The Arethusa was still at least a week or longer out of St. Helena, depending on the erratic winds, or doldrums, near the equator. All around them sailors raced to their stations, awaiting the next command.
With the barest zephyr of a breeze that day, they fixed their gaze on the ship with the Chilean flag making slow but steady progress toward the Arethusa. Cullen was pretty sure the unspoken question on everyone’s lips was why a warship was headed toward an island whose main purpose was to serve as gaol for a madman who had already escaped from another island prison.
Chapter Twenty-Two
15.9650°S, 5.7089°W
Island of St. Helena
November 15, 1820
* * *
Finally, after days of barely-there breezes one had to inhale deeply to make sure the whiff and promise of land was there, the Arethusa drifted into the anchorage off St. Helena. Lieutenant Dalton began hurling demands to the bo’sun to commence the placement of two heavy anchors, first at the bow, and then at the stern once the ship had settled on how she wanted to face the wind.
Although it was November, the seasons this side of the equator and at this latitude meant the island was in late spring or the beginning of summer. Willa leaned over the rail next to Cullen and stared toward the odd configuration of Jamestown which seemed to have been poured into a flat crevice between two volcanic peaks. The tight rows of houses flowed in a long, narrow slice at least a mile back from the seawall fortifying the harbor.
The lower levels of the island were nearly bare with only sparse trees and greenery against dark volcanic rock. When her eyes tracked higher, she spotted jungle-like vegetation at higher elevations. A few flat areas were covered with dense flax fields white with pale, early blooms.
Cullen turned toward her, his green eyes hazy in the morning mist. “We’ll only be staying long enough to take on fresh water and some provisions.” He straightened and placed his arm around her shoulders in defiance of the occasional intense glances Dalton had been sending their way ever since they’d arrived on the top deck to get their first glimpse of St. Helena. “After that, we’ll spend the next year or so sailing in circles around the island.”
“Looking for what?” Willa’s eyes widened.
“I don’t know,” Cullen admitted. “Great pretenders, like that Chilean warship that finally disappeared? Hapless Frenchmen who think he should rule the world again?”
Willa ignored Cullen’s aimless chatter. She preferred to pay attention to the way his eyes lingered on her, slanting down to her neck, and lower. The longer Willa spent in the company of her accidental husband, the more she came to love his quirky ways of letting the rest of the crew, and Lieutenant Dalton in particular, know that she belonged to him. And…that he would brook no infringement on his right to the exclusive affections of his wife.
She almost giggled at his deliberate provoking of Dalton by placing a proprietary arm around her.
Their leisurely enjoyment of the first sight of land in weeks was interrupted by Marine Captain Woodall, who had just left the captain’s cabin. “Captain Still would like a private word with you, Dr. MacCloud.”
At Cullen’s stiff reception, the ship’s marine commander smiled. “He just needs a few minutes. I’ll stay here with Mrs. MacCloud.”
Cullen leaned back onto his heels and shoved his hands into his uniform trouser pockets. Captain Still sat at his desk staring at him and acting as though some seabird had raced off with his tongue.
“Well?” Cullen was used to the captain’s silences, but that didn’t mean they didn’t still annoy him.
“We have an important mission for you.”
Cullen spread his arms wide and looked around. “Where?”
“You are to report to the home of Major and Mrs. Richard Armitage, a pleasant farm cottage near the trail to Longwood.”
“To what purpose?”
“There has been, ah, some concern over Monsieur Bonaparte’s health. The Admiralty asked that my surgeon make himself available for a medical examination of the prisoner. Another opinion, if you will.”
Cullen’s senses prickled. He’d heard of a previous Royal Navy surgeon who had endured public ridicule as well as a court martial for giving his “opinion” on the former emperor’s health. Public outcry could turn on something as innocuous as the bastard’s associates on the island complaining to papers in Europe and England about the amount of firewood he was provided. He must be severely ill if someone in the Admiralty had a bee in their bonnet over the condition of his health.
“Do I have a choice?”
“No. Those are your orders.” Captain Still re-folded the letter he’d pretended to read from. Cullen was not fooled. His commanding officer had known he’d be issuing this particular order, probably since the beginning of the voyage. Even the Admiralty could not have gotten a message to St. Helena that quickly. And why when it would have been so easy to issue the order before they left the basin in Portsmouth?
“How long will I have to stay on the island?”
“As long as it takes to secure the General’s cooperation.”
Cullen could not stifle the smile that leapt to his lips. “That could be a very long time indeed. My wife will of course accompany me. You agree that leaving her here alone on the ship would not be prudent?”
The captain sighed and gave a slight nod in assent.
“How soon do we report?”
“Immediately. A longboat crew awaits. Take a few minutes to gather your things and then be on your way to shore. We have to weigh anchor as soon as possible. The topmen have sighted that blasted Chilean ship again, south of the harbor. I’ll have to hunt him down and demand an explanation for his lurking in the vicinity of the island.
“And Dr. MacCloud…here is something I’ve been keeping safe for your wife.” He handed over a small, cloth-wrapped bundle.
Cullen took the packet from Captain Still with a look of puzzlement. “She’ll explain everything,” he assured him, and sat down at his desk, gathering letter-writing implements, and signaling the end of the discussion. “Good luck with the assignment.” He waved a hand in dismissal.
Cullen saluted the captain and left to find Willa.
He finally found her curled up on the bunk in their cabin poring over her journal.
“What is this?” His tone came out sharper than he’d intended, and she looked up with a blend of amusement and annoyance on her face.
“What is what?”
“This.” He shoved the packet into her hand and stood back with his arms folded tightly around his middle. After a few silent moments, he exploded. “Well?”
“Captain Still gave you the locket.” She leveled a steady, unblinking gray gaze on him.
“And? Does it belong to you?”
“No.” She slowly unwrapped the locket from the winding cloth and dropped it on the bunk.
He picked it up and when he saw the likeness, flung it down hard again. “Why, Willa? Why did ye let her pull ye inta her web?”
Her gaze still hadn’t wavered. “I can’t say.”
“Ye can’t say?” He pounded his fist against the bulkhead.
“It belongs to Ariadne’s cousin who lives on St. Helena. I promised I’d deliver it to her.”
“No.”
“No?”
“Ye heard me, lass. I’ll not have ye dragged into that evil conniver’s skein of lies.” He stabbed his fingers through his wind-blown hair and took a wild look around the cabin. “Give me that thing back.” He held out his hand.
“No.”
He took a deep breath and turned away, trying to count off a hundred seconds before he launched into another argument with Willa. Even then, he knew he couldn’t win.
He suddenly turned back to his stubborn wife. “Pack a few things. We’re going to be staying on St. Helena for a few days.”
“Why?”
At her sharp question, he gave her a wide, innocent smile and said, “I can’t say.”
The
night before when they’d settled in at the Armitage home on the island, Cullen had debated Willa for hours on the folly of delivering the locket to Ariadne’s cousin, Mrs. Towle. But his stubborn wife, predictably, would not be swayed from her purpose.
Major Armitage and his wife resided in a dormer cottage situated along the mountainside path to Longwood House, the imprisoned emperor’s residence on St. Helena. They had kindly provided Cullen and Willa the use of an upper level bedroom during their stay on the island.
Willa fidgeted while he helped her into her stays and buttoned up the back of her dress. “Even though I did find your friend, Ariadne, particularly odious, I gave my word. And, truly, Cullen, what is the danger in giving a homesick Englishwoman a locket with a miniature of her mother?” She crossed her arms in that maddening way she had of signaling an argument had ended, in her favor. “Ships rarely arrive on this island so far away from anywhere. Why shouldn’t I give her a token of comfort from a kinswoman?”
Cullen shook his head and turned away to pace the length of their small quarters. He stopped back in front of her. “Have I not explained, in detail, many times before, just how dangerous this woman, and probably her kin, can be?”
“This island is bristling with the Royal Navy and British Army troops. What could possibly go wrong? For heaven’s sakes, she’s married to a British Army lieutenant.”
“But she’s still one of them.” Cullen raised his forefinger in what he believed should be an end to the discussion.
“One of them?” Willa gave him the withering look that made him feel like a naughty child.
“She’s a French royalist. They’re all in this together, plotting, forever plotting. They’re terrified Boney will escape and destroy their status quo again.” Cullen began to pace. “And don’t doubt for one moment the aristocracy of England isn’t just as nervous as the Frenchies about all the wild plots to loose this madman against the world again.” He stopped his pacing and raised a second finger to make another point in his argument. “Why do you suppose the Admiralty gave two French spies passage on a warship to Gibraltar?”
Willa waved a hand in dismissal. “How much damage could a single, helpless woman do on an island this small and this well guarded?”
“If you do this, Willa MacCloud, you will be defying your husband’s orders.”
The look she gave him at that ridiculous ultimatum made him want to swat her bottom, and give her a reason to stay. But before he could act, she planted a quick kiss on his forehead, grabbed her dark blue woolen cape from a hook, and headed out the door.
He stood in the middle of the room, confused and having an internal debate with his smarting pride. If he followed her, the argument would continue, but he knew she would not be moved from what she considered a mission of caring for a homesick young woman.
He sat down and tried to read a book from one of their host’s shelves. After ten minutes or so, he slammed the book back onto the shelf and grabbed his uniform jacket for the climb up the trail to the Towles’ cottage.
A woman coming down the steep path leading to the governor’s house wore a dark red cape that swept the top of her walking boots. She’d given Cullen a smile in passing and must have been a servant at one of the houses, because she carried a white-feathered hen in her arms. Cullen’s first impression was one of amusement because he couldn’t figure out why the hen was so calm and accommodating, like a pet.
He felt as though a painful cog had twisted inside his head when a sudden view of that fateful, sun-drenched day came back in a sickening flood. His first sight of the woman in the red cape carrying the chicken apparently had stripped away the layers of the part of his broken brain where the memories of Gibraltar hid.
The jolt of remembrance hit him so hard, he had to sit down hard on a rock beside the trail. Ariadne—she’d been there the day he’d been beaten by a band of crazed Spaniards paid to kill him. She’d paid them, and she’d been wearing one of those dark red capes so ubiquitous on Gibraltar.
He’d been up on the top deck taking a break from the fumigation of the lower decks that day. One of the Gibraltar provisioners’ boats had rafted up to the side of the ship with sides of beef for sale. Mr. Baker, the purser, had been negotiating with the seller on the deck when one of the men on the boat hoisting a slab of meat motioned for Cullen to come near. He couldn’t imagine what the butcher wanted, but when he approached, the Gibraltaran pressed a slip of paper smudged with blood from the sides of beef into his hand.
When Cullen opened the message, all he could see was Willa’s name in amongst the bloody smudges. All the other words in the scrawled message were a blur. He’d given the man a coin and rushed below to the surgery to retrieve his glasses to better decipher the words. The meaning had been clear and direct. Ariadne had somehow managed to lure Willa away from the shore party of marines, and the note promised she’d kill her if he didn’t come immediately. Although a hundred questions had buzzed through him, he’d gone straight away to Captain Still and argued with him until he’d agreed to have the coxswain take him by longboat to shore to see for himself that Willa was safe.
When he’d made his way to the address in the northern part of town, which he hadn’t shared with the captain, Ariadne was there, with the small army of ruffians she’d hired to kill him.
Before she’d loosed the devils, she’d explained simply that there could be no witnesses to the delivery of the locket to her cousin on St. Helena. The woman who would take possession of the locket would silence Willa.
“What makes you think she’ll deliver the locket if I’m dead?”
“She loves you too much to allow your name to be destroyed with the Admiralty, even after you’re dead. You should have waited for me,” she said simply. “Then I wouldn’t have had to do this.” With that, she turned and swept away in that damnable hooded cape, leaving him to his fate. She’d assumed the mob of men she’d hired would finish him off.
Even now, with his memories slowly returning, he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how Ariadne had planned to ruin his name with the Admiralty, or how she’d convinced Willa.
His wife was so far ahead of him on the steep trail, he couldn’t even glimpse her tall, slim figure swinging up the hill. Damn her long legs—. He began running, clawing his way past the heavy boulders lining the pathway. This was the most exertion he’d attempted since his beating. His head was pounding, his vision blurring. But he had to get to Willa before someone tried to end her life. Not, by damn, if he still had a breath left.
Although the miniature on the locket that had caused so many trials in Willa’s life looked very similar to Ariadne, the woman sitting across from her, handing her a steaming cup of tea, did not. The woman who claimed to be married to the absent First Lieutenant Towle was definitely French, but seemed not to have anything in common with the French Royalist spy.
Suddenly, everything fell into place. Willa understood. She lifted the cup to her lips and then stood, turning her back to the woman. She walked toward a rear window in the neat farmstead and pointed outside before absently setting down the teacup. “Oh, look. Chickens.” Willa pushed briskly through the back door out into the midst of a flock of gabbling hens and two wary roosters. They marched to her side and tilted up their heads, inspecting her gravely. Was she a threat, or merely an odd, new hen?
The dark-haired woman followed her, a look of clear annoyance on her face. “Madame, the weather up here, it is so hot and humid, please come back inside and finish your tea.” She stopped for a moment, seeming confused by the determined look on Willa’s face.
“As you say, it is beastly hot up here. I seem to have lost my taste for hot tea. My husband will be wondering where I’ve been.” When she began to stride away, the French woman, who clearly had nothing in common with Ariadne, made her move. She tripped Willa with her parasol and then dragged her toward a wooden shed. Willa, who was having none of it, snatched at the abandoned parasol and gave her attacker a sharp crack on the side o
f the head.
Willa gazed at Mrs. Towle, if that was her real name, who had a bluish lump forming on her forehead. She was still breathing, which was more than she deserved, but she’d awaken to a deadly headache. Willa walked away without looking back and hastened down the nearby path toward the Armitage cottage.
Her mind raced through a series of possible ways she’d explain what had happened to Mrs. Towle. She stopped suddenly. She didn’t care. If the woman’s husband hadn’t guessed what she was really up to on this godforsaken island, then Willa had no intention of enlightening him. On a hunch, she turned around and walked back to the house where she’d left the untouched cup of tea. She lifted the cup of hot liquid to her nose and sniffed carefully. The bitter almond smell made her drop the hot drink, the delicate cup smashing on the stone floor.
She raced away in the direction of the Armitages. She’d gone only a few steps when she felt a hard metal cylinder pressed painfully against her head and someone with her arm in a tight grip. From the looks of the man she could almost view without moving and possibly losing part of her ear, he would not be amenable to reason. And she couldn’t be sure, but his bright red uniform jacket might be evidence that there was indeed a Lieutenant Towle.
Chapter Twenty-Three
When Cullen finally arrived at the Towle cottage, his already heavily taxed brain had a hard time understanding what he was seeing. First Lieutenant Towle held a cocked pistol to the side of Willa’s head, his thumb hovering in preparation to fire.
An angry woman he assumed to be Mrs. Towle sat on a stone bench next to the front stoop with a piece of wet linen pressed to her forehead. The tall and glorious Mrs. MacCloud nearly matched the lieutenant in height, and he was having a hard time controlling her movements. As usual, she maintained the look of a self-righteous and unrepentant Royal Navy officer. Fortunately, she was not, because with a mess like the one this scene suggested, an officer might be court-martialed and end up in the brig.
Pride Of Duty: Men of the Squadron Series, Book 2 Page 18