laughing crowd, we came at last down to where the rocks gave way to sand while the sinking moon showed us quite a large ship swaying up and down vigorously in the bay. Ivar moaned at the sight. Waiting for us among the wet smash and sheen of the breakers was a rowing boat, whose crew leapt out eagerly to meet us.
“Hurry now or we’ll miss this tide,” one of them said. “We thought you’d never be here in time.”
I slid off the donkey and patted it. I also patted the gorse bush by my side. It was in bloom – but when is gorse not? – and the caress of my fingers released the robust fragrance of it. It is a smell that always makes me think of home and Skarr. It seemed a shame to me that the youngest novice promptly staggered into that same bush and was sick on it.
“Here, lassie.” One of the sailors seized me and swung me into his arms. “Carry you through the water,” he explained when I uttered a furious squawk.
I let him. I became almost unbearably tired just then. It seemed to me that in leaving the soil of Skarr I left all my strength behind, but I expect that it was just that I’d had no sleep the night before. As I was carried through the crashing surf, tasting salt as I travelled, I had glimpses of Ivar and Ogo wading beside me, and a further glimpse of Aunt Beck, drawn up to her very tallest, facing the sailor who had offered to carry her too. I saw her glance at the waves, lift a heel and glance at that, and then shrug and give in. She rode to the boat sedately sitting across the sailor’s arms, heels together and both hands clasped demurely around his neck, as if the poor man were another donkey.
I scarcely remember rowing out to the big dark boat. I think I must have been asleep before they got there. When I woke, it was bright grey morning and I was lying on my face, on a narrow bench in a warm but smelly wooden cabin. I sprang up at once. I knew it was only a matter of forty sea miles to Bernica.
“Heavens!” I cried out. “I’ve missed the whole voyage!”
It turned out to be no such thing. When I dashed out into the swaying, creaking passage under the deck, Aunt Beck met me with the news that we had met contrary winds in the night. “The sailors tell me,” she said, “that the Logra barricade diverts the air and the sea too when the wind is in the north. We shall be a day or more yet on the way.” And she sent me back to do my hair properly.
Breakfast was in a little bad-smelling cubbyhole at the stern, where the sea kept smashing up against the one tiny window and the table slid up and down like a see-saw. No porridge, to my surprise. I wouldn’t have minded porridge. I was ravenous. I laid into oatcakes and honey just as if we were on dry land and the honeypot didn’t keep sliding away down the table whenever I needed it.
After a while, Aunt Beck wiped her fingers and passed the cloth to me. “Ten oatcakes is plenty, Aileen,” she told me. “This ship doesn’t carry food for a month. Go and see what has become of Ivar and Ogo.”
I went grudgingly. I wanted – apart from more oatcakes – to go on deck and see the sea. I found the boys in a fuggy little space across the gangway. Ivar was lying on the bed, moaning. Ogo sat beside him, looking anxious and loyal, holding a large bowl ready on his knees.
“Go away!” said Ivar. “I’m dying!”
Ogo said to me, “I don’t know what to do. He’s been like this all night.”
“Go and fetch Aunt Beck,” I said. “Get some breakfast. I’ll hold the bowl.”
Ogo passed me the bowl like a shot. I put it on the floor. It was disgusting.
“Don’t put it there!” Ivar howled as Ogo dashed from the room. “I need it! Now!” He did look ill. His face was like suet, all pale and shiny. I picked up the bowl again, but he wailed, “I’ve nothing left to be sick with! I’ll die!”
“No you won’t,” I said. “It’s not heroic. Where’s the medicine your mother packed for you?”
“In the bag you’re sitting on,” Ivar gasped. “But stupid Ogo doesn’t know which it is!”
“Well, I don’t suppose I do either,” I said, getting up and opening the bag, “and I’m not stupid. Why don’t you know?”
Ivar just buried his face in the lumpy little pillow and moaned. Luckily, Aunt Beck came in just then. “This is ridiculous,” she said, taking in the situation. “I thought Ogo was exaggerating. Move over, Aileen, and let me have a look in that bag.”
There were quite a number of jars and bottles in the bag, carefully packed among clothes. Aunt Beck took them all out and arranged them in a row on the floorboards. “Hm,” she said. “Which?” She picked up the glass bottles one by one and held them up against the light. She shook her head. She picked up the earthenware jars one by one, took the corks out and sniffed. Ivar reared up on one elbow and watched her anxiously. Aunt Beck shook her head again and, very carefully and deliberately, began pouring the contents away into the bowl.
“Hey!” said Ivar. “What are you doing?”
“I do not know,” Aunt Beck said, starting to empty the glass bottles into the bowl too, “what Mevenne was intending here, but I fear she is as bad at remedies as she is at embroideries. Aileen, take this bowl up on deck and empty it all into the sea. Be careful not to spill it on the way. It could set fire to the ship. Then come back for the bottles. They need to be thrown overboard too.”
“But what shall I do?” Ivar was wailing as I carried the bowl away as carefully and steadily as I could.
Aunt Beck snapped at him to behave himself and to take that filthy shirt off at once.
It took me quite a while to get that bowl poured away. I was two steps along the gangway when the ship pitched sideways, suddenly and violently. And, do what I could, the bowl swilled and slopped some of the stuff on the wooden floor. There was only the merest drop, but it made a truly horrible smell and started to smoke. Aunt Beck had not been joking about those medicines. I went the rest of the way more carefully than I had ever done anything in my life. I put the bowl down on each step of the wooden stair that went up to the deck and held it steady as I climbed after it. I crept with it out into the sudden brisk daylight on deck. There were ropes everywhere, sailors staring and a dazzle of choppy waves beyond. But I kept my eyes grimly on the nasty liquid in the bowl the whole way to the edge of the boat and carefully looked which way the wind was before I started to pour the stuff away. I didn’t want it blowing back in my face. It was a huge relief when I finally tipped the bowlful into the brownish, rearing waves.
The sea boiled white where the liquid went in. I had to wait for the ship to move past the whiteness before I could lie on my front and swill the bowl out. That made a lesser whiteness. I snatched my hand away and, I am afraid, lost the bowl, which dipped and sank almost at once. Oh well, I thought. Probably good riddance.
When I went back below, the spilt drop had stopped smoking, but there was a round charred place where it had been.
In the cabin, Ivar was now sitting up, his top half all gooseflesh without his shirt, staring at Aunt Beck. Aunt Beck had taken her ruby-ended pin out of her hair and was wagging it slowly in front of Ivar. “Watch the pin. Keep watching my pin,” she was saying, but broke off to pass me the bottles and jars all bundled up in Ivar’s shirt. “Overboard,” she said. “Shirt and all.”
“Hey!” said Ivar. “That’s a good shirt!” He stopped staring at Aunt Beck and scowled at me.
“Curses,”
