To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [149]
Robin said, ‘I think someone is watching us.’ Standing at the window of the Leith house, he peered through the horn and was careful to keep his voice firm. If the rest could hide their dismay, so could he.
‘He is welcome,’ said Father Moriz, the German. ‘We shall still sail tomorrow. Are you afraid of small boats?’
‘It is twenty tons, for God’s sake,’ said the engineer, John le Grant. ‘All you need to know is which side to be sick over.’
Robin kept quiet. He had been to Aalborg once with his father, and he hadn’t been sick. He was used to small boats. He had just looked forward to something magnificent. And although no one had told him very much, he could make guesses.
Later, when supper was over and the fireside flask had gone round, he spoke his thought to M. de Fleury. ‘Now we shall have to fish.’
The dimple he hated appeared. ‘It is what one usually does, in a fishing-boat.’
He was obstinate. ‘In one as big as the ship that isn’t coming from Danzig?’
‘How much you know,’ said his master. ‘That is the ocean there outside the firth. What else would a ship do but fish?’
‘Rob other ships,’ the boy said. ‘Baltic ships trading in herring.’
The dimple deepened. ‘An interesting theory. Have you shared it with anyone else?’
He was honest. ‘My grandfather wondered. He says Master Crackbene is known.’
‘Mick?’ M. de Fleury addressed the broad-shouldered seamaster. ‘Are you known?’
‘I hope so,’ said Crackbene. ‘Or I have been wasting my time.’ And everyone laughed.
Then they were at sea.
At first, he believed they were going to fish, for they struck out as you would expect, into the ocean. He was accordingly mystified when they changed tack to bear persistently shore wards. Questioned, the crewmen ignored him. There were only eight, and none of them Leithers, although he thought he recognised one: a man who sometimes plied between Dysart and Eskmouth. Finally, he asked the German chaplain where they were going.
Father Moriz’s eyebrows vibrated, and his streaming eyes stared accusingly over the scarf wrapped about his nose and his mouth. He pinched it down and answered, if curtly. ‘There is a harbour. I understand we have people to meet.’
‘Back in Scotland?’ yelled Robin.
‘Can you not tell west from east? Yes, back in Scotland. A respite at least from the wind. Are you not glad?’
‘And then what?’
‘And then, if you insist, you will be told everything,’ said Father Moriz.
It was a tidal river they entered, full of sandbars and crowded with fishing-boats. Behind the jostling masts there stretched sheeted water and marshes; what else the masts hid was not apparent until they had dropped anchor in the deepening dusk and were promptly hailed from a skiff at their lee. The men who came aboard from her were not only strangers, but only one of them spoke a language he knew. They were greeted by Master Crackbene, who in turn presented them to his employer.
Presented was not the right word. They spoke to M. de Fleury as free men; as Master Crackbene did when he was forgetful or angered. And M. de Fleury, broaching the ale-keg himself, answered the strangers in kind. When Robin scrambled to help, M. de Fleury said, ‘No. We’re leaving in half an hour. Pack.’
Father Moriz was busily strapping his coffer, and the engineer’s modest bundle was ready, as was that of the sailing-master himself. Like the others, M. de Fleury had brought almost nothing: it would not take long to pack. Robin himself had more garments than anyone. He had been told what to bring. He found, heaving bags into the skiff, that he kept catching his breath with excitement. Then he was in the lighter himself, and the strangers had joined him, with M. de Fleury and the three Company men, and the dogger was already weighing anchor, ready to sail off without them.
He sat and watched it diminish until its lamp splintered and shrank among the rigging and masts of the fishing-boats. Then something heavy and dark took its place. A dam gate. A