Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [137]
Flushed with triumph; buoyant with expectations; illumined with shadowless vanity, Leone Strozzi stood under the fluttering red silk of his banners and watched the pale coasts of Africa come nearer and nearer.
The Catarinetta had her accident on the morning of the 14th of August, their last day at sea. How it happened, no one afterwards was exactly able to say. One moment, the little fishing-smack with the striped sail was skimming towards them, set on a parallel course; and the next, with a crunch of broken timber that shook the Catarinetta, she was under their flank, and the few men who had been aboard her, hurt, dead or dying, were spilled in the sea.
The slaves, shouting, had shipped oars automatically, but by the time de Guimeran recovered his balance and ran up on deck, the Catarinetta’s impetus, despite the jar, was enough to have driven her some distance onward. He satisfied himself that no irreparable damage had been done to her sides and, leaving Gabriel to initiate emergency repairs, de Guimeran replaced him at the tiller and gave orders to turn.
Afterwards, he remembered that Gabriel, working like a slave himself, his face lined with remorse, had still turned and demurred, hesitantly. There were no survivors by now. And they had the lives of twelve hundred men in their hands. Already the other galleys had forged far ahead. They must keep up, or endanger the coup. De Guimeran didn’t listen. He had seen one dark head in the water which was not floating helplessly, and one arm alternately upraised and thrust forward swimming. He completed his orders and La Catarinetta swung round, her sails filling, and flew back the way she had come.
By the time she reached the wreckage, the swimmer was the only man living. Standing amidships, boarding tackle in his hands, de Guimeran nursed the galley along, order by order, until it lay as close as was possible to the swimming man. There was blood on the face under the black, streaming hair, and he was swimming, de Guimeran saw, one-handed, but doggedly for all that. He was not dressed like a fisherman.…
Gabriel, standing beside him, his work abandoned, said suddenly, ‘He will need help; his wrist is broken. Let me support him up the ladder …’ and, without waiting for permission, vaulted lightly over the rail and into the surging water beside the wounded man. The swimmer looked up.
‘It’s …’ said the Chevalier de Guimeran. ‘My God, it’s Jerott Blyth.’
To that, Jerott knew later, he owed his life. Half conscious from a blow on the head and the pain of his wrist; clouding the water with the blood from the shallow cuts which covered his body, he looked up as someone jumped into the water beside him, but he did not hear de Guimeran’s shout. He was looking instead at the man treading water beside him: the smiling, big-featured face; the guinea-gold hair, regardlessly cropped; the magnificent shoulders under the soaked doublet, with the Cross of St John white on its breast. ‘My dear Mr Blyth,’ said Sir Graham Reid Malett, tenderly reaching out one muscular arm and placing it, relentlessly, on Jerott’s tired shoulders. ‘It is no use. I’m afraid you must drown.’ Then the water closed over his head.
He came up once, as another body splashed into the water beside him. For a moment he saw Gabriel’s face quite clearly: saw his eyes narrow, and heard his voice say, ‘De Guimeran … really, I can manage this by myself, I am sure.’ Then he realized that the firm hand under his other arm was de Guimeran’s, and that despite anything Gabriel might wish to do, he was being