“Need your shawl, you do,” observed Megan. “You’ll be getting a fever. I’ll go up and get you mine.”
“Nonsense,” said Charity. “It’s a fine warm night.”
And as if to prove it, she took a turn around the lawn before going to bed.
It was her undoing. As she strolled down beside the river on the soft grass a snake suddenly slithered toward her. Turning in panic to run, she fell, landing on a fallen branch, and cut her arm. There was another sound as the snake slid into the water and Charity scrambled up and ran toward the house. When she reached it, she discovered that her hand was wet. Blood had dripped from her chemise sleeve down onto her hand.
Not wanting to bother Megan, who might already have gone to bed, Charity hurried to her room. There, she bathed the cut in water from her cracked washbasin, then sat down wearily to think.
She did not really like the idea of stealing Marie’s jewels.
It wasn’t taking them that disturbed her, for they represented Marie’s commission on what had been stolen from others with her connivance. But . . . suppose René failed her. Suppose in spite of his apparent acceptance of her story, he had not been quite sure. Suppose Marie saw him tonight and in his arms convinced him of her loyalty. Then Charity might deliver the jewels to René, who would simply keep them . . . and she would be trapped in Charles Towne, having committed a criminal offense.
She paced about, feeling a deep unease, and finally decided tonight was the night she must strike. Tonight, she was sure of Marie’s absence. If she waited until the day the Flying Fin sailed, she well might not have access to Marie’s room. No, it must be tonight when Marie was gone. She would take some small piece that would not be readily missed. To that end, she did not undress, but only loosened her bodice and lay down on the bed in her green dress, waiting for the house to become quiet.
Outside a vagrant breeze rustled the leaves of one of the big five oaks, whispered through the magnolias. Lulled by the rustling and the soft breeze, she fell asleep.
She was awakened by the sound of her door opening. Her first confused thought was—Alan?
She lurched to an elbow to find herself looking into the muzzle of a gun—held in Marie Bellingham’s shaking hands. And in the bright moonlight that flooded the room, Marie herself was a startling sight. Still wearing the green riding dress she had worn to Charles Towne earlier in the day, she swayed on her feet, her eyes wild, her hair now covered with a black mantilla. From her left shoulder blood seeped through her sleeve, ran down her arm to her elbow, and dripped on to the floor. Speechless, Charity stared at this apparition.
“Damn you,” Marie said in a low venomous voice. “Damn you!” And swayed, falling like a graceful lily to the floor. Her black mantilla floated free as she fell and the gun dropped heavily from her nerveless fingers.
Charity started up and stared down at the fallen Marie. She tugged down the shoulder of Marie’s dress. It looked to her but a flesh wound, but it was bleeding freely.
Suddenly Charity straightened. This woman had staggered up these stairs to kill her—let Alan help her! She would not!
Alan was just coming out of his door as she reached it. “I heard a noise,” he said. “Something thumped above my head.” Seeing that she was white-faced and fully dressed in the middle of the night, he grew silent.
“Your wife needs you,” she said harshly. “She is in my room. I think she has been shot.”
Alan gave her a horrified look and rushed past her, running down the hall. She heard him take the attic stairs two at a time. Now was her chance! Seizing a candle from Alan’s room, she ran to Marie’s room, threw back the covers of the bed and took the coffer from the lower drawer of the chest. Careless Marie had left it unlocked. Quickly Charity ran her hands over the tumble of necklaces, brooches, rings—a ring, that would pay for her passage and its loss not be noticed in such a jumble. She seized a ruby ring and replaced the coffer.
She was just in time. Alan appeared in the doorway with Marie’s limp body in his arms. “Get bandages, hot water,” he cried. “And send for a doctor!”
In his arms, Marie stirred. “No doctor,” she murmured. “Tis not deep.”
He looked down at his wife in consternation. So pathetic was the expression on his face that for a moment Charity wanted to laugh.
“Hurry,” he said.
She sped to her room, slid the ring under her mattress, then rushed downstairs and seized a handful of linen napkins from the dining room. Rousing the old black woman who was sleeping soundly in the kitchen, Charity told her to heat water and bring it upstairs quickly.
When the wound was bandaged and Marie lay back on the pillows looking dazed, with Alan beside her, Charity crept away. Unable to bear the hot stuffiness of her room in her jangled state, she sat in the dark dining room. It was there she heard the thunderous knock on the front door. She peered out the window. Outside she could see several horsemen. The earth was soft from recent rains and she had not heard them come up. She was certain that this visitation had to do with Marie’s unexpected return. Charity waited while Alan answered the door and ushered his late-night visitors into the hall. From the darkness of the dining room she watched and listened.
The men who had ridden from Charles Towne to Magnolia Barony were terse in their explanations. A Frenchman named René du Bois had been murdered in his rooms—poisoned by manzanilla in his wine. The odor from the contents remaining in the glass was unmistakable. He had, it was presumed, shot his murderer. The woman who lived below him, roused by the shot, had rushed out and seen a woman in a green dress and black mantilla run into the street and leap onto a horse. Others had seen the horse take the cart track leading to Magnolia Barony. Would the landgrave be good enough to summon the women of his household, they asked gravely.
The landgrave saw no reason to disturb the women of his household, who had all gone to bed.
Then it must be added, said the leader of the deputation with a sigh, that the landgrave’s wife was said to have been in Charles Towne this very day, riding a horse and wearing a green dress.
The landgrave stiffened and said he would call out and shoot down any man who cast slurs on his wife’s reputation.
“No need, Alan. I will speak to the gentlemen.” Marie’s voice floated down to them. Looking up, Charity saw her standing at the head of the stairs, clad in a handsome white satin dressing gown frothing with lace. She was very pale, but there was nothing about her to indicate that she had fainted in her own blood a short hour before. Charity had to admire Marie’s courage as she drifted languorously down the stairs, clutching her satin robe about her with her left arm—which, Charity realized, gave her a chance to favor it without seeming to.
“What is the matter, Alan?” she asked. And when he had explained, she paled a little more. The deputation’s leader interposed to add there had been a trail of blood across the verandah leading to the front door. And here too! cried his companion—here in the hall leading upstairs, see it? Excited, they made for the stairs.
With his body, the landgrave blocked their way.
Ship’s manifests had been found on this man du Bois, he was told sternly. It would appear René du Bois might have been the man who supplied information to those damned buccaneers who lay in wait a few miles out. If it should turn out du Bois had had a female accomplice—
Alan’s face was gray.
“You are not looking for my wife,” he said grimly. “But for me. I am the man you seek.” Amid the general gasp he added, “I killed René du Bois.”
Charity chanced to be looking at Marie at that moment and saw hope surge up in her eyes. Suddenly Charity realized how she could refute Alan’s confession, and as she edged toward the kitchen door yet another member of the party burst in to announce breathlessly that only one horse in the stable had been recently ridden. As Charity pushed open the kitchen door she heard Marie’s contemptuous rebuttal. Josh had taken her horse, curried and fed him, and doubtless turned him out to pasture
. With this cool lie echoing in her ears, Charity raced up the back stairs to Marie’s room. The jewels were gone. And the gun. And the green dress—which was probably ashes on the kitchen hearth by now. But she did manage to find the black mantilla.
Back downstairs she ran, and rushed in before they could take Alan away. “He must not make this sacrifice!” she cried. “It was Marie—his wife. Examine her! You will find she is wounded in the left shoulder! And here—this is the mantilla that she wore.”
Alan’s pallor deepened but Marie, perfectly self-possessed, stepped forward.
“Nor can I let my husband make this sacrifice,” she declared proudly, and Charity paused, as did the others, to look at her. Was Marie ashamed that Alan had so handsomely taken the blame for her, she wondered, and thus thrust his neck in a noose?
Marie’s next words cut through any doubts she might have had.
“Arrest this woman!” Marie insisted, pointing toward Charity. “For it is she my husband shields with his false confession. A green dress, you say? is she not wearing a green dress? A mantilla, you say? Has she not found one readily to hand? I have known of her affair with this Frenchman—that she slips out to meet him—for some time. Eagerly has he sought invitations here to Magnolia Barony in his attempt to be near her. But she is a stray, a woman my husband rescued from pitiable circumstances, and he does feel responsible for her—but not for this! Nay, I will not let him shield her from this—the murder of her lover!”
For a moment Charity stood speechless with rage. Then a torrent of accusing words burst forth from her. She leaped at Marie and one of the men caught her roughly. She struggled with him and her exertions opened the cut on her arm. Blood stained her sleeve and he looked startled, staring down at it.
“The wound. . . .” murmured Marie, smiling. “Come,” she added, “we will see where this trail of blood leads.”
Too late, Charity realized that it led to her room in the attic, where Marie had come to confront—and possibly to kill—her. There too they found René’s gun, which had been fired—and the ruby ring. Manzanilla they all knew was readily procurable in Tortuga, where Charity had so recently been.
When the law men came downstairs, their case against Charity was complete.
Argument was useless.
Hands bound, she was dragged roughly away, and sat in front of one of the men on his gray horse as they plunged into the low ground fog of the cart track to Charles Town.
With a sense of doom, Charity rode in silence, head bowed.
Marie had won.
CHAPTER 46
Friendless and alone, Charity stared around her at the dark little jail cell into which they had thrust her. Still dazed by the rapidity of the events that had brought her to this state, she sank down on the narrow cot. Her situation, she knew, was hopeless. The case against her was too clear. Even Alan, looking at her in horror, had believed it. Though what lies Marie had told him, she could only guess.
Oddly enough, the fact that Alan believed her guilty did not disturb her so much. All the way through the fog she had seen before her another face, lean and hawklike, with wintry light eyes.
Restless, she got up and paced about.
Finally—now that she had not long to live—she faced the truth. Like a terrible explosion in her brain, she saw herself in a bright pitiless light.
She had never loved Alan—she loved Jeremy Court. Dear God, she had loved him from the first!
The force of that knowledge weakened her and she sank trembling to the cot again.
All the time I loved him I told myself twas only my body responded to him, not my heart—I could not bear to admit that I loved a man who didn’t love me. Twas why I worried so when he was gone, why I tried so hard to enrage him—I wanted to strike at him, to make him feel something for me other than naked lust! Oh, God, I wanted his love and I could not admit it—even to myself.
And when . . . when he took me, when his hands caressed me, when he held me close in his arms, I could fool myself for a little while that he was truly mine and would always be mine. But when our love-making was over, I realized it could never be .. . never. And it made me monstrous uncivil to him. My pride could not stand it, knowing I’d always be second, that another woman would always be first in his heart.
Perhaps tis better I hang, she thought wildly. I have nothing left to live for. All the men I loved have either not loved me or turned out badly. And Court ... her eyes grew tender. Ah, Jeremy, I left you . . . when all I wanted was to stay in your arms.
She covered her face with her hands and rocked with misery. Had he not once said he’d had to be content with the crumbs from Marie’s table? Oh, why could she not have been content with the crumbs from his?
On her prison pallet, she writhed in dry-eyed grief, for she had learned the secrets of her own heart too late.
Only Megan came to see Charity at the jail. She looked old and tired and her gray hair was not neatly combed as usual, but flew about. It hurt Charity’s heart to see her so, for Megan had become a second mother to Charity.
“Ye must plead your belly,” Megan insisted.
“I won’t do that,” frowned Charity.
“Sure and tis the only way to be sure of another nine months of life! All accused women do it!”
Nine more months of this torment. . . .
“Perhaps I’m tired of living,” murmured Charity.
“Ah, now, that’s no way to feel,” chided Megan. “Your trial’s been postponed. Dr. Cavendish interceded for ye.”
Charity laughed shortly. “He needn’t have bothered.”
“Tis not because of that spineless planter that ye feel this way,” mused Megan. “What is it makes ye want to die, Charity?” She gave her a shrewd look. “What really happened on Tortuga? You weren’t in no tavern there, were you?”
“No,” said Charity, taking a deep breath. “I was mistress to a man you may have heard of—Jeremy Court.”
Megan looked startled. “La!” she cried. “The buccaneer!”
Charity nodded. Suddenly she wanted to tell someone, and she poured out the whole story into those kindly old Irish ears, about Court and herself and Marie and St. Clair and René. “And worst of all,” she finished, “after all the hell Court went through to get back to her, Marie was just using him. So she could get her share of the prizes St. Clair took—she has a whole coffer full of jewels, rubies, diamonds, emeralds. It was in the lower drawer of her chest, but she must have hidden it somewhere else before she came downstairs because I couldn’t find it.”
"That must have been what she was doing the night you was taken!” exclaimed Megan, her eyes widening. “The voices downstairs woke me and then I heard someone creeping up to the attic. Funny sounds came from that little room over her’s—like someone was moving boards in the floor.”
“That’s probably where she put them,” Charity agreed in a weary voice. “But she’ll have moved them again by now, in case I alerted the authorities.”
“I could alert them for you,” said Megan sturdily.
“No.”
Charity put a dissuading hand on Megan’s arm. “I’ll not drag you down with me. You need your job, Megan.”
“Then won’t nothing dissuade you, Charity?” cried Megan, leaning forward. “Plead your belly. Sure there’s no harm, and in nine months maybe things will have changed.”
Charity shook her head. “I’ve made a mess of my life,” she said quietly. “It’s best over now.”
Her gaze was resolute. Megan’s shoulders sagged as she said goodbye. They both knew it was for the last time.
All the dark night Charity lay awake, staring at the moon through the iron bars. Morning found her haggard-eyed and tired, but she had come to a decision.
She would not “plead her belly.” She would not grovel, she would not lie. She would go into court and —if they would let her, for she remembered how the magistrate in Massachusetts had cut her off—she would tell them all the truth. About Marie, about
Jeremy, everything.
Marie would have to leave Alan then or ... he would throw her out. She would no longer be accepted in polite society—and a woman as proud as Marie could not stand that. Marie would either have to find her way to Tortuga and live there as Jeremy’s mistress, or sink into some nameless backwater and be forgotten.
So Jeremy would at last have the woman he wanted or . . . she would have set him free.
As the days passed, Charity’s face took on a set purposeful look. She knew she could not get a message to Tortuga, but. . . gossip found its way there. A colorful story like hers would be repeated, and would warn Jeremy of Marie’s treachery, in case Marie found another pirate who wanted to fly under the famous Captain Court’s colors.
If they would not let her say these things in the courtroom, she would ask to make a last statement on the gallows. Prisoners were permitted to do that, indeed encouraged to do so, before they were hanged. Usually they were pious exhortations to others not to fall into evil ways, but she would give the waiting crowd the facts before the tightening hemp choked off her words.
It was little enough to do for him. . . .
Oh, God, she loved him so much. She put her head in her hands and wept. Wept not that she must die, but for what might have been. The life they might have had together that now would never be. Wept for her foolishness, the pride that had blinded her.
If only ... if only for a little while he had loved her, not just taken her body and enjoyed its wild response to him, but loved her . . . she could have taken that with her into whatever hell the hanged were tossed.
But now it was too late and she must do what she could.
Hot tears scalded her cheeks and ran down into her mouth. She sat up and dashed them away with the back of her hand. Her jailer would soon be bringing her breakfast and he would find her calm. And calm she would stay to the end.
Though the jail food was poor, consisting mainly of gruel and odd-tasting stews, she ate it, determined to keep up her strength. She wanted her voice to ring out clearly in the courtroom, and clearly once again on the gallows. She wanted its echoes to carry all the way to Tortuga. . . .
This Loving Torment Page 46
