Master of Paradise (23 page)

It was a moment before the words penetrated
the furies of his mind. When they did, he dropped rigid shoulders
and pulled her into his arms. “I want my home, Gabé,” he groaned
into her hair. “More than anything, I want to walk through that
front door with you at my side.”

She moved back and sought his eyes. “As
what?” she asked, afraid for him to voice the words.

“
Cómo mi espôsa,
” he said. “As my
wife.”

A thrill rushed through her.
Wife
. It
had always seemed a detestable word. As if the person saying it
really meant
appendage
. But now it seemed the most beautiful
word in the English language.

She looked down on the lovely house that had
once been his home. Tried to imagine strolling through the majestic
roots of the banyan tree, looking up in awe as she passed beneath.
Tried to envision herself mistress of such a home. Saw him come up
the walk, full of salt and sand. Saw her throw herself into his
arms and kiss him in joyous welcome. Saw golden-haired children
gathering cheerfully at their feet.

Children who didn’t have to worry about their
pirate father being hanged.

“How do you say ‘home’ in Portuguese?”

His mouth formed the words. “Like Spanish.
Casa.
”

She tried it tentatively. “
Meú
casa.
”

Briefly, he smiled. But it was a sad smile,
and his mournful lion’s eyes drifted once again back to the sight
below. “
Sem lar,
” he said softly, more to himself than
her.

“What does that mean?”

“Homeless.”

An abrupt ache inside burst her happy picture
of home. “Rodrigo, let’s go back. Let’s go back to our valley,
before it’s too late.”

Before he could answer, there was a noise
behind them. They whirled to the sight of four men leveling pointed
guns.

There was a jubilant cry as the men lowered
their weapons and stepped forward. Gabrielle stared dumbly, trying
to adjust as she realized the intruders were members of Rodrigo’s
old crew. There was Higgins, the fugitive from New South Wales so
reluctant to be tattooed, and her old friend Jonah Fitch among
them.

Then there was a rustle in the bushes and a
tall man with wild red hair and a thick beard stepped out. It was
like looking at a ghost as she recognized Wallace, who she thought
had been blown to death in the explosion.

“We’re the sole survivors of the attack,”
Wallace explained. “We knew if you made it out alive, you’d come
here eventually.” He turned to Gabrielle and added, “Glad to see
you made it too, lass.”

Jonah Fitch stepped forward. “I second that,
ma’am.”

“And Cullen?” she asked hopefully.

They shook their heads. “I’m sorry, ma’am,”
said Jonah in a sorrowful tone. “We looked and looked, and never
found him.”

To cover his embarrassment, she reached out
and pressed his hand affectionately. “Thank you for that. I see
you’ve taken to the pirate life,” she added lightly, regarding his
former charade.

“I have, indeed, ma’am. And I must say, I
like you more as a woman.” His eyes flicked to Rodrigo and he
added, “If you don’t mind me saying so, sir.”

Somewhat impatiently, Wallace said, “Suffice
it to say, we’ve been keeping an eye on your house. Cross moved in
a month ago. I don’t mind telling you, Rodrigo, there have been
some pretty strange things transpiring since he got here.”

“Such as?” Rodrigo asked in a tight tone.

“There’s slaves coming and going in ungodly
numbers. And them Frenchmen come and stay a day or two, then leave
and others replace them.”

Rodrigo turned back to the house he’d grown
up in. “For once, I’m grateful to be the last of my line,” he said
bitterly. “I’d hate for the other Soros to see what’s transpiring
in their own home.”

As they watched, Hastings came out of the
house to see what the commotion was about. The boy was still
screaming, turning his face upward as tears streamed down it, while
his mother tried desperately to hush him. Even from where she
stood, Gabrielle could see the woman’s fear. She would be beaten if
her son didn’t stop crying, and the look on her face said she knew
it.

They were too far away to hear anything but
the boy’s shrieks. But the stubborn set of Hastings’s shoulders
spoke volumes. Gesturing toward the boy, he watched as his foreman
wrestled the child forcibly from his mother’s arms. As the boy
screamed louder still, the foreman tossed him to another slave, who
carried him off. His cries drifted away, and soon all was silent.
So silent, there was a ghostly still of terror in the air.

Slowly, Hastings walked around the African
woman whose son had just been wrenched from her. He looked her up
and down in a leisurely fashion, as he might a horse he was
thinking of buying. He fingered her hair, making the woman start.
He came before her and pried open her mouth so he could see her
teeth. Then he stroked her face tenderly in a gesture that froze
Gabrielle’s blood. He said something and jerked his head toward a
room upstairs. Cringing, the slave looked up at the window he’d
indicated and shook her head, as if pleading not to be taken.
Hastings didn’t even bother to punish her. He just nodded to his
foreman, who grabbed the woman and hauled her through the banyan
tree and up the porch stairs.

Wallace had moved to his captain’s side so he
could speak softly in his ear. “The oddest thing,
Capitão
.
He takes these women and rogers them. Sometimes two or three a day.
One of the boys sneaked up and peeked in the window to make sure.
Makes them do all manner of unspeakable things. Things I wouldn’t
mention in front of a lady. We hear them screaming sometimes.”

By now Rodrigo was seething, pacing like a
caged wildcat, his fists clenched in rage at his sides. “They
defile my house in this manner, doing their dirty work in my
mother’s bedroom.” He was so incensed, he began to rant in
Portuguese.

“Well, it’s tearing us apart,
Capitão,
I can tell you that. The things we’ve seen...”

“We’ll wait until dark,” Rodrigo interrupted
crisply, very much the pirate captain now, very much in command.
“Then we’ll go in. The two of us, Wallace.”

“Where to,
Capitão?
”

“To cut the heart out of a vulture.”

“I’m going too,” Gabrielle said to him.

He gave her the dismissive glance of a leader
with more pressing things on his mind. “Not this time,” he
said.

Her chin firmly set, she parroted his words
back to him. “I can’t just crawl into a hole and hide while evil
takes over the world.”

Stiffly, he said, “Very well.”

Gabrielle followed as Rodrigo and Wallace
noiselessly climbed the rail of the porch and swung themselves up
onto the sloping roof that led to the bedroom windows upstairs. She
had little trouble pulling herself onto the roof. Her years of
fencing had made her agile, and her legs strong.

It was a hot night, as usual, and the windows
were open. Earlier they’d heard grunts and screams coming from the
room. Now all was quiet except for the gentle rhythm of a man’s
snores.

Moving stealthily to the window, they peered
inside. It was a spacious, airy room with high ceilings, cool and
inviting. A large four-poster bed with Hastings sleeping in it
dominated one wall, conspicuous for its absence of mosquito
netting. Above it was a collection of ancient swords much as
Rodrigo had displayed on his ship.

The furnishings were fashioned from light
bamboo. A small gecko slept undisturbed on the wall above
Hastings’s head. In the corner was a lovely tropic bird in a golden
cage, its long white tail sticking out of the bars.

But her impressions were fleeting as Hastings
began to stir. Rodrigo, on his way to rouse him, stopped suddenly
and stared at something at his feet. Following his gaze, Gabrielle
gasped softly. The slave woman was lying on the floor, tied by a
rope to the bed. She was awake, but she didn’t lift her head from
the floor. She merely lay as she was, staring up at the intruders
with eyes that were wide with terror.

Rodrigo leapt to the wall where the swords
were kept with the unseeing instinct of one who knows their
positions well. His hand came to rest on a gold-encrusted saber.
Seizing it from the wall, he slashed the ropes from the frightened
girl with a heave that sent Hastings bolting upright in his bed.
Ignoring him, Rodrigo took the girl’s arm gently and lifted her to
her feet.

“Go to your son,” he told her. When she
didn’t seem to understand, he repeated the command in Swahili. She
stared at him to make sure she understood.

Wallace, on his way to the bed where Hastings
was demanding to know what was going on, paused and gave the girl a
meaningful glare. “
Mkombozi,
” he said, jerking his head
toward Rodrigo in introduction. It was what the freed slaves called
him, Swahili for “the Liberator.”

“
Mkombozi!
” The woman’s mouth formed
the word as if it were a prayer. Then she quickly ran from the
room.

Even as she did, Wallace’s fist was grabbing
hold of Hastings’s nightshirt. Rodrigo joined him and together they
hauled their prey from his bed onto the floor with a heavy crash,
where he lay sputtering indignantly, sprawled with his nightshirt
up about his legs. With one quick motion, Rodrigo’s knees straddled
him, one pinning each of his shoulders to the floor as he held the
blade of the sword to his throat.

Wallace was hovering over them, his hands
flexing convulsively. “Let me kill him,
Capitão
. Let me do
it slowly, with great pain. ’Tis only rightful justice for all the
men he slaughtered.”

“No,” said Rodrigo, in a feral voice
Gabrielle barely recognized as his. “He must be killed, but we’ll
have no fun with it. And I must do it myself.”

Gabrielle felt a wave of satisfaction sweep
over her. She realized she felt no remorse for what was about to
happen—just a sense of justice being dispensed. But as Rodrigo put
the sword to his throat, Hastings cried, “Wait, Roderick!” It was
the squeal of a man who knew he was about to die. “
Rodrigo,
”
he corrected belatedly, through clenched teeth.

“Think fast, old friend,” Rodrigo taunted.
“Your time is running out.”

Wallace took Gabrielle by the arm and began
to pull her away. She fought him off.

“I have something to trade for my life,”
Hastings rasped.

Gabrielle stopped cold. She was suddenly
terrified of what might leap from his infinite resources of
treachery.

Rodrigo gave a caustic chuckle. “What could
you possibly have that would be of more interest to me than your
life?”

“If you deem it worthy, make me a promise
you’ll spare me.”

“Why should I promise you anything? Now that
I know you have something to offer, why shouldn’t I just torture it
out of you?”

“Because I’m strong. You know that. It would
take you days to break me. I may even last a week. By then, it may
just be too late for the information to be of any use to you.”

Rodrigo glanced at the others, then back to
Hastings. “All right, then, if I deem it worthy, you have my
word.”

Hastings said one word so it rang out in the
room. “Cullen!”

At the name, Gabrielle came back to life.
When Wallace reached for her again, she shoved him back and stepped
to Rodrigo’s side.

“What about Cullen?” she demanded.

Hastings’s eyes darted to her and she saw his
surprise to see her—surprise which, with effort, turned into a
characteristic smirk, even with a blade to his throat. “So you’ve
joined your precious lover at last, Gabby.”

She kicked his shoulder, causing the sword to
slip and cut him, dripping blood to the floor. “Hastings, you
serpent, tell me what you know about Cullen, or so help me I’ll
give Rodrigo leave to slit your sorry throat.”

With an evil glint, he spoke the words slowly
and deliberately, relishing every one. “Cullen’s alive. I gave him
to the sultan of Zanzibar.”

Cullen...alive!

In a fury, Rodrigo grabbed Hastings’s hair in
his fist, drew back his head, and made ready to slice his throat.
Wallace stayed his arm. “Wait. What if he’s telling the truth?”

“I know he’s telling the truth,” Rodrigo
ground out tonelessly. “Giving the boy to the sultan of Zanzibar is
exactly what he’d do.”

“Then the information
was
worthy,”
Wallace pointed out.

“Yes. But I think we should kill him
anyway.”

“But
Capitão
, your word!”

The shock in his quartermaster’s voice
penetrated the hunger for revenge. Not moving his eyes from
Hastings, Rodrigo said, as if it pained him, “Very well. This will
wait for another time.”

Gabrielle watched the scene, but none of it
registered in her mind. The only thing she could think of was that
Cullen was alive.

Cullen was alive!

The supply schooner was anchored off the
island, about five hundred meters out to sea. From the brush that
lined the clean white beach, Rodrigo, Gabrielle, Wallace, and the
others lay in wait, watching the small dhow ride the waves,
attempting to circumvent the coral reef. The tide was unpredictably
choppy today. Three times they’d tried to land, and three times had
been forced to choose another spot. The day before they hadn’t been
able to land at all, but had returned unsuccessful to the schooner
to await the morning tide. If they weren’t able to land this time,
they’d give up and go around to the other side of the island,
hoping for better luck. It was just the sort of inaccessibility for
which Dario Soro had chosen the island a hundred years ago.

Finally, the dhow caught a wave and sailed
onto the reef. Its crew jumped out, stepping lively on the biting
coral, and grabbed the small boat, guiding it to shore. Once
anchored on the beach, they began to unload their supplies, eager
to be off while there was still a friendly tide.