“You didn’t tell me we were shipping out on a corsair,” Kate said.
Any ship that was used by pirates might be called a corsair, but it was more frequently used to refer to the actual pirate than his ship. Corsairs from Algiers, Tunisia, Tripoli, and all along the Barbary Coast of northern Africa, still sailed the Mediterranean in the usual guise of privateer, preying on merchantmen anywhere. Some had no pretext at all, but roamed as blatant pirates. Sometimes the fear of them was enough, for their reputations were really quite fierce, and most merchantmen surrendered without a fight.
“I thought corsairs steered clear of the British blockade?” she said.
“Corsair? Oh, you mean like a pirate ship?” His head shot around to see if anyone was listening. No one was. “What’s this,” he said, touching the shawl on her head.
“The captain asked me to wear it when I come out on deck.”
He contemplated her for a moment. “You’re not convincing as a nun.”
“I’m hungry, who should I see about meals?”
Standish turned a little green, turned to the rail, and then thought better of it. He put his hand over his mouth and let out the large belch instead.
“You look awful, Ambrose. Your business must be important to get you on a ship this small and so soon after the last trip on the Wilde. Not once, but twice, is it now?”
His black eyes flashed for only a second, she wondered just what that was. Anger? Amusement? It was hard to tell.
He said coldly, “The world goes on, Katherine, and I plan to go on with it.”
She tried not to grind her teeth, but his words made her anxious. Katherine. She didn’t like it when he called her that, because she didn’t feel that it was really herself he was talking to then. She didn’t like the idea that he was still thinking of her mother, now that he was a man.
Kate looked out to sea. It was a cloudy day, not calm, not too rough. There was a healthy bit of wind, a few sails in the distance, and land far on the horizon. This was typical near ports or as you skimmed near to the coasts. It felt good to be out once again, but the landfall so near was also a comfort.
Then she wondered on their course. To head for Madeira, there was no need to be this close to the coast of Africa for this long; they should be heading a bit to the west. She decided to check the course with the stars tonight.
“You are wondering where we are,” Standish said. “They have to make a stop along the way, that’s all.”
She nodded. Of course, they probably had a regular route for their trade. She was the unusual element here, but they would carry on with their own business. Standish motioned to a sailor and snapped out some words she did not understand.
“What is that you said?”
“You wanted food,” he said, not looking her way. “You should know I would give you anything you want, Katherine.”
Kate was taken aback by his sudden change, and the use of the name of her mother once again. She tried to pass it off, to bring him to the present. “What language is that?” she said.
“Sanskrit for all I know. I picked up a few words here and there. I know enough to get by. There’s the master, Kate, go ask him for what you need.”
The captain didn’t look unreasonable at her approach. He nodded his greeting, and she began to speak, but her stomach grumbled in the middle of the request. He didn’t wait for her to continue, but gave the order in English for hard biscuits, water, and some fruit.
“It shall be taken to your cabin. Was there anything else?”
“No, I—“
He turned away before she finished and began yelling orders to his crew.
Well, perhaps it’s for the best, she thought. I’m not in a chatting mood, and there are many notes I need to record in the journals. She was really quite behind and hoped she could remember it all and accurately too.
Some plants looked like others, the problem being that the imposter may not really help you. In some cases, it could kill. For example, angelica was used for respiratory ailments. But it also resembled water hemlock, which was really quite poisonous.
Perhaps it was no wonder that women who healed with plants were considered to be witches in the past—and even now, by some. Sometimes a cure was just a cure, but sometimes the cure was worse than the affliction. And the results could be construed as a burnable offense. But being suspected of witchcraft wasn’t always the case, she knew. Before monks and their religion took over the practice, women were quite often the healers of the day and respected for it too.
Kate finished her stroll on the deck, and then went to her cabin to eat.
It went on like that for days. She saw little of Ambrose Standish, who as usual, did not take his travel well. Whenever she needed something, he spoke to the master on her behalf, which seemed less awkward when she made the requests for herself. That was the only contact they had, and that was all right with Kate.
She got a little pan of hot water in the morning to wash and make lukewarm tea, which on some voyages was a true luxury. The food was good and came to her cabin at regular intervals, which was also a blessing. In the morning were the hard biscuits and fruit. In the evening there was usually something with meat. She strolled on the deck on occasion, most often at night, and no one bothered her at all. But she missed chatting with the crew, as she did on her own ship, and others she had been on too.
Once in a while she caught a glance from one of these men. Never the same man twice, but often enough of a glance to make her feel uncomfortable. It was not really lust; she had seen that before. It wasn’t disgust or disapproval either. Kate thought it was more like hunger. Like they were looking at her, but they were thinking of a fine dinner.
It reminded her of the wolf-dog there in the woodland park on Gibraltar.
She put it down to her imagination and being on a strange ship with an unknown crew. Still, she wrote about it in one of the journals. Her mother’s journals, it seemed, were the only true friends she had on board.
* * * * *
CHAPTER 31 - Cargo
“Wake up, Kate. You’re dreaming again.”
Ambrose Standish shook her shoulder, but she pushed him away. “I’m awake, my mother was making you tea.”
“Was she?”
At first he seemed amused, but his eyes were narrow and penetrating. Kate decided that such was not a good thing to see the first thing in the morning. She wrapped her arms around herself.
“You’re cold?” he said.
“Don’t look so gloomy, Ambrose. In my dream, it was a sunny day and it was regular tea, real tea. Earl Grey, very British, you like that. You were hiding in the bushes watching my brothers, and I invited you in as a fellow pariah.”
Ambrose was not allowed to play with her brothers either. He was older than the boys, but he still had a streak of childishness about him then. He was never asked though, and the boys sometimes made fun of him when he stood around to watch.
Kate never understood why he stayed around them so much. His father usually sent someone to fetch him to get on with his chores around the trading post.
“Tea, good idea,” he finally said.
A man of few words today; she wished he was always that way. Kate sat up, carefully holding the covers close. “You look . . .”
“I look what?”
“Different. You’re not smiling, maybe that’s it.”
“Why should I smile? All my plans are ruined. Your doing, was it?”
Kate didn’t like his tone. It wasn’t really rude, but accusing. She said, “What are you talking about?”
He held up the note she gave him on the quay. The one that Sir Edward Lindsay was supposed to read. Kate fought the urge to grab for it and slap him on the way.
“What are you talking about?” she said again, not wanting to look at him anymore, but drawn to it anyway.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know,” he said. His face was twisted into a smirk.
“Who’s pretending?” she said carefu
lly. “Are you all right? Are you sea sick again?”
Then she saw that the note had been opened. It was one thing to not deliver it, another to read it without permission. She reached out very calmly and did slap him then.
He was frozen, deadly pale. She could tell he was working up to some action when suddenly two men burst into the room.
He jumped, and then swore at them in that language she did not know, but had heard several times by now. Some sort of North African mixed in with Arabic tongue, she assumed from the look of them. It was as much from their dress as their features.
“Not yet,” he shouted at them, rising and stomping his foot.
“Get out of here,” Kate said, and she meant all of them. “Who the hell—“
Ambrose turned suddenly and slapped her.
Kate was knocked back flat on the bunk. Her mouth hurt. She could taste blood. She was more surprised than angry, but figured that would change any second.
To her further surprise, the men gave him a feeble salute and left the room. Ambrose seemed to have things well in hand, and Kate felt the worse for it.
“I assume you’re going to tell me what this is all about. I’d like to know before my uncle hangs you by your thumbs from his bowsprit. It will save me the bother of having to pay attention at that time.”
He snickered at her, and then let out one long bray. It was more of a shout than a laugh. “Your uncle, your precious family, you can all go to hell.”
“That sounds bitter, Ambrose. Tell me what’s ailing you. Holding it in may burst your spleen, I hear, and that can rarely be a good thing for anyone near by.” To her great relief, the words didn’t come out as shaky as she felt. Sarcasm had not always served her well, but sometimes that was all she had.
He raised his hand to strike her again, but Kate saw the reluctance in his eyes. She looked around for a weapon. There was nothing near. He must have moved all the good stuff in her sleep.
“What? No rocks, Katie? No potions or poultices? No words of wisdom or more sarcastic wit?”
“How about this. If you hit me again, I won’t love you anymore.” The words were low, soft and old fashioned with just a hint of French accent.
He blinked at her a moment. “Katherine?”
Then he came back to the present. His eyes focused on her in that narrow snake stare, and he also spoke very low. “Bitch, just the same bitch as ever. All these years and you’re still the same teasing whore that you were before, Katherine.”
“Call me Kate, since we seem to know each other so well.”
But this man she did not know—not at all. She glanced to the door as he started to pace. Only the light from a lantern came in, it was still dark outside.
“I would have helped you start over, Katherine,” he said, rubbing his temples in worry. “I would have made you forget them. I was there; he was not. He was off running around the world, leaving you there to stroke all those strangers and strut around showing your wares like some cheapened harpy come down in the world. In another time or place, you could have been a duchess, a queen even. It was his doing, his seed deserved to die.”
“My father?” she whispered, then louder, “Do you mean my father?’
“I saw it, you know.” Ambrose was looking in her direction, but Kate doubted it was the present he was seeing in his dark glassy eyes. He continued in nearly a whisper. “I watched the whole thing. They were after guns and horses, the Frenchmen, not after little brats. I told them though, the braves, my grandmother’s people, they listened to me. I told them where they could find your brothers, and you were meant to go too. My father didn’t want to do it, but the British then—“
“Told them? Who? What are you saying?”
He looked at Kate now, here, in the present, in this cabin. The detachment in his eyes made her blood run cold.
“The French were going to leave without the spoils,” he said. “They found out who she was, her family name, and they were just going to leave, just like that, out of some sort of misplaced gentlemanly deference. Can you imagine? Trappers, traders, scum that could not live in proper society, thinking they knew anything about proper society? I told the Huron war chief about your brothers, about how they could sell the boys up north, because they could speak British and French and some native tongues as well. And you, they would have found another use for you.
“I told him how the French were lying, that they saw the value and would come back later, on their own, so they would not have to share with their red brothers. He believed me because I was of their blood, one of them. It’s the only time I didn’t mind being a savage.”
He stopped, but he was again looking far away.
He glanced around nervously as if looking for someone else. She couldn’t know that in his mind, he was talking to his grandmother again.
Finally he added, “They believed me because my grandmother was a Kiowa squaw raped by a Huron buck, tossed out on her ass by her own tribe, and taken in by my doddering lecherous grandfather.”
“But why my mother, she was nothing but kind to you?”
“Kind to everyone, a whore of another sort. But it was my father’s idea, my dear Papa and his conniving friends. They were talking, he told the British officers what was going on there. All the talk of rebellion, it was sedition. My father pledged loyalty to the King and got paid for his services.”
“I knew your father was a Tory, but an informant? A spy? That doesn’t explain why my mother—“
He sobbed, fought it back. “Your mother’s tender touch . . . such a waste. She was tending the natives nearby. She heard them, you know, my father and the British officers. She knew what my father was doing. The British just wanted to send her to prison, but my father had a better idea. He said that if she were arrested, they would know it was him. She had to die, and it had to look like the natives. The fine British officers from their fine families—they agreed.”
Then he laughed hysterically. And he kept laughing. Kate thought that he would never stop. She eased off the bunk and edged toward the door. But he caught her by the arm and threw her back down. It knocked out her wind and she gasped for air.
Quickly, he crawled over the top of her.
Kate fought to push him off, but his full weight was too heavy. She stopped struggling and listened to his rasping breath. He just lay there, crushing her. Perhaps he was unsure. Perhaps reason had returned.
“Leave me now, just walk away, Ambrose,” she said. “We’ll forget the whole thing.”
The words seemed to wake him. He stared down at her for only a second, and then slithered off her like she was too hot to touch. His face was contorted in such pain and hate that he couldn’t control the sob. It just contorted his face, but no sounds would come out. She thought he might burst from the pressure.
Someone banged on the door.
“Not yet,” he roared.
But someone burst in anyway. It was the second mate.
He had blood on his pants, not his own by the look of him. He looked unscathed by the effort.
“It is done, mon ami,” the mate said. “Done clean and over the side without a shot even.”
The accent was some sort of Arabic too. She hadn’t noticed him so much before, but he looked European then. Now he looked like he had the bloodlines of both, and she knew that both sides often shunned mixed blood. Ambrose Standish was another example of that.
And look how well he has turned out, she thought.
“What’s done?” she demanded.
The mate eyed her, and then winked towards Ambrose.
“Get out,” Ambrose said.
The mate stopped smiling.
“Get out or get nothing,” Ambrose said.
The mate rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand, leaving behind a slight smear of blood on his face. Kate felt the heaviness rise up from her stomach as she guessed the horrible truth.
Mutiny. She didn’t have the nerve to say it out loud.
Ambrose just grunte
d.
“Why?” she said.
“Why not?”
“You bastard.”
“Bastards, younger sons, and useless girls. Which are you, little Katie? I thought they took you too, you see. I didn’t know you were there still. Did you know she liked it? I really think she did.”
“Stop it!” Kate put her hands to her ears and pressed hard. But she could still hear him.
“All that time I waited, wondered who would find her, what would happen. I loved her that much. I have never been with another, I can’t do it with anyone else.”
“Mama!” Kate sobbed and collapsed to her knees.
He touched her shoulder. “Katherine, if you would only try. Let me love you, Katherine.”
He didn’t speak for a moment. Kate studied his ankles, his feet, and wondered about her own. She had a black toenail from stubbing her toe on a bucket. It hurt still, and itched a little bit too. She wiggled her toe, but it didn’t move without the ones all around it. They all moved together.
Her toes had never been the same since they got frostbit and blue during her winter in Boston—the winter with her friend, Terry. The winter spent ice-skating in the cold hardness of coastal New England. The winter her father died.
Someone started humming.
Ambrose burst out laughing. It snapped her back to reality
“I’m not crazy, Kate, but I think you may be. Do you know I thought about marrying you when you got old enough? Ten years, maybe, that’s all it would take, I told myself then. I could have waited that long, I could have waited longer for that much money. But he took you away. Lucky thing for you too, for I also thought about killing you just because you were there that day. But poor little Katie didn’t say a word. She hummed and sang and screamed in her sleep, but she never said a word. Do you know how funny that is?”
She just gaped, for no words came to mind at all.
“I said do you know how funny that is?” But he didn’t wait for a reply. “Little Katie just sat in the corner or hung from the rigging and sang her little songs about flowers and bees and other stupid things, and they blamed the French for the whole thing. With a little hint or two from me, of course.”
The Wilde Flower Saga: A Contrary Wind (Historical Adventure Series) Page 31