Swords From the Sea (15 page)

"If we are truly entering the Ice Sea," responded Thorne, "I must speak with Master Dickon, at once. Do you see to it, Peter."

To his surprise the boatswain rolled off without objection or question, and the armiger braced himself for the task of accusing Durforth on his unsupported word. By now he knew it was no light matter so to bring in question the master of a ship-this knowledge had impelled him to hold his peace, until he could win the confidence of Chancellor. But the pilotmajor seemed to avoid Thorne.

However, Thorne walked toward the poop rail, having fully decided to go to Chancellor and tell him his own side of the story.

Chapter IX

The Rendezvous

Chancellor was seated in the narrow stern cabin by the table on which lay astrolabe and backstaff. Powerful hands clasped behind his curly head, he nodded as the landsman entered.

"You asked for a word with me, my lad?"

"Yes, Master Dickon. And I pray that you will hear me to the end, for this is a matter that I may no longer keep to myself."

Gripping the deck beam overhead, to steady himself against the roll of the ship, Thorne began his tale.

"I am Ralph Thorne, son of him called the Cosmographer, and I fought Master Durforth at Orfordnesse in your presence."

The master of the Edward showed no surprise at this, but as the youth went on to unfold all that had taken place in London, he fell serious and his eyes never left the speaker's face.

"It is ill doing," he made response in his slow fashion, "to lay a charge against a man without proof, on hearsay and suspicion."

"That is true, Master Dickon. But so is my tale."

"According to your story, you came secretly to the ship. Since then you have lain hidden. How am I to take your word against that of a gentleman?"

Thorne felt his cheeks grow hot as he leaned forward, checking a harsh retort with an effort.

"Sir, my presence here should be a surety of my mission, which is to serve the king."

"Was the murder of the honest gentleman your father included in this mission?"

"My father? Nay, he is alive and hearty."

Something in the face of the older man choked the words in his throat.

"My father-what of him?"

"Within an hour of our embarking Master Robert Thorne was slain with your sword in his cottage, and all his maps were burned on the hearth."

As the youth made no response, Chancellor added slowly:

"The truth of this is established by Master Cabot, who, after bidding us farewell on the shore, went to your father's cottage to have speech with him. Finding him as I have said, Master Cabot returned to the shore and came out to us in a skiff, to ask if any upon the ships had knowledge of the deed or of my lord Renard."

"What of Renard?" asked Ralph through set teeth.

"He was to have escorted the venerable pilot back to London, but, missing him in the village, apparently went on alone."

Ralph bent his head a moment, touching with his hand the rude drawing on the table, so unlike the delicate tracery of his father's charts.

It came into his mind that the Cosmographer would never, now, behold him returning with the king's navigants, and the certainty that Master Thorne was no longer living filled him with a longing to have lived otherwise. With his own sword!

"Sir," he cried, "I do hold it ill of you that you should have thought me guilty of my father's murder. One thing I must ask of you-nay, two. A sword and to be put aboard the Confidentia where Durforth is."

"Not so."

Chancellor rose, stooping to avoid the deck beams overhead, and held out his hand.

"I did no more than test you with words. A man may lie with his tongue, yet his eyes must e'en bear witness of his honesty. Your eyes are honest. 'Tis so I judge a man."

"Your friends," assented the armiger, "do say that you are just, Master Chancellor. I have found you so."

The big pilot shook his tawny head as if impatient of a burden that was not to his liking.

"In these treacherous days when poison is in the very air of England, I may not easily know who is friend and who is unfriend. Before this I had other evidence that approved your innocence."

"How?"

"A ship's master is more careful than you reek. When Peter rowed me out that night, I questioned him of the new hand that he had trepanned."

Chancellor smiled, and when he did so his weatherbeaten face glowed with a kindly light.

"Peter's a rare rogue-cheats the gallows with every breath; yet is he loyal to those he serves. None so long before you appeared upon the shore he wandered off to the ale house to wet his throat. There he heard the tumult raised by my lord Renard's fellows when they sought to put an end to you.

"Peter hath the Spanish gab and heard something of their secret talk. I examined you straitly while you lay unconscious, and knew you for Robert Thorne's son."

"Yet told me naught of his fate!"

"It is not easy to relate such news, my lad. You lay ill. Moreover," the pilot added quietly, "I will not join in fellowship with other men if they be not open with me. I bade Peter put you to test, the which he did after a fashion of his own."

He motioned Thorne to a seat beside him in the stern casement and put his hand on the youth's shoulder.

"It was not in my mind to deal hardly by you. 'Twas best you should lie hidden, lest Durforth come to know of you and demand your punishment of Sir Hugh, who holds him in much esteem."

"And what, Master Dickon," cried the armiger, "is your thought of Durforth? I will face him and accuse him of abetting my father's murder-which was by Renard's hand I will swear."

"Master Durforth was on his ship when it took place."

"It is true that the pair of them slew my father," insisted Thorne from set lips, "and I shall take vengeance for that black deed."

"But Durforth we may not accuse. Others might have caused the molder ing victuals to be put in the holds. Durforth is a skilled navigator, and hath on the Con fidentia a rare globe showing the passage we must follow."

"What of the course he laid down, to the inland sea?"

"Faith," smiled the pilot, "I would give half my share in this venture to know the truth of that. He hath made no mention of it in council. 'Tis a riddle that will someday resolve itself.

"My lad, I will enroll you among the gentlemen adventurers. You will be the fourth upon this ship. We will observe closely Durforth's actions, and know whether he be honest man or rogue. On the morrow the council meets in the cabin of Sir Hugh and I will ask Durforth of this inland sea and Town of Wooden Walls."

Chancellor was a man slow of decision but one who would not draw back once he had made up his mind. Seeing this, Thorne shook his head, yet would not gainsay the plan of an older and wiser man. He thought that the master of the Con fidentia was too shrewd for Chancellor's questioning, and in this he was right.

But it fell out not as they had planned. The mist thinned away steadily though the nearby shore was still hidden. They could hear the surf breaking on the rocks, and the cries of rooks and gulls. Once the lookout of the Edward sighted a skiff with one man in it-a dwarf whose fishskin garments glittered with spray.

He pulled out to stare at the Edward, which was making little way in the heavy cross seas. And then, with a glance to windward he bared pointed teeth in a soundless laugh and pulled away for the shore.

The three ships bore in, and presently sighted the cliffs of a headland. But the wind, which had been rising steadily, grew to a full gale, twisting and buffeting the little vessels until Sir Hugh made signal to put about and gain sea room, entrance into the bay being impossible.

A lowering sky seemed to press the very masts of the Edward, and through the sweeping cloud wrack Ralph caught a glimpse of the silver circle of the sun, low over the land. He noticed that the cries of the birds had ceased, and that the mariners were taking in all but the main- and foresails.

Obeying a second signal from the admiral-ship, Chancellor, whose vessel was the handiest of the three, ran within hail of Willoughby on the lee side. The shout of the captain-general came to them faintly over the thud and hiss of the waters and the whining of rigging.

"The rendezvous is Wardhouse. A' --'s name, Dick, stand by me."

The next moment the dim light was eclipsed as if a lamp in the sky had been put out; a blast heeled the Edward, splitting the main course. As far as Thorne could see the horizon was a void, laced with the white of flying foam.

Out of the blackness the white crests of waves roared at him, crashed on the bow, filling the air with spume, and raced aft to merge into the boiling wake. He propped himself against the bulwarks and hooked one arm around a backstay, bending his head to snatch a breath of air.

He did not dare to stir from this post of vantage, but the able shiplnen he could see laboring at the jeers, where the mainyard with its shreds of sail was being lowered away and secured. Ever and anon he heard Chancellor's shout-no louder than a whisper-and the answering pipe of Peter's whistle.

For a while he watched the stern lantern of the Bona Esperanza pitching in the murk ahead of them. Sir Hugh was carrying more sail than Chancellor, and drifted farther to leeward, so that presently the point of light winked out. Ralph, awed by the racing seas, kept the deck, full of wonder and interest, and half believing that the ship would break into pieces the next moment.

So it happened that some hours later-he judged it to be the mid hours of the short night-he heard a startled cry from the foredeck.

"Ice on the weather bow!"

From the topgallant poop behind him came the hoarse bellow of Burroughs, the master.

"Helm hard a-weather! Veer out the foresheet to wear ship! "

For a moment the Edward seemed to hang back and Thorne loosened his hold to peer over the side. He could see no ice, nothing save a vague blur of white where the seas were breaking. Then the ship brought-to on the other tack with a lurch and he lost his balance, rolling into the lee scuppers.

A rush of water drenched him, and he struggled to his knees, coughing and shivering, when a powerful hand caught him under the shoulder and drew him erect. He made out the great bulk and the reeking leather garments of the boatswain.

"Gunner," Chancellor's clear voice rang out, "fire me a caliver to leeward."

The wind all at once seemed to Thorne to grow bitter and chill as in mid-winter. He waited until one of the small guns of the forecastle flashed and roared.

"Are we doomed, Peter?" he cried. "Is our time run out?"

The boatswain, who had been peering over the bulwark, roared with laughter.

"'Tis the younker! Nay Master Ralph, thou'lt live yet to be hung. This is no more than a fairish blow, a goodish blow, ye might say. The caliver was fired to warn the others of the ice, if so be they are within sight or hearing, which I doubt."

The Edward rode out the storm and headed back to the coast without sighting either of the consorts. Chancellor thereupon set about finding the Wardhouse. He picked up the two headlands from which they had been driven by the gale and ran east for a day along a coast that was brown and bare of trees, with snow lying on the heights.

This snow, the Iceland mariner maintained, never melted, a thing that seemed beyond belief to the other shipmen. But they saw nothing of any habitation, much less a town.

They did sight a clump of islands lying several miles offshore, and Chancellor decided to put out and land upon one of them. The Edward was in sore need of both wood and water.

The island they selected was overgrown with stunted firs and birches on the higher ground, and a rocky pinnacle offered a good lookout. Burroughs had noted a likely cove for anchorage where he thought they would find fresh water.

The work was not at an end when those on the ship saw the boat put out without the casks, and half the men. Peter, coming over the side, reported to Chancellor that a man sent to the height had seen a dwelling near the center of the island, where the forests hid it from view from the sea.

"What manner of dwelling?"

"A great house it be, with wall and tower."

"Then it is the Wardhouse. For this is the northernmost point of land, and must lie along the seventieth degree of latitude. Aye," Chancellor added thoughtfully, "no other ships from our part of the world have ventured as far as this."

He ordered Robert Stanton, master gunner, a dour man, except in liquor, with two gentleman, Thorne, and a half-dozen hands to make ready to accompany him to the shore. The gentlemen donned corselets and girded on their swords, taking also hand guns, while the mariners were content with pikes and cutlasses. Leaving the ship in charge of Burroughs, they went off in the pinnace.

On the gravel of the beach they noticed marks where other boats had been drawn up-fishing craft or ketches, the Icelander said. And Stanton hit upon a beaten path that led in the direction of the house. It bore the signs of frequent use, but no heel marks were visible. And it took them up through the pines, past gullies where snow lay in deep patches, to a clearing where only ferns and a kind of flowering moss grew.

A stout log palisade stood in the center of the open space, and a thatched roof and the bole of a rude stone tower were to be seen above it. Chancellor, bidding his men look to their arms, went up to the gate and thrust it open.

"Christians have been here before us by token of yonder grave and the cross above it," one of the gentlemen observed, and they went on with more assurance to the door.

It opened as readily as the gate.

"Ho, within! Have you no welcome for wayfarers?"

The cry went unanswered, and the house was found to be deserted, though signs of occupancy were not wanting. In the hall were stacked bales and fardels of traders' goods, broadcloth, kerseys, and raisins, and round pewter. A book of reckoning bearing the name of one John Andrews, of Cairness, lay upon the bundle.

This book disclosed no more than lists of barter, by which Chancellor made out that the cloth and pewter had been exchanged in the past for such things as furs, tallow, and fish. It did mention that these shipments had been made to and from the Wardhouse.