He broke the surface and spotted Blake just ahead of him. Getting to the pirate ship shouldn’t be a problem. Getting past the few pirates on board was another story. Hopefully it wouldn’t be as difficult as his encounter with Angeline had been earlier that day. An encounter he couldn’t shove from his mind, no matter the present danger.
He’d swindled many people in his past, made a thousand spurious deals that had relieved people of their fortunes and lined his own pockets. But he’d never hurt anyone he cared about.
Until now.
Not only hurt, not only stolen money from, but apparently his actions had destroyed her life, had possibly led her to murder and God knew what else.
Drawing in a deep breath, he dove beneath a roller, wishing the waves would wash him clean of his past. But he supposed God didn’t work that way. God forgives, God redeems, but He doesn’t always sweep away the consequences of one’s bad choices. Like everyone in the colony, Hayden had hoped to escape the horrors of war by coming to Brazil. He had also hoped to escape his equally horrifying past. But it had found him anyway. First in the form of his father, and now in the form of precious Angeline.
He plunged upward through the surface, his eyes stinging from salt, his lungs gulping air, his heart heavy with guilt. He could do nothing but apologize to both God and man. God had already forgiven him. Hayden prayed Angeline would do the same someday. Water slapped him in the face like she had done earlier. He deserved that and more for what he’d done. Even still, he could not abide by her wishes and keep silent. James deserved to know the truth—whatever that truth was. Hayden could not allow one of his best friends to marry a murderer.
All such concerns fled him when he and Blake struck the side of the ship. He must focus on their mission or all would be lost. Waves lapped the wood and spread foamy claws upward toward a railing that disappeared into the thick black of night. The oaky smell of moist wood filled Hayden’s lungs as Blake nodded and began climbing the rope ladder.
Captain Ricu was on board. At least they’d seen one of his men rowing him to the ship at nightfall. That was hours ago, and by now, the flamboyant captain was surely sound asleep in his cabin. The long days spent in the tunnels seemed to steal his ostentatious vitality. Most of the pirates ashore were asleep as well, save the few that guarded the camp. Since they were preventing the colonists from escaping by land, not by sea, it had been easy to slip into the water without drawing their attention.
Hayden gripped the thick line, propped his bare feet on the hull, and followed Blake. Coarse rope, which felt more like a dozen needles, burned his hands. The ship creaked and groaned beneath each incoming wave, mimicking the ache in his muscles. Above him, the night soon swallowed up Blake. Hayden continued until finally a hand gripped his arm and hauled him over the bulwarks. He landed like a wet fish on the foredeck. The drip, drip from his clothes and his heavy breath echoed like alarms over the ship.
Thankfully, the guttural snores of several men rose to drown out the sound—pirates, who with bottles clutched to their chests, lay in haphazard positions across the deck like marionettes whose strings had been severed. Even the watchmen, muskets strewn across their laps, slouched against masts and gun carriages as if God had poured a sleep potion on them from heaven.
Lifting a silent prayer of thanks, Hayden inched his way around prostrate forms, eyeing the pistols and swords strapped to their bodies. The colonists could sure use some weapons, but he dared not risk waking the sleeping miscreants. The gunpowder was far more important. Destroying the tunnels and—if what James said was true—keeping the final beast imprisoned was their top priority. Then perhaps Captain Ricu would give up his quest for gold and leave them alone. If not, they’d find another way to deal with him.
Hayden dropped down a hatch, ignoring the foul stench that bit his nose. He’d been on this ship twice before. Once to rescue Magnolia and the second time to deliver the treasure maps to the captain. Both times, he’d taken note of the layout—knew the ship’s magazine must be located between the second deck and the hold. He only hoped it wasn’t locked. Grabbing a lantern from a hook on the bulkhead, he led Blake into the bowels of the ship, past the wardroom and the pantry until they stood before a bolted door.
Apprehension stormed across Blake’s gray eyes. He yanked a small ax from his belt and raised it above the iron lock. It would make noise. They both knew it would. What they didn’t know was whether that noise would penetrate the pirates’ blissful slumber. But they had no choice.
Blake slammed the ax down.
Clank!
The lock swung on its hinge but didn’t break. Groaning inwardly, Hayden exchanged a look of frustration with his friend. They waited. The ship rolled over an incoming wave. Blake rubbed his sore leg. Wind whistled through the hallway, joining the creak and grate of aged wood. But no human sounds met their ears. The lantern sputtered, casting ghoulish shadows on the bulkhead. Blake raised the ax again.
Clank! Thud!
The lock snapped off and fell to the deck. Lifting the lantern, Hayden pushed the door open to reveal a dozen kegs of gunpowder, piles of muskets, pistols, grenades, cutlasses, and cannonballs. He exchanged a grin with Blake. Now the hard part began. Getting one of the heavy kegs up the ladder to the main deck, over the bulwarks, and into one of the cockboats tied to the ship without getting caught. Once in the boat, it would be a short trip down shore away from camp where they could hide the keg until they could formulate the best plan to put it to use.
Clipping the lantern on the deckhead, Hayden grabbed a pistol and shoved it in his belt then slid a handful of shot in his pocket. All these weapons. All this gunpowder. It seemed a shame to leave most of it behind.
“We could blow up the ship if we wanted,” he said without thinking.
Loosening his tie, Blake ran the ends over the sweat on his neck. “Everyone on board would die.”
They stood staring at each other, the possibility of enacting such a heinous task weighing heavy in the air between them. The deck tilted. The lantern swayed. A chill bit through Hayden’s wet clothes.
Blake shook his head. “You don’t have it in you either, Hayden. Not anymore.”
Hayden’s tight chest unwound. Before he’d come to know God, he wouldn’t have hesitated to kill men who were intent on killing him. But something had changed within him in the past few months. Well, a lot had changed, if he was honest. But one thing he’d come to know with certainty—human life was precious. Every human life. Each person a unique masterpiece of the divine Creator.
Even pirates.
He released a breath and nodded at his friend while Blake snatched a couple of pistols and a sword and shoved them into his belt. Then together, they carried a keg of powder down the hall and up the ladder onto the main deck where a blast of wind flapped Hayden’s damp trousers against his leg and sent ice up his spine.
Something didn’t feel right. Yet when Hayden glanced around, the pirates remained sprawled in the same positions as before. A lantern swinging from the mainmast cast ribbons of dark and light over the deck as it screeched in harmony with the creak of wood. They set the keg down and glanced over the port railing at the dark shape of a boat thumping against the hull. Blake grabbed the rope dangling over the side and began tying it around the keg while Hayden kept watch.
Just a few minutes. That’s all the time they needed in order to lower the keg to the boat and be on their way. Just a few more minutes and their mission would be completed. Hayden shook his head at how easy it had been. Thank God the pirates had grown overconfident and become complacent in their vigilance.
Blake finished tying the rope and tugged on it to test the knot.
Squatting, Hayden helped him lift the keg, his muscles straining as they set it atop the bulwarks. They were about to lower it over the side when boot steps clapped over the deck and a shadow emerged from the darkness. Lantern light glimmered off a jeweled waistcoat and winked at them from a gold ring in one ear.
“And w
here you think to go with that?”
Hayden’s body turned to mud. And like mud, he wanted to spill to the deck, squeeze between the planks, and disappear. Instead he set down the keg, wondering if the despair in his own eyes matched the despair he saw in Blake’s.
Captain Ricu graced them with one of his annoying, insolent belly laughs. “What be this? You think to make idiota out of Captain Armando Manuel Ricu?” He stomped his boot on the deck, jingling the bells that adorned it.
Hayden cursed himself silently. Why hadn’t he heard the man coming? Rum and sour fish wafted beneath Hayden’s nose. Why hadn’t he smelled him?
Four pirates swarmed them, relieving them of their weapons and leveling pistols at their chests. Ricu planted fists at his waist and stared at them, though his expression was lost in the shadows. Probably for the best as Hayden could feel his anger from where he stood.
“I treat you well and this be how you repel me?”
Blake shifted the weight off his bad leg and huffed. “Repay. And we could have blown up your ship, Captain. And you, along with it.”
“Instead you steal to blow up later.”
“No,” Hayden began. “We—”
“Enough!” Ricu stormed, swung about and charged through his sleeping men, kicking them as he went and shouting words in Portuguese.
Groaning and grunting, the pirates scrambled to rise, rubbing their eyes and standing at attention once they saw their angry captain.
Further Portuguese words were brandished about before Hayden and Blake were escorted back to shore, along with the captain and a few of his men. At least he didn’t hang them from the yardarm or enact any other vicious pirate torture Hayden had read about. Such as the rosary of pain that made a man’s eyes pop out or flogging with the “cat,” a whip made from knotted strips of rope that ripped open a man’s flesh. He suddenly wished he hadn’t read any of those fanciful pirate tales as a kid. Trying to evict them from his mind, he glanced at Blake who sat beside him in the jostling boat. Stiff and stone-faced like a warrior, a tic in Blake’s jaw was the only indication of his angst.
Whatever Captain Ricu had planned for them, it couldn’t be good.
Pirates jerked them from the boat and hauled them through tumbling waves onto dry sand. With a snap of his fingers, Ricu sent several of them marching toward the colonists’ camp.
Hayden’s heart stopped. Beside him, Blake’s breath came hard and rapid.
Captain Ricu took up a pompous pace. “Since you not know to behave. Since I cannot trust you, I take what is most precious to you.”
Hayden’s mouth dried. He had nothing precious but Magnolia.
Within moments, women’s screams pierced the night. Both he and Blake started forward, but the tips of two swords held them back.
“Now you listen. Now you behave.” Ricu grinned.
“Please, Captain,” Blake’s voice came out in a desperate growl. “They had nothing to do with this. Punish us. Not them.”
Heart in his throat, Hayden squinted into the darkness where the pirates took form, dragging two women across the sand, one with brown hair, one with flaxen.
“Leave them be!” Batting aside the blade and ignoring the pain slicing his hand, Hayden charged forward with one thought in mind: kill the man who handled his wife so harshly. But he only made it a step when something hard struck his head. He toppled to the sand, barely conscious.
Conscious enough to hear Magnolia scream and the captain’s glum pronouncement:
“I take your wives prisoner aboard the Espoliar.”
C
HAPTER 30
You can’t go.” James clasped Angeline’s hands. “The pirates may not allow you to return.”
Violet eyes, moist with tears yet sparking with defiance, raised to his. “They are my friends. The only friends I’ve ever had.” She swallowed as the rising sun highlighted the smattering of adorable freckles on her nose. “If Captain Ricu is allowing me to bring them food and see how they fare, how can I refuse?” She squeezed his hand then released it. “I know you understand.”
Of course he understood. If Ricu would allow him to go, he’d row out to the Espoliar in a second. “I still can’t believe you talked him into it.” James had seen her speaking to the flamboyant pirate yesterday evening after supper. A brief conversation in which Angeline did most of the talking and Ricu did most of the staring, giving her a look as if he wished to swat her away like one of the sand fleas that inhabited the beach. By the time James was halfway there to rescue the foolish woman, Ricu had shrugged and walked away while Angeline turned to face James, a smug look on her face.
“I had merely to mention his lady’s name and how he would wish someone to care for her should she find herself in such a predicament.”
“You have that pirate wrapped around your finger.” He eased a lock of her hair behind her ear, constantly amazed by this woman. “But what else would I expect?”
She smiled. “By a tenuous thread, I assure you.”
“All the more reason not to deliver yourself into his hands,” James growled. It had been two days since Eliza and Magnolia had been imprisoned aboard the ship, and everyone in camp was overwrought with worry. Each evening Blake and Hayden had returned bone-weary and bruised from the tunnels where Ricu had dragged them as part of their punishment. Unable to sleep or even to eat, both men spent the night pacing the beach in frustration while dipping their heads in secret plans to rescue their wives. Yet after contemplating a thousand scenarios, nothing seemed feasible. Nothing that wouldn’t put their wives in more danger, and risk all the colonists’ lives. The worst part—James knew from experience—was imagining what Captain Ricu and his men were doing to Magnolia and Eliza. Though Angeline tried to comfort them with hopeful words of Ricu’s desire to change, Blake and Hayden suffered immensely, their haggard faces reflecting the torture they felt within. Captain Ricu was far smarter than James had given him credit for. Sure, he could have killed Hayden and Blake on the spot, but that might have caused the rest of the colonists to rise up in rebellion. This way, Ricu kept them all in check on the threat of hurting two of the colony’s favored women.
A breeze tossed a curl across Angeline’s shoulder as she squinted at the Espoliar rocking offshore, the golden sun rising behind its stark masts. “I will be all right, James. Don’t worry.”
Yet she was worried. He saw it in the tightness around her mouth, in the way she bit her bottom lip. “I can’t lose you,” he said.
“You won’t.” She tried to smile.
“You stand barely above five feet tall, and you forget you don’t have your pistol anymore.”
“I haven’t forgotten.” She frowned as if she truly did miss the weapon. “What good would it do against a dozen pirates, anyway?” She gave a little shrug.
“That is exactly what I am saying!” James said.
Which only made her smile all the more. She brushed sand from his shirt. “Is this our first squabble?”
“No.”
She seemed to ponder that for a minute. “Indeed, I fear you are correct. We’ve had many before. Are we to spend our entire courtship quarreling?”
“Not if you stop being so stubborn.”
“Hmm. I’m not sure that’s possible.”
“Something we agree on at last.” He grinned.
She reached up to caress his jaw. “There are many others, I’m sure.”
When she touched him like she was doing now, James believed he’d agree with anything she said. “We’ll have a lifetime to discover our many areas of agreement.” He placed his hand atop hers but suddenly frowned. “That is, if you don’t go getting yourself killed by pirates.”
She smiled. “I better go.” Bending, she picked up the sack at her feet containing fruit, smoked fish, and a few of Eliza and Magnolia’s personal items then headed toward the cockboat where Blake and Hayden waited to see her off.
James followed after her. Mule-headed, reckless woman! The frayed hem of her emerald ski
rt sashayed back and forth over the sand as she marched dauntless into unknown danger.
Courageous, beautiful woman.
Angling a wide circle around Hayden as if he had a disease, she stopped to speak to Blake before she allowed the pirates to assist her into the craft.
Captain Ricu appeared at the railing, doffing his red-feathered hat in his usual colorful greeting, but his eyes were on Angeline approaching in the boat.
“If he lays one finger on her!” James huffed and kicked the sand then glanced up at Hayden and Blake, their sullen gazes glued to the ship.
“Forgive me, I’m being thoughtless.” When he should have been comforting his friends, he was the one demanding comfort. Once again, he’d failed as a preacher.
Blake slapped him on the back. “We will all feel better when Angeline returns with a good report.”
If she returns. He watched as the pirates assisted her up the rope ladder and then over the railing, where she disappeared from sight. Please, God, watch over her.
Not since her father had been alive had anyone cared whether Angeline lived or died. James’s raw emotion, so often worn on his sleeve—and one of the things she loved about him—had kept her warm all the way out to the ship. Kept her legs moving even now as Captain Ricu, after sifting through the contents of her bag, escorted her below. The massive man smelled of port, gunpowder, and tobacco. He repeatedly glanced over his shoulder at her, licking his lips as one would when selecting a choice cut of meat for supper.
Angeline had met men like him—men far more prolific in stature than brains. Men who, decked in garish pretention, swaggered their authority about in order to mask a wavering confidence within. To say she was not frightened would be a lie. Her jittery stomach was evidence of that. But to say she couldn’t handle herself with such men would also be a lie. She had proven that already with this particular man. But would the allure of his lady-love’s approval continue to restrain his nefarious passions? That was the question that had her heart in a knot.
Abandoned Memories Page 24