Paul Kearney: Ships from the West

Year of the Saint 561

Richard Hawkwood hauled himself out of the gutter whence the crowds had deposited him, and viciously shoved his way through the cheering throng, stamping on feet, elbowing right and left and glaring wildly at all who met his eye. Cattle. God-damned cattle.

He found a backwater of sorts, an eddy of calm in the lee of a tall house, and there paused to catch his breath. The cheering was deafening, and en masse the humble folk of Abrusio were none too fragrant. He wiped sweat from his eyelids. The crowd erupted into a roar and now from the cobbled roadway there came the clatter of hooves. A blast of trumpets and the cadence of booted feet marching in time. Hawkwood ran his fingers through his beard. God's blood, but he needed a drink.

Some enthusiastic fools were throwing rose petals from upper windows. Hawkwood could just glimpse the open barouche through the crowds, the glint of silver on the grey head within, and beside it a brief blaze of glorious russet hair shot through with amber beads. That was it. The soldiers tramped on in the raucous heat, the barouche trundled away, and the crowd's frenzy winked out like a pinched candle flame.The broad street seemed to unclench itself as men and women dispersed, and the usual street cries of Abrusio's Lower City began again. Hawkwood felt for his purse – still there, although as withered as an old woman's dugs. A lonely pair of coins twisted and clinked under his fingers. Enough for a bottle of the Narboskim at any rate. He was due at the Helmsman soon. They knew him there. He wiped his mouth and set off, a spare, haggard figure in a longshoreman's jerkin and sailor's breeks, his face nut-brown above the grizzled beard. He was forty-eight years old.

'Seventeen years,' Milo, the innkeeper, said. 'Who'd have thought he'd last so long? God bless him, I say.'

A rumble of slurred but cheerful assent from the men gathered about the Helmsman's tables. Hawkwood sipped his brandy in silence. Was it really that long? The years winked past so quickly now, and yet this time he had on his hands here, in places like this – the present – it seemed to stretch out unendingly. Bleary voices, dust dancing in the sunlight. The glare of the day fettered in the burning heart of a wineglass.

Abeleyn IV, son of Bleyn, King of Hebrion by the Grace of God. Where had Hawkwood been the day the boy-king was crowned? Ah, of course. At sea. Those had been the years of the Macassar Run, when he and Julius Albak and Billerand and Haukal had made a tidy sum in the Malacars. He remem shy;bered sailing into Rovenan of the Corsairs as bold as brass, all the guns run out and the slow-match smoking about the deck. The tense haggling, giving way to a roaring good fellowship when the Corsairs had finally agreed upon their percentage. Honourable men, in their own way.

That, Hawkwood told himself, had been living, the only true life for a man. The heave and creak of a living ship under one's feet – answerable to no one, with the whole wide world to roam.

Except that he no longer had that hankering to roam. The life of a mariner had lost much of its shine in the past decade, something he found hard to admit, even to himself, but which he knew to be true. Like an amputated limb which had finally ceased its phantom itching.

Which reminded him why he was here. He swallowed back the foul brandy and poured himself some more, wincing. Narboskim gut-rot. The first thing he would do after – after today would be to buy a bottle of Fimbrian.

What to do with the money? It could be a tidy sum. Maybe he'd ask Galliardo about investing it. Or maybe he'd just buy himself a brisk, well-found cutter, and take off to the Levangore. Or join the damned Corsairs, why not.

He knew he would do none of these things. It was a bitter gift of middle age, self-knowledge. It withered away the damn fool dreams and ambitions of youth leaving so-called wisdom in its wake. To a soul tired of making mistakes it sometimes seemed to close every door and shutter every window in the mind's eye. Hawkwood gazed into his glass, and smiled. I am become a sodden philosopher, he thought, the brandy loosening up his brain at last.

'Hawkwood? It is Captain Hawkwood, is it not?' A plump, sweaty hand thrust itself into Hawkwood's vision. He shook it automatically, grimacing at the slimy perspiration which sucked at his palm.

'That's me. You, I take it, are Grobus.'

A fat man sat down opposite him. He reeked of perfume, and gold rings dragged down his earlobes. A yard behind him stood another, this one broad-shouldered and thuggish, watchful.

'You've no need of a bodyguard here, Grobus. No one who asks for me has any trouble.'

'One cannot be too careful.' The fat man clicked his fingers at the frowning innkeeper. 'A bottle of Candelarian, my man, and two glasses – clean ones, mind.' He dabbed his temples with a lace handkerchief.

'Well, Captain, I believe we may come to an arrangement. I have spoken to my partner and we have hit upon a suitable sum.' A coil of paper was produced from Grobus's sleeve. ‘I trust you will find it satisfactory.'

Hawkwood looked at the number written thereon, and his face did not change.

'You're in jest, of course.'

'Oh no, I assure you. This is a fair price. After all-' 'It might be a fair price for a worm-eaten rowboat, not for a high-seas carrack.'

'If you will allow me, Captain, I must point out that the Osprey has been nowhere near the high seas for some eight years now. Her entire hull is bored through and through with teredo, and most of her masts and yards are long since gone. We are talking of a harbour hulk here, a mere shell of a ship.'

'What do you intend to do with her?' Hawkwood asked, staring into his glass again. He sounded tired. The coil of paper he left untouched on the table between them.

'There is nothing for it but the breaker's yard. Her interior timbers are still whole, her ribs, knees and suchlike sound as a bell. But she is not worth refitting. The navy yard has already expressed an interest.'

Hawkwood raised his head, but his eyes were blank and sightless. The innkeeper arrived with the Candelarian, popped the cork and poured two goblets of the fine wine. The Wine of Ships, as it was known. Grobus sipped at his, watching Hawkwood with a mixture of wariness and puzzlement.

'That ship has sailed beyond the knowledge of geo shy;graphers', Hawkwood said at last. 'She has dropped anchor in lands hitherto unknown to man. I will not have her broken up.'

Grobus pinched wine from his upper lip. 'If you will forgive me, Captain, you do not have any choice. A multitude of heroic myths may surround the Osprey and yourself, but myth does not plump out a flaccid purse – or fill a wine glass for that matter. You already owe a fortune in harbour fees. Even Galliardo di Ponera cannot help you with them any more. If you accept my offer you will clear your debts and have a little left over for your – for your retirement. It is a fair offer I am making, and-'

'Your offer is refused', Hawkwood said abruptly, rising. 'I am sorry to have wasted your time, Grobus. As of this moment, the Osprey is no longer for sale.'

'Captain, you must see sense-'

But Hawkwood was already striding out of the inn, the bottle of Candelarian swinging from one hand.

A multitude of heroic myths. Is that what they were? For Hawkwood they were the stuff of shrieking nightmare, images which the passing of ten years had hardly dulled.

A slug from the neck of the bottle. He closed his eyes gratefully for the warmth of it. My, how the world had changed – some things, anyway.

His Osprey was moored fore and aft to anchored buoys in the Outer Roads. It was a fair pull in a skiff, but at least here he was alone, and the motion of the swell was like a lullaby. Those familiar stinks of tar and salt and wood and seawater. But his ship was a mastless hulk, her yards sold off one by one and year by year to pay for her mooring rent. A stake in a freighting venture some five years before had swallowed up what savings Hawkwood had possessed, and Murad had done the rest.