Queens' Play Read Free Page B

and badly handled. She turned beamside on to the galley and pointed into the wind, her sails shaking, but she was already moving too fast to leeward. The leaping water between the ships shrank and vanished; there was a moment’s shudder; and then wood met wood with a grinding scream of a crash. Twenty great oars to starboard stubbed to needles with the impact, and as the top side of
La Sauvée
’s low freeboard gave way, twenty shanks in vengeful hunger closed on blood and muscle within, pinning Christian thief and pagan pirate alike with polished beech and spliced lead. The world stopped as the boats locked; then the
Gouden Roos
, obeying the helm, lurched off as the sea leaped into the hole in
La Sauvée
’s side.
    Horror, panic and ignorance held Stewart fast to the ship’s side. He saw that the undrilled crew, leaderless, shocked and decimated, had no idea what to do. The bo’s’n had vanished. The captain, wet with spray, was clinging hard to the mainmast and mouthing at the heaving galliasse. There was no sign of the Irish party; then the Archer, taking a step on the jumping, slippery deck, saw O’LiamRoe disappearing down the poop ladder and two black-headed Celts capering down the main gangway closing hatchways and hurling the tangle of pulped bunting in the sea.
    La Sauvée
began to settle. On her port side she was dry and firm yet; on the roll to starboard she took in green sea with a slap and suck. The galliasse, her timbers buffed and splintered, pitched still at their side. The helmsman had brought the
Gouden Roos
up to the wind, but with the impact she had lost all her way. She lay clumsily in stays, helpless to sail out of the galley’s hapless path, and the September wind, pranking from side to side, gripped her broad upperworks and began grimly to drive her again, backwards and up to the flank of the stricken galley once more.
    The O’LiamRoe, crowbar in hand, appeared for an instant underStewart and vanished to starboard into the pit of overturned flesh. It seemed a futile errand of mercy. Ashamed of the thought, Stewart leaped down himself and was belaboured like a log in a millrace. The free men, silent with terror, were fighting towards the single spare boat, followed by the first of the unlocked slaves. As he was dragged, twisting with them, a sea broke and hissed on the rambade. They cowered, and then scattered screaming. For the last time the galliasse overshadowed the clotted and struggling ship.
    It was then that the whistle blew. It blew twice, and the second time they heard the order, clear, succinct and calm. ‘
On va faire voile. Casse trinquet! Timonier, orser!
’
    There were just enough sane men left to obey; and Robin Stewart was one of them. With violent purpose they leaped for the running tackle of the furled lateen sail, high above them. Willing hands un-clewed the rope; and in the very throat of all the malignant crab-gods of the ocean, they mustered in fright and foreboding the mighty snap of a tug needed to break the sail from its withies and gather the wind to their rescue. The hemp snaked and crashed as they pulled—and the sail stayed hard-tied to the yardarm.
    Stewart, glaring swollen-eyed at the masthead, dragged with the others a second time and a third at the sheet. Nothing moved. The galliasse nudged nearer. To leeward the sea suddenly bobbed with a cluster of heads; then more. The skiff, freed on a starboard roll, fell badly and overturned. The slap and crash of the sea, louder than wind-voice and wood-groan and the air-swallowed scream from the injured, rose to a thunder as the ships neared. Stewart, the burrowed skin white and red off his palms, pulled again in heart-gouging unison in vain.
    Round, compact and shining with salt, a scrubby figure whisked up the loose foremast rope, its wind-torn black flying, its unclean hands warping the wind-scoured skies to its chest. Master Thady Boy Ballagh, ollave, poet, professor, the fifteenth and the nippiest, climbed