The Merchant of Dreams (Night's Masque, #2)(40)

He wandered into the shattered remnants of the poop. The table and benches lay in ruins, and the dividing wall between their cabin and Raleigh's was gone, only a few splintered timbers showing where it had been. Beyond it, the stern was a gaping hole, floorboards shattered and sloping precariously down towards a drop into the sea. If he had not persuaded Ned to join him on deck, his friend would likely be dead right now. For the first time in weeks he was glad he had not brought Coby. The thought of her cut in half like that poor bastard out there… He put the grisly image aside. Where was Ned anyway? With a pang of guilt he headed back to the gun deck.

When he found Ned at last, the younger man rushed to embrace him, muttering curses over and over like prayers as he buried his face in Mal's shoulder. Mal rested his chin against Ned's brow, fighting down his own post-battle shakes. Around them the gunners were slapping one another's shoulders and laughing, even as their injured fellows groaned in the hold below. They had lived to see another day, God be praised. No man could ask for more than that.

CHAPTER XI

Coby stood on the after-deck, staring up at the red sails that bellied above her. Nearly three weeks into their journey and they were still zigzagging down the coast of Portugal. The same westerly winds that hindered their own progress would be blowing Mal's ship around the coast of Spain and into the Mediterranean. She kicked the rail irritably, as if the ship were a lazy pony needing to be spurred on by its rider. The skrayling at the ship's wheel turned to stare at her, and she muttered an apology in Tradetalk.

She looked around for Sandy, and presently spotted him sitting on a coil of rope with a book of mathematics open on his lap. She pattered down the steps to the weather deck and crossed the ship's waist in long, slightly erratic strides.

Sandy looked up as her shadow fell across the pages.

"We left England only a day or so after Mal," she said. "Do you think we might catch up with him?"

"The Falcon is a fast ship, made for war. They are well ahead of us by now."

"But you cannot be sure, can you?" She squatted next to him so that they were eye to eye, and lowered her voice. "You have not… spoken to him yet?"

"I have tried." He stared southwards, as if he could see Mal's ship in the distance. Coby had to admit that he looked like a man who had not slept well in days. Or rather, nights. "But most likely he still wears the earring Kiiren gave him. At any rate, I have searched all night, as far as I dared to go, and found no sign of him."

"You are right, I suppose," she said, standing up. Though she strained her eyes, she could see nothing in any direction except miles of empty ocean. "It's almost Easter, and still we sail south. Surely we must be nearing the Straits of Gibraltar?"

Sandy got to his feet. "I will speak to our captain, if that will soothe your spirit."

"Thank you, sir."

"And you should take cover, like your friend Gabriel," he added. "The sun is far stronger in these parts, and will burn you before you know it."

Since the hold was now hot, stuffy and stinking of the bilges by day, Hennaq had rigged up an awning on deck between the two masts so that his passengers could shelter from the sun and keep out of the way of the sailors. Gabriel was lying on his stomach stripped to his shirt and hose, a sheaf of paper before him and an ink-pot wedged into a gap between the mats that covered the bare deck. He looked up with a frown, and Coby tried not to smile at the ink stain down the side of his nose.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you."

"No, don't go." Gabriel laid down his pen and pushed himself up off the matting, twisting round to sit crosslegged. "I want your opinion on something I'm writing for Ned."

Coby sighed. "I know little of love poetry, sir."

"This isn't a love poem. At least, not in the usual sense. It's a play."

"Oh." She sat down on a cushion next to him. "What's it about?"

"It's…" He cocked his head on one side, his features twisted into a caricature of frustrated thought. Coby suppressed a laugh. Gabriel was ever the actor, on or off stage.

"There's this young man and his sweetheart," he said eventually, "but her father wants her to marry a rich old merchant, so they trick the old man out of his fortune and get married anyway. I'm calling it A Bear-baiting in Bankside, because that's where it's set. And the old man is the bear, do you see?"

"Oh. That's… different."

"Tales of kings and princes and foreign lands are all very well," Gabriel said, "but what man – or woman – does not enjoy scandal and gossip? And one's neighbours cannot be relied upon to follow lives of constant wickedness."

"No indeed."

"So I thought, why not put it in a play? A comedy about men's foibles – with a moral ending of course."

"That could work. And the Master of the Revels could have no objection to such a trifle."

"My thoughts exactly." He grinned and passed her a handful of papers. "Here, tell me what you think."

Coby began to read. The handwriting was dreadful, and the page a mess of crossings-out with corrections written very small between the original lines, but she had seen enough such drafts in her time at the theatre to be able to make sense of it. She read on to the next page. It was hardly Marlowe, but the words had a lively spirit to them, the humour sharp-edged without being malicious. She found herself smiling at a line here and there.