Microsoft Word - Sherwood, Valerie - Nightsong

by kps

  I knew, thought Carolina sadly, ignoring the hubbub outside as someone bellowed to restore order, followed by a crash which might have been caused by a thrown whisky keg. Perhaps those were luckier who searched and never found, she thought, luckier than those who found only to lose!

  "But if I do find the right man"-Penny's gamine smile flashed-"I promise you I shall know it instantly!" She cut the cards flashily.

  "Penny, he won't stand a chance against you," Carolina assured her warmly.

  "I'll wager he won't!" laughed Penny. "Meanwhile, since I can't find the right one, I'll make do with whoever appeals to me. Which may run into numbers!"

  Penny lifted her head as the sound of a shot rent the air, followed by a jumble of confused shouts. The noise retreated. "I think the dance is over for the evening," she remarked tranquilly. "Buckets of sea water are being sloshed over the drunks to revive them, and the ladies are being dragged back to their quarters to sleep off the evening's festivities."

  "You're certainly calm about it! If it wasn't for that stout door, we'd have been in it!"

  "I'm used to it," was her sister's laconic response. "And much, much worse. Would you like me to describe a rather bad night in Nassau?"

  "No, I wouldn't," Carolina said with a shudder. "I'd never realized how protected I was in Tortuga and Port Royal. And now . . ."

  Which brought them squarely back to their present predicament.

  "I do hope," Carolina told Penny, "that Ramona Valdez is still in Havana-she was to marry the governor there, you know."

  "Yes, I had forgotten Ramona," murmured Penny, restlessly dealing another hand.

  "Do you think she would help us?"

  "Of course she would help us! We rescued her when she was shipwrecked, didn't we, and returned her to Spain?"

  Penny gave her younger sister a whimsical look. "Ramona might not thank us for that-not if the governor she married turned out not to her liking!"She paused. "Do you know anyone else in Havana?"

  Carolina laid down her cards. "I don't know," she said. "I did befriend various Spanish prisoners on Tortuga and some of them were later returned to Havana. I don't know if any of them are still there or whether or not they would remember me."

  Across the table Penny considered her with a droll expression. "Anyone who ever saw you would remember you, Caroll"

  "But maybe in Havana they would not wish to remember," pointed out Carolina, frowning.

  "There's that possibility, of course." Penny dealt a new hand of cards. "Come on, Carol, concentrate!" she added impatiently. "You're letting me win too easily!"

  But with all that the immediate future might hold in store for them, Carolina found it difficult to concentrate on a game of cards.

  Penny looked up thoughtfully. "So you really think Ramona would free us?"

  "Of course she would!"

  Penny shrugged. "People change," she said cryptically. "Not Ramona-she'd remember how we helped her."

  Penny gave her a mocking look. "Or perhaps she'd just remember we were heretics and have us burned at the next auto-da-fe!"

  Carolina shuddered.

  "Come along," Penny said easily. "I didn't mean it! You'll remember I always had a shocking sense of humor!"

  Carolina could not find it in her heart to deny it.

  Once again, Penny beat her easily.

  The drunken brawl on deck did not continue. The Spanish captain had managed to restore order before they passed Dog Rocks and Deadman's Cays. With half the crew in irons, they had sailed past the Florida Keys into the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico and at last to the entrance of Havana harbor.

  Rising up from the rugged coral rock, the sheer walls of the frowning fortress of EI Morro rose up to the east to guard the harbor. Her guns boomed a welcome to the galleons, returning triumphant from their raid. To the west the white city of Havana gleamed in the sun, built of West Indian coral limestone.

  To Carolina, this seemed a city of forts, for near EI Morro rose another fortress, the Punta, and the town's main square, close to the seawall, was guarded by yet an older fort, La Fuerza, which faced the inner harbor.

  The women were-according to their natures--glum or raucous as they disembarked.

  After the excitement of her first encounter with Penny had worn away, Carolina had slipped back into despondency, grieving for Kells. Not even Penny's best efforts had been able to snap her out of it. But now, resentful that she and her sister should be grouped together with this motley group of bawds, the trash of the western world, who had been cast out upon the sands of New Providence and were now being transported willy-nilly to Havana, she lifted her chin.

  They should not see her weep! With a dull sense of fatalism-what would be would be!-she sat in the longboat with the others and was rowed to shore across the inner harbor.

  Havana went wild that day. The triumphant return of the galleons-victors, bringing home their spoils-had excited the townsfolk, and they had turned out as if to a fiesta.

  Gallant caballeros with silver jingling on their saddles, elegant senoritas and senoras sitting decorously in their carriages, soldiers from the forts, mestiza strumpets, Indian servants with liquid eyes and inscrutable faces, fishermen and fishwives, merchants and their families, harlots from the waterfront brothels calling out encouragement to their kind-they were all there.

  Carolina's face went hot at the thought of being marched through that crowd, jeered at and ogled. Worse, being able to speak Spanish, Carolina could understand the bawdy comments directed at her and at flame-haired Penny, who swung rakishly along beside her, barefoot, looking about with apparent unconcern.

  Somehow she stumbled through it, head high. Through the Plaza de Armas with its handsome two-story homes and its beautiful cathedral, down a hot street beneath shawl-draped balconies, where young girls leaned over and threw rose leaves down upon the victors, who looked up and waved, grinning salutations.

  "They're taking us to the slave market," muttered Penny, beside her. "I can see the bell up ahead. Keep your head high, Carol. This isn't going to be fun!"

  As Penny spoke, Carolina cast a hopeless look about her. To be sold as a slave!

  Somehow-although she had spoken facetiously of it to Penny-she had not expected it to be like this. She had imagined some sort of servitude, from which she would be shortly rescued by Ramona Valdez, for she had clung stubbornly to the hope that Ramona would still be here in Havana. But to be sold! That meant anyone could buy them: some plantation owner deep in the interior, a brothel owner to entertain his patrons, a shipmaster who would carry them out upon the high seas to who knew what terrible fate!

  Her gaze swept the cheering throng-and came to rest upon a handsome trio just ahead: an old man, gray-haired, portly and somehow official-looking, who gazed sternly at the crowd from a carriage; and beside him a young girl, who might be his daughter, with a white mantilla spilling from a high-backed tortoiseshell comb over her thick black hair, gleaming almost blue in the sunlight; she was leaning over and speaking with animation to a tall caballero who sat astride a nervous horse, controlling the dancing animal with ease, although the horse seemed inclined to go sideways and wanted to rear up.

  It was the man that drew Carolina's attention. He was dressed elegantly in black and silver with a burst of frosty Mechlin at his throat and a wide-brimmed hat with a silver band that shaded his hawklike face. In that he was unremarkable, for the dons favored somber garments and he might have been dressed for a ride up into the hills.

  But in all else she found him remarkable indeed. A pair of cold gray eyes regarded her steadily from a face bronzed by long hours in the sun-perhaps at the prow of a ship. And indeed he had ceased talking to the young lady beside him and was leaning slightly forward, his gaze intent upon Carolina being herded through the town in her much mended yellow calico. The older man was quick to notice his interest and his stem gaze also swung to Carolina and the tall redhead beside her.

  But the caballero on the horse, who sat so
tall in the saddle, held her gaze. Her lips parted and her breath came shallowly. For that lean hard body was as familiar to her as breathing. Those fine hands, so firm upon the reins of his dancing mount, had caressed her to wild abandon. That dark face, so intent upon her now, was the face she had loved-and thought lost to her:

  Kells!

  She could not explain it, but it was true. The face she was looking into was his face, the face that had lit up her life and now haunted her restless dreams.

  He was not dead, he was alive, he was here in Havana, seated upon a big chestnut horse, staring down at her without any visible sign of recognition!

  All the emotions that had tom Carolina since the day Port Royal sank, all the pain and worry and guilt and despair fused for a moment with this shock of discovery that the man she had yearned for and grieved for was not dead after all-and she turned pale and wavered for a moment as if she would fall.

  Penny had been striding along in the hot sun in apparent disdain. Now she turned in alarm as her sister stumbled and had a swift glimpse of Carolina, deathly pale, staring up at a tall caballero in black and silver who watched them from astride a chestnut horse. Conscious of the unfriendly crowd about them, she caught her breath in dismay.

  "Oh, for heaven's sake, Carol, don't faint!" she muttered, grasping Carolina's arm and supporting her as her slight body suddenly sagged. "It would be too humiliating!"

  Abruptly Carolina got hold of herself. Kells had given no visible sign of recognition but then he was always in control. The very fact that he was here in Havana meant that something was afoot! The divers had lied-they had not seen his body submerged in that drowned cabin. They had lied so that they might swiftly collect their money--or perhaps seize the gold money chains they had brought up from the wreck, and be off to search for loot somewhere else! She and Hawks had both been taken in. The ship she had seen advancing into the harbor when the earthquake struck must not have been the Sea Wolf after all!

  Her mind raced ahead. What plot could have brought Kells here? Did he plan to take Havana? Why not? He had raided Cartagena and other Spanish towns! Surely this was some bold enterprise like that. How well he had concealed his surprise at seeing her! She was proud of him-but then, when had she not been proud of him? Her heart swelled and of a sudden the harsh sunlight that poured down over Havana was turned before her eyes into drifting gold, the city air with its myriad scents was suddenly the perfumed air of the tropics; the raucous clamor, joyful; the scene before her colorful and gorgeous. Her head lifted and she took a deep thankful breath and flashed a brilliant smile at Penny.

  "I'm all right," she said hastily. "Oh, it's too bad we didn't have a chance to comb our hair-mine looks terrible and so does yours!"

  "Well, don't overdo it," said Penny in amazement, letting go of her arm. "It's bad enough to be sold but you don't have to look pleased about it!"

  Carolina laughed. It was a beautiful rippling sound, carefree and young. That laugh reached the ears of the portly gray-haired gentleman in the carriage who happened also to be the Governor of Havana. He gazed upon the pair in amazement. What beauties they were, the statuesque redhead and the slender elegant blonde with her delicious laugh!

  Beside him, the fact that the attention of both men had centered upon the two captives being marched to the slave mart was not lost on the governor's daughter.

  "Trash!" she hissed.

  "Ah, but elegant trash, you will admit, Dona Marina," drawled the tall caballero Carolina had identified instantly as Kells.

  Governor Corrubedo murmured an assent and Dona Marina spread a look of anger over each of them. She was young and tempestuous and she had no mother to guide her, for Governor Corrubedo's wife had died young and he had not remarried. Her elderly duena-her maiden aunt, Dona Merced-s-could hardly keep up with her and had panted to the governor on several occasions, "You must get her married without delay or she will disgrace you!" But the governor was an indulgent parent and loved his only daughter dearly, allowing Marina a freedom that was unheard of in that day, when Spanish girls of breeding and fortune were kept cloistered behind iron grillwork or sitting in sunny courtyards well guarded by watchful duenas.

  "Your Excellency. Dona Marina." The tall gentleman on horseback was bowing his good-by as he moved away from them.

  "Don Diego took his leave of us very suddenly," said Marina in a spiteful voice as she saw his broad back moving through the crowd away from them.

  "Nonsense, querido mio," responded the governor absently. "He doubtless wishes to view the bidding."

  "Or perhaps to bid himself!" snapped his daughter.

  That thought had occurred to the governor also. Both the blonde and the redhead had been very ripe. Every male eye had followed them as they passed. His gaze passed thoughtfully to Marina. She also was very ripe. Young still-but ripe. Although but fifteen, her figure was lush and her young breasts strained against her tight bodice. She was thinking thoughts of men now, was Marina. The governor sighed.

  He had hoped to postpone the day but suitors were already arriving at the big spacious house on the Plaza de Armas that he chose to occupy rather than his official residence in the forbidding fortress of La Fuerza.

  Some of the suitors who eyed her as she promenaded sedately around the Plaza on Sundays, some of those who were just beginning to serenade her off-key beneath her window, were wealthy, the sons of rich men who could take her across the ocean sea, away to Spain and even the questionable delights of the Spanish Court. Some were the sons of planters with large holdings. But Marina favored none of them.

  Marina-and her father forgave her for it since she was young and untried-bad a talent for looking in the wrong direction. More specifically, in the direction of the tall gentleman who had just left them-a newcomer to Havana, Don Diego Vivar. And what did they really know about Don Diego? A hero, true, if what was said about him was to be believed. But the voices that labeled him a hero had come from Spain. No one here knew anything about him, about his holdings, his prospects-eonly that he was a king's favorite sent on a dangerous mission to the New World.

  Better far that Marina choose a more suitable mate, the one the governor had already selected for her: Don Ramon del Mundo. He had all the proper qualifications.

  He was young, handsome, wealthy, and reputedly held vast estates in Spain. The governor had been given to understand that Don Ramon had come here only to prove his valor, preferably in some spectacular way. Certainly his foray into the buccaneer stronghold of Port Royal several months ago had been valorous enough, and the governor had encouraged it. If Don Ramon survived such dangerous inclinations, he would seem glamorous to Marina, who was at a romantic and impressionable age.

  But Don Ramon bad come home only to learn that the King of Spain preferred someone else to execute the plan to invade Jamaica which Don Ramon had so painstakingly built. A Spanish Court favorite was already being groomed for the mission. He would be dropped off directly at Jamaica, somewhere near Port Royal.

  Meanwhile if Don Ramon would be good enough to assemble a small force to await the stranger's instructions? They could be landed by pinnace and there await the commands of the newcomer sent from Spain.

  Don Ramon had been sulking ever since.

  And a sulky lover is not a successful lover! The governor had begun to wonder if Don Ramon really had any interest in his daughter at all.

  And then abruptly-and in the most romantic of circumstances-Don Diego Vivar had appeared upon the scene. Darkly handsome and with a clouded past, and living in the governor's own house! Small wonder that Marina had become enamored of him!

  And how could Marina's father be certain such a marriage would be suitable?

  The Governor of Cuba frowned. The women had stopped streaming past now. The girls were still throwing flowers from the shawl-fringed balconies, and a general air of fiesta held the old city in thrall. Beside him, Marina fretted.

  A sudden thought occurred to him-and Governor Corrubedo was a man who, once a th
ought occurred to him, would promptly put it into action. He leaned toward his driver and instructed him to push the carriage through the crowd; they would view the slave auction.

  But getting there through the crush proved impossible. Disgusted with their slow pace, the governor muttered a few words to his driver, who promptly left the carriage and shouldered his way through the crowd on foot.

  The governor had put his plan into operation.

  Sheltered by the curved arches and pillars of the arcade-and nearly deafened by the discordant clanging of the market bell-Carolina stood with the other women about to be auctioned off, grateful for the shade. Beside her Penny stood regally, looking slightly down her nose at the surging crowd. The rest milled about, muttering, frowning, giggling and one or two making their hips sway invitingly. But Carolina stood out, for she was standing on tiptoe trying to peer over the crowd-ah, there he was; Kells was approaching on horseback, looking cool and in command.

  He would buy her! All was right with her world! Suddenly she thought of Penny. He must buy Penny, too! "We are sisters," she cried in ringing Spanish. "We must be sold together.

  "What are you shouting about, Carol?" demanded Penny in amazement, for Penny had no facility for picking up languages.

  "I am saying that we must be sold together-that we are sisters," said Carolina. "Well, I doubt they will take our desires into consideration!"

  "Someone will," said Carolina confidently. "You'll see." For although she was dying to tell Penny that Kells was here, that he was even now advancing upon them, studying them gravely with his level gray gaze, she dared not. For Kells could only be here in Havana on some desperate mission and she would not give him away for anythingl