Barbarous

by Minerva Spencer

  He was absolutely insane.

  He released her as quickly as he’d grabbed her and Daphne followed him without hesitation, not wishing to annoy or upset him in any way. They entered the larger room and she glanced from the small table with three chairs to the mattress where Malcolm’s unconscious form lay sprawled.

  Calitain followed her gaze. “Ah, you look at the little lordling. Are you concerned for him? Don’t be. He is fine, just a little bit the worse for drink. I think the gift of consciousness on his last day is not something he can appreciate at this point. Perhaps later in the day he will come around, eh? But for now, sit. Jean-Paul will make us a breakfast worthy of your last meal.”

  The other man was bent over a smoky hearth, stirring something in a large metal pot that smelled awful.

  Calitain, who must have been very observant indeed, noticed the quivering of her nostrils.

  “Oh, for shame!” He grinned at his partner-in-crime. “I fear your humble food is not good enough for my lady, Jean-Paul. Do you not have something else to offer? Perhaps a croissant or a bowl of strawberries and cream?” The two men laughed unpleasantly and Daphne resolved to do a better job of hiding her thoughts.

  “Don’t worry.” He was beside her, moving in the disconcertingly quick way he had, standing no more than an inch away. “Jean-Paul’s food is an acquired taste, but I feel sure you will acquire it soon enough.” He tore a chunk of bread off the large black loaf that sat on the table and slammed it down in front of her.

  “Eat,” he said, his voice no longer amused.

  Daphne ate. She followed his example, dipping pieces of bread into what was very strong coffee; the combination was surprisingly good. She studied the Frenchman surreptitiously while she ate. Like the sailors she’d seen on Hugh’s ship, both Calitain and Jean-Paul were hard-looking, as if they’d been fired in a kiln. The fine network of scars that webbed his face and throat made him resemble a broken piece of pottery that had been rudely reassembled. His excessively muscular forearms rested on the table, the sinews rippling beneath his tanned skin. His hands were almost as big as Hugh’s and just as calloused from a lifetime of hard work. He looked as if he could break her in half just as easily as he tore chunks from the loaf of bread.

  Both men moved with a brittle awareness, as if they were constantly anticipating attack from any quarter. While Jean-Paul was tense, Calitain looked like a man in the process of coming undone, unraveling in fits and starts and cracking along the many seams that riddled him. He was never still. Even when his body was motionless his eyes were not. They flickered restlessly about the room, like wolves circling a kill. Sometimes his lips moved but no sound came out, as if he were engaged in an endless internal argument.

  All in all, he was the most terrifying person she’d ever met.

  Daphne was concentrating on not doing anything that might annoy the volatile man when an agonized moan came from the corner of the room. She and Calitain turned to see Malcolm hunched against the wall, clutching his head in both hands.

  Calitain burst out laughing, the sound heavy with contempt.

  “Wha—what was in that bottle?” Malcolm whimpered.

  “It was nothing but a little clap of thunder.” Calitain’s lips twisted into a sneer. “It is one of Jean-Paul’s specialties. You don’t want to hurt his feelings, do you?” His face lost all traces of humor. Jean-Paul, also, had stopped whatever he was doing to stare at Malcolm’s shivering form.

  “No! I meant nothing untoward, only that is was rather . . . uh, strong. Devil take it but my head is pounding. Might I have some tea?” he asked piteously.

  Daphne could have told her cousin that asking these men for anything, not to mention anything that sounded too English—a country they clearly despised—was a terrible idea.

  Calitain was at Malcolm’s throat before she could blink.

  “What did you say?” He shook Malcolm so hard his teeth rattled like dice. He shot a look at Jean-Paul while squeezing Malcolm with one enormous fist. “What did my lord say, Jean-Paul?” he bellowed, spittle flying out of his mouth and showering Malcolm’s face.

  Jean-Paul shrugged, taking his time before uttering the first words she’d heard him speak. “Ee wants le thé.” He grinned, mockingly emphasizing the French word for tea.

  “That’s what I thought he said.” Calitain frowned, as if he couldn’t decide whether he was pleased or disappointed he’d been correct. He blinked at Malcolm as if he did not recall why he was gripping his neck.

  Malcolm gaped up at his captor and Calitain released him just as abruptly as he’d grabbed him, watching without a flicker of emotion as Malcolm slid back to the soiled mattress, gasping for air like a trout on a stringer.

  Calitain pointed to the third chair at the small table. “Get up and eat. Jean-Paul will give you some good French coffee, none of le thé.”

  Malcolm scrambled to his feet and flung himself toward the flimsy chair, his face an unrecognizable mask of fear. He yelped and cringed when Jean-Paul came up behind him and thumped a chipped bowl of coffee onto the table.

  Calitain watched Malcolm eye the bowl and then look at both his and Daphne’s mugs. For an instant Daphne thought Malcolm might be so foolish as to request a proper mug. But then he looked at Calitain and saw something that made him pick up the bowl and slurp noisily.

  Calitain turned to Daphne, a malicious gleam in his eyes.

  “We are not set up for company, Jean-Paul and me. We did not think to be here so long. In fact, we did not think to be here at all, but for his lordship here. It is my fault, I suppose. I took his lordship’s word that he would have my money. The word of a gentleman, eh, Jean-Paul?”

  The other Frenchman gave Malcolm a look that was even more menacing for its complete detachment.

  Malcolm prudently studied his bowl of coffee rather than the mentally unhinged pirate with whom he’d made such an unfortunate alliance. Calitain’s hand clenched and twitched on the table and Daphne thought he might strike Malcolm, but he just waved his hand, the gesture flamboyant and dismissive.

  “I should not complain,” he said, leaning close and taking one of Daphne’s hands, caressing it lightly as he spoke. “But for the lordling here, I would not soon be reunited with my good friend One-Eyed Standish. I cannot wait to see the complete look of surprise on my old friend’s face. Just like the surprise it was for me to learn he is Lord Ramsay, eh? A baron, Jean-Paul! Can you believe it?” He looked from Daphne to the laconic Frenchman.

  “La vérité est plus étrange que la fiction,” Jean-Paul said, smiling at Malcolm in a particularly unpleasant way.

  Calitain, too, looked at Malcolm, his expression like that of a young boy who was about to pull the wings off a fly.

  “You know what Jean-Paul means, eh, milor’? You are an educated member of the British aristocracy. No doubt you speak several languages with fluency.” Calitain’s eyes lit with unholy amusement when Malcolm miserably shook his head. Calitain barked a laugh and turned to Daphne, looking at her with narrowed eyes, as if he were reading something written on her face. “You are a smart lady, not like your ignorant companion, eh? Tell milor’ what it means.”

  “Truth is stranger than fiction,” Daphne translated, giving in to the small smile that twitched at the corner of her mouth as she stared across at Malcolm. In spite of the unstable nature of her current position, she was truly enjoying Malcolm’s humiliation at the hands of the diabolical lunatic. Calitain saw her smile and laughed; this time the sound was genuine.

  “I think the lady does not like you, my lord.”

  Daphne realized the madman was purposely misstating Malcolm’s title. He was crazy, not stupid.

  His eyes flickered to Malcolm for an instant before returning to her. “Your amour, Lord Ramsay, he and I have been—shall we say—not the best of friends these past years. He is a man who holds a grudge, you see.” He lifted his hands in a very Gallic gesture and shrugged. “I am not that type of man. To me it is business. You unders
tand?” It seemed he was finally asking her a question that required an answer.

  “Yes.” Daphne gave him the answer he wanted and kept her face expressionless.

  Calitain continued his monologue with a deeply thoughtful look. “For years I’ve had to deal with Standish and his grudge. He is, as you say here in England, like a bulldog with a pork chop, eh?” He shook his head in disgust. “He should be grateful to me rather than bearing me a grudge.” He pounded his fist on the table, his eyes glazed as he relived some memory. “Yes, he should thank me. But for me, he would have been dead while still in the hands of the sultan. I am the one who convinced the old man to let him live after he was caught scheming. I made the sultan see that he would get many hours of entertainment from him.” Flames danced in his dead black eyes. “But for me your baron would have been dead long ago. But does he thank me? No!” He lunged toward her but Daphne kept utterly still as he hung over her, seconds lasting years.

  He slumped back. “No, he does not. He harries and torments and tracks me like an animal, until there is almost nowhere I can go where I am not hounded and hunted for the bounty he has placed on my head.” Calitain stared through, rather than at, Malcolm, his hands clenching and unclenching. Clenching and unclenching. For a moment, she believed his tenuous grip on sanity might slip enough that he’d put a period to her miserable cousin’s life.

  But then he deflated, the tension draining from his body like water from a sieve. His hands, which had twitched with menace a mere moment earlier, now lay motionless on the table like two belly-up crabs at low tide.

  His face spasmed with an emotion Daphne could not decipher. His eyes locked with hers, an almost pleading expression in them. “It is because of him that I am forced to deal in slaves—it is the only thing I can do to make money. And it is his fault I must always stay aware and awake. Always on the move. Always wondering if one of my very own crew will claim the bounty that sits so heavily on my head.” His neck bowed, as if the burden were weighing on him at that very minute.

  Daphne stared at his shaggy black head and imagined smashing her half-empty mug over it.

  He leapt to his feet and his chair skittered backward and collided with the wall behind it. “Now I see that being in this miserable little cottage is nothing but an act of God. The Mohammedans call it kismet—you have heard of this?” he asked Daphne, his conversational tone at odds with the mad joy shining from his eyes.

  “Fate.”

  He hooted and slammed his hand down on the table, making the crockery dance. “I begin to see why Standish is so enamored of you, my lady. I, too, enjoy the company of a well-read lover. Is that not so, Jean-Paul?” He threw the question over his shoulder.

  The Frenchman smiled.

  Calitain snatched up his fallen chair and dropped into it.

  “So, we wait for Standish to come tonight. And then, mon amour,” he said, gently chucking Daphne under the chin with rough fingers, “I will take the money he has brought and I will kill him and finally put an end to this.” His smile was almost beatific. “After tonight, kismet can bugger off to torture some other poor fool.”

  Once again it was Malcolm who shifted the insane man’s attention away from her.

  “What about her?” Even with his life hanging by a thread, Malcolm hated her.

  Quicker than a bolt of lightning, Calitain swung his arm, his hammer-like fist striking Malcolm’s face so hard he spun in a complete circle before toppling to the floor.

  “Who are you to ask me anything?” Calitain raged. “You are not even necessary to me anymore. If Standish comes or if he does not come, what good are you? I should kill you now. Or maybe I should let her do it?” He towered over Malcolm’s writhing body.

  Daphne’s eyebrows shot up at the sudden proposition and she wondered if she would be capable of killing Malcolm.

  Calitain moved to the next topic as quickly as he had the last one. “You are a fool and have an inflated sense of your worth, just like the rest of your class. I have known many men like you.” He threw back his head and crowed gleefully. “I am related to men like you. Ah, that surprises you, eh? Scum like me making such a claim?” He booted Malcolm in the backside, but his heart didn’t seem to be in it. He turned back to the table and flung himself into his seat with an irritated grunt. Malcolm crawled across the floor and tucked himself into the dark corner, not even on the mattress now. Daphne believed he might have realized, at last, that staying out of Calitain’s reach was the wisest thing he could do.

  Jean-Paul approached the table and plunked down two bowls of food with his usual lack of decorum, not bothering to offer any to Malcolm. Daphne picked up her spoon without hesitation and began eating.

  Calitain had sunk into a blue study and paid her no mind. He dragged the bowl toward himself and began shoveling food into his mouth, his gaze bent inward.

  They ate in silence for what seemed like an eternity before he slammed down his spoon.

  “Yes, I know about noblemen.” His lip curled. “My dear departed mother learned about noblemen too, much to her detriment.” He dipped black bread into the bowl and stuffed it into his mouth, masticating furiously before he spoke. “She was brought to England by some French aristos who were visiting their English cousins. The son of the house took quite a fancy to my mother, the charming little maid who didn’t speak any English.”

  His black eyes narrowed. “But that suited the little lordling. He was not interested in witty banter with a mere servant. After he raped her, my mother went to her mistress, her dress in tatters, tears running down her face, and she told her what the fancy English lord had done to her.” He smiled bitterly. “Her mistress slapped her face so hard she was knocked off her feet. She called her a putain—you know this word?” he asked Daphne, not waiting for an answer. “It means whore. Yes, she called my mother a whore, a lying whore and then she turned her off, threw her out of the house with nothing but the clothes on her back. She cut her adrift in a country whose language she could not speak or understand.”

  Calitain’s fist was curled around the handle of the spoon as if it were a weapon. “So my mother did the only thing she could to feed herself. She became a whore, a real whore.” He gave Daphne a chilling smile. “Yes, it is true—you are sitting next to a man with almost as fine a bloodline as yours. Imagine that! Of course, I was not raised in the family mansion, but I saw it often as I grew up. From the outside, at least. Perhaps some of that aristocratic polish rubbed off on me after all, eh?” His nostrils flared with insane rage and his black gaze ate through her like acid; Daphne thought she might die with a spoon in her chest.

  But then he closed his eyes and an oddly sensual expression slid over his harsh features. “I saw my dear father again. You see, he married and had children, my half-brothers and -sisters. We did not move in the same circles, of course.” He chuckled harshly. “I spoke to my father just one time, but really that turned out to be enough for the things I wanted to discuss with him.” He gave her a pained look. “You will be sad to hear he did not welcome me with open arms. In fact, he denied that I was even his son! That would not have bothered me so much, but then, if you can believe it, he called my mother a lying French whore who’d seduced him.” His voice broke on the last word and he stared sightlessly into space before striking the table so hard she was amazed it didn’t shatter.

  His eyes slowly refocused on her. “I couldn’t have that, could I? Would you sit still while your mother was being so wickedly disparaged? And after she had died so young. So worn out by the life he’d inflicted upon her, leaving me to fend for myself at a tender age, forcing me to follow in her footsteps. I told him all of this. I believe I finally convinced him of the truth . . . in the end. Yes, right before he died he said he was sorry for how poorly he’d treated me—his eldest son.”

  He spread his hands out on the table and studied them as if he’d never seen them before. “I was so saddened by his death I had to leave England.” He looked up, his tone confiding. “
If I am to be perfectly honest, I must admit that being taken by corsairs shortly into my first journey at sea was the best thing that could have happened to a young and impressionable boy like me. Don’t believe everything you hear about how wicked they are, my lady,” he said wryly. “They do provide opportunities for advancement—you just need to seize them when they present themselves.”

  He sighed. “That is something Standish never understood. I always wondered why he thought himself so much better than me, and now I find out he is nothing but another spoiled aristo. Wait until I tell him that we might even be related.” He grinned, his mad eyes shining at the thought of his reunion with Hugh.

  Dear God.

  * * *

  Calitain talked almost nonstop during the course of the day. Daphne’s brain was so frayed from the nerve-racking combination of remaining expressionless and listening to Calitain rave, she felt she might begin raving herself. If the man’s fighting skills were not up to scratch, he could always talk a person to death.

  As dusk approached, Malcolm gathered his nerve and asked the questions Daphne wished she might, but did not dare.

  “The men have not returned. It would appear Ramsay has not tried to go to the authorities or plan any kind of ambush. It will be dark soon, what should . . . what should I do?” he asked, his confidence visibly dwindling the longer he had to endure the demented pirate’s stare.

  Calitain heaved himself up from the table and went to the small alcove behind the hearth. He returned with two weapons, one of which he tossed to Jean-Paul, who caught it handily, although he’d appeared to be dozing in the ragged chair beside Malcolm’s mattress.

  “I am going to prepare to greet Standish, milor’. And Jean-Paul will prepare to greet whoever he brings along. I hazard he’ll bring his boy-whore and whoever else he keeps with him at that big house. If your hired hands have done their job, he should not be bringing the entire crew of the Batavia’s Ghost with him.” Calitain drew a wickedly curved blade from an ornately decorated scabbard and turned to Malcolm wearing an utterly chilling smile. “But really I do not care who he brings or how many. We will be ready no matter what, eh?” He looked at Jean-Paul, who was running a stone along the edge of his blade.