Shadow of the Corsairs

by Elizabeth Ellen Carter

  “I need the money. Don’t let me down, Morwena,” he said softly, withdrawing from the bed toward the open window and the thin curtain which beckoned in the gentle breeze and the sounds of birds waking, a chorus of sounds that would soon awaken the city’s human inhabitants.

  “When?”

  “Tonight.”

  “No. It can’t be done. Even if I could persuade someone to buy my stock, no one has that amount of money with them, it will take time.”

  “Two days, and no more, otherwise I will be back.”

  “Where? You can’t come here again. Someone will recognize you.”

  “The western gate of the public gardens.”

  ***

  Morwena went through the day as jumpy as a cat, but mercifully alone. Her father had announced that he was most unwell. At first she thought he suffered from too much excitement and too much drink from the wedding the night before. But as the morning wore on and her father did not seem better, Morwena sent a message to her aunt.

  Dear Aunt Savarina came straight away. It hadn’t taken much to persuade Father to stay with her for a couple of days. Savarina was a couple of years older than her brother , Thomasso, but seemed so much younger. Her black hair, which had been her crowning glory as a young woman, was now a burnished silver. Though she might look grandmotherly, her appearance hid a spine of steel.

  Thomasso Gambino might be many decades into his manhood, but he was no match for his sister’s persuasiveness.

  “You leave him to me,” Savarina told Morwena while she packed a small bag for him. “You do what you have to do.”

  “Oh, Sava, I wish I could tell you everything…”

  “Hush, child, you don’t have to explain anything to me. I know my brother and I know you. You’re a sensible girl, even if you are a little too independent for your own good. I’m proud you’ve not tried to manage your father on your own, and called on me.”

  Morwena’s gratitude was inexpressible. One day soon, she would tell her about Pietro, but not right now. Just one thing at a time – see if she could broker a deal with Jonathan and his captain and pay her debts. Then find Nico. Together, they would see what they could do about Pietro.

  Filled with nervous energy, she spent the day cleaning and dusting everything – including the shelves she had done the day before. Yet it didn’t stop her mind from racing – wondering what sort of trouble Pietro had gotten himself in, and whether Jonathan Afua from the Terpsichore would keep his promise and meet here today. What if he didn’t? Where would she find another buyer? How much would she need to repay Pietro’s debt and her debt to her father?

  Too many lies, too much deceit. She was just about ready to scream.

  Stop it! Just stop it!

  Just after noon, the jingle of the bell at the shop door startled her.

  The two men who entered were as different from each other as two men could possibly be. One was more muscularly built than the other. One man was dark skinned while the other had fair skin only tanned by the sun. One had a head of tight black curls cropped close, the other had longish fair hair, sun-bleached white and tied at the nape.

  Morwena turned to Jonathan hoping her relief didn’t show too readily on her face.

  “Follow me if you’re ready to do business,” she said, gesturing to the shop’s small storeroom.

  The pirate looked to Jonathan. Amusement played about his mouth.

  “Friendly today, isn’t she? Was it something I said?”

  Jonathan didn’t answer and Morwena ignored the pirate’s rudeness.

  “Quickly!” she hissed.

  “Miss Morwena?”

  She hated the sound of concern she heard in Jonathan’s voice and imagined what he could see. She knew her eyes were bloodshot, as though she had been crying, and dark from lack of sleep. And she was sure there was a bruise on the upper arm that the sleeve of her dress did not quite hide.

  “Come in. See for yourself. I keep samples of the stock here. All the farming implements in the warehouse are yours. But I need seventy ducats by the end of the day. Do we have a deal?”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa there,” said Hardacre. “What scam are you trying to pull, young woman? We’re not doing any deal without seeing all the implements. And seventy ducats? Really? My friend may be new in town, but even he’s not so stupid as to swallow that cazzata.”

  Slap!

  Hardacre’s cheek reddened. He looked as surprised as she felt.

  The Italianised Englishman is the devil incarnate. Morwena had heard the adage, but hadn’t believed it until now.

  “You kiss your mother with that mouth? I am giving you a fair price on the finest iron goods in Palermo. Ask the Florio family if you don’t believe me.”

  Hardacre burst out laughing – and held out his hand.

  “It’s good doing business with you.”

  “I… I don’t understand.” She stammered before accepting his handshake.

  “Shall we go see what I’ve bought?” he asked.

  Morwena wiped her hands down the front of her apron. She looked to Jonathan, but his face revealed no answers apart from the restrained hint of a smile that played across his lips. Infuriating!

  After locking up the shop, they made their way down to the warehouse. The building was conspicuously quiet when they arrived. There was just one man there, the same age as the others previously, but with sandy brown hair. Morwena recognized him, too, another Englishman, but she didn’t know his name.

  “It’s all yours, Captain,” he said, holding open the door as if he was expecting them. They went through, the sound of their footsteps echoing in the cavernous space. Morwena’s mouth fell open. The warehouse was completely empty – with the exception of a pyramid of boxes and crates. Her boxes and crates.

  “What happened to all the goods?” she said. “Six weeks ago it was nearly full!”

  “The new owner wanted to use the space for his own importing,” said the sandy-haired man.

  “New owner? There was no new owner two days ago.”

  Hardacre performed a theatrical flourish and bow. “There is now.”

  She looked at all three men in turn. Jonathan appeared to be keeping his own counsel, but his manner was relaxed. The other man had an open and friendly face. He smiled in the face of her scrutiny, then bowed and looked to Jonathan for a prompt.

  “Miss Morwena Gambino,” said Jonathan. “In all this time serving these rogues, I see you’ve not been properly introduced. This is Elias Nash, Terpsichore’s first officer.”

  “It’s my pleasure, Miss Gambino,” he said, bowing. “No doubt you’re perplexed over this turn of events, but I can assure you that you have nothing to fear in your dealings with us.”

  “We’re above board, even if we’re not beyond reproach,” quipped Hardacre.

  It was all too much. She didn’t know whether to laugh at their antics or cry. Neither prospect was appealing, so she chose being frustrated instead.

  “Stop wasting my time. I have a shop to run. Are you going to buy my goods or not?”

  “Miss Gambino, do you recognize this?” From within his shirt, Kit Hardacre pulled a piece of paper and, with great ceremony, unfolded it and turned the printed side to her.

  It was her circular. The ones Nico handed out. The ones she was inspired to do all those months ago when she was desperate to save her father’s business. Now it taunted her. She tamped down the temptation to snatch it from him and rip it apart.

  “I recognize the heart of a fellow entrepreneur and admire your initiative,” Hardacre continued, “so I have a business proposition for you.”

  “Even after I slapped your face?”

  “That was the perfect proof of your character and good judgment.”

  “In other words, Kit deserved it,” explained Elias.

  Jonathan silently nodded his agreement.

  “The Terpsichore is a trading ship, and we’ve recently identified an opportunity to – how shall I say it… expand our op
erations. We need a warehouse of our own where we can store goods without questions being asked.”

  Morwena frowned but Hardacre appeared to have anticipated her question.

  “We need someone to sell what we bring in. For a cut of the profit, of course.”

  “What things, exactly?”

  “The usual things – wine, spices, the occasional high quality second hand goods, gold mainly…” Hardacre was beginning to run on and Jonathan jumped in.

  “Coffee.”

  A bright grin emerged as he became aware of having everyone’s attention, including Morwena’s.

  “One of my cousins exports coffee from my family’s plantation in Ethiopia via his business in Egypt. It is mostly sold to the Arabs, but he would welcome an expansion into Europe.”

  Morwena nodded slowly. Here, she was on firm ground. What they were asking was a simple matter. The Gambinos had been in trade for generations. She knew all the leading families of business. A good trade was a good trade; they would even do business with a woman if the goods and the price were worth it.

  “But that’s not all,” Hardacre continued. “We need someone we can trust. Someone with discretion and contacts to act as our quartermaster.”

  “To provision your ship? Water, food? A chandler? All that I can do.”

  “If that were all, then that would be too easy. Some of our requests might be unusual. We need them delivered on time at a fair price, no questions asked.”

  “For a percentage of each transaction?”

  Hardacre nodded. Morwena was already calculating. With the right volume of goods, just five percent of each transaction would give her a tidy sum with absolutely no financial risk.

  “Twenty percent.”

  Elias gasped at her opening offer. Hardacre simply grinned.

  “Five,” he countered.

  “Fifteen.”

  “Ten.”

  Morwena grinned and folded her arms. Let him stew on that number. There was silence for a moment, and she watched the pirate Hardacre mull over his next move.

  “Five percent on the goods we order, ten percent on the goods you sell for us. Good enough?”

  “And you pay for my goods over there,” she said, nodding to the pile of crated farming implements.

  “Yes, but a fair price.”

  Morwena held out her hand.

  “It will be pleasure working with you.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Jonathan was intrigued by the change he saw in Morwena. This morning she looked haunted, hunted in fact, but now with the discussion of business and the resolution of her financial difficulties, her face had taken on a brightness, a vivacity that tugged at him, urging him to draw nearer.

  He felt shame. He was a married man with a wife he loved. Then there was the stabbing realization that he was that no longer. He had no wife. He had no children – just the memory of the life he called before.

  How different this Morwena was to Mellesse. His wife had not been one to display her emotions. She was shy, but steadfast, content to go where he led, content as long as she had her children at her side.

  Jonathan pulled the reins on his thoughts. He should walk away, contenting himself with the fact that he’d done a good deed – helped rescue a damsel in distress, repaid his debt to the men who helped rescue him – and go home with his conscience intact.

  That’s when he noticed the bruises. At first he thought it was a shadow, a trick of the light when he first saw it beneath the short sleeve of her green dress. He might have dismissed it, if he hadn’t seen a similar one on the other arm.

  Were those marks there when they first met and he hadn’t noticed them? Or had something happened with her father or brother? Or a would-be lover?

  “As you can imagine, buying a warehouse has not been cheap,” said Kit, forcing Jonathan to follow the conversation with Morwena once again. “I’ll need a few days to turn some assets into coin. How much do you need to settle your immediate debts?”

  “Forty ducats,” she said. “I cannot take a piccoli less.”

  Hardacre watched her carefully and Jonathan found himself doing the same. During their earlier exchange, he had been drawn to the uplift of her mouth as she pushed Hardacre. But now, the same mouth was drawn tighter and, if he wasn’t mistaken, there might also be a slight shadow of a bruise at the corner of her nose he hadn’t seen before.

  To his surprise, he realized Hardacre was looking to both Elias and himself as though he were silently seeking agreement on the forty ducats. Then he looked back at Morwena.

  “Agreed. Of course, I don’t carry that much money on me. We’ll have to go back to the ship.” Then the serious tone of Hardacre’s voice changed and he became the showman once more. “Besides, it’s only fitting for our new business partner to look over her new trading vessel – the finest that ever sailed the Mediterranean.”

  A man who is too modest goes hungry. Jonathan smiled as the words of the old proverb came back to him.

  In that case, Hardacre would never starve.

  He was beginning to understand his captain. The captain, he corrected himself. The attention-seeking flamboyance was largely for show – a performance, just like the one he saw pickpockets and petty thieves employ in the marketplace. They mesmerized and distracted so no one else could see what was going on beneath.

  Kit Hardacre charmed and beguiled – but he did it to stop people getting too close. Heaven help the woman who got under his skin.

  Before Hardacre could offer his arm to Morwena, Jonathan stepped forward and claimed her arm instead, ignoring the completely erroneous but knowing glances the two other men threw his way.

  Despite this, they at least displayed the manners to start off toward the Terpsichore ahead of them, giving him the opportunity to speak with Morwena without being overheard. He decided to address his observations directly. There was no point beating about the bush – that’s not who he was and he suspected it was not who she was either.

  “The money is not all to repay your father, is it?” A statement phrased as a question. Morwena almost stopped midstride but continued on. She looked up at him.

  “It shouldn’t matter to you what I do with my money,” she replied.

  “As one of your business partners, I do have my reasons.”

  “You?”

  “Kit, Elias, and I each have a share in the warehouse and this venture.”

  “Of course, coffee importing.” A smile returned to her face. “Tell me, how long has your family been growing coffee? Do you export the beans or do you roast them yourself?”

  “Miss Morwena –” Jonathan started, but Morwena continued to talk past him.

  “… I spoke to a café owner just a few months ago, and he said it was very difficult to get reliable supplies of high quality coffee –”

  “Morwena!”

  Her mouth was open, but no further sounds came out. Jonathan resisted the urge to laugh and, he wasn’t sure, but it seemed that her jaw snapped shut audibly, like a crocodile.

  “I can see the bruises,” he added softly. “Who hurt you? Was it your father?”

  She shook her head vigorously as she composed herself.

  He watched various expressions wash over her face. It had taken Jonathan three years of marriage to read Mellesse so well. What is it about this woman? Were all Sicilians the same? He stopped himself before traveling down that path too far.

  Morwena licked her lips, fashioning her response.

  “You can trust me.” He hadn’t intended to say that out loud. For some reason, the offer seemed too intimate. Jonathan was quiet until he felt on more solid ground. “Hardacre is a jester, but he’s decent enough. Nash you can trust, too.”

  Jonathan counted the seconds until Morwena nodded, apparently coming to some internal decision. She raised her face and he mapped it, the shape of her brow against pale skin, the shape of her eyes, the line of her nose over full lips which then opened.

  “You may as well know the wh
ole of it,” she said. “I need thirty ducats for my brother.”

  He mentally shook himself back into the present. “Your brother, Nico?”

  “No, my older brother, Pietro. I haven’t seen him in years. About six years ago, he and my father had a tremendous fight. They came to blows. Horrible, hateful words were said between them. Papa threw him out of the house and Pietro vowed never to step foot inside as long as my father lived. The last anyone had heard was that he had gone to sea.”

  “And Pietro has returned?”

  “I hardly recognized him. He’s changed so much. I thought I saw him after Cettina’s wedding and…” She took a deep breath. “… he made his way into my bedroom last night, desperate for money. He said men would harm him if he didn’t get it.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  Morwena nodded, although she kept her face forward. “I do. And he knows about me going behind my father’s back.”

  Then she hesitated. Jonathan slowed his pace some more to let Kit and Elias get even further ahead.

  “And?”

  “He’s been following me.”

  A tingle spread across Jonathan’s skin despite the sun. The man he had followed. That was Pietro Gambino. He knew it to be so.

  “He was there when I confronted the storeman at the warehouse,” she said. “He knows about you.”

  “Have you spoken to Nico?”

  She shook her head. “I haven’t spoken to him. I haven’t seen him for a couple of days. I was so angry with him when I thought he had squandered the money I’d given him for the rent on the warehouse. I didn’t know he’d given most of that to Pietro. I’m sure Nico learned I was looking for him and decided to hide for a few days to stay away from my temper.”

  “Do you have a temper, Miss Gambino?” Jonathan phrased the question as innocently as possible, a small tease to lighten the darkening mood of their conversation. Morwena seemed to pick up on his mild ragging and laughed.

  “Me? No, I don’t have a temper – that’s what other people lose. I have passion!”