The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [204]
Hislop and d’Harcourt got to him soon after that in the small boat, and pulled him in. He did not give them much help, and they took in a good deal of sea. D’Harcourt, breathing hard, let him be where he was and snatched the oars again. Behind him Hislop, who had been shuddering violently, suddenly let his oar slip altogether. Water swirled round their legs. D’Harcourt said, ‘Her planks have sprung. Can you see to Hislop?’
He didn’t say, ‘We shall have to turn back.’ For a long time now, the boat had been making more water than they could bale. And Danny, he knew, had now collapsed.
Lymond said, ‘He’s unconscious. I’ll bale you out so far as I can. Send the pinnace.’
‘For you? I can’t leave you!’
‘You can’t take me. She’d sink. I haven’t finished,’ said Lymond. The wind on his wet body was throwing it into convulsions, like the sea, as he set about baling. He paid no attention at all to d’Harcourt’s expostulations. Only when d’Harcourt, stammering at him, tried to turn the boat, with the three of them still aboard, and row against the tide towards the shore, did Lymond put one hand on the gunwale and without wasting breath or temper or time, lift himself overboard.
D’Harcourt stayed, shouting for a while, and rowing raggedly after him, until the boat began to settle low in the water and he realized that if he stayed, he would sink. He baled and rowed for a long time, single-handed, and in the end it did sink, but within sight of the shore, and there were men running through the firelit crocheting surf to drag him out, and Hislop.
Robert Best was among them, seizing d’Harcourt’s shirt and shaking him so that his wet head rolled to and fro, and shouting in his face, ‘Did you find them?’
His voice was rusty with seawater. He said, ‘Send the pinnace.’
‘Buckland’s gone with a fishing boat. There’s another out there already. Ludo!’
D’Harcourt opened his eyes. ‘Lymond is still there. There.’ He rolled on one elbow and pointed. He added, ‘Nothing else.’
Robert Best said, overtaken with anger, ‘You could have——’ and stopped, because it was wholly unfair. The boat had sunk. And the Voevoda was his own powerful law. He helped the other man to his feet, and laid him with Hislop near the fire, where the others were. The sailors from the pinnace were now helping to keep it going, and lying in its warmth, the others were beginning to recover. He and Buckland had moved no one yet, although the men and women who had come to their help were readily hospitable, and had brought sacking and bannocks and a cauldron of soup and a dipper.
They said ‘Sir Alexander’ was coming; and somebody else. He supposed they were the local lairds; one of them belonging perhaps to the castle he could see, now pricked with lamplight on the south shoulder of the gentle small rise up above him. Apart from that, and the scattering of bothies well up the shore, there was no sign of civilized life.
They were lucky to have as much. It was a pretty bay, half-moon in shape, with white grainy sand rising to thick sweet grass, still very green. Below, were the slabby rocks, sloping down to the sea, ochre and charcoal in the firelight, with their black feet in the spray. And the roar of the water. Sometimes, as the waves shifted, he saw the queer cabalistic shape of the Edward, like a black thornbush caught on a nail. The Edward Bonaventure, with her cargo. With her six timbers of sables, from the Emperor to the monarchs of England. Twenty entire sables, exceeding beautiful, with teeth, ears and claws. With four once-living sables, with chains and with collars. With 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, upon which the wild swan, crane, geese and other great fowls might look down as she floated dead on the Bay of Pitsligo, with her drum of silver, the hoops gilt.
Francis Crawford had