To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [171]
‘Holà, Svipa!’ called Anselm Sersanders.
Walking into sight by the rail, Katelijne refrained from answering ‘Ey!’, and not merely because M. de Fleury, possibly short of patience, was not far behind her. Instead she said quickly, ‘Anselm. Come up.’
The face in the boat, ruddy within its light beard, wore its familiar expression of harassed obstinacy. Sersanders said, ‘I’ve come for you. It’s all right. Come down.’
‘I can’t. Come up. Leave the boat and come up.’
‘You can’t stay, Kathi. Come. He can’t stop you.’
‘No,’ his sister said. Her eyes shifted sideways and back. She said, ‘Quickly, then,’ and opening the rail very fast, stepped out and trod on the ladder. Sersanders set his foot on a rung and stretched up. His sister seized hold of his hand, and instead of stepping daintily down, hauled him up with a disjointing yank. He clung to the walloping rope and exclaimed. He saw someone else was behind her: the large person of Nicholas de Fleury. De Fleury smiled. His powerful hand released the girl’s grip and firmly shoved her back upwards on board. His equally punctilious foot, following through, courteously punted Sersanders face down in the boat. Sersanders sat up in the skiff, his nose bleeding.
‘Sorry,’ said Nicholas cheerfully. ‘She said no.’ He had stepped back and pulled up the ladder.
‘I said I couldn’t come down!’ said Kathi furiously. ‘Look what you’ve done! I asked him up! Let him up! Anselm, you don’t know what’s –’ She stopped, being deprived of the means of continuing.
Nicholas kept his hand over her face. ‘Anselm?’ he said. ‘She is well. She is protected. So far as all at home know, she has never been out of your sight. She is staying here as my special insurance, and you are staying with Martin as his. You are being thrown off this ship. There is no way you can board it. Turn, and sit up, and tell your men to row you as far back to your ship as they can. And if anything happens, lie down.’
‘What do you mean?’ Sersanders said.
‘What I say,’ said Nicholas de Fleury; and removed his hand from the face of the girl.
‘Katelijne?’ her brother said.
And very shakily, his sister answered. ‘I think you should leave.’
There was nothing more he could do. The ladder had gone. The rail was lined with men even bigger, it seemed, than their patron. Sersanders picked himself up, and sat down, and gave orders in a low voice to the oarsmen. They grasped the shafts of their blades, and the boat slowly rounded the stern and began to pull away from the Svipa. He sat this time in the prow, so that his accusing gaze rested all the time on the face of his sister. She was pale, and staring too; but not at him.
No one was looking at him. They were all looking past him, and up. He turned to see why. He was confounded by a sudden frenzied hauling of lines in the cod-boats. He perceived the Unicorn where he had left it, but now its decks were a curious antheap of jostling men. And he saw, emerging from the back of Bjarn Island, a dragon. No, not a mythical beast; but the vast high-decked bulk of the licensed Hanse ship the Pruss Maiden, preceded by a gentle puff of white smoke from its bows.
The Svipa had not been alone. Nicholas de Fleury had saved his own cod by agreeing to be the Lübeckers’ mussel.
*
Martin had no chance at all. The first shot, a warning one, fell into the water and sank by the Unicorn. The other cannon were trained on its deck. And by then the Lübecker was so close that the best its victim could manage was a defensive burst of stray bullets and arrows.
Martin was wearing his cuirass. He had already drawn his short sword when Svartecop laid a hand on his arm. ‘It isn’t worth it. I know Paúel. He wants the loaded ship, and its merchants to ransom. Let him have them.’
It sounded suspicious. ‘But you and the men?’ Martin said.
Svartecop grinned. ‘Lutkyn, Paúel, Colombo, Ochoa de Marchena, Mick Crackbene, myself – we belong to the same brotherhood of classionarii, sometimes on one side, sometimes another.