Desire in the Sun

by Karen Robards

  "Come about!" Logan ordered.

  The helmsman did as directed, and the Magdalene turned sideways in the water, slid right alongside her prey. The galleon was taller, but not more than six feet or so. Wood screamed as the ships scraped. Logan's crew cheered as they rushed the side. Fired from close range, another cannonball hit, bringing down the Bettina's mizzen to a chorus of hoarse screams. Grapnel hooks, gleaming silver in the bright sunlight, were hurled upwards, hooked over the galleon's rail. From the deck of the Magdalene rose another earsplitting cry as the pirates prepared to swarm their prey en masse.

  "Boarders away!"

  Logan led the charge, and was eagerly followed. With the prospect of blood and loot to draw them, the pirates leaped up the nets that had been connected to the grapnel, easily scaling the distance to the galleon's rail. Half the crew seemed to go over at once; they were met with little resistance.

  Then, from the Bettina's deck, a cannon exploded. Shrapnel came flying over the rail to scourge the Magdalene's deck. Black smoke laced with flame appeared briefly above Lilah and Joss. This time the chorus of victory cries came from the Bettina's deck. Bodies of men who had just been going over the Bettina's rail when the cannon fired tumbled onto the Magdalene's deck, thudding as they hit. More bodies got caught in the grapnel lashings, hanging grotesquely as blood poured from them. Those who had not yet made it over the rail fell back, dropping and scrambling for cover.

  "Get down!" Joss yelled, coming around the cannon in a single bound to throw Lilah bodily to the deck.

  "What's happening?" Lilah gasped as a second explosion from the galleon came whistling over.

  "They were ready after all. That cannon was loaded with scrap metal. It probably took out half our crew!"

  "Fire cannon!"

  The command came from the Bettina. A round black cannonball hurtled over the Magdalene's deck, taking the mizzen with it. The mast crashed down to the accompaniment 6f screams.

  "Holy hell, Cap'n got it full in the face. Blew the top of his head clean off, by God! They were ready, suspecting a trap!" Blood ran down Speare's face. Lilah saw to her horror that his right ear was gone. "Why ain't you at that cannon, damn you? It's a bloody slaughter up there!"

  "Too many of our own aboard. Cannon aren't picky who they kill," Joss told him.

  ' 'Boarders-again!''

  The cry came from Foxy, who was trying to muster the crew now that Logan was dead. A few leaped up the nets at his words, only to be cut down by a hail of small arms fire as the defenders rushed the rail. More screams sliced through the smoke, more bodies thumped to the deck. One unfortunate lost his hold on the nets, then caught himself again with just his shoulders and head visible above the Magdalene's bulwarks. He started to grin with relief, only to have the grin change to a look of surprise as the two ships, caught up on a wave, smacked together. Lilah watched bright blood pour from his mouth as he was crushed between the hulls. When the ships parted again, instants later, he hung on to the net for scant seconds, then dropped soundlessly from sight.

  "Cut line! Cut line!"

  The cry came from many throats at once. The pirates had had enough of the one-sided fight. In her entire life Lilah had never been so glad to hear anything as that order to retreat. Joss, after ordering Lilah to stay put, set to slashing at the grapnel holding the Magdalene to the Bettina. Pistol fire sounded from the Bettina as the unfortunates left behind battled to the death. Lilah remembered anew that there was no surrender for pirates; to surrender only traded death in battle for death by hanging.

  More shrapnel raked the brigantine's deck as the men worked frantically to free her from her erstwhile prey. The sulphurous smell of gunpowder was everywhere. Lilah could barely breathe, barely see through the pall of black smoke. She had passed the point of terror by now. She lay huddled beneath the sheltering bulwark, her arms providing what protection they could for her head. Horror had rendered her emotions numb.

  In a matter of moments, the Magdalene was safely away. 1vo pirates who had been left behind on the Bettina, alive and apparently not badly wounded, leaped into the sea and began to swim frantically after the brigantine. Fire from defenders at the rail of the Bettina cut them down. They sank, screaming, as their blood rose to join the crimson puddles that had already spread over the surface of the sea.

  A plume of smoke rose from where a cannonball had torn into the Magdalene's deck. Men quickly extinguished it while more men worked to get die brig's sails up. Joss labored with the rest. Lilah felt renewed terror as she saw him shin up the jib to help with the torn rigging.

  The wounded littered the deck. Their screams and moans were hideous to hear, but they were ignored as the survivors rushed to get the ship clear. Lilah was just taking hold of herself, telling herself that, pirates or not, she had to help men in need, when the cannonball came screeching overhead.

  It hurtled down like a heaven-thrown thunderbolt, and when it hit it took the Magdalene with it.

  The powder was stored aft, in barrels, and the ball found it.

  The ship exploded, the sound a giant's enormous sneeze, its force lifting the Magdalene clear out of the water. When she fell back, shuddering and splintering, a great fan of jet-black smoke rose from her innards.

  A second explosion sounded, the force of it knocking Lilah off her feet, slamming her headfirst into the bulwark.

  When she recovered her senses, it was to find the Magdalene's bow almost under water and a bright sheet of flame rushing toward her from the hatchway with the awful speed of a herd of stampeding horses. Lilah barely had time to do more than take a second horrified look before instinct sent her leaping over the rail, to fall down, down, deep into the bloodied sea.

  XL

  Lilah clung to a barrel cover as the Magdalene went down. For what seemed like an eternity the brigantine appeared to balance on her prow, her stern high in the air, silhouetted against the soft blue sky. Her sails were bright crackling flags of crimson flame. Inky black feathers of smoke dirtied fluffy white clouds high above. Then, with hardly more than a whoosh, the ship slid downward, creating a giant whirlpool that sucked everything in the vicinity into its vortex before swallowing it whole. The ship and all that had been aboard her simply vanished from the surface of the ocean in the space of a few minutes. Swirling ripples rushed out from where the ship had disappeared, catching Lilah as she clung for dear life to the barrel lid. She was far enough from the center that she was not drawn down in the ship's wake. Others, not so fortunate, screamed as they were dragged under, never to be seen again.

  Bodies and debris bobbed all around her. A man clung to what was left of a spar nearby. He was alive, but Lilah spared him scarcely a glance. Her eyes raked over the gently rolling waves, weighing every bit of flotsam, anything that might possibly be human that she could see. Her stomach churned; her throat was dry.

  One thought occupied her mind to the exclusion of all else: What had happened to Joss?

  He had been on the jib when the powder had blown. She had not seen him again. Had he been thrown clear? Or had he gone down with the ship? At the thought that he might be dead, that she might never see him again, Lilah wanted to scream, wanted to curse, wanted to cry. If he was dead, she could not bear it.

  Two longboats crisscrossed the surface of the water, picking up survivors. They were from the Bettina, whose master was clearly too godly a man to see even pirates drown.

  He would, instead, see them hang.

  Joss could not be dead. She would know if he was, would feel it deep inside. He was alive, somewhere amidst the debris that was all that was left of the once- proud brigantine. She had to find him, now, before the Bettina's crew did. They would think him a pirate like the rest. At the discretion of the captain, pirates, when taken, could be hanged summarily from a yardarm. No trial was required; it was the law of the sea. The gloomy truth was that those who had survived the Magdalene's sinking might not see land again anyway. They might very well end their lives at the end of a rope at se
a.

  It occurred to Lilah that she herself might be mistaken for a pirate, but the possibility did not seriously worry her. She would explain the situation, and they would understand and restore her to her father. Joss was the problem. Convincing a captain to spare her was one thing; arguing for the life of a man, a gunner who to all appearances had been as much a part of the pirate crew as anyone, was another.

  But none of that mattered at the moment. All that mattered was finding Joss. Alive.

  Where was he?

  Not wanting to cry out his name for fear of attracting the attention of the longboats and being picked up before she was ready, Lilah looked carefully around. Then, kicking, still clinging to the barrel lid, she half swam, half floated to an overturned lifeboat to which three men clung.

  Yates was one, Silas another. Lilah did not know the third. The skin on Silas's face was blackened, burned raw in places. His hair was singed off. He looked dreadful, a creature from a nightmare. Still, he seemed to be suffering little pain, she thought as he stared at her for a moment without recognition. Or perhaps he was in shock.

  "Remy? That you?"

  "Yes, it's me, Silas."

  Her voice, made hoarse by the smoke she had inhaled, was nonetheless far from Remy's inarticulate grunts. Nov/ that the Magdalene was gone, there seemed no sense in keeping to her role. Besides, her worry about Joss was so acute that it drove everything else from her mind.

  "By damn," Silas muttered, staring. "Yer a bloody wench. By damn!"

  In addition to the change in her voice, Lilah realized that she had lost her kerchief and protective coat of dirt. Silas's recognition of her true sex was almost inevitable, but she no longer cared.

  "Have you seen Joss? San Pietro?" she asked urgently, but Silas only stared at her, his eyes starting grotesquely from his scorched face.

  A longboat came close, oars lapping through the water. Lilah saw that two survivors were huddled in the stern under guard by a man with a musket. A third survivor was sprawled in the floor of the boat, clearly unconscious. One of the Bettina's crew crouched in the bow, leaning out over the water as he probed at a floating body with a boat hook. Two more manned the oars, but Lilah had eyes only for the man sprawled on the floor.

  He was black-haired, broad-shouldered, tall and muscular, and wearing a sapphire silk shirt. He was Joss. She was sure of it.

  Abandoning her barrel cover, she swam for the longboat, grabbed the side.

  "Back off there!" The man with the musket swung the weapon around on her.

  "I'm not a pirate," Lilah said impatiently, barely sparing him a glance. "Help me aboard."

  At the obvious femininity of her voice, all the men aboard who were capable of doing so turned to her.

  "Lad or lass, it makes no matter. Pirates all," one of them said.

  "I tell you I'm not-"

  "Pull 'er aboard, Hank," said the one with the musket, who seemed to be in charge, to the one with the boat hook. Then, to Lilah: "If you try anything, we'll blast you to Hades. Lass or no."

  Hands reached down to drag her over the side. Her attention was riveted on Joss. There was blood on the back of his shirt.

  "What's wrong with him?" she demanded, scrambling to kneel beside him.

  The man who had helped her aboard shrugged.

  "By Jehosephat, it's the idiot, Remy! She's his leman!" One of the pirates roused himself enough from his lethargy to stare at Lilah with a mixture of surprise and venom.

  "Watch your language, you!" The man with the musket swung the weapon around so that it pointed at the speaker, who subsided.

  Lilah ignored this interchange, instead focusing on discovering the extent of Joss's injuries. He was unconscious, soaking wet, scarlet bloodstains spreading like red ink on the wet silk covering his back. She traced the blood to its source, a deep gash in the back of his head, just above the skin of his neck. The hair there was sticky with blood and matted. She reached out a trembling hand to determine the extent of the injury. As she moved, the barrel of the musket caught her shoulder, pushing her back.

  "You, sit over there with the others!"

  "But-"

  "You heard me. Sit! Or lass or no, I'll blow you straight to hell! Right here and now!"

  Lilah looked up at that hard, unyielding face, and knew that he would do as he threatened. The man was young, probably not more than a few years older than herself, freckle-faced and gangly. But his expression was grim, his grip on the musket unwavering. Lilah realized that he considered her as much a member of the pirate crew as any of the captured men. She realized something else, too: He had been through a dreadful fight to the death, and as far as he was concerned, she was the enemy he'd narrowly defeated.

  The longboat picked up Yates, Silas, and the third man who clung to the lifeboat, then reversed direction to make its way back to the Bettina. Lilah kept her eyes fixed on Joss. He moved once, flexing his back as if it hurt him, sending more blood spurting forth to trickle down his neck, stain his shirt. His head lifted, came down again so that the opposite cheek rested in the faint wash of the seawater that sloshed in the bottom of the boat. In his new position, she could see his face. Her every muscle ached to go to him, but she was sorely afraid that if she made the attempt she would be shot. So she stayed where she was, watching, aching.

  Joss grimaced, his eyes flickering open, then closed. Lilah caught her breath, and made an involuntary move toward him. The muzzle of the musket caught her in the shoulder, thrusting her painfully back.

  "Do that again and you're gone!"

  "He's hurt, bleeding! He needs help!"

  "Stay where you are! There'll be no mollycoddling of bloody pirates! What is he, your lover? That's too bad."

  "He's not a pirate-I'm not a pirate! We were forced-"

  "Sure you were."

  Lilah glared at the man, who was looking at her with a combination of hatred and contempt, the small black hole at the end of the musket never wavering as he pointed it at her heart. Joss groaned, and she felt a spurt of anger.

  "Look, you insufferable man, my name is Delilah Remy. My father owns Heart's Ease, one of the largest sugar plantations in Barbados. We were shipwrecked and-"

  "Stow it," the man interrupted rudely. "I don't have the time to listen to fairy tales."

  "Why, you…!" Forgetting where she was, Lilah started to her feet. The boat rocked precariously. The man roughly shoved her back down.

  "Move again, and I'll throw you overboard, and leave you to drown!"

  Looking at the grim set of his mouth, Lilah believed him, completely. Disgruntled, she crossed her arms over her chest and sat, alternating between glaring at the imbecile with the musket and casting worried looks at Joss as the longboat was rowed back to the Bettina.

  XLI

  On the deck of the Bettina, the pirates were herded into a tight little group under the main mast and kept under guard. Lilah was herded too, to her indignation. Joss, still unconscious, was hauled up from the longboat by means of a rope tied under his arms. He was dumped with as much care as if he'd been a sack of oatmeal near the others. Lilah, waiting until the guard was looking elsewhere, crawled furtively to his side. Shedding her soaked jerkin, she pressed it to the back of his head, trying to stanch the flow of blood. The cut was not large but it was deep, and still freely bled. The blow that caused it must have been severe. It was a miracle he had not drowned.

  His was hardly the worst of the injuries. Like Silas, most of the survivors were terribly burned. Yates had had a foot blown off. Lilah and one other were the only ones to escape uninjured.

  All in all, nine pirates including herself and Joss had been brought aboard the Bettina. The rest were given up for dead, their corpses gone down with the ship or left for shark bait. A decent burial was not considered necessary for pirates, the carrion of the sea.

  None of the women except Lilah had survived. Caught below decks when the ship exploded, they had probably been among the first to perish. She hoped the explosion itself
had killed them quickly. She did not like to imagine them burned to death, or drowned.

  Not even Nell. Her audacity in pursuing Joss was not deserving of such a terrible end.

  The deck was a shambles, littered with pieces of scrap metal and sticky with blood. Her jib had gone down in the fight. It lay splintered across the deck, an ominous reminder of how much the galleon had lost in the battle. Her dead lay in a neat line before the forecastle, and they appeared to number more than a dozen.

  Easy to spot as he moved with frenetic energy about the deck, the captain was a short, stocky man with a grim set to his mouth. At the moment he was standing before the forecastle, Bible in one hand, pistol in the other. A shot rang out. Lilah jumped, then realized the shot was a signal to all hands except the guards to gather together for the funeral service for their fallen shipmates.

  By the time the prayers for die dead were over and the bodies were being tipped one at a time into the sea, Lilah was shivering with fear. There was no reason to expect mercy from those who had been so mercilessly savaged.

  The captain marched over to stand in front of his prisoners. He eyed the bedraggled group with loathing.

  "Pirates," he said. "Bah!"

  Spitting on the deck to express his opinion of his captives, he turned to a lanky man who stood just behind him.

  "No need to haul the scum to port. Hang 'em."

  "Aye, Captain!"

  From the man's alacrity, he was, like the captain, out for vengeance. The rest of the crew that Lilah could see were in grim concurrence. Those of the pirates who heard their sentence pronounced and were aware enough to understand their fate cried out and moaned, sobbing and begging for mercy. Silas lurched forward on his knees, scrabbling for the captain's leg as he started to walk away.

  "Have mercy, sir, have mercy…"

  The captain booted him savagely in the face. Silas screamed, clawed at his burned face, then collapsed on the deck, sobbing. Lilah felt sick with fear, and knew she had to act.