To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [225]
‘No,’ Govaerts said. ‘I have more news. I should not have believed it, except that I went and saw for myself. The ship, the Charity, is covered with ash.’
‘It happens,’ Gelis said. ‘They use Greek fire in fighting.’
‘Covered with ash,’ Govaerts said. ‘Not consumed. It began to fall as they sailed south, so heavily that the sky was black as night, and they could not see one another twelve inches apart. Before it fell, they saw the mountains of Iceland explode. The flames rose so high, Babbe says, that they saw them two hundred miles off. They fled because of that, not only because of the Svipa.’
‘And the Svipa?’ Gelis asked.
‘Remained behind with the Hanse ship, the Pruss Maiden. They were waiting, it seemed, for word from on shore.’
‘Both of them?’ Gelis said.
‘Babbe didn’t want to confess it, but apparently both the Svipa and the Hanse ship had sent to attack him on shore. Both ships were still in good order. If they had fought one another, the fight had been stopped, or resolved.’
There was only one question to ask, and for a long time, she did not ask it. Then she said, ‘For whom were they waiting?’
By then, Mistress Clémence knew that the reply was one that Govaerts was unwilling to give. She did not realise, until she heard it, how bad it was going to be.
Robin of Berecrofts had taken part in the fighting on shore and when it was done, had ridden inland with men from both ships. For M. de Fleury had not been on the Svipa, nor had the girl and her brother. All of them were in the interior of the mainland with the Hanseatic master Paúel Benecke. And they were still there when the mountains exploded.
‘I am sorry,’ Govaerts said. ‘But there has to be hope. The ships would not leave until M. de Fleury and the others were found.’
‘But the ships themselves may have burned,’ Gelis said. Then she said, ‘When will we know?’
Govaerts said, ‘Eric Mowat is on Orkney. As soon as he is sure.’
‘How will Orkney know something is wrong?’ Gelis said, and then stopped. ‘Ah. The ash.’
‘Swift as the wind,’ Govaerts said. ‘I have to ask you. Would you like to come to the Canongate house, and wait there for news? Your rooms are there. The Berecrofts family are waiting as well.’
Clémence sewed, jabbing and jabbing. Then the Lady said, ‘I think that would be best, of course. Thank you. Jordan can stay here with Mistress Clémence and Pasque. Do you not think so?’
She was asking Clémence her views, and Clémence agreed, her voice quiet. The child was her charge, not its mother. And she thought, once the word travelled west, that she might have company in any case very soon.
Because Govaerts was steward and manager both, the house and bureau of the Banco di Niccolò in the Canongate was as impeccable when Gelis came there that Friday as it had been five weeks before, on the February day when Nicholas and young Robin had left. Before she went to her rooms, she walked with Govaerts through all the offices, showing Nicholas’s household and clerks that she was not distraught, but was waiting with patience for news, as they were. Showing them, in case they feared for the future, that she was not merely a cipher.
She had thought, of course, of what would happen if Nicholas was killed before their mutual game came to an end. She had achieved some of the objectives she had set herself that wedding night, awaiting his step on the stairs, although they hardly mattered if he were not alive. There were some hurdles, some traps she had prepared and fiercely wished him to face. Now he might not. She could not complain. She had taken a gamble that the game could be played, rounded off, and completed; if it did not do that, she had lost everything. But then, so had he.
She thought of the girl Katelijne, and the rumours. The priest was there, and could scotch them, but she was sorry, for the girl’s sake. She was sorry, for several reasons, that the girl had gone to Iceland at all. But she was certain beyond possible doubt that Nicholas would neither have touched her, nor allowed her to be touched. It shook her sometimes to see proved, over and