Virgin Star (38 page)

Seanessy had the pleasure of watching the amber eyes widen with shock and outrage. In the instant, she forgot the tenderness of hours past. She forgot the queer dark-skinned men still kneeling at her side. She forgot everything except the wicked delight staring at her in hazel eyes. "I might come out of my clothes, Seanessy, but I promise I'd be holding your dismembered head in my arms!"

She looked pleased with herself; as if she had said something arch and ingenious.

"Courting our wit again, Shalyn?" Seanessy asked before laughing meanly. "Shalyn mine, haven't I warned you about these threats—that they only serve to make me want to prick the pretense with a piece of my flesh?"

She colored sharply.

"Surprise is a far superior weapon to strength ..."

The Chinese voice sounded in her mind and before she could think better of it, her leg lifted with a swift hard kick to his midsection, knocking the wind from his chest and doubling him over. He looked up grinning, his eyes lit with excitement when—

When he saw her changed expression.

"Ti Yao," she whispered. "Ti Yao ..."

Ti Yao. Ti Yao was the Oriental man on the beach who waved to her mother, warning her of the slippery step that brought her death. "Ti Yao,.."

Shalyn dropped to the hard wood deck, covered her face in her hands as at last memories formed a fast-moving kaleidoscope of the missing years of her life. "Ti Yao ..."

Seanessy's shadow came over her bent form, kneeling as in supplication, and he knelt too, instantly subdued. "Shalyn, you remember more?"

She didn't answer, for a long moment she didn't answer, and only because instinctively she froze to protect the rush of memories as precious as life; her mind shut out the present only so she could better grab on to the past. She was hardly aware of Seanessy lifting her up in his arms and moving to his quarters.

The light changed, darkening, and she only realized it as he gently set her on the bed. A loving hand came over her forehead where he brushed back her hair. To see her remarkable eyes, feverish, filled with sudden knowledge too long denied.

"Ti Yao. He was Zinja. I remember, Seanessy. I remember ..." Zinja was the ancient art taught to a few select men in the Orient, and Ti Yao was among them. "My father hired Ti Yao to protect us, my mother and I, and he did, Seanessy, he did. All my life ... Because, because; you see, his promise was a sacred vow unto death he had given to my father. And because my father never did return after my mother died ..."

She remembered that the shock and grief of her mother's death had begun to subside and was replaced by fear. A fear ignored by the strange quiet man. She remembered the days of waiting: Ti Yao carefully preparing her meals, bathing with her in the warm ocean, dressing her hair and washing her clothes, hut also making her run on the hot sand with him, hang from tree limbs, stand on her head, and slowly dance the magic of tai chi as his intelligent dark eyes watched her follow his movements with more grace and agility than any boy he had ever taught.

"Mercy, Seanessy, I remember now..."

"The man ... this Ti Yao, he is the one who taught you the Oriental dance?"

"For many years we lived in a small house along the riverbanks of the Tampin. Many miles north of Malacca. At the water's edge, and yet surrounded by the jungle. For two years I knew only Ti Yao and his concubine, Gschu. Gschu, dear Gschu.

"They cared for me. Like a daughter or a student. Ti Yao would not forsake me even though my father never did come back. My father left me, Seanessy. I never saw him again after my mother died."

Seanessy had knelt down to stare at her with kindness and compassion, waiting and praying she would remember everything.

"Ti Yao taught me the tai chi because ..." Her voice drifted off as she remembered. "Ti Yao once said that I had a boy's spirit and discipline in a female body." She remembered pressing him for any information she could get, but he said he had no idea when her father would return, much less what fate would do with her life. "Aye, my father had paid him to protect me..."

"From what, Shalyn?"

She shook her head. "I don't know! I don't think I ever knew. Ti Yao had been paid to protect me, that was all I knew." It had occurred to Ti Yao that his instruction in the Oriental art fulfilled this obligation as well; her facility for learning only reinforced the idea that the fates meant her to have the abilities no other woman had. "Someday, Ti Yao always promised, my father would return."

She rubbed her forehead, memories washing over her.

"Yet Ti Yao, what if he is dead?"

"Then his soul has ascended for the reincarnation."

"I mean what of me?"

"You are not dead, little one."

"What shall become of me?"

"Whatever the fates decide."

So Ti Yao's remarkably simple mind reduced every complexity of her unusual orphan's fate. All she knew was that her mother had died and her father, an English naval officer, had left his young, refined, and very English daughter in the care and stewardship of a man he knew only as the best hired assassin money could buy, a move that spoke well of how desperate he must have been.

But why? Why?

"I remember waiting for my father's return. I was so young, eight or nine years old then. England had begun to fade into the far recesses of my mind, and all the fondness I felt toward my mother and Aunt Mary, the beauty of the English countryside and our old Tudor house became more and more like a dream or a fairy tale. I tried to keep them in my mind. I had a little black enamel box where I kept my treasures: one of Aunt Mary's books"—she looked up at him—"a book of Shakespeare's sonnets, the shell that made my mother fall, my mother's wedding ring, and a lock of her hair. I remember looking into that box and trying to remember my life in England, trying to remember my mother too. but finding it all seemed like a fairy tale ..."

She felt her heart and pulse, signaling alert. Small beads of perspiration lined her lip and she bit it, a hand rubbing her forehead. More memories surfaced, like a curtain opening in her mind and light pouring in to illuminate the darkness. It was a mercy...

Gschu, oh, Lord, she remembered Gschu...

"Gschu was Ti Yao's concubine. We lived in a small remote fishing village at the river's mouth. I can see it so clearly now ..."

Seanessy guided her to the soft cushion of pillows at the table where he held her on his lap. She was hardly aware of his strength and comfort surrounding her, for she was remembering. The village consisted of tiny one-room huts, neatly lined along the wooden levee that kept them safe during the rains and flooding. A precious junk docked in front of each wooden hut. Clothes were hung and dried on lines stretching between them. She remembered their small house situated in the middle of the village, with its red shutters and open door, and the enticing scent of Gschu's fresh shrimp and rice floating out like a lure on a fishing line.

"Ti Yao left me with Gschu for long periods of time; I don't know why. He would suddenly have to leave and I'd wake up in the morning and he would be gone. Then it was just Gschu and I. Oh, she was such a tiny woman and older than Ti Yao by at least ten years, but she was as strong as an ox. Oh, Seanessy." She buried her face against him in sudden pained horror. "How could I have forgotten Ti Yao and Gschu? I loved them, I loved them ..."

She looked at his face, tears filling her eyes as she raised her own hand. "Gschu was so small, no higher than my breast, and yet fate had given her these hands. Oh, Lord, they were so large, larger than a man's, and so strong. 'These hands are my fate,' she would say, for she would use them to heal people. We always had a line of people outside our door, waiting for her consultation. Her father was a famous physician in Canton, but she had been abandoned by her family, her husband, her class. She could not have children, you see. Ti Yao always said her hands were compensation for this sorrow, that he loved her hands more than he would ten children ...

"It was a peaceful life. I would wake before dawn and practice tai chi with Ti Yao when he was there and alone when he was gone. Then after Gschu had seen all her patients, she'd give me lessons in Cantonese and Buddhism. I remember staring up the river waiting for Ti Yao's return. Until twilight, and Gschu would call me inside ..."

She remembered the details of that part of her life. She could recall every face and name and character of each person in the village, she remembered Gschu's kimono's—the special red silk one—and her strong, large hands as they worked, their small wood dishes, the women washing and the children swimming, the rice farmers two leagues down the river, she remembered the excitement when the traveling holy men came and the New Year's Eve celebrations. She remembered the endless months of the monsoons.

Shalyn closed her eyes as she remembered staring at the steady sheet of rain falling from the sky. Endlessly falling. Rivers of mud flowing into the ocean and coloring the aqua-blue waters; she remembered the heaviness in her heart after the months and months without sunshine, until her spirits felt as if they too were drowning beneath the rain. Then one day she would wake to the strange and beautiful sound of silence and a sky made of rainbows. Ti Yao's normally dispassionate face would wear a smile of gratitude and Gschu would sing for weeks afterward. "Oh, I remember the monsoons."

"Aye. The monsoons," Seanessy agreed. "Like a bad preacher, they are an endless torment. The only thing that thrives during those rains are the insects. I always try to sail out before they start."

Seanessy had never stayed in Malacca during the

monsoons; he couldn't. He felt as if the sky was falling in on him, as if he didn't have enough space to breathe. Thankfully, Malacca not only provided a convenient port for outfitting along the China trade route, but it was one of the few ports along the sheltered side of the Bay of Bengal. Unlike the eastern side of Malay, Malacca allowed a ship to sail out the Straits to the Indian Ocean during the monsoon season and still keep her rigging.

"Shalyn, what happened then? What happened to these people you loved? To Ti Yao and Gschu?"

"Gschu died of malaria," she remembered. "Nay... not malaria," she remembered. "Not really. She died of a broken heart. Because the last time Ti Yao left he never did return. We waited nearly half a year and then the monsoons started and Gschu fell to malaria. I cared for her until the end. I always felt certain she would get well if only Ti Yao returned. Yet he never did. The monsoons stopped. Gschu was offered to heaven on the funeral pyre. I remember thinking I would go to the British Admiralty at Penang and appeal for passage back to England. I remember thinking they might even help me find my relations there, my Aunt Mary. I said goodbye to all the villagers and ..."

She shook her head, her eyes filling with an unbearable agony as she tried to see through the darkness. Her uncertain memory stopped again as quickly as it started. It stopped with a young sixteen-year-old girl staring up a slow-moving river, searching one last time for Ti Yao...

She only saw the darkness, darkness like a waiting monster. A monster she felt drawing closer and closer. "I don't remember anything more!"

*****

Chapter 11

Shalyn sat naked to the waist on her hammock, a small wood-framed mirror held up in one hand— she had won the glass from Edward in a card game last night. She did not notice the beauty staring back in the glass: the haloed lift of gold hair, her high cheekbones, the small pert nose and wide full mouth, or even the velvety thin brows arching with bewilderment over dark and mysterious eyes. Her eyes filled with feverish intensity as she lowered the glass past her shoulders to the round fullness of her breasts.

She stared at the mark.

A diamond shape in pink. A blue point inside the diamond. An odd face—like a child's drawing. She traced a finger over the strange lines, her finger moving slowly, hesitantly, as if afraid to touch what had been done to her. She stared until the glass blurred in her mind and she saw his face: the shrewd and wise almond eyes were set in a rounded face above his flat nose and thin lips. She remembered a thin scar that traveled from the corner of his lip to his round chin. Ti Yao's was not a handsome face, but strong and compelling, a face she had worshipped.

Ti Yao, Gschu ...

She remembered everything now except what had

happened. Ti Yao had died, she knew, because he had never returned. What happened to her in the five years between sixteen and twenty-one? How did she get from the fishing village to Seanessy's doorstep in London?

"Now, lass, it will be coming back. Mind my words you remember more each day..."

She prayed Butcher was right.

She went to the small trunk pushed against a toolbox, where she kept her things, and opened the lid. She carefully set Edward's looking glass back inside. Her stare lingered on the ruby star.

Seanessy had showed the gem to Knolls, the ship's carpenter. Knolls's father owned a jewelry shop in London. The shop sat on Port Street and offered a young restless boy a continuous view of the proud oceangoing vessels leaving London's port, which explain why he had abandoned his jeweler's apprenticeship as a young man. Yet Knolls had learned enough about gems to offer an "educated" opinion.

"That's what's called a virgin gem." Knolls had whistled.

"A what?" Seanessy asked.

"Look at it. The untouched edges. This gem's not seen the sharp edge of a knife."

"Oh?"

"Untouched. Some lucky sod pulled this glorious bit o' rock from the cold hard earth and pinned it to a gold star."

Seanessy looked at her with a grin. "A virgin star."

"Aye." Knolls laughed, "Probably worth a hundred times as much if ye prick her proper." The bright blue eyes turned to her. "The only good be in the virgin's ruination."

The men had laughed uproariously, and she, feeling inexplicably ridiculed, snatched it back from the man and turned away. Presently she reached a hand to the jagged rough edges of the sparkling ruby. A shiver rushed magically up her spine. She withdrew her hand and slammed the lid shut.

Virgin star indeed!

Lord, it was so hot in here...

She thought of climbing the ratline. How she loved to be so high above the world, suspended in flight, viewing the endless blue water from every direction. 'Twas a feeling of pure sensation, a chance to escape the troubling turn of her thoughts, if only for a moment or two.

Seanessy probably would never know anyway...

The heat grew and grew as the sun crossed its zenith and began its grand descent, shining in a bright blaze of white light overhead. Standing at the rail and looking out to sea, Butcher swore every day seemed hotter than the last as they sailed east from Madagascar, past Ceylon, and into the Bay of Bengal. The island was no more than two days' sailing now.

He wiped the wet cloth across his forehead. The wind too had shifted, changed, blowing whisper-soft when it blew at all. Presently the barest hint of a breeze filled the sails. No one could work below deck before sunset—it was like a Roman sweat box. A group of men lowered buckets into the water, lifting them back to splash across the deck as the wood planks absorbed and threw back the heat. Off-duty men sat listlessly in what little shade they could find, whittling sticks, mending sails, or chalking.

Seanessy finally finished his task and stepped outside, joining Butcher at the rail. Oly lay against the side at Butcher's feet in the shade as Butcher too lowered a bucket into the water but pulled it up and dumped it on the grateful dog's coat.

Seanessy stared at the shimmering band of sunlight over the water. The light felt like a sharp assault on his vision, and he squinted with discomfort. "Another hour, maybe less, and I'll drop sails." Twice a day they dropped anchor so everyone able to swim could dive into the cool water.

"Aye, not much of a wind but it’s better than nothing." Butcher nodded. "Ham still believes we will reach the bit o' rock by tomorrow, or the next night at the latest. Even with this fair virgin's breeze."

The last four days this baneful wind had blown sporadically, in fits and starts, like a capricious tease before suddenly abandoning them altogether for hours on end. "A fair virgin's breeze," the men called it, chuckling when Shalyn never did get it.

"I can't take much more of it," Seanessy said, squinting still at the brightness of the sunlight as if he had drunk too much the night before. He took the next full bucket from Butcher and dumped it over his own head. The cool moisture slid over his hot skin. He repeated the measure until he was soaked.

Butcher leveled a steady gaze on him. "Some things need time." He thought of Kenzie on their wedding night and added softly, "The best things need time."

Seanessy was in a different frame of mind. "Like I said—I can't take much more of this." The sound of a loose sail made Sean swing around, his gaze lifting as he turned. He shouted an order but stopped, his gaze focusing on the arresting sight. "I'm going to kill her!" The vow was uttered in a tight-lipped whisper as he turned back around and grabbed hold of the rail, as if needing support. "I will skin her alive!"

Butcher guessed the problem and took a casual glance skyward to confirm it: the lass hung three sheets to the wind on the ratline. "Uh, oh. Let's walk slowly back to your quarters like we never saw her up there." The last thing they wanted to see was the lass's jolt from Sean's wrath—that was until the moment her feet hit the deck. "Nice and slow now..."

From above, Shalyn watched the two men disappear into the captain's quarters. She released her breath all at once. That was close! She would not press her luck again! Agilely, keeping one hand to her wide-brimmed straw sun hat, she began making her way down the ratline.

Silently Seanessy came up to the bottom of the mast. Shalyn remained unaware of the extreme danger until the moment her feet landed on the deck. She turned around. She screamed. A hot wave of panic made her take a step back before she started to turn around to flee. Too late. His strong hands came to her person. The world spun in a blur as he swung her violently up in the air. Her hat tumbled to the ground, and that was the very least of her troubles, the very least. For before she could mobilize the most basic defense, Seanessy held her under the arms and over the rail of the ship.

"So we like heights, do we?"

His brows rose with his grin. Feet kicking in midair, she grabbed tight to his forearms as her stomach turned in circles and she silently cursed his great strength that let him manage the trick so effortlessly. Wide frightened eyes looked at the water twenty paces below her feet before she appealed toiler captor.

"Seanessy, oh! Put me down—"

'I’ll do it, child—so help me God."

Shalyn turned from the amused hazel eyes to the drop and back again, as if trying to decide which she'd choose. She'd pick the water if it weren't for all those sea terrors. "Seanessy, oh, please! You know I'm afraid—"

"Oh, aye, the sharks.” He looked over the white-capped wake of ocean water. "Shalyn darling, you don't imagine I'd let a shark taste you before I had the pleasure?"

She bit her lower lip and squeezed her eyes shut, the idea making her beg, "Oh, please, Seanessy!" She kicked her legs, holding tighter to his thick forearms. "What do you want?"

"Your obedience child. I want you to mind my every word."

Instantly her unsteady gaze went cross. "Well, no! I won't! Why should I?"

"Why? I am the captain!"

She felt the warmth of his large hands under her arms; she squirmed with discomfort, more as she contemplated the choice: the promise of her will or being shark bait. Yet her eyes came back to his grin. That pleased grin made the choice.

"Captain of this ship and of these men, but not, methinks, of me!"

A low rumble of laughter sounded from the men gathering around to watch—aye, the girl had spunk and it no doubt would get her wet.

"Is that right? Hey, Slops?"

Among the dozen or so others watching this entertainment, Slops, their famous galley cook, stood nearby, arms folded across his enormous bare chest. "Aye, Captain?"

"When was the last time you dumped the rubbish?"

"Oh... Nearly an hour past, Captain. Must be getting closer to land. We had dozens of the sharp-toothed beasts fightin' over the measly pickin's. I managed to catch one of 'em on a hook, but,well, the others tore 'im to bits afore I could reel 'im up. What a bloody mess!" He shook his head with the horror of it. "Still, 'tis probably safe now..."

Shalyn swallowed, her already frantically beating heart speeding up. If it were only bushwa, but she knew better! She had watched Slops dump the rubbish from atop the lookout; with horror and fascination, she had watched this shark feast.

"Seanessy, oh, please—I am loath to swim with sharks—"

"Shalyn, you are being quite daft. If I drop you— and mind my words, Shalyn, I am going to drop you—I'll watch from up here. If—when—I see a shark, I'll send Richards for my pistoles—"

"I would be eaten by then!"

After a moment's thought he conceded, "I suppose you are right. Well." He shrugged.”'I’ll shoot him afterward—it's the best I can do for you. Come, child, my arms are set to shaking now," he lied. "So say goodbye, Shalyn."

"No, please—"

"Then give me your obedience, child."

"Wait! Wait!" She was not beyond begging, pleading, or bargaining. "There must be something else you want—"

"Indeed!" Seanessy's gaze lit with amusement now, as at last his luckless lass reached the point. "There is! As a matter of fact there is something I want from you, and, dear child, I do want it badly. It's a shockingly easy trade for your obedience; I don't even have to think long about it."

He laughed when it took her a minute to know what it was he wanted from her. "Well, not that! That wouldn't be fair!"

"News to you, Shalyn mine, but right now, and. pretty much any and all other times, it is all I want from you."

She would not give up, not without a fight and her very best effort. One could always win if one played one's wits. "There must be something else! There must be!"

He appeared to give it some thought but finally he shook his head. "I can't think of anything!"

The men chuckled at her helplessness. Butcher, Ham, Slops, Edward, and a number others said in chorus, "Say goodbye, Shalyn!"

"Wait! Wait! I've got it!"

"Yes?"

"The sonnets. I know them all by heart too." She too lied. "I think." Seanessy loved Shakespeare, she knew, not just reciting sonnets to her but always entertaining the-crew by reading parts with her, especially favoring the dramas but sometimes reading from the comedies as well. Just last night they had read from The Taming of the Shrew all the way to the end. Until Katharina's last speech about this very subject, obedience, which Shalyn naturally refused to say, forcing Hamilton, of all people, to finish off the part about minding your husband.

"The sonnets—"

She nodded, seizing this slim hope. "I'll sing one for you if you let me go. You do love them so, do you not?"

This surprised him—she would always surprise him—and he chuckled. "What a novel idea!" He glanced behind him. "Men? What say you? A little poetry for the girl's life?"

Slops shrugged unseen. "If it's all ye can get from the girl—"

The men laughed as Seanessy admitted, "I'm afraid it is. So far..."

Edwards sighed sarcastically. "Nothing caps a bloody hot day quite like a little Shakespeare sung by a lass quaking with the fear of the sharks."