Still, it sounded familiar, like his long-dead grandmother, and he looked around suspiciously. There was no one else near.
Lucky for him the Wilde was still tied to the pier awaiting the final renovations. Standish wiped the sweat from his forehead. He needed a moment to rest his body, but his mind continued to scheme.
He had already made arrangements to leave for Gibraltar soon. Any day now, and then things might turn in his favor once again.
Kate would turn up somewhere, eventually. If he couldn’t find word of her there in Gibraltar, he would go on to Madeira and wait for her uncle, as he figured she would. But she would have protection then, and he was running out of time. He’d have to find her long before that or else come up with another plan.
You have to do that anyway, little fat boy.
“Shut up, you old hag,” he whispered angrily. He looked around; no one had heard him. Standish rubbed his temples with shaking fingers.
He hadn't planned on the Spanish learning about the shrine so soon. Pilgrims might have told them, or one of the locals had gotten word out, perhaps the priest.
He didn’t do it; he hadn’t been near. At least he had convinced them of that. But he knew the Spanish suspected that he knew more than he was telling. Whatever had been hidden there, it must be what Kate was after too. But he couldn’t tell the Spanish that either.
Kate was fulfilling Louis’s last request, he was sure. His spies in the prison had told him that much at least, but that’s all they knew, no particulars. The Republicans had little patience for religion, it would seem. They went to the shrine and did their worst, but had come up with what?
Like the Spanish, he still didn’t know what the Republicans had been looking for. Now both the Spanish and French were suspicious of him. But Standish knew the French would not waste any more time with Christian trinkets and mystical rhymes of a man they suspected of being a Royalist collaborator.
No, not suspected.
They knew it, not from their torture, but thanks to his fevered rambling overheard by their own spies inside. Maybe they had gotten so used to the screaming that they didn’t know how to listen to whispers anymore.
In the end, Louis Dumars hadn’t given them what they needed after all, and in anger, the Republicans had destroyed the shrine. But Kate knew the secret, he was sure. And by now, the Republicans must also understand their folly in letting Kate get away, not once, but twice.
They would search for her now with little subtlety and less consideration than they had shown her in prison. She had it coming, but Standish knew that might endanger him as well. He couldn’t have them stumbling in, disrupting his plans, grinding his future into the dust like they had done to the shrine in the mountains.
The French Republicans wanted the names of the Royalist conspirators. They weren’t anymore accepting of foreign interference into their internal affairs than were the British, especially from the Americans.
The Royalists wanted the treasury of Louis Dumars, sure to be a lavish collection of whatever had been left behind by his peers who had taken flight to save their lives. Must be paintings and jewelry, gold and silver galore, Standish figured. The treasure would fund their conflict for years to come, or else their lifestyle in exile from now on.
“Not if I find it first.”
For the Spanish, it was more difficult. Should they ally themselves with the British or the French? If they chose the French, then which side: the Royalists or Republicans? Pick the wrong side, and they could end up the same way as their peers of the nobility there.
But there were others—people, not countries— who wanted the same things as he did: money and power. The source didn’t matter: Royalist treasure, war profiteering, pirating. Who knew there would be so much risk when he first started down this road?
Standish grunted then, for he also had his own claim to Kate Senlis, and it had nothing to do with power or money, but with self-preservation. Of course, he could just kill her. That had always been an option, but somehow, it never quite got to that. Most times, she had been protected, but he didn’t believe she was charmed like his grandmother had.
It was only luck that she survived the attack in the settlement years ago. Other times . . .
For the first time ever, Ambrose Standish wondered why he had always been so reluctant. He knew, but he didn’t want to say it out loud: Because she looks like the other.
It was his native grandmother voice, come again. Then he heard the old crone cackle as if she was standing right behind him. He nervously glanced back. Nothing there, but it made his skin crawl a bit. The old hag was right though. It had always been reason enough.
“So far . . .”
He had more immediate problems. The Republicans at the shrine acted in anger and haste to their greater detriment, because the Spanish were incensed that the shrine would be so destroyed. It had them rethinking their bargain, one Dumars had brokered, which made the Republicans skittish in return.
Maybe that was Louis’s plan all along. Lack of respect would breed distrust, and then disloyalty. Dumars knew them both too well, the Spanish and the French. That’s why he was sent to negotiate between them.
But who had sent him to begin with?
Was it the Catholics in Rome? Dumars was devoted, but would he risk so much for his religion at a cost to his own country? Rome had much to lose if the Spanish overthrew their order of things as the people had done in France: the monarch, the aristocracy, their religion too.
The Americans? They could pay, it was true, but Louis had more interest in family than in money. War in Europe could be lucrative for American merchants and the American government who needed time to cement their own foundation and money to make it so.
Chose the Royalists then? Peers, bloodlines always tell. Could it be as simple as trying to save his friends?
Maybe even the British. But all they had to offer was sanctuary, and station, of course. In England the man could keep his titles, some had died for less. And if Dumars had all that treasure . . .
No, the damage was already done, and Louis Dumars was already dead and judged:
To the French Royalists, he was a hero.
To the French Republicans, he was a traitor.
To the Spanish, he was a martyr.
To the Americans and the British, he didn’t matter.
To Ambrose Standish, Louis Dumars was a fool. “He’s probably burning in hell. I wonder how it compares to the prisons there in the new French Republic?”
He knew where the Republicans had taken Kate and Louis Dumars after capture. It had been a nunnery once. Sometimes he wondered if the forlorn cries he heard there at night were the prisoners or the echoes of long-dead prayers of those suffering for their devotions.
The notion used to make him laugh.
Not anymore.
Now the Spanish no longer had need of Ambrose Standish. It was a matter of mistrust as much as anything. Maybe that was his fault. They paid their last tribute in pieces of silver. He took the gesture as an added insult, because it was.
“Damned Catholics.”
Ambrose wiped at his face with his shirttail and cursed the rolling deck. A storm at sea was never his friend, but that was true of everyone else. He snickered, and then checked his watch again. It was almost time for bells.
“I must take no more chances,” he whispered.
The Wilde had been well guarded except for tonight. He knew because he had his wharf brats watching the ship. This was a chance he had to take. Standish made his way to Kate’s cabin. Not the master’s cabin, but the one she had used in the voyage with the Earl.
She had slipped away out there, he knew, for the brats said that no woman was aboard when the ship came in. They would know, they had nothing better to do besides watch the comings and goings, hoping to beg a bit of coin from the arriving passengers.
Women were the easiest marks, and their charity was the safest plunder. Meanwhile as their husbands or fathers shooed away the rab
ble, pockets could be picked or purses removed.
This larceny art was lucrative, when it worked. But the punishment was often hanging or a slit throat, depending on whose ship they chose to descend. If it was a Royal Navy ship in need of a quota, the boys would sometimes be given a choice: swing from the yard arm, or be taken aboard as ship’s boy or powder monkey.
“Hang or serve. Not much choice,” Standish said, as he stood in the middle of Kate’s cabin.
Why would anyone serve in the British Navy when they could be hanged instead? But then, he hated the sea—and the British, for that matter. They had done no good by his father, who had helped them so much in the American war. Branded a Tory, his father died a pauper, eventually throwing himself into the Boston harbor. Standish had never forgiven any of them for driving his father to it.
The cabin smelled like fermenting apples . . . and mint . . . and something else. Spices? Something floral. Lavender? Rose? Some kind of wild flowers too? Whatever it was, it was enough to put his head in a bucket. He cursed her again between gags.
Finally empty, he pushed the bucket away and got on with his business. He ripped up the bedding, tore it all to shreds. There was nothing there that should not be, though he could swear he smelt something like . . . pine trees.
Several items of clothing hung from pegs on the walls. He slipped his hands up and down them, but felt nothing there, but softness. His hands against the fabric evoked another aroma, musty, like old clothes—cedar lining from an old trunk, perhaps, used to repel moths. He held up one dress to examine it more closely.
Suddenly, he cringed and let it drop.
It was old, he knew, one of her dresses—not Kate, but her mother’s. Katherine St. John and Samuel Matteson Senlis met in Paris, married there. They first lived in a house that had belonged to her family for centuries, though her relations had lands in the south and west.
“How romantic,” he whispered snidely.
Louis Dumars had shown her the house. That’s where the Republicans caught them when Louis was denounced as a Royalist collaborator, and therefore, a threat to the Republic.
Of course, Standish had to reveal that fact and urge them to action. The Republicans arrested Louis Dumars, and Kate got caught in the trap. Standish thought it funny at the time. She was always nosy as a child, and this time it caught her for the worse.
But that was months ago. And this is here and now, he thought. “Where else to look?”
Standish went to the largest trunk and opened the lid. It also smelled of cedar, but was empty of anything useful to him. There were charts of coastlines and a few flags for signaling. There was a patterned wool blanket that he knew came from Peru. There was also a small rug of ornate design that might have come from the Orient or even Persia.
Something was wrapped in what looked to be an old shawl. He picked up the bundle, grabbed a loose end, and tossed the bundle into the air. He caught a whiff of some kind of mint as two small dark items thumped to the floor. He reached to pick them up. Carved wooden animals and some dried up leaves—a horse and some kind of sea creature. He tossed them to the side, but they clattered against the wooden deck.
The noise made him flinch. He listened for a moment, but no one else was near. He continued his search through the trunk.
There were some half-filled bottles and pouches of dried up old weeds. He dumped out a few. The smell was strange. He stepped on the dried flowers and leaves, grinding them into the wooden floor with his feet. It made the smell overwhelming. He sneezed, and then held his nose between two fingers as he continued to look around.
Nothing. She was storing many of her things elsewhere then. Where? He had already checked the warehouse, but the old man had told him to get out. Someone had moved her things, he was sure. He suspected that Mr. Whayles would know, but Standish knew the Scotsman would tell him nothing. And worse, might do something in retaliation.
Something to ridicule me, he thought bitterly. Better to just slink away like a mongrel cur with a cut-off tail, his grandmother said.
Ambrose ignored the voice in his head. He hated both discomfort and embarrassment, and he hated the Scotsman too. Now there were two on the Wilde. What did she call them—Mr. Whayles, one and two? Reason enough to avoid confrontation.
Louis Dumars held the same opinions of him, he knew. Dumars had respect for Ambrose’s position at first, like everyone did, even the British.
“But little respect for me personally.”
So Standish had to use her—Kate, of course. He would have never been able to meet Louis Dumars if he hadn’t convinced Kate Senlis that she needed to see family in France. Of course, she didn’t know it was him who did the arranging, neither did Louis Dumars.
To them it had all been by chance. That was the funny part now—the puppet strings they both danced to without either knowing. Louis had been an arrogant fool, and Kate was naive. She still didn’t know she had been manipulated.
“So easy,” he said to the dresses hanging there. “Then all I had to do was stand in the shadows and watch the daily progress in that Republican prison. I knew eventually you would have to turn to me, there was no one else about.”
His grandmother cackled her laughter again and demanded, “Just whom are you talking to?”
He blinked hard and ignored her. The old hag knew very well he was talking to Kate, even if the only thing here was her dresses.
But Dumars was stronger than any of them thought. And Kate had been too. The French refused to treat her as badly as she deserved. Her family was known; they had been rich, but no longer with title. Years before, Katherine St. John had been kind to the ill and infirm, had given a great deal of money and aid to the poor there in Paris. Sometimes she even nursed the blighted masses herself. That’s how she met Senlis; he was delivering supplies from the New World.
“A love story, I think I may puke.”
But that was long over. It died out on the colonial frontier in New York.
“I wish I had seen it all finished and done.”
But his father had sent him away to Boston soon after the Senlis compound was attacked. In fact, only a couple of days before Kate’s father got back. Standish and his father spent the American war in the company of the British, and now his own father was dead.
His grandmother started talking again, but he blurted to block out her venom, “Have to solve these problems on my own now, so back to the problem at hand.”
What was Kate trying to hide still, even though Louis Dumars was dead? Let the French flail in their searching, he decided. He would find out himself what Kate was after, and then collect it himself.
“To bad the bitch got away from me even out there in the middle of the ocean.”
He felt himself grow angry, and that made him want to strike out. He pulled his knife and started slashing her dresses—first deliberately, then more frantic as the smell of her presence overwhelmed him.
Did someone touch him?
He staggered back, with his arm still raised with the slashing knife.
He looked around, but reason got the upper hand again. No noise, better be on about my business.
He wasn’t sure what it was he was looking for. Her journals, something she had written or traced, some clue.
Where else to look?
There was a shelf with several books and a few small casks in the corner. He checked the books first, looking for the infamous journals. There was writing in the inside cover of some. Most were books from exotic places, with notes from her father or the O’Malleys.
Gifts. How touching.
He tossed the books aside after he flipped through their pages. Nothing. Under the books was a paper. Standish pulled it up. There were some bugs underneath. He shuddered as they scurried away.
The paper was a newspaper page from Boston: A story about her father. Her newly dead father then, and all his contributions to the world. Now the bugs were eating at the paper’s underside the same as they were eating at her father�
�s.
Standish and his grandmother both laughed.
What next?
A globe. How could he have missed the globe? She would use it to track where they had been, where they were going. He checked. It was true, there were markings all over the sphere, thin lines crisscrossing the world, and tiny carved ships tacked on in places with something sticky.
Where the fleet might be, the fleet of the rich Senlis Family Trust. They should have people doing the work for them, he thought. Some people don’t know how to use position and money. That is why some people are meant to give orders and the rest are meant to serve.
“I am trapped in the wrong blood lines, the wrong body. I should be one like the Earl or the Marquis. I would not be bored with my privilege. I would use it. I would be indispensable to those above my station and admired by those below.”
Admired or feared, it didn’t make much difference really. He caught his face in a small mirror above a bowl in the corner. Her washstand was a simple affair with nothing but linens, a small bit of soap, the bowl and pitcher, and the mirror.
No powders or paints, no rouge, no perfumes.
He studied his face. Normal, he thought, normal enough except for the eyes—black and cold and savage, the eyes of a half-breed bastard. His father’s eyes, they were, and those of his father’s savage mother. Ambrose’s own mother’s eyes had been blue. Why couldn’t he have his mother’s eyes and be sent to England like so many of the other loyal Tories after the war? He looked different, he was different, and the proof was there in his eyes.
His grandmother’s eyes were looking back at him now. Her voice said something in her native tongue. He understood it too well. It meant fat little boy, the usual slur, which meant pathetic and weak.
He smashed the mirror.
Then he froze, listening. Again, no one seemed to hear. He was alone. They were foolish to leave the ship like this, and this time he wondered why it was so.
Nobody cares about you.
Standish shrugged off the slur with a slight twist of his head. Then he went to the casks. They were sealed, and he rolled out the nearest one. Hand to his knife, he reconsidered. He might break off the tip if he used it for this.
The Wilde Flower Saga: A Contrary Wind (Historical Adventure Series) Page 22
