‘I should like to thank Captain Reynard,’ Carolina murmured.
Rye flashed her a grim smile. ‘So would I,’ he said. ‘More handsomely and more tangibly than I was able to do at the time. But his officers and those of the other buccaneer vessel chafed at lingering with the disabled La Fuerzo when there might be other crippled galleons in the area, easy to pick off. They forged ahead, leaving us to limp along - and half a day away they chanced upon a pair of carracks that made short work of them. Captain Reynard died without ever reaching Tortuga.’
His words brought home to her with force how short was the life expectancy of a buccaneer and she gave silent fervent thanks that Rye was a buccaneer no longer.
‘We were alone upon the horizon until we sighted another ship of the scattered flota - El Lobo, The Wolf. She had escaped the storm with relatively little damage. Since we were in some danger of sinking, it occurred to me that we could use a more seaworthy vessel. I held a council of war. There was a chance we could take El Lobo and have a ship of our own - but we were not in sufficient strength nor had we a manoeuvrable vessel; we must do it by a ruse. We donned Spanish uniforms. When El Lobo hailed us, we duped her into believing we were the Spanish officers and crew, survivors of a battle with the buccaneers. In my good Castilian Spanish I requested a boarding party to help us assess our damage - and when they came, we forced them at gunpoint to call for other boats to be sent with men “to aid us in our repairs lest we sink at once”. As each boatload arrived, we clapped them in irons. By a stroke of luck, El Lobo’s captain became curious. He himself arrived. That was all we needed. A party of us accompanied him back on board his vessel. I had a pistol pressed against his back and in fear for his life he gave such orders as left us in command of the ship. We took El Lobo without firing a shot.’
Carolina was so proud of him it shone in her eyes.
‘As a galley slave I had steadfastly kept the name “Diego”, but now I had a thought for my family back in England and I passed myself off to the buccaneers as an Irishman named Kells. Now I had a ship of my own under me and I was towing a prize. When we sailed into Cayona Bay, I was already Captain Kells and El Lobo, which we later altered and refitted to more rakish lines, became the Sea Wolf.’ He turned to look at her sternly and there was a leaping hellish light in his grey eyes though his voice was soft. ‘And ever since the night I sailed El Lobo into Cayona Bay, I have sought vengeance against Don Carlos and his kind.’
And so had begun his private war with Spain. A battle that had raged ever since. Rye did not have to tell her that whenever he boarded a Spanish galleon, he saw Rosalia’s face.
Carolina’s lips were dry.
‘And that is why you fly Rosalia’s petticoat when you fight the ships of Spain?’ A salute to a lost love . . .
He nodded grimly. ‘That is why. Although the petticoat is not Rosalia’s and never was. It came from a trunk of clothes making the passage by galleon from Cadiz to Panama - I intercepted the shipment.’
So the petticoat was symbolic. But the woman - he wore the woman in his heart like a flag.
There was a knock at the door. ‘Cap’n,’ said a brusque voice, ‘the wind has changed and there’s dirty weather ahead.’
‘I’ll be right there.’ Rye was up and dragging his trousers over his lean muscular thighs.
Carolina watched him go. She sat in the bunk, feeling the lurch and roll of the wooden ship beneath her, and thought about the terrible story she had just heard.
A bride he had never bedded, a woman he had loved so deeply that he had spent all these years avenging her . . . A woman whose name, just the mention of it, made him restless, unhappy, a woman he had cared for too much ever to forget. . .
Carolina bent her gleaming head and covered her face with her hands. With all her heart, she wished she had never asked Rye about that other woman long ago in Spain.
14
The night wore on with the roll and pitch of the ship, growing ever more pronounced as the storm increased its fury. The lamp swung precariously, but Carolina, tossed about, took no notice. Rye had not returned and as the storm worsened, an idea occurred to her. She would look through Rye’s things; she would see if there were any mementoes of that Spanish girl of long ago!
It seemed safe to do it now for Rye would be fully occupied on deck with green seas slashing over the side and the Sea Wolf driven like a white-winged bird before the wind. She leapt up and began to open his chests, which were ranged about the cabin, and tumble their contents. Chest after chest disappointed her and she was about to give up her search when suddenly she found two tall-backed Spanish combs intricately carved of tortoise shell. She grasped them speculatively and was studying them beneath the lamp, asking herself for the tenth time if these combs - so obviously meant to be worn by some lady of Spain - could possibly have belonged to Rosalia, when there was a sound behind her.
Carolina whirled guiltily to see that Rye had come into the cabin. His clothing was soaked and he tossed back his wet dark hair with a shake that sent droplets flying.
‘I came to see if you were all right - ’ He stopped, amazed at the confusion of opened chests and piled up goods about him. ‘Did the storm overturn these?’ he demanded.
‘No, I - I was looking for something.’ Carolina’s face flamed.
Rye glanced at the two combs, held stiffly in her slender hands. ‘Ah, so you found them,’ he said. ‘I had intended those combs as gifts for you but in this welter of stuff I had forgot where I put them.’ He cast another thoughtful glance about him. ‘I will be on deck until the storm eases off,’ he said abruptly - and was gone.
Carolina was left with her embarrassment and the two Spanish combs. They were beautiful and delicately wrought but they conjured up unhappy thoughts: of a younger Rye strolling through a sunlit garden in Salamanca, his grey eyes drinking in the beauty of another woman who wore a comb like this one. Of Rosalia in her wedding gown with her white mantilla held up by a comb like this one. Of the memory of a lost love that these combs would conjure up.
She cast the pair of combs away from her with a shiver, then scooped them up and hid them away in the deepest corner of one of her own chests. She would never, never wear them! A reminder of Spain and Rosalia she would not be!
And now that her search had turned out to be fruitless, she began to feel ashamed of herself and sought out Virginia to see how she was faring.
Not very well!
Carolina had been flung about mercilessly as she sought Virginia’s cabin. She arrived there to find Virginia clinging to her bunk, moaning and desperately seasick.
‘Go away and let me die in peace!’ croaked Virginia.
Carolina, a remarkably good sailor herself, had forgotten that Virginia was not a good sailor. Now she remembered guiltily that when they were children Virginia had often been sick just making the trip across the Chesapeake to Aunt Pet’s.
The storm did not abate and neither did Virginia’s seasickness. She lay, weak and retching, in her bunk, while Carolina - afraid that her frail sister would lose all the gains she had so recently made and sink back towards death again - tried desperately to make her comfortable.
‘You should try to eat something,' she told Virginia in a troubled voice during the days that followed.
Virginia turned away with a shudder. ‘I may never eat again!’ she gasped.
‘Oh, Virgie!’ Carolina cried in panic. She turned Virginia’s limp body back towards her so that she could mop her pale face with a damp cloth. ‘Virgie, if you die on me on this voyage, I swear I will never forgive you! Oh, Virgie’ - her voice broke - ‘I need you!’
The white face so close to her own broke into a weak smile. ‘I promise not to die,’ whispered Virginia. ‘If only this miserable storm will end so the world isn’t going every which way!’
And the following day it did.
They had been driven far south, Rye told Carolina. ‘The storm must have visited the Virginia Capes too,’ Carolina said, trying
to look on the bright side. ‘In the Tidewater they may decide we’re all dead and forget about us!’
Rye gave her an ironic look. ‘Little chance of that,’ he said drily. ‘When a man carries treasure, the world tends to seek him out!’
They were not to know - not yet - that the freakish path of the storm that had driven them so far off course had struck only a glancing blow at the Virginia Capes before it swirled south, driving them before it - or that other ships that had sailed past Yorktown into the Chesapeake a full two days after them had missed the storm altogether and were having fair sailing across the broad Atlantic.
It was mere chance, but it was to alter their lives, for on one of those London-bound ships was a gossipy lady from Williamsburg, a friend of Amanda Bramway, who had drunk in delightedly the scandalous story of the disastrous wedding at Level Green, as Amanda Bramway had told it . . .
But of course, they did not know that then. And as the weather cleared and murky skies changed to blue, as they struck out again for England, as Virginia sat up and, under Carolina’s coaxing, began to eat again, new hope surged through Carolina.
‘I have a wonderful feeling about what lies ahead!’ she told Virginia breathlessly one day as they stood by the railing looking out over a wide blue ocean. Overhead the seabirds screamed, swooping down past the billowing white sails to dive for the ship’s garbage that the cook was just then throwing over the side. Alongside the hull a pair of dolphins were playing joyously. The wind was steady and a sparkle of white spray blew upwards, causing Virginia to step back and Carolina to shake out her blonde hair with a laugh. ‘Everything is going to be all right,’ she told her sister confidently. ‘What does it matter after all that Rye and I couldn’t be married at Level Green? We’ll be married in Essex - and after that we’ll straighten everything out!’
Her sister gave her an affectionate look. Dear headlong Carolina, always so sure things would work out. Virginia held back a long sigh as she turned back to gaze into the unfathomable blue distance. Nothing, nothing had ever worked out for her . . .
But time and the sea were both passing rapidly now. The weather continued fair, the wind held. They passed the Scilly Isles with their treacherous rocks and boiling seas, they came smartly around Lizard Head at the southern tip of England, they sailed past Plymouth, where Francis Drake had sallied forth to meet the advancing Armada, past the Eddystone Rocks, past Torquay with its terraced houses and spilling banks of flowers, past Lyme Regis where the young Duke of Monmouth had made his ill-fated bid for a throne, past brooding Corfe Castle and the Isle of Wight, past Hastings where in a single bloody battle England had changed hands. The Sea Waif was marching up the English Channel towards the Straits of Dover. They would soon be coming round Margate and sailing up the broad mouth of the Thames.
And at last, with London but a day’s sail away, Carolina, lying in bed beside Rye while the pale moonlight streamed in through the stern windows and made her blonde hair seem to have a cool glow all its own, repeated to Rye what she had said to Virginia on a spray-washed deck.
And Rye, looking down into her sparkling eyes as he delicately stroked her slim body to passion, smiled down at his lovely mercurial lady.
‘Aye,’ he agreed huskily - for just to look at her made him feel a stirring in his loins, an overwhelming urge to sweep her up against him, to hold her, to have her. ‘We’ll be married when we reach England.’
They would have been less sanguine about their future if they could have heard a conversation that was even then going on in London.
There were two participants in that conversation - a man and a woman - and this was no chance meeting, here in an upstairs room of The Shark and Fin, for the tall well-dressed man seemed out of his element in this dingy waterfront inn that catered to sailors and street bawds - and the woman had come here in the night at no small risk to herself.
The woman had come in with an impetuous rush. She was hooded and cloaked and wearing a black face mask -not too unusual in itself, for not only prostitutes but many aristocratic ladies now customarily wore face masks when out in public. She had not arrived unaccompanied. Outside the closed door stood a dark-visaged servant who would have died for her - and the lady knew it. Now he stood frowning guard over the bedroom door through which she had vanished. His name was Sancho and he had been long in the service of her husband’s family - and hopelessly in love with her from the day she had first crossed his vision.
It was a love never to be, of course. Nor even to be mentioned. Sancho had long ago accepted that fact. And it was to Sancho’s credit that he did not understand what was afoot here - if he had, even his blind devotion to the lady might have faltered.
For the lady was the wife of Spain’s ambassador to England. Her husband was the Duke of Lorca, scion of one of the oldest families of Spain and patrician confidante and adviser of that last of the Spanish Hapsburgs, Charles II, the dull-witted and sickly King of Spain.
His Duchess was here tonight on a mission all her own. She had been a bewitchingly beautiful girl when the elderly Duke of Lorca had got her at sixteen fresh from a convent and she was now, in her early twenties, a flamboyantly beautiful woman. Her dark eyes flashed behind her mask as she entered. She tossed back her hood with a shake of her thick shining black curls - which supported no high-backed Spanish comb or mantilla this night, for the Duchess of Lorca was endeavouring with all her might to look English. With a graceful nervous gesture she tore off the black mask that covered almost her entire face, and the man who stood by the hearth - cold at this time of year despite the damp rising from the river - feasted his grey eyes on the creamy smoothness of her skin.
It was he who spoke first. ‘You were not wise to come here tonight - ’
‘Hush,’ she interrupted. ‘No names. Even the walls may have ears.’
He shrugged. If the walls had ears tonight, they were both in deep trouble - the kind they were not likely to survive - for knowledge of their enterprise would have put both their handsome heads on the block. Hidden away in the wine cellar of this very inn (with the bought connivance of the landlord), sandwiched in between giant hogsheads of ale and well guarded, lay the lady’s greyhaired husband, the Duke of Lorca himself. And despite being bound hand and foot, despite his age and enforced inactivity of late, the Duke had kept up a steady deadly flow of invective during his waking hours whenever his gag was removed so that he might eat or drink.
The Duke of course did not know it was his young wife’s machinations that had brought him to this pass. He had quickly learnt that to attempt to shout brought instant retaliation from the impassive rogue who guarded him - a rough return of the gag to his mouth without so much as a sip of water. That water was left tantalizingly near the wine cellar’s single guttering candle and the Duke of Lorca was not allowed to touch it until by his moans he made clear that he had seen reason and would be quiet if allowed to drink.
This dispensation had not kept him from muttering in a low venomous tone all the curses he could think of - in Spanish, of course - and since his captor did not know Spanish any more than the heavyset and heavily scarred innkeeper who came down occasionally to bring up ale or wine, those muttering were ignored.
How long he had lain there in the wine cellar, the Duke of Lorca did not know. In fact it had been a very long time, and only an iron constitution inherited from forebears who had fought alongside El Cid, had saved his strength from failing up to now. He had been brought here, heavily drugged by a potion slipped into his Madeira by the dainty hand of his wife - but he did not know that. He was at a loss to explain - and indeed no one had bothered to explain it to him - how he could have gone to sleep in his big carved bed in a fashionable town house in this - to him - barbaric English city, this London, and waked up dazed, with a mouth dry as cotton, in this dark cellar, a prisoner of total strangers.
The pair in the room above were just then deciding his future.
‘There is news?’ demanded the man restlessly. ‘Is this wh
y you take such a mad chance as to come here?’
‘Not the news you seek,’ said the Duchess. ‘I would have you remember that things move slowly in Spain.’
The Englishman who faced her - and who was desperate for money indeed to have entered into such a plot with this beautiful but, he suspected, unreliable woman - sighed. He was well aware that things moved slowly in Spain. The several months that had already passed had proved that!
‘Is he still well secured?’ The Duchess was speaking of her husband.
The tall Englishman nodded absently. In an effort at disguise he was raffishly dressed in a puce coat several sizes too large for him with wide fraying cuffs and tarnished gold braid. And his deliberately mismatched trousers of an off shade of green were a trifle too tight and tended to bind his well-shaped thighs. One of his faded garters had lost its rosette but his black boots - he had found no others to his liking - were his own and held an incongruous mirrorlike sheen. But his shabby clothing, marking him for a down-at-the-heels gentleman though they might, could not conceal the arrogance of his stance or the excellence of his figure. And the rather ratty sand-coloured wig he had purchased at random to conceal his own dark hair rode atop a dissolute face that would to its dying day be attractive to women.
‘And he is in good health?’ she persisted, noting as she spoke the masculine lure of his physique.
‘As good as could be expected.’
‘You have looked in on him, have you not?’ she asked sharply.
‘No, I did not want him to be able to identify me.’ In case things go wrong.
‘The difficult part is over,’ the reckless lady said with a shrug. ‘What could go wrong now?’
Everything, he thought, studying her. Had she been a man, she would probably not have lived past her teens, he thought. Quick to anger, she would most likely have died as the result of a duel, for she was always tempted to exceed her capacities and would probably have flared up, unwilling to admit that she was overmatched.
Windsong Page 21