To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [160]
John had looked up. He said, ‘Ask Nicholas, and tell me if he answers. Officially, the returns will be rich. Unofficially, he’s hoping to tempt out and damage his rivals. Secretly, if you want my opinion, he’s running away from himself. Do you hear something?’
‘Sir!’ It was one of the watch, in a whisper.
John said, ‘We are coming.’
On deck, the muffled voice of the incoming horn was unmistakable, its direction uncertain. Slowly it grew more distinct. It was not until the vessel came close, slipping into the principal harbour, that they saw the ghostly line of its lamps, and its dimensions.
Nicholas was in a tavern with Robin at the time, concluding a deal with Crackbene and a Faroese pilot called Torolf Mohr, while fog curled through the turf roof and round the edge of the door. The contract was not for themselves. Torolf, a self-assured man with one eye, had already stuffed the ducats into his purse. ‘Any friend of Crackbene’s,’ he was repeating with casual joviality. ‘I am minding that couple you sent up to summer in Nólsoy: how the man fretted and fumed! Three times a week he rowed over in secret to Tórshavn: the little wife never knew. But the next batch of Føroyar young, I can tell you, had a fine cross-bred kinship among them. Would that be the ship we were talking of?’
Robin jumped. Nicholas flung open the door, having crossed the matted dirt in two strides. It was a ship’s horn. He refrained from swearing. ‘It can’t be. You say they all use the main harbour?’
‘They all do. You’re safe where you are. But you’d better get your men aboard and get out. You can’t bribe the whole of Tórshavn. Whoever it is, they’ll learn that you’ve been.’
‘It can’t be helped,’ Nicholas said. Crackbene had already left. It was good news in one sense: the men would still be sober enough to rouse out. In another sense it was startlingly bad. Either his competitors knew to be early, or they were faster by far than he bargained for.
It could be dealt with. Only one vessel had come. By the time it could land a shore party, the Svipa could be preparing to con its way out. All the time he was helping Crackbene to scour through the huts and herd his seaman back to the ship, Nicholas was working out where the incomer could have come from.
He was answered just as he embarked on the final trip from the shore to his ship. The Faroese pilot called Torolf stood above and spoke from the wharf. The fog curled behind him. ‘Ey, Svipa!’
‘So?’ said Nicholas.
The man’s one eye beamed in the light of his lantern. ‘The ship that came in. It is the one we were speaking of.’
Damn. ‘The ship from Ireland?’ said Nicholas.
‘From Killybegs, yes. You were right. You will need me.’
‘She’s big?’
‘O, jà!’ The Faroese grinned. Stretching one arm, he described an immense, waving line with the lantern. ‘Four hundred tons, twice your size. Its name is Unicorn.’
Then Nicholas swore, so that the Faroese laughed out aloud. The Faroese said, ‘It is your title, nei?’
‘Others hold it as well,’ Nicholas said. ‘But I don’t think they should have a ship to go with it. Do you?’
‘We shall see,’ said Torolf Mohr. ‘But make haste. Put to sea. Let the lad off at the skerry. Bless’, bless’.’
Nicholas had borrowed a boy to lead them out through the channel. He signalled his oarsmen to pull, and called thanks. ‘Takk! Takk fyri!’ But Torolf had already gone.
Aboard, he found the orderly chaos of departure, and had to resist the impulse to shout. The other ship would know of his presence by now, but Martin and Sersanders still had to revictual and take on a pilot. In this fog, they were unlikely to catch him, and probably knew it.
Even so, the Svipa’s progress seemed painfully slow, swaying along the fjords between shadowy cliff-faces and fingers and pinnacles, banded with mist. And when at last the wind started to come, dispersing the mist, it pranked from every side, funnelled this way and that between cliffs, so that the ship shook with