by Susan Grant
“I’ve been with my patients in sick bay,” Bern explained, “or I’d have come sooner.”
Her heart skipped a beat. She had been vaccinated, but Andrew could catch something, particularly if he was in a weakened condition. “Disease?” she asked uneasily.
Anger shadowed his drawn face. “Not what is typically found in men’s bodies, nay. What I treat is the animalistic result of one man’s diseased mind.”
Carly’s breath caught in her throat.
He hated Richard!
She wrung her hands, again seeing in the doctor the prospect of an ally, but afraid to hope this time, afraid to lose such a precious opportunity. “It’s all right,” she ventured hesitantly. “You can say what you want to me.”
Bern frowned and clasped his hands behind his back, gazing at the candle by her bedside. “Many times, too many times, the duke has issued rather sadistic punishments when perhaps a verbal reprimand would have sufficed. When I spoke to him about the vicious floggings, he explained that the crew needed to be toughened before they engaged Spencer and his pirates in battle. Of course, you already know about the towing accomplished when we engaged Spencer in the doldrums. We lost a dozen men to the heat.”
Bern exhaled, sounding wearied beyond his years. “While we docked on the mainland seeing to repairs, the first lieutenant and I asked that he cease the madness. Such barbarism may be common practice on some ships, but we wanted no part of it.”
“But he didn’t stop,” Carly murmured.
“And he won’t. He flogged the first lieutenant to death that day. But he let me live, because I’m the only man who can keep alive the poor souls he needs to work this ship.” His mouth twisted. “The few healthy men left are his minions.”
He gestured to her untouched dinner. “Please, don’t let me keep you from your meal.”
“Actually, this situation is not conducive to my appetite.”
He considered her, then nodded. “The Longreach is paralleling the coastline, and it will through the night.” He hesitated, as though mulling something over.
Puzzled, she said, “Go on.”
“If . . . if I were to say to you, milady, that the opportunity exists, this very night, to take advantage of that proximity . . . might you?”
She froze. Was he talking mutiny? Jumping ship?
She clamped down on her surge of excitement. She wasn’t leaving without Andrew.
Her heart thudded in her throat as she carefully chose her words. “If I were to say to you, ensign, that true love comes first . . . might you understand why I cannot go?”
Bern’s countenance softened. He withdrew a ring of large, old-fashioned keys from his pocket. “Take these.” He pressed them into her hand. “You’ll know why when morning comes,” he said softly, then backed out the door.
Richard burst into her cabin. “Get up!”
Having slept fully clothed, she glowered at him from a cot littered with mangled white bows that had come loose from her gown.
“Come on,” he snapped, snatching her upper arm in a painful grip.
Carly hurried to keep up. The warship’s timbers creaked on the swells. But there was no one to work the sails. Except for the man at the wheel, the deck was deserted. Yesterday, six longboats trailed the stern on ropes. Now only one remained.
“Where is everyone?” she asked innocently.
In his most pronounced display of emotion toward her to date, he growled, “They’ve mutinied! Deserters, the lot of them! I’m going after them, however. I’ll find where the bounders have ferreted themselves away.” He plowed one hand through his hair. “Now I’ll have to speed up our friend Spencer’s demise, as if I didn’t have enough things to worry about.”
Carly’s stomach twisted. Richard had never intended for Andrew to stand trial. He meant to kill him first, and that made their dilemma far more desperate.
“I’ll be in the wardroom with my officers, discussing the situation. Serve us breakfast there.” He deposited her into a large cabin that was as hot as a furnace.
“You want me to cook?”
“Yes, I want you to cook. And don’t tell me you never learned how. You’ve half a brain—use it!” He slammed the door.
Gasping, she leaned against a wide wooden table riddled with slashes. Daylight seeped through the smoke vent in the ceiling, making it difficult to see more than a few feet in front of her. She ignited a rush from the galley stove, which was thankfully still burning, and lit a few stubby candles.
She sat for awhile, trying to collect her wits. On the downside, she had no weapons, and all the good guys who might have gotten her some had jumped ship. On the positive side, very few sailors were probably left onboard, and they’d be overburdened and distracted trying to sail and navigate a warship, while placating an angry lunatic.
Her hand closed over the bulge in her skirt. Bern’s keys were hidden in her dress. There were five. He said he treated prisoners. One key must be for the hold, and another for shackles. Andrew’s shackles, she prayed.
She busied herself with the mundane chore of preparing breakfast as she struggled to take advantage of the new situation. She scrounged around the galley, looking for biscuits, oatmeal, and sugar. Her dress pasted itself to her sweaty skin and her hair hung in dreadlocks. Better not to tidy up, she thought, in case the duke or his thugs were contemplating using her for sustenance beyond food. With that in mind, she rubbed ashes on her cheek and sprinkled some in her hair.
The galley grew dimmer as she worked. The cheap, foul-smelling candles had already burned down to pools of hissing, melted tallow. She was sloppy in replacing them, not bothered, for once, by splattering hot tallow on a wooden floor and table. The duke and his entire ship could go up in flames, for all she cared. Heck, why not throw a few candles in the powder room for some added excitement?
A candle in the powder room.
“Whoa.” Her heart stopped, then restarted with a thunderous beat. Could she? Blow the ship to smithereens, the duke and his murderers with it?
Squeezing her eyes shut she concentrated, remembering the sketch of the warship Andrew had used the day they formulated their plan to destroy its rudder. The powder magazine was located well below the waterline, three or four companionways below the topmost deck. The room was small, with a hatch only the gunner could unlock, something hardly ever done at sea—no one wanted to chance a stray spark getting inside.
She stopped herself in the middle of loading silverware onto the cart. If she were to set off an explosion in the powder magazine while she and Andrew were still aboard, they’d die with the duke.
They’d have to escape first.
But how? How did one blast apart a ship after the fact?
Leave a candle burning in the powder room.
She’d learned that during battle, boys known as powder monkeys squeezed through small windows in the powder room walls, hunkering down inside to shuttle powder out to the men operating the cannons. She was petite, too. Well, except for her butt. Certainly she could squeeze into the magazine like a powder monkey. Once inside, she’d set a candle on the powder bags she knew were stored next to wooden barrels of the stuff.
She wheeled a rickety wooden cart of food to the wardroom, while her mind percolated with hatching plans. A burning candle was a ticking clock. She’d have to free Andrew, swim to the longboat, and row away in the finite minutes it gave them.
How much time would a candle give them? An hour? Two? They burned at different rates depending on thickness and quality. The beeswax candles in her quarters were cleaner and slower burning than the tallow ones in the galley. . . .
The whole thing was awfully dicey.
She paused in front of the wardroom door, listening to the voices of the duke and his men. Her gaze drifted to the horizon, where warm rain obscured the craggy African coastline. As the shower passed overhead, droplets softened the edges of the half-dozen huts in what she guessed was a village.
Why not just free Andrew, get into
the longboat, and escape?
No. Richard was relentless—she’d already learned that. Left alive, he’d hunt them down and kill them. If not her and Andrew, then Bern and the others.
Exploding the ship with him in it was her only option.
Again, she gazed at the beach. If she did anything at all, it would have to be tonight. Who knew how much longer they’d follow the coast? In a longboat without a compass or water, she and Andrew wouldn’t last long on the open sea, though she made a mental note to bring a bag of supplies with her later . . . just in case.
Forcing a pleasant smile on her face, she opened the door and breezed inside. Time to feed the demons their breakfast.
“Andrew,” she whispered against the solid wooden door, glancing nervously behind her into the darkness of the hold. No one had followed her. “Andrew, can you hear me?”
“Carly!” The familiar deep voice sounded hoarse.
“There’s been a mutiny,” she quickly told him. “Almost everyone jumped ship last night.”
“Who is left?” His voice sounded nearer now, and more alert.
“Richard’s here. And those two jerks who captured you.” Again she peered into the dank, lantern-lit hold. “And the little troll who usually guards your cell. Except, at the moment, he’s too busy sailing and steering.”
“Four? Are you telling me that only four men are left?”
“Yes. And they’re all so preoccupied by the mutiny that they left me alone to cook their meals.” She’d attended them charmingly and docilely all day, keeping them well stuffed. “They ignore me, so I listen to them talk, and they talk a lot. They intend to patrol the coast. They’re going to use a cannon to terrorize villages and other ships until they track down the sailors. I can see the coastline, but I don’t know how much longer we’ll follow it without enough men to work the sails.”
“We have to act tonight.”
“That’s what I think, too.”
Something scrabbled down the companionway. Carly gasped. A tiny shadow scurried past. A rat. Relieved, she shut her eyes. “I told them I had to clean the galley and make dinner, so they don’t know I’m here. I have a plan to run by you before I search out the powder room.”
Silence.
“And I have keys, Andrew. Bern left me keys. I can get you out!”
“Not until after dark,” he said briskly. “And only if you’re certain the guard is occupied elsewhere. We’ve no weapons.”
“I know,” she murmured. “I’ll come at midnight. Are you shackled?”
“Aye.”
She flattened her hands on the door, pressed her cheek to the rough wood. How she ached to hold him again.
“You mentioned the powder magazine, Carly. Why?”
“This is my plan: I’ll light a candle in the powder room and we’ll escape before the ship blows.”
“Woman, do you have any idea how risky such an operation is? Candles throw sparks. Hot tallow drips.”
She clenched her hands into fists. “Richard said he’d kill you before we got to England. Because of the mutiny, I think it might be sooner rather than later. So, yes, I think it’s risky, and, yes, I stand the chance of destroying us all, but I’m sure you’ll agree that possible death beats certain death any day.”
She heard his deep sigh. “If it costs me my life to see you safe,” he said, “so be it.”
“But I won’t be safe,” she shot back. “The duke already said he wants to marry my sister, so I don’t have high hopes for surviving this voyage, either.”
More silence.
Meaning he was now considering the possibilities, the risks, the consequences of her crazy plan.
“Do you remember everything you learned about the magazine?” he asked finally.
She breathed silent thanks. “Yes, most of it.”
He quickly reviewed the dangers and the setup of the room, nonetheless.
“I’ve been researching candles, too,” she said. Each time she returned to the sweltering galley, she lit them, her chest tight with anxiety. Afraid to risk jotting down figures, she struggled to keep the results clear in her head. “I’m studying how they burn, Andrew, the individual characteristics. Tallow versus beeswax, fat versus thin. By the time I’m through, I’ll know exactly the length of wax we need.”
“Two hours,” he said. “I’ll want two hours.”
She exhaled. “Okay.”
“If you haven’t already, determine how many minutes a knuckle’s length of wax gives us. Then five knuckle lengths.”
“I will.”
“Then multiply and divide, snuff out candles, and start new ones. Break off bottoms and try different wicks.”
“Yes, I’ll do all that.”
“And then, my little spitfire, I want you to get down on your knees and pray for all you’re worth.”
A prolonged roll of thunder rumbled in the distance as Carly left the cabin. By midnight, wind had transformed the sea into a seething sheet of foam. With most of its sails wrapped, the warship plunged and rose on the swells.
Except for the sounds of the rising gale, the decks were deathly still and deserted. Complacent, Richard hadn’t posted a single lookout. Cruel dictators made such sloppy leaders.
It didn’t surprise her to see Andrew’s warden asleep in his hammock, clutching to his chest the bottle she’d just happened to leave near the wheel after dinner. For a typical seaman, brandy was rare and precious, an unexpected treat she knew would put him under for the night.
The stage was set.
Now all she had to do was perform.
The lantern she carried scarcely lit the length of her shadow. The duke had locked her in when he retired for the night, but as she’d discovered that morning, Bern’s keys worked from the inside, as well as the exterior.
The ship yawed, and she staggered to a stop outside the powder room. The storm was getting worse. She’d have to wedge each candle even deeper between bags of powder to keep them from tipping. That would leave them less than two hours, but how much less, she didn’t know.
She withdrew one of two identical, long, thin beeswax candles from the folds of her dress. Hands shaking as much from apprehension as excitement, she lit one wick with the lantern flame, then fastened the lamp on a hook on an exterior wall made for that purpose. Powder rooms weren’t lit from within; too dangerous. Instead, lanterns were hung outside double-glazed portholes, allowing illumination—but not sparks—inside.
She stripped to her chemise. Then, feet first, holding the candle straight out in front of her, she shimmied backward through a tiny hatchway barely wide enough for her thighs and hips. She grunted, pushed herself with her hands until her rear end cleared, then eased down to a crouch between the wooden barrels inside the powder room.
She stayed like that for a long moment, unable to move, her breaths hissing in and out. She was actually sitting in her underwear, holding a lit candle in a room stacked from floor to ceiling with gunpowder.
Swallowing hard, she stretched her arms outside the hatch and lit the second candle from the first, insurance in case one burned out. Then, working swiftly and carefully, she jammed the candles between cylindrical linen bags of powder—deeper than she’d wanted to, but the heavy seas left her no choice.
The warship lurched, then rolled.
Not breathing, she stared at the candles. The flames danced, but the stems stayed upright.
Thank you.
She scrambled out, dressed, and snatched the lantern.
The clock was ticking . . .
Her insides felt watery as she dashed to Andrew’s cell. Leaking barrels blocked her way. Stumbling, she flew forward, scraping her palms over the rough floor and jamming splinters into her knees. On her feet again, she ran through the darkness, crunching over filth left by a crew that didn’t care about the state of their ship. She lifted her skirts higher. They were heavier than she was used to and slowed her down. Startled, rats scampered by, bumped into her, scraping her shins with their sharp
little claws.
She halted by Andrew’s door. “Andrew!” She fought to catch her breath while she sorted through the keys. “It’s done. I had to push them in pretty far because of the swells. I don’t know how much time is left.”
“Open the bloody door!”
“I have to find the key first.”
In her haste she dropped the key ring. She aimed the lantern at the floor, groping blindly.
The clock ticked. . . .
Her fingers closed around cold metal. She scooped them up, her hands shaking as she tried each old-fashioned key in turn.
She shoved the second to last key into the opening, and the lock turned with a heavy metallic click. She flew into Andrew’s arms. Wrapping her fingers in his hair, she met his desperate, hungry kiss.
He pulled away, breathless. “Come on, love. There’s little time.” She unlocked his shackles.
They raced up the companionways and out to the deck. A line of thunderstorms was fast approaching. The ship pitched on the waves, its helm unmanned, its sails useless. Andrew gripped her tightly, guiding her to the stern, where a single longboat bounced in the wake. She could hear his ragged breathing above the booming of the surf and her pulse.
Using a pulley, he towed the boat closer. “Jump!” he shouted, never letting go of her hand.
Cold seawater gushed up her nose. Andrew was a powerful swimmer, and he dragged her upward to the surface, then propelled her through the swells to the boat.
They fell onto its bottom, panting. Then he cut the line and they spun free. “Hold on!” Andrew grabbed the oars. “I’m going to row like hell.”
Rain came down in cold, slanting spikes. She sat, facing her husband, her teeth chattering. Andrew gasped with the strain of his efforts. The current and the winds were working against them.
The clock ticked. . . .
Behind Andrew loomed the warship. She kept her eyes trained on the deck, scanning for signs of the duke or his men. But not one of the cowardly murderers ventured on deck. Even so, knowing what was about to happen to them nauseated her. She shivered uncontrollably now, unable to pull her gaze from the Longreach, looking so lost without its crew. Driven by the gale, it slowly listed to one side.
