Free The Skull by Christian Darkin Page B

them down and they fitted almost perfectly, locking in to each side of the boat in the stern and leaving just enough room for him and the oars and mast. It was precarious, but it fitted.
    Quickly, he led the animals back to the place De Cuir had set for the exchange. The seeds were there, in several large sacks. De Cuir had kept his side of the bargain. William left the heifers and the money and dragged the sacks back to the boat, piling them into the bow to give the craft some balance for its top-heavy load. The sun was almost rising now. It was time to leave.
    He heaved the little boat back into the sea and climbed in. It was sitting very low in the water. Dangerously low. The Lady in her veil pitched from side to side, towering above him as he rowed out to sea. The tiny boat rocked unpredictably in the ripples.
    Going was slow. The Lady blocked most of the wind from the sails, and France seemed to take forever to disappear from view behind them. Once it was finally gone, the wind picked up, and they started to move faster, but with the wind came waves.
    By nightfall, William knew he was in serious danger. He had watched and felt the storm comingin with slowly rising fear, and now it was all around him, pulling, rocking and tipping the boat from side to side. The sky was dark and the sea was a rolling, sickening landscape of heaving mountains, rising, falling and erupting around him.
    His little boat was a solid design. It was long and deep, which meant it could hold a lot more cargo than one would expect of such a small vessel. It was easy to turn, and it was double-ended, so that if he really had to, he could swap around in his seat and start going backwards to make a quick manoeuvre. It was also flat-bottomed, so although it rocked enough in small waves to alarm anyone not used to sailing, it only would tip so far and no further – meaning that it was deceptively stable, even in moderately rough seas like these.
    The problem with a deep, flat boat was that if the waves really did get up then it wouldn’t tip or capsize. It would simply fill with water and go straight to the bottom.
    All William could do was watch the waves, and fight to keep his little vessel angled straight into the worst of them so that it would ride them instead of taking their full smashing, tipping force against its sides, and hope to stay afloat until it was over. It was aconstant and exhausting fight, and with every passing minute, it got harder.
    The wind was strong now, and rain was slapping against the sail in rattling waves as the gusts changed direction. Looking up, a fork of lightning outlined the figure of Juliana’s Lady, rising in front of him as though rearing out of the water. Her unseen eyes seemed to stare through the veil into his.
    Out in the dark, heaving fury of the water, it seemed to William that a power was rising. It was the same power he felt when he looked into the huge empty eye socket in the tomb. A raw, natural power that was the force behind the storm, the force that turned seasons, that grew the crops or ruined them.
    And it was in Her, too, the monster in the tomb.
    Nature, in all its cruel glory, had taken his father. It did not care about William, his little boat or even the whole village. Human desires meant nothing to it. That much he had learned from Marie. He would cling on or he would not, and the storm would roll on regardless until it ended.
    He dipped the boat into another wave so wide and high it blocked out the sky until it carried him up above the boiling landscape. For a moment, in the rolling waves under him, he thought he caughta glimpse of Her huge eye, not empty now, but alive, ringed with dark scales, Her curved teeth open and waiting, hanging just below the surface. This wild, tearing fury was Her world. Her storm.
    Then suddenly, he felt the boat tip forwards and they were ploughing down the side of the wave, and into the next rising eruption, the oars twisting and dragging as William