Microsoft Word - Sherwood, Valerie - Nightsong (24 page)

In her dream she was standing again atop her house when the earth began to shake.

Beneath her the brick building seemed to slant more violently and at the same time to sink. The roof was sliding off seaward and as it slid, Carolina saw what waited for her down below and a scream burst from her throat.

Below her in the sandy street a great crevasse had opened up, and house and roof-and Carolina herself were tumbling into it. The house went in first, almost majestically, along with two surrounding houses. And then the roofs. And then Carolina, clinging futilely to the railing as it buckled.

She went in screaming-and felt the sand close about her like a vise, shutting off her wails, holding her motionless, locked in and suffocating.

The next shock tore open the crevasse and erupted the newly fallen contents into the sea. In her screaming consciousness Carolina felt herself violently jerked upward, the world around her suddenly changed from solid to liquid. She was in the water, she realized desperately, and she almost drowned as she was sucked upward through the roiling water.

She broke the surface gasping and saw in that blinding moment a sight she would never forget. Not all the horrors of Port Royal's fall would ever match that moment.

She was looking at a clawing hand that was just now rising from the water. A hand in which a ruby and diamond necklace was entangled-her necklace. And beside the hand a head of streaming ginger hair-Gilly !

And through a great pounding she seemed to hear Kells's voice, far off, saying, "I had thought to use the necklace as collateral. . . ." and there in the green depths she saw his face, looking up at her accusingly.

She was threshing in the bed now, her whole body turned into one long wild scream.

And the pounding was real-it was someone beating on the door.

Bathed in perspiration, Carolina came foggily to herself. She was not in Port Royal, not in the water, she was lying in a bunk in a cabin of the Ordeal, and Captain Simmons's resentful voice was bellowing to her through the door, asking her what on earth was the matter?

"I am sorry," she called out in a quivering voice. "I was having a nightmare."

There was a grunt on the other side of the door and the sound of boots stalking away. She supposed the captain was now regretting having taken her aboard.

But somehow her terrifying dream had dispelled the sense of unreality that had dogged her ever since the earthquake. It was all real to her now-real and terrible.

Kells was gone. She was alone. She would always be alone.

There in her lonely cabin she burst into tears. It was like a dam breaking. She could not stop weeping. As the next day passed, she only picked at her food and she stayed in her cabin.

Captain Simmons was perplexed. At the very least he had expected this beauteous lady's company at meal-time and for strolls around the deck. But the Ordeal continued to beat its way up the Windward Passage and still the lady did not come out.

Captain Simmons had an answer for that:

He stopped having meals sent to her cabin.

Driven by gnawing hunger-for after all she was young and strong and in vibrant health-Carolina at last decided to leave her cabin. She would take a turn upon the deck and find out why food had abruptly stopped arriving the day before yesterday.

Did this green young captain from Philadelphia think he could starve her into taking her meals with him? She had, after all, paid for her passage--and a handsome price at that!

It was with a glint in her silver eyes that she made determinedly for the door that bright morning. She had dried her tears at last and decided to rejoin the land of the living.

But she had not made the door before the ship gave a lurch and she was sent in surprise against the wall.

Quickly righting herself, Carolina made for the deck where she found a flurry of activity, with sailors scrambling over the rigging and a mountain of canvas billowing above her.

She looked about her. The sun should not be coming from that direction.... Why, they were heading northwest-not northeast as they should have been!

The captain hurried by and she hailed him.

"Captain Simmons, why have we changed our course? What is wrong?" He turned to her, his eyes wild. "D'ye not see those ships?" he cried, waving his arm in an easterly direction. "They're Spanish!"

Carolina shaded her eyes from the sun and peered in the direction he was pointing.

Two very tiny ships seemed to be bobbing on the horizon.

"How can you tell at this distance?" she asked mildly.

In truth Captain Simmons had but fancied he saw a flash of red and gold flying from the mast of one of the ships, but it had translated immediately in his mind into the red and gold flag of Spain.

"'Tis obvious!" he sputtered. "I saw it through my glass."

His beautiful passenger gave him a skeptical look. "They are more likely to be salt ships from Turks Islands coming from that direction," she observed. "And while I have your attention, may I ask why the cabin boy has stopped bringing my meals to my cabin?"

Up until that moment young Captain Simmons had intended only to veer away from a pair of ships that were most likely in these waters to be Spanish, beat his way northwestward away from them, slip through Crooked Island Passage, and tum eastward into the broad Atlantic on his voyage to England. But in his overwrought condition-for he was certain in his panicky heart that they were being pursued by Spanish warships whose one mission in life was to sink his unarmed merchantman-he now came abruptly to a different decision.

"I have changed my mind about voyaging to England," he said testily. "We are setting course for 'Philadelphia." "But I have paid passage for England," objected Carolina.

"Surely you-"

Captain Simmons regarded this cool island beauty with something akin to hatred.

How dare she stand there looking so unconcerned when they might all be blown out of the water if those galleons caught up with them? And to think he had dreamed of her last night, dreamed he was removing that badly mended yellow calico dress from her slim body, dreamed that he was running his eager hands over her silky breasts, pulling off her chemise, kissing her, fondling her.

"Your passage money will be returned to you!" he exploded, giving this buccaneer's woman a look of anger. "When we reach Philadelphia." Where I will sell this vessel, he was thinking. And never sail the treacherous seas again! Lord, but I had narrowly escaped death in Port Royal-if I had but landed a little earlier, my vessel would have been dashed to pieces against the shattered buildings as so many other good ships had been in that cursed harbor!

Carolina stepped back before the venom in his voice-until she realized that it was motivated by fear. She sighed. After all, what did it matter if she reached England by way of Philadelphia? It would take a little longer, true, but if Captain Simmons returned her passage money she would have enough not only for passage from Philadelphia to England but enough to pay for good accommodations and to buy some decent clothes. She would not arrive in London looking like a beggar wench!

"Very well," she said. "Philadelphia it is. But I have had no breakfast and I have come to inquire if you intend to starve me?"

Before her the frightened young captain seemed to draw himself up. His face grew puffy. "Find the cabin boy and get him to bring you some food," he shouted.

"There will be no hot food on board this vessel until we have escaped--them!" He flung an arm outward toward the distant pair of ships.

Thinking how much better Kells had managed matters aboard the Sea Wolf, Carolina went off to seek the cabin boy, who could find only some cheese and ship's biscuits.

She munched them as she watched those tiny ships grow a little closer.

By late afternoon everyone knew that the captain was right: The ships were Spanish.

Carolina expected the Ordeal to slip through Crooked Island Passage by night and into the open ocean. But in his panic, sure that the wind did not favor that, the captain drove his ship forward, penetrating ever deeper into that vast chain of islands and cays the buccaneers called "The Shallows," but which others called the Bahamas.

With Deadman's Cay to port and Rum cay to starboard, he was floundering into Exuma Sound. If in desperation he turned west in an effort to reach the Straits of Florida, he could run the ship aground on the Grand Bahama Bank.

By mid morning Carolina had decided that the . captain-who was looking bleary-eyed and distraught as he stood beside the helmsman-was in need of advice.

"Had Kells been in your situation," she told him conversationally, "and chosen not to engage, he would have played tag with his pursuers among the islands."

"Exactly what I've been telling you, Cap'n," muttered one of his ship's officers, standing nearby.

Captain Simmons gave them both a grim look. He was fast losing his youth. A gray pallor spread over his face every time he looked past the Ordeal's stem at the steadily gaining galleons which now flashed gold in the sun. "And what would you suggest we do now?" he demanded helplessly of the officer who had spoken.

"I would turn hard to starboard past Devil's Point and lose them going round Cat Island," volunteered Carolina, who had not been asked. "I heard Kells say once that he had done that."

They both turned to stare at her.

"Of course," she added cheerfully, "he only did it so that he could swing round Cat Island and come up behind them and take them by surprise. You will be doing it to gain the open ocean."

"Go away and find something else to do, mistress!" roared the young captain.

"Running a ship is men's work."

Carolina shrugged and strolled away. But she noticed that after a hurried conference the ship changed course. Not long after that, the officer who had been there when she had given the captain her advice found her.

"We are all beholden to you, mistress," he said in a low voice. "Young Captain Simmons is too green to be in command of this ship and had his father not died so unexpectedly on the voyage, he would not be. Old Captain Simmons would have followed your advice and struck out for the open ocean. But our young captain is fearful. He has heard tales of the Inquisition-all true, I don't doubt-and he has a terrible dread of falling into the hands of the dons. It is his plan to hug Cat Island's coast and set his course for Eleuthera Island and from there strike out for Philadelphia."

"What do you think of his plan?" she asked.

His answer was a shrug. "I think it will most likely get us all killed, but captain's orders is captain's orders."

Carolina leaned upon the rail after he had left and stared moodily at the pursuing galleons. The sea was a brilliant glittering blue, the sky azure. They were so near land that the air was full of seabirds and landbirds, swooping and crying in flight.

Above her the white sails billowed, a mountain of canvas. It seemed incredible that on such a day anything bad could happen. And yet there were those galleons, relentlessly pursuing.... If only Captain Simmons could bring himself to steer a bold course. She doubted that he could.

All day they played cat and mouse with the golden galleons along Cat Island's eastern coast. Night found them off the dangerous reefs that fringed Eleuthera's ninety miles of eastern beaches. And there the captain was at last persuaded to strike northward for Philadelphia under cover of darkness. It was an overcast night with no visible stars. The Caribbean night seemed to have closed them in like a dark blanket.There was little wind so they made scant headway, the sails for the most part drooping and flopping. And where would the galleons be tomorrow morning?

Carolina asked herself that question as she made ready for bed. Suppose they were taken by the Spanish? What kind of treatment could they expect?

She tried to take her mind off that. It was not too difficult. Indeed a film of numbness had slid over her mind in the wake of Kells's death. Being captured did not assume the terrible importance it once would have because at the moment she cared little what happened to her.

She would live or she would die-fate would decide. Meantime she leaned her chin on her hands and sat in gloomy contemplation of all that might have been.

It was better, she decided, to be born lucky than to be born either beautiful or rich.

For if you had luck you needed little else.

Neither she nor her two elder sisters had had much luck, she told herself. Look at what had happened to them! Penny, the eldest, for all her beauty and her wild spirit, was lost these many years and probably long dead somewhere in Philadelphia.

Virgie had had a tragic life-but she had won through at last to happiness with Kells's brother in Essex; whether Virgie's luck would hold, Carolina, in her present pessimistic mood, would not have cared to wager.

As for herself, whenever she had ended up in the right arms, those arms had been snatched away from her. She had been separated from Kells first by misunderstandings, then by old entanglements and other people's quarrels and chicanery-and now by the sheer chance of his having arrived back in Port Royal at precisely the wrong moment, when a sinking city and a cresting wave had conspired to down his broken ship.

A luckier man would have escaped that. A luckier woman would have had a chance to say good-by to her lover before he sank beneath the waves.

Carolina's lips twisted bitterly. There was no truth to the cheerful belief that good would triumph over evil, she told herself. Look at Robin Tyrell, Marquess of Saltenham! Look at Reba and Reba's mother! They had certainly triumphed and were living no doubt in splendor in England, secure in the knowledge that Robin's crimes had been safely pinned on someone else-Kells.

And now Kells was dead and would never be able to raise his voice against Robin, never retrieve his damaged reputation.

Carolina stared into the dark, her hands clenched, and fervently prayed to God that she would someday have the chance to confront the marquess, that she would have the chance to bring him down. In Kells's behalf.