Microsoft Word - Sherwood, Valerie - Nightsong (23 page)

"They are diving on my house now," he said, running a hand over his shaved head, for he had lost his wig in the earthquake. It made him look strange to her eyes. "My wife is broken-hearted, for the house is gone and we have lost everything."

But at least you have her, thought Carolina.

"There will be no rebuilding the town," he sighed. "There is nothing left. Perhaps someday sand will pile up and rebuild the cay which once stood here-and of which we have only a remnant left-but not in my time. Not in my time."

She could sympathize with his despondency for he was an ambitious man who had meant to return home someday-rich.

"Where do you think you will go now?" he asked her. "To that plantation up the Cobre that Kells sought to buy?"

"No," she said. "Not there." She almost burst into tears for if she had not foolishly sent away the necklace, Kells might even now be up the Cobre-safe. Remembering Hawks and the danger her presence placed him in, she straightened. "I have decided it would be best for me to seek passage to England and--and wait for Kells there."

She tripped slightly over the words. But it was true in a way, for in her heart she would always wait for him. Always. "Can you help me arrange it?"

"I might." He gestured seaward and Carolina saw another ship. "The Ordeal has just cast anchor and has a longboat rowing toward us at this moment. Her captain is a friend of mine and he told me the last time he was here that he would make this voyage but one more time from Port Royal to London and then he would retire to his home in Philadelphia and let his son take command of his ship." .

"He may have many friends here who will take precedence over me," Carolina said nervously.

Governor White gave her a bleak look. "Captain Simmons will take no one who cannot pay cash, if I am any judge. And few can pay cash when their houses, their fortunes have been swept away-as my own has been," he added bitterly. "But you have gold." He studied the money chains she held in her hand. These buccaneers and their women always seem to have gold, he was thinking.

Beside Carolina, Hawks moved restlessly.

"Stay here," the acting governor said curtly. "I will see what I can do." He shook his head. "The price of passage anywhere this day is likely to be high!" "The Ordeal," she muttered. "That's an odd name for a ship!"

"Yes, well, I can tell you where she got the name," he flung over his shoulder. "She was named the Enterprise when Captain Simmons first commanded her. She sailed into Port Royal-it was long before my time-when yellow fever had struck the city. And sailed out again, a fever ship. Captain Simmons made his home port of Philadelphia but he was the sole survivor-everybody else aboard had perished. That was when he renamed her the Ordeal."

"That's all this town needs now-fever. Or plague," rumbled a voice nearby. Heads lifted. What was this about fever? Or plague? There was alarm written on every face.

Now rumors would spread, thought Carolina. By this afternoon there'd be talk of plague and fever all about the city!

"Hawks," she muttered impulsively, "come with me to London." Hawks gave her an uneasy look. "I'd like to go," he said under his breath. "But best not perhaps."

He meant that he was still a wanted man .As Kells had been.

"Hawks," she said in a low voice, "I will send for you. When I have visited the goldsmiths in London, I will see what can be done to arrange a pardon. You will live to see Essex again, I promise you that!"

Hawks swallowed. She would do it if she could, his captain's valiant lady.

"And keep-keep looking for Moonbeam, won't you?" Her voice broke. "She was in my arms just before the earthquake struck. . .."

She watched him nod solemnly and was about to say more-about hiring other divers when the earth stopped shaking, for the tremors were still continuing in the stricken city, and would be for a long time to come. But she bit back the words. She must get hold of herself-in another moment she would burst into tears.

"I-I need some air, Hawks. It's too crowded here. Come over by the rail. We'll wait for word."

Silently Hawks followed her to the ship's rail.

"Perhaps we should walk about," she said restlessly. "And not just stand here."

Hawks cleared his throat. "Won't do no good to run away," he declared in a compassionate voice.

About to clamber over a coil of rope, Carolina stopped in her tracks. Hawks was right.

She was trying to run away-from herself, from her memories, trying to escape the thought that Kells was dead. . . .

Child of the night wind, daughter of sighs, Heart full of passion, head in the skies, Sing me a lovesong sweetened with lust-Someday all dreams come to dust!

ABOARD THE ORDEAL

June 1692

A feeling of unreality still haunted Carolina as, "aboard the merchantman Ordeal, she sailed out of what was left of Port Royal's harbor. As the ship pulled out into the open ocean she looked not ahead, but wistfully behind her at a watery wasteland.

The tragedy in Port Royal had been of mind-boggling proportions. At least two thousand people had perished; there were bodies floating everywhere. To top the remaining inhabitants' woes, an avalanche of mud had poured down the Cobre River from the broken mountains, inundating the turtle crawls, smothering the loggerheads and hawksbills confined in their wooden-fenced pens, some of whom, with flippers tied as was the custom, had not even had a chance to try to swim. The raging tide of mud had fouled the ruins of the submerged town, already made hideous by floating unburied corpses, and muddied the sea roundabout.

It was an eerie scene Carolina viewed as the Ordeal sailed away. A sunken city built on sand--and still sinking. For chimneys and parts of roofs, and the uppermost parts of the masts of ships that had gone down in the holocaust, still remained visible in the muddy waters. Even that fragment of the town the sea had left standing was broken and ruined by the three great tremors that had changed the fortunes of the buccaneers forever.

From Fort James to Fort Carlisle, divers, homeowners and scavengers were busy breaking through those roofs that still peeked out of the water and trying to salvage what they could from the sunken buildings below. In the distance Carolina could watch them crawling and scrambling like busy ants over the broken buildings of what seemed a destroyed Venice. But at its deepest part Port Royal already lay fifty feet deep beneath the sea-and slipping ever downward. Around her the sea was alive with sharks.

Wild rumors had circulated, increasing the hysteria of the survivors: Spanish Town was gone, washed away on a sea of mud, great new crevasses now slashed through the Blue Mountains above them, other parts of the island had fallen into the sea; indeed the entire island was a tilt and slowly following Port Royalin to the blue depths of the Caribbean!

Carolina had discounted the rumors, heard them dully. For there was an aching background refrain ever roaring through her head, pounding at her temples, making her throat ache: Kells was gone, Kells was gone. ...

And with him, her world.

Governor White had been surprised and chagrined to discover that the Captain Simmons of the Ordeal was not the Captain Simmons he had known for several years, but the captain's son. This Captain Simmons was young and inexperienced, and his Adam's apple worked a great deal. His father, who had been owner and captain of the Ordeal, had died in his sleep two nights earlier and young Simmons had found command thrust upon him. Lacking his father's control over men, Simmons found the job harrowing. The rowdiness of the seamen, the bluff heartiness of the giant first mate as well as his bone-crushing handshake, the reserved wariness of his fellow officers all intimidated him. He brought the Ordeal into Port Royal harbor almost empty, for it had been his father's plan to sail fast to Port Royal, pick up goods on the quay cheap for cash and take his son to England on this his first voyage-for young Simmons had been brought up exclusively by his mother and by a maiden aunt who hated the sea. After a time in England, the plan had been to return to their home port of Philadelphia where the old man would retire, leaving his son the ship that had been their livelihood for so many years.

Young Captain Simmons was horrified by what he found in Port Royal harbor.

"Bodies all about!" he had cried. "Floating all around us! And where are the wharves?

Half the city seems gone-we're looking at the chimneys and the rooftops!"

Simmons had understated the case for he had never before seen Port Royal. Two-thirds of the town had vanished, and most of the rest wasn't habitable. A sandspit remained.

He had nervously accepted Carolina aboard as a passenger-at three times the going rate. But he had paled at the first rumor of pestilence breaking out in the city.

"Plague!" he had cried, his young voice rising in panic, and ignoring the governor's pleas that he take on more survivors, he had abruptly up-anchored and sailed away.

"Running scared," muttered one of the ship's officers in disgust. "Old Captain Simmons would never ha' done it!"

A red sunset found them beating past Morant Point, heading for the Windward Passage between the eastern tip of Cuba and the northwest comer of Hispaniola.

Sunset found Carolina dining in the captain's cabin and borrowing a needle and thread to mend her tom gown.

"I must apologize for having no women's clothes to give you," said the young captain, eyeing with masculine approval the pretty picture his guest made in her yellow calico gown with bits of her flesh appearing here and there through the rents.

"I suppose I could not expect it since you have no women aboard," sighed Carolina.

"I could lend you some of my own clothing," he suggested diffidently, his boyish face flushing at the thought.

Carolina hesitated. She was no hand with a needle and her dress would be awkwardly mended, she knew. But she was the only woman aboard this ship; word had already circulated among the crew that the celebrated Silver Wench was aboard-she

had heard mutterings of it on deck-and it seemed to her that to walk about in trousers would put her on a level with New Providence's notorious Rouge, who wore men's clothing and swung a cutlass.

"No. I do thank you but I will manage to make do with what I have," she said hastily.

"Ah-yes. Would you care for some wormwood wine?"

"No, thank you," said Carolina, who detested absinthe, although it was customarily drunk in Port Royal.

The young captain looked chagrined. He had heard many stories of the Silver Wench-as who had not?-and he had somehow expected someone more flamboyant, more dissolute, than the steady-eyed young woman who faced him across the sturdy oaken table.

"What happened to your husband?" he asked suddenly-for everyone had heard of the famous Captain Kells. "Was he in Port Royal when the earthquake struck?"

"No, he was not," said Carolina. An easy lie--she had already practiced it on the governor, who had probably learned differently from the divers by now. "And since our house was destroyed, I thought it best to return to England and wait until he sends for me."

The young man opposite her fingered his glass and thought about that. The heady thought had just occurred to him that he was captain of this ship and in sole command here-and that this was a very desirable piece of woman flesh seated across from him.

Carolina caught his thought. "My husband is accounted the best blade in the Caribbean," she said carelessly. "Do you fancy the long or the short sword?"

A slight shiver went through her host's thin chest. "I favor neither," he said promptly, and poured himself another glass of wormwood wine. "I am a man of peace." It was what his mother had always abjured him to be-a man of peace. And since he was a thorough-going coward, it had seemed excellent advice and he had hewed to it.

"Indeed?" Carolina laughed. "And yet you sail the Wind ward Passage which as all men know is haunted by pirates from New Providence as well as the ships of the dons! Tell me, how many guns do you carry?"

Captain Simmons's father had been brave to the point of foolhardiness. His stories had terrified his son-especially the one about the fevership , which was the main reason he had turned tail and sailed precipitously out of Port Royal. It had been frightening enough sailing down the Windward Passage with his father's strong hand to guide him. Now he was sailing back up it on his own-and this-buccaneer's wench was jeering at him across his own table.

"You have sailed the Windward Passage?" he asked stiffly, Carolina nodded.

"Tortuga will lie on your starboard side once you have passed Hispaniola. I lived in Tortuga." Another life it seemed now, far away. ...

Captain Simmons took another gulp of wine. "You must tell me about it," he said crossly. "For I have not seen Tortuga, nor am I likely to."

"I am too tired to tell you about it tonight," sighed Carolina, who wished to be alone with her grief. "If I have your leave to retire to my cabin?"

Captain Simmons had been toying with the idea of suggesting that she share his cabin but her remarks about her dangerous husband's prowess with the sword had dissuaded him. He rose. "I will see to the arrangements," he muttered and disappeared through the cabin door.

I was right, thought Carolina grimly. He meant not only to charge me triple the going rate for my voyage to England-he meant to have me in his bed as well! She decided she disliked the nervous young captain. And realized she must at all costs keep up the fiction that Kells was still alive to protect and avenge her. Plainly her situation on board this vessel hinged on that. Her lip curled. It was little different from being in Port Royal!

Bone-tired, she was glad when the captain returned and escorted her to her cabin.

She gave him a wan smile and shut the door in his face, then latched it and tottered to the bunk and threw herself down upon it. 'She had expected to dissolve in tears but so tired was she that she fell immediately asleep.

Carolina slept-but not peacefully. She tossed and moaned on the bunk, again reliving the earthquake-but with a difference. This time she was reliving, along with her own fate, bits and pieces of what had happened to others.