He was smiling. His teeth were beginning to rot, she noticed, though just a bit. He was fastidious about such things, and Kate knew how much it must have bothered him. She had myrrh resin, which could help with such things, and parsley too for his breath.
She cleared her throat. “When we reach Madeira, I want off this tub, and I never want to see you again. If you’re lucky, my uncle won’t kill you.”
“It’s not that easy, Katherine. It was always a choice, my dear—the harem or me. I promised my friends, you see, but I’m afraid I just don’t want you anymore.”
“Ambrose, stop and think, just stop and—“
”You look like the real Katherine, you know. Oh, I know you’re a pretender. Sometimes you sound like her too. You don’t remember her, I bet, but I do. Did you know that every time he looked at you, he died a little bit more, thinking of her?”
“Who?” she said, but she already knew.
“Your father, of course. Eventually, he just withered away, but then you got to see that, didn’t you. You killed him. That face of yours, those voices you take on, you killed him.”
“You bastard.” She said it through clenched teeth, though she hadn’t meant to say it at all. He seemed pleased that she had, for he smiled.
“So you said, my sweet Katherine. It was my father who was the bastard of that aboriginal slut. Oh, my grandfather told everyone it was his child, but he was stupid enough to think that people would believe he would hump something beside sheep and little boys. But I’m not a boy anymore, and I know the ways of the world. This time, you have to do what I say.”
He left her locked in the cabin. Kate closed her eyes, remembering, yet trying to clear her mind of the pictures that kept coming alive in her mind like watching a play. Not clear pictures, but hazy and vague. That is what frightened her more, not the remembering, but that she might be forgetting it all.
She tried the door, kicked at the furniture, then crawled into bed and cried.
It was almost a full day before she saw anyone again. Some crewman brought her food. She threw it at him before he got out the door. She did that a few times, then hunger made her prudent. She ate the food, and then threw the dishes at the man who came to fetch them.
They didn’t let her out for days. They barely gave her enough water to wash. Then someone brought her hot water, soap, and a clean dress.
“What’s this, my last meal? My shroud?”
“You are to wash up, and I am to bring you out on deck,” the sailor said. He was one of those who spoke English. He didn’t seem too pleased with the task that he was given.
“They hang mutineers,” she said.
He didn’t look her in the eye, but saluted slightly. “I will be just outside the door. Call when you are ready.”
“Ready for what?”
The slaughter? The auction? The spectacle?
“Just do it,” he said. “I do not want to get nasty, I really do not.”
Kate thought to differ on that point, and then thought better of it.
“You’re from Virginia,” she said.
“I was, then the Brits took me off a merchantman and chained me into their own bloody hold. Pumping bilge—that I did—for almost a year. Took off first chance I could.”
Impressment, kidnaping. The practice made her angry, and it had her uncle worried too. It was one of the things they wanted to discuss when she met him in Madeira . . . if she ever was able to meet him again.
“That’s hardly my fault,” she said. “I’m American too, not British.”
He licked his lips, unsure. Finally, he said, “Just do as they tell you. I ain’t getting myself killed ‘cause of you.”
She did. It felt wonderful to be clean, with clean clothes too. Everything was better with fresh sea air on her face. The open sea, far as the eye could see—she took a deep breath in the cooling breeze. It made her feel more alive, but then she remembered her place and circumstance.
Then she saw the sails and realized what all this was about. She was bait, a semblance of normality to lure the ship closer. Passengers—especially women—were a sign of being harmless; that is, of not being pirates. She tried to go back below decks, but Ambrose Standish grabbed her hand, held it to the crook of his arm, and made her stroll with an occasional painful twist to the wrist.
She knew what was coming. Her mind raced back through her mother’s journals. Corsair was from the Latin term, cursus, meaning plunder. Ships had turned to plunder since man had turned to the sea.
The ship itself was a corvette, smaller than a frigate, but also made for both some fighting and even more speed. “The red corsair,” she whispered. “A bloody pirate ship.”
Kate saw the merchantman loosen her sails to slow up. It hesitated on the white-capped waves, signaling its intentions. The corsair replied with a signal of distress. Once it was close enough, the corsair made full sail as it maneuvered until its bow came full broadside onto the other vessel’s hull. The merchantman didn’t have time for defensive maneuvers: How could they know what was coming?
Early galleys were rowed as well as sailed, and the bows were sometimes designed for ramming. They had the extra speed to make it effective, and the jar of the ram often disabled the enemy vessel. Galleys did not fare well in heavy weather, and they were too slight to handle the open seas. Not since the Vikings, that is. The design of corvettes evolved from those galleys, and worked now as effectively.
It seems the new master of the Red Wind was taking a lesson from those earlier days of the galleys. It would be an unexpected maneuver, she knew. With just the force of the wind and surprise, they rammed the other vessel with a great drifting smash.
The sound was the worst part, and the damage wasn’t disabling, but it was enough to stay their motion and good sense. The crew of the merchantman just staggered around the deck in disarray and shock.
After that, the pirate action was swift and vicious.
Obviously the mutineers were unsure of themselves and needed the victory to be complete and uncomplicated. Those who resisted were butchered with no thought to quarter. In less than an hour, the other ship was boarded, conquered, and prisoners taken.
The mutineers took the rest of the night to pick over the cargo. They finished off any wounded crew with a swift blow and a toss overboard. They raped some of the women, the maids of the paying passengers, Kate guessed by their dress. Then they brought the remaining women passengers on board the Red Wind.
The pirates then tied the women they had raped and any surviving male passengers to the rails of the merchant ship and hulled it with point-blank cannon fire. The ship sank quickly with gapping holes in its side.
But not quick enough—Kate heard the screams of fear and the cries for mercy as the ship slipped down and the sea took them over. The voices ended abruptly as the deck went under in a bubbling roar, the draft pulling the pirate ship near to where the doomed vessel had been.
The silence was a severe contrast to the desperate cries on a few seconds before. But the silence was familiar: no birds, no leaves rustling, no bugs or bees. Her mind flashed back to sunshine and flowers as a sharp pain shot through her eyes.
Kate blinked back the vision and the pain. She heard the women passengers crying, but that was her only contact with them. Standish ordered her to be taken below, and then he came to gloat.
“What are you about, Ambrose?” she said, still disbelieving.
“Cargo, my dear. Trade goods.”
“They didn’t take much cargo. That ship was hauling rice, and that takes too much room for a ship like this.”
“And passengers.”
“You killed most of the bloody passengers, what—“
The women. She had heard stories, sea tales of fancy, she thought. Perhaps they were true after all.
“Ransom?” she said, hopefully.
He laughed. “All right, perhaps. But probably something more interesting for most of them.”
“You said harem before. You ca
n’t be serious.”
“Katherine, the slave girl. Kate, the Caliph’s mate. Too delicious! Would you sing your little songs for some Suliman Khan, Katherine?”
“I’m not Katherine, I’m Kate. Katherine is dead.”
He bowed. “As you wish, I could never refuse you. I must leave you now, my sweet. I have the rest of the cargo to attend.”
“Cargo, you mean the women for sale?”
He smiled wickedly and left without another word.
Over the next several days, they took another ship . . . and another . . . and another.
Each time, the carnage was the same and more women were selected to be part of their profane cargo. Each time Ambrose Standish would use her as bait, and then make sure she knew her part in this thing. Kate knew it wasn’t her fault, but she was there at the taking, seeing the horror over and over again.
It was the sounds she found hardest to shake. She was thankful for any sea winds that could sweep away the sound and smell, the last vestiges of the dying.
Today was like any other when prey was in sight. Kate had a deep sense of sadness that never went away since that first time. It blocked out the dread of wondering what her fate would be. She didn’t ask Standish, she would not give him that.
The latest ship taken was from the Middle East by the look of her. But it had yielded more trouble than spoils. She heard Ambrose arguing with the crew about it. Kate couldn’t decide if she should hope for another mutiny, or if she would be the worse for it.
She mumbled, “Where is the Royal Navy and their bloody blockade when you really need them?”
It wasn’t the first time Sir Edward Lindsay had come to mind. She regretted her parting now, not telling him how she felt. But what was that? He was like no one she had ever met before. She told him she was leaving, she told him at least that. Why didn’t he come save her now as he had before?
“Now that I really need it?”
The red corsair sailed in troubled waters for days after the taking the last ship. The crew was uneasy; she could feel it. But it could have been her imagination; Kate was the first to admit that she was no expert these days as to men’s true intentions.
She was called to the deck once again. There was a sail in the distance and she felt her stomach lurch in dread, just as all the times since the first when this dreadful business began. But the mutineer-turned-master called for a signal. The ship in the distance signaled back, and Ambrose came to kiss her hand.
She recoiled, but he only laughed.
“My dear, you look worse for the wear,” he said. “I’m so glad you’re only human.”
“Go to hell.”
“Probably, but only in due time. I’ll see you there, I’m sure,” he said. “In the mean time, where you are headed now, Katherine, it might have you wishing for the Bastille.”
“You really are Coyote, aren’t you, Ambrose?”
His face grew pale in a second, for he understood what she meant, and he hated that he did. In native lore, the coyote was the trickster. Coyote was used in stories to teach children morality or to scare them. Coyote was the fool, the clown, the changeling who behaved badly.
Coyote is everywhere, watching, waiting, because in the end, the coyote was also a survivor.
She added, “You might have the upper hand now, Ambrose, but remember Sanopi.”
Sanopi was Coyote’s antagonist in the stories of the Huron. Kate was sure he knew of them from his grandmother, who had been a captive of that tribe when that woman’s own troubles had begun. After all, Kate was sure that it was how Ambrose had come to this.
He refused to comment, but he was still very pale.
Kate sighed and turned away. “I hope we never meet again.” If she did, she might kill him herself. No, that wasn’t true. She wasn’t sure she could do that, not even to him. But others might want the privilege. She thought to ask, “Where are you going?”
“Why, that’s an American ship. I’m going home.”
Kate had such dread of the past encounters that she had failed to notice the other ship’s colors. Seeing them now was like a stab to her heart. The familiar Stars and Stripes brought tears to her eyes. Then she started to scream, she had to be heard. Surely they would help—
He just laughed.
“Even if they could hear you, Katherine, they think you’re all quite mad—a lunatic ship, taking ladies whose husbands have deemed them unworthy or unwilling or unable to withstand the rigors of their own chosen life. It’s a sad business, tragic for some, but such life can be hard.”
How convenient. But not as uncommon as one might expect, or hope for.
“Get out of my sight,” she whispered.
He bowed slightly. “Your wish is my command.”
“Then drop dead.”
“Always the charming lady. They will either love you in the harem, or lop off your head. Might be like old times after all, pet, just like your sainted ancestors. I hear some betrayed their queen and ended up with the heads on a pike for display. A fair ending for betrayal.”
He blew her a kiss and laughed as he left. She could hear him for a long time, but Kate wasn’t sure if it was really the man, or just his echo in her mind.
* * * * *
CHAPTER 32 - Fiya
Kate knew that the American ship had sailed away in the night. She heard the boats drop from the Red Wind, and then the cargo and passenger pass over. Ambrose was on his way home. Kate thought to dive in and swim after the ship as long as her strength held. But they didn’t let her out of the cabin. She knew she didn’t have the nerve anyway.
I am a coward, she thought, same as always.
With Ambrose Standish gone, the former first mate was now the master on the red corsair. Kate found that he wasn’t an unreasonable man, just focused on his business at hand. That business happened to be selling women. She had heard of it, never knew it was true. Now it seems she would be learning the hard way. But slavery was not uncommon.
Americans had slaves and the English did too. Slaves worked all the plantations in the Indies. And not just the dark-skinned races were sent into such forced labor. Convicts and any other souls deemed undesirable to British society were sent to servitude on the penal colonies in the New World. The British used to send them to America too. The colony of Georgia served the Crown that way. Now undesirables from England were sent on the long voyage Down Under and probably never seen or heard from again.
The new master brought the cargo on deck for his inspection. Kate counted eleven others. Two of the women had dark skin and dark eyes. They were dressed in exquisite linens and fine-spun cottons with intricate embroidery and thin golden braids. The fabric was not in structured gowns like in Europe, but wrapped and flowing around their bodies. They were from India, she guessed, or near about.
Another woman had red hair and a few others were blonde. There were two fiery Spaniards and one pious one who constantly prayed apart from all the others.
And then there was Fiya. She stood separate from the others and half a head taller than most of the men. Her dress was European in style, but simply cut and adorned, yet so elegant that it had to have been expensive to someone.
A proud father? Perhaps a husband or even a lover?
She wore it like she was used to such things. Kate only knew her name because the new master called her by name. He added an address of respect, and she was not manhandled like the others. And there was one other obvious difference: Fiya was looking quite ill. It wasn’t the normal seasickness either. Kate wondered if the master noticed too.
Small groups were forming among the prisoners. Perhaps those who were taken together now stayed together. Some were crying, while some women seemed quite resolved to their fate. Perhaps they were disbelieving or even hopeful, she thought.
What am I?
Then a sort of keening started. The Indian women were praying to gods and goddesses that Kate did not know very well, only from her mother’s journal. All the Spanish prayed together n
ow too. Some of the blonde women did the same, but they were obviously not Catholic. The redheaded woman stood on her own, but mimicked the prayers of the Spanish Catholics.
Irish then.
When it came to assigning cabins, they all had one thing in common. They refused to sleep in a room with Fiya. Kate wasn’t sure if it was because of the woman’s non-Christian religion, or maybe it was the illness. Or perhaps it was because Fiya had the superior attitude of a Princess Royal, and looked at them all with disdain.
When the crewmen started herding the women together, Kate asked to speak to the master. He looked at her side-wise, distrusting.
“You are a man of business,” she said.
Then he only looked bored and continued with his bookkeeping.
Kate pointed towards Fiya. “She looks ill.”
He looked worried. Perhaps Fiya’s safety was important.
“I can tend her. I know some ways of healing. I will need my books and my trunk.”
He looked skeptical.
Fiya collapsed.
The other women rapidly spread wide like the waves on a pond from the plunk of a rock. Kate knelt beside the woman and felt her forehead, her cheeks. Fiya was burning with fever. Her eyes were partly opened and glassy bright. She mumbled in her native tongue in a nearly whimsical tone. In other circumstance, it would sound very pretty.
Kate stood up slowly. It might be the plague. Kate thought to say it aloud, though she doubted it was true. On one hand, they might leave her be to tend the woman. On the other hand, they might just throw them both overboard and mourn only the loss of the coin.
“I need help getting her to a cabin,” she said.
The new master motioned, but his crew hesitated. Perhaps they also thought it was the plague.
“I will help you myself,” Fiya said and grabbed onto Kate with strong, long-fingered hands.
She got the woman to bed, and in a few moments, Kate’s trunk was returned. It had been ransacked, many things were spilled and scattered. Some others had been taken away. She had three dresses left there, and no petticoats at all. The dresses were torn in places, as if done in a tantrum by a vengeful child.
The Wilde Flower Saga: A Contrary Wind (Historical Adventure Series) Page 32
