Two
There was nothing he could do except grit his teeth and take it. When the pressure on his arms eased and his captor released him, Jesamiah slumped forward face down waiting for the kicking or battering that he guessed would be coming next.
What he did not anticipate was the sound of running feet, an authoritative call of “What’s goin’ on ‘ere?” More running feet as his assailants hoofed it, and then the close proximity of a woman’s perfume.
A linen kerchief dabbed at the blood dribbling past his eye and down his cheek.
Fleetingly he hoped it was Tiola, but she never wore exotic perfume or expensive silk gowns that rustled as she moved. He opened one eye, squinted at the very pretty woman kneeling beside him.
“You ‘appened t’be ‘ere and the militia were fortuitously passin’ by just in time eh, Alicia m’darlin’?” he croaked, the breath heavy in his aching belly. Added, “You’ll get that fancy ‘ankie all bloody, y’know. Ouch!”
She continued to dab. “Tch. You always were a baby, Jesamiah Acorne.” She put her arms around his waist, helped him to his feet and guided him to a side door near the well-lit end of the alley. “You had better come to my lodgings: that cut needs tending.”
Another fleeting thought. It would be better to return to the
Sea Witch
and wait for Tiola to patch him up. Shrugging the sensible thought aside, Jesamiah did not resist as the woman guided him up a flight of back stairs and ushered him into a front bedroom overlooking the late evening bustle and noise of King Street below.
The luxury and expense of the newly built King George Boarding House. The best in Nassau, the best in the entire Caribbean, or so the owner boasted. Jesamiah would not have expected Alicia Mereno, wife to his half-brother Phillipe, to be staying anywhere else. Except, Phillipe, as it turned out, was not a brother at all and Alicia was now a widow.
She sat him on the bed, poured water from the laver into the bowl on the washstand and searched for some linen she could use. Found an under-petticoat and tore it into strips, fetched a brown glass phial from a valise.
Jesamiah batted her hand away as she once again began probing at the cut above his right eye.
“Please Alicia, leave me alone. It will heal without you proddin’ at it.”
Alicia sniffed disdainfully and ignored him.
“What you doin’ ‘ere in Nassau?” Jesamiah winced as she persisted with her administrations, sucking air through his teeth with an indrawn hiss of stinging pain as she poured the tincture of seaweed into the cut. “For bugger’s sake, leave it, woman!”
“What do you think I am doing here?” she retorted as she eased the cork stopper back into the bottle and tossed the bloodied linen into a corner by the door. “I came to discover why you had murdered my husband and left me destitute into the bargain.”
Jesamiah grunted a bark of amusement as he flapped his left hand at the expensive room and then pointed at her fine gown. “You don’t look in financial need, Madam, nor did I murder Phillipe. It was self-defence.” Scowling he brushed at a dribble of the yellow-coloured tincture and insolently wiped his finger on the bed’s white sheet, where it left a smeared stain. “The bastard you so fondly called husband had kidnapped and tortured me. Only fortune ensured the pistol he fired direct at my heart was not loaded.” He grinned at her, lopsided, for his lip was sore. “I finished ‘im off before ‘e ‘ad chance to try again.”
Leaning over him, her bosoms rounded and tempting beneath the tight fit of her bodice, Alicia inspected the wound, satisfying herself that the bleeding had stopped. They had known each other long before she had married Phillipe, in the days when she’d had a different upstairs bedroom in the more wretched surroundings of Port Royal’s Love Lane. She had been good at her profession, but good had never paid as much as she craved. Rich husbands provided a better bargain and she had found herself two. The first had died of old age and a heart seizure, leaving her a rich widow. Phillipe Mereno had then swept her off her feet, married her and taken her to his tobacco plantation in Virginia. Where he promptly spent most of her fortune and what was left of his own.
She was just as pretty now as she had been when Jesamiah had bedded her as a whore, though. Prettier, for her figure had pleasantly filled out in all the right places. Whores starved, wives blossomed. And Jesamiah could never resist a pretty woman. He caught her wrist, slid his hand behind her neck and coaxed her to come close; put his lips on hers. A light kiss, intended as nothing more than a thank you, but ignoring the sting to his sore lip, he followed it almost immediately by one that was harder and more insistent.
Between the two kisses he murmured, “An’ I very much doubt you’re no more sorry t’see the end of ‘im than I am.” He pulled her onto his lap, picked at the lacing to expose those round, tempting ripe fruits that were craving to escape. “You set all this up, didn’t you, darlin’?”
Alicia looked offended. “Set what up?”
“Those buggers in the tavern, the other lot in the alley?”
She was undoing the ties of his shirt. Trailing her fingers through the light covering of dark hair on his chest; murmured, “What buggers, what tavern? I have no idea what you are talking about.”
So, denial about Teach’s men. That Jesamiah could believe. But the other? She was up to something. The only way to find out what was to play along and see what happened. And as something else at this precise moment was all too clearly up, it seemed a bit of a pity to waste a given opportunity.
“If you really want to administer aid, darlin’, I can think of a more effective way to dull the pain.”
As he pushed her to the bed and rolled on top of her, Alicia smiled to herself. Jesamiah Acorne had always been so very predictable.
Three
The Past – 1683
In the place where he patiently waited, and watched with grief the son he had treated so wrong, the memories that in life he had set aside and tried to forget came back to him. They were tangled and confused at first, like trying to see through the grey of a morning sea mist that would not lift, or through an unfocussed telescope. But the more Charles St Croix remembered, the clearer he could see. The brighter and closer the images came.
St Croix had been his birth name, though he’d always known it was not the name of his father, for his mother had told him so. On reflection, he wished she had not, for his anger at the English lover who abandoned them, to whom she had referred but rarely and then only by the affectionate name of ‘Magpie’, had festered, disrupting his childhood. As a youth, when their paths had unexpectedly crossed, he had not known the man was his father. Only after his mother’s death had he discovered the Magpie’s true identity. But by then he no longer cared; had denied his birthright and later, taken another name for himself, the name of a friend. Mereno. Musing on this now, remembering it all, all the twists and turns of the past, the fog of regret and confusion slowly began to clear…
…The fighting was fierce, almost animal in its intensity, both sides desperate to win; to lose meant dishonour, for when you were fighting for your King, to die was preferable to giving up your honour. Honour was more important than life; or so the young captain of the English vessel, St Croix, had believed.
The deck beneath his feet was slippery with blood; the damage inflicted to ship and crew by three consecutive broadsides hurling grape shot and langrage had been horrendous. Then chain shot had brought down the rigging and main mast. The English were crippled. Finished.
Once the Spanish had come alongside and boarded – there had been no possibility of stopping them, too many of his crew were dead or wounded – it had seemed to be almost over. There were more Spanish than the English, and this, the waters of the Gulf of Mexico near Portobello, was their home territory; they knew the winds and the currents. But many of the English privateers had learnt their trade under the leadership of Henry Morgan, and none of them was prepared to surrender. Death or victory were the only options.
Now it was hand-to-hand, man pitched against man. St Croix knew this was his end. His right arm was broken, blood spilling from above his left eye partially blinded him. His energy was spent and he had nothing in reserve. He stood there on his gouged and splintered quarterdeck, a shattered cutlass in his hand, waiting for death. Did it matter if he died? He had no reason to live, nothing and no one to live for. His natural father had abandoned him to the stigma of illegitimacy, had not wanted to know him, or so he believed; his mother was dead – of a broken heart, some had said. A woman he had swived in England, Betsy, had cursed him for getting her with child. It had been years ago and he only eighteen, but the shame of her vindictive scorn and his guilt at abandoning her – like father like son – still tore into his soul. There had been no one to capture his heart; he had no one in this world to care for. And no one to care for him.
Perhaps,
he thought as he watched the man in front of him raise his sword for the final blow,
perhaps I will find peace, and someone to love, in the next world.
Better to die here, in a blaze of glory fighting for England than to lose his vessel and his honour to the Spanish.
His opponent, too, was tired. Grunting with effort the Spaniard began the downward arc that would end in St Croix’s decapitation. But it was the Spaniard whose eyes widened in surprise as the lifeblood dribbled from his mouth; the Spaniard who toppled forward, dead.
Charles St Croix stared at the youth before him. Tall, thickset, only fifteen years old. His face handsome in a firm, rugged way. Black hair. Black eyes. The foremast jacks said he had a black heart too, for he was not well liked among the men: he was harsh on discipline and intolerant of fools. But he was a good sailor; he never shirked, never slacked, did his duty and did it well. Too well, maybe?
He came from Bristol. Some said he had killed his mother to obtain the money for his midshipman’s commission. St Croix did not believe it. The circumstances of how the lad had come to be aboard a privateer vessel of His Majesty King Charles II’s fleet were his own business. He would not remain midshipman long; promotion would fall easily to Edward Teach. If he lived long enough to achieve it.
The stiletto-blade dagger, driven deep, had pierced the Spaniard’s heart. Teach, even at fifteen, knew how to kill. The Spaniards behind him faltered, began to drop their blades, to raise their hands in surrender. Without their captain there was no enthusiasm to fight. The Spanish did not share Captain St Croix’s rigid code of honour, it seemed.
Teach bent forward, put his foot on his victim’s back and retrieved the long, thin blade, the sound of its withdrawal making a sucking and squelching sound as it pulled free of the flesh. He wiped it on the man’s soiled breeches. It was disrespectful. Not the action of an honourable gentleman – was any of this almighty mess respectful or honourable?
Charles nodded at the lad. “I owe you, Edward. Thank you.”
Someone called out; “Do we take prisoners?”
Teach answered before St Croix could speak, his West Country accent strong and recognisable. “Nay quarter I b’lieve we sai’. We bain’t t’give nay quarter aboar’ this’n ship.”
As Captain, St Croix could have countermanded the order, but that would have seemed weak, and Teach was right; there was no room aboard a ship for prisoners during a time of war. A quick death by sword, dagger or even the noose was preferable to being cast adrift or being marooned on an island with no food, water or shelter. But still, the murder of those who had surrendered sickened him.
Aye, his young midshipman had saved his life, for that he would grant a lieutenancy and be grateful. But Teach had no honour, he enjoyed killing, and for St Croix there was no pleasure in the bond. From the day the boy had come aboard he had recognised the lad for what and who he was. An evil bastard who should never have been born.
Four
Wednesday 2nd October
“Oh. Tiola. You’re here.” Jesamiah stooped beneath the low beam of the door lintel and stopped momentarily baffled, a step inside his great cabin. He removed his hat, coat, pistol and cutlass; hung them on their pegs.
Resorting to his usual flippant banter to mask the moment of discomfort, said with a laugh, “I was beginning to think you had decided to jump ship.”
Tiola looked up from where she was kneeling beside a clothes trunk, pressing a gown into the already cramped space within. “If you want breakfast you will have to call for Finch. I ate an hour ago. There is some cold chicken left I believe. I doubt he’ll re-light the stove and cook you something.”
“I’ve already eaten,” Jesamiah lied as he strolled to the table, opened the coffee pot lid, peered in and simultaneously felt its silver side. Stone cold. He poured a cup anyway. “When did you get back then?”
Tiola closed the lid of the trunk and began to buckle the straps. “About an hour after we spoke last night.” She sounded calm, no hint of anger, but her words were crisp and succinct. Jesamiah knew her well. This was a lull in the wind before the storm broke.
“Oh,” he said, frowning, puzzled, at the baggage. She had been here all night then. While he had been…Bugger! He lifted the pot, attempted a placating grin: “Coffee?”
“No thank you.” The air was almost crackling with her in-held fury. She knew. Just how was beyond his comprehension, but then, when you had a witch for a fiancée and you spent the night making love to another woman, perhaps it was unwise to dwell on the details.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart.” He shrugged; made a lame excuse, “I got detained.”
Tiola went to the wall cupboard where she kept some particular medicines and salves, those that were expensive and hard to obtain; laudanum, quinine, mercury. Transferred them to a round leather valise that had compartments designed for the safe carrying of glass bottles and phials. Said nothing.
Jesamiah cleared his throat. “Er? You goin’ somewhere?”
“I am.”
Puffing his cheeks he sat, sipped the cold, black coffee. It tasted revolting, Finch must have been making it last longer by adding ground rats’ turds and dust again. He peered into the sugar bowl. Empty. He thought about calling for his steward. Thought better of it. Finch would be in as much of a strop as Tiola was – and she was about to erupt with all the force of that Roman volcano he had learnt about in his history lessons as a child. He was damned if he could remember what the darn thing had been called, now. He pondered a moment; Popocata…something or other. He stroked his fingers down his moustache; no, that was the Smoking Mountain of the ancient Aztecs in Mexico. Vesuvius! Ah, that was the one.
“So where would you be goin’?” He tried to keep his tone casual, to make it sound as if he was not much concerned.
“I have been asked to attend a confinement. The Governor’s niece had a difficult time at her last birthing, he does not wish her to suffer so again.”
That sounded ominous. Tiola would not be talking about Governor Rogers of Nassau for, as far as Jesamiah knew, his only family here in the Bahamas were his wife and unmarried children.
“Which governor would that be then?” Once again, no answer.
“You’re packing quite a bit of dunnage; planning on being gone long?” When she did not reply, added, “Where would this governor’s niece be then, eh? In England?” He forced a laugh. England was more than a good few weeks’ sail away.
“North Carolina. Bath Town.”
“What!” Jesamiah splattered coffee down his shirt and waistcoat. He dumped the cup on the table, spilling more on to the cloth. Finch would grumble for days about the resulting stain. “Bath Town?
Bath
Town!”
“
Ais
, Bath Town.” Tiola shut the lid of the valise, looked around to see what else she should take with her.
“Are you out of your mind? No. Absolutely not. There is no way I will be permitting you to go there! No!”
In front of the mirror Tiola patted her raven’s-wing-black hair, pushed a few pins more securely into place. Until a few months ago she had worn it loose, draped across her shoulders and down her back but since she had become a respectable wife to the Dutchman, Stefan van Overstratten – and recently, his widow – she had taken to wearing it piled in this neat, prim style. Jesamiah hated it; his fingers continuously itched to tweak at the pins and set it free from shackled confinement.
“I will be gone a while. She is not due yet.” Tiola turned, smiled an irritating smile that held nothing of humour or sympathy. “I am sure you will not find cause to miss me.”
She knew. Definitely knew. She was like a fuse, an innocent length of tarred cordage, benign until attached to a barrel of gunpowder and lit. Beneath her apparent calm she was fizzing. Would blow at any moment.
Jesamiah Acorne, five feet ten, tanned, lean, muscular; dark-haired, dark-eyed. A respected seaman. Jesamiah Acorne, a pirate for ten years from the age of almost fifteen, an ex-pirate for less than two months. Quick to laugh, formidable when angry…aware he was up to his crotch in shite. And what did a man do when he knew he was in the wrong?
Losing his temper, he thumped his fist on the table then kicked the chair aside. More coffee spilt on to the cloth. “I said no – you are not going! I forbid it!”
“Do you indeed?” Tiola answered primly.
The door opened, Finch’s squawked protest shrilled as a woman brushed past his vigorous attempt at barring her entrance. She raised an eyebrow as she glanced around at the light-oak panelling and the extreme elegance. The cabin was twenty-four feet by twelve, with only the space beneath the skylight high enough for Jesamiah to stand upright without a slight stoop. But with most of its furnishing – desk, cupboards, lockers that doubled as seating – fitted flush with the curved panels of the bulkheads, its five stern windows and the skylight, it was light, airy, and surprisingly spacious.
“So, this is the
Sea Witch
,” she said, peering in at the neat side cabin that was Jesamiah and Tiola’s bedroom. “Cosy, very cosy.”
“Beg pardon, Sir, I couldn’t stop ‘er!”
“Thank you Finch, don’t worry about it. You may go.”
“Came aboard wiv’out askin’; swanned in ‘ere as if she owns the bloody place.”
“I said thank you, Finch.”
“‘T ain’t proper.”
Jesamiah glared at him.
Without acknowledging the woman’s presence, Tiola swung a cloak around her shoulders and put on her bonnet, tying the ribbons beneath her chin. “If you would be so kind as to take these trunks, Finch, I would be grateful. They are to be sent over to the
Fortune of Virginia
, the Captain is expecting me.”
Touching the shine of a forehead where the line of his thinning and grizzled hair was slowly receding, Finch piled the lighter two and the medication valise one atop the other and returned almost immediately for the third. Grumbling a few impolite remarks about the intruder as he shuffled past her, adding with an indelicate sniff, “The
Fortune
sails with the tide, Ma’am. Less than ‘alf an ‘our.” He turned to his Captain, “If ’n your fancy piece wants coffee you can get it yer bleedin’ self. I’m busy.”
Jesamiah willed aside the red tinge that was threatening to blush into his cheeks. Fancy piece? Hell’s grief, did the entire crew know where he had been last night?
For nearly a minute the two women glared in silence at each other. Alicia stood aloof and patronising, Tiola, rigid with fury. How dare he invite his doxy aboard? How dare he!
Alicia broke the awkward silence. “Are you not to introduce us, Captain Acorne?”
Clearing his throat, Jesamiah indicated Tiola. “May I present my affianced, Mistress Tiola Oldstagh – Madam van Overstratten as was. Tiola. Mrs Phillipe Mereno, Alicia.”
~
I know perfectly well who she is. The whore you swived last night, you fuckster
. ~
The words slammed into Jesamiah’s mind; he winced at the force of her anger – her hurt – hit him like a cannon ball. Tiola so rarely used impolite language.
Retaining her outward dignity, however, she dipped a slow and elegant curtsey. “Mistress Mereno.”
Returning the formality, Alicia masked a flare of intense jealousy. She had heard this woman was comely – no, girl, not woman, for surely she was barely seventeen? And ‘comely’ was an understatement. Miss Oldstagh was a beauty. Beyond the two spots of red anger dimpled into her cheeks she was unflawed; perfect, apart from the lack of a rounded bosom, but even Alicia had to concede that as she was so petite, little more than a few finger-widths above five feet and as slender as a willow, full bosoms would have spoilt the faery image.
Her eyes were black and wide with long, thick, lashes. Not a hint of lead paint, cochineal rouge or coloured makeup anywhere on her face. Her bold stare, a direct challenge, had a fearless intensity that belied the apparent fragility. Alicia had the distinct impression that Tiola Oldstagh merely appeared to be the sapling willow, but was as indestructible as oak – and as potentially dangerous as yew.
Defiant, Alicia tipped her chin higher and fingered the gold crucifix dangling into her cleavage. Beneath this girl’s piercing gaze she felt vulnerable and utterly exposed, as if she were standing, skirt and petticoats hauled up to the waist, lower half naked, waiting for the obligatory monthly examination by the pox-men. Even the experienced, tired old whores dreaded those intimate brothel inspections. Oh, she did not wish to go back to that kind of degrading, brutal life!
She forged a light, careless laugh and walked further into the cabin, and indicating permission, settled herself beside the table. “I have merely come on business,” she explained. “Captain Acorne’s unwarranted disposal of my husband has left me in somewhat of an altogether unacceptable position.”
~
What position be that
? ~ Tiola snapped into Jesamiah’s head. ~
Flat on her back, legs waving in the air as she screamed her ecstasy? Or did you thrust in from behind
? ~
He blanched. “Look,” he protested, “I’ve known Alicia a long time, Tiola. This is not what you think.” He patted the air with both hands, trying to dampen the sparks that were shooting, invisibly but none the less potently, from Tiola’s eyes.
“I know what to think, Jesamiah Acorne.” Tiola yanked his sapphire betrothal ring from her finger, tossed it to the table where it rolled and settled in front of Alicia. “I know full well what to think, and do not you dare lecture me contrariwise!”
A gust of wind swirled through the cabin and caught her cloak that rustled like bats’ wings as, without a backward glance, Tiola swept out. Neither of the two remaining occupants noticing that the skylight and the stern windows were shut firm, that no wind could possibly have wafted in.
Jesamiah heard Tiola calling for Rue, his quartermaster and second in command. Through the windows a moment later, saw the gig heading for the
Fortune of Virginia
, Tiola in the stern, her back upright and towards the
Sea Witch
. She did not turn around. His heart was thumping, throat dry, and his stomach felt hollow, sickness in his guts. What in all the names of idiocy had he done? He’d had an itch and he’d scratched it; where was the harm in that? But women viewed it differently, he knew. How could he have been so utterly, totally, stupid?
~
Tiola? I am sorry, love. So sorry
. ~
Silence. Jesamiah had never been able to initiate their private conversations, and even if he had, he was acutely aware that she was too angry to be answering him.