Food and wine were brought to them mid-morning: cold meats and mussels, delicious patties and cherries, none of which Cecily could look at but which Isolde devoured to the last crumb. The wind was strengthening and the sea bore dark patches, and the high head-dress swathed with a fine veiling was no longer an appropriate statement of restored dignity. It would have to come off again. She took Cecily back to the cabin, wondering why the crew needed to carry a supply of live chickens and two piglets from Scarborough to York.
The glass-paned window that looked out directly over the ship’s wake began to streak with rain long before Isolde noticed it, for the constant pitching and tossing had made Cecily’s first voyage memorable for all the wrong reasons, and Isolde was disinclined to leave her so wretchedly helpless. When she did emerge from the cabin to replenish her lungs with fresh air, the deluge of fine rain made her screw up her face and draw her cloak more tightly across her shoulders as she made her way across the slippery deck to the bulwarks.
‘Where are we?’ she asked one of the crew as he turned to watch, holding out a hand to steady her. ‘Where’s the land?’
The man looked out into the bank of cloud as he pointed. ‘Over there, lady. It’ll be hidden for a bit until this lot clears.’
She sat on a wet wooden crate for safety. ‘I thought we’d be staying within sight of it, going south.’
‘Nay.’ He smiled. ‘If we had a northerly, now that’d be different: that’d blow us due south in record time. But we don’t get northerlies in summer, do we? So we have to fill our sails with whatever we can catch, and then go from side to side, see? Like that.’ He zigzagged with his hand. ‘Your old maid taken bad, is she?’
That sounded like a perfectly reasonable explanation, and it satisfied Isolde, who knew little either of geography or navigation. Once again, she settled herself against Cecily’s unhappily sleeping bulk, covered herself with blankets, and began an examination of the leatherbound books on the shelf above her. Silas La Vallon had an interesting collection, though she had not thought his taste would run to stories about King Arthur, La Belle Dame sans Merci, the Legend of Ladies, or a Disputation between Hope and Despair, which proved to be not quite the help she had expected. The possibility that these might have been selected for her benefit flashed through her mind, but was dismissed. Darkness came before supper that evening, and the bucking of the ship and the consequent swinging of the lantern made reading difficult. And Silas La Vallon, to please her, kept well out of sight.
Sleeping had been a fitful and precarious business, noisy with shouts and pounding feet, howling wind, clattering sails and the constant rush of water all around them. Using the close-stool had in itself been an unexpected peril, especially when trying to manoeuvre Cecily on and off it, and, by first light, Isolde had realised that sleep and ships were incompatible.
After watering her maid with some of their precious ration, then suffering the inevitable consequences only moments later, Isolde clutched a blanket tightly around herself and left the cabin in an attempt to reassure herself that land did exist. A fine line of blue stretched across the horizon below the clouds. ‘There!’ she called to the master. ‘Look! Is that it?’
He came through the door beneath the forecastle where she understood his cabin to be and joined her, cheerily. ‘That’s a bit o’ blue sky, mistress. We might get a bit o’ sun later, and a good westerly, by the feel o’ things.’
‘But that will blow us away from Hull, won’t it? I thought we’d have been within reach of Hull by now.’
‘Eh…no. We shan’t be seeing Hull today.’ He laughed, not bothering to explain. ‘I’ll send ye some food up, mistress, seeing as you’re awake already. Did ye not sleep so well?’
‘Not much,’ she said, frowning.
‘Aye, well. It’s always worse on’t first night. Better tonight, eh?’
Disappointed, she returned to the cabin and made an effort to straighten it, and when the cabin boy brought the tray tried with her most beguiling smile and a toss of her glorious red hair to bedazzle him. ‘Who does this ship belong to?’ she said, sweetly, taking the tray from him.
‘Master Silas Mariner, mistress. He’s the owner.’
‘Silas Mariner? Ah, easier to say than La Vallon, yes?’
‘Yes, mistress.’
‘And where did you berth before you went to Scarborough?’
Like a man, he took the full force of her green eyes, smiled, and said, ‘Sorry, mistress. If I want to keep my job, I have to keep my mouth shut.’ He bowed, and closed the door quietly.
It was mid-day when Isolde tried yet again to elicit some information regarding direction, distance, time of arrival—anything concerning land or the lack of it. She made another attempt mid-afternoon, and again in the evening, by which time Master Silas Mariner-La Vallon had failed to return to his cabin in the forecastle before she appeared on deck.
‘I realise that you are doing your best to avoid me, Master La Vallon,’ Isolde said, as he turned to make a polite bow, ‘and I am grateful for that. However, there is a problem which I need to discuss.’
‘You are mistaken, mistress. I was not avoiding you but waiting for you. And I am aware of your problem. My crew are well trained. They have to be.’
The fear and anger that she had tried since dawn to contain took another leap into her chest, making her feel as if she had bumped into something solid. Her legs felt weak, but she allowed herself to be led over coils of rope and across the drying deck into his cabin, which was not the master’s, after all. It was larger than hers, but wedge-shaped, the table piled with papers and instruments, ledgers, quills and inkpots.
As the cabin dipped and rose again, she held on to a wooden pillar and waited until he had closed the door before turning to him. Her voice held more than a hint of panic, which she had not intended. ‘For the fiftieth time of asking, sir, where are we?’ The words seemed to come from far away, adding to the sense of unreality that had dogged her all day, and, in the exaggerated pause between question and answer, she saw that he, too, had discarded the earlier formal attire for the barest essentials of comfort. His shirt, a padded doublet of soft plum-coloured leather and tight hose were his only concessions to the North Sea’s cutting edge.
‘I will show you,’ he said. He brought forward a roll of parchment from a pile on the table and weighted its corners with a sextant, a conch shell, a glass of wine and one hand. ‘There…’ he pointed to the eastern coastline ‘…there is Scarborough, and this is where we are now, down here, see?’ His finger trailed southwards, passing Hull, where Isolde had expected to enter the estuary of the River Humber in order to reach York on the Ouse. His finger stopped some distance from the coast of Norfolk, nowhere near land.
Isolde felt herself trembling, but pulled herself up as tall as she could despite the tightness in her lungs. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t see. I don’t see at all. What’s happened? Have we been blown off course by the storm? Is that it?’
Silas allowed the roll to spring back, and she knew by his slow straightening, his watchful air, his whole stance, that he was preparing for her reaction. His shaking head confirmed that there was more to come. ‘No, mistress, there was no storm last night. That was just weather. We are on course.’
‘On course for where? Hull is behind us now.’
‘Yes. We are heading for Flanders. We always were.’
The room swam.
‘No,’ she said, breathless now. ‘No, sir. You may be, but I am not heading for Flanders. Turn this ship round immediately. Immediately! Do you hear me?’ She whirled, heading for the door, the master, anybody. But once again he was there before her, and this time, with no one to witness, he caught her in a bear hug and swung her round to face him, wedging her against the door with his body. All the defences that she had been taught, which were supposed to be crippling