Wind of Destiny

by Christopher Nicole

  ‘As you say,’ Christina said. ‘He will not dare to hurt me.’ But she would not look at her sister-in-law.

  ‘Ha ha,’ Lumbrera said. ‘Perhaps not, senorita. Who knows, what hurts one person which another might enjoy. But I am going to entertain you. Come along.’

  ‘If you harm her, Lumbrera,’ Toni said. ‘I swear by Almighty God that I will see you hanged.’

  ‘Ha ha,’ Lumbrera said, taking Christina’s arm to march her to the steps; this time she made no effort to shrug herself free. ‘What you should do, Senora Diaz, is light a candle, for her soul. Ha ha.’

  *

  ‘Steady as she goes,’ said Captain Landry, and the coxswain repeated the word. ‘Steady,’ as he maintained the helm amidships, and the USS Maine proceeded at speed towards Cape Henry and the Norfolk Navy Yard that lay beyond. Standing beside the captain, Joe Mc-Gann felt a swelling of pride. She had proved herself to be a magnificent ship, faster than any he had served in before, and at the same time stiff enough to handle the worst of weather. She was handsome, too, with her high white painted topsides, her tiered superstructure, her tall funnels, her graceful bow sliding away into the underwater ram which was still regarded as essential on all battleships, her canoe stem, her high masts and fluttering flags, and her huge, gleaming, twelve-inch guns, two in a forward barbette and two aft, which gave her the awesome power which was her reason for being. To sail with such a ship into battle would have to be the culmination of any officer's career. Supposing such a contingency could ever arise where the United States Navy was concerned.

  ‘Slow ahead,' the captain said. ‘Mooring stations, if you please, gentlemen.'

  The officers hurried about their business, while Joe remained on the bridge as the captain’s deputy. Cape Henry, low and tree-clouded, came abeam, and the waters of Chesapeake Bay opened in front of them, stretching some two hundred miles north to Baltimore and Washington. Here was history, and associated with the McGanns more than any other family in the United States Navy. Off Cape Henry had been fought the decisive battle of the War of the Revolution, when in 1781 the Royal Navy had been unable to defeat the French fleet blockading Yorktown, with the result that Lord Cornwallis had had to surrender his command to General Washington. Harry McGann, the most famous of Joe’s ancestors, had commanded a frigate on the French side in that encounter. And if Harry’s son Toby, hardly less famous, had earned his reputation battling against the British on Lake Champlain in the War of 1812, and against the Barbary pirates in the Mediterranean, both before and after the British war, Joe’s own father, Jerry McGann, had sailed these waters during the Civil War. Here too had taken place that strange encounter, almost bloodless but none the less revolutionary, between the two ironclad ships, the Merrimac and the Monitor, the first of its kind in history. Out of that conflict had come the concept of the very ship on which he was now sailing, as the Merrimac's earlier successes against the conventional warships of the Federal fleet had proved that the future of naval combat had to lie in steam and steel, after four thousand years of wind and wood.

  The Norfolk Navy Yard had been seized by the Confederates at the beginning of the war, as it lay on the southern, Virginia, side of the vast bay, and the Federals had burned it before abandoning it. But since 1865 it had been fully restored to the great naval dockyard it had been before, and off it lay the other ships of the new United States Navy, the Texas, virtually a sister ship, already in full commission, and, together with the three much larger ships, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Oregon, all of more than ten thousand tons displacement, was in the process of fitting out. While on the slip there waited the largest of them all, the eleven thousand ton future USS Iowa. Joe’s heart swelled as he surveyed them. They would compose the first battle fleet the United States had ever possessed, a sign that this mighty land was at last preparing to take its proper place amongst the great sea powers of the world. Of course there was a long way to go before they would equal the myriad battleships possessed by the Royal Navy, or even those fleets of the French and Italians. But the Iowa and her consorts represented a beginning.

  The orders were given, the anchors were let go, and the Maine came to rest, steam gusting from her funnels. Already a picquet boat was nosing its way alongside, as the gangway was lowered, and the pipes were coo-eeing as a naval staff captain climbed on board, pausing only briefly to salute the flag before mounting the ladders to the bridge. ‘Captain Landry.’ ‘Captain Hawke.’ Landry shook hands. ‘You seem in a hurry. You know my Executive Officer, Joe McGann?’

  ‘Of course.’ Hawke shook hands once more. ‘You’ll want to read these despatches, Bob,’ he told Landry. ‘If you’re ready to sign acceptance of the ship, you’re under orders to take her right back to sea, the moment you’ve coaled and taken on stores and ammunition.’

  ‘Well, now, that sounds like trouble,’ Landry said. ‘I’m quite willing to accept the ship; I’ve never commanded a finer vessel. But my men were kind of expecting a furlough.’

  ‘They’ll have to expect, for the time being. The admiral wants a battleship on patrol off the Cuban coast. You’ll be relieved as soon as the Texas is refitted; say a month.’

  ‘Off the Cuban coast, sir?’ Joe enquired. ‘That’s right. Seems like another insurrection has broken out down there. According to the reports of our consuls, all hell has broken loose, with murders, burnings, lootings, summary executions … even one or two pitched battles between government troops and the insurgents. Well, judging by what happened the last time, neither side cares too much who gets hurt in these shindigs, and there are one hell of a lot of American citizens, and American businesses, in Cuba. The State Department feels it would be a good idea to remind the Spanish authorities, and the rebel leaders, that we are keeping an eye on the situation. We are not taking sides. Obviously, the ideal arrangement would be for you to make a prolonged courtesy call to Havana. But there again, the State Department feels that might be to indicate undue support for the government at a time when there is a good deal of sympathy in this country for the insurgents. So you’ll just have to keep the sea, outside the three-mile limit, but close enough to let everybody see you.’

  Landry nodded. ‘Haven’t you got a relative in Cuba, Joe?’

  ‘Yes,’ Joe said. ‘My sister is married to a planter, in the south, Santiago Province.’ ‘Heck,’ Hawke continued. ‘That’s where the revolution started.’

  ‘But a planter will surely be on the government side,’ Landry suggested.

  ‘No, sir. It would be a mistake to suppose the rebels are all discontented peasants. Arnaldo Diaz has always been a supporter of a free Cuba, and so has his son. I’d very much like to get over there, and maybe ashore, if that’s possible, just to make sure my sister is all right.’

  ‘I imagine that can be arranged, unofficially,’ Landry said. ‘Well, Jim, I’ll sign those papers and we’ll start getting ready to put back to sea. Should complete in forty-eight hours. Joe, you’d better assemble the men and tell them what we have to do. They won’t be happy, but it’ll be a good shakedown cruise.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Joe said. ‘I would like permission to go ashore and send a wire to my parents on Long Island, to inform them that I hope to visit Cuba before too long, and also to discover if they have any information they can let me have. Unless our move is a secret one.’

  ‘Heck, no,’ Hawke said. ‘We want it to be publicised as much as possible, for everyone’s sake. And if your folks do have any information on the situation in Santiago Province, then it can’t help but be useful to us. You send your wire, Lieutenant. And let me have a copy of the reply.’

  And then let’s get on to Cuba as quickly as possible, Joe thought. Before it’s too late. Too late for what? he asked himself. But he had no doubt at all that the Diazes would be involved. And that could mean Toni was in danger. Unless by some happy chance she had managed to get out.

  And Christina? He had endeavoured not to think about her at all, during the past year. He could not pret
end to understand her, could not decide whether she had been making the most ghastly joke at his expense, or whether she had been really drunk, or whether she had just been determined to end his courtship once and for all. If it was the last, then she had succeeded. But he had still not been able to get her image out of his mind. She was the first woman he had ever allowed himself to fall in love with, after more than thirty years. He could remember her every gesture, every smile, the scent of her hair … and the touch of her sweat wet flesh, the feel of her body against his. He did not know that he would ever forget those things. Thus he also did not know if he would ever be able to love again — or if he wanted to.

  And she, certainly, would be in danger, if her brother and father opposed the Spanish government with arms in their hands.

  Pray to God, he thought, that nothing actually happens, until I can get there.

  Chapter 8

  The Prison — 1895

  Slowly Christina went down the steps, and faced her horse. She had never ridden astride before, nor had she ever mounted with her wrists bound together. But she resolved not to show weaknesses before these men. Even if they were taking her away to hang her, she was a Diaz de Obrigar, and must accept her fate with dignity.

  Oh, she thought, if only they were taking me away to hang me.

  She grasped the reins with her hands, close together as they were, placed her left foot in the stirrup, and found she could not raise her weight.

  ‘Assist the young lady,’ Lumbrera commanded, and before she could protest one of the policemen had seized her leg, above the boot, sending his fingers questing through the material of her skirt, and was lifting her from the ground. Her right leg went over the horse’s back with a flutter of petticoat.

  Toni watched with an almost painful sensation of inadequacy. There were pink spots in Christina’s cheeks, but otherwise she appeared quite composed. Yet Toni did not dare imagine the thoughts that must be going through her mind, the awareness that she was in Lumbrera’s power … she just could not let it happen.

  She waited for the police to wheel their horses and ride down the drive, one on either side of the slight figure in black, then ran down the steps and across the meadow to the military encampment, where she found Captain Torres easily enough, as he supervised the unrolling of yard after yard of barbed wire. ‘Captain,’ she gasped. ‘You must help us.’

  ‘Senora?’ He listened to her tale with grave concern, then nodded. ‘Police work is a dirty business.’

  ‘You must do something about it.’

  ‘I cannot interfere with the police, senora. I am expressly ordered to confine myself to military matters.’

  Toni reached for breath. ‘She is going to be raped,’ she shouted. ‘At the very least. She may even be tortured.’ My God, she thought. The candle — and she didn’t even know what was involved.

  ‘I cannot interfere, senora,’ Torres repeated.

  Toni controlled herself with an enormous effort. ‘Then will you give me permission to leave the plantation. I must get help, don’t you see?’

  ‘You would be arrested yourself,’ he pointed out. ‘Nor could you possibly help die senorita.’

  ‘I can try,’ she shouted. ‘I can get Father Jaime … ’

  ‘Father Jaime has been arrested for conspiring with the rebels,’ Torres told her.

  ‘Father Jaime … ’ words failed her.

  ‘He will very probably be hanged,’ Torres said. ‘Now, senora. I must request you to return to your house and stay there. Anything you attempt to do can only make matters worse for your sister-in-law. Hopefully, she will cooperate with the colonel, and soon be returned to you.’

  ‘Co-operate? He doesn’t want her to cooperate. My God, if you only knew … ’

  Torres’ face was sad. ‘I do know, senora. But I am powerless to intervene. Sergeant,’ he called. ‘Escort Senora Diaz back to her house, and I wish you to place a guard there until further notice, to make sure the senora is not disturbed.’ He saluted. ‘Good day to you, senora.’

  Toni hardly saw him, as tears of mingled anger, frustration and despair poured down her face, and she stumbled up the hill to the house.

  The police had taken over the military barracks in Daiquiri, thus freeing the soldiers to man the harbour defences in strength, and also to protect such important, and vulnerable, places as the railway station and the warehouses. To reach the barracks it was necessary to pass through the town itself, and the people on the street, still gathered to discuss the arrest of their priest, immediately recognised that Christina Diaz de Obrigar had also been arrested. Word of what had happened spread rapidly, and quite a crowd gathered to watch the posse pass by. Christina did not look at them, kept her eyes fixed firmly on the road in front of her.

  She was endeavouring to shut her mind to what was happening to her, to enclose herself, at least mentally, in a cocoon. It was an art she had learned to practise some four years before, ever, indeed, since that fateful day with Jack Lisle. She had been sixteen, and she had worshipped him since she had been ten, when he had first come to Obrigar. Her feelings had been fairly obvious, she supposed, to her mother and father, and they had seemed to offer their blessings upon an eventual union between their daughter and the man to whom they were tying their own futures. So to pursue the man who had so fulfilled her every dream had been the most natural thing in the world. In her innocence, she had not understood where such a pursuit might lead her, when he was also a red blooded man who had perhaps unnecessarily turned himself away from all feminine company in the pursuit of his soul-consuming vengeance … but who was also aware that such a pursuit probably meant he did not have much time left in which to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh.

  Thus in a moment of mutual passion, and weakness, they had succumbed together. And for that moment, and the moment following, she had been blissfully happy. But then he had told her that he would not, could not, marry her. She had been aghast, unable to believe her ears. What he had had to say had been acceptable enough, that he could give no hostages to fortune until his grim quest was completed. But if only he had told her that before.

  Being the man he was, he had been prepared to accept all the guilt for what had happened, had suggested she tell her mother and father, and have him expelled from the plantation. It would make no difference to him, as he would merely find someone else to employ him until the day of retribution. She had not done that. And when he would have left anyway, she had begged him to stay. Her father and her brother both looked upon Jack Lisle almost as a god, certainly as the man who would lead them and theirs to salvation. To have wrecked their dream out of a personal spite … and it had been a spite; for a while she hated him … had seemed a pointless exercise. How she wished she had done it, now. Although would it have made any difference?

  But she had not done it, had accepted her fate. There had also been the fear, in telling her parents, that they would send her away, to a nunnery. By not telling them, even if she had entered a mental nunnery, knowing that she could never now marry because no gentleman would accept her awful secret, she had at least made the nunnery the confines of her own beloved plantation. And in time had even come a softening of feeling for the man who had betrayed her love. So much so that she knew Mother and Father had still looked forward to their marriage, when the revolution was complete. As if that could ever happen, now.

  Contemplating a lifetime of lonely spinster-hood had not seemed so terrible, until the coming of Joe McGann. Even if she had thought Rafael was committing a terrible crime in marrying Toni, and involving her, unwittingly, in the looming catastrophe of the revolution, she had at the same time recognised that Toni was going to be a boon, acting the part of the sister she had never had. But Joe … because there was a man she could have loved, a man with no obsessive goals to seek, a truly gentle giant who would spread his embracing physical magnificence around her, and protect her for the rest of her life. But who, she had no doubt, would back away from her in disgust were he to
know she had given herself to another man. Yet she had been tempted. Hence that wild, drink-inspired invitation — because, if he had accepted it, it would have exorcised the first, and he would have accepted that he was not marrying a virgin. But, again as she should have known, he had been shocked and disgusted by her vulgarity. And thus she had lost him. But she had never possessed him.

  Now more than ever, she was alone, as the retribution which she had always known must one day overtake her, had finally arrived, but in a more dreadful sense than even she had anticipated. Yet as she had survived for four years by retiring, when necessary, into the privacy of her mind, surely she could survive whatever was about to be inflicted upon her, by adopting the same defence. But there was the trouble; she had no idea what she would actually have to survive, or for how long. As a self elected nun, she had at least been certain that her body would remain inviolate, had rather grown to anticipate that for the rest of her life. Now her body was no longer in her keeping; the breathlessness of her lungs, the patter of her heart, the feeling of emptiness in her groin, added to the discomfort of riding astride, all told her that. As well as the almost visible anticipation in Lumbrera’s very sweat, as she watched his back riding in front of her.

  And of the men to either side?

  The houses and the crowds were left behind, and in front of them loomed the barbed wire and the wooden huts of the barracks. Here there was a high gate with armed guards, saluting the colonel as he rode through. It was now approaching noon, and very hot. Christina could feel sweat trickling out from her hair, and her throat was parched. But she could not let them see that.

  The horses halted before the command building, above which the red and gold flag of Spain floated lazily in the light breeze. Here Lumbrera dismissed his troop, and dismounted. ‘Senorita?’ he invited.