Cryspyn drew in a deep breath and bit his inner cheek. Then, taking a fateful decision, he walked to the ladder, and climbed down, crossing the yardway to the gates.
He would go and speak to the priest Luke.
At the water’s edge, Tedia stood hopefully.
Her husband had said that he was going to go out in the boat, and that gave her a little while to come here, to the southernmost point of St Nicholas, from where she should be able to see her lover on his way over from the main island of Ennor.
It was hard to control her beating heart. Tedia was nearly two and twenty years old now. She had been married for some three years, and still the marriage was unconsummated. By committing adultery, she hoped she might find a little ease. She was desperate.
That cow Brosia was so cruel, with her snide little comments about women who couldn’t please their men in bed. Brosia boasted that she found it easy. Her breasts were enough to make any man mad with lust, but then, as she would say with a sweet smile of pure venom, looking at Tedia, not all women were lucky enough to be so well-endowed.
It was nothing to do with that, Tedia was sure of it. In a way, she still felt sorry for her man. Isok appeared desperate and ashamed, but there was nothing he could do. They had tried all forms of cure; Tedia had even gone to see a woman who was supposed to be wise, but the old whore had merely cackled and advised Tedia to put her hands to better use.
Her hands were perfectly able with other men. There had been lovers enough when she was young who had enjoyed the way she used her hands. She had loved the feel of them, and she liked to watch the boys as their eyes grew languid, then urgent, their breath coming more swiftly, their hips thrusting. It was a form of power that she relished — until it came to scare her.
That was when Peter Visconte, the priest at St Mary’s on Ennor, had been found out and removed from his position. Suddenly Tedia herself had realised that the pleasure she was giving, the pleasure she received, might be forbidden by God outside marriage. Eve had tempted her man and wrought terrible damage; Tedia was doing the same.
Some of the men she had loved tried to persuade her otherwise: some had succeeded. The four years from hearing of the priest’s misbehaviour to her marriage had been sexually active, but with each coupling had come still more guilt. Tedia knew that only within marriage was a woman supposed to perform those acts which made a man cleave to her, and she had chosen her Isok because he was entirely innocent of such offences. Oh, he was generous to a fault as well, and he was kindly, and he had a good future with his fishing skills: all that swayed her, but not so much as the fact that he was still a virgin. To her knowledge he had not tried to take advantage of her, or of any of the girls in the islands. Religious, she felt sure he was holding his carnal desires in check.
That was a joke! She soon found out that he had no carnal desires! His prickle wouldn’t rise even after the most careful and deliberate attention. She had even submitted to a tale told by a friend, who had heard from a sailor what some whores in the Sutton Water stews did, and set her lips to the task. All to no avail. Poor Isok did what he could, but nothing seemed to work.
And so now, after three years of trying and failing to tempt her husband to service her, Tedia was here, standing at the southern tip of St Nicholas Isle some yards from her house, hoping to catch sight of her first lover since her marriage.
The first drops of rain spat into the sand at her feet, and Tedia realised that she had been so deep in thought that the weather had overtaken her. The clouds were black and angry, and what looked like a wall of rain was approaching. It was two miles out to sea still, but approaching as though resolved to roll over the islands and crush them.
Struck at first with anger that God should prevent her lover’s journey to her, she stamped her foot. Then she had a moment’s regret for her husband: if Isok was far out to sea, he would be right in the thick of this terrible storm … and then her feelings returned to pique. This was God’s way of preventing her from breaking her marriage vows.
She only hoped, as she turned and marched homewards, that God hadn’t decided to make her lover pay for her lusts with his life. If he was caught out in the banks with this weather, he must be drowned.
She turned and stared, a hand shielding her eyes. If he died, she would never forgive herself. The poor fellow. All he wanted was a companion. He was like her, lonely. To die, just for seeking friendship, was cruel in the extreme.
There was no sign of him, though. That gave her a moment’s relief, and then she saw another figure. Someone was wading back the other way, from St Nicholas to Ennor. Not many people were supposed to know of that route, but one man obviously did. She wondered who it could be, and then a freak gleam of light from the heavens answered her question.
‘Where are you going, Brother Luke?’ she wondered aloud, but then shrugged. Before the weather broke seriously, she wanted to be back indoors. Once home, she shut the door, but couldn’t settle. After only a little while she went to peer out to sea. The rain was falling regularly now, the wind blowing mercilessly, and she again felt a twinge of guilt that her husband should be out there, risking his life in the attempt to win a living for her.
There was nothing she could do for him. She shut the door and sat on her stool in the dark by the fire, swaddled in a blanket, but only a little while later her door suddenly opened. She spun round, hoping that it was Robert, but her husband entered. He stared at her a moment, then gazed about the room.
‘I thought you were out at sea!’ was all she could think of saying. In her heart, she was sad that she was not to be widowed. That would have been better for both of them. It would save him the lifelong shame … and her the grief.
‘Is that all you can say?’ Isok demanded. ‘You look anxious, wife. Have you brought a man here to cuckold me, then? Or were you just hoping I’d never return?’
Her expression must have given him his answer. ‘I shall leave you to him, then. I shouldn’t want to come between you both,’ he said and gave a harsh laugh, a sound halfway between a growl and a sob, before walking out again.
The master was knowledgeable about the sea and his boat, Baldwin saw, and he was more than capable of defending it when evenly matched, but this was different. These Bretons were too numerous. If there was a good arrow and a decent bowstring aboard ship, perhaps they would have had a chance, although Baldwin doubted that even Paul, Sir Charles’s man-at-arms, could prick a man accurately even if they were able to find a dry bowstring, the deck was now rolling so sickeningly.
All they could do was wait. The Bretons were smiling now, sure that the prize was in their grasp. All they must do was win the fight before the storm hit them all.
They couldn’t, though. The rain began gently, and then it was as though a heavenly sluice had opened. Water fell in a torrent, turning the sea to a grey, bubbling mass of craters; the deck of the ship grew slick and slippery, and Baldwin and Sir Charles both slid and fell as the ship suddenly turned in response to some command of the master.
Gervase was using all his skills to prevent the attack, but it was only delaying the inevitable; Baldwin saw a man at the prow of the pirate ship heave his hand back and hurl a grappling hook high overhead. It caught in a rope some way over Baldwin’s head, and instantly a sailor at Gervase’s side swung himself up, hand over hand, towards it. He had a knife in his belt, and as he pulled this out to saw at the rope attached to the hook, a man in the other boat raised a crossbow. It fired, and the sailor gave a scream. He fell slowly, one hand on the rope, which Baldwin saw growing darker as the man dropped to the deck. The tough cord had stripped all the flesh from his hand and thighs, and become soaked in his blood.