Phoebe thought she would be sick. Her knees went slack, and she sank onto a bench beside the trestle she’d been scouring. Terrible images of a man bound to a whipping post and savagely beaten filled her head. “The sergeant?” she asked weakly and rested her head on her folded arms with a groan when Mistress Bell nodded.
The tavern keeper laid a gentle hand on Phoebe’s shoulder, in rough sympathy.
“Was I hired to be a whore?” Phoebe asked, looking up at Mistress Bell’s weathered, careworn face. “Is that why Lawrence felt free to manhandle me? Is all this happening because I was too witless to understand what I’d agreed to do here?”
The older woman shook her head, and the leathery skin over her cheekbones glowed with brief, faint color. “No, lass—you needn’t share any man’s bed unless you wish it so. I’ve told you that already. Lawrence is a coward and a rogue—and mark me, there are those like him in the Continental Army as well, He’ll not soon forgive you—much less one of his own sergeants—for showing him up for a fool.”
“Isn’t there something I can do—someone I can talk to?”
“If you don’t want to make matters worse for that poor blighter, you’ll stand back and let things fall ot as they will.”
“But a decent man is about to be whipped because of me—”
“And there’s naught to be done to stop it,” Mistress Bell interrupted. “Finish your scrubbling, miss and take yourself off to bed. Tomorrow will come almost as soon as you’ve closed your eyes.”
Despondently, missing Duncan and old Woman’s wise, reassuring advice, Phoebe completed her chore and, carrying the candle Mistress Bell had given her, climbed the steep, narrow steps to her room. There, after stripping to her petticoats, splashing her face with cool water from the pitcher on the washstand, and using a salted fingertip for a toothbrush, she collapsed onto her bed and cried.
Morning came all too quickly, just as the boss had predicted, and Phoebe washed, dressed, and hurried outside to use the stinking latrine behind the tavern. She scrubbed her hands again, in a basin beside the back door, using hard yellow soap that made no lather, and then went into the inn’s kitchen.
“He fair perished from the beating you got him, did Jessup Billington,” said a red-haired woman who would have been beautiful if not for the pockmarks fanned over one cheek.
“Hush yourself, Ellie Ryan. It’s not Phoebe’s fault that Major Lawrence is a pig,” Molly interceded, with a spirit surprising in someone who presented such a frail and mild appearance. “He’s the one that wants a proper hiding, if you ask me.”
Phoebe put out both hands in a bid for peace. She had never meant to get poor Billington into trouble, and she certainly didn’t want to be the cause of strife between Molly and the redhead. “Please don’t argue,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut against the terrible headache that suddenly pulsed in both temples. “It won’t do the sergeant any good, will it?”
Half an hour later, while serving a breakfast of sausage and ale to two merchants, Phoebe’s worst fears were confirmed. Sergeant Billington had indeed been tied to a post in the town square and soundly punished for insubordination. Lawrence had wielded the whip personally, one shopkeeper told the other, and there had been plenty of blood. They’d flung the poor bastard into a room in the back of the blacksmith’s place to recover as he might, and it had all come about because of some chit working in that very inn.
Who cared, they concluded in the end. Wasn’t he British, and hadn’t those rotters destroyed a lot of good men with their ruinous taxes and their war? Why, it was all an honest fellow could do to put food on the table, in these terrible times. There was precious little pity to spare for a lobsterback.
Phoebe, who felt sick again, might have been invisible for all the notice they paid her; she was only there to serve, like a footstool or a faithful dog. She suspected, too, that even if they had known she was the “chit” who’d earned a British soldier a whipping, they probably wouldn’t have given a rip.
She brought their ale and somehow kept from pouring it over their heads, and when Mistress Bell sent her out with a basket to buy eggs to be hard-boiled for the evening trade, she made her way to the blacksmith’s instead of the market. There was no one about—it was midday by then, and the tropical sun was hot—so she slipped inside, moving quickly past the forge and the horses nickering in their stalls, and found the room where Jessup Billington lay. He’d been stripped to the waist for his beating, and the skin on his back was not only lacerated, but bruised as well, and hideously swollen. He lay on his belly, his trousers crimson with dried blood, and cursed when Phoebe touched him.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
“Bugger that,” said Billington. “Get me some good stout whisky, lass, and be quick about it. The smithy keeps a flask on one of these shelves.”
Phoebe withheld the observation that water would be better for a man in his condition and went looking for the whisky. It was, given her involvement in the matter, the least she could do.
Billington raised himself onto one red-crusted elbow with a groan when she knelt to offer the flask, and the effort was agonizing to watch. He took a long, thirsty draught of liquor before sinking into the straw again. “I don’t know why you came, miss,” he said, “but I would beg you, as one Christian soul to another, to leave me be from now until Judgment Day.”
“I want to help you, if I can,” Phoebe said.
“You’ve helped me quite enough already,” Billington replied, groping for the flask, which Phoebe placed in his hand. “Do be so kind as to get out of here before Lawrence sees you and hangs me for a traitor and you for a spy.”
Phoebe rose to her feet. “Why would he do that?”
“Because he’s a spiteful snake,” Billington said, with excruciating patience, “and because I am indeed a traitor, and you might well be a spy. Give my sympathies to Rourke when he comes to collect you, the damn fool. And now, if you have a merciful bone in your body, get yourself gone.”
Phoebe felt herself turn pale. “What do you know of Duncan Rourke’s and my association?”
Billington laughed hoarsely. “Nothing I’m willing to confide in a devil-blessed bit of baggage like yourself,” he said. “Word gets round, and that’s all I’ll say.”
With that, he passed out, though whether from the pain or the whisky or both, Phoebe could not guess.
She found a pail of water on a bench near the forge and lugged it back to the dark, dirty chamber where her rescuer lay. Tearing off a part of her one and only petticoat, she soaked the cloth and began, ever so gently, to bathe the mutilated flesh of Billington’s back. Every once in a while, she was seized by a bout of deep retching and had to stop the careful washing, but eventually the worst of the blood had been removed, revealing the true extent of the wounds. Phoebe closed her eyes for a long moment, preparing herself for what she had to do, then opened the flask and poured its contents over Billington’s raw flesh.
He shot screaming and cursing from his stupor, like a man set afire, and Phoebe scrambled out of his reach, certain he would have killed her if he could.
“Damn your black soul, wench!” he bellowed. “What witchery is this?”
Phoebe was crying, though she was barely conscious of the fact. “It wasn’t witchery, it was common sense,” she said. “You might have gotten an infection if I hadn’t done something to prevent it, and your precious whisky was the only antiseptic on hand.” She paused, lip quivering. “You might still die, but at least you have a chance to recover.”
“Get out,” Billington seethed, through his clenched teeth, “before I rise and find a pitchfork and run you through for the pure pleasure of it!”
Phoebe got out and returned to the Crown and Lily, where Mistress Bell was waiting to blister her ears with a lecture for tarrying too long and not bringing back the eggs, but she endured it without protest.
Phoebe had been gone more than ten days when word reached Duncan, via the usual complicated, clandesti
ne route, that she was in Queen’s Town, a British-held settlement on the northernmost island, working in Sally Bell’s tavern. He was respectfully advised by his contact to fetch her before her good intentions got them all hanged, it being common knowledge that she hadn’t the sense God gave a pot handle.
Fiercely angry and, at the same time, wildly relieved to learn that that exasperating woman was still alive and making trouble, Duncan crushed the missive in one hand and then held it to the candle in the middle of the table until it blazed between his fingers. When it had been consumed, he glared at the ashes, as if to ignite them, too, by the heat of his gaze.
“What is it?” asked Alex, who had been moved downstairs to the drawing room, where he had a view of the sea. Physically he was mending, but there was no light in his eyes, and his state of mind worried Duncan deeply, though he was careful to hide the fact. “From the look of you, that dispatch might have been penned by the devil himself.”
Duncan deliberately stilled a muscle leaping in his jaw. He did not believe in striking women, children, dogs, or horses, but at that moment, if he could have gotten his hands on Phoebe Turlow, he’d have throttled her with a smile on his face and a melody in his heart.
“I must go to Queen’s Town,” he said. “Immediately.”
Alex, already pale, turned a grayish white. “Queen’s Town? Good God, Duncan, why don’t you just sail to London and present yourself at Court? The effect will be the same, either way—they’ll hang you, and put your head on a pike!”
Duncan left the table, where he had taken a light meal before the message had arrived, hand-delivered by one of Old Woman’s native lads. “I have no choice,” he said. “Phoebe is there.”
Alex cursed roundly. “Well, if she’s a blasted British spy, she’s told them about Paradise Island, and we’re all about to be fitted for the noose!”
“They’d have been here by now, if she’d told them anything,” Duncan said. His instincts, on which his life and those of his men so often depended, assured him that Phoebe was as loyal to the rebel cause as General Washington himself. But she was also a creature of impulse, with a degree of courage unwarranted by her survival skills, and she could easily trust the wrong person. “Don’t worry, my friend—I’ll see to Phoebe.”
By the time the tides changed, a little after ten o’clock that night, Duncan had assembled a minimal crew and was sailing steadily toward the settlement of Queen’s Town, where there was a price on his head. At dawn, they dropped anchor, a few miles south of the harbor, and Duncan and two of his men rowed for shore.
Phoebe was still in Mistress Bell’s bad graces more than a week after her failure to buy eggs, but at least she hadn’t been fired and sent from the Crown and Lily in disgrace. If that happened, she would be left with only two choices—turning tricks or starving. No one else would hire her—word had gotten around about her propensity for causing grief—and she couldn’t have found her way back to Paradise Island even if she had the faintest idea where it was. So she kept her opinions to herself and steered clear of Major Lawrence whenever he came into the tavern, which he did on a regular basis, and resigned herself to emptying spittoons and slop jars and washing all the mugs and pitchers every night. One day soon, if there was a God in heaven, Mistress Bell would get over being miffed and stop assigning all the nasty jobs to Phoebe.
She was comforting herself with this thought and making her way along the moonlit path to the privy, when a shape loomed suddenly before her like a demon’s shadow. She tried to scream and was wrenched against a hard chest for her trouble. It was little consolation that the chest in question, like the hand over her mouth, was Duncan’s. This was not a friendly visit.
Phoebe struggled, on principle, though a part of her wanted to be captured and carried off to the eighteenth-century equivalent of the Casbah, whatever it might be.
“Silence,” he breathed, close to her ear, stilling her with the sheer power of his grasp. “If we’re caught, I won’t be the only one dangling from a high branch. You’ll be right beside me.”
He had a point. No one would believe Duncan had taken her by surprise; instead, they’d say it was a tryst, that she was his lover and his accomplice, every bit as guilty of treason as he was.
Because she didn’t want to die—and for a few less urgent reasons, too—Phoebe stopped fighting.
6
I could lose my job over this,” Phoebe complained, when Duncan had dragged her through shadowy alleyways and down some worn wooden steps into what smelled like a cellar. “I’m still in trouble for visiting Mr. Billington when I should have been buying eggs.”
He struck a flame, using a flint and steel taken from a small tinderbox, and the glow of a single squat candle smoked and wavered in the gloom. “You have already lost your position at the Crown and Lily,” Duncan said flatly, his face craggy in a shifting pattern of darkness and light. “And Sally Bell won’t miss you overmuch, I’ll wager.”
Phoebe hugged herself, because the cramped, musty space was chilly and dank, and because a large, lonely, and very unpredictable world lay beyond those cellar doors slanting at the top of the steps. A person could be riding peacefully in an elevator one moment, and find herself flung into another century in the next. Having read about Mr. Einstein’s theories concerning parallel dimensions was one thing, but experiencing them firsthand was something else. She felt like a cosmic guinea pig.
“You should have left me alone,” she said, as Duncan removed his dark, tailored waistcoat and laid it gently round her shoulders. “I was doing fine.”
“Oh, wonderfully well,” Duncan responded. His expression was unreadable in that wretched light, but his tone was wry. “So well that you’ve already gotten one man beaten half to death.”
Phoebe stiffened. Whether she spent the rest of her life in this century or returned to her own, she would never forget what had happened to Sergeant Billington, nor ever completely forgive herself for it. “It was an accident,” she said, after taking a moment to swallow the lump in her throat. “What should I have done? Let Major Lawrence have his way with me? I struggled, and the sergeant came to my rescue, and I’m very grateful that he did. However, I didn’t ask him to do it, and I’ll thank you to keep that in mind.”
Duncan rose from the overturned crate on which he’d been sitting—Phoebe’s seat seemed to be a three-legged milking stool—and plundered a cabinet, stirring a cloud of dust. Phoebe sneezed loudly.
“Do be quiet,” Duncan enjoined, returning with a corked bottle and two wooden cups. “We’re supposed to be hiding, in case you haven’t deduced that. But perhaps you wish to signal some British compatriot?”
Phoebe sniffled. “Are we back to that? I’m no spy, Duncan Rourke.”
“Then why did you leave Paradise Island without my permission?”
“Because …” She paused, watching him pour wine into the cups, which he had wiped out hastily with the tail of his finely stitched linen shirt, and accepted one when he held it out to her. “Because I was developing codependent behavior patterns. Toward you.”
“ ’Codependent’?”
“I wanted to take care of you.”
He hesitated, taking a long, elegant swallow from his own cup before replying. “And that is wrong?”
“Not in its purest sense, no,” she said, blushing and, for a moment, dodging his gaze. “But some problems can—and should—only be solved by the person who has them.” When she looked at Duncan again, she saw that he had arched one dark brow, and he was watching her intently over the rim of his cup.
“And what, by your lights, is this problem I must solve?” he asked.
Phoebe sighed, exasperated. “How should I know?” she countered. “Whatever it is, it makes you play the harpsichord as if you were trying to batter down the gates of heaven itself with a torrent of sound.”
“Or of hell,” Duncan muttered lightly, refilling her wine cup and his own. “You are right,” he allowed after a few moments. And a few thoughtfu
l sips. “It is a private torment, one you can do nothing about. You will only harm yourself by trying.”
Phoebe leaned forward slightly on the milking stool, earnest and probably a bit drunk. Instead of guilt, however, she took a defiant and somewhat reckless pleasure in her inebriation, because in point of fact, after all she’d been through lately, it felt good. Time enough for regrets in the morning, when she would have a headache and a queasy stomach and wonder if it was okay to start the first 12-Step group, even though nobody was supposed to do that until 1935. She made a mental note to leave a journal for her descendants, should she be lucky enough to have any, to buy stock in Xerox, IBM, and Microsoft.
She blinked, hiccoughed, and held out her cup.
Duncan shook his head and took the humble chalice from her, setting it aside on the barrel top, where the greasy candle struggled to sustain light. “Thank you,” he said, with the merest hint of a smile.
“For what?” Phoebe asked, frowning.
“For caring,” he said. “You’re safe with me, Phoebe. I’ll make you a bed, and we’ll set off for safer places as soon as possible.”
She peered, squinting into the darkness that pressed close around them. “Lie down in this place? With rats and mice and spiders everywhere? No way, José.”
Duncan sighed. “I sleep here myself on occasion,” he said in a reasonable tone. “And I have been unmolested by such vermin.”
Phoebe giggled. Either she’d had an even larger share of the wine than she’d thought, or the stuff had been considerably more potent than the brand she usually bought at the supermarket. “You sleep in a cellar? The illustrious Duncan Rourke? Why, for heaven’s sake?”
“Precisely because I am the illustrious—and more than a little notorious—Duncan Rourke. Now, cease your chatter and take rest. Escaping from Queen’s Town might prove quite a challenge, and you’ll need all your strength for it.”
“I’m afraid,” Phoebe confessed.
“That is wise of you,” Duncan retorted, holding up the candle so that it spilled its murky glimmer over a cot with a netting of rope for a mattress, one moth-eaten blanket, and a pillow that looked as if it already provided housing for a family of mice. “I think, in you, a little wholesome fear would be an attribute. It might keep you from doing stupid things—though I confess that’s a rash hope.”
Pirates Page 9
