The Maiden's Abduction. Juliet Landon

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СКАЧАТЬ harbour, the vast expanse of sparkling sea beyond, the swaying masts of ships and the brown water that reflected every shape and threw it crazily askew. Houses lined the quay in an arc on one side, enclosing the harbour on the other side by a wall of stone and timber that extended from the base of a massive natural mound at one side of the town. It was on top of this mound that the Norman castle perched, which they’d seen against the evening sky. Now it was being mobbed by screaming seagulls, some of which came in to land at Isolde’s feet with beady, enquiring eyes and bold, flat-footed advances.

      ‘I’m going,’ she told them, on the brink of tears. ‘I’m going and I’ve only just arrived.’

      The breeze that had brought a welcome coolness into her bedchamber overnight had now lifted the sea into more than Silas La Vallon’s hypothetical millpond, causing Cecily to clutch at her skirts, her head-dress and shawl all at the same time. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing, love,’ she said.

      No, dear Cecily. I have not the slightest idea what I’m doing.

      Silas La Vallon’s ship was also a surprise to her, for she had thought he meant one of the squat northern cogs that piled cargo up and down the rivers, one-masted, cramped, and serviceably plain. She had seen them at York, loaded with bales of cloth and smelly commodities, and it had been a measure of her temporary madness that she had agreed to sail with him even in one of those. But this was not a cog; it was a four-hundred-ton carrack, a three-masted beauty that sat proudly on the high tide outside Dame Elizabeth’s door almost, a towering thing with decorated castles fore and aft, swarming with men and more ropes than a ropemaker’s shop.

      The men grinned and nudged and pulled in their stomachs, then got on with their swarming as she and Cecily were led aboard and introduced to the master, whose aquamarine eyes sparkled with intrigue in a skin of creased and burnished leather. And she looked hard and with genuine regret at the three who stood waving and calling last-minute instructions on the quayside. The two boys watched in fascination the men who hauled in unison, the sails that squeaked upwards, cracking and billowing, the majestic swing of the bow, and it was only Dame Elizabeth who noticed the quick brush of fingers across one cheek as it received her wind-blown kiss.

      Or perhaps there was another who saw, who came to lean on the bulwark by her side to wave, then to point out the Brakespeares’ house and its adjacent warehouse, King Richard’s House over there, the old Roman lighthouse, and there, over to the left, the town gate through which Bard would already have passed.

      ‘Yes, I see,’ she said, straining her eyes to scan the road.

      The town nestled closer on to the hillside as they passed beyond the harbour entrance and out into the open sea, holding itself steady as the ship took its first pulling lunges into the swell like a swimmer lengthening his stroke. She felt the lurch as the sails cracked open and the corresponding rush of exhilaration in the pit of her stomach, as though she stood on a live beast, and found ever more to see as the distance between them and the land increased, the prominent headland at one side with never-ending cliffs on the other. Below the cliffs were beaches where white-edged surf broke and mended again, then raced in upon the rocks further along, determined to smash uninterrupted.

      ‘We didn’t see any of this on our way here,’ she said.

      ‘You’d not have seen the cliffs or the rocks because you were above them,’ Silas told her. He turned round and pointed across the deck. ‘That’s what you’d have seen.’

      The water was a pure shimmering blue, bouncing sunlight and seagulls into the clear morning air, and Isolde was spellbound.

      ‘You can eat your apple now,’ he said.

      It was still there, in her hand, and so she did, but was unable to hear her own crunching for the multitude of creaks and groans underfoot and the crashing roar of waves hurtling past. Nor did she taste a thing.

      He left her alone after that, as if, having made sure she would not jump overboard, he could relax his guard. That was the cynical view she took of things, which was, perhaps, an inefficient tool to guard against the wayward thoughts to do with his nearness as he had leaned across her to point; the tiny red mark on his chin where he had cut himself shaving, the way the cuffs of his white cotton shirt clung to his beautiful hands. Silly, inconsequential things. Irritably, she brushed back the memory of his intimidating manner, despite her own defence, but it returned with masochistic glee to taunt her with every detail of their argument.

      Finally, she went aft towards the shallow stairway, where a cabin was built high on to the stern of the ship, its sloping roof decorated with gold-painted finials and cut-work edgings. It was large enough only for a wide bed built above a cupboard, a shelf that served as a table over their luggage, and two large boxes in a corner. Cecily was sitting upon one of them, hugging a basin to her chest and groaning. Her face was grey. Isolde took a blanket and wrapped it around her maid’s shoulders, helping her outside to the deck. ‘Deep breaths, love,’ she said. ‘Stay in the corner and go to sleep.’

      Food and wine were brought to them mid-morning: cold meats and mussels, delicious patties and cherries, none of which Cecily could look at but which Isolde devoured to the last crumb. The wind was strengthening and the sea bore dark patches, and the high head-dress swathed with a fine veiling was no longer an appropriate statement of restored dignity. It would have to come off again. She took Cecily back to the cabin, wondering why the crew needed to carry a supply of live chickens and two piglets from Scarborough to York.

      The glass-paned window that looked out directly over the ship’s wake began to streak with rain long before Isolde noticed it, for the constant pitching and tossing had made Cecily’s first voyage memorable for all the wrong reasons, and Isolde was disinclined to leave her so wretchedly helpless. When she did emerge from the cabin to replenish her lungs with fresh air, the deluge of fine rain made her screw up her face and draw her cloak more tightly across her shoulders as she made her way across the slippery deck to the bulwarks.

      ‘Where are we?’ she asked one of the crew as he turned to watch, holding out a hand to steady her. ‘Where’s the land?’

      The man looked out into the bank of cloud as he pointed. ‘Over there, lady. It’ll be hidden for a bit until this lot clears.’

      She sat on a wet wooden crate for safety. ‘I thought we’d be staying within sight of it, going south.’

      ‘Nay.’ He smiled. ‘If we had a northerly, now that’d be different: that’d blow us due south in record time. But we don’t get northerlies in summer, do we? So we have to fill our sails with whatever we can catch, and then go from side to side, see? Like that.’ He zigzagged with his hand. ‘Your old maid taken bad, is she?’

      That sounded like a perfectly reasonable explanation, and it satisfied Isolde, who knew little either of geography or navigation. Once again, she settled herself against Cecily’s unhappily sleeping bulk, covered herself with blankets, and began an examination of the leatherbound books on the shelf above her. Silas La Vallon had an interesting collection, though she had not thought his taste would run to stories about King Arthur, La Belle Dame sans Merci, the Legend of Ladies, or a Disputation between Hope and Despair, which proved to be not quite the help she had expected. The possibility that these might have been selected for her benefit flashed through her mind, but was dismissed. Darkness came before supper that evening, and the bucking of the ship and the consequent swinging of the lantern made reading difficult. And Silas La Vallon, to please her, kept well out of sight.

      Sleeping had been a fitful and precarious business, noisy with shouts and pounding feet, howling wind, clattering sails and the constant rush of water all around them. Using the close-stool had in itself been an unexpected СКАЧАТЬ