Lisbon (47 page)

“What did Keynes pay you to haul me out to sea and dump me overboard?”

Across from him, with his feet propped comfortably on the heavy teak table, the old pirate laughed. “Enough,” he said. “Enough. And of course,” he added indifferently, “I’m honor-bound to do it.”

Tom felt a creepy sensation in the back of his neck. This stolid fellow before him might very well do just that.

“Of course, you’d be losing a good navigator,’’ he murmured. “My father tried to teach me all he knew about navigation.”

“ Tis true, it never hurts to have an extra navigator on board,” mused Yarbrough. “Still, like I say, I’m honor-bound to throw you overboard. ”

There was a silence between them while Tom eyed the brace of pistols hung on a nail on the wall behind Captain Yarbrough’s sturdy back. He wondered if they were loaded, decided any gun in this old pirate’s cabin would always be loaded. He was just contemplating the odds on whether he could upend the heavy wooden table, oversetting his host, and snatch one of those pistols from the wall when Captain Yarbrough spoke again.

“O’ course, I only promised Keynes I’d do it—I didn’t say exactly when. He thought five days, but seems to me there’s no hurry. Could be years from today—twenty, thirty, forty.” He laughed at Tom’s expression, brought his heavy hand down on the table with a slap that sounded like a gun’s report. “You’re safe from me, boy. Devil Ben’s son, fancy that. I’m glad to have you sailing with me, navigator or no.”

Tom relaxed. It was the first time he had ever been glad of his sojourn in southern seas slashed by the Tropic of Capricorn. In silent acknowledgment of being given back his life, he raised his glass to the captain.

“Where are we bound?” he inquired.

Captain Yarbrough shrugged. “Madagascar—where a man can still practice his trade. Unless of course something better comes along. ”

Tom gave him a speculative look. Desperate as he was to get back to Charlotte, he was all too aware that any attempt to leave the
Douro
at any port she touched might change the mind of the old pirate facing him—for the worse. He had heard many stories of Captain Yarbrough and knew him to be a formidable foe.

“I think,” he said thoughtfully, “that something better might just have come along. ”

He outlined his plan to Captain Yarbrough, who nodded his approval. “You’re Devil Ben’s son, all right. ’’ He turned to shout at the cabin boy, lurking somewhere outside. “Bring up the Portagee, lad!’’

And Sebastião da Severa was brought to the cabin, looking elegant and aristocratic despite his cramped days in the ship’s hold.

Tom could not but admire da Severn’s calm demeanor, for from his pallor it was obvious the Portuguese expected to be forthwith dumped into the sea in a sack.

“Set your mind at rest, Senhor da Severa,’ he told the older man warmly. “You’ll not feed the fishes tonight. I’ve been telling our captain here about you, and he wants to ask you some questions.’’

Da Severn’s gray head inclined courteously toward the captain, who slouched back in his chair regarding him, but the look he shot at Tom was a grateful one, a thank-you for saving his life.

Southward the great ship fled. Past the rocky cliffs and winelands of the Portuguese Madeiras, past the spectacular volcanoes of the Spanish Canaries sliding away to larboard, south across the Tropic of Cancer. Before the arid views of the Cape Verde Islands presented themselves, a decision had been reached aboard the
Douro
, made casually over a three-way handclasp and sealed with wine.

There in the deep-water passages that threaded these islands, with the hot rainy season drenching the
Douro'
s decks and canvas, her course was shifted. Instead of following the West African coastline and rounding the Cape of Good Hope to beat their way north again through the wild waves and violent monsoons of the hot Indian Ocean past Durban and drive at last up the Mozambique Channel to Madagascar, the prow of the
Douro
turned southwest across the equator toward South America and the lush green rain forests of the vast and rich Portuguese colony of Brazil.

It would be two years before Tom Westing saw Lisbon again.

As soon as Charlotte had eaten her breakfast in her new 
domain, her feet were untied, the door was discreetly closed, and she was left alone in this strange dim room. She tried to get up, sank back down once, then managed with difficulty to stand on her feet, for she had been several days without using them. It was a barren room, this place they had brought her to. Square and fairly large, with peeling paint of an indeterminate color upon the walls, a bed, two wooden chairs, a washstand with a plain white bowl and pitcher, a cupboard in one corner. And a mirror. Quite a handsome pier glass that stood tall and handsome and out of place. Charlotte recognized it as having come from the house in the Portas del Sol, and wondered why Rowan had had it brought here.

She tottered toward the windows and tried to open the wooden shutters. They were nailed shut.

She turned and tried to run for the door. A swarthy fellow stationed just outside caught her as she came through and pushed her back inside. He turned with a pronounced limp and called “Mae,” which Charlotte knew meant “Mother.” At that point the sturdy, broad-hipped woman who had called herself Alta Bilbao hurried in, brushing past him. She shook a stubby finger in Charlotte s face and scolded her in rapid Portuguese. From that torrent of words Charlotte was given to understand that madness did not excuse everything—the Senhora was to stay here,
here in this room
, was that understood?

There was another, smaller window in the high-ceilinged room that afforded what light there was, and Charlotte’s gaze flew to it when the Bilbao woman left the room. It’s shutters were flung wide, but it was high up, far beyond her reach, and heavy with lacy iron grillwork. Peering through a crack in the shutters, she could see that outside her big square room was a small balcony of similar iron grillwork that overhung the street, but the shuttered doors that led to it were nailed as well, and the entire thing was too solid to be beaten down even if she used a chair. Her gaze again sought that heavy—and well-guarded—oak door. Hopeless. She would never get out of here except by trick.

And tricks were difficult with those who did not speak your language—especially if you were clumsy with theirs.

In desperate haste, Charlotte tried to perfect her Portuguese—with the woman who served her, and occasionally with the dark silent man who locked and unlocked the door for the serving woman to get in. What she learned was discouraging enough. The Bilbao family was not local; they were from Coimbra, on the Mondego River to the north. They had once had property but a wagon accident in Coimbra had left Jorge Bilbao lame, and with a crippled son to support, they had become servants. The street they had lived on in Coimbra, Alta told her, was so narrow it was called Quebra Costas, the “rib-cracker.” Alta had expected Charlotte to laugh at that, but it had all given Charlotte a sinking feeling as she realized the care with which Rowan must have selected the Bilbao family. They were suitable as servants if she did not transgress, strong and suitable as guards if she did. And she had so easily fallen into his trap. She had underestimated Rowan. . . .

And guard her the Bilbaos did. Charlotte tried bribery, but she had nothing to bribe them with. She promised them rich rewards if only they would let her go. She had money back in England, she told them, lying shamelessly. But Alta and her husband, having lost everything before and been almost reduced to begging in the streets, were cautious. They were being paid richly now, they explained. For every month a messenger—whom Charlotte never saw—brought them a small purse of coins. What more was there?

Desperate, Charlotte tried to throw herself on their mercy. She told them how Rowan had tried to kill her lover long ago and then had tricked her into marriage. It was very tragic, Alta agreed in a soothing voice, but, 
senhora,
it was a long time ago and best forgotten. And when the
senhora
s madness subsided, when she forgot about these stories and was herself again, her husband would come back—himself, he had promised that before he left. And no, he had said she was to have no writing materials. The
senhor
had been very firm about that.

Thus Charlotte was balked at every point, and her bright 
spirit slowly sank into a darkness deeper than the semidusk she lived in. Day followed day monotonously in the big square room—windowless so far as her viewing the world was concerned—that had become her prison.

Rage against Rowan tore at her. It distorted her days, skewed them into fury, and she could not eat, but instead paced what now seemed to her a cage, like some trapped animal, nervous and alert for the slightest sound. She sank, shattered, into bed at night to shiver and hate him until sleep mercifully claimed her.

Only to dream savage nightmares, wild dreams in which she managed to kill Rowan—and woke up with her own harsh laughter ringing in her ears. And then she would sleep again and perhaps dream bittersweet dreams of Tom— and wake up sobbing.

One night she waked from such a dream and sat shaking, her head sunk into her hands. When she lifted her head at last she realized that there must be a full moon outside, for a shaft of moonlight from that small high-up window cut through the darkness of the room and illuminated the tall pier glass.

That pool of light seemed somehow to beckon to her, condemned eternally as she was to days of twilight. She left her bed and padded over to the pier glass and stared into the mirror, which gave her back a ghostly reflection. The woman she saw had, she thought, no vestige of her old self. This woman was a haunted vision with a thin haggard face and wild unruly pale hair—for Charlotte had not even been allowed a comb and must needs comb her long locks with her fingers.

She shrank from what she saw.

The mirror, she thought dully; that was why he had left it. So that she might see more vividly her own despair.

The moon waned, and dawn came slowly, but the coming of the new day meant little to Charlotte. Here in the semidarkness of her cell—as she now dubbed her big square bedroom—there was nothing to do but to think about all she had lost. And about Rowan and how much she hated him.

Midnight, the great black stallion, had been shot for 
publicly humiliating Rowan. Chase, the hunting dog, had been destroyed for not loving him enough. And she, the erring wife, was to be imprisoned forever and ever.

Rowan would never come back for her, never. She would be kept here until the end of time. Tom was gone from her life, she would never see her children again, what was left for her?

There was the sound of a key turning in the lock, and Alta Bilbao came in, bringing her supper. “You did not eat your breakfast and you have not touched your lunch,” she scolded Charlotte.

Charlotte laughed crookedly. Did this woman really believe that food was important? Strange were the ways of fate. . . .

That evening she slashed her left wrist with a knife she had filched from her supper tray. But Alta, who came up looking for the missing knife, found her in time, bound up the wound, and tied her to the bed so that she could not move and injure herself again. After that, all sharp objects were removed from the room. Charlotte was forced to drink from a wineskin and even had to eat with a wooden bowl and a wooden spoon—no knives were allowed. Oh, they were very efficient, she thought sadly, these demons Rowan had set to watch her.

So the interminable half-lit days came and went. Soups and broths and stews—Alta was not a very good cook— followed each other in dreary procession. Since Rowan had left Charlotte with naught but the clothes on her back and thrifty Alta was not about to buy clothes for Charlotte out of her own money, it was necessary for Charlotte to wait naked or wrap herself in a sheet while her own garments were washed downstairs. Her suggestion to Alta that she might make new garments for herself out of those sheets if Alta would bring her scissors, needle, and thread was met with shocked reproof. What, destroy those fine linen sheets? Why, Alta would be held accountable for them by the master when he returned!

Charlotte gave up. She was condemned to wear the same gown forever, it seemed.

All Saints’ Day came and went, and Portugal’s national 
holiday December 8 honoring Our Lady of the Conception. On Christmas Eve the Bilbaos shared with her their traditional boiled codfish and potatoes and rice pudding. But not even the
rabanadas,
that extra treat which Alta had made by frying bread dipped in egg sauce and then simmering it in sugar sauce, could lift Charlotte’s spirits.

Back at Aldershot Grange this Christmas her children would be playing in the snow. Or if Rowan had taken them to London, they would be listening bright-eyed to the songs of Christmas carolers. Or perhaps, muffled in woolen scarves and stocking caps, they would be shepherded by Wend through merry, jostling, laughing crowds in the street and stop to eat hot roasted chestnuts or watch a puppet show. Dear God, how she missed them! Her smile was wan as she thanked Alta for including her in this special dinner.

About Tom and his fate, she dared not let herself think, or she would break down completely.

On New Year’s Eve, Alta gave Charlotte a slice of the round fruitcake she called “king’s cake’’ and explained that they must lock her in early, as they wished to go out into the town for the New Year’s Eve celebration.