The Diamond King

by Patricia Potter

  And the captain? He most certainly was wanted by the English, whether for piracy or treason.

  But she would be safe.

  Oddly enough, the idea held little comfort.

  Robin had left with the captain at the warning. Now he returned, opening the door quietly and closing it in the same way. He walked soundlessly to the cot and peered down at Meg.

  “She’s sleeping,” Jenna mouthed soundlessly.

  He nodded.

  Jenna rose and went over to the other side of the room. Robin followed.

  “What’s happening?”

  “An English warship,” he said. “The captain is trying to outrun it into a squall where we can lose them.”

  “They have seen us?”

  “Aye. It turned in our direction. The captain wanted me to tell you it might get rough.” He looked over toward Meg, his brows gathering together in the same way she had seen the captain’s do. “I will be staying with you to help.”

  She looked at the lad, realizing that many of his mannerisms were modeled after Malfour’s. He must be a hero to Robin.

  Her heart jerked at the thought. What chance would Robin ever have if he followed the thieving ways of his mentor? And what would become of Meg, who obviously worshiped both of them?

  Somehow she would have to get them safely off this ship.

  What would David Murray say if he were confronted with two small Jacobites as well as a woman who many said carried the devil’s mark?

  She walked around the room and secured what she could, placing medicines back in the cabinet and blowing out the lantern. It threw the cabin into gloom, and she knew they were heading toward evening.

  “Do you think she will be all right?” Robin asked, uncertainty and a need to be reassured once more in his voice.

  “I think she is a very stubborn and braw lass,” she said. “And that is very important.”

  Robin, who until now had seemed more man than child, gazed into her eyes as if he were seeking her heart in them, and the truth.

  Then he looked away.

  “What do you plan to do after this journey?” she asked.

  “We are going with Will to Brazil,” he said.

  She raised an eyebrow. “To Brazil?”

  He suddenly clamped his lips together. She knew he’d forgotten for a moment she was the enemy. A Campbell.

  The ship rose, then shuddered as it plunged into a trough. She leaned down and held Meg as firmly as she could without waking her.

  A huge roar blasted through the room, and she thought they were being fired upon until she realized it was thunder. Lightning erupted in an explosion of light outside. The whole sky must have been alight to illuminate the cabin through the small portholes. The ship shook, then settled back down into another trough before rising again.

  The cabin went dark again.

  “I’m going above,” Rob said. “I will be right back.”

  “Is it safe for you?” she asked, thinking that the last place she wanted to be now was on deck. She wanted to be below only slightly more.

  “Yes,” he said. “There are safety lines. I want to see how long …” She heard worry in his voice and knew instinctively the concern was for Meg rather than himself.

  She wanted to stop him, but she could not do that and hold Meg safely at the same time. She did not think he would take advice from her even if she had the right or authority to do so. Still, she wanted to reach out and stop him.

  “Robin …”

  “Lord Robin,” he said bitterly, then dodged out the door before she could do anything else. So she had been right. He did come from the aristocracy. And he evidently regretted those few moments in which he’d lowered his guard.

  For the first time since she’d been at sea, Jenna felt real fear. Even more than when the Charlotte had been fired upon. She felt it more for Meg and Robin than for herself.

  The ship rolled.

  Meg woke with a small scream.

  Jenna leaned over, protecting and holding the child’s body with her own. “It is all right,” she said. “’Tis only a storm.”

  But in the dim light of the cabin, she saw the fear in the child’s face. “Cannon,” Meg said.

  “Nay, ’tis only thunder.”

  “Da,” she cried, her voice contorted with terror.

  Jenna’s heart skipped several beats as she took Meg’s hands in her own.

  “Where’s Da?” Meg was delirious, obviously back in other places that were full of terror.

  Jenna’s heart lurched. She’d believed her past was filled with sorrow. It was nothing like that experienced by Meg.

  She wet a cloth and bathed Meg’s face, now dry and hot from fever. “It’s all right, love. You are safe. Everyone is safe.”

  But the lass obviously did not hear her.

  “Da,” she kept saying. “Please, please don’t die.”

  The door slammed open, and Rob appeared at her side. She felt droplets of water and realized he was shaking.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Yes.” But his voice didn’t seem so sure. His teeth chattered.

  He stationed himself on the other side of the cot, kneeling on the floor since there was no chair, and when light crackled through the portholes again, she saw that he clutched Meg’s other hand.

  Meg cried out again. “Da. Please, please don’t die.”

  Stricken, Jenna looked toward Rob. “She was not … there?”

  “Aye, she was. After the battle, her mother and she went looking for her father. They found him as he was dying. Then the Sassenach came. They … abused her mother. Meg hid, but heard everything. Later she got her mother to the woods, but she was never the same and she died when we were with Will.”

  Dear God. Jenna struggled to hold back tears. It would not do Meg any good. Only toughness would.

  She suddenly understood Captain Malfour, or Will, or whoever he was, and why he was what he was.

  You could drown in these children’s stories.

  But what Malfour was doing was disastrous. He was turning their loss into hatred, into a path that would eventually lead to more violence and death.

  Lightning snaked into the room again, and she saw the pinched faces of the children. Thunder roared overhead, and the ship bounced like a cork in the sea. Fear surged through her again. Stronger. This was nature. She could at least try to reason with human beings. You could not reason with nature.

  And she wanted these children to live, even more than she wanted to live. She wanted them to have joy and happiness and security and love. Everything they needed so badly.

  Thunder boomed again.

  A cry escaped Meg’s lips.

  “’Tis nothing but a wee storm,” Jenna whispered.

  Meg only tossed more wildly. Her fingers were still in tight fists, the knuckles white with strain.

  Light exploded into the room again, and the ship seemed to roll all the way to the side.

  Jenna leaned over and caught Meg. The cot was bolted to the floor, but Meg was not bolted to the cot.

  It was all Jenna could do to keep from letting out a scream of her own, but that would only terrify Meg more. She grasped Meg’s hand even tighter as the ship groaned and creaked and fought her way through the waves. Jenna heard the shattering of glass as bottles broke loose from their moorings and the sound of doors swinging back and forth as their latches gave way. The lanterns, their contents emptied for safety, swung wildly as the floor heaved.

  During another flash of lightning that illuminated the cabin, she saw Robin’s white face. Yet he, like Meg, displayed a courage that would humble most men.

  “It’s all right, my lady,” he said. “The captain is a fine sailor. He can do anything.”

  Jenna wasn’t so sure. The captain was apparently a successful brigand, but could he do anything else? Such as steer this ship through these seas?

  She prayed he and his men were competent seamen. She had encountered other storms in the past w
eeks, but nothing like this. It was as if the ship were being tumbled over the fingers of God.

  She prayed silently over and over again. She did not want Meg—or Robin—to know how afraid she was.

  Meg whimpered. Her body was rigid, her lips clamped in pain. Her nails had pierced Jenna’s skin as she’d clutched her hand ever tighter.

  “It’s all right if you yell,” Jenna whispered.

  “Nay,” Meg whispered. “The English will hear us.”

  Fear ran through her. The child was somewhere else. A dark place full of terror. Her heart broke.

  “What can we do?” Rob’s voice was full of fear. She could feel his anxiety.

  She wished she had an answer. How did one stop a plunging ship in a storm, or cool a raging fever, or cure an infection? How did one prevent war, or banish evil? She had never felt so helpless in her entire life.

  “Talk to her,” she said. “Hold on to her hand. Let her know you are here.”

  “It’s not enough.”

  Nay, it wasn’t enough. But she had nothing else to offer at the moment, except her prayers.

  “You can pray,” she said.

  “God doesn’t listen,” Robin said bitterly. “If there is a God.”

  She was shocked for a moment. She knew that many Jacobites were Catholic, while her family was Protestant, but she had never met anyone who did not at least proclaim themselves believers. To do otherwise was heresy.

  She knew about heresy. When she was a child, she had a way with animals as well as healing. It had only added to the rumors associated with her birthmark. Children had taunted her with the accusations of witchcraft. So had people in the nearby village. It was a fear that had infected her parents and had turned them away from her, not because of superstition but because they felt it cast suspicions on the entire family.

  Was heresy worse than being a Jacobite child in today’s Scotland?

  Jenna was beginning to hate what she was, what she had been. She didn’t know if she could have done anything had she been more aware. But she should have seen. She should have tried to help.

  Captain Malfour had tried.

  She did not want to think well of the pirate.

  He hated her, hated everything she was. She hated what he was. You did not fight violence with violence. You did not defeat enemies by becoming a thief and murderer. You did not kidnap women or other helpless civilians. You did not take children on perilous voyages.

  They stowed away. He could have sent them back. One side of her argued with another, even as she realized neither was helpful.

  She was where she was, and she had to make the best of it. At least no one had attacked her person. But that was of little comfort as she tried to ease the agony—both present and past—of a young lass.

  Meg!

  With every great heave of the ship, Alex could almost feel what it did to Meg’s thin body.

  The storm had been the only escape. But he had not realized how bad a storm it would be.

  He tried not to think of Meg. There was nothing he could do now. He could only hope that the Campbell lass had common sense. And Rob should be with her now. The lad had come on deck until Alex had told him he needed to stay with Meg. They could not be trusting a Campbell.

  Mainly, though, he wanted the lad to be safe belowdecks.

  If there was any place safe in this squall … Squall, bloody hell. It was closer to a typhoon.

  More than ever, he wished he’d taken the children back to Paris.

  Lightning seemed to leap from cloud to cloud, and Claude’s shouted orders were barely audible through the noise of driving rain and pounding thunder. The decks were dark except when the occasional flash of lightning lit the entire sky.

  Lifelines had been rove fore and aft the decks to prevent the crew from being washed overboard, and the sails were being furled. He’d given Claude command. The first mate had more experience with storms than he did, and Alex knew enough to admit what he didn’t know. Instead, he worked to furl the sails with the other seamen, hearing their oaths, their prayers to the saint of seamen.

  He was drenched through and through, and more tired than he believed possible, when a furled sail broke loose, flapping in the wind and threatening to tear away the main-yard. He climbed up the mast; he wouldn’t ask another man to do it.

  As he perched above the sea, the Ami plunged through waves twice its height. He held on for dear life as he cut the halyards and barely avoided being swept away as the sail flapped against him. Then it was gone, carried out of sight by the wind.

  He hung there for a moment, fascinated by the majesty of the storm, then carefully climbed down. His hands were swollen from the burn of the ropes and the irritation of salt water. His bad leg ached from the strain he’d placed on it.

  Claude gave him a nod of approval as he landed back on the deck. Despite the fact that he was the captain, he felt a sense of accomplishment that had eluded him most of his life. He’d had an easy, comfortable existence until he joined Prince Charlie. He’d had a good education and had followed a childhood dream to go to sea, but with his father’s fortune behind it, he hadn’t had to work at it.

  All that had disappeared at Culloden. Since then he’d lost much of his confidence and certainly the arrogance. Defeat and hunger did that to a man. Thieving did it, too.

  He’d seen the contempt in the Campbell lass’s eyes. It had hurt, even coming from that quarter, or perhaps even more coming from that quarter.

  Burke awaited him below, muttering to himself about bloody fools.

  Only another damn fool Scot, and one who hated the sea, would stand out there in the gale and worry about a worse fool. Alex had sent him down earlier to see to the prisoners. But now he’d been enlisted to handle the sheets as had every other man jack.

  “What?” he yelled to Burke as the man continued to mutter.

  Burke’s reply was lost in the scream of the wind.

  Alex moved around the deck, working the sails and grabbing a sailor as he almost plunged into the sea when a huge wave washed over the deck. He, along with the other sailors, cowered under the bulwarks and held on to the belaying pins or whatever they could find to keep from being swept overboard.

  The rain battered the decks, and the wind continued to howl like a banshee.

  It seemed forever before the winds gradually grew less fierce, and the ship righted ever so slightly.

  Claude ordered some sail, enough to steady the vessel, and directed the helmsman to turn the ship southwest with the wind. Waves still washed over the decks, keeping him from opening the hatches, and Alex could only wonder what was happening below, only pray to whoever might be listening that the Campbell woman and Rob were protecting little Meg. Hamish’s knowledge of the sails had required his presence abovedecks.

  The ship seemed tiny in the whirlwind of the sea, and the clouds still twisted and writhed so low he felt he could reach out and touch them.

  Like the others, he braced himself as the ship continued to roll, then finally steadied slightly as the sky seemed to lighten. The waves were not as vicious, and finally the crew could move without help rather than lurching from one fixed object to another.

  When the water no longer crashed over the deck, Alex and another seaman opened the hatchway. He climbed down awkwardly, his leg paining him more than usual. He tired to ignore it as he reached the sick bay, opening the door.

  The floor still moved with the heavy seas. The cabin was dark. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could see the Campbell wench. She had her arm held across Meg, and the other fixed to the bolted cot. Rob’s hand clutched Meg’s and the other kept her legs steady. A blanket had been cut and tied around her but apparently both the Campbell and Rob had thought that was not enough.

  He wondered how long they both had held those positions.

  “It’s lessening,” he said, and he felt, rather than saw, two sets of eyes on him. “How is she?”

  “Delirious,” the Campbell lass said. “She
kept talking about her da.”

  He approached her and stared at her fingers curled around the iron leg of the cot. They seemed anchored there and he had to open her fingers one by one.

  “It’s all right,” he said gently. “You can let go.”

  He noticed then that she was shivering.

  The ship was still tossing too much for him to light a candle or a lantern. “Rob, take … the lady to her cabin.”

  “I would rather stay with Meg,” she said.

  He started to say he did not care what she would rather do. She was a prisoner, and her well-being was his responsibility. Or so he told himself.

  “Why?” he asked harshly. “She’s just Jacobite refuse.”

  “She needs me,” the woman said stubbornly.

  He did not want to admire a Campbell, but that insidious feeling crept through to a heart he thought well shielded. He could hear the weariness in her voice, almost feel the pain of muscles too long strained in one position.

  “You will do her no good if you drop from exhaustion,” he said. He was aware of her eyes on him.

  “You must be exhausted, too,” she said, still contrary. He wondered whether she was always that way, or just to him.

  “I am used to it, my lady. I spent a year evading the English and their turncoat allies. There was little sleep.”

  “You think I have no heart,” she said.

  “I do not question your heart,” he replied. “I do not know you that well. I do question the endurance of your body. I’ll send someone to watch over her.”

  Still, she did not move.

  “Please let her stay.” Surprisingly, the weak, barely audible words came from Meg.

  “Oh, Meg,” the Campbell said. Then she looked at Alex. Even in the gloom, her eyes looked misty, as if tears hovered there. Tears for Meg.

  Alex tried to ignore them. Instead, he leaned down and felt Meg’s cheek. Still hot. But perhaps not as hot as it had been. Or was that merely wishful thinking? He had given up on hope and prayers long ago, but perhaps …

  He swallowed hard, then knelt next to Rob. “Meg?” His fingers touched her cheek.

  “I want her to stay.”

  He was too startled to react. She had been the fiercest of them all against their enemies. “Whatever you wish, little one,” he said finally.