I heard the brass hunting horn tootling closer, and the sound of horses. I tossed bread. The first of the grooms appeared just as I heard the crack of the filling lugsail.
“Behind you!” Kevin called.
I turned, saw the boat’s bow approaching, and tossed the satchel aboard. I seized the larboard gunwale as it went past, and rolled aboard as Kevin shifted his own weight to starboard to prevent capsize. Kevin shoved the tiller and the boat swung its nose to the sea.
On the shore, Sir Stanley Mattingly was cursing and whipping his dogs. I rose to my feet, dripping. I put a foot on the gunwale and grasped a shroud for balance.
“Sir Stanley, I thank you for your kind hospitality!” I called.
Vigorous obscenity pursued me across the water.
“Sir,” I said, “you asked my name, and now I am pleased to answer. I am Quillifer, son of Quillifer, the apprentice to Lawyer Dacket, and in two days’ time, I shall have the pleasure of seeing you at the Assizes!”
I offered an elaborate bow, and straightened in time to see Sir Stanley snatch his gun from his bearer. I decided it was time to take shelter below the gunwale, and to pull Kevin down likewise.
The shot put a neat hole in the sail. By the time the knight had reloaded, the boat was well out of range.
* * *
The lugsail rattled overhead. “Friend,” said Kevin. “May I trust you no longer to mock armed, violent men? At least till I am safe at home?”
“We were in no danger,” said I.
“Safe as long as the sausages held out, and Sir Stanley’s aim remained poor.”
I waved a hand. “He was aiming at the sail, not at us. He wouldn’t want to be hauled up on a charge of manslaughter.”
“You have more confidence in his moderation than I.”
“I’m hungry,” I said. “The orgulous Sir Stanley has deprived us of our dinner.”
“Orgulous?”
“A new word I invented. From the Lorettan, orguilio, pride.” I stared unhappily at the horizon. “I should invent a new word for hunger.”
“You are welcome to catch a fish.”
“And you left the cider behind! For shame, Master Spellman.”
I removed my soaked, chill clothing, and stretched naked across a thwart, in the sun. The brisk wind dusted my skin with gooseflesh, but I was comfortable enough. I had been far colder when I was hanging upside down from Master Greyson’s roofbeam.
“Pity you won’t be visiting the fair Ella tonight,” Kevin said.
I gave him a surprised look. “Why would I not?”
“What?” Kevin laughed. “You want another race against Sir Stanley’s pack? Or his bullets?”
“Sir Stanley is unlikely to march up and down his pier with his gun on his shoulder—he will be asleep in his bed, or in the hall, draining the wine and brandy of his brother-in-law. The dogs will be in their kennels, and the sheep in their pens.”
“And Ella in the creamery, screaming for help and earning a reward for catching you.”
I shook my head. “Friend, your skepticism is alarming in its degree.”
“We’ve upset the whole household. Ella might be frantic in her desire to keep the others from knowing about your arrangement, and the best way to preserve her innocence will be to denounce you.”
“The lovely Ella? I can’t imagine such a thing.”
We argued the matter, and then found other matters to argue. By the time we arrived at the Ostra’s many mouths, the tide was rushing in, and carried us to the city with fine efficiency. The Lorettan pinnace was still aground, but the crew were heaving at the capstan, and the hawser leading to the kedge anchor was taut as a bowstring, tension shooting water from its fibers.
“Now,” I said, as I began to draw on my still-damp clothes, “I pray you go to my master Dacket’s office, and there sign a paper that you witnessed my delivery of the writ.”
“You won’t go yourself?”
“He’ll put me to copying documents, and I’ll miss the meeting with Ella. I’ve already promised tomorrow to the work, and I see no reason for an early start.”
Kevin was skeptical. “And what excuse will I give for your absence?”
I tugged my tunic over my head. “You may relate the tale of our escape from Mutton Island. Recount our heroism, the attack by dogs, the shot through your sail. And you may inform Dacket of my injuries—embroider them as you like, but tell him how manfully I am bearing up, even though the doctors have been called and my mother despairs of my life. You may then say how I expect to be early at the office tomorrow.”
“You are the expert in such embroidery, not I.”
“You underrate your ingenuity. Remember that story you told Professor Mitchell, when we were at grammar school and caught out of bounds.”
“We were caned,” Kevin said. “He didn’t believe us.”
I drew hose onto my legs. “But the story was a marvel! Were there not tritons, and some kind of monster from the Land of Chimerae that flew overhead and darkened the sun?”
“Very well,” Kevin said. “I will tell Lawyer Dacket you were taken by tritons.”
Kevin found a place near the quay, dropped the sail, and tied the boat. I jumped onto the quay and helped Kevin disembark.
“Are you truly mad enough to visit the maid tonight?”
“Oh, ay. ’Twill keep me out of trouble in town.”
“Ethlebight will take comfort from that, but I will rest uneasy.”
We marched beneath the great River Gate blazoned with the shield of Ethlebight, crenellated towers and ships supported by the hornèd rams that represented the wool that remained the foundation of the city’s wealth. Kevin departed for Lawyer Dacket’s office, while I carried my empty satchel home to Princess Street. I changed my clothes, got more bread, meat, cheese, and a few of the pearmains. Then I went to the buttery for a bottle of the moscatto, and another jug of cider for the journey.
On my return to the quay I tarried by a barber’s shop, and there sought a preventative for parturience. My last packet of sheaths I had left with Annabel Greyson, and I could but hope her father hadn’t found them, proof of her perfidy.
I returned to the boat, repaired the hole in the sail, and as soon as the tide shifted set out through the cane, past the handsome pinnace that had finally won free of its mud bank, and was now creeping up the channel under sweeps, with a leadsman in the chains calling out the soundings.
I am young, I thought, and a man; and whyfore should I not act the role of a young man? Enjoy my pleasures before age and care ruin them?
No guard marched along the Mutton Island pier. Ella I found in the shadow of the creamery door. We kissed for several long, fair moments, and then she took my hand and led me beneath rows of ghostly round forms that hung from the roof beams—pendulous muslin bags, filled with curd and dripping on the brick floor the last of the milky whey-drops. Beyond was a room with stalls intended for sick animals. No ailing sheep were in residence, but there was straw to make a bed.
Make a bed we did, and stretched out our cloaks to fashion an inviting couch. I opened the moscatto, with its flavor of sunnier, drier climes, and we drank and then licked drops of the sweet wine from each other’s lips. For some hours we dallied on the straw, sharing our pleasures, and then I kissed Ella good-bye, plucked straw from her hair, laughed, and kissed her again before wrapping myself in my cloak and setting off for the pier.
The fortified wine burned in my veins, and I felt a pleasant looseness in my loins. I found the boat, cast off, and raised the sail. The moon soon set, and I found myself alone on the dark water, where I nibbled bread and cheese, drank cider, and sang to myself as the brisk wind blew the boat along.
Youth will needs have dalliance,
Of good or ill, some pastance.
Company me thinketh the best