Upon A Starlit Tide

23. The Tide’s Way

23

The Tide’s Way

‘I thought you’d gone,’ Luce said, watching the groac’h examine Samuel’s back. ‘That you’d left Saint-Malo, like the rest of the Fae.’

‘Not yet.’ The shore-woman’s skirts trailed in the water.

‘Can you help him?’

She nodded. ‘The tide is still rising. And the water has cleaned his wounds.’ She hummed a little melody, brushed her fingers lightly over Samuel’s injuries. ‘You have done well.’

‘I did nothing.’

‘Not true. It was you, and your kiss, that saved him.’

‘My kiss?’

A knowing glance. ‘You deny kissing him?’

‘No, but...’ Mother Aggie had said that the kiss of a seamaid would bring luck—calm seas, fair winds, good trade. ‘Is it true, then? What they say about a seamaid’s kiss?’

‘True enough.’

The night bell, Noguette, tolled from the cathedral, marking the hour of ten and the beginning of the city curfew.

‘I should have done more,’ Luce said brokenly. ‘I tried to keep him from the hull, tried to protect him.’ She wiped away fresh tears. ‘I wasn’t strong enough.’

The groac’h looked meaningfully at Luce’s tail, its tendrils shining in the shallows. ‘You have much to learn. That is not your fault.’

She laid a hand on Samuel’s back, her low, soft humming growing stronger. Luce watched, transfixed, as the wounds marring Samuel’s skin began to ease, lessening somehow.

‘He will be scarred,’ the groac’h warned.

‘He will be perfect.’ Luce swallowed, stroking Samuel’s hair.

The tide-woman might have smiled beneath her tusks. ‘Here,’ she said, gesturing to Luce’s wounds. ‘Your turn.’

When Luce, too, had ceased bleeding, the groac’h got to her feet. ‘There is nothing more we can do for him here,’ she said. ‘He needs rest, and care. Come; he will be safe in your little cave.’

Luce shook her head miserably. ‘We cannot go back to the cave. Morgan—Morgan knows the storm-stone is there.’ And killed Bones anyway. Fresh sorrow welled within her.

‘There is more than one sea-cave near Le Bleu Sauvage,’ the fae said. She whistled, a beautiful quavering note that carried over the Manche. Luce made out the shape of the little witch-boat on the dark water, bearing toward the beach. She slid farther into the water, pulling herself clumsily along, wondering how she might bring Samuel with her.

A bark tore across the sand, the sound of claws scrabbling on rock.

‘It is the hounds.’ The groac’h clenched her jaw in irritation. ‘Cursed beasts.’

‘We must go,’ Luce hissed. The dogs, mastiffs imported from England generations before, were huge and terrifying. They had killed a soldier not three moons past, ripped him to pieces on the beach beneath the castle and eaten what remained. There had been blood on the driest, highest sand for months.

Several hair-raising growls carried up the beach. Long, four-legged shadows skimmed over the rocks and the sand, and through the shadows beneath the ramparts.

Closer, ever closer.

‘They’ve caught our scent,’ Luce whispered.

‘Onto the boat,’ the fae commanded. ‘Quickly.’ She slipped her arms beneath Samuel’s shoulders with surprising strength, dragging him toward the waiting boat. Luce plunged into the water, flicking her tail hard, arrowing along the sea-bed. She broke the surface at the boat’s side and pulled herself aboard.

The dogs came into view, rending the sand with their huge paws, wet clumps of it scattering in their wake. They barked excitedly, plunged into the bloody shallows, growling and sniffing.

‘Hurry,’ Luce called to the groac’h. ‘They will swim if the urge takes them.’

She drew the sea-silk from within her chemise and slipped it carefully into the folds of her caraco. With the loss of its touch on her skin, her tail shimmered away into legs, bare beneath the thigh-length chemise and startingly cold in the night air. Shivering, she got to her feet, then leaned over the boat’s side to take Samuel’s weight from the groac’h while she hoisted herself lightly onboard. Samuel, for his part, remained resolutely unconscious. His eyes were closed, his skin frighteningly pale. Together, and with no small amount of help from the sea, which rose up, bearing Samuel over the witch-boat’s side and depositing him gently in its belly, the two women got him settled. The groac’h whistled again and the boat turned smoothly, brisking toward the open water of the Manche.

Luce watched the beach disappear behind them. The hounds were moving, trotting toward the Holland Bastion. ‘They’re leaving,’ she said.

‘They will be back,’ the groac’h replied. ‘The shores of Saint-Malo are never safe at night.’ She settled herself by the tiller, though she made no move to take it. ‘There was a time, long ago, when the Fae Folk lived here, alongside the people of the city. These shores were shared, and rife with magic.’

‘What happened?’ Luce asked. ‘Why did things change?’

‘It is the nature of humans to seek, and to want,’ the tide-woman said, with a shrug. ‘First, they ripped our sacred stone from the earth and used it to build their walls and churches. Then they razed our forests for their ships, butchering the oldest, most powerful trees for their masts. There is only so much conquest, so much thievery, the Folk can bear.’

Luce leaned over Samuel. His eyes were still closed, but he was breathing, and the blanket covering him bore no trace of any bleeding.

‘He’s so cold,’ she murmured.

The groac’h produced another blanket, handed it to her. ‘If you wish to truly warm him, you need only summon the right breeze.’

‘The right breeze?’

The fae pursed her lips and blew gently through her tusks, catching her breath in her cupped hands. She leaned toward Samuel, opening her hands. A deliciously warm, drying breeze ruffled over him and Luce both.

‘Could I—could I do that?’ Luce asked, soft with wonder.

The groac’h chuckled. ‘Of course.’

The witch-boat plowed steadfastly on, gliding around the Grand Bé before curling toward Clos-Poulet, faithful to the tide and the shore-woman’s song. It rolled a little as it turned, and Luce wrapped her arms around Samuel, bracing him.

‘Could I use my voice to control a boat like this?’ she asked.

Another chuckle. ‘You, dear child, could control a fleet. ’ The groac’h tilted her head, considering. ‘But yes, to begin with. A boat like this.’

A fleet. Something stirred deep within Luce. The night, sparkling with promises of secrets and shadows, the stars and their reflections, seemed suddenly limitless. She gazed at the fae, sailing her little boat without sheet or tiller, capable, powerful. Free.

‘You already knew, didn’t you? About what I was.’ Luce motioned to her legs, tucked within a blanket. ‘About what I am. ’

A sideways glance. ‘I have lived in your cove for many, many years. I see everything. Remember everything.’

‘You did not think to tell me?’

‘Would you have listened?’

Luce said nothing. Until very recently, she had avoided the tide-woman as much as the next person. All those who dwelled on the coast of Bretagne had been taught to mistrust the Fae. By the priests, by the tales. Had it been deliberate? Was it easier to steal from someone if you believed they were dangerous?

There is only so much conquest, so much thievery, the Folk can bear.

‘What of the lutine? Did she know, too?’

‘Probably.’

‘The jetins?’

‘Most definitely. Why do you think they never throw stones at you?’

‘Is that... is that why you helped me before the ball?’

A shrug.

Before Luce could ask further, Samuel moaned softly, stirring beneath his blankets. She took his hand, spoke soothing words until the witch-boat drew gently onto the sands of the cove.

The Dove was exactly where Bones had anchored it before Morgan’s men had taken all three of them to Saint-Servan. It lay like a wounded whale, bleakly pale in the starlight. Luce did her best not to look at it as she and the groac’h helped Samuel ashore. Samuel, however, roused from his torpor.

‘The Dove? ’ he rasped, straining to see the darkened beach.

‘She’s here,’ Luce murmured, supporting him. ‘She’s safe.’

Inside the groac’h’s cave, Luce’s eyes widened in surprise. In place of the dim, rather chill chamber she had expected, she was standing in a cosy, comfortable home. Worn carpets furnished the sandy floors, and a fire crackled in a stone hearth. Ships’ lanterns glowing with a magical softness hung everywhere—the stone walls, the sloping ceiling—filling the space with warmth.

The fae helped Luce bring Samuel to a smaller chamber behind a curtain made of salvaged sails. It contained a low bed with clean sheets and thick woolen blankets, as well as a shallow bowl of fresh water, clean linens, and a healing salve. A tray bearing two bowls of steaming hot soup, wooden spoons, and two small loaves of brown bread sat on a small sea chest, and there were clean clothes for both Luce and Samuel, too, folded neatly on the blankets. Luce turned to the tide-woman, speechless with gratitude. ‘I don’t know what I would have done without you.’

‘You’d have managed,’ the groac’h said gruffly, drawing the curtain. Beyond its folds the light dimmed, as though the cave itself were preparing for sleep.

Luce washed Samuel’s back and covered it in the sweet-smelling salve, then helped him eat a few mouthfuls of soup.

‘Luce?’ he murmured, his brow creased with pain and weariness. ‘Where are we?’

‘We’re in the groac’h’s cave, Samuel. We’re safe.’ Luce stroked his hair, helped him settle on his belly on the clean sheets. She ate her own soup, and then, too tired and worried to contemplate returning to the malouinière, changed into the fresh chemise the groac’h had left her and curled up on the bed beside him. She did not let go of his hand all night, and woke to find him watching her, weary but alert.

‘They killed Bones,’ he said, his voice cracking. Luce wrapped her arms—gently, so gently—around him.

‘I know. I’m so sorry I couldn’t save him,’ she whispered.

And then she held him while he cried.

Later, as the sun slanted westward and the air softened, Luce left the tide-woman’s cave and went to greet the sea. The sand was cool against her bare soles, the Manche lapping peacefully at the shore.

She had stayed with Samuel throughout the day, cleansing his wounds, wrapping them in fresh bandages the groac’h had provided. The fae’s cave was a wonder, neat and tidy, the furnishings, though clearly rescued from the sea, clean and comfortable, and her ability to sway the winds meant that it was always warm and dry. The little driftwood fire in its rough stone hearth was never without a flame.

All the warmth and comfort in the world, however, would not dispel the memory of Bones’s limp, sodden body. It echoed in Luce’s every thought, imprinting its shape on her mind. She knew Samuel was the same. With the help of the groac’h’s magic, the wounds on his body were healing. His soul, she feared, would be slower to recover.

The water beckoned. Luce wore the sea-silk tucked into the fresh chemise the groac’h had given her; it would take a few steps, only, for the silk to do its work. For the saltwater to cast itself over her skin, changing it to scales. One push with her tail, and she would be heading for deeper water, its silence glossing over her, hiding her from the world, soothing her troubled heart.

Her fingers were working at the rusted pins holding her borrowed stomacher in place when movement on the water caught her eye. A ketch, its sails breezing across the tops of the rocks encircling the cove. She hastened back to the cave, one eye on the vessel as it struck sails.

The groac’h was waiting at the cave’s entrance. ‘Friends of yours?’ she asked mildly, as Luce hurried inside.

‘I very much doubt it.’

Together, they watched the ketch drop anchor and launch a jolly-boat manned by several burly men. Luce narrowed her eyes, wondering if these could be Morgan’s men, and, if they were, if they were the same ones who had... who had...

‘Come for his precious stone then, has he?’

Never before had Luce heard such bitterness in Samuel’s voice. She turned, found him leaning heavily against the stony wall, face wan and grim.

‘You should be resting,’ she said gently.

‘I’ve rested enough.’ There were deep shadows in his eyes.

All three of them watched, unseen, as the men reached the shore and dragged the jolly-boat onto the sand. It did not take them long to find the entrance to Luce and Samuel’s erstwhile cave. Bearing large baskets, they disappeared inside, returning soon after loaded high with storm-stone. They repeated this process, moving back and forth between cave and jolly-boat, jolly-boat and ketch until the last of the stone was gone. Several of them helped themselves to the casks of whiskey and packages of lace and silk in the cave, as well. One or two even took some of Luce’s meager treasures.

‘Morgan isn’t with them,’ she murmured, running her gaze over the ketch’s decks for the third time.

‘Why would he be?’ Samuel replied. ‘When he can pay others to do such tasks for him? A little heavy lifting, a little murder... Far better to avoid such unpleasantness.’ He shifted his weight against the wall, sucked a sharp, pained breath between his teeth.

‘We should get you back to bed,’ Luce said, disliking the pallor of his face, the laboring of his breath.

‘I am well enough.’ He glared after the ketch, which had weighed anchor and was moving slowly away from the cove. ‘Though perhaps a little rest might be beneficial...’ He stumbled and Luce stepped beneath one shoulder, propping him upright. The groac’h caught his other side. Together, they helped him back down the corridor to the warmth of the cave.

‘Stay there,’ the fae said firmly, when Samuel had eased himself, belly-down, on the bed. ‘Your wounds are severe. You must give them time to heal.’

‘We do not have time,’ Samuel said, wincing as he settled.

Luce frowned. ‘We don’t?’ It would be yet days before her family was due to return from Nantes. The freedom their absence afforded her had been her only brightness in the depths of the night.

Samuel’s face softened. ‘Have you forgotten what you learned in Lulworth, Luce?’ The memory of a smile. ‘Can’t say I blame you. A lot has happened since then.’

It came back to her, then. Sudden and appalling. ‘The Duke of Marlborough.’

Samuel nodded against the pillow. ‘And his twelve thousand men.’

‘Do you think they’ve left England?’

Samuel shrugged, then grimaced. ‘Impossible to say.’

‘Who is this duke you speak of?’ The groac’h, who had listened to this exchange in silence, regarded them both with her strange, moon-coloured eyes.

‘An English fleet is preparing to cross the Manche,’ Luce told her. ‘It may be on its way even now. It carries an army set upon taking Saint-Malo.’

The groac’h seemed unperturbed. ‘Such tidings are not surprising. Saint-Malo—indeed, the whole of Bretagne—is weak. How can it be otherwise, when so much of the land has been desecrated, and so many of the Fae have left?’

‘Does it not concern you?’ Luce asked. ‘Do you not fear for yourself, for your kind?’

‘Most of my kind left these shores years ago.’

‘Why did you stay?’ Samuel asked.

‘Reasons,’ the groac’h told him, with a shrug. ‘Although perhaps I have lingered here too long. If what you tell me is true, it is time to make preparations of my own.’

‘Where will you go?’

Another shrug. ‘Only the tide can say. There are still places of beauty and wonder left in the world. Places that men in their death-ships have not despoiled. A fair breeze and a path of stars is all that is required to find them.’

‘So you would simply go?’ Luce asked, surprised. ‘You would leave your home, your lands, defenseless?’

‘These are no longer my lands.’ The fae gestured to the cove, where Morgan’s men were sailing with their cargo of storm-stone. ‘The men of Saint-Malo have done nothing but take. Their very city was made with stolen stone. Perhaps the time has come for them to give something back.’

Too much has been stolen. Something must be given back.

‘It is the tide’s way,’ Luce said softly.

‘It is.’ The groac’h tilted her head, considering. ‘You could always come with me, seamaid.’

A fair breeze. A path of stars. Luce’s skin prickled, as though a faraway wind played over her hair, her dreams. What would it be, to feel such breezes? To sail upon starlight?

‘My family is here,’ she said quickly. She felt Samuel’s gaze upon her and was careful not to meet it. ‘What would happen to them if the city should fall? What would happen to all the people here?’

The darkness of a new moon glinted in the tide-woman’s gaze. ‘Why should I care? Why should you ?’

‘Because they are my family.’

The tide-woman’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. Then she nodded. ‘There is a way to know for certain if the fleet will reach these shores,’ she said, drawing aside the curtain and beckoning to Luce. ‘Come.’

Seamaids, the stories said, were the loveliest, but also the vainest, of the Fae. Most longshoreman—old sailors who had given up the sea and settled on shore—had an encounter to share. Stories of seduction and mystery, of alluring songs and sudden, violent storms that arose mere moments after a seamaid was sighted. Some told of the maid’s kindness, her ability to grant wishes to those who offered her aid. Others spoke of her cold-heartedness, her bitter, drowning fury. There was one detail, however, that all the tales shared: the seamaid’s comb and mirror.

Luce had always thought the items a fancy, nothing more. What use would a seamaid have for a comb and mirror? Surely she had better things to do than sit by and idly comb her hair? Hair that would no doubt become salt-tangled and knotted as soon as she returned to the sea? So when the groac’h rummaged in a battered sea chest, withdrawing two items—a silver hand mirror and a matching comb—she knew a moment of doubt.

‘You’re jesting, surely?’ She regarded the silver mirror, its ornate handle twisted and tarnished with time, and realised that it was the same one she had taken to the de Chatelaine ball. The comb was a perfect match, silver as spring rain.

‘I never jest.’

The tide-woman looked between the mirror and the comb, then returned the comb to the chest and left the cave, her bearing leaving no doubt that Luce’s was expected to follow. The day had drowsed into evening, and the Manche lapped placidly upon the rocks.

‘The tide is on the ebb,’ Luce said uncertainly. ‘Is this the right time for such things?’ There was a reason that groac’hs were also known as tide-crones. Their magic depended entirely upon the rhythm of the sea. Luce had experienced this firsthand at the ball, when she had raced back to the cove in the magicked boat, the vessel and her gown crumbling as the tide ebbed away.

‘For me? No. But for you... the magic of the sea-folk does not rely on the tide. It is one of the reasons they are considered so dangerous.’

Luce struggled to find a reply to that.

‘Here,’ the groac’h said, when they had reached the water’s edge. ‘Take the mirror. Hold it up, like this. Now, turn your back to the sea.’

Mystified, Luce did as the she bid, turning to face the cliffs and raising the mirror until it was level with her eyes.

‘What do you see?’ the fae asked.

‘... myself?’ Luce frowned at her reflection. She was unusually pale, and there were dark rings beneath her eyes. A broad bruise—no doubt where Morgan’s man had cuffed her when she’d stumbled— glowered over one cheek, and cuts and grazes marred her brow. There were more on her shoulder and forearm, hidden beneath her dress. ‘More’s the pity.’

‘Turn it,’ the groac’h said impatiently. ‘Like this.’ She tilted the edge of the mirror slightly, so that Luce was looking not at her own reflection, but at the Manche, mirror-flat over her shoulder.

‘I see the Manche,’ Luce said.

‘Yes, yes. Anything else?’

Luce peered into the silvery surface, spied a pair of gulls winging lightly over the water. ‘Birds?’

‘The sea’s face shines like glass,’ the tide-woman explained. ‘It reflects light, just as a mirror does. But underneath, its depths are filled with shadows. You must not fear the darkness. Indeed, it is there that you will see what you most require.’

‘I understand,’ Luce said, more confused than ever.

‘You most certainly do not.’ The fae tsk ed softly and reached out one hand, trailing her long fingers over Luce’s eyelids. ‘Close your eyes. Think of the fleet. Think of its danger, its power. Think of your family, of the people here, and what will befall them should it arrive.’

Luce obeyed. Eyes closed, she pictured herself in Dorset once more, at the Thorner family’s table. Little Flora and Tobias, clinging to Samuel with such devotion. His rage when his brother Thomas threatened to sail to Saint-Malo, and terror that he would be there when the city fell. When the city fell. She imagined the graceful spire of the cathedral, the steep rooftops, the fortress, shattering apart. Fire devouring the streets and homes, the ships at anchor in the harbour. And the people, the people—she tried not to see her family running in terror through the streets, gripping each other as the city collapsed around them, flame and seawater alike threatening to tear them apart.

‘Do you see it?’ the groac’h asked. ‘Do you feel it?’

Luce nodded. Tears were gathering behind her eyelids, threatening to break free.

‘Good. Open your eyes.’

Luce did as the tide-woman asked. Tears rolled down her cheeks, but she hardly felt them. The calm, evening-soft reflection of the Manche was gone. Instead, the entire northern sky roiled with iron-grey cloud. Before it, riding on the wind, came the English fleet. A hundred ships or more surging atop the waves, soldiers lining the decks, as they sailed swiftly past the cove and westward, toward Saint-Malo.

Luce blinked and the fleet, the storm, disappeared. She lowered the mirror, turned. The same gulls, drifting peaceably. The same serene sky. The evening had taken its rightful place once more.

‘What did you see?’ the groac’h asked.

Luce brushed at her cheeks. ‘I saw the fleet. It is coming.’

‘When?’

‘When the weather turns. A week, perhaps. Maybe longer.’ The shore-woman nodded, then headed back to the cave. Luce, following, watched as she paused to scrape oysters and mussels from the damp rocks, stowing them in the folds of her net skirt.

‘What now?’ she asked.

‘Supper, I think,’ the groac’h replied. ‘I’m hungry. And we should feed the storm diver now and then if he’s to properly recover.’

‘And the fleet?’

A shrug. Why should I care?

‘But... will you truly leave?’

‘I will.’ The shore-woman, bent over a clustering of mussels, did not look up.

‘When?’

‘Only the tide can say.’

It was clear the groac’h would say no more on the subject. Luce joined her at the rocks, tucking the mirror into her belt and gripping her sea-knife. She tried not to think of the last time she had used the blade; the way it had felt as it sliced into Morgan’s face, or the ropes binding Samuel against the belly of the Lucinde. ‘The tales always say seamaids are vain and selfish. But they were never just looking at their reflections, were they?’

‘The mirrors are used for all sorts of reasons.’ Mussels clattered into the groac’h’s skirt. ‘To see the shape of the weather, to know if danger approaches. And other things, besides. When a seamaid looks backwards into her mirror, she sees therein that which she requires.’

Luce prized an oyster free, added it to the growing pile. ‘Can you... will you teach me more of such things? What of the matching comb? What can it do?’

‘It is too late in the day for raising storms,’ the groac’h said mildly.

‘Raising storms ?’

‘Indeed.’ The fae straightened, eyeing Luce over her tusks. ‘Did the Lion never warn you not to comb your hair after nightfall?’

‘Well, of course he did. Everyone knows not to do that.’ Luce looked sideways at the shore-woman. ‘Is it more than superstition, then? Can a comb—can someone’s hair —truly control the weather?’

The groac’h, nodding in approval at their haul, started toward the cave. ‘Supper first. Then talk.’

‘Of course.’ Luce, following, realised she had taken the mirror from her belt and was holding it tightly, protectively, against her chest. She unfolded her arms at once. ‘I’m sorry. Here.’

‘Keep it,’ the tide-woman said, waving her away.

‘It belongs to you,’ Luce protested.

‘No,’ the groac’h said, as gruff as ever. ‘It belongs to you. ’