Nightsong

by Valerie Sherwood

  ‘But . . . you are going?’ she murmured at last.

  ‘I must,’ he sighed.

  ‘I know you feel you must go but - oh, Kells, please don’t.’ Her voice was wheedling and her slender hands traced a fiery persuasive path down his belly and groin, burrowed enticingly below. ‘Don’t sail away - stay with me.’

  It was a siren’s song - and Kells was not slow to respond to it.

  Wakened to passion again, he turned over and drew her slim, yielding body against his own, caressing her tenderly. But he did not answer, although he took her again, driving her to frenzy with his ardour, and let her go at last with yearning.

  ‘This is a terrible place for you to leave me,’ she murmured sleepily.

  His grin was a white flash in the starlight, half seen. ‘Terrible?’ he said humorously. ‘There is no better house in the town than this one. It is strong and defensible and decorated to your taste. You have servants, the latest Paris gowns, jewels, the city at your feet. Would you trade all that for a meagre life at sea, storms that howl in the rigging, mouldy bread, water turned green in the casks, the ever-present danger of meeting the entire might of the Spanish treasure flota at one time - or the Vera Cruz squadron - and being blown out of the water?

  ‘Yes,’ she said, as definite as he.

  ‘I’d given you credit for better sense,’ he laughed. And, sounding pleased with himself, he rolled over and was immediately asleep.

  The longcase clock in the hall chimed the hour - it was two A.M.

  Beside the sleeping figure of the buccaneer, Carolina lay in the starlight, thinking. Her pleas had made no impression on him. This hot night of lovemaking which had left her so breathless had not moved him either.

  Unable to sleep, at last she rose restlessly and donned a paper-thin silken shawl from the Orient that had come to this buccaneer port via the pirates of Madagascar. The shawl was of a cool Chinese gold, heavily embroidered in white silk - a pattern of sumptuous twining roses. The long pale silken fringe swished along her slim bare legs as she went and settled herself in the window for coolness and looked out over the moonlit town.

  A city of some eight thousand souls met Carolina’s sombre gaze - and all of them crowded into two thousand buildings that pressed towards the waterfront where the goods of the world streamed in and out. There was no fresh water here, and everything had to be brought in by boat. Yet there were handsome brick residences all about, the big warehouses stretched along the waterfront.

  Kells had brought her here from Tortuga when war between England and France had accomplished what the Spanish could not - broken up the Brethren of the Coast. For Tortuga had a French governor, and buccaneers were fiercely loyal to their own countries. So the French buccaneers had stayed on Tortuga, and the English buccaneers had found a new home in Port Royal, where wine and money flowed. Still - she now admitted to herself - she had been happier on Tortuga than she was here. In Tortuga their sprawling white house had been a fortress against all the world, but here in cosmopolitan Port Royal the world reached out to her, mocking her with the life that they could never have back in England, in Essex, where Rye’s family still lived. Not Rye - Kells. She must remember to think of him as Kells because that was who he was condemned always to be - Captain Kells, the daring Irish buccaneer whom no one had ever guessed was that aristocratic English gentleman. Rye Evistock. Until I came along, she thought bitterly.

  Indeed it was all her fault. If Rye had never met her, she told herself, his secret would perhaps have been safe. Or if not safe, dealt with. But she had come along and, she told, herself bitterly, ruined everything for him - forever.

  Her self-denunciation was interrupted by a shadow that scurried out of the house below and ran, barelegged and with a shawl thrown over her head to make her more part of the darkness, barefoot down the street.

  Carolina frowned. That would be fifteen-year-old Gilly, she guessed, slipping out to keep some tryst at a waterfront tavern. Probably with some brawling chance-met buccaneer. There was no question of Gilly’s being robbed of her virginity - she had long ago lost that in the wilds of New Providence, which lay to the north - but there was always the danger that Gilly might be pounced upon by one of the pimps who did not know that the girl was under Carolina’s - and therefore Captain Kells’s - protection. She might be spirited away to one of Port Royal’s numerous brothels!

  Thinking of what might happen to Gilly brought Carolina’s thoughts abruptly back to the day she had first met the girl, the day on which she had received The Letter and made a decision that was to alter her life. For in a strange tortuous way, it was that decision which was sending Kells off buccaneering again . . . Indeed the sight of Gilly’s flying form racing down the sandy street had brought it all back, and in her mind Carolina was strolling through the town on a late winter day and feeling carefree in the comfortable knowledge that Kells had left the buccaneering trade behind him - forever.

  BOOK 1

  The Silver Wench

  I'll sing to you a devil’s song

  Of danger and of love gone wrong

  (And other sins as well!)

  And take you through a scented grove

  'Mid gold-encrusted treasure trove

  Into a lovers' hell!

  PART ONE

  The Belle of Port Royal

  Far across the Spanish Main, let me take you once again,

  Weave for you a lovers’ tale, woven when the moon was pale,

  Of galleons and buccaneers - a bride who waited, bathed in tears

  To sight a sail upon the sea - and, shivering, know that it

  was he!

  PORT ROYAL,

  JAMAICA

  February 1692

  1

  It was a hot day in Port Royal. In a butter-yellow dress as light as her heart and swinging a ruffled yellow silk parasol, the girl who had once been Carolina Lightfoot of Virginia’s aristocratic Tidewater picked her way daintily down a street littered, as it always was in the morning, with wine bottles and tankards and a variety of other debris. Once she stepped over a pair of boots - the boots’ owner was presumably dashing around barefoot - once over a slipper of tangerine satin probably lost by some woman of the streets, and twice she made her way around sodden drunks who lay prone, cuddling their cutlasses and perchance a jug of rum: a perfectly normal morning in Port Royal, for Carolina rarely went abroad before the streets were cleaned of broken glass and human litter, swept out of the way impatiently by press gangs from the jail by order of the royal governor.

  She caused some little attention. Bleary eyes that had known scarce a wink of sleep turned to blink at this golden vision wearing yards and yards of floating voile and who swung along jauntily on pale yellow kid slippers-guarded as always by the big taciturn buccaneer called Hawks.

  ‘We should have waited a bit till the streets were cleaned,’ grunted Hawks. ‘Ye’ll cut your feet on this broken glass.’ He reached out to steer her around a broken wine bottle whose sticky contents was abuzz with insects.

  ‘Yes, I suppose I should have waited.’ Carolina tossed back her head with a gesture that swept her thick fair hair away from her neck in the sticky heat. ‘But it’s cooler early, and the market gets so crowded later.’

  She did not say what she intended to buy at the market and Hawks did not ask. It was not for him to argue with the captain’s extravagant lady whether she wanted to buy a fashion doll from Paris or some China tea and spices or a length of Italian silk or French laces. Everything - even shrunken heads from the jungles of South America and fine Bordeaux (when everyone knew England was at war with France) - everything found its way sooner or later into Port Royal harbour. The goods of the world changed hands here. Hawks could only hope Carolina would not load him up so heavily he’d have trouble getting his cutlass arm free, for the town was alive with riffraff this morning and he did not care for the way some of them were looking at his lustrous charge.

  They had passed from Queen’s Street down a narrow st
reet between the tall brick buildings that crowded this city built on sand, and they were just emerging on to High Street on their way to the market when there was a sudden disturbance on Lime Street loud enough to drown out the hawkers’ crying out the virtues of their fresh-caught fish and crabs.

  As they turned the corner on to High Street they came under the observation of two gentlemen who were observing passersby from the open first-floor window of a tall brick house. The younger and taller of the two had the look of an adventurer about him. He was wiry and well built; his body had a lithe grace that had pleased many women. He had a smooth olive-skinned face, a high forehead, an aquiline nose, black winglike brows and a cleft chin of exceeding firmness. And beneath those winglike brows a pair of narrowed tawny-gold eyes looked haughtily down upon the crowd - for Port Royal not only stayed up late, it got up early. His black hair swung like coarse shining silk against the shoulders of his dark olive coat as he lounged in the windowsill, his back against the green-painted wooden frame, one long leg swinging indolently over the sill. His lazy demeanour was contradicted by the alert look in his tawny eyes as he took in the scene before him, and from time to time he murmured quick questions to the man who hovered behind him and answered in a low urgent voice.

  As Carolina, daintily picking up her floating yellow voile skirts to avoid more broken glass, turned the corner, the man in the olive coat straightened slightly.

  ‘Madre de Dios!' he murmured in Spanish under cover of the clamour. ‘To find a beauty like that - here! These buccaneers do well for themselves indeed!’

  ‘You must remember to speak in English,’ warned his heavyset friend behind him in a worried voice, ‘else our lives will pay for it. I will remind you, Ramon, that I do this for you out of old friendship and - ’

  ‘I know, I know,’ chuckled his younger friend, his admiring gaze still fixed on Carolina. ‘And I will remind you, John, to call me “Raymond” and not “Ramon” and to remember that for the moment I am French - a renegade, perhaps, but still French.’ He was about to ask John who the golden vision was when distant shouts and running feet erupted from Lime Street into High Street. A cart piled high with oranges was knocked over and the oranges cascaded into the street, rolling along the gutters like bowling balls. Several people tripped over the oranges and went down beside the overturned cart. And the reason for all this commotion - a ginger-haired girl of perhaps fifteen summers running as if for her life - darted through the turmoil, collided with Hawks, and with an anguished squawk ricocheted to the ground directly in front of Carolina.

  As she fell, the girl’s plain brown kirtle tumbled upward, revealing a startlingly handsome red silk petticoat and a white chemise edged with lace ruffles, in sharp contrast to her dirty bare feet and sun-bronzed ankles.

  From the crowd, stumbling through the rolling oranges, panted a blowzy woman in magenta satin whom Carolina recognized as one of the well-known madams of the town (indeed, it was said the governor himself patronized her establishment at times), and right behind her a fierce-looking bawd in stained pink silk who roared, ‘After her, Sadie! Don’t let her get away with my chemise and your petticoat!’

  Carolina looked down, astounded, into the fallen girl’s sharp-featured dirty face and met a pair of woebegone brown eyes.

  ‘Oh, lor’, don’t let them get me!’ wailed the girl, clasping Carolina around the ankles. ‘They’ll have my hide for this!’

  The enthusiasm of the girl’s desperate assault might have toppled Carolina had not Hawks, with a sudden imprecation, seized his captain’s lady by the arm and righted her. He would have removed the girl’s grip on Carolina’s ankles with his boot save that Carolina stayed him and turned to face the girl’s pursuers.

  ‘Before you touch this girl,’ her voice rang out, ‘tell me, what is her crime?’

  Her crime was fairly obvious - this girl would be one of Port Royal’s ever-shifting floating population, a scullery wench, perhaps, who had gone to work in one of the brothels. Not pretty enough to make her way as a prostitute, for competition in that field was hot in Port Royal, she must still have wanted finery - and so she had stolen a chemise and a red petticoat and been caught in the act.

  She’s a thief, that one! And me and Tilly both says so!’ shrilled the magenta-clad madam, who came to an abrupt stop before Carolina and her frowning bodyguard.

  'That she is!' roared the big woman in pink, coming up behind Sadie so suddenly that she bumped into her, almost knocking her down. ‘Don’t let her get away with it, Sadie!’ She pushed the madam forward so violently that she stumbled. ‘Pull the petticoat off the slut’s back, and then I’ll pull off the chemise!’

  Carolina had asked her question only to give herself time to think what to do, and now her decision was swiftly made as the girl who lay on the street beseechingly clutching her ankles burst into tears. ‘Don’t let them strip me on the street, mistress!’ she wailed. ‘Oh, don’t - please!’

  ‘I can promise you they won’t strip you here on the street,’ said Carolina with a warning look at the two women, who were now fiercely regarding her, hands on hips. ‘Tell me,’ she said sternly. ‘Did you steal these clothes?’

  The girl stopped crying abruptly. Her eyes widened. Then she gulped, ‘It was because they was beating me - both of them. With a stick!’ She regarded Carolina in rising panic. ‘I only wanted to get even!’ she wailed.

  Carolina, who always fed lost dogs and cats, and who had more compassion for human strays than could be found anywhere else on this island, gave her a look of sympathy. This pathetic waif had no home, no family - Carolina didn’t have to ask; it was readily apparent. Naught but the clothes on her back, and those were about to be ripped from her body.

  She turned to the two women. ‘I am taking this girl home with me,’ she said flatly. ‘The clothing will be returned to you within the hour.’

  ‘We’ll have it now!’ screeched the woman in stained pink, who was advancing menacingly on Carolina.

  Hawks looked dismayed. Interfering in a fight between women never worked out for a man, but he must defend the captain’s lady at all costs.

  ‘Well, John,’ chuckled the man who lounged in the window. ‘I see I am about to rescue a lady!’

  Ignoring his friend’s clutching arm, and his desperate, ‘Wait, Ramon, that woman is - ’ he dropped catlike to the street below and reached the quarrelling group in a single bound, sending a bystander staggering as he did so.

  And before Hawks could even bellow ‘Get back!’ and push Carolina and her unlikely charge behind him, a rich masculine voice came from behind Carolina.

  ‘No one will be stripped in the street,’ was his level pronouncement. ‘I stand to defend this lady.’

  Carolina swung about - to the disappointed grumbling of the ogling crowd that had gathered about, hoping for a mêlée - and met the tawny gaze of a stranger. A tall darkhaired stranger in dusky olive who moved with assurance and had a naked blade swinging negligently in his hand.

  Faced by glowering Hawks and this new, more deadly menace, the two bawds fell back, muttering.

  ‘The clothes’ll be sent to you, Sadie,’ Hawks told the angry madam with relief. ‘I’ll see to it myself.’

  Carolina ignored the pair. She was regarding the stranger in some wonder. He was extraordinarily handsome, she saw, as dark as any Spaniard, but there was no mark of the don about his casual clothes, and his English was flawless.

  ‘I do not believe I know you, sir,’ she said slowly. ‘But I am most grateful to you nonetheless.’

  The stranger made her a sweeping bow. ‘Raymond du Monde, at your service, mademoiselle.’

  Carolina acknowledged his greeting graciously and extended her slender hand. The stranger bore it to his lips, met her gaze with laughter in his eyes as he kissed it - and held it a shade too long.

  It was a shade too long for Hawks, too. Just as Carolina was about to give the stranger her name, Hawks broke in.

  ‘Captain Kells’ll be gratef
ul to you,’ muttered Hawks. He spoke with feeling for he knew in his heart that he could not have raised his cutlass against a woman, and it would have been hard holding off two of them. And what would the Captain have said had he returned to find his lady scratched and bruised and with perhaps tufts of her beautiful blonde hair torn out?

  The stranger caught that remark and for a moment there was a new gleam in his tawny eyes. ‘Captain Kells?’ he asked in a slightly altered tone.

  Carolina was used to having men’s expressions alter at the mention of her buccaneer husband, but she winced when a voice from the crowd remarked audibly, ‘Gor’, don’t he know he’s talkin’ to the Silver Wench?’

  The gaze of the handsome stranger upon her was steady. She noticed the little V-shaped scar at the corner of his mouth, the cleft chin, the dark line of jaw scraped clean with a razor.

  ‘Silver Wench?’ he murmured. ‘You will forgive me, mademoiselle, but I am new to Jamaica.’

  ‘I have been called that,’ she admitted stiffly.

  He seemed to reflect. ‘Ah, I recollect now. Then you must be - ’

  ‘Wife to Captain Kells,’ put in Hawks before Carolina could reply. He moved uneasily, wishing Carolina would take the young wench - who had by now scrambled to her feet although she was still keeping close to Carolina for protection - and get them gone from here. The dark stranger was looking at Carolina in a most admiring although slightly inquisitive way. He had sheathed his sword and was smiling at her - and there was something in his smile that put Hawks in mind of a black panther from Africa that he had once seen break free of its bonds aboard a ship. There had been no subduing the panther once it was bent on freedom; it had killed three men before it was brought down - and there was something in the stranger’s olive-skinned face that reminded Hawks of that panther. ‘We’d best go home, mistress,’ he muttered.