Devil's Island (32 page)

Abraham did not respond as Naomi kept up her harangue. His daughter seemed to be raging as furiously inside as the hurricane that threatened outside. Abraham tried to tune her out for a moment, then began to listen more closely as he heard her scream, “I hate you! It's all your fault—you should have been the one to die.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Crispin. You should have died, not him.” Naomi grabbed onto a heavy table bolted into the wall. The bow of the ship rose higher and higher, then tilted on the crest of the wave and dived. The stern cantilevered out of the water as the bow plunged and smacked the sea with a shuddering crash.

She blames me for her husband's death,
Abraham realized as the impact sent him sliding. He bumped into the built-in bed and grasped its sturdy frame.
But why? Because it was one of my ships?

Naomi quit yelling but started to sob—whether in anger or terror, he wasn't sure. Abraham was stunned by her declaration that he was to blame for Crispin's death. He thought back to the circumstances surrounding his son-in-law's demise and remembered a crucial fact:
he
was supposed to be on the ship that went down. But at the last minute Crispin, whom Abraham had taken into the shipping business, had offered to make the trip for him.

Abraham recalled it all now. Rebecca had been sick for days with a high fever, and Crispin knew how worried he was. Abraham did not want to leave on an extended business trip when his youngest daughter could be seriously ill, and he had been grateful when Crispin, who was very competent and whom Abraham trusted implicitly, had volunteered. Rebecca recovered in a few days, but Crispin was lost at sea.

Weeks later Abraham learned that the ship, with its full crew and cargo, had gone down off the coast of Rhodes. He sailed there to locate any remaining traces of the wreckage; the only evidence had been a few planks of the hull, bits and pieces of cargo, and two badly decomposed bodies that had washed ashore. Abraham would never have been able to recognize the bodies, but he identified one of them from the engraved gold wedding ring on his left hand: it was Crispin.

And now he knew that Naomi blamed him for her loss—not only blamed him, but wished he had died in Crispin's place.
That's
why she's so bitter,
Abraham thought.
She blames me for not being on
that doomed ship, and she probably blames Rebecca for getting sick.

Father and daughter continued to ride out the storm in silence, clinging precariously to the securely fastened furniture in the ship's luxurious stateroom. The violent tossing had Abraham's seaworthy stomach in knots, and when he closed his eyes, he could picture the giant waves battering the ship.

He was not surprised when the bow lifted and seemed to hang suspended in the air indefinitely; then it plunged deeper and deeper . . . and deeper still.

A rogue wave.
He imagined it would blot out the whole horizon— a massive, vertical wall of water with no curling crest, just a thin white line along the entire length.
And we've hit it.

As the
Mercury
plunged into the killer wave, Abraham's bulky body flew through the air, smashing the stateroom door, which blasted open on impact. The whirling wind snatched him from the room and flung him through the hole in the stern into the angry sea.

So this is how it will end,
he thought as the churning water swallowed him.

Naomi stood on deck and watched as the badly battered
Mercury
limped toward the port of Ostia. The tattered remnants of its majestic sails hung pitifully from what was left of the masts, which had been snapped in half like twigs by the hurricane. The ship now inched along on manpower.

A sailing vessel, the
Mercury
had only a short row of oars on either side that could propel the ship forward in an emergency. The storm had been over in three hours, disappearing as suddenly as it had arisen, but it had taken more than a week to complete the voyage. The crew was utterly exhausted, and there had been times Naomi wondered if they would ever make it to Rome.

Naomi also wondered how she had survived the storm; most of it was a blur. She remembered seeing her father swept into the swirling water through the hole that had opened in the ship's stern. She remembered being more terrified than she had ever been in her life. But she had not been aware how long the storm had lasted or how she had managed to keep from being thrown overboard with her father. Eventually Kaeso had found her, and she remembered him trying to pry her away from the heavy table—the only part of her father's stateroom that had been left intact. Naomi had wrapped her arms and legs around one of the table legs and held on to it so tightly that her arms and legs were black with bruises for days afterward.

Kaeso had offered Naomi his cabin, and he moved to the crew quarters. The captain, who had worked for her father for more than twenty years, was polite but subdued. She knew he was grieving for his friend and employer, and she also knew he did not trust or respect her. Naomi couldn't care less, as long as he understood she was in charge now.

And I
am
in charge,
she thought happily as she glimpsed workers on the dock staring slack-jawed at the crippled ship slowly approaching. As soon as the sailors had secured the ropes and lowered the gangplank, Naomi disembarked and ordered Lepidus, one of her new slaves, to hire a carriage. “I'm not floating up that smelly river on a barge,” she muttered to his sister, Fulvia, who waited beside her on the dock.

“No, ma'am,” the young Egyptian dutifully replied. “Not a lady of your status.”

Naomi loved hearing the quick, deferential response and thanked the stars that she'd had the good sense to buy the brother-sister pair before she left Ephesus. “Load what's left of my things on a barge,” she told Kaeso, “and have them sent to my father's villa.”

Unsmiling, the captain nodded his acquiescence. “You can reach me through your father's office in Rome if you need me. I'll await your instructions on the repair of the
Mercury
.”

Among other things, the two of them had clashed on whether her father would want to restore the
Mercury
right away. They had also clashed on how to notify Abraham's Rome office and bank about his death. Naomi had wanted to wait and tell them in person, making sure they realized that she was taking over her father's business; that way she would have a chance to gauge people's reactions. But Kaeso had insisted on immediately sending a message by carrier pigeon, and she had relented when he agreed to say in his note that Abraham's oldest child would be arriving shortly in Rome to handle his affairs.

Lepidus returned with a splendid carriage, and Naomi smiled. She would arrive in style, as she had intended. She made sure Fulvia was carrying the small valise Naomi had personally packed and then settled into the carriage for the short trip to Rome. Inside the valise were two items, a wooden box and a leather pouch, which she had found locked inside the drawer of the table that had saved her life. The box held enough gold coins to meet their immediate expenses, and the pouch contained a document from her father's bank at home. Naomi was not sure what the technical term for the document was, but she understood its purpose: to make available for his use in Rome a vast sum of money, guaranteed by funds available in his account in Ephesus. All she had to do was present the letter to his banker in Rome, and the money would be hers.

I'm a very rich woman,
she thought as the wheels of the carriage sang over the pavement.
Tomorrow will be the day I've lived for all my
life.

26

NAOMI TRIED TO CONCEAL HER FRUSTRATION as she spoke to the portly, balding banker. “I don't think you understand,” she told Cassius, willing herself not to laugh at his ridiculous lisp. She did not want to insult the man—not until she'd secured her father's funds in her own name, that is.

Once again she went over the details, thinking that perhaps this time her words would penetrate his thick skull. “You acknowledged that you received the message saying my father had drowned at sea and that I would be handling his business affairs. And here is the letter from his bank in Ephesus authorizing you to release funds. I'm sure you've handled this kind of transaction for him before.”

“Yes, of course, and I'd gladly do it again—for him.”

“Then you'll do it for me. I'm his legal representative now.” Naomi did not hesitate to make the claim, even though it might be a stretch. She was not familiar with the legalities of inheritance, but she knew she was her father's rightful heir. The man was simply being stubborn because she was a woman, she decided. It wasn't unusual for a woman to inherit a fortune, but it was out of the ordinary for her to attempt to exercise complete control over it. Some men couldn't handle the concept of a competent woman, and this fool of a banker was evidently one of them.

“Actually, there's some question about that,” Cassius said, whistling the words through his teeth.

Naomi bristled visibly. “What do you mean?”

The banker appraised her carefully before he spoke. “A few days after we received your message from the
Mercury
, we received a contradictory message from your father. You see, he's not dead, therefore you cannot be his legal representative.”

“That's impossible.” All the color drained from Naomi's face. “I watched him drown.” She stifled a moment of panic at the thought that her father had not actually perished when he'd been hurled from the ship. It couldn't be! Kaeso had said there was no way her father could have survived in the open sea; even if he hadn't succumbed to the raging waves of the hurricane, they were too far from shore for him to swim to safety. After the storm had died down, Kaeso had tried to search for Abraham, but there had been no sign of him.

“Perhaps you'd like to see the message. It originated from the harbormaster's office at Syracuse.” Cassius pushed a small square of parchment across the desk, and Naomi's heart almost stopped as she read it.

Rescued at sea. Will arrive in Rome within the week.

Let no funds be transferred from my account for any reason.

The note, written and signed in her father's bold, artistic handwriting, bore the harbormaster's seal.
Rescued at sea.
She couldn't believe it—wouldn't believe it.

“It's obviously a forgery,” Naomi said, her voice rising. “Some impostor wants to get his greedy hands on my father's estate.” She was on the verge of tears, and she hoped the banker would think it was from grief, not the deep despair that threatened to overwhelm her. She had been terrified when her father was swept overboard, but afterward, she had not been devastated by the fact of his death. Rather, it had seemed fitting—a matter of justice. After all,
he
should have been the one lost at sea three years ago. She reasoned that Abraham had simply cheated destiny for a while before finally meeting his intended fate, and she refused to feel guilty for not mourning him.

“An impostor? That could be,” Cassius said. “But you understand that I can't legally transfer any funds until we get this sorted out.” His tone was placating, but the puffy black eyes were cold. Naomi could not tell whether he was convinced the message was authentic, or whether he was simply holding on to her father's assets with a banker's tightfisted reflexes.

This can't be happening,
she thought, looking around the opulent office she had entered with such confidence, believing she would be a wealthy woman—in her own right, not in her father's name—when she left. Naomi knew she was far from destitute. She had a roof over her head—a magnificent roof, actually; her father's villa was small but lavish. And she had the wooden box with its stash of gold coins. But how long would that sustain a household? A few months, perhaps, if she were frugal. She did not want to count every coin and worry how she would live until her father's estate was settled, however. She had come to Rome to find a prominent husband, and that would require the right wardrobe. It meant being seen in the right places by the right people, and that required money—and plenty of it.

Naomi squared her shoulders as Cassius rose and walked around the desk. She had survived the stigma of her fanatically religious family in Ephesus, and she had survived a monstrous hurricane at sea. She didn't care if Cassius happened to be the most powerful official at the most prestigious bank in Rome, which he was—she'd be hanged before she would accept defeat from this overbearing lump of lard.

Cassius offered Naomi a pudgy arm, clearly indicating that their meeting was over. “Why don't you come back in a few days,” he said, “after your father—or whoever sent this message—has had time to arrive in Rome and contact me.”

Almost trembling with fury, Naomi stood but refused Cassius's arm. “Very well,” she said in her haughtiest tone, “but you can rest assured that when this matter is resolved, I will transfer every last
denarius
of my father's assets to another bank.”

“I wouldn't be too hasty to make any changes, if I were you.”

She noted with some satisfaction that the banker had blinked before he spoke; she had gotten his attention with her threat.

“I could be of great assistance to you,” Cassius continued. “I've handled your father's account for many years, and a woman in your position—alone in this delightful, but dangerous, city—might need the advice of an astute businessman such as myself.”

She despised his patronizing tone, and she despised leaving his bank empty-handed. As she followed Cassius to the door, she resolved to find out who had sent that message. It had looked like her father's large, dramatic scrawl, Naomi thought, but she had examined the note only briefly. Someone familiar with his handwriting could have cleverly forged it—her father's string-bean assistant, for one. Quintus probably signed Abraham's name to correspondence as a matter of routine. Her father ran one of the largest shipping operations in the Empire, so there would be samples of his handwriting scattered from Mauretania to Arabia.
It could have been anyone,
she told herself.