Osric limped over and announced that he was ready to try using the makeshift boat to get ashore with the smaller animals. I turned my attention to Abram. ‘Are you willing to give it a try?’
The dragoman nodded immediately. ‘I’ll send my own men with the ship’s crew. They can take our valuables with them.’
Protis threw up his hands. ‘You’re crazy, risking your lives for a couple of birds and some dogs!’
‘It would help if you let us have some oars,’ Osric told him pointedly.
Protis glared at him before stamping off to the rail and telling his men to hand up a couple of oars. There was a moment’s hesitation and he had to shout angrily at them. Reluctantly, they obeyed. Protis brought the oars across to us and laid them down on the deck. ‘This ship may still be afloat when I get ashore,’ he told us. ‘I’ll try to organize a rescue boat to come out to fetch you and your precious animals.’
But from the way he avoided looking me in the eye, I knew he did not expect the ship, or us, to survive that long.
As the ship’s boat pulled away, Osric, Walo, Abram and myself busied ourselves with the abandoned buckets. We emptied enough water from the trough to allow us to turn it on edge, and then tip out the rest. Abram found a couple of lengths of plank that he fitted for thwarts, and he knotted loops of rope to hold the oars when it came time for us to row. Osric and I used an axe and a crowbar to smash a gap in the ship’s rail. By the time we had finished, the ship had sunk so far that there was less than three feet between the deck and the surface of the sea. We slid our makeshift vessel overboard with ease. It wallowed with barely five inches above the surface of the sea, but it floated.
Osric stepped carefully into it, and Abram handed across the gyrfalcons in their cages. The five white dogs were more awkward. They had to be restrained from leaping across the gap and upsetting the balance of the unstable craft. One by one, Walo picked them up and settled them in place to be watched over by Abram. I took a last look around. Walo had insisted on scrambling back aboard the sinking ship and had gone forward. He had already released the remaining chickens from their coop. Now he was unlatching the door to the ice bears’ cage, leaving it wide open. He did the same with the aurochs’ enclosure. Finally, he walked down the deck to join me and together we climbed into the boat.
We pushed off and, taking turns at the two oars, crept away from the sinking ship, looking on in silence as Modi and Madi pushed their way from their cage and padded up and down the deck. They sniffed curiously at the items that had been left behind. Only recently had I found a way of telling the difference between the two bears: Modi walked with a slightly different gait to his brother, his left front paw turned in at an angle. It was ironic, I thought, that I should have learned to tell them apart soon before I saw them for the last time. Quickly they came across the chickens that Walo had released, and there was a brief and dramatic chase. Terrified squawks ended abruptly in bursts of feathers, and the two ice bears settled down to gnaw happily on their catch. By then the aurochs had also emerged from its confinement. It went directly to the pile of dried grass that Walo had dumped at the base of the mast and began to eat.
Once or twice Walo tried to stand up to get a better view, and I had to tell him sharply to sit down or he would upset the boat. Strangely, he was showing no sign of distress as he looked back towards his beloved bears enjoying their meal. I wondered if it was Walo’s intention that the animals would go to their deaths content, on full stomachs.
We rowed. Our progress was a crawl, and the sun beat down. Fortunately, the sea was a glassy calm, and there was nothing to do but sit very still and avoid disturbing the delicate balance of our unstable boat or take an oar when it was handed on. None of us spoke.
I was struggling to come to terms with the loss of the larger animals. Even if we succeeded in reaching the shore with the gyrfalcons and the dogs, they were not sufficient for what Carolus had had in mind when he had entrusted me with the embassy to the caliph. At best, the king might order me to return to Kaupang next year and start all over again with a new batch of white animals. More likely, he would abandon the whole scheme. In which case, my future – and Osric’s – at the royal court would be hanging by a thread. Carolus did not tolerate a bungler.
Osric broke into my gloomy thoughts. ‘That canvas patch should have kept the water out,’ he observed.
‘Protis’s vessel was too badly neglected,’ Abram told him. ‘You saw for yourself the poor condition of the hull when you were underwater.’
‘True, the seams were bad,’ my friend replied. ‘But if we had not delayed to fit the patch, as I suggested, maybe we could have got the vessel to land and beached her.’
I felt that Osric was blaming himself unnecessarily. ‘That’s all behind us now. I was the one who had made the decision to hire Protis and his ship. Let’s concentrate on getting safely to shore in this tub.’
Osric shook his head ruefully. ‘Even the most rotten hull shouldn’t spring such a disastrous leak in a calm sea and with virtually no wind. Our luck has to change.’
His remark hung in the air between us. I found myself wondering if the sinking of the ship was just a freak accident, bad luck, or something more. I could not shake off the feeling that there was a link between the murderous attack on me in Kaupang and the recent calamity. It took the rest of the afternoon for us to reach the shore. By that time the sinking vessel was too far away and too low in the water for us to see any detail. Her mast was still visible so we guessed that she was settling into her grave still upright. Ahead of us, Protis and his men had already landed in a small cove. A group of a dozen men were gathered around their skiff where it was drawn up on the beach. I presumed they came from the community of boat builders that Protis had spoken of. Further up the beach were several half-built boats on the stocks, and there were untidy heaps of raw timber and long sheds that looked as if they contained the shipwrights’ stores.
We were less than a stone’s throw from the beach when, ignoring my warning growl, Walo suddenly stood up. The boat wobbled dangerously, and he let out a whoop.
I jerked around. He was pointing out to sea, his eyes shining. Directly between us and the sinking ship were two small dark shapes in the water, not half a mile away.
‘Modi and Madi! They’re swimming after us. That’s why Walo let them free,’ exclaimed Osric
‘Quick!’ I cried, after I had recovered from my initial shock. ‘We have to be ready for them.’
We rowed the final yards. Protis and his men waded into the water and, helped by several shipwrights, dragged our makeshift vessel to land. Osric handed over the first of the gyrfalcon cages for it to be carried up the beach and set down safely on the ground. The dogs leaped out and bounded ashore.
‘There are two large and dangerous bears on their way,’ I announced loudly. The shipwrights stared at me. Then I remembered that they would not understand my language. A small crowd of onlookers had gathered at the back of the beach, women and children. I guessed they were the families of the shipbuilders, curious to see what the sea had brought. I yelled at the top of my voice to gain their attention, and pointed. The white heads of the two bears were now much closer. It was extraordinary how fast they were able to move through the water. In a few more minutes they would be on land.
I heard a murmur of astonishment from the crowd, a murmur that turned to a ripple of alarm as they realized what they were seeing.
‘Abram, tell them that the bears are dangerous and we must have somewhere to contain them,’ I told the dragoman.
One of the shipwrights was quick on the uptake. He ran to open the door of a boat shed.