The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [198]
They had time, before the light went, to see the outline of a fair-sized keep on the skyline, and a modest handful of bothies. They had time, also, to note the position of the reefs behind and beside them, and to take up their position in clear waters, with every piece of ground tackle down that they had. The holding, Christopher reported, was good.
Then they went below, to the strange rocking creak of a ship swinging at anchor, and set their watches, and chewed their salt meat for the last time to stay them till morning, when the pinnace would steer her way through the rocks to the shore, and they would feel the earth swaying under their feet, and drink sweet water again, and tear bloody meat at a fireside … and see a new face … and listen to a tongue that they knew … and handle a girl …
‘The ship is sleeping already,’ Chancellor said. Too tired to eat, he had come in after the others and sat down fully dressed as he was. On one of the mattresses John Buckland was already stretched out, his face a landscape of bone-peaks and hollows, and Lymond had dropped on the sea chest beside him, his coat over his shoulders, his head supported on one motionless hand, his elbow on the chart table.
Under the hand, with its unhealed blisters and callouses, his eyes could not be looked at. Chancellor said, ‘You will have to shave off your beard. I can’t tell what you’re thinking.’
‘About beer,’ Lymond said, without moving.
‘No,’ said Chancellor. After a moment he said, ‘We couldn’t have done it without your men. Blacklock and Hislop and d’Harcourt. I’ve been to see them. They’re sleeping.’
‘I know,’ Lymond said. He took down his hand and let both arms rest on the chart table. In the candlelight his blue eyes looked dazed. He said, ‘I can listen.’
And Richard Chancellor, bowing his head, rested his arms on the same table and sobbed.
A long time later, moving softly past Buckland, Lymond brought him aqua vite, and he found it at his elbow when, sniffing, he stirred at last to find a kerchief and put his wet face to rights. The candle had been moved, too, away from the table and was where it threw no light on his face, or on Lymond, leaning back against the wall. Lymond said, ‘You are allowed this much for every ship you go to Gehenna with, and bring back again.’
‘I lost three ships,’ Chancellor said. ‘And eighty-five souls.’
‘I stopped counting,’ Lymond said, ‘after I had seen the first hundred or so of my soldiers dispatched to their earthly rest through me. You lead, therefore you kill.’
Chancellor said, presently, ‘We are in Scotland.’
‘And that, as perhaps you know, is my weakness,’ Lymond said. ‘I shall not be among the volunteers for your shore party.’
In the chest on which Lymond was sitting, there was a letter, forgotten until this moment. Chancellor said, ‘Does it matter who you are, or where you come from? You don’t need to know Jenkinson is a Northampton man; just that he knows the world, and the secret of crossing it. The Burroughs are Bristol seamen; Bourne is a Gravesend gunner, Adams a schoolmaster, Eden a Treasury official …’
Lymond said, ‘You are going to ask me to meet John Dee again. What use would it be? My God, in three months I still haven’t learned enough to understand half your arguments.’
‘That isn’t true,’ Chancellor said. ‘You have a … you have the right sort of mind. You know enough already to conceive ideas and discuss them. You only need to be guided.’
‘I know,