The Boat of a Million Years Read online

  5

  Springtime came back, and that year it was mild, overwhelmingly bright, full of fragrances and the cries of wildfowl returned. Gorged with snow melt, the stream sprang white amidst hillside leaves, brawled through the dell, plunged into the bamboo forest, bound for the great river and so at last the sea.

  A man and a woman followed it on the road. They were clad for travel. Staves swung in their hands. On his back was a load of needful goods, on hers a swaddled baby boy who gurgled lustily and happily as he looked around him at wonders.

  The people stood gathered together behind, where their homes came to an end, and wept.

  XI. The Kitten and the Cardinal

  Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, cardinal of the Church, first minister to His Most Christian Majesty Louis XIII, who had created him duke, gave his visitor a long regard. The man was altogether out of place in this chamber of blue-and-gilt elegance. Though decently clad for a commoner, he seemed unmistakably the seafarer he proclaimed himself. Of medium height, he had the suppleness of youth, and the dark hawk face was unlined; but something about him—perhaps the alert steadiness of the look he gave back—bespoke a knowledge of the world such as it takes many years in many comers to gain.

  Windows stood open to summer fragrances blowing from the fields and woodlands of Poitou. The river Mable clucked past an ancestral castle lately rebuilt as a modern palace. Sunlight, reflected off the water, danced in shards among the cherubs and ancient heroes that adorned the ceiling. At a little distance from the cardinal’s thronelike chair, a kitten played with its shadow across the parquetry.

  Richelieu’s thin fingers stroked the parchment on his lap. Its age-spotted dun made his robe appear blood-bright. For this meeting he had put on full canonicals, as though to shield against demons. But when he spoke, his voice held its wonted wintry calm.

  “If this be not falsified, today shall perhaps see the strangest audience I have ever granted.”

  Jacques Lacy bowed with more grace than would have been awaited. “I thank your eminence for it, and assure him all is true.” His speech was not quite of the region nor of any in France. Did it still bear a lilt of Ireland, or of some land farther yet? Certainly it showed that, if not formally educated, he had read many books. Where did a skipper plying between the Old World and the New find time?

  “You may thank the bishop who prevailed upon me,” said Richelieu dryly.

  “After the priest of St. Felix had prevailed upon another, Your Eminence.”

  “You are a bold one indeed, Captain Lacy. Have a care. This matter is dangerous enough already.”

  “I humbly beg Your Eminence’s pardon.” The tone was by no means insolent, but neither was it contrite.

  “Well, let us get on with your business.” Even away from Paris, hours were precious; and the future might not hold a large store of them. Nevertheless Richelieu considered for a minute, stroking the beard that brought the gauntness of his features to a point, before ordering: “Describe exactly what you said to the priest and caused him to do.”

  Surprise slightly shook Lacy’s self-command. “Your Eminence knows.”

  “I will compare the accounts.” Richelieu sighed. “And you may spare the honorifics hereafter. We are alone.”

  “I thank Your— Well.” The mariner, drew breath. “I sought him out at his church in St. Nazaire after I heard that ... monsieur would grace these parts, no enormous distance to travel from there, with his presence for a while. I told him of the casket. Rather, I reminded him, for he knew about it in a half-forgotten way. Naturally, that caught his attention, for nobody else remembered. It had simply gathered dust in the crypt these past four hundred years.”

  The kitten pounced at Lacy’s foot. A smile in its direction flickered across the cardinal’s lips. His eyes, huge and feverishly luminous, turned back to the man. “Did you relate how it came to be there?” he pursued.

  “Certainly, monsieur. That was evidence for my good faith, since the story had not become part of folklore.”

  “Do so again.”

  “Ah ... in those days a Breton trader named Pier, of Ploumanac’h, settled in St. Nazaire. It was hardly more than a village—not that it’s major these days, as monsieur doubtless knows—but on that account a house cost little, and the location was handy for the small coastwise vessel he acquired. Men could more easily change their homes and trades then than now. Pier prospered modestly, married, raised children. At last, widowed, he declared he’d enlist in the crusade—the final one, as it turned out—that King Louis the Saint was launching. By that time he was old, but remarkably well-preserved. Many people said he still looked downright youthful. He was never seen afterward, and folk supposed he had died.

  “Before he left, he made a substantial donation to the parish church. That was common when someone was about to go on a long journey, let alone off to war. However, to this gift he attached a condition. The church was to keep a box for him. He showed the priest that it contained nothing more than a rolled-up parchment, a document of some importance and confidentiality; whereupon he sealed it. One day he or an heir would return to claim it, and the parchment itself would validate that claim. Well, a request of this kind was not unheard of, and the priest duly entered it in the annals. Lifetimes went by. When I appeared, I expected I’d have to find the record for today’s priest; but he’s an antiquarian and had browsed through the books.”

  Richelieu lifted the parchment and read it for perhaps the seventh time, repeatedly glancing at Lacy. “Yes,” he murmured, “this declares that the rightful heir will look just like Pier de Ploumanac’h, whatever name he bears, and describes him in full. Excellently crafted, that description.” The cardinal fancied himself a man of letters, and had written and produced several dramas. “Furthermore, there is this verse in supposed nonsense syllables that the claimant will be able to recite without looking at the text.”

  “Shall I do so for monsieur?”

  “No need—thus far. You did for the priest, and later for his bishop. The proof was sufficient that he in turn wrote to the bishop of this diocese, persuading him to persuade me to see you. For the document concludes by declaring that the ... heir ... will carry tidings of the utmost importance. Now why did you refuse any hint of their nature to either prelate?”

  “They are only for the greatest man hi the land.”

  “That is His Majesty.”

  The visitor shrugged. “What chance would I have of admission to the king? Rather, I’d be arrested on suspicion of—almost anything, and my knowledge tortured out of me. Your eminence is known to be more, m-m, flexible. Of an inquiring mind. You patronize learned and literary men, you’ve founded a national academy, you’ve rebuilt and generously endowed the Sorbonne, and as for political achievements—“ His words trailed off while he waved his hands. Clearly he thought of the Huguenots curbed, yet kept conciliated; of the powers of the nobles patiently chipped down, until now their feudal castles were for the most part demolished; of the cardinal’s rivals at court outwitted, defeated, some exiled or executed; of the long war against the Imperialists, in which France—with Protestant Sweden, the ally that Richelieu obtained—was finally getting the upper hand. Who really ruled this country?

  Richelieu raised his brows. “You are very well informed for a humble sea captain.”

  “I have had to be, monsieur,” replied Lacy quietly.

  Richelieu nodded. “You may be seated.”

  Lacy bowed once more and fetched a lesser chair, which he placed before the large one at a respectful distance, and lowered himself. He sat back, seemingly at ease, but a discerning eye recognized readiness to explode into instant action. Not that there was any danger. Guards stood just outside the door.

  “What is this news you bear?” Richelieu asked.

  Lacy frowned. “I do not expect Your Eminence to believe upon first hearing it. I gamble my life on the supposition that you will bear with me, and will dispatch trusty men to bring you the further ev
idence I can provide.”

  The kitten frolicked about his ankles. “Chariot likes you,” the cardinal remarked, a tinge of warmth in his voice.

  Lacy smiled. “They say monsieur is fond of cats.”

  “While they are young. Go on. Let me see what you know about them. It will tell me something about you.”

  Lacy leaned forward and tickled the kitten around the ears. It extended tiny claws and swarmed up his stockings. He helped it to his lap, chucked it under the chin and stroked the soft fur. “I’ve had cats myself,” he said. “Afloat and ashore. They were sacred to the ancient Egyptians; They drew the chariot of the Norse goddess of love. They’re often called familiars of witches, but that’s nonsense. Cats are what they are, and never try like dogs to be anything else. I suppose that’s why we humans find them mysterious, and some of us fear or hate them.”

  “While some others like them better than their fellow men, God forgive.” The cardinal crossed himself in perfunctory fashion. “You are a remarkable man, Captain Lacy.”

  “In my way, monsieur, which is quite different from yours.”

  Richelieu’s gaze intensified. “I obtained a report on you, of course, when I heard of your wish,” he said slowly. “But tell me about your past life in your own words.”

  “That you may judge them—and me, monsieur?” The mariner’s look went afar, while his right hand continued as the kitten’s playmate. “Well, then, I’ll tell it in a curious way. You’ll soon understand the reason for that, which is that I do not want to lie to you.

  “Seumas Lacy hails from northern Ireland. He can’t readily say when he was born, for the baptismal record is back there if it’s not been destroyed; but on the face of it, he must be around fifty years old. In the year 1611 the English king cleared the Irish from the best parts of Ulster and settled it with Scottish Protestants. Lacy was among those who left the country. He took a bit of money along, for he came of a mildly well-to-do seafaring family. In Nantes he found refuge with old-established Irish trading folk, who helped him regularize his status. He took the French form of his Christian name, became a French subject, and married a French woman. Being a sailor, he made long voyages, as far as Africa, the West Indies, and New France. Eventually he rose to shipmaster. He has four children alive, their ages from thirteen to five, but his wife died two years ago and he has not remarried.”

  “And when he heard that I would be in Poitou for several weeks, he went downstream to St. Nazaire and opened the casket that his ... ancestor had left in the church,” Richelieu said low.

  Lacy looked straight at him. “Thus it is, Your Eminence.”

  “Presumably you always knew about it.”

  “Obviously I did.”

  “Although you are Irish? And no member of your family claimed the thing for four centuries. You yourself lived almost thirty years in nearby Nantes before you did. Why?”

  “I had to be sure of the situation. At that, the decision was hard.”

  “The report states that you have an associate, a redheaded man with a missing hand who goes by the name of MacMahon. Lately he has disappeared. Why?”

  “No disrespect intended, Your Eminence, but I sent him off because I couldn’t foresee what would come of this, and it was wrong to risk his life also.” Lacy smiled. The kitten tumbled about his wrist. “Besides, he’s an uncouth sort. What if he gave offense?” He paused. “I took care not to know just where he’s gone. He’ll find out whether I’ve returned safely home.”

  “You show a distrustfulness that is ... scarcely friendly.”

  “On the contrary, monsieur, I’m putting a faith in you that I’ve put in none but my comrade for a very long time. I stake everything on the belief that you will not immediately assume I’m a madman, an enemy agent, or a sorcerer.”

  Richelieu gripped the arms of his chair. Despite the robe, it could be seen how his wasted frame tautened. His eyes never wavered. “What, then, are you?” he asked tonelessly.

  “I am Jacques Lacy from Ireland, your eminence,” the visitor replied with the same levelness. “The only real falsehood about that is that I was born there, for I was not. I did spend more than a centftry in it. Outside the English-held parts people have a large enough measure of freedom that it’s rather easy to change lives. But I fear they are all doomed to conquest, and the plantation of Ulster gave me an unquestionable reason for departing.

  “I came back to where I had once been Pier de Ploumanac’h—who was not a Breton born. Before and after him I’ve used other names, lived in other places, pursued other trades. It’s been my way of surviving through the millennia.”

  Breath hissed between teeth. “This is not a total surprise to me. Since I first heard from the bishop, I have been thinking... Are you the Wandering Jew?”

  The head shook; the kitten sensed tension and crouched. “I know about rascals who’ve pretended they were him. No, monsieur, I was alive when Our Lord was on earth, but never saw him, nor knew about him till much later. Once in a while I have passed myself off as a Jew, because that was safest or simplest, but it was pretense, same as when I’ve been a Mussulman.” The mouth formed a grim grin. “For those roles, I had to get circumcised. The skin slowly grew back. On my kind, unless a wound is as great as the loss of a hand, it heals without scars.”

  “I must think anew.” Richelieu closed his eyes. Presently his lips moved. They shaped the Paternoster and the Ave, while his fingers drew the Cross, over and over.

  Yet when he was done and looked back upon the world, down at the parchment, he spoke almost matter-of-factly. “I saw at once that the verse here is not actually nonsense. It bears a certain resemblance to Hebraic, transcribed in Roman letters, but it is different. What?”

  “Ancient Phoenician, Your Eminence. I was bora in Tyre when Hiram was its king. I’m not sure whether David or Solomon was reigning in Jerusalem just then.”

  Again Richelieu closed his eyes. “Two and a half millennia ago,” he whispered. He opened them wide. “Recite the verse. I want to hear that language.”

  Lacy obeyed. The rapid, guttural words rang through sounds of wind and water, through the silence that filled the chamber. The kitten sprang off his lap and pattered to a corner.

  Stillness prevailed for half a minute before Richelieu asked, “What does it mean?”

  “A fragment of a song, the sort men sang in taverns or when camped ashore during a voyage. ‘Black as the sky of night is my woman’s hair, bright as the stars are her eyes, round and white as the moon her breasts, and she moves like Ashtoreth’s sea. Would that my sight and my hands and myself lay upon all!’ I’m sorry it’s so profane, monsieur. It was what I could remember, and at that, I had to reconstruct it.”

  Richelieu quirked a smile. “Yes, I daresay one forgets much in thousands of years. And in ... Pier’s day, clerics, too, were less refined than they are now.” Shrewdly: “Though did you expect that something like this would go a little way toward authenticating you, since it is the kind of thing that would stick in a man’s mind?”

  “I am not lying to Your Eminence. In no particular.”

  “In that case, you have been a liar throughout the ages.”

  Lacy spread his palms. “What would monsieur have had me do? Imagine, if you please, even in this most enlightened of eras and countries, imagine I proclaimed myself openly. At best I’d be taken for a mountebank, and be lucky to escape with a scourging. I could easily go to the galleys, or hang. At worst I’d be condemned as a sorcerer, in league with Satan, and burned. Evil would befall me without my saying a word if I just stayed in one place, living on and on while they buried my sons and grandsons and I never showed signs of age. Oh, I’ve met folk—many live at this moment in the New World—for whom I could be a holy man or a god; but they’ve been savages, and I prefer civilization. Besides, civilization sooner or later overruns the savages. No, best I arrive at a new home as a plausible outsider, settle down a few decades, and at last move onward in such wise that people take for gr
anted I’ve died.”

  “What brought this fate upon you?” Richelieu signed himself anew.

  “God alone knows, Your Eminence. I’m no saint, but I don’t believe I was ever an especially terrible sinner. And, yes, I am baptized.”

  “When was that?”

  “About twelve hundred years ago.”

  “Who converted you?”

  “I’d been a Christian catechumen a long time, but customs changed and— May I ask leave to defer telling how it happened?”

  “Why?” demanded Richelieu.

  “Because I must convince Your Eminence that I’m telling the truth, and in this case the truth looks too much like invention—“ Before those eyes, Lacy broke off, threw up his hands, laughed, and said, “Very well, if you insist. It was in Britain after the Romans were gone, at the court of a warlord. They called him Riot ham us, their High King, but mainly he had some cataphracts. With them he staved off the English invaders. His name was Artorius.”

  Richelieu sat motionless.

  “Oh, I was no knight of his, merely a trader who came by on my rounds,” Lacy stated. “Nor did I meet any Lancelot or Gawain or Galahad, nor see any glittering Camelot. Little of Rome lingered there. In fact, it’s only my guess that this was the seed corn of the Arthur legend. But monsieur will understand why I was reluctant to mention it at all, I was tempted to concoct a prosaic falsehood.”

  Richefieu nodded. “I do understand. If you continue a liar, you are as skillful a one as I have found in a wide experience.” He forbore to inquire whether the Phoenician had embraced Christ out of expediency, the same as when he did homage to numerous other gods.

  Lacy’s tone became wry. “I shan’t insult you by denying that I’ve given a great deal of beforehand thought to this interview.”

  Richelieu plucked the parchment from his lap and cast it to the floor. It struck with a small rattling noise that drew the notice of the kitten. So much of a bodily gesture did the cardinal permit himself. He leaned forward, fingertips pressed together. Sunlight glistened off a great ring of gold and emerald. “What do you want from me?” he snapped.