To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [159]
‘Halfway!’ Robin said.
“The Faroe Islands are halfway, near enough. We lost a day here, and we had a slow start with the dogger. We’re going to an island only two hundred miles east of Greenland.’
‘I know,’ Robin said.
They boarded next day, the fifth of March, at Deer Sound, having left Eric Mowat behind. Robin was sorry. Parting, he had tried to say something about Orkney. ‘It isn’t really like anywhere else, although you think it’s going to be.’
Mowat had grunted. ‘Picts and Irish and Vikings. You won’t find that mixture anywhere else, although Caithness comes closest. The history of Orkney was written in Iceland. The great earls lie here. They say you can hear the voice of Thorfinn in the wind.’
‘Who was Thorfinn?’ Robin said.
‘A better sailor than any of us,’ said Eric Mowat. ‘And the greatest earl of them all. His son Paul had a granddaughter who carried the earldom of Orkney to the Scots Earl of Atholl. A daughter a few generations on brought it to the Earl of Strathearn. And a girl descended from them gave the earldom with her hand to a Sinclair, and one of them was to sail further west than most men live to describe. Picts, Irish and Vikings. You can push the blood from one line to another, but it remains aye a powerful ichor.’
‘Dysart,’ Robin said suddenly. He thought of the crewman he had noticed, in the boat that had brought him to Montrose. He said, his voice hollow, ‘Lord Sinclair’s land is between Roslin and Dysart.’
Mowat grinned at him. ‘Aye, a great place for the herring, the Forth. A few well-built doggers can earn their price there.’ He contemplated Robin more seriously, and feinted a blow to his chin. ‘Come away! It’s the mark of your master’s fine native cunning, not sorcery. You wait and see what happens in Iceland.’
‘The Mouth of Hell is going to open, they say. Dmitri says it will open this year.’
‘Then let’s hope you get your trading done first,’ Mowat said. ‘Then Hell can do what it likes with the Lübeckers and the Vatachino and the rest.’ He paused. ‘It’s only a mountain, you know.’
‘I know,’ Robin said.
They reached the Faroes a day later than planned, on the Sunday. They were sure, that is, that it was Sunday. They had Crackbene’s word, supported by Lutkyn and Yuri, that the crags and drengs that passed, inch by inch in the fog, belonged to the Danish archipelago of the Faroes. They were meant to be seeking the shelter of Tórshavn. They could not even see the sea. Between the regular nerve-fraying blares of their own trumpet, they could hear the regular plop of the lead-line, and beyond that, a subdued piping of seabirds, and far, far distant from that, a lowing of elf-horns, or of trolls, or of small, invisible boats also mournfully announcing their presence. Eventually they dropped anchor and lay unpleasantly rocked by invisible rollers, while a skiff was prepared to take the patron and Crackbene ashore. Father Moriz and John declined the privilege.
Nicholas said, ‘You’re sure you don’t want to come?’ Suspended in fog, his gilt-bearded face looked capable of biting off hands, like a leonine post-box.
‘We don’t mind,’ said the German priest blandly. ‘Ask where we are, and if they reply in Chinese, come and tell us.’ Then he went back to the cabin, where he was beating John le Grant at a stiff game of cards.
The boat returned full of stores, and proceeded to ply back and forth. The ship lurched as its holds were replenished and then became preternaturally quiet, except for the groans and bangs and creaks of its timbers and rigging. All the crew were on shore, except for the card-players and a couple of watchmen.
‘It was Tórshavn,’ said Moriz. ‘And the right harbour. Isn’t it unwise, allowing the seamen on shore?’
‘No,’ said John, picking up cards. ‘They need the change, they need the girls, and there’s nothing to get sick or drunk with. Why did you come on this voyage?’
‘To prove that I’m unshockable. Godscalc asked me my opinion of Nicholas.’
‘Godscalc’s dead.’
‘I still hope to