"Bide a moment," Edward said. He set another coin on the counter and pointed to the Basque fishermen. "Give these lads a round of whatever they fancy, and as much bread and cheese and salt meat as the silver will buy besides. I have no quarrel with them, and I want none." He meant that; Basques were even worse than Frenchmen for remembering feuds forever.

His gesture satisfied this table full of them, anyway. They rose one by one and bowed, each with a hand over his heart. Edward and-after a nudge from him-Richard bowed back. Then they could go over to the Bretons without seeming to be on their side.

"Drink up!" said the man who'd been loudest in inviting them to come. "If you bought for those Basque buggers, we'll buy for you. Do you know Breton, or just French?"

"I can have a go in your tongue," Edward answered, and Richard nodded.

"They can! They can!" the fishermen whooped in their own tongue. Also in Breton, the talky one said, "Good to meet you, by all the saints. I'm Francois Kersauzon. Will you be giving me your names?"

"Kersauzon, is it? I've heard of you, friend," Edward said, and introduced himself and Richard. "If anyone's done better in our backbreaking business, I don't know who he'd be."

"I've been lucky," Kersauzon said. Sun and salt had feathered his coppery hair with gold strands. He was slimmer than either Radcliffe, but had a fisherman's broad shoulders and scarred, callused hands.

"Lucky? I'll say! More cod and bigger cod than anybody else brings back," Edward said. "I'm jealous. I won't try to tell you any different."

"Plenty more where those came from, too," Kersauzon said easily. He wasn't drunk, no, but his tongue was loose in his mouth. One of his crewmen tried to shush him, but he didn't want to shush. "Don't fret over it, Jacques. Plenty more, yes. Is it the truth? Or is it even less than the truth? The Englishman gave the truth for us-we can give it for him."

"Kor ki du," Jacques answered. Edward hid a smile. Black dog shit-Jacques wasn't convinced.

Radcliffe grabbed a stool from another table and brought it over to the one where Kersauzon and his friends were sitting. His son did the same. The famous Breton raised his mug. "Your health!"

"Yer mat!" Edward said, and drank with him. The crooked smiles some of the fishermen wore told him he didn't speak Breton all that well. They didn't bother him; he already knew it. But he won points for making the effort.

"Here," Francois Kersauzon said. "As you drink with us, so you can eat with us, too. Enjoy it!"

He cut a slice of the tavern's bread for Edward and another for Richard. Then, as Jacques squawked some more, he started sawing away at the most remarkable joint of meat the Englishman had ever seen. It looked like a smoked and salted goose's drumstick…except that it was larger than his own calf, large enough to stretch almost from one side of the table to the other.

It was dark meat, like goose. It tasted a lot like goose-but, Edward thought, not quite the same. He knew he might be wrong. Goose he usually ate fresh, and the smoking and salting could well have changed the flavor. It was almost like eating goose ham.

"Good. Mighty good." He talked with his mouth full. Richard, busy eating, nodded. Edward went on, "So along with all your big, fat cod, you went and killed the roc out there, too?" He was only half joking. He'd always thought the roc was only a bird sailors told stories about. He'd always thought so, aye, but now he wondered. Wouldn't you need a bird the size of a roc to get a drumstick like this one?

Kersauzon and one of the other Bretons both said the same thing at the same time: "Honnnk!" They pitched their voices as deep as they could: almost deep enough to make the table vibrate. All the fishermen from Brittany, even sour Jacques, laughed like loons.

"Well, friend Francois, you know something I don't," Edward said.

Before he could go on, Jacques said, "Never thought I'd live to hear a Saoz admit that."

"A Gallaou is worse," Francois Kersauzon said, an observation that surprised Radcliffe not at all. The Bretons lived right next door to the French, so of course they disliked them more than the English. The Channel kept Edward's countrymen far enough away to seem less menacing than their nearer neighbors.

"If it is the roc, where did you find it and how did you keep it from sinking you?" Edward persisted. "And if it's not, by Our Lady, what is it?"

"Will you pay me to hear the story? Will you pay me a third of your catch this year to hear it?" Kersauzon asked. He might have drunk a good deal, but he wasn't too sloshed to be sly.

"That's outrageous!" Richard exclaimed.

The Breton shrugged. He gestured toward the enormous, inexplicable drumstick. "If you don't care to hear the story, no one will make you. But you can still eat your fill. We don't begrudge it."

"A third of my catch?" Edward said slowly, in Breton. Then he said it again, in French, to make sure he had it right. Francois nodded. The Englishman went on, "And in exchange for this, you promise me…?"

"That you will hear my story, and that it will be true," Kersauzon answered. "Past that, I promise nothing. How can I? Ours is a chancy trade. Things may go well, or they may not. Who can know ahead of time? A third of your catch may be worth nothing, too. God forbid it, but it may be so."

Richard Radcliffe set a hand on his father's arm. "Let's get out of here," he said in English. "He's run out a line and baited a hook, and he'll haul you in and cut your guts out and dry you in salt."

"Your father would be gamy, even in salt," Kersauzon said, also in English. Richard turned red.

"Tell me your story," Edward Radcliffe said. His son exclaimed in dismay. Edward held up a hand. "I will pay your price, friend Francois. Maybe I am a fool. It could be. Plenty of others have said so. And I will give you one small promise in return."

"Which is?" the Breton asked politely.

"If you lie, or if you cheat, I will hunt you down and kill you."

Several of the Bretons growled. Jacques reached for his knife in a way that warned he wasn't about to cut himself more of the strange smoked flesh that tasted so much like goose. Francois Kersauzon didn't flinch, or even blink. "A bargain," he said, and thrust out his right hand.

Edward clasped it. Kersauzon began to talk.

Maybe I am a fool…Plenty of others have said so. Radcliffe wondered whether his words would come back to haunt him. If they did, he would keep his promise. It was as simple as that.

All around him brawled the immensity of the Atlantic. He'd never been a cautious sailor, clinging to the sight of land. You couldn't be, not if you wanted to make a halfway decent living with your lines and nets. But he'd never sailed so far into the green-gray-blue of the ocean before, either.

Ahead of him, like a will-o'-the-wisp, the Morzen bobbed on the swells. Francois Kersauzon's cog-her name meant Mermaid-was a little smaller, a little faster, than the St. George. If she'd wanted to, she could have given Radcliffe the slip. But she reefed her big square sail a bit and stuck with the English vessel.

Edward Radcliffe stood at the St. George's stern, holding the tiller that connected to the rudder. A few cogs still used old-fashioned twin steering oars, but he liked the new arrangement better. It let the builders square up the stern, so the cog could hold more than it would have otherwise. The Morzen was made the same way. Up ahead, Kersauzon was doing the steering; by now, Edward was as familiar with his distant outline against the sky as he was with those of his own sailors.

"I don't like this," Henry grumbled. "I don't like it one bit. Those damned tricksy Bretons are laughing up their sleeves at us. You wait and see if they're not, Father."

"Fine sleeves they have for laughing, too," Edward said. His son gave him a dirty look. He was joking and not joking at the same time. A Breton kabig, with its hood, its wooden toggles, and its sturdy oiled cloth, was one of the best foul-weather jackets around. His own wool coat didn't shed water so well, though it was probably warmer.