10. Chapter 10
Chapter 10
A thelstan Waite called his wife’s project a folly, and was still of the opinion that folly it was.
Even his lady was not madcap enough to go in public in the men’s clothes she doubtless wore in her sailing days. Nonetheless, she wore her riding habit - a rational affair, not one of those outfits that beauties had to be sewn into anew with every wearing - and sturdy boots.
He could not help but admit that, when she climbed upon the horse and pressed against his back, the sensation was not unpleasant. It was quite different to the night of the storm, too. Back then, his mind was wholly consumed with the blazing, bright, single-aimed thought to get his men and his wife to safety. Now her arms encircling him, so tense back then, were relaxed and soft.
He thought back to the start of that damnable day - the isle far away, the story of two sisters, Julia on her mare listening with great attention. With what seemed like a great attention, at least. After all, the first weeks of their acquaintance she seemed like a lady of the utmost respectability, too, and look what it turned out to be.
As they passed through the fishing village, the dust-track leading through it like the sad end of all the roads of the ancients, men took off their caps - those who had caps to wear, at any rate - and women inclined their heads in respect. There were not many of the former, and not simply because on such a fine morning most would be preparing for a fishing expedition. He knew that truth no worse than his wife and his chaplain did. But that truth was hardly the reason to upend the great rules of the world, was it?
If you think so , his inner voice whispered, why are you here in the first place?
To humor my young wife.
Since when do you care about humoring your wife? Or anyone, for that matter?
On the coast, they were met by a small crew of the old boat, paint half-peeled off, that was waiting for them.
“My lord, my lady,” the older man who was plainly the leader of the expedition bowed. “We are honored”. He did not sound especially enthusiastic. Athelstan could not blame him. These men had to work for their livelihood with a crew that was a half of what it would have once been, and the intrusion of what must have seemed to them like a bored noble couple could not have been welcome.
“As are we”, his lady wife smiled brightly. “What is your name?”
“Ilfred, Your Ladyship.”
“You have a very skillful wife, Ilfred. I am sure you are well-matched in your mastery of your crafts.”
Both men stared at her with puzzlement, if for different reasons. Ilfred was probably surprised that a highborn lady cared about such details. Athelstan, in turn, was unsure how did she come to that conclusion in the first place.
“So she is”, the fisherman said with more cheer than before. “So she is”.
They were already on the deck, men pushing away from the shore, when Athelstan leaned closer to Julia’s ear and murmured a single question:
“How did you know?”
“Why, my lord, do you suspect my having gone behind your back and learned something in advance?”
“No. I am just curious.”
“I simply looked closer at his tunic. It was a very fine weave, even though the wool was not of the best rank. He must have a very loving wife, to take such pains over a simple garment”.
“Or one who feels dutiful. Or simply enjoys weaving as a craft.”
“And here I thought I was insufficiently romantic.”
“No such thing.”
“There are husbands and wives in the world who love each other, my lord.”
“I know,” Athelstan replied quietly. “I am not a fool, nor am a blind.”
He would have liked to say that he had been prevented from uttering the next, more painful set of words - Even though you thought me to be so - by his own sense of propriety and tact.
In fact, it was because the boat lurched upon the wave, and although he did not lose his footing for a moment, it did interrupt his speech.
Julia’s fine eyes sparkled with excitement, he noticed as he looked at her again. Her profile clean and clear, her lips touched by a slight smile, she was no more perturbed by the movement than he, and looked entirely within her element. Nor did she make a move to sit down, as a more gently-bred lady would have done.
But then, a gently-bred lady would not have conceived of such an escapade in the first place.
The pale shore became a line upon the horizon in the end, like a faraway place of mists from some legends. Athelstan knew such moments well, when the firm land under one’s feet became little more than a dream, and the sea, with its great and treacherous expanse, the only reality that mattered.
He would have lied grievously if he said he did not miss it.
The men around him have clearly found the right spot and busied themselves with their light nets woven from flax. His wife knelt by the side of the boat, helping them set these up.
His first instinct was to call out to her. Then he paused.
Her scheme would not have much effect if she did nothing but treat the day as a somewhat prolonged outing, doing nothing of substance when it came to the actual fishing. They might have as well gone for a picnic, for all the effects such a thing would have. No; however little Athelstan Waite wanted to admit it, Ilfred and his men had to bear home the story of a lady of the castle who did not mind getting her hands dirty.
Besides, Athelstan imagined what his brother would have exclaimed if he saw the noble bride chosen for him thus occupied. At this, he could not help but feel somewhat amused.
Then he waved that thought away, knelt by Julia’s side, and picked up his section of the net.
Once the nets were set up properly, the rowers started propelling the boat in circles around them, while the other half of the crew started striking the surface of water with poles, making a great din; no doubt, to make the fish flee in horror - right into the finely-woven net.
Julia grabbed the nearest pole just as he did the same, and started bashing the empty water - slowly first, almost timidly. Then, as the boat continued its relentless coursing around the nets, her movements grew in abandon. Ten minutes later, she had the flushed, happy expression of a student let out into a green summer day at the end of his lectures.
Athelstan’s own driving of the fish was steady and relentless. There was no sense in tiring himself out. The mad dashing is for the fish, whose grey-silver shadows he could now see in the water. Mindless creatures, undone by the sound and the fury.
“Are you well?” He called out to his wife, voice overtaking the unholy din.
“Never better!” Julia shouted in response. “Why would I be unwell?”
“Your father mentioned your headaches.”
“Oh.” The exultation in her eyes dimmed. “I did have headaches, by the end of the first year.” She didn’t need to specify the first year of what. The first year of her captivity, the life after the sea had been wrenched from her. “And I’ve been always tired - though I exerted myself half as much as I’ve done - before”.
They weren’t alone. She remembered that as well as he did. She was not wholly reckless after all.
“And now?”
“Now, I think I have some vigor in my blood again,” her smile blazed as the sun on the waters.
“The sea-air, perhaps.”
“Or the salt on my tongue.”
Athelstan turned his head, looking fully in her eyes now. He couldn’t refer to her past now, not openly so.
He was not particularly good at referring to things obliquely. But here they were.
“If the waves do you this much good, I approve of them wholeheartedly.”
Her gaze grew softer. She recognized, it seemed, his offering of a truce.
She could not clasp his hand then and there. But she did say:
“I should strive for your approval, then.”
Then there was a joyous roar around them, the sound of half a dozen throats. The fish finally filled the net to the brim, the flax sagging under the weight of the shining bodies.
It was the time to haul the catch in.
His reaction was ridiculous, to think of it. Julia, in her male disguise, had likely survived greater physical ordeals than this. Nonetheless, he kept glancing at her with a silent warning not to try being a cheerful heroine to the point of impossibility.
Her hands - ungloved for today - grew bone-white with the effort. So did his, so did everyone else’s, but neither he nor everyone else had spent years in shadowed seclusion allowed no greater weight than a sewing needle.
She did not cry out or complain. That was exasperating. Athelstan could not help but admit, though, that, had she been shrieking in horror the whole way, he would have respected her effort less.
When the full nets were finally on deck, weighing the boat down, the doomed fish thrashing around, Julia stood for a few seconds, breathing heavily and visibly shivering from top to toe.
No one fell dramatically into anyone’s arms. But he judged that moment, the moment of a rare fortunate catch, decent enough for him to squeeze his wife’s shoulder.
***
Julia’s whole body ached, especially her arms. The cold of the deep-blue evening, and these were apparently never particularly balmy in this place even in summer, cooled the slick sweat beneath her clothes.
Nonetheless, the appearing stars overhead were as bright as diamond dust.
“I would quite like to do that a few more times, for a better effect,” Julia said, getting down from her mare in the castle’s courtyard. Then she added, surprisingly haltingly, “If it won’t be an embarrassment to you. Or too great a distraction from your duties.”
“If we do that a few more times, your hands are going to grow as red as that of a fishwife proper.” His expression was deadpan, but he did take her hand between his palms.
“I shall cover them with fine gloves for when we have guests from the court. This way no one outside these lands is going to find out our dark secret,” Julia added not without humor. “Unless it is you who found today too onerous?” She teased, feeling buoyant.
“Never. I’ve been through harsher ordeals than a day’s worth of fishing, my lady”. With that, Athelstan Waite pressed her bare, roughed hand to his mouth and kissed the palm.
It was a quick and strangely clumsy thing, not a gesture of some smooth seduction, but Julia’s breath caught in her throat. She leaned a little closer to her husband, his silhouette sharp in the firelit darkness of the courtyard.
“My lord!” An old man’s voice called out from the direction of the great doors. “My lady! You came back safely. Praise be to the Triad. I lit a candle to the Lady as the Sea-Star, praying for your return.”
At this, Lord Waite released Julia’s hand quickly, as though withdrawing his hand from the fire.
“Father Telmen”, he said, not without irritation in his voice. “You should not have worried. I am not a green boy still finding his sea-legs.”
“It it my duty to take care of the man I serve, is it not?” The old priest smiled faintly. “Even if he insists on enmeshing himself in follies.”
Julia raised her eyebrows at hearing the chaplain speak so to the great lord he indeed served. Her cheeks burned faintly hot - with anger more than embarrassment - at hearing her plan dismissed as a folly.
“It was hardly a folly,” her husband said coldly. “I do not participate in those. I dearly hope you credit me with this much sense.”