The Princess and the Captain Page 3

  ‘You’ll live as a stranger wherever you go.’

  ‘I’d rather a life of danger than a doll’s life,’ Malva repeated firmly. ‘I’m not a pretty thing to be put on show in a shop window.’

  ‘Then … then we won’t have any regrets.’

  Philomena pulled the hood up again to hide the Princess’s beautiful face. She peered cautiously over the pile of straw, and then beckoned to Malva to follow her.

  The Archont turned when he heard them coming. His shaven skull looked like a silver helmet in the light of the rising moon. Malva went up to him and, as usual, bowed her head to show respect.

  ‘There’s no time to stand on ceremony,’ the Archont whispered. ‘Everything’s in order, but you mustn’t delay.’

  He took the Princess’s arm and led her round to the back of the cart. Two men were sitting up on the driver’s seat, reins in hand, waiting for the order to leave. The Archont had hired their services in the city, in one of the greasy taverns frequented by mercenaries. They had followed his instructions to the letter: the story was that they had been employed by a vintner to deliver the barrels of Rioro ordered for the wedding feast, and were going straight back with their cart this evening. On board were a dozen empty barrels to be returned to the vintner’s warehouse.

  ‘Quick, get in!’ the Archont urged. ‘I’ll go with you as far as the guardhouse.’

  Malva started with surprise. ‘No further? I thought we arranged that –’

  The Archont passed a hand over his shaven skull. His grey eyes looked deep into his young pupil’s.

  ‘Think, my child. I can’t leave the Citadel, particularly not this evening. It would arouse suspicion at once. But never fear – the two drivers are trustworthy, and I’ve made sure the boat is waiting for you in the port of Carduz. You’ll find Vincenzo on board, one of my most faithful friends.’

  Philomena was listening with some concern. ‘This Vincenzo,’ she asked, ‘are you sure he’ll take us to Lombardaine?’

  ‘Absolutely sure,’ smiled the Archont. ‘And to show him that you really do come from me, I’ll give you this.’

  He took the thin cord with his Archont’s medallion hanging on it from around his neck, and gave it to Malva.

  ‘My name is engraved on the other side,’ he said. ‘With this pledge, Vincenzo would take you to the ends of the Known World.’

  Malva’s hands were on the cart, but she couldn’t bring herself to get in. She was sorry that the Archont wasn’t going all the way to Carduz with them; she’d miss his reassuring presence dreadfully.

  ‘When we’re safe in Lombardaine I’ll send your medallion back,’ she said. ‘Then you’ll know that we’ve succeeded. All we have to do then is wait for news from you.’

  The Archont put his hand on the Princess’s shoulder. ‘You may count on me. I will say prayers for you during the Rite of Tranquillity. And now, hurry! It’s a long way to Carduz.’

  Partly reassured, Philomena and Malva got into the cart, and the chambermaid raised the lid of one of the barrels.

  ‘You first, Princess,’ she said, holding her nose.

  Malva hitched up her skirt and clambered over the rim. The barrel was just wide and deep enough to hold a prettily rounded girl of fifteen. The aroma of Rioro wine still lingered and made her head spin, but she didn’t complain. She’d have to get used to strong smells in her new life on the run.

  Philomena leaned over to hand her the precious bundle, and then lowered the lid on to the barrel. For a second Malva felt as though she was imprisoned in a coffin. It was so dark, and she was so scared …

  She heard Philomena open a second barrel and hide in it herself. There was a dull sound as she fitted the lid back into place. At a word from the Archont the cart set off down the stony path leading to the gates of the Citadel.

  Preparations would be going on for much of the night in the Hall of Delicacies. With a little luck the Coronada wouldn’t notice her daughter’s absence before sunrise, when she was expected to begin putting on her bridal finery. How disappointed the lady’s maids, the hairdressers and everyone else who pestered her would be to find that the bird had flown! It would be midday before they finished searching every nook and cranny of the Citadel. No wedding! No banquet! Nothing. As for the Prince of Andemark, the bridegroom whom Malva hated, he’d just have to find some other Princess to take to his bed!

  Suddenly Malva thought of the farewell letter she had written. By Holy Tranquillity, she’d left it behind her dressing-table mirror! She wanted to get out of the barrel and ask the Archont to retrieve it, but at that moment the cart slowed down. The driver was stopping at the guardhouse. It was too late for her to emerge from the barrel. Malva heard the Archont talking and joking with the sentries before bidding them goodnight, and a few moments later the driver was urging the horses on.

  The cart went north across the plains on the banks of the River Gdavir. Oh well, thought Malva, it’ll be a little while before anyone finds the letter behind that mirror. Jolted about in her stinking barrel, she felt she was suffocating. After what she thought was long enough, she lifted the lid so that she could breathe fresh air.

  Above her, the stars were coming out one by one in the black sky, and far away the Citadel was receding. She could see only its outlines now, and the trembling light of the lanterns hanging in the olive trees. Malva began to laugh quietly. She thought of the Coronador and the Coronada, and the look on their faces the next day. Their fury, like the expense of the wedding ceremony, would be immense!

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ whispered Philomena from the barrel next to hers.

  ‘Nothing …’ said the Princess, stifling her laughter. ‘Come out and see how lovely it is.’

  Philomena lifted the lid of her own barrel. Her long, pale face emerged, but a bump in the road unbalanced her, and she hit her forehead on the rim. Malva started laughing even more.

  ‘I don’t see what’s so funny,’ grumbled Philomena, rubbing her head.

  ‘If you could see yourself, poor Philomena … oh, you’d laugh too!’

  Philomena looked closely at Malva. In the dim light, the barrel made it look as if she had a peculiar, round body without legs or arms. With her tousled hair, too, the Princess was unrecognisable. The chambermaid’s face split into a smile.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘We’re a pretty sight, the pair of us! I expect we’ll reek of wine for days!’

  They burst out laughing, while the two drivers, silent and impassive, drove the cart on towards the mountains. The landscape lay before them, bathed in moonlight: groups of yew trees, a few isolated stone cottages, wide expanses of wild grass. There wasn’t a soul in sight, and the road opened wide ahead of the horses, as if inviting them to gallop.

  Later, Malva and Philomena shared a piece of bread and a handful of black olives.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever eaten anything so good,’ murmured the Princess.

  ‘That’s because it’s flavoured with freedom,’ replied Philomena.

  It was true. In spite of the dangers threatening her, Malva had never felt so light at heart. She closed her eyes. For the first time in her life she would not be sleeping in her own bed. For the first time in her life she was disobeying the Coronador, not to mention the precepts of Tranquillity and Harmony. Before falling into an uncomfortable slumber, she clutched the Archont’s medallion in her hand, grateful to him for understanding her so well.

  4

  The Bitter Taste of Secrets

  Orpheus crossed the bridge without sparing a glance for the silvery reflections cast on the waters of the Gdavir by the moon, and started up a paved road that climbed straight to the Upper Town. Scents of almond and tamarisk wafted on the night air. He looked up at the Campanile on the very top of the hill. The family home of the McBotts stood at the foot of its tower. Orpheus had been born in that house.

  His whole childhood had kept time with the sacred rites in the Campanile, the weddings and funerals, and the sound
of the bells had been his lullaby. They were what he missed most now that he was living in the Lower Town: the chimes and the Angelus. When he was a child, he had liked to hear even the sad tolling of the death-bell. Someone’s died, he used to say to himself, and his curiosity would draw him out of the house, hoping to see the coffin pass. As a child who had never known his mother, he found funerals particularly interesting.

  But today he didn’t want to hear a death knell. He had feared death ever since his father had fallen ill. The idea of being left without any family in the world was terrifying.

  He walked fast up the steep streets to the Campanile, and when he knocked on the heavy front door of the house he felt as if the blows of Fate were echoing in his ears.

  ‘Holy Harmony, there you are at last!’ exclaimed old Berthilde, opening the door. ‘Quick, come in. The Captain’s expecting you!’

  Orpheus followed the old servant’s thin figure. ‘How is he?’

  Old Berthilde sighed and shook her head. ‘The doctor came again this morning. He didn’t prescribe anything.’

  Orpheus anxiously passed through his father’s study, a long room full of furniture, rugs, books and navigational instruments. On the walls wooden masks opened their distorted mouths; Orpheus shivered, as he used to in his childhood, when he met their eyes made of shells. The mementoes of Hannibal’s voyages had always frightened him.

  The next room smelled stuffy, of medicines and illness. Hannibal McBott was waiting for him, lying on a sofa near the fireplace.

  ‘Good evening,’ said Orpheus softly, approaching his father.

  The old man’s head emerged from under his blankets. His face looked grey and his skin was as fragile as paper. His feverish eyes fixed on his son’s face.

  ‘I’m dying,’ he said straight out. ‘I’m glad you’ve come.’ A coughing fit shook the Captain’s shrivelled frame. ‘Come closer, come closer,’ he gasped. ‘We don’t have much time left.’

  Orpheus wanted to protest, to say that the doctor might be wrong and the Captain could yet recover his strength. However, he had never in his life contradicted his father. So he kept quiet, as usual, and merely sat down near the sofa.

  ‘I have to talk to you,’ Hannibal began. ‘About something important. But I find it difficult to get the words to set sail from my lips – and there’s a bitter taste in my mouth that won’t go away …’

  His emaciated hand tried to pick up a bottle from a tray beside him, but it was trembling too much. Orpheus uncorked the bottle and then, supporting his father’s head, helped him to swallow a mouthful of brown liquid which smelled of burnt straw and honey.

  ‘I must find the strength,’ Hannibal murmured. ‘I’ve waited so long. I ought not to have left it so late.’

  Orpheus listened, baffled. Perhaps his father’s illness had clouded his mind.

  ‘Do you remember our discussion?’ Hannibal suddenly asked.

  ‘What discussion?’

  ‘The only real talk we ever had, just the two of us, man to man.’

  Orpheus frowned, realising that his father meant what they had said to each other on that terrible evening thirteen years ago.

  ‘You mean that discussion?’ he asked cautiously.

  ‘Yes, yes. You were eleven. You burst into … into my study …’

  ‘… without knocking, yes, I remember,’ murmured Orpheus, in distress.

  He could still feel the force of his father’s cold anger when he had rushed unexpectedly into his study as he sat surrounded by his books, his instruments, his masks.

  ‘I was so impatient,’ Orpheus remembered. ‘That captain would have taken me on board his ship … it was an amazing stroke of good luck! I ran back here from the harbour and then into your study without stopping to think.’

  Recalling these memories, the young man felt a pang. Why wouldn’t his obsessions leave him alone? Only a short while ago, at home in his armchair, he had lived through the scene again.

  ‘That’s when you told me the truth,’ Orpheus sighed, looking sadly at his father. ‘But let’s not talk about it any more. It’s in the past, there’s nothing to be done about it now. Let me tell you how your old dog is. He’s slow these days, but his eyes are still bright … or would you like me to read to you, to take your mind off things?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Hannibal irascibly. ‘Never mind Zephyr, and I don’t want to be read to! What happened that day is more important. What exactly did I tell you?’

  Orpheus wiped his moist palms on his trousers. ‘You told me about my birth,’ he said quietly. ‘I already knew it had been a difficult one, and that my mother didn’t survive. But I had no idea that I’d had such a close brush with death myself.’

  He sighed, and laid his hand on his father’s. All this old history just twisted the knife in the wound. Why bring it up again?

  ‘I told you that you’d had concussion,’ his father went on. ‘I said the shock of it almost killed you.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what you told me,’ Orpheus sighed. ‘And the doctors gave me up for dead. But luckily for me you nursed me, you watched over me day and night …’

  ‘Until you were out of danger, that was it, am I right? And then?’ Hannibal persisted. ‘What else did I say?’

  ‘You explained that in spite of all the care and nursing when I was a baby, I still suffered from the trauma of my birth. The concussion had damaged part of my brain.’

  Old Hannibal was shaken by a long trembling fit. ‘Your brain, yes, that was it,’ he murmured. ‘I wanted you to understand how serious your condition was.’

  His eyes full of tears, the old man sat up and propped his head against the sofa cushions. He ran his tongue over his lips like a man unable to quench his thirst.

  ‘You didn’t try to find out more,’ he said after a while. ‘You didn’t ask me for any proof, any details.’

  Orpheus shrugged. ‘What could I have asked? All that mattered to me were the consequences of my illness. When you explained that I could never be a sailor …’

  His voice broke. At the time his father had been a tall, strong man, a colossus, his face weathered by sun and sea-spray. In his company Orpheus felt weak and inferior. He would never have dared to doubt the Captain’s word.

  ‘You told me I ran the risk of dying if I went to sea. The pitching and tossing of a ship would open up the injury to my head again and cause irreparable damage. That’s what you told me that evening.’

  Orpheus saw his father’s hands close on the blankets. He saw his chin tremble and his cheeks cave in.

  ‘I remember exactly what I said,’ murmured the Captain. ‘ “For you the sea means death. If you board a ship you won’t live more than two days.”’

  Orpheus closed his eyes. Those words had been ringing in his ears for the last thirteen years. For thirteen years they had made him suffer.

  Hannibal reached out for the bottle of brown liquid, and Orpheus gave him another mouthful. When he touched his father’s shoulders he felt the skin burning with fever.

  ‘Look at me,’ said the old man once he was lying down again. ‘Look straight at me, Orpheus.’

  He took a deep breath.

  ‘It wasn’t true,’ he said. ‘I lied to you. You didn’t suffer concussion at birth, you’d never been ill. I made it all up.’

  For a moment Orpheus thought that his poor father was delirious, losing his mind. He glanced at the bottle. Very likely whatever it contained was making the old man hallucinate.

  ‘You don’t believe me,’ Hannibal said.

  Orpheus sighed and smiled sadly at his father.

  ‘He doesn’t believe me!’ the old man exclaimed again, on the verge of despair. ‘But this time it really is the truth!’

  He became agitated again. He started nodding his head, trembling, making uncontrollable movements. Orpheus felt numb. He didn’t know what to do or say.

  ‘Listen!’ Hannibal suddenly cried. ‘Go and find my shipboard logbook in my study! The big volume bound in black leathe
r! Quick!’

  Orpheus rose, and went into the study like a sleepwalker. The logbook was on the bookshelves, just where it had been for years. Orpheus took it out and gave it to his father, who was lying with his eyes closed, trying to get his breath back.

  ‘The proof that I was lying is in there,’ Hannibal murmured. ‘You can check it for yourself.’ He opened his eyes, with difficulty. ‘I’ll tell you everything, even if it means that you hate me. I owe you an explanation before I die.’

  Orpheus put the logbook on his knees and waited.

  ‘I always knew you’d want to go to sea,’ began his father. ‘You have it in your blood, like all the McBotts. And above all, I knew you’d make a good sailor and a good captain. I’ve watched you from early childhood, Orpheus. You learn fast, you have courage and energy. And above all you want to travel. You want to put to sea, to go on voyages of discovery.’

  Shaken to the core, Orpheus listened. His father had never talked to him like this before, so sincerely. He had never paid him such compliments.

  ‘I had my lies well prepared in advance,’ Hannibal went on, ‘so that I could feed them to you when the time came. I made up the story of your concussion. It didn’t hold water, but I knew you’d believe me. You had no one but me in the world, and you’d always trusted me …’ He choked and coughed. ‘But I abused that trust. That’s why I must try to put things right before it’s too late.’

  At that moment Orpheus heard a noise and turned round. Berthilde was standing in the doorway, holding a tray. She seemed upset. Her hands were trembling so much that the glasses on the tray clinked together.

  ‘Berthilde,’ gasped old Hannibal. ‘She knows! She knows I lied!’

  Orpheus looked at the maid’s face. She had worked here for the McBott family for more than thirty years. She was as much a part of the house as the furniture. No doubt her eyes had seen all that there was to see, and her ears had heard all that there was to hear. Even the silences.

  ‘Tell him, Berthilde,’ Hannibal urged her.

  ‘Your father is right,’ she said, before bowing her head. ‘I knew.’