The Bird King(56)

Fatima sheathed her dagger and stumbled across the deck as the cog pitched, sending a spray of froth over the railing. There was, indeed, a rope trailing from one corner of the mainsail, slapping against the outer railing in a petulant rhythm. Though it was thicker than her wrist, Fatima wrapped it around both hands and braced her feet against the deck.

“My name is Fatima,” she called up to the monk, who was holding himself aloft on a ratline with his toes and appeared to be cursing in his own language. “Not madam.”

“I don’t care,” snapped Gwennec. “The less I know, the less I’ll have to tell the inquisitors when they catch up with us, which they will. Christ Jesus, the beating I’ll get! I was meant to be keeping watch over this damned boat while the others went ashore.” He looped another, thinner rope around a beam partway up the mast, twisting it into a series of shapes which, when he pulled them, miraculously became a knot. The rope went taut and the mainsail belled out, carrying the little cog over a swell with such force that Fatima thought they might leave the water and take to the sky. Her own rope began to resist her violently. She dug her feet into the humid deck and pulled back with all her strength, certain, for one grave moment, that she was going to be slung overboard into the froth below.

Gwennec landed on the deck beside her with a thump and dried his hands on his habit.

“A good, following wind tonight,” was all he said, relieving Fatima of the rope. He looped it around one shoulder and leaned into it like an ox in harness, gritting his teeth. The mainsail swung slowly around until the beam above their heads made a right angle with the mast. The cog settled into the wind almost meekly. With a weary sigh, Gwennec threw the rope around a large dowel set into the railing.

“Watch me,” he said. “This is a reef knot. You’ll need to know how to tie one, if you plan to make landfall in one piece.” He took two loops of rope, one in each hand, and bent them over each other. “Left hand, right hand. See?”

Fatima did not, but nodded anyway.

“You seem more like a fisherman than a monk,” she said. Gwennec shrugged, unoffended.

“You’re correct, as it happens. I was a fisherman until I took vows. My family fishes cod off the Breton coast.”

“Are you Breton?” called Hassan, sounding livelier. “So was my grandmother. She was captured from a trading ship that got caught up in some kind of naval encounter near the Strait. Her family never ransomed her, so my grandfather ransomed her as a dowry and married her. I’m one-quarter Breton.”

“Well I’m four-quarters Breton,” snapped Gwennec. “And if you think I’m going to clap you on the back and call you brother because your grandfather kidnapped one of my countrywomen, you’d best think again.”

“There’s no need to be ugly about it,” said Hassan. He raised himself to his elbows with a groan. “I was only making conversation. Am I supposed to act contrite over something that happened forty years before I was born?”

“Not contrite,” Gwennec muttered, untucking his habit from his belt. “Only a little less glib.”

The cog rose and dipped, gliding down the far side of the swell almost gently, as if to apologize for its earlier misbehavior. For a moment, Fatima saw a young, red-haired woman standing at the rail, wearing a dress too thin for strong weather. She wondered whether Hassan’s grandmother had mourned in secret, whether she had looked upon her children with ambivalence, as offspring who were not quite hers, from whom her history had been erased. Was it possible to love children born of war? Fatima tried to remember her own mother’s face and found she couldn’t. Perhaps if she had birthed her child in her own land, among those she loved, she would have lived.

“My grandfather loved her, if that means anything,” said Hassan in a different voice. “She used to sing to us in her own language. I’ve forgotten the words now. I was her favorite grandchild. Out of all of us, I was the only one who inherited her coloring.”

Gwennec studied Hassan with a scowl. “You do have a Breizhiz look about you,” he said. “Though only in the hair and complexion. Your features are Moorish.” He spat a clot of blood onto the deck. Turning his back, he stumped up the short steps to the raised platform that made up the stern castle and ran his hands over the tiller, soothing it as he might a nervous horse. Satisfied with whatever the tiller had told him, he tugged on several of the slender ropes that ran from the top of the mast to the deck railing, testing each for tension. His hands, like his face, were red and wind-roughened, but Fatima liked the way he used them: they were fluent, like Hassan’s, though their language was wood and water instead of paper and ink. When they finally settled on the tiller again, the cog began to turn, gliding obediently where they told it to go.

“What are you doing?” cried Fatima, roused as if from sleep.

“Turning around,” said Gwennec. “The wind will be against us, but if we tack a little, we should make it back to port in a few hours.”

Fatima stared hard at Gwennec. He only spat again and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Gathering her robe, Fatima ran up the steps to the stern castle and dug her nails into Gwennec’s clever hands, wrenching them away from the tiller. Gwennec gave a hoarse cry and danced backward. Fatima put herself between him and the tiller, pressing her back into it until she felt the pressure in her spine.