“And my brother Jacob’s finest lad, named Jacob too. He’s a bosun’s mate, but soon moving up. He usually sails on the Wilde, but I brought him along to teach him some manners.”
This lad grinned with a full set of teeth minus one far back on the side. He offered his hand. Sir Edward shook it as young Jacob Senlis said, “His finest, true, but also his only lad, sir, though I have seven sisters. They’re all younger than me, so it’s no wonder that my father is haggard and I go out to sea so much.”
Lewis Senlis bellowed his laughter. Then the lad blushed and took a step back. The freckles on Kate were also clear on this lad. The hair was the same as Kate’s too, but perhaps a bit lighter with not so much bronze. But these men had blue eyes, and their mouths weren’t as full. There was very little other family resemblance, but the affection showed clear enough.
Both young men were about twenty, Sir Edward guessed. They both looked very comfortable at sea. As he had by the time he was that age.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I would offer you my best Scotch, which I prefer, but it seems to have gone missing. I hope that best brandy will do.”
Lewis accepted, but the lads stayed behind with the boat.
On the way to the captain’s great cabin, Lewis Senlis said, “Your pardon, sir, but the boys seem a bit leery, and want to keep an eye out for Kate. I don’t think they trust you quite yet.”
Sir Edward thought he was beginning to like these men.
The captain’s guard opened the door, but Lewis Senlis turned back to the boat. “What am I thinking, I must be getting old.” He scratched his head in thought, and then called, “Mr. M’bani!”
Another man soon appeared up out of the boat. This man was quite tall and as thick as a tree trunk. He was African, wore a golden earring, and his hair was cut so close that you would think he was bald with just a muddy head. He was dressed as a petty officer, and his uniform was immaculate. He moved with the grace of a savannah cat.
“My steward and my right hand,” Senlis said. “Mr. M’bani calculates as well as me, though his eyes see better now. We might be lost without him.”
M’bani brought up a small package and offered it to Senlis. “Your Madeira, sir.” Then he gave a nod toward Sir Edward and turned to go without saying another word.
Fiya was standing nearby. When the man drew near, she eyed him up and down. His eyes had been looking straight ahead, true discipline and spine, but when he passed Fiya, he blinked and slowed and took a misstep. She held his eyes for only a moment, before she turned to walk away.
In the last light of the day, the Red Wind glided in among the other ships. Her crew wondered what was happening now, and how much they had missed out on. The news traveled fast between ships.
* * * * *
CHAPTER 39 - Becalmed
The wind that brought the red ship among them at dusk the night before was the last breath of life, it would seem. Now the air didn’t stir, and the waves formed a smooth wobbling on the surface of the water as if it was very old glass. The ships were becalmed, drifting with whatever currents the ocean commanded.
Kate asked permission to go to the corvette to see too the rest of her things. Fiya went with her. A few of the crew of the Stalwart were still on board, but with no wind and many repairs already completed, there was no need for a large complement.
She was prying the lid off a tin of sweet biscuits when someone tapped at the open door.
“Mr. M’bani,” she said. Then she greeted him in his own native tongue. The only words that she knew in that language were the only words that he had taught her.
Fiya greeted him as well, but added more.
“You know my language,” the man said with some surprise.
This surprised Kate too, for he seldom showed any emotion at all.
Fiya spoke with him a few moments. Kate ate a biscuit as she rummaged through her things. She had already used up every bit of her knowledge of the language, but the two seemed comfortable enough on their own. Finally, she pulled out the bottle of Scotch from the old pickle cask.
“What have you there, Mattie Little?” Mr. M’bani said.
“Stolen property and a magic elixir. It’s a wonder that Ambrose Standish didn’t find it. Maybe he just didn’t get around to it, he’s always been adverse to pickles.”
She brushed off the wide-bottomed bottle, then pulled up the cork and sniffed. “This little lamb has traveled with me through high seas and low tides. And on the back of one surly mule, come to think on it, though I forgot that I had it at the time. The lamb, not the mule.”
“It appears to be Scotch whiskey,” Fiya said.
“Oh it is, and fine Scotch whiskey too. I know you’re not allowed to partake, Fiya. Drinking, so you say, is not allowed. We’ll have to share the bottle I think, Mr. M’bani, for I have no glasses here.”
But it didn’t seem a problem: the sinning or the sharing. Fiya took the bottle and lifted it to her mouth. She wetted her lips, then licked at them a moment before she took a full swallow.
“And you a princess of Islam, too,” Kate said.
Fiya choked, and held the bottle out for someone to take away. Mr. M’bani grabbed it.
Kate offered Mr. M’bani a seat.
“Mr. M’bani is my uncle’s steward,” she said, “though I think he does much more than that now.”
“I keep full accounts of all trade goods and ship’s supplies, it is true,” he said.
“You are a man of learning,” Fiya said.
He nodded and took a drink.
“Mr. M’bani was taken as a slave to a French duke. The man thought it amusing to educate him. When he died, he set Mr. M’bani free.”
“It is a degrading story,” Fiya said.
“What do you know of such things?” he said.
“I know what it is to be treated as if you had no thoughts of your own. I know what it is to have free will, but no say in your own life.”
“How could you know of such things? You look soft from your husband’s pampering.”
Kate thought that was enough challenge for the man to be stuck like the apple on Sir Edward’s wall. But to her surprise, it happened a whole different way. She sat silent, sipping the Scotch as she tried not to listen too intently. Or at least appear not to do so. She reached for another biscuit.
“I remain unmarried by choice,” Fiya said. “My choice.”
“Your father’s pampering then,” he said softly.
“Perhaps, for a time. Until I was to be traded as a cow would be sent to an auction.”
Kate knew they both understood such things. And she understood that her own experiences could not compare. Her captivity had always been short. It was capture and confinement for a reason, not as a way of life. She always had hope, no matter what came.
“I too was educated on a whim. It amused my father to see the faces of others when I recited my verse and did my sums,” Fiya said. “He had a liking for Shakespeare and Omar Khayyam. He did not understand that he was also teaching me rebellion.”
“Some would call it independence,” Kate said.
They both turned to her in question.
“Oh, I admit, I know very little of it all. Still nothing ventured, nothing gained. And speaking of adventure, Fiya, Mr. M’bani killed a lion with his bare hands and part of a broken knife.”
Fiya’s eyebrow went up, just the one. “And why would you do such a thing?”
He shrugged. “He would have done the same to me.”
“That is a good reason.”
They laughed, and it occurred to Kate that these two people had similar problems. They first came into this situation as slaves in some way or form. They had moved past that burden, but what would they do now? Mr. M’bani had a future with her family’s business, but he was a black man. He would never be captain; few men would take orders from him. He had gone as far as he would be allowed.
And what would become of Fiya? She would never be happy to sit at teas as a c
ompanion, or a subject of discussion and curiosity. She would never marry in her homeland, for her disobedience, not to mention her former lover, had cast her forever apart. Forever adrift . . .
Perhaps marry an Englishman? Marry an earl? Not bloody likely, Kate thought.
“What will you do?” Kate said to her friend.
“This is a question I have often asked of myself lately,” Fiya said. “I have yet to find an answer.”
Mr. M’bani was nodding. Then the two spoke of their lives now and their past lives too. Kate sipped the Scotch, nibbled her biscuit, and thought of her own life as well. What did two such proud and educated, such worthy people do when life gave them no place to go? And where will I go, she wondered.
She shook herself from self-pity and realized that she wasn’t understanding a word they were now saying. It took her a moment to realize that they were speaking another language, for she thought it might be the liquor.
She said, “Don’t speak in that language, else I’ll think you are speaking of me.”
Mr. M’bani grinned, but he continued, “They say I am a free man, but I do not feel free. I want to go home.”
“What would you do in this place you call home?” Fiya said. “Kill lions?”
He laughed. “No, I have money now. The world thinks that it is civilized because it has money. But I am a wealthy man in my own terms. Wealth is measured in many ways.”
Both of Fiya’s eyebrows went up.
“You would leave then? Go off on your own?” Kate said.
He spoke in a murmur of longing, “I would go back to a place where there are no street lamps, no guns, and no calls to war. I would raise sweet-smelling flowers that entice brilliant birds. I would close my eyes to listen when they call out their songs of joy to their brothers and their lovers. Then I would watch them fly away into the blue sky until I could not longer see them. And the next day, I would do it all over again.”
Fiya was nodding, smiling like a shy Nile queen. “I know such a place. The full moon at night bathes the world in a pearl’s lustrous sheen, and the warm evening breeze feels like a silk brushing your face.”
They were lost in their visions and sat silent for a while.
Finally, Kate said, “Poetic, but not very practical.”
“What is that you say?” Fiya said.
“Only that you must have a plan.”
They both looked at her for a moment. Mr. M’bani took the bottle of liquor and checked to see how much she had taken. There was some left. He took a drink himself, and then waited.
“In times of war, a sail taken is a spoil of that war,” Kate said. “The Red Wind was a slaver. They would have taken us to fates we did not choose, nor desire.”
“Such things are a war against your soul,” Mr. M’bani whispered.
“Your British man, he thinks this is the spoil of his war,” Fiya said.
“We did not surrender, our colors were still flying.”
“You flew the plague flag, as I heard the tale,” Mr. M’bani said, greatly amused.
Kate took back her bottle.
“A flag of the plague which did us no good in the fog,” Fiya said.
Kate started to drink, but she paused. “Maybe the flag worked all right, maybe they were just stupid. Anyway, that Frenchman was his, I grant you. Sir Edward’s, I mean. But it’s now on the bottom of the sea. He can sail it from there if he likes. I know the rules of the prize court, and I say that this ship is ours still. We took it, it’s ours.”
She fought back a burp, then got the better of it, and swallowed it down. “Anyway, I didn’t kill two men just to hand this ship over to a man who looks at me with such a surly expression. Even if he did give me back my piccolo and half my apple, he could have at least smiled when he saved our backsides.”
Mr. M’bani just shook his head. “That is neither here nor there, Mattie Little, as we are all set on this calm sea like butterflies pinned to the table.”
“Your duke had some strange habits, Mr. M’bani,” Kate said.
“He was not my duke.”
“He’s a dead duke now,” she added and burst out laughing.
Mr. M’bani took the bottle away from her again.
“Say what is meant,” Fiya said, not so patient as Mr. M’bani. She took a biscuit and studied it a moment before nibbling. It seemed to go down easier than the Scotch.
“I’m saying that the Red Wind is ours, we can do with her what we choose. It’s our ship, our choice—stay or go, sink or swim. Though the last two options I would tend not to favor.”
Fiya contemplated the possibilities. The thoughts flying through her mind showed clearly on her face. She pushed the rest of the biscuit into her mouth and smiled as she ate it with obvious pleasure. Kate wasn’t sure if it was the thoughts or the sweet biscuit causing that sly smile.
Mr. M’bani sat down beside her. He said very softly, “I would not call it the Red Wind, that is a foolish name. It is a name for uneducated men who believe in demons and curses and other such things.”
Fiya smiled softly in reply, and Kate noted that her eyes had seldom left Mr. M’bani.
Taking Fiya’s hand, he continued, “I would call it the Fiya, for beauty and grace.”
“Then we christen her the Fiya,” Kate said, though she wondered if either of them heard.
“You speak of foolishness.” Fiya pulled her hand away and turned a cold shoulder.
It was clear she was pleased. Kate had seen such an expression and such a look before, but not ever on Fiya. This was the same way that little Yollie acted toward Peres, the love of her own young life. Kate felt such a mixed sense of longing and envy sweep over her that she blinked back the burning of tears.
She said, “Fiya, I call you my friend. Mr. M’bani, I have known you for years. You must take the ship; I give you my half in recognition of your service to our family. You must go to this place you know so well in your hearts. Happiness is hard to come by and so easily lost in this world.”
She said no more, just watched the realization dawn in them both—freedom, a new start, life by their own choice. They were all heady notions. Fiya took another biscuit, though also offered one to Mr. M’bani.
“We could not sail it alone,” he said, taking two. “There are others on your uncle’s ships who are much the same as me. They would go, if they knew.”
“Then they must know,” Fiya said.
“And the British on board?” Kate said.
The man rubbed his chin as he thought. “I have seen it done this way before. One leaves a task, another takes over. No one notices much who it is that comes and goes. If the work were being done, few would volunteer to do it instead. Leave that to me,” he said. Kate opened her mouth, but he quickly added, “None will be hurt, I will not start that way.”
She understood.
But Fiya said, “It is a dream. Fate is not in our favor. We do not stir on this sea. It is like you say, butterflies pinned to a paper. I too might die for the waiting.”
Then she helped herself to another biscuit, and Kate remembered her cocoa, now dearly departed. Fiya had a sweet tooth, the worst that she’d ever seen. She liked Fiya very much. Fiya was an ally. Kate sipped at the Scotch as she fiddled a bit with her bracelet in thought.
Kate said, “Then we must summon the wind.”
“Summon the wind? Do you mean with your charm,” Fiya said. “Have you ever tried?”
“This is superstition,” Mr. M’bani said.
Kate giggled. “It’s a bit of magic, laddie, and sometimes we need more than our fair share. Besides, I feel like celebrating, and I’m almost out of biscuits and Scotch. The sad details can fall down on us later.”
“How do you know it will work?” Fiya said.
Kate’s eyebrow went up, just the one. “At least it will be something to do. I do hate to wait for life to happen, for it always happens badly to me.”
“It is better to take life by the hand,” Fiya agreed, “provided the ot
her hand is holding a knife. How do you summon your wind?”
Mr. M’bani grunted and went hunting for more biscuits.
Kate’s eyebrows furrowed together as she tried to remember. “Of course, there must be a ritual. Perhaps candles, perhaps drums and ceremonial face paint. I’ll look in my mother’s books, there must be something there.”
“We must go back,” Fiya said.
“Why? Have you eaten all my biscuits?”
Mr. M’bani grabbed her hand and pulled Kate up from her seat. Then he gently pushed her towards the door. Perhaps they are just eager to get on with it then, she thought.
* * * * *
CHAPTER 40 - Betrothed
As they rowed back to the Stalwart, they sang. They did not row a straight line, but they did carry a tune. Sir Edward was there when she crawled up the rope-net ladder. She saluted, and then Kate noticed that she was the only one there. Fiya and Mr. M’bani stayed down below. She knew they had business of their own, and thought to offer their excuses as they began to row away.
She tried to stand straight, but she wavered. Kate felt a slight twinge of guilt that there wasn’t much left of the Scotch. She handed him over the bottle all the same.
He looked at it with his eyebrows up, but he took it and said, "I would have a word with you in my cabin, Madam."
"If you’re going to be angry with me, I think I’m better off here."
"After you, Madam."
He held out his arm to show her the way, but Kate blushed red when she hiccupped.
“You are drunk,” he said, making a face at her breath. He held up the near-empty bottle as evidence.
“I was just a bit and not on my own, but I don’t think that I am anymore. I think now I’m just a bit ill.”
Inside his cabin, he poured her a glass of sherry.
"I don't want any."
"Listen to what I have to say and then decide."
"Very well." She took the glass.
"I have reasons to believe that your Mr. Standish is a spy. In fact, at this very moment, he is wanted by the Crown for questioning and probably trial."
She set the glass on the table.
The Wilde Flower Saga: A Contrary Wind (Historical Adventure Series) Page 40
