Pip Vaughan-Hughes - Relics

'Not the ivory hands of a princess, I'm afraid,' said Anna. At the convent we washed clothes for the poor, even if we had to break the ice with an axe to do so.'

The Captain stared at her for a long moment, then at me. You don't, by any chance, speak Basque?' he asked hopefully.

So it was that Mikal joined the Cormaran. He was a poor, half-starved Basque fisherman's son, only survivor of a ship that had foundered in a storm. For three months he had lived on gull's eggs, and had all but abandoned hope when our sail came into sight.

'The Basques have plied the ocean for generations,' the Captain told us. 'They tell no one where they go – it is the greatest secret in the wide world. So if a shipwrecked sailor appears among them, the crew will not be so surprised. You must have a disguise, and you must have a reason for being here. This is the only way I can see that solves both problems. And this mummery need only last until we leave Dublin. I believe the men will be more cheerful after a few nights of hard-earned riot, and I will re-introduce you as a wealthy passenger.'

'I cannot speak a word of Basque, however,' said Anna. It was plain she was already enthralled by the idea. 'But are there any Basques aboard?'

'That's the point,' said the Captain. 'There are none – dare I say it, the only language of the world not represented. I believe that Gilles speaks a little Euskadi, but that is all. You will be respected, believed – the Basques keep their own counsel, that is well known – and can retreat into silence whenever you wish. On the other hand, you will have to speak something.'

'I am speaking your Occitan now,' she answered. Will that do?'

'Indeed it will,' said the Captain with a little bow that was part mockery and part undeniable respect. Well, you have a man's clothes already. But you will have to cut your hair.'

'Certainly not!' she snapped. 'The silent sisters could not cut it, and nor shall you or anyone else. I shall plait it. My teeth may drop out, but my hair stays put.' And she wound a black, defiant rope around her neck.

'A female Samson, no less,' laughed de Montalhac. 'Very well. Here is what we shall do.'

After the Captain left, Pavlos stayed with us until it grew dark. Then we crept down to the ship and slipped inside the Captain's tent. The next morning I would make a pretence of climbing back to the high point, something none of the other crewmen were likely to want to join in, and come back with Mikal. I hoped the plan would work. I could not see Anna as anything but intensely, wonderfully female, as I discovered when I tried to picture her as a boy. It was as if a strand of that ink-black hair had begun to wind itself about my heart. As I watched her sup with the Captain and Gilles I remembered my hands under her tunic and nearly choked on the succulent morsel of fresh mutton I was mumbling at with my rickety teeth.

Later, as the Captain, Gilles and I left the tent to sleep by the fire outside, she was stretching out on the bright rugs that covered the sand. 'Good night, Petroc of Devonshire,' she said. 'Sweet dreams – if the dead can dream.'

'I believe this is a dream, and I am only afraid that I will wake from it,' I said, without knowing where the words had sprung from. 'Am I in yours, or you in mine?' She spoke softly behind me. 'Death in life, life in death. We are the same, you and I.' I looked back, but she had blown out the lamp and I could not tell where she ended and the night began. Then, soft as a moth's wings, her lips brushed mine and cool fingers rested for an instant on my cheek. Another instant passed and I felt her leave me.

I stepped outside. Under the great sky the fire seemed like a little spark. The stars danced their old, solemn dance above me, far, far away.

So it was that Mikal came aboard the Cormaran. It was as the Captain had predicted: the castaway boy was welcomed like a long-lost mate. He set to with a will, and if he wasn't the most expert seaman, he was excused – after all, it was his first voyage, and he hadn't got very far into the bargain. He had to endure the usual filth about sheep-shagging, and endless seagull jokes, but after a few days he blended, unsuspected, into the general melee.

As the two new boys, it was natural that we should be friends, especially as I had found Mikal somewhere on the other side of the Godforsaken island and brought him back to the world. And the truth is that we were inseparable. Although I was the more experienced seaman – a strange thought, this, to one whose only experience of water had been paddling in mountain streams – then Mikal's ferocious energy more than made up for his lack of skills. I taught him what little I knew, but he was precocious, and soon the crew found they had an insatiable student on their hands. By the time we passed the isle of Rathlin, off the north-east tip of Ireland, he was prattling about knots and broad reaches with all the joy of the newly converted.

Anna had folded and twisted her black mane into three short ropes, which she plaited at the nape of her neck. It was a little strange, but she passed it off as the fashion in her village and that seemed to suffice. Mikal was too young to shave, fortunately, and as Anna had starved with the rest of us her face was gaunt and quite mannish. As I have said, we were inseparable, but in ways that the rest of the crew could never know about. There are precious few private moments on a ship at sea, but Anna and I sought them out like gold dust in the bed of a river. Since that first, night-hidden kiss on the island – the first of my young and so far celibate life – my mind and flesh had been consumed by Anna. We would brush past each other, her touch striking sparks from me that I half-imagined were visible to the crew. Sometimes we could hold hands for minutes at a time, the desperate lock of our fingers the only outlet for passion. Often she would whisper such things to me in her dark voice – she took an endless delight in shocking my hopelessly innocent self – that I felt the deck lurch beneath me even though the sea was calm. And three times – no more – we kissed, hesitant with fear of discovery but full of heat and urgency, only to fly apart at the smallest hint of an approaching footstep. It was torture, but of the most wonderful kind. In truth I thought that, if this was to be the height of my earthly pleasure, it would almost be enough. But once the flesh has awakened, only death can still it, and Anna had awakened me as the sun awakens the earth in springtime. As an odd counterpoint to all this – salt to temper the honey – Pavlos got it into his head that I would have to be schooled in those warlike arts which I had never so much as considered. It was sheer luck, he told me sternly, that I had bested the island madman, and my clumsy attack could just as easily have brought about the death of Anna or – and he emphasised that this, under the circumstances, would have been the preferable outcome – my own demise. So I found myself being tutored, every morning, by a terrifying college of teachers: Horst, Dimitri and Pavlos himself. Dimitri was the ship's unofficial fencing master and held his classes – I saw them as such, but they were both less and more than that: vicious games that honed skills and headed off any ill-feeling or rage that might otherwise have festered into real bloodshed – as soon as the sun had risen and the day was fair. In time I would join in these melees, but, as the first lesson proved, at my present level of accomplishment I would lose a duel with Fafner the cat. I faced Horst, both of us armed with a blunt sword and a round wooden buckler shield. Copying my opponent, I dropped into a crouch, shield before me, sword up. Then, in the blinking of an eye, Horst dropped his sword, knocked mine from my hand with the edge of his shield and felled me with his shoulder. Before I had even squawked in surprise he was sitting on my chest, the rim of his buckler pressing into my throat.