Abandoned Memories (33 page)

Clank! Thud!

The lock snapped off and fell to the deck. Lifting the lantern, Hayden pushed the door open to reveal a dozen kegs of gunpowder, piles of muskets, pistols, grenades, cutlasses, and cannonballs. He exchanged a grin with Blake. Now the hard part began. Getting one of the heavy kegs up the ladder to the main deck, over the bulwarks, and into one of the cockboats tied to the ship without getting caught. Once in the boat, it would be a short trip down shore away from camp where they could hide the keg until they could formulate the best plan to put it to use.

Clipping the lantern on the deckhead, Hayden grabbed a pistol and shoved it in his belt then slid a handful of shot in his pocket. All these weapons. All this gunpowder. It seemed a shame to leave most of it behind.

“We could blow up the ship if we wanted,” he said without thinking.

Loosening his tie, Blake ran the ends over the sweat on his neck. “Everyone on board would die.”

They stood staring at each other, the possibility of enacting such a heinous task weighing heavy in the air between them. The deck tilted. The lantern swayed. A chill bit through Hayden’s wet clothes.

Blake shook his head. “You don’t have it in you either, Hayden. Not anymore.”

Hayden’s tight chest unwound. Before he’d come to know God, he wouldn’t have hesitated to kill men who were intent on killing him. But something
had
changed within him in the past few months. Well, a lot had changed, if he was honest. But one thing he’d come to know with certainty—human life was precious. Every human life. Each person a unique masterpiece of the divine Creator.

Even pirates.

He released a breath and nodded at his friend while Blake snatched a couple of pistols and a sword and shoved them into his belt. Then together, they carried a keg of powder down the hall and up the ladder onto the main deck where a blast of wind flapped Hayden’s damp trousers against his leg and sent ice up his spine.

Something didn’t feel right. Yet when Hayden glanced around, the pirates remained sprawled in the same positions as before. A lantern swinging from the mainmast cast ribbons of dark and light over the deck as it screeched in harmony with the creak of wood. They set the keg down and glanced over the port railing at the dark shape of a boat thumping against the hull. Blake grabbed the rope dangling over the side and began tying it around the keg while Hayden kept watch.

Just a few minutes. That’s all the time they needed in order to lower the keg to the boat and be on their way. Just a few more minutes and their mission would be completed. Hayden shook his head at how easy it had been. Thank God the pirates had grown overconfident and become complacent in their vigilance.

Blake finished tying the rope and tugged on it to test the knot.

Squatting, Hayden helped him lift the keg, his muscles straining as they set it atop the bulwarks. They were about to lower it over the side when boot steps clapped over the deck and a shadow emerged from the darkness. Lantern light glimmered off a jeweled waistcoat and winked at them from a gold ring in one ear.

“And where you think to go with that?”

Hayden’s body turned to mud. And like mud, he wanted to spill to the deck, squeeze between the planks, and disappear. Instead he set down the keg, wondering if the despair in his own eyes matched the despair he saw in Blake’s.

Captain Ricu graced them with one of his annoying, insolent belly laughs. “What be this? You think to make idiota out of Captain Armando Manuel Ricu?” He stomped his boot on the deck, jingling the bells that adorned it.

Hayden cursed himself silently. Why hadn’t he heard the man coming? Rum and sour fish wafted beneath Hayden’s nose. Why hadn’t he
smelled
him?

Four pirates swarmed them, relieving them of their weapons and leveling pistols at their chests. Ricu planted fists at his waist and stared at them, though his expression was lost in the shadows. Probably for the best as Hayden could feel his anger from where he stood.

“I treat you well and this be how you repel me?”

Blake shifted the weight off his bad leg and huffed. “Repay. And we could have blown up your ship, Captain. And you, along with it.”

“Instead you steal to blow up later.”

“No,” Hayden began. “We—”

“Enough!” Ricu stormed, swung about and charged through his sleeping men, kicking them as he went and shouting words in Portuguese.

Groaning and grunting, the pirates scrambled to rise, rubbing their eyes and standing at attention once they saw their angry captain.

Further Portuguese words were brandished about before Hayden and Blake were escorted back to shore, along with the captain and a few of his men. At least he didn’t hang them from the yardarm or enact any other vicious pirate torture Hayden had read about. Such as the rosary of pain that made a man’s eyes pop out or flogging with the “cat,” a whip made from knotted strips of rope that ripped open a man’s flesh. He suddenly wished he hadn’t read any of those fanciful pirate tales as a kid. Trying to evict them from his mind, he glanced at Blake who sat beside him in the jostling boat. Stiff and stone-faced like a warrior, a tic in Blake’s jaw was the only indication of his angst.

Whatever Captain Ricu had planned for them, it couldn’t be good.

Pirates jerked them from the boat and hauled them through tumbling waves onto dry sand. With a snap of his fingers, Ricu sent several of them marching toward the colonists’ camp.

Hayden’s heart stopped. Beside him, Blake’s breath came hard and rapid.

Captain Ricu took up a pompous pace. “Since you not know to behave. Since I cannot trust you, I take what is most precious to you.”

Hayden’s mouth dried. He had nothing precious but Magnolia.

Within moments, women’s screams pierced the night. Both he and Blake started forward, but the tips of two swords held them back.

“Now you listen. Now you behave.” Ricu grinned.

“Please, Captain,” Blake’s voice came out in a desperate growl. “They had nothing to do with this. Punish us. Not them.”

Heart in his throat, Hayden squinted into the darkness where the pirates took form, dragging two women across the sand, one with brown hair, one with flaxen.

“Leave them be!” Batting aside the blade and ignoring the pain slicing his hand, Hayden charged forward with one thought in mind: kill the man who handled his wife so harshly. But he only made it a step when something hard struck his head. He toppled to the sand, barely conscious.

Conscious enough to hear Magnolia scream and the captain’s glum pronouncement:

“I take your wives prisoner aboard the
Espoliar
.”

HAPTER
30

Y
ou can’t go.” James clasped Angeline’s hands. “The pirates may not allow you to return.”

Violet eyes, moist with tears yet sparking with defiance, raised to his. “They are my friends. The only friends I’ve ever had.” She swallowed as the rising sun highlighted the smattering of adorable freckles on her nose. “If Captain Ricu is allowing me to bring them food and see how they fare, how can I refuse?” She squeezed his hand then released it. “I
know
you understand.”

Of course he understood. If Ricu would allow him to go, he’d row out to the
Espoliar
in a second. “I still can’t believe you talked him into it.” James had seen her speaking to the flamboyant pirate yesterday evening after supper. A brief conversation in which Angeline did most of the talking and Ricu did most of the staring, giving her a look as if he wished to swat her away like one of the sand fleas that inhabited the beach. By the time James was halfway there to rescue the foolish woman, Ricu had shrugged and walked away while Angeline turned to face James, a smug look on her face.

“I had merely to mention his lady’s name and how he would wish someone to care for her should she find herself in such a predicament.”

“You have that pirate wrapped around your finger.” He eased a lock of her hair behind her ear, constantly amazed by this woman. “But what else would I expect?”

She smiled. “By a tenuous thread, I assure you.”

“All the more reason not to deliver yourself into his hands,” James growled. It had been two days since Eliza and Magnolia had been imprisoned aboard the ship, and everyone in camp was overwrought with worry. Each evening Blake and Hayden had returned bone-weary and bruised from the tunnels where Ricu had dragged them as part of their punishment. Unable to sleep or even to eat, both men spent the night pacing the beach in frustration while dipping their heads in secret plans to rescue their wives. Yet after contemplating a thousand scenarios, nothing seemed feasible. Nothing that wouldn’t put their wives in more danger, and risk all the colonists’ lives. The worst part—James knew from experience—was imagining what Captain Ricu and his men were doing to Magnolia and Eliza. Though Angeline tried to comfort them with hopeful words of Ricu’s desire to change, Blake and Hayden suffered immensely, their haggard faces reflecting the torture they felt within. Captain Ricu was far smarter than James had given him credit for. Sure, he could have killed Hayden and Blake on the spot, but that might have caused the rest of the colonists to rise up in rebellion. This way, Ricu kept them all in check on the threat of hurting two of the colony’s favored women.

A breeze tossed a curl across Angeline’s shoulder as she squinted at the
Espoliar
rocking offshore, the golden sun rising behind its stark masts. “I will be all right, James. Don’t worry.”

Yet
she
was worried. He saw it in the tightness around her mouth, in the way she bit her bottom lip. “I can’t lose you,” he said.

“You won’t.” She tried to smile.

“You stand barely above five feet tall, and you forget you don’t have your pistol anymore.”

“I haven’t forgotten.” She frowned as if she truly did miss the weapon. “What good would it do against a dozen pirates, anyway?” She gave a little shrug.

“That is exactly what I am saying!” James said.

Which only made her smile all the more. She brushed sand from his shirt. “Is this our first squabble?”

“No.”

She seemed to ponder that for a minute. “Indeed, I fear you are correct. We’ve had many before. Are we to spend our entire courtship quarreling?”

“Not if you stop being so stubborn.”

“Hmm. I’m not sure that’s possible.”

“Something we agree on at last.” He grinned.

She reached up to caress his jaw. “There are many others, I’m sure.”

When she touched him like she was doing now, James believed he’d agree with anything she said. “We’ll have a lifetime to discover our many areas of agreement.” He placed his hand atop hers but suddenly frowned. “That is, if you don’t go getting yourself killed by pirates.”

She smiled. “I better go.” Bending, she picked up the sack at her feet containing fruit, smoked fish, and a few of Eliza and Magnolia’s personal items then headed toward the cockboat where Blake and Hayden waited to see her off.

James followed after her.
Mule-headed, reckless woman!
The frayed hem of her emerald skirt sashayed back and forth over the sand as she marched dauntless into unknown danger.

Courageous, beautiful woman
.

Angling a wide circle around Hayden as if he had a disease, she stopped to speak to Blake before she allowed the pirates to assist her into the craft.

Captain Ricu appeared at the railing, doffing his red-feathered hat in his usual colorful greeting, but his eyes were on Angeline approaching in the boat.

“If he lays one finger on her!” James huffed and kicked the sand then glanced up at Hayden and Blake, their sullen gazes glued to the ship.

“Forgive me, I’m being thoughtless.” When he should have been comforting his friends, he was the one demanding comfort. Once again, he’d failed as a preacher.

Blake slapped him on the back. “We will all feel better when Angeline returns with a good report.”

If she returns
. He watched as the pirates assisted her up the rope ladder and then over the railing, where she disappeared from sight.
Please, God, watch over her
.

Not since her father had been alive had anyone cared whether Angeline lived or died. James’s raw emotion, so often worn on his sleeve—and one of the things she loved about him—had kept her warm all the way out to the ship. Kept her legs moving even now as Captain Ricu, after sifting through the contents of her bag, escorted her below. The massive man smelled of port, gunpowder, and tobacco. He repeatedly glanced over his shoulder at her, licking his lips as one would when selecting a choice cut of meat for supper.

Angeline had met men like him—men far more prolific in stature than brains. Men who, decked in garish pretention, swaggered their authority about in order to mask a wavering confidence within. To say she was not frightened would be a lie. Her jittery stomach was evidence of that. But to say she couldn’t handle herself with such men would also be a lie. She had proven that already with this particular man. But would the allure of his lady-love’s approval continue to restrain his nefarious passions? That was the question that had her heart in a knot.