Microsoft Word - Sherwood, Valerie - Nightsong (19 page)

Now she saw that Louis Deauville had come out of his house and was gazing about.

He looked up and saw her and bowed. Carolina inclined her head to him. She knew he was hoping that she would come down and chat, for he was loitering there aimlessly, but she had no intention of doing that.

It was a pensive face she turned toward the mirror-like shimmer of the glassy sea.

Below her, had she known it, Gilly was taking advantage of her absence to slip into Carolina's bedroom.

The past weeks had been frustrating for Gilly, too-frustrating for two reasons: For one, Jarvis was pressing her. Idling here in Port Royal, he was growing impatient with his doxy.

For the other, she had lost Carolina's favor.

It had come about the day after Kells had sailed, and it had come about because all her life Gilly had hated cats. When she had first moved into the house, she had been standing idly in the kitchen, waiting her chance to snatch some of the hot fritters Cook was just taking from the fire, when Moonbeam had wandered in and strolled past Gilly.

Gilly had kicked the cat away from her.

Cook had turned just then and had seen Moonbeam going end over end to rise spitting and upset. "You do that again, Gilly," she warned, "and I'll tell the mistress."

"Cat's got no business in kitchens," mumbled Gilly.

"This one has. She has the run of the whole house. And"-Cook's voice rose-"if I see you touch her again, I'll take a stick to you!"

Gilly had beat a speedy retreat, and Moonbeam had avoided her ever since-until the morning after Kells had sailed away on the Sea Wolf.

Carolina had been sitting disconsolately at her dressing table, combing her long hair and wishing herself dead, when Moonbeam, dashing up from downstairs, and Gilly, coming down from the attic, had both come to a halt just outside her door. Gilly had just asked, "Are you goin' to the market today?" and Carolina was about to answer her when Moonbeam had come flying up and, seeing Gilly standing there, had stopped short and backed away.

Gilly, concentrating on the cat, had thought herself unobserved, for Carolina's back was to her-but Carolina could see in the mirror how Gilly's expression turned ugly and how, as Moonbeam tried to stand her ground-for the cat knew she had every right to enter Carolina's bedroom and jump on her mistress's lap-Gilly drew back her foot to kick her.

"Gilly!" The face Carolina swung to confront Gilly held an expression Gilly had not seen before, and her level tone held a cold warning. "If you kick that cat, I will personally tear those clothes from your back and set you out in the street." Gilly drew back. "I wasn't about to-" she began to protest.

"You were, don't deny it!" snapped Carolina. Her eyes narrowed. "I may have been wrong about you, Gilly. Perhaps you aren't worth saving. But just so you don't take revenge on Moonbeam when my back is

turned, let me tell you if anything happens to that cat, if I find her hurt or limping or covering somewhere, I will have you whipped and returned to those women whose clothes you stole." She studied Gilly who was shuffling her feet and looking scared.

"Do we understand each other, Gilly?"

Gilly mumbled something which might have been "yes."

"In the future," added Carolina, "you will assist Cook in the kitchen, unless Betts asks you to help her. You will no longer need to spend so much time on the second floor.

Come here, Moonbeam."

Moonbeam darted past Gilly and jumped onto Carolina's lap while Gilly retreated in stony fury. Gave herself airs, did this buccaneer's woman! she was thinking. And all this commotion over a worthless cat! The next time she saw Moonbeam in the kitchen and when Cook's back was turned, Gilly picked up a heavy pot, intending to hurl it at the cat and then claim she'd dropped it, but the sudden memory of Carolina's warning deterred her: "If I find her hurt . . ." Gilly had no desire to be returned to Sadie's brothel where she'd stolen the clothes-those ugly bawds would have her hide, they would!

Reluctantly she had put down the pot, and Moon-beam glided warily past her to look expectantly up at Cook, who laughed and gave the cat a morsel.

With a scornful look at the two of them, Gilly had flounced away. She had, she told herself, needed time to think. For weeks now Jarvis had been after her to "get the necklace and be done with it." Indeed that had been his refrain every time she had managed to slip away to see him-and that wasn't easy now. She had to pretend a headache or a stomachache and slink away to her own room before the house was locked up, then scuttle downstairs and get outside somehow, and, to avoid suspicion, she had to time her return so that she would appear to have wandered outdoors just after the doors were unlocked "to get a breath of fresh air after such awful pains all night long!" Ifthe two sturdy buccaneers who, along with Hawks, guarded the place, knew about Gilly's nocturnal wanderings, they kept that knowledge to themselves.

After all, to their minds she was but a saucy slip of a girl with a predatory smile, kept off-limits to them by a vigilant Hawks, who saw in Gilly dangers that the soft-hearted Carolina had not perceived.

Gilly kept putting Jarvis off, insisting that the house was "too strict guarded" for her to get the necklace. In reality she was searching for some sailor who would take her off the island with no knowledge of the necklace. So she told Jarvis, "I'm locked in nights so tight I can't get out often like I used to. You'll be seeing less of me until I can get my hands on the necklace."

Jarvis had growled because having Gilly in his bed was something he had grown used to on New Providence. "If 'tis too hard for ye, give it up and we'll get us back to Nassau."

Gilly remembered all too well the helter-skelter life of New Providence Island. "Just be patient-I'll think of something," she told Jarvis hastily.

But two nights ago, slipping out, Gilly had strolled the waterfront and found the sailor of her dreams. Jack was young, fresh-faced, just off the sloop Prudence, and eager to believe anything Gilly told him. After one night of tossing on damp sheets in a waterfront dive, he would have done anything for her. It was easy for Gilly to talk Jack into persuading his captain to take her with him when he left "as soon as this cursed calm breaks and we get a wind," for she had promised to marry him on shipboard and sail with him back to the far-off Yankee port of Boston, where he promised her he'd leave the sea and help his brother till their little farm until he could build Gilly a house of her own.

Gilly had given Jack a hypocritical smile. Boston wasn't where she wanted to go but at least it was far away, and once there she could break enough gold off the necklace to pay for passage to England. And once in London she'd sell the stones and forget she ever knew "trash" like Jarvis and the ardent young sailor who at that moment would have given his life for her. She'd become a "lady"!

But she must get the necklace before the wind came up, before the Prudence sailed!

She had been watching for her chance all morning long. And now at last, with Carolina gone to the captain's walk above, she had it!

"Where is Gilly?" Cook wailed as Betts came into the kitchen. "She's supposed to be helping me!" Betts shrugged. "She was carrying out the slops last I saw and not making a very good job of it."

"Sit you down here, Betts." Cook wiped the moisture from her perspiring brow and waved a long iron spoon at a wooden bench. Betts sat down. "We got to have a talk with the mistress about Gilly. She's always whining she's sick and running off to her room and we don't see hide nor hair of her until the next morning when she comes in from outside, looking bleary-eyed. Half the time she claims she passed me on her way out, that I was wool-gathering and didn't see her-and you know that ain't true!"

"I think Gilly's slipping out to meet someone," said Betts, who had had the same experience with Gilly. "Leastways, she moons around like she's in love."

Cook snorted. "In love? Gilly? Not likely! To her kind one man is as good as another, so long as they gives her trinkets!"

Betts thought that might be so. "What's that cooking?" she asked Cook, sniffing the savoury odor that came from the big copper pot that hung from a chain in the fireplace.

"Hawksbill and loggerhead stew," replied Cook, going back to stir desultorily the contents of the steaming pot. "With some bits of beef thrown in."

"Bits" of beef would be right, thought Betts, fanning her hot face with her hand. For she suspected Cook of spiriting away the big cuts of beef that came to the house and selling them surreptitiously down at the market. Turtle, which was plentiful , was their main dish around here. And the mistress was so preoccupied these days she did not seem to notice what she was eating! She gave Cook a resentful look.

"It's too hot in here," she complained, rising. "I've got to get me to some other part of the house before I'm clear melted down!"

"Wait, I'll go with you," said Cook. "We can sit in the dining room. The mistress will be out on the roof, studying the sea for ships this time 0' day."

She followed Betts into the comparative coolness of the diningroom where the green-painted walls seemed to speak of cool meadows far away.

The two women seated themselves on two of the straight chairs that lined the walls, ready for extra guests.

"D'you think we'll all end up on a plantation up the Cobre?" asked Cook, for like everybody else she had heard garbled gossip about Kells's intentions.

"I don't know." Betts shook her head vigorously.

"But Spanish Town can't be half so hot as here!" She kept on fanning her face.

"Where's Hawks?" demanded Cook. "I haven't laid eyes on him since breakfast and he usually comes into the kitchen for a mid-morning bite 0' whatever's cookin'."

"Hawks has gone t'other side of town. Probably to see a woman!" Betts winked.

Cook sighed. She'd had hopes of Hawks for herself-she liked big silent men.

Unfortunately Hawks seemed to like slimmer, younger women. Men! She took out her vengeful thoughts on other men. "Those two buccaneers Captain Kells left to guard the place are just sittin' on their haunches outside waitin' to be fed, I'll be bound-don't never occur to either of them to do nothin' to help us!"

Betts nodded emphatically. She agreed with Cook that the extra guards were "lazy louts"-especially since neither of them had seemed to notice the new green petticoat she had worn to attract their attention.

They sat together and gossiped in the dining room, glad of the coolness, entirely unaware that instead of "carrying out the slops," Gilly was upstairs slipping into Carolina's bedroom.

Gilly's bright eyes lit upon the curved-top trunk, which Carolina, her thoughts preoccupied with going up to the captain's walk to scan the sea, had carelessly left unlocked.

Overjoyed at being alone in Carolina's bedroom at last, Gilly ran on tiptoe across the floor,flung the trunk open, and began rummaging inside. Beneath the lacy chemises, beneath the scarves and fans and gloves, beneath the petticoats and rosettes and ribands, she found what she was looking for: a silver-encrusted box of teakwood.

She lifted the box out to the light, opened it and pulled out its contents excitedly from the dark red interior of the box. She held the necklace up, marveling at the weight of its gold-for it was the first time she had touched it. Her avid gaze devoured the blood-red brilliance of the rubies, the white glitter of the diamonds. She ran caressing fingers over the necklace and licked her lips. Her breath came shallowly and her heart beat fast.

She sat there staring at it, lost to the world.

This was her future she was holding in her hands-a future that would let her shuck off men like Jarvis and that mewling boy, Jack, so humbly desperate for her favors. This would let her sneer at men-as all her life she had longed to do. This would let her kick them out of her bed! And more: This would buy her a fine town house and a coach and six! And servants! Her eyes glittered. If ever her servants forgot even once to call her "my lady," she'd stripe their insolent backs with a whip! She'd do it with her own hands and have the satisfaction of hearing them wail! She ran her tongue over her lips, and her brown eyes held an unholy gleam. Transfixed by the wealth she was running through her fingers, she sat there on her haunches. Entranced, spinning daydreams-half-evil, half-wonderful-of what she would do when she sold the necklace.

A sudden noise from down the hall startled her into remembering where she was, and she snapped alert, her head swiveling around to view the door. A quick step coming this way and the cat dashed by. Oh, lor', that meant the mistress was returning from upstairs, for the cat always accompanied Carolina on these journeys, running joyfully ahead of her and circling her skirts, rubbing against her when she arrived at her destination. But the mistress always stayed up on the rooftop longer than this! thought Gilly in consternation. Whatever had possessed her to come running down so soon?

But that quick light step had alerted her to her danger and she cast her eyes about her. She would have run to the big wardrobe and hidden herself in that, but to her mind that was most likely Carolina's goal. She must be coming downstairs to get a hat from the cedar wardrobe's top shelf-a hat to shade her against this devilish tropical sun.

In panic, every nerve quivering, Gilly tried to think of some other place. Under the bed? No, there she could be seen from the door for the light coverlet did not reach to the floor!

On a sudden burst of inspiration, she threw herself into the trunk and cautiously pulled the top down. She gave it a last good tug and huddled inside, still clutching the necklace. She would give Carolina lots of time to clear the room because when she left this trunk and this room, Gilly intended to have the necklace clutched tight in her hand, her hand wrapped in a scarf. She would burst through the front door, claiming she'd cut her hand on Cook's big butcher knife and must reach the doctor before she bled to death-no one would block her way.

So she reasoned as she lay cautiously, half smothered among the chemises. And this time her timing had best be right or she'd be whipped-or hanged. Gilly shivered.