Over the weeks, Serafina had detected a hint of sympathy from the maid. Serafina also knew Carla loved to gossip. Her mother had once said they should discharge her because of how the family’s secrets were spread about the street. But to let go a young woman such as Carla without references meant she could never find another place of service. She would be reduced to working in one of the weaving mills or the silk dying factories. Serafina’s mother was far too good-natured to do this without extreme cause. So Carla had been warned and left in place as the upstairs maid.
“Good morning, mistress.” Carla was careful in her movements. Clearly she had been given strict instructions by Serafina’s mother. The girl set the tray and the bowls down just inside the room and turned to lock the door behind her. Then she brought over the breakfast tray and set it where Serafina had been writing. “I hope you slept well.”
“I never sleep.”
Carla sighed. Up until now, that had been the extent of their morning conversations. Carla always sighed. But she never said anything more. Her dark eyes showed a certain wisdom far older than her years. Serafina examined the face before her, wishing she had come to know this young woman better. “I need to ask you to do something for me.”
“I can’t.”
“You could,” Serafina said softly, “if you did not tell my parents.”
Carla straightened. She openly examined Serafina. “They would dismiss me.”
Because she was listening so intently, Serafina detected a number of unspoken hints. Carla had not said no. Which meant she might do this. But there was something more at work here. In that fleeting instant, Serafina realized she was no longer addressing a maid. Carla had become her equal. Even perhaps her superior.
Serafina whispered, “What do you want?”
Carla’s eyes flickered about the room, then came to rest upon the corner of the dressing table. “You have such lovely things.”
Serafina knew instantly what the maid saw. There upon the table sat Serafina’s jewel box. The carved little box with its velvet interior contained only three items of any real value. All of them had been left to her by her grandmother, her father’s mother. Serafina loved all three items dearly. Even so, she did not hesitate.
Serafina slipped the tiny golden key from the bracelet on her left wrist. She unlocked the box and opened the inlaid top. She picked up the ruby brooch. She held it between them. “Is he still here?”
Carla’s face came alive in a manner that not even the room’s murkiness could mask. “He has been dismissed from the art academy. But he is still in Venice.”
“Can you find him?”
“I know where he lodges.”
The news caused an icy shiver to course through Serafina. She realized with a shock that Carla was quite attractive, although in a dark and somewhat earthy manner. Serafina fought down a sudden urge to grip the woman’s shoulders and shout at her, demanding to know how she knew such a thing. But the impulse was instantly dismissed. Luca loved her. “Will you take a letter to him and deliver his reply?”
Carla’s gaze never left the brooch. “Yes.”
Serafina took the letter from her pocket. She kissed the seal. Together with the brooch she placed it in Carla’s outstretched hand. “Go. Hurry.”
The day loitered in torturous fashion. Never had the slatted light seemed to travel so slowly across the floor of the room. Serafina endured what felt like eons of doubt. Finally, however, the key scraped into the lock, the door opened, and the maid reappeared.
Serafina remained seated in her chair only by gripping the arms and holding herself back. To her mind, Carla’s motions were more languid than ever before. She moved across the room, taking precious minutes to settle the tray upon the table between them. Finally, Serafina could stand it no longer. “Well?”
“I saw him.”
“You gave him the letter?”
Carla’s focus came to rest upon the jewel box. Serafina knew she wanted more payment. But she also knew there were only two more items of any value. And there was a great deal more that needed doing. “Well?” she said again.
Carla seemed to accept that she would receive nothing further at this point. Her gaze hardened. “He says yes.”
“That’s all? Yes?”
“I was hoping for additional payment. After all, I have risked—”
Serafina leaped up so swiftly Carla gasped and backed away. But not fast enough. Serafina gripped the maid’s arm with a hand transformed to steel. She moved forward until her face was inches from the maid’s. “Tell me.”
“H-he is thrilled beyond words,” the maid answered in a fearful rush. “H-he yearns for you with every b-breath. He will be where you wish and counts the passing moments as he would the loss of his own life’s blood.”
All strength drained from her body. Serafina released her hold and stumbled back to the chair. “He loves me,” she whispered.
“He adores you.” Carla seemed to find no pleasure in the words. She reached into her pocket and drew out a sealed page. “He sends you this. He says the smudges are from his tears.”
Serafina resisted the urge to open it immediately. She would not allow this woman to see her weep. And weep she would. Of that she had no doubt. Besides which, they had little time.
She fumbled with the jewel box’s tiny catch. Her hands trembled so that when she lifted the pearl necklace, the pearls swung and glimmered between them. “You shall have these if you do what I say.”
“Say it then.” Carla’s expression had taken on a hypnotic intensity. “But be swift.”
Serafina had thought it out with great care. She told her exactly what she wanted. “Will you do this?”
“That is two things, not one.”
“This for the first, the comb for the other.”
“Show me.”
Serafina allowed the pearls to drop into her other palm. She clasped her hands together, hiding them from view. “Not until the first task is done.”
Carla lifted her eyes from Serafina’s hands. She measured the younger woman very carefully, then said, “I will do as you ask.”
By the light of the lone evening candle, Serafina unsealed the letter. She knew Luca could not write, or at least not write well. He had confessed as much during one of their earliest private conversations. He had failed at different schools and driven away all but his art tutors, until his parents had thrown up their hands and ordered him into the military. He was good with his fists and with weapons, but he hated taking orders. He could fight, and he could draw, and he could work both stone and clay. His painting was marginal, or so he claimed. But Serafina thought his oils to be absolutely beautiful in their emotional power. He was a very sensual artist. Which made his response to her letter all the more potent.
It was a drawing of her face. Serafina looked down at herself and wept with the knowledge that he really and truly loved her. There was no other way he could have expressed such a vivid emotion unless he himself shared it.
Her image looked out of the page with an expression that was both dreamy and yearning. It was exactly how she had felt when he had entered her bedchamber and kissed her and drawn her close.
Serafina jammed one fist into her mouth to stifle the noise of her sobs. Impatiently she cleared her eyes and examined the drawing. She saw the smudge marks and wept the harder, for she knew he had first drawn her and then leaned over the page, hungering for her as she did for him. She saw three longer smudges where his fingers had traced their way around the border of her face. She traced the marks and felt the fire of his touch upon her anew.
She remained where she was, touching the page and weeping, until the candle expired and cast her into the darkness of another lonely night.
Chapter 5
Falconer awoke from the nightmare, his heart pounding and skin clammy with sweat.
It was the same harrowing dream he had endured for three long years. He could not recall whether he had first had the dream and then given his soul and
life to his Creator or the dream had started after his baptism. Falconer had spoken of the dream with only one man, his friend Felix, the curate. After Falconer’s acknowledgment of its fearful power, the curate had told him that Falconer had always carried the nightmare in one form or another. The only difference was now, with God’s help, Falconer had the strength to face its torment head on.
When Falconer had asked why God did not take the terrible dream from him, the curate had simply said that God’s timing was not man’s. In the meantime, Felix told him, Falconer must learn patience and study the message of Paul’s thorn in the flesh.
Falconer now rolled from his bunk, missing his friend mightily. Many extraordinary results flowed from coming to know the Almighty. One was that he was so afflicted by loneliness. Falconer had spent most of his life in utter solitude, even when he was surrounded by a warship’s teeming humanity. Falconer slipped to his knees and said his morning prayers, imploring God to keep his friend safe. He ended his petition as he had every morning and evening since leaving Trinidad, begging for help in this futile and frustrating journey to England.
Three weeks he had traveled, certain he was not only followed but hunted. And while he had journeyed far, the direction had turned out to be consistently wrong.
The only vessel departing Trinidad the day Falconer had met with Felix and narrowly dodged death had been headed to Grenada, his home island. Once there, a friend among the planters had brought Falconer alarming news. Strangers were about in Grenada’s capital, dangerous men armed with cutlasses and official documents. The strangers were asking about Falconer and his habits. Did he poke his nose into affairs that had nothing to do with his trade? they asked. Did he seek information about slaving? A mate of the planter ran the tavern where the strangers were staying. This man had heard how they planned to put Falconer in chains and sail away.
Two hours later, Falconer met up with a fisherman, who took him as far as Ronde, a mean little island north of Grenada and home still to Amerindians. Falconer carried nothing save his sword, the secret documents collected under enormous danger, and two pouches of gold. From Ronde he made his way to Saint Vincent, then on to Guadeloupe. Neither island harbored any large vessels, which was not unusual for the time of year. The spring tradewinds were long gone and the summer tempests just beginning. Falconer continued his meandering progress across the Antilles. In Port-au-Prince he boarded a foul-smelling craft packed with smoked eel heading for Saint Augustine in Florida.
On the third day of their voyage, he saw for the first time why the seas were so starkly vacant. When at dawn he arose from his hammock, he faced a cloud wall rising to the highest heavens. The solid barrier chopped away the sea and the sun. Falconer found himself recalling the old seamen’s tales of those who sailed off the world’s edge. For a moment he almost believed them.
The wind rose with the daylight, blowing strong and steady from the southwest. Which meant the wind was blowing into the storm, as though even the breeze was being sucked into the maelstrom. The captain and his two mates talked long and hard over their passage and decided to hold to their course. To turn and flee for the Grand Bahama harbor would have meant beating against the rising wind. And once there, they would have no guarantee of safety, for the Bahama harbors were notoriously exposed.
They made landfall in Saint Augustine the next day, and still the storm remained poised upon the horizon. The next dawn was still stained by the dark menace. The wind blew constant and strong from the land. Falconer snagged a berth on a land-hugging trader making the run northward to Charleston in the Carolinas. Charleston was the largest port south of the nation’s capital. The seas were massive, with peaks as tall as the vessel’s single mast. But the wind remained steady and the skies utterly clear, and they made good time.
Charleston harbor did indeed hold two European vessels—one British and one French. But the ships were little more than floating hulks. Both had lost their masts and managed to reach port only by jury-rigging a spare boom as a lateen sail. The harbor was filled with news of a storm so massive none had found its eye. Not even the oldest sailor could recall a storm so large this early in the tempest season.
Four days later, the storm had abated somewhat. At least, the dark wall no longer climbed against the horizon. But no ship was willing to attempt an Atlantic crossing. So Falconer took berth on a vessel headed even farther north, to Georgetown and Baltimore. Anything was better than this idleness, he thought.
Three days out, they caught a small taste of the storm they had missed. The sky darkened and a light rain fell. Then out of nowhere they were slapped by a careless hand, a wind so strong it heeled the two-masted vessel over until the gunnels were drenched. The captain feared his vessel would flip and cried aloud to God. It seemed that God heard them, for as swiftly as the wind came, it passed. They arrived to find Georgetown mourning four of their own fishing fleet that had not been so blessed.
Boots in hand, Falconer slipped down the stairs and entered the main hall. The seaman’s mission was located in the Georgetown harbor and offered simple berths to crewmen and laborers. Falconer seated himself in the farthest corner from the entrance, his back to the wall. He had given the mission hosts only his first name and assumed he was safe. But old habits died hard, and he eyed every new guest who found his way into the hall.
The church bells struck six in the morning, and already the day felt oppressive with heat and summer damp. He sniffed the air wafting through the open window. He smelled sweet river water, distant storms, and the surrounding city. Falconer had never felt comfortable very far from the sea. The air seemed empty and strange without its taste of salt.
By the time the others awoke and the room had filled, Falconer had finished his breakfast of tea and gruel. He returned to the task he had begun the previous day—the repair of a hole in the kitchen wall. He had never shied away from work. Putting his hands to such an undertaking as this had a calming effect upon his mind. He could lose himself for hours, praying from time to time and drawing close to God through honest toil.
A minister from the neighboring church came into the hall, greeted the men, and led them through a hymn and a brief homily and prayer. Afterwards Falconer resumed work. Time and again his mind returned to the quandary that had ended so many of his recent prayers. Why was God allowing circumstances to place so many barriers between him and his quest? Had not his Maker called him into the crusade against slavery wherever it was found?
“Are you well this morning, Brother John?”
Falconer started at how the pastor had managed to approach him unnoticed. “Well enough, Father. Thank you for asking.” He had a hunter’s trained ability to sense any approach, yet this man had walked over casually as he pleased and settled unnoticed into the seat next to Falconer. His instincts had obviously been dulled by his frustrating lack of progress.
The young man smiled. “I am Methodist, Brother John. Our Lord Jesus referred to the Lord of all as Father. We prefer a more modest title.”
“Pastor, then. Yes, thank you. I am well.”
“You look fit enough. And the women speak of little else save how you help them. Is there no task you consider beneath you?”
The pastor no doubt referred to how he had spent the early part of the week on his hands and knees, scrubbing the kitchen slate floor as he had holystoned many a deck. “I have never shirked from work or duty, sir.”
“I only know you as John. Might I ask your surname?” When Falconer did not reply, the pastor eased back in his seat. “You carry secrets, I see.”
“Only so that I bring harm to none, sir.”
“Tell me this, if you will. Are you a Christian?”
“I hope and pray the good Lord will recognize me on that day.”
“You are not certain?”
Falconer spoke slowly. “I would like to be.”
“But . . .”
“I have committed many a misdeed, sir.”
“As have we all. Yet the Lord allowed
himself to be nailed to a tree for this very reason, that all have sinned and fallen short of grace.” The young man was of an age as Falconer, though his face remained pale and unlined, his gaze soft, his demeanor scholarly. “You have lived a hard life?”
“Aye, that I have. Very hard.”
“And gone far astray.”
“Beyond the limits of your imagination, sir.” Falconer felt the sudden urge to confess to this gentleman pastor with the open-hearted face. Not to impress nor to shock. But for a reason that he could not even identify. The words welled up, such that he had to clench his jaw to keep them inside. I was once a slaver, he wanted to say . . . I have sold my own brothers and sisters into bondage. I am no better than Joseph’s kin. But he did not speak, since to do so could mean risking all.
The pastor did not seem the least bit put out, either by Falconer’s response or the morose silence that followed. He had a way of seeming comfortable both by this reserved man and the hard parson’s bench where he sat. “What brings you to Georgetown, can you tell me that?”
“Aye, I suppose, if the reasons stay between us.”
“You have my word.”
The pastor’s guileless face invited trust. “I have been living these past four years in the Windward Islands,” Falconer told him. “You know of them?”
“The name only. They are British possessions, I believe.”
“Some are. Others are French, Dutch . . . a few in the Antilles are Portuguese. I ran a chandlery.”
“This is not a dangerous profession, at least in these parts.”
Falconer shot him a guarded look. “Who spoke of danger?”
“A man comes by ship out of the hardest storm any can recall this early in the season,” the young pastor replied. From his tone he might as well have been taking his ease among close friends. “He refuses to give his name. He lives as though he does not have a farthing to his name. He works well and hard at any task given him. And daily he visits the Georgetown port, seeking passage to Britain.”
Heirs of Acadia - 03 - The Noble Fugitive Page 5