by Sally Watson
The voices on deck had risen now, topped by the infuriated bellow of Captain Narramore, who had apparently just arrived on the scene. More purposeful sounds began, and Jade came back to practical reality. Blood was soaking her shirt sleeve. She must get Domino to do something about it in the morning, but just now it would be enough to bind it tightly and stop the bleeding. It couldn’t be very deep or serious, for she could flex her arm, and even manage to strike the flint and steel and relight the slush lamp.
She was just starting the tricky business of wrapping a silk scarf tightly around her own upper arm—one end caught between her teeth—when there came a banging at the door.
She stopped breathing in the middle of a breath, staring at the unoffending door as if it had deliberately betrayed her. Again the banging, and the first mate’s voice.
“Mistress Lennox! Wake up, Mistress Lennox! Demme, she can’t be sleeping through all this!”
Jade took up her cue. “Wha— What is it?” she called, making her voice sound small and alarmed with very little trouble. “What’s happening out there?”
“No danger, Mistress. But someone’s let some of the slaves loose. Captain wants to talk to everybody on board.”
That was predictable enough; of course he would. But no one could possibly think of suspecting her. It would be quite beyond imagination, so long as she hadn’t actually been caught in the act. Feeling quite comfortably safe, she breathed again and played for time.
“Slaves loose!” she squeaked. “Well, I’m certainly not coming out there, then! Not until you get every one of them put right back again!” She fumbled with the scarf, clumsy in her hurry, pulling it so tightly that the bleeding must stop, even if her fingers went numb. And she tied it somehow with right hand and teeth while the idiotic conversation went on.
“I tell you there’s no danger, Mistress. But the captain wants to see everybody. The chap wot loosed them is on board somewhere, and he might’ve got into your cabin,” he added cunningly.
“Well, he didn’t!” snapped Jade in splendidly convincing indignation. “And I’m not going out there in the middle of the night like this; it’s not decent; and besides, I’ve got my night-rail on, and my slave is locked in her cubbyhole, so I can’t get dressed.” She tied the final knot. The pain of the cut had become something far away and irrelevant, something her body felt but her attention couldn’t be bothered with. The mate was still waiting in baffled silence outside the door.
“Well, couldn’t you just put on something by yourself, Mistress?” he suggested finally in a diffident and embarrassed voice. “Captain’s wild, Mistress; I don’t know wot he’ll say if I tell him you won’t.”
Jade at once perceived that this would be a great mistake. “Well, then, I’ll try,” she agreed reasonably. “But you’ll have to give me a few minutes, you know.” And she hurried to her chest to find the most voluminous garment she owned. No time to change from her breeches; she must just put something over them. The rose red contouche would be best, in case blood seeped through the scarf, she decided with a coolness that quite pleased her. The color wouldn’t show, and also it had full, deep-cuffed sleeves reaching below the elbow.
She rolled the blue shirt-sleeves as high as she could, and slipped the contouche over her head. It hung full and waistless, hiding any bulge of bandage or breeches. A glance in the tiny mirror showed a few smudges on her face, easily wiped off, and no more pallor than could be easily explained by alarm. She took a deep breath and felt ready to face the world, the crew, and even the captain in his wrath.
The deck was now lit with a dozen or more lanterns, the hatch was an empty black hole down which the captain was staring, the crew swarmed everywhere, and Mr. and Mrs. Plomley stood bewildered and disapproving near the stairs leading up to the quarterdeck. Jade at once went and looked bewildered and disapproving with them.
The squeak and splash of oars below suggested a small-boat returning from a hunt for swimming slaves, and a shout presently verified this. “Caught two, sir!”
Jade gritted her teeth and thought of all the swear words she knew, which was very few indeed. She kept her face carefully blank—a mistake which might well have betrayed her had anyone been in the least suspicious, but they weren’t. Captain Narramore was promising a flogging for the culprit when he should be found, and no one else was paying any attention to the passengers except for the conscientious mate, who regarded them anxiously.
“Did any of you hear anything?” he asked the three passengers. The Plomleys shook their heads. Jade tossed hers.
“I should think I did!” she pronounced with as much indignation as she could manage with the distraction of her throbbing arm, coupled with a sad lack of any real dramatic ability. “I’ve never heard so much racket; and all that banging on my door; it isn’t nice.” It sounded just like Aunt Louisa, she decided, flickering her lashes in what was intended to be roguish reproach, but which caused the mate to wonder if she was subject to fits.
A few feet away the bos’n was standing up to the captain with the boldness of conviction. “I tell yer, I got the fellow! Blooded me dagger, I did. On ’is arm, I fink, sir. Couldn’t see, what wiv it being dark and all, but ’is left arm I fink. ’Ave a look at everyone’s arms, and you’ll find ve blighter wot let ’em loose.”
Jade’s heart leaped and then calmed down. It was just conceivable that they might look at Mr. Plomley’s arm, but certainly she and Mrs. Plomley would be passed over without question. Ladies simply did not run around turning slaves loose at midnight, and with swords, at that. Unthinkable.
Sure enough, the search was made then and there, every sailor and officer pulling off his shirt if he was wearing one, to prove that he hadn’t a wound from the waist up—except for the fellow that Jade had pinked, and he could prove he’d been below with the others until the alarm.
Jade leaned against the bulkhead as she watched, partly to prove to herself and everyone else how relaxed and unconcerned she was, and partly because her throbbing arm was making her feel just the tiniest bit odd. No one was paying her the slightest attention, and she could enjoy the whole scene as much as her wound would permit. The captain was becoming more and more livid—first with the loss of the slaves, and now with the impossible fact that no one had apparently done the thing.
“It was a slave you stabbed,” he muttered furiously at the bos’n, his lean face suffused. But the bos’n shook a stubborn head, waved his stained dagger, and maintained that the chap he got was wearing a shirt, which none of the slaves wasn’t.
At last the captain turned his enraged eyes on Mr. Plomley. “I’ll see you as well, sir,” he growled, quite beyond any consideration of courtesy to passengers. “And what about your personal slaves, all of you?” Ignoring Mr. Plomley’s indignant sputtering, he swung around to Jade with a sudden thought. “What about your slave, Mistress? That big black fellow—”
“He’s locked in the cubicle!” she retorted in brief panic. “I always lock them in! You can see for yourself!” And she blinked, because the ship seemed unaccountably to be swaying in a way that it had never done before.
Mr. Plomley’s pale offended torso was gleaming now, unmarked. Captain Narramore turned away again as the gaunt figure of the second mate emerged from the hatch to report on the number of slaves missing. His harsh voice and unemotional face tended to fade out. So, for that matter, did the deck. Jade shook her head, screwing her eyes to make things come back to normal. There was a dark hollow sickness in her middle, and a swarm of bees buzzing invisibly.
“Wot’s the matter with Mistress Lennox?” It was the anxious voice of the first mate. “I think she’s fainting, sir!”
Jade could see the captain turn—a long distance away, and very slowly. There was surprise in his face, and no wonder. What nonsense! She never fainted, never in her life! She— A wave of grayness came between her and the world. She shoved her back hard against the bulkhead and tried to tell them that she never fainted.
“Her
e, Missy, look out!” And the captain reached out and grabbed her firmly by the arms.
Red-hot pain shocked Jade out of any thought of fainting. Caught completely unprepared, she stiffened with a hissing gasp—swayed in his grip—and when she could breathe again through bared teeth and shutter her face, it was far too late to dissemble. His fingers had felt the bulk of the scarf and the warm dampness seeping through. The captain’s weathered face wore a look of idiotic incredulity. Behind him, a half circle of blank eyes, and one slanted pair that gleamed ferocious.
The milk being irretrievably spilled, Jade was seized by the old danger-madness that so baffled her family. Her sudden laughter was derisive, triumphant, altogether reckless; it shocked her audience to their very souls, and gave Jade a most tremendous satisfaction. She laughed again.
Unbelieving voices babbled around her, one hysterically soprano and the rest outraged and masculine. A girl! Impossible! The sleeve of her contouche was ripped open, revealing blue shirt and reddened scarf as damning, incredible proof. The captain turned a face pitiless with anger.
“I swore I’d flog the guilty party, and so help me, I shall!”
They were watching to see her flinch. But Jade was still somewhere apart from reality, in a state of near-intoxication, so that his words slid past her like a sword unable to pierce her guard. She heard appalled exclamations and a small scream from Mrs. Plomley, but she knew her own face remained unmoved. She even managed one of her small crooked smiles, aimed right at Rory MacDonald. He was definitely not looking down his nose at her now.
It was a brief moment of glory—which Captain Narramore refused to pause and admire. “Lock her in her cabin until morning,” he ordered curtly. “The storm’s abating, and I want to sail with the next tide if the sea isn’t too heavy. I’ll deal with her after that. Did you hear me, Lawton? That’s an order!”
The punishment for disobedience at sea was hanging. Clearly reluctant, the first mate obeyed, leading the unresisting Jade to her cabin and then staring down at her dumbly. Jade stared back, still exalted, but uncomfortably aware that reality was waiting to break through. And being the heroine of a Greek tragedy had probably been very unsatisfying indeed for the real Antigonë. Still, so far she was still on stage, and meant to make the most of it. Besides, there was a practical matter to be seen to.
“Will you do something for me?” she asked, carefully calm.
He swallowed, properly impressed. “If I can.”
“Look after my slaves, please—and don’t let anyone let them out until it’s over. Please! They’d be wild. And try not to give the girl any orders; she’s not used to them. Here, I’ll give you the keys to their cubbyholes.”
And her hand, she was pleased to see, was perfectly steady.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nightmare
She lay on her bunk in her boy’s clothes, watching the tiny patch of sky visible through the window as it turned gray and mauve and blue; and she wished she were dead. Her battle-courage had all ebbed away, and she was in the grip of a smothering black fear such as she had never before dreamed of. It churned and lurched in her stomach, and made her pulse pound in her ears and her hands clammy. And with it was the humiliating discovery that she was not, after all, the stuff from which Greek heroines were made.
She had thought she was brave and strong, had despised weaklings. Now, with her courage about to be really tested, she knew herself a shameful coward who longed to undo the whole thing, put the escaped slaves back below the hatch, go back to yesterday and pretend she had never thought of it. It was a mean, despicable wish—and she wished it with all her heart!
She lay perfectly still, arm throbbing and fists clenched, not crying because tears were wholly inadequate. She tried to tell herself that it would just be like one of Father’s beatings—only worse, of course—but her body knew better, for her heart twisted painfully at the mere thought, and the tiny room was so filled with her own dread that she could hardly breathe.
It was of no use to remember her code. That didn’t tell what to do if a consequence was too much for her untried courage, and broke it. The thought of herself screaming and crying under the lash was in a way as great a fear as the lash itself. Perhaps greater. If only she could know she wouldn’t break. . . .
But she couldn’t run away. She had to face it—and with at least an imitation of bravery, if that was the best she could do. And while she could keep it up, would it be pretense at all? Wasn’t that what courage was: facing the thing you feared and pretending not to fear it?
It was light now, and the ship was coming to life. The sails were being spread; she heeled over into the brisk wind; came about, creaking, as the tide ebbed.
Jade shivered, already exhausted. She was cold with fear, and numb, and her arm hurt more and more. The Pearl must be out of the lee of the island now, into the strong wind that remained from the storm. And presently the first mate, hangdog, came for her.
A sense of unreality possessed her now. She forced herself to look around, squinting into the hard bright sunlight at the sullen crew, and Tom’s pale distraction, and MacDonald’s ferocious ringed eyes. The Plomleys were conspicuously absent, and Captain Narramore’s mouth was a thin slit in a thin face. Jade put her shoulders back and her chin up, propelled as much by habit as will. Her legs were weak and her mouth dry, but she stared back at him, astonished that her craven animal fear seemed to show so little.
“Well, Mistress Lennox?”
Nothing was left now of principles or code: only the warring passions of pride and terror that caused her stomach to twist and gripe until the fear of being sick came to add itself to the others.
“Have you anything to say?”
She shook her head, not daring to trust her voice. An attempt at a smile stuck halfway, but she could feel that by some miracle her pretense was holding up . . . so far. . . .
“Right.” He gave an inaudible order. Reluctant rough hands began to propel Jade across the deck, and the sick terror swept down on her again, almost blotting out sun and sky. And then MacDonald’s voice cut in, harsher and sharper than usual, like a jagged saw.
“Don’t be a fool, sir! How could a puny wench like this possibly loosen the wedges, even if she had a key to the padlock? . . . Matter of fact, I did it myself.”
No one took it in for a moment. Jade stared with suddenly clear eyes, shocked for the moment right out of terror and nausea. “Liar!” she said with conviction, her voice a thin croak.
“Liar!” echoed the captain, but he looked slightly shaken. “She’s admitted it,” he pointed out unanswerably. “And look at the wound on her arm—and her clothes—and the blooded rapier in her cabin. Are you sweet on her or something, MacDonald?”
At this calumny they both forgot the crisis for an instant and turned furious eyes upon him. Rory MacDonald fairly spat. “How in blazes d’you think she got the hatch open, you flaming imbecile? And who d’you think prodded the poor devils into moving?”
Jade gaped, remembering certain odd sounds and shapes in the dark of that few moments. Captain Narramore was looking like a man receiving a third kick in the pit of the stomach.
“A conspiracy!” he breathed.
“It wasn’t!” yelped Jade, quite irrational.
“Mutiny!” added the captain. “That’ll hang you, MacDonald—after I flog you both. What are you waiting for?” he snarled at the first mate. And the two criminals— hating each other almost as much as the captain—were marched off to punishment.
After that, things became mercifully blurred, for the black fear and unreality flooded over her again. There was a long, nearly-unbearable wait . . . and the hideous sound of a whip coming down on someone else’s back . . . and then in sharp focus Rory MacDonald’s masked face and a bright glance of derisive challenge. If it was intended to quench her, it had the opposite effect, for she rose to it. If he could stand it, she could! And he wasn’t making a sound. New courage surged through her, in a confused rush.
&n
bsp; Then raw fire seared across her own back, shocking the air from her lungs with the unexpected savagery of it. She heard her own gasp—felt an instant of not caring whether she were brave or not—and then came a wave of obstinate pride that wiped out everything but itself. If it wasn’t courage, it made a good substitute.
Time measured itself in streaks of lightning, and then someone was yelling. It wasn’t Jade; she was sure of that. It seemed to be everyone else. Then the lightning stopped and there was a most astonishing eruption of noise: a medley of shouts and shooting, of running feet and strident swords, and crashes and crunches, and then, to her great relief, nothing.
Jade came slowly up from a deep dark place shot through with lurid bits of light. Probably a well, she decided foggily. There was someone hurting, too, but she didn’t much care, because she was busy with the effort of rising out of the well, and also with the problem of breathing. It was stuffy down here, and the murmur of voices echoed hollow and faint.
Lights grew stronger presently from the other side of her closed eyes, and she was no longer sure she wanted to come up at all. She had a nasty suspicion that it wasn’t going to be pleasant, and that the person hurting so badly might even turn out to be herself.
It was, too. She had just a moment to notice that she was face-down on a huge bed, and to receive a brief impression of a tall man bending over her. She could see no more than a glimpse of velvet breeches and a narrow strip of silk shirt, and then the pain attacked, no longer dull, but flaming red and orange, shot with streaks of murky yellow. Jade drew one sharp breath (which made it worse) and the figure at once bent over her.