The Snow Driver/Chapter 7

ASTER THORNE was old, and the old live in their memories; these are real, and the events of the passing days are no more than the spume cast up by waters, to vanish with another day. Master Thorne, sitting in the darkness by his son could not grasp the changes that he heard as words.

“Edward dying? Now by the good St. Dunstan, that is an ill thing for the lad was the miracle of our day, being learned and gentle. Aye, I mind him well. Surely, Ralph, you have made much out of little. In the days of good King Harry”

“These are other days,” the armiger reminded him patiently.

“Alack, you have sent one Spanish noble to his long home, and mayhap others. So great a lord as Renard will harry you from the kingdom, lad. These be hard tidings, hard tidings. But you must abide in the cottage, Ralph, and I will betake me to London. They will have a welcome for Robert Thorne. His grace of Northumberland and Sir John will hear me out and bear a petition to the king.”

“No, father, the twain great lords are dead long since, and the fortunes of the Thornes are low.”

“So you say, Ralph, and so it is.” The cosmographer sighed profoundly. “'Tis cold of nights, and no one to sit by the fire.”

“We have tasks to perform, sir, and may not sit at ease. Can you not understand? Renard is chancellor in all but name, now that Mary is to be chosen queen. Faith, we may have Philip coming out of Spain to woo her with a fleet of galleons.”

“A Spanish king!” breathed Master Thorne, a little aroused. “Nay then I must fare to court—did you not say it, Ralph?—with my charts and present them to Edward, my completed work, the magnum opus.”

“Do so,” cried his son, “and relate my story as you have heard it. Nay, hold! You said Durforth came here to solve a certain riddle of navigation. What was it?”

Here Master Thorne was on familiar ground, his memory stanch and quick.

“This Durforth, it comes to me now, is a Burgundian, and a man who loves the bawbees. He has an itch for gold in his fingers, and my lord Renard hath paid out to him some round sums. Aye, I mind he bought a pinnace with a dragon figurehead, to sail around like a lord in the northern seas. He did bespeak my aid in charting a course.”

Master Thorne pondered a moment.

“The man is bold and a skilled navigant. He has coasted the shores of Norway to the north point where begins the Ice Sea. From there, the course he had in mind ran thus:

The armiger pondered this and shook his head.

“It hath the seeming of a cipher of words.”

“'Tis no cipher but plain speech.”

“How, then?”

“Why the Wardhouse or Guardhouse lieth—so I have heard, for no Christian voyager hath set foot upon it—at the north point. 'Tis there in a tower or castle the Easterlings keep watch and ward upon the Ice Sea. Aye, and the Laps and reindeer folk.”

“And what is the sea?”

“Aye, lad, there's the rub. South and east of the Wardhouse there standeth no sea upon my charts. Nor did Durforth know of any.”

“He spoke of a town and a road. Surely here is a journey over land. Whither?”

“Why, you should steer north of east from the Wardhouse, if there is a passage open to Cathay. But, turning south and east, you would e'en come to the limbo between Christian lands and Cathay.”

“And what is that?”

Master Thorne smiled unseen, and stifled a chuckle.

“Why, lad, do you seek the mysteries of cosmography? Some do say the elf king rules this region; others, a Christian king, Ivan the Terrible rules over Easterlings, Tartarians and Muscovites.”

“What more?”

“'Tis related that this monarch hath a great treasure of gold and silver, but that is hearsay.”

Thorne, sitting by the dark hearth, his head in his hands, could make little of this. He sensed, rather than understood, a scheme afoot to betray Sir Hugh. Durforth, who was to lead the fleet around Norway, had another course in his mind, had counted so much upon it that he risked going to see the cosmographer and his charts.

Yet, even while he pondered, he was conscious that his father was moving about cheerfully; he heard a tankard clink and something gurgle into it.

“Ralph,” quoth his father, “be the times what they may, I drink to your seafaring, with the good Sir Hugh. 'Tis a proud day and a glad day.”

A cup was thrust into the armiger's hand and he tasted spiced wine.

“To your journey, sir,” he said blithely. “Seek out the lady Elizabeth and her gentlemen, for she at least is stanch. But go swiftly hence. Tarry not the dawn, for each hour brings its peril. Fare ye well!”

HEY clasped hands at the door for the first time in many years. Master Thorne took his son's rapier and watched until Ralph had passed into the shadows across the highway. After listening a while, the old man kindled a fire in the hearth and fell to furbishing and polishing the weapon in his hands.

He was tired and bewildered by the swift passage of events and turned to his unfailing consolation, his maps and manuscripts of voyages. Lighting the candles on the table he settled down to pore over them and lost all account of time.

Dawn had marked the tree tops and a fresh wind set the candle flames to flickering when he looked up at last, having been for the past moment conscious of horses trotting along the road. The door had been thrown open and two men stood within it watching him.

One, a slender fellow in a broad plumed hat, Thorne did not know. The other was my lord Renard, attired for traveling, who pinched his chin between thumb and fore finger while his glance strayed from the sword and the two cups beside it on the table to the old man's charts and from them to Master Thorne.

“You keep late hours, sir,” he observed, advancing and taking the weapon in his hand.

“Come to the fire, my lord,” muttered the cosmographer. “'Tis a fair cold night.”

“A cold night to bide awake,” nodded the envoy. “You are alone, too, I perceive. Yet I am informed that your son passed this way, going to London.”

He raised his voice as if he had asked a question, his eyes full on the Englishman. Master Thorne, who was no adept at falsehood, held his peace, wondering what had occasioned this visit from such a notable. He did not think my lord Renard would hunt his son in person; indeed, the behavior of the envoy was far from alarming.

Master Thorne wished now that he had thought to conceal the sword, but his visitor seemed to attach no importance to it.

“I thought, my master,” went on Renard slowly, “that you had no son.”

“Nay, we had a way of quarreling,” spoke up the cosmographer frankly, “but Ralph is a good lad.”

His eyes, too, dwelt on the gleaming sword with more than a little pride.

The sallow face of the nobleman was impassive but he raised his heavy brows, and bent over the table to scan the charts and papers spread thereon. And now he frowned, picking up first one sheet, then another. Evidently he was able to judge of their contents, for a muttered exclamation escaped his lips when he examined the chart of the northern seas.

“Ah, you have skill in cosmography, 'tis clear. I seem to remember that you learned your craft in Spain in Seville.”

“That is true,” assented Master Thorne readily, pleased in spite of his distrust of the strangers, at the compliment.

“Such knowledge is priceless in these days of discovery,” pursued my lord Renard amiably. “Perhaps it had been better for you if it were not. The merchants of Orfordnesse do not value you justly, but I”

As idly as if he were casting dust from his fingers, he tossed the sheets he held into the fire, first handing the rapier to the gentleman who attended him. As the sword left his grasp he spoke swiftly under his breath and the other nodded understanding.

Master Thorne gave a great cry when he saw the flames catch at his precious maps. He ran around the table and plucked one of the smoldering sheets from the hearth.

As he did so, the gentleman who attended my lord Renard stepped forward and ran the rapier through the old man's body, withdrawing the blade in the same second and wiping it clean on his handkerchief, which he then tossed upon the floor.

Master Thorne made no further outcry. Swaying on his knees, he fell forward, his head dropping among the crackling logs. Stung by this fresh agony, he moaned and drew himself back rolling over on the hearth, the smoking paper still clutched in the hands that were pressed against his breast.

In spite of the odor of scorched flesh and singed hair my lord Renard would not leave the room until he had seen the last of the maps burned upon the hearth. Then he removed the lace handkerchief that he held against his nose.

“Here, D'Ayllon, lieth a prophet who had no honor in his own country. Leave the stripling's sword by the carcass of the sire. Now—” he considered the tableau attentively—“the yokels of this coast may cudgel their brains, and no harm to us."

D'Ayllon nodded indifferently.

“Still, signior, the son is living and may cause us to be harmed. And that Maestro Cabota”

“Pfaugh! Cabota dodders to his grave, and the stripling we will silence in London.”

Master Thorne's body was found within the hour by Cabot, who came to pay his call, and the Orfordnesse folk wagged their tongues apace. They agreed that the cosmographer, being a man of dark belief and uncertain religion, had come to a fitting end. The Thornes were ever a wild lot.

Some held that Ralph had slain his father, by reason of the rapier seen beside the body, and the complete disappearance of the armiger who had come up from London. Although town and countryside were searched by the bailifs, no trace of young Thorne was to be had.

Certain men who had gone down before midnight to the shore to watch the setting out of Sir Hugh and Richard Chancellor, and had been talking to the shipmen waiting by the boats drawn up on the strand, remembered that a strange youth had approached them, walking unsteadily and to all appearances drunk. Assuredly he must have been drunk, since he offered to join the shipmen to go upon the voyage to Cathay.

He was a well set-up lad they saw in the faint light, and the shipmen called him a lad of spirit. His soiled leather doublet and his features were smeared with blood—this struck them afterward—and he spoke thickly.

A burly man from the ships, with limbs like an ox and brass rings in his ears, haled the volunteer into one of the boats, and there he collapsed on the thwarts, perhaps from loss of blood, perhaps from the drink in him.

The other boat keepers argued that such a man would do them little good; but the boatswain with the earrings swore in a way that made the Orfordnesse folk stare that the Edward was short three wights and he would make a hand of the young yokel.