Microsoft Word - Sherwood, Valerie - Nightsong (2 page)

The lean buccaneer who sprawled there with his lady was accounted the best blade in all the Caribbean. He was the notorious captain Kells, whose name resounded like a great gong across the Spanish Main. A name the very mention of which caused the captains of Spanish treasure galleons to blanch or redden angrily according to their natures. The pale moonlight gilded his long muscular legs, his narrow buttocks and broad handsome back, and cast in shadow his hawklike sardonic face just now so intent.

For the lady he clasped so fervently in his arms was the light of his life-and he knew he soon must leave.

She trembled and sighed against him. A soft moan escaped her lips and his hard face softened as he pressed tender kisses upon her smooth hot cheeks. And from his heart went up a silent prayer to a God he no longer believed in that she would be safe in this wild town in which he must leave her.

She was not, he knew, apt to go unremarked. For the woman he clasped in his arms, her lissome body silvered by moonlight, her hair a starlit mass spread out upon the pillow, wore the most famous face in all Port Royal. Endless stories were told of her: of her breathtaking beauty (apparent to all and staggering to those who first glimpsed her). Of her wild but aristocratic past (much exaggerated by gossips, who ever choose to believe the worst). Of her tempestuous romantic entanglement with the most dangerous sea rover of all in a port populated by dangerous sea rovers-Captain Kells (all too true!).

Some said he had married her, some said he had not. Others laughingly maintained that he was an insatiable bridegroom and so determined had he been to bind her to him that he had married her again and again: On Tortuga, in Virginia's Tidewater from whence she came, in Essex, in London-even in the Azores. And some of the stories were true.

But true or not, she would ever be the bride of his heart. All Port Royal envied him her favors. They called her-affectionately, these buccaneers from so many nations-the Silver Wench, and in the moonlight she was more than lustrous, she was magnificent. Her sweet young body (she was only one-and-twenty) fitted sublimely to the sinewy lines of her tall determined lover and they lay locked in ecstasy, oblivious to the wild carouse that as usual was making the nighttime streets of Port Royal horrendous with noise.

Even though the clocks had all chimed midnight, the din of carousing in the rows of taverns had scarcely diminished-indeed, many had roared to greater fervor as men who had come by their gold in mortal combat lightly gambled it away or tossed it to the nearest inviting wench for her favors.

But the singing and the yelling, the clatter of tankards and the rattle of cutlasses, the howls and tinny laughter, came only faintly to the tall brick house on Queen's Street, and the pair who strained upon the big square bed heard it not at all.

Their concentration, sublime in its intensity as they shuddered in ecstasy and then drifted down from the heights, was only upon each other-and on the sudden question the woman with the starlight hair now put to her able lover between their bouts of fiery lovemaking.

"Kells," she said, using the name the buccaneers called him, although in truth he was Rye Evistock of Essex and that was the name he had married her under on shipboard just off the Azores. "You don't really want to leave me, do you?"

Her voice was wistful and the strong arm of the buccaneer, just now lying outfiung beneath her as she lay on her back studying the stars, tightened as if to shield her from the world. "I never want to leave you," he said in his deep rich voice-and it was the God's truth that he was speaking. "Don't you know that, Christabel?"

He had used the name the buccaneers called her, for to them she was-would always be-Christabel Willing, the Silver Wench of the Caribbean, who had set Tortuga aflame with her caprices and had married at last the Lord Admiral of the Buccaneers-Captain Kells. She smiled that he should call her that but indeed here in Port Royal she had almost forgotten that she had been born Carolina Lightfoot, aristocratic daughter of Virginia's Tidewater country, or that her mother ruled in queenly splendor the great domain of Level Green upon the York River, largest and finest house to be found in all of Colonial Virginia.

"But . . . you are going?" she murmured at last.

"I must," he sighed.

"I know you feel you must go but-s-oh, Kells, please don't." Her voice was wheedling and her slender hands traced a fiery persuasive path down his belly and groin, burrowed enticingly below. "Don't sail away-stay with me."

It was a siren's song-and Kells was not slow to respond to it.

Wakened to passion again, he turned over and drew her slim, yielding body against his own, caressing her tenderly. But he did not answer, although he took her again, driving her to frenzy with his ardor, and let her go at last with yearning.

"This is a terrible place for you to leave me," she murmured sleepily.

His grin was a white flash in the starlight, half seen. "Terrible?" he said humorously.

"There is no better house in the town than this one. It is strong and defensible and decorated to your. taste. You have servants, the latest Paris gowns, jewels, the city at your feet. Would you trade all that for a meager life at sea, storms that howl in the rigging, mouldly bread, water turned green in the casks, the ever-present danger of meeting the entire might of the Spanish treasure flota at one time-or the Vera Cruz squadron-and being blown out of the water?"

"Yes," she said, as definite as he.

"I'd given you credit for better sense," he laughed. And, sounding pleased with himself, he rolled over and was immediately asleep.

The longcase clock in the hall chimed the hour-it was two A.M.

Beside the sleeping figure of the buccaneer, Carolina lay in the starlight, thinking. Her pleas had made no impression on him. This hot night of lovemaking which had left her so breathless had not moved him either.

Unable to sleep, at last she rose restlessly and donned a paper-thin silken shawl from the Orient that had come to this buccaneer port via the pirates of Madagascar.

The shawl was of a cool Chinese gold, heavily embroidered in white silk-a pattern of sumptuous twining roses. The long pale silken fringe swished along her slim bare legs as she went and settled herself in the window for coolness and looked out over the moonlit town.

A city of some eight thousand souls met Carolina's somber gaze-and all of them crowded into two thousand buildings that pressed toward the waterfront where the goods of the world streamed in and out. There was no fresh water here, and everything had to be brought in by boat. Yet there were handsome brick residences all about, and big warehouses stretched along the waterfront.

Kells had brought her here from Thrtuga when war between England and France had accomplished what the Spanish could not-broken up the Brethren of the Coast. For Tortuga had a French governor, and bucca-neers were fiercely loyal to their own countries. So the French buccaneers had stayed on Tortuga, and the English buccaneers had found a new home in Port Royal, where wine and money flowed.

Still-she now admitted to herself-she had been happier on Tortuga than she was here. In Tortuga their sprawling white house had been a fortress against all the world, but here in cosmopolitan Port Royal the world reached out to her, mocking her with the life that they could never have back in England, in Essex,where Rye's family still lived. Not Rye -Kells.

She must remember to think of him as Kells because that was who he was condemned always to be-Captain Kells,the daring Irish buccaneer whom no one had ever guessed was that aristocratic English gentleman, Rye Evistock. Until I came along, she thought bitterly.

Indeed it was all her fault. If Rye had never met her, she told herself, his secret would perhaps have been safe. Or if not safe, dealt with. But she had come along and, she told herself bitterly, ruined everything for him-forever.

Her self-denunciation was interrupted by a shadow that scurried out of the house below and ran, bareleg-ged and with a shawl thrown over her head to make her more part of the darkness, barefoot down the street.

Carolina frowned. That would be fifteen-year-old Gilly, she guessed, slipping out to keep some tryst at a waterfront tavern. Probably with some brawling chance-met buccaneer. There was no question of Gilly's being robbed of her virginity-she had long ago lost that in the wilds of New Providence, which lay to the nortb--but there was always the danger that Gilly might be pounced upon by one of the pimps who did not know that the girl was under Carolina's-and therefore Captain Kells's-protection. She might be spirited awayto one of Port Royal's numerous brothels!

Thinking of what might happen to Gilly brought Carolina's thoughts abruptly back to the day she had firstmet the girl, the day on which she had received The Letter and made a decision that was to alter her life. For in a strange tortuous way, it was that decision which was sending Kells off buccaneering again. . . .

Indeed the sight of Gilly's flying form racing down the sandy street had brought it all back, and in her mind Carolina was strolling through the town on a late winter day and feeling carefree in the comfortable knowledge that Kells had left the buccaneering trade behind him-forever.

I'll sing to you a devil's song

Of danger and of love gone wrong (And other sins as well!) And take you through a scented grove 'Mid gold-encrusted treasure trove Into a lovers' hell!

Far across the Spanish Main, let me take you once again, Weave for you a lovers'

tale, woven when the moon was pale, Of galleons and buccaneers-a bride who waited, bathed in tears To sight a sail upon the sea-and, shivering, know that it was he!

PORT ROYAL,

JAMAICA

February 1692

It was a hot day in Port Royal. In a butter-yellow dress as light as her heart and swinging a ruffled yellow silk parasol, the girl who had once been Carolina Lightfoot of Virginia's aristocratic Tidewater picked her way daintily down a street littered, as it always was in the morning, with wine bottles and tankards and a variety of other debris. Once she stepped over a pair of boots-the boots' owner was presumably dashing around barefoot-once over a slipper of tangerine satin probably lost by some woman of the streets, and twice she made her way around sodden drunks who lay prone, cuddling their cutlasses and perchance a jug of rum: a perfectly normal morning in Port Royal, for Carolina rarely went abroad before the streets were cleaned of broken glass and human litter, swept out of the way impatiently by press gangs from the jail by order of the royal governor.

She caused some little attention. Bleary eyes that had known scarce a wink of sleep turned to blink at this golden vision wearing yards and yards of floating voile and who swung along jauntily on pale yellow kid slippers-guarded as always by the big taciturn buccaneer called Hawks.

"We should have waited a bit till the streets were cleaned," grunted Hawks. "Ye'll cut your feet on this broken glass." He reached out to steer her around a broken wine bottle whose sticky contents was abuzz with insects.

"Yes, I suppose I should have waited." Carolina tossed back her head with a gesture that swept her thick fair hair away from her neck in the sticky heat. "But it's cooler early, and the market gets so crowded later."

She did not say what she intended to buy at the market and Hawks did not ask. It was not for him to argue with the captain's extravagant lady whether she wanted to buy a fashion doll from Paris or some China tea and spices or a length of Italian silk or French laces. Everything-even shrunken heads from the jungles of South Aunerica and fine Bordeaux (when everyone knew England was at war with France )—everything found its way sooner or later into Port Royal harbor. The goods of the world changed hands here. Hawks could only hope Carolina would not load him up so heavily he'd have trouble getting his cutlass arm free, for the town was alive with riffraff this morning and he did not care for the way some of them were looking at his lustrous charge.

They had passed from Queen's Street down a narrow street between the tall brick buildings that crowded this city built on sand, and they were just emerging onto High Street on their way to the market when there was a sudden disturbance on Lime Street loud enough to drown out the hawkers' crying out the virtues of their fresh-caught fish and crabs.

As they turned the comer onto High Street they came under the observation of two gentlemen who were observing passersby from the open first-floor window of a tall brick house. The younger and taller of the two had the look of an adventurer about him. He was wiry and well built; his body had a lithe grace that had pleased many women. He had a smooth olive-skinned face, a high forehead, an aquiline nose, black winglike brows and a cleft chin of exceeding firmness. And beneath those winglike brows a pair of narrowed tawny-gold eyes looked haughtily down upon the crowd -for Port Royal not only stayed up late, it got up early. His black hair swung like coarse shining silk against the shoulders of his dark olive coat as he lounged in the windowsill, his back against the green-painted wooden frame, one long leg swinging indolently over the sill. His lazy demeanor was contradicted by the alert look in his tawny eyes as he took in the scene before him, and from time to time he murmured quick questions to the man who hovered behind him and answered in a low urgent voice.

As Carolina, daintily picking up her floating yellow voile skirts to avoid more broken glass, turned the comer, the man in the olive coat straightened slightly.

"Madre de Dios!" he murmured in Spanish under cover of the clamor. "To find a beauty like that-here! These buccaneers do well for themselves indeed!"

"You must remember to speak in English," warned his heavyset friend behind him in a worried voice, "else our lives will pay for it.I will remind you, Ramon,that I do this for you out of old friendship and-"

"I know, I know," chuckled his younger friend, his admiring gaze still fixed on Carolina. "And I will remind you, John, to call me 'Raymond' and not 'Ramon' and to remember that for the moment I am French-a renegade, perhaps, but still French."