A Templar's Apprentice (11 page)

I stood and wriggled my fingers, pleased. He had already moved into place and forgotten me. I wandered out of the forecastle, back toward the ladder to the hold. Seamus blocked the way. “Geordie needs ye aft, move on.”

“But I've been working for —” My protest was cut off by his look.

“Now.”

Plagues, God. Boils and famine would work. A few dozen locusts down his back and in his breeks. Feel free to drop them now.

The Templar worked closeted away for the next two days. Near noon on the third, I felt his shadow over me as I caulked the decking with Geordie.

“I need ye tonight, Tormod. We are going to shoot the moon. 'Tis time yer lessons resumed.”

I squinted up at him. He seemed pensive, as if his mind were still far off in calculation. “Aye,” I said.

“Geordie, can ye do without the lad? I'd like him to sleep a bit.”

“Aye, Captain. 'Tis not as if the boards are goin' anywhere. Prevention, this is. Get ye gone, ye bilge rat.” I smiled at Geordie's good-natured chafing. His names for me changed by the day.

“Ye need me an' ye know it, old man.” I tossed a floppy straw hat to him. “Cover yer head before ye burn out what little mind ye've got.”

The Templar cuffed me as I passed. “Respect for all, Tormod. A knight can be funny but not disrespectful o' an elder.”

I ducked my head guiltily but caught Geordie's wink as I stowed my bucket. The Templar walked away.

“Bilge rat,” Geordie said beneath his breath.

The night sky was black and the stars winked like fireflies. Not a cloud marred the view, not a wind crossed the bow. I stood at the wheel as I had for the last several candle marks. Tonight's lesson was how to shoot the moon. I looked forward to it. The astrolabe, our charts, quills, and ink lay on a plank set across two casks. We were to take our headings from the height of the moon from the horizon as it related to the position of several stars.

The door to the forecastle creaked behind me, and in the still blackness I saw the silhouette of the Templar silently cross the deck.

“Have the others gone below?” His question was nearly lost in the wash of the sea, and suddenly, for no reason I could fathom, the skin on the nape of my neck prickled.

“Aye. None have been about for more than a candle mark.” I matched my tone to his, not knowing why, but sure that it was something I should do. He stepped into the moon's shimmer of light and I saw that he carried a small bundle in his hands. He glanced quickly about and laid his burden on the plank beside our equipment.

Recognizing the wrappings, I stepped back, uncertain and no little bit frightened.

“Prop the wheel an' come to me. Be quick about it, the moon is even now reaching its apex.”

I looked up. The moon seemed full, but I had no experience to judge the absolute peak of the cycle. “What must we do?” I asked.

He unwrapped the carving. This close I could see what I was not able to before. It was made of hardwood, stained dark with age. It was a woman. She was on her knees, but sitting back on her heels. Her hands were lifted above her head, palms up, as if reaching, waiting.

The Templar moved behind the cask and crouched, looking at the carving. He shifted it several times, and it took me a moment to realize he was arranging the figure according to his sight of the moon. When the form was where he wanted it, he said, “Hand me the astrolabe.”

“What are we doing?” I whispered, giving it to him.

“Following a vision,” he said mysteriously.

I watched as he turned the astrolabe's back to us and then placed the instrument into the hands of the carving. “God's toes,” I gasped. It was a perfect fit, as if one had been made for the other.

The warm rush of air and the tingling of a million pinpricks that I had felt before in the carving's presence flowed across my skin as the carving began to glow. Its brilliance lit the ebony of the night with a cascade of shimmering stars. And as I looked on these, lights began to lessen and spread out, their tiny reflections winking on the dark wooden planks at my feet.

“Here, Tormod. Hurry. Crouch an' tell me what ye see.”

I moved to his side and took a sighting through the center of the astrolabe. My breath caught tight in my throat. The brilliant sparkles of light that radiated from the carving were exactly in position with the myriad of stars surrounding the moon. As I stared and the moon reached its fullest, the lights began to flicker,
growing stronger and brighter, filling the space in my mind, turning to dots. Black on a page, atop an etching that shifted from lines of ink to the sharp clear edges of a real mountain. Valleys dipped in the folds that formed before me. Water careened over a ledge, the crash of it filling my ears.

Focus. Ground. Shield.
Abruptly, the world shifted and I swayed. The carving before me turned black once again.

“Are ye all right, lad?” His words came to me from far away, but his hand on my arm felt solid.

“I am well.” I murmured, the vision still strong within me.

“What did ye see?”

“The stars mark the map. They're laid over it.”

He smiled and nodded. “I had a suspicion,” he said and crouched. I watched, waiting.

“Did ye have a vision?” I asked breathlessly.

“No,” he said. “I see only stars.”

“But why would ye have me look first? Why did it only work for me?”

“I don't know, but I dreamt last night o' ye doing just this,” he said. “The carving is once again providing the key.”

“Ye speak in riddles. The key to what?”

“Finding what's been left for us to find,” he said.
“Back to the wheel, now. We'll have to shoot the moon another night.”

The Templar spent much of the next few days closeted away with his maps and charts. Whenever I stopped by the forecastle between shifts or just during the quiet of afternoon, he was elbow deep in mathematical formulas that he scratched on every available surface.

In midmorning of the fourth day, I was at loose ends. I had finished the Matins prayers and stood at the aft part of the ship with nothing to do. The weather was downright eerie, the sky a deep and forbidding gray. The rain and wind had died off during the night, but the air was still and cold. I huddled in my plaid by the rail staring at the ominous deep green of the ocean. Barely a ripple marred the surface, and the sail hung slack.

Seamus had the wheel. I watched him across the length of the deck. His face was pinched; something worried him. Unease slid through me. “Tormod, get Alexander.”

He almost never addressed me directly without some kind of a venomous jab. So I was surprised. I shot him a sideways look, but did as he bid. I bolted to the forecastle and popped my head inside. “Seamus needs ye.”

The Templar looked up. His eyes were tired, red-rimmed and bleary. “Aye.” He laid aside the maps and quill and followed me outside, scanning the ship, sail, and sky as he moved. “What is it?” he asked Seamus.

I felt it then, or rather I didn't feel it and knew.

“There's no wind. Not a stirring since last night.” His voice was grim. Wind didn't mean much to a fishing vessel, but on a ship this size, it was nearly essential to travel. The Templar moved to Seamus's side and took the wheel, peering anxiously ahead.

“We should be all right for a while. We have enough provisions. The barrels o' ale from the Archbishop, an' the food is plenteous.”

For some reason I felt the Templar's words were not as confident as they might be. “How fare the water barrels?”

“Two o' the eight are contaminated,” said Seamus. “We have enough for a normal journey, but I don't know.”

A white sail billowed in the forefront of my mind. Wind whispered in my ears.

“It will be enough,” I said, lurching back to the present.

“It will be enough,” the Templar echoed, striding across the deck and back to his maps.

Day passed into night, then again into day. Everyone took their turn at the oars, moving us slowly across the calm water. I was as jumpy as a kitten. It was my prophecy that the wind would come. Part of me knew it would — everything I saw
happened.
But it was not an easy wait.

Seamus was even more affected than I. The longer we were forced to slowly crawl our way across the expanse of blue, the edgier he became. He took to prowling the perimeter of the ship in unending sweeps, constantly eyeing the horizon. But nothing he did changed the course of our placid wake. The Templar watched for the wind's change with no less impatience, yet he at least appeared calmly accepting of the situation.

I was above deck, off in a shadowed corner, casting my net when Seamus's voice reached me.

“Alex, we canno' go on like this. We must alter our course an' go back the way we've come.” His outburst was loud, even in my ears a challenge.

“Our course is Spain.” The Templar's voice was low but his authority carried.

Seamus paced away and back, agitated. “I have a very bad feeling.”

“I canno' heed ye this time, Seamus. Yer visions are not specific enough; the power comes to ye sketchily. It could mean anything. We must continue. We will lose too much time going back. Unless ye've seen
something more specific than what we spoke o', we continue on.”

Seamus paled, and a slight tremor wracked his body. “No. I've seen nothing more.”

The Templar turned away, but I could see that he was bothered. “It will be all right, Seamus,” he said, slowly pacing before the rail. His mind was working, puzzling out the bits and pieces he had already encountered.

Seamus swallowed hard. He looked my way and his usual animosity appeared, then he turned back to the bleak horizon. “This damn stillness is killing me,” he said. “Mark my words, Alex, something bad is about to happen, an' if we go on, we are powerless to stop it.”

The Templar did not turn back, but I knew from the sudden tension in his posture that the words had reached something inside him. The small hairs on my arms prickled as he turned his eyes to my darkened corner and, for no reason I could justify, I felt suddenly frightened.