Her expression was such that the exclamation ‘ah’ was enough to throw the King into a rage.
‘You have no right to be here, you witch!’ he shouted, like a boy at his mother.
The Queen of Galle came all the way into the room, her cloth of gold gown and the collar of emeralds she wore making the King look like a small boy. ‘Abblemont,’ said the Queen, with a slight inclination of her head.
Abblemont sank into a deep bow, his right knee on the floor, his eyes down.
The Queen sniffed slightly. ‘I would think,’ she said, ‘that you would have more care for your niece.’
Abblemont kept his eyes down.
‘She came after me like a bitch in heat!’ said the King.
‘Of course,’ said the Queen quietly. In two words, she somehow expressed disbelief, and an utter disinterest. ‘Abblemont, see to it that I never hear her name mentioned again.’
The Horse didn’t raise his eyes. ‘Of course, madame.’
Clarissa de Sartres stood on the bridge below the nunnery and watched the dark water move implacably – deep, and very cold.
An hour ago, she had considered suicide. Her immortal soul was as ruined as the rest of her – she had little interest in God, or a life of contemplation. Or anything else. And as if God had granted his permission, she found her room unlocked for the first time – and the postern gate of the nunnery unlocked as well. No one had seen her cross the courtyard. Perhaps no one cared.
But the water looked cold, and her imagination – always her bane – spun her a hell of eternal cold; dragged down to the bottom of the river and resting there for ever. With the Bain Sidhe of her nurse’s tales.
The utter humiliation of being banished from court – for ever – for the sin of being attacked by the King. Her throat closed, and her hands shook, and she gagged and the darkness closed on her again.
Not quite raped. Her imagination supplied whatever hadn’t happened, and the speed with which she’d been jettisoned by her uncle – and the sheer ferocity of the joy of the other women at court at her degradation – had been telling.
God doesn’t give a fuck, she thought. And in that moment she thought of a very young man in her father’s courtyard, saying those words. More than a year ago, in Arles. And how she had despised him for it.
She looked up at the nunnery on the mountain, and at the Rhun River flowing at her feet. She realised in that moment that she hadn’t escaped – she had been allowed to come here, so her inconvenient version of events would perish. For a few heartbeats, she was utterly consumed in hatred – an emotion she had seldom felt before.
If I kill myself, they win, she thought.
Open Ocean west of Galle – Ser Hartmut.
The crossing itself was not without incident. Ser Hartmut had never sailed in the north, and he exclaimed with joy to see great hills of ice sailing by like so many white ships of war. But the wind was fair, and ten days sweet sailing brought them off Keos, the northernmost of the islands of Morea, and they bore north and west into the setting sun. It was late in the year, and de Marche had plotted a conservative course, making each crossing of the empty blue between islands as brief as he could allow, but no storm troubled them.
West of Keos, they saw a ship’s sail – apparently a great lateen, according to the sailors – nicking the far western horizon, but when the next day dawned they were alone in the great bowl of the ocean.
Seventeen days into the voyage, and they had had no weather worse than a rain squall. The three ships were still together, well in sight; La Grace de Dieu was well in advance, with her two consorts trailing in an uneven line, each ship at least a mile from the last.
Ser Hartmut was on the deck, fully armed, as he appeared every day at daybreak and remained all day until the sun set. He had wrapped the mainmast in a thick linen canvas quilted hard, and he practised at this informal pell all day, cutting, thrusting, hammering away with a pole-axe. He would take long breaks in which he merely sat in the bows and watched the sea. Sometimes, Etienne or Louis de Harcourt, his other squire, would come and read to him. At other times they would spar with him, matching blunted swords or spears up and down the deck.
Ser Hartmut never spoke to the sailors but they had developed a healthy respect for him as a fighting man. Despite his size, he was as fast as a cat; despite his girth, he had excellent wind, and could usually fight long after his squires began to grow pale and raise their hands in token of submission.
His men-at-arms were no different, and they trained hard enough that every day had its tale of broken bones, sprains, and bruises.
Some of the sailors began to practise with their spears too – but never in the open glare of the Black Knight.
But this day saw nothing of the sort. It was hot, and the sailors were bored – many were in the rigging, simply hanging there, waiting for a slight breeze to cool them. After nonnes such a breeze arose, and from the east, so that the ship began to move, and the water whispered along the ship’s bluff cheeks.
The sun began to set.
And then everything happened at once. Whales appeared under the round ship’s counter; great leviathans rising from the deep and sounding around them.
De Marche was on deck in a moment. ‘Rig the nets! To arms!’
Etienne was pale with fatigue and had a black eye. But he ran up the ladder to the aft castle in full armour and managed a good bow. ‘Ser Hartmut asks – what is the purpose of this alarm?’
De Marche leaned over the side. His servant had his breast and back open on the hinges and his shirt of mail held high, and de Marche didn’t wait on courtesy, but put his head into the mail and then his arms. From deep in the steel mesh, he said ‘The Eeeague. They follow the whales.’
‘Eeeague?’ asked de Vrieux.
‘Silkies, sir.’ De Marche’s head popped through the neck of his hauberk and he leaned out over the wall of the castle as the boarding nets went up. Crossbows were coming out to the hold at a fair speed, and men on the deck were arming.
‘Land-ho!’ shouted the lookout. ‘Land, and three ships. Ships are hull up.’ The last report was sullen – the sound of a man who knew he’d failed in his duty.
‘Master Louis, the lookout is to be listed for punishment,’ de Marche snapped. He sprang on to the rail, swung up into the rigging, and climbed a stay, hand over hand despite the weight of his mail, until he stood on the small platform at the midpoint of the tall, single-piece aft mast. ‘Where away?’ he shouted.
The lookout in the mainmast fighting top pointed. ‘West-north-west,’ he shouted, obviously eager to be forgiven for his dereliction. ‘Bare poles,’ he called. And then, almost to himself, ‘And I’d have seen ’em sooner if they carried any sail, anyway.’
De Marche found them quickly enough. He watched them as long as his eyes could stand the sun-dazzle, and then he watched the water below his feet. From this height, he could see the great dark shapes of the whales, and the smaller shapes flitting in and out among them. Herdsmen? Tormenters?
The red flag burst from his own gallery. The Grace de Dieu heeled and began to turn, picking up the wind on her quarter she turned south – but round ships didn’t turn particularly well, and the whole process was glacial.
Two miles astern, another red flag flashed; after a few heartbeats, the middle ship, Saint Denis, answered.
Men with crossbows were lining the sides of his fore and aftercastles. A round ship was a ship shaped like half an egg, with great towers built fore and aft to raise archers and crossbowmen, and give them the height advantage they needed, whether they fought men – or things.