Microsoft Word - Sherwood, Valerie - Nightsong

by kps

  And now as the swift tropical darkness fell, they saw ahead of them a line of low, dark green bluffs rising. They had reached New Providence, and the shanty town that was Nassau lay ahead with its protected harbor that could anchor half a thousand pirate vessels while denying access to the deeper draft men of war.

  Nature had provided assistance, too. The long sandy spit of Hog Island, dotted with occasional wind-stunted trees, provided a barrier to protect the busy harbor where countless shallow draft ships seemed to be anchored, their white sails turned rose-colored by the setting sun.

  At that point a nine-pounder spoke from somewhere along the coast and Captain Simmons in panic gave orders to come about.

  It was the wrong maneuver to have made just then. With a jarring lurch the Ordeal came to a halt. With the last of the light she had run aground on a sandbar off Hog Island.

  Carolina never really understood what happened through the night. There was desultory firing, occasional lights blinking from shore, shouts that came from out of the darkness as great ships glided by. Once in the harbor a powder magazine blew up with a deafening explosion that sent an incandescent array of hot metal and flaming sparks into fiery arcs that hissed back into the black waters. Moonlight glinted on the white surf that boomed off a nearby reef. Carolina had heard that there were two entrances to this harbor-s-she had no doubt that this determined fleet that had so successfully blocked the Ordeal's escape had blocked them both off.

  When morning came, shot pounded around them as desperate pirates tried to run the French and Spanish blockade with their fast, shallow draft vessels. Some of their ships were blown out of the water, some were captured and new crews put aboard to be sent into the harbor to pound the coast. Miraculously the Ordeal remained untouched, stuck fast to the sandbar, for the sturdy merchant ship had resisted all efforts to dislodge her.

  As the morning advanced, Carolina borrowed a glass from one of the ship's officers and studied the town with curiosity. What she saw was mainly a tent city. Spars had been stuck into the sand with a bit of ragged sail attached to give shade from the brilliant sun. Behind that white sand beach, beyond the pink coral heads and the waving palms, stretched a jungle, and beyond that the coral hills where lookouts undoubtedly kept watch. Carolina wondered if the pirate lookouts had all been drunk yesterday that they had not seen their stately advance and given warning sooner.

  The attacking force had gone ashore now and there was fighting on the beach. The nine-pounder in the crumbling fort had been silenced, but there was the popping sound of small-arms fire. She could see men running-and sometimes women with bright skirts flying.

  Gilly had been one of those. . .. It was easy to picture the ginger-haired urchin mouthing oaths and jeers as she ran. . . . But Gilly lay deep beneath Port Royal harbor.

  Carolina's jaw tightened. This was no time to ponder upon the past, upon what might have been. A longboat was approaching from one of the galleons that had cast anchor nearby, and in the prow was a frowning Spanish officer.

  And Carolina, as the only person aboard who could speak Spanish, found herself cast in the role of translator.

  Captain Jose Avila arrived aboard with an armed escort and formally demanded surrender of the ship Ordeal, which he termed "an impudent invader of Spain's sovereign seas." He also demanded surrender of Captain Simmons's sword but since Captain Simmons didn't have a sword, he took command of the ship anyway.

  "Ask them where they are taking us," squeaked Captain Simmons in an agony of fright. "He will only say 'disposal will be made of us,' ' Carolina reported woodenly.

  "Tell him I insist on having another interpreter," cried Captain Simmons.

  Carolina turned and gave him a wounded look but she repeated his request faithfully to Captain Avila, who raised his dark brows, snapped his fingers, and muttered something in Spanish to one of the officers who accompanied him. There was a short wait during which Captain Avila instructed Carolina to read him the roster of the ship's company and the ship's manifest.

  By the time she had finished that, they had a new translator, a melancholy-faced young man who came on board and snapped tensely to attention. Carolina guessed he was a young officer on his first assignment-perhaps he had been recently a student-and was overwhelmed by suddenly being singled out for duty under the sharp eyes of his commanding officer.

  There was a swift exchange of words between Captain Simmons and the go-between. "Tell your superior officer that this ship is not an interloper," he said earnestly and there were now beads of sweat glistening on his brow. "We were carrying important cargo to England, there to be delivered to the Spanish ambassador for transshipment to Spain."

  He had their full attention now. Everyone, Spaniard and Englishman alike, was hanging on his words.

  "And what cargo is this?"

  "We carry the Silver Wench of whom you may have heard. She is the woman of Captain Kells, who loves her well. For her sake he will surrender his body to Spain!"

  There was a general growl among his men but Carolina stood transfixed. She turned her accusing gaze on the sweating young captain for a moment, then decided to enter the fray herself.

  "It is true I am called the Silver Wench," she told her captor in her very good Castilian Spanish. "And it is true that I will always be Captain Kells's woman!" Her voice rang out. "But-"

  "How come you to speak our language with such grace, senorita?" cut in her captor with narrowed eyes.

  "I once found a Spanish girl shipwrecked on the Virginia coast. She was the lone survivor of a galleon that foundered in a storm. My father arranged for her return to Spain via the Spanish ambassador in London, but in the months she stayed with us, I learned her language. Later-on Tortuga-I befriended the Spanish prisoners of the buccaneers, bringing them fresh fruit and talking with them-they had few friends there."

  The Spanish officer, who up to now had considered Spain had a corner on gallantry, gazed upon the glowing beauty of this admitted buccaneer's woman, and a grudging admiration crept into his dark eyes. Suddenly he swept her a courtly bow.

  "You are safe here, senorita," he said. "My men will not molest you." He turned with a frown to Captain Simmons, who had viewed this sudden bowing with alarm. "Tell this quaking captain that my men will now take over his ship for transportation of the prisoners from this pirate stronghold we have just now subdued."

  "But we have here the Silver Wench! We offer her in exchange for our freedom!"

  Captain Simmons cried almost tearfully.

  "Tell the young captain that he has a loose tongue," was the-scathing rejoinder. "If he allows it to wag any more on this subject, I will have it cut off."

  Captain Simmons cringed back and Carolina noted how, as he joined his men, they drew away from him.

  She turned to the Spanish officer and gave him a deep curtsy and her brightest smile. "You are a true caballero of Spain, mi capitan."

  "And you are a dangerous wench," he growled. But a captivating one, his smiling eyes added.

  Boatloads of women were approaching, Carolina saw, being rowed in longboats by laconic Spanish sailors. She peered past them, looking for other boats -boats containing the hundreds of men who had fought the invasion on shore. "Where are the men?" she wondered.

  "Put to the sword," replied the Spanish captain and she looked at him, hardly comprehending. "You took no prisoners?" she demanded.

  "Only the women," he said grimly. "Will you do me ,the honor to be their translator, senorita? For we have found none of them who speak Spanish."

  "Yes," Carolina murmured dizzily. All dead, she was thinking. Kells had never done anything like that-not when he took Cartagena, not when he took Spanish vessels.

  He had ransomed them, not killed them!

  She was diverted from her thoughts by the first woman clambering aboard-a blowzy woman with broken teeth and the wildest assortment of clothing Carolina had ever seen, topped off with a multicolored bandanna wrapped around her large head.

  One by one
they came aboard, some laughing, some crying, some making eyes at the men aboard and flirting their skirts invitingly. But the last to arrive was the one who made an impression on Carolina.

  She came aboard like a spitting cat and slapped the face of the young officer, who had handled her too familiarly as he helped her over the side, with a crack that snapped his head back.

  "Insulting whelp!" she cried. "Watch where you put your hands!" Captain Avila was watching this byplay with some amusement. His dark gaze-approving in spite of himself-passed over this splendid bit of womanhood, her magnificent figure only accentuated by the fact that she was wearing men's clothing. A pair of fine upstanding breasts pushed against the white cambric of her tom shirt and through it came delectable glimpses of pale female flesh. Her dark trousers fit rather too snugly and her lower legs were bare-indeed she was barefoot. Her dark blue eyes snapped imperiously and a head of riotous red hair sprang like glowing flame to surround a commandingly beautiful face-and a face accustomed to command.

  "This, senorita, is the famous Rouge," the Spanish captain told Carolina humorously.

  But Carolina seemed not to hear him. A look of shock had spread over her lovely countenance, and for a moment she seemed to totter.

  "Penny," she said faintly. "Dear God, it's really you! You're Rouge!"

  ON TO HAVANA!

  Chapter 17

  "You are the Silver Wench? You, my little sister? I knew that Christabel Willing was the Silver Wench, but I never in my wildest dreams imagined that Christabel Willing was Carolina Lightfoot!" Penny nearly doubled up with laughter.

  "Indeed I can hardly credit that you are the woman called Rouge," Carolina countered ruefully.

  The two women were sitting in Carolina's cabin, which she had hastily offered to share with "Rouge." Penny was lounging lazily back against the bunk with one long leg stretched out, her bare heel resting on the table in a pose her mother would have described sharply as "outrageous," and Carolina was perched on the edge of her chair, studying her beautiful sister, whom the family had so long regarded as "lost."

  "Whatever happened to you, Penny? Why didn't we ever hear from you?"

  "A great deal happened to me." Penny's brilliant smile flashed. "And do you really think the aristrocratic Lightfoot clan would have welcomed the news that a daughter of theirs was the notorious 'Rouge' of New Providence? What do you think Mother would have said? Or Father? Or Aunt Pet? Or you, for instance?" she added with a slightly jeering laugh.

  "I think we would all have tried to rescue you," Carolina said soberly. "And Kells would certainly have done it."

  Those dark blue eyes, so like her reckless mother's, held an amused glimmer. "But suppose I didn't want to be rescued?"

  "I suppose we'd have done it anyway," sighed Carolina. "Plucked you out bodily and asked you if that was really what you wanted to do with your life!"

  "Oh, don't be priggish!" exclaimed Penny. "From anyone else maybe, but I wouldn't expect priggishness from you, Carol!"

  Carolina was in a mood to be argumentative. "Well, you must admit New Providence is a terrible place," she said. "Everybody says so."

  "Even Kells?"

  "Especially Kells."

  Penny chuckled. "I never saw him, you know. I was told he'd visited New Providence but at the time I had other fish to fry."

  "Yes, he told me. Of course he'd never seen you before so he didn't have any idea you were my sister, but he told me you were inciting two men to kill each other and when they lurched away, you followed them swinging a cutlass!"

  "Oh, I probably did," shrugged Penny. "I was just having a tantrum, most like. I doubt I really hurt anybody." She gave Carolina a keen look. "By the way, where is Kells?"

  "He's dead," said Carolina, feeling a lump rise in her throat. "His ship was just coming into Port Royal when the earthquake struck. The Sea Wolf went to the bottom, taking him with it."

  "Oh, Carol, I'm so sorry!" exclaimed Penny, and real compassion lit her dark blue eyes. "I'd heard it was a real love affair-the Silver Wench and her buccaneer."

  "It's true, I loved him deeply," said Carolina in a blurry voice. She got hold of herself.

  If they talked about Kells, she'd be hard put not to burst into tears! "But enough about me, Penny. Tell me all that's happened to you and how you ended up in a godforsaken place like New Providence? All we knew was that you'd run away to the Marriage Trees with Emmett and had got as far as Philadelphia. Were you married in Maryland or in Philadelphia?"

  "In Maryland, just over the border. The storm was tearing through the Marriage Trees-a big oak fell and nearly killed us-but we found a minister to perform the ceremony in a house that had a light in it. We woke him up. He was frightened by the storm and wanted to wait till morning but I aimed Father's big dueling pistol at him and he read the words over us in short order!"

  "Father missed that pistol but he assumed it was stolen by one of the servants,"

  marveled Carolina. "He never dreamed you took it!"

  "Yes, well, Emmett had his points but he wasn't the best of protectors. I thought I'd better have a weapon handy in case we met brigands on the road and I had to protect him." Penny's short laugh spoke volumes.

  Carolina studied her sister: That long elegant body, that complete self-composure, that relaxed mien of a lounging tigress. It was a face of great beauty she looked into, with a jaw just slightly square and dark blue eyes as reckless as her own. There was something wild and untamed and forever free about Penny with her flashing smile and her luxuriant red hair.

  "I never understood why you married Emmett in the first place," she sighed.

  "Personally, I never could stand him-his eyes were too small and he looked at everyone sort of calculatingly as if wondering how he could make them suit his purpose-for all that he was such a dolt!"

  "You read him right," murmured Penny. She put her other bare foot on the table, leaned back and folded her strong arms behind her head. Her red hair framed a thoughtful face. "I ran away, of course, because I wanted to be free, mistress of my own fate. But I really think I married Emmett to spite my parents because they would have pushed me into a tiresome marriage with some dull-witted fellow who could

  'take care of me' sooner or later. ..." She laughed. "And so I married another dull-witted fellow who was even worse and who expected me to take care of him!"

  Carolina was not surprised. Emmett had, so far as she knew, no saving graces.

  "Mother sent to Philadelphia when she found out you were there, and Emmett wasn't hard to find. But all he would say was that you'd quarreled and you'd left him. He never would say what you'd quarreled about."

  "I don't doubt it!" Penny's eyes flashed, dark angry sapphires fringed by russet lashes. "Emmett was very sulky. He complained that I was too much for him-in bed, that is. He said I wore him out! Can you imagine?" She looked indignant. "Indeed, he said if he had to tumble about all night, he'd be much too tired ever to do any work the next day!"

  Carolina could well imagine it; she had always had an instinctive dislike for self-centered Emmett. What she could not imagine was Penny's next words.

  "But he'd worked it all out," she went on bitterly. "Since I was 'such a hot wench'--to use his phrase- and since I kept him so 'exhausted' –his words again-I could use up my extra energy and keep us both in luxury if I'd just accept the advances of certain gentlemen that he would find for me-and bring home to my bed!"

  "Oh, no!" wailed Carolina. "I hope you didn't do it, Penny!"

  "You're right, I didn't do it!" snapped Penny. "But that was what we quarreled about."

  "He said you attacked him," remembered Carolina.

  "I did," said Penny, aggrieved. "I threw everything in the room at him when he suggested he'd find other men for me--for money." Her smile was grim. "I blacked both his eyes and near broke his nose!"

  "No wonder he wouldn't say where you were-he was afraid you'd tell what had happened!" Penny laughed her throaty laugh. It had a hard sound.


  "I don't wonder Emmett didn't care to admit where I was! Oh, we'd quarreled, yes-but for him to seek revenge against me by selling me to a sea captain bound for Ireland

  ... !"

  "Oh, he didn't!" cried Carolina, shocked out of her despondency.

  "He did, indeed," affirmed Penny. "Bribed our landlady's two big sons to tie me up and deliver me to him in a sack down at the waterfront! He told them that I was a hellion and a harpy and that he was going to send me home to my family and leave me there! Of course, they believed him. And they had no love for me for from time to time I'd rejected both their advances! So one of them throttled me while the other tied me up and gagged me. They thrust me into a hempen sack"-she moved her body restlessly as if she could still feel its coarse roughness against her skin--"and I wasn't let out of that bag until we were four hours out to sea." Her teeth clashed together. "I can tell you that I came out of that bag fighting! And there was this coarse red-

  bearded giant who said he'd seen me and he'd fancied me and when it turned out Emmett couldn't persuade me to-"

  "So this sea captain was one of the 'gentlemen' Emmett intended you to entertain?"

  gasped Carolina.

  "He was indeed-and I'll never forget his coarse red beard that nearly took the skin off my face! He said he had bought me fair and square and he intended for me to keep Emmett's bargain. I gave him a most terrible kick that doubled him up. I had hoped at least to break a few of this scoundrel's bones but he was more durable than that. He rose from the floor with what I would term an ugly expression and reached out lightning fast with one of those cordlike arms of his and knocked me across the room.

  Knocked me unconscious, he did."

  Carolina was leaning forward, hanging on her sister's words. All this from the tall aristocratic beauty who had swept all before her when she danced the stately minuet to a tinkling harpsichord at the Governor's Palace in Williamsburg. She had always thought Penny born to wed at least a governor or a general!