The Veil Of Years - Isle Beyond Time Part 13

"How lucky for you-or is that simply because in winter the sun sets soon after it rises, and it is too dark and cold to go outside?"

"You're a clever one! You saw right through me. Drink more ale. I am not defeated yet. I'll sell you a patch of ice and a bag of gravel to seed it with, before the night is over."

Pierrette sipped from the mug. The ale was clear and crisp, and rather than dulling her senses like cloying wine, it seemed to sharpen them. Attempting to calculate how far north the storm had blown them, she studied the stars overhead-and one star in particular, that stood slightly over halfway up the northern sky. She also asked many questions about Egil's island home, until she was truly convinced it was not what she sought.

The ale pa.s.sed through her rapidly, and at her body's urging she excused herself, to go among the rocks.

But the Irish boy said, "I'll join you," in that offhand yet sociable manner boys affected about such things.

"Actually," Pierrette replied, "I think I need a bit of a walk to clear my head. But please don't leave-either of you. I'll be back shortly." Such bodily functions had always been the greatest threat to her disguise, traveling in a party of men who would stop and pee wherever they were. She had cultivated the air of being a very shy young boy, and that had seemed to suffice-and she had learned great control over her bladder as well.

She found a suitably private spot. When she arose from her task, she was disoriented for a moment.

Which way was the camp? She glanced at the sky, seeking the pole star, but did not immediately spot it.

When she did . . . was it just a tiny bit higher in the sky than she expected it? She then knew what her next question for Egil would be.

When she returned, the big man sat alone. The boy did not come back, with fresh tankards of ale, for quite some time. "If I were standing in that field you want to sell me, with my sack of gravel in hand, how high overhead would that star be?" She pointed.

He smiled. "Why should it be higher or lower?"

"I think that if your summers are only a month or two long, and your winter days but an hour or two, that star must stand almost overhead, and all the heavens whirl around it."

The Norseman's eyes narrowed. "You look like a boy, but what are you? A shaman? A shapechanger?

A reader of minds?"

It was Pierrette's turn to laugh. "I am a student of a wise master-and could I have come all the way from the warm southland without noticing that the guide star appeared slightly higher in the sky at the end of each week's travel?"

"You aren't going to tell that to every sailor you run across, are you? It would be very bad for trade, if the master of every leaky southern washtub could read the stars aright, and find his way around thenorthern waters without getting lost."

"I won't tell anyone. I have no wish for the far places of the world to lose their mystery. But the scholar ibn Saul also knows the stars, and what he knows, so do all those he writes to."

"Then I should kill him before he leaves this place."

Pierrette realized her mistake too late. She rushed to repair it. "It would do you no good. What he knows, the others already know also. And besides, aren't you a Christian? Murder is no light burden to take with you on your final journey."

Egil sighed. "I suppose you're right. Even if his relatives never heard of his death, and made no complaint, our priest would see me banished. Everyone takes murder seriously, these days."

"Don't look so glum. Of all the scholars I know, ibn Saul is the only one who puts his knowledge to practical use. His correspondents are content for him to travel cold seas and wet, and to read of his exploits from the comfort of their sunny terraces."

He nodded. "Still, it is a sad thing, that all the mysteries have a way of becoming common knowledge, and the furthest lands become as well known as one's own garden plot."

"What you say is truer than you can imagine," said Pierrette, "and only a little while ago I would have commiserated with you, but now I have come to suspect that for every new sh.o.r.e we explore, a newer one appears somewhere beyond it, and we will never find the end of everything."

"You are deep, whether you are really a boy or are an old shaman in disguise. But I am not. My head is heavy with new thoughts and ale, and we must depart at first light." He arose with a popping of knees and a rasp of salt-stiffened clothing.

All the time Egil and Pierrette had conversed, the young Hibernian had remained silent. Now alone with Pierrette, he spoke. "My father knows of the islands you seek," he said. "He once described them to me, exactly as your scholar said: a rim of black rock, broken by several channels, and within, circle upon circle of other channels, with great wharves. In the exact center of that maze is a black peak, flat-topped, upon which stands a palace or a fane, whose columns are red and black."

Pierrette's heart thudded noisily in her chest. Her breath caught in her throat. The boy truly described Minho's land-concentric circles, the cones of successive volcanic eruptions, the outer ones breached by channels that led inward to the central, newest cone, on whose leveled top stood the sorcerer-king's residence. "What . . . what else did he say?"

"He was not allowed to stray from the wharf when he docked, but he was paid well for his cargo-furs from the Nors.e.m.e.n's mountains and a chest full of amber." The boy reached within his clothing, and drew out a small object that gleamed warmly in the fire's light. "He was paid with gold. This was the smallest morsel, which he gave to me." He held it out to Pierrette. Her hand trembled as she took the gleaming object from him.

It was a cylinder of gold the size of Pierrette's thumb, sharply incised.

Rolling it across her palm, she envisioned the pattern it would make, pressed into a wax tablet or soft clay: the entwined figures of a dolphin and an octopus. A chill coursed up her ribs. For the very first time, she held an object that had definitely come from the Fortunate Isles, not in Otherworldly hands, but here,in the ordinary world. She had seen similar seals in Minho's library, which was very much like her master Anselm's, but larger-the original, after which Anselm's was modeled. "It is indeed the land I seek,"

Pierrette whispered. "Why are you showing this to me?"

His young, soft face turned red and he whispered, "When you left us to pee, I followed you. I . . . I saw you. You aren't a boy at all."

Pierrette's mind raced. If her own party discovered they were travelling with a girl, a woman, she did not fear they would suddenly become strangers bent on bedding her-especially not Lovi or Gregorius. But the Nors.e.m.e.n, with the thin Christian finish the Irish priest had painted on their rude, Viking natures, were a different case. "Why didn't you tell Egil?"

"There is more to my father's tale," he said. "All the rest of the gold was shaped into chains, like necklaces. Only the piece you hold was different. When Father gave it to me, he told me what the ruler of that kingdom had said: 'There will come a virgin girl, seeking my kingdom. This I have foreseen. She will dress as a boy, but her eyes will be as old as your grandmother's. This is for her. If you trade it for cattle, they will bloat and die. If you trade it for furs, they will stink and become slimy. A boat purchased with this, however sound, will fall apart when least you expect it. But who does as I bid will live a hundred years, and have forty grandchildren.' "

Minho! He knew! This was the sign he had promised, and it had been held in his own hand, in this world. He had foreseen this very meeting, on this remote skerry, out of sight of land. "Why did your father give it to you?"

"What good is gold you can't spend? Father was already wealthier than was good for his soul. When Egil's Nors.e.m.e.n discovered our island and its little community of monks and Christian families, father gave the rest of the gold as peace gifts, impressing them with the generosity of our G.o.d to sailors on the cold sea. Only that small morsel of gold remained ungiven-until now."

Pierrette rolled the little cylinder back and forth. Dolphin and octopus. Octopus and dolphin. The dolphin's eye glistened as if it were faceted, as if it were a tiny star.

"It was true, what the king said. I am indeed the one this is intended for. But I have nothing to give in return."

"You need give me nothing. I will have my reward. There is a girl, at home . . . I have hopes that she will be the grandmother of my forty grandchildren."

"But he gave it to your father, not you."

"I considered that, and asked Father to repeat the words. 'Who does as I bid,' he said. Not 'ifyou do as I bid.' I think he foresaw that I, not my father, would be the one to give it to you."

Pierrette also believed that. Later, when she slept for the hour or two that remained before dawn, she dreamed of a white room with paintings of blue dolphins and octopi on its walls, and a bed heaped with pure white furs. The breeze on her naked skin was balmy, not cold, and sunlight's captured heat radiated from the dark floor tiles. She glanced down at herself, wondering placidly where she was, and where her clothes had gone, but she could not see her own body. When she lifted a hand to her face, the magnificent coral and gold of the sunset streamed right through her invisible fingers. "That is because you are not really here, yet," said a resonant, masculine, tenor voice. "Come. Hurry. It is the end of an age, and I have waited a thousand years for you." She awoke with the little cylinder still clutched in her hand. The impression of the octopus and the starry-eyed dolphin was pressed into the palm of her hand, and did not fade until they were once again at sea, in their own small boat, with their water keg full.

Chapter 22 - Gesocribate.

Much to Pierrette's regret, ibn Saul had reached the same conclusion she had: the stories told around the Thuleans' fire were fascinating, and they a.s.sured him that explorers would not run out of new places to discover, in his lifetime-but the places they described were not the Fortunate Isles.

"These are not a month's sail to the south or far away to the west. They are here." His fist thumped against the sheer rail. "They are not far at all-and I will find them." Gesocribate was their destination now. Consulting with the Vikings, ibn Saul and their boatman determined that the storm winds had driven them about twenty-seven miles north of Sena and a bit west as well. From the green, moss-covered rocks of the skerry, by fresh morning light, they had gazed northwest. Only five miles distant loomed a large island, which the boatman recognized. They could just make out the rocky mainland coast by squinting eastward into the sun's brightness.

With a steady breeze just abaft the beam, they sailed crisply on a course opposite the one they had w.i.l.l.y-nilly arrived on. When the last of the treacherous rocks and shoals between the island and the mainland were behind them, they turned east and north with the wind astern, on a port tack. Gesocribate lay on the north sh.o.r.e of a bay ten miles long whose entrance was only a mile wide. When they cleared that gullet, Pierrette saw a vast expanse of smooth water dotted with brown, yellow, and tan sails, and fringed with fat, green fields. Surely, Vikings had entered the bay, despite the Roman fortifications on both sides of the gullet, whose catapults and stone-throwing slings were still manned, but though they might have burned farmhouses and stolen sheep, the city itself seemed untouched.

Gra.s.s grew in the cracks between the Roman wharf stones, worn by centuries of barefoot sailors, grooved by wagon wheels, polished by the crates, bales, boxes, and barrels that had been pushed across them. Gesocribate was not the busy place it once had been, when Roman ships had swept Venetii and, later, Saxon, pirates from the sea, but there were ships in port-and ibn Saul headed for them as soon as his feet touched stone.

Pierrette tagged along with him. It was too much to hope that the masters of those vessels-she counted seven she deemed worthy of being called ships, not boats-would one and all refuse his commission.

She would have to delay her own search.

Her hand crept to her pouch, where nestled the gold cylinder seal, among her other treasures-Father Otho's cross, her mother's ring, and the crystal bauble veined with red and blue. The seal was her key to Minho's kingdom. She had not dared study it in the presence of others, but she was sure that the dolphin's tiny eye was a star-and the stars would be her guides. But for now, she would have to remain with the others, and do what she could to keep the scholar from finding the Fortunate Isles.

* * *Ibn Saul paid for a room over a wharfside wine shop-or cider shop, if truth were told. They dined on black wheat pancakes wrapped around vegetables, bits of meat, and chopped eggs-a delectable change from rough forest fare and meager meals afloat. Her stomach full, her head slightly fuzzy with drink, Pierrette looked forward to a night in a bed-even one shared with ibn Saul, Lovi, and Gregorius.

But though she lay long abed, sleep did not come. She lay thinking about one thing, then another. Was Yan Oors well? Had he found a likely she-bear? How would she find him, when it was time for the bear to drop her cubs? And ibn Saul's next exploration: only one shipmaster had been willing to consider his charter offer, and Pierrette did not like the look of him. His eyes were too close together, for one thing, but more to the point, the caulked seams ofSh.o.r.e Bird 's hull were green and oozing, and her standing rigging had not been tarred in a long time. It was frayed and brown, not glossy black. If a man cut corners with ship maintenance, how reliable could he be in other ways?

Also, she had seen one of the small, evil shadows emerging from a heap of dung; when it slithered away, it had gone slightly south of west, and she wondered what that meant. Had the noisome things' destination somehow changed, or did her own position, now many miles north of the Liger's mouth, make the difference? If so, if a mere fifty miles of northing had such an effect, then the shadows' destination, or the point at which their paths would all converge, was not far away at all.

She visualized a map of the coastline, and guessed that their destination must lie no more than a hundred miles offsh.o.r.e. That was, of course, further than any but a shipmaster desperate for money would go, but it was not as far as Viking Egil's warm paradise on the far side of the world. She now suspected she knew where the shadow's destination was, and it confirmed the hypothesis she had formed, but as yet she had too little evidence, and could not act upon it.

Lying awake and silent, she must have seemed asleep to Gregorius, when he slipped out of the bed. At first, she a.s.sumed he would seek the chamberpot, but when she heard him quietly rummaging in their baggage, she squinted in his direction. She heard the faint clink of coins. The priest had ibn Saul's purse!

Then she knew what was afoot. Gregorius was sneaking away. Pierrette saw him take a single Byzantine solidus from the purse, then put the sack back where he had found it. At least he did not intend to rob ibn Saul of everything. With his small bundle of possessions, he slipped out the door.

Pierrette dashed to the small balcony and scrambled to the ground. Guessing which way Gregorius would go, she rushed ahead to the wharf, and hid herself behind a large cask. She saw the swath of light spread across the cobbles when he emerged from the inn. "Gregorius!" she whispered as he neared her position.

He sucked in breath, and halted. "Leave me alone!" he whispered. "I don't want to fight with you."

"I can't stop you. And I saw that you only took one coin for your pa.s.sage, when you could have taken the whole purse. But why? Why leave us now?"

"TheMerry Dancer 's destination is Burdigala! From there, I'll be almost home-in a country where no evil shadows creep, where the sun is warm, and olives and peaches grow, and . . ."

"What about Lovi?"

His face wrinkled in anguish. "He would never leave his master. I've hinted at it, but his mind is completely closed. Love is one thing, but he has a vision of himself as a famous explorer someday. I didn't dare ask him outright. He might have betrayed my intentions to ibn Saul-out of his love for me, and his wish to have both of his desires." The priest shook his head sadly. "As I've said before, I am only a subst.i.tute for his true desire-which is you. As long as you are near, he won't willingly go elsewhere. I know this." He smiled ruefully. "Will you comfort him, when I'm gone?"

"I can't do that. Not as you mean it. I've told you that before. Will you really leave, if I a.s.sure you of it yet again?"

Gregorius sighed. "I must. I'm no more an explorer than I am a cleric at heart. I'm a singer and a tale-teller." His gaze became sharp. "Are you going to betray me?"

"For Lovi's sake, I might. But no. I'm going back to the inn. And you must hurry. I can hear the creak of a sail being hoisted, and the tide has turned. With this offsh.o.r.e breeze, your ship won't wait long for you.

Good-bye, and good voyaging."

He turned away and rushed off down the wharf, where a large ship, mainsail aback against the mast, was straining against her mooring lines astem and astern.

When Lovi and ibn Saul awakened, there arose the ruckus Pierrette had dreaded. The scholar raged and ran down the wharf, shaking his fist at the empty water. By then, Pierrette guessed, the vessel must be breasting the narrows with a following breeze, with her sails bellied full and sheets straining. By mid-morning, when the offsh.o.r.e winds died in the face of the prevailing westerly one, she would swing southward on a beam reach and struggle past Raz Point, and would have no further fear of land so close off her lee rail. "Good luck," she murmured.

Another uproar ensued when ibn Saul discovered the missing solidus, but that died quickly. "It's less than I'd spend, feeding him, if he stayed." That was, of course, not really true. One solidus would feed all of them for some time, and pay for wine and cider as well.

Lovi could not yet accept that Gregorius was gone: had Piers actually seen him board the ship? Might he have jumped back off before it left the wharf? Lovi's hurt and anger seemed directed not at Gregorius, but at her. Pierrette was relieved when ibn Saul put them to work loading baggage ontoSh.o.r.e Bird 's dingy deck.

Sh.o.r.e Birdwas an inauspicious name for a ship that was going to sail straight out into the unmapped sea, where no land was known to be. Further, she seemed weak in the spars, like a sandpiper or a phalarope indeed, not a st.u.r.dy duck or a graceful tern. Pierrette decided to keep a close eye on ship, master, and crew.

They pushed off at mid-morning on the last of the tide. Pierrette waved at their erstwhile boatman, who did not intend to sail back to the Bay of Sins. "There'll be no more business for me, and I hate fishing," he had said. "Here, at least, I can ferry people across the narrows, or onto ships at anchor in the roads."

"But you are the last person who knows the secrets of navigating the tidal race."

"So what? There is no longer any reason to. There, I was a relic of an old tradition as dead as those who inhabit Sena's necropolis. Here, I am a sailor among other sailors, and do not have to live in a musty cave."

Pierrette eyed him curiously. He had cut his hair and beard, and no longer looked old. His hair was nowmerely gray, not mottled as with green algae. It was as if he had shed a certain physical resemblance to the sea-spirits along with his former occupation, and now was as other men. She judged that his decision was a wise one.

Sh.o.r.e Birdstruggled through the narrows with half-filled sails, because the early offsh.o.r.e breeze was now almost gone. There had been a brief altercation between ibn Saul and the shipmaster, Kermorgan, when Pierrette led Gustave to the down-slanting gangplank. "Another pa.s.senger! You did not mention this. There is no room for four more feet on my deck."

"That is Gustave," said ibn Saul. "He is not a pa.s.senger any more than my sacks are. You saw him there on the wharf when you asked what goods and chattels we would bring aboard. And at any rate, you agreed to take four of us, and now we are three."

"I will allow it. But keep him from underfoot-and don't expect to split an extra, fourth, ration among the three of you."

The Fortunate Isles had to lie beyond the last islands and skerries-or so ibn Saul had calculated. That meant there was no direct course to them, because the usual winds were westerly, and square-sailed Sh.o.r.e Bird could not come closer to the wind's eye than a beam reach. For every mile of westering they made against those seasonal winds, they would have to sail ten or twenty north or south, slowly gaining distance from the black, rocky lee sh.o.r.e of Armorica.

Pierrette stayed in the bow with Gustave most of the time, among the chicken cages, grain barrels, and caged pigs that provided their sustenance. On their second morning at sea, she observed Lovi standing at the rail, dangling a dark object over the water below. It was his "lucky" horseshoe. "You aren't going to throw it away, are you?" she asked softly.

"What do you care?" he snapped. "It hasn't brought me luck, has it?"

"Who can tell? Without it, where might we be now?" She didn't think "luck" worked like that, but Lovi had been so happy to find the horseshoe, and she felt quite sorry for him now. "Besides, you can never tell what may happen if you throw something of value into the sea."

"Oh? Is that another of your stories?"

"It is. If it will cheer you up, I'll tell you."

Just for a moment, Lovi seemed to brighten. "Is it a changing tale, like the ones about the Tarasque? One with several beginnings or endings?"

"Wait and see. Tonight? You must promise not to throw away your horseshoe."

He nodded, grinning crookedly. "Who knows-perhaps this is not an ending, but the beginning of a new kind of luck for me."

If Lovi had been like other men, she might have considered comforting him in a physical way, at least with a hug and a chaste kiss-had she not been wearing the tunic,bracae , and conical hat of a peasant boy. "Perhaps so," she replied, not meeting his eyes. "It's too bad you aren't attracted to girls. You wouldn't have a hard time finding an affectionate companion, then. I've seen the way they look at you, in every town." He sighed. "Once, that might have been," he said sadly. "I didn't choose to be what I am. It just happened that way. Perhaps if I had fallen in love with a girl, before . . . but no. I suspect my nature was different from the beginning."

"Perhaps so," she replied.

"What about you?" he asked-now peering intently at her. "Now that I think upon it, I've never seen you yearning after girls, either."

"I . . ." Pierrette was nonplused. "I've been too busy. I try not to think about such things."

"I think you're lying. I think you are attracted to men also. I think . . . you are attracted to me." He put his hand on hers, atop the ship's rail. She s.n.a.t.c.hed it away.

"No! I mean, you don't understand me at all." Of course she was attracted to him, but it was Pierrette who was attracted, not her alter ego Piers. "Besides, my . . . my mentor . . . has forbidden me such things. The consequences would be dire."

"Aha! He would not have forbidden you such a thing unless he knew you leaned in that direction already.

You do find me desirable, don't you?"

This was not going well at all. Lovi had a.s.sumed that the "mentor" in question was Anselm, as she wished him to do, but he had made more of it than she expected, and had gotten all too close to her true feelings-but not her true nature. "What you want can never happen," she said, not looking at him. "It is absolutely out of the question. It is impossible. You must accept that."