Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [77]
Beneath a powerful shawl, the round brown eyes inspected him narrowly. The wind howled and the mizzen suddenly flapped. There was a rush of wet feet on the deck. Bel said, ‘Oh, never fear, we’re good sailors. Where are we?’
‘At sea,’ said Gelis, arriving. ‘What a murky night. How dead is your reckoning?’
He said, ‘I’m sorry. We have to keep the deck clear for sailing.’
‘We could hold a rope for ye,’ said Bel. Her eyes ranged round the grey tossing ocean. She said, ‘We thought we might see some land. If we’re pointing at the Pillars of Hercules, then I owe her two ducats, or she’ll take it in doppias. She’s a great one for a wager.’
‘We’re sailing south-west,’ Nicholas said.
‘Are we?’ said Gelis. They happened, because of work on a spar, to be sailing south-east at the time, but there was no one within earshot to contradict him.
He said, ‘If you doubt me, there might be land to be seen from the crow’s-nest.’ It leaned against streaming cloud, at the top of the mainmast. He saw Gelis, her head back, consider it.
Bel said, ‘There should be a wager in that.’ Her expression was wicked.
Temptation seized him, and then he remembered what he was doing. Nicholas said, ‘No, there isn’t. Below, please.’
They obeyed him but only, he fully realised, because they had sufficiently amused themselves.
That night, he joined them for supper, along with those seniors not already on duty. It was not because he had nothing else to do. In the least of the day’s incidents, a seaman fuddled with illicit drink had caught one of the two young grumetes with his hand in his pouch, and had beaten him senseless.
Nicholas had dealt with it. It wasn’t unusual. It was the sort of thing to be expected from a new-gathered crew at the outset of a ticklish voyage and hardly worth mentioning.
Gelis was of another opinion. Attacking her see-sawing soup, she looked up as soon as Nicholas, stooping, came to the table. ‘Don’t tell me!’ she said. ‘You waited to sew the boy into his shroud. Or was it the seaman?’ Godscalc stiffened.
‘Not my job,’ Nicholas said. ‘You’re enjoying the soup? There is plenty.’
‘So I suppose,’ she said. ‘The crew diminishes daily.’
‘But not the passengers,’ Nicholas said, sitting down with deliberation. Gelis van Borselen was mourning her sister in the only way that she knew, and she didn’t want him to be passive. That he realised.
Diniz was there. Diniz had had plenty of sleep, and was anxious to please. He said, ‘You have to keep discipline.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. I understand the man thrashed a child,’ Gelis said.
Nicholas ate.
Gelis said, ‘Did you hear me?’
‘I’m sorry?’ said Nicholas.
Diniz said, ‘He was drunk. The seaman was drunk and Nicholas had him thrashed in his turn. It’s over,’ he said.
‘And the boy? Filipe?’ Gelis said.
‘Sewed in his shroud,’ Nicholas said.
Diniz said, ‘No. You let him off. Bel’s looking after him.’
‘Bel says it isn’t his fault,’ Gelis said. ‘She says the other boy, Lázaro, put him up to it.’
The fat woman was, of course, right. Lázaro was a natural bully. Nicholas ate, his mind on the pins of the rudder. Diniz said, ‘You should get rid of the thief and the man.’
Nicholas said, ‘Oh, the boy of course goes. We’ll see what becomes of the man.’
He winced at the bang as Gelis laid down her knife. ‘The child is dismissed, and the drunkard who beat him can stay?’
‘Yes, if he sobers,’ said Nicholas. ‘He’s said to be a good mariner, Luis. Every sea-going man makes that mistake once.’
‘How sad,’ said Gelis, ‘for any children they meet. And the enterprising Lázaro also keeps his position?’
‘It sounds,’ Nicholas said, ‘as if Lázaro might be handier than Filipe in a tight corner. A voyage like this needs survivors.’
‘Your priest is remarkably quiet,’ Gelis said.
‘That’s because he’s a survivor,’ Nicholas said. He waited, on edge, for Godscalc to speak, and then felt