“What luck it’ll be if they don’t hang you, you bloody animal!” a different voice spouted from down the stairs. The sound of another clubbing punctuated the outburst.
Molly ran after the soldiers. “Stop!” she yelled in a panic.
One of the officials wheeled around abruptly as the soldiers continued on. “Take him on out, you two,” he commanded them. He faced Molly, looking upon her with an authoritative posture. “What’s your business, ma’am?”
“Why is that man being arrested?”
“That man?” The official scoffed. “Bloody pirate, he is. Not any ol’ pirate, mind you. Damn good one if ya were to ask me, ma’am, and those are the worst.” He shook his head. “We’re sorry to wake you.”
“You don’t understand. I have every reason to believe that man is innocent!”
“Innocent?” he repeated in a mocking tone. “I have reason to believe you are mad, madam.” He turned about and hurried downstairs into the corridor.
“Wait! You could at least hear a lady out.”
The official’s voice echoed from the dark, rudely. “Good evening, madam!”
She followed, refusing to give up. “Wait! Please just hear me out!”
No response. Molly hastened toward the dark corridor she had so recently traversed with Thomas, this time without him to guide her. Bumping against the cold stone and brick, she let her senses guide her until she was certain the basement window could not be much farther. In the blackness she stumbled, falling to the ground. Looking up, she saw the small window in clear view, opened wide. The street outside was visible. Hopeful, Molly raced toward the exit, using light from the streets above as a guide. A full moon sat in the sky like a witch’s eye—wide, round and pale. The street was empty except for three English soldiers lying sprawled on the ground, weapons still in hand.
Molly looked upon the scene in terror. There were links of chain lying bent, twisted and broken on the ground, the cuffs split in two. The soldiers lay motionless. Molly walked up to the men on the ground, her pistols ready, not sure if they were still alive. Large teeth and claw marks crossed the bodies of the men. Fresh blood oozed from the wounds and pooled at the men’s sides. Molly turned away, trembling and sickened by the gruesome sight. On the ground lay crushed white petals, similar to the flowers Thomas had aboard his ship. Deliberate marks had been made in the cobblestones beneath. Molly examined the marks more closely. They were scratched in, barely legible, but she deciphered them: “Ship house.” Molly dashed away. Again she let her senses guide her, for she had depended totally on Thomas to lead her through the narrow streets and alleys the previous night. Shortly after dawn, breathless and weary, she caught sight of the ship house and prayed that Thomas would be inside.
The windows of the house glowed dimly. Bart’s candlelit lanterns were burned down to waxy, cypress-tree stumps. Sitting atop the old roof, the moon watched Molly like a spectre through the morning mist. Large prints—like a dog’s, but larger—dotted the path ahead. The sight was ominous, but Molly ventured on, following the prints. The shipyard was quiet, but a strong wind blew, breaking the hush and tumbling the sea beyond. As Molly pressed on, the prints grew smaller in size and more humanlike in shape. Reaching the old iron door of the ship house, Molly felt to make sure her pistols were on her person. Bright light seeped through the doorway and into the scrap yard from within. Cautiously, Molly stepped inside.
Brief shouts and immediate responses came from somewhere nearby, including some Molly recognized as Tom’s.
“Need a few more, Bart! Mr. Shaw! Help Bart, there.”
Hearing the captain’s voice, Molly rushed toward the source.
“Allow me a moment, please! You there! Be of some good use, eh? Take the rest o’ them boxes onboard!”
Tom’s voice rang out again. “If that’s the last, Bart, then we’re prepared to leave. Only need one more thing.”
“Which is, Cap’n?”
The captain grinned and gestured toward the ship house door where Molly stood, catching her breath.
Bart turned to look. “Ah! Good evening, miss. I’ve arranged you a cabin fit for the King himself.”
Flustered and confused, Molly called out to Tom. “What’s happening? Are you leaving now?”
“Soon!”
“But the soldiers at the inn …” She trailed off.
Tom nodded. “Precisely, you have the idea. We can’t wait for morning, Miss. I’m sorry to have left you behind, but you’re clever and I knew you’d receive my message. My crew is here, supplies are loaded and we’re about ready to sail. Now, please do hurry and come aboard!”
Molly felt dizzy, frightened and confused. “I’m not sure.” The grown woman inside Molly’s head wrung her hands and told Molly she’d be a fool to conspire with an outlaw, and the girl on the inside tightened her bodice, strapped her boots and told Molly she’d be a coward not to finish what she set out to accomplish. Molly, the hapless heroine wedged between the two warring voices, decided she’d rather be a fool than a coward.
The new ship, the Scotch Bonnet, sat in the seawater below, ready to sail. From outside, encroaching English guardsmen could be heard. Through the windows over the ship house doors everyone could see the glow of rows and rows of torches lighting the shipyard. Dozens of soldiers surrounded the front of the house. The voice of their commanding officer thundered out.
“Captain Thomas Crowe! You are under arrest by order of His Majesty’s Royal Navy and the Caribbean Royal Guard! Surrender your ship and arms, reveal yourself and come along humbly!”
Thomas looked down intently, his eyes fixed on Molly. “You can come with me, or you can go with them. You have the blessing of choice. I, less than human, do not.” He pointed toward the ship house door. “You have nothing to fear. They want only me. They’ll probably take you back to wherever it is you came from.”
Molly looked back over her shoulder and then again at Tom. Wherever she’d come from was far away now, both geographically as well as in her heart, but the young captain did not know that. Still, she allowed herself a moment to settle into her decision. Was she really considering fleeing the authorities with a wanted man? Was she really in need of a purpose so much that she would allow Captain Thomas Crowe to be her doorway to a new life? Why did she even stop to think about whether or not she wanted to sail with a convicted criminal? Perhaps, she thought, because Tom was something more than a crook with a curse.
“Miss Bishop, please decide.”
One last look into the captain’s eyes made her decision for her. After all, where else had she to go? “All right,” she agreed, following him to quickly board the ship.
“Hurry, now.” He quickly showed her to her cabin, a special one, constructed at the last minute as an extension of his own, with not much more than a dividing wall between the two.
From outside came more angry shouts. “Surrender your ship, Crowe!” There was a pause and then the voice became even more strident. “Very well! Then be executed here! Fire!”
Shots rang out and Molly screamed. Bullet holes riddled the ship house as splinters of wood fell to the ground and showered the deck of the ship. The crew called out to one another. Ropes were uncoiled and sails raised. The captain barked out his orders.
“Bart!” Tom cried.
Bart ducked and hurried toward a large, iron winch, cranking the sea gates open. Numerous counterweights shifted across the ceiling and rafters of the ship house. The ship crept forward into the tossing ocean. Bullets grazed the hull. Thomas shouted triumphantly, waving fists at his attackers. Bart, followed by his old mutt Jezebel, scurried up the ramp onto the ship an instant before the gates crashed together. As the vessel escaped, the ship house began to burn, set afire by the soldiers’ torches.
Cautiously Molly walked out onto the deck, and Tom placed an arm around her, throwing the other in the air. “To London!” he ordered the crew with victorious gusto.
“Crowe!” A voice bellowed.
The captai
n turned toward the source. Standing at the edge of the ship house, the commanding English officer huffed and puffed, and raised a blunderbuss loaded full of scrap silver. Molly gasped. Thomas quickly swiveled around again, wrapping himself around her with his back to the shooter.
Molly screamed in horror. “No!”
The gun thundered. A hail of shrapnel cut up the Scotch Bonnet’s newly-painted railings and hull, and a single chunk bit Tom’s left shoulder as it whizzed past his neck. He grimaced, suppressing muffled epithets as the ship sailed out of range. Molly gazed up at Tom, her eyes filling with tears. Scoffing at the soldiers, Thomas’s eyes were fiery.
“Didn’t touch you, did it?” he asked Molly, examining her closely. “Miss?”
Molly’s trembling voice was barely audible. “I don’t think so.”
A relieved smile crossed his lips, but his eyes became yellow as the smile gave way to solemnity.
“You had better rest,” he advised Molly, “You didn’t get the full night’s sleep I promised you.”
“What? But, no! You’re injured! You need to mend it! I can help!” she refused to go as she looked over his bullet wound. “What’s happening to you?” Gingerly, she brushed her small fingers over the fresh cut in his shoulder. Where the shrapnel had struck him, the flesh sizzled and melted like a burn. It did not bleed like a bullet wound, and crusted over an ashy black and gray, not dark red or brown. Wisps of smoke rose from the grisly canyon in his skin.
“I will mend it myself. It is not as severe as you think,” he argued, opening her cabin door and shielding his wound from view, “It would have been much, much worse if the shot had stuck inside.”
“That’s nonsense! Why won’t you allow me? You could bleed to death!” Molly stared into his strange yellow eyes, confounded by his obstinence and hesitant to allow his soothing gaze to sway her again.
“Look,” Thomas said, displaying his wound to her. “It has already stopped bleeding.”
“But, how?” Molly saw that he was not lying. The great damage the shot had done moments earlier had already become less severe.
“Now please, rest, please.” Thomas waited for her to step inside her cabin before shutting the door.
“What a terribly powerful curse it must be,” she said to herself, unable to do more than obey his wishes as she pondered the curious behavior of his injury. Once Tom shut her door she went to her bed, but she couldn’t rest. Thomas was so quick to push her away when she approached him. Molly became terribly self-conscious, wondering if she’d unintentionally communicated something to him she’d rather have kept secret. There was a basin and a pitcher filled with water in her new cabin. Taking a kerchief from her pocket she dipped it in the water and washed her face and arms. How long since she had used a brush? She took one out of her bag and proceeded to untangle her hair. As the knots grew fewer, so did her thoughts grow more tangled. What had she really been after when she left Bridgetown? A purpose? A second chance? When she first left home for the New World she’d had only one goal. That mission had become another when ill fate intervened, and since then, her problems had multiplied and become much more complicated in nature. She’d known Thomas for no time at all, and she wondered whether he was any of the things she was looking for. How could she tell? Her eyes downcast, Molly quietly shed a few tears for her own sake.
The ship continued as though in a slow sleepwalk, wallowing out into open sea. Tom shut his cabin door and sat wide awake at a charting desk. After an hour or so passed and the stars shifted position, Tom stood and walked to the cabin windows, fastening them open so he could feel Sea’s loving whispers against his cheeks. His cabin was just like the one on his last ship, but still unfamiliar to him. He’d given Molly the adjacent half, the only other room now situated at the rear of the main deck. Tom stood facing the stern-side windows. The view was of the ship’s wake—a view of the past. Funny, how it swirled and whirled rather than make a straight line—how it changed shape in ways that were never predictable, and became indistinguishable from the ocean waves before shrinking into the dark.
A spray of salt sent a fiery pain racing down his arm, beginning from his shoulder, which had long since stopped bleeding. He flinched and wandered back to his bed, where he collapsed, exhausted, and fell asleep. His last conscious thought took his mind back to the strange and beautiful Molly Bishop, lying asleep in her cabin. He wondered if she had dreams. Not ordinary dreams, but dreams like those he had, exceedingly vivid and too real not to be true.
A few hours later Tom sat up straight in a frenzy, waking from a particularly alarming dream. He looked at his open hands, expecting them to be drenched in blood; they were clean. Then he looked all around him. Still unaware he was fully awake, he stood and swung wildly at the blackness, shouting his brother’s name, afraid someone was lurking somewhere in the cabin. “Harlan!” Confused, he yelled out the name again, clenching a dagger in his right hand. Throwing open the cabin door, he found nothing but moonlight loitering on the deck of the Scotch Bonnet.
Werewolf’s teeth are a valuable commodity, especially in certain dark corners of the Caribbean isles. The folk who live on the islands, both rich and destitute, are greatly superstitious and will pay large sums for even the smallest amounts of traditional remedies for all variety of “curses.” Those who are not afraid of what they believe to be fairy tales find a different kind of value in the teeth, and prize them above ivory and even gold.
Werewolves’ teeth, when ground to a powder and burned in the home, are thought to protect the residents and provide them a spiritual immunity to a condition called “lupomorphosis,” as I have named it. You may be more familiar with the term “lycanthropy,” which, I will explain, is not a condition but rather a practice. You see, a werewolf does not choose to transform by means of magic or ritual. A lycanthrope does. Yet, I have never met a lycanthrope, and I do not expect to.
I would suppose that Bart Drake, though well acquainted with things of myth, was not a lupomorph, and was simply, as Thomas was convinced, a normal man. A normal man, perhaps, but an extraordinary shipbuilder, from what I have heard told by a number of sources, excluding Captain Crowe. Mr. Drake, or Sir Bartholomew Drake as he was known before his dismissal from the Royal Navy and the graces of the Crown, was the source of many revolutionary ship designs that, I regret, never received proper laudation. He sailed with Thomas after the destruction of his ship house, and afterward he vanished with time. He was already far too aged when Thomas Crowe approached him after so many years, but he managed to act as quartermaster for both the London trip and a subsequent trip to Barcelona. After that his story ends abruptly.
In London, Thomas Crowe was pursuing what I shall call a matter of familial interest. He was an unusual werewolf. Often he described to me things that had happened to him that do not normally occur because of one’s contracting a form of lupomorphosis. Thomas Crowe had dreams, and not in such a way that you or I would dream. He would often envision things to come. He claimed to have met certain individuals in his sleep whom he would not meet for many years after experiencing the dream. Often, he would dream of his brother, Harlan. These, he told me, were particularly unpleasant dreams.
Geoffrey Mylus,
April 10, 1833
~~~
Tom sat comfortably on the very tip of the ship’s bow, arms supporting and balancing himself as he surveyed the endless blue, sparkling with a crisp solar lustre before him. It was noon, the sun high overhead, and the crew was hard at work, systematically maintaining the sails and course of the ship. Bart had been below deck since early that morning, scouring over blueprints and charts and inspecting the functionality of his masterpiece vessel. The weather was balmy, although shade was still welcome. Tom waited patiently.
He turned around on his perch as Molly suddenly appeared wearing a dress of soft peach, the neckline dipping in a demure curve. She had carried it in her bag since her flight from Bridgetown. In her hand was a bottle of brandy and a rag. She had not forgotte
n his wound. “Good day, Captain.”
Tom peered up, squinting through the sunlight, and smiled, his blue eyes striking Molly and making her shy. “Good day, miss. Thirsty for a drink, eh?” he asked with a playful smirk, pointing at the bottle.
Her eyes narrowed teasingly. “Hardly.” She stepped up to him, her gaze coming to rest on his shoulder. “You had best let me look at that.”
“Oh, yes of course, look all you want, but don’t touch.” He waved a finger, grinning.
Molly rolled her eyes.
“Stings, you know,” he complained dramatically. “Unbearable! Unbearable!”
“Well, Captain, if you don’t think you can withstand the pain …” She shrugged and feigned to turn back around.
“I only mean to joke, Miss. Thank you.” He gestured at the rag and brandy, then unlaced his cotton shirt and pulled it up and over his head, cramming his lion’s-mane of blond hair through the collar and shaking it into shape again.
Molly, waiting and watching, lingered on his bare chest and arms. The muscles beneath his bronzed skin moved and flexed smoothly like thick bubbles rising on the surface of a pot of simmering caramel. Molly pinched a corner of her bottom lip between her teeth, caught herself, and looked away before Thomas freed his head from the clutches of his tangled, fluttering shirt.
“Do your worst.” He said at last, shrinking back with a mock grimace.
“Honestly, Captain …” Molly tore the rag into two strips, soaking one piece in the brandy. She fought a smirk, which revealed two dimples in her cheeks, and flashed her eyes at him. Without warning she pressed the rag hard to his wound and smirked. “Might sting,” she teased.
His eyes widened in surprise and he squirmed. “Easy, now!”
More gently this time, she continued dabbing the wet rag, cleansing the wound. Discarding the brandy cloth and replacing it with the dry one, she tied it securely around his shoulder. The wound was much less visible than it had been the previous night, but she did not comment on it. “That should do well for now. At the least, it won’t become infected.”
The Lore Series (Box Set): All 3 Books In One Volume Page 5