Lisbon

by Valerie Sherwood

  “That monster is taking my children away!” Charlotte cried tearfully. “Untie me, I must go and stop him!” In her anxiety, she had spoken in English, and as the woman set down the broth and untied her wrists, she tried to repeat her words in Portuguese.

  The woman looked upset. She spoke in Portuguese so fast that Charlotte could catch only a word here and there— but what she made of it was that the senhora was not to concern herself, it was only for a little while—until she was better! Desperate to reach the ship before Rowan sailed away with Cassandra and Phoebe, Charlotte tried to untie her own ankles. At this point she was pushed back firmly into her chair and broth was proffered. When Charlotte struck away the broth, Alta sighed and seized Charlotte’s wrists and, despite Charlotte s struggles, tied them up again.

  When the woman had gone, Charlotte sagged against the heavy chair and deep sobs racked her body. Rowan would sail in an hour . . . with the children . . . her lovely little Cassandra, her tiny Phoebe. In an hour ... in an hour. . .

  The next morning Alta Bilbao again brought the broth, and with it a large slab of bread.

  This time Charlotte ate it.

  That night, gagged and wrapped in blankets, she was again moved to a new location—to some hilly spot, she judged, from the lurching gait of the donkey or whatever it was her shrouded body had been thrown across. Cramped and half-suffocated, it was almost as if she had been sewn in a sack—and that made her think again of Tom. Had five days gone by? she asked herself wildly. Was Tom, even now, sinking into the green depths, drowning in a sack?

  It was indeed the fifth day.

  Tom had awakened with a groan and a sickeningly throbbing head in the darkness and stench of a filthy hold. He was aboard ship—too well his nose knew the smell of rotting fish and ship’s biscuit and moldy cheese, too well his ears picked up the creaking of the timbers and the crack of the sails. For a moment he was disoriented, seemingly suspended in time and space.

  Then a cultivated voice out of the darkness nearby said, “Ah, you’re awake. I was here when they brought you in—‘tossed you in’ might be more accurate. I am Sebastião da Severn. ”

  “Tom Westing. ” As he spoke his own name, it all came back to Tom—all of it, hearing Charlotte scream and rushing into that flat-fronted mansion and being attacked from all sides, and then the world exploding and dropping him into a bottomless pit. He tried to sit up and found that he was clanking chains—indeed he was firmly chained by the foot to a huge iron ring. He tugged at that ring and began to curse.

  “Ah, that is how I felt when they first brought me here, ” observed the same cultivated Portuguese voice that had spoken before. “Now I am more sanguine, my friend. If one is to die, one may as well accept it in good grace.

  “Why are you here?” demanded Tom harshly, his voice rasping because the sudden exertion on top of his head injury had made him feel sick.

  He could almost feel the other man’s shrug. “I have enemies,” was the response. “Enemies who lured me to Lisbon so that they could finish me off and then find a way to claim my lands in Brazil.” The voice was wry. “It could be said that I walked into a trap. ”

  “So did I.” Tom was thinking about Charlotte. Her desperate scream still rang through his mind. God, what had they done to her? “Have you thought about getting out of here?” he inquired.

  “I have thought of nothing else. Indeed, it seems forever that I have been in this dark hole. From time to time I have been brought water and bread. But the sailor who brings it is a mute and cannot answer any of my questions. ” The timbers creaked again and there was a sharp slap of sails overhead.

  “How long since we cast off? asked Tom.

  “Some hours now. I think our captain must plan to take us out to sea and there dispose of us.”

  Yes, that seemed likely. Tom’s mind was racing. “You say you have lands in Brazil, Senhor da Severa. Have you tried bribery?”

  “I would,” sighed da Severa, “if I could talk to someone. ” As time went on, they got to know each other rather well, these two unfortunates, as they ate their coarse brown bread, and grew to like each other. Da Severa was a wealthy landowner—he did not say how wealthy, but Tom gathered that his wealth was considerable. He was a childless widower who had chosen not to marry again. In Lisbon his nephew—who had refused all offers to come out to Brazil, since it was clear that that might entail work—had plotted against him with a man called Cortinas. And one night da Severa had been set upon and placed aboard this vessel. If her captain could be persuaded to sail for Brazil instead of wherever he was bound, da Severa could pay him more than whatever sum he had had of Cortinas.

  Tom took note of that.

  On the fifth day the mute disappeared and a cabin boy brought in a bucket of water and a dipper. And a broken slab of brown bread that the prisoners could share between them. “Wind’s coming up,” he reported. “Looks like a gale.”

  “What ship is this?” asked Tom.

  “She’s had half a dozen names since I’ve been aboard her,” was the lad’s cheerful reply. “Scrape and paint, scrape and paint. Just now she’s called the Douro."

  Named for a Portuguese river.

  “What was she before?” asked Tom.

  “She was La Lune.” He laughed.

  La Lune. The name meant nothing to Tom. “And before that?”

  “The Swallow. And before that the Merrie Harlot.”

  Ah, there was a name that rang a ship’s bell in Tom’s mind. “She’s been the Merrie Harlot more than once, I’ll wager,” he said softly.

  “How would you know that?”

  “Because that was her name a long time ago, when she sailed the waters around Madagascar.”

  “Won’t matter to you none,” said the lad uncertainly. “Because now that we're five days out, they’re going to throw you both overboard. Tonight. The captain sends you his compliments and tells you both to be sayin’ your prayers.”

  “Does he indeed?” Tom’s voice was ironic but his heart was beating fast. “Tell your captain—”

  “Tell your captain what?” boomed a rough voice, and Tom found himself blinking into yet another circle of light. In the lantern’s tawny light a graying man, built like a barrel, came in and stood looking down at him. “I’ve been commissioned to drop you overboard in deep water, sewn in a sack,” the man said abruptly. “And I’ve a curiosity before I do it to know the why of it. What’s your crime, lad?”

  Blinking into the lantern’s light, Tom looked up warily at his captor.

  “No crime,” he said. “I loved a woman—and her husband objected.”

  “Oh, so that’s the way of it.” The harsh voice above him had gone humorous. “Some husbands have no sense of humor about their wives dallying!”

  “She was mine before she was his,” growled Tom. “He and a gang of murderers set upon me and pushed me over a cliff. They thought they’d done for me and they told her I was dead. He got her by a trick.”

  “Clever of him,” was the cool observation above him. And then, more thoughtfully, “I took him to be a clever man.”

  “I came looking for her,” Tom told him moodily. “And now he’s got you to do for me, and God knows what he’ll do to her. ”

  “Like as not,” was the callous agreement.

  That brusque indifferent voice, that burly neck, that way of standing—a few more scars, maybe, but it was the same man.

  “Could it be you’re Captain Yarbrough?” Tom wondered. “Aye, you’ll have seen me around.”

  “That I have,” agreed Tom. “But not here. In Madagascar. ” “What do you know about Madagascar?” the captain asked sharply. He was peering down at his captive now with more interest.

  “I’ve dined with you there and shared a few bottles of rum when this ship was called the Merrie Harlot. Don’t you remember me? I’m Tom Westing, Captain Ben Westing’s son. I shipped out to Madagascar with him aboard the Shark.’’

  “Devil Ben’s son? I can’t believ
e it. Ben Westing told me you’d jumped ship somewhere, he hadn’t seen you since.’’

  “Aye, I was chasing a skirt,” lied Tom.

  Above him, Captain Yarbrough swore softly. He pointed a finger at Sebastião da Severa. “You’ve got a reprieve for the moment, Portagee. I want to talk to this lad!

  An hour later, bathed and shaved, Tom was sitting across from Captain Yarbrough in his great cabin and the captain was pouring him out a glass of Madeira wine.

  “When did you last see my father?” Tom asked, sipping the wine.

  “Just before his ship went down—with him on it. Broke up on a coral reef near the isle of Nosy Be. None was saved, not one.”

  Tom felt a ripple of misery go through him. His father and he had never seen eye to eye, but it was a shock to learn that Devil Ben was dead. Lost in the Indian Ocean. . . .

  “Sure it’s sorry I am to be the one to have to tell you,” said Captain Yarbrough morosely. “Have some more wine, boy.”

  Tom watched the golden wine splash down into his glass. Memories flooded back, not all of them bad. His father had loved Madagascar. For a moment Tom remembered the sights and sounds of the place: impossibly blue water washing white beaches with their fringe of waving coconut palms, the overpowering sweetness of the yellow-green ylang-ylang flowers, clove trees, aromatic lemon grass, vanilla ... a world apart. A world bloodied by the sword and drunk with rum.

  “What did Keynes pay you to haul me out to sea and dump me overboard?”

  Across from him, with his feet propped comfortably on the heavy teak table, the old pirate laughed. “Enough,” he said. “Enough. And of course,” he added indifferently, “I’m honor-bound to do it.”

  Tom felt a creepy sensation in the back of his neck. This stolid fellow before him might very well do just that.

  “Of course, you’d be losing a good navigator,’’ he murmured. “My father tried to teach me all he knew about navigation.”

  “ Tis true, it never hurts to have an extra navigator on board,” mused Yarbrough. “Still, like I say, I’m honor-bound to throw you overboard. ”

  There was a silence between them while Tom eyed the brace of pistols hung on a nail on the wall behind Captain Yarbrough’s sturdy back. He wondered if they were loaded, decided any gun in this old pirate’s cabin would always be loaded. He was just contemplating the odds on whether he could upend the heavy wooden table, oversetting his host, and snatch one of those pistols from the wall when Captain Yarbrough spoke again.

  “O’ course, I only promised Keynes I’d do it—I didn’t say exactly when. He thought five days, but seems to me there’s no hurry. Could be years from today—twenty, thirty, forty.” He laughed at Tom’s expression, brought his heavy hand down on the table with a slap that sounded like a gun’s report. “You’re safe from me, boy. Devil Ben’s son, fancy that. I’m glad to have you sailing with me, navigator or no.”

  Tom relaxed. It was the first time he had ever been glad of his sojourn in southern seas slashed by the Tropic of Capricorn. In silent acknowledgment of being given back his life, he raised his glass to the captain.

  “Where are we bound?” he inquired.

  Captain Yarbrough shrugged. “Madagascar—where a man can still practice his trade. Unless of course something better comes along. ”

  Tom gave him a speculative look. Desperate as he was to get back to Charlotte, he was all too aware that any attempt to leave the Douro at any port she touched might change the mind of the old pirate facing him—for the worse. He had heard many stories of Captain Yarbrough and knew him to be a formidable foe.

  “I think,” he said thoughtfully, “that something better might just have come along. ”

  He outlined his plan to Captain Yarbrough, who nodded his approval. “You’re Devil Ben’s son, all right. ’’ He turned to shout at the cabin boy, lurking somewhere outside. “Bring up the Portagee, lad!’’

  And Sebastião da Severa was brought to the cabin, looking elegant and aristocratic despite his cramped days in the ship’s hold.

  Tom could not but admire da Severn’s calm demeanor, for from his pallor it was obvious the Portuguese expected to be forthwith dumped into the sea in a sack.

  “Set your mind at rest, Senhor da Severa,’ he told the older man warmly. “You’ll not feed the fishes tonight. I’ve been telling our captain here about you, and he wants to ask you some questions.’’

  Da Severn’s gray head inclined courteously toward the captain, who slouched back in his chair regarding him, but the look he shot at Tom was a grateful one, a thank-you for saving his life.

  Southward the great ship fled. Past the rocky cliffs and winelands of the Portuguese Madeiras, past the spectacular volcanoes of the Spanish Canaries sliding away to larboard, south across the Tropic of Cancer. Before the arid views of the Cape Verde Islands presented themselves, a decision had been reached aboard the Douro, made casually over a three-way handclasp and sealed with wine.

  There in the deep-water passages that threaded these islands, with the hot rainy season drenching the Douro's decks and canvas, her course was shifted. Instead of following the West African coastline and rounding the Cape of Good Hope to beat their way north again through the wild waves and violent monsoons of the hot Indian Ocean past Durban and drive at last up the Mozambique Channel to Madagascar, the prow of the Douro turned southwest across the equator toward South America and the lush green rain forests of the vast and rich Portuguese colony of Brazil.

  It would be two years before Tom Westing saw Lisbon again.

  As soon as Charlotte had eaten her breakfast in her new domain, her feet were untied, the door was discreetly closed, and she was left alone in this strange dim room. She tried to get up, sank back down once, then managed with difficulty to stand on her feet, for she had been several days without using them. It was a barren room, this place they had brought her to. Square and fairly large, with peeling paint of an indeterminate color upon the walls, a bed, two wooden chairs, a washstand with a plain white bowl and pitcher, a cupboard in one corner. And a mirror. Quite a handsome pier glass that stood tall and handsome and out of place. Charlotte recognized it as having come from the house in the Portas del Sol, and wondered why Rowan had had it brought here.

  She tottered toward the windows and tried to open the wooden shutters. They were nailed shut.

  She turned and tried to run for the door. A swarthy fellow stationed just outside caught her as she came through and pushed her back inside. He turned with a pronounced limp and called “Mae,” which Charlotte knew meant “Mother.” At that point the sturdy, broad-hipped woman who had called herself Alta Bilbao hurried in, brushing past him. She shook a stubby finger in Charlotte s face and scolded her in rapid Portuguese. From that torrent of words Charlotte was given to understand that madness did not excuse everything—the Senhora was to stay here, here in this room, was that understood?

  There was another, smaller window in the high-ceilinged room that afforded what light there was, and Charlotte’s gaze flew to it when the Bilbao woman left the room. It’s shutters were flung wide, but it was high up, far beyond her reach, and heavy with lacy iron grillwork. Peering through a crack in the shutters, she could see that outside her big square room was a small balcony of similar iron grillwork that overhung the street, but the shuttered doors that led to it were nailed as well, and the entire thing was too solid to be beaten down even if she used a chair. Her gaze again sought that heavy—and well-guarded—oak door. Hopeless. She would never get out of here except by trick.

  And tricks were difficult with those who did not speak your language—especially if you were clumsy with theirs.

  In desperate haste, Charlotte tried to perfect her Portuguese—with the woman who served her, and occasionally with the dark silent man who locked and unlocked the door for the serving woman to get in. What she learned was discouraging enough. The Bilbao family was not local; they were from Coimbra, on the Mondego River to the north. They had once had property b
ut a wagon accident in Coimbra had left Jorge Bilbao lame, and with a crippled son to support, they had become servants. The street they had lived on in Coimbra, Alta told her, was so narrow it was called Quebra Costas, the “rib-cracker.” Alta had expected Charlotte to laugh at that, but it had all given Charlotte a sinking feeling as she realized the care with which Rowan must have selected the Bilbao family. They were suitable as servants if she did not transgress, strong and suitable as guards if she did. And she had so easily fallen into his trap. She had underestimated Rowan. . . .

  And guard her the Bilbaos did. Charlotte tried bribery, but she had nothing to bribe them with. She promised them rich rewards if only they would let her go. She had money back in England, she told them, lying shamelessly. But Alta and her husband, having lost everything before and been almost reduced to begging in the streets, were cautious. They were being paid richly now, they explained. For every month a messenger—whom Charlotte never saw—brought them a small purse of coins. What more was there?

  Desperate, Charlotte tried to throw herself on their mercy. She told them how Rowan had tried to kill her lover long ago and then had tricked her into marriage. It was very tragic, Alta agreed in a soothing voice, but, senhora, it was a long time ago and best forgotten. And when the senhoras madness subsided, when she forgot about these stories and was herself again, her husband would come back—himself, he had promised that before he left. And no, he had said she was to have no writing materials. The senhor had been very firm about that.

  Thus Charlotte was balked at every point, and her bright spirit slowly sank into a darkness deeper than the semidusk she lived in. Day followed day monotonously in the big square room—windowless so far as her viewing the world was concerned—that had become her prison.

  Rage against Rowan tore at her. It distorted her days, skewed them into fury, and she could not eat, but instead paced what now seemed to her a cage, like some trapped animal, nervous and alert for the slightest sound. She sank, shattered, into bed at night to shiver and hate him until sleep mercifully claimed her.