Éire’s Captive Moon (39 page)

“What is happening?” Charis demanded, tugging on his arm. Cowan patted her shoulder, trying to keep her silent. The dip in the harbor had not, alas, made her any less stubborn and she shrugged his hand off roughly. “Cowan! What is happening? Why are we not going home?”

“We will,” he assured her, praying that it would be true. “This man will help us.”

He prayed that it would be so.
Jesu, protect us!

A small building, crafted of wood and stone with oiled cloth to cover the rounded windows, sat like a warden on the right as they passed the gates. It was to this place that Alfonse led them, brusquely indicating they should precede him inside. A tallow candle sputtered on the middle of a rough-hewn table off to one side of the room. Around the one-room house, Cowan saw a few chairs, two cots, and a large wooden chest, sturdily chained for security. Bribes, perhaps? Cowan sighed again over his gear, which had held a meager stash of coin—a stash he could have increased had Charis only waited on her escape—that he could have used to pay for passage.

“Sit down, then,” Alfonse directed.

Cowan did so, gesturing for Charis to sit close beside him on one side of the table so he could see the door and two of the windows. Charis shifted uncomfortably on the wood-slat chair, but she didn’t protest.

Alfonse went to a shadowed trestle table that Cowan had not seen before the candle’s light glanced off it. “Ale,” their host stated, bringing two wooden cups back with him and setting them down before turning for his own. “For bargaining, ’tis best to start with a wet throat,” the guardsman declared. “We will see which ship can accommodate you,” he went on, picking up a board. “I have a chart here of the next vessels to leave port. Where were you bound?” He waved a mug at Cowan. “Drink, man, drink.”

The board was a map, and there were ship shapes carved into the wood, each with a peg of a different color lodged in a sail. It was a fair enough representation for an illiterate shipping director or a harbor guard, Cowan supposed.

“We seek to go here,” he said, pointing to Ulaid, the northeast kingdom of Éire. “We can work for passage,” he stated again, in case the man had missed that detail when they had been at the water’s edge.

“I’m sure,” Alfonse said expansively, pulling at his lower lip. “Drink up, we’ll talk.”

Hesitant, but afraid to offend the man and ruin any chance for passage, Cowan kept his eye on Monsieur Alfonse and tilted the cup to his lips.

“Good, good,” Alfonse said, bringing his own cup to his mouth for a full draught. “Always good to start on fair terms.”

Cowan took one long swallow and set the cup down.

“Spiced ale? It’s different than I’m used to,” he allowed, smiling in what he hoped was a friendly manner. To his left, Charis sniffed at her own cup and got very still.

He didn’t manage to inquire as to the reason, for the room began spinning and Cowan remembered nothing more.

The good wishes of the villagers of Balestrand echoed alternately in Agnarr’s ears with the despondent leave-taking of Els as the old man left for his relatives in the north. On the one hand, there was much to look forward to this summer morning. Tuirgeis was taking a fleet of thirty ships on this journey and Agnarr himself had been charged with overseeing a third of them. It was a great honor, a fine responsibility, and should yield much gold if all went well. Agnarr knew that the trick would be getting some of that gold himself before the ships sailed back to
Nordweg
. He himself had no plans of returning this summer. He had not told Bjørn or his mother, but he would send for them as soon as he had claimed land on the Green Island. He could go for them himself, perhaps, in a year from now.

But at present, his focus was directed west. Orkney. Tuirgeis had made trading arrangements with their countrymen there last year. The winds were fair and Agnarr grinned with fierce anticipation as he stepped from the bow of the ship to the stern, maneuvering over booted feet and ducking around the snapping sail.

“Take good care of that helmet, Erik,” he advised the young warrior with a chuckle. Yes, Erik the Hardheaded was a good name for him. A man’s name, one won in battle—in a twisted path—but won nevertheless. Erik had won renown, too, as a victor in the battle against Vigaldr last winter.
Yes
, Agnarr mused again,
he is much like myself at his age.

“Thor’s priestess blessed this helm, Agnarr,” Erik boasted with a decisive lift of his red-bearded chin. “It shall not fail.”

Agnarr nodded shortly, but his thoughts flew to the village where he had found Eir. She had thrown the spear that had robbed him of his own Thor-blessed helm, something neither of them had ever forgotten. Eir. She would be home by now, he thought. The sea would not stop her. Men could not strike her. She had Kingson to guard her, and he was a proven berserker. Yes, surely she was safely among her people by now. Or perhaps she had gone with Kingson to his people?

The thought made his muscles tighten. Had that other man dared to claim her?

He stiffened his shoulders and glared into the west. No matter. If Kingson had claimed her, he would just take her back again. She had not killed him, he reminded himself with a grin. She could have, but she had not. That was important.

“She will be mine again,” he promised himself. And
he
would give her
sons. “Ja.
It will be so.”

“It’s the truth,” Charis said to Captain François Perot as the trading ship approached the Kentish coast. The sun caught in the captain’s silvering hair, reminding her of Achan before he had died. She waved the memory off with a subtle motion of her hands. “I told Monsieur Alfonse and I’m telling you, here in the light of day, that Cowan is the son of King Braniuecc of Ulaid. If you take us to our shores, Braniuecc will pay gold for him.”

She spoke slowly to the captain, but sincerely. Between their mutual knowledge of Norse and his spare knowledge of
Gaeilge
, they were managing to communicate. Cowan, the fool, had awakened ready to take heads from bodies this morning, and had been knocked senseless by this same captain. Idjit. Drinking a full draught of ale from a strange man. Had he not smelled the nightshade in there? Had his father taught him nothing about self-preservation?

Captain Perot stroked his grizzled beard and looked her over again from head to toe. She cocked her head, wondering if he was going to try that again. She decided to head him off. “Don’t,” she advised him, her voice calm and quiet.

Yet he sensed menace in that word, and evidently remembered that she had drawn his own knife on him before dawn. His lust had dampened considerably when she had threatened his manhood. Devin and Devlin’s lessons remained with her.

“A prince of Ulaid,” the trader captain mused aloud. “Not a bastard son?”

“No,” Charis stated firmly, remembering the stakes in this bargaining session. Home.
Freedom!
Her own people and the wellbeing of Ragor’s children. “He is the king’s acknowledged heir,” she went on with a decisive nod, “and is worth much to his father.”

Perot inclined his head slowly, thoughtfully, and hummed a little under his breath. Charis laced her fingers together in front of her, resisting the urge to say more. Around them, the sailors went about their tasks, checking lines and keeping debris off the deck. Perot stared at the sea and the mild waves that caressed his ship.

At last, he spoke. “Fair enough. You promise a ransom for this prince of Ulaid. I need his back to work. Can he sail?”

“Yes.”

“Good. And you, you are a doctor?”

Charis had heard the term when she and Cowan had been forced onboard this vessel. “Yes, I am a—a doctor,” she said, struggling with the unfamiliar word. “I can heal your sick and wounded.”

Perot’s voice was sharp. “Good. You can see to him, first” he said, indicating Cowan’s prone body with his booted toe, “and then come to me and I will take you to those of the crew who need doctoring.” With a dismissive nod, the captain turned, shouting something to a man who was headed to the under-deck storage area.

Charis smiled to herself. She had done it all on her own.

Cowan would be proud of her, she was sure.

“You told him what?” Cowan demanded, squinting up into the sun. She was kneeling over him, trying to clean the wounds on his head. “That my father is king of all Ulaid?”

“Hush!” she said, swiping his open mouth with the salt water she was using to clean him. “I said what needed to be said to get home.”

“But he’s not,” Cowan rasped, sitting up. “He’s just a minor ruler.”

“He’s a king and that’s enough!” Charis glared at him. “You don’t have to worry further. Your only job is to help sail this ship,” she told him. “
I
did the bargaining.”

In response to this, Cowan just stared at her, mouth agape. Well, he should be surprised. She had told him all that had passed since he had drunk that ale back at the harbor guard’s house.
He should be pleased, blast his eyes!

Those same bright green eyes darted back and forth, as if seeking a way out of their predicament.

Charis clucked her tongue at him. “Whatever you do,” she advised, “don’t try to escape. Idjit. Drinking ale from a strange man . . . ”

“Enough, woman,” Cowan countered, glowering at her from narrowed eyes. “So you smelled the herbs in the ale before you drank. Good on you,” he concluded. “Some of us can fight and some of us can smell. Aren’t you the lucky one?”

Charis smiled to herself, letting her hair fall forward to hide the expression. “
Isea
, I am that,” she agreed smugly. Then she returned to the business of cleaning the wounds he received when he’d returned to awareness after having drunk the “spiced ale”. With only a few airily disappointed sounds, she checked the bandaging around his head. “They’re doing well,” she remarked. “Achan always said that the salt water was good for healing.”

“Hmph,” was all he said.

She smiled again, more warmly this time, and caught his chin against the back of her hand so that he looked her in the eye. “When I’m done here, I have to go below to help others. I am going to try to find some herbs in their cooking supplies. You only have to wait,” she reminded him.

“Go below?” Cowan repeated. “What kind of help are you providing?” His expression was anxious. “They haven’t, ah, hurt you, have they?”

Charis felt her pride in herself give way just a bit in the face of his concern for her. “No, they haven’t.” With a sly smile, she recounted her method of persuading the captain to leave her alone.