by Shirl Henke
Swinging down from her small gray filly, she approached him with dread. “Guacanagari, I have come for my husband. Is he well?”
“My heart is troubled. I am glad that you are here. My nephew is grieving. He will speak of his pain to no one. He arrived here two nights ago, asking me to denounce his friend the Holy Man, and I did so. Then I had runners follow Fray Bartolome to Elzoro's compound to bring his message back. But Rigo has no interest in what has happened with this evil Elzoro.”
“Where is my husband?”
Guacanagari led her to a small caneye at the edge of his village. The jungle surrounded it on two sides. “Your husband is within. He has asked that no one come near him.”
“Thank you, Great Chief,” Miriam said simply, bowing to him. He turned and walked away, leaving her to face Rigo. She took a deep breath for courage and the lush fragrance of frangipani and leopard orchids filled her nostrils. This place was paradise, but only if Rigo loved her.
The interior of the hut was dark and smelled moldy and stale, quite unlike any dwelling inhabited by the fastidious Tainos. She blinked, allowing her eyes to accustom themselves to the dimness, then saw Rigo, stretched out on a raised pallet. He was awake but did not stand, merely raised up on one elbow and cocked his head at her, scowling.
“This place fair reeks of stale wine and your unwashed body,” she said, wrinkling her nose as she inspected his bloodshot eyes and beard-stubbled face. He looked surly and dangerous.
Rigo reached for a wineskin at the side of his bed and unfastened the stopper, then took a long pull before acknowledging her. “Well it should reek, for I have emptied two of these,” he patted the wineskin absently, then added, “or is it three?”
“You are drunk, Rigo.”
“If only I could get drunk. I crave the oblivion. Leave me, Miriam.” He turned his back to her and again drank deeply.
She flew across the earthen floor and knocked the wineskin from his hands. “You lie here wallowing in self-pity while your brother is gone to meet with Brienne in your place!”
He turned, swinging his long legs from the bed, and rose with a snarled oath. “And you, of course, would sacrifice me to save him.”
“He is your brother, Rigo!”
“And he is your lover!”
Miriam stepped back, thunderstruck at his black fury. “My lover? That is absurd! Will my betrothal to Benjamin ever hover like a ghost between us? Can you not see, now that he has returned, that I love him as you do—like a brother?”
“If my eyes did not play me false, lady, I witnessed a most tender scene between you and Benjamin, late at night, on the porch of our house. You held each other and you kissed him. Is that the stuff of sisterly love?” His voice was sneering yet ragged with pain.
Miriam blinked in amazement. “You saw me talking to Benjamin after the ball. I had come looking for you—you, my lord, who has chosen to absent yourself from my bed for these long months. I abased myself searching you out that night, just as I have done now...and tis all in vain.”
She turned from him and squeezed her eyes tightly closed to keep the hateful tears from overflowing. Clenching her hands into fists beneath her skirts, she whispered, “Benjamin loves Rani, the Gypsy girl he has pursued across the ocean-sea. He has forgiven us our betrayal of him, Rigo—and he admitted that I was right to break our betrothal. He and I could never love as husband and wife should—twould have been a terrible mismatch.” She turned when she felt his hand lightly touch her shoulder. “Has it also been a terrible mismatch for you and me?” Her eyes met his, trying desperately to read an answer.
Rigo scarcely dared to breathe, fighting the urge to crush her in his arms. His fingertips grazed her proudly uptilted chin. “At times it has seemed so, lady. I overreached when I cast my eyes on you.”
“Yet you did...and I returned the attention as you surely must recall. I have forsaken all for you, yet no matter what I do, it never seems enough.”
“I love you, Miriam. Is that enough?” He stood very still, almost as if expecting a blow to strike him.
He is afraid I do not love him! The revelation flashed in her mind. “You are jealous of ghosts, Rigo, for I am not in love with Benjamin. I am in love with my husband. Yet tis you who planned to leave me, never I you. Even without our son, I would be bound to you.” She placed her hand on his chest and felt his heart pound.
He crushed her in an embrace, burying his scratchy black whiskers in the tender skin of her neck. “I could never leave you, Miriam. Once, long ago, I thought of it when I was uncertain of what lay ahead for me here with my family. They were Jews, rich conversos who could care for you even if I could not.” Suddenly he raised his head and looked into her eyes. “When did you first take the idea that I planned to leave you?”
“Aboard ship. I heard you ask the boatswain about Mexico.”
The raw anguish in her voice cut him like a lash. “Oh, Miriam, my lady, my love, we have been such fools. I was so afraid of what I had done to you. You were so sick carrying my child, crossing the ocean to an unknown future. I wanted only to protect you, to provide for you—not to leave you...never to leave you.” He tangled his fingers in her hair and held her head against his bare chest.
Miriam burrowed her face in the curling mat of his chest hair. “Oh, Rigo, I love you. Always I have loved you, from the first moment I saw you, I think, near death, lying in that bed in Uncle Isaac's house when Benjamin brought us together.”
He stiffened as the present crisis brought him back to reality. “Benjamin has gone after Brienne?”
“Caonu and his warriors are with him. Also your brother Bartolome, Rudolfo and some of the Spaniards from the hato. Caonu's spies followed the corsair from Navidad to some caves near our hato.” Quickly she told him all that had transpired in the two days he had been absent. When she explained about Aaron and Magdalena going to Santo Domingo, he swore at the ill timing.
“I will need Guacanagari's help. We must go to Elzoro's plantation and find a way to take the renegade—or kill him.”
“Be careful, Rigo. He is dangerous and set on killing you. I—I have not read all the ledgers and papers Fray Bartolome brought back, but—”
“I will return you safely to our compound while Guacanagari prepares his men here. You must keep that hard-won evidence—and yourself—safe.” He kissed her then, fiercely, possessively.
He tasted of stale wine and male musk, but she did not care. Miriam seized great handfuls of his night-dark hair and held his head down to hers, returning the fierce caress with joy, fear and sorrow all mingled together.
* * * *
“You hate me and wish me gone, do you not, Piero?” Rani took the crust of moldy bread and stuffed it in her mouth, then drank a swallow of brackish water. Brienne had untied her hands and removed her gag, ordering his puto to bring her food. He was playing some cruel game with them both. Now she hoped to turn it to her advantage.
“Soon you will be gone from my captain's life. You will be dead,” Piero said sneeringly.
‘Then why does he bother to feed me? And why did he not just kill me and feed me to the sharks back in the bay? No, he has plans for me after he has killed the Spaniard.”
“You are in league with the half-caste,” Piero said suspiciously, the cunning in his black eyes gleaming malevolently.
“I have never laid eyes on this wild Indian. What is he to me? Let him and your captain fight to the death. I care not. My love is in Marseilles. I want only to seek out Benjamin in France.” She held her breath as the jealous boy studied her and considered her words.
“Luc would be very angry with me if you escaped.”
She shrugged. “How would he know twas you? Only loosen my bonds. Soon the pig of a boatswain will return. If I pretend to still be tied, he will not think to check my wrists. I will wait until he swills some wine and goes to sleep to make my escape.”
“I still think Luc will kill you once your usefulness in luring the half-caste is over.”
“What if you are wrong? I have seen the way he looks at me...I am small, dark and sleek, just like you, Piero. And I am fresh flesh. Men do crave that, you know.” Her eyes were hard and calculating as she measured his response.
Piero pondered for a moment. Then, he retrieved a length of cord from the cave floor and slowly retied her hands behind her—but not quite so tightly. Using the tip of his dagger blade, he loosened slightly the knots in the rope binding her ankles.
However, Rani's feelings of triumphant smugness were suddenly transformed to alarm when the youth brutally stuffed the gag back into her mouth, far down her throat. Her unintelligible protests were further muted until they became feeble, choking gasps as he cinched the cloth tighter and tighter, securing the gag. After knotting it he rose to stare down into the terror-filled eyes of his victim. It was his turn to savor triumph.
“Now, bitch, I give you your chance to free your hands and feet—if you do not strangle first. Either way, I will certainly be free of you, forever!”
With that, he turned from the panicky girl, who was slowly suffocating. As he strolled away, his pretty face was wreathed by a smile that seemed almost beatific.
* * * *
Outside, far above ground, Benjamin and Caonu stood behind a dense stand of poui trees, watching two of the corsair's guards pacing before a small opening into the earth. Vero sat silently by Benjamin's side.
“This is where my men saw the captain take your dark-haired woman,” Caonu whispered. Guacanagari's younger brother was still a slim man with delicate features, but the exuberant youth had matured into a shrewd and resourceful man who had survived much since the coming of the white men in 1492.
“I will take Vero in this back entrance and see if he can find Rani before we attempt to meet with Brienne at the place he has selected for the exchange. If fortune smiles, she is yet within the cave and I can overpower the guards, who are not expecting us to know of this entrance.”
“Who do you wish to accompany you?” Caonu asked Benjamin.
Benjamin watched his younger brother slip through the poui trees. “I think Bartolome here is eager to prove himself. Select six Tainos to go with us. Then you and Rudolfo are to take the rest of our forces to the appointed meeting place and wait. We will join you there.”
Caonu nodded. “It will be as you say.”
The Tainos vanished like wraiths into the jungle while the Spanish under Rudolfo Torres headed quietly along the overgrown path to await the rendezvous with the corsair. Every man prayed their leader would find his Rani unharmed.
Whispering a command to Vero to follow, Benjamin moved in position near the small clearing before the cave, which lay beyond a dense stand of silk cottons beneath whose towering canopy the jungle floor was overgrown with dense foliage.
Bartolome shadowed Benjamin, while two Tainos circled to the other side of the clearing. Then, on a prearranged signal, Benjamin tossed several coins, creating a small clatter. One guard stopped his pacing and raised his arbalest, quickly notching a bolt. His companion did likewise and both men scanned the perimeter. When another clatter sounded, they turned toward it. In a flash, the Tainos were on one guard while Benjamin and Bartolome seized the other. Their throats swiftly cut, the two pirates were rolled into the dense undergrowth.
A small torch flickered from deep inside the cave, its light calling to them in an eerie, unsettling way. The wolf trotted ahead of Benjamin, now given the command to find his mistress. Bartolome carried the torch as they moved steadily lower into the bowels of the earth.
“Are you certain he knows where he goes? And more to the point, can the beast find his way back once he has found her?” Bartolome's green eyes, so like his mother's, were darkened nearly black in the dimly flickering light.
“First let him find Rani, then we shall worry about the rest,” Benjamin murmured low. Vero took a sudden plunge around a large stalagmite and Benjamin darted ahead of his brother, into the shadows after the wolf.
Suddenly a slight figure plunged from behind the jagged, calcified formation and leaped at Benjamin, knocking him to the ground.
Bartolome came running to reach his brother, but Vero reappeared and lunged unexpectedly between Bartolome and the embroiled pair on the floor.
A gasp of recognition, followed by soft laughter carried past the wolf's growl. “Put up your sword, brother,” Benjamin commanded. “I have found my elusive Gypsy wench.” He rose, pulling up the small girl dressed in cabin boy's clothes. Long masses of inky curls tumbled loose from the grimy cap she pulled off her head.
“Oh, Benjamin, you came for me, truly you did!” Her voice was raspy from the cruel gag Piero had used, but her clever Romani hands had made swift work of untying the ropes that bound her. She clung to her golden lover, throwing her arms about his neck and kissing him fulsomely.
Benjamin held her tightly, his eyes squeezed closed for a moment as he ran his hands up and down her slender body, assuring himself that she was alive and unharmed. “Did you doubt that I would follow, foolish little imp? Oh, Rani, I have lived in such terror of what that corsair might do to you.”
“As well you should, my friend,” Luc Brienne said conversationally. He walked from behind yet another maze of stalagmites. Quickly, before Benjamin could do anything but step protectively in front of Rani, the corsair's men fanned out in a neat semicircle, with arquebuses and arbalests trained on Benjamin and Bartolome. The captain smiled. “Well, well, now I have netted even a bigger catch than I had hoped, two of the half-caste's brothers.” He bowed to Rani, who was peering around Benjamin's shoulder with smoldering eyes. “My thanks to you, little caraque. Perhaps I shall think of a way to reward you...and punish Piero at the same time, eh?” He smiled again but the curve of his lips did not match the icy coldness in his eyes as he turned toward the quaking boy.
“You have me, Brienne. You do not need Rani or Bartolome,” Benjamin said, distracting the corsair from his cruel cat-and-mouse play with his puto. God, do not let him use Rani in his perverted revenge!
Brienne appeared to consider, then shrugged fatalistically. “Ah, but I have been given a very great gift—you, your brother and the caraque” He stroked his chin and studied them. “I think my overlord will be well pleased to be rid of the wench. I am certain there is some way in which I can oblige him.”
“Your overlord? Reynard, the French spy masquerading as Elzoro?” Benjamin said contemptuously, “or is it another, further away? Back in Marseilles?”
At that taunt Brienne's face lost all traces of amusement. “Bind them well.”
Two of the seamen moved forward with stout ropes in their hands, but Vero suddenly materialized from the shadows, standing protectively in front of Rani. One of the men aimed his arbalest at the wolf but Benjamin tackled the guard and knocked him to the ground. Several of Brienne's men pulled Torres off the guard and held him.
Using the distraction, Rani cried out a command in Romani and the wolf took off with a burst of speed, vanishing into the twisting maze of caves. Another guard fired his arbalest, but if it struck the wolf it did not slow him.
“Should we pursue the beast, captain?”
Brienne spat in disgust. “Do not bother. Tie their hands and let us leave here to reunite our forces with Reynard. I think we shall bargain with Rigo Torres much better now. Yes, much better. We shall slip into the jungle quickly before their allies decide to come in search of them.
* * * *
Guacanagari looked from the vantage point, high in the branches of an enormous oak, down into Elzoro's compound. “I do not like it, my nephew. Those great dogs are trained to kill us. They will catch your scent if you enter.”
Rigo smiled grimly. “Someone must get inside and open the gates else we shall be forced to besiege the compound. We must deal with the French spy while his raiders are clustered within. If they escape and scatter, they can go to ground and later resume their depredations.”
“We should wait until Benjamin returns.” Guac
anagari remained unhappy with Rigo's dangerous plan.
“He is after the corsair at the opposite end of the valley, searching for that Gypsy girl he is so obsessed with finding. We cannot allow Elzoro to reunite his forces with Brienne's.” With that Rigo began to slide from the tree.
One of Guacanagari's grandsons had found a weak place in the heavy thatch wall where the fierce hounds had chewed almost through. It was in an isolated area behind a crude, windowless stockade where Don Esteban held recalcitrant slaves during their punishments. At present it was deserted. Rigo had studied the layout of the compound for over a day, watching the comings and goings of the inhabitants. He knew the raiders were temporarily quartered within, at least forty extra men besides the overseers, and field and house servants that normally worked the plantation.
“Now I finally have you, you jackal, with all your ravaging thieves penned up.” Of course, the dogs were a significant deterrent. There were several dozen of the big hounds, all trained to rip open a man's throat. Rigo was not pleased about entering the compound, but he would not ask another to take this risk for him. Anyway, the dogs were penned up during the daylight hours. He was the one both Elzoro and Brienne wanted dead. Today he would find out why.
Guacanagari's warriors and the men from the hato comprised a force less than the Frenchman had inside, but Rigo had surprise on his side. Once he opened the heavy gates, his forces could swarm in and overtake the brigands. Their first target was the dog pens, for they must keep the animals confined. Then the rest of the force would move to the crude huts where the raiders were quartered. It was just past dawn and the dogs had been summoned by an overseer. Obediently they bounded into their large pen to be fed the meager rations which kept them so lean and deadly.
Inside the large, elaborately furnished stone mansion, Don Esteban paced, slapping the message he had just received from Brienne against his thigh in fury. First that accursed priest had drugged his guard and made off with damning evidence linking him to his associate in Marseilles. Now that arrogant little wharf rat was traipsing through the jungle doubtless swarming with Taino spies. And he was bringing both Torres brothers here. If anything happened to Benjamin Torres! He shuddered to think of the repercussions. At least Yarros had brought his raiders into the compound. Now he must devise a plan using them to dispose of Rigo Torres and recover the evidence from that priest. The infuriating old fool had seemingly vanished, but Elzoro was certain the documents had been sent to the Torres hato with an Indian runner.