Sweet Vengeance

by St. Michel, Elizabeth

  Chapter 2

  Abby retched. Dark as pitch the world swirled and wavered like a dream. Her head pounded and in a feverish spasm, she strained to rise, arms flailing, her fingers dragged through cold slick dampness. Mold and the stench like that of a sewer made her eyes water. Nausea rolled again and looped the pit of her stomach. Her knees gave out and she crumpled forward racked with dry heaves.

  “Easy girl.” An arm shot around her shoulder. Someone tucked her head beneath his chin. The rocking did not stop. A huge dip followed and she lost her stomach once more. Abby collapsed against the only warmth she could secure.

  Foul water dripped on her shoulder. She shivered uncontrollably, her mind failing to grasp what was real and what was not real and her throat burned from the effort to speak. A bottle was placed to her lips followed by a soft murmur that induced her to drink. She spat it out, the water like poison. “Where am I?”

  “Welcome aboard the Civis, the belly of Satan’s ship.”

  Abby attempted to digest that piece of information. She rubbed her wrists.

  “I removed your bonds, lass. I feared the ropes too rough for your skin. I didn’t know if you’d ever wake up, believing you had been over-drugged. We’re two days out of Ireland.”

  Abby shook her head. Ireland? A ship? Memories clawed through a surreal fog, slashing her mind, escalating like rain pouring through a downspout. Images tore open, explosion, glass shattering, fire, pain, terror and death. Her hands shaking, she touched her neck, raw from where her assailant had choked her. She placed a knuckle in her mouth to stifle a sob, the awful grief, the reality of her father and brothers dead.

  “My name’s Simeon Smith, and I’m your traveling companion to some unfortunate destination. I was the cook for Lord Gratham. His wife, Lady Gratham kept the stable master as her stallion until he blackmailed her. To cover the extortion, she sold the family silver and said I stole it. I threatened to go to the Earl with the truth. The next thing I knew, I was bound, gagged and thrown onto this ship−a tidy way of getting rid of a problem. Did you offend some peer of the realm?”

  To have incurred the wrath of an angry God wrought from her own wickedness. Her falsehood had reaped evil and she railed against the costs. Tears burned her cheeks, disaster placed at her feet.

  A few gray streaks of light illuminated from above. Abby turned toward the man named Simeon, an older man with a wizened countenance, a long, hooked-nose and whiskers. She imagined him drawing on a clay pipe as he fished from a dinghy.

  Could she trust him? Compassion lay palpable in his voice. Under dire circumstances and against their will, they had been thrown together as prisoners, cut-off from the world. He shrugged out of his coat and covered them both, offering his meager warmth. Her chest tightened. Even in the darkest of places she found a mercy. Yes. She could trust him.

  “I am Lady Abigail Rutland, daughter of the Duke of Rutland.” When Simeon moved away, she clutched his arm. “There will be no class differences. We are equals on this voyage.” She resettled the coat around them.

  A well-spring of terrible guilt rose, releasing a floodgate of tears. Abby cried out her transgressions and sins, soaking Simeon’s shirt. How she had faked her engagement, her time in the garden with the vicar, the horrible man—never, she vowed, would she have romantic inclinations again. “They are still alive. I know they are alive. Fate could not be this cruel. I’ll do anything to get them back. I’ll take whatever punishment meted out. I’ll do anything,” she argued and pleaded, the bargaining, a failed and desperate act. “Without my family, there is nothing to live for.”

  “You rebelled against what wasn’t right for you, a part of growing up to defy authority. You love your father and brothers. There is no doubt in that.”

  A dirty rag was produced and she blew her nose. She touched the left side of her head where it swelled, tender beneath her touch. She ripped off a wool cap. Where had it come from? Her fingers glided through sharp pokes of hair. Her breath hitched. “My hair has been shorn.” Abby palmed the shirt beneath her heavy coat. Bindings had been bound around her breasts to flatten them. Her cheeks burned with her degradation. “Why?”

  “Someone went to great pains to make you appear as a lad. I’m guessing to fool the Captain who might be superstitious about having females on board.” Simeon slapped the back of his neck. “Sometimes the lice bite worse than the rats.”

  “Rats!” Abby cringed. A rustle of scratching drew up the floorboards.

  Simeon banged his boot on the planking. “Speaking of rats, before we were heaved on this ship, I was bound and gagged in the room next to yours in a dockyard shed. The walls were thick but my hearing’s keen. Two men argued, one had a cultured voice like a gentleman, the other had a high-pitched tone, rough like a crofter. I imagine your father, the Duke of Rutland has enemies. As a powerful duke, there is always someone who lurks in the corners with a score or two to settle. Can you think of anyone important enough to try to murder your father?”

  “You said two men? The man who had captured her had said, ‘we’”. Whoever had done this demonstrated tremendous hatred of her family. To take on the Duke of Rutland was madness. Abby frowned. She had been protected all her life to the point of never thinking about her safety. She had not seen her kidnapper. But never would she forget his awful voice.

  Simeon stroked his beard. “Both men were angry. Something about the timing had gone wrong and they feared discovery. A message delivered was late. Does this make sense?”

  “Just before the explosion, a servant said he had been looking for me for a half hour.” Abby locked her hands to force their stillness. She had been in the garden with the vicar not in the ballroom which explained why he had difficulty finding her. “Knowing my father and brothers they would not wait. They would come looking for me.” Hope burned like a vestal flame. Never in her entire life did the duke or her brothers wait for more than five minutes. Had their impatience determined their salvation? “They are not dead. They have to be alive.”

  “Hang onto that thread of hope, Lady Abigail. Live to bring justice to your family.”

  How could she ever thank this solid wonderful man who had given her a reason to survive? “If we ever escape, I promise to have my father use his power to exonerate you.”

  “Thank you, my lady,” he hesitated. “They mentioned a Nicholas, sent on a ship to Brazil under an unsavory Portuguese sea captain to be enslaved in the cane fields. Do you know him?”

  Abby caught her breath. “My brother.” Her vision blurred to a faded but not forgotten remembrance, Nicholas holding her close as they watched the moon rise.

  “I must warn you, Lady Abigail, the men who did this were pleased for they looked to end your life by the cruelest measures. That means you must watch out for Captain Benjamin Lee. He secured a tidy sum to take you and me aboard with no questions asked. It’s a dirty business. Captain Benjamin is a former slaver; he’s had plenty of experience to keep himself free of indictment. He will destroy any evidence.”

  Abby shuddered. Simeon was right. Strong rumors of slavers tossing dozens of heavily chained slaves overboard to avoid prosecution had been whispered in London parlors. She made a silent vow. If some miracle occurred, if somehow, she survived this journey, she would seek her revenge against her family’s enemies.

  “I hate to entertain what would happen if the crew or captain were to find out you were a female. Keep your hat pulled down and your voice lowered. If you must respond, say little, gibber as one of your father’s tenants.”

  The hatch rasped opened on rusted hinges. A gruesome visage leered. Abby inhaled. Scar tissue covered the right side of his head, the absence of an ear, and grisly mutilation.

  “Exercise time.” The scarred man blinked. “Is the lad awake or dead?”

  “One-Ear,” Simeon whispered. “He’s crazy. Stay close to me.”

  Abby buttoned her oversized coat and followed Simeon up the ladder, keeping her cap pulled over her ears, her head down. Her
knees wobbled from the after-effects of the drug. At the last rung she was hauled into the air and thrown onto the deck in a teeth-shattering jolt. A chorus of laughter burst out. The crew scrutinized her. They were rabble and nothing compared to them in all Christendom. Brutal ghoulish vultures, scarred by pox, dressed in rags, stinking worse than below decks. The faces of beasts grinned with rotting teeth. Gnarled hands clenched from sodden, starved and lustful, stunted bodies. Abby scrambled to stand behind Simeon.

  Simeon whispered to her. “Only the cruelest of Masters, Captain Lee can suppress them, ill-born, lowly, thieves and bastards. They can lift a sail or slit your throat with equal facility. Hold yer tongue. If they get a whiff you’re gentry you’ll be talking to St. Peter. Be brave.”

  A shadow passed over her and she turned. Captain Benjamin Lee, a fearsome creature with the appearance of a robust cadaver. Beneath the dull blue seaman’s uniform he wore, sinewy muscles bulged with obvious power, and the hair on the back of his hands was coarse and black. Was it possible the darkness of his eyes, the downturn of his thin lips flaunted more cruelty than his crew? Abby trembled. The glare of his inspection rattled tremors up her spine, her future, a vision of doom. She whispered to Simeon. “Can I be brave if I’m afraid?”

  “That is the only time one can be brave,” murmured Simeon.

  Captain Lee’s lip curled in disdain. “You will earn your keep aboard my ship. If there is any trouble, a taste of the cat will teach you a lesson.”

  One-Ear slapped his knee, cackling. He scuttled aside when the captain strode by him.

  Someone thrust a bucket and scrub brush into her hands. She knelt on the deck and for the first time in her life, Lady Abigail Rutland performed physical labor.

  The Civis, Abby translated from the Latin word that meant civilized. The ship and its crew represented anything but civilized. In the weeks of incarceration, Abby and Simeon’s collective skins fell gray and lifeless as the pewter clouds hanging in the skies, their eyes sunken and lusterless even under the impetus of fresh air. Beauty and cleanliness and perfume were not for her. She hated the poverty, sordidness and cruelty from the daily beatings of crewmates to picking the weevils out of her daily share of bread. She worked before the sun rose and after it descended, too exhausted to care about the filthy hold where she and Simon slept. Justice. The thirst for it flooded her veins.

  For over two months she endured being the object of abuse by the crew, encouraged by the captain who showed pleasure as the abuse heightened. To remain invisible grew impossible. Despair loomed, naked and cold and fatal as a knife’s blade. Simeon maintained her optimism. They would jump ship at the nearest port and find transport home.

  The Civis ploughed through the icy waters of the Atlantic. One-Ear crawled down from the crow’s nest. “Captain, she’s bearing down on us. Has the stinking odor of a privateer.”

  Simeon whispered, “I hope they outrun our pursuer. American privateers make Captain Lee and his crew look like babes in their nappies. The colonials seize, plunder and derive pleasure in cold-bloodedly dispatching their enemy. I fear for you if we fall into their hands.”

  “You thieving dogs of London’s’ sewers, raise the tops’l,” Captain Lee ordered, his voice frightful as a serpent’s hiss. “We’ll be lambs to the slaughter if we don’t outrun the Yank.”

  Underneath his bold words, the captain visibly quaked. What terrors caused a cruel captain like Lee to keep looking over his shoulder?

  The harvested wind pressed the merchant ship forward. Over the stern, she watched their pursuer disappear. Simeon’s words rang like the tolling of a bell. Abby grabbed the railing, uttered a soft acknowledgement to a higher power, relieved the merchant ship had outrun its predator.

  She had read about the legalized pirates, men authorized by the rebel colonies in America. The men who manned the privateer vessels were the elite of adventurers—bold, daring, dangerous men who relished a fight and who had much to profit from the capture of British ships. Prize money was awarded to the crew who captured British vessels, whether merchant or warships and many men had earned their riches in this way.

  The discussion at her engagement ball emerged like a hand, icily cold and clammy as death. The warnings of privateer ships that “haunted the seas,” and how they outwitted the best of British Admiralty. Even Captain Davenport had been outfoxed. To Abby, the threat at that time was nonexistent. Now surveying the thick mist enveloping them, Abby shivered. How could the Civis, a mere merchantman, defend against an attack?

  Adventure is just a romantic name for trouble. It sounds fantastic when you think about it, but its hell when you meet it face to face in a dark and lonely place. No doubt the vicar’s wisdom had merit.

  As the sun descended, heavy waves battered like thunder against the hull of the ship. A storm brewed and so did the tempers of the crew and captain. Her stomach gnawed with hunger. Simeon was under the weather and begged permission of the captain to go below. After finishing her chores, she crossed the deck to settle in for the night, not looking forward to picking through the salted meat, and praying it wasn’t from a rancid cask. Wind whipped through the sails and she stared overhead, unable to see the top of the mast through the fog.

  Someone tripped her and she slammed to the deck. Air wheezed out between her teeth. One-Ear and his friend, the navigator laughed. She attempted to rise then was kicked in the stomach. Abby clutched her side, rolled and scrambled to her feet. She dodged a fist aimed at her face then stomped on One-Ear’s instep. His bones cracked beneath her heel. He keeled over, grabbed his foot and yowled like a cat in heat. Abby glared. How she hated One-Ear.

  A knife flashed. If only she had not sent Simeon below. The navigator tossed a knife between his hands. Abby scuffled back until pressed against the pinrails. The sound of the ocean roared and the waves licked below. The navigator leered over her. She recoiled from the rank smell of rotting teeth. From her right, One-Ear loomed, limping forward with a sword. Her fingers moved over the shaft of a belaying pin and yanked it out. A huge wave smacked the ship. The floor heaved upward beneath her feet. She wound her wrist in the ratlines. The belaying pin dropped into the ocean. Water pitched over them. She shrieked her voice lost, sucked into the hungry sea. The merchantman bowed and righted, seawater slid off the decks. The navigator slithered down her body into a heap at her feet. A sword stuck in his back.

  She gasped, her hands flew over her mouth. One-Ear, sprawled on the deck gave a short bark of laughter. The aberrant wave had caught him off balance and he had inadvertently skewered his friend. His lip curled. “You’ll pay for this.”

  Simeon untangled her hand. “I ought never to have left you.”

  Captain Lee’s roar over the Atlantic seemed to still the sea, the squall that they had caught the tail of, spent. “You spawn of rats and swine. My navigator is dead. Who is at the bottom of this?”

  Abby shook. Without a navigator, they were lost on a desert of waters. The ship plunged and her foulest nightmare mounted.

  One-Ear limped to the captain, pointed a finger, his nail like a yellowed corkscrew. “They waited in the shadows and attacked us.”

  “It’s not true,” Simeon protested. “They attacked the lad.”

  “You rotting progeny of whores. Am I to believe a thief? String them up!”

  Hands rushed to do the Captain’s bidding. Coarse ropes girded her wrists to the mast. Abby whimpered. Simeon’s eyes bulged. Nine ugly tar coated cords knotted at the ends whistled through the air. A few lashes could slash a man’s flesh to ribbons.

  “The floggings will continue until morale improves,” One-Ear chortled and hung lanterns so all could watch in the gathering darkness.

  Abby reeled. Simeon moaned and Captain Lee laughed. “When I’m finished shredding your hide, you’ll be food for the fishes.” Captain Lee raised the cat.

  Simeon broke out in full body tremors. Abby turned away. Nothing could save them.

  For a month, Captain Jacob Thorne had shadowed the C
ivis, following her close then letting her have some distance and finally coming up fast upon her. His nose twitched like a hound picking up the spoor of a fox trapped in his hole. The sails of the Vengeance were let out. Darkness cloaked their swift motion through the water. Their progress took too long. Every muscle in his body strained.

  Jacob raised his scope and smiled. The captain of the Civis was busy meting out punishment on two of his sailors. The distraction allowed the Vengeance to come up on their starboard undetected. He narrowed his eyes to the old man and boy tied to the mast and cursed the cruelty of the merchantmen’s captain. None of his concern. One...two…three. He gestured with his fingers to signal his crew.

  “Fire!” The sides of the Vengeance shook, her cannons blasting at the helpless quarry. The Civis’s captain swiveled, his brutality forgotten and the look on his face laughable as he recognized his negligence.

  Dear God! Abby swung violently from the cannon blast.

  The whip halted mid-air. Sailors toppled to the deck.

  “Privateers!”

  Captain Lee’s eyes, abnormally large, dilated with his fear. “When those privateers are done with you, you’ll be wishing to be back under my whip.”

  She twisted her head and squinted through the fog and darkness. What could be worse?

  Again, cannons blasted into the helpless merchantman. Billowing clouds of smoke to larboard blotted out everything. Abby choked. The acerbic odor caught in her throat and set her to gasping and coughing. The crew scrambled to get their weapons.

  From the bowels of Hell, she emerged into another more horrifying layer of the netherworld. Confusion and clutter met her dazed eyes as men rushed about, daggers in hand, positioning weighty guns and dragging kegs of powder into place. One-Ear brandished a sword, his scar paler; all were sweating, and their eyes held a mixture of terror and grim resignation. Her head swam and she leaned dizzily against the mast.