The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [201]
They were half a mile from the shore and the reef, almost wholly submerged, offered no foothold. ‘The small boat. We stay,’ Lymond said.
They dropped the small boat over the lee side five minutes later, and formed a staggering barrier, shoulder to shoulder as the blundering form of Osep Nepeja was dropped into its bows, followed by his six semi-conscious fellow countrymen. Then the good oarsmen followed, with Robert Best, and Christopher and Diccon Chancellor, because he knew the rocks, and the safety of the Muscovite Ambassador to England had been placed in his hands.
Chancellor boarded last of all, and the Edward lurched and settled as he laid hands on the rope, her timbers squealing plainly through the thud and the crash of the waves, and the new resonant sounds of water pouring, from all around them, under their feet. Chancellor stopped, his hair clawed from his scalp by the wind, horror and despair on his face, staring at Lymond.
Lymond said, ‘We will launch the pinnace. Go quickly,’ because the ship was breaking beneath them, and the five of them were holding back, by main force, the screaming men who had not found a place in the boat. Chancellor looked at them all and then at Lymond again. ‘I have lost you before I have found you,’ said Richard Chancellor. And turning aside, jumped into the boat, and cast off.
Adam Blacklock was sent to fetch Chancellor’s box, and what he could collect of the ship’s papers while Buckland directed the repair on the pinnace. How long they had, no one knew: the wind, gusting in the dark, was kicking the ship round the reef, and probably only the reef itself was staunching its gougings. When the wind sucked her off, she would sink, giving them to the storm, and the cold winter sea, and, half a mile off, the shore with its black, spray-dashed rocks. And of them all, only Buckland and the men of St Mary’s could swim.
Only Lymond did not at once turn to help with the pinnace. He sent Blacklock on his errand and stayed alone where he was, braced by the shards of the mast, watching the spray rise and fall in the dark, and the pattern of white, disclosed and hidden again, which was the wake of the small boat, plying west and dipping its oars. And achieving his errand, Adam came to his side also and said, ‘What is it? They should be all right.’
It was hard to hear in the wind. Lymond said, ‘They are safe,’ and Adam saw with a shock that his face, under the short, blowing hair was withdrawn and perfectly calm.
Adam Blacklock said, ‘You think we are lost.’
‘Perhaps,’ Lymond said. ‘There was a prophecy once.… I think it is going to be fulfilled. And not before time.’
He looked at Adam, and from the flash of white in the dimness, Adam realized he was smiling. ‘You are going to live anyway. Someone has to do Chancellor’s maps.’
He had turned to go, thrusting Blacklock before him, when the shout came through the thunderous spray. They heard it, down in the waist where the pinnace was ready to launch. But high on the wrecked fo’c’sle with Lymond, Adam saw it: saw Chancellor’s boat stop only half-way to shore, where the long, marbled breakers were piling, and sudden ghostly cascades starred the night. Standing in the boat was a dark figure shouting, and struggling about it were others, clutching, clawing, trying to pull the man down.
Lymond said, ‘Oh, Christ in heaven,’ and didn’t wait. They glimpsed, as they ran, the black figure fall from the boat, and then the struggling mass heel and tumble into the pale spume around him. The last thing they saw was the whale shape of Chancellor’s boat, upside down, lifted on the waves like the bellowing kit, tormented by dolphins.
A moment later, Buckland got the pinnace into the water and they were aboard, and seizing the oars while the last of the Edward’s crew thudded over the gunwale beside them. Then they in turn struck through the waves, towards the overturned boat, and the black specks which were men’s heads, dead or alive, in the sea.
The tide was against them, and the wind, pushing them south.