“A bilander!” Beaty blustered. “What nonsense!”
Whether a fly boat or bilander, neither were particularly well suited for the open seas. “Is there a flag?” he asked.
“No.” Iain the Red paused, then laughed. “Look at them now, trying to lower the sail.” He laughed again with great amusement. “They look like children romping around a bloody maypole! Look at them trying to untangle those shroud lines, aye? They’re twisted up every which way—oof, there went one, down on his arse!”
The men gathered at the railing to watch, and laughed at the blundering of the crew on the other ship as they tried to free a sail from a broken mast with what looked like a lot of pushing and shoving. “Aye, give it over, Iain, let’s have a look,” one said, and they began to pass the spyglass around, all of them doubling over with mirth.
The spyglass came back around to Iain, but when he held it up, he stopped laughing. “Diah, de an diabhal?” he exclaimed and lowered the instrument, turning a wide-eyed look to Aulay.
“What, then?” Aulay asked, feeling a mild tick of alarm, imagining a gun pointed at them, or a pirate’s flag being raised.
“A lady,” Iain said, as if he’d never seen one.
A lady? It was not unheard of for one to be on the high seas; wives of captains sometimes sailed with them. If it were anyone else, a lady of importance, she’d not be sailing on a rickety boat like that.
“In a proper gown and everything,” Iain said, his voice full of awe.
Aulay didn’t know what a proper gown meant to Iain, so he motioned for the spyglass to have a look. He could scarcely make her out, but it was definitely a woman standing at the railing, holding a white flag that almost matched the color of the hair that whipped long and unbound about her face. There were a few men beside her, all of them clinging to the railing, all of them looking rather desperately in the direction of his ship.
Aulay instructed Beaty to maneuver closer, and when there was nothing but a small bit of sea between the two ships, the men’s frantic attention to the sail on the other ship was forgotten in favor of lowering a jolly boat down the hull. There was more chaotic shoving among them until four men scrambled down a rope ladder into the boat and began to row with abandon toward the Reulag Balhaire. The woman remained behind on the ship’s deck with a few men, including one that was the size of a small mountain, towering a head above all the others.
When the smaller boat reached them, one of the men grabbed on to the rope ladder to steady them, and one rose to standing, bracing his legs apart to keep his balance. “Madainn mhath,” he called up, and with an affected swirl of his hand, he bowed low. And very nearly tipped over the side when a swell caught him unawares.
“Scots, then,” Beaty said. “That’s something, at least.”
“We are in need of your help, kind sirs!” the man called up, having managed to right himself. “We’ve been set upon by pirates, aye?” He spoke with a strange cadence, as if he were a town crier delivering this news to a crowded venue.
The men did not carry swords or guns that Aulay could see. It seemed all they could do to keep the jolly from tipping too far to one side. “That ship flew the colors of the king,” he called down.
The spokesman looked startled. He squatted down to consult the other men in his small boat. A flurry of shaking heads and talking over one another ensued, until the man stood up again and said, “She flew no such flag when she fired, on me word, sir! She fired with no provocation from us!” He pressed his hand to his chest quite earnestly.
“No’ bloody likely,” Iain muttered.
“Why do I feel as if I am watching a theatrical performance?” Aulay asked idly. “What do you think, then, Beaty? Could a freebooter put his hands on a royal flag?”
“More likely a privateer,” Beaty said, referring to those private ships holding a royal commission. “They’re no’ above a bit of pirating, are they? Might have nicked a flag, I suppose.”
Perhaps. It was hard to argue who’d advanced on whom when they’d not witnessed it. But it seemed unlikely that a privateer or pirate would have engaged this ship. It was too small to hold anything of quantity or value.
Aulay leaned over the railing. “What have you on board that invited attack?”
“Naugh’ but a lady, Captain!”
“Who is the lady, then?”
That question prompted more spirited discussion on the jolly boat.
“What, then, they donna know the lady?” Iain snorted.
Once again, the man straightened up, put his fist to his waist and called out, “Our Lady Larsen, sir! We are carrying her home to her ailing grandmamma!” He paused, put a hand to his throat and said, “’Tis a journey of great and intolerable sadness, as the lady’s grandmamma is no’ expected to live!”
Larson. Aulay did not know the name.
“An ailing grandmamma my arse,” Beaty muttered.
Aulay was likewise suspicious. These men seemed to have no idea what they were doing, who was on board, or even how to mount a sail and sally forth to dear old Grandmamma. Moreover, the man had the peculiar habit of speaking as if he were acting in a play. “Where is your destination?” Aulay called.
“Denmark, Captain. Her grandmamma is a Dane, she is, but we are Scots, like you.”
“Never knew a clever Dane,” Iain mused. “No’ a single one.”
“Aye, she has the look of an heiress,” said one of the crew, holding the spyglass to his eye. The man next to him punched him in the arm and grabbed the spyglass as if he’d been waiting too long for his turn and was cross about it.
Apparently, the men had been passing it around to view the woman while Aulay, Beaty and Iain focused on the men below.
“Been sailing long?” Beaty called down.
“A day,” the man said.
“No, lad, I mean, what sort of seaman are you, then?”
“Well that’s the interesting thing, sir, aye? We are no’ seaman. No’ a one of us a sailor, save our captain. We’re but Christian soldiers on an errand of mercy. Able-bodied, aye, willing to try. But no’, as such, sailors.”
“Bloody damn curious,” Beaty muttered, his thick brow furrowed.
“Agreed,” Aulay said.
Billy Botly, the youngest and smallest of the crew, was the last to receive the spyglass, and he had to fight for it. He was so slight that a good, strong wind would knock him overboard if he weren’t careful, and as he swung one leg over the edge of the hull to have a look, Aulay feared precisely that. “Aye, an heiress,” the lad said, a wee bit dreamily.
Aulay reached over Billy’s shoulder, took the spyglass from him and had a look himself. The lady was still standing there, still clutching the white flag against her chest, her hands crossed over it as if she feared she would lose it.
He lowered the spyglass again and peered down at the man. “Aye, and what do you want from me, then? I’ve no time to ferry anyone to her ailing grandmamma.”
His crew chuckled derisively in agreement.
“The ship, sir, she’s taking on water, that she is. We’ll no’ last through the night.”
“Should no’ have sailed in a ship no’ meant for open water, then,” Beaty called down. Apparently, Beaty was the only man aboard who was not moved by the sight of a comely lady in dire circumstances.
“Aye, but we’ve the miss and her father, wounded in the fight, he was. She’s no one to