Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [55]
There, where in the cloud-torn sky the faintest new radiance told of the uprising moon, loomed the dark shape of a ship. A ship painted black. The corsair capital ship Lymond had fooled on the way to Algiers.
Jerott had had two hours’ sleep when it happened, and he felt like a man half-clubbed to death. He knew, as he effected, at top speed, his share of their practised defence, that if the pirate ship chose to close in, firing, the Dauphiné would sink where she lay. Sails up, oars manned, guns primed and aimed, the corsair had all the searoom and the initiative. She could sink or board as she chose. Jerott wondered, heaving up arquebuses, what Lymond would do to the look-out. But it was hardly the fault of the seaman. Lightless on a black, starless night, the enemy ship might have come nearer yet, unseen but for that late-rising moon.
Still no guns. They were barely in cannon range. Give us another two minutes, thought Jerott, and we’ll have our firing-power ready, at least. That was the anchor coming up. The oars were dipping, waiting for orders. Pouring like animals over the gangway, the seamen were taking up positions. Jerott, sprinting round checking crutches, glanced up again, measuring the speed of the adversary.
She hadn’t moved. Standing off, just out of firing-range, she had turned to lie head to wind, and, as he watched, the mainsail slid down. Finding Lymond unexpectedly beside him, Jerott said with disbelief, ‘She hasn’t seen us?’
‘The hell she hasn’t,’ said Lymond shortly; and added, ‘Be quiet!’ as Jerott opened his mouth to say something. In the darkness Jerott could just make out that he had a spyglass trained on the unmoving ship. Still looking through it, he raised his voice. ‘Notre homme!’ and used three well-chosen words when the comite came.
Silence invested the Dauphiné from tabernacle to prow.
Jerott looked at the Master over Lymond’s head, and then back to the pirate. Something was happening. Across the water they could hear voices, thin in the calm of the night, and the echo of another, familiar sound, which was just in the process of stopping. Lymond lowered the spyglass and straightened. ‘Well, what’s your theory? They’ve anchored,’ he said.
‘It is the same ship that attacked us?’ Jerott got the glass, verified in silence that it was, and added, ‘They’re doing something aft. That’s odd. They’ve got three-quarters of their complement on the tribord rail. Look at the tilt of her. Unless … Christ, is she foundering?’ said Jerott, who still very badly needed his sleep.
‘Don’t be a bloody fool,’ said Lymond. ‘She’s launching her caique, the same as we did a few moments ago.’ And, sure enough, a moment later they saw the boat leave the corsair ship’s deck, a long black shuttle sliding down the silver loom of the oars and surging broadside into the moon-dazzled waters in a bouquet of spray. Dark figures swarmed down the galley’s flank as it settled, and the last aboard the caique turned and shouted.
As the skiff swerved and, in a flashing fishbone of oars, began to drive away from the parent ship, every lamp on the big corsair galley suddenly and miraculously glinted alive. Outlined from poop to rambade, she lay to her anchor at the mouth of the bay, oars shipped, guns silent, crew and officers thronging her rails. And high on the rigging, unrolling in the tremulous wind and burning scarlet and ivory like some heavenly conflagration in the newly lit lamp at the masthead, flew the eight-pointed white cross of Malta, the flag of the Knights of St John.
No one spoke. Beside him, with sharpened perception, Jerott could feel every nerve in Lymond’s strained senses tightening. Jerott said, ‘It can’t be. Francis: Gabriel would never come to meet you like this.’
‘Who, then?’ said Lymond. And immediately, ‘All right. Don’t let’s dwell on it. Master, we want the women embarked in the caique together with the escort and foodstuffs. Then let the canot down on the port side with an armed welcoming-party. Our guests can transfer into that a safe distance