Paul Kearney - Hawkwood's voyage

“The ale will get warm,” Estrella said hesitantly.

He did not reply, but stood drinking in the life of Abrusio, the sight of the flawless sea, as calm as milk. When would the trade start up again? He did not want to begin the voyage with his ships being towed out of the bay, searching for a puff of air on the open ocean.

That thought made him feel guilty, and he turned back into the room. It was full of light now, the early afternoon sun pouring down to flood the stone and touch off the gilt thread in the tapestries, bring out a warmer glow from the dark wood of the furniture.

He sat and ate and drank, whilst Estrella hovered like a humming-bird unable to settle upon a flower. There was a sheen of sweat on her collar-bone, gathering like a jewel in the hollow of her throat before sliding gently below the ruff and down into her bodice.

“How long have you been back, Ricardo? Domna Ponera says her husband spoke to you days ago, when there was that shooting in the harbour. . I have been waiting, Ricardo.”

“I had business to attend to, lady, a new venture that involves the nobility. You know what the nobility are like.”

“Yes, I know what they are like,” she said bitterly, and he wondered if court gossip about Jemilla had come this far down from the Noble Quarter. Or perhaps she was just reminding him of her own origins. It mattered not, he told himself, though again the remorse edged into his mind, making him defensive.

“Half my crew were taken away by the Ravens when we docked. That is why I stank like a privy when I arrived. I have been in the catacombs trying to get them released.”

“Oh.” Her face slumped, some of the energy going out of her. He noted with satisfaction that not even she could find fault with such a virtuous cause. She loved virtuous causes.

She sat down on one of the high-backed chairs and clapped her small hands together with a snap. A servant appeared at once and bowed low.

“Bring me wine, and see it is cold,” she said.

“At once, my lady.” The servant hurried away.

She could order the common folk like a true noble at any rate, Hawkwood reflected. Let her try that tone of voice once with me and we’ll see how that narrow rump of hers likes a seaman’s belt across it.

“Berio, was that?” he asked, slugging thirstily at his ale.

“Berio is gone. He was slovenly. This new one is named Haziz.”

“Haziz? That’s a Merduk name!”

Her eyes widened a little. He could see the pulse beat in her neck. “He is from the Malacars. His father was Hebrionese. He was afraid of the burnings, so I gave him a position.”

“I see.” Another stray dog. Estrella was a strange mixture of the petulant and the soft-hearted. She might take in a man off the street out of pity and throw him out again a week later because he was slow in serving dinner. Jemilla at least was unrelentingly hard on her attendants.

And her lovers, Hawkwood added to himself.

The wine came, borne by the ill-favoured Haziz who had the look of a seaman about him despite the fine doublet Estrella had procured for him. He looked at Hawkwood as though Richard were about to strike him.

They sat in silence, the husband and wife, drinking their tepid drinks slowly. As he sat there, Hawkwood had an overwhelming longing to be at sea again, away from the torrid heat, the crowds, the reek of the pyres. Away from Estrella and the silences in his home. He called it his home, though he had spent more time in either of his two ships and felt more at ease in them.

Estrella cleared her throat. “Domna Ponera was also saying today that your ships are being outfitted for a new voyage in great haste, and that all the port is buzzing with talk of the issue of a Royal warrant.”

Hawkwood silently cursed Domna Ponera. Galliardo’s wife was a huge woman with a moist moustache and the appetite of a goat for both food and information. As wife to the port captain she was in a fine position to acquire the latter, and her mine of information obtained her invitations to households where ordinarily she would not have been countenanced. Hawkwood knew that Galliardo had upbraided her many times for being too free with her tongue, but he was as much to blame. He could not, he had once told Hawkwood with a sigh, keep his tongue from wagging in the marriage bed, and he so loved the marriage bed. Hawkwood preferred not to dwell on that. His friend was an admirable fellow in many respects, but his unbridled lust for his enormous wife was inexplicable.

It was Domna Ponera who took the bribes, and then bullied her husband into carrying out her promises. A convenient berth, a vacant warehouse, an extra gang of longshoremen, or an eye turned aside for a special cargo. There were many ways a port captain might be of service to the high and the low of Abrusio; but though it made Galliardo rich, it did not make him happy, even if it did make his wife gratifyingly agile in the afore-mentioned bed. Sometimes though, Hawkwood thought that Galliardo would give it all up to be master of a swift caravel again, plying the trade-routes of the Five Seas and raising a riot in every port he put into to wet his throat.

As for Domna Ponera’s Royal warrant, Hawkwood had already seen it. The scarred nobleman, Murad of Galiapeno, was in possession of it, and had sent the victualling documents to Hawkwood as soon as he had received Richard’s agreement on the proposed voyage. Hence his visits to the catacombs this morning. Some other poor devils had gone to the pyre today, but not Hawkwood’s crew. There was that to be thankful for.

“Do you know anything about this warrant?” Estrella asked him. She was trembling. She probably hated the silences even more than he did.

“Yes,” he said heavily at last. “I know about it.”

“Perhaps you would be so good as to tell your wife then, before she hears about it from someone else.”

“Estrella, I would have told you today in any case. The commission is for my ships. I have been hired to undertake a voyage by the nobility, and ultimately by the King himself.”

“Where to? What is the cargo?”

“There is no cargo as such. I am carrying. . passengers. I cannot tell you where, because I am not yet entirely sure myself.” He hoped she would recognize the element of truth in that statement.

“You do not know how long it is to be for, then?”

“No, lady, I do not.” Then he added, out of some belated sense of decency, “But it is likely to be a long time.”

“I see.”

She was trembling again and he could see the tears coming. Why did she cry? He had never worked it out. They took little pleasure in each other’s company, in bed or at board, and yet she always hated to see him go. He could not decipher it.

“You would not have told me-not until you had to,” she said, her voice breaking.

He stood up and padded barefoot out to the balcony. “I knew you would not like it.”

“Does it matter greatly to you what I like and do not like?”

He did not reply, but stared out at the crescent of the teeming harbour and its forest of masts and, further out, the blue of the horizon where it met the sky in the uttermost west. What lay out there? A new land ready for the taking, or nothing but the rim of the earth as the old sailors had believed, where the Western Ocean tipped away eternally into the gulf wherein circled the very stars?

He heard the swish of her heavy robe as she left the room behind him, the gulp of breath as she swallowed a sob. For a second he hated himself. It might have been different had she borne him a son-but then he could imagine the scenes when first the father took the son to sea with him. No, they were too far apart from each other ever to find some middle ground.

And did it matter? It had been a political marriage, though the Hawkwoods had done better out of it than the Calochins. Estrella’s dowry had bought the Osprey . He forgot that sometimes.