Pirate Code (19 page)

Five

Grunting his last effort, Don Damian del Gardo thrust again, shuddered and rolled, breathing hard, sweating, from Francesca’s inert body. She too shuddered but from disgust, relieved it was over.

For too long she had been forced to endure the degradation of del Gardo’s inept attentions in bed. Before that she had sat cloistered at home with her frail father-in-law, grieving over the murder of Ramon, her husband. Oh, it had looked like an accident, but three people knew it was not. Herself, Ramon’s father, and del Gardo. She blinked aside tears. Del Gardo had a way of ensuring that no word of his calumny would ever be uttered. Normally he went straight to sleep after fumbling and poking at her, lying there on his fat rump, mouth open, paunch belly heaving upward as if he were nine months with child. She would lie the other way, her back to him, knees drawn up, silently weeping, her mind questioning her faith in her God. It was wrong to kill. Even more wrong to kill herself, but she so wanted to do both, were it not for her child.

About to turn over, to shuffle as far away from him as she could, she went rigid as he spoke. As if he had read her thoughts he said into the darkness, “Your son. He is how old now?”

Francesca’s mouth ran dry, her heart began to beat faster with the pound of fear. “He will be nine come Advent.”

“And he is content living here as a brother to my own sons? I believe my wife dotes on the boy.”

Don Damian’s mouse of a wife detested the boy, but then she detested all her children and refused to see any of them.
Señora
del Gardo also loathed her husband, which is why she kept herself in her private world of seclusion in her chamber and ignored the endless succession of his mistresses. While they were performing for the evil bastard, she was not having to do so.

Del Gardo grasped Francesca’s breast and pinched the nipple between his fingers. “There is something I want you to do for me, Madam.”

What? Oh God, not again! What vileness did he want her to repeat now?

“That English dog. I want to know what he is up to.”

She stifled the sigh of relief. “Is that not why you have taken him to the Tower? To torture him?”

Del Gardo snorted. “He’ll not talk; he’ll clack like a market wife as soon as he feels the first brand of pain, but I cannot rely on what he spews up as being the truth. I need to know about the plans for this pathetic rebellion. Do the English think I am such an imbecile that I do not realise he is here to liaise with the rebel leaders? Pah!” Del Gardo heaved his body to the edge of the bed and then to his feet, stumbled over to the piss pot.

“I am going to release Acorne on parole.” He farted, finished streaming urine and returned to the bed. “That crew of his will not return, pirates are never loyal to a weak captain. What? Come back for a man who gets himself arrested and tortured? Never!”

Francesca was not so sure; she had looked into Jesamiah’s eyes and seen strength and courage there. He was not a weak man like del Gardo, relying on brutality and fear to maintain authority. This Jesamiah Acorne was someone worth knowing. A man who might, just might, help her salvage the collapsed ruins of her life.

Hiding her eagerness, she said compliantly, “What do you want me to do?”

“I will release him into your father-in-law’s custody. Nursemaiding a pirate is the only thing the old man is useful for now. You will befriend Acorne and discover everything.” He moved quickly, reached out and grabbed her hair at the nape of her neck. “Everything Francesca. Do not fail me. I expect you to uncover information about this rebellion. Understand? You have, so far, done well with the information you have brought me; do not go changing sides because you want to spread your legs for a pirate to sniff at your cunny.” He twisted her red hair tighter, yanked her head back. “It would be a pity if, like his father, your son was to meet with an unfortunate accident, would it not?”

She mewed with fear. He let her go, turned away.

Her husband, Ramon, had fallen, so they said. Had tumbled, down and down the stone steps that led to the dungeons in the Tower. When he came to rest at the bottom his neck was broken. No one ever mentioned the marks of obvious torture.

She lay still, unmoving, hoped del Gardo had fallen asleep.

“Pleasure me again. You were useless last time, I felt nothing. If you do not make an effort to please me I will dismiss you and then there will be no need for me to hold your son hostage, will there? I may as well dispose of him now. Mouth woman! Take me in your mouth.”

Six

Sunday Morning

He had been dreaming. A vivid, explicit, dream.

Jesamiah groaned, rolled over. Every bone, muscle, sinew, everything ached abominably. He was also damp; the rain must have come in during the night; his fault for sleeping below the window. It had seemed the cleanest place at the time, perhaps it had not been a good idea after all. Pushing himself to his knees he caught his breath, then slowly and carefully stood up, tugging his coat closer around his body. It was cold in here, this dank, dark place where little sun came in to bring any cheer. Some time during the long night he had retrieved the coat from Chesham – ah he remembered now, it was when the rain had started again. The wind had blown it in, and the wetness on his face had roused him from a dozing sleep. He’d fetched the coat and huddled beneath the window where the layer of ordure was less noisome than everywhere else. Looking at Chesham’s stiff corpse, he felt a momentary spasm of guilty disrespect, but shrugged it aside. A dead man had no use for warmth, a living one did.

There was only a dribble of water left in the small pitcher they had left him; he drained it into his mouth, washed it around his teeth, swallowed. No piss pot; nowhere to ease himself. He chose a corner, dug a hollow in the foetid straw with his heel, loosened his breeches and squatted. It was either that or soil himself, and he was not the first to use this corner or any of this stinking cell. Not by any means.

Done, he wandered to the window, forlornly peered out. The rain had stopped, the sky was a washed, pale blue with a few ragged wisps of mares’ tail cloud. He wondered how far the Sea Witch had gone. Where she had gone. If only he had been allowed to speak with Rue first! He would have advised him to head up the Florida coast, aim for Charleston. There were plenty of rich pickings along there, fat merchants with bulging bellies and holds to match. Surely Rue would know that? He had been a pirate as long as – longer – than Jesamiah. Isiah, too, knew his trade and Mr Janson and old Toby. On the other hand, that was Teach’s hunting ground and no one deliberately antagonised Blackbeard’s regular bouts of insanity.

Jesamiah slammed his fist against one of the window bars, he must stop this self-indulgent wallowing in self pity! Rue would return with the
Sea Witch
and have a handsome prize in tow. He would! He would!

Closing his eyes he tried to imagine her sailing proud and beautiful into harbour, sails billowing and straining, her wake foaming behind. But all he saw was Tiola and the dream that had visited him.

He snapped his eyes open, stared out at the blue sky and the white clouds.

“Tiola?” he murmured, “Tiola sweetheart why can I not hear you? Where are you? Talk to me. Forgive me. Please?”

He could not bear this bereft emptiness that echoed, hollow, inside him! Could not bear being without her.

~
I thought I would be able to tell you everything once I’d set sail
. ~ He spoke the words in his mind, as he always had to Tiola. ~
I thought I would be able to explain. Please Tiola, listen to me, let me tell you that I have been an almighty idiot and how I have buggered everything up.
~

Only the wind and the splash of the sea answered him. Gulls were crying and a man’s distant voice shouted an impatient command. Nothing else. He could not even feel her presence, that comforting nearness that he had grown so used to. She had been with him from a few months before his fifteenth birthday. He had not know it was her then, had not known it until he had taken her intimately as his own; claimed her as his woman. He had been a boy when first she had come to him; a boy bereft, in pain and drenched in humiliation. Her spirit, her soul, had come to him, laid a hand on his back. ~
Get up, fight back
, ~ she had said.

Resting his forehead on the mildewed and snail-slimed wall he closed his eyes again. He had no more energy to fight back. Not now, not without her. He saw again the lingering images of that dream. It had been so vivid. So real.

Tiola. With him, with van Overstratten. Making love. He had seen every detail; their bodies, skin glistening, forming the two-backed beast, her legs entwined around his hips as he thrust eagerly into her. She had cried out, her beautiful black hair, unbraided, hanging loose and sweeping the floor as she had tipped her head and arched her body to take him in deeper. As she always had done with him, with Jesamiah. Her scream of ecstasy had awoken him.

He didn’t bother stopping the tears; there was no one here to see. He had lost her. He had left her a second time, had chosen the sea over her and she, Tiola, had returned as wife to her husband instead.

It was not a random, fanciful dream. It had been Tiola telling – showing – him that she no longer wanted him. He couldn’t blame her, look how often he had let her down. Why would a beautiful, intelligent woman like her settle for being hurt over and over again by a useless scumboat of a pirate?

Lost in the depth of his grieving despair he failed to hear the stamp of boots or recognise the grate of the bolts – spun round, startled, at the creak of the door opening, his fingers hastily wiping at the embarrassing wetness dribbling down his cheeks. Almost vomited as his heart raced and his legs threatened to buckle beneath him. This was it. They had come for him. They were to take him down all those winding stone stairs into the darkness of that chamber below, where they had the equipment to slowly crush your feet or fingers, tools to pry out your eyes, pull out your guts and rip off your balls. The door opened further, he leant against the wall to keep upright; felt the shudder of abject fear ripple through his body and a warm wetness running down his leg. Closed his eyes, muttered a prayer.

A swish of silk, the delicate smell of perfume – the scent of roses. His eyes snapped open, met the green gaze of the redhead. Jesamiah rested his head on the brickwork, released a slow breath of intense relief – followed rapidly by a flush of intense shame, for the tell-tale wet patch on his breeches.

Motioning at the guard to remain at the door the woman stepped inside, fastidiously lifting her skirts high as she attempted to sidestep the worst of the mouldering excrement.

“This is not a very pleasant place to be,” she said in English, her nose wrinkling at the squalid stench.

“You get used to it,” Jesamiah answered, trying to mask his unease, his mind racing. What the fok was she doing here?

Noticing the dead man the woman gave a small, distressed gasp, went to him and squatting on her heels, touched a palm to his chest then the back of her hand to his cheek, confirming what she already knew, her action disturbing the swarm of flies that had settled on the stiffening corpse. “You poor, poor, man. May you rest in peace.”

“You knew him?” Jesamiah asked, the suspicion dark behind his question.

“No.” She stood, wiped her hand on her skirt. “His face is familiar, but no, I did not know him.”

“You, speak Spanish!” the guard barked in broken English as he lowered the musket in his hand and pointed it at Jesamiah. “Orders I have. You speak Spanish.”

The woman looked squarely at Jesamiah, said in Spanish for the benefit of the guard, “You have been released on parole into the care of
Señor
Escudero, my father-in-law. I assume you have no objection to a bath, a shave, clean clothes and a hot meal?”

If this was a new form of interrogation, then it was working. Her mere presence made Jesamiah want to spill everything he knew immediately and pour out his heart, but he had learnt long ago not to trust people he did not know. Especially pretty redheads. And this one was undeniably pretty.

“That would suit me admirably,” he drawled, casually crossing his boots at the ankle and folding his arms; squeezing every ounce of courage into appearing relaxed and confident. “But what must I do to earn it? Confess the truth of why I am here? Tell you I am a spy, that I have orders to sabotage the Spanish fleet or to slip poison into Don Damian’s wine? Sorry darlin’, can’t help you out. I recently took vows to always tell the truth.”

“I am curious to know why you are here,
sí
, but I am a woman, would you not expect me to be?”

Jesamiah shrugged, appearing indifferent. Don Damian would not be letting him out of here for no reason – certainly not because of the softness of his heart. This woman was here at the Governor’s command to wheedle information out of him.

Fine. He might oblige her, eventually, but on his terms, not hers or del Gardo’s.

He pushed away from the wall, ambled towards her. “Well, let me satisfy your curiosity. I am here because Governor Woodes Rogers of Nassau has gone back on his word, which has annoyed me. Another man annoyed me, the reason being none of your business. A naval commodore wanted to commandeer my ship, which very much annoyed me. I wanted to do something which would annoy them in return, offering to fight on the side of Spain was the most annoying thing I could think of.” And if she thought he was going to tell her any more, she could go whistle.

The woman smiled, a smile that radiated from her sparkling eyes as well as her mouth. “I perceive you to be a very annoyed man.”

When he made no further comment she added, in English, “Don Louis Fernandez Escudero is an honourable man, he has sworn to give you hospitality in exchange for your agreement of parole.”

“
Español, Español,”
the guard growled, tapping the butt of his musket on the floor impatiently. “I must know of what you speak!” They both ignored him.

“He cannot be that honourable if he sends a woman into this stink to fetch me out.”

“He is an elderly man and cannot climb stairs. For other reasons also, he is unable to come.” She indicated the door. “You may, of course, remain here if you would so prefer.”

He did not prefer, but neither did he trust her.

“If you swear to not try and escape, you will come to no harm Captain Acorne.”

“Oh I’m sure I’ll be perfectly safe until you’ve got what you want out of me. After we’ve made love, perhaps? You’ll feign sleep and hope I murmur indiscretions into your ear while I’m sated with pleasure, then scuttle back to your master.”

“You think I would want intimacy with the likes of you?”

Very close, Jesamiah leant forward, tucked a loose strand of her hair behind her ear, brushed his lips against hers. “Oh but you do, darlin’, you do.” Kissed her again, a little firmer, more demanding. The guard shuffled; leered at them.

A squall of rain hurled through the window. Jesamiah pulled away, grinned lasciviously. “You’d best remember one thing,
Señora
. I don’t talk in m’sleep; an’ even if I did, you’ll be far too exhausted to hear. I’ll ride you hard, you’ll have no energy left to listen.” He was deliberately crude. He did not think del Gardo’s mistress, here with orders to gain his trust, deserved tender wooing.

He walked across the cell and retrieved his hat from where it lay on the soiled straw; knocked it against his thigh to remove the filth clinging to it before putting it on. He pointed at the dead man. “What happens to him? To Chesham?”

He did not get the reaction he expected. “Chesham?” she answered, genuine puzzlement creasing her face into a frown. “Is – was – that his name?”

“Aye, Francis Chesham. The English spy.”

It suddenly occurred to Jesamiah that he could not exactly remember what Jennings had said. Had it been; “he is an English spy,” meaning he was an Englishman and a spy, or was it, “he spies for England,” which could make him anything; Spanish, Creole or English. It was irrelevant now, though.

“Did you and lover-boy discover that? Say anything else of interest when you had him tortured, did he?”

Stern, she challenged, “I could ask a question of you. How did you know him?”

Jesamiah stepped towards the door. “You ought to be well satisfied
Señora
; del Gardo will be delighted to hear I know of Chesham and what he was, don’t y’think?”