The crystal cave - Mary Stewart [45]
"You asked who we were. We are Ambrosius' men."
There was a silence. I realized that the river-banks had disappeared. Far off in the darkness to the north a light showed; the lighthouse. Some time back the rain had slackened and stopped. Now it was cold, with the wind off shore, and the water was choppy. The boat pitched and swung, and I felt the first qualm of sickness. I clutched my hands hard against my belly, against the cold as much as the sickness, and said sharply: "Ambrosius' men? Then you're spies? His spies?"
"Call us loyal men."
"Then it's true? It's true he's waiting in Less Britain?"
"Aye, it's true."
I said, aghast: "Then that's where you're going? You can't imagine you can get there in this horrible boat?"
Marric laughed, and Hanno said sourly, "We might have to, at that, if the ship's not there."
"What ship would be there in winter?" I demanded. "It's not sailing weather."
"It's sailing weather if you pay enough," said Marric dryly. "Ambrosius pays. The ship will be there." His big hand dropped on my shoulder, not ungently. "Never mind that, there's still things I want to know."
I curled up, hugging my belly, trying to take big breaths of the cold clear air. "Oh, yes, there's a lot I could tell you. But if you're going to drop me overboard anyway, I've nothing to lose, have I? I might as well keep the rest of my information to myself -- or see if Ambrosius will pay for it. And there's your ship. Look; if you can't see it yet, you must be blind. Now don't talk to me any more, I feel sick."
I heard him laugh again under his breath. "You're a cool one, and no mistake. Aye, there's the ship, I can see her clearly enough now. Well, seeing who you are, we'll take you aboard. And I'll tell you the other reason; I liked what you said about your friend. That sounded true enough. So you can be loyal, eh? And you've no call to be loyal to Camlach, by all accounts, or to Vortigern. Could you be loyal to Ambrosius?"
"I'll know when I see him."
His fist sent me sprawling to the bottom of the boat. "Princeling or not, keep a civil tongue in your head when you speak of him. There's many a hundred men think of him as their King, rightwise born."
I picked myself up, retching. A low hail came from near at hand, and in a moment we were rocking in the deeper shadow of the ship.
"If he's a man, that'll be enough," I said.
***
The ship was small, compact and low in the water. She lay there, unlighted, a shadow on the dark sea. I could just see the rake of her mast swaying -- sickeningly, it seemed to me -- against the scudding cloud that was only a little lighter than the black sky above. She was rigged like the merchantmen who traded in and out of Maridunum in the sailing weather, but I thought she looked cleaner built, and faster.
Marric answered the hail, then a rope snaked down overside, and Hanno caught it and made it fast.
"Come on, you, get moving. You can climb, can't you?"
Somehow, I got to my feet in the swinging coracle. The rope was wet, and jerked in my hands. From above an urgent voice came: "Hurry, will you? We'll be lucky if we get back at all, with the weather that's coming up."
"Get aloft, blast you," said Marric, roughly, giving me a shove. It was all it needed. My hands slipped, nerveless, from the rope, and I fell back into the coracle, landing half across the side, where I hung, gasping and retching, and beyond caring what fate overtook me or even a dozen kingdoms. If I had been stabbed or thrown into the sea at that point I doubt if I would even have noticed, except to welcome death as a relief. I simply hung there over the boat's side like a lump of sodden rags, vomiting.
I have very little recollection of what happened then. There was a good deal of cursing, and I think I remember Hanno urgently recommending Marric to cut his losses and throw me overboard; but I was picked up bodily and, somehow, slung up and into the waiting hands above. Then someone half-carried, half-dragged me below, and dropped me on a pile of bedding with a bucket to hand and the air from an open port blowing