Alys Clare - The Enchanter's Forest

She risked another quick look at the group of monks. The one who had stared at her sat a little apart and she realised that she had already noticed something about him: he did not join in conversations or eat the sparse and not very appetising meals with the others. Was he being punished? Joanna was not very familiar with the ways of monks but she had an idea that temporary ostracism might well be the penalty for some piece of behaviour unacceptable to the community. With a faint smile she amused herself by wondering what the shunned one had done. It served to distract her from her moment of fear and soon she had forgotten all about it.

The ship had put in at Barfleur — Josse had told his companions that the port was favoured by their King and his mother, a fact verified by the excellent state of repair of everything from hawsers and bollards to the quay itself — and, since Harald said that it would take some time to complete the unloading and loading procedures, Gervase suggested that the party go ashore. Their horses were brought up from their accommodation below and for a happy hour the party enjoyed a ride on the fresh green grass above the town. Sabin spotted a street market on the way back to the quay and, handing her mare’s reins to Gervase, stopped to purchase some provisions.

As the Goddess of the Dawn sailed out of Barfleur and prepared to round the Cherbourg peninsula, the four adults and Meggie enjoyed a simple meal of bread, cheese, apples and a flagon of cider that nevertheless tasted like a feast.

At noon on the sixth day out of Pevensey, the ship reached Mont Saint Michel. Since the little island could only be approached at high tide, the Goddess stood off for an hour or so then, with the small waves now lapping at the rocky feet of the Mount, she put in briefly and tied up at a rickety wooden jetty. Josse and the others watched with amusement as the party of monks was ushered swiftly and unceremoniously off the ship by the clearly anxious Harald; ‘I’m surprised he didn’t chuck them in the sea half a mile off and make them swim for it,’ Josse observed. With haste, the crew prepared to put to sea again, every man of them, the captain as well, working with fierce concentration in that perilous place that tested the most experienced seamanship.

Josse and the others watched them intently, admiring their efficiency; Josse for one was relieved when at last they were done and the ship began to pull away from the jetty. So total was the absorption of both passengers and crew upon the task in hand that hardly anybody noticed the strange behaviour of one of the monks, the last one to slither down the gangplank and in the rear of the rest of the party by some fifteen or twenty paces. A couple of sailors, anxious to draw back the gangplank, went to hurry him up; abruptly he turned and ran back along the narrow plank, now stretched over the gap of water that was already appearing between the ship’s sides and the wooden supports of the quay. With a brief nod to the sailors, who were watching him indifferently as if passengers changing their minds at the last moment were all in a day’s work, he sprang up on to the gunwale and ducked down out of sight into the companionway leading down to the cargo deck. His brother monks, already some twenty paces away, did not notice any more than most of those on board the ship had done. Even if they had, it would not have concerned them overly.

The man was the monk whom Joanna had thought was being ostracised.

He was not in fact a monk at all.

Late in the afternoon the Goddess entered the estuary of the river Rance. She sailed for a mile or two up the wide waters of the river’s mouth but the captain knew that he could not approach the port of Dinan, perhaps another six or seven miles upstream, until the tide was once again coming in and the sea building up towards high water.

Joanna, seeing Sabin standing up in the prow, went to join her.

‘How are you feeling?’ she asked her quietly; Sabin had been very sick during the first night in the stuffy cabin. She had asked Joanna not to tell Gervase and Josse, explaining with a wry smile that she was meant to be the healer, not the patient. She had dosed herself with a remedy of her own making — Joanna had been interested in the ingredients, the main one of which was root of ginger — and she had not felt as bad again, although she had been frequently upset by the ship’s motion and had consequently felt queasy for most of the voyage.

Sabin smiled. ‘Better now that the end is all but in sight,’ she said.

‘You and Gervase intend to disembark at Dinan too?’

‘Yes,’ Sabin confirmed. ‘Gervase was for sailing on round to Nantes, but I have heard that the sea gets rough around the Breton peninsular and I was very reluctant to encounter anything worse than we have already experienced.’

Joanna was about to point out that the sea had been flat as a pond almost all the way, but it would have been unkind and so she didn’t. She had noticed that, while some people quickly grew accustomed to the way a ship pitched and tossed and were soon no longer nauseated by the motion, others could sail all their lives and still lose their most recent meal at the first wave. ‘So you will continue your journey by road?’

‘Yes. The captain sent for one of his sailors, a man who knows the area, and he told us that the road from Dinan to Rennes is good. The one from Rennes to Nantes, as I know from my own experience, is even better. At this time of year, we shall make good progress and perhaps even beat the Goddess into Nantes.’

‘Even if you don’t,’ Joanna observed, ‘you’ll arrive feeling better than if you’ve just rounded Armorica on a sailing vessel.’

‘Armorica?’ Sabin queried. ‘A Breton myself, I know the word, of course — it is the ancient name for Brittany — but I was not aware that anyone still called the land by that name.’

Joanna could think of no reply; a short, trite answer would have served, only she did not want to fob Sabin off with the trivial; the full explanation would have taken far too long. ‘I — er, I must have heard someone use the term somewhere,’ she said vaguely. Sabin eyed her curiously for a moment then, with a faint shrug, turned away.

The Goddess of the Dawn tied up at the quayside in the port of Dinan just as darkness fell. The journey upriver had been slow and tedious, especially for the crew, who had manned the oars for the last stretch. Their labours had been aided by the incoming tide, which sent the water flooding in up the river, but the men nevertheless had been hard put to it to keep the ship steady in mid-stream. Watching the swift expertise with which the hands secured the vessel to the quay, Josse thought that to a man they were undoubtedly looking forward to going ashore for a hot meal and a well-earned drink or two.

The captain sent four of his crew to bring the horses up from below and as Gervase and the two women set about stowing their bags and bedrolls behind the horses’ saddles, Josse went to say farewell to Harald.

‘When d’ye expect to return to England?’ Harald asked. ‘That is, if you’re intending to return?’

‘Aye, we’ll be going back,’ Josse confirmed. ‘As to when. .’ He shrugged. ‘I cannot say. It depends on how long it takes us to see to our various missions.’

Harald nodded sagely. ‘Men of affairs, then.’

‘Er — aye.’ It seemed easier to agree than to enter into extensive explanations which were, in any case, nobody else’s business.

‘We’ll not be calling in here on our return,’ Harald said, ‘but we’ll be bringing a consignment of wine up from Bordeaux to the monks on the Mont, so you might catch us there if you’ve a mind to. Won’t be for more than a fortnight at the very least, however, and longer than that if these westerlies keep up.’