As Erik descended into the hold, he saw her clasp her hands behind her back and stare out across the water.
Ten
“Grant this mercy, O Lord, we beseech Thee, to Thy servant departed,” Marcus spoke in clumsy Latin, Erik having told him the words only minutes before. For a burial, the rite was rather a farce. Whatever God thought about the dragon-blooded, the men would have found it unsettling if one of them had spoken the prayers, but they were the only ones who knew Latin.
The compromise was undignified. Then again, there was seldom dignity in death.
Erik stood and listened as Marcus continued. “That he may not receive in punishment the requital of his deeds who in desire did keep Thy will, and as the true faith here united him to the company of the faithful, so may Thy mercy unite him above to the choirs of angels. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
In dragon form, Toinette and Erik had dug the holes: simple work enough. The men filled them in though, as seemed more proper, and set a crude driftwood cross atop each of the graves.
Sence, of all the men, wept openly: quiet, but without shame. The others hung their heads, blinked tears away with some pretense of disguise, or simply stared in silent grief. Only some had known the dead men well, but their deaths were a reminder to all of what had passed—and the uncertainty in which they all now found themselves.
Toinette stared straight ahead, her arms folded under her breasts. She’d taken her blue gown out of the ship and donned it before the burial. It was damp, but whole and free of sand. She’d also brushed her hair and bound it severely back with string. Bare of that softening influence, her face was stark, her lips a knife edge. The angles of her shoulders and elbows and jaw all spoke of pain.
Standing barely inches from her, Erik longed to offer her comfort, but dared not even touch her arm as he’d done on theHawk. Even if she’d welcome the contact at another time, it might do more harm than good in front of her crew.
“May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace,” said Marcus. He stepped back, dropping his once-folded hands to his sides.
They all lingered for a while, in the same awkward silence that attended funerals everywhere. The Eternal had touched that place and the people gathered there, if only for a time; taking up worldly duties felt alien, as a familiar house did on returning after long travel. One walked around then, looking at furnishings, until the sound of feet on that particular floor became familiar once again. With burials, there was that time of shifting, of clearing throats and looking from one to another.
“Franz has found a few rocks we could move for one side of a shelter.” Samuel was the one to finally speak. “And the cliffs could be the other wall. The lot of us could likely shift them.”
“Do what you can while we’re getting the supplies,” Toinette said, and the thickness in her voice vanished gradually as she spoke. “If there’s need, we can—” She waved a hand in the air.
“Yes, Captain,” said Samuel.
“Good work, all of you.”
That got smiles. A few of them were guilty, and others turned that way quickly. Erik knew that part of things too.
He’d been present at a great many funerals. Eventually, unless they shut themselves away from the world entirely and early, all the dragon-blooded were.
* * *
“Two holes in the hull,” Toinette said. She spoke aloud, more for her own benefit than for Erik’s, though he stood on the deck beside her and listened. “Too small and too high for risk just now, but nothing I’d want to go to sea with. Broken railing in places. And the mast, of course.”
“Can you repair it?”
“I’m no shipbuilder, but—yes. We can. It’ll be clumsy work, but it’ll likely hold together until we reach a civilized port.” She glanced over at Erik, and tried her best to phrase what came next gently. “You know we can’t go onward.”
He was silent. Toinette braced herself to make her case: sharp words, hard facts, the lives of her crew. She’d marshaled almost all of her forces by the time Erik spoke, only to have them scattered by what he said. “We may not have to. The island’s in the right position, as near as I can tell.”
“You think the Templars landed here?”
“If they landed anywhere. If they existed at all. I’ll know more when I can look around the island, but—aye, if this isn’t it, then we’ll not find it this trip. Even Artair would say we’ve done more than enough in service of this mission.”
“That does indeed absolve us of everything.” Toinette turned to the hatch. “The supplies won’t be growing legs any time soon.”
They both needed to go below this time: corpses were easier to carry than barrels. Toinette went first down the ladder after an awkward pause when she realized that Erik was letting her go ahead on account of her skirts. His voice drifted down to her along with his feet. “I would think that you’d look on him more kindly, considering.”
Toinette stopped, hands on a barrel of dried peas. “Thank you,” she said. “I’d almost forgotten I was a poor relation—other than the relation part.”
The hold was dim, but dragon-blooded saw well enough in the dark that she knew Erik had the good grace to flush. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that as it came out.”
“As it happens,” Toinette went on, pushing the barrel over to the bottom of the ladder, “I’m quite grateful for what he did. I’d have come without the debt, but it did weigh in my thinking. I believe he’s a good man. Good men still act in their own interests first. You were always surprised by that. Take hold of the top and pull. I’ll push from below.”
Between the two of them, the barrel wasn’t heavy, only awkward. Neither of them spoke until they’d gotten it onto the deck; it took too much concentration to keep the thing steady. An injury wouldn’t kill one of them, nor render them unfit for work as long as it would a human, but having one’s foot broken was far from a holiday.
