The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [197]
He took his decision a thousand miles north of London, on the edge of November, with a gale coming from the west bringing weather that they had not had, even yet. He confirmed it later that morning, when by flag and cannon shot he drew the fleet towards him and took aboard the captain of the Esperanza and the Confidentia, but not Howlet, of the Philip and Mary, whose boat was half stoved in making the attempt, and who had to be picked up by pinnace. It was only then that they learned what damage the small ships had suffered, and it was realized beyond all doubt that these could not hope to reach London.
There was time for that, and a quick consultation over Chancellor’s charts; then they parted. Over the noise of the wind, presently, the men on the quarterdeck of the Edward Bonaventure could hear singing, reaching fitfully into the growing storm from the ships round about them. Chancellor listened to it, his face stiff and salted, his bloodshot eyes and ridged brow turned to the weather. ‘You can ask your ships to do too much,’ he said. ‘And your men.’
They reached the entrance to Trondheim Fjord with the tide and a full gale from the west, which brought the sea green round the poop and over the worn and cracked pavisades of the four weary ships. They skimmed rocking before it into the cannonading spray of reef, rock and island, carried under bare poles as fast as four bladders, and as capricious; caught and swirled by the currents; turned by the waves and pushed and pulled by the wind.
The entrance to the fjord was dirty. A lordly hand, gay with malice, had dusted the sea with black rocks and brought mountain heads, gritty with reefs, to its surface. Quicker than the eye could run on a chart, the ships poured and swirled through the great throats of water, and the less able died first.
The Bona Confidentia struck at full speed. She exploded as if the reef had blown up beneath her, with men, planks and spars spurted into the sky like math from a scythe blade, seen small and distinct, between the wall of one sky-reaching wave and the next.
The Bona Esperanza turned, shearing her sides; took water and turned again; half struck and turned again into the wind, her mizzen-mast down and her rigging fallen, tangled with men. Then the current took her and she fled jerking, like a disabled creature, dragging her dying trap with her. The Philip and Mary disappeared in her wake.
Chancellor pulled the Edward out of the fjord. He did it conning the ship minute by minute, with the helmsman’s head raised by his foot and the whole crew working to him as his lips, his eyes, his ears, his finger-ends. He drove her between the islands as he had once envied another man in his element, swift and hard and firm on the reins, winning point by point from the winds, giving and winning again; reading the spume and the breakers and lifting his ship like a child round and over them. And he held it until he had brought her outside Froya; and outside Froya, the wind moved to the north, and let him turn aside from the haven which was no haven, and whose entrance they knew the Edward could never brook twice.
He consulted nobody; but divined his course and gave his directions; and the Edward, swinging slowly, brought her beam to the storm and, limping, began the long journey homewards, alone.
He wept that night, but not again; and held prayers for the dead in the morning, his voice hoarse and steady above the roar of the wind. He had fifty men and a tired ship to bring home in seas which turned the sun green and mantled the moon and the stars through the night. There was no rest, nor was it time yet for speaking.
Chapter 2
On November 8th, 1556, with her casks empty and her sails in tatters; with two of her crew washed overboard and one dead from the flux, the Edward Bonaventure sighted land and was able, slowly, to make towards it. A day later, it was possible positively to identify it as a