Mutiny of the Heart

by Jennifer Bray-Weber

  “I can stop the bleeding.” He laid the eggs on the table and plucked a cup from the shelf.

  “I’m not bleeding.” A ridiculous thing to say.

  “There’s a trail of blood leading all the way to your door. And what of this table? You slaughter a goat on it?”

  “Take your leave, Ricker.”

  “No.”

  She hated to do it but he wasn’t budging. He wouldn’t ignore a male captain. Damned if she’d let him do it to her. Ricker needed to understand she was authority. “You defy your master?”

  Ricker bristled. “Aye.” He cracked open an egg and let the contents slide into the cup. “I won’t let you bleed out.” He peeled away a thin membrane from the egg shell. “Remove the rag.”

  As she did, rivulets streamed down. “What are you doing?”

  He knelt beside her and wiped away the fresh blood with the pad of his hand. “I learned this from Julian, a Miskito Indian.” Ricker positioned the egg membrane over the gash. He cracked open the other egg, peeled away the inner membrane, and applied it to her arm too. “The egg will act as a bandage, stop the blood flow.” He dipped two fingers in the cup, coating them with egg. “Should help the healing.” Lightly, he daubed the jelly-like substance upon the egg bandage. She felt no pain from his touch. Just the raw tickling of pressure. Stunned, she stared at her arm. The bleeding had indeed stopped. Was it truly the egg? Or was it his magical hands? It seemed absurd that either could heal. Yet... Maybe he was a witch doctor.

  She let her gaze slink away from his ministrations, across to the open laces of his tunic, up his neck, pausing on his lips growing into a smirk, before landing in gulfs of blue staring back at her with such intensity her mouth went dry.

  Yes, he certainly could be a witch doctor. She sucked in her lips to wet them. “Amazing,” she managed to rasp.

  “Aye.” A playful light danced in the swirling depths of his eyes. Ricker looked very different without his defiant scowl. Much more fetching. What would a large genuine smile do to him?

  No. Wait. What was she thinking? Just how much blood did she lose?

  Joelle refocused. “This Julian. Is he a medicine man?”

  “No. A seaman. A ship’s pilot. Not much older than myself.” Ricker poured rum into the cup of eggs. “Got any ale?”

  She waved a hand to the trunk filled with various bottles of rum, wine and ale. Ricker chose a squat bottle of small beer and added it to the rum and eggs. He offered the cup to her.

  “I don’t fancy kill-devil rum,” she said.

  “Mustn’t let the eggs go to waste,” he quipped. “May I?” He lifted the cup in permission.

  Before she had hardly nodded, he’d thrown back the concoction in one swift move.

  “You surprise me, Mr. Ricker. Your skills go beyond that of a mapmaker.”

  He shrugged and sat back down, inspecting the dressing on her arm. “Picked it up from crew members when I was a common deckhand. You’ll need to add more egg to this later,” he said, touching the dried bandage.

  “Mapmakers aren’t witch doctors.”

  Ricker gave her a quizzical look. She waved off the statement.

  “Mapmakers don’t do a deckhand’s job. Mapmakers don’t drink kill-devil rum. Mapmakers don’t clear decks for action.”

  “Fishermen do.”

  “No, they don’t. Not with your skill. The way you handled the sails out there, that wasn’t from deckhands letting you take practiced turns at pulling shrouds on calm seas. You knew exactly what to do. Only someone seasoned in battle would know how to manipulate the sails as well as you did under fire.”

  She very nearly missed it—the flicker of his lids at the mention of battle. Oh yes, there was more to him than he let on. She would have those answers now.

  Joelle refilled his cup. “Tell me about this Julian. Is he a friend of yours?”

  “Was.”

  * * *

  Ricker was no fool. Quint was curious about him. As he was of her. Especially now after his first experience of her reputation he’d heard so much about from different crewmen. She had manipulated the battle in her favor, anticipated moves, took measures that bordered on rashly dangerous. All strategies to be admired of a man. As a woman, he marveled upon in awe.

  So she wanted to know more about him. His own fault for coming here. Damn, he hadn’t been aware that she’d noticed him working the sails in those last critical moments. He’d called attention to himself and he doubted she’d let it go. Nay, unless he cut out his own tongue, she’d keep fishing for answers.

  “Last I saw him was ten years past. We shared a prison cell together.”

  “For the larceny you spoke of.”

  Seven months of staving off insanity and despondency, only to be denied doing the hempen jig as a proper brigand alongside his friends.

  “We were lucky, I suppose, we didn’t hang.” For reasons he’d never fully understand. They were pirates, after all. Captured pirates did not escape execution. “Instead, we were sold into slavery.”

  Ricker would never forget the grim outline of Julian’s face as the bidding took place. At sixteen, the Indian displayed far more austere courage than any other man he’d ever met, save one—their captain. For Julian, becoming a slave would not define him as a man. Just as he piloted a ship through the most dangerous waters and around impossible reefs, so could he steer his course through slavery.

  ’Tis only for a while, my friend, Julian had said with the final sling of bids. Go headlong into these troubled waters. Never be defeated here. He had placed his hand over his heart. And you will find your calm seas.

  Ricker had decided then—as they led Julian away—that he would do his damnedest to live by his friend’s creed.

  His destiny was his.

  He chuckled at the irony of what had become of his life. He’d been a tough boy to crack. But he’d often thought a hanging would have been the better fate. Years spent under the thumb of another made him a bitter, angry man.

  “He was a fine pilot,” Ricker said. “I’ve heard he tried many attempts at escape.” He hoped one day Julian would succeed.

  “Ordinary seamen who are arrested and put on trial for larceny and sold into slavery aren’t merely seamen. They are something more dangerous. Who did you sail under, Mr. Ricker?”

  The tilt of her head captured the macabre pendulum of light and shadow from the swinging overhead lantern playing in her green eyes. She knew at least one truth about him. He was once a pirate.

  “Tell me plain,” she said.

  “Sam Bellamy.”

  “Black Sam Bellamy?” She lit up in admiration. “You sailed with Black Sam on the Whydah Galley?”

  He nodded once, letting the folklore that had sprouted from what happened to the grand ship take hold.

  “Christ.” Her eyes snapped up to meet his. “Were you on board when the Whydah sank?”

  Ricker still had nightmares of that horrible night. The storm had surprised them. The howling winds screamed so loud his ears throbbed. The cold rain slashed at his face, peeling away exposed skin. His eyes, his throat had burned from the salty water he breathed. The waves had batted, batted, incessantly batted the ship.

  “Spirits were high before the storm,” he said, fingering the rim of his cup. “Especially Black Sam’s, who was hours away from reuniting with the woman he loved.”

  Ricker had never seen the man so jubilant. Julian had said Sam’s love for the girl was what drove him to piracy. That the captain was determined to drench her with the finest things the world had to offer, to have her family honor and respect him for his wealth. Ricker had understood the honor and respect part, but at fifteen, he hadn’t grasped the power of love. He’d only seen men lose their minds, and their coins, over fair skin and ample bosoms. He’d lost his coins from time to time, for sure, but because that was what men did.

  He’d grown quite a bit from that naive boy.

  Ricker looked into his mug. If he stared too long, he might see h
is memories come to life in the amber liquor. Again. He sank back into his chair and resigned to telling the tale instead.

  “Our hold groaned with riches. We had just captured a boat loaded with Madeira wine that morning and another with tobacco in her cargo that afternoon. Both worthy prizes for a band of pirates. We were infamous, rich and bound by no law, country, or king. Aye, we had much to celebrate. Until the storm.”

  “You were on one of the prizes, not the Whydah,” she said.

  Quint was astute. He was coming to expect nothing less from the beautiful captain. Damn, she was beautiful. Her inquisitive eyes were empathetic. Why did he find that a curiosity?

  “No, I was not on board Whydah when she sank, taking her captain and nearly every crewman with her.” God rest their souls. “The Mary Anne ran aground. We had to chop off her mast to keep the violent waves from rolling us over. The sea was as unforgiving as she was bountiful. I watched her swallow men, good men.”

  The horror saturated his mind. “I watched helplessly as my mate Brisby was swatted to the edge of the boat by a nasty wave.” He’d grabbed the rail of the tilting boat before falling into the gnashing jaws of the water. “I had reached for him, my screams for Brisby to grab hold drowned out in the boisterous noise.” Terror had petrified upon Brisby’s face in a lightning flash. “Then another wave slapped him overboard. His arms flailed as he was folded into the raging sea. It happened so quickly.” Despair had balled in the pit of Ricker’s gut knowing there was nothing more he could have done, but try to save himself.

  “Good men.” He sighed.

  “’Tis hard to lose a friend, someone you work alongside day in and day out.” Pain burrowed in her frown. She averted her gaze to her lap. “A few short months ago, I, too, lost a dear friend.” She shook whatever vision she had of this friend away.

  They sat in silence. He hadn’t really thought about it until then, that she suffered the same hardships as he—death always lingered near for the roving buccaneers.

  Ricker threw back the rum, draining his cup. He nodded when Quint lifted the bottle, questioning if he wanted more. Of course he wanted more. But sometimes even the numbing elixir couldn’t chase away the nightmares. Not once he let them bleed through his consciousness.

  “Somehow, the Mary Anne survived,” he continued. “At first light, bodies were washing up on shore. Men I had respected, who were my friends, men who had become my only family, rolled in the surf with debris.”

  Warmth on his knee chased away the chill still frozen in his bones from the nightmare. There was comfort in her hand resting there. Comfort he was unaccustomed to. The gesture alone would have been enough to undo him. ’twas her expression where he found she understood his angst. No words, no placating nod. Just her delicate brow drawn down.

  Had she lost everything? Did she know what it was like crouched in a dank prison cell rotting away in the same clothes for seven months? Nay. This woman couldn’t possibly know what living through hell was like.

  “Those of us who survived were gathered up and arrested. Nine of my brothers were executed.”

  “And you were spared.” Her voice matched her expression—compassionate and grim. “Had you claimed you’d been forced to sign Black Sam’s Articles?”

  He had considered it. In the end, he couldn’t bring himself to follow through with what he deemed a cowardly act. He would not turn his back on the commandments set forth by the Whydah’s crew—the ship’s law he willingly signed. They were brothers bound by code, his only family.

  “The minister who’d come to persuade us to repent saw my etchings on the wall. With nothing to do day after day but dwell on my death at the end of a rope, I took to carving out the landscape of islands and ports I’d been to with a chicken bone to stave off insanity. He must have seen an opportunity to reclaim a boy’s soul. Rehabilitating a pirate is good business for a preacher, notably if that also meant turning a nice profit.”

  Ricker remembered well the moment his fate had changed.

  “Are these accurate portrayals, son?” The preacher had drawn his fingers along the lines of inlets, shores, over the squiggles of shoals, mouths of rivers, harbors of Port Royal, St. Croix, Hispaniola and Venezuela.

  “To the best of my memory, Father.”

  His hooded gray brow lifted, his eyes wide in wonderment. “Amazing,” he had said. “And this is Boston Harbor.”

  “Aye.” Ricker hadn’t the occasion to be among men who served God. But he had been among men steeped in sin. That toothy grin on the preacher’s face had been wicked through and through.

  “I see,” Quint said, bringing Ricker back to his present state of servitude.

  “I’d heard I fetched a mighty nine pounds. I went on to earn the preacher a quarterly sum with the partnership he had with my—” how he hated the word, “—master.”

  Quint shifted in her seat, no doubt uncomfortable with this part of his story. As she should be.

  “For another three years, I worked under Captain Laughton, cataloguing coastlines and reefs. He was a ruthless man, demanding a captain’s respect but treating his crew like worthless scum.” The bastard. Ricker snorted. “He thought the beatings would keep us in line.”

  “They rarely do.” Freckles dusted the rise of her cheeks in her teasing smile meant to lighten the mood. It worked.

  When did she get to him? Sure, she was a beauty, maybe one worth the trouble. He’d never seen a woman, a captain, no less, with tactical skill. No fear, only command. He was drawn dangerously close to her—a moth to a flame.

  “Shortly after I, ah, acquired my freedom, I earned honest pay drawing up coastlines.” He huffed a caustic chuckle. “Until the cowardly, false-tongued traitor I enlisted with got us captured by corsairs and I was sold off again as goods.”

  He hadn’t meant to reveal so much. But he had. Ricker was only mildly surprised. Sitting with her was like a swig of whiskey—smooth, warm and mellow.

  “I give you my word, Ricker.” The sincerity in her voice matched that of her eyes. “You help me and freedom will be yours.”

  Freedom would be his no matter what. The ragtag band of pirates would not stop him from taking what was his at the first chance he got. Not even the red-headed siren whose knee softly brushed against his, sending an electric wave up his thigh.

  He’d never seen a woman quite like Quint. Her abilities as a captain, her feminine artfulness, her sharp intuitiveness—his curiosity in her was eating him alive. Christ! Those lips. Begging to be kissed. He better damn well focus on something else lest he do something foolish.

  “Are we ever free?” Do the nightmares ever really cease?

  “No,” she said. “I suppose not.”

  For a fleeting moment, she drifted. What shackles did she bear? Should he care? Nay, he didn’t think so. But he wasn’t entirely sure.

  “What is it that haunts you, Captain?”

  “I’ve nothing that ails me.” Her chin inched higher. She may have been defiant, but Ricker saw the lie in her eyes.

  “Come now. What of this map? You say it leads to answers. Answers to what?”

  Profound sadness shadowed her freckled features. “Why he left,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Who?”

  “My father.” She dragged her fingers into her red tresses at her temple, locks slipping through, and away she wafted once more to someplace far in the past. “Who am I really? Why did he leave me at the orphanage? Why did he come back years later to deliver the strongbox? What were the emerald and map to mean? Why didn’t he take me with him? I needed him. Missed him. Didn’t he know that? Didn’t he care?” The slender column of her neck tightened as she swallowed. ’twas painfully obvious she fought back her emotions and tears. “I didn’t even know he came until he was gone.”

  Ricker was wrong. He did care. She fought demons just as he. At least his were distinct—people, mostly. He’d overcome his sufferings. Quint’s torments were elusive, like trying to grasp the thick sea fog. She might
never put her anguish to rest.

  “So, Mr. Ricker,” she said, regaining her flinty battle-ready mask. “Does that satisfy your need to know what haunts me?”

  “We’re all made up of scars.”

  “Scars grow thick to protect the wound.”

  He shifted closer in his chair toward her. “Some wounds need attention.” He gently traced the outer edge of her dressing. “To lessen the pain.”

  “Rum lessens pain,” she countered.

  “’Tis true.” Ricker handed Quint her cup and picked up his own. “To pain,” he said, tilting his mug in a toast.

  Her slow drink was like a slow burn of a gun’s corded fuse. The tension was near to igniting. With each passing second, his trousers grew uncomfortably tight. He wanted to kiss her. Had to kiss her. Would kiss her. Now.

  The moment he drained his cup, her mouth descended upon him hard and voracious. Ricker recovered from his surprise before she pulled away slightly.

  “To rum,” she rasped.

  He grabbed her by her nape. No way was he letting her get away with that. He returned the favor, attacking her lips, raiding her mouth, feeding off the warm taste of liquor, the soft roll of her tongue. Damn, she tasted divine. Better than cool water to a dying man.

  “What the devil?”

  A rapier on the wall rattled at the slam of the door.

  “Get your bloody hands off her!”

  Ricker rose to his feet to face Valeryn. The heat of anger flushed up his neck, from both the interruption and the threatening demand. Things were about to get nasty. “What’s your trouble, friend?”

  “Oh, I’ve no trouble I can’t be rid of.”

  In two strides, Valeryn crossed the cabin, his fists clenched and ready to swing. Ricker’s muscles tensed for the fight. Oh, how he wanted to fight. It’d been far too long since he’d had a worthy opponent. Valeryn would prove to be that worthy opponent. He saw it in the inferno brewing in the man’s eyes.

  “Mind yourself, boys.” Quint retrieved a log book from her desk. “Take a seat, Valeryn. We’ve got to go over the charts.”

  Valeryn’s jaw twitched. Ricker figured it was as much for being ordered to stand down by his woman as it was his urge to pummel Ricker.