Pirates

by Linda Lael Miller

  With a little gasp of protest and unutterable confusion, Phoebe Turlow fainted for the first time in her life.

  When she awakened, disoriented and sick, she was being carried up the staircase, Scarlett O’Hara style, and the hard arms supporting her were Duncan Rourke’s.

  He proceeded along a darkened hallway, refusing to look at Phoebe even though she sensed that he felt her gaze. The long muscles on either side of his neck were corded, and a muscle pulsed in his jaw.

  “Please put me down,” she said in a reedy voice. All her theories about the disappearing elevator and businessmen in silly costumes had vanished; the unfortunate and frightening truth was that Phoebe didn’t have the vaguest idea what was happening to her. Still, it was probably easier to be brave when standing up.

  “Your merest wish, madam, is my creed and my philosophy,” Rourke replied, and, passing through an open doorway on the right, he hurled her unceremoniously onto a waiting feather bed. “It would behoove you to mind your manners,” he added in parting. “For if you don’t, I promise you I shall take drastic measures.”

  Phoebe watched, trembling, as her host, be he pirate, patriot, hallucination, or ghost, turned and left the room. She heard a key grate in the lock, and started to scramble off the bed, but the strong brown hand of a native woman touched her shoulder. Phoebe had thought herself alone until then.

  “Here, now, child,” her companion said, in a soft and soothing voice. “You drink this medicine tea Old Woman made for you, and sleep. You came a long way to find us, I think, and you be tired.”

  Phoebe sat up and accepted a steaming cup with both hands. The woman’s motherly manner and kind words calmed her a little. “Something strange is happening to me,” she confided. “I think I’m having a nervous breakdown.” The tea tasted of honey and sweet herbs and probably contained a drug, but Phoebe drank it anyway.

  Old Woman smiled as she reached out and smoothed Phoebe’s ruffled hair. “No, child, you’re not sick,” she said. “It’s good magic afoot here, so don’t you fret. Old Woman, she been expecting you oh so long a time. She made ready. You finish tea, and you sleep. Tomorrow, just like always, the sun he shine bright to warm the heart.”

  Phoebe was beyond trying to make sense of anything; she, like Alice, had gone through the looking glass into another world. She set the cup aside, sorry that it was empty, and settled back onto the pillows. “What did you mean, when you said you’ve been expecting me?”

  “Old Woman sees things, that’s all. Sees them in smoke and in the mists that rise from the waters to dance for the moon.”

  “Well,” Phoebe said, with weary wryness and no little resignation, “that certainly clears things up.” She sighed as a light, soft blanket settled over her, seemingly in slow motion. Her words were childlike, and she knew it, but they were out before she could polish them to an adult shine. “Good night, Old Woman. I probably won’t see you again, because when I wake up, I’ll be back where I belong, and all of this will be nothing but a dream.”

  Phoebe’s self-appointed guardian shook her head. “That other place is the dream, child, not this one. You belong right here, with Mr. Duncan and me. You was lost before, maybe, but now you be found.”

  “Right,” Phoebe agreed, as her eyelids fluttered and closed. She heard the music again then, as delicately wrought as ever, but full of restrained passion and fury now, instead of the old, aching sorrow. She didn’t open her eyes, lest the dream end before she was ready to let it go. “That’s Duncan playing—isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Old Woman said tenderly. “He be talking to you. You listen, and try to understand.”

  Phoebe smiled, turned onto her side, and nestled deep into the feather bed. The subconscious mind, she reflected just before she drifted off, is a marvelous thing, full of magic and mystery.

  Duncan played until he’d purged his spirit of the music, taking no note of the compositions he chose, for he knew countless tunes and could execute any one of them without thinking. That night, like many before it, had its own unique melody, however, complicated and original and never to be heard again. When he had exhausted the terrible restlessness, the sense of seeking that had tormented him all his life, he covered the well-worn keys of the harpsichord and strode out of the drawing room.

  The great house was quiet, settled, and yet it fairly vibrated with her presence—the lunatic or crafty spy, who called herself Phoebe Turlow. She looked like a lad, with that close-cropped hair, and he might have checked to make sure she wasn’t one, if there hadn’t been a tantalizing swell of cleavage visible above her laced bodice.

  He smiled slightly. In truth, he’d been sorely tempted to look anyway, or at least untie the laces.

  He needed a woman, plainly, and copious amounts of smuggled rum. Or better yet, a rousing fifth.

  It was this damnable waiting that was driving Duncan insane, and vexing Alex and the others as well. They were warriors, seldom idle; men who sailed the seas, and marking time until a message arrived was pure torment.

  To keep from mounting the stairs, shaking his houseguest awake and subjecting her to a relentless interrogation—Old Woman would surely put a hex on him if he did—Duncan lit a lantern and returned to the cellar with its maze of passages, retracing his steps to the spot where he’d found the intruder.

  Searching the stone floor, he discovered an oddly shaped leather pouch. Farther along, in the place where Phoebe had fallen, a small metal object caught the light. It was a bracelet of a type he’d never seen before, with a tiny pocket watch affixed.

  Duncan frowned, pondering the clever gadget and its curious, though admittedly delectable, owner. In the sacrosanct province of his mind, he wondered if Mistress Turlow was the “she” whose imminent arrival Old Woman had predicted on the night of the storm and before that, and promptly discarded the notion as pap and whimsy. Phoebe, with her lad’s hair, bow-shaped mouth, and “good bone structure,” was no mystical creature from another world. More likely she was an agent of the British, come to get the goods, once and for all, on Duncan Rourke, enemy of the Crown, and the two dozen skilled fighting men who followed him.

  He’d known, of course, that the English would eventually locate the island, hidden though it was among a hundred unpopulated places like it, and surrounded by rocks and reefs so treacherous that only an expert captain could navigate them. Van Ruben, the Dutchman who had settled Paradise and built the mansion, with its secret channels leading to the sea, had not been a sociable sort. He’d wanted, according to legend, simply to live in refinement and peace, raising indigo, transporting and selling it himself. After the house was finished and most of the workers had gone back to Europe, Van Ruben had lived on in happy isolation, with a rich wife and a native mistress and children by both. In time, no one save the crews of the planter’s two small ships even remembered the island, let alone traveled there.

  Discovery had been inevitable, of course, for the English were intrepid explorers, among other things, and they were deft seamen. Duncan had hoped for a little more time, but the arrival of Phoebe Turlow was a clear indication that Paradise was no longer a secret from the rest of the world.

  He frowned, carrying the bracelet and the bag in one hand and the lamp in the other, as he moved back along the passageway to the stairs. There was another possibility, too, one even less appealing than the prospect of a full-scale British invasion. Phoebe might not be an English spy at all, but an associate of yet another enemy, the pirate Jacques Mornault.

  Mornault knew where the island was, though he’d stayed away for two years, having been thoroughly disgraced by rounds from Duncan’s well-placed cannon, which were hidden in the lush tropical growth on the high ridge overlooking the main harbor. Sending a woman to scout the area and prepare the way for fresh attack would be like Jacques; the Frenchman was meaner than the devil’s cross-eyed stepfather, and cunning along with it. To underestimate such a man would be a foolish blunder and shortsighted.

  Duncan reached the
main floor, extinguished the lantern, and set it aside, moving without hesitation through the darkened house. By God, he’d have the truth out of that woman come the morning, and if she was Mornault’s mistress, he would make a point of seducing her before sending her back to her lover.

  He met Old Woman on the main staircase, and her wise, night-shadowed gaze fell immediately on the trinket and pouch he’d recovered from the cellar floor.

  “She sleeps,” said the beloved witch. “You will not disturb her.”

  “I am the master of this house,” Duncan pointed out blandly. He had learned, long since, that a wise leader never relinquishes authority, even in the smallest matters—to do so is to invite chaos. “Should I wish to awaken our lovely visitor, I will do so.”

  Old Woman smiled, but not, this time, with fondness. “Look inside her medicine bag. You will see that the things she carries are unknown to us.”

  Duncan shivered inwardly, but his jaw was set. “I fully intend to examine Mistress Turlow’s belongings,” he said. “If she’s not an English spy, I’ll no doubt find some ribbon or bauble, a remembrance of her lover, Mornault.”

  “You go far,” Old Woman said, not unkindly, “to avoid the truth. Phoebe was sent here to give you joy, to bear your children, to teach you and to be taught. Without her, you cannot be the man the gods meant you to be, and she needs you, also, to become herself.”

  He sighed. He’d never met anyone who spoke with the convoluted grace that Old Woman did. She was often astonishingly articulate, though at other times it seemed she could barely shape a comprehensible sentence. He suspected her of playing roles, choosing the one that best suited her purposes at the moment, and was absolutely certain that her mind was, in some ways, quicker than his own.

  “Enough of your riddles,” he said, suffering an insight into how Alex must feel when he, Duncan, performed his own verbal acrobatics. “Mistress Turlow is a prisoner, though of course she will be treated with courtesy as long as she behaves. In the morning, however, I intend to question her until she tells me what I want to know.”

  “Take care,” Old Woman warned gently, moving past him, as slight and boneless as a breeze, to proceed down the stairs. “You are too certain of the answers, and the questions have yet to be asked. A man already convinced is deaf and blind to proof that he is wrong.”

  With that, she was gone, disappearing into the darkness of the foyer like a haunt.

  Duncan proceeded to the second floor and stopped outside the locked door of Phoebe’s room, her odd belongings in his hands. He imagined her thrashing, nubile and eager, in Mornault’s bed, and the image enraged him so profoundly that he muttered a curse and went, in long strides, to his own chamber.

  There, where a silvery wash of moonlight streamed in through the great windows, twins to those below in the long dining room, Duncan opened the catch of Phoebe’s bag and dumped the contents onto the polished library table where he did most of his reading.

  A tubular object of some sort, half out of its wrapping of thin white paper, with a string dangling. A small mirror. A book, strangely bound in stock hardly thicker than its pages, rather than the usual cloth or leather. He scanned the first page, which described a gruesome murder in odd terms and meters, much like Phoebe’s speech. A leather folder, filled with photographs, little squares made of a hard, slick substance he had never seen before, and currency.

  Puzzled, Duncan struck a match and lit the candles on his desk, holding one of the ornate green bills to the light. The phrase “The United States of America” leaped out at him, making his heart pound with an excitement the likes of which he had never felt before. Inside an oval, couched in what appeared to be wheat fronds, was the likeness of a homely and somber-looking man with a beard. “Lincoln,” read the tiny print beneath the engraving.

  He laid the bit of paper down with the other things, blew out the candles, and began to undress. Though mystified and distinctly worried, Duncan Rourke was smiling as he stretched out between the smooth sheets of his bed, savoring five magnificent words he, and many others, were willing to die for.

  The United States of America.

  3

  Phoebe opened her eyes, fully expecting the Duncan Rourke fantasy to be over, leaving reality swirling in its backwash. Instead, she saw Old Woman standing beside her bed—which wasn’t the one in her hotel room—beaming with benevolent triumph and gesturing toward the row of windows on the other side of the room.

  “There,” she said. “The sun’s been waiting for you to look at him.”

  Phoebe covered her face with both hands and groaned. “This isn’t real,” she said. “I’m hallucinating.”

  Old Woman laughed, her voice mellow, polished, and resonant. “No, miss. You was doing that before, in that other world. Like I told you last night, what you see around you is what’s true.”

  Even though Phoebe was more inclined toward wild hysteria than anything else, she forced herself to concentrate, focus, keep her internal balance. “My name is Phoebe Turlow,” she recited in determined if moderate tones, speaking to herself alone. “I live in Seattle, Washington. I was born in 1969, and I have a bachelor of arts degree in English Literature. I was married—”

  “Yes, yes,” interrupted Old Woman indulgently, prodding Phoebe into an upright position and setting a breakfast tray in her lap. “All that’s over and done. Here. You eat. You need your strength to make a match with the likes of Mr. Duncan.”

  Phoebe’s appetite proved unhampered by the situation. She reached for a piece of toasted bread, thick and buttery, and took a bite. “I really don’t think I imagined Seattle,” she said, musing aloud rather than talking to Old Woman and chewing as she spoke. She frowned at her companion. “I’ll bet you’re a subconscious archetype. Yes—it’s all very Jungian. You’re some sort of mother-figure—both nurturing and controlling…”

  Old Woman rolled her luminous brown eyes. “Such strange talk,” she scolded, but with affection. Then she sighed and sat down in a chair drawn close to the bed. “You be careful what you say outside this room, miss. There be some who would call you witch, hearing such wild talk. And these folks here, they don’t much take to magic and the like.”

  Overwhelmed and hungry, Phoebe swallowed the arguments that rose in her throat, along with a sip of strong tea, and said nothing. After that, she consumed an egg and a portion of stewed apples, flavored with cinnamon and nutmeg.

  Then, emboldened, Phoebe reiterated her original theory. “ ‘Old Woman.’ Even your name is straight out of a textbook. You symbolize wisdom, I think, and compassion, and—”

  “I am flesh and blood, miss, just like you,” said the archetype. “I just myself, that’s all.”

  Phoebe shook her head, waggling her fork for emphasis. “No,” she said. “You’re a remarkably detailed projection of my deeper mind, which is obviously troubled. If you were real, you would have a name.”

  “I have,” came the quiet reply. “I am called ‘Old Woman’ because I have lived so long. My true name is a secret—to say it aloud is to make a powerful spell.”

  Phoebe gave up, for the moment, and was just setting the tray aside to get out of bed and look for the bathroom when a brisk rap sounded at the door. Before she could say “come in” or “stay out,” Duncan stepped over the threshold, looking even more authentic in the daylight than he had by the glow of oil lamps and candles.

  The loose laces at the neck of his shirt and the dark stubble of a beard added to his roguish charm, and Phoebe pondered his role in her personal mythology. Like Old Woman, he was surely an illusion, signifying some facet of her psyche.

  Embarrassing though it was, Phoebe finally concluded that Duncan represented the deepest yearnings of her libido. Freud would have a heyday with this, she reflected. But underlying all her tidy, though alarming, psychological speculations was something else: an absolute certainty, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, that her sanity was still very much intact.

  Her instincts told her
that Old Woman really was flesh and blood, just as she appeared to be, and so was Duncan Rourke. He stood at the foot of her bed by then, looking imperious and, though he was clearly trying to hide the fact, every bit as confused as Phoebe herself. He took a small object from the pocket of his breeches and tossed it into her lap.

  Her watch.

  “A clever application of an old principle,” he said, grudgingly, as if by commenting on a modern gadget he must also give Phoebe the credit for inventing it.

  Grateful for this small proof that she hadn’t imagined her other life in the late twentieth century, Phoebe pulled the watch onto her wrist and checked the time—not that the hour mattered. It was, after all, the year that was in question.

  “Thanks,” she said. “For a while there, I thought I’d gone crazy. By the way, what year is this?”

  Duncan raised one dark eyebrow, silently indicating that he had yet to discard the possibility of lunacy. Old Woman, whose true name could not be uttered because it was magic, stood by, not speaking, protective, and bristling with dignity.

  “It is 1780, of course,” said the master of the house. Then, after a lengthy and thunderous silence, he demanded, “Who are you?”

  Phoebe, though still reeling from the announcement that more than two hundred years had just fallen off the celestial calendar, recalled Old Woman’s warning about the eighteenth-century attitude toward witches, self-proclaimed or otherwise, and thought carefully before answering. “My name is Phoebe Turlow,” she said. “I believe I’ve told you that already. In fact, I’m thinking of changing it, out of pure boredom. Do I look like an Elisabeth to you, or a Helen?”

  A muscle leaped in Duncan’s cheek, and was promptly stilled—by force of will, no doubt. “The truth, madam,” he intoned. “I have had enough of your nonsense.”

  “That is the truth,” Phoebe insisted, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and standing up. She was not ill, not physically anyway, and talking to Duncan while lying almost prone disquieted her in a way that was not entirely unpleasant. It also gave him the psychological advantage. “I know you’re wondering how I got here,” she went on, trying in vain to smooth her crumpled wench’s costume and at the same time lend herself some shred of credibility. “Well, as it happens, I have no idea.”