Microsoft Word - Sherwood, Valerie - Nightsong

by kps

  Kells was gone. She was alone. She would always be alone.

  There in her lonely cabin she burst into tears. It was like a dam breaking. She could not stop weeping. As the next day passed, she only picked at her food and she stayed in her cabin.

  Captain Simmons was perplexed. At the very least he had expected this beauteous lady's company at meal-time and for strolls around the deck. But the Ordeal continued to beat its way up the Windward Passage and still the lady did not come out.

  Captain Simmons had an answer for that:

  He stopped having meals sent to her cabin.

  Chapter 15

  Driven by gnawing hunger-for after all she was young and strong and in vibrant health-Carolina at last decided to leave her cabin. She would take a turn upon the deck and find out why food had abruptly stopped arriving the day before yesterday.

  Did this green young captain from Philadelphia think he could starve her into taking her meals with him? She had, after all, paid for her passage--and a handsome price at that!

  It was with a glint in her silver eyes that she made determinedly for the door that bright morning. She had dried her tears at last and decided to rejoin the land of the living.

  But she had not made the door before the ship gave a lurch and she was sent in surprise against the wall.

  Quickly righting herself, Carolina made for the deck where she found a flurry of activity, with sailors scrambling over the rigging and a mountain of canvas billowing above her.

  She looked about her. The sun should not be coming from that direction.... Why, they were heading northwest-not northeast as they should have been!

  The captain hurried by and she hailed him.

  "Captain Simmons, why have we changed our course? What is wrong?" He turned to her, his eyes wild. "D'ye not see those ships?" he cried, waving his arm in an easterly direction. "They're Spanish!"

  Carolina shaded her eyes from the sun and peered in the direction he was pointing.

  Two very tiny ships seemed to be bobbing on the horizon.

  "How can you tell at this distance?" she asked mildly.

  In truth Captain Simmons had but fancied he saw a flash of red and gold flying from the mast of one of the ships, but it had translated immediately in his mind into the red and gold flag of Spain.

  "'Tis obvious!" he sputtered. "I saw it through my glass."

  His beautiful passenger gave him a skeptical look. "They are more likely to be salt ships from Turks Islands coming from that direction," she observed. "And while I have your attention, may I ask why the cabin boy has stopped bringing my meals to my cabin?"

  Up until that moment young Captain Simmons had intended only to veer away from a pair of ships that were most likely in these waters to be Spanish, beat his way northwestward away from them, slip through Crooked Island Passage, and tum eastward into the broad Atlantic on his voyage to England. But in his overwrought condition-for he was certain in his panicky heart that they were being pursued by Spanish warships whose one mission in life was to sink his unarmed merchantman-he now came abruptly to a different decision.

  "I have changed my mind about voyaging to England," he said testily. "We are setting course for 'Philadelphia." "But I have paid passage for England," objected Carolina.

  "Surely you-"

  Captain Simmons regarded this cool island beauty with something akin to hatred.

  How dare she stand there looking so unconcerned when they might all be blown out of the water if those galleons caught up with them? And to think he had dreamed of her last night, dreamed he was removing that badly mended yellow calico dress from her slim body, dreamed that he was running his eager hands over her silky breasts, pulling off her chemise, kissing her, fondling her.

  "Your passage money will be returned to you!" he exploded, giving this buccaneer's woman a look of anger. "When we reach Philadelphia." Where I will sell this vessel, he was thinking. And never sail the treacherous seas again! Lord, but I had narrowly escaped death in Port Royal-if I had but landed a little earlier, my vessel would have been dashed to pieces against the shattered buildings as so many other good ships had been in that cursed harbor!

  Carolina stepped back before the venom in his voice-until she realized that it was motivated by fear. She sighed. After all, what did it matter if she reached England by way of Philadelphia? It would take a little longer, true, but if Captain Simmons returned her passage money she would have enough not only for passage from Philadelphia to England but enough to pay for good accommodations and to buy some decent clothes. She would not arrive in London looking like a beggar wench!

  "Very well," she said. "Philadelphia it is. But I have had no breakfast and I have come to inquire if you intend to starve me?"

  Before her the frightened young captain seemed to draw himself up. His face grew puffy. "Find the cabin boy and get him to bring you some food," he shouted.

  "There will be no hot food on board this vessel until we have escaped--them!" He flung an arm outward toward the distant pair of ships.

  Thinking how much better Kells had managed matters aboard the Sea Wolf, Carolina went off to seek the cabin boy, who could find only some cheese and ship's biscuits.

  She munched them as she watched those tiny ships grow a little closer.

  By late afternoon everyone knew that the captain was right: The ships were Spanish.

  Carolina expected the Ordeal to slip through Crooked Island Passage by night and into the open ocean. But in his panic, sure that the wind did not favor that, the captain drove his ship forward, penetrating ever deeper into that vast chain of islands and cays the buccaneers called "The Shallows," but which others called the Bahamas.

  With Deadman's Cay to port and Rum cay to starboard, he was floundering into Exuma Sound. If in desperation he turned west in an effort to reach the Straits of Florida, he could run the ship aground on the Grand Bahama Bank.

  By mid morning Carolina had decided that the . captain-who was looking bleary-eyed and distraught as he stood beside the helmsman-was in need of advice.

  "Had Kells been in your situation," she told him conversationally, "and chosen not to engage, he would have played tag with his pursuers among the islands."

  "Exactly what I've been telling you, Cap'n," muttered one of his ship's officers, standing nearby.

  Captain Simmons gave them both a grim look. He was fast losing his youth. A gray pallor spread over his face every time he looked past the Ordeal's stem at the steadily gaining galleons which now flashed gold in the sun. "And what would you suggest we do now?" he demanded helplessly of the officer who had spoken.

  "I would turn hard to starboard past Devil's Point and lose them going round Cat Island," volunteered Carolina, who had not been asked. "I heard Kells say once that he had done that."

  They both turned to stare at her.

  "Of course," she added cheerfully, "he only did it so that he could swing round Cat Island and come up behind them and take them by surprise. You will be doing it to gain the open ocean."

  "Go away and find something else to do, mistress!" roared the young captain.

  "Running a ship is men's work."

  Carolina shrugged and strolled away. But she noticed that after a hurried conference the ship changed course. Not long after that, the officer who had been there when she had given the captain her advice found her.

  "We are all beholden to you, mistress," he said in a low voice. "Young Captain Simmons is too green to be in command of this ship and had his father not died so unexpectedly on the voyage, he would not be. Old Captain Simmons would have followed your advice and struck out for the open ocean. But our young captain is fearful. He has heard tales of the Inquisition-all true, I don't doubt-and he has a terrible dread of falling into the hands of the dons. It is his plan to hug Cat Island's coast and set his course for Eleuthera Island and from there strike out for Philadelphia."

  "What do you think of his plan?" she asked.

  His answer was a shrug. "I think it
will most likely get us all killed, but captain's orders is captain's orders."

  Carolina leaned upon the rail after he had left and stared moodily at the pursuing galleons. The sea was a brilliant glittering blue, the sky azure. They were so near land that the air was full of seabirds and landbirds, swooping and crying in flight.

  Above her the white sails billowed, a mountain of canvas. It seemed incredible that on such a day anything bad could happen. And yet there were those galleons, relentlessly pursuing.... If only Captain Simmons could bring himself to steer a bold course. She doubted that he could.

  All day they played cat and mouse with the golden galleons along Cat Island's eastern coast. Night found them off the dangerous reefs that fringed Eleuthera's ninety miles of eastern beaches. And there the captain was at last persuaded to strike northward for Philadelphia under cover of darkness. It was an overcast night with no visible stars. The Caribbean night seemed to have closed them in like a dark blanket.There was little wind so they made scant headway, the sails for the most part drooping and flopping. And where would the galleons be tomorrow morning?

  Carolina asked herself that question as she made ready for bed. Suppose they were taken by the Spanish? What kind of treatment could they expect?

  She tried to take her mind off that. It was not too difficult. Indeed a film of numbness had slid over her mind in the wake of Kells's death. Being captured did not assume the terrible importance it once would have because at the moment she cared little what happened to her.

  She would live or she would die-fate would decide. Meantime she leaned her chin on her hands and sat in gloomy contemplation of all that might have been.

  It was better, she decided, to be born lucky than to be born either beautiful or rich.

  For if you had luck you needed little else.

  Neither she nor her two elder sisters had had much luck, she told herself. Look at what had happened to them! Penny, the eldest, for all her beauty and her wild spirit, was lost these many years and probably long dead somewhere in Philadelphia.

  Virgie had had a tragic life-but she had won through at last to happiness with Kells's brother in Essex; whether Virgie's luck would hold, Carolina, in her present pessimistic mood, would not have cared to wager.

  As for herself, whenever she had ended up in the right arms, those arms had been snatched away from her. She had been separated from Kells first by misunderstandings, then by old entanglements and other people's quarrels and chicanery-and now by the sheer chance of his having arrived back in Port Royal at precisely the wrong moment, when a sinking city and a cresting wave had conspired to down his broken ship.

  A luckier man would have escaped that. A luckier woman would have had a chance to say good-by to her lover before he sank beneath the waves.

  Carolina's lips twisted bitterly. There was no truth to the cheerful belief that good would triumph over evil, she told herself. Look at Robin Tyrell, Marquess of Saltenham! Look at Reba and Reba's mother! They had certainly triumphed and were living no doubt in splendor in England, secure in the knowledge that Robin's crimes had been safely pinned on someone else-Kells.

  And now Kells was dead and would never be able to raise his voice against Robin, never retrieve his damaged reputation.

  Carolina stared into the dark, her hands clenched, and fervently prayed to God that she would someday have the chance to confront the marquess, that she would have the chance to bring him down. In Kells's behalf.

  A bittersweet vision of Robin Tyrell rose hauntingly in her mind. Dark and attractive, so fleetingly like Kells, Robin had been the dark side of the coin. Memories assailed her, lashed her. Of empty gray eyes, of a dissolute face, of a caressing voice that had called her "dear lady." There had been a time when she had almost believed she could change him.

  Now she was older, wiser. Now she knew that people rarely changed-only circumstances.

  And Robin and her old schoolmate Reba, the Marquess and Marchioness of Saltenham, were blithely going their way with never a thought for the woe they had left behind them.

  Life was unjust.

  Carolina threw herself face down upon her bunk, wishing she would smother and never wake, never live to face all the heartache, all the distasteful realities that lay in store.

  And lying thus, she fell asleep and dreamed she was a little girl again, back on the Eastern Shore, crying for a lost doll-and for a father who could never love her.

  And amid her tears, into that dream on magical boots strode a tall dark Englishman-Kells. Half awake, half asleep, she found herself tossing on her bunk and reliving those wild days on Tortuga, those days when she had by turn loved him and hated him. And in her dream a tall white ship carried them back to the Tidewater and a gala reunion with her mother at Level Green.

  Having drifted off to sleep with thoughts of that leisurely world of Virginia's Tidewater that she had lost so long ago, Carolina woke refreshed for the first time in days-s-and as she went out on deck in a pink dawn that turned the sea momentarily to a misty lavender, she realized that what had wakened her had been the ship's turning sharply about.

  The reason for that change of course was glaringly apparent.

  Not only were the golden galleons still visible in the distance as they sailed cautiously past the coral reefs that guarded the northeast comer of Eleuthera, but two lean ships flying the French flag were approaching from the open ocean. Captain Simmons had turned tail and was fleeing before them to the west-a course that would inevitably take him down the Northeast Providence Channel.

  The young captain had gambled and lost.

  It was a black look he gave her when he saw her standing, yellow calico skirts blowing, by the rail. A look that said, We might have gone round Abaco Island and so reached safety had it not been for your counsell .But Carolina, watching the ships approach, had a fatalistic feeling that there were ships everywhere that day on the watch for such as they, and that it would not have mattered whether Green Turtle Cay or even Pensacola Cay, the result would have been exactly the same-a frowning warship bearing down, driving them ever onward.

  Like the others aboard she watched glumly as those stout ships herded them down the Northeast Providence Channel, past Spanish Wells, past Hole in the Wall. If they held this course they would wind up at the pirate port of Nassau on New Providence Island.

  "What does Captain Simmons intend?" she asked the sailing master when she could get a word with him. "Does he not know that his present course will bring him to New Providence? Why does he not turn hard to starboard and run between Berry Island and Gorda Cay up the Northwest Providence Channel and so reach the Straits of Florida? It is his only chancel"

  The sailing master looked hard at this young woman who had studied a buccaneer's charts so well. "I would you were in command of the ship," he muttered, running a distracted hand through his nut-brown hair. "But the captain seems to have lost his resolve. He stands there with his teeth chattering!" He gave his captain's back in the distance a contemptuous look.

  "Well, someone must jolt him out of it or we are lost!"

  The sailing master gave her a glum look. "I doubt anyone can do it. I wish to God I had never signed on for this voyage!" He was still muttering as he moved on down the deck.

  Carolina hesitated but a moment. The captain did not like her, but he must hear her out-all their lives depended on it. For she had little hope for any of them if they reached New Providence.

  Squaring her slim shoulders, she marched upon the captain. He stood with his back to her, a beaten dejected figure in crumpled clothes.

  "Captain Simmons," she began.

  He did not turn. He did not seem to hear her. His head was bowed and he was lost in contemplation of the deck planking.

  She opened her mouth to speak again and even as she did the captain's head was jerked upward by a cry from the rigging above and they saw, coming out from behind Sandy Point up the coast of Abaco Island on their right, the masts of a tall ship-and from her masthead she flew
the blue and gold lilies of France.

  What would Kells have done in such a case? was racing through Carolina's mind.

  "Captain Simmons!" she cried. "Turn hard to star-board. Run past that ship. You may yet escape a broadside and reach the Straits of Florida!"

  As if in a trance, the young captain stared at the oncoming ship-his only barrier at that point to freedom. Slowly he swung to face the clamor that had arisen behind Carolina for others aboard were of her persuasion.

  "It is too late," he said in a hollow voice. "We could never pass her. We would be blown out of the water."

  Carolina stared at the beaten captain and in her rage she wanted to burst into tears.

  How inglorious it would be to go to the bottom without ever firing a shot! Around her the crew was muttering, but they were not likely to mutiny-not in time at least, for they were fast losing their chance as the majestic French vessel moved out into the channel.

  Captain Simmons blundered past her as if he could not bear the sight and Carolina watched bitterly as the big warships herded their inoffensive vessel toward New Providence Island and who knew what grim fate.

  WELCOME TO

  NEW PROVIDENCEI

  Chapter 16

  All day beneath a cloudless sky they had sailed the clear cerulean waters. No shot had rung across the Ordeal's bow. Indeed it was unnecessary. She had struck her colors without being asked to do so and now slunk along, a beaten ship but still intact.

  Along with the grim-faced officers, Carolina had remained on deck as the Ordeal was herded past reefs of pink coral and over a bottom whose white sand held a brilliance that seemed to highlight the parrot fish and barracuda that held sway in the aquamarine depths. And now their escort had been joined by other ships, silently driving toward New Providence.

  No one aboard understood exactly what was happening, why French and Spanish ships were beating together toward Nassau, but Carolina sensed that the jaws of a trap were closing.