The Bird King(93)

Fatima sank back, but did not quite lie flat, for in the next instant, Hassan had his arms around her and Gwennec was planting stubbled kisses on her cheek.

“Thank God,” cried Hassan, half sobbing. “I told you, Gwen, I told you I’d know if she were dead. I knew it wasn’t so, I knew it in my soul—”

There was a little shriek. The scarred man rose to his feet and groped for a piece of driftwood, and a moment later, a shadow landed in a spray of sand and thrust itself in Fatima’s face.

“Have you gone entirely mad?” roared Vikram. “Do you realize what that thing could have done to you?”

“Who’s this now?” piped the sparrow’s voice. “Why’s it shouting at the king? What is it, anyway?”

“I’m the king’s fairy godmother,” snapped Vikram. He prodded Fatima, lifting and dropping her arms and legs until, apparently satisfied with the state of her health, he subsided into the sand with a long-suffering groan. Fatima struggled to sit unaided, blinking until the beach, the sky, the faces gathered around her came into clearer focus.

The sparrow’s voice came, not from a child as she had first thought, but from a woman of very small stature; she was not in a nightdress after all, but in a man’s linen undershirt, which fell nearly to her ankles. Her face, like Gwennec’s, was ruddy and lined from the sun, and her hair was as straight and straw-like, but nut-brown whereas Gwennec’s was blond. Her limbs, though short, were well muscled and bore the emblems of hard work: chapped hands and sinews that stood out across her wrists and forearms. Standing behind her, the scarred man seemed almost a giant, his white robe and blue linen coat catching the air and floating around him like the flag of some unknown country.

“Who are they?” asked Fatima, her voice cracking.

“The tall one is Deng,” said Gwennec. “The not-so-tall one is Mary. They’re all right.”

“But where did they come from?” pressed Fatima, feeling suddenly wary.

“We were shipwrecked,” said Mary, whose smile was unaccountably cheerful. “On the boat from Calais. A straight shot across the Channel, it was supposed to be. But there was a storm, a big storm, and then a calm that was even more terrible, and no land in sight. People began to talk. Someone said the ship was bewitched, and since Deng is very black and I am very small, they figured it must have been one or the other of us as cursed the ship. So we set off, just us two, in a shore boat in the dead of night. Deng had some fancy notion of navigating by the stars, but we got turned around anyway, and ended up here.”

“And not before we were half dead from rowing,” said Deng in a dry voice, tossing aside the stick he had picked up to threaten Vikram. “I still have the blisters to prove it. I’m used to cutting out cataracts, not pulling oars.”

Fatima, still only half awake, looked from his hands to his face and back again.

“Are you a doctor?” she asked dully.

“Yes, I’m a doctor.” Deng paused and burst into on odd laugh. “I’m a very, very good doctor. I don’t say so to brag—only it’s strange that I should be here in this unnamed place and not treating kings and delivering princes. I didn’t think people like me were destined for journeys like this. Then again, I never thought I’d be accused of witchcraft by toothless old sailors, either.” He patted his hands on his robe to knock the sand off and sat down facing the waves, laughing again.

“You can still be doctor to a king,” said Mary, her smile unbothered. “We’ve got a king right here.”

“Stop it,” snapped Deng.

“No, I mean it. You might’ve been snatched from a life of renown, but for those of us as were laundresses, this beach isn’t so unpleasant. I suppose I can wash clothes just as well on Avalon as I could in Cornwall.” Mary flung her hair over her shoulder and walked down the beach with a stiff, uneven gait. Just beyond her, huddled against a sun-bleached log, was a rough sort of encampment: a series of damp canvas sacks, their contents spilling out onto the sand, and the fragmented remains of a campfire in a shallow pit.

“If I’d a needle and thread,” called Mary, pulling garments out of one of the canvas sacks, seemingly at random, “I could even sew myself some proper clothes instead of wandering about in your unmentionables, Deng.”

“We lost her pack when the boat capsized,” muttered Deng, rubbing his eyes. “I grabbed my own kit without thinking, but not hers. Now she won’t let me forget it.”

Hassan laughed, his voice high and light. Fatima turned to look at him: his eyes looked very wide, as they always did when he was flirting. Stung, Fatima tried to rise. Hassan pulled her back again.

“Don’t,” he whispered into her hair. “Not for another minute yet. I’m still not sure you’re real.”

The invitation was irresistible. Fatima closed her eyes and buried her face in the front of his shirt, smelling salt and the dense, acrid sweetness of old sweat. She thought of the night she had come to his room in the Alhambra and told him to flee, and how much younger they had both seemed then, though it hadn’t been so long ago—the miles and not the days had aged them. How very small had been the chance of survival. To be here, with all the empty space of the map between them and the Holy Office, seemed less a victory than a gift. Fatima breathed the milky air and realized her face was wet.