The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [9]
The priest stood by the elm. At close quarters, he was seen to be of unusual size, although his broad, large-nosed face with its heavy black brows appeared tranquil. Now his hood was thrust back, the hair stuffed under the rim of his cap showed thick and black as dyed cotton. He had a throat like an elk’s, and there was a new scar on the fist at his hipbone. Behind him his two men stood at ease, holding the horses. He himself contemplated the river where the Florentine galley still reposed in all its elegant length while the thick yellow water rushed past. It was stuck on a sandbank.
If you were in no hurry, the scene was entertaining enough. Below the steep bank, bare-legged men swearing in every dialect from Savona to Naples had been set to work with levers and shovels. The crew were among them. On deck, supervising, paced a broad cleanshaven official in a red pillbox hat and a black gown with gold glinting about it. In the prow, two half-naked men toiled to wind in the capstan: the distant oak tree was shaking. Other trees, scarred of trunk and ankle-deep in the last of their leaves, had already suffered. A thunderhead of crows towered above them. The lord Pagano Doria dismounted, as the trunk beside the priest quivered. A nest sprang into the air, touched water, and bobbed off behind on the current.
The priest looked at the tree, and so did Doria. Dug deep into the bark was (still) the noose of the galley’s belaying cable. As they watched, the noose slowly crawled tighter. There was a smell of heated tow. The link rope, straight as a rule, was sensibly humming. The lord Pagano spoke with some gravity. “They seem to be moored at both ends.”
The priest inclined his head, turning. He said, “I fear they will hardly go far.” He had a melodious voice, and spoke in Latinist’s Italian, learned somewhere in Germany. He said, “Will you apprise them, monsignore, or shall I break the news?”
A fellow spirit. The lord Pagano Doria gave his charming, mischievous smile. “Allow me,” he said. And, drawing his double-edged, gold-hilted sword, stepped in front of the priest to the cable.
“But—” said the chaplain very quickly. Pagano, smiling, paid no attention. Raising both fists, he chopped with his blade at the mooring.
The severed stay leaped like a whip, sending leaves, grass and gouts of sand spinning. On the foredeck of the galley the capstan, suddenly freed, tossed to the ground its two straining seamen. It then began to run backwards, unreeling the rope at the bow. Loosed, the galley swung immediately broadside to the flow of the river and, sliding backwards, remounted the sandbank. The supervisor fell down. The clamour that followed was the kind you might hear at a bull-baiting. Muffled below it was the circumspect laughter of the man with the donkeys and the oil-vendor. The vineyard factor, making intermittent use of a woodstack, was the picture of silent concern, but for other reasons entirely.
The two men by the elm tree faced each other: one, five-sixths of the height of the other. The lord Pagano Doria exclaimed, “Now, the Universal Creator protect me. Who could have foreseen such a thing? They will blame me, and rightly.”
The priest appeared thoughtful. “You perhaps. Or perhaps the person who failed to untie the cable.”
“Ah,” said Pagano Doria. “You chide me, and rightly. It is not seemly that some poor man should take another one’s blame. Even though, of course, it was his fault in the first place. Will you come and witness me making confession?”
The priest smiled. “If you wish. The officer on board may be hurt. You may need special rites if he assaults you.”
“I?” said Pagano Doria. Perhaps because he was short, he knew well how to bring a little chill into his voice, a little