Like Chaff in the Wind (4 page)

Chapter 4

Mrs Gordon quickly decided travelling by sea had its advantages, and spent most of her days chatting up the cook or one of the sailors, coming back to share nuggets of information with Alex, who to her surprise discovered she was prone to seasickness and therefore remained in bed.

“Did you know the captain’s crossed the Atlantic thirty times?” Mrs Gordon asked, sitting down on the single stool.

“Great. I suppose that means he knows what he’s doing, right?”

Mrs Gordon nodded and went on to tell Alex one more blood curdling story after the other, stories of shipwrecks and pirates and ships sitting becalmed for weeks in the middle of the ocean, the whole crew convinced that soon they would die, maddened by thirst.

“Are you doing this on purpose?”

Mrs Gordon laughed and said that as distraction it served, did it not?

After a couple of claustrophobic days in the dark cabin, Alex made her way out on deck, sniffing the fresh air with appreciation. For the first time since they set off, she had woken hungry, and she’d consumed a hearty breakfast consisting of salted fried pork, beer and somewhat stale bread.

“We’ll be anchoring off Plymouth tomorrow,” Captain Miles told her, coming to join her by the railing. “We have one new passenger coming aboard.” He smiled at Alex and went back to studying the sea. “Your companion tells me you’re on your way to join your husband.”

“Yes, in Virginia.” She wasn’t about to tell him more than that. “How long will it take?”

“Seven to ten weeks, depending on the weather and the winds.”

Late June then, she sighed, wondering how she would stand it. The last few nights he’d been so close, and she had arched herself to meet his touch only to bang her head against the wall of the berth and jerk awake. She missed him; there was a jagged hole inside of her that grew larger with every day. Their son sat aching in her heart, but Matthew, well him she missed with everything. With her hands, where she wanted nothing more than to let her fingers rest against his skin, with her mouth, with her breasts… Every part of her was left diminished, damaged, now that he wasn’t here to blend seamlessly into her.

“You’ll find him.” Mrs Gordon appeared like a giant, overweight magpie by her side.

“You think?”

Mrs Gordon tut-tutted with irritation. “Of course you will.” She cocked her head to one side and gave Alex a swift pat. “He’s not dead, lass, and as long as he’s alive you’ll find him. He calls to you, doesn’t he? Just like my Robbie—” She broke off. Alex regarded her narrowly, studying her in a way she’d never done before. Always black, never anything but black, except for her old-fashioned caps and collars that stood starched and white. And not once had Alex thought to ask.

“How long were you married?”

“Twenty years.” Mrs Gordon’s short fingers caressed the ring she wore on her pinkie. “Twenty years and four lasses, and then all five died within a year.” She shrugged off Alex’s hand. “I was very blessed, aye? I loved and was loved.” She tightened the shawl around her and patted Alex on the arm. “So do you, no? You love him so much you’d die for him.”

Alex nodded.

“That’s why you had to go after him. You’d never have forgiven yourself if you didn’t.”

*

It was not the most elegant of entrances. Despite several attempts, the new passenger was unable to clamber aboard using the rope ladder, and Alex hung over the railings watching while a rope was tied round his waist to hoist him aboard instead. The man landed in a heap, but quickly regained his feet, brushing at his cloak, his breeches – well, his everything – before turning to face the captain. With a flourish he bowed, sweeping his flashy hat off his head. Alex took one look at his face and was sure she would die. There, on the spot.

“At your service; Ángel Benito Muñoz de Hojeda – from Spain.”

Alex gawked at him. It couldn’t be! Ángel was dead! Well, to be precise, he wasn’t even born yet, but he’d died in 1999, she saw him die with her own eyes. And now he was here, in 1661, or at least someone looking eerily like him and using the same name was here, and it made her throat clog. She retreated behind the captain, but managed to curtsey and mumble an adequate greeting, all the time fearing her guts would drop out and land with a sickening plop on the deck.

Unbidden and definitely unwelcome, the image of her mother wrapping herself round a frozen Ángel and self-combusting them both into nonexistence sprung to the front of Alex’s mind. Oh God, oh God! Just thinking of it made her hyperventilate; her mother some sort of witch, and Ángel, God curse him, Ángel was a lowlife, a living contradiction of his given name. She stared down at the oak boarding and counted back from a hundred in an attempt to calm down.

She peeked at the stranger; Holy Matilda! This could be Ángel´s twin!

“A mouthful, all those names,” Mrs Gordon remarked.

“My friends call me Benito,” the stranger smiled. “Don Benito.”

Alex softened. Not the same then; besides, this man had warm eyes and a tentative but genuine smile – not at all like the future Ángel Muñoz. She smiled back and dropped her eyes to his extravagant petticoat breeches, decorated with yard upon yard of pink ribbon at waist and knee. My, my; a budding fashionista – down to the polished buckles of his shoes.

“And what may a Spanish gentleman be doing so far from home?” Captain Miles said, sounding as if Spanish gentlemen were a dangerous species best thrown overboard.

“I’m an envoy of the Tabacalera.” There was a slight hesitation in Don Benito’s reply, dark eyes sliding to the side. Hmm, thought Alex, grinning internally at Mrs Gordon’s sharp look in the Spaniard’s direction.

“The Tabacalera?” the captain said.

“It’s a tobacco company, the oldest in the world.” Don Benito puffed up with pride.

“
En Sevilla
,” Alex nodded, “
ya lo sé
.”

Don Benito beamed at her, his whole face alight with pleasure.“
Habla usted Castellano?
”

“Obviously,” Alex muttered.

“Are you perhaps familiar with my home city?” He sounded pathetically eager. Alex nearly told him that of course she was – she was born in Seville, in 1976 – but stopped herself from blurting that. He’d tear her apart with questions about her family and she would have no answers.

“Not really, a short visit many years ago, that’s all. My mother was from there,” she said, which meant she was anyhow drowned in a flood of questions that she handled by referring to the fact that her mother had died many years ago and she didn’t know.

“What was her name?”

“Mercedes. Mercedes Gutierrez. She was a famous painter.” She was a weird painter, a woman who painted miniature time portals and littered the world with them. Alex studied Don Benito carefully, but there was no reaction. She relaxed; it was all a coincidence, this man must be somewhere up the future Ángel’s family tree that’s all.

“A tobacco spy?” Captain Miles interjected, eyeing his new passenger with a slight frown.

“Captain!” Don Benito said. “Of course not. I have business to conduct with the Virginia Governor, Sir William Berkeley.”

The captain looked impressed.

“Really?” Alex said. This might be a most opportune meeting, for it would help to know the Governor, even at a once removed.

“Do you know him?” Don Benito asked.

“Never heard of him,” Alex said, making him smile.

“I don’t know him either – except by repute. I am but a glorified messenger boy.” A very well-dressed messenger boy, Alex concluded, even if she had serious doubts as to the state of his undergarments, given how the man kept on scratching himself.

*

Don Benito proved most pleasing company, regaling Alex and Mrs Gordon with stories of his life. It seemed that he had become loosely attached to the English Court in exile some years ago, and when the king was invited to return to England in May of 1660, Don Benito had been requested to come along.

“Why?” Mrs Gordon asked. “Is the king perchance interested in tobacco?” Don Benito laughed and explained that his present mission was a new development, and in his personal opinion the king was more prone to wine than tobacco. He then changed the subject, asking Alex what she remembered of his hometown, before launching himself into a dreamy description of his beloved Seville. With a little wave, Mrs Gordon escaped, winking at Alex over Don Benito’s head.

Sometimes Alex suspected Don Benito suffered from verbal diarrhoea, because God, how that man could talk! But when he ruefully admitted to being overjoyed at meeting someone with whom he could speak his mother tongue, she was somewhat ashamed of her uncharitable thoughts. Besides, she found their conversations invigorating, even if they did tend to drift off into yet another discussion about the Bible. This man must know the whole thing by heart, she reflected, ears shut as he yet again quoted something from Romans – his obvious favourite.

Time and time again, Don Benito returned to his favourite subject, Seville, describing the scent of orange blossom, the procession of the virgins and the silence of a midday siesta in summer, when the air was so hot it almost hurt to breathe it.

“It’s not quite as nice in spring. The Guadalquivir floods on a regular basis, leaving the whole city covered in water and mud.”

“Doesn’t happen now, with the new redirected river channel,” Alex mumbled, frowning down at her recalcitrant knitting.

“Channel? What channel?”

Shit; that particular little channel wasn’t even on the drawing board yet. Alex gave him a bland smile.“Mmm? Oh, don’t mind me, I was thinking of Stockholm.” Don Benito looked unconvinced, but didn’t push.

*

One evening, Captain Miles requested the presence of his passengers on deck, a foreboding wrinkle on his brow.

“I have reason to suspect I have a woman on board who has been…err…free with herself and requested payment.”

“A whore,” Mrs Gordon clarified. Behind her, Don Benito converted what sounded like a laugh into an extended coughing fit.

“Aye,” Captain Miles said stiffly, preceding them onto the deck.

The women from the hold – around sixty or so – stood on one side, while the crew, a motley collection of two dozen men, stood on the other. Between them sat a young woman, flaxen hair escaping the tight braid that hung down her back. At the captain’s command she stood, chin held high while the captain outlined her sins.

“I did no such thing,” the woman said once he’d finished.

The captain eyed her with irritation. “So if I were to search your belongings I wouldn’t find…” He stopped and pulled a written list towards him, squinting down at the words. “…three pewter buttons, one small silver ring, five silk ribbons in green, one half crown, one pink silk stocking…” He gave an amused snort. “…are you holding out for the other one, Smith?” Smith pulled out a pink silk stocking from his pocket and waved it at the captain, making the crew collapse in laughter.

“Well?” the captain demanded, glaring at the woman in front of him. She hung her head, muttering that she wasn’t really doing anything wrong, was she? They wanted to, so…

“On my ship I won’t condone immoral behaviour, you hear? You’ll be punished for whoring.” He studied the assembled women and turned to look at Alex, standing to one side with Mrs Gordon. “We have ladies on board, and if you can’t behave, you must suffer the consequences.”

“We’re not all like Nell,” one tall redhead protested, with supporting murmurs from her friends.

“I’m glad to hear that, and I expect to see you back tomorrow for the punishment.” The captain nodded to one of his men and the unfortunate woman was led off to spend her night under lock and key.

“What will you do to her?” Alex asked over supper.

“She will be whipped. Twelve lashes, I think; enough to humiliate, not enough to cause serious damage.”

“And to the men?”

Captain Miles choked. “The men?”

“You said you were going to punish immoral behaviour,” Alex said, “and as far as I can make out it isn’t only the girl who’s been fornicating. After all she’s been doing it with someone, right?”

Don Benito had yet another long coughing fit, making the captain glare at him.

“So,” Alex sat back. “Will they also get twelve lashes? You know, enough to humiliate but not enough to damage?”

Clearly it had never struck the captain that men should be punished for following their baser instincts, and over the following half hour the debate rang louder and louder, the captain insisting that this was his ship, and he would dispense justice as he saw fit.

“She profiteered, she tempted them,” he snapped, glowering at Alex who glowered back and stood up.

“You’ll do as you please, Captain Miles.” She leaned across the table and sank her eyes into him. “But don’t you dare say that you’ll not allow immorality on your ship, not when you choose to only punish one party.” With that she swept out.

Chapter 5

Alex was impressively good at cold-shouldering when she felt like it, and for the coming days Captain Miles tagged after her like a little dog in his pathetic attempts to repair their relationship.

“The lass is perfectly fine,” he informed Alex one morning, with a look on his face that begged her to smile at him.

“Oh, good, and her morals are now fully repaired, right?”

The captain beamed at her and nodded. If only you knew, Alex thought, but decided that there was no point in telling him of what went on under cover of the dark. Captain Miles shifted closer to her.

“The women in the hold, don’t they pay for their passage?” she asked. Simon’s somewhat garbled explanation had left her confused as to what these women were: voluntary emigrants? Bond servants?

“No, some of them are bonded to me and I will sell their term of service once we arrive at our destination. Some I ship over and they’re auctioned off as wives. There are very few women out there.”

“How awful,” Alex said. “Like a cattle auction.”

Captain Miles gave her a worried look. “It’s them that have chosen it. And if there’s an auction it is mostly the other way; the lasses will pick, and the poor sod they choose will burst himself to buy her.”

“So all the women down there are here because they want to.”

Captain Miles sighed. “Or because they have to. Some come from the Highlands, there’s not much there for a woman alone in the world.”

“But none of them have been forced? Carried aboard against their will?”

He looked mightily offended. “Mrs Graham! What do you take me for?”

“Just asking, and it does happen, right?”

“Aye,” he agreed. “It does.” He stood looking at the water below them for some time before giving her a perceptive look. “Is that was happened to your man, then?”

Alex was so unprepared for the question that she didn’t need to reply.

“Ah, lass. I’m sorry for you.”

“I’m sorry for him.”

“So how? If you don’t mind telling me.” He sounded genuinely interested and Alex gave him a brief summary. “And the ship was the
Henriette Marie,
you say?”

Alex nodded, not at all liking how the captain’s face had pulled together.

The captain braced himself against the railings. “The
Henriette Marie
is owned by a certain Mr Fairfax, owner not only of that ship but several. And he also has a plantation somewhere in Virginia, but I don’t know its name. Every time one of his ships lie at port in Scotland or in England, men disappear. They never return, probably carried over the sea to work themselves to death there, at his place. He doesn’t want them to survive, I’d assume.”

“What?” she gasped.

Captain Miles gave her shoulder a reassuring pat. “Most of them don’t have a wife who comes looking. So mayhap you’ll find him safe and sound.” He didn’t sound as if he believed what he was saying, the impression further reinforced by the strained smile he sent Alex’s way.

“Oh, I will, I most definitely will.” She scowled down at the water. “Why hasn’t someone stopped him? If you know, then so do others, right?”

Captain Miles shrugged and tapped his nose. “Powerful friends, Mrs Graham. I wouldn’t advise you to threaten him with exposure. A cornered rat is a nasty piece of works.”

Alex didn’t reply; she was busy stopping herself from crying.

“Why are you weeping, lass?” Mrs Gordon’s concerned voice made her jump, and Alex wiped at her wet eyes.

“I’m not.”

“Och aye, you are. Why?”

Alex summarised what Captain Miles had said.

“No major change, no? You already knew that he’d be sold and mayhap badly treated.”

“It’s easy for you to say, it isn’t your husband, is it?”

“Nay, but I care for him as well.” She gave Alex a little shake. “It doesn’t help him, child, for you to weep. Nor does it help you.”

“No,” Alex squared her shoulders. “You’re right, it doesn’t.”

“That’s my lass.” Mrs Gordon smiled at her. “I told you already years ago that you’re his Ruth, no? He won’t die without you.”

“What a comfort,” Alex muttered. “
Wither thou goest, I will go,
” she breathed. Yes, of course she would, and if that Fairfax character had any sense of what was good for him, he’d better have a very live Matthew Graham on his hands when she found him.

*

A week later, Mrs Gordon rushed into their cabin, bug-eyed, and threw the door closed behind her, leaning against it as if she expected the four riders of the Apocalypse to force their way through.

“You won’t believe this!” Mrs Gordon said, her ample bosom heaving.

“Believe what?” Alex gave her an irritated look; such a nice dream, involving her and Matthew.

“The Spaniard, I knew it!”

“Knew what?”

“Have you not seen then?”

Seen what? The incredible amount of ribbons? The way his hair was always neatly curled and perfumed?

“You have no eyes in your head, lass. Have you not seen how he scratches himself, all the time like?”

Alex wrinkled her brow; of course she had. “So he has lice?” Alex’s eyes dashed across the cabin in search of a potential infestation.

“Nay. Or mayhap he does, but nay, that’s not it.” Mrs Gordon sat down on the stool and flapped her hands. “That I should live to see the day…”

Alex was by now very curious, but waited until Mrs Gordon’s high colour faded into her more normal piggy pink.

“A priest,” Mrs Gordon said, eyes wide. Alex total lack of reaction was obviously a huge disappointment. “He’s a papist priest!”

“He is?” Alex said, mainly because something was expected of her. She wanted to laugh, but from the look on Mrs Gordon’s face, being a papist priest was to hover somewhere close to the inner circle of Hell. “And how do you know?”

“It was the hair shirt, aye?”

“Hair shirt?”

Mrs Gordon spoke so fast Alex could barely make out what she was saying, but finally she grasped that Mrs Gordon had caught Don Benito in some state of undress – she refused to explain how that had happened, although Alex had her own ideas – and seen that the man was wearing a hair shirt.

“You should see his skin. All chafed, and with huge blotches of rash. He must have been wearing it for a long time.”

“So he wears a hair shirt. That doesn’t automatically make him a priest, does it?” Alex felt uncomfortable; a zealot on board.

Mrs Gordon agreed that it didn’t, but as per chance she had happened upon his cabin unlocked.

“Per chance?” Alex frowned.

Mrs Gordon shrugged and went on with her story. How she’d found cassock and breviary and rosary beads, and a golden crucifix and you know, those long bits of cloths they hang round their neck. Alex interrupted her mid-steam by standing up and clapping her hands.

“Enough! You’ll not go around talking to anyone about this. You’ve been spying on him, and that’s wrong. I’m sure there’s a rational explanation to all this.”

“Aye? And how do you mean to find out?”

“I’ll ask him of course.”

“You will?” Mrs Gordon beamed. “And then you’ll tell me.”

“We’ll see about that; if I think you can take it.” She escaped from the cabin, laughing at the dull thud of Mrs Gordon’s hairbrush hitting the door.

Alex found Don Benito standing on the quarter deck, staring off in the direction of Europe.

“
Pax vobiscum
,” Alex murmured, smiling at the responding start.

“
Y contigo, hija.
”

“So, you want to tell me?” She turned to lean her back against the railing.

“Tell you what?”

“About the hair shirt, all the paraphernalia of a catholic priest that apparently litters your cabin.”

He looked at her with disappointment. “Have you been through my things?”

“No, I wouldn’t do something like that, nor have I attempted to ogle you in states of undress. But someone else has.”

“Ah,” Don Benito said resignedly. “Mrs Gordon.”

“Yes, I’m sorry. She won’t say anything. So are you? A priest, I mean.”

“
Sí.
” He threw her a look. “I would ask you not to tell, it might make things difficult for me where I’m going.”

Alex smiled. “Clandestine conversions? Secret baptisms?”

“Perhaps. There are those in Virginia that would be glad of a Catholic priest, but it’s something that is best done discreetly. Especially with a Governor so firmly committed to the Anglican Church.” Don Benito sighed and shifted on his feet. “My going to Virginia has nothing to do with my calling as a priest. The timing was opportune for other reasons.” He sounded very casual, his dark eyes wide when they met hers. Good try; he was lying through his teeth.

“But your position with the English Royals does have something to do with it,” Alex said, recalling that the present king’s mother was a Catholic.

“Maybe, but those are questions to tread very carefully around.”

Alex hitched her shoulders, not caring one way or the other. “And the hair shirt?”

Don Benito’s face froze into impenetrability. “That’s none of your business,
hija
.”

“Probably not.” She let the subject drop, leaned her elbows against the railings and locked her eyes on the frothing wake.

“My turn,” Don Benito said.

“Your turn?”

“To ask you some questions.”

Alex shrugged and nodded a go-ahead.

“Your mother was Spanish, wasn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“So you’ve been baptised into the Holy Church.”

“No…I, well, my father…” She had been baptised by Matthew at the advanced age of twenty-six in a ceremony she still considered somewhat doubtful, but that wasn’t something she intended to share. “My father insisted that I be brought up in his faith.”

“Ah,” the priest nodded. “And was he of strong faith?”

Alex suppressed an urge to giggle. Magnus had never expressed any interest in God. To him, the world was ruled by the natural laws of science and common sense.

“Sometimes.”

“And you? Are you of strong faith?” His dark eyes bored into her.

“I don’t know, I—” She broke off. To Matthew it was self-evident, to all the people that now inhabited her world, it was a fact that God existed. “I would like to be.” She laughed at herself; every night she prayed to God that he may keep her Matthew safe, and still she wasn’t sure. Talk about hedging your bets.

“Do you think I was wrong?” Alex asked to change the subject.

Don Benito looked bewildered.

“You know, the other night, when I argued with the captain about the hypocrisy of punishing just the girl.”

Don Benito’s mouth curved into a smile. “It hasn’t helped, has it?” He threw his head in the direction of the forecastle.

“No, if anything the reverse.” She returned to her original question, and he sighed.

“No, I think you were right. But so, to a point, was the captain. Men are weak willed when it comes to female temptation.”

“Even a priest?”

Don Benito looked away. “Yes, sometimes even a priest.”

Alex covered his hand with hers. “I hope it was worth it, you seem to be paying a very heavy price.”

Don Benito kept his eyes on the horizon. “I loved her, I still love her and that, I fear, is my greatest sin. I can’t truly repent, because every night I see her in my dreams.”

“To love isn’t a sin,” Alex said. “You know that, and so does God.”

“
Ojalá
,” he whispered. “I hope so.”