The Pirate Captain (21 page)

“It’s not necessary to impress me with your vast experience.”

“Then I’ll save meself the breath of asking if you desire to watch.” His swollen eyes rounded in a final emphasis.

Stung, Cate jerked a chair around to the stern window and threw herself into it. His combustion grew as he stormed about the room, his bells jangling wildly with each step. She flinched at the crash of something being thrown, solid as opposed to glass or pottery.

“Damnation seize my soul! I could torture them for the sheer joy of hearing them scream, place bets on how long it takes to die, but I didn’t. I could slit their guts and make them dance, whilst I torch the town, out of pure cussedness, but I won’t. I could take the lot of them, hell, the whole goddamned town and sell them, but I won’t. Scurrilous, vile, blood-thirsty, barbarous, brutal or base: pick a word and that would be me, with naught but a shred of virtue or decency to be had.”

If shock had been his goal, Nathan had failed, for none of his threats were far from what she had heard of him. He seemed to be almost baiting her, daring her to argue with him. On the other hand, his scorn seemed aimed at himself, rather than her. Either way, for all she cared, he could rot in hell and not a moment’s sleep would she lose over it.

In an icy silence, Nathan seethed about the room, the clump of boots and slosh of the rum bottle marking his path. The chill in the air was palatable, as proven when Kirkland come up the steps, immediately swiveled and crept back down. As Nathan continued to drink, her uneasiness grew. She hadn’t seen him in drink—not this much, at any rate—and hadn’t the slightest notion of what to expect.

As she watched the blur of his reflection in the window, more rational thoughts slowly came to prevail. There was the chance he drank due to a throbbing head. Kinder thoughts suggested a state of semi-drunkenness might be a necessary for what he was about to embark upon: engaging in the very violence and mayhem he had sought to avoid. His threats—which in the glare of honesty she knew to be hollow—weren’t the most vexing. What stung was the tongue-lashing.

Nathan eventually stormed out of the cabin. Cate assumed him gone ashore, and so was surprised when he returned. Still with her back to the room, she listened to him stomp about. Amid heavy exhalations, chairs were jerked and a bottle was set down with far more force than necessary. It was growing late, the sun too weak to push through the after gallery’s thick panes. She heard the scrape of a flint struck and saw the glow of a candle grow on the glass.

Nathan scuffed to a halt and heaved a resigned sigh. “So what passage must I pay to escape this Purgatory?”

Cate glared over her shoulder. “I’m no pirate. At least I know right from wrong.”

“As do I,” he conceded readily. “However, I
am
a pirate, which renders the latter entirely superfluous.”

There was the agitated rustle as he set to pacing once again. “Worrying about right and wrong can get a soul killed,” he grumbled, half under his breath. “And I can’t very well conduct what need be conducted, if I have to live in mystery of what’s to greet me upon me return to me own bloody damned ship.”

“In that case, I’ll strive to keep myself and my opinions out of your business.”

Nathan scuffed to a halt behind her. “How’s about if we negotiate, opting, of course, to overlook said opinions?” His testiness gave way to his more familiar tease. “Truth be told, I rather fancy having you in me business.”

Cate peeked over her shoulder and was met with a smile, one meant to charm. Her face heating, she nodded.

“Capital,” he declared. “Now, how’s about I call Kirkland? The man’s near apoplectic worrying you might go hungry.”

###

It was that half-time of neither day nor night, when the light grew so thin the world became like a child’s drawing: a place of two dimensions, flat people moving against a paper backdrop, shore, trees and mountains all existing on the same plane.

Nathan lingered at the cabin door. He drew a breath as if to say something, but didn’t. This repeated several times gave her hope—vague, but hope nonetheless—that he might change his mind and allow her ashore. Settling his hat carefully on his head and his faded-to-near-colorless burgundy coat on his shoulders, he stepped over the coaming and was gone.

From where Cate sat, she couldn’t see the boats pull ashore, and perhaps it was best. Seeing him head off to the uncertainty of battle or accident was an unpleasant prospect. Not to be melodramatic, but she knew first hand how capriciously Providence could strike, how easily one’s life could be turned into something unrecognizable. It wasn’t beyond reason to think she might never see him again.

She shook away the thought and set to delicately thumbing through one of the volumes stacked next to the chair. Sticky with pitch and tar, her hands were a mess from picking oakum. They were covered with fuzz, which no amount of wiping could remove. The book was in French, a language with which she had but passing familiarity, and so she picked out what words she knew and guessed the rest. It was a thoroughly inefficient way to read, but it passed the time, the ultimate goal. Kirkland brought her a plate shortly. Having little appetite, she picked bits from the softtack, chewing without tasting. He took away the virtually untouched meal with a suffering eye, leaving a mug of broth in its place. She drank out of obligation.

Cate peeked through the sidelight once more at the hostages, barely visible where they huddled against the forecastle. She felt as much a captive as they. Her future might well be more tenuous than theirs. She wished she could advise them not to worry; she was reasonably confident no harm would befall them. These were pirates, but not the rapacious, plundering barbarians they were purported to be. There was a good chance, however, that point being advertised could be detrimental to their—and therefore her—success.

The grog dispensed, the men gathered amidships instead of the forecastle. The wealth laid at their feet, and the knowledge of more to come, put them in soaring spirits. They indulged in vast speculations of the prize to come and what the kingly sums might purchase. The lure of piracy was of little wonder: fortunes exceeding a lifetime of labor could be had in a day, squandered the next, and regained the next. The bell clanged. A bellowed “Pipe down!” sent them to their hammocks, although many opted to sleep on deck.

She roamed the cabin, looking for something that wasn’t there. Being alone for five years had taught her much in the way of loneliness, but the emptiness she suffered now was a wholly unfamiliar sort: a void that had been filled suddenly gone wanting, a blanket yanked away on a cold night. She thought to go to bed—sleep could be an excellent way to pass large spans of unpleasantness—but balked at the dark cavern of where her cot awaited. She knew all too well the hazards that came with empty hours in the darkness. They provided a blank canvas upon which the mind could paint an endless number of torturous scenarios of what might be happening ashore. The shrill of female laughter and music echoing across the harbor brought those imaginings in full color. She heaved open the gallery windows and sat on the sill. There, with the sentries’ call of “All’s well” after every bell, she watched the moonlight’s silver dance amid the golden flicker of town’s lights on the water.

Cate had stared for so long, when she finally saw the light, she thought it to be imagined: the flames of a torch swinging a low arc, one, two, three times. A looping circle at the end and it was doused.

She sat up the increased pitch of voices and footsteps on deck. She sped out, in spite of Nathan’s directive, meeting Pryce as he trundled down the afterdeck companionway.

“Was that him?” she asked in a low voice.

“Aye. ’Twere his signal.”

Cate stood at the mizzen shrouds. The longboats’ silhouettes were but dark blots against the harbor’s oily satin. As they drew nearer, she could hear the jocular murmur of conversation, Nathan’s graveled voice among them. She hadn’t realized she had been holding her breath, until it came out in an explosive burst of relief at seeing him spring up over the gunwale. The moonlight flashed on his smile at seeing her. He then turned to the matters at hand.

Two strapped and padlocked chests were lifted aboard. Neither of remarkable size, they were of considerable weight, requiring a goodly amount of sweating and cursing before they came to rest on the deck. Stirred from their sleep, the torches shone on the greedy anticipation on the men’s faces as they gathered around. With not a little drama, Nathan unlocked the great latches, threw open the lids and stood back.

“The good mayor claims over ten thousand pieces.” Nathan's dubiousness as to the veracity of that was drowned in the joyousness. “A considerable overstatement, by my estimation, but still not a bad day’s work, eh mates?”

A rollicking cheer went up, with a great amount of hearty backslapping.

Pryce, being Quartermaster, and therefore keeper of both the Prize Book and the prize itself, named a counting detail. Cate was more than a little stunned by the overt trust.

“Honor among thieves,” Nathan declared grandly. “Part of the Code, remember: anyone suspected of thievery shall face a court of his equals?” He cast a jaded eye toward the surrounding men. “Not an altogether forgiving lot, to be sure.”

“What happened to your face?” she exclaimed when he turned into the light.

His hand flew up to his cheek, wincing when he touched the streaks there, bright and angry.

“Oh, nothing,” he said, evading her advances as she sought to inspect more closely. “It's nothing, really. I ran into—”

“Someone with fingernails. I see. No, it's quite all right,” she said over his denials. “I'm not shocked at what men do ashore. Although it would appear you might consider exercising a little more discretion in your choices.”

“I wasn't doing
anything
except trying to procure a bit of treasure for this wretched lot.”

“If that were the case, then where did those come from?” Cate demanded, pointing to the claw marks. “You should wash that, you know.”

“Must you wash everything? I got it seeking these.”

Nathan shoved the bundle into her arms and stood back. Shaking the bundle out, Cate found a red-checked skirt, a shift and jump-style stays made of homespun. There was a pair of peasant-like clogs, as well, which at first glance appeared a bit small, large feet the price of being tall.

“Clothes? You brought me clothes?” she cried.

“I thought perhaps those might be more fitting, what with your standards being so high and all. I had in mind they were more to your size than those…others.” He finished with a disdainful flourish of bejeweled fingers.

She brought the clothing closer to her nose and frowned. They smelled heavily of the previous owner—and quite recent—a strange combination of perspiration, orange water, and fried fish.

“You'll no doubt want to wash those.” Nathan bore the forced smile of a man already resigned to his doom.

“You took these off someone. You stole these?”

He back-pedaled, grimacing. “Not exactly.”

“Is that how you got those scratches? What did you do, knock her down and take them, or, did you get her undressed, and then sneaked off?”

“You don't paint a very flattering picture, either way.”

“Then paint a better one.”

Nathan sputtered, with several false starts. “There's no pleasing you, is there? A man risks life and limb—”

“Which limb were you risking?” She was in high color and in no mood to be placated. It was mortifying to think someone had lost their clothing—their only ones, by the looks of it—for her benefit.

Cate stalked into the cabin to fume in private, struggling with emotions she didn’t understand. The wait had played on her nerves more than she cared to admit. Through the night, she had fought against envisioning what he might have been doing. There had been no orange glow of flames over the town. It was safe to say no buildings had been torched, but by all appearances, other flames had been lit. The wondering had been trying enough; knowing now that he had been pursuing his pleasures the while was far more disturbing than anticipated.

The knowledge stung worse than his cross words. Worse, Cate didn’t understand why. Well, if she were honest, she did know, the question being more a matter of who she was angry with: Nathan, for being a man, doing what men do, or herself, for acting like a naïve maid. Neither was flattering.

Boots and the soft jingle of bells announced Nathan’s arrival. He stopped near the table and cleared his throat several times.

“I’m sorry,” she finally blurted. “I didn’t mean to appear an ingrate.”

“Soiled goods from a pirate, is it?” he asked, not a little accusing, and then laughed, a lot derisive. “No worries, luv. Your secret ’tis between us.”

As she laid the clothes on the table, he seized her by the wrists.

“What the bloody hell happened to your hands! Belay that. I’ve eyes for meself,” Nathan said, when she jerked away and tucked them behind her back. “I would have thought between all hundred-odd sorry, thick-pated sprats on this blessed hulk, they could find enough brains among them to stop you, before you’ve gone bloody.”

Cate couldn’t argue; her hands were nearly that in several places. Her nails felt as if they had been torn from their beds, her fingers so covered in brown fuzz they resembled monkey hands. Those same fibers and grit had worked through her to the binder around her chest, prickling and itching to the point of near raw.

“Mr. Kirkland, oil and ash, if you please,” Nathan shouted, relying on his volume to carry the order down to the galley.

“And vinegar…for your face,” Cate added at Nathan's questioning glare.

“We’ll be in need of hot water directly,” he told Kirkland as the stone bottle and saucer of ash were delivered. “And a bit of wool.”

Pitching his hat and coat aside, Nathan retrieved the basin from its stand. While Cate worked the oil and ash into her hands as directed, he filled the basin, bidding her to rinse next. The hot water burned the tortured skin at first, but soon had a balming effect. As she massaged the luxurious heat into the aching joints, a skim of oil and brown fuzz formed on the water’s surface.