Fires of Delight

by Vanessa Royall

  “Wait!” cried Selena. “Please!” But they dragged her to the center of the square where their kinfolk lay dead, and one of the men produced a long, curved, evil-looking blade.

  I’m going to die, thought Selena. I’m really going to die…

  At a time like this, it was said that a person’s past life flashed before her eyes. All that Selena could remember, though, was her sixth or seventh birthday, when she’d received two kittens, one black and the other white, from her mother. She’d named them Yin and Yang.

  The blade flashed, slicing Selena’s dress from throat to hem and leaving a bloody slash no wider than the mark of a pencil from her Adam’s apple to her abdomen.

  The crowd howled in glee.

  Then little Campanale and the men from the sloop raced into the square, waving and shouting. The man with the knife hesitated. Selena pulled her dress closed, feeling the burning wound of the blade.

  Campanale began to speak excitedly, angrily, in the dialect of the region. Several times he mentioned Jean Beaumain.

  The man with the knife stepped away from Selena with an embarrassed expression on his swarthy face. The rest of the crowd moved back as well. Campanale walked over and inspected the damage done to Selena.

  “It is fortunate,” he quavered, in his falsetto tones, “that Jean Beaumain’s name is respected by these people.” He took her hand. “Come, let us go.”

  Yolanda and Martha Marguerite were not especially pleased to witness Selena’s return to Hidden Harbor, but the older woman was solicitous about the knife wound. She provided an ointment and maternal advice as Selena applied the stinging white salve.

  “Rub it thoroughly but carefully into the cut,” she said. “It should help heal the wound in a matter of days. How fortunate you were not more seriously hurt.”

  “I would have been, I assure you. At least now I know that I can trust Campanale anyway.”

  Martha did not respond to that assumption.

  Selena told of the European man who had been in the village.

  “Yes, that is—was—LaValle. He had a most unsavory reputation. It was said that he operated a smuggling business out of Port-de-Paix. The natives tolerated him because, in addition to his clandestine affairs, he brought trade to the village and its inhabitants.

  This time it was Selena who did not respond. She was thinking that if Royce had had dealings with LaValle, he too must be involved in business that was less than upright. The thought saddened her greatly, because now she could no longer try to deny the possibility that her betrothed had never really changed his stripes at all. Was Royce, at his core, still the unprincipled adventurer and opportunist of old?

  No, I won’t believe it! she declared to herself.

  And yet…

  “Does the word ‘sorbontay’ mean anything to you?” she asked Martha Marguerite.

  “Why, no, I don’t believe so, my dear. Should it?”

  “I guess not,” Selena replied. “It doesn’t mean anything to me, either.”

  Yet two men, two very different men, Ward and LaValle, were dead. And both of them had spoken the same dying word.

  “Well, the way things have turned out, I must proceed with my plan to investigate Yolanda’s quarters.”

  Martha Marguerite once again promised her cooperation, and on the appointed day she withdrew hastily from table—Jean had not returned from Cuba and the three women were lunching by themselves—complaining of internal distress. A short time later, as Yolanda speculated with Selena about the nature of Martha’s malady, a servant brought news that the older woman was calling for the Haitian girl’s aid.

  Yolanda excused herself with a smile of satisfaction, and went to minister to Martha Marguerite.

  Tension mounted within Selena, but she forced herself to appear calm, finished the crab-and-lobster casserole she’d been eating, and even called for a small bunch of grapes and some Madeira. Finally, she motioned the servants to clear the table, got up, and started toward the rose room. When she was certain that no one observed her, she doubled back, slipped out the front door, and walked along the veranda to the west wing of the sprawling, gracious house. Whether by accident or plan, Selena and Yolanda lived at opposite ends of Hidden Harbor.

  Yolanda’s quarters opened onto a small garden similar to the one that Selena enjoyed. Glancing about, Selena swung over the veranda’s railing and dropped into the grassy garden. While her own was well-tended, however, the bushes and flowers here had been allowed to grow wild, creating the effect of a miniature wilderness. The air was hot and still beneath great, wet, hanging leaves, and Selena began to perspire immediately.

  One second later she was as cold as a North Sea stone.

  Something was sliding toward her through the grass.

  Selena had assumed that the Haitian beauty would take some precautions to protect her rooms from trespass—she had equipped herself to deal with locks, if necessary—but a serpent was something else entirely. Lifting her skirts, she dashed toward the flagstones outside Yolanda’s French doors, pressing herself against the glass and wood.

  She could not see the snake itself—the grass was too high—but she did see the blades of grass ripple and shiver as the serpent changed directions and came toward the French doors.

  Oh, Lord, now what? Selena thought. The damn things had poor eyesight. But they hunted unerringly by scent alone.

  And now she remembered Rafael telling her about snakes being used in plots of vengeance, the scent of a piece of clothing…

  Had Yolanda done something like that? Had she taken an article of Selena’s apparel and trained a serpent to strike?

  Then Selena saw the snake’s hooded head rear up over the top of the grass, swiveling this way and that in eerie menace, looking for her, seeking the scent.

  Just get inside! she told herself, as the serpent, goldish-black and ugly, lewd in its peculiarly glistening thickness, slithered up onto the flagstones.

  Prepared to break a pane of glass if need be, Selena tried the handle on the French doors. It moved. The door swung open. Selena slid inside. The snake, coiling and uncoiling, edged sideways over the flagstones and struck at the glass with its jagged yellow fangs.

  The glass did not break, but the serpent was there, as if on guard.

  Selena, just on the verge of abandoning this entire mission and getting out of there while she was still able, turned away from the French doors. What she saw in the room struck her motionless. This was not a bedchamber at all, but rather some form of depraved, savage chapel. Two of the walls were black, two red, and thick red draperies obliterated most of the forest-heavy daylight A low, black table, much like an altar, stood on the floor in the center of the room. Seven black candles burned thereon, illuminating what appeared to be a glittering black pillar made of terra-cotta, or something similar. Facets of the pillar gleamed and wavered as the candles burned and, peering more closely, Selena realized that the artifact was larger at its top than its base, an unmistakable, contoured shape of the male phallus.

  Then Selena became aware, too, of Yolanda’s singular scent throughout the room. Musky, insinuating and perverse, the fragrance seemed to close around her. It was as if a living thing, shapeless and insubstantial but undeniably there, were tempting her flesh toward unspeakable sins. Selena felt a glowing rush in her loins, and there was a sudden, vacant place where her heart had been. Writhing images of Royce, of Jean Beaumain, of Sean Bloodwell and all the men she had ever known swarmed in her mind, and she realized that she was panting as if in the high throes of stark, unholy lust.

  Only the bizarre, disgustingly familiar lumps on the altar, spaced evenly at the base of the black pillar, kept Selena from throwing herself down on one of the many low couches in the room, there to stroke and flail at the burning root of need.

  Curiosity, horrible as its object proved to be, impelled her to reject desire. She stepped forward, farther away from the serpent whose forked tongue hissed on the glass, and knelt before the altar for a
closer look.

  Thirty eyes stared back at her. Thirty dull zombie eyes in fifteen shrunken heads.

  One of them had belonged, a short time ago, to LaValle of Port-de-Paix.

  Choking down her gorge, trembling, Selena glanced at the others. Jean Beaumain had been gone now for several weeks, and…

  But his face was not among these men and women who had come, by God knew what misfortune, into the devilishly skilled hands of Yolanda Fee. Their skin was uniformly wrinkled like the outsides of dried, brown apples, and their hair was as lustreless as their eyes. Yet it was possible, even by candlelight, to see that most of the men had been attractive in life, and that the women had been beautiful. They may, indeed, have been Yolanda’s lovers and rivals. For a dark, fleeting moment, Selena imagined her own little head resting upon this evil altar.

  Abruptly, she got to her feet, forcing herself to think. Yes, she was here all right, but what of use had she learned?

  That Yolanda was a witch?

  Selena had already been told.

  That she commanded access to unspeakable secrets?

  Selena saw no reason to doubt.

  That she was, at last, consummately dangerous?

  Selena believed.

  You’re here to find that pouch of wealth, she reminded herself. So, forcing back the loathing evoked by the altar, and the concupiscence elicited by the mocking scent, Selena began a search. The couches revealed nothing except the fact that given their unusual shapes, each had been designed to facilitate a different position in the physiological symphony of love. The altar she had already inspected. Even the walls and floors appeared to conceal nothing, although Selena was afraid that her tap-tap-tapping could be heard throughout the house. She ran her hands over every inch of drapery fabric, again with no result.

  Then in the gloom at the room’s innermost wall, Selena found what at first appeared to be another curtain, but which, when pushed aside, revealed a drawing room of conventional design, the furniture somewhat heavy but well-made, the furnishings and paintings unremarkable, common. There was a bedroom adjoining this chamber, with everything neat and predictable, including a big brass four-poster with an embroidered silk canopy atop. Either Yolanda Fee sheltered two very different people in her one devil’s bait of a body, or she was very adept at showing whichever nature she chose to whom she chose.

  Selena began to wonder how much Jean Beaumain himself really knew about his mistress. The short walk from the primitive chapel to these spacious, European-style rooms would have taken a civilization twenty thousand years to traverse.

  And then Selena entered the combined wardrobe and dressing room.

  The scent again, with its beckoning lure to lust and degradation, all but overpowered her, but Selena fought it off. She looked everywhere, going over each of the hundreds of garments here, but found not a trace of sovereigns or jewels.

  What she did discover, to her initial bewilderment, was the symbol of an eye sewn somewhere upon every article of clothing. Also, in new thread, in hurried, irregular stitching, there was a small embroidered cross.

  Selena stood there in the dressing room, staring at her image in Yolanda’s gigantic mirror, wondering.

  The mirror—not the mirror itself but its power of reflection—catapulted Selena to the conclusion that came to her there.

  Yolanda, born, raised, and trained in a world where magic was as elemental as breathing, obviously feared both Martha Marguerite’s ring and Selena’s cross. Thus she had sought, by stitching those symbols into the fabric of her garments, to ward off their presumed powers, to guard herself from anticipated assaults.

  The shrunken heads, the phallic tower, the candles: these meant nothing. Yolanda was a girl who lived in terrible fear.

  Selena believed that her cross represented no threat to anyone. But if Yolanda was afraid of the eye-shaped ring, she might have good reason.

  And that would mean Martha Marguerite was the truly dangerous person here at Hidden Harbor!

  If so, Selena had approached and consorted with an apparently cultured, obviously intelligent woman who might be far more threatening than the simple, superstitious Yolanda Fee could ever hope to be.

  Selena held this theory for three full days, until she found a time to steal into Martha’s suite and discover, in every garment the woman owned, a tiny, embroidered, five-pointed star.

  Checkmate. She still had no idea whom to trust, if anyone.

  But she did not find the jewels in Martha Marguerite’s rooms either.

  “I’ve been waiting for the chance to ask you this,” whispered the older woman one afternoon on the veranda, where she and Selena were having tea and hoping to catch sight of the Liberté on the horizon. “How went your expedition?”

  “There are more things on heaven and earth,” Selena replied, “than I dreamt of in my suspicions.”

  Martha gave her young guest an odd look, but said nothing.

  7

  Strange Nectar

  A month went by, and then another, yet Jean Beaumain did not return. Winter arrived, blessing St. Crique Isle with splendid warm weather by day and with cool, gorgeous nights for sleep. Yolanda, growing fretful at her master’s absence, traveled to Haiti for a fortnight, but returned to Hidden Harbor sullen and unapproachable. Martha Marguerite received, via Port-au-Prince, a long letter from her family’s Parisian attorney advising her that a certain Uncle Pierre, who had been in charge of familial affairs, had died of pneumonia. Decisions had to be made, he said, especially in the light of a rising revolutionary animus against the titled nobility. Martha ought to come to Paris, he pleaded, at first opportunity. The woman fretted over the matter at breakfast, luncheon, tea, and dinner. Selena’s usually generous supply of sympathy waned; she began to take many of her meals alone.

  She, too, had decisions to make, a pressure that increased with each day that Jean remained away. So, early in April, she had Campanale and several other servants take her to Port-au-Prince aboard the sloop. Once there, she learned that a Spanish freighter was due to arrive any day from Venezuela, en route to New York. Selena no longer had the slightest idea if Royce was in New York—or even if he was alive, for that matter—but at least she had friends there who might know of his whereabouts and who would give her comfort and shelter.

  The main problem was that she hadn’t a cent to her name. Damn the soul of whoever had taken those jewels! Damn the jewels anyway! And damn Jean too for being away so long!

  But in truth, she’d begun to fear for his life.

  Campanale suggested that she attempt to sell or pawn her gold cross, but Selena would not hear of it, besides which the amount it might bring would not suffice to take her to America. Just when she’d decided to inquire after a loan of money, word came that the Spanish vessel had been destroyed in a hurricane off the Tortugas. There would not be another ship to New York for two months.

  Thus, it was back to Hidden Harbor for Selena, but not before reading a story in an English newspaper—six months old—that reported Lord Sean Bloodwell’s arrival in Paris to take up his duties in the diplomatic corps. He had been received by the French monarch, Louis XVI.

  As the little one-sailed sloop glided slowly out of Port-au-Prince, it passed on the port side an inbound British frigate, the HMS Prince William, named for one of the royal sons. Its sails were ripped through and there were more great, jagged holes in its hull. Obviously there’d been a battle at sea. Since the Prince William was British, Selena wished the damn thing had been sent to the bottom.

  But when they arrived back at Hidden Harbor, Selena’s spirits, heretofore bleak, soared immediately.

  The sleek Liberté, intact and unscathed, lay at anchor, and Jean Beaumain himself was waving from the veranda. He embraced her when she joined him up at the house with sufficient enthusiasm to flare the ever-present fires of animosity in Yolanda’s sultry eyes, to put a quick look of concern on Martha Marguerite’s face. He had been telling them of his adventures and now over brandy h
e regaled Selena as well.

  “When we reached Cuba,” he said, “I did some trading in Havana that turned a small profit, but I also learned of a prospective deal in silver that was abrew down in Caracas. So of course we set sail for Venezuela immediately…”

  He looks wonderful, thought Selena, watching Jean as he lounged cavalierly in the veranda chair. He was deeply tanned, and the sun had turned his blond hair almost to a white-silver hue. His eyes were sparklingly blue, and every inch of him was lean, honed.

  “…Once in Caracas, I was informed that a lode of silver had been discovered and was being mined somewhere in the Amazonian basin. We proceeded to Brazil where I managed to buy, at a very good price, some of the best ore. I brought it back to Caracas, made a deal, and ladies, I must tell you that it was one of the best! I could retire now for the rest of my life.

  “If I chose to do so,” he added, grinning.

  Martha betrayed nothing by her expression, but Yolanda Fee looked discomfited, almost hurt. Clearly, she wanted Jean to cease his wandering and remain at Hidden Harbor with her.

  Selena, for her part, said only that she was happy to see him safe and home. She wanted to get him alone for a long talk, but decided to wait for a time that would not further arouse the hostility of the other women.

  When Jean had finished relating his adventures, Martha chimed in with her news from France, adding the urgent plea that he take her there as soon as possible.

  “I will think it over,” he allowed. “I myself will not set foot on French soil until I have done with Chamorro, but if you must go back, you must.”

  This satisfied Martha Marguerite, although it caused Yolanda to leave the veranda in a sloe-eyed huff.

  Jean paid no attention. “Now I am going to bathe for a long, long time,” he announced, rising, “and then we shall dine.”