He turned, almost sharply, wondering that a girl with half-African blood would dare speak to him thus. As he looked at her in the moonlight, she appeared to gather her robes of dignity about her. It angered him, for he did not wish to notice.
“No. Can you not see I am a busy man?” He gave a dismissing wave of his hand. “Go, then,” he said and strode up the quarterdeck steps.
Minette watched him go, once again stung by his indifferent rebuff. I’m not a lady. I’ll never be one. I’m not even worthy of his respect, she thought again. I’ll always be a slave in the white man’s eyes. Tears welled, but she squared her jaw and blinked them back.
Minette turned at the Carib’s voice. “Is you wantin’ to board Sir Karlton’s ship now?”
“Yes,” she breathed, “as soon as possible, Mr. Sam.”
“Come along, gal. I has the boat ready soon.”
She followed him across the deck to where a rope ladder waited. She noted the broad smile on the serving man’s face. He looked to be of Indian and African blood.
“Ain’t a female known to turn the head of the great Sir Erik Farrow ‘cept one. An’ she done upped and married an English lord.”
“If I wanted your opinion, I’d have asked for it.”
He chuckled, and Minette looked at him, unable to keep her curiosity down. “Who was she, d’you know?”
“Lavender Harwick. She got mad at Cap’n Foxworth and married his cousin instead.”
32
HEART’S UNSPOKEN DESIRE
The sun had long since set behind a silver-edged cloud as Emerald’s footsteps echoed hollowly on the planking of the Regale, lolling gently in the water. With eager anticipation she watched the motley crew lower the pinnace into the twilight waters, purple in hue beneath a shadowed sky. Soon now she would be swept into the strong arms of her stalwart father!
Above, stars flared and glittered like diamonds. She turned at the sound of boot steps, as surprised to see Baret Buckington as he apparently was to see her.
He paused, as though contemplating, before momentarily joining her on the wind-washed deck. “I thought Cecil and Zeddie had brought you to Karlton by now,” he said, nothing in his voice.
She did not know why, but the lack of warmth in his tone was disappointing. “There was a delay in getting my trunk aboard the longboat,” she explained in an equally toneless voice and turned away to look out at the sea, feeling the wind in her hair. “Naturally, I’m anxious to leave.”
“Naturally, you would be.”
She gave him a side glance as he stood there, the wind touching the billowing sleeves of his white shirt, his dark hair blowing.
He was watching her, but she could not see his expression. Then he walked to the rail of the ship and glanced below. “I wonder what’s keeping Cecil?”
She too glanced about. “He was here a moment ago.”
They lapsed into silence. He looked out across the sea. “A beautiful evening.”
“Yes,” she said, gripping the rail. “It is.” She looked up at the stars, then at him.
Baret’s expression was suddenly enigmatic, and he lifted his head to stare up at the masts barely visible against the darkening sky.
The moon rose above the water, a glorious white orb sagging in the purple twilight, strewing pearl-like glimmers across the sea. The wind that came on its heels carried the scent of the Caribbean and lifted the hems of Emerald’s skirts.
She turned toward him, feeling his gaze, and grew still as their eyes held.
Baret turned away. “Your father is waiting.” And he left her to hear his boots ringing as he went up the steps.
Good-bye, she thought and turned away too, stung by his disinterest.
Sir Cecil came walking up, accompanied by Zeddie, and she was brought without further delay to the rope ladder where a pinnace waited below, moving gently in the water.
Minutes later she was seated comfortably in the boat and looking out with expectancy toward her father’s ship. Zeddie too seemed pleased—and relieved—as the oarsmen began rowing their way across the water.
“Well m’girl, we made it after all, thanks to his lordship.”
Yes, she thought, and grew more tense as she pondered meeting her father.
What would he have to say about this adventure?
33
MARACAIBO
Sunset’s flaming streaks scribbled across the sky of the Spanish port of Maracaibo. Along a narrow cobbled street, still retaining heat from the day’s sun, a tall-storied house with its high windows screened in alabaster stared down on a sun-baked courtyard, ancient with tales of old Spain. Amid gnarled olive trees, Baret Buckington stood concealed in the shadows, waiting.
Tonight he wore a wide-brimmed Spanish hat and the exquisite uniform of a Madrid cavalero, its black collar embroidered with silver thread. A Latin cross hung from a silver chain around his neck, and beneath the tight-fitting black jacket he wore fine chain mesh from Toledo.
Having “borrowed” horses, he, Erik, and Levasseur had ridden into Maracaibo disguised as soldiers. Thus they had accomplished the first stage of their dangerous journey and had sheltered in a shadowy coffee house until dusk approached, behaving as men wishing for nothing more than to gamble among themselves. As dusk settled over Maracaibo, they casually found their way here to the courtyard of the villa where Lucca was held under guard.
Meanwhile, the pirate crew, consisting of men from the three captains, had left a small sloop in Lake Maracaibo and were now concealed on shore among the trees waiting with a pinnace for them to return with Lucca.
Erik was somewhere about, as was Levasseur. But just where, Baret was no longer certain, and that was what bothered him. He felt confident about Erik, now that he had made his break with Felix, but Levasseur was as treacherous and wily as any serpent coiled on a rock.
Except for the fact that Levasseur and his crewmen believed that they needed him to extract from Lucca the information about the Prince Philip’s treasure, Baret would fully expect a dagger in his back the moment he brought Lucca to the waiting ship.
He frowned. There was trouble and danger ahead. The expanding tale of Lucca’s knowing where treasure was hidden was only a pirate’s wishful dream that grew with the size of the spoken tale. Lucca was an old scholar, nothing more, a man who had changed his cowl for a heretic’s Bible and who had sailed with Viscount Royce Buckington aboard the Revenge as friend and confidant.
Baret doubted if Lucca knew anything of the remains of the Prince Philip beyond the fact that it had been sunk off the coast of Panama. Baret had not yet planned his response to Levasseur and his pirates once the truth was known. Of course he now had Erik to back him up. Levasseur would be a fool to come against them both.
His intense gaze was riveted upon a high window in the upper chamber where Lucca was being held by the Spanish viceroy, Petros de Guzman. The official was elsewhere in Maracaibo tonight, attending an official banquet to greet the admiral sent from the queen regent.
As darkness settled thickly over the courtyard, Baret listened, alert, his senses trained to recognize danger before it struck. Someone was following him? The chirping crickets ceased. A tense silence began to close in about him. A breath of sea-laden wind whispered. He did not like it. The rustling leaves could cover the approach of someone moving closer.
His head turned away from the window to the seasoned brick wall that bordered the flagstone courtyard. Trotting hoofbeats from several horses belonging to Spanish soldiers echoed with a hollow sound across the cobbles, followed by the rise and fall of lazy voices.
The wind cooled dots of perspiration on his handsomely defined features as the horses drew nearer to the courtyard wall. The point of his sword lifted slightly, and he waited.
The horses moved on, the sound of their hooves fading with the twilight. Overhead, the olive leaves brushed against each other, rustling. There was little time.
A rising wind coming from the Gulf hinted of a sudden storm. The crew
keeping the pinnace would be growing uneasy about the sloop secretly anchored in the shallows of Lake Maracaibo—a sheltered extension of the Gulf of Venezuela. The lake, as Baret knew, was no secure place to be anchored when a hurricane was brewing.
Again, he well knew that were it not for Levasseur’s greedy ambition to locate the plunder, the treacherous pirate would think nothing of taking the pinnace back to the sloop and leaving both him and Erik trapped in Maracaibo.
He was unable to see in the darkness settling over the courtyard, but his instincts told him he was not alone. And he sensed this was more than either Erik or Levasseur, who were also concealed somewhere among the trees. The presence he felt in the courtyard belonged to someone else—or was it his imagination? He tensed. Did that presence, perhaps of a fourth man, belong to one of the other pirates, sent to follow him here from the shallows where the pinnace waited? Sloane, perhaps. Was Levasseur leery, thinking that Baret might fail to keep his side of their bargain? Or did he have something more devious in mind?
Baret had written a one-line message to Lucca in Greek—a language certain to not be known by the Spanish soldiers—informing him that he waited below. Then he had rolled the paper about a smooth stone and carefully tossed it through the scholar’s window.
Once certain the prisoner had retrieved it, Baret waited among the olive trees for the reply.
Perhaps an hour had passed while Baret waited. When the old one did not appear at the window, concern gnawed at his insides. What was detaining him?
Behind the alabaster window, a small and arthritically twisted man, a scholar of Greek letters who had served as Cromwell’s appointed secretary to Viscount Royce Buckington on board the Revenge, sat hunched over his desk, his quill scratching busily.
Lucca was aware that the whereabouts of a certain treasure chest that Viscount Royce Buckington was reported to have stashed away containing jewels and gold from the prized Prince Philip had elicited profound interest within the English government—and without. He was not so certain that all in the Admiralty Court who held interest in the chest did so for the good of the Crown, as was suggested.
Scholar Lucca was convinced that certain men from Parliament who were working silently for his release from the Spanish viceroy were doing so not for King Charles, nor for his own sake, but with the treasure in mind and, more important, to silence his knowledge of the fate of the viscount.
Lucca found this to be a strange matter, considering that the Admiralty Court had already declared the viscount to be dead.
Evidently not all who speak of his reckless death in a duel at Port Royal believe their own words. Does the Admiralty believe in ghosts? he thought with a cynical smile.
Obviously those men who spoke the loudest of the man’s death were the most certain he yet lived.
Lucca would gladly return to London in order to testify before the Admiralty Court of Captain Royce Buckington’s innocence of piracy. For Lucca, London was not a terror. Execution Dock posed no threat to a man such as himself. He would set sail for England at once except for the misfortune of being held in Maracaibo on charges of heresy.
He frowned as his quill underlined carefully chosen words in the forbidden black book authorized by James I of England in 1611, a book that had belonged to the viscount. When his own Bible had been confiscated and burned as heretical, he’d managed to conceal the viscount’s, and this he intended to turn over to Baret.
Lucca smiled wearily. The Bible would be the least likely book that pirates would open to read, thus missing the information they sought on the whereabouts of the viscount. He had chosen the section in the Acts of the Apostles where Paul was in a storm on the Adriatic.
A faint sound caught his attention. He held his quill poised in silence.
Did it come from below in the courtyard? Perhaps Baret grew impatient. He must hurry. He hesitated a moment longer, his ear tuned to the slightest sound. He glanced toward the closed door. All remained silent in the villa.
Swiftly now he wrapped the Bible in a piece of cloth and tied it with a leather strap. He set it aside to write a letter—one that would only be a decoy to plant false information for the enemies of the viscount and Baret. He wrote:
And so, your lordship, how the infamous scoundrel named Levasseur came to discover my whereabouts here in Maracaibo, when I was certain my situation was such that I could never again contact you, is a mystery to me.
Yet I shall not divulge the information they so strenuously seek to anyone except you, the viscount’s fair son. The words you wish to hear are best left to a face-to-face meeting, whereupon I shall tell you all the known truth of where the treasure of the Prince Philip is located.
But it is my sad duty to report to you that your beloved father, the Viscount Royce Buckington, is dead—
Lucca’s quill dropped from his fingers. His head jerked toward the door. Rushing footsteps sounded in the outer corridor!
He struggled to his feet, tipping the chair in his haste. His jaw clamped, and he gritted his teeth against the stabbing pain in his crippled body as he sought to hurry.
He snatched the Bible and stuffed it inside his tunic, then attempted to reach the window to drop the half-finished letter into the courtyard.
The wooden door crashed open. He caught a glimpse of a Spanish uniform as he reached for the window.
“Stop, heretic! The letter in his hand, Marcos! Take it! Bring it to the viceroy and the English lord, Felix Buckington!”
Below in the courtyard, waiting in the shadow of the olive trees, Baret came alert. Shouts sounded within the villa—from Lucca’s chamber.
Lucca! Then was the letter too, with its precious information, in the hands of the soldiers? Was it possible to rescue him? He must!
He stopped. Another sound, this one from behind him.
Baret whirled, and with a whisper his blade lifted from its scabbard, the point coming up and reflecting in the moonlight.
A Spanish captain stood illuminated, his sword sheathed. For a moment Baret forgot that he was donned in Spanish uniform.
Evidently the captain suspected nothing and spoke to him in rapid Spanish.
Captain de Francisca thought him to be a guard by the name of Marcos, who had been on duty all evening.
If that were true, then where was this guard named Marcos?
Perhaps he was with the soldiers in Lucca’s room. How many soldiers were there? Could he find out without arousing suspicion? Somewhere in the garden Erik also waited, and Levasseur …
Baret’s own Spanish rolled from his tongue smoothly like oil. “Caption! Why do I stand here doing nothing to assist in the battle? Should I not strengthen the hands of my comrades inside the heretic’s chamber?”
The captain looked at him with contempt. “Battle? The old one is bent with disease. The order to put him to death is nothing. It has come from the English ambassador.”
The English ambassador! Why would any Englishman wish the viceroy to have Lucca put to death?
“Kill him? Is he not to be brought to Cadiz for the Inquisitors?”
“You ask too many questions, Marcos.”
“The English heretic is wily. And so are his friends. Who can trust them?”
“The Englishman Lord Felix Buckington has sent word from Jamaica. Lucca is to be put to death.”
Felix. Naturally he would have read the letter from Charlie Maynerd before Erik had been able to retrieve it.
“Caption, the soldiers may need my help.”
“Three soldiers are enough.”
He pretended shame. “You are right, Caption. Three soldiers of our illustrious queen could thwart a dozen heretics. I will go guard the horses. There are many thieves loose this night.”
The captain gave him an impatient look. “What is ailing you, Marcos? Pedro is on watch. What thief would steal the viceroy’s horses on the lighted street?”
Four men … plus this captain … if he could continue the masquerade a little longer, perhaps …
> He sensed the Spaniard’s measured look.
“You, Marcos,” came the proud voice. “How long have you waited in the courtyard?”
Was he growing suspicious?
“Only a short while, Capitan.”
“Step forward into the moonlight.”
So …
“As you wish, Capitan.”
When Captain de Francisca saw Baret’s slight smile and the point of his blade lifted, his swarthy face hardened, and he shouted a warning.
But before he could draw his sword, Baret landed a heavy blow to his jaw and another to his belly. The man doubled. A quick jab to the back of his neck sent the prison captain facedown onto the courtyard.
Baret stooped, unsheathed the captain’s sword, and threw it into the darkened trees.
The captain’s shout had alerted the soldiers inside the villa. Baret heard the clatter of their boots rushing over the flagstones. Where are Erik and Levasseur?
Two soldiers appeared. One ran ahead with sword drawn, while the other impatiently struggled with Lucca, dragging him along. The scholar tripped on his black robe, and the guard struck him.
That injustice fired the anger in Baret’s heart. He deliberately stepped into the clearing with the moonlight falling on his Spanish uniform, the silver of his blade reflecting.
A third guard came running, not from the house but from the direction of the horses near the street. For a moment, the Spanish soldiers did nothing as they saw his uniform. Where are the others?
Then one man noticed their captain lying on the court and shouted, pointing at Baret, “An impostor! Take him!”
“Lucca! Quick! Away!” commanded Baret, but Lucca could do nothing more than raise himself to an elbow on the stones, a shaft of moonlight falling on his silver hair beneath the cowl.
“The Bible,” he rasped. “Important … message …”
His urgent cry alerted Baret. He wondered what he meant, but there was no time to ask.
“Thy Word … a light … for your path …”
The soldier who had kept the horses rushed at Baret, seemingly anxious to make a name for himself.
Buccaneers Series Page 39
