This Loving Torment

by Valerie Sherwood

  “They ought not to be selling English women,” muttered one young ruffian. “It shames me to see it.”

  “Tis only St. Clair and one or two others that do it,” rejoined another glumly. “Captains like Court release any English prisoners they find on Spanish ships—anyone who isn’t Spanish, for that mattter. And return their women to them.”

  Trying not to shake, Charity watched a frowning Spaniard with a bandaged arm sold. He was a stone-mason, the crowd was earnestly informed by the auctioneer—a good man to have about if you wanted to build a house.

  “Is that man being sold for life?” she asked a guard.

  “Nay, tis but for three years—like any other articles of indenture,” she was told with a shrug. “Tis a form of ranson, y’see, for those without money.”

  Three years, she thought. Three years in a brothel or . . . perhaps even worse . . . “given” to that raffish pack aboard St. Clair’s vessel for their enjoyment. She felt her hands tremble and clenched them to hide their weakness.

  The sale dragged on. The virtues of each prisoner were extolled, but none of them brought a very high price. Plainly, human flesh was not at a premium in Tortuga.

  At one point the auctioneer held up a Spanish prisoner’s burly arm and pinched the muscles. “See that brawn?” he cried. “That’s strength to lift!” He touched the prisoner’s calf with the toe of his shoe. “And strong legs to pull and carry for you!”

  “La,” muttered Polly in a shaky voice. “What will they be doin’ with us? Raisin’ our skirts to see if we’ve legs under them?”

  Charity didn’t answer. She wanted to tell Polly it would be all right, but the words stuck in her throat. It wasn’t going to be all right. How could it?

  Of the women, the Spanish lady was sold first. A fresh-faced young fellow who looked for all the world like the seamen Charity remembered in Torquay, had been studying her with open admiration. Rather old-fashioned in dress, he wore no coat, a clean white ruffled shirt, a wide sash and big floppy boots. He stepped forward promptly and made the first bid.

  The Spanish woman eyed him with contempt. His honest gray eyes smiled back at her. Charity thought he looked the best of the bunch, and watched as he bid eagerly—once even raising his own bid. He’s bound to have her, she thought, as the auctioneer brought down his palm with a thump on the block. “Sold to Timothy Hobbs,” he said, adding under his breath, “I wish you joy of her, Tim. They have long claws, those Spanish wenches.”

  Haughtily, Timothy Hobbs’s purchase stepped down from the block and stared with loathing at her buyer. He was taken aback. With a shrug she turned her back on him, folded her arms and tapped her foot. He looked worried and stood beside her indecisively, not knowing what course to take.

  Charity was propelled to the block next. She stood above the crowd in the brilliant sunlight, her bright hair—long ago having come loose from its pins—blowing in the trade winds. Her dress was untidy, her eyes dark from sleepless nights, but there was a defiance in her gaze and she held herself proudly.

  Damned pirates, the lot of them—they wouldn’t make her crawl!

  The bidders went wild. Captain St. Clair, bidding for her as a “gift” to his men, was soon left out, and the brothel owners, their eyes kindling at such a boon to their trade, snapped out bids against each other so fast the auctioneer could not keep up. Two hundred pounds—three. Five hundred. Seven. Nine. At this unprecedented bidding, the crowd pressed forward. Hoping her pounding heart would not burst through her chest, Charity kept her chin lifted and looked out toward the harbor.

  “One thousand!” roared a big voice.

  “Ravenal bids one thousand,” intoned the auctioneer. “Come on, my hearties, are you going to let Court have this fair bit of England washed up on our shores?”

  “Twelve hundred!” howled a red-faced brothel owner.

  There was a momentary pause. Charity swallowed.

  “Captain Court bids fifteen hundred!” roared the big voice.

  The brothel owner turned to glare at him. Then he looked up at Charity, standing cool and beautiful above him, and moistened his lips with his tongue. “Seventeen hundred!” he screeched and his voice cracked.

  Alertly the auctioneer looked toward the big booming voice..

  “Too rich for your blood, Ravenal?” he demanded.

  “Eighteen,” boomed the reply.

  “Nineteen hundred!” screamed the brothel owner.

  “Two thousand.”

  There was a dead stillness. The brothel man turned white and stumbled away through the crowd.

  “Sold to Captain Court for two thousand pounds,” said the auctioneer, slapping his palm down upon the block. “Come and pay up, Ravenal.”

  “I've one more yet to buy,” roared the big voice.

  Glad of the arm that reached out to help her from the block, Charity descended a little shakily. She had escaped the brothels and the horrors of St. Clair’s ship but she had yet to face the pirate Court.

  Polly’s turn was next.

  To her shame, Charity had forgotten all about asking for a doctor. Now she wasn’t sure Polly was going to be able to stand upright on the block. Her face deeply flushed, eyes glazed, Polly swayed under the blazing tropical sun. She looked very sick and the men gazed at her uneasily. Bidding was not brisk. She was quickly knocked down to the big voice.

  “Sold to Ravenal,” cried the auctioneer.

  “Not to Ravenal,” announced the big voice. “Sold to Captain Court.”

  “I stand corrected,” laughed the auctioneer. “Come collect your property, Ravenal. I think she’s going to fall down.”

  “This woman is sick,” cried Charity in indignation, as Polly wavered. “You surely aren’t going to—”

  Polly righted herself. “It’s a fever,” she gasped. “I did feel it coming over me on shipboard.”

  The big voice boomed, “Leeds, you’re a doctor. Have a look at her.”

  A slender wiry man eased through the throng and bowed deferentially before Charity and Polly. “My name is Kirby. I'm a doctor.”

  Polly gave him a doubtful look.

  “Even though I’m a buccaneer,” he grinned, and there was something in his sharp face to inspire confidence, “sure and I’m still a doctor.” With a practiced hand, he touched Polly’s forehead. “You’re very hot,” he muttered. “It might be best you come with me, mistress. I’ve got a room or two in my house that serve as an infirmary for my friends when they get themselves sliced up. I could take care of you there; there’s a Frenchwoman who helps me—you’ll like her.” As he spoke, he was leading a doubtful Polly, who looked quite dizzy and glassy-eyed, away with him. Charity watched her go half in approval, half in dread.

  “Tell Court I’ve taken this one to my house, John,” Leeds Kirby called through that confusing hubbub of voices, the clank and clash of scabbards and sword hilts banging against each other as they jostled. Then a heavy hand fell on Charity’s shoulder and she looked up and up—for the man was a giant—into that big smiling face that had looked so wolfish at a distance. Up close it seemed only a weathered English face with honest blue eyes. This man could not have looked more unlike a pirate if he had tried. Charity felt he must have but recently escaped from some woodpile, where he had been earnestly chopping wood for a buxom wife and six children.

  “I’m John Ravenal, mistress,” he said in that voice that matched his frame. And then more gently, “You’ve nothing to worry about, mistress. Tis Jeremy Court that’s bought you and he’s a real gentleman.”

  Charity found that hard to believe.

  At a cry from behind her, she turned. Timothy Hobbs, the young fellow who had bought the Spanish lady, was finding he’d got a little more than he’d bargained for. He must have tired of waiting and taken her arm, for now she had scratched his face—a wicked-looking scratch that had drawn blood.

  Charity held her breath. Would this fresh-faced young fellow punish his new-bought slave for that small attack? She stared a
t him, noting how upset he looked. His was a good English face, she thought, such a face as she had often seen in Devon, on the thin side and with resolute eyes and chin.

  “I but asked her would she take my arm,” he cried, upset.

  “She speaks only Spanish,” said Charity sharply, adding in that tongue, “He only wanted to take your arm, senorita.”

  The Spanish lady sniffed, but Charity asked her name and learned that it was Dona Isabel de Cordoba y Hernandez. She conveyed this information to Dona Isabel’s owner.

  “Wouldst tell her that I intend her no mischief, m’lady?” implored the slender young buccaneer with the scratched face. “I but wish to convey her to my lodgings and set before her a good dinner.”

  Charity supposed that was the most either of them could hope for. She translated to Dona Isabel, who cried fiercely, “I will go with him, but if he so much as lays a hand upon my person, I will run him through with this hatpin which I carry in my bosom.”

  “He seems a decent fellow,” cautioned Charity. “You might end up in worse hands. I wouldn’t be in a hurry to run him through with a hatpin.”

  From Dona Isabel’s cold eyes flashed a look that said in Spain honor was measured by loftier standards. But she accepted the arm proffered her, and Timothy gave Charity a brilliant smile as they departed.

  Now Charity realized her giant was waiting patiently. “I will see you safe through the streets of the town,” he explained. “Tis a rough town and Captain Court would not wish you to be hurt or insulted on the way.”

  She was astonished. Somehow she had believed all pirates, when ashore, spent their time guzzling in filthy taverns with half-naked women, whom they bedded beneath the dirty tables.

  The buccaneers of Tortuga, she was told, were not all low criminal types.

  “We are the Brethren of the Coast, mistress,” Ravenal explained gravely as they wound their way through the narrow twisting streets lined with Spanish style houses.

  “And what does that mean?” asked Charity, still tense from the galling experience of being publicly sold like a horse or a cow.

  “Why, it means we abide by rules, mistress, that we do not attack ships flying our own country’s flag. We are not such as your Barbary corsairs stabbing out at all of Christendom. We are men of honor.”

  Although she considered this statement ludicrous in the light of his being by his own admission a buccaneer, his honest face glowed so with righteousness that she held her tongue and tried to keep up with his long stride as they made their way over the cobbles. Overhead the sun beat down fiercely. She could feel her green dress sticking to her, and the men who passed them—many of them were such as to strike terror into the heart of any honest citizen—stripped her boldly with their eyes, although she observed that they gave a wide berth to her stalwart companion. Obviously, Captain Court had given his new purchase a more than adequate escort.

  There was some consolation in that, but her heart was still beating wildly when they reached a house that stood higher than the others and looked out over the harbor. The big square Spanish house was two stories tall and built of stone. Its first floor windows were protected by heavy iron grille as well as shutters, and the upper casements reached the floor behind iron lace work balconies.

  At any other time she would have appreciated the beauty of the house. Today she did not.

  Ravenal knocked, and a servant appeared. With trepidation. Charity accompanied the blond giant through a heavily carved nail-studded door and into a cool high-ceilinged hall that seemed dark after the brilliant sunlight. Following the clomp of Ravenal’s heavy boots into a beautiful inner courtyard in which a pinkish stone fountain tinkled, she blinked as the bright sunlight, shafting down through the waving palms of the patio, struck her eyes.

  “I will leave you now, mistress,” Ravenal said gravely. “Captain Court’s servants will attend to your needs.”

  “Is he not here?” she asked, bewildered.

  “Nay, he has business elsewhere. I doubt you’ll see him tonight, but if you do twill no doubt be late. I wouldn’t wait to dine with him.”

  Charity gave him a look of complete amazement. She had been bought in a pirate’s market and by now she had expected to be fighting off her purchaser tooth and nail. Instead, she was being treated as if she were the honored guest of a Colonial planter.

  She told herself suspiciously it was too good to last, and when the gentle-looking young servant girl reappeared again—no doubt to escort her to some dark room that could be securely locked from the outside—Charity waved her imperiously away. The girl went, looking bewildered. Still nervous, Charity paced about the courtyard, which was paved with beautiful tiles—stolen, she guessed, from a ship conveying them to the Colonies. Curiously she looked about her at her new prison. Two-tiered collonaded galleries encircled the courtyard, and an outside stone stairway led upward to the second floor. The pillars were of uniform round stone—booty also, she guessed, being brought to New Spain, as was the handsome iron grillwork balustrade that connected the pillars.

  In some ways, the house rivaled Magnolia Barony. It was not so rawly new, for one thing. The doors, for instance, must have been seized in the sack of some Spanish Colonial town; they were richly ornate, and might have been torn from the dwelling of a rich merchant or even a Colonial governor, to grace the home of a swaggering buccaneer.

  That Court was a swaggering buccaneer, Charity had no doubt. He would arrive shortly to claim her as his prize. The thought made her leap up from the stone bench where she had rested for the moment, and pace about again.

  She considered the possibilities. Running away would be difficult. This was an island surrounded by a deceptively beautiful sea—she could not walk away from her jailer on land as she had done in Dynestown. Nor was there a laughing Tom Blade to come to her rescue. Her heart hurt a little at the thought of him. The Gull had been taking her to Barbadoes; she had assented to the journey partly hoping to see him again—if he was still alive. He had been after all her first love.

  She returned to her situation. If she slipped out and made her way back into the heart of the town and tried to find employment as a barmaid and dyed her hair—no, she shrank from a dash into the town. Remembering the rough evil bearded faces that had passed her in the street, the lecherous bawdy laughter of the few women she had seen, she knew the town held no answer.

  She must think of something else. Suddenly the answer came to her. There was some sort of government here, a French governor, she thought she had heard. She would appeal to him. Although he might not be able to keep order along the wild waterfront, he surely would not countenance an English woman being sold in the market like a head of livestock. She would go to him now.

  She jumped up and started across the courtyard when she heard the heavy front doors thrust open and the sound of boots. A number of booted feet. Quickly, she shrank back and hid behind a cabbage palm that flung itself riotously upward, clambering over the ironwork. Men strode through the courtyard, three of them, their boots clattering over the stones, and disappeared into a room at the other side. She waited, afraid to move lest she be discovered—and waited too long.

  The three of them tramped back again, carrying a long roll that looked like a map—she could not really see them through the leaves in the gathering dusk. They settled themselves, she guessed from the scraping of chairs, in the big room beside the front door.

  She had lost her chance to leave.

  Perhaps there was a back entrance. She looked uneasily upward. Night fell fast in the tropics, and it was falling fast here. Already the sky was a darker blue and the shadows had deepened around the palms in the courtyard. She moved back through the courtyard and found her way to the kitchen.

  It was occupied by a broad-beamed, muscular cook who wore big skirts and wide gold loops hanging from her ears, and by the little servant girl who had admitted them. Although the cook scowled fiercely at sight of Charity, the slender little servant girl leaped up and smiled re
assuringly. She moved toward Charity, light-footed, dark braids swinging, the light from the fireplace playing over her gold bracelets.

  There was no passing the cook to go through that small heavy wooden door at the back of the kitchen, for as Charity moved toward it, the big woman stepped forward belligerently and barred her way.

  Charity glanced toward the meat roasting on a spit in the fireplace. It smelled delicious. She was very hungry and felt herself weakening in her resolve to leave at once. The servant girl, her dark eyes anxiously studying Charity, noted that glance and gestured toward the heavy wooden trestle in the center of the room. The fragile little maid ran to the cook and made signs. Charity began to understand. The girl was a mute. She came back and took Charity’s wrist in her slender hand and led her to a wooden bench before the table.

  Her resolve now entirely weakened by the delicious aroma wafting from the meat revolving over the fire, Charity sat and allowed a heavy silver trencher to be set before her and a chased flagon, also of heavy silver, filled with wine. Fresh bread was brought and a dish of beans and some vegetables Charity could not identify. The girl watched anxiously to see if she was pleased.

  Charity smiled and beckoned her to sit down. Looking delighted, the girl did so. The cook spoke sharply, and the girl bounced up again and began piling bread on a silver charger while the cook cut great hunks of the freshly roasted meat, savory and dripping, onto another even more massive charger. The girl trundled away with the first charger into the now dark courtyard, her bare feet making no sound on the smooth stones.

  Charity ate slowly, watching the girl return and stagger away under the weight of the second charger piled high with hot meat. The bread was coarse but it was good. When the girl returned, she brought Charity a hunk of the delicious meat, which Charity washed down with fine Madeira. Two tall flagons she drank to bolster her for what lay ahead. Escape tonight was now impossible. Even if she could find the governor’s house in the darkness—and she would never make it through these evil streets, she would surely be dragged down and ill-used before she ever reached it—it was unlikely that his servants would open the door at night to a stranger.