“It can be adjusted,” Kevin said.
“I do not see myself in armor.”
“You should have your portrait painted. You look admirable, just like Lord Bellicosus in the play. Could you not utter at least a few of that worthy’s lines?”
“I am not in a swaggering mood.” I pulled the pintle from the gudgeon on my left side, separated the two halves of the cuirass, and let it drop to the deck. “We are allowing ourselves to be distracted. I cannot believe that Sir Basil intended to pawn his armor once he arrived in the Triple Kingdom, and live on what it brought him. He must have had a treasure with him, or something that represented that treasure.”
So, we searched through everything again, very thoroughly, and eventually I found a piece of parchment stuffed into the toe of a battered old boot. It was sealed with an elaborate seal featuring whales, ships, and sea monsters, and I heated a knife over a candle and freed the seal from the document.
The parchment certified that fourteen thousand, eight hundred thirty royals were on deposit in the Oberlin Fraters Bank, in the account of one Charles Morland. I looked at the document, laughed, and gave it to Kevin.
“Do you have business with Oberlin Fraters?” I asked.
His eyes scanned the page. “I do not.”
“So, you do not know how Master Morland would reclaim his money, once he arrived in Steggerda?”
“A seal and a signature,” said Kevin, “and possibly a password.”
The fourteen thousand royals would have supported Sir Basil in great style for the rest of his life, assuming that he didn’t spend it all in quarrels and lawsuits.
“There is an Oberlin bank in Selford,” said I. “We should make a deposit there, and see how it can be drawn from another branch.”
Kevin carefully folded the parchment, and put it on the dinner table. “Do you seriously intend to defraud the bank of this money?”
“The bank has no more right to the money than Sir Basil.”
“They may disagree. And though I am no expert, I believe the law supports them.”
I shrugged. “Laws are not invariable. They are tools, not absolutes handed down from the Mount of the Gods.”
“Tools may turn on their masters.”
I took the document from the dinner table and put it in my doublet. “I know not what I will do with this. And should I do anything at all, I will be very careful.”
Kevin looked in dismay at the riot of steel and fabric that covered his cabin. “Let us see about stowing away this rubbish,” said he. “And then see about getting to sea.”
I looked at him in surprise. “You haven’t heard? We are blockaded.”
I told him what the provost told me, that a large galleon of Clayborne’s navy was taking prizes right off the mouth of the Brood.
Suddenly decisive, Kevin rose and reached for his boat cloak. “This useless hoard-hunting has distracted us from our proper duty,” he said. “We must view this sea-monster.”
In just a few minutes Captain Oakeshott had joined us, and we were in the sternsheets of Meteor’s longboat, with six oarsmen taking us down the river. It was a voyage of eight leagues to the river mouth, and though we caught the last of the ebb, the tide was making for the last part of the journey, and coming in frothing great waves up the channel. Fortunately, we were able to set a sail, and the oarsmen could rest unless they were needed to drive us through one of the oncoming waves. Still it was the middle of the afternoon before we arrived within sight of the galleon, a tall, dark shadow tacking back and forth on the glimmering western horizon.
Kevin and Oakeshott viewed the intruder with their long glasses, and murmured their conclusions to one another.
“She is a high-charged galleon,” said Kevin. “But I can see only her upper works; I can’t count the gunports.”
Oakeshott curled his lip. “I can say with all confidence that there are more gunports than we possess, and the guns heavier. For that ship is no less than eight hundred tons, and we are but an hundred fifty.”
We saw a group of gentlemen on the sandy strand, and came ashore to join them. Some were ship captains that Oakeshott knew, and others military men, among them the governor, Sir Andrew de Berardinis. He was a stout, sturdy gentleman with long white hair that flew like a flag in the fresh wind, and he was accompanied by other men who formed his military family.
I borrowed Oakeshott’s glass and found the nautical stalker wearing round onto the larboard tack, the sun flashing off the high sterncastle with its diamond crosshatch pattern, lapis-blue alternating with ochre-yellow.
“Blue and yellow diamonds,” I said. “And there is a device painted on the main topsail, but I can’t make it out.”
Kevin looked surprised, and put his glass to his eye. “That device is the blue sea-wolf,” he said. “I know that ship. She was built for the Mercer Aubrey Jenkins down in Bretlynton Head, and made at least one voyage to the Candara Coast for spices before the navy bought her a couple years ago for four thousand royals. She’s Wolf Azure, renamed Royal Stilwell, eight hundred fifty tons and at least forty guns, probably closer to fifty.”
Oakeshott and I exchanged glances. Royal Stilwell so outclassed Meteor that there was no hope of our fighting a successful engagement, nor was there any ship in harbor that could match her.
I turned to Kevin. “May we hope that Stilwell is a right hooker, and that we can outrun her?”
He looked dubious. “Close-hauled, may be. But she can carry such a spread of canvas that I wouldn’t dare to fly before her on a wind.”
And with the wind holding westerly, if Meteor left harbor close-hauled, we would be running toward the enemy, not away.
Oakeshott walked to the other captains to tell them the bad news, and I considered the consequences of our being blockaded in Longfirth. At best, our privateering expedition would be cut short, and there would be no income from Sea-Holly if she weren’t carrying supplies and troops back and forth to Selford. In the worst case, we might be held here until Clayborne’s army came, and lacking reinforcement the city fell, and we would be prisoners for having taken the Duke of Andrian’s Lady Tern.
Suspicion stabbed at me, and I wondered if Orlanda was behind this somehow, and was even now prompting Clayborne to march.
But I banished such thoughts as unprofitable, and I could not in any case stop Orlanda from doing anything she cared to do.
I glanced over the flat country, the low dunes with their sparse grasses stooped in the wind, and the two lights behind. The city was well out of sight, beyond the misty horizon.
I looked at the lights again, and again out to sea where the Royal Stilwell patrolled, and then I returned to Kevin.
“I think I may have an idea,” said I.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The anchor cables roared and rumbled as they plunged into the river, and the ships checked in their motion, then swung with the wind and tide. The wind had backed to the southwest, still blowing hard and providing a challenge for any vessels trying to leave the port. Yet we hoped to seem exactly those vessels, intent on making a dash for freedom right under Stilwell’s stern counter. We left our sails clewed up but not furled, ready to sheet home at a moment’s notice, and hoped that the officers grouped on Stilwell’s poop would see what we wanted them to see.