Uncovering The Merchant's Secret

A scraping noise made him jump in surprise, dragging him from his memories. It sounded as if something was ripping through the bottom of the boat and the floor vibrated. Cries of consternation came from the deck above and he realised that the scraping was true and the cog had collided with something. He ran up on deck and found Nevez leaning over the side, glaring.

‘That is no lighthouse. This is the work of wreckers. We have been tricked.’

‘What can we do?’ John asked.

Nevez smacked the rail with his fist. ‘Nothing! The hull is breached. There is a small rowing boat, but, other than that, our lives are in the hand of fate.’

Around them, men were throwing barrels and chests overboard and clinging to them in the hope of floating to shore safely.

‘Quick, to the boat,’ Nevez shouted.

‘One moment,’ John called. He was already running across the tilting deck to the galley. The letters to Masters Fortin and Rudhale could be rewritten, as could the report for King Edward’s Lieutenant, but the box also contained certain letters of importance to him from Margaret that he could not bear to lose. He took the steps two at a time and landed up to his ankles in water. He grabbed the document case, grateful it was small enough to stow in a satchel. He slung the satchel across his body so it hung beneath his arm and fastened his cloak over the top. There was no point being safe from drowning to freeze to death.

The boat pitched and he had to scramble on to the deck on his hands and knees. The deck was deserted. Nevez’s rowing boat had moved away.

‘Wait for me,’ John shouted.

‘Swim to us,’ Nevez yelled.

John took a running jump into the sea. The waves enveloped him, pulling him down into the black, crushing coldness that left him gasping for breath. He surfaced, his lungs begging for air. As he broke through the water he discovered that, contrary to what he had thought, he cared very much about living.

He had no time to rejoice in this newfound appetite for survival or recover his breath because a large piece of wood struck his shoulder from behind. His arm went numb. He kicked his legs, propelling him towards the small boat. Something tore at his leg and he realised he was closer to the rocks than he realised. The rowing boat would risk being smashed if it came close. If he was near to the rocks, he could not be too far from the shore.

‘Go without me,’ he bellowed.

He could scramble over them towards safety. He aimed for the rocks when something hit him from behind, forcing him head first on to an outcrop. The impact left him reeling. He flailed and was slammed once more on to the rocks. Something warm trickled down his face, but he had no time to examine the wound.

John clambered up the rocks and crawled on his belly in the direction of the light that was burning on shore. Facing brutal wreckers would be safer than a certain death by drowning. After much slipping and sliding that left him grazed and bruised, he staggered on to a beach. He tripped over a body of one of the crewmen who had not survived the waters and gave a sob.

His head was spinning. There seemed to be two moons shining down, but even so he was finding it hard to make out anything in the moonlight. He felt his head and his fingers came away wet and sticky with blood. The sensation made him nauseous.

John staggered further up the beach, but when the hard sand changed, he slipped and lay on the damp shingle. He rolled on to his back, tangled in his cloak, and lay there. Time lost meaning and it could have been a day or a minute before he first heard the voices that called to each other across the shore. The wreckers had come.

Among the coarse sounds, John was convinced he heard soft female tones that did not belong in a place of such devastation and death. He caught a scent of something floral that was at odds with the odours of sea and blood. He decided he must be dreaming, or was at last to be reunited with his wife and a feeling of peace descended on him.

‘Margaret?’ he mumbled. ‘I am ready for you.’

He could not keep his eyes open and had no strength left to do anything but surrender to whatever fate held in store for him.

Chapter Two

The fires had been lit in the church windows again.

Blanche Tanet slammed down her comb as soon as the faint scent of smoke reached her. Her bedchamber on the top floor of the tower room had windows at each side and she could see both shores that the castle overlooked. She leaned out, looking towards the village of Plomarc’h and, sure enough, in the window of St Petroc’s Church, a light shone out to sea. The church was on the clifftop set a short distance from the village. It was visible from the sea, so sailors and fishermen would know they were being watched over, but the purpose of the beacon was far from holy.

Blanche had been preparing for bed, but could not ignore this. She muttered an oath under her breath. She tore off her chemise and began to dress in breeches and a shirt. Over the top of her padded, sleeveless gambeson she threw a heavy cloak, then tugged on her knee-length leather boots. She did not have time to braid her hair, but simply gathered it, twisting and piling it under a wide-brimmed sailor’s hat, and strode down the stairs, gathering a flaming brand from the iron ring in the wall. When she reached the path that led to the beach she broke into a run, arriving on the beach slightly out of breath.

The bodies of drowned men littered the shore. When the moon slid from behind heavy, black clouds, the rocky shore looked like a battlefield. Blanche felt her stomach heave. She swallowed down the bile that rose to her throat and tightened her grip on the torch. She strode to the shore and peered out across the black rocks that glistened wet and sharp, only slightly visible above the surface. The rocks stretched out well into the sea and had been guilty of causing more deaths than Blanche could imagine over the centuries.

Barrels bobbed, surging in and out as the tide dragged at them. Wine. This had most likely been a merchant ship. All around her, the villagers hauled the debris from the sea to carry it away or load it on to the wheeled carts they had brought in preparation for such finds.

Was she the only one who felt a twinge of guilt at the way they treated the dead? A little way along the shore, a short, wide man was standing up to his knees in the water, heaving a cask back to shore. Blanche recognised him. Andrey was her cousin by her second marriage and the Captain of Blanche’s ship White Wolf.

Blanche intercepted him as he dropped his salvage on the shingle and stood upright, stretching his arms to relieve the cricks in his neck.

‘Who ordered the fires to be lit?’ she demanded.

Andrey scowled and spat into the sea. ‘Who do you think? Ronec did.’

Blanche’s fist tightened around the flaming brand she held. Jagu Ronec was the landowner whose property neighboured Blanche’s. He was also the Captain and part-financier of Blanche’s second ship, White Hawk. He was wealthy, powerful and—as Blanche had found out only after she had allied herself with him—cruel and unprincipled. She counted to ten in her head, breathing deeply before she answered, wishing she had never thought to involve him in her crusade against the French forces. Even with this attempt at controlling the repellent emotions Ronec’s name conjured, her voice was tight and full of fury.

‘And you obeyed him?’

‘Not I,’ Andrey said. ‘But the crews are growing tired of waiting for your command to sail and your insistence on only taking French ships. They look to Ronec, anticipating an alliance between you.’

Blanche flushed. There was an implicit criticism in Andrey’s words and it was not without reason. Ronec had already had more of Blanche than she had wanted to give and marriage was an alliance she was determined to resist to the last. The villagers’ discontent was something she would have to address soon. Ronec was not present, of course. He would not venture out to wallow in salt water in the dark when others could do it on his behalf.

‘Take the bodies to the castle,’ she commanded Andrey. ‘They deserve a proper burial.’

Andrey nodded and began relaying the order to the men who had gathered round to watch them speaking. Andrey’s loyalty to Blanche was unquestionable and she knew that the dead would be laid to rest with respect.

Blanche began to roll the barrel up the sloping beach to add it to the pile of salvage. The methods were dishonourable, but she would not let the salvage be wasted when it could be used to improve the lives of the tenants on her land.

The barrel was heavy. Blanche paused for breath beside a corpse that had been washed further up the beach than most. The man was lying on his back, one arm tangled inside a heavy cloak that must have hampered his efforts to swim and should by rights have dragged him to the bottom of the sea. Yet here he was, lying on the beach, his long limbs sprawled out carelessly. He could have been napping on a riverbank on a warm summer afternoon.

He was not a youth, nor as old as Andrey. Blanche guessed he was somewhere around his thirtieth year, only a handful of years younger than she was. Unbidden, her mind went back to her first husband who had died before his time. This man looked nothing like Mael, but the thought of stolen years upset her more than she was expecting, sorrow creeping around her heart like a winding cloth.

She knelt down next to him, barrel of wine temporarily forgotten, and held the brand close to his face. He would have been handsome when alive and it struck her as unfair that he had been snatched from life in such a brutal manner. A deep gash split his right eyebrow and ran across his temple into his sandy-brown hair. It was stark red against the paleness of his skin, though the cold and seawater had staunched the blood flow and now it was a livid, ragged-edged wound.

The laces of his shirt were untied to the middle of his chest. He must have been caught by surprise and had no time to dress properly before the cog was dashed on the rocks. By the flickering light of the brand, Blanche noticed the glint of gold among the fine, light brown hairs. She, reached beneath his collar, hooking her finger under the chain and drew out a delicate cross.

The wreckers would simply rip it from his neck, snapping the chain, but Blanche could not bear to do that with something so beautiful. She stuck the torch into the sand and cradled his head, easing it forward to slip the long chain free. Red stones glinted on the surface. Something this beautiful was too fine to leave for the wreckers to break and waste on drinking, gambling or whoring. Blanche had little care for the treasures she stole from the French beyond what good they could do to aid the cause of Brittany or her tenants, but she was gripped with the need to make sure the unknown man’s treasure survived as a memorial to his life. She would not share this with anyone else so she slipped it around her own neck, tucking it deep into the bodice of her dress where it nestled between her breasts. An odd frisson made her shiver at the feel of the object that had been intimately touching him.

As she rested the man’s head back, his eyes flickered open and he uttered a weak, breathy moan. He was alive! The strength of relief and joy that flooded her heart took her by surprise. He gave a heaving cough and water bubbled to his lips. Blanche pushed her hands against his ribs, pushing upwards to force any remaining water out. He bared his teeth and hissed. Mortified at having added to his pain, Blanche slid her hands gently up to his cheeks and pulled his head into what she hoped was a more comfortable position. His eyes opened once more—a little wider this time—and he peered at her. His eyes were light blue and full of confusion and pain. Though hazy, they were captivating in their intensity and Blanche could not tear her gaze away.

Blanche’s hat had become dislodged when she had jerked in surprise. She pulled it off. As her thick, black locks fell freely about her, the man smiled and whispered something in a language she thought was English.

‘I don’t understand,’ she replied in Breton, then repeated it in French.

He reached a hand out towards her hair, fumbling and clumsy. Blanche instinctively recoiled, as she did at the advances of any man, but as his fingertips brushed against her cheek with the lightest of touches, her heart fluttered.

His strength was almost spent and his arm was seized with a tremor that made it shake violently. He could not be long for this world and the awakening was only delaying the inevitable. Blood loss and shock would claim him before the night was out. Already his hand was so cold with the clammy texture of a corpse. Instinctively, Blanche wanted to pull away, but remorse and guilt flooded her once more. Her people bore the responsibility for his death, so the least she could do was bear the discomfort and act as witness to his passing. She owed him that much. She covered his hand, holding it to her cheek and feeling the quiver that raced along his arm.

He tried to pull her down towards him, tilting his head back and parting his lips as if he intended to kiss her. His fingers scrabbled deep into the hair at the nape of her neck, causing her to shiver at the intimacy of his touch. Her heart drummed a march in her breast.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered, stroking the matted hair back from his brow.

His eyes focused again and locked on hers and he bestowed on her a smile of such overwhelming tenderness that she wanted to weep. Tenderness. So long since anyone had looked at her in such a way. Blanche closed her eyes wistfully. She bent her head and kissed his forehead with the lightest of touches. His head came up and his mouth found hers with a swiftness she would not have anticipated in one so close to death.

His lips tasted of salt and moved over hers with a fierceness she had never encountered before. He was fighting to the end; a dying man’s final attempt at comfort or a sweet memory to take beyond the grave. There was desperation beneath the desire, drawing her to him and leaving her powerless to resist its pull. She kissed him back, letting her lips form the shape of his in a moment of mutual sorrow.

She felt the moment his strength gave out. Her eyes filled as she drew away and laid his head gently down.

He smiled once more.

‘My angel. I am ready to come to you,’ he whispered in French, then closed his eyes.

An angel?

Blanche smiled at the thought, though tears smarted in her eyes. He thought he was speaking to someone else. If only the man knew what kind of woman was peering down at him, he would not use such terms. She was Jael. Jezebel. She was the Magdalene at her worst.

His hand went limp and she placed it across his chest. She ran her fingertips along the edge of the wound on his head, probing as gently as she could so as not to cause him more discomfort, though she suspected he was rapidly slipping beyond such experiences. The wound was deep and she felt the hardness of bone. His chest heaved and he groaned, twisting on the sand. There was still strength in him. If his body was as strong as his kiss, there might be hope...

‘Andrey, come help me,’ she shouted. ‘This one is a survivor.’

Andrey stomped over and looked down.

‘Huh, better to finish him off quickly,’ he said, reaching for the curved dagger at his belt.

Blanche threw herself in front of the man, arms out, and stared up at Andrey defiantly.

‘No. We’ll take him to the castle and give him a place to rest.’

Most likely he would not survive the night, but she could not leave him here for such a sad and lonely end.

Andrey looked appalled. ‘We have no idea who these men are. He could be a spy for Charles de Blois. Do you really want to give shelter to such a man?’

Blanche stood, curling her fists. She placed them on her hips and lifted her shoulders back. Though she was only a woman, she had learned that to mimic a man’s posture somehow garnered more respect and granted her authority that using her femininity did not.

‘It is my home. I will not be argued with.’

Andrey still looked unhappy. Blanche softened her stance and smiled.

‘I know what you say is wise, but look at him. He can be no danger to us, even if he is a spy, in this condition. Fetch a cart and help me carry him, but be discreet. I want as few people to know as possible. That will ensure word does not travel.’

Especially to Ronec’s ears. Andrey met her eyes and Blanche knew he had the same thought. He nodded his head, seemingly satisfied by this precaution.

She bent down once more as Andrey stomped off, and took the man’s hand. It would be sensible to at least try to find out what allegiance he might have.

‘What is your name?’ she asked. ‘Can you speak?’

He opened his eyes and muttered a word that was no word.

‘Your name,’ she repeated, leaning close so that her ear was close to his lips. ‘Who are you?’

He muttered something that may have been Jacques, then his eyes closed and his mouth went slack.

Andrey brought the cart and began to rearrange the contents to make space. Blanche pushed the man’s cloak back and saw he was wearing a satchel. Blanche eased it free. It contained a small, shallow casket made of dark wood.

‘At least we’ll have some spoils,’ Andrey said with a grin.

Blanche held it to the light. It was plain and looked well used. Probably a document case, but maybe a jewel casket.

‘It may contain the key to learning who he is,’ Blanche mused.

‘Key! Not one I’ve found.’ Andrey laughed. ‘Best break it open.’

Blanche put the bag and casket on to the cart.

‘There’ll be plenty of time for that later. Keep it safe for now.’

If the man lived, she would ask him herself. If he didn’t, then she would permit Andrey to open it and put an end to their curiosity. She helped Andrey lift the man, slipping her arms in the crook behind his knees, and made sure he was laid carefully on to the cart. His long legs were crooked, reminding her of a discarded marionette, and she straightened them before putting the box beside him. She followed the cart up the beach and along the rutted track that led to the sea gate of the castle. In the courtyard she paused, as the first seeds of doubt began to grow.

‘We won’t put him in a bedroom,’ she decided. ‘There’s a small storeroom in the cellars of the outbuilding. Take him there.’

She saw that the man was taken where she instructed and a pallet with a mattress was provided. She dismissed Andrey and his suggestions that she call a servant to tend the injured man.

‘The fewer people who know, the safer it will be for all of us.’

In truth, she felt responsible and wanted to tend the man herself. The moonlight shone through the small, barred window, falling across his face, which even in the dim light she could see had a deathly pallor. She loosened his wet shirt and eased it off his body, thinking how long it had been since she had undressed a man and how welcome it was knowing this one was in no position to paw at her or expect a candle’s worth of rutting. She pressed her palm over his heart. The beat was barely perceptible beneath the mound of his chest. He began to shiver, tremors passing through what Blanche recognised was a powerful frame. She drew a sheet high up to his chin and covered him with a pair of wolf pelts. She spooned weak ale laced with something to ease his pain between his lips.

If he survived the night that would be miraculous, but she left him and went to her own bed satisfied that she had done what she could.

Chapter Three

Long fingers of light fluttered across the wall. They played over his legs and moved slowly, languidly up his body until they reached his face and began to climb stealthily upwards. Because of this, he knew time was passing, but his limbs felt heavy and he had no desire to move. He was lying on a mattress, though the lumpy sack filled with stale-smelling straw hardly dignified the description. Everything was unfamiliar. This was not his home.

His head ached as if he had been beaten around it repeatedly and his muscles felt torn, but he didn’t know why. He reached a hand up to touch the main source of the dull throbbing on his temple and discovered his arm was weak and the effort brought a sweat to his brow. He succeeded in feeling his head. It was bandaged, which meant he had suffered an injury of some sort, but he had no idea what or how he had come about it. Nor did he have any idea how he came to be in this place.

The last thing he remembered was—

And there he was forced to stop, because although he had the vague sense of scents and tastes, and the sound of screaming and splitting wood in his ears, he had no recollection of what had happened. He knew for certain he did not know this place, but how he knew that, he was unable to explain. The smell was musty and old with a hint of yeastiness to the air. If he didn’t know better, he would say he was in a bakery or storeroom.

He rolled his head to look at the source of light and realised the narrow slit of window was barred. Panic constricted his chest as he realised he must be a prisoner. The fact he had no idea who his captors were, or why he had been imprisoned, increased the terror tenfold. The agitation heated his limbs and he felt his blood spring to life as it surged around his body. He took a deep breath and decided he would hammer on the door until someone came, but when he embarked on this plan his legs buckled before he had crossed half the small space, and he crumpled to the ground. He lay in a heap on the cold stone floor, noticing now that he was naked from the waist up. So, he was in a barred room with a stone floor and a small door. That probably meant the ground floor or cellars. Which meant a big building. The effort of coming to this conclusion made his head reel and did not, in fact, help him in any real way, but a small part of him cheered in satisfaction that he had noticed the surface he was lying on. He had not lost all his wits.

He cried out in English, but when no one answered, something in the back of his mind told him this was not the only language he could use. He repeated his words in French, gratified that the words came as easily. Still no one came, so when he felt slightly stronger he crawled his way back on to the pallet and pulled up the sheet and furs. He lay there shivering, his mind in turmoil, knowing that he had no choice but to wait until his captors deemed it fit to visit him. He slept again.

When he woke it was daylight now. The sun was a warm orange and there was a faint scent of sea in the air, accompanied by a hint of sweet blossom. He inhaled deeply, taking pleasure from the only thing of beauty in his life that he could clutch on to.

A metallic scraping sound caught his attention and he realised it was coming from the other side of the door. It was the sound of a bolt being drawn back. He looked to the door slightly too sharply and the movement caused his head to spin. Lights burst behind his eyes and he blinked furiously to clear them, so that when the door opened he was lying with watery eyes and staring at the ceiling so he did not immediately notice who had entered.

Someone walked to the corner of the room and he heard a pot of some sort set down on a table he had not noticed earlier. He waited patiently to see what would happen. An instinct was telling him to try overpowering whoever it was and try to escape, but he knew he didn’t have the strength to do anything of the sort. He opened his eyes and craned his head weakly. A short girl in a plain gown was placing a jug on a small table.

‘Where am I?’ he asked in English. ‘Help me!’

His voice was rasping from the dryness of his throat. The girl shrieked and jumped back and the jug toppled over. Before he could speak again she had fled from the room, banging the door behind her. He heard the bolt scrape, confirming he was a prisoner. He groaned weakly and licked his lips, thirsty beyond endurance and with a belly that ached from emptiness. He didn’t think he would be able to sleep, but his head began to spin and he lapsed into a fitful sleep.