Pirates

by Linda Lael Miller

  Christ, he thought, closing his eyes for a fraction of a moment. His wife, his child. His father and brother, and his crew. His ship.

  Whatever it cost, this gambit must succeed.

  “Show your crew!” demanded the Northumberland’ s sea master.

  The men stepped up to the rail, grasping it to maintain their balance as the Francesca bent her masts and rigging toward the water, creaking mightily under the strain. It was then, of all times, that Phoebe snowed herself, dragging herself up the slippery incline of the deck to join the startled crew at the rail.

  She waved a handkerchief. “Help!” she cried, with a convincing note of hysteria in her voice. “We’ll all drown if you don’t save us!”

  Nobody was going to be able to help that woman, Duncan vowed to himself, as fresh fear surged, bile-bitter, into the back of his throat, when he got his hands on her. In the meantime, he could only hope that chivalry, a trait the British loved to ascribe to themselves, would prevail, and the Northumberland would sail within rappeling distance.

  “Hold fast!” the English captain boomed, true to form. “Assistance is on its way!”

  Duncan drew his sword as the awkward prison ship lumbered toward them. When the Francesca tipped again, with a great, grinding moan of timbers that reverberated along his spine, he saw Phoebe lose her tentative grasp on the rail. She slid backward, arms wheeling, and Duncan caught her with his free arm and held her against his chest.

  “You,” he said past her ear, “are in more trouble than you have ever dreamed.”

  “So,” she replied, only a little breathless, “are you.”

  “Find something to hold onto,” Duncan commanded, “and stay put until the fighting is over.”

  “Yes, dear,” Phoebe promised very sweetly, turning to look up at him and bat her eyelashes. “You must know that I wouldn’t dream of disobeying you.”

  The Northumberland was alongside; he could not stay and throttle her. Instead, he embraced her briefly and bolted into the fray.

  The battle was long and it was bloody, and the British, as always, gave as good as they got. Blue sparks filled the air as Duncan’s sword clashed with that of an English captain, and all around, his men fought with the tireless, savage intensity that had enabled the fighting force to survive more than four years of warfare. At one point, when Duncan glanced around him, looking for Phoebe, a new opponent descended upon him and cut a deep slash into his right shoulder.

  The pain would come later, if he was fortunate enough to live to feel it, Duncan knew. For the moment, all he could see was smoke and blood and the flash of sunlight on swords. He heard the shouts of his own men and the crew of the Northumberland, the terrible scream of timber from the Francesca as she succumbed.

  Phoebe. Had she stayed aboard the doomed ship, or was she on this one, getting in the way of swordplay?

  Duncan fought his way across the deck, wielding his sword and casting glances to left and right when he could afford to, searching desperately for any sign of his wife. He did not catch so much as a glimpse of her, and he was terrified to consider the possibilities, but he did not yet despair. Phoebe would do what she must to survive, for the sake of their child and for herself. That was the sort of woman she was.

  Behind him, he felt the Francesca go into a death roll, as if she were a part of him, an extension of his own body. Soaked in sweat, choking on the acrid smoke of cannon and muskets and burning cargo, Duncan did the only thing he could—he continued to fight.

  The Northumberland was a transport ship, rather than a war vessel, and when the tide of battle turned at last, it favored the rebel forces. Once the trained soldiers had been defeated, those put on board to lie in wait for Duncan and his raiders, only the crew was left to offer resistance. They were sailors, not men of war, and they had been reduced to swinging barrel staves and mop handles in the effort to protect themselves. One by one, then by twos and threes, they saw reason and surrendered.

  Duncan lowered his sword in time to turn and see the Francesca tumbling beneath the water’s surface like a whale turning up its belly. He stopped Beedle as he passed and caught at the man’s tattered sleeve with a bloodied hand.

  “Where is my wife?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

  “Below,” Beedle said, casting a glance toward the corpse of Duncan’s ship. “She’s safe, man—gone to find your father and brother and see if they need looking after. Here, let’s have a look at the shoulder, if we can find it for the blood …”

  Duncan shrugged away when his friend would have taken hold of him. “Later,” he replied, though Beedle could not have heard, for Duncan had already turned by the time the word left his mouth, making his way toward the companionway leading belowdecks.

  He encountered several of his men as he went; each one tried to waylay him and was shaken off. He found the hold, where the prisoners were kept, and stood on the threshold, appalled by the stink of the place, temporarily blinded by the gloom.

  Phoebe’s form, slightly plump now that their child was growing inside her, was the first one he recognized. He could see that she was whole, with no blood on her, and the relief that rode the wake of this realization made him sway in the doorway. He grated out her name.

  She turned and looked back at him, her face a smudged, pale oval in the darkness. “Over here, Duncan,” she said. “Come quickly.”

  He stepped over prone bodies, neither knowing nor caring if they were alive or dead, and reached her side. She was kneeling on the filthy, straw-littered boards of the lower deck, holding a man in her arms. Duncan dropped to one knee when he recognized his father. He was dimly aware of Lucas, grubby and gaunt, close by.

  John Rourke smiled up at him. One hand was splayed over his sunken chest, as if to keep his heart beating by an act of will. “If I were a well man,” John said, “I swear I would get up off this floor and thrash you for a fool. Don’t you know a bloody trap when you see one? They might have had you, Duncan. God in heaven, they might have had you.”

  Tears burned in Duncan’s eyes, and, for once, he made no effort to hide them. It would have been futile. “Are you going to lie there and die, old man,” he challenged gruffly, “after all I’ve been through to save you from a British prison?”

  Phoebe had withdrawn a little way, so Duncan could be closer to his father. Lucas, he saw, through a sheen of tears, was slumped across from him, clasping the older man’s free hand against his own forehead. His broad shoulders moved with his weeping, though there was no sound from him.

  “It is my time to die,” John replied slowly, and with obvious difficulty. “I reckon I’d have done so anyway, right about now. The circumstances probably don’t matter much, in the scheme of things.”

  “Stay with us,” Duncan rasped. He felt Phoebe’s hand on his back, providing a counterpoint to the pain awakening in his wound, and was amazed at the comfort that came from such a simple caress. “There are doctors …”

  His father gave a long, shuddering sigh—there was a faint echo of amusement in the sound—and then shook his head. “I am too weary,” he said. “This I cannot grant you, Duncan. But there are things I will ask, of both you and Lucas.”

  “Anything,” Lucas said. It was the first time he’d spoken.

  “Remember, when this war is ended—no matter who prevails—that you are brothers. I enjoin you to look after your mother and sister, of course, but also to forget your differences when the fighting ceases and set yourselves to the task of raising Troy from the ashes. It must be held for the Rourkes who will come after us.”

  Across their father’s fragile, dying body, Duncan and Lucas looked at each other. There was no need to speak; they had always been close, and although they had argued many times, and even come to blows on occasion as brothers will, they loved each other. There had never been any question of that.

  “Phoebe?” John looked about, blindly, for his daughter-in-law.

  “I’m here,” she said gently, drawing near again, so that he could
see her.

  He smiled, and she smoothed his hair with a light, soot-smudged hand. “You’ll comfort Margaret, won’t you?” he asked. “And Phillippa? And this great brute of a son of mine?”

  “Yes,” she promised. She looked tenderly at Duncan and then told her fatherin-law in a soft voice, “There will be a child in March. We’re going to call him John Alexander Rourke.”

  John’s gray face took on a translucent quality; he seemed to welcome death, to see things Phoebe and Lucas and Duncan could not. “John Alexander Rourke,” he repeated, making the name a benediction on his own life.

  With that, John Rourke closed his eyes, sighed once more, and perished.

  Lucas doubled over with a soundless cry, laying his forehead to his father’s chest, and Duncan, half-blinded by his own grief, rested a hand on his brother’s heaving back, lending the only comfort he could give. He did not know how long they sat like that—ten minutes? an hour?—before Beedle and other members of Duncan’s crew came and led Lucas away.

  Only then did Duncan realize that the other prisoners, probably all dissidents on their way to England for trial, had been ushered out.

  Phoebe laid cool, dirty hands on either side of Duncan’s face. “Come with me,” she commanded softly. “You can do nothing more here, and you’re wounded. I’m going to keep my promise to John and look after you.”

  Duncan supposed he was in a mild state of shock. He rose awkwardly to his feet—the wound in his shoulder was throbbing in time with his heartbeat now, and the pain was like the touch of a smoldering branding iron. And yet, in the face of his father’s death, it was no more than an annoyance.

  She took him to a room filled with long tables; the mess, no doubt. There were men everywhere, moaning and bleeding, being tended by freed prisoners and, in some cases, by those who had wounded them in the first place. Lucas was there, looking grim but whole, and he helped Phoebe press Duncan onto one of the improvised cots.

  The pain grew keen and sharp, clawing at him like talons, like claws attempting to wrench his muscles out through his skin. And his father, the man he’d thought would live forever, was dead.

  Lucas peeled away shreds of Duncan’s bloody shirt, while Phoebe peered at the wound.

  “It looks pretty bad,” she said.

  Duncan uttered a strangled laugh. “An astute observation, Mistress Rourke,” he said. “I want whiskey. Now.”

  “Too bad,” Phoebe said. “What we had went down with the Francesca, and as near as we can tell, the captain and crew of the Northumberland are simply not drinking men.”

  “What are we going to do?” asked Lucas. He looked like a dead man himself, as soiled and befuddled as if he’d just dug his way up out of the grave to inquire what all the wailing was about.

  “Clean the wound as best we can, and then stitch it closed.”

  “You know how to do that?”

  “I saw it in a movie once,” Phoebe said, with alarming confidence.

  Lucas opened his mouth, only to be stopped by the back of Duncan’s hand coming to rest against his belly.

  “Don’t bother asking what a ’movie’ is,” Duncan told his brother. “You won’t understand the answer.”

  “Shut up,” said Phoebe. “I need to concentrate.”

  Duncan passed out then, and it was probably just as well.

  Phoebe on the deck of the Northumberland. It was sunset, and half a dozen lifeboats bobbed on moving patches of pink and apricot waters, dappled with bits of crimson and gold. The captain, the crew, and the tattered remains of the redcoat contingent were aboard, with water and food to last them until they were found or reached shore on their own. Understandably, the prisoners who had been incarcerated below, with John and Lucas, had chosen to remain on board.

  Among them were a surgeon and two barbers, who had done an admirable job of mending the wounded, Duncan included. The suturing had proved to be too much for Phoebe after all, and she’d been grateful to hand over her needle and thread to the doctor.

  “The captain all but turned the Francesca onto her masts, searching for you,” Beedle said with some amusement in his tone. His spiffy coat was somewhat the worse for wear, now that the fighting was over, and the brass buttons were either missing or dulled with blood. “Where were you hiding, Mistress Rourke?”

  Phoebe might have smiled, if John hadn’t been dead and Duncan severely injured, body and soul. She thought of the book she’d read about Duncan’s life, lying open somewhere, far off in the twentieth century, and remembered that it had mentioned his sword wound. “I was in the hold, crouched inside a coil of rope. I believe there were two or three bilge rats in there with me.”

  Beedle waved to the crewmen of the Northumberland, and one sporting fellow waved back. “Duncan will have my hide for saying it, but I don’t care,” he said, without looking at her. “I’m glad you were close at hand today, Mistress Rourke. Your husband had need of you, though only God knows whether he’ll ever admit it or not.”

  “Thank you,” Phoebe replied. “I expect, when Mr. Rourke recovers, he’ll lecture me until I’m ready to cover my ears with both hands and jump overboard. He was not, to put it plainly, pleased to find me on board the Francesca, today of all days.” She paused, truly aware, for the first time since the action had begun, of her own weariness. “Now, I must go and sit with my husband,” she said.

  “He’d prefer it, I think, if you’d lie down,” Beedle said kindly. “I’ll find you a place to rest and come for you straightaway if the captain needs you.”

  She thought, as she did every day, every hour, every minute, of their child. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll rest. Thank you again, Mr. Beedle.”

  The plain man blushed and offered his arm.

  Phillippa and Margaret, Old Woman and all the servants were waiting on the beach with muskets and whatever other weapons they’d been able to find, as the Northumberland sailed ponderously into port. When the vessel was near enough that they could recognize Phoebe and Lucas and Beedle at the rail, they lowered their guns and simply waited.

  Phoebe came ashore in the one remaining lifeboat, escorted by Lucas and the elderly surgeon, Dr. Evan Mars, who had been on his way to England to stand trial on charges of treason. He had been in the pay of General Washington himself, until his capture.

  Slumped between Phoebe and the doctor, rummy with fever, was Duncan.

  Margaret Rourke did not wait for the rowboat to reach the shore; she waded out to meet it. “Where is John?” she asked, her gaze moving from her firstborn son to her second, and lingering on the latter even as she addressed the former. “Tell me, Lucas.”

  “Father is dead,” Lucas said quietly. Phoebe’s heart went out to him, and to Margaret, whose face showed that she had known the truth before she had asked. “It was his heart.”

  Margaret gripped the side of the boat, standing waistdeep in the surf, her dress floating gauzily around her. She stared at Duncan for a long time, then turned her gaze on Phoebe. “Will he recover?”

  “I don’t know,” Phoebe replied in all honesty, wishing again, as they all made their way toward the house, Lucas and the surgeon all but carrying Duncan between them, that she’d read the end of that damnable biography before she left the twentieth century.

  Duncan was taken to the master bedroom, where Phoebe and Old Woman stripped him down and bathed his scalding flesh in cool water. He was in a waking stupor and wholly uncooperative during the process, writhing and twisting about, singing snatches of bawdy songs, calling out orders to a phantom crew.

  “Let me get Simone to help,” Old Woman said, watching Phoebe. “You look near to collapsing yourself.”

  “Simone is back?” Phoebe asked, surprised and somehow troubled by the news. “When did this happen?”

  “She showed up two nights ago. Said she came down from Queen’s Town. Now, you don’t bother Old Woman with no more questions. You just go and put your feet up.”

  Phoebe didn’t want to be too far from Duncan, but she
had been under a considerable strain lately, and she was tired. Too, the news of Simone’s return had upset her, in some vague, indefinable way. She laid protective hands over her stomach. “Something is wrong,” she mused.

  “A whole lot is wrong,” Old Woman amplified. Then she covered Duncan tenderly with a linen sheet and crossed to the doorway. “Mr. Alex, he ready to put a gun to his head. Miss Phillippa, she so torn up about her papa being gone, I don’t know how we’ll put her back together. Mr. Lucas and Mistress Margaret, well, they just brokenhearted. It’s a sad place, this house.”

  “Yes,” Phoebe agreed, but she was still thinking about Simone and wondering why she had returned to Paradise Island.

  *

  The next day, Duncan’s fever was down, and his fits of delirium gave way to a profound, healing sleep. The day after that, John Rourke was buried on a hilltop overlooking the sea, with a clergyman, one of the prisoners from the Northumberland, to perform the ceremony. Like Dr. Mars, Lucas, and the others, the Reverend Franks had been a prisoner. Franks was accused of preaching sedition and readily confessed his guilt.

  Phoebe attended the funeral, and so did Duncan, although he could barely stand. The Northumberland was taken out onto the open sea, though still within plain view of the mourners on the island, there to be set ablaze with torches. She made a fitting tribute, Phoebe thought as she stood watching the ship burn, for John Rourke, the gentle Viking. Those who had sailed the craft on her brief and final voyage were returning to shore in small boats.

  Alex was the first to turn away and hobbled slowly down the hill on his crutch, brushing off the help Beedle attempted to lend with a motion of his hand. Phoebe glanced up at Duncan’s face, just then, and saw that he was not looking at the magnificent fire, or pondering his father’s fresh grave. He was watching Alex.