by Eric Flint
De Los Reyes nodded, started past Contreras—
“He may not go!” Berrio screamed. “He earned his letter of marque by agreeing to this campaign. He must repay Spain—”
De Los Reyes turned on Berrio. “I must repay Spain? By doing to others what was done to me?”
Berrio blinked. “What nonsense are you speaking? What does this have to do with—?”
“Idiot. How do you think I was born, was made? Why, do you think, I am Diego the Mulatto? Do you think for a second that it was my mother who was white? No, one of you great and noble hidalgos did to her what is being done to the women here—right here!” he shouted, pointing to a scrum of distracted men clustered in the narrow alley between two smoking ruins, all staring at something taking place on the ground. He spat in their direction, resumed his rapid progress toward the shore.
“Godless dog!” Berrio shouted after him. And then, falling in beside Contreras, who resumed his approach to the crosses atop the slight rise in the center of Willemstad: “The mulatto is not reliable, you know. It’s said that he helped that gin-drinking cripple Peg Leg Jol raid Campeche. Well, him or some other griffo like him.”
Contreras stopped and looked back. He saw that Diego de Los Reyes had himself stopped and was looking down at the three-year-old boy propped against the wall of the burning house. The flames were approaching the child.
Abruptly, the tall mulatto pirate captain leaned over, plucked up the boy, and resumed his rapid pace toward the ship waiting for him.
Berrio had resumed his rant. “But I suppose we can’t expect loyalty, or even obedience from reivers. Particularly of his type. They are half animal, after all. You can see that clearly enough in their—”
“No,” Contreras interrupted. “Men such as him—and they are men—have been tormented by a life of being refused the dignity of being called, or even thought of, as human. So if they are now animals, it is not because they were born that way. You made them thus.”
“Me? How is the mulatto’s bestiality my doing? I didn’t whelp him on his mother!”
Contreras sighed. Of course Berrio would be insensate to figurative language. Contreras continued past the flames, the shrieks, the moans, the cowering children and came to the foot of the crosses.
Upon the larger one, fashioned out of a splintered yardarm lashed to a high post, a tall, thin elderly man was affixed. His eyes were closed and there was no sign of motion in his face or his body. The pirates had managed to nail his feet to the pole, but had apparently failed, despite repeated attempts, to affix his palms similarly to the yard. The curve of the wood and its many cracks rendered it unsuitable for spikes. So they had simply strapped his arms over it.
The other cross was not really a cross at all. It looked more like some kind of drying rack—for fish? for skins?—that had been propped up by a pair of stays and had been fitted with a thin plank for a crossbeam. Hanging from that beam was a young woman—she could not have been older than fifteen—with a wound in the center of her chest. If she was still alive, there was no sign of it.
Contreras felt his jaw muscles bunch in rage, forced his voice to be calm. “Berrio, what do you know about this?”
“What? You mean the woman?”
Inhuman idiot, why were you not taken by a random bullet? “Let us start with the woman, then. Why has this been done to her?”
“We’re to kill the Dutch. So we have.” His voice was defensive. His eyes skipped sideways.
“The truth, Berrio. Now.”
“She—resisted.”
“Being captured?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Berrio. I will not warn you again. Speak clearly or answer to de Murga. Personally.”
“She resisted the attentions of my men.”
And you too, you worthless filth? “And so, you shot her?”
“No! She did that to herself. When Raul climbed on her, she saw the pistol in his belt and—”
Contreras could not tell if his body was trying to laugh, to sob, or to vomit. “So she is up here as an example?”
“Yes.”
Contreras checked the girl more closely. “I doubt she was still alive by the time you finished doing this.”
“She was,” murmured a hoarse, accented voice.
Contreras turned, saw that the old man on the other cross had raised his head slightly. He stepped quickly over. “Berrio, cut this man down. At once!”
“Captain, this is the chief enemy of Philip our king! This is Jacob Willekens, the governor of this den of heathen raiders.”
“Do as I say, Berrio, or I shall—”
“Señor,” pleaded Willekens, “no. I do not wish more pain. I only wish to be rejoined with my last daughter.”
“Very well. I shall bring her here.”
The old man looked over at the dead girl on the adjoining cross. “She is already here.” He glanced at the pistol on Contreras’ belt. “Please,” he said, “for the love of the one we both call Christ, send me to Him, to her.”
Contreras pulled the pistol, placed it gently against the old man’s heart. Who nodded, smiled, and closed his eyes.
And as Contreras pushed the muzzle more tightly against the narrow chest and pulled the trigger, he thought: I wish it was Berrio.
Part Three
August–October 1636
Liquidly glide on his ghastly flank
—Herman Melville,
“The Maldive Shark”
Chapter 38
Oranjestad, St. Eustatia
Eddie woke to the sound of gulls. He lay a moment, listening. Calling me out to sea again, huh, guys? All right, all right: I’m coming. He opened his eyes.
Anne Cathrine was sprawled, leonine, beside him. Well, not exactly beside him; one of her legs was still on top of his, trapped there from when she’d finally half-dismounted, half-fallen off him.
Images of the prior night came back, along with the recollection of, Three times? Damn! Not that Eddie Cantrell had any problem with that whatsoever. His attitude about hot sex was simply “the more, the merrier.” Except in Anne Cathrine’s case these days, it was “the more, the hornier.”
And that was a change. If anything, he’d been the one who’d always been up for round two, occasionally three. Not because she wasn’t into it but because when she finished, she really finished. As in “wake the neighbors, scare the dog, rattle the windows” finished. That was just who she was: extremely vigorous, amazingly passionate, and very physically fit—to say nothing of damn-near double-jointed.
But, particularly since the dance, her lovemaking had been, well, different. Whereas she used to be Miz One-and-Done to the point that she slept like someone had slipped her a Demerol cocktail, now she seemed to get more determined to go again, and even again, until she was more spent than he was. Given his prosthesis and how that impacted their respective levels of exertion, some imbalance was nothing new, but that was part of why she hadn’t been frequently ready for round two: she was ready to become comatose, often for nine hours. Of course, when she woke up, fully recovered . . .
Eddie shook the memories out of his head and the smile off his face. Focus, man, focus. The sex had been different in another way. Not only had she been initiating encores, but when she did, the lovemaking was more . . . what? He sought for the right word. It was almost, well, desperate. As if she’d been told that she was never going to make love again.
He looked at her, resisted the urge to move a bang of red-gold hair off her cheek. Is she afraid I might not come back, that something might happen to me? If he’d been weighing anchor to cruise into battle, well, yeah, maybe then. But today he was just sailing to Antigua from St. Eustatia: the down-time equivalent of driving to the back-roads convenience store where you never saw another car. So, no; fear for his safety wasn’t the cause. Besides, this trend had been growing for a while now. But last night had felt like some kind of final surge, that whatever forces were at work in her had sparked each other
into overdrive.
The mystery was easy enough to solve, of course; just wake her and ask. Well, ask after she had a cup of faux coffee and cuddled and dozed a bit and then stretched and then . . . well, maybe asking her wouldn’t be so easy after all. Because it would sure take a bit of time—
Time!
Oh, for the love of—! Eddie swung out of bed, using his prosthesis as a very efficient pivot to slip over to the window, lean the storm shutter further out, and squint into the sunshine.
The very crude, yet very precise, wooden sundial in the square told him exactly what he feared it would: if he didn’t get a move on, he was going to be late for his own predeparture meetings!
He pivoted back away from the window, lifted his waiting uniform off the gentleman’s valet, and headed for the door. He stopped, looked at Anne Cathrine sleeping, her lips slightly parted. His heart just about turned into mush. He tiptoed back over to her side of the bed; the resulting sound—sfft . . . tak! sfft . . . tak!—reminded him that with a prosthesis, “tiptoeing” was not only a half misnomer, it was only half-quiet.
He kissed her cheek and backed away. She made a sound like a lioness purring through a sigh as he headed to their dressing room.
* * *
Eddie left the dressing room by the door that communicated directly with the hall—and almost ran straight into Anne Cathrine. “You—you’re awake!”
She nodded and glanced away. Her eyes were sort of puffy—and—red? Had she been crying? “Cat, honey, what’s—?”
She intercepted his hand, held it so it did not reach her, but clasped it so firmly Eddie thought that she would never let go, break it, or both.
“Anne Cathrine, what’s wrong? Please, tell—”
“I have given it serious thought, Eddie. And . . . and I have decided not to come down to the dock to see your ship depart.”
He put his other hand on hers, moved the one she held so that now he had her one hand in both of his. “Okay . . . but why? Did I do someth—?”
She shook her head hard, smiled like her face might break. “No. No.” She squeezed his hand again, really hard. “No. But I do not wish to embarrass you.”
He had to stop himself from laughing at the notion that she could ever do something that would embarrass him, because her face clearly told him that now was not the time for levity. “Sweetheart, that’s not going to happen. It’s simply not possible.”
“It could.”
“How?” He couldn’t help but smiling slightly, just enough to be reassuring. “Just how are you going to embarrass me?”
“I might cry.”
Eddie once again had to stop himself from laughing. “Cat, that wouldn’t embarrass me. I’d be—”
“Then I do not want to embarrass myself.” She reached up and took his shoulders, looked him in the eye. “Eddie. Please. This will be better for me. For us. Now go. You will be late. As you so often are these days.” Her brief smile was so pained he thought that he might start crying. “You are the most wonderful husband in the world.” She pulled him in and hugged him so hard it made him think of what water-safety instructors had told him about how drowning people often react to rescuers; they clutch you so hard, there’s a risk that you could go down with them.
Then she was walking, stiff-legged and fast, back to their bedroom. She closed the door behind her quickly, leaving Eddie speechless and wondering.
* * *
Sophie looked up at the rap on the infirmary door. Had somebody burned, cut, or crushed a finger or toe already? Her hands full with hanging her good dress so that it would not wrinkle, she called over her shoulder, “Please come in. It is unfastened.” Because Brandão still had not acquired a lock for the door.
Which opened to admit a beam of sunlight that then reflected off the red highlights of a head of auburn hair.
“Hugh!” Sophie hung up the dress quickly—wrinkles be double-damned!—and stepped quickly over to him as he slipped in. She didn’t stop until there was only a hand’s width separating them. He was looking down at her and said, “Sophie,” and for a moment she thought of stepping just a little bit closer—but no: the old shibboleths of decorum rose up, along with the internal voice that reminded her, You don’t know how he would feel about that. Yet.
“I didn’t expect you,” she said and wondered if any human could possibly sound more lame uttering the perfectly obvious. “Why are you here? Are you not leaving, after all?” She controlled her voice lest she sound too hopeful. “Has there been a change in plans? In your orders?”
He smiled ruefully. “No, seems that I’m still wanted back down south to sort out some possible silliness involving my old Spanish employers.”
Sophie stepped back so she could take his hand without fumbling her own along his body. “Please. Do not make light of such things, Hugh. In my experience, flippant words tempt fate.”
“Heh. Funny thing for a Norn to say.”
“A Norn?”
His smile became one of perplexity. “What? You’ve not had word of the girls’ nickname for you?”
“I am the Norn?”
“Yes. Well, a Norn. Not sure as if they’ve identified other Norns or not. But that hardly matters now, does it?”
She wasn’t sure how to feel about such a fate-filled nickname. “The Norn are severe creatures, Hugh.”
He closed the distance between them so that it was back to a palm’s breadth. The ends of her fingers hovered near his abdomen, and his near hers. “Well, now, you are a bit severe, when you’ve a mind to be. And—don’t deny it!—you’re often of just such a turn of mind. But I see beyond that, and so do those two sisters. And they love you not in spite of your being a Norn, but because of it.”
“And you?” she asked. She heard her voice buzz, deep in her throat, as she said it. “Do you have—regard for me in spite of, or because of, my being a ‘Norn’?”
Hugh’s smile slipped away, but not because he was pulling back from her, but because he was suddenly serious, his head closer. A full second passed. Maybe two. He was looking at her, but his eyes were also someplace else.
Then his head elevated back to its prior, more upright position. He slipped his hand out of hers to reach into his pocket. “There are some lines I’ve been working on over these weeks. They’ve been contrary, they have. Not wanting to flow straight.
“But then, I saw the sun come up this morning and I thought, ‘well as a wise man once said, carpe diem.’ But I still wasn’t sure if the words had ripened enough. Plenty of time to share them when I get back, I reasoned. Never show much of an important work too soon.”
He had more to say, but she didn’t care. “Hugh, I know where you are going and why, so please: do not tempt fate by presuming that you can be certain of sharing them when you get back. Because, since none of us may know which moments will be our last, no moment is ‘too soon.’”
He nodded. “Those were my very own thoughts when I saw the sun in your eyes, just now. Besides, you asked a question about whether my regard for you is in spite of your Nornish qualities or because of them. As chance would have it, those troublesome lines I’ve been mulling over speak to that—and you’re entitled to an answer.” He slipped a wax-sealed sheet out of his pocket.
She stared at it. “Is it another poem?”
He was smiling again. “Well, now, I don’t quite know what label would most suit it. It started as a letter, but halfway through it turned into a poem. It ended as what I believe the up-timers call ‘free verse.’” He held it toward her. “Why don’t you take a look, and tell me what you’d call it?”
She had to take a step back to make sure she took the paper without any unwonted contact, felt the new part of her damn the old part as either a creature of trained reflexes, a hypocrite, or both. If you would be quit of the hoary old bonds and shackles that almost strangled your soul past resuscitation, then be quit of them all. If some prove wise, add them in later: learning as you go will not kill you. Think for yourself. Live
for yourself.
She studied the wax seal: it had been impressed with a signet ring. No doubt that of his family, of the earl of Tyrconnell. She suddenly wished to see his homeland, then just as suddenly realized that would not magically bring them any closer into each other’s orbit: he had never seen those green fields himself. Besides, that land was part of the Old World, and all they had spoken about in their times together were how they felt about this New World, both its perils and possibilities. And above all, its uncertainties, which were, after all, the wellspring of the other two qualities. Anything might be possible here.
And that might be his topic, she realized as she broke the seal and unfolded the paper: a heartfelt embrace of what they might become individually, even together, in such an untamed and unshackled place as this. Her eyes ran greedily over the first lines, drinking them in.
Then she felt her eyes slowing, encountering words she had not expected. He had written them beautifully, lyrically, soulfully, but—
She took another step back, held up the paper. His eyes went from puzzlement to worry.
She struggled to find words of her own, truly her own, in every way. But her surprise, and her dread, were amplified by waves of emotion crashing headlong into each other at the very core of her being. Speechless, she waved the paper once.
And then ran as fast as she could. Out of the infirmary. Down the street. Then down the next. She did not know where she was going.
And she could not stop or think long enough to care.
* * *
Tromp was waiting at the far end of the dock, where the last skiffs from the three remaining steamships would arrive. Harrier had left eight days earlier, ostensibly as part of the escort for the first ships heading down to Trinidad. Those larger ships, mostly carrying supplies and new gear to expand its oil field, would not all arrive there, however. Patentia, carrying the more complex rotary rig needed for the Jennings field, had split off for that destination only one day out, escorted by Harrier and a pair of speedy jachts.
