“So you say.”
“You’ll never know for sure, will ye?” she snapped. Then her mood turned serious as she glanced at Matthew. “I’d set fire to the cabin if it wasn’t for him. That would keep the crew too busy to worry about us.” She sighed. “Nay, don’t look at me so. I’d nay leave any living thing to burn to death. There’ll be fire enough for all of us in hell.” She swallowed, trying to rid her mouth of the acrid taste of fear. “Is there any chance ye can get his crew to mutiny?”
James shook his head. “I thought of that just before you knocked Matt senseless. No. They’ve nothing to gain by joining us. He’s already promised all hands a share of the gold. If it was the old crew on the Miranda,I might try to persuade them, but these are his men. They don’t know me.” He compressed his lips thoughtfully. “No,” he said, “we’ll have to escape on the Silkie.”
“So I thought. At least it’s too cloudy for them to follow us by moonlight. I—oh!” She gasped and pointed toward the cabin door.
James drew a pistol and cocked it in one smooth motion as he whirled around, expecting to see someone in the doorway.
As soon as James’s back was turned, Lacy snatched Harry off a chair, popped the surprised cat into the sea bag, and pulled the drawstring tight. “I thought I heard someone in the passage,” she lied. “Give me one of those pistols. I’d not cross the deck to the Silkie unarmed.”
“If there’s any fighting to be done, I’ll do it,” James said. He went to the door and pressed his ear against the wood. “I don’t hear anything.”
“With luck, they’re all drunk in the fo’c’sle.”
James shook his head. “No, not on Matt’s ship. There’ll be a watch, and he’ll be sober. We’ll have to get past him.” He went to where Matthew lay and ripped a sheet in strips to tie his friend’s hands and feet. Matthew’s chin was swelling and a trickle of blood ran down his neck.
“Did I hit him too hard?” Lacy asked.
“No, though he’ll have one hell of a throbbing head when he does wake up,” James answered as he gagged the captain with another section of sheet. “That should keep him from giving an alarm any too soon.”
Harry meowed.
James stood up and looked around. “Where’s that damned cat?”
Lacy stepped in front of the bag, hiding Harry’s struggles to get free. “I want a pistol,” she repeated. “I’ve earned it.” She eyed him stubbornly. “Like as not, you’re too drunk to shoot straight. If ye don’t hand one over, I’ll scream bloody murder, and that will bring the crew running. I’ve come this far with ye, James Black, and I’ve seen that half your cockeyed schemes don’t float. I’ll carry a weapon or we’ll not go a step from this cabin.”
He frowned. “I’m drunk, but I’m not too drunk to hinder my aim. I’d have to be dead drunk to shoot worse than you.” Reluctantly, he removed Matt’s knife from his belt and tossed it to Lacy. She caught it in mid-air. “You can have the skean. I don’t trust you with a flintlock,” he said. “You might change sides again and shoot me.”
“Son of a bitch!” she exclaimed softly. “And who saved your bollocks just now?” Resentment brought heat to her cheeks. “Swivin’ pirate,” she muttered under her breath as she donned one of the captain’s coats and jammed a cocked hat on her head.
How could Jamie still doubt her when with both hands she’d thrown away a rosy future with Matthew Kay? she fumed. She was truly hurt. She’d knocked Matthew unconscious for James and she was leaving behind most of what she’d risked her life to bring up from the wreck.
“You’re an ungrateful bastard,” she said in exasperation. “Why I bother with ye, I surely don’t know.” She bent and scooped up a handful of gems and a nose ring, and tucked them into her coat pocket. In the other pocket, she put a bottle of rum. “I hope there’s fresh water on the Silkie,” she said. “I doubt we’ll have time to take on supplies.”
“I think not.” He picked up the heavy sea bag and motioned her toward the door. The cat’s muffled squeak came from the folds of the canvas. “What the hell?” James asked, looking over his shoulder.
Lacy strained under the weight of the golden bowl and the other contents. “We’ll have to come back to the island for Kutii,” she said. “I won’t leave him stranded here.” She lifted the latch and peered out into the passageway. “It’s clear,” she said. Her hands and feet were tingling. She was so frightened that she didn’t know if she could cross the deck to the small boat, but she had to try. And it was far better to be shot dead than to admit her cowardice to James Black.
Matthew groaned.
“Wait. I’ll go first!” James ordered. “You close the cabin door behind us. And if trouble starts, drop what you’re carrying and make a dash for the boat.” He turned on her with an intense gaze. “If we get separated, we’ll meet six months from today in St. Mary’s on the Chesapeake,” he said. “If either of us gets there with the gold, we’ll wait for the other. Agreed? August fifteenth.”
“Where?”
“It’s north, in the Maryland Colony If we get away with Matthew’s gold, the Caribbean won’t be safe for either of us. St. Mary’s on the Chesapeake. Remember that.”
“How far is it?” she asked.
“Far enough to be out of Matthew’s reach.”
“I don’t trust ye.”
“Good,” he said. “That makes two of us.” Cautiously, he moved through the hatchway and up the narrow ladder. Lacy kept close behind him. It was so dark that she had to feel her way with one hand.
The wooden bones of the ship creaked, and Lacy could hear water lapping against the hull. From somewhere behind her came the faint rustle of rodents’ scratching feet. The stagnant air was damp and musty. She could smell tar and black powder.
“Shhh,” he warned.
She put her foot on the bottom step and curled her fingers around the handle of her knife. Her heart was fluttering like a netted pigeon.
When James pushed open the hatch, the first thing Lacy heard was the fragment of an off-key song, bellowed in a score of rum-soaked male voices.
“... seven ships all on the sea,
Heavy with Spanish gold,
And forty stout sailor lads,
Each one so brave and bold.”
“Keep close,” James whispered.
And where else would I be? Lacy wondered wryly.
They had gone no more than six feet when the deck watch spied them and shouted, “Who goes there?”
“It’s me, you fool!” James answered in a voice so like Matthew’s that Lacy’s mouth gaped open in surprise.
Almost at the same time, the cabin boy appeared carrying a serving bowl of steaming chowder. “Ye ain’t the cap’n!” he shouted. Scrambling back, he dropped the tureen and began crying the alarm shrilly.
“Go!” James urged Lacy.
A shot rang out. James dropped the sea bag, switched his yet unfired pistol from his right hand to his left, and drew his sword with his free hand. When the bag hit the deck, Harry squawked and shot out of the sack, running across the deck.
“Harry!” Lacy cried. “Come back here!”
James gave her a shove. “Get to the boat!”
Two sailors came running toward them armed with cutlasses. James put a musket ball in the center of the first man’s chest. The second hesitated, then charged in, swinging his weapon. James blocked the cutlass with his sword, recovered, and ran his assailant through.
Lacy reached for the sea bag, then screamed when a man lunged out of the darkness and grabbed her. She twisted and struck out with her knife. She felt the blade slice through flesh, and the sailor gasped with pain. He swung at her with a fist. His blow glanced off the side of her face. It hurt, but not enough to slow her down. She started for the stern of the ship, dragging the sea bag after her.
She heard the clash of steel on steel, and then the roar of a flintlock. She snapped her head around to see James holding a smoking pistol. Three more sailors were advancing on him. “Jam
es!” she shouted.
“Get out of here!” he yelled.
More of the crew were pouring out of the fo’c’sle. Ships’ lanterns flared in the darkness. Lacy covered the distance to the rail and looked down at the small boat bobbing below. “James!” she called again. He didn’t answer. Mustering all her strength, she wrestled the sea bag up on the gunnel and shoved it over the side. It landed on the deck of the Silkie with a crash, then slid sickeningly toward the rail. Lacy gasped, then sighed with relief as the bag hit the edge and held.
A girl with any sense at all would follow the bag, she thought as she turned back toward James. Her foot struck a cutlass lying on the deck and she bent to pick it up. She couldn’t see James in the confusion, but judging by the sounds coming from where she’d left him, he was still causing someone a heap of trouble.
A man’s form tumbled to the deck, and Lacy caught sight of James with his back to the ship’s wheel. She had started toward him when a sinewy hand clamped over her mouth. She struggled wildly as she was pulled backward toward the rail. She swung the cutlass blindly, trying to strike her attacker.
“It is Kutii,” the Indian said, releasing her mouth.
Lacy stiffened. “We’ve got to help James.”
Kutii glanced up at the quarterdeck where James was surrounded by angry crewmen. “We go,” he said.
“No!” she protested. “I won’t—” Then she was in the air. Seconds later, she hit the water with a splash. When she surfaced, Kutii was beside her, pushing her toward the Silkie.
“Damn you!” she cried. With Kutii’s help, she climbed up onto the boat. He ran to slash the rope that bound them to the square-rigger. “No!” she insisted. “James!”
On the quarterdeck, James turned toward the sound of her voice. “Six months!” he shouted.
The Silkie began to drift away from the Adventure. Kutii unfurled the sails. Lacy stood motionless. “No ...” she whispered hoarsely. “Not without—”
A sailor with a musket in his hand ran to the rail and took aim at the Silkie. There was a flash and a loud crack.
Kutii gasped and clutched his chest.
Lacy cried out and half-turned toward him. A second shot rang out on the quarterdeck. She looked back and screamed as she saw James fall. Several sailors shouted in triumph as they swarmed over his prone body.
Kutii grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “Star woman, we go,” he insisted. He turned her toward the tiller. “You take.” He pointed back to the larger ship. “We go before they stop us.”
Trembling, too numb to weep, Lacy moved to the tiller. Even the sight of Matthew’s sea bag, still lying where she’d tossed it, did nothing to ease her anguish. She’d known she couldn’t have James, but she had expected to lose him to England—not to death.
Kutii raised the second sail, and the canvas snapped in the wind. The small boat leaped forward, almost as though the Silkie’s spirit realized the need to put distance between her and the square-rigger.
“Goodbye, James,” Lacy whispered. The racing clouds overhead parted just as she gave a last glance back. She blinked, uncertain of what she’d seen, then muffled a cry of joy. There, bobbing up in the dark water like a seal pup, was a frantically swimming tomcat.
She could no longer hold back her tears. They streamed down her face as she brought the Silkie about and Kutii scooped the thrashing cat from the waves and carried him back to her.
Wet and shivering, Harry emitted a loud burst of purring, then proceeded to shower her with water as he shook himself like a dog and cat-walked along the deck to take possession of his cabin once more.
Lacy leaned into the tiller, purposefully crossing the shallowest part of the reef and heading north into the darkness. She closed her eyes and whispered a silent prayer.
“I want to see,” she murmured. “Is he really dead? I want to see.”
She waited expectantly.
Nothing came to her. After a few minutes she dried her eyes with her coat sleeves and wiped her nose. “He’s too mean to die,” she said aloud. “Rascals born to hang don’t die like that.”
She exhaled slowly. Meet him in the Maryland Colony, he’d said. A place called St. Mary’s on the Chesapeake. Why not? she thought. It was as good a port as any. I’ll go there and wait, she decided. And after six months—if he doesn’t come—then I’ll mourn him.
“Take the treasure below, Kutii,” she called. “We don’t want to lose it after all the trouble we’ve taken to get it back.” The wind caught her cocked hat and blew it across the deck, and she took a firmer grip on the tiller. “We’re going north to the Maryland Colony,” she said to her friend. “We’ll wait for James there, and maybe ... just maybe, we’ll take a look at the soil and see what kind of farmland it would make.”
Kutii came toward her. “He is not dead,” he said.
“No, I don’t think he is,” Lacy agreed.
“I, Kutii, tell you this. Jamesblack is not dead.” He drew in a ragged breath, and Lacy noticed the dark streak on the right side of his chest.
“Oh!” she cried. “You’ve been hit.”
“Kutii no die,” he answered. But as she watched in horror, he too crumpled over and fell to the deck.
For the first week after they escaped from the island, Lacy thought Kutii would die. He refused to go below, saying that only the sun and sea air could heal him. So he lay on a blanket on the deck, exposed to the elements. He was weak from loss of blood and had difficulty breathing.
Lacy had removed the musket ball, digging it out with a knife point and her fingers, and she had seared the torn flesh with fire. Kutii refused even to taste the rum she’d brought with her, so she used it to bathe the wound.
He was too ill to eat, and what water she got down him she had to dribble between his cracked lips, one spoonful at a time. In the daytime, he suffered from the heat, and at night, he was wracked by chills. She could see the flesh falling away from him, almost by the hour.
But it was Kutii’s cough that most worried her. He slept only in brief snatches, awakened again and again by a terrible rattling cough that brought up blood and foul matter.
They used up all the fresh water and would have died of thirst if a sudden squall hadn’t dumped a heavy rainfall on them. Lacy used a sail to catch the precious liquid and stored it in their only water keg.
Sharks followed the Silkie, their ominous dorsal fins cutting the water in silent threat, until Lacy feared to allow Harry access to the deck. Sharks had never frightened her, not even after Kutii had fought with that big one at the dive site. But these were what James called great whites, larger than any she had ever seen, and more predatory. Hour after hour they stalked the small boat, occasionally nudging the hull and coming to the surface to stare at Lacy with round, cold eyes.
Kutii said that they weren’t sharks at all, but the spirits of Carib Indians who had eaten the flesh of their fellow men and were condemned to live out eternity as carnivorous souls.
Not knowing which islands were claimed by the English and which by the Spanish, Lacy was afraid to go ashore, even when she did sight land. Her knowledge of the Greater Antilles was sketchy at best, but she was aware that the Bahamas lay to the north, and north and west of them was North America.
The maps that were aboard the Silkie had been ruined by water. Only a faint line remained to show where parts of the American coast lay. James’s precious backstaff had been lost, but she wouldn’t have known how to use it if she had it. She did have the compass and a vague idea of the location of the great shellfish bay the natives called the Chesapeake.
A far piece, she mused, but not as far as Com-wall. This time, she didn’t have James to help her navigate. She was alone and pregnant. Getting to the Maryland Colony—surviving the ocean journey—was up to her. Kutii was too ill to do anything, and even if he’d been well, he knew less about North America than she did.
By the second week, Lacy was forced to anchor off an island at night and swim ashore to find food
and fresh water. The sharks were gone; they had vanished as mysteriously as they’d come, and she was glad to see the last of them.
Under cover of darkness, she gathered fruit and shellfish, and filled her water keg. She smelled smoke and suspected there might be a settlement nearby, but she was afraid to approach to try and buy supplies. A woman without weapons and an injured man were at the mercy of anyone who wished to harm them, and if she tried to sell any of the treasure, Lacy knew she would be signing her own death warrant.
On the tenth day, she sighted a Spanish galleon. If the larger vessel saw the Silkie and came down on them, she and Kutii would have no chance to escape. But the Spaniard never deviated a degree from her course, and by mid-afternoon her tall masts had vanished over the horizon.
Once, they passed a single-masted fishing boat. The fishermen waved but continued casting their nets, and the Silkie sailed on unhindered.
Kutii’s illness gave Lacy something to think about other than James’s possible death. Each day was so filled with physical activity that she was exhausted by nightfall and slept soundly. And when she did think of James, she thought about his child who would be born in the autumn, and the need to find a safe haven before she became too large and unwieldy to provide for herself.
At last, Kutii began to mend. His cough didn’t go away entirely, but each day he was able to do a little more. He stopped losing weight and was able to fish and to help her with the tiller.
The terrible injury had left its mark; Kutii was not the man he had been before he took the musket ball. His magnificent head of hair had thinned and become streaked with gray. His hawklike nose seemed sharper and his lips were mere slashes of copper. His hands were overlarge for arms that showed bone and sinew, and Lacy could count his ribs.
But the loss of Kutii’s physical strength had not diminished his spirit. His strange heathen eyes still glowed with an inner power, and his deep voice offered wisdom and comfort. With each day that passed, he became dearer to Lacy. He told her stories about his boyhood and his people, and regaled her with legends of the treasure and the history of the Incas. They laughed together in the hot afternoon sun and lay awake staring at the stars in the warm March nights.
Fortune Trilogy 1 - Fortune's Mistress Page 27