‘But, Master,’ Wilfred asked with a gentle smile, ‘are these enquiries leading anywhere? Is there any plan of escape from this ship?’
I laughed carefully, waiting for my chest to explode. No – the Mediterranean was working more of its magic. The cough I’d thought many times during the early days of the voyage would finish me off was gone. I laughed again and looked at the boy.
‘I might once have conceived a daring plan,’ I said with an attempt at brightness. ‘See those two savages over there by the mast? The others are below, taking advantage of Hrothgar’s absence to break out the beer. I could take up that lump of wood that has fallen so conveniently on to the deck and brain one of them, and grab his axe to finish off the other. Meanwhile, you could jam the hatch shut on everyone else. You and I could then rearrange the sails and take the ship off to some place of safety.
‘Leave aside, however, that I might have trouble lifting anything as heavy as that piece of wood, let alone being up to a desperate but brief struggle with a man who can probably lift me with one hand while wanking with the other.’ I smiled at the dark look that passed over Wilfred’s face. ‘Leave all that aside. Do you know anything about the management of any ship, let alone one this big and heavy? For myself, the only attention I’ve ever paid to ships is a purely abstract interest in the balance of forces. And this one really is bigger and heavier than anything I’ve ever seen below supply carriers. I never thought barbarians might be up to building anything so large. As for a place of safety…’ I trailed off and allowed myself another laugh.
‘Oh, my dear boy, I’m not saying we should entirely think ourselves into the heads of beasts prodded along to the slaughter. I’ve been alive a long time, and one reason for that is that something always turns up – if only you know how to recognise it. For the moment, though, with or without its two head gaolers, this ship is a floating prison, and we might as well put aside all thought of escaping. We wait here for Edward and Hrothgar to come back. I’m beginning to hope they’ll bring some decent wine to have with dinner. In the meantime, I’m off to my cot for another nap. Get me up when the sun casts a four-foot shadow of yourself, and we’ll have a Greek lesson. I think you will now understand why I’ve been putting so much emphasis on the spoken language.
‘So, help me to my cot if you can,’ I said curtly. ‘I feel a good dinner coming on for tonight, and I’d like to be up to its full enjoyment. One of us needs to stay in reasonable health.’
Chapter 9
But there was no good dinner. The crew waited until the stars looked down from a moonless sky. When Edward and Hrothgar didn’t return, they served up something disgusting and went back to their beer. I was kept up half the night by their bawled singing and by their yapping, increasingly ill-natured arguments. When I eventually woke the following morning, the sea was calmer still and the sun hotter. I sat on the deck under my awning, looking over to the land. I still couldn’t see much of Cartenna. And I could see no suggestion of a returning boat. It would soon be a day since it had set out.
‘I think we should pray, Master,’ Wilfred said, coming over to stand beside me.
I gave what I hoped was a casual sniff, and looked harder at Cartenna. I couldn’t tell for sure, but there seemed to be movement of some kind on shore. I leaned forward and held up a hand to shade my eyes. It might have been a boat. Or it might have been something else. I looked back down at the deck. Without Hrothgar to nag, of course, nobody had seen fit to clean up Wilfred’s vomit from the day before. Though dry, it was beginning to attract flies from the shore.
‘We must pray for Edward, and I suppose for Hrothgar,’ Wilfred elaborated. ‘But I fear the time has come to pray for ourselves. I have sins that I wish I had been able to confess.’
I ignored him, hoping he wouldn’t get back on to that worthless subject. I turned my head slightly, wondering if a new angle of vision might bring some improvement. It didn’t. I tried to think of something witty. I did better with keeping the wine cup from spilling its redness all down my chest. At least no one would think I was either palsied or cold inside from the fear. If I couldn’t be bothered with twisting round to look, I could plainly hear the muttering on the deck behind me.
‘Do tell me,’ I asked calmly, ‘if we are just to be thrown overboard, or if the crew proposes to carve us up first.’
‘I think it will be the latter,’ came the infinitely sad reply. ‘The weapons they carry would be superfluous for the former.’
I tried not to laugh. This was, after all, a crisis. ‘Oh dear,’ I said. I took another sip and put my wine down very carefully. ‘Have the kindness, dear boy, to help me round so that I can face these people.’
It may be that familiarity had blunted the horror of their appearance. Or it may be that Hrothgar had done outstandingly well in transforming them from a pack of beer-demented barbarians to a crew of cut-throat pirates. Whatever had been the case, though, they weren’t now an encouraging sight. They looked pretty much as they had on their first appearance in Jarrow – only there was no monastery wall this time to keep us apart. They stood in a closely packed rabble a couple of yards from my daybed. One of them leaned forward and jabbered something I couldn’t catch. Someone at the back began making weird animal noises. How Hrothgar had kept them in any line at all said much for his skills as a leader. How he’d dared trust them unsupervised on board was a mystery. Now he was gone, and might not be back, they were all reverting by the moment. I clutched for my stick and got unsteadily to my feet.
‘Gentlemen,’ I said in my best approximation to their own language. No one seemed surprised I could speak it. ‘Dear friends.’ I smiled and held out my free arm in a gesture of regard and affection. ‘I appreciate your concerns for what may have happened ashore. But I do suggest that a day is not long enough for drawing untoward conclusions. Let us wait until evening. If nothing has happened by then, let us consider returning to England – where I can promise a generous reward from the Lord Bishop of Canterbury for my safe return.’
‘We want our men back,’ someone shouted.
‘You’ve fucking stitched them up with the Greeks,’ someone else added with a certain want of reasonableness. There was a general humming of assent.
I didn’t bother with probing. It was plain that ‘our men’ covered the two oarsmen alone. Edward and Hrothgar could be written off as lost. My stick wobbled with a slight motion of the ship, and I had to grab hold of Wilfred to stay on my feet. Since he was clutching at me for the same reason, it was almost a wonder we didn’t hit the deck together. As it was, I was able to carry on with my probably useless oration.
‘You must consider,’ I said, ‘that I have no knowledge of conditions on shore. You surely know that I am a prisoner on this ship, and have no contact with anyone. If your friends are in trouble there, I cannot help them. All I can do is repeat my promise of reward for my safe return to England.’
‘You’ll get them back,’ the man at the front shouted again. ‘You’ll get them back – or the boy dies!’
Against my better judgement, I laughed. I thought raiding undefended towns was their job, not mine. What did these creatures now expect of me – that I’d swim ashore in the absence of another boat, and then back with an oarsman under each arm? They might as well butcher us on the spot. I sat quickly down and fussed with my blanket.