“It’s Parmaison. But where is de Lisle? And why would he not come to me directly?”
“There’s urgency involved. Great urgency,” Sinclair said. “Look at the oars. He’s ready to put out to sea again immediately, once he has spoken with you.”
“Hmm. Find us a boat, Sergeant.”
“I have one ready, Admiral, at the end of the pier.”
After quitting La Rochelle that morning, St. Valéry, with Sinclair’s concurrence, had sent two of his swiftest galleys to return to the roads approaching the harbor and to remain there for the remainder of that day, keeping watch to see what might develop. It had been an afterthought, no more than a precautionary measure, for they had been under way for more than two hours before the thought occurred to either man, and although they considered it highly unlikely that anything untoward might actually take place, since they had burned the only ships remaining in the harbor, they had agreed that it might be a good idea to keep a watchful eye on the fort and the headlands flanking it. But now one of the delegated vessels had caught up to them, far ahead of schedule.
The captain of the returned galley, Sir Geoffrey Parmaison, watched them pull alongside from the narrow forecastle, then helped the two senior officers aboard in person before leading them to a small folding table and three chairs he had set up beneath an awning on the upper foredeck. He dismissed the watchman at the prow, and then all three men sat down.
“Tell us, Sir Geoffrey,” St. Valéry began without preamble.
Parmaison nodded and then spoke tersely. “We returned to La Rochelle as ordered, Admiral, and arrived in sight of it just in time to see three of our own galleys entering the harbor. We saw them, I say, but we were too far away to attract their attention and could do nothing to stop them sailing into La Rochelle.”
“Who were they? Do you know?”
“Aye, Admiral. De Lisle was closer to them than I was, and swears he recognized one of the galleys as being Antoine de l’Armentière’s.”
“De l’Armentière? He is supposed to be in Cyprus.”
“That’s what I thought, sir, but de Lisle is cousin to him, and he swears it was Antoine’s galley that he saw leading the flotilla. Apparently it differs from any other.”
“Aye, it does. It is Moorish, a prize of war—a pirate vessel, captured off Gibraltar some years ago. De Lisle was sure of this?”
“As sure as he could be from a distance of miles, but whoever it was, he took three Temple galleys into La Rochelle and stayed there.”
“Hmm. Where is Captain de Lisle now?”
“On station, Admiral, waiting for whatever might happen. He sent me back to bring you the word.”
“And you saw nothing more than you have described?”
“Nothing, sir. They went in, and they did not come out.”
“Very well. Thank you, Captain Parmaison. Return to your station, rejoin Captain de Lisle, and bid him remain where he is until he has something more to report.” He held up one hand to stay the man and turned to Sinclair. “Do you have anything to add, Sir William?”
“No, Admiral, because I think you and I are considering the same eventuality. Were either of us in de Nogaret’s shoes in this, we would impound all three vessels, imprison the commanders and their crews, then take the galleys out to sea again, crewed by our own men, to pursue this fleet. Is that what you are thinking?”
“Aye, it is. Captain Parmaison, you can see for yourself that we have no time to waste. Rejoin de Lisle as quickly as you may and bid him wait, well out of reach, to see if those galleys emerge from La Rochelle again. If they do, at the first sign of them, you are to make all speed to return and let us know. Understood?” Parmaison nodded, and St. Valéry rose to his feet. “Then may God be with you and grant you all speed. Wind and oars, Sir Geoffrey, wind and oars. Sir William, we must inform Admiral de Berenger of this at once.”
They could hear Parmaison shouting orders to his crew before they reached the entry port where Tam and their boat waited for them, and before they arrived back at the wharf his galley had already veered away from its anchorage.
5
Vice-Admiral de Berenger’s administrative and organizational skills were beyond dispute; his crews had every piece of Sir Kenneth Sinclair’s convoy—wagons, livestock, and cargo—sorted, dismantled where necessary, and stowed aboard ship in ample time to sail upon the evening tide, leaving the tiny village looking abandoned behind them. Sinclair, who had not really expected that they would complete everything in time to catch the tide, made a point of seeking out the vice-admiral before returning to his galley, which had already shipped the Templar Treasure, and congratulated him on the speed and efficiency of the entire operation. De Berenger, still preoccupied with the final details of dismantling their lading gear and leaving the small wharf clear of debris, thanked him with a slightly distracted smile and told him he would see him aboard within the hour. Sir William left him to it, returning to where Tam Sinclair awaited him patiently in a boat at the end of the wharf. As soon as he was safely aboard, Tam gave the order to the four oarsmen to take them back to the galley, about a hundred yards away.
It was only as they crossed the water that Sinclair realized that he had not seen the Baroness leave the beach, and that he had not thought of her in several hours, and he grunted to himself in satisfaction. Intense concentration on other things had obviously shut her out of his awareness for some time, and he resolved to remember that technique and apply it to her in future. He could see Admiral St. Valéry’s galley already disappearing hull down on the horizon, and the few ships left in the small inlet were all in the final stages of preparing to leave the land again. Sinclair’s galley, de Berenger’s own command, would be the last to go, and Will found himself hoping that the villagers they were leaving behind would waste no time in erasing all sign that they had ever been visited this day.
By the time he boarded the galley, the last members of de Berenger’s party were already climbing into two boats tied to the wharf. The surface of the pier at their back had been swept clean, not a single piece of debris remaining that might be linked to their visit, and after seeing the boats’ oars bite into the water, Will turned away and went in search of his cramped quarters in the forecastle. There he cast off his outer clothing and dropped onto his narrow bunk, remaining there as the ship rocked to and fro before finally putting out to sea. At some point, because there was no urgency for him in anything that was happening, he nodded off to sleep, aware, just before he lost consciousness, that in his mind’s eye he was staring at Lady Jessica Randolph’s face and that she was meeting his gaze, her eyes wide but expressionless, noncommittal, masking whatever she was thinking.
Seven days later, out of sight of land and clinging to a straining rigging rope in the waist of the ship in a howling storm, he was thinking of the woman again and straining to catch sight of the admiral’s galley on the port side, where he had last seen it days before, but he could see nothing. Whatever might be out there, it was hidden from his sight by swooping waves, wind-whipped spume, and horizontally driven rain that stung exposed skin like needles of ice. Twice since leaving the fishing village, and both times on the first day, he had seen her muffled figure looking out over the galley’s rail, once from the stern and once from the prow, but since the weather had begun to worsen on their second day at sea, he had seen no sign of her and had not expected to.
The Bay of Biscay was renowned for the ferocity of its storms, and most especially so at this time of year, with the inexorable approach of winter. Sinclair was well aware of that, just as he knew that the vessel in which he was riding had been designed to survive such storms, and that they would be safe as long as they held far enough out to sea to preclude any possibility of their being blown onto the rocks along the shoreline. His intellect knew that; his heart and his brain knew it; but there was some other part of his being that remained staunchly unconvinced. That part of him