Windsong

by Valerie Sherwood

  And unknown to him as his ship lay at anchor in Plymouth Hoe, and as he fought in turn his conscience and his heart, a merchant ship called the Mary Constant had sailed past him, rounded the Lizard and Land’s End and sailed out into the broad Atlantic.

  ON BOARD THE MARY CONSTANT BOUND

  FOR BERMUDA

  Summer 1689

  23

  A fine fresh wind was blowing from the North Sea and the good ship Mary Constant had taken that wind in her sheets and was running before it. She had driven past Gravesend and out of the mouth of the Thames last night. Now in morning’s pale light, with the sea a grey white-capped glimmer enclosing her fat wooden hull, she stood off Sandwich making for Deal and the Strait of Dover. The fair county of Kent lay off her starboard bow and the distant coast of France was somewhere off to larboard.

  On the Mary Constant's spray-splashed deck stood the two girls who had once been roommates back in Miss Chesterton’s select school for young ladies - eons ago, they would have told you.

  ‘He’s a nice old man, our captain,’ murmured Reba, who had sensibly changed to a sleek bronze broadcloth whose wide skirts, now whipping in the sea breeze, had bands of stiff black braid at the hem. She was holding on to a ratline with one hand as she spoke and shading her eyes against the sun to look upwards at the topgallants flashing as they caught the wind.

  Carolina had also been holding on to the ratlines, looking up at the billowing topgallants. Now her fascinated gaze came down to focus on Reba. ‘How do you know?’ she wondered - for stout, red-faced, smiling Captain Dawlish with his worn clothes and quaint bluff manners hardly looked the kind of man to frequent such a fashionable gaming establishment as Jenny Chesterton’s.

  ‘I met him once when I was a little girl,’ replied Reba, pushing back the locks of auburn hair that were blowing over her face. ‘He doesn’t remember me, of course - I’ve grown more than a dozen inches and filled out since then! But I remember my father introducing us - he was the captain of my father’s very first ship, Carolina, and he looked just the same then. The Mary Constant,’ she added in a bored tone, ‘is my father’s ship. I thought you knew that.’

  Carolina, who had paid for their passage with the gold Rye had left her, considered how thunderstruck the smiling little captain would be - how indeed he would blanch - if he knew that he was carrying the owner’s daughter overseas without that owner’s permission.

  Captain Dawlish could not know that Reba was Jonathon Tarbell’s daughter of course. Both girls were using false names - Rebecca Jones and Carolina Smythe. They had thought it best to travel incognito under the circumstances - Reba because Captain Dawlish would probably promptly return her to her father, Carolina because she did not want the Lightfoots of Level Green ever to hear about her misadventures; she wanted to lose herself completely and begin again.

  Arranging passage to Philadelphia on the spur of the moment had proved impossible. No ship was leaving for Philadelphia until the end of the week. But Reba’s sharp russet eyes had sighted the Mary Constant lying at anchor in the Thames and she had immediately brightened.

  ‘There’s our ship, Carolina!’ she had muttered in triumph. ‘And she’s about to leave for somewhere - that’s plain enough!’

  Rather against her will, Carolina had let Reba arrange to have them both rowed out to the soon-to-depart vessel, and over the ship’s side they had dickered with a surprised Captain Dawlish, who was quick to admit that he had room for two more female passengers. Indeed there was a widow, one Mistress Wadlow, even now occupying a cabin that would accommodate three.

  ‘So now there’s no going back,’ Reba had muttered as, with Carolina’s gold coins, she struck the bargain.

  ‘I hope you realize we’re going to Bermuda - not Philadelphia,’ Carolina had replied in an undertone as she prepared to climb the ship’s ladder.

  ‘And from Bermuda we can get passage to Philadelphia easily, I would imagine,’ Reba had countered - and once aboard had gone along with Carolina and her boxes to greet the woman with whom they would share accommodations on this journey.

  Mistress Wadlow had proved to be a fragile, perverse, talkative old woman from Cambridge who had taken passage to Bermuda so that she might see her daughter’s new grandchild before - she told them dramatically - she died.

  ‘But you’ll have many years yet!’ declared Carolina, scandalized. She believed people should make plans to live - not plans to die. ‘Indeed you appear to be in good health.’

  ‘No, no, it is not my health. My health is fine.’ Mistress Wadlow’s birdlike voice rose to shrill over Carolina’s. ‘I had my fortune told before I left Cambridge and the fortune-teller told me I would never see England again, that something tall and black would rise out of the sea and would stand in my way!’

  ‘And yet you took passage anyway?’ marvelled Reba who had grown up on tales of sea monsters.

  ‘Aye.’ Mistress Wadlow sighed and her thin jowl shook as she shrugged. ‘I’m counting on the sea monster to appear on the return journey, so I may never come back from Bermuda! For I don’t like my son’s new wife and I’ve been living with them in Cambridge, you see. And besides,’ she added with a flash of candour, ‘my son didn’t want me to go and I wouldn’t put him above bribing that fortune-teller to frighten me out of the trip!’ The two girls exchanged startled glances.

  ‘My elder sister once made the voyage to Bermuda,’ Mistress Wadlow added. ‘And after ten years of living there she decided to come back to England and - wouldn’t you know? - the ship sank with all hands. But she had many adventures on the first crossing and she wrote me all about them.’

  She promptly embarked on the telling of all of them, her flow of words checked only when she paused to draw breath. When finally she stopped to answer a knock on the door, Reba leaned over and whispered in Carolina’s ear, ‘Now we know why her daughter went to Bermuda. She fled to escape this torrent of words!’

  ‘Shush, she’ll hear you,’ muttered Carolina, who had taken a liking to this kindly, half-innocent, half-worldly old woman, fleeing a distasteful daughter-in-law to the shelter of her own flesh-and-blood daughter. The situation had been reversed with her own parents - her mother had fled the scorn of her in-laws. But Carolina herself had never felt truly welcome at home when she was growing up and she sympathized with little Mistress Wadlow.

  Mistress Wadlow even talked and muttered in her sleep, her grey head tossing on the pillow. And now, after having passed a restless night listening to her jibbering while the Mary Constant fought her way valiantly through the shipping down the Thames, the two girls had escaped their talkative cabin mate, who was still dressing, and had come out on deck for a breath of fresh air. In the early morning light other passengers were stirring, some lounging by the rail watching the Kentish coast sliding by on their right. Soon there would be little groups of passengers cooking over small fires made on the deck - fires which must be watched carefully lest they set the vessel afire.

  Carolina had last night taken off her ice-green satin gown - the glamour of which had quite stunned the stout little captain when they had hailed his ship as it was about to depart. She had folded it away carefully in one of Reba’s boxes. Reba had generously offered Carolina one of the two dresses she had been able to bring along, aside from the handsome russet silk in which she had come aboard - for Reba had not gone back to try to collect her things from Jenny Chesterton; there had not been time. The dress Carolina had borrowed from Reba was a pale yellow sprigged muslin with three-quarter sleeves which she wore over a sunny yellow linen petticoat - crushably thin and also borrowed from Reba. The gown was tight-bodiced and narrow-waisted and mercifully cool for a sunny voyage. The skirt was split down the centre in front so that it might be gathered up on either side into panniers, the better to display the petticoat. But Carolina had not bothered to tuck it up - indeed on this windy day that overskirt, which was trimmed in narrow lemon-yellow braid, was a help in keeping her petticoat from flying up and displaying h
er pretty legs (and she had already noticed with some dismay how bright were the smiles of the male passengers and how dark the frowns of the female passengers when this happened!)

  Reba had generously offered her the dress this morning so that she would not have to ‘wear out’ her beautiful ice-green satin on this long voyage. At first Carolina had hesitated, for the sprigged muslin was a lighthearted dress indeed - not one to be worn over so heavy a heart as her own. Then with a little laugh she had accepted both dress and petticoat.

  ‘Once again l am wearing your wardrobe, Reba - just like in school,’ she had told her friend ruefully.

  And Reba had shrugged. ‘But who’s paying my passage?’ she had countered.

  Now both girls offered a tempting sight to the strolling passengers who paced up and down the slanting deck for exercise. Like bronze and yellow fall chrysanthemums blowing in a brisk early autumn breeze, they swayed as they clung to the ratlines and talked, occasionally pausing to fight down the voluminous skirts that blew up to reveal a froth of white lace-trimmed chemise skirts. They were so conspicuous as to be the subject of frequent comment among many of the Mary Constant's passengers.

  ‘I still say that for two girls with their looks to be travelling alone means that they’re no better than they should be!’ insisted one of them - a Mistress Hedge - tartly. She looked balefully at the ship’s rail where Carolina and Reba were now leaning on their elbows, staring out to sea. 'And with such fine clothes!’ she added spitefully, casting an annoyed glance down at her own plain mouse-coloured gown and then back at the late arrivals.

  ‘Come along, Nettie.’ Her husband, John, hurried her past the two flowerlike young figures. ‘And speak more softly or they’ll hear you.’ He winced as his wife turned again to glare at the offending pair.

  And the way they answer a body!’ Nettie added with indignation. ‘I asked the red-haired - ’

  ‘Auburn,’ corrected her husband gently.

  ‘I might have known you would notice that, John! As I said, I asked the red-haired one with the hard face where she would be staying when she got to Bermuda and she said she didn’t know. Then I turned to the white-haired one - ’

  ‘Silver blonde,’ murmured her husband with an appreciative glance at Carolina’s shimmering locks, blowing wildly in the sea wind.

  His wife sniffed her disdain.

  ‘ - And I asked her where they’d be staying and she said she didn’t care!’

  Nettie’s husband hid a smile. ‘Perhaps they thought it none of your affair,’ he suggested cheerfully, taking a deep breath of the bracing sea air and peering up at a couple of gulls, noisily chasing each other about the rigging. It was a beautiful day, a day made for sailing, and the white sails of the fat merchant ship Mary Constant billowed gaily overhead.

  ‘Nonsense!’ his wife snapped. ‘They were just trying to put me in my place!’

  Which would have taken some doing, thought her husband gloomily. Certainly he had never been able to do it. He managed another quick look at the two girls as he and his wife turned about and began to walk the ship lengthwise in the opposite direction. ‘The Beauties’ was what the male passengers privately called the dazzling pair who had boarded just before the ship cast off, but to his mind only one was a real beauty - the blonde with the sad preoccupied expression.

  ‘Impudent, they are!’ declared his wife, incensed.

  ‘Unhappy more like,’ he said with sudden insight. ‘The blonde’s eyes are red-rimmed, didn’t you notice? She looks as if she might have been crying.’

  As indeed she had. For last night Carolina had dreamed of Rye. She had lain in her bunk, somewhere between sleep and waking, and of a sudden as she drifted off into dreams, it had seemed to her that she was on board the Sea Wolf once again. She had nestled the more contentedly into the bunk and the creaking of the merchant vessel’s heavy timbers had become the straining of a buccaneer ship’s sturdy timbers as she cut into the blue waters of the Caribbean, eager to be unleashed against some mighty galleon three times her size and triple her guns ... a great ship flexing its muscles even as her valiant captain might flex his muscles.

  And with the thought, her buccaneer had appeared suddenly before her. ‘Kells,’ she had murmured in a soft rich voice and opened her white arms to welcome him.

  ‘Christabel,’ he had answered, calling her by the name she had used on Tortuga.

  He had come to her willingly and lain down by her side. Her clothes had magically disappeared without so much as a belt being unbuckled - but then magical unreal things happen easily in dreams. Carolina’s thin chemise had sped away from her on a shaft of moonlight, becoming, somewhere out there beneath the stars, the white wingspan of an albatross soaring across the blue and endless depths of ocean.

  ‘Kells,’ she had murmured again, and sighed as his long body warmed her, as his deft hands caressed her.

  Hold me,’ she had whispered, and her arms had gone round his neck. As his grip on her tightened she had strained towards him, feeling the hardness of his rib cage and another hardness, more intimate, that she met with a glad sigh.

  She had lain in his arms all night - but only in her dreams. Morning had found him gone. Morning had found Reba vigorously brushing her thick auburn hair and saying curiously, ‘Who is this Kells? You were babbling about him all night!’

  And then Mistress Wadlow, who had wakened in time to hear that, had sat up and interrupted with a shudder, ‘The child must have been having a nightmare. For the only Kells I’ve heard of is a notorious pirate.’

  ‘Buccaneer,’ corrected Carolina absently.

  ‘I see. There’s a difference?’ asked Reba politely, for she had never been one to worry about such fine distinctions. A sea rover was a sea rover as far as she was concerned.

  ‘Oh, yes, there’s a difference,’ said Carolina. And while Mistress Wadlow made chirping sounds indicating she’d like to interrupt, Carolina went on to educate both of them in Caribbean lore and to explain to her that the buccaneers were really privateers who attacked only the ships of Spain while pirates preyed on anyone.

  ‘And how did you learn all this?’ Reba asked with lifted brows.

  Carolina could have reminded her that she might have learnt it from Rye’s own lips that Christmastide in Essex but she chose not to. ‘Everyone in Virginia knows the difference,’ she said with a shrug. It was not quite true but would serve well enough for the moment.

  ‘I expect,’ piped up Mistress Wadlow, who was panting as she struggled into her stays, ‘that Captain Dawlish is keeping his fingers crossed and hoping we can make port safely, for beyond the Azores I’m told the sea grows wilder and is filled with hunting ships.’ Her faded blue eyes grew saucerlike in her thin face.

  Carolina sighed. At that moment, still under the spell of last night’s vivid dream, she would have given almost anything to see just one long grey hunting ship - the Sea Wolf. But of course that is not to be, she told herself sadly. Never again.

  She turned resolutely towards Reba. ‘There’s little use putting your hair up so elegantly. The wind on deck will only blow away the pins.’

  Reba turned to give her a quelling look. ‘There’s always good reason to look your best! After all, you never know what will happen or who you’ll meet.’

  Carolina shrugged. They had already met all the passengers and Reba had considered none of the men worthy of her steel. As for anything ‘happening’, the best they could hope for was fine weather - the worst, to meet a Spanish galleon or a storm at sea. For herself, she hoped for an uneventful voyage.

  Nearby Mistress Wadlow, who had now found her breath again, was saying much the same thing.

  ‘I don’t know why I let you talk me into this,’ Reba complained when they were at last out on deck, leaning against the portside railing as the wind bellied the canvas and the vessel heeled before the breeze. Reba was having trouble finding her footing but Carolina had become used to having a vessel’s swaying deck beneath her feet and felt a kind o
f kinship with the ship as the sails cracked and the ratlines hummed.

  ‘You’ll get your sea legs soon,’ she promised Reba. ‘And remember it won’t be forever. We’ll reach Bermuda and then - ’ She had almost said ‘home’. But Philadelphia, which was to be their eventual destination, was not home. Home was the Tidewater - no, it was not there either. Home was a man’s arms, held wide and welcoming. Home was a buccaneer ship or a white red-roofed house overlooking Cayona Bay or a great house in Essex that she had never seen - home was where Rye was, wherever he might be.

  And now she knew she could never go home again. Not to those warm strong arms.

  She could never forgive him. Her pride would not let her.

  Not that he was likely to ask her to forgive him. She had been cast out from paradise.

  But the days on shipboard were long and monotonous. They had passed Dover before Reba, who for so long had bottled up her love for her errant marquess, began to talk.

  ‘I don’t know when I first discovered I loved Robin,’ she confided to Carolina as they walked up and down the deck of the swaying ship, listening to the great sails crack in the wind, and trying to hold on to their flying skirts and ignore the admiring smiles the seamen sent their way at the sight of dainty ankles suddenly in view.

  ‘In Essex I didn’t believe that you really loved him at all,’ Carolina admitted.

  ‘I don’t think I did - then,’ Reba confessed with a sigh. ‘He was so handsome and I was so thrilled at the idea of being a marchioness and’ - she flushed as she turned to Carolina - ‘I wanted to be considered, well, ahead of the pack. I pretend more experience than I had.’