CHAPTER II
They sailed back to Marseille with Youssef then rode to Mal's estate near Aix with the boy. At this time of year the roads were so empty of traffic that three travellers on horseback attracted curiosity, so Coby used a little of her stage makeup to cover the tattoo lines on Ruviq's brow and cheeks and hid the rest of his face with a hood and scarf. Only his amber eyes threatened to give him away, and he kept those fixed on his hands where they rested on the pommel of his saddle.
Concealing Ruviq's identity from the servants was a different matter. They were only just coming to terms with having an English-born master, and Mal did not trust them to keep quiet about a skrayling visitor, however well-disguised. He therefore rode ahead and ensured the entire household were too busy lighting fires and preparing supper to notice Coby smuggling Ruviq into the house as dusk was falling. She had her own apartments with a lock on the door to keep out prying eyes when she was undressing, so hiding the boy for a short time would be little problem. There were however a few suspicious glances when she appeared later that evening, and not a few mutterings when she asked to eat in her room.
After supper she came down and sat by the fire with Mal. The servants brought mulled wine laced with honey and lavender to aid sleep, and then left them alone. Coby knelt before the hearth and stared into the flames, her hands wrapped around the steaming mug. Mal coughed to get her attention, and she looked up, half her face red-gold in the firelight, the other in darkness. It took all his selfcontrol not to fall to his knees beside her and drink from those wine-hot lips until…
"How are things?" he asked instead, glancing up at the ceiling. One could never be quite certain the servants were not eavesdropping.
"As well as can be expected," she replied, taking the hint. "But the sooner we leave, the better."
Mal nodded. "Pack tonight, and we'll be away at dawn. The days are short enough as it is."
He drained his own cup, bade her goodnight and retired to his own chambers, before he could do something they might both regret.
"It would have been safer to go by sea," Coby grumbled one day as they rode through yet another small village where people stared at the three of them as they passed.
"The boy has been through one shipwreck already. I didn't want to alarm him with another long sea voyage, especially at this time of year. The weather out in the Atlantic is far worse than our crossing to Corsica."
Coby nodded. She still had nightmares about the storm in which she had lost her parents, on the crossing from Neuzen to Ipswich. All she remembered was cold salt water coming at her from every direction, and then a chill worse than midwinter snows eating into her bones as everything went black. She shivered at the memory.
"Where do you think the skrayling ship was headed?" she said. "Marseille?"
"Perhaps. Though if they were dealing with the French, why not go straight to Paris from Sark?"
"Mayhap they prefer to trade in Marseille. The markets there are full of goods from Africa and the East."
"As are those of London. No, they had a reason to come further south."
"Italy, then?"
"Possibly. Though if they hoped for a warm welcome in Genoa, they were disappointed."
"The boy might know." She looked over her shoulder. Ruviq's pony had stopped and was tearing mouthfuls of grass from the roadside. Ruviq seemed not to have noticed; he slumped in the saddle, his face hidden by his hood. Coby reined her own mount to a halt and clucked to the pony.
"I asked him, back in Provence," Mal said, "but he just mumbled something in Vinlandic and would not say any more."
"Perhaps he needs more time," she said. "After everything that's happened to him… to find himself amongst strangers who do not even speak his tongue… I remember how horrible that was."
"You ask him, then. He may confide in you."
She turned her mount and trotted back down the road. Ruviq looked up in alarm, as if he'd quite forgotten where he was. Coby gave him a reassuring smile and reined in beside him, then they rode knee to knee for a while, out of earshot of Mal. At first Coby made small talk, asking Ruviq how he liked the horse and apologising for their campfire cooking. When he seemed at ease, she brought up the subject of the voyage.
His expression instantly became guarded.
"I do not know."
"You must have overheard someone say something, surely? I remember when I was a child, I used to crouch on the stairs, listening to my parents talking to visitors–"
"No. There were qoheetanisheth on the island, but I was too young."
"Co-what?"
"Elder talk. In here." He tapped his temple.
Coby raised a hand to the cross at her throat. It sounded like more witchcraft to her. She kicked her pony's sides gently until it caught up with Mal's gelding.
"So," she said, after relating the conversation, "we are no wiser than before."
"For now, at least. But we have the advantage of a true friend amongst the Vinlanders. If anyone knows what the skraylings are up to, it's Kiiren."
The island of Sark had been given to the skraylings of Vinland by Queen Elizabeth in return for their services in keeping the Narrow Sea free of pirates. The fact that the island had itself been a haven of pirates played no small part in its selection. That and it annoyed the French, who also liked to lay claim to Sark and its larger neighbours.
Still it was now to all intents and purposes an independent realm, a little piece of the New World tacked to the edge of the map of Christendom, and English ships were only slightly more welcome than those of any other Christian nation. It took Mal a whole morning of negotiation to persuade a Cherbourg fisherman to sail them the forty miles to the island. Whether he would return in two days to take them back to France remained to be seen.
As they got nearer, Coby realised she could still see no sign of buildings apart from the crumbling harbour wall, which must have been constructed long before the skraylings' arrival. Within it a copse of masts sprouted, yardarms bearing the square reddish sails typical of skrayling vessels, most of them tightly furled against the spring gales. The only other sign of the Vinlanders' presence was a cairn at the seaward end of the harbour wall, out of which thrust a great branch of driftwood hung with yellow and blue ribbons and strings of shells that rattled in the sea breeze. Some of the ribbons were faded to colourlessness by the salt air, whilst others were as bright as spring flowers. The fisherman muttered and crossed himself as they passed this heathen-looking monument, and his passengers were barely given time to scramble ashore before he turned the boat around and headed back out to sea.
They were greeted by a stout, elderly skrayling with white shell beads woven into his braids. He bowed to them in the skrayling manner, arms at his side with palms facing forward.
"My master desires to visit the Outspeaker," Coby said in Tradetalk, after the introductions were over.
"Of course. The brother of Erishen-tuur is always welcome with us. Kiiren-tuur's tent is over the next ridge, downstream from the hendraan."
"Hendraan?" Coby asked. Another Vinlandic word to add to her vocabulary.
"Place of staying, with many tents," the harbourmaster said.
She thanked him, and conveyed the directions to Mal. As they left she could feel the harbourmaster's eyes boring into her back. He must be curious as to what a boy of his own people was doing in the company of two English visitors, but evidently the outspeaker's business was not his to question.
A steep path led up from the harbour to the interior of the island. Steps had been cut into the cliff face, but like the harbour wall they had not been maintained well. Several times Coby lost her footing on the weathered stone and had to steady herself by grabbing a handful of the coarse weeds that had sprung up by the path. At last they reached the top, where they were buffeted anew by the powerful westerly winds that swept the island. A dry, dusty track led across short turf peppered with rabbit droppings. In a sheltered hollow about half a mile to the west, the skraylings' striped tents rose out of the surrounding bracken and gorse like an unseasonal flush of toadstools.
"Take the boy to the camp and see if you can find his kin." Mal gave her the pouch into which they had gathered all the intact necklaces. "I'm going to look for Kiiren."
She nodded, guessing it was his brother Sandy he really wanted to see. If it had been her own lost brother waiting in the next valley, no amount of curiosity about the skrayling expedition could have kept her from him. She waved Mal away, then set off towards the main camp.
As they drew nearer, she could hear the sounds of raised voices. She glanced at Ruviq, but the boy only grinned and quickened his pace. Coby hurried after him, wondering what could be causing such a commotion amongst the normally peaceful skraylings.
On the seaward edge of the camp a wide circle of ground had been stripped of its turf and dozens of skraylings were clustered around the perimeter, stamping and cheering. Through a gap in the crowd Coby could make out two figures within the circle, locked in a wrestling hold. Patches of dust stuck to their grey-and-pink skins, adding to the mottled effect of their natural colouring, and their long hair was tied back with coloured ribbons like the ones on the harbour monument. Both were naked as savages. A blush rose from her suddenly tight collar and she made to turn away; too late. She stared in horrified fascination at the stubby, hairless tail extending from the base of the nearest wrestler's spine until her view was thankfully blocked by the shifting crowd.
She shuddered. There were rumours, of course, but she had dismissed them as ignorant gossip like all the other tall tales circulating back in London: that the skraylings bound elemental spirits into bottles, sacrificed human infants to their dark gods – though to Coby's knowledge the skraylings acknowledged no gods, heathen or Christian – and that they had no females and were born from the bark of trees, which was certainly nonsense. Master Catlyn had explained that skrayling females preferred the safety of their island cities and did not wish to undertake the long and hazardous journey to Europe.
Her train of thought was interrupted by a roar from one of the wrestlers, followed by the thud of bodies hitting the ground. A few moments later the crowd erupted into whoops of victory on one side and groans of disappointment on the other, and the match was over.
The spectators began to disperse, only to come to a halt when they caught sight of the new arrivals. Or rather, Ruviq. Coby realised they were all staring at the boy in surprise and alarm. One of them, whose facial tattoos were almost identical to Ruviq's, pushed through the crowd and threw his arms around the boy, exclaiming loudly in Vinlandic. Others crowded around them, their tone of voice questioning.
She tried to explain in broken Tradetalk what had happened, but when she came to the part about finding the bodies, her throat closed around the words and tears began to stream silently down her cheeks. She held out the pouch.
"These are all?" one of the skraylings asked.
"Yes." The word came out as a croak. She swallowed and tried again. "Yes. All."
Ruviq said something to the others in Vinlandic, miming pulling at his throat.
"It was your necklace we found," she said to him. "I think Mal – Catlyn-tuur – has some of the beads. Do you want them back?"
"Blue-stones?"
"No, only the lodestone ones."
He shook his head sadly. "Only the blue-stones were given to me by my father. I must make new."
"He would be proud of you," Coby said, patting him on the shoulder.
Her business completed, she bade farewell to the skraylings and set off to look for Mal. The light was already fading, and an icy wind whipped the waist-high bracken into a dark, rattling sea. Behind her, the skraylings' voices rose in an eery song of mourning.
The harbourmaster's directions proved easy enough to follow. Mal skirted the coastward edge of the settlement and soon found a little stream, swollen now with winter rains, cutting through the thin skin of earth to reveal the island's rocky skeleton. Soon it descended into a narrow defile that opened out into a sheltered dell looking out to sea. A single tent stood well back from the cliff edge. Sheltered behind it from the constant winds, fist-sized stones ringed a circle of ash.
"Holla! Kiiren! Sandy!"
After a moment a short, slight figure emerged from the tent and shaded his eyes to look up at where Mal was standing.
"Catlyn-tuur!"
Mal scrambled down the last few yards and Kiiren met him halfway across the dell, teeth bared in a very human smile. For a moment Mal saw again the unknown outspeaker lying dead with his shipmates in the Corsican tower. Kiiren hesitated, his concerned expression betraying the change in Mal's own demeanour. Mal forced a smile.
"Well met, old friend," he said, and stepped forward to embrace the former ambassador.
"There is not bad news about your young friend?" Kiiren asked, pulling back and peering around Mal, as if expecting the girl to be hiding behind him.
"Hendricks is well. I came on ahead, to see my brother." It was Mal's turn to look around. "Where is he? How… how is he?"
"He is much better since last time I wrote to you. Healing almost done."
Healing. Well, that was one way of looking at it.
"He went down to shore," Kiiren went on, "to gather food. Perhaps you would like to go to him?"
"Sandy can wait. There's something we should talk about, first."
Kiiren frowned. "It is so important?"
"Yes."
Kiiren led the way to his tent. It was the same one the ambassador had occupied back in Southwark, a small domed affair with bright blue silk panels adorning the interior. It even smelt much the same, a mixture of smoke, skrayling musk and shakholaat. Bedding enough for two was piled on top of a richly carved sea chest of dark wood, but there was no other sign that his brother had been here. Mal was not sure what he expected to see; when Kiiren had taken charge of him, Sandy had owned nothing but the clothes he stood up in and a few books.
Whilst Kiiren brewed fresh shakholaat over a charcoal brazier, Mal considered how to broach the subject of the Mediterranean expedition. He had rehearsed this conversation so many times on the journey from Provence, but now it came to it he hardly knew where to start. Before he could frame a strategy, however, the tent flap opened and Sandy ducked inside.
Mal scrambled to his feet and stood eye to eye with his twin. Sandy gazed back levelly for a moment before breaking into a smile and hugging him. Mal patted Sandy's back, swallowing tears of relief. For a moment he had been afraid Sandy wouldn't even recognise him; odd as that would be, since apart from Sandy's clean-shaven chin they were as alike as two peas in a peascod. At that thought he released his twin and looked at him afresh. Sandy was looking better than Mal had seen him in years, suntanned and flushed with the exertion of climbing up from the beach. He was dressed in a loose tunic and breeches like a skrayling, and his hair hung in braids past his shoulders. He hefted a net full of mussels, grinned at Kiiren and said something in the ancient tongue of the skraylings. The words tugged on the sleeve of Mal's memory, but without the skrayling drug to help him, he could make out only fragments.
"Speak English, amayi," Kiiren said.
"Sorry, brother." Sandy ducked his head, sheepish. "I… I have not spoken our father's tongue in such a long time, I forget."
Kiiren gestured for them to sit on the cushions scattered around the tent. "You had something important to say, Catlyn-tuur?"
"It can wait until later," Mal replied. He wasn't about to distress Sandy with talk of mass suicides. "Nothing is more important than my brother."
Sandy poured three cups of shakholaat and passed them round.
"Why are you here?" he asked Mal without preamble.
"I'm returning to London on Walsingham's business." It wasn't exactly a lie; if the skraylings were up to something in the Mediterranean, the spymaster would want to know. "And since I would be passing the island anyway–"
"You must have been this way before." Sandy's tone was even, but Mal's guilt supplied the unspoken accusation.
"I didn't want to interfere with your healing. Kiiren indicated it would take a long time."
"But you came anyway."
Mal put down his cup. "I came to see you as often as I could, when… when we were both in London. Do I need a reason to visit here?"
Kiiren reached out and put a hand on Mal's arm. "Do not be offended, Catlyn-tuur. We live apart here and are not accustomed to company. We are both made disagreeable by it, I think."
Ever the ambassador. Mal lowered his eyes and let his hands fall into his lap.
Kiiren turned the conversation to less prickly matters, like the best way to cook mussels, and after a few minutes Sandy excused himself and went outside to start building a fire for supper.
Keeping half an eye on the tent-flap in case Sandy returned, Mal told Kiiren about their discovery on Corsica.
"Why would they do such a thing?" he asked Kiiren when he was done. "To live as a slave is terrible, I know, but–"
"It is not this life they feared, but next."
"I thought you skraylings didn't believe in Hell – or Heaven."
"Next life in this world. As humans."
"As guisers."
"Yes. It is not just against our law, but against our beliefs. Skraylings are skraylings, humans are humans; that is how it should be."
"Could they not choose to just… die and not be reborn?"
"Perhaps. Not all are reborn, even if they wish to. But to die in fear and pain brings…" He shook his head. "I do not know English word. Perhaps you have none."
"English word for what?"
"Creatures that haunt dreamlands, lurking in shadows."
"I know the things you mean." He shuddered. He well remembered the creatures he had seen – or rather not seen. They lurked on the edge of vision, filling their victims' hearts with the terrible certainty that to look upon them was to go mad. "I don't think we do have a word for them."
"hrrith, they are called in Vinlandic. It holds meaning of hunting, and hunger, and emptiness beyond death."
"That's a lot to put into one small word," Mal said. "Hunting and hunger, eh? Perhaps we should call them 'devourers'."
It felt good to pin them down with a name. Naming a thing gave one power over it in the old stories his nurse had told him.
Kiiren nodded his approval. "You remember Erishen's murder, how his soul – your soul – fled into the darkness, seeking haven from hrrith."
"They would have destroyed Erishen. Devoured his soul."
He wished they had, then none of this would have happened. Erishen's soul would not have tried to take refuge in unborn twins, and he and Sandy would both have been whole and sane and spared this damnation.
"Erishen would have truly died that night," Kiiren said, echoing Mal's thoughts. "If his murderer had not first stolen his spirit-guard."
"Like the earring you gave me, back in London." He fingered his left earlobe, though he had not worn the pendant for some months. "That's why Ruviq is still alive. He lost his clan-beads, or threw them aside on purpose, and so he dared not take his own life."
"Yes."
The coals settled in the brazier with a sigh, making him start.
"What about the outspeaker?" he asked. "What was he doing on that ship?"
"I do not know. Mine is not only clan here, and since I took over care of Erishen, I have little time for worldly business. I am not privy to elders' counsel any more."
"And now?"
"Now I will have to serve my people, if they need me."
"And what about Sandy? He still needs you."
"He is much recovered. Better even than I had hoped."
This was his chance. He drew a deep breath. "I want to take him home, to Provence. He has spent too long amongst strangers; he needs to reacquaint himself with the manners of his own kind."
"He is already amongst his own kind."
"So you say. But Erishen or no, he is still my brother. Still one of my people, as well as one of yours. And…" He lowered his voice. "And if anything happens to me, he is sole heir to my estate."
"You do not intend to marry your girl Hendricks, then, and make children?"
"I–" He stared at Kiiren. 'How did you know?"
"I have made much study of your people. I know man from woman, even if many of my companions do not. And like her, I am both in spirit." He grinned. "Besides, she does not smell like man."
"I should hope not," Mal replied with a laugh. Then he recalled Kiiren's earlier question. "No, we are not betrothed, nor even lovers. She will not give up her male garb, and French law is very harsh on the subject of masculine love."
"But she is woman, not man."
"And for that transgression also, she could be punished. Even if we were to move back to England, it would not be simple…"
Kiiren clicked his tongue. "My people were wise not to ally themselves with France. I think we would not be welcome there."
"That is as may be, but it has nothing to do with my brother," he said, unwilling to let the subject drop now he had dared to broach it. "May I take him back with me, at least for a while?"
Kiiren's mouth curved downwards, and he shook his head. "I am sorry, my friend. I think this is not good time. Not yet."
"Then my business here is done," Mal said, getting to his feet. "I will seek passage to London in the morning."