The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [193]
It was not their navigator who failed them. From Orlov they set course for Gorodetsky Point, which they called Corpus Christi, where the abrupt grey cliffs, split and fissured, rose from the sea with misty snows on their crowns, and the soft russet landscapes of scrub trees and low Lapland cottages lay far behind them. They passed Lumbovska Bay, and then thrust round the great headland at Sweetnose, where, fourteen months previously, Christopher had made his light-hearted offering of oatmeal and butter.
There, snow fell upon them with a gale out of the north, and Christopher worked with the others to clear it without mentioning the whirlpool; helping to melt frozen blocks with a candle; to fold and stow the deadweight, crackling sails; to take the soundings as they crept from anchorage to anchorage behind the small islands along the north Lappian coast; saying nothing as they passed Nokuyev Bay and the River Arzina where masters and mates, carpenters, cooks, pursers, coopers and surgeons, gunners, seamen and merchants, sixty-seven English souls strayed perhaps in that black howling air, and watched their living ships sail slowly by.
He had ceased to resent his father’s companion. At anchor; or during the absence of parties ashore, seeking water and wood, the obscure discussions in Chancellor’s cabin would continue, but at other times Lymond became without argument one of the team that ran the ship as Buckland liked to have it; safe and clean, with rules for prayer and rules against fire; regulating the course by signal of his three fellow vessels, and conferring with their captains daily. He had time to spare for Christopher, and showed him once, between squalls, where great patches of ambergris were lurching on the steep seas, and at another time whales, pursued and tormented by threshers, the plunging dolphins nicknamed by Nepeja kossatka from the twisting scythe-tails which betrayed them.
Of intention, the Russians were no longer separate, but joined with Best and the men of St Mary’s for as much of the day as was possible, talking Russian among themselves, and sleeping and gambling, or playing long, inconclusive games of chance or of chess. It was Danny, instructed by Lymond, who browbeat them up on to deck and tried to teach them, in the white sparkling cold, some simple truths about the forces of wind and of water, but they listened, livid and uncomprehending, and fled as soon as might be to the dark creaking squalor below.
Fear was their great enemy. Buckland was everywhere, and Chancellor, when he could leave the deck also, below decks, working with and talking to seamen, for this time they had no minister with them. Often they found Lymond had been there before them. Buckland, walking up from the waist of the ship, remarked on it to his pilot.
‘Handling men is his profession,’ Chancellor said. ‘You should be thankful for it. You’ve seen what he is doing up here.’
‘I’ve seen him take sightings for you. I take it you trust him to do it. I’ve found something he won’t do.’
‘What?’ said Chancellor.
‘Take over the bloody jerfalcon. I thought he knew all about birds. He had an eagle, they tell me.’
‘And he killed it, they tell me,’ Chancellor said. ‘Why doesn’t Nepeja look after it? It’s his master’s royal gift to Queen Mary.’ Six timbers of sables they carried, from the Emperor to the monarchs of England. Twenty entire sables, exceeding beautiful, with teeth, ears and claws. Four living sables, with chains and with collars. Thirty lynx furs, large and beautiful, and six great skins, very rich and rare, worn only by the Emperor for worthiness. And a large and fair white jerfalcon for the wild swan, crane, geese and other great fowls, with a drum of silver, the hoops gilt, for a lure for the hawk.
‘Because,’ said John Buckland wearily, ‘he spends all his time vomiting. In Russian.’
‘I’ve noticed that,’ Chancellor said. ‘Give him an interest. Give him the sables