“Those of the men aboard ship who wish to remain in my service, may. I wish the others to be escorted ashore—safely—by your warriors and set free at the mouth of the river.” With over a hundred miles of formidable forest and river between Ant Hill and the cape, he doubted that the men would have any desire to return.
“The ship?"
"The ship is to be used to destroy my enemy, Radcliff, and his estates."
Arahathee nodded. Radcliff s alliance with the Powhattans, the Monacans’ enemies, had not found favor with Arahathee. He frowned. "Why not kill the man, burn his crops?"
"That is not my way." No, he didn’t go for the jugular. He planned to peck the man apart. A field here, a shipment of tobacco there. A piece of flesh here, an eye there.
And he knew just the man to be the instrument of his torture. The perfect pirate. Since his own wife desired the man, the sooner he implemented his plan, the better.
Chapter Eleven
"You want me to wot?"
"Paint over the name of the merchant caravel.” In the fire-lit bedroom, Mad Dog traced the bow of Modesty’s lip with a callused fingertip. "With your artist’s eye, you could do that quite splendidly."
The amber glow highlighted his cheekbones so that they looked like pottery shards. His irises were like the silver glass beads the Indians coveted. And his kisses were as heady as the colonial brandy in which she had seen the Indians in Jamestown indulge too liberally. His woodsy smell in itself was highly arousing.
She knew he toyed with her, that he amused himself by awakening her grudging desire to an unsustainable passion that left her weak with the ache of wanting. Then he would chuckle with amusement when she was reduced to asking him to take her.
"Change the Röter Lowe’s name? To wot?" His plan to ruin Radcliff was becoming more devious by the day. Mad Dog had the knack for taking small openings and changing them into big opportunities.
"Oh, use your imagination." His fingertip mapped her chin, moved down her neck, and rested in the hollow of her throat. “You are so good at doing that."
Heat flooded her cheeks at his veiled meaning. Exploring his wondrously built body was a never-ending pleasure for her. Mayhaps because her sight was so poor she used her hands and fingers, her lips and tongue, so skillfully.
“Tis a marvelous gift you have," he had once told her in a voice suspended somewhere between exquisite agony and tortured ecstasy. That time had been mid-morning. He had returned with a turkey he had shot and wanted her to dress and boil it—and had stayed to dally away the morning.
Strange, to be so intimate with someone and yet not address them either by name or an endearment. His name did not fit in the environs of the bedroom, and he had taunted her that her given name did not befit the less than virtuous woman he had taken for a wife. Of course, neither of them had an endearing feeling for the other.
A smile curved her lips. " Röter Lowe uses ten spaces. So does the name I have in mind."
His hand glided over her hip and down the length of her thigh. “And what is that?"
The lightness of his touch evoked just the opposite desire in her. She wanted to be taken in maddening, demanding lust instead of this drawn-out love play that strung her nerve endings so taut she quivered. Her breath caught, her lids fluttered, in anticipation of the moment that his hand would move inside her thighs. “Yew shall see."
He cupped her shoulders and gently pressed her onto her back and lowered his head over hers. His long hair formed a dark canopy for their faces. He rested his forehead on hers for a brief moment. Then, where her fingers deftly wielded a paintbrush, his lips deftly feather-brushed her own. "I would see. All of you."
The kiss she expected, hungered for, was not forthcoming. Instead, to her astonishment, he shifted his massive weight. Braced on his forearms, he slid lower over her.
She felt his beard-shadowed jaw abrade her chest. His hair, tickling her skin, followed in the wake of his tongue-tipped kisses. Kisses that moved even lower.
She tried to focus her thoughts elsewhere, to retain at least the freedom of her mind. She visualized the task he had set her. "The figurehead would have to be recarved, also," she murmured. “To match the ship’s new name.”
“I'm good with a knife," he said, his words smothered between her breasts.
Envisioning his aptitude with the knife at splitting throats, she felt the hair at her nape stand on end.
"But I am also good at other things," he continued, as did his adroit kisses.
Her nipples hurt, they were so hard with her pent-up need. She wished he would kiss them or tweak them as he sometimes did until she groaned and shuddered in quick release.
She had a notion that she surprised not only herself but him as well at how quickly her body responded to him, over and over again. However, he neglected her pouting nipples. Keen disappointment and frustration were undoing her effort at maintaining her detachment.
When his lips reached her belly, she thought he would kiss her navel, as he had done once before. She trembled with delicious excitement. Her hands covered each of her breasts, her fingers finding her nipples. She sighed.
“It is this I wish to see," he muttered thickly and parted her thighs before she realized what he was about.
With bewilderment and embarrassment, she tried to squeeze her legs together.
Easily, he kept them spread and lowered his head to view her most intimate parts by the revealing light of the flickering coals. “Ahhh, you are like a rose.” She could feel his warm, ragged breath, his fingertip lightly tracing the intricate folds of her flesh, separating each one. “Your pink petals unfurling one after the other. . . to reveal that inner bud . . . glistening with creamy dew.”
Her fingernails dug into his iron-hard forearms, hoping to stop him, but his tongue found the engorged bud and began stroking it.
She squirmed, wiggled her hips, anchored by his large hands. Inconsistent with her hips, her hands grasped his head and held him. Her fingers raked through his lion's mane as she felt the ecstasy of release flow through her.
Later, with their backs turned to one another, she whispered, “I know now why they call you Mad Dog."
He said nothing, but she could tell he was listening.
"Backward, it spells God dam.”
His low laugh was almost savage.
It was she who was damned. She had to find a way to leave.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
His arms folded across his chest. Jack stood just inside the wharfhouse, sheltered from the wind, and watched as Modesty carefully lowered herself from the ship’s fo’c’sle to the scaffolding that dangled against the vessel’s swelling side.
The fifteen remaining members of the Röter Lowe’s crew went about re-rigging the less than seaworthy vessel, but more than one sailor cast a peek at Modesty’s trim ankles encased in white woolen stockings.
Squatting men were busy with needle and cord, sewing and lacing the great pieces of canvas into more serviceable sails.
A strong northern wind buffeted the scaffolding. Modesty gripped the scaffolding rope with a white-knuckled hand, while the other began painting the name of the caravel’s new home port in cobalt blue.
Jack heard footsteps on the pier’s wooden planks and turned to see Mad Dog. The wind billowed his employer’s black cloak and long hair, making him look like some huge fiend swooping down upon him. Jack waited until Mad Dog entered the wharfhouse and was within earshot, then said, "She’s extraordinary."
Mad Dog arched a devilish brow. "The ship or the girl?"
He grinned. "I’m damned either way I answer that.”
"You are damned if you fail to serve me precisely as I have instructed. You understand me, I trust?”
"All too well."
Jack was ostensibly to serve as an intermediary agent for the planters: With their power of attorney, he was to take orders from the colonial planters for goods required from London—farm implements, horses, weapons, clothes. The task should take no more t
han four or five months.
In exchange, he would carry their cash crops—tobacco, flax, corn—to England, where he would trade them to the representatives of London’s merchants, the factors, in exchange for the ordered goods. Of course, no cash was to change hands other than the commission Jack took.
From among the planters whose business he was to solicit, he was to gain Radcliff’s trust. In representing him, Jack would gradually build Radcliff s debt to the various London merchants until that debt destroyed Radcliff s estate. A demonic plan which its deviser calculated should take no more than three or four years.
At the end of that time, Mad Dog had promised Jack that the vessel would be his to sail the high seas, and that his indenture papers would be given back to him.
Jack eyed Mad Dog warily now. “You are taking a risk in trusting me, a notorious felon. What’s to prevent me from making off with the ship as soon as I set sail from here?"
That slow smile sent shivers rippling down the muscles at either side of Jack’s spine. “I share this with you that you may be enlightened. I am the fourth Baron De Villiers through my mother, and my father is the Lord High Admiral of the British Navy. Should I request it, he will most devotedly hunt you across the seven seas. He will explore every cove and inlet of every island until he finds you. Rest assured of that. If you cooperate, I am sure it can be arranged for you to receive the highly prized privateer papers which would permit you to legally ply your nefarious trade.”
Jack was awed by the man’s lineage, but he managed to respond with merely a shrug. “Doubtlessly your father is a figure who wields much power. So why not let him destroy Radcliff? Tis obvious he could do so as easily as he could squash a cockroach.”
Again that unnerving smile. "I reserve for myself the right to that great pleasure.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The practice of decorating a ship’s bow with allegorical sculptures symbolizing the ship’s name had seemed ludicrous to Mad Dog’s father, whose wife was a scion of an ancient Norman family. "’Tis the foppish French who are responsible for such an asinine thing,” his father had fumed. “Humph, decorating a ship. By God, next the French Navy will be decorating their seamen’s cocks!"
Mad Dog had been a mere fourteen at the time. He made a quip that played on the word seamen, bringing a stem glance of disapproval from his father, a member of an old, close-knit Essex family of minor gentry.
Now Mad Dog felt rather asinine, perched on a scaffold like some damned pigeon while trying to re-carve the figurehead. Ironic, he thought, that the warrior Ajax had been a madman. And here he was converting the figurehead of the madman into a water sprite—under the direction of the wench he called his wife. She had yet to paint the ship’s name.
November’s chilly wind buffeted the platform against the ship’s planking, and his knife slipped. A crimson slash bisected his thumb pad. "Damn!"
Modesty cried out from the ship’s bow directly above him. "Are you all right?” Her face was as white as her coif. Tendrils of hair coiled from beneath its edge and draped over her neck. Her rapidly growing hair had a lustrous health and soft curl that her former locks had lacked.
He wiped his hand on his buckskin breeches. “Aye."
He waited until the gust of wind abated, then went back to carving. The foremastmen were taking in the top sails, a swabber washed the deck, and the boatswain was coiling the tackling and arranging the marlin spikes. The fifteen sailors who had elected to remain and serve under Jack Holloway appeared steadfast enough.
“Can yew make her a little more—er, feminine?" Modesty asked.
With a grunt, he picked up his chisel. “I never claimed to be a sculptor."
"Well, she looks more like a seahorse than a sprite."
He flung her a scornful glare. “Don’t you have duties that call?"
'"Tis exactly that about which I wish to speak."
His mouth pressed flat. The wench was exasperating and would test the patience of a monk. “Why is it that I have a foreboding?"
"You recall you asked me to paint the ship’s name?"
“Aye? And what is it to be?"
She hesitated, as if she were about to request some rare boon, then blurted, "The Maidenhead."
His hand halted its work on the figurehead.
He glanced up at her. Her expression was at once both guarded and waggish, like a feminine Falstaff. In spite of his consternation with her, he had to chuckle. “So you have regained that prize possession. Symbolically speaking, of course.”
Her big smile transformed her pinched face into a portrait of dazzling features. Bemused, he stared up at her.
"Yew might say that. But ’tis not about the name I wish to speak,” she said, her words a little rushed, a warning to him that something was afoot. Of course, that was to be expected whenever the wench was around. "Have you given thought to the papers Jack will need? The credentials he must have if he is to convince the planters that he would represent them most honestly?"
"Is this something we have to discuss now?" Cannily, she had picked a time when he was at a disadvantage—dangling from ropes and she placed in a position of superiority above him.
“And there are the ship’s papers, also." She lowered her voice, even though they were alone at that part of the vessel. “And if you expect to falsify Radcliff s bills of lading and—”
Granted, she was right about the need for official documents. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. He was only just formulating the strategy for forcing Radcliff into financial failure. "Cease priming me and get on with it. What is it you have in mind, wench?"
“Modesty." She looked quite pleased with herself. “Why, only that I am a master forger.” He could feel his eyebrows climbing the rungs of his forehead. "You, naturally, have— er, your own credentials?"
"Well, I have none of me work with me, but I can testify that I trained under the best."
“But of course," he said dryly.
She looked affronted. "Well, I did! I worked under Joos de Hondt himself, no less!"
Mad Dog was impressed. The Flemish calligrapher was also a scientist and cartographer who had migrated to London just before the turn of the century. He later had become famous for the first wall map of Europe. "That was during one of your more reputable periods of activity, I take it?"
“No.” She wrinkled her nose in disgust. "It was during one of Joos’s disreputable periods of activity.”
Laughter burst from him. “I should have known."
She ignored his remark and leaned further over the figurehead. She flicked away the curls the breeze had tumbled across here forehead and lowered her voice even more. "Mad Dog, why wait years for yewr revenge? I can furnish yew with what yew need! Now! Have Jack bring me back Radcliff’s signature, and I can falsify a mortgage of the estates. All Jack would have to do would be to file it in London with the Company and bring back the lien on Radcliff’s property. Radcliff Manor and every single candlestick in it would be yewrs within the year!”
He picked up on her drift. He could buy up Radcliff’s paper debts at a fraction of their face value and have them reimbursed in full for himself. “And in return?”
“And in return, yew let me go." She hurried on. "When Jack comes back from soliciting the planters, we can sail with him when yew go to Jamestown for the General Assembly. While we are at Jamestown, yew and I can arrange to be divorced. Just in time for me to take passage back to England with Jack. It all works out quite nicely, doesn’t it?"
She looked so hopeful. He hadn’t realized how miserable she was at Ant Hill. All at once, he recognized the trail of signs she had been leaving, which he had been too obtuse to read. “The water sprite." He gestured at the figurehead. "And the nymphs and leprechauns and fairies you paint. All this preoccupation with these fantasy beings—they’re your way of coping with the unbearable, are they not?"
Her bewitching, mismatched eyes held a nostalgic expression. "The people of the nether world are like wise children who ne
ver grow up. They are never malicious as adult humans can be, only mischievous sometimes. And the human world can’t hurt them."
He couldn’t stand what he saw in her eyes and fixed his gaze instead on the coarsely carved water sprite emerging from the warrior. "I am not one for grand gestures," he said gruffly, “but if your work proves worthy, then divorce you I will."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
A freshly gilded water sprite graced the ship’s bow. Within less than a fortnight the caravel was ready to sail under her new guise, the Maidenhead. So, too, was Jack Holloway.
He was in possession of a letter of introduction from Thomas West, twelfth Baron De La Warr and grandson of a first cousin of Queen Elizabeth—courtesy of the magnificently mendacious Modesty.
For his role, Jack was bedecked in the garb of a gentleman. A fashionable narrow sword belt that followed the shape of his waistline was buckled at his side; a plumed hat was rakishly tilted over one eye; his high, standing collar had been stiffened with buckram; his blue velvet doublet with points of red ribbon and slashes in the sleeves revealed the red silk lining; and lastly, high bucket boots were ornamented with ribbon knots and spurs.
A tuck here, a feather there, a bit of ribbon, and Modesty had redesigned the apparel of the vanished Captain De Ruyter.
Jack wriggled his scrunched toes. The boots were a wee bit small, and De Ruyter’s hose were somewhat baggy in the seat. The doublet was too short-waisted, so that the peasecod, the pad in the center front of the doublet, barely covered his cod.
He knew he could convince the average colonist of his genuineness, but a greater test lay just downriver, at Henrico. So it was for that village he first sailed.
The miserable wretches who had agreed to stay on obeyed his orders readily enough. After all, his command could be no more brutal than that of De Ruyter, and at least the sailors were assured of continued employment. A dependable first mate would be helpful, but Jack had to count himself lucky just to have his own ship.
He blew a gallant kiss to Modesty, who waved good-bye from the wharf. His lot could be worse. He could still be confined, as she was, under the hawk-eyed watch of Mad Dog.
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