Three days it would take, the captain told him, to seal up the Fishwife’s hull with warm sealswax and get the latest auspices from the icemen. Queer customs, the scholar thought, but he’d once seen a ship twice the Fishwife’s size split in half by an errant hunk of ice. So far north he hoped the Lord and his Saints would forgive a little pagan superstition. Still, the scholar scowled at the lined old woman come to rub her wax and speak her blessings over the Fishwife.

On the second day he found himself drunk enough to brave the dockside inn, if only in search of more drink. Outside the winds tore across the harbor cold and sharp enough to shear the hide off an ox, but inside the scholar found a thick sweaty warmth hung in the air. The place smelled of soured wine and sickly sweet smells he could not identify. She was packed, this inn, with sailors and fishermen and a few brave knights with their squires come down from the castle on the bluffs to sample the dockside whores – of which there were plenty.