Desire in the Sun (35 page)

Joss grimaced, his eyes flickering open, then closed. Lilah caught her breath, and made an involuntary move toward him. The muzzle of the musket caught her in the shoulder, thrusting her painfully back.

“Do that again and you’re gone!”

“He’s hurt, bleeding! He needs help!”

“Stay where you are! There’ll be no mollycoddling
of bloody pirates! What is he, your lover? That’s toe bad.”

“He’s not a pirate—I’m not a pirate! We were forced—”

“Sure you were.”

Lilah glared at the man, who was looking at her with a combination of hatred and contempt, the small black hole at the end of the musket never wavering as he pointed it at her heart. Joss groaned, and she felt a spurt of anger.

“Look, you insufferable man, my name is Delilah Remy. My father owns Heart’s Ease, one of the largest sugar plantations in Barbados. We were shipwrecked and—”

“Stow it,” the man interrupted rudely. “I don’t have the time to listen to fairy tales.”

“Why, you … !” Forgetting where she was, Lilah started to her feet. The boat rocked precariously. The man roughly shoved her back down.

“Move again, and I’ll throw you overboard, and leave you to drown!”

Looking at the grim set of his mouth, Lilah believed him, completely. Disgruntled, she crossed her arms over her chest and sat, alternating between glaring at the imbecile with the musket and casting worried looks at Joss as the longboat was rowed back to the
Bettina.

XLI

O
n the deck of the
Bettina,
the pirates were herded into a tight little group under the main mast and kept under guard. Lilah was herded too, to her indignation. Joss, still unconscious, was hauled up from the longboat by means of a rope tied under his arms. He was dumped with as much care as if he’d been a sack of oatmeal near the others. Lilah, waiting until the guard was looking elsewhere, crawled furtively to his side. Shedding her soaked jerkin, she pressed it to the back of his head, trying to stanch the flow of blood. The cut was not large but it was deep, and still freely bled. The blow that caused it must have been severe. It was a miracle he had not drowned.

His was hardly the worst of the injuries. Like Silas, most of the survivors were terribly burned. Yates had had a foot blown off Lilah and one other were the only ones to escape uninjured.

All in all, nine pirates including herself and Joss had been brought aboard the
Bettina.
The rest were given up for dead, their corpses gone down with the ship or left for shark bait. A decent burial was not considered necessary for pirates, the carrion of the sea.

None of the women except Lilah had survived. Caught below decks when the ship exploded, they had probably been among the first to perish. She hoped the explosion
itself had killed them quickly. She did not like to imagine them burned to death, or drowned.

Not even Nell. Her audacity in pursuing Joss was not deserving of such a terrible end.

The deck was a shambles, littered with pieces of scrap metal and sticky with blood. Her jib had gone down in the fight. It lay splintered across the deck, an ominous reminder of how much the galleon had lost in the battle. Her dead lay in a neat line before the forecastle, and they appeared to number more than a dozen.

Easy to spot as he moved with frenetic energy about the deck, the captain was a short, stocky man with a grim set to his mouth. At the moment he was standing before the forecastle, Bible in one hand, pistol in the other. A shot rang out. Lilah jumped, then realized the shot was a signal to all hands except the guards to gather together for the funeral service for their fallen shipmates.

By the time the prayers for the dead were over and the bodies were being tipped one at a time into the sea, Lilah was shivering with fear. There was no reason to expect mercy from those who had been so mercilessly savaged.

The captain marched over to stand in front of his prisoners. He eyed the bedraggled group with loathing.

“Pirates,” he said. “Bah!”

Spitting on the deck to express his opinion of his captives, he turned to a lanky man who stood just behind him.

“No need to haul the scum to port. Hang ‘em.”

“Aye, Captain!”

From the man’s alacrity, he was, like the captain, out for vengeance. The rest of the crew that Lilah could see were in grim concurrence. Those of the pirates who heard their sentence pronounced and were aware enough to understand their fate cried out and moaned, sobbing and begging for mercy. Silas lurched forward on his
knees, scrabbling for the captain’s leg as he started to walk away.

“Have mercy, sir, have mercy. …”

The captain booted him savagely in the face. Silas screamed, clawed at his burned face, then collapsed on the deck, sobbing. Lilah felt sick with fear, and knew she had to act.

The captain was already moving away. Guard or no, Lilah shifted Joss’s head out of her lap and leaped to her feet.

“Captain! Wait!” She would have run to him but the musket trained on her gave her pause. “Captain! I must speak with you.”

To her relief the captain turned sharply at the sound of her voice, Lilah supposed because it belonged to a female.

“A lass.” His eyes swept her, registered her sex. Then he shrugged, “No matter.”

“But I’m not a pirate!” Lilah cried desperately, ignoring the killing looks cast her way by her companions in misfortune. “I am Delilah Remy, and I was shipwrecked—”

“Shut your mouth, you little slut!” One of the guards strode to stand between her and the captain, threatening to stave in her face with the butt end of his musket. Lilah looked past him, knowing she would not get another chance, her eyes and voice beseeching the captain to listen.

“Please, we were forced aboard the
Magdalene,
we were never part of the crew. We were as much victims of these pirates as you. …”

The musket butt lifted, was drawn back in preparation for a blow. Lilah cringed, raising her arm to shield her face,

“She tried to tell something of the same story when we fished her out, Pa. I was in no mood to listen.”

Lilah realized then that the freckle-faced young sailor from the longboat was the captain’s son.

From the corner of her eye, she saw a rope being thrown up to catch a yardarm. It snaked upwards, a thick brown arc against the sky, missed its mark and fell back. As she realized what this portended, Lilah shivered and redoubled her efforts.

“You must listen to me. Please, I beg you. …”

The captain turned back, crossed his arms over his chest. He and his son in an identical posture beside him considered her. Lilah knew that by no stretch of the imagination did she resemble the young lady she had once been, but she hoped that they would see something that would given them pause. She tried a tentative, tremulous smile. When that didn’t work she stood mute, staring at the pair of them, chewing unconsciously, nervously, on her lower lip, her hands twisting together.

“Let her come here,” the captain ordered at last. The hovering guard stepped back. With a great feeling of relief Lilah went forward.

“Now tell your tale, and tell it quickly. And be warned, I mislike liars!”

Beneath the yardarm, the rope was thrown up again. This time it arched gracefully over the spar, was caught and pulled into position.

“My name is Delilah Remy. …” Lilah began, only to be interrupted by a sailor who ran over to inform the captain that the rope was up and the hangings could begin.

“Read a prayer over ‘em, and get on with it.”

The sailor was dismissed with a wave of the captain’s hand. Lilah tried not to hear the despairing cries of her erstwhile crew-mates as one of the sailors began a hasty chant of “Our father …”

Her one concern had to be for herself—and Joss.

Speaking as quickly as she could, she told him how she and Joss had come to be aboard the
Magdalene.
Her story was buoyed by the captain’s son, who said: “The
men I picked up did seem surprised to learn that she was a female, Pa.”

“Hmm.” The captain stared at her for a moment, nodded. “All right. Barbados is not far out of our way. Need to make some repairs anyway, so I suppose we can make port there as well as anywhere. If you’re telling the truth, you’ll be glad to get home. If you’re not, well, I suppose you can hang just as well in Bridgetown as here.”

He turned away, pleased with himself, and cast a sharp look at his son. “Give her a cabin, and some dry clothes, but make sure she’s locked in.”

“Aye, Pa.”

“Captain!”

He turned back to look at her, from his expression clearly surprised to be importuned more about a matter already settled to his satisfaction.

“My companion—he is no more a pirate than I am.”

“Which one is he?”

“The one lying amidships. Tall, with black hair. He’s injured, unconscious.”

“He was at the stem cannon! I saw him set a charge myself!”

The speaker was one of the sailors, a small coterie of whom had been listening with varying degrees of suspicion to Lilah’s tale.

“That so?” The captain fixed Lilah with eyes that were suddenly ten degrees colder.

“He—he was forced. They would have killed us if he hadn’t—”

“He was a gunner! I saw him, too, sir, hard to miss, he is, being so tall!”

The captain’s eyes swung back to Lilah. At the look in them she nearly despaired.

“You can’t hang him! I tell you he was forced—”

“Whatever the merits of your story, if he was laying cannon he’s a bloody pirate. He hangs with the rest!”

With that pronouncement the captain started to turn away again.

“No! You can’t!”

Lilah ran after him, caught his sleeve. He looked down at her impatiently.

“I warn you, lassie, I’m in no mood to listen to a young gill’s heart-stirrings. I’ve lost nigh a third of my crew, one my own sister’s lad. Plus I’ve got God knows how much damage to my ship. Do you know what it’ll cost me to set her right again? I’ll spare you, but not a man who fired a cannon on my ship. If he’s your fancy-man, then I’m sorry.”

“He’s not!” The words came out in a rush as she sought frantically for those that would save Joss. The captain was concerned about money. … “He’s not my—my anything! He—he’s a slave, highly skilled, very valuable! He—he belongs to my father, and—he’s worth more than five hundred American dollars! My—my father will want to be recompensed if he loses such a valuable property! If you hang him, you’ll owe my father that money! But if you restore him to my father, and me too, I’ll—I’ll see that you are well paid for your trouble.”

The captain stared at her, then at Joss. “Now, lass, spare me your tales. That’s a white man and—”

“He’s a slave, I tell you, and you’ve no right to hang him! He’s what they call high-yeller, and my father owns him and he’ll make you pay if you kill him! Five hundred dollars. …”

“Let’s have a look at this slave!”

To a man the group around the captain walked over to stare down at Joss. Lilah went with them, her heart in her mouth. The pirates were being dragged, screaming, crying, away to hang.

Joss had regained consciousness, but barely. He blinked his eyes and lifted his head once before groaning and dropping back against the bloodied boards of the deck.

“Fetch a bucket of water!”

Someone did, and the bucket was emptied over Joss. As the cold deluge splashed him, slopped onto the deck, he lifted his head again, blinking. He moved an arm forward to serve as a pillow, resting his head on it. His eyes stayed open and Lilah thought that he was groggy but aware. Then his eyes found her, and sharpened slightly.

“Can you hear me, boy?” the captain asked, bending at the waist to growl the question, his face scant inches from Joss’s.

Joss nodded, the movement barely perceptible.

“You lay cannon against my ship?”

Lilah held her breath.

“Had no choice. Would have been killed, other—otherwise. Hope you’ll—accept my apologies.” He sounded as if he was struggling for breath.

The captain pursed his lips, squatted. “You know this—person?” He gestured toward Lilah. Joss’s eyes lifted to her face, and he moved his head in what seemed to be assent.

“Aye.”

“What is the person’s name, and relationship to you?”

So he would test her identity, too, weigh her story against Joss’s. Lilah noticed that the captain was careful to use no pronouns that would give away her sex, and realized that Joss could not know they were aware of the truth behind what was left of her disguise. He would try to protect her. …

“Remy.” Joss’s voice was hoarse, but he stirred, trying to sit up. He winced and fell back, and it was all Lilah could do not to run to his side. “He’s my …”

“They know I’m a lady, Joss,” Lilah interjected. “You don’t have to protect me anymore.”

Joss looked at her. So did the captain. His look carried a clear warning for her to be silent.

“Miss Remy claims that you’re a blackamoor. She says you’re worth five hundred dollars, and that you’re her slave. What do you have to say to that?”

Joss looked at Lilah again, his eyes suddenly growing hard.