Sea Witch

by Hollick, Helen

  De Cabo, who had uttered few words beyond a few grunts of response to Jesamiah’s occasional translations, also rose and went to stand beside the door in case anyone should enter, his own brace of pistols drawn and cocked.

  “We require very little from you, my dear Governor,” Jesamiah continued pleasantly. “Merely the contents of your treasury. The breakfast we thank you for, an unexpected bonus.”

  The Governor scrabbled to his feet with all affability gone. Jesamiah lowered the pistol and pointed it at the man’s groin. “We will have what we came for mate, with or without you in one piece to witness it. I can as easily shoot you now, as later.” He smiled, menacingly, waved the weapon to emphasise his meaning. “Now what is it to be, eh? The cache of treasure you have accumulated, or your more personal package? Do I remove the private tool and tackle kept so snugly in your breeches?”

  “Damned Jacobite! You will never get out of the harbour!” the Governor spluttered anger. His face suffused scarlet.

  “Ah, you see, apart from ourselves and your few yawning servants, who have probably already returned to their beds, I would be surprised to find a single man or woman on this devil-spawned island who is awake and sober. Mid-day, mayhap, they will be stirring for another tot of rum to set them up for the afternoon ahead, but while the moon rides the sky? Come, come, Sir, let us not be fanciful.” Jesamiah smiled lazily, added, “And I am no papist Jacobite. Pirate will do.”

  As he had predicted, it was easy. Rue and the others were already at the fort. They loaded their own longboat until they were in danger of sinking; to speed the process, commandeered several more. The Governor’s treasury was removed as easily as hauling in lobster pots. No fuss, no fighting. Just as Jesamiah preferred it. There was only one thing he had overlooked; the extent of Jean de Cabo’s smouldering jealousy.

  The last load had gone up from the strong room in the undercroft of the fort. In its place huddled the Governor – stripped of his fancy clothes, the silk stockings and the silver buttons.

  “I am sure someone, eventually, will realise you are missing and find you incarcerated down here. In a day or two, perhaps?” Chuckling, Jesamiah fitted the key into the lock of the iron-studded door, made to shut it and felt the barrel of a pistol pressing into his back. He froze, all amusement gone, his stomach twisting in alarm. His muscles tensed as he fought down a lurch of fear. Phillipe had always come up behind him, to grab his hair, or thump him in the small of his back. Always the smaller, weaker, Jesamiah had never been able to get away. In adulthood he still hated people coming up behind him.

  “Perhaps they may find you too, Acorne?” De Cabo said in his thick-accented English. He stank of garlic and body odour. “Merci for your ingenuity, Monsieur, but I think the Salvation will be the better for it to not be repeated. My men are fickle, you understand, and I ‘ave a liking for the title Le Capitaine. I ‘ave no wish for them to be turning their loyalty in a wrong direction.”

  With the flat of his hand he gave Jesamiah a hefty push between the shoulder blades, sending him stumbling forward. Instantly recovering his balance Jesamiah spun on his heels, his hand, in the same movement, going to the knife tucked securely in his boot. Underestimating the speed of his reaction, De Cabo barely saw the flashing glint of Jesamiah’s blade, but felt it go in diagonally upward under the ribs.

  ‘A knife needs an upward thrust, boy, for the ribs lie open to it going in from below, but they block a downward stab. From above you’ll leave a bloody gash, also leave yer opponent alive to ‘ave another go at ye. Go in low and upwards, boy. Always, low and upwards.’ One of the two efficient methods of killing that Malachias Taylor had taught Jesamiah. It had saved his life on more than one occasion.

  De Cabo was dead before he met the floor.

  “I understand full well, Capitaine,” Jesamiah said without a trace of compassion as he wiped the blade on the dead Frenchman’s coat. “A pity you did not.”

  He re-sheathed his knife, stepped over the twitching corpse, shut the door and ignoring the terrified Governor cowering within, locked it. On turning, found Rue standing there, his own blade in his hand.

  Jesamiah stood quite still. He had killed de Cabo with indifference, a contemptible man, but Rue? He had thought Rue was different, had thought of him as a friend. Ah, what was friendship among pirates? Loyalty only ran the length of a deck and lasted as long as the gold and the rum was available. Or until the hangman put a noose around your neck. Friends either got themselves hanged, or it seemed, decided to try to kill you.

  Jesamiah’s fingers went to his ribbons as their eyes met, held. And slowly Rue smiled, lowered the blade.

  “’Ad you not moved so quick, mon ami,” he said as he flipped the knife upward, “I would ‘ave dealt with ‘im for you.”

  “I appreciate the gesture,” Jesamiah said, releasing the tension from his muscles by resting his arm along Rue’s shoulders. “But would it not have been a little late? I might have already been dead.”

  Rue rubbed at his chin, pursing his lips, holding his amusement. “You know, I ‘ad not thought of that!”

  Jesamiah barked his own laugh, slapped the flat of his hand between his friend’s shoulders. “Remember it another time, eh? I have no difficulty with killing scum such as that bastard, but,” he said, as they walked together companionably up the dank, slippery steps into the fresh, clean air, “had you decided to row in de Cabo’s boat, I would have been obliged to kill you also. Savvy?”

  No one aboard the longboat spoke of the absence of their French captain, nor was anything said as Jesamiah stepped on to the deck of the Salvation. No one queried his right to set their course after the anchor cable had been cut with an axe – no time to haul at the capstan to bring it aboard. Dawn would soon be breaking and Jesamiah had no desire to be caught at anchorage in daylight. Efficient and capable he ordered the ship, under full sail into the open swell of the Atlantic. Before he went below, he called the crew together.

  “I take it you have no objection to my making free use of the great cabin?”

  Only the captain used that cabin. No one said a word.

  “Nor, I assume, do you object to my preference of promoting Rue as my quartermaster?” He gestured an apology to the previous incumbent. “You’re a good man, but Rue is the better.”

  The man shrugged. He had not much cared for the job anyway. The quartermaster was always the first into a fight and the last to sample the rum. And aside, anyone who was fast enough to kill de Cabo was not a man to argue with.

  Ten

  31st July – 1716

  Concern etching her face, Tiola squatted on her haunches. “Your arm is broken, Kisty, here where the swelling is worst.” She indicated but did not touch the girl’s injured forearm. “It feels as though it is a clean fracture of the bone we call the ulna.” Added with a compassionate smile, “Although I do not suppose the scientific words make it any less painful.”

  The fifteen-year-old African slave’s face puckered into tears. She had been brave while Tiola examined the damage as gently as she could, but the courage was fading fast. “It hurts,” she wailed, cradling the arm to her chest, the wrist and hand hanging limp, tears streaming. “Oh, it hurts so!”

  It had been a silly accident, one that could happen to anyone. Kisty had slipped in the soapy residue of the slopped laundry water puddling Bella’s rectangular courtyard, her foot skidding on the wet cobblestones that glistened like fish scales in the sunlight. She had tried to save herself from falling by putting out her arm, the sound of the bone fracturing distinctly audible as she came down.

  Wet linen sheets and underpetticoats pegged along the washing lines strung to and fro, flapped in the boisterous wind. The yard, with its central well and seat of ease – a flimsy wooden hut containing nothing more than a board with a hole in it over the stink of the cess pit – was an almost unique amenity in this quarter of Cape Town. Bella was a wealthy woman who could afford the choice of luxuries. The southern end was dissected by a dar
k passageway three feet wide. It ran beneath the first floor of Bella’s double-fronted property, which faced into Harbour Street. Although most people tended to call it Grope Lane.

  Bella’s personal apartment was to the left of the passage, the business side to the right, and at its courtyard end a flight of wooden stairs led steeply up to the two light airy rooms of a first floor lodging. Tiola and Jenna had made them into a comfortable home.

  Drawn by the noise, Bella appeared with two of her girls, Amber-Rose and Crystal, towing behind. Kisty, purchased from the slave market as a housemaid, was aware she had a good place of employment and that Bella was a fair woman to work for, but despite her employer’s repeated assurances, she remained dubious about not being required to work ‘upstairs.’ Frequently, Bella told the girl she was unsuitable, not being in possession of the correct assets that were a prerequisite for entertaining gentlemen. Kisty’s face was pretty but her bosoms were as flat as unleavened bread and had no prospect of filling out.

  “Stop snivelling, child,” Bella snapped. “Do you need to make such a caterwauling fuss?” All the same, she leant over Tiola’s shoulder to inspect the injury for herself, her mouth making a small moue of concern. Bella Dubois was often blustering wind on the surface, underneath she valued her girls, from kitchen slave to prima prostitute.

  “You had best send for Doctor Paterson,” Tiola suggested, being practical. “I am no bone surgeon.”

  Both Amber-Rose and Crystal shrieked in unison, horrified. “Him? Oh no, not that charlatan! He is always drunk and his breeches stink of piss.”

  “But this needs setting,” Tiola protested.

  “You can do it though dear, can you not?” Bella answered, confidently patting Tiola’s arm. “You mended a dog’s leg a few weeks past.”

  “That was a dog!”

  “Is there a difference to bones then? Are those of a dog’s softer or harder, or something?” Bella agreed with her girls, there would be no doubting the form of payment the useless drunkard of a quack doctor would be asking. And the better physicians, those who served the gentry residing on the other side of town, would never condescend to set foot in the brothel area to tend a black slave, for all Bella’s pile of accumulated wealth.

  Tiola protested again, adamant. “What does it matter if a stray cur runs lame? If I cannot set Kisty’s arm straight, she will have a crooked limb all her life.”

  “I agree, but will an oaf such as he do any better?” Bella countered. “He is a drunken fool. His diagnosis would be to saw the arm off.”

  Kisty gave a quivering, alarmed cry, cradled her arm closer. “Oh no, no Ma’am! I do not want to be ‘putated!”

  “No one is going to amputate your arm, Kisty.” Tiola reassured the girl. “It is merely a broken bone, a splint and firm bandaging, several weeks rest, and it should be as good as new.”

  “There you are then,” Bella exclaimed, gesturing Amber-Rose and Crystal indoors and then, helping a shaking Kisty to her feet, remarked to Tiola, “If you do not have the medications you require, as we have arranged, I shall obtain them.”

  Can I do this? Tiola thought. She glanced at Jenna, hanging the last dripping sheet on the line. The older woman merely shrugged.

  “There was little your grandmother could not do,” Jenna said pragmatically. “And what she could do, so can you.”

  Tiola took hold of Kisty’s uninjured hand. “Do you want me to tend you, dear-heart?” The black girl nodded, her face grave, her front teeth biting into her lip.

  “It will hurt.”

  “More than having my arm ‘putated?”

  Tiola smiled. “No, not as much as that.”

  “If you are a good girl and are very brave,” Bella coaxed, “When it is all over I will buy you some sugar cane to suck.”

  Kisty’s eyes widened. Any discomfort was worth enduring for such a rare treat.

  Restless, Tethys wandered her vast domain of the oceans of the world, ill at ease. The winds, stirring and growling on the surface of the sea always agitated her. And when they billowed into the fury of a hurricane storm her rage was also whipped into a savage ferocity.

  In her churning discomfort she sought payment for the pain searing through her – and the vengeance of Tethys was never mild.

  Always, she demanded the taking of a ship and the claiming of life as compensation.

  Kisty was feverish. She at last slept, helped along by the few drops of laudanum Tiola had administered. The tiny room at the rear of Bella’s apartment was no more than the size of a large cupboard, but Kisty loved it because it was hers. She had brightened the cramped space by covering the cot with a quilt made from sewing scraps of material together, and on the wall, two pictures Bella had not wanted. One was of flowers. Round, yellow sunflowers and brilliant red poppies. The other was a ship. A Spanish Galleon, cleaving her way through a wild sea.

  In between tending the injured girl Tiola had sat staring at the picture, seeing in her mind not a mediocre painting but a real ship. His ship. She felt the dip and rise of the deck, heard his voice calling frantic orders above the howl of the rising wind.

  “Clew it up! For God’s sake, get it clewed up!”

  It was months since he had sailed away on the Mermaid. Had she really been here in Cape Town all this while? At times it felt as though she had lived here forever, at others as if she had arrived but yesterday. Tiola had stopped feeling homesick for the wild freedom of the moors, stopped grieving for her mother and brothers. Bella’s was home now: the clack of her tongue when she shrilled about something amiss downstairs, the chatter of the girls; all had become familiar, worn-in and comfortable. Yes, this was home; these were people she had learnt to love.

  What had Jesamiah been doing all the while, she wondered? Up to no good, probably. How could a pirate be anything different? She barely knew him and yet, inside, she felt she had known him forever; every nuance of his tanned face was stamped indelibly on her brain. She thought about him every day recalling each subtlety: the way the white scar crinkled at the side of his eye when he laughed, the way he habitually fiddled with that gold earring or his ribbons. His voice, his smell. His cock-sure confidence. Only occasionally, when she was busy supervising a difficult birthing or doing something that required concentration, did he become nothing more than a passing thought, his face darting across her mind like the quick come-and-gone shadow of a bird in flight. But he was always there, lingering somewhere in her consciousness.

  He had another ship, for this one – the one she could see in the blur of the picture – was not the Mermaid. This was larger, not so clean in her lines, not so agile. Where the Mermaid had been a sprightly maiden, this one was a portly matron.

  Or was it the storm slowing her, making her timbers groan? For there was a storm, somewhere out there beneath an ink black sky that was not the sky of the African Coast or the Southern Atlantic. A sky and a sea being torn apart by the roar of a devil’s wind. Jesamiah was facing into a storm and his ship was foundering.

  As if in a dream, while Kisty slept, her arm splinted, her face contorted even in sleep, Tiola watched it unfolding, there in the blurring between the painting of a ship and the misted reality of the inner awareness of her Craft.

  And as with any dream, she could do nothing but stand helpless and watch – unable to stop the nightmare from running its dreadful course.

  Eleven

  The last night of July looked like being the last night of Jesamiah’s life. During the day there had been little indication of a storm coming, only a ripple in the spread of canvas and a churlish response from the Salvation’s rudder.

  The sky had been overcast since dawn with not the merest hint of where the sun might be. The crew were not particularly worried. The southern tip of the Florida Peninsula was a handful of miles ahead and providing they kept their bearing they would be able to run on up the coast to Charleston without a problem. Rough seas, hauling on wet halyards and wearing sodden clothing meant nothing to sailors. Here in the
Caribbean it was never long before the sun shone again and they could dry out.

  An hour before dusk Jesamiah had glanced with some concern at the spread of sail. The breeze began to veer and race beneath the leaden cover of cloud; blacker, more ominous weather was building. Then dusk crowded in, and the wind luffed right over, to scurry across the surface of the sea in a different direction to that of the current. As Jesamiah watched, standing beside Rue at the helm, the waves were growing bigger, white horses were starting to gallop, and as full darkness swarmed around them the Salvation suddenly rolled heavily to starboard, lurching unsteadily like a drunk. Everyone aboard paused in what he was doing and apprehensively held his breath. She righted herself, an inaudible, collective sigh of relief.

  “Best have topsails close reefed and storm trys’ls set ready,” Jesamiah said quietly to Rue as he took the wheel from his quartermaster, folding his hands in a firm, determined grip around the spokes. “And get those tarpaulins secured over the hatches. Rig lifelines down the length of the deck. My bones tell me we’re in for a rough night.”

  Grim, his older bones mumbling the same warning, Rue, in a form of a salute, touched the red bandanna bound across his forehead. The first streak of lightning split the sky, followed by a cannon roar of thunder.

  Another quarter hour and the Salvation’s bow was pitching into deep troughs between waves rising higher with each successive onslaught. Her quarterdeck went up into the air, leaving Jesamiah’s stomach behind as the stern hung for a second before hurtling downward again. The bow plunged and the ship slammed into the next oncoming wave as if it had hit the solidity of a wall. She shuddered as the sea burst in a spume of foam over her fore rail, shook herself and forged valiantly on.