She sat here because there was nothing she could do. She had not saved the life of the child or its mother, could not save those wretched men, and could do nothing to help Jesamiah.
“I am so glad you have made amends with your husband, my dear,” Mrs Rogers repeated, yet again, her hand reaching out to squeeze Tiola’s. “It is our duty to serve our husbands, although we receive little thanks for it.” She sighed and reached out to straighten her husband’s askew wig, smiled conspiratorially at her only female companion. “Mr Rogers does so vex me with his lack of care for his appearance.”
Steadfastly, Tiola ignored the woman as she meandered on. It made sense to come here, she could not fault Stefan on that, for the rioting had spread quickly – and was being as quickly stamped out – but angry men with weapons were volatile, and Nassau was like an open powder keg this night. Initially, she had been surprised to find him waiting for her, but in public he was always a man who wanted to be seen doing the right thing; no husband who took pains to portray himself as a gentleman would have abandoned his wife to the mob. And for once it appeared he truly was concerned for her.
Mindful and courteous, he had shielded her from two drunks who barged into them, and taken her arm to guide her away from a brawl ahead. Had raised his pistol twice to threaten potential aggressors. She was capable of taking care of herself but for fear of exposure, she did not like to rely on her ability of Craft, and in truth, she had been grateful for his protection. She had been relieved to find herself brought here, although she strongly suspected Stefan had some ulterior motive for his solicitude. A motive she had not, yet, had opportunity to uncover.
Dinner, she realised however, was going to be one of those occasions that she would prefer not to happen. From the outset, Mrs Rogers had assumed the rift, “Your little upset” as she termed it, between husband and wife had been mended.
“Get yourself with child,” she suddenly whispered. “Always the best way to please a husband, they enjoy fussing over and pampering you because they hope for the patter of a little boy’s feet.” Mrs Rogers’ whispers, like those of her husband’s, were a full-blown trumpet blast.
Woodes Rogers guffawed. “Patter of feet? Good grief woman, that son you presented me with fifteen years ago thundered around as if he had nailed boots on!”
“Seventeen, dear. He is seventeen now.”
“Is he by Jove! Well bless me, where does time go, eh? Ha, ha!” He thumped his hand on to Stefan’s shoulder. “Get yer poke undone, Stefan, give yer wife something to think about other than that stubbornly unhelpful swab of a pirate. Make sure no bun cooking in the oven is of his dough first though, eh?”
He was not a man who understood the word, or the deed, of tact. Mrs Rogers blushed at his crude humour and hastily changed the subject.
Answering automatically, aye or nay, to a barrage of minor domestic trivialities, Tiola opened her mind to the man she loved.
~ Jesamiah? ~ She met the blackness of his shielded mind, as solid as a wall, but she tentatively pushed against it, insistent, and his defence momentarily crumbled. She heard, felt, him respond, a brief snatch of his loving presence, his tenderness and devotion, all of it instantly ripped away in an outburst of distraught anguish.
~ I’m so sorry sweetheart! Please believe I love you. I have to do this. I have no choice! ~
And the world beyond the closed windows of Governor Rogers’ first floor dining room erupted into a blasting crescendo of sound, the sky was lit as if it were day, the windows rattled, the ground shook. The men were on their feet, hurling their chairs aside, scrambling for the French windows.
Rogers hauled them open, hurried out on to the balcony. “Gad! That bloody Fanny Anne Vernon ain’t firing cannon at m’town now, is he? I’ll have him court-martialled!”
Tiola darted with them, her lace shawl slipping from her shoulders to crumple unnoticed on the sun-faded carpet, her hands pressing hard, covering her mouth to stifle the scream from hurtling outward.
~ Jesamiah! No! ~ Was he going? Yet again was he sailing away and leaving her behind? She could not believe this was happening!
~ I thought you loved me, thought you wanted me! Jesamiah! Oh Jesamiah! ~
Henry Jennings was shaking his head, one hand going to her shoulder in comforting understanding as the tears began to crawl down her cheeks. Rogers was blustering as loud as the booming echoes that were shuddering through Nassau. Only Stefan van Overstratten remained seated, arms folded, his expression a contortion of intense satisfaction and relief.
Twenty Two
Jesamiah’s insistence on discipline during a fight, and the many hours he had spent putting the crew through exhausting gun practice proved its worth. The guns on the larboard side ripped, one after the other, as their target came in sight. Each one tore through the unprotected Challenger’s stern, through the taffrail and across the quarterdeck, smashing her wheel and binnacle box, slamming into the mizzenmast. Shattering through her seven stern windows, the heavy iron balls going on through Commodore Vernon’s cabin and the bulkheads and straight on along the gun deck, destroying everything in the way, be it wood, iron or human flesh and bone.
Jesamiah roared at Rue to bring Sea Witch round, bellowed at the men to shift their arses and meet her. She responded, as always she did to Jesamiah’s orders, without griping, moving willingly, fast and efficient. The yards creaked round, her crew swearing and cursing as they hauled on the sheets, the canvas cracking as the wind, full behind, billowed them outward as if they were live things.
Aboard Challenger, red-coated militia guards were scurrying aloft in what was left of the lower rigging, but Jesamiah’s men at the swivel guns easily picked them off before they even had chance to aim, let alone fire the muskets slung over their shoulders. He did not need to see to know what the carnage would be over there. He felt sorry for the damage to a proud ship, but it was only a passing regret. Had it been the other way around Vernon would have had no hesitation in blasting the Sea Witch out of the water – as his officers may well be doing in the next few minutes anyway.
Swept along by the current and the wind, Sea Witch was gaining speed, swaying forward parallel now with the naval vessel, less than fifty yards between the two. Challenger was firing for all she was worth, her first shots whistling overhead to fall harmlessly into the sea beyond the Sea Witch’s starboard rails.
One…two…three…four…five…swabbed out, reloaded, each of Sea Witch’s larboard cannon fired one after the other, the noise deafening, the belch of flame from the muzzles; acrid smoke palling in the rain-sodden air. Men wiped their smoke-blackened forearms across their red-rimmed smoke-irritated eyes, desperate to stay alive. The screaming of the wounded and dying was pitiful.
Rain was sculling down as if it were being swept through a drain, so dense it formed a heaving mist. The four guns on the open waist of the Sea Witch hissed as steam rose from the hot iron of the heavy barrels; the deck ran with water that poured in a red-tainted torrent out through the scuppers. The smoke writhed and seethed around the masts, clung to the gap between the two ships.
Challenger‘s guns were finding their mark now, a section of the Sea Witch’s rail shattered in a burst of splinters – a man cried out, fell backwards clutching at his eye where a splinter, several inches long, had penetrated. Blood seeped through his fingers as his body contorted, and then lay still.
Smoke and rain almost obscured the Challenger, only the flared illumination of blasting flame marking where she was, but Jesamiah reckoned that to them, the Sea Witch was no different. Neither side needed to see the other to aim and fire. Not now.
Jesamiah’s only problem: he could see nothing for’ard, nothing beyond the mainmast ahead of him. Momentarily he came close to panic. Was he heading direct for the deeper channel? He glanced at the compass, the needle was swinging in its correct position, but this manoeuvre took more than a compass reading to achieve! It took skill and experience and a sharp sight. If they slewed to either starboard or la
rboard they would run aground on the hard bar of the sandy shallows, or fetch up on the jagged rocks of the shore, would founder and be wrecked, destroyed as surely by the sea as they may yet be by the Challenger’s blasting guns.
Twenty Three
Tiola stared, horrified, at the destruction happening on the far side of the harbour. The appalling damage to both ships and to the men aboard them. As she watched, with a creaking groan and whip-lash crack of the separating stays, Challenger’s main topmast tilted, lingered a moment, then tumbled slowly downwards as if it were a felled tree. All of it falling as a tangled mass of cordage, canvas and split timbers. Holes gaped like yawning mouths in her side; rudder, stern and railings were nothing but ragged splinters. But Vernon kept strict discipline aboard his ship and his officers and gunners, heedless of the dead, dying and wounded, were retaliating with a savage, almost insane vengeance.
Sea Witch’s sails were holed, great chunks of her railings were also jagged and gouged. Her rigging was shredded in places, her fore t’gallant mast tilted at a crooked angle. Jesamiah’s men, heedless of the militia aboard Challenger aiming their muskets at them, were scampering aloft to make running repairs as best they could. As Tiola watched, one man took a musket ball in the back and fell like a stone. She closed her eyes, squeezed aside more tears, hoped he was dead before he had hit the wooden planking of the deck.
~ Oh Jesamiah! Jesamiah, what have you done? ~
She received no answer. She knew he was alive, she would have known instantly were he to be dead. Early on, when first she had spoken to him in this special, secretive way, he had shielded himself from her presence within his mind by a natural instinct, now, he had learnt how to do it as and when he wanted. He had the right to choose to hear her or not, but sometimes she wished he was not so stubbornly independent. She pushed again, firmer, against the shield he had erected against her, felt its impenetrable solidity. He knew she was trying to contact him, for she sensed a slight, hesitant waver before it strengthened even further.
He was leaving her. For a second time he was leaving her behind. And an inner dread that maybe he would not be coming back cut into her as cruelly as any sharpened blade.
The rain was sweeping Sea Witch’s bow as she swept forward past the Challenger. The density of the downpour partially obliterating her from sight, but rain would not stop the round shot, grape, langrage or the musket balls from hitting her. Rain could not protect the Sea Witch from being blown to pieces, nor could the rain protect Jesamiah – but Tiola could.
She was in pain and anguish from his going, did not know why he was going, but she loved him and trusted him. He had said he had no choice. He often lied, but never to her. It hurt, his going like this, but oh, how much more it would hurt were he to die!
She was tired, was emotionally and physically drained, but since stepping ashore the headache had gone. Raising her hand she made a soft “hie…ssh,” sound on an exhaled breath and concentrated on the solid shape of the Sea Witch. She closed her eyes and freed her spirit, allowed it to spiral upward like a curl of smoke rising solemnly from a chimney. Released from the confinement of her earth-bound body, Tiola soared above the house and above Nassau. Her inner self, the immortal part of her that held no boundary of form or shape shifted into an ethereal, shadowed mist that writhed itself around the Sea Witch, safely enclosing her in a protective embrace.
Tiola could have removed Challenger with one flick of her fingers, could have toppled and sank her as if she were of no more consequence than a holed bucket bobbing on the surface of the sea, but Tiola’s powers were governed by restrictions, her abilities limited by the law of her Craft. She was not permitted to do deliberate harm to a mortal unless the necessity was imperative to save herself. Oh, she could, very easily she could kill every person in Nassau; she could swipe out their arrogances and their angers, remove all the petty jealousies and the selfish obsessions. One word on her breath, one movement of her hand and all would be gone. Except she would be gone with it, for she existed as the counterbalance to the evils of the world; hope against despair, compassion against indifference. She was the love that drove out hatred, and she could not, ever, permit hatred to consume her.
Her Craft was created to preserve, not destroy. So, instead of harming those aboard the Challenger she shielded the Sea Witch. To human eyes, Jesamiah’s included, Sea Witch disappeared into a swirling mist-cloud of fugged smoke and pouring rain.
Thunder ripped across the sky, its roar matching the whoomph, of the Challenger’s cannons and her men ducked their heads against the vicious sting of the rain that pricked spitefully into their skin. They were firing blind at a ship that had become a ghost, a fading shadow. Not a shot hit her, for Tiola’s spirit mass absorbed every shuddering blow.
The fort’s cannons should also have been in action – there was movement up there on the walls, men were darting about, hurrying to load the guns, a great bustle of confusion, but as Jesamiah had predicted many of the Governor’s militia were dealing with the fighting in the town, leaving the fortress undermanned. One cannon roared to life but its shot fell wide, a second had damp powder in the touch hole, and beyond a feeble sputter, did nothing more.
As the Sea Witch slid past the Challenger’s bows, Tiola could hear Jesamiah shouting for the men to get ready to loose sail. She could see them as they waited alert and tense at their stations, and could feel the great pull of the ebbing tide carrying the ship along. But her energy was fading, it was all she could do to hold the misted shadow-cloak in place. She nearly let it slip! A great cheer arose from the Challenger as they saw their target clearly again!
Tiola gasped, closed the gap in her concentration and the cloak of protection. What had caused that? What element had shrivelled in under her awareness and caused mischief? And then she heard the low, hushing laugh, became aware of the waiting, gleeful presence; realised the reason for the headaches and the tiredness. Tethys! Tethys was draining her ability as water seeps from a cracked pot!
~ You are in my realm. I hold power here, not you or your kind. ~
~ You cannot harm me, Tethys! ~
A laugh, the sound of the sea booming against the rocks.
~ Can I not? As the moon pulls upon me and takes me to where she commands in the form of the ebb and flow of the tides, so I can pull upon you. I can attract the strength which flows within you. And when you have become weak and unable to protect him, I will claim him as mine own. ~
Sea Witch was surging forwards, captured by the current of the tide, hurrying towards the swathe of the sandbar beneath the sea, not the deep, safe, channel. Tiola screamed at Jesamiah but he could not hear. She could do nothing to stop the proud ship from running aground; Could do nothing except watch!
~ Help him! ~ she pleaded. ~ Rain please! Please do not listen to your mother. I beg you, help him! ~
Twenty Four
Jesamiah alone saw her, a vague outline of a figure standing on the bowsprit. She was too far away in this downpour to see clearly, but her grey cloak, gown and hair were billowing in the wind, and she was looking out to sea, her right arm raised, finger pointing. Tiola?
~ Is that you sweetheart? ~
~ Right, go hard right, now, my luvver! ~
Something was not right! He could hear the drumming of the rain, the roar of the thunder, the crash of the sea and the sound of the waves pounding on to the rocks beneath the fort. Could hear, too, the wide, open, Atlantic Ocean calling to him. That voice, for all it was trying to be, was not Tiola’s, but it blended into a roll of thunder and Jesamiah assumed it was the sound of the rain and his own agitation that was distorting her words. It had to be Tiola. Who else would it be?
~ Starb’d Jessss…ssamiah! Hard to starb’d, Now! Now! ~
Without thinking further he grabbed the wheel from Rue and spun it. Sea Witch heeled, paused a moment, and then her bow was lifting, rising and rising to meet the first Atlantic roller that hurried, eager, to meet and caress her.
“Loose all s
ail!” he bellowed, giving the helm back to Rue and curling his hands around his mouth, while leaping down into the waist. “Drop sail! Now, now, now!”
Sea Witch’s mainsail and foresail were tumbling from the yards; she was lifting, her bow rising up and up as she slid over the bar and out into the open ocean. Then her bow dipped downward and her stern swooped up as she fell over the wave. Battered, most of her larboard rail in pieces, holes gaping in her sails, she plunged out into freedom. Ran, scarred, scratched and scathed, eight men dead, a further eighteen wounded, but she was afloat and she was free.
Calls, obscene jeers and shouts, cheers, as her sails filled in great, curving billows of thundering canvas that spread grey and elegant against the night sky. Nassau was falling astern and Sea Witch was through the danger. Broken, battered, but through.
Tiola let her go. Pulling away, she released the ship from the encompassing mist, sent her out into the dark night and the flickering illumination of the storm, which was beginning to abate, the rain easing, the thunder rolling away. She watched as the jib sails began to creep up the forestay. A wash of spray hurled over her bow and Sea Witch was gathering way, her beloved captain taking the helm, urging her into the exhilaration of a full gallop.
Pirate Code Page 14