Spindle and Dagger - J. Anderson Coats Page 0,58
held out by the captain’s penteulu.
Gerald’s coin is real. He’s on the wharf. Soon I’ll be with them again. Warm and squirmy, smelling of porridge and soap.
The graybeard points at Nest, then the rowboat. She all but dances toward it, but when I move to follow, a redheaded sailor puts himself in my path and speaks to me too fast. His tone is mild, friendly even, but Nest whirls to face the graybeard with huge, startled eyes.
“H-he’s wrong,” she stammers, but in her panic she speaks in Welsh. “My husband will pay for us both.”
The graybeard grabs her arm and marches her toward the rope ladder. Nest struggles, arguing in haphazard Norse-Irish, but he pays no mind. She swivels and cries, “Elen. Elen!”
I try to rush toward her, but the sailor blocks me — this way, that way — and his friendly smile takes on an edge of warning. Her protests turn plea as her windblown golden head disappears over the side, hand over hand down the ladder. The last thing I hear before the crush of water drowns her voice is I’m sorry.
Gerald of Windsor must have refused to pay my passage. After all I did for his children, for him to serve me this way. He deserves the vengeance Owain will visit on him, and that day cannot come soon enough.
Given half a chance, I might end him myself.
There’s a scuffle and a splash. The rowboat glides across the harbor toward shore with a sailor at the oars and the graybeard and Nest at the bow. She’s hooded now, her hands pressed to her face.
Rhys smiles, the bastard, smiles like he’s won. He even lifts a cheerful hand to wave Nest on her way.
“Passage,” the captain says to Rhys in his clunky Welsh, and the penteulu sailor appears with the open strongbox.
Rhys reaches beneath his cloak, then begins frantically patting his midsection. “My purse. It’s gone. One of you stole my purse!”
“I’ve no idea what you’re speaking of,” the captain replies in a voice of honey. “You must have forgotten it. Why else would you demand I turn around?”
Rhys goes ashen. His hands fall still. “God rot you.”
“What, no silver?” The captain smiles. “Then we’ll get our price on the Dublin slave docks.”
Rhys darts a glance toward the side of the ship, and that’s when they seize him. He struggles and bawls, “God damn every last man of you thieves!”
A heavy presence appears at my elbow. It’s the captain, and he leans tree-bough arms against the rail and squints at the harbor. It takes all my will, but I keep from shrinking from him, even though big Norse-Irish sailors are binding Rhys’s wrists and I am very, very afraid.
“Now then,” the captain says, “about your passage.”
“G-Gerald of Windsor should have paid you.”
“He did not know you. He had not even heard your name.”
I lick my lips. “His wife. She arranged it.”
“The Englishman barely had the silver to pay her way,” the captain replies. “Once the price went up.”
Once the price went up. Gerald of Windsor didn’t betray me.
“So now you owe me for your passage.” The captain speaks to the harbor, his posture easy. He has no need to corner me. This is a ship thirty paces long. I’ve nowhere to go. “Or it’ll be the slave docks for you as well.”
“I can pay.” I pull Owain’s purse from where it hangs beneath my armpit. I grip it hard so there’s no trembling. “Part now, and part when I’m on shore.”
The captain holds out a weathered brown hand, and I fill it with silver. As I pour, I sneak glances at the wharves. A number of horses cluster nearby, spilling down the rickety waterside lane. That’s them. Gerald of Windsor is collecting Nest right now. She’ll be telling him there’s been a mistake. That somehow he must put together coin enough to get me off this ship.
The rowboat is back, and the sailor appears on deck. The captain tilts my coins, nods, and gestures to the ladder.
Rhys writhes and curses while sailors tether him to the mast. One slams a meaty fist into his jaw, and he slumps against the ropes. His warband hardness is gone, and he’s all boy now, bone-scared and greensick.
Mayhap this is what Einion ap Tewdwr saw when he shoved them clear of me one by one. All hardness gone. Empty hands.
“Him too.” I drag my eyes away from the wharves and point at Rhys. “I’ll cover his passage. Let him go.”
The captain laughs.