Ships from the West

'Captain, you have come downstairs at last. I have been meaning to have a word with you for days in private. I could almost believe you have been avoiding me. Bleyn, leave us.'

'Mother—'

She stared at him, and he closed his mouth at once and left the cabin without another word. Jemilla shut the door carefully behind him.

'My dear Richard,' she said quietly. 'It has been a long time since you and I were alone in the same room together.'

Hawkwood tossed the dividers on the chart before him. 'He's a good lad, that son of yours. You should stop treating him like a child.'

'He needs a father's hand on his shoulder.'

'Murad was not the paternal type, I take it.'

Her smile was not pleasant. 'You could say that. I've missed you, Richard.'

Hawkwood snorted derisively. 'It's been eighteen years, Jemilla, near as damn it. You've done a hell of a job of pretending otherwise.' He was surprised by the rancour in his voice. He had thought that Jemilla no longer mattered to him. The fact that both she and Isolla were on board confused him mightily, and though the ship had needed careful handling to enable the fastest possible passage since Abrusio, he had been using that as an excuse to stay up on deck, in his own world as it were, leaving the complications below.

'I'm rather busy, and very tired. If you have anything to discuss it will have to wait.'

She moved closer. The shawl slipped to reveal one creamy shoulder. He gazed at her, fascinated despite himself. There was a lush ripeness about Jemilla. She was an exotic fruit on the very cusp of turning rotten, and wantonness in her seemed not a vice but the expression of a normal appetite.

She kissed him lightly on the lips. The shawl slipped further. Below it she wore only a thin shift, and her heavy round breasts swelled through it, the dark stain of the nipples visible beneath the fabric. Hawkwood cupped one breast in his callused palm and she closed her eyes. A smile he had forgotten played across her lips. Half triumph, half hunger. He placed his mouth on hers and she gently closed her teeth on his darting tongue.

A knock on the door. He straightened at once and drew back from Jemilla. She wrapped her shawl about her again, her eyes not leaving his. 'Come in.'

It was Isolla. She started upon seeing them standing there together, and something in her face fell. 'I will come back at a better time.'

Jemilla curtseyed to her gracefully. 'Do not depart on my account, your majesty. I was just leaving.' As she passed the Queen in the doorway, the shawl unaccountably slipped again. 'Later, Richard,' she called back over her naked shoulder, and was gone.

Hawkwood felt his face burning and could not meet Isolla's eyes. He scourged himself for he knew not what. 'Lady, what can I do for you?'

She seemed more disconcerted than he. 'I did not know that the lady Jemilla and you were . . . familiar to each other, Captain.'

Hawkwood raised his head and met her eyes frankly. 'We were lovers many years ago. There is nothing between us now.' Even as he said it he wondered if it were true.

Isolla coloured. 'It is not my business.'

'Best to have it in the open. We'll be living cheek-by-jowl for the next few weeks. I will not dance minuets around the truth on my own ship.' His voice sounded harsher than he had intended. In a softer tone he asked: 'You are feeling better?'

'Yes. I - I think perhaps I am gaining my sea legs.'

'Better to go up on deck and get some fresh air. It is fetid down here. Just do not look at the sea moving beyond the rail.'

‘I will be sure not to.'

'What was it you wished to speak of, lady?'

'It was nothing important. Good day, Captain. Thank you for your advice.' And she was gone. She banged her knee on the jamb of the door as she left.

Hawkwood sat down before the chart and stared blindly at the parchment, the dull shine of the brass dividers. He knuckled his eyes, his exhaustion returning to make water of his muscles. And then he had to sit back and laugh at he knew not what.

The small change of course he had ordered woke him from a troubled sleep. He climbed out of the swinging cot and pulled on his sodden boots, blinking and yawning. In his dreams he had been terribly thirsty, his tongue swollen in his rasping mouth, and he had been seated before a pitcher of water and one of wine, unable to quench his raging thirst because he could not choose between the two.

He stumped up on deck to find a strained atmosphere and a crowded quarterdeck. Arhuz nodded, checked the traverse board and reported, 'Course east-south-east, skipper, wind backing to west-south-west so we have it on the starboard quarter. Do you want to call all hands?'

Hawkwood studied the trim of the sails. They were still drawing well. 'What's our speed?'

'Six knots and one fathom, holding steady.'

'Then we'll continue thus until the change of the watch, and then get square yards on fore and main. Rouse out the sailmaker, Arhuz, and get it all set in train. Bosun! Open the main hatch and get tackles to the maintop.'

The mariners went about their business with a calm competence that pleased Hawkwood greatly. They were not his Ospreys, but they knew their craft, and he had nothing more to tell them. He studied the sky over the taffrail. The west was clouding up once more, banners and rags of cloud gathering on the horizon. To the north the air was as clear as ice, the sea empty of every living thing.

'Lookout!' he called. 'What's afoot?' On an afternoon like this, with the spring sun warming the deck and the fresh breeze about them, the lookout would be able to survey a great expanse of ocean whose diameter was fifteen leagues wide.

'Not a sail, sir. Nor a bird or scrap of weed neither.'

'Very good.' Then he noticed that both Isolla and Jemilla were on deck. Isolla was standing by the larboard mizzen shrouds wrapped in a fur cloak with skeins of glorious red-gold hair whipping about her face, and Jemilla was to starboard, staring up into the rigging with a look of anxiety.

'Captain,' she said with no trace of coquetry, 'can you not say something to him, issue some order?'

Hawkwood followed her gaze and saw what seemed to be a trio of master's mates high in the fore topmast shrouds. Frowning, he realised that one of them was Bleyn, and his two companions were beckoning him yet higher.

'Gribbs, Ordio!' he bellowed at once. 'On deck, and see master Bleyn down with you!'

The young men halted in their ascent, and then began to retrace their steps with the swiftness of long practice.

'Handsomely, handsomely there, damn you!', and they moderated their pace.

'Thank you, Captain,' Jemilla said, honest relief in her face. Then she swallowed and her hand went to her mouth.

'You had best get below, lady.' She left the quarterdeck, weaving across the pitching deck as though she were drunk. One of the quartermasters lent her his arm at a nod from Hawkwood and saw her down the companionway. Hawkwood felt a small, unworthy sense of satisfaction as she went. This was his world, where he commanded and she was not much more than baggage. He had seen her a few times at court in recent years, a high-born aristocrat who deemed it charity when she deigned to notice his existence. The tables had been turned, it seemed. She was a refugee dependent on him for the safety of her son and herself. There was satisfaction to be had in her current discomfort, and she was not so alluring with that pasty puking look about her.

She will gain no hold on me, Hawkwood promised himself. Not on this voyage.

The wind was picking up, and the Seahare was pitching before it like an excited horse, great showers of spray breaking over her forecastle and travelling as far aft as the waist. Hawkwood grasped the mizzen backstay and felt the tension in the cable. He would have to shorten sail if this kept up, but for now he wanted to wring every ounce of speed he could out of the blessed wind.