Lord Bloodwell, a Scots commoner who rose to mercantile fortune in the American colonies and who was elevated to the peerage for his unswerving loyalty to His Majesty, has stated: “War is a horror that must be avoided unless there is no honorable alternative. But revolution is a terror that rips nations and families apart…”
Ah, did Selena not know it! This man, whose life she had once shared, had been all but heartbroken when he’d learned that her loyalties were with the Colonists, with the revolutionaries, with the enemies of his monarch. Yes, they had been different people, but had that fact diminished the pain of their foredoomed separation. No, it had not.
Yet Sean had gone on, forgiving her, permitting her to go her way, yes, but proceeding along the path he had planned for himself. He was doing something!
While she was sitting here in the library of Hidden Harbor, waiting and brooding and…going stale. And the very sight of his name on the printed page of newspaper could not but evoke a spell of poignant reverie. After they had helped each other escape from the Maharajah of Jabalpur, after Selena had been certain that Royce was dead, she’d accepted Sean’s offer of marriage. It had seemed so right, even necessary. They’d brought with them a tiny little orphan girl named Davina in honor of Davi, the Dravidian wizard, a blond, blue-eyed creature of English blood whose fate in the Orient would have been disastrous. Selena and Sean were, in effect, the child’s mother and father even before they took their vows on the deck of the SS Blue Foray, bound for America. The sky had been brilliant, cloudless, swept clean by the trade winds, royal blue to the north, shimmering where the sun was.
Selena had had no wedding gown. The white, billowing sails were her wedding gown. Innocence and truth were in her heart, as they had been when she was but a little girl. She and Sean had stood before the ship’s captain—Flanders his name was—remembering their pasts, the brave but evanescent dreams that had brought them to this day. Wind surged, filling the sails, lifting the ship, and they moved forward into the future, locked together for a moment by a destiny greater than—and unknown to—both of them.
Over the rail of the Blue Foray, Selena saw the ocean rolling on forever. The same ocean that had robbed her of Royce Campbell, adrift into death on his plague-ridden Highlander, had also led her to India and to Sean Bloodwell: love given and love taken away.
“I do!” she had cried, in answer to the captain’s query. “I do!” As if to God and the sky, and to all those she had loved who dwelt now in far regions. She wanted them to hear, to know, and in the absence of chronicles and chisels, the very walls of Coldstream Castle must be imprinted with this faraway call of her young and beating heart.
And there aboard ship, taking her vows, which by the first law of love only Royce Campbell could transcend, she had recalled returning to Coldstream on journeys with her father, and how his subjects lit great bonfires of greeting on the highest hills, fires of delight to welcome them home.
Were those fires gone, never to blaze again?
After the wedding ceremony, a huge black thunderhead of a cloud had appeared in the northern sky, assuming for one fleeting moment the shape of a wolf.
Only Selena had seen it.
One final item in the newspaper story brought a tear: “Lord Bloodwell lives with his adopted daughter, Davina, at his home in St. John’s Wood.”
It had been right of course for the little girl to go with Sean. What kind of life could Selena have offered, running, hiding, rushing hither and thither in the revolutionary maelstrom of New York? But the child should have a mother, and how Selena yearned to hold her now.
“Brace up,” she ordered herself. “Selena, the sky begins here.”
Resolving to seize control of her own fate once again, Selena sought out Martha Marguerite. The older woman was in her study, brooding over a map of France. She seemed edgy and distracted.
“I must talk to you,” began Selena forthrightly, “about certain perceptions I have had since my arrival.”
Curiously, the expression on Martha’s face seemed almost to be one of relief.
“Please be seated,” she said, offering Selena a chair. “I had begun to fear that you would never come to me. Indeed, I had begun to fear that you would go to her.”
“Yolanda Fee?”
“Who else, my dear? But now that there are two of us united, we may be strong enough to best her. God willing,” she added.
Selena saw the strange ring on Martha’s finger. It was as good a place as any to begin.
“It may seem bizarre of me to ask this,” she began, “but does your ring, or the symbol of the eye upon it, confer any special benefits?”
The other woman smiled. “And how do you come to ask such a thing?”
Continuing to gamble on her hunch that Martha was friend rather than foe, or at least more friend than foe, Selena pressed on. “I am missing some things of value that I brought here with me. Frankly, I’m sure they were stolen.”
“And you suspect Yolanda?”
“Yes. If it is possible to be in two places at the same time.”
She described how the items in question—she did not say that these were jewels, nor did Martha ask—had disappeared while she and Yolanda were both at dinner.
The older woman shook her head. “So she is capable of that as well.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“My dear, Haiti is a strange land. The rules of the physical universe seem sometimes to be suspended or altered there, for those who are trained in its secrets. And I fear Yolanda was so trained. She wears a certain scent that is said to be powerful enough to rouse passion—”
Now Selena understood. She herself had been affected by that very scent on Yolanda’s clothing.
“—and it is also rumored that those possessed of the witchcraft can be in two places at once. They are also able to mix potions that will change the shapes of their enemies, or even kill them. On the other hand, has Yolanda made any threatening gestures against you?”
“No, not directly,” Selena admitted.
“Someone else might have taken your things. It is possible. Who is your houseboy?”
“That shy, dark little fellow. I think he’s called Campanale.”
“Have you spoken to him about this?”
“No, you’re the first person I’ve told. Besides, he seems quite harmless.”
“Always beware of appearances, my dear. I assume, since you’ve come to me, that you have a plan in mind?”
“I do. But I need your help. I would like to get into Yolanda’s quarters and have a look about.”
Martha Marguerite’s eyes widened. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. What’s the matter?”
“Well, insofar as I know—and that encompasses the nearly three years since Hidden Harbor’s completion and Yolanda’s presence here—no one but she has ever been inside. Not even Jean. She goes to his bedchamber when they—”
Martha Marguerite hesitated, thinking it over.
“All right,” she agreed, “I’ll help you. But mind, be extremely careful.”
It was decided that Martha, two days hence, would feign a small physical indisposition and send for Yolanda’s help. Whatever her mysterious powers, the beauty was known to possess healing skills as well, which she delighted to use. “She likes to show off,” Martha said. “And while she is with me, you take the opportunity to inspect her chamber. But you must promise to look carefully at everything you see, and to tell me exactly what you noticed.”
Selena said that she would. It did not, under the circumstances, seem to be an unreasonable request.
The day before Selena was to embark upon her stealthy foray, however, news arrived that promised to make an inspection of Yolanda’s rooms unnecessary. Campanale, her diminutive houseboy, and several of the other servants had taken a sloop to Port-de-Paix in order to acquire supplies for Hidden Harbor’s kitchens. Port-de-Paix, on the north coast of Haiti, was a tiny village, much nearer to Hidden Harbor than Port-au-Prince. It
was rumored to be a smuggling base for all manner of contraband, and it might well have been—Jean admitted as much—but it was primarily a dusty market town. Jean and his men had taken the Liberté on a short jaunt over to Cuba in quest of bullion that was believed to be available there, and when Selena heard Campanale and the others babbling to Martha Marguerite she feared that something terrible might have happened to Beaumain.
Selena heard the agitated chatter, a mixture of Spanish, French, and deep-woods Haitian dialect out on the veranda, and hurried to see what the trouble was. The houseboy was waving his arms, talking to Martha Marguerite, but when he saw Selena coming to join them, he pointed at her vigorously. “Selena! Selena!” he cried excitedly.
“Yes?” Selena asked apprehensively.
Martha turned toward her. “My dear,” she said, with a faintly bewildered expression, “our little Campanale here says that, in the harbor of Port-de-Paix, there lies a great black ship with your name emblazoned upon its hull.”
“Royce!” cried Selena, or rather she choked on his name a little, since her heart was in her throat just then.
He had come!
And Port-de-Paix was no more than twenty sea miles from St. Crique Isle.
“I must go immediately,” she declared. “The men must take me on the sloop, since Jean is away.”
Martha, who knew about Royce—and approved of his existence, since it meant that Selena had no permanent interest in her beloved Jean—gave the necessary orders. Forgetting about the missing sovereigns and jewels—what could they matter now?—Selena boarded the sloop. As it began to move, she saw both Yolanda and Martha Marguerite waving to her from the veranda in farewell. Neither of them seemed at all distressed to see her leaving.
The wind was good and the journey quick, but as the sloop drew near the Haitian coast, as Selena scanned the horizon, she saw in the little harbor of Port-de-Paix not the massive Selena with its masts and cannon and proud swath of Campbell plaid, but rather two British men-o’-war lying at anchor.
Little Campanale, manning the rudder, was puzzled.
“Those not be here before,” he said, gesturing toward the British ships and looking to her for instructions.
Oh, damn it all! thought Selena. Royce had been almost close enough to touch, but now…
“Put into shore west of the village,” she ordered disconsolately, “I’ll see if I can learn what is going on.”
She was all too well aware of the probability that one of the ships might carry Lieutenant Clay Oakley.
Campanale and his fellow servants did as they were told. Selena waded from the sloop to the shore and began trudging down the dusty road toward Port-de-Paix. She was wearing a dress made for her by the seamstress at Hidden Harbor, a decorative, fluffy little pink thing, and the few peasants she met along the roadway stared at her in fearful wonder. Who was this lovely, tall, blond creature appearing out of the Haitian foliage? They used their hands to make pushaway gestures toward her as if she carried a curse or worse, and one little boy, riding in the back of an ox cart, made a furtive sign of the cross.
On the outskirts of Port-de-Paix, which was comprised of perhaps twenty low, ramshackle buildings, all whitewashed to reflect the heat, Selena ducked behind a mango tree at the side of the road and looked.
A number of British soldiers, four of them carrying a stretcher, were walking toward the village dock. There a rowboat waited, and in the rowboat, his smooth ivory pate gleaming in the sun, was Oakley himself. The mere sight of the man sent shivers through Selena.
Carefully, the stretcher-bearers lowered their burden into the dinghy—Selena saw a soldier lying motionless upon it—and presently the little craft moved out toward the warships. Selena guessed, from the lack of attention being given to the man on the stretcher, that he was dead.
Royce?
She waited until the rowboat was far from shore, until the rest of the soldiers were also out on the water in a second dinghy, and then made her way into the village in which awful, keening shrieks of grief had begun to rise. The reason for these soul-shattering ululations was immediately apparent. Three Haitians—two men and a woman—lay dead on the pale white dust of the village square. They were naked and trussed with rope. The hands and feet of one man had been lopped off. These lay in the bloody dust with the gouged eyeballs of the second man and the breasts of the woman.
Friends and relatives of the victims were kneeling around the bodies, wailing in grief, rocking back and forth, side to side, the universal motions of impotent despair. They were too preoccupied even to notice Selena. Glancing around the village, she saw in the shadowed doorway of the largest building a wiry, leathery man in European clothes. He stared at her for a moment, then ducked out of sight.
She walked over to the building, which was a market or store of some kind, and entered. There were shelves filled with casks of rum and wine, bins stuffed with vegetables, and freshly slaughtered hogs and chickens hanging from hooks. Myriad flies buzzed around the carcasses. The man she’d seen was standing nervously in a corner next to a reeking side of butchered beef, as if trying to conceal himself.
“Yes?” he asked, coming forward a little when he saw that he couldn’t hide. “What do you want?”
“What’s happened here?”
He was mean-looking, but his eyes showed intelligence. “What business is it of yours?”
She decided to come right out with it. “I’m here looking for Royce Campbell. I had news that his ship was here a little while ago.”
His grin of surprise was also sarcastic. “Well, you missed him, lady. And so did those British. I guess he is too fast for you.”
The man, who had first spoken in French, was now addressing her in colloquial, if accented, English.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “Do you know Royce?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” he shot back, moving past her toward the door. “As for me, I’m leaving.”
“Wait. Please wait just a minute. I have to know about Royce.”
He hesitated in the doorway. “Lady,” he said, “there are three dead Haitians outside, and a whole group of very live, very angry ones. We are the only two Europeans here, and I think we are going to be dead very soon. Do you understand?”
Selena did. Foreigners had just killed three natives, and their kin would not hesitate to take retribution. But Royce came first. She had to know about him.
“Mr. Campbell was here, though?” she persisted.
“Yes, he was. I handed over to him a cache of valuables that I had been entrusted to hold for him—”
Selena thought, wonderingly, of her own purloined pouch of jewels and sovereigns.
“—and he left one step ahead of those British barbarians. Also, I am afraid he unwittingly left you and me holding the proverbial bag. Oh, Lord, here they come!”
He stepped back from the doorway and Selena saw the enraged Haitian villagers advancing upon the building.
“They’re going to kill me!” he cried, slamming and barring the door. “They’ve already killed a British soldier.”
“Why?”
“Because I was in league with Campbell, you fool! And Campbell—whom they do not know—brought the British in his wake, and now three of their people are dead. That bald British officer tortured them to find out where Campbell had sailed to. Of course, the victims did not know.”
Angry howls, increasing in intensity, rose outside the store.
“Why didn’t the British torture you?” Selena asked.
“Because I hid,” he snapped. “And I doubt that those crazed people outside are going to give me much credit for it. They blame me for what’s happened.”
Selena’s thoughts turned to her own safety, but not before she had registered the troubling information that, yet again, Royce had been involved in the kind of dangerous, sinister transaction which had been his forte in the old days, and which had colored his name in the ports of the seven seas.
She and
the man heard a dull thunk on the thatched roof of the store. Then they heard a slow, crackling hiss.
“They’ve set us afire!” He pulled a small derringer from his boot. “If they get us,” he said, “fire will seem preferable to their ways of pain. I prefer a bullet.” He gestured toward Selena with the pistol. “You?”
The grass roof had flared fully now. Already heat and smoke were filling the store. The sounds of the people outside were inhuman. Perhaps the man was right, but…
“No,” she said.
“Suit yourself.” He put the barrel of the pistol into his mouth and pulled the trigger.
The shot from such a weapon was not sufficiently powerful to blow a man’s head off, but it was deadly enough. The man’s head jerked forward, then back, and he slumped to the dirt floor as if he’d been struck a knockout blow in a prizefight. A bit of blood appeared at the corner of his mouth and his eyes blinked spasmodically.
Selena bent over him. Flames were licking at the walls of the store now, and she knew that she had to get out before the fiery thatch collapsed upon her. The derringer had fallen on the floor next to the man. She picked it up. Useless for anything now! It was a one-shot weapon.
“Ahh!” he said, looking at her. His features were contorted and his eyes were fading. There was surprisingly little devastation, only that thin trickle at the corner of the man’s mouth, a bit more blood pooling in his left ear.
“Why did you have to do that?” she asked helplessly, bending over him and cradling his head in her hands. As she did so, Erasmus Ward’s cross came out from beneath the top of her dress and hung down.
With his last flicker of life and knowledge, the man’s eyes widened.
“Sorbontay!” he gasped.
And died.
Selena had no time to contemplate either the word or his death, because a section of burning roof collapsed. She leaped away from the flames and headed toward the door. Throwing aside the bar with which it had been secured, she dashed outside to be seized immediately by three enraged Haitian men. They howled in triumph as they grabbed her, an exultation that was only slightly lessened when they determined that the man in the store was dead.
Fires of Delight Page 14