To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [151]
‘I wouldn’t have told anyone,’ Robin said. Then he said, ‘Are we going to fight the other ship?’
Father Moriz patted his shoulder and leaned back. ‘Not if all goes according to plan. We are making for the same markets, that’s all. And he is off the west coast, and better positioned to reach them than we are. But he has no idea he should leave quite so soon.’
The same markets for what? Frowning at the jolting black hide of the curtain, Robin tried to recall what he had glimpsed in the hold. He had seen sleeping animals penned, and stout boxes, and signs of considerable provisions. He had seen barrels of salt, and bales with coquet seals on them. He had seen casks of water and boxes of fish-hooks – boxes with hundreds of fish-hooks. And he had observed, in swathes and coils and bundles, more fishing-lines than he had ever seen at one time in his life.
He said slowly, ‘But we aren’t going for herring.’
‘No,’ said Father Moriz. ‘We aim higher than that. We aim to serve Christendom – which has, you may have noticed, one hundred and sixty-six fast days per year, forty of them in Lent – with a fish that is greater than herring; that will endure without salting; that will transport to every clime, while exacting the highest of prices. We are going to fetch stockfish.’
‘I am sorry,’ said Robin. He was sorry for the priest, who had spoken so bitterly; he did not understand why.
‘It is not your fault,’ said Father Moriz, recovering. ‘I cannot say I approve, but I would rather be here to influence what occurs if I can. You understand this is a field of great competition, where rights are already pre-empted and disputes are not taken to court, but settled at sea. We shall be away for some time.’
Robin thought of the great northern sea, washing Denmark and Norway her vassal; embracing England and Scotland, truculent neighbours; surrounding the islands of Orkney and Shetland, so recently Danish. He said, ‘Stockfish are cod. Stockfish are cod, caught and dried by the sun and the wind.’
‘So I believe,’ the priest said. ‘And so, with a warehouse in Leith, a boy will know what an old man from Augsburg had to be told: that the cod is a creature of habit, and will come at a certain time every year – at this time, as the year turns to March – to the place where it best likes to fatten and breed. And there, well before the spawn can begin, and during the weeks of rich feeding, when they are at their ripest and heaviest, men will gather and catch them. And you will perhaps know that of all the known world, there is one favoured spot where they come, and where all those hunting them will come also.’
‘The Westmann Islands,’ said Robin. He thought the priest was teaching him some lesson. Then he saw he was not.
‘We are going to the Westmann Isles,’ said Father Moriz. ‘We are going to tamper with Nature, defy law and cheat pirates. We are going to multiply fish for the Lord. We are going to sail the stiffening ocean to Iceland.’
As he spoke the anchor-chain rattled. The squeak of the windlass had ceased; the tow ropes took up the strain. The Svipa slowly came into motion, swaying through the long sandy channel that would take her to sea. The priest rose and went out. Robin stood at the door, silent with shock. The Mouth of Hell was in Iceland. He had heard mariners talk. You could see the column of smoke from the mountain when you could see nothing else. Smoke and fire rising straight from the sea.
He thought of the deep shell of the ship, packed already with clothing and provender; the food and water and ale, the livestock and the well-equipped cook-room; the fish-hooks, baskets and lines that were to feed them on their long stormy journey, and then make them rich, if they lived. He thought of the other shapes he had seen, which were cannon.
In the last week of February, when his father had been at sea for a day, Jordan de Fleury left his house and his toys in the High Street and travelled with his nurses and mother to Dean, a little south of the new hall of Beltrees.
He bore the journey quite well, despite the cold and the wind,