Chapter 21: Tidal to Tide

(Robin of Oakley narrates)

Though the ship is skimming the waves as if it was in a race, the thought of sailing at faster than the fastest horse, and at night, despite the fullness of the moon, was terrifying sitting in the single cabin. This is a Venetian galley, that Rebecca has secured for us to cross the channel, and it sails like the wind. The Capitan speaks no English, and I speak no Italian, though Rebecca had chattered away to him with her instructions on the jetty as if she was a native. On deck, seeing the movement of the ship in relation to the barely visible ribbon noting the transition between sky and sea, rather than just feeling it, the speed seems more controlled and therefore acceptable to my senses. It is much easier on the mind to be able to see where we are going.

I determine that I am no sailor, although for the first time since leaving the river two days ago I am enjoying the journey. Though the sea is featureless, other than light twinkling off the tops of the waves, the sky on the other hand is alight with stars, and the steersman guides us by them with a smile in my direction when he sees my dishevelled person on deck. The huge, black bearded Capitan goes further, and claps me on the back, to the accompaniment of a deep laugh when he sees me on deck. They all seem so cheerful, boosting my confidence in giving up my fate and mortality to the skills of their sailing and the strength and water tightness of their sleek craft.

Soon I first hear, then see breakers hitting distant shores on either side of me, where we enter the broad River Thames estuary and surge high on the tide as the moon sinks nearer to the western horizon.

I have time to relax and think about what Rebecca told me as we waited on the wharf at Brugge for the galley to be loaded and readied to sail with us and cargo. She told me about how my father had lived and earned his living, that he has ever done, all those years he spent on the road, by his wits and using the wager mongers to boost his winnings against their books.

I remember him winning far more coin from the wager mongers than his third place, in fact it was much more than my winnings! It was the first tournament I had ever entered last year in Bartown, the first of the only two tournaments in which we together competed. As Rebecca said, on that day he had worked the wager mongers’ books to his own advantage by his being careful, always betting on certainties. That’s why he hid his talents during early rounds so it looked like he won the final round through good blind fortune or accidental failings by his superior archers. I remember thinking at the time, that he cannot possibly be the bowman that my sister sought so eagerly, this old man’s bowmanship being little better than the ordinary run of the mill. Only now, a year later, with Rebecca point out the facts, does it dawn on me that he was pipped into third place in that tourney by a hair’s breadth because he only wanted second place behind me; he stood to earn more from my winning than if he had triumphed in the tournament. And all this time I had deluded myself that I was perhaps his equal, when I clearly wasn’t even close, neither by steadiness of aim or resolve in guile. But I am not dismayed by my self-evaluation, for I am proud to have such a father as he.

Bankers do the same, Rebecca had said on the jetty, balancing the odds of success against failure. They never rely on chance but study the trends, just like William Archer studied the winds and the form of the opposition, judging his responses so that he could always appear hidden within the general field of ordinariness. When he could no longer disguise his superiority in one field of competition, he moved to a new field where the competition and, more importantly, the promoters and wager takers were strangers to him. Bankers rely on being better informed than their competitors and able to better target markets or determine likely margins before they even plan their ventures, and regular updates of information. And then employing the best Captains and vessels for their ventures. They find out the information they require through agents, continually monitoring and updating, so are aware of the dangers and pitfalls, the likelihood of success and the value of a market before committing investments to it. My father, she said, would had made a fine banker, and still could if he would give up the irksome duty of King’s Reeveship of Bartonshire, a role which he did not seek but does to the best he can.

Even as a small girl, Rebecca had known that she was destined to end in running her father’s bank, being an only child of a father too broken hearted over his loss to consider remarrying. So she had studied this young man, this inveterate archer, almost a boy himself, only five years older than the girl she was at the time, with interest. Merely a bowmaker and seller, without any one real home for three quarters of the year, who banked such an accumulation of loose coin so large that she suspected he was a robber outlaw and that these regular bankings were his highway pocket pickings. Her father Jacob had laughed at her fears and explained that the entirety of his purse was indeed made up partly from the honest sales of his wares, which was wholly dependent on his competitive success on the field, and partly on his prize winnings, but even more was gleaned from calculating his odds by winning wagers from bookkeepers who rated him as a complete outsider. Rebecca was so interested by Will Archer that she looked out for him whenever he called and engaged him in conversation. Although reserved and reticent at first, he relaxed in the informality of her youth and opened up a little more, and she was always fascinated by his stories of life on the road. He thinks like a banker, she told me, and we have that in common, even though my father always seemed to regard her as a child all the time he called at her father’s bank. She couldn’t help but notice that he was always a serious man, sad even, as though he was carrying a burden too heavy for him, nor could he put it down. He only spoke of his parents and a fisherman cousin, never a lover. He didn’t appear to have a wife and made it very clear that he wasn’t romantically interested in Rebecca, even though she was, visit upon visit, becoming a woman in front of his eyes, that he was blind to.

She looked at me with a frightening and honest intensity and admitted that for so long she was full of desires for him, yet he remained only friendly and ignored all her signals. I had felt the child then, much as she must have felt. Rebecca is a dark haired beautiful woman, who commands respect from anyone who deals with her. Indeed, she has that same steely determination and charisma that my parents have, that individually are as cold steel managers of their destiny, yet soar like flaming comets in each other’s company. Rebecca has that same isolated steely sadness that my father had when I first met him in that archery field outside Bartown. My heart goes out to her.

“I spotted him once in the bath house at our home in Lincoln, purely by chance you understand,” she had said, colouring slightly, in her continued confession of her feelings, while speaking on the jetty, “and I saw his betrothal ring on a thread around his neck, held close to his heart, yet hidden from the world he found too empty to engage in emotionally. I knew then that I didn’t have a chance with him, the only place I would ever have a finger hold in his heart is that of the sweet but slightly irritating limpet-like child daughter of a dear friend. Then, when Jacob was told that your Inn’s well had collapsed in the flood, all those years ago, Will shyly asked Jacob to intervene on his behalf, yet keep his name out of it. Not the normal reaction of an inveterate investor, and nor remotely normal were the terms of his offer: he was not interested in the receipt of interest for his investment, he was happy for it to be an anonymous gift of charity.

“Bankers are nosey people, Robin, we love to know other people’s business, looking for ways to use it to advantage. We cannot help ourselves. That’s when my father found out his connection with Alwen, and he developed a relationship with your family, which has endured way beyond purely the conduct of business. I think Jacob regarded William as the son he never had, and I think Will felt a little of that too, since his own father was shut off to him for much of the year. And it was Will and Alwen only that saved our lives, when we had no one else to turn to. He must have thought he had lost his nest egg after the Church and Crown had confiscated our bank and seized all its known assets. No one else, of all our friends and business partners, dared lift a finger to help us until Alwen gave us sanctuary or Will to get us out of the situation we found ourselves in, unless it was to exploit us.”