Mad Morgan (26 page)

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Authors: Kerry Newcomb

BOOK: Mad Morgan
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“I am Morgan, Henry Morgan!” he shouted, exultant, his eyes blazing. “Here I am, you bastards. I'm still here!”
“I
built my house to catch the last light of day. Every sunset is mine,” Morgan tells her, sweeping his hat from his head and bowing, inviting the sixteen-year-old girl to enter.
“I am told that is how you invite every woman into your house for the first time. I think you hope to charm them into your bed,” Nell laughs. But there is a hint of anticipation in her voice.
Morgan feigns a wounded pride. “Why, I have never shared that with another. Only my little sister.”
Nell fumes at being referred to as his sister. When will he realize how much of a woman she really is and that the desire she feels is hardly a child's fancy? But she is delighted to be alone with him, in his house overlooking the sea. And indeed the sunset is his. They sit together on the porch steps and witness a dazzling display as the clouds become tinged with gold then deepen in hue. She suspects Morgan is lying about all the women he has brought out from Port Royal or Kingston and romanced here to the siren call of the rolling tides and whirling gulls and whispering wind. But they will never love him like she can. One day he will see her for what she is and what he needs.
 
 
“I thought I would find you here,” Sir William said, riding up in his carriage. There was an expression of kindness upon his thick homely features, and sympathy in his voice. If only he could spare his daughter
this pain. Nell was sitting on the porch steps of Morgan's house, her mind ensnared by memories of three years past, the first time Henry Morgan had brought her to his house above the sea. She had been all of sixteen, a woman by most standards, but to his eyes, still a girl and worse, like a sister to him. Now, in his absence, the house had become her retreat from the rude streets and rough populace of Port Royal.
With Henry Morgan taken and more than likely executed by Don Alonso, a gloom had settled over the peninsula. In the aftermath of the Spanish visit and the broadsides from the
San Bartolomeo
that had crippled the sleek, shallow draft sloops and schooners favored by the freebooters, men like Thomas LeBishop and Calico Jack and a handful of others were left with but a couple seaworthy ships in which to ply their illicit trade. And even then they had to sneak from port under cover of night in hopes of avoiding the English authorities.
Alas, the Spanish Main offered a meager harvest. And to make matters worse, every merchant vessel the Brethren managed to catch sight of sailed under the protection of an armed escort, the likes of which only a fool would approach.
Returning to Port Royal after a brief foray into the Caribbean, the English governor had ordered the crews to remain in port. Captain Hastiler and his men confiscated the vessels and brought them over to the Kingston piers. It seemed the governor of Jamaica was more concerned with placating the Spaniards and their treaty and completing his fictitious memoirs than seeking justice for the denizens of Port Royal.
“Please, Father, you do not need to follow me about.” Nell frowned at her father, displeased that he had shattered her reverie.
“I worry about you.” The physician thought his daughter looked thinner. But she had to grieve in her own way.
“Worry for yourself and our good friends when the council meets tonight. See that the Black Cleric does not assume too much. I daresay he thinks his flag flies over all of us.” Nell stood and stretched her legs. The resentment toward Sir Richard Purselley had been building for almost a month now, ever since Don Alonso's visit, when the Spaniard under Sir Richard's protection had fired on Port Royal. “No one can doubt his skills at sea, nor LeBishop's match with a blade, but dealing with the governor will take more craft than cutlass.”
“The Black Cleric has many followers.”
“As does Henry Morgan, far more than Thomas LeBishop.”
“But Henry is de—”
Nell gave him a sharp glance. Her expression turned belligerent. “He is not dead.”
“How can you say that? I doubt Don Alonso presented Henry with a nosegay.”
“I would know if he had come to harm.”
“You fool yourself, lass.”
“I—would—know.”
“Nevertheless, and I loved him like a son, Henry is not among us. And should Thomas LeBishop choose to march on the governor, I am not certain I would oppose him.”
“And who would sit in the governor's chair—Thomas LeBishop, Calico Jack? Or perhaps the Portugee Devil. They'd kill half their number before nightfall.” Nell scowled. “Tell them to wait a while longer. Father, they will listen to you. Henry Morgan will return. Then we can deal with Sir Richard Purselley.”
The physician shook his head and sighed. “Ah, daughter, you have the faith of an angel. It is out of place among the hellions with whom I chose to cast my lot so long ago.” Sir William took a kerchief from his coat pocket and dabbed at his bulbous nose, coughed and wiped his mouth. He mopped the perspiration from his high forehead. A sea breeze tugged at a few wispy strands of hair. His tone softened. “It troubles me. When days pass and I haven't seen you …”
“Then you should know I am here.”
The physician had to admire his daughter's tenacity. Ever since Morgan's abduction by the Spaniards, Nell had made a point of visiting the house, lighting a lamp at night and placing it on one of the beams that framed the porch. She was determined to keep a signal burning, a pinprick of light against the great darkness, a beacon of hope. Who was he to dash her dreams and argue the futility of her efforts? Life would teach her that lesson in its own good time.
“Join us this night. I would have my daughter at my side.”
“Very well. As you wish. I will remain here and see the sun down, then set my lamps and return to Port Royal.”
“As you like it,” said Sir William. He flicked the reins of the mare in harness. The animal ceased cropping grass and started forward. The physician trotted the animal back onto the road and toward the jumble of houses, shops, taverns, and warehouses that dominated the far end of the peninsula.
Nell leaned on one of the support poles and watched her father disappear around the corner of the house, following a well-worn path through the golden palms and tulip trees.
She breathed in the fragrant air, enjoying the peace, while a flock of bright green parakeets with jet-black wings dipped and dove and chased one another through the frangipani that grew in thick profusion to either side of the road. The woman returned her attention to the merging of the azure sea and sky, the oncoming waves that spilled their opalescent foam upon the shore. Then, sated for the moment with the natural beauty of this vista, she sauntered back inside the house.
 
 
Morgan takes her by the hand and brings her into a large front room furnished with the plunder of innumerable raids, a settee from Hispaniola, an armoire from Maracaibo, mahogany tables and velvet-cushioned chairs taken from a plantation house outside Santiago de Cuba.
“Remember, should some lad in town invite you to sit alone with him in his father's house, keep one hand on your knife, for men are hotspurs when it comes to beautiful women.”
Nell picks up a jeweled hand mirror from a nearby table and holds it up to inspect her image, intrigue in her blue eyes as she studies her reflection, runs her fingers through her auburn hair. She is wearing a dress today, something her father stole from a contessa's wardrobe. The bodice is quite Parisian, revealing much of her bosom. She looks around at Morgan and flashes him a saucy smile.
“So you think I am beautiful?”
Morgan gulps and averts his gaze. Perhaps bringing her out from town wasn't such a good idea. Up until now he has been teasing her. Suddenly the tables are turned and he doesn't like it. He is too close to the girl and her father. They are like family. Although the way she looks right now makes him tempted to forget all that and risk Sir William's wrath.
“Toto … what are you doing?”
And she just laughs and skips across the room, slowly turns, as if in a dance. She senses her effect on him and revels in it. Nell Jolly, a pirate's daughter, has begun to realize that beauty is power. “Maybe there are some men I would not resist.” She extends her hand to him.
“Oh, indeed.” Then Morgan sweeps her into his arms and Nell tries to look wanton. He carries her outside, down the porch steps, through the palms. The sixteen-year-old is puzzled at first, then realization dawns. He is walking toward the shore about fifty yards from the house.
“No,” she warns him. “Henry Morgan, don't you dare.”
But of course he was born to dare, and marches out knee-deep into the surf and drops her into an incoming wave. “Best you cool off, Toto.”
“Oh! You toad-spotted snipe!” She scrambles out of the sea; drenched and sputtering and ready to pin his hide to the wall. Her youthful lust is the last thing on her mind. Nell tries to chase him but the dress weighs her down and she trips over the soggy material that wraps about her legs. She falls forward into the mud, the incoming tide catches her again, she struggles to her feet spewing salt water. “Henry Morgan! I'll have you at sword's point for this.”
“Not in that dress, you won't,” Morgan laughs, and scrambles out of the surf. He makes a mad dash for his horse, vaults into the saddle and gallops off toward Port Royal. Tonight, the “wickedest place on earth” would be safer than anywhere near Nell Jolly.
Nell laughed now, the memory had lost its sting. Oh, but if she could have laid a hand on him then. Morgan and his teasing ways, that was how he resisted what was in his heart. He cared about her more than he dare allow himself to realize. Even then, in her anger, she had loved him.
She walked to the doorway that opened onto a bedroom, sat down on the edge of the feather bed, her hand upon the mahogany four-poster bedframe. Funny. She could no longer remember what had happened to that contessa's dress. Only that it never recovered from its seawater bath. She lay back upon the coverlet. “You'd be proud, Henry Morgan,” she said to the stillness. As per his advice, she placed her hand on the hilt of her knife.
Staring at the thatch roof overhead she wondered what it would be like to hold him, to feel his flesh upon her, within her. His hands caressing her, slipping her shirt to her waist and covering her with kisses. She rolled on her side and placed her hand on the space beside her in the bed, admired the shadows and slanted sunlight and watched the patterns on the wall shift and lengthen as the sun dipped into the western quadrant.
She yawned.
The minutes slipped by, then the hours. Past memories collided with the present, the sound of the waves, the droning tides, ebbing and falling, like the ocean's heartbeat, unchanged since world began, when the great globe cooled and the rains fell and the first rains collected upon bleak and thirsty soil. Praise for the unceasing miracles, laud the hand that molded earth and sky and bound all living things to one another for better or ill.
The minutes slipped by, then the hours. The sun drifted on its golden course, the warmth that stirs as in the human breast where love dwells, the fire that spills like honey over hill and mountain and shore. Praise for the glory of the light. Yet the light must die that men might praise an infinite expanse of sky adorned with twinkling gems, the most precious of which is hope. Time and the woman glory in the velvet night to come, where dreams dwell and stars align to guide the sailor home.
The minutes slipped by, then the hours. Suddenly Nell sat upright upon the bed. She rose and hurried across the room, through the house and out onto the porch, drawn by something more powerful than reverie or illusions, a call that wakened deep in her soul. Not quite understanding, no matter. She heeded the call, took one of the hurricane lanterns, and plunged off through the grass and the palm trees and ran to the shore to stand in the fading light, shielding her eyes as the sun turned a vibrant peach-gold as it dipped to the waterline and cast a path of molten light across the waves from the edge of the earth to the woman on the strand.
And there against the setting sun she saw a blemish on the horizon and her heart leaped to her throat. A sail? It had to be a sail. A small craft was out there. Someone from Port Royal or Kingston? Perhaps. But her heart said no.
And she had learned to trust her heart.
Nell hurriedly began to gather driftwood while she could still see. She hurried back to the house and gathered kindling from the supply alongside the north wall, darted inside to help herself to a pistol and powder flask, then back down to the shore where she arranged the pyre, sprinkled gunpowder on the kindling, and fired into black powder, igniting the charge. Flames sprang up. She fed them more of the kindling, then some of his firewood, tearing her shirt in the process. She didn't care. Her heart was racing with the tides. She stood in the firelight facing the ebony sea and prayed. And waited … waited … waited.

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