Paper Woman: A Mystery of the American Revolution (37 page)

But as they
rowed back to the brig, Sophie studied the beach of moonlit silver and the
blackened jungle beyond it.
 
This wasn't
the
Gloria Maria
's first visit to the cove.
 
Arriaga had known about the crabs, and Tomás had showed the
passengers how to flirt with a group of dolphins familiar enough with humans to
venture close to shore.
 
Salt-crusted
remains of a campfire: she wondered whether crabs weren't the only foolish
creatures in the cove.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

EARLY SATURDAY
MORNING the passengers again went ashore, this time to a grove of palm,
cocoplum, and pigeon plum trees, where the crew had strung hammocks and
provided rum, cheese, fruit, and cakes.
 
The crew even had the decency to set up their bubbling, stinking pitch
pots downwind.
 
The arrangement was
enough to satisfy the grouchiest of guests.
 
Jacques, who had drunk five sailors under the table the night before,
proceeded to the nearest hammock and sprawled in it.
 
Within a minute, his snores echoed through the grove.

Only the fact
that Mathias had come to bed long after she'd fallen asleep threatened to skew
Sophie's mood, but she was far too interested in Abaco to preoccupy herself
with his mood.
 
She watched the crew of
the
Gloria Maria
careen the ship with heavy tackle attached near the
base of the mahogany tree and ten feet off the deck on the mainmast.
 
After the Portuguese waded out to stuff
leaky seams with oakum and cotton and cover the patches with pitch and tallow
paint, she, David, and Mathias walked along the beach and explored mollusks and
starfish.

Sophie
surrendered to the heat just after noon.
 
Belly full of fruit and cheese, head humming with rum, she tumbled into
a hammock and snoozed, lulled by the music of tropical birds and palm fronds.
 
Even a distant, grumbly thunderstorm failed
to rouse her.

Late afternoon,
a fishy smell prodded her awake, and she stared head-on at a grouper working
its bloody, hook-torn mouth.
 
With a
yowl, she flipped from the hammock and rose, scowling, to the whoops of David,
Mathias, and Jacques.
 
The Frenchman
slapped his knee.
 
"See you jump,
belle
Sophie!"

Mathias poked
David.
 
"She mistook it for El
Serpiente."

David, who'd
held the grouper in her sleeping face, pondered the fish.
 
"Surely not.
 
This poor creature, god rest its soul, looks too much like
Fairfax."

"
Oui
,
it is something about the eyes, I think.
 
Cold-blooded.
 
Shall we go ahead
and flay it, then?"

The three men
swiveled sun- and rum-flushed grins at her.
 
The prod to her intuition was almost painful, so she glowered.
 
"I hardly think it wise to tempt the
Fates with such humor."

"Fates,
bah!"
 
Jacques swaggered.
 
"After such a storm, what are the odds
that assassins or English pigs are here in Abaco?"

David swelled
his chest.
 
"Those louts are food
for sharks."

She crossed her
arms.
 
"You'd better throw your one
little fish back before you give the Portuguese cause for ridicule."

"Hah."
 
David brandished it at her.
 
"Fortunately, we didn't catch just old
Fairfax here while you slumbered."

Beyond the
grove, they'd strung fourteen fish out on three ropes.
 
David's grouper, which weighed less than
five pounds, was the smallest.
 
They
toted the catch down the beach to where José was lambasting a sailor for a
careless cleanup of the pitch pots.
 
Spying the catch changed the cook's entire attitude.

Whistling, he set
to work dressing the fish.
 
In the cove,
Tomás and three men rowed the gig and pulled while Arriaga and sailors along
shore pushed to right the
Gloria Maria
.
 
To cheers from the passengers, the brig was towed to deeper water.
 
Knee-deep in water and bare-chested like
most of the crew, Arriaga faced them with a grin and took a bow for a job well
done.

***

After supper on
the beach, a sailor fiddled while men smoked pipes, sang, and danced around a
bonfire.
 
Each tune, Sophie got passed
between Mathias, David, and Jacques.
 
The captain, quick to perceive Mathias's reserve, claimed her for
several tunes.
 
While they danced,
Mathias slunk off, annoying Sophie.
 
Not
that she disliked Arriaga, an accomplished dancer, but it dawned on her that
she'd misread Mathias in addition to Edward.
 
Even were Jacques sober enough to reprimand his nephew for inattention,
it wouldn't have helped.
 
The blacksmith
wasn't ready to change their relationship.
 
Perhaps he never would be.

While the
fiddler took a break, and everyone refilled tankards of rum or wine, Mathias
reappeared.
 
David slapped him on the
back.
 
"Welcome back.
 
We feared the crabs had carried you off, and
we were about to send out a search party."
 
He and Jacques guffawed.

"I walked
up the beach."
 
Mathias regarded
Sophie.
 
"There's a place that's
quite lovely by moonlight.
 
You want to
see it?"

"Certainly!"
 
David took a step forward before Jacques
snagged his upper arm.
 
"Ah.
 
Right.
 
What Uncle Jacques means is that he and I are too busy drinking rum and
learning bawdy Portuguese, so we shall defer the walk to later."
 
His leer glittered in the firelight.
 
"But you two run along."

Mathias hadn't
taken his eyes off her.
 
She laughed,
handed her tankard to David, and hiccupped.
 
"Oh, why not.
 
I'm sure my
dear old chum Mathias will come to the rescue if crabs try to carry me
off."
 
With another laugh, she
looped her arm in his and bounded up the beach with him.

He disentangled
their arms after they'd galloped far enough to be out of earshot and caught her
hand in his while still matching her stride.
 
"'Dear old chum'?"

With the
sensuality of shimmery stars, a swollen moon, and a surf serenade, most men
would seduce a woman on that beach.
 
But
Mathias wasn't most men, and she had the hunch he'd rather
talk
.
 
"'Dear old chum' is more complimentary
than 'stodgy old fart'."

He braked their
progress and faced her.
 
"I knew
it!
 
You've been trying to make me
jealous with Arriaga!
 
All that dancing
with him!"

Oh, damn.
 
Mathias didn't want to talk.
 
He wanted to argue.
 
"Well, one thing I'll say about the
captain.
 
He knows how to appreciate the
company of a woman."

His eyes
bugged.
 
"So you were encouraging
him!"

By then, she
wished she'd drunk more wine.
 
She
glanced at the bonfire, then to the deserted beach ahead, a silvery ribbon by
moonlight.
 
"I'm sweaty from
dancing and a bit drunk.
 
I'm going to
walk and cool down.
 
I suggest you
return and get yourself thoroughly drunk.
 
If you find a fellow named Mathias Hale, send him after me.
 
I've stored up eighteen years of lewd
fantasies to share with him."
 
She
strolled up the beach.

The shells went
crunch, crunch beneath her shoes.
 
After
a quarter minute or so, she heard the echoing rasp of Mathias's shoes.
 
She kept walking and rounded a bend to where
there were fewer shells.
 
Just ahead, a
blanket had been spread upon sand where the beach widened, and a bottle of wine
stood upright beside the blanket.

She stared down
at it while Mathias approached, and it occurred to her that perhaps he hadn't
wanted her out there to lecture her.
 
The breeze felt marvelous on her sweaty arms, and she looked with
longing at the water before facing him.

He bowed.
 
"Good evening, madam.
 
My name is Mathias Hale.
 
Some dolt of a fellow back there told me you
wanted to see me."

She removed her
shoes and stockings, began tugging off her trousers, and quipped, "Last
one in the water is a rotten egg!"

His splash
naked into the tepid, thigh-deep water wasn't but seconds behind hers.
 
Since she'd never advanced in swimming past
basic dog paddling, he was upon her in two strokes.
 
She squealed with mock protest before wrapping her legs about his
torso, anchoring herself against him, and sliding her tongue around his.
 
"My lucky stars," she whispered a
moment later, the warmth of his mouth on her throat, "Neptune is poking me
with his trident."

His lips wended
around to her neck.
 
"One of your
fantasies?
 
Tell me more."

She unwrapped
her legs and licked his chin.
 
"Mmm.
 
Salty on the
surface.
 
Shall I find something sweet
inside?"
 
And she trailed her tongue
down, into the hollow of his throat, around both nipples, across his flinching
stomach, past his navel and abdomen.
 
Salty, yes, they were creatures of salt.

"Sophie —
Sophie —"
 
His knees wobbled, and
he rolled his head back.

Crouching, she
reached behind, grabbed his buttocks, and guided the primordial trident into
her mouth.
 
"If you don't stop —
Sophie — I shall —"
 
He gasped and
shuddered.
 
"Oh, gods, Sophie, yes,
just so, oh, oh —"

As his cry
faded from the beach, he lifted her into his arms, savored the salt on her
lips, and carried her back to the blanket, where he tasted her until he grew
engorged enough to swim in the ocean of her body.
 
Suspended on the verge of
le petit mort
, she gazed into
her own vulnerability in his eyes, the obsidian depths there reflecting
starlight and moonlight the way of a still midnight lake.
 
Over and over she arrived at the brink of
rapture, but the lake in his eyes guided her back, so she must hover at the
edge and listen to arousal and rawness thundering in her veins, heartbeat and
current of the empyrean.

In the instant
before she wept with release, her soul recognized the spirit lake in his
eyes.
 
Le petit mort
was but the
dénouement of the mighty and fragile ecstasy that fueled the universe.
 
She understood then why she'd climbed out
her bedroom window two weeks past and turned her back on a comfortable life in
Alton and the promise of opulence in England.
 
She'd found the adventure she'd been seeking her whole life.
 
To her amazement, she need never have looked
farther than her own heart.

***

Near midnight,
David and Jacques tottered up the beach belting out a ditty about three French
soldiers and their commanding officer's wife.
 
Consequently, Sophie and Mathias were fully clothed by the time the two
men arrived.
 
Arriaga's orders: everyone
except sentries must spend the night aboard ship.
 
Sophie looked with fondness at the site of their lovemaking while
Mathias folded up the blanket.
 
They
hadn't but scratched the surface on her supply of fantasies.
 
How fortuitous that the trip to Havana
wasn't even half over.

On deck late
Sunday morning, she squinted north.
 
Sentries had reported the arrival of a storm-damaged fishing sloop —
alas, not the
Annabelle
— in the neighboring cove the previous night,
hence Arriaga's caution.
 
Abaco as a
refuge must be on every sea captain's nautical charts.

Aboard the
Gloria
Maria
, sailors assembled the new main topmast.
 
Sails had been hung out to dry in the light breeze.
 
She followed their shade until noontime sun
denied her cover.
 
On the verge of
ducking below to evade direct sunlight, she spotted the captain headed her way
from amidships beaming his approval.
 
He
extended a folded parasol to her.
 
"My dear wife left this aboard in March.
 
Please, you make use of it."

"Thank you,
capitão
."

He caught her
hand and kissed it.
 
"My pleasure,
senhora
."

She opened and
extended the parasol and watched him amble away, his flattery flushing her
cheeks.
 
Not impervious to his charm,
she considered all the
Gloria Maria
's ports of call and bet herself that
the captain had a dear wife in every one.

That evening,
while Tomás inventoried repairs to confirm their completion, second mate Jorge
accompanied the passengers ashore to bag more crabs.
 
The dolphins put in an appearance but seemed nervous and kept
their distance, so Sophie blew them a kiss of encouragement from shore.
 
Poor creatures, having their cove turned
into a shipyard.

Aboard the
brig, she sat back-to-back with Mathias, drank Portuguese wine, sniffed cooking
crabmeat, and listened to fiddled shanties and folk songs while the remnants of
vermilion sunset emptied from the west.
 
The crew wasn't as eager to wallow in rum as they'd been the previous
two nights.
 
Excessive consumption of
spirits had made several of them sluggish.
 
Still, sentries were back aboard, the brig was seaworthy again, and
everyone was in good cheer.

She turned in
after another exquisite supper, too sleepy to chat with her companions and the
captain, sat on the blankets, and thought of Hernandez's final moments.
 
Again, she heard him implore her to give the
emeralds to Don Alejandro and meet at the home of his uncle in Havana.

Since David's
warning on St. Augustine wharf, something about Hernandez's last words had
niggled the back of her brain.
 
The
logistics of the young Spaniard's shooting
were
wrong.
 
How could El Serpiente have shot him from
the front and his horse from behind?
 
Weariness fuzzed her focus.
 
She
stretched out on the blankets.

Jerked awake
from a dream about gunfire, she heard footsteps pounding down the companionway
and dragged a blanket over her torso just as Mathias burst into the cabin.
 
"Sophie, wake up."

"I'm
awake."
 
She heard a firearm report
in the distance.
 
"What the blazes
is going on?"

He closed the
door.
 
Moonlight through the port light
illuminated him.
 
"Someone's
shooting at the ship from the beach."
 
He knelt beside her, having scooped up his rifle, powder horn, and
pouch.
 
"Stay here in the cabin
while we resolve it."

"Of
course, but —"
 
Foreboding clawed
her chest.
 
"— but who's shooting
at us?
 
Pirates?
 
Arriaga will weigh anchor to get away,
right?"

"No
pirates.
 
We'd have seen their ship by
now.
 
It's one person wasting shot at us
from different spots on shore."

Someone from
the sloop in the northern cove, perhaps?
 
Sophie's foreboding deepened.

"Arriaga
probably won't weigh anchor yet.
 
The
shot's falling short, and we need daylight to navigate our way out of the
islands safely."

David knocked
on the door.
 
"Is Sophie all
right?"

"I'm snug
in bed, dear brother."

"Stay
there,
belle
Sophie."
 
From
Jacques's growl, his fingers itched for his tomahawk.

Mathias pecked
her cheek and rose.
 
She covered her
torso until he'd exited and shut the door.
 
Then she dressed.
 
Although she
had no desire to make a target of herself up on deck, she wouldn't sleep again
until the matter was resolved.

In the moonlit
cabin she listened.
 
Sporadic shots
continued every thirty seconds to two minutes from the beach, not from the
island, which was closer.
 
She
envisioned a man firing at the brig, relocating to another spot on the cove,
and reloading his musket for another shot.
 
Who would do such a thing?
 
Why?
 
For how long would he continue?
 
Was it someone from the sloop?

Footsteps in
the corridor outside drew her attention, and the hinges on the other cabin door
squeaked.
 
David and Jacques were up on
deck with Mathias, so who was entering their cabin?
 
She tiptoed to her door, heard the other door squeak closed, and
had just enough time to squeeze into the corner at the door before her cabin
door eased open.

A man garbed
all in black and smelling of seaweed crept in, light from the corridor glinting
on a dagger in his hand.
 
Horror and
panic leaped through her.
 
The person on
shore had created a diversion to allow an intruder to slip aboard the
Gloria
Maria
.
 
Moonlight in the cabin would
reveal her presence.
 
She slid to the
floor and groped, her hand closing about the parasol.

Before she
could grab anything more substantial, the man turned about.
 
She sprang upward with a shriek.

The second of
surprise that the shriek bought enabled her to swing the parasol by the fabric
end.
 
Air whooshed with its descent,
curtailing when the solid mahogany handle whacked his temple.
 
He grunted and collapsed.
 
She dropped the parasol and bolted out.

The first
person she saw upon scrambling up the companionway was Tomás, who registered
the terror on her face in an instant.
 
"¡
Un extraño — un cuchillo — en mi cabina
!" she blurted
in Spanish.

The first mate
stared with incredulity toward the diversionary musket fire ashore,
comprehension flooding his expression.
 
He signaled her to wait there on deck, checked his pistol, and ordered
two sailors with cutlasses to accompany him below.
 
Seconds after they disappeared, David spied her and trotted
over.
 
"We told you it's much safer
below!"

"Safer?
 
Hah!
 
A man entered my cabin with a dagger, so I hit him in the head with a
parasol.
 
Tomás just went down
there."

"Wait
here.
 
Keep your head down."
 
His fowler gripped, he clambered down the
companionway after the Portuguese.

Another musket
report sounded from shore.
 
She crouched
on deck steadying her nerves, considering with irony that she'd complied with
Arriaga's request to make use of the parasol.
 
The musket ashore fired once more before David emerged from below,
followed by Tomás.
 
She stood, her knees
shaky.
 
Behind the first mate, the two
sailors carried a sea-dampened, semi-conscious man.
 
They dumped him on deck, and he groaned.
 
Tomás trotted off to find the captain.
 
The sailors stood guard.

Tension and
incredulity gripped David's face.
 
"Damnation.
 
I don't believe
it!"

"Especially
after we came through the storm," she murmured, by then all too familiar
with the man's dark features.
 
The
prisoner of the Portuguese was none other than El Serpiente.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

CAPITÃO
ARRIAGA CLOSED El Serpiente's grappling hooks into a sack along with the
assassin's daggers and rope and addressed David.
 
"The American rebels do not like you.
 
The redcoats do not like you."
 
He handed the sack to Tomás and glanced at
the bound, silent assassin on the deck.
 
"And the Spaniards do not like you.
 
Does anyone like you,
senhor
?"

"I told
you we were caught in the middle of this.
 
Had I known that tracking my father's murderer would make me a target of
assassins, I'd have stayed in Williamsburg playing cards."

Hands clasped
behind him, Arriaga paced around El Serpiente.
 
"I have not heard of
Casa de la Sangre Legítima
."
 
Another shot fired from shore.
 
Still operating the diversion, El Escorpión
had no idea his partner was in custody.
 
El Serpiente maintained silence and a face devoid of expression.
 
A smile carved through Arriaga's
features.
 
"But if these assassins
are the menace you believe, there must be a handsome bounty awaiting those who
release them into custody of the governor of Cuba."

Jacques's scowl
exploded.
 
"You do not mean to take
him with us?
 
These are assassins, not
altar boys!
 
They butcher innocent
people.
 
They tried to kill us,
believing we stood in their way.
 
They
will kill
you
without compunction.
 
Execute this man without delay, or you will regret it."

"Need I
point out that I have had occasion to regret taking
you
aboard?
 
The Spaniard is my prisoner.
 
You will not lay a finger on him unless he
becomes aggressive.
 
Those are my
orders.
 
Am I understood?"

All for money.
 
Disgust permeated the assent of Sophie and
her companions.

El Escorpión
fired another shot.
 
Sophie gestured to
shore.
 
"And just how much longer
must we listen to that?"

Arriaga flapped
his hand toward shore.
 
"The
assassin frequently announces his location.
 
We are hardly at a disadvantage."

"But who
can sleep for all the noise?
 
Do you
want your crew exhausted on the morrow?"

"Ah, so
you suggest I send men out there to capture him?"

Arriaga had the
attitude of someone who was trying to educate a fool.
 
On the verge of retorting that she detested being treated in such
a manner, she swallowed her words.
 
Showing her to be a fool just might amuse Arriaga to no end.

Instead, she
frosted him with a glare.
 
"An
intriguing idea.
 
Since bounty money
warms your blood, there's a second source of it out there on Great
Abaco."
 
She heard her traveling
companions suck in breaths.
 
Arriaga's
eyes hardened with her rebuke, but she held her glare.
 
"Your four passengers cannot
sleep.
 
Resolve the problem."

No one spoke
for several seconds.
 
In the background,
El Escorpión got off another shot.
 
Then
the cackle of El Serpiente scratched the air like the sound of ice on
winter-brown branches.
 
"
Sí,
capitán
, go ahead and try to capture my colleague — but I suggest you send
at least five men so your dead may be buried properly.
 
For two years, agents for the French,
British, Dutch, American rebels, and Spanish government have failed to
apprehend us.
 
Fortune continues to
favor the Rightful Blood, for the storm blew our ship right to you."
 
He cackled again.
 
"But who knows?
 
Perhaps a Portuguese pig of a ship captain can succeed where everyone else
has failed, eh?"

"Miguel!"
 
Tomás stepped toward the assassin, a dagger
clenched in his fist.

Jacques's upper
lip curled.
 
"What did I tell you,
capitão
?
 
Kill the Spaniard now, and be rid of the
menace."

In Portuguese,
Arriaga ordered the first mate to sheath his dagger and instructed Jorge and
three sailors to secure the assassin.
 
Hoisted to his feet, El Serpiente glowered at everyone.
 
Arriaga's men shoved the assassin on to the
hold.

A shot sounded
from shore.
 
Arriaga returned his
attention to Sophie.
 
"Tell me how
you
would resolve the problem with the other assassin."

He hadn't given
up trifling with her.
 
"Fire a
cannonball into the jungle.
 
If the
assassin survives, you will have communicated your message for him to
begone."