The Windflower (31 page)

Cat watched them a moment. Then he said, "Saunders is right. You're too involved with her."

There was a brief pause as Raven's winsome gaze found Merry's and then transferred slowly to Cat. "I may be." Raven said, "but so, my friend, are you."

Raven let a few days go by* and then went with Will Saunders to try to buy her from Devon. And though Will never went near Merry when she was alone, because he said bluntly that he didn't trust himself, their motives were pure.

They found Devon in the captain's cabin, with Morgan and Valentine, drinking cici, which was corn gin from Chile made from maize chewed by toothless old women and fermented in water. There wasn't another palate on the
Joke
besides those three that could keep it down.

The transfer of women by purchase was a common enough thing. Devon heard their request calmly, and without smiling asked, "Why?" It was obvious that he was going to say no, as they'd already half anticipated, but they had to answer the man's question anyway. That was the rub. Raven wasn't sure how it could be, but while it wouldn't have been even slightly embarrassing to admit that their purposes were unabashedly carnal, it was ticklish beyond description to announce that they just wanted to let her go. As they spoke, facing into Devon's golden, autocratic gaze, there was the unavoidable if unspoken implication of reproach to Devon for the way he was treating her, which was a heavy breach of pirate etiquette. Even that aside, Saunders's explanation, tactfully phrased as it was, couldn't help having such a ring of romanticism and sanctimony to it that Morgan hardly waited for Saunders's finish and Devon's refusal before laughing himself hoarse. Thomas Valentine sighed and, fixing Saunders with a blighting gaze, said tartly, "If you don't all stop being so
damned
amusing about that wretched wench, Morgan will happily keep her around for the next twenty years."

The man had a point.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The sleek, heavy keel of the
Black Joke
slipped southward through the warm Gulf Stream, displacing thousands of tons of green water. Below, tiny sea creatures without number waged fierce microscopic battles, as indifferent to the human presence passing above as it was to them.

A brown floating wand of sargasso weed hid a herring no bigger than a child's finger. Grazing nearby was a bluefish that caught and ate the herring just before the bluefish itself became a meal for a passing squid. Satiated and gloating, the squid hurled through the water, gaining momentum until it had enough thrust to launch its tapered length upward, bursting through the surface into sky and sunlight. The squid soared like a flying fish, thirty yards, perhaps more, before it began to lose altitude and. dropping sharply, prepared itself for the thrilling splash that would come when it fell back into the sea. But the splash never came. The squid dropped instead into the bottom of the skiff from which Raven was fishing. Thus the above-water and underwater worlds came together.

Laughing with delight, Raven picked up the squid and put it in a bucket for Merry to see.

He brought it to her in her cabin after he had gotten the key from Cat. She was too happy to see him, too pathetically lonely. In the week since she'd been confined again in her cabin, he had come to see her as often as he could, and others had also—Sails had been in, he knew, as well as Saunders, Cook, Griffith, and some others—but they had to be discreet about it and quick, because though Devon hadn't prevented them from visiting her, he wasn't likely to be overly enamored of the idea. The man was still sleeping elsewhere. Cat, who ought to know, said that the highborn were the same in every way as common folk, but whenever Raven gazed into Merry's blue eyes or watched her smile, he wondered how Devon could possibly want to sleep anywhere else.

The squid was fascinating and frightening for Merry, and she envied the nonchalance with which Raven picked it up and let it wrap a sticky tentacle about his bare wrist. She was braving herself to do it, trying her best to ignore the sea creature's glowering gaze as she put out her hand, when they were interrupted by Max Reade on deck shouting, "Raven? Devil take the lad, where's he got to? If he ain't gonna take that boat out to fish, / sure as hell am. Damme if he don't say he's a gonna take that skiff night fishin', and here's the skiff back before the hour's out. Saunders! Where's Mischief got hisself to? Maybe if he don't show up in about one second here, I'm gonna take my turn with the boat!"

The squid went back into the bucket, and Raven left Merry quickly with a regretful smile and a tossed kiss. For a minute or two Merry listened to the lively argument on deck, smiled when Raven won it, and putting her arm out the window, waved at him as he set off again in the skiff. Turning back toward the cabin, Merry realized suddenly that Raven had forgotten the squid. And. typically, he had forgotten to lock the door.

She was so closely watched that Raven's slip could do her no good, and she expected Cat to discover it when he brought her evening meal. But the ship's carpenter had cut his hand open on a ravehook while cleaning out some old caulking on the fo'c'sle, and Cat stayed aloft to attend him. Cook came instead, straight from the kneading trough, his tattoo powdered with flour. He set her wooden bowl of spiced cabbage soup and a tin plate of apple cake on the table and had glanced critically at the door, as though he were going to ask her why it wasn't locked, when he noticed the squid. Instantly diverted, he tried to talk Merry into surrendering the squid to him for squid soup.

She was so angry at the very suggestion that by the time he left empty-handed, he had forgotten about the unlocked door.

Merry spent the evening peering into the bucket while the squid turned desultorily in its ration of seawater, fixing her with a glassy stare and occasionally letting a tentacle slither sulkily out toward her.

Cat knocked on the door later, after she had gone to bed.

"Merry?"

"Cat, I'm in bed."

"Fine. Merry, have you got a squid in there?"

"Yes."

"Oh, for God's sake."

"It's just a little one."

"Merry . . . You don't want to go to sleep with that in with you. You'd better let me dump it out."

"No!"

"It'll die and stink."

"No. it won't. I've put it in my washbowl. It has plenty of water.''

A pause. And then with resignation, "Oh, all right. Can I get you anything?"

"No. Thank you. I'm almost asleep."

"All right. Does Cook have the key?"

"Yes. Good night, Cat."

"Good night."

She wasn't sure later what had made her lie to him about the key. She didn't intend certainly to make another doomed bid for escape with its attendant horrors and promised punishment; so she might as well have told Cat. Perhaps it was her revulsion for being locked in that kept her from it. Or perhaps she was too tired for a lengthy explanation. And anyway, it was a clear example of her overly conscientious attitude that she should worry about whether or not her captors had arranged to have her securely enough imprisoned.

She awoke much later to blackness and the sharp sounds of activity on deck. The
Joke
was making sail. Merry tried to relax again into slumber. Instead, she found herself awake, listening alertly in the shapeless night and interpreting the vigorous noises above her.

Jim Selkirk on the foretop had sighted a sail to the windward, south by west, and distant by more than five leagues. The bucking motion of the
Black Joke,
as it began to breast the waves, told her that they were giving chase to the sighted sail, running close to the wind. They tacked ship to the westward, and later to the southeast. Merry heard the order to load the cannons. She wasn't particularly alarmed; she had heard the order given before and knew it often led to nothing more than a warning shot. What concerned her was what the squid would eat. She thought about it as she sat cross-legged on her bunk and closed her mouth so she wouldn't bite her tongue and held her hands over her ears to prepare for the percussive explosion.

The explosion came, howling like a banshee, and in a second's horror she realized that it had been no single warning shot but a broadside. The cabin tilted violently, hung suspended, and righted itself. Her dinner plate and cup went flying; her shoes skidded across the floor, and she had to grapple for the edge of the bunk to keep from following them.

Running to and fro, clutching up and stowing fallen objects, wedging her washbowl of squid into a cupboard for safety, she heard the air crackle as the other ship returned the fire. Spray rose, hissing against the
Joke
as a ball rent the water nearby.

The
Joke
was going into battle.

With wild heartbeats she listened to the repeated scream of cannon fire, the high whiz of musketeers firing from the rigging. Racing footsteps pounded the deck above her head until every timber around her began to vibrate. Shouts tore from hoarse throats. A piercing shriek from the deck above her mingled with the thudding crash of the ordnance, and she stifled a cry as she realized that one of the sailors she had befriended was dying in agony above her.

She flung open the cabin door, and the acrid reek of powder smoke burned her face and lungs. The black grid of the hatchway framed the horror above. Through smoke-hazed lantern light she saw pirates moving quickly, their faces powder-blackened and altered over the glint of cutlass and grappling hook. Far above, boarding nets strung in the rigging made a weird webbed pattern against the stars.

A thunderous, shuddering crash threw Merry painfully against the frame of Morgan's door as the great hull of the
Joke
collided with the enemy vessel. Hell shone in vignette through the hatchway-—the swarm of cursing, panting men resisting the fury of a boarding party, clanging steel blades becoming red, spitting scarlet in a spray as they flashed.

Cowering below the insanity, she could feel the cold tremors in her limbs, the sweat of fear damping her shirt, growing sticky on her face, trickling into her mouth.

Suddenly a body fell heavily from the sky, blocking the hatch in a grotesque sprawl. It was Jim Selkirk, shot from the crow's nest, and she stared upward, horrified, into his blank eyes. The dead fingers went lax, and his pistol broke free to drop to the deck before her and skitter toward her feet. She grabbed it up in a haze of instinctive reaction.

Again the
Joke
rolled. The floor tipped sickeningly away, and the backwash tossed her like a toy against Morgan's red oak door. She grabbed at the bronze latch for support as her feet slid across the dropping floor. The latch gave, and the heavy door swung open, throwing her into the room.

Inside, holding a swaying lantern candle by its black tin loop, was Cook's assistant, the man she knew only as Hey, You! He was hunched over Morgan's wide Belgian desk, the yellow candlelight falling in a long oval on the somberly gleaming surface and bouncing back to illuminate the man's face in carmine shadows. Wispy hair jutted stiffly out from the base of his russet stocking cap. His greasy leather gaiters were askew, and his brown plaid shirt twisted at his stout waist, as though it had been donned in haste. He turned, saw Merry, and began to come angrily toward her. She raised a hand instinctively to protect herself. Her hand still held the half-cocked pistol, and seeing it, he magically fell back, adopting a sly, wary grin.

"What are you doing?" she asked him.

"And who might you be to be askin' me that, eh? I may well be askin' you the same! Last I heard, the likes of you was supposed to be under lock and key. What would Devon say if he saw you with that barker in your hand? I've half a mind to call him. What would you say to that?"

The threat didn't exactly make her break out in a cold sweat. Devon had more pressing matters on his hands. And what
was
this man doing here? In theory the
Joke
was a democracy. The captain's quarters belonged to the crew as much as they did the captain. But Rand Morgan was still Rand Morgan, and in practice before anyone entered Morgan's cabin, they knocked, and all except Cat and Devon waited for an invitation to do that. Why would a kitchen assistant come here surreptitiously in the midst of the fray and why was he gripping a bulging canvas purse?

Not lowering the gun barrel, Merry said, "If Devon comes, will you show him that bag of money in your hand?"

"It's my share!" He clutched it all the harder. "It's what I got coming to me."

Merry knew well that none of Morgan's men helped themselves to spoils. Thomas Valentine divided the loot, in full view of the crew. Also the man before her seemed to have deserted his position in battle, and the punishment for that was fearsome—marooning on a barren island with enough water and food to last for one week. Suddenly she realized what this man's presence here must mean. She said, "You're planning to desert!"

"Well, ain't you just as quick as a berry! I ain't got time to stand here clappin' my jaws about it wi' ye, so let me be. We'll go our own ways and no one the wiser. This is no affair of your'n that I can see."

The tiniest bit of admiration mixed with the doubt in her voice as she asked, "How do you mean to get away?"

He was impatient to be off, and after a moment he appeared to decide that it would be faster to humor her with an answer than to argue. "There's a jolly boat half-lowered to the port that was meant, I suppose, to take you out of here if we was to be gettin' the worst of the fight. Old Tuck Simmons was to have the watchin' of it, but he's long since been blown into the sea. So while them bloody fools are killin' themselves to starboard. I'm meanin' to shamble off to the port."

"Are we near land?" she asked.

"Near 'nough. Now, see here. I've got to be movin' along, so—"

There was no time to think it over. Merry took a single slow breath and said, "I want to come with you."

A man of a different kidney might have been flattered, but Cook's middle-aged assistant was a realist and a well-developed coward. Every man aboard knew she'd tried to escape once before. He said sourly, "Well, you can't. I've got enough trouble without having His Powerful Highness Devon hot after my carcass." He started for the door.

Not for nothing had Merry Wilding spent a month of her life on the most notorious ship that furled sail on the Gulf Stream. Stationing her legs apart carefully for balance and effect, Merry put two hands on the pistol's walnut grip and aimed the bronze barrel straight at the man's retreating back.

"You!" she said. "Take one more step without me and—and, Saint Anne as my witness, I'll blow your ears off."

It was a solid improvement over her try with Devon and the crossbow. Morgan, if he could have seen her, would have been as happy as a King Charles spaniel.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The battling ships had a strange beauty from four hundred yards away. Against the night sky of transparent black the ship's lanterns breathed sheer golden light that caught as glistening streamers on the ocean waves. From the
Joke's
stern lanterns twin haloes glowed like the eyes of a great sea monster. The battle raged in miniature; the slowly shrinking scene seemed a microcosm of madness, with flames licking the rigging of the other ship, sooty clouds of smoke rolling upward, and the shouting and shooting and clanging echoing and faint. It looked like an accident in an alchemist's laboratory. And Merry was leaving it behind as if it were a Punch and Judy show bypassed on a street corner.

Wearing denim breeches, a white shirt, and a kelly green bandanna over her hair, Merry sat in the jolly boat's bow with her pistol trained on the kitchen assistant, whose name, she had ascertained, was Michael Meadows. Meadows rowed, and Merry watched the battle through the oars as they rose and dipped, rose and dipped. They had gone more than a league's distance before Merry realized that she was looking at three sets of masts.

She exclaimed, "There's a third ship!"

"Eh? Oh. aye. A Portuguese schooner, sailing out of the Brazils, more 'n likely. Wouldn't be surprised if it was coffee she was hauling. Dumpy little rascal, ain't she? Them sails is patched like a whaleman's shirt. She's prize to that pirate bark that's putting up Satan's own fight against the
Joke."

So Morgan was fighting another pirate ship!

"A pirate bark?"

"Aye." Meadows glanced over his shoulder at the ships. "That be Malachi Head. See his colors there, by the aft lantern? His flag's got the bloody dagger 'pon it. He's the devil's spawn, old Malachi. When he takes a ship, he sticks the men through with boarding pikes, and if'n there's women aboard, he lets his crew take their sport with 'em and then throws the lot of 'em into the hold. Then he bombards the ship, for target practice, see, till she goes down ablazin'. Him and Morgan usually gives each other a wide berth, but this time the lookout spied a woman on the captured schooner, and her with a babe in her arms and two little ones clingin' to her skirts. So Morgan brings it up for a vote: How many want to take Malachi Head's ship and steal his prize? Well, quicker 'n a trout's tongue every man jack on the
Joke
is finding some reason or other we oughta take the ship. Saunders says because there might be silver aboard the Portuguese, Valentine says we oughta be replacing the skiff you sank, even Shay, that son of a bitch, suddenly remembers some old grudge he's got against Malachi Head's bosun. Humpf! You know the real reason they wanna fight that Malachi Head? To save the young 'uns! I ask you!"

Dawn glimmered, a lilac fuzz on the horizon. Smiling into the trade wind's light breath. Merry said, "I think it's wonderful."

"Oh, you do, eh? For my money, being a hero is fine, but suicide is something else again. I can't see giving up yer life for a babe. They all die anyway," he said gloomily, coasting on his oars. "Twenty years ago, back in Dover, my wife had three babes in three years, and not one of them lived more 'n a day or two. And with the last one my wife dies too. Childbed fever they call it. I call it bad doctorin'." Meadows spit over the side. "She weren't no more than seventeen."

Merry was quickly and deeply affected. "I'm sorry," she said.

Meadows shrugged, grinning slyly through charred, stumpy teeth. "She was a shrill one anyway and never gived me a moment's peace, though 1 was sorry about the little ones, and that's a fact." He let one oar hang in the water and reached between his legs for the rum bottle. He took a long swig, and as he lowered the bottle his gaze fell on the bucket Merry had placed by her feet. "There it goes—he done it again! Put one of them arms out and wiggled it around."

Merry glanced uncertainly at the malefactor in the bucket. "He can't help it," she said, on the defensive. "The bucket's too small, and he
is
a squid, after all."

"Well, I don't hold with squids, nor octopussies neither. Ain't natural, a critter havin' all them arms. Fair gives a body the creeps. Dump him out."

"I'm going to," Merry said, "as soon as we're far enough from the ship."

"If that don't beat kissin'! Think a cannonball's gonna fall on him? Out he goes—or I don't oar another stroke."

It was not a threat Meadows was likely to carry out, with the eastern sky paling to slate and the rising light adding to their danger of detection and capture. But the squid must be half-starved by now. Decency demanded that she set it free. Merry put the pistol down in her lap, picked up the bucket, and leaned over the side until the bucket's wooden mouth was under an inch of water. Gently tipping the bucket sideways, she watched with a lump in her throat as the squid slid out and away into the glossily black ocean. It was one more link to Raven gone. Cat. Devon. The hand that she had braced against the side slipped as she drew in the heavy bucket, and her shifting weight sent the boat rocking like a tree cradle in the wind.