The Windflower (10 page)

In a carefully covered sconce behind Merry burned a single small flame, its light flinching in shiny, trembling patterns on the window's rusting metal frame. She felt a sudden coldness, and the skin on her arms tingled as though a light, flimsy wire had skimmed the surface of the hair there. She knew as though someone had told her in words that she was not alone. Her skirt hissed as she spun, staring about her in the tiny room, a bare open cube that held no places that could have hidden another human. There was nothing but thin, cloudy candlelight and shadows. Trying to still the foolish tremors of her heart, she took two steps into the room, slowly letting the air slide from her lungs; and for no particular reason she could have named, her gaze fell on a thick, lozenge-shaped shadow that lay like a pile of cinders near the door. It took her a moment to realize the strangeness of the shadow—-there was nothing there to cast it, and it was moving; and as it moved in its territory it moved within itself as well, heaving with life. Two thousand minutely glistening black and hard-shelled bodies were making their way in well-ordered insectual haste across Merry's cabin floor.

Afterward she was able to reflect with mild pleasure that she had had the presence of mind not to scream. She had simply walked from the cabin, sternly repressing a certain gritty distaste as her feet crackled accidentally on a score of stragglers. Sir Michael had been in the corridor, in conversation with one of the junior officers, who turned and smiled with lush enthusiasm when he saw Merry, his youthful features reddening when Merry told him politely that her cabin was full of ants.

There had been, quite naturally, a good deal of commotion and a good deal of embarrassment later when the ants were traced to a bowl of dusty comfits in Merry's trunk. In two words, spoken in a sinking voice, Aunt April had laid the matter bare: "Henry Cork."

Merry's cabin was unlivable after the liberal application of acrid astringent poisons, laid down to kill the ants. Aunt April's tiny cabin was only large enough for her and Betty, her aproned, aging maid; when the truckle bed was pulled out, there was no room to walk. There were no vacant sleeping arrangements available; and yet Aunt April was nearly stampeded with officers begging to give up their beds for Merry's comfort. Sir Michael's offer carried the day, if only because his were the only quarters not already being shared with another. Sir Michael handsomely agreed to make himself comfortable in a hammock mounted in the captain's quarters.

An hour later Merry shut her eyes for the last time that day, wincing against the headache, in Sir Michael's bunk. The mattress was rude and lumpy, the stark long-sleeved nightdress she had borrowed from her aunt felt scratchy, the sheets smelled as though the ship's launderer had too generous a hand with the bleach cup, and the hot skimmed milk the first mate had kindly brought curdled in her stomach. But the Atlantic Ocean rose and fell beneath the
Guinevere
like a mother rocking a cradle, and Merry fell almost immediately and blessedly to sleep, with headache intact, her dreams fitful.

She was awakened some time later that night by a noise; and sat up and opened her eyes in a single movement, and found herself staring, from inches away, into a rotund, unshaven, and evilly grinning face. She never saw the blow that came from behind to end once more her wakefulness, and this time there were no dreams.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Consciousness returned with the scent of fermented fruit. Merry opened her eyes to a darkness relieved only by thin, glossy spears of sunlight. It had to be day. Could so much time really have passed? She tried to move, wearily, and found first with annoyance and then with terror that she could not. A hasty catalogue of her limbs and joints revealed that her knees were tucked up under her chin and there was no room to stretch out her legs and relax the cramps that were twisting her calf muscles into corkscrews. From without came a rumble of wheels and the murmur of voices. When she tried to call out to them, a sticky, foul-tasting wad of fabric slid deeper into her mouth, choking her words into a rasp that was barely audible, even to her own ears.

Bound, gagged, and thrust like yesterday's garbage into an aged apple barrel, Merry was being hauled off in an unsprung wagon toward parts unknown.

A nerve path cleared suddenly in her brain, and her hearing focused on a man's voice, startlingly close to the barrel.

"The thing I don't like about it is the bloody thin air out here. It's too thin to get aholt of, like thin soup, and it's hard to get enough of in one breath."

"That's right." It was a different voice, also male. "Ya always did have such a way with words, Jack. It's like the air is unsatisfyin'. One longs fer a thick blast o' that good solid New York air, reekin' o' coal smoke and horse manure dust. Out here how can a fellow tell he's breathin' at all? And that ain't the only thing. Yer citizens out here are stoopid. Like that last one we stopped and asked when we was a little bit lost awhile back. Why, he could've passed for a scarecrow—that big bleedin' straw hat. Downright pictureskew."

"That's
picterex. Picterex
is the word. And I wasn't lost—you was lost, Biddies. I know right where we are."

"Yeah—we're on the mother planet." There was silence, and then: "I ain't heard her move yet back there. Think I killed her? She was a puny little thing."

"Nah. She ain't moving 'cause she's trussed tighter than a parson's gout. And she ain't puny everywhere. Saw when I tied her, and felt it when we dumped her in the barrel." Merry could hear seagulls crying, and a new sound which she knew to be the booming of surf, and a salt scent mixing with the apple smell in the barrel. "See those rocks yonder? What say you we stop and have us a little taste of that crisp little apple we got rolling around back in our barrel?"

With desperate common sense Merry forced herself not to cry.
If my nose fills up,
she thought,
I'll
suffocate.

"That's th' tenth time you've suggested that, Jack, and by God's whiskers I want to as bad as you, but we already said there might be soldiers chasin' us two miles back, or somebody lookin', or who knows what. I say let's wait until we— Watch for that pothole. Jack."

There was a lurch and a bump, and the apple barrel with Merry in it lifted and came down again woodenly. There was a moment of excruciating pain before Merry's nightmares vanished as before, into blackness.

A thick gray light burned against the whitened skin on Merry's face as she rolled once more back to consciousness. Someone had taken the lid off the barrel. There was a new voice above her, a youthful voice, with crisp, businesslike accents.

"Look, I don't have time for any of that. If you were interested in that, you should have done something about it earlier."

She recognized the answerer's voice from the wagon. "How could we, and all? With Federals maybe breathin' down our heels."

The barrel was suddenly pushed onto its side, and Merry found herself being tumbled onto a sandy beach. She felt her knees crack as she straightened them and gasped with relief under her gag. She was in the foggy open, and it was very early in the morning. She found it difficult to focus her eyes—the effort of trying to look directly at a thing made her dizzy and nauseated. It was too much like looking at two images that passed back and forth, one in front of the other, so she shut her eyes. She had seen the same round, bewhiskered face that greeted her on the ship. She wasn't sure if it was Jack or Biddies, but whoever it was picked her up from the beach.

The young, hard voice spoke again. "You're breaking my heart. If you were stupid enough to let someone take your trail, you'd better put space between yourselves and this place as quickly as you can. No, not over there. Put her in the skiff if you want your money."

Her conveyor halted, started again, halted, as if in indecision, and then turned with her. His hand under her rib cage made it difficult for her to breathe. She twisted her face and opened her eyes to look at her carrier. He was looking at someone else.

"Damn you for a cold-blooded puppy. I crave the wench. It won't take long." His voice had taken on a wheedling tone.

"Yes, I know it won't—about ten seconds by the look of you," said the younger man. "And having waited two hours already, I don't have ten seconds. You were late, and I'd given you plenty of time."

It was Biddles's turn to talk. "God's toenails, man. It was bleedin' hard sneakin' on that ship. It takes time to crack a ship as heavily guarded as that one was. And then to look for the papers, find the papers, and pack them up—and then this little baggage here that we didn't plan on. It was only our native ingenooity that got us out of that one. If I hadn't thought of the barrel, we wouldn't have got away at all."

"Put her in the skiff," the young voice ordered again, and this time he was obeyed.

There was saltwater in the bilge of the skiff, and a coil of salty rope in front of her face, and a small boom waving above her head. Jack's arms left her body with almost tender reluctance.

"Don't blame her on me," said the younger man. "You should have made sure she didn't see you."

"We couldn't help it," whined Biddies. "She was lookin' right at us. What could we do?"

"Slit her throat," said the younger voice coolly.

"We charge more for killin', and you hadn't paid us yet. You wouldn't want us doin' somethin' extra you'd have to pay us more for, would you?" said Jack.

"That weren't it at all, Jack," said Biddies. "It's you, always wanting a woman. Comes in the way when we have a job to do."

Coins jingled. "That's ample," said the boy's voice, "for the botch you've made of the job." Light footsteps approached the skiff, crunching on the sand.

Before she saw him, Merry knew who it was. Seven months ago in a smuggler's tavern she had become acquainted with that cold adolescent voice when its owner had grabbed her and hurt her and threatened her life. She looked up helplessly into the hard blue eyes of Rand Morgan's reprobate companion, Cat.

The boy scanned her without pity or recognition or even much interest while the fog played mother-of-pearl patterns on the stark bend of his tall cheekbones. On one side of his face sparkled the engraved hoop of a silver earring as big as a bangle, and his pale hair ribboned neatly from chin to hip in a thick braid knotted with leather. His buttonless black shirt fell open to the low-slung waist of his trousers, exposing the bands of tanned maturing muscle that corded his chest and below. The collar of his buff greatcoat moved idly in the wind from the sea.

Without taking his eyes from her own frightened ones he said, "She saw you, so she has to die. I agree." He bent and pushed the skiff out from the beach. She felt it break free from the sand and slip into the water; his legs moved slowly against the waves. "I'll take care of it. 1 told you I would, and 1 will. But you two had better be far away from here when they find the body."

There was a shout from the beach. "You're not just keeping her for yourself, are you?" shouted Jack. "We want to hear her hit the water.''

The sail flapped as Cat took the sheets, and he swore under his breath at the shouting and shouted back to them over his shoulder, his braid streaming behind him. "You'll get your splash. Now get the hell out of here."

The dirty cambric nightdress was no protection against the cold wind that dug like nails into Merry's skin. Tremors began in her chest and rolled violently into her limbs, where the stiff wires of the jute ropes were methodically gnawing the living flesh from her ankles and her wrists, and her hair became fouled by the sloshing bilge water.

Indifferent as a stone, Cat was working the sail, and after a time there was the rhythmic slap of the bow against the waves as the small craft made the open water. Settling back, the boy looked at her and said in an abrupt way, "I can't help it. You'll have to go in."

Her resolution not to cry was broken as she begged behind her gag, tears running down her cheeks, choking her. A whimper tore from her throat, savage in its desolation. Cat hesitated for the space of a heartbeat and then said, "Relax. What's a little seawater?"

He let go the sheets, leaving the sails to luff under the punch of the wind. Bracing the tiller with his knee, the pirate reached for her arm.

Her brain flaring with terror, she fought him in a pathetic way, twisting and squirming like a trapped mink into the rocking bow. The boy watched her, allowing patiently her futile moment of resistance before drawing her out and into his arms. One strong and fluidly muscled arm curved tightly around her shoulders while the other caught her under the knees and spun her over the side with a splash.

The water was green and foamy and arctically cold. It rapidly discovered the raw spaces of her body: where she had been struck on the head, where the ropes had flayed open her skin, and where, in being moved and carried and packed, thoughtless hands had scraped her many times against wood and metal. Half fainting from pain, she thought how it was said the drowning could view their whole life, flashed before them like a poor man's panorama, but all she could see was her wet, stinging hair that lashed her eyes, and all she could think of was the horrible thing that Henry Cork had told her once— that drowning victims are found with their lips drawn back over their teeth in a silent scream, only the effect of water on the facial muscles. Drowning was supposedly a pleasant death really, once one ceased to struggle.