Sea Witch

by Hollick, Helen

  Delighted at the unexpected prospect Tiola answered in the only way she could. “Then it seems I must accept. Thank you.” She was puzzled by his motive, but did a gentleman require one in order to impress a young lady?

  Stefan van Overstratten’s concept of a picnic would have done justice to a royal banquet. Everything had been thought of and provided, including a table and dining chairs. Tiola thought the slaves, who had lugged the stuff half way up the mountainside to the edge of the woods, were probably cursing her to Hell and back, but for once she did not care that another had toiled for her sake. She was enjoying herself. Stefan – he insisted on being called Stefan – was a charming host, regaling her and Jenna with such absurd stories Tiola was certain her sides would burst from laughter. It was good to find strangers were capable of offering kindness and friendship. Good to discover pleasure again after all the tears of the past.

  Jenna, claiming her ageing years were unsuited for walking the last stretch along the upward path to the summit, elected to settle herself in the shade and await the return of the younger couple. Grateful for the opportunity to forge ahead, striding out with the wind from the ocean tugging through her hair, her petticoats and overskirt billowing around her legs, Tiola confided to Stefan it was more probably Jenna’s increasing girth that tired her, not her age.

  “These hills do puff her so,” she explained. “I am continually suggesting she ought not bustle about so urgently, for where can you walk in Cape Town that is not a hill?”

  Stefan, offering his hand to help her over a tumble of rocks, his smile easy and pleasing, answered with his own amusement. “Ja, even the beach slopes, does it not? And with the wind constant from the south how often do you see the sea benign and flat?”

  He was pleasant company. The air on the summit was fresh and clean, smelling of flowers and fruit, tasting of the sea. The August sun was warm, its radiance feeling good on her face. Yesterday and the day before it had been raining, more typical of a southern hemisphere winter.

  At the top, everything was as he had promised. A panoramic view of the Cape Peninsula spread green and lush with its dazzling carpet of woods, vineyards and plantations. The straggle of the settlement seeming not so squashed together from up here; the gleam of so many white walls, the star shape of the fort, even the ugly spread of the V.O.C. granary barns were attractive from this height. The sea, shimmering beneath the sun, stretched away until it fell over the edge of the world.

  “It is truly beautiful,” Tiola announced with a quick breath of awe. “I cannot believe I have been denying myself this wonder.”

  The Dutchman forged a congenial smile. He had wanted to impress; it appeared he had been successful. Seated on a rock, blowing hard and mopping at the sweat beading his forehead, he stemmed a gasp of horror when Tiola added, “How much more splendid it must be from the Table itself!”

  Hastily he interjected, “The walk is not so pleasant, I believe, and the cloud often comes low, obliterating any expected view.” Relieved when she did not press the idea further he added, “One evening soon we must make this climb again. To come up before dark and watch the sun set on this side and the full moon rise on this,” he swung round pointing, “is beautiful to behold.”

  Tiola turned her head to smile at him, the suggestion sounding interesting, a little romantic perhaps? She was fifteen years old, a young woman alone – apart from her guardian – in a new and strange world, and Stefan van Overstratten was not displeasing to look upon. Was there more than mere politeness behind his offer she wondered suddenly? He was a man of means, unmarried, and apart from his sister, her useless husband and this newborn nephew, had no family. Such a man would be wanting a wife, and suitable wives were difficult to find here in Cape Town. The female population constituted native women, imported slaves, prostitutes or other men’s wives. Men of van Overstratten’s calibre usually applied to the marriage agencies in Holland and London. Unless there should be the rarity of someone suitable closer to home? Tiola blushed, flattered.

  ~ Beware! ~

  The voice of her grandmother shouted in her mind and Tiola gasped as a tumble of rocks slid from beneath her feet to bounce down the sheer side of the drop below. Van Overstratten grabbed at her arm, pulled her away from the edge. She had not realised she was so close! Her breath quivering she clung to his shoulders, not daring to look down, all too vividly imagining the fall. He smelt of cinnamon and fine-blended tobacco; a hint of sweat from the walk.

  “Come, come away from the edge Tiola,” he said, guiding her to stand more safely. Embarrassed, she let go of him, smiled her gratitude. His purring Dutch accent blending into his perfectly spoken English was low and seductive, although he mispronounced her name. He made the emphasis on the ‘o’, Ti- oh -la. She said nothing, did not think it polite to correct his error.

  Brushing his clean-shaven cheek close to hers, he pointed to a ship beating her way to windward, and casually slid his arm around her waist.

  He was charming, handsome and wealthy. Possessed impeccable manners, and she knew he was everything Jenna had hoped to find for her and more. For all that, Tiola would not be taking a moonlit walk with him. She was flattered by his attention but she did not want him as a husband. There was something about him, something her inner sense was trying to tell her. To not trust him? Why would that be? Instinct was warning her, and a witch’s instinct was never wrong.

  Those rocks had been very solid when first she had set foot upon them. Had the warning not been for the danger of a steep drop, but for something else entirely? One day she may find the truth, but for the moment Jenna would be feeling abandoned.

  Using her guardian as a convenient excuse, Tiola eased away from Stefan and began to descend the path. If the Dutchman realised her discomfort, he assumed it was because of her modesty. He made no mention of her reticence, indeed, admired her all the more for it.

  He would have to make enquiry, of course, discover whether there was public scandal of any sordid misdemeanour he ought to know of. She was a delightful young creature, and so far his attempts to find a wife suitable to breed him sons had been unsuccessful. He was concerned for her background, but she was obviously educated and intelligent. And beautiful women so rarely possessed these essential qualities as additions to their other, essential, attributes. He would need to search hard to find another as pleasing as Tiola Oldstagh.

  Walking behind her, discreetly admiring the sway of her hips, her slender waist and trim ankle, van Overstratten decided that perhaps he would not make his search for information too diligent. What he did not know would not concern him.

  Fourteen

  Luck followed Jesamiah Acorne like gulls trailing behind a fishing boat. They found a settlement a few miles up the coast and were fed, cared for and made welcome. It was a poor place, reliant on what the sea could yield, yet the five Spanish-descended families were willing to share what little they had. Those discarded by the sea were never turned aside by those who made a living from it.

  Jesamiah was grateful for the food they offered, a warm fire to ward off the chill of the night and the mosquitoes, and a comfortable bed. A girl, pretty in her rough way, had helped her mother salve and bandage his hands. By the second night she was sharing that comfortable bed, which had been hers anyway.

  Ten days and nights later, he lay awake staring at where the low supporting beams of the roof would be if there was light to see them by. The dwellings along here were nothing beyond shacks, made mostly of mud bricks or woven sticks plastered with a mud-and-dung daub. Dark and smoky inside, but dry and not infested by too many cockroaches. The mosquitoes were a nuisance, they always were, wherever you went. Jesamiah as with many a sailor, nursed a theory that drinking rum kept them away. It was nonsense of course, but a good excuse to keep a bottle always to hand. Except the rum had gone with the Salvation. The gut-rot stuff these settlers brewed, although having the same blissfully numbing effect on the senses, tasted foul.

  The flea-ridden bed was set i
n one of four alcoves. Beyond the shabby curtain a rectangular area provided a space where the family struggled through the daily misery of life. From the second alcove came Rue and Isiah’s contented snoring; along the opposite wall, the girl’s mother and wind-weathered father slept behind another thin and patched curtain. The girl’s bundle of younger brothers were squashed into the fourth.

  Her head was on Jesamiah’s shoulder, asleep, a delicate smile tipping the corners of her mouth, her hair spilling across his skin. She had not been innocent of a man, and would doubtless expect a handful of coins for her attentiveness when it came time for him to leave. Lying there, sleep beyond reach, Jesamiah remembered the first woman he had looked at with aroused interest but, as a raw youth, had been too embarrassed to approach. A blonde with tight-curled ringlets; more bosom than bodice. In Port Royal, the night he had met Malachias Taylor, not long after he had been thrown out by his bastard of a brother from the only home he had known, with nowhere to go except the sea; to seek out his father’s old friends and a life of piracy.

  Phillipe had accused him of being baseborn, despite the wedding ring Jesamiah’s mother had worn for more than a year before his birth. He was no illegitimate by-blow and she had not been a whore. Ah, leave it be! She was dead, his father with her. What sense in resurrecting the past after the distance of all these years? Except on occasion the past reared its ugly head and demanded attention. Still hurt.

  He shrugged the mental image of Phillipe aside, refusing to entertain thoughts he would rather forget. Turned his mind to more pleasing recollections – how many women had he bedded since his first? But that thought too, turned sour. Beyond a few he could not recall their faces, let alone their names. Hermione: he remembered her, he had spent a month with her while they had careened the Mermaid at Nassau. Justine? Sal? Catrina. Arabella. Ah yes, the beautiful Arabella. Now she was a cat with sharpened claws! Had almost got him and the rest of the crew dancing a hemp-noose jig because of her lust for gold coins. His first woman? Oh he remembered her too, though he had been three sheets into the wind from a surfeit of drink. Malachias had found her for him, said she was a friend; a prostitute of course. They always were.

  Across in the Windward Islands that had been, after his first battle at sea; first Chase, first pirate attack. First woman. You always remember your first, Taylor had said as he had pushed Jesamiah into the welcome of Dolly’s embrace and the apple-dumpling expanse of her chest.

  “You always remember yer first encounter, Jes boy, so make sure it’s worth rememberin’.”

  Yet he could not remember, when he was drowning, where he had heard that voice. Jes…a…mi…ah! The scream had rocked his mind, not his ears, had been inside his head, not outside. Where in damnation had he heard that accent before? Try as hard as he could the answer would not come. It was almost as if the memory of it had been erased, washed away. Memory was such a fickle thing. His brother he wanted to forget, that voice he wanted to remember.

  Thinking back, he wondered how much Malachias had paid Dolly. She had initiated his eager, fumbling innocence into the secrets of manhood and then spent the rest of the night teaching him how to do it properly. How to give and get pleasure. Not love; there was never love from her kind. How could love be bought with a silver shilling? What use had a pirate for love, anyway?

  Damn it all! Where had he heard that bloody voice before?

  Lying there in the darkness he also recalled his first, terrifying, fight at sea. Would Dolly have been as terrifying, he wondered idly, if it had not been for the rum that had dulled his naive apprehension? He thought nothing of spending his sexual need with a woman now.

  That first Chase, his first Prize, had been laden with sugar and timber. The Mermaid had cut in across her bow, firing a single warning shot, manoeuvred to larboard and taken all the wind, effectively crippling the poor blighters. Undermanned, underpaid, the crew had given a token resistance out of misplaced loyalty to their captain, but by then it had already been too late, the Mermaid was alongside throwing grappling lines and boarding, the pirates pouring over the rails cutlasses drawn, pistols firing, axes raised. All a reek of yelled shouts and swirling smoke. That was the point of attack, to make as much noise as possible, adding to the fear.

  How many attacks since then? Jesamiah tried vaguely to count. Alcide, Dinah, Vanessa. Resolve, Heliotrope, Cadiz, Cornelia, Topaz; La fleur de lis, the Rose. Several with bird’s names; Cormorant, Gull, Sparrow, Flying Swan. The Wren. He chuckled. An inappropriate name if ever there was one! Wren – she had been a huge, ungainly lump, wallowing close to the scuppers so badly was she leaking. Pelican would have suited her better. There had been a Pelican. Where? Ah yes, nor’-nor’-west of the Bahamas.

  So many more. So many. Odd that he could remember most of the vessels but only a few of the women. And that he had so forgotten Malachias Taylor these last weeks. He found grieving tears were dribbling down his cheeks, the hot salt taste stinging his chapped lips. Pretend to be fearless, to have not a care beyond where the next tot of rum and willing strumpet was to come from. Board a vessel, kill those who resisted, take what you wanted including the virtue of a woman if it was available; destroy the rest. Laugh, hide the loneliness that continuously stabbed inside.

  The girl stirred, her hand brushing against his stomach. She opened her eyes, smiled, expected him to make love to her again.

  He obliged, but what was the point of that also? None whatsoever when he received so very little lasting pleasure from it for himself.

  Fifteen

  “Rue! Rue? Wake up!”

  Had anyone been awake to witness Jesamiah’s self-indulgent misery during the night they would not have believed the man urgently shaking his friend’s shoulder to be the same person. Rue was stretched out beneath the shade of a palm, legs crossed at the ankles, the wide-brimmed grass hat he had fashioned pulled low over his eyes, arms folded across his chest. He shoved the hat from his eyes, stared at Jesamiah squatting beside him, closed his eyes again and resettled his hat.

  “Go away.” He added something crude and explicit in French.

  “Listen! I have news! Bloody superb, gift from God news!” Jesamiah’s excitement was unmistakable. Like a boy on his birthday.

  “It ‘ad better be,” the older man growled, removing the hat and waving it ineffectually at the irritating buzz of insects. “I do not take kindly to being woken from my afternoon nap.”

  “Three more survivors have straggled ashore, down in the next village.”

  “Très bon for them! As long as they find their own shade I am most ‘appy for them.” Annoyed, Rue replaced his hat. Jesamiah snatched it, tossed it away.

  “Merde!”

  “Will you damned listen? They are Spanish.”

  The Frenchman was unimpressed. “Unless they are natives, so is everyone along this stretch of coast. Even you are ‘alf Spanish, your mother was Spanish you are able to speak the language. In case you ‘ad not noticed, we ‘appen to be idling in Spanish territory.”

  “They were from a Spanish vessel. One of a fleet.” Jesamiah ignored the sarcasm, had his hands on Rue’s shoulders attempting to shake sense into him. “A convoy of galleons. Galleons, Rue. The entire fleet went down. Carrying gold from Mexico; packed to the fore-deck, bloody great, treasure carrying galleons!”

  Interest was twitching. Rue uncrossed his legs. “You are serious?”

  The grin swept over Jesamiah’s mobile face. “As serious as a duck’s arse, mate! Word is spreading as wild as fire in the hold; they were on their way to Spain from Havana, were hit by the same hurricane that did for us. All of them Rue, all laden with gold bullion and silver, precious gems and barrels of indigo. The wrecks are scattered along God-knows how many miles of reef.” Hunkered on his heels he rested his forearms on his thighs, giving a moment of quiet silence for the implication to sink in.

  The wind scurrying in from the Atlantic was strong on the far side of the dunes, among the scrub and vegetation its bluster dropped co
nsiderably. Here, it was more of a whispering breeze, its voice a very quiet, continuous, sssss, a muted harmony whispering with the muffled whissh of the ocean.

  “A fortune’s in the holds of those ships, Rue. A fortune run aground an’ sitting there with only fish and crabs to shit on it.”

  Slowly the Frenchman smiled, a sweep that split his face from ear to ear. “Or for someone with enterprise and skill to salvage it, non?”

  Scratching at his beard growth Jesamiah pondered the genesis of a plan. “No Rue, for someone with a fast ship and the savvy to go one better. I’d wager the Spanish are already running around like their arses are on fire. The stuff was destined for the King’s treasury, wealth he cannot afford to lose. They’ll be all over the Florida reefs these next few months, reclaiming what they can. Plenty of sharks too – and I am not talking of fish. Pirates ‘ave as much a nose for the smell of gold as do our finned friends for blood.”

  Rue sat forward, his eyes gleaming, hooked. “So what is it you propose?”

  Rising to his feet, Jesamiah strode a few paces to the top of the dunes, thinking. Unprotected, the wind hit him in the face and the sound of the surf churning on to the beach and roaring in his ears was startling. He stood there, legs widespread, hands on hips staring into the emptiness of the wild Atlantic. The air smelt heavy with salt, was humid, with an undertone of damp earth. He drank it all in, breathing it deep into his lungs the sight, sound and feel of the sea.

  Turning his back to the ocean Jesamiah spoke his thoughts aloud, the wind streaming through his hair and ribbons. “They will have to store what they salvage somewhere. Build a warehouse along the coast? Somewhere easily accessible from the sea but with fresh water, and practical to defend. Probably near to where the main body of the fleet went down.” Remembering the torn carcass of the Salvation added, “I’m not going to risk the hazard of shallows, reefs and the more deadly type of shark for nothing more than a few pieces of eight. Not when all we have to do is let the Spanish do the collecting while we bide our time, learn where this storehouse is, then sail in and take what we want.” There was no trace of the despondency of last night in his eyes. Nothing but an eager alertness.