‘Va? Va, you have to stop. The man macShiel is here.’
He looked up from his supine position, panting. The tide had crept in and he was wet with sea and sand. macShiel asked Elenya a question, but indicated Va.
‘He wants to know what you were doing. A reply that doesn’t make him question your sanity any more than he does already would be welcome.’
‘Penance. Tell him my sins are many and great.’
She repeated the answer, and the kilted man seemed satisfied.
‘Ask him about that boat.’ Va pointed. ‘Is that the Kenyan’s doing?’
macShiel nodded. ‘It’s how they build them in his land. I have to admit, it is better: faster, more manoeuvrable. You can do things in it you can’t with a square sail.’
‘Tell it to naFraince. The leaky bucket we came here on wasn’t fit for a river.’
macShiel laughed, then remembered the dead priest. ‘He stole something from you.’
‘A book, one of a set. We know he has it – the boy’s seen it. It belongs to the patriarch of All Russia, and it’s my holy duty to take it back.’
‘Good luck then. The word I hear is that King Ardhal has paid the blood-price to the family of the man he killed here. If he now works for the king, you might have trouble.’
‘Did he really kill your priest?’
macShiel sucked air and blew out his cheeks. ‘Who else? Adding up the days, Father Padroig and Akisi’ – he turned and spat – ‘were on the road together. One of them didn’t arrive.’
Elenya interrupted herself. ‘All this talk is thirsty work.’ She gazed out to sea and said nothing more.
‘These are bad times, mistress, and we forget ourselves. We lose our manners as well as our self-respect. I can’t even raise men to get the father’s body.’
‘What did he say?’ said Va, and when Elenya finally told him, he got up. ‘I’ll go with him. I’ll have seen worse, smelled worse, done worse.’
‘That’s true enough, Va,’ she murmured. She relayed his offer.
macShiel was genuinely moved that a stranger would help where his kinsmen would not. ‘Come and eat with me, and we’ll do what needs to be done later.’
They followed him through the village, past the curious, fearful and sometimes lustful stares. None of them said anything though, because it was all too different and no one was certain of anything any more.
CHAPTER 21
THEY STAYED HIDDEN behind a twisted hedge of thorns while the army passed by. Va lay on his stomach, perfectly still, the hood over his head arranged in such a way that he could see out with one eye. Elenya sat at his feet, facing out into the field and away from the road. Her grey cloak and hunched shoulders made her look like a boundary stone, unmoved for years.
Peering through the slit between brown soil and black wood, Va had watched the horses go by, the infantry go by, and finally the cattle-drawn carts laden with supplies. It had taken half the morning, and now there were the followers that tagged along behind every army. Wives, whores, thieves, cooks, musicians; some of them all those roles in one.
The last pair of feet disappeared from view, and Va turned onto his back. ‘It’s only a small army. A thousand fighting men, a hundred horse.’
‘But none of them landless peasants being led to their slaughter by some crazed mercenary sick with love.’
Va swallowed hard. ‘No, I suppose not. But it looks like High King Cormac is going back for another try.’
Elenya stood up and stretched. ‘Who isn’t the real High King at all, just some upstart from Mumhan.’ She slung her bag over her shoulder and started for the gap in the hedge. ‘This isn’t going to be easy, you know,’ she said.
‘It still has to be done.’
‘You can’t just march in and demand the book back.’
‘macShiel said this Ardhal is an honourable man. Honourable men don’t like the idea of owning stolen property. So, yes, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.’
‘Except you’ll need me to translate for you, or did you think he spoke Rus? I could tell him that you’re some odious tree-worshipper from the far south holding me hostage, and that I’m throwing myself on his mercy if only he’d free me from your cruel ownership. And you wouldn’t be able to tell until they fetched the rope to hang you.’
‘You wouldn’t do that.’ He frowned at her slight. ‘I do know some World.’
‘Va, when you commanded your vast armies, how did you manage to tell them what you wanted them to do?’
‘I had people.’
‘It’s a good job you still do. Now it looks like An Cobh is going to be under siege again, you’ll have to work out a way of getting in and out without being killed by either side as a spy.’
Va knocked a stone out of his sandals. ‘God will provide.’
‘Whenever you say that, I know you’re going to do something stupid and trust to luck.’ Elenya searched her bag for the hard yellow cheese macShiel’s wife had given her. ‘The problem is, it always works, doesn’t it?’
She twisted the lump of cheese this way and that until it broke into two unequal portions. She kept the smaller and gave Va the larger.
They trailed the army until noon, when they stopped at the top of the hill overlooking An Cobh. The soldiers marched on and started to arrange themselves in the valley below, slowly working their way round to cut the promontory off from the land. The horsemen darted this way and that, issuing orders and rounding up the livestock that hadn’t been withdrawn inside An Cobh’s stone walls.
‘This is a rubbish siege,’ said Elenya. ‘They can still get supplies in by boat. They’ll give up in a week and go home.’
‘If they had any boats. Didn’t macShiel say Cormac burned them all last time?’
‘True. But they can always make more.’
‘They don’t seem too worried.’ Va stood as tall as he could, his hand shading his eyes. ‘Ah. They’ve got a couple of galleys coming into the bay.’
‘So it’s not so rubbish.’ Elenya watched the valley as the soldiers put up tents and built fires at intervals around the walls. ‘This rabble seems quite organized. Bit of a setback for you.’
‘Something will turn up.’
The gates of An Cobh were closed. The walls were crowded with figures, going this way and that, all too far away to tell what they were doing. Wood smoke started to obscure the scene further.
‘All this for just one book,’ said Elenya.
‘I know. But you said the thieves were led by a black man.’
‘I said a man in black. I couldn’t tell the colour of his skin.’
Va looked at the way the sentries were arrayed. ‘I should be able to slip through the picket during the night. The walls are climbable. I might need some rope.’
‘And what about me? How do you propose to get me in?’
Va tutted. ‘That’s up to you.’
‘You won’t leave me behind.’ She put her hand lightly on his arm.
He flinched and put his own hand to cover where she had touched him, as if burned. ‘I need to check on the defences on the far side of town.’
‘Then we’ll walk together.’
They were halfway round the horseshoe curve of the surrounding hills when fresh black smoke rose in two pillars behind An Cobh. Va tried to make out what had happened, but the rock on which the town sat hid the shore from view.
‘They must be firing the port.’
‘Who, Cormac or the king?’
‘I can’t tell. It doesn’t make sense, either way. Cormac will want to take the town; the King of Coirc will want to keep it. There’s no sense in burning it all to the ground.’
Then one of the boats hove into view. Its rigging was alight, along with most of the foredeck. It was abandoned, and it heeled over to starboard without check. The crew were tiny white splashes in the choppy sea.