Fidelma frowned slightly.
‘I am no seaman, Ross. Why would I need to examine it? Is there illness on board?’ she repeated.
‘No, sister,’ Ross hesitated a moment. He seemed very uneasy. ‘In fact … there is no one on board.’
Fidelma blinked, the only expression of her surprise. Silently, she followed Ross to the side of the ship.
‘Let me go up first, sister, and then I will be able to haul you up on this line.’
He indicated a rope in which he tied a loop, as he was speaking.
‘Just put your foot in the loop and hold on when I say.’
He turned and scrambled up the line to the deck of the merchant ship. Fidelma was hauled up the short distance without mishap. Indeed, there was no one on the deck of the ship apart from Ross and his crewmen who had now secured the sails. One of Ross’s men was stationed at the tiller to keep the ship under control. Fidelma looked about curiously at the deserted but orderly and well scrubbed decks.
‘Are you sure there is no one on board?’ she asked with faint incredulity in her voice.
Ross shook his head.
‘My men have looked everywhere, sister. What is the explanation of this mystery?’
‘I do not have sufficient information to make even a guess, my friend,’ replied Fidelma, continuing to survey the clean, tidy appearance of the ship. Even the ropes seemed neatlycoiled. ‘Is there nothing out of place? No sign of an enforced abandonment of the ship?’
Again Ross shook his head.
‘There is a small boat still secure at the amidships,’ he indicated. ‘From the first moment I saw her, I saw that the ship was riding high out of the water so there is no sign of any danger of her sinking. She is not holed, so far as I can make out. No, there is no indication that she was abandoned from fear of sinking. And all the sails were set straight apart from the tops’l. So what happened to the crew?’
‘What about that tops’l?’ Fidelma asked. ‘It was badly secured and could have been ripped off in a heavy wind.’
‘But no cause to abandon ship,’ Ross replied.
Fidelma glanced up at the mast where the topsail had now been stowed. She frowned and called Odar who had taken in the sails.
‘What is that cloth up there, there on the rigging twenty feet above us?’ she asked.
Odar glanced at Ross quickly before replying.
‘I do not know, sister. Do you want me to fetch it?’
It was Ross who instructed him.
‘Up you go, Odar.’
The man leapt up the rigging with practised ease and was down in a moment holding out a strip of torn material.
‘A nail in the mast had caught it, sister,’ he said.
Fidelma saw that it was simply a piece of linen. A torn strip of material that could have come from a shirt. What interested her was that part of it was stained with blood and it was a comparatively fresh stain for it was not fully dried brown but still retained a distinctness of colour.
Fidelma looked thoughtfully upwards for a moment, walking to the base of the rigging and peering towards the furled topsail. Then, as she went to turn away, her eye caught something else. The smeared dried blood imprint of what was clearly a palm on the railing. She stared down at it thoughtfully, noting that whoever had made that imprintmust have been holding the rail from the seaward side of it. She sighed quietly and placed the torn piece of linen in her marsupium, the large purse which she always carried on her waist belt.
‘Take me to the captain’s cabin,’ instructed Fidelma, seeing there was nothing to be learnt above decks.
Ross turned aft to the main cabin underneath the raised stern deck. In fact, there were two cabins there. Both were neatly arranged. The bunks were tidy and in one of the cabins, plates and cups were set in place on the table, slightly jumbled. Ross, seeing her glance, explained that they would be jumbled by the erratic motion of the vessel as it swung without a helmsman before the wind.
‘It is a wonder that it has not already crashed on the rocks before now,’ he added. ‘God knows how long it has been blown across the seas without a hand to guide it. And it is under full sail, so a hefty wind could have easily capsized it with no one to shorten or reef the sails.’
Fidelma compressed her lips thoughtfully for a moment.
‘It is almost as if the crew has simply vanished,’ Ross added. ‘As if they were spirited away …’
Fidelma arched a cynical eyebrow.
‘Such things do not happen in the real world, Ross. There is a logical explanation for all things. Show me the rest of the ship.’
Ross led the way from the cabin.
Below decks, the soft, pungent salt tang of the sea air gave place to a more oppressive odour which evolved from years of men living and eating together in a confined space, for the space between decks was so narrow that Fidelma had to bend to prevent her head knocking against the beams. The stale stench of sweat, the bitter sweet smell of urine, not dispersed by even salt water scrubbing, permeated the area where the crew had been confined while not performing their tasks above deck. The only thing to be said about it was that it was warmer down here than up on the cold wind-swept decks.
However, the crews’ quarters were fairly tidy although not as neat as the cabins that were presumably used by the officers of the ship. Still, there was no sign of disorder or hasty departure. The stores were stowed meticulously.
From the crew’s quarters, Ross led the way into the central hold of the ship. Another smell caught Fidelma’s senses, it being a rapid change of sensual stimulus from the stale bitter odour of the crew’s quarters. Fidelma halted, frowning, trying to place the perfume that assailed her nostrils. A combining of several spices, she thought, but something else dominated it. An aroma of stale wine. She peered around in the gloom of the hold. It appeared to be empty.
Ross was fiddling with some tinder and flint and struck a spark to light an oil lamp so that they could see the interior better. He exhaled softly.
‘As I said, the ship was riding high out of the water which made her doubly unwieldy before the weather. I expected that we would find an empty hold.’
‘Why would there be no cargo on board?’ Fidelma demanded as she peered round.
Ross was clearly puzzled.
‘I have no idea, sister.’
‘This merchant ship is Gaulish, you say?’
The seaman nodded.
‘Could the ship have sailed from Gaul without a cargo?’
‘Ah,’ Ross saw her point immediately. ‘No, it would have sailed with a cargo. And likewise it would have picked up a cargo in an Irish port for the return journey.’
‘So we have no idea when the crew deserted her? She might have been on her way to Ireland or on her way back to Gaul? And it could well be that her cargo was removed when her crew deserted her?’
Ross scratched his nose reflectively.
‘They are good questions but we have no answers.’
Fidelma took a few paces into the empty hold and began to study it in the gloom.
‘What does a ship like this usually carry?’
‘Wine, spices and other things not so easily come by in our country, sister. See, those are racks for the wine kegs but they are all empty.’
She followed his outstretched hand. There was, together with the empty racks, a certain amount of debris, of pieces of broken wood and, lying on its side, was a iron-shod cartwheel, with one of the spokes broken. There was something else which caused her to frown a little. It was a large cylinder of wood around which was tightly wound a coarse thick thread. The cylinder was two feet in length and some six inches in diameter. She bent down and touched the thread and her eyes widened a little. It was a skein of animal gut.
‘What is this, Ross?’ she asked.
The sailor bent, examined it and shrugged.
‘I have no idea. It has no use aboard a ship. And it is not a means of fastening anything. The skein is too pliable, it would stretch if any tension was placed on it.’