Startled, Noel took the bottle and stared at his double. Was it true that Leon was incapable of tasting and experiencing through the physical senses on his own? He knew that Leon felt his pain. Perhaps Leon shared his other emotions as well.
The idea angered Noel. It made him feel invaded, exposed. He looked at Leon with contempt. “Is that all you are? A voyeur?” he asked.
The grin vanished from Leon’s face, leaving humiliation and fury in his eyes. He struck without warning, his fist smashing into Noel’s jaw.
Noel went staggering back, bumping into a pair of pirates who cheerfully shoved him toward Leon again. One of them plucked the brandy bottle from Noel’s hand and poured the contents down his gullet like water.
Noel raised his fists, but even as he and Leon circled each other, seeking the right moment to attack, the music abruptly stopped. Pirates were shoved aside right and left, then Black Lonigan stood there, towering over all of them, his beard foolishly braided with Lady Mountleigh’s pearls.
“There is no fighting among ourselves!” he roared in a voice like thunder. “Leon! You made yourself one of us when you signed the articles. Do you want to lose your share of the plunder for this?”
Leon straightened from his battle crouch and dropped his hands to his sides. “Noel is not one of us,” he said sullenly. “Not yet.”
Black Lonigan’s dark eyes swept Noel. “But you soon will be, eh, bucko?” he said softly.
Noel hesitated. He did not know which course to take. Without data from his LOC, he could not determine how history was being changed. Yet he had no choice, now, but to carve out a place for himself in this time. Unlike Leon, however, he did not want to spend the rest of his life with thieves and scoundrels.
“Well?” said Lonigan. “Will you go on the account with us?”
“What’s going to happen to the women?” Noel asked.
“Noel, don’t be a fool,” Leon said angrily.
Noel ignored him. “What happens to the women? What happens to the men who refuse to join you? Are you going to kill all of them?”
Lonigan shrugged. His face gave nothing away. He snapped his fingers, and a tall, ebony-skinned man appeared from the crowd. Thin to the point of emaciation, he was so dark he seemed to absorb the light. His teeth were filed to sharp points and stained red, almost as though he’d been eating raw meat before he came aboard. He smelled of death—cold and stale.
He had strange, compelling eyes. Eyes like obsidian. Eyes like a tar pit, dragging Noel down. A haze shimmered around Noel, and all the noises faded. He felt isolated from the men surrounding him as though he stood in a jar and could see them only through the distorted curve of the glass sides. But the black man’s eyes stayed with him, holding him mesmerized. He was drawn deeper and deeper, and although inside he knew he should resist, must resist, still a curious lassitude possessed him.
In the deepest, farthest reaches of the man’s gaze, Noel saw a name. He felt the heat of it scorch his face. He heard a voice, deep and resonant, vibrate through him.
I am Baba Mondoun, the voice said.
A low moan rose through Noel, although he knew he did not utter it aloud.
I am a bocor. I see into men’s souls. I know all things through the gifts of the gods. You are mine, Noel Kedran. You are mine. When I call you, you will obey me. Say it.
The words swelled in Noel’s throat. He did not want to speak, yet something seemed to control his body. His lips moved and he whispered, “Yabo, Baba.”
The flames before him danced brighter. Their illumination grew blinding, all encompassing. Then, abruptly, they vanished. He saw the man blink, and he blinked too. Lonigan turned to shout a command at someone, and Mondoun walked away. Noel felt staggered and without support, as though he might lose his balance. Suddenly he could hear again. Noises assaulted his ears.
Natty Gumbel gripped his wrist. “Ye don’t want ter be marooned, now, d’ye? God’s my witness, ye can starve quick enough on some of these scrubby sand heaps. There be some without game or water. There be some that disappear at high tide. And where would that put ye but gluggin’ in the deep? Ye want none of that, lad. Put aside yer scruples and sign on. Ye’ll be a free man and a rich one to boot. Black Lonigan’s men never starve. Meself, I’m glad ter be in his band. He’ll treat ye better than ye had it before.”
Noel looked around and saw Black Lonigan holding out the inkpot and quill pen. A slow smile spread across the pirate captain’s face.
Noel shivered. He started to speak, then forgot what he meant to say. Although he had intended to defy Lonigan, he took the pen and signed the articles.
“Do you want a scrip to show you’ve been forced?” asked Lonigan.
Noel remembered the naval lieutenant’s scorn for such documents. “No,” he said.
His voice sounded tinny and far away. His skin felt flushed and hot.
“Welcome to the crew of the Medusa,” Lonigan said. “Leon will award you your share of the plunder.”
Lonigan smiled to himself and strode away, shouting orders for the crew to divide itself between the Plentitude and the Medusa. He wanted to sail both to Tortuga. Although drunk and disorderly, the pirates obeyed, changing out the torn sails and separating the two ships. The Medusa took the lead, and the Plentitude followed five hundred yards off her port stern, avoiding the brigantine’s foamy wake.
Noel’s knees felt oddly weak. He sat down on a small keg of rum and wiped his sweating brow. Leon gripped his shoulder, and when Noel glanced up he was surprised to see his duplicate looking pale and shaken.
“What did Mondoun do to you?” Leon asked softly. “Where did you go?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You left,” Leon insisted. “You stood there right in front of me, but I couldn’t sense you at all. You vanished from my mind. Now where the hell did you go?”
Noel shook his head. “You’ve been in the hot sun too long. I was right here.”
“No, you—”
“Drop it!” Noel said irritably. “You’re sounding like someone with a bad head chip. Go pester someone else. Flog a few backs. Put on some more sail. Walk the gangplank, but leave me alone.”
His head was throbbing. He rubbed his forehead, but that didn’t help.
“There is something you are not telling me,” Leon said. He shook Noel’s shoulder. “I can tell when you’re lying! What do you know? What did you do? Is it the LOC?”
Noel slapped his hand away. “The LOC is gone, remember?” he said bitterly. “You threw it overboard.”
“Perhaps, and perhaps not. You could have tricked me.”
“Search me then.”
Leon’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe I should. I don’t trust you.”
“You don’t want me aboard. You don’t want me dead. You don’t want me marooned. Have you ever wondered if there’s a consistency problem in that short-wired brain of yours?”
Leon’s mouth clamped in a thin line. His eyes blazed. Before he could retort, however, nausea rolled in Noel’s stomach.
He jerked himself to the railing and vomited. There was nothing in his stomach to bring up, yet the dry heaves wracked him severely. He had a momentary sensation of something wriggling and furry passing up his throat. Then it was gone, the spasms ended, and he sank to his knees with a sigh of relief.
Already his headache was gone. He no longer felt feverish or weak. He thought it must have been a little Caribbean virus, coming and going. He hoped it was gone.
Brushing his fingertips across his forehead, he found his skin cool and dry. Energy flowed back into him. He got to his feet and glanced at Leon, who stood staring at him with alarm.
“What’s your problem?” Noel asked. “What are you looking at? Ever see mal de mer before?”
“You aren’t seasick.” Leon was still looking at him with a mixture of puzzlement and fear. “Your eyes—”
“What about them?”
“They’re clear now. A few minutes ago, they look
ed…strange.”
“What do you mean, strange?”
Leon shrugged. “Just…strange. I don’t think I was talking to you.”
Noel backed up a step. Leon had always been weird, capable of using ESP and limited forms of mind control on some people. But now he sounded like he had lost his mind.
“Sunstroke is a dangerous thing,” Noel said carefully, watching Leon as closely as Leon was watching him. “You didn’t do too well in the New Mexico heat. The Caribbean can be just as hot. Maybe you’d better stay in the shade for a while.”
“It’s not the sun! It’s you,” Leon said impatiently. “Something has happened to you. Or did happen to you. Why do you keep denying it?”
“Why do you care?”
“I don’t. You just don’t want me to know. You always want to keep me out. You and your smug feelings of superiority. But remember this, dear brother—”
“I’m not your brother, dammit!” Noel snapped. “Stop calling me that.”
Leon glared at him. “We’re on equal footing now. You don’t have the LOC. You’re no better than me.”
“It isn’t the LOC that makes the difference. I’m still real,” Noel said. “You’re not.”
Hatred blazed in Leon, and Noel braced himself for an attack. But Leon restrained himself this time. He said, “I don’t think you’re real anymore either. I think you’re changing.”
“That’s impossible!”
Leon smirked. “You sound afraid.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Changing. Maybe fading.”
“It can’t happen.”
“It might.”
“No.”
“You’ve changed already,” Leon said. “I can sense it. I can smell it on you, see it in you. I know.”
“You know zip.”
“Then why are you so scared inside, deep inside, where you think I can’t see?”
Noel stared at him, confused and annoyed, unable to answer. He knew Leon couldn’t read his thoughts. At least Leon never could before. Was it different now?
“Leon,” he said uncertainly, but with a scornful shrug Leon walked away.
Chapter Four
By evening they dropped anchor in the tiny bay of an uninhabited island. The sails were furled and lookouts posted. Dinghies set to, rowing load after load of men to shore from both ships.
Assigned to help load empty water barrels into the dinghies, Noel paused in his work to look around. The bay, though small, was protected by a curved headland, quite rocky and covered with scrub. Pure white sand glittered on the beach beneath the incoming lap of the tide. The sunset was a brilliant ruby color that turned the water to blood. To the east, a black bank of clouds had massed with cirrus clouds fanning across the sky. The air was still hot despite the dropping sun, very moist and heavy. The open seas were growing rough, and the barometer was falling. A storm was coming, a bad one according to the signs. Some of the pirates watched the sky uneasily. Others, like Leon, ignored the situation.
Monkeys screamed from the branches of graceful palm trees, and birds shrieked and fluttered in alarm as the pirates landed and set up camp. Some of the men went fishing and foraging. Soon a huge turtle was turning on a spit, and fish were wrapped in wet fronds for roasting in hot coals. Lonigan even let the women and the shackled officers of the Plentitude come ashore. They were set to gathering coconuts under the watchful eye of their guards. The bosun and ship’s carpenter hacked their way into the jungle with their swords and reclaimed a trail leading to fresh water. Noel and a team of pirates filled the water barrels with the cold spring water gushing from a tiny waterfall in the cliff face of the island’s central hill, then hauled them back to the beach, using crude wheeled platforms designed to move cannon into position.
Capped with wooden lids, the water barrels stood ready for loading. Fish were salted and packed into provision barrels. Leon killed a wild boar with a musket. The beast was butchered on the spot and salted down, too, and Leon was hailed as king of the island.
Lady Pamela was named queen. Brought unwillingly into the pirates’ midst, she stood stiff and expressionless while they took turns bowing to her. The firelight reflected off her hair. Her eyes were as intense as emeralds.
The cook brought her the choicest turtle meat, tender and flavorful, sizzling with juices. She looked as though she would refuse, then accepted the offering with a regal nod of her head. Satisfied, the pirates let her return to Lady Mountleigh and the three-sided hut made for them from branches and palm fronds. The pirates had also supplied the women with massive chairs of carved oak and a fine Persian carpet that they unrolled over the sand.
Lonigan broke out the rum kegs, and soon the pirates were happily guzzling from their tin mugs and gorging on fish and turtle. The musicians played eerie rhythms and drumbeats that sounded pure African. Occasionally during a break in the general noise, Noel could hear voices chanting from the hold of the Plentitude in response. He hoped the poor slaves did not think they had been returned to their own home shores. As far as he could tell, Lonigan intended to sell them on the block in Tortuga for a fine profit. There were black members of the crew who must have been slaves themselves once, yet none of them seemed to identify with the plight of the poor wretches chained in that filthy hold. Or, Noel thought, if they did sympathize they dared not show it.
Rum flowed freely, and while some of the men danced, others lounged on the sand and spoke of how they would spend their money once they landed in port. The women in Tortuga were the best, Natty Gumbel claimed. Doe-eyed Spanish women with pale skin and tiny waists. Regal mulatto women. Women with skin like black satin, calling out enticements in French. Lush, generous women everywhere, standing on their balconies whenever a ship came in, waving, willing, wonderful.
In the midst of this fantasy, told to the derision of most of the men, Black Lonigan spoke briefly to Leon, then slipped away from the company. Noel saw the captain stride into the shadowy jungle, carrying a heavy sack of swag over his shoulder. He took neither weapon nor a lantern. The moon overhead was obscured by cloud cover, and the amber light from the campfires did not penetrate far into the trees. When Lonigan didn’t return after several minutes, Noel wondered what he was doing out there alone. Burying treasure?
Noel joined Leon, who was watching a dice game. Leon scowled at his approach.
“Want to gamble away your share?” Leon asked. He held a rum cup that was nearly full, and although he sipped from it now and then he did not seem to enjoy it.
By contrast, most of his companions had flushed faces. They were beginning to laugh at nothing and everything. They swigged the potent rum as though it were water. Their wagers were reckless. None of them cared whether they won or lost.
“What’s Lonigan up to?” Noel asked quietly beneath the noise.
Leon’s scowl deepened. “How should I know?”
“He spoke to you before he left.”
“I’m the quartermaster. You’re just one of the crew.”
“We’re all equal under pirate law,” Noel said.
Leon gestured rudely.
“Tell me.”
“He’s gone to take a bath. Now go away. You’re spoiling my game.”
Noel walked away from the gamesters. He stared at the jungle, feeling restless and edgy. The rumble of the drums throbbed in his head. He wished they would fall silent, but no one else seemed to mind them. Rain began to mist lightly, hissing as it fell on the fires. He could hear the wind rustling the palms.
Lady Pamela gestured to him. It was a quick, nervous wave as though she wanted no one but him to notice. Noel dismissed his curiosity about the captain and went to her.
“Is there something I can do for you?” he asked.
The women, visibly tense, sat on their chairs as far back under the overhang of their crude shelter as possible. The firelight flickered across their gowns and faces. The boy was curled at his mother’s feet, his head leaning against her knee. He had gone to sleep
, and Lady Mountleigh’s soft plump hand rested protectively upon his small shoulder.
“Please,” Lady Pamela whispered. “Those poor men have had no water and no food.” As she spoke she gestured at the prisoners, who sat chained to the palm trees like dogs forgotten by their masters. “Will someone not have pity on them?”
Without a word, Noel fetched a water pail and took it to each of the prisoners in turn. “God bless you,” whispered one.
Another nodded his thanks, but the majority of them maintained proud silence. Their eyes, reflecting the dancing flames of the campfires, shimmered with contempt. Noel didn’t care. He’d been their prisoner first. At least right now, he had a sliver of freedom.
He gave them breadfruit and some mangoes to eat and returned to Lady Pamela.
“Thank you,” she said.
“What about you?” he asked. “Did you get enough to eat?”
She glanced away as though her appetite was unimportant. “Please,” she said. “It’s raining. We should like to retire. When may we return to the ship?”
Noel glanced at the pirates. Some of them had fallen into drunken stupors, lying sprawled like puppies in the sand. Others were singing a sea chanty that had no connection to the drumming. Noel frowned. That drumming was like an itch under his skin. It was driving him crazy.
“I think you’re meant to stay here tonight,” he said. “The queen of the island has to stay with her subjects.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she said sharply. “I won’t be treated this way—”
“Pamela,” Lady Mountleigh said in warning.
Lady Pamela turned crimson. Fuming, she made numerous tiny pleats in the lap of her gown, smoothed them out, then made more.
“This is intolerable,” she said at last. “We cannot sleep here, out in the open like savages, certainly not among these men. It’s barbarous.”
“They won’t harm you,” Noel told her.
“You may believe that. I do not.” She reached out as though she would touch his hand, then curled her fingers into a fist and drew back. “Please take us to the ship.”
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