Madoc Page 17

  The wind dropped and in the morning they were almost becalmed, but Svein began to get excited because the dawn showed him that something was happening to the sea.

  ‘Mud … look at that colour,’ he exclaimed, leaning over the side to point down into the water.

  The blue of the great ocean had a definitely brownish tint. From the masthead, it became apparent that far off to the right there was still some azure water, but the sea immediately around them was a discoloured stream, pouring past them to the south.

  With almost no movement, they felt frustrated at being trapped at a time when the signs were the most hopeful of having land within reach, for every man knew the significance of muddy water.

  ‘A great river, this must be,’ declared Svein, ‘with brown water, yet too far from shore for birds to come out to us.’

  But then the wind came from the south-west and took them away from the muddy stream. In a few hours, the Gwennan Gorn was clipping along at almost her best pace, with the strong breeze dead on her stern. Madoc was tempted to try to steer her as far to the west as she would go, to get back to the origin of the coloured water, but Svein said that speed in any direction was the thing that mattered most. They would have halved the rate of their progress if they braced their yard to crawl due north. Madoc had great misgivings, but it seemed better to reach the unknown quickly, rather than slowly, with their food stocks so low again.

  Nothing was seen for the rest of the day, nor on the morrow.

  The crew said nothing, but Madoc could feel their resentment growing again. Alun continued his sullen silence and did not appear to have been stirring up any trouble amongst the seamen,but he threw some evil glances at Svein as he stood at the steering oar.

  On the second night, Madoc slept uneasily wedged on his blanket against the bulwark as the little vessel pitched with the ever-following wind. Another man was clinging sleepily to the steering oar, it being Alun’s turn to sleep. As ever, the Welsh prince’s thoughts sped homeward across the great ocean. Whatever the cost, this voyage has been the best thing in the world for me, he thought – getting away from the turmoil of Aberffraw and the hatred of his brothers. Time to get over the loss of Annesta and to heal the wound by this almost monk-like solitude and penance of sailing in an empty world.

  His reverie was abruptly shattered by a yell and a scream, mixed with a scuffling of bodies in the deck space below him. He leapt up and dashed to the edge of the hold, putting his head over the edge to try to see what was happening in the dim starlight.

  ‘Svein … Einion … what’s going on?’ Madoc shouted into the hold. The scuffling still went on, mixed with the curses of sleeping men being rudely awakened.

  ‘Whatever’s happening down there, stop it,’ he yelled, suddenly alarmed by the struggling and moaning that came from below.

  But the next second a pair of hands reached up and grabbed him by the throat. Helpless, he felt his breath being cut off and as flashing lights began to burst redly in front of his eyes, he was dragged further over the edge until, with a final explosion of stars inside his brain, he pitched forward into the hold and lost consciousness.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The first thing Madoc did when he awoke was to vomit violently. His head was throbbing like a drum;his main desire was to die and, for an hour or so, he neither knew nor cared where he was.

  Eventually, true consciousness came to him and he found himself squatting in the hold, his back against the curve of the hull. His hands were tied in front of him with leather thongs, but his feet were free – not that there was anywhere to go.

  A grey light was filtering into the sky, which was clouded over again, though not with the ominous masses that had come with the storm.

  He groaned and tried to identify the many aches and pains in his body. He managed to turn his face to the left and saw dimly that Einion was similarly trussed alongside him. There were a number of other men in the hold, all with their wrists lashed by the plaited leather. More serious, however, was the figure of Svein lying across the oxhides that formed a mound over the cargo. He was not tied up and the reason was all too obvious. Though alive and breathing stertorously, his face was dead white and blood was seeping from under a crude bandage that was wrapped around his shoulder and chest.

  Madoc found that his throat would not function. Pain and soreness in his voicebox prevented anything but a useless croak coming from it. But even this was enough to attract Einion’s attention.

  ‘Brother, are you all right?’ he muttered.

  Madoc croaked back a noise that he hoped sounded reassuring.

  ‘Madoc, you sound like a goose with its throat cut. Your face is red and you have blood in your eyeballs. Can you not speak?’

  Madoc remembered being grabbed and throttled, presumably accounting for this damage to his throat and the sore puffiness of his face. He managed to make some noises which sounded nearenough like ‘What’s happened?’ for Einion to understand him.

  ‘Mutiny … that damned Alun Crookeye has raised a revolt against us. Svein is stabbed by him. I fear for his life.’

  Madoc tried to get up and crawl towards Svein. He reached him on his knees and touched his face with his manacled hands. It was cold and sweating, but the Viking groaned and opened his eyes.

  ‘Treachery, old friend,’ he murmured.

  ‘Where are you hurt?’ Madoc tried to ask. It felt as if a razor was being drawn across his windpipe.

  ‘He has a stab in the chest, on the right side under the armpit, thanks to Alun,’ growled Meirion, the man who had been steering.

  ‘I will recover, never fear,’ said Svein, in a weak, but resolute voice. ‘I have to do so, in order to tear the limbs off that damned traitor.’

  Madoc gradually got the world into perspective.

  ‘The crew … how many are on Alun’s side?’

  He found that, by whispering instead of trying to talk, he could make himself understood to Einion.

  ‘All except these nine men here, I think. Though their attachment to Alun is probably one of expediency, not loyalty,’ murmured his brother.

  ‘Call him … call that damned dog with the crossed eyes,’ hissed Madoc, unable to do so himself.

  Einion struggled to his feet, his head just below the deck level.

  ‘Alun … Alun Gam, come here.’

  Into the dawn light of the square hold opening, Alun appeared.

  ‘Don’t shout orders at me, I’m the shipmaster now,’ he snapped.

  Svein grunted and tried to move when he saw his arch-enemy, but he was too weak and fell back onto the ox-hides.

  ‘What’s the meaning of this, Alun? What can you gain by so mistreating us and trying to kill Svein Olafsen?’ grated Einion.

  The skinny, wall-eyed sailor looked down grimly at them.

  ‘Sanity … that’s what I shall gain. We have come on a devil’s errand and you compound it, you and that barbarian Viking.’

  Madoc was genuinely puzzled.

  ‘What do you mean, compound it?’ he croaked.

  ‘As if coming into the unknown was not enough, you saw a sign of land two days ago … a muddy effluent … and yousailed away from it. You may court death, but the rest of us want to live.’

  ‘So what have you done, madman?’ asked Einion boldly.

  ‘Put our steering oar and tacking boom to take us back towards the source of that current,’ snapped Alun. ‘As you should have done in the first place. You madmen have not enough sense to run a boat across the Straits of Menai, let alone into evil waters so far from the Christian world as this.’

  ‘And have you reached this muddy current again, clever sailor?’ snapped Einion.

  ‘Not yet, but the wind is not in our favour, thanks to your madness in leaving the river water astern of us.’

  ‘What are you going to do with us?’ croaked Madoc, managing to make himself heard, in spite of the pain. ‘Kill us, as you have tried to kill Svein?’

  Alun’s ugly face twiste
d in hate. ‘Kill him! What did he do to me … smash my face and injure me for advising some other course. No, I’ll not kill you, Prince Madoc, for you are still a king’s son, bastard or not. We shall have to see what befalls us in these devilish waters.’

  Madoc struggled to his feet, to stand alongside his brother.

  ‘Then let us free. You are on your new course – it is pointless changing back again now. We have no cause for quarrel with you, apart from the need to have justice over your attack on Svein.’

  Alun shook his head emphatically.

  ‘Oh no! You shall stay there for the time being –and those stupid men who refused to see the sense of my actions. I have other men here who are sensible and who want to see their families again, not throw their lives away in this endless sea.’

  ‘Then you will need us to get you home, Crookeye,’ snapped Einion, ‘for none of you know anything about navigating a vessel out of sight of land.’

  Alun nodded. ‘For that reason, as well as my reluctance to lay a finger on the life of a royal man, you will be treated as well as the rest of us. You will share our food and water and share the thirst and hunger, if we do not see the shore soon.’

  One of the other sailors – sullen and uncommunicative – came down to hand round some water and a meagre ration of rotten meat, coconut flesh and some dried fish.

  Madoc tried to make Svein as comfortable as he could. He managed to unwrap the wound coverings with his tied hands. There was no more bleeding from the knife slash, though it was red and angry-looking.

  Alun refused to untie their hands and without this they had no hope of climbing up out of the hold. They tried unpicking each other’s knots, but the water slopping about the bottom of the vessel had tightened up the leather until it chafed cruelly into their skin.

  Though weak and feverish, Svein watched their struggles, then beckoned Madoc near him with jerks of his head.

  ‘I have a knife inside my jerkin,’ he murmured. ‘They forgot to take it away when they searched you others.’

  Cautiously, Madoc slid down beside Svein on the cargo cover, propping his back against the casks and boxes under the ox-hides. He slid his bound hands under the rough cloth of the Norseman’s jacket and closed his fingers on the hilt of a seaman’s knife.

  Svein’s eyes watched the deck edges above them.

  ‘Now!’ he muttered and Madoc slid the knife out and held it close to his own stomach as he rolled back to his place opposite.

  He slumped across his neighbour, just in time, covering the knife with his body, as Alun stared suspiciously down at them.

  As soon as he had gone, Madoc put the keen edge of the knife to the bonds of Meirion, the man alongside him. Meirion twisted his wrists to meet the knife and the leather parted easily.

  They worked fast after that, but always with eyes turned to the deck above, stopping when anyone approached. Soon the eleven men with Svein were free, though they sat with the cut bonds draped around their wrists as camouflage.

  ‘What now?’ asked Einion, in a low voice.

  ‘Wait till dusk … that cannot be far off,’ replied Madoc. He was sore in his heart as well as his hands, to think that so many of the men had gone over to Alun. He had sensed all along that the crook-eyed seaman had a strange power over lesser men.

  ‘What do we do then?’persisted Einion. ‘Rush them without weapons? They are more numerous than us and we have the disadvantage of being below their level in this damned hold.’

  Madoc shrugged. ‘Let the inspiration of the moment tell us what to do. I’m sure that once the others see that we are free, they will desert Alun and come back to their senses.’

  They sat for some time, waiting for the first signs of the rapid sunset, when their dilemma was solved in a most dramatic way.

  There was a sudden shout from one of the seamen standing in the bow. ‘Birds! Many birds … look.’

  He pointed upwards and, sure enough, a whole formation of dark-coloured birds wassteadily winging itsway high overhead.

  Another man sprang up the rigging to stand on the main spar. His eyes followed them as the steady beat of their wings took them towards the horizon. Then his face took on a look of incredulity. He pointed away to the steerboard side.

  ‘Land … land!’ he yelled hoarsely. ‘Land all along the skyline!’

  Alun and most of the crew ran to the steerboard bulwark, some jumping up and holding the rigging.

  In the hold, the captives heard the cry themselves and staggered to their feet. They dropped their severed bonds, but the crew above were too intent on looking into the distance to worry about them.

  Madoc grabbed some broken wood from old crates that was intended for fire kindling and, with the other ten at his heels, scrambled up the heap of cargo and leapt for the edge of the decking.

  Surprise had its effect. Alun kicked Madoc in the face as he tried to get to his feet, but Einion smashed a baulk of timber at his shoulder and knocked him down.

  Madoc scrambled up, oblivious of the blood running down his cheek from a large gash. He threw himself on Alun, while the other men advanced threateningly on the rest of the crew.

  As soon as the half-hearted rebels saw that Alun had been felled, they capitulated. Madoc’s half-score, incensed and seeking revenge for the hours of indignity and discomfort in the hold, advanced on them and laid about them with fists to relieve their feelings.

  Alun was trussed up and dumped unceremoniously into the hold, where his prisoners had so lately been kept. Svein was carefully brought up and laid on blankets on the deck.

  The rebels sheepishly made their apologies to Madoc, saying that they would not have continued long with Alun’s madness. After the blows had been flung and honour satisfied all round, Madoc was inclined to forget the whole affair, apart from Alun Gam himself. There were more pressing problems and excitements, as the land was now clearly visible from the deck.

  ‘We must cease all this idiocy and join together as we always have done!’ shouted Madoc, as he paused at the foot of the standing rigging. ‘We are the crew that found the Fortunate Isles and conquered the currents of Gwennan’s Bane. I know your endurance has been sorely tried, but the end is in sight, I feel it in my bones.’

  With that, he swung up the walrus-hide ropes and clambered to the main spar, with the sail billowing below him. The journey was over, at least for the time being. Low, flat land stretched as far as the eye could see, all along the horizon. If this is not a continent, it is an immense island, he thought, with thanks and gladness in his heart.

  The coast seemed featureless, with trees and scrub growing down to the water’s edge, as far as he could see from this ten mile distance. Sand dunes began pointing like a great finger far towards the west, where there seemed to be an opening in the coastline.

  He came down and told the news to the others, who took it in turns to climb the mast and gaze on this new land.

  Madoc went to Svein and, for the first time, his wound was cleansed and properly bandaged. He still had a fever and the margins of the stab were even redder and more angry-looking than before, but his mind was clear and he listened eagerly to the news of the landfall.

  ‘Find some safe anchorage away from the main coast, Madoc,’ he urged. ‘We are on a lee shore and if one of those storms from the very depths of hell should come along again, we would surely be wrecked.’

  ‘There seems to be an inlet or river mouth some miles ahead,’ reassured Madoc. ‘We are making for that and will get inside by morning.’

  Madoc turned the ship’s bow inshore until they could reach bottom with their line. The anchors were dropped and with fervent hopes that no wind would blow up in the night, they sat out the darkness in anticipation of land under their feet and new water and food in their bellies in the morning.

  ‘What do we do with that dog in the hold?’ asked Einion, as they squatted on the deck in the dark.

  Madoc sighed, ‘I don’t know, brother. He has been nothing but trouble since
we entered the waters of the new world.’

  ‘We would do best to throw him over the side and be done with it. We have a just right to do so, by any law.’

  ‘I cannot do it, Einion. If we were home, perhaps. But here, where no Welshman has ever breathed the air before, I cannot bring myself to do such a thing in cold blood.’

  Einion shrugged. ‘We store up more trouble for ourselves if we let him live,’ he said.

  Madoc put off the decision. ‘Let us see what we can see when our feet touch this new land. Maybe some answer will be given to us.’

  In the morning, the wind had shifted around to the south-west and they had difficulty in getting the Gwennan Gorn along the coast as they desired. For a time, they managed to coax her along by dint of hard work on the steering oar, combined with the use of the tacking boom to prod the sail around the mast.

  But by midday, the wind was in front of their bow and reluctantly, the sail came down and the oars came out.

  All that day, they pulled the bluff shape of the little vessel through the water by means of human muscle alone. After weeks of poor diet and the days of physical exhaustion in the storm, they had little enough muscle to spare. It was almost evening when at last they brought the ship round the point of the long sandbar that they had been following for most of the day. This low tongue of land ran for more than twenty miles.

  ‘Bring her round into the gap,’ ordered Madoc, again at the masthead. The opening was about five miles wide, a small island being visible on the far side. As they laboriously crept around the corner, they moved into the wind again and the sail was hoisted, to the relief of the sweating crew. A smell of vegetation drifted to them, even though the nearby land seemed mainly sanddunes and grass.

  As they sailed into the channel, Madoc was astonished to see how it widened out again. It was a river mouth without doubt, but its size was enormous. It must have been thirty miles wide just inside the entrance, going back a long distance behind the sand spit that they had been following.