Louisiana History Collection - Part 2

by Jennifer Blake

  “Are you bored already?” she asked, more willing than he knew.

  “Why not? There is the widow who sees only our Refugio, and the young wife with whom it would be unwise to meddle. You are left, our Venus, to receive the benefit of my charms.”

  “I'm honored.”

  “No, you are diverted, you are entertained, you are even amused, but you are not honored.” He lowered his voice. “Therefore I am safe.”

  “Safe? From entanglements? But I thought the absence of those is what you were deploring?”

  “Yes,” he said, and sighed. “But I am also safe from Refugio's wrath, so long as I can talk to you and you only laugh.”

  “He requires that you be circumspect?”

  He gave her a long look with a lifted brow that might have meant anything. “It seems wise, if not necessary.”

  “For us all,” she agreed. “But do you think Refugio would really mind if Doña Luisa was charmed by you also?”

  He glanced over his shoulder at the lady with a speculative light in his eyes. With one finger he scratched at his mustache, then smoothed its thin dark line. “Do you think she might be?”

  “How can she fail?” Pilar grinned down at him.

  “Cruel, cruel female!” he accused. “You are playing with my affections, raising dreams that the lady over there would rend like the rind of an orange. If Refugio doesn't rend my body first.”

  “Surely he wouldn't?”

  “We were warned last night, all of us, Charro, Baltasar, and I”

  It was fitting, perhaps, that the answer she received to a question so far from her real purpose should be oblique. “Don't tell me he fears being supplanted?”

  “I think he is more concerned with discretion. Intimate moments have a way of bringing out the truth, don't you find?”

  “I wouldn't know,” she said, the words a trifle stiff. She would have to be more careful; it seemed she was also being measured.

  “Endearing, if true.” He tilted his head with its powdered and tightly curled wig to one side, watching her with bright brown eyes.

  She smiled, holding his gaze. “Isabel tells me you were an acrobat with a traveling fair.”

  “A tumbler, to be accurate. But I have been many things.” The last admission was expansive.

  “Among them, a Gypsy fortune teller. I would think you would be good at that.”

  He put a finger to his lips, looking around him, then leaned forward. “I am,” he said, and gave a modest flutter of his lashes.

  Keeping her voice as low and conspiratorial as his own, she bent toward him. “And you are also a good grandee, though I should tell you that most I've met think too much of their dignity to sit on the floor.”

  A frown drew his brows together over, his nose. “Is this really so?”

  “I give you my word.”

  He nodded, then pursed his mouth. He sent a glance toward the corner where Doña Luisa held court, then shifted his sidelong gaze to the card players. He looked back to Pilar. A lithe flexing of muscles, made without touching so much as a finger to the floor, and he was on his feet and moving to draw a chair next to the one where she was seated.

  “There,” he said, lowering himself into it, crossing his legs at the knee and smoothing his breeches. “How is this?”

  “Excellent,” she answered, her voice grave.

  “Dignity. I must remember that. And if I make any other errors, I will trust you to point them out.”

  “I'll do that, though, as I said, you are doing very well. Charro also, though his part is not so difficult since he has only to play himself.”

  “I doubt he could do anything else. You've noticed his speech?”

  “You mean the way he sometimes forgets the Castilian lisp?”

  “Exactly. The oaf refuses to admit the elegance of it, says it comes hard to his tongue.”

  “They don't use it in the Tejas country?”

  He shook his head. “It's a barbaric place.”

  “The polish his father wanted for him seems to have been a failure.”

  “Not precisely. He discovered a few things about the company of older women, and I have taught him a little about the younger ones, among other things.”

  “I'm sure he's grateful.”

  “He isn't grateful at all! In fact, he accuses me of stealing his women away from him while displaying my technique. It isn't true, and you must not believe him.”

  “No, I won't,” she said solemnly.

  But neither could she believe what Enrique said. His answers to her questions were given easily enough, and seemed to bear out most of what Isabel had told her; still, he was not as simple a man as he pretended, none of Refugio's followers were. Enrique might well mislead her for the fun of it, or else might tell her what he thought she wanted to hear out of courtesy. He was also, she thought, capable of clouding the issue for purposes of his own or on Refugio's orders, or else for what he conceived to be the good of the group. She would have to talk to Charro. Perhaps she could then compare what each man had to say and arrive at something near the truth.

  With these things churning in her mind, she said softly, “Do you think Refugio is still enamored of the widow?”

  “Still? She's a ravishing creature, but I've never heard her name pass his lips before this voyage. More than that, though an indolent attitude and a fund of idle chitchat have an irresistible appeal for some, I would have said these things would drive our leader mad in less than an hour.”

  The niggling gladness his words brought was quickly repressed. Pilar pursed her lips. “Still, she is his lost love.”

  “A fatal allure, yes. Doña Luisa also has the goad for his ox held firmly in her little white hand.”

  “But is he a man to accept the goad? I think not, unless it pleases him.”

  Enrique gave a swift shake of his head, his brown eyes grave. “You think he would choose a noose about his neck instead of a woman's arms? He might, out of a grandee's precious dignity, except for one thing. He would not hang alone.”

  It was a point. Refugio's care for those who rode with him was legendary. He had, more than once, risked his life to save one of his own from the noose or firing squad.

  Pilar had no chance to answer. There came a quiet footfall from the direction of the door behind them, then Refugio bent over them with a hand on the backs of each of their chairs. “Clacking like two crones over the chocolate pot,” he said. “How gratifying it is that you have found a common interest. I am, of course, all fluttery delight to be chosen. What a pity if you should run out of subject matter. Never fear, I will not fail you.”

  Straightening, he walked to where the widow sat and took a place beside her. And for the next few hours the company was entertained by as fine a display of accomplished flirtation as was ever presented for public viewing. There were compliments of sonorous grace and gestures of delicate homage; there were glances and sighs and looks of languishing and improper intent. The widow coyly retreated before the courtly advance; the brigand, withdrawing, enticed her to be bold. He took her fan and, spreading it, fanned her flushed cheeks. She retrieved it and rapped his shoulder, then drew the furled lace along the strong jut of his chin with its dark shadow of beard. Doña Luisa fed Refugio a bonbon, and he chewed it slowly, savoring the taste, before running his tongue along the inside edges of his lips.

  Pilar refused to watch. She laughed and joked and allowed herself to be drawn into the card game, and only glanced now and then at the performance going forward at the other end of the room. Somehow the evening passed, dinner was consumed, and the hour came when she could reasonably excuse herself and go off to bed.

  Sleep was slow to come. Her head ached, the cabin seemed close and airless, and the rolling of the ship more pronounced, as if somewhere on the ocean there was a storm brewing. As the night deepened and the ship grew quieter, she wondered where Refugio, was and what he was doing. Delighting himself, probably, she thought with sour cynicism. Punching her pillow in an
attempt to make it softer, she closed her eyes with determination.

  It was after midnight when Refugio entered the cabin. He closed the door behind him with noiseless care and stood listening. The night had grown overcast; there was neither moonglow nor starshine beyond the cross-hatching of panes at the porthole. He moved by instinct in the sea-black darkness to the single berth. Going to one knee, he leaned over the woman who was lying in it.

  Pilar's breathing was even and nearly without sound. She was, he saw, quite safe, and deeply asleep. She lay in trusting repose, wearing nothing more than a thin shift, for he could see the pale edge of the neckline across her breasts. He put out his hand to touch the silk of her hair spread over the pillow. It was warm, vibrantly alive under his fingertips. He drew back, closing his fingers slowly into a fist.

  He was, ten times ten, the fool. This evening he had allowed irritation and despair and a species of jealousy to spur him into a crass exhibition of a passion he did not feel. He had thought that if he was to be damned, then he might as well be damned completely. He had not known how much the condemnation in another person's eyes could hurt. Or how easily the sickness in his mind could reach his heart.

  The impulse to lie down beside Pilar, to curl his length around her and wait for sleep or the morning, whichever came first, was like a grinding pain in the top of his head. She was so sweet and innocent and beautiful that it would only be natural.

  She might, if he were patient, wake and turn to him. One touch and he would be lost. He would taste the rosy smoothness of her mouth, and learn the gentle curves of her body with delicate, wandering care. Blind and deaf, mute and without memory, he would seek in her his private salvation. With diligence and rigorously held desire, he would lead her in the dance of love until she felt the music, until she joined him in its passionate rhythm and the melting wonder of its finale.

  It was impossible. Even if she would permit it, he was not innocent and certainly not sweet. He moved, in fact, in a fugue of sweat and secondhand perfume with a scent of decaying hyacinths, both manured with generous ladling of self-pity and regret. He could not afford, or abide, for Pilar to catch a whiff of any of it.

  A saltwater bath at dawn would cleanse him of the smell of this night's work, and the self-pity would vanish with the early light, of this he had no doubt. For the regret, however, there was no remedy.

  8

  THE CORSAIR CARAVEL appeared at first light, lifting silently out of the night mist. It might have been a Portuguese ship from its lines, but was lanteen-rigged with a single square sail on the foremast in the style of the African Mediterranean. By the time the ship was sighted by the lookout of the Celestina, it was so close upon them it was possible to see the turbaned heads and dully winking weapons of the men who lined the rails, perched on the crosstrees, and swarmed upon the ratlines as thick as lice in a beggar's blanket. From the mainmast flew a green banner with a crescent, the symbol of the sons of Islam known as the Barbary pirates.

  The overcast sky of the day before had become blue-black, and there was a sprinkling of cold rain in the rising wind. The Spanish captain was a cautious and somewhat indolent man; his ship was riding the waves with sails reefed for the coming storm, and had been for hours. Roused from his comfortable berth and apprised of the danger, he dithered and called on his saints, and stared over the quarterdeck rail at the other ship. He discussed the situation with his officers in high-pitched tones, but rejected all suggestion that he stand and fight. He could not quite decide if there was time to make an escape, however; Spanish ships were notorious for their sluggish maneuvering, though they rode well in heavy seas. In the meantime the eager, babbling cries of the pirates began to be heard across the water.

  The captain, in a frenzy of fearful anger, called an order. A brass trumpet squawked and died away. There was a flurry of secondary commands, followed by shouts and curses and the thud of feet as men pounded up to the decks. Seamen ran here and there with pale faces and eyes bulging with excitement. They leaped into the rigging and sails flapped and boomed, blooming white against the sky. The ship floundered, wallowing as it came about under a confusion of contradictory commands. Then with ponderous deliberation it caught the rising wind. A salvo was ordered by the captain to slow the pirates. A single shot was all that could be got off. The report thundered. The smoke of it drifted in a pall over the ship while the ball skipped uselessly across the sea like a stone over a mill pond. Raising its figurehead above the waves, the Spanish ship began to surge forward in a desperate bid for escape.

  It was too late. The pirate ship was closing. Nearer it came, and nearer still. Arrows whistled like an endless flight of thin and vicious birds. Booming fire from muskets spat down on the decks. There were yells and screams in a half-dozen languages. The blue-water gap between the two ships grew more narrow. Grappling hooks were brought out by the pirates and set whirling. They whined through the air, rattling and skidding as they fell to the Celestina's deck, biting into the wood with a screeching crackle.

  The pirates hurled themselves upward and over the rails, tumbling onto the Spanish ship with knives and swords in their hands and blood lust in their eyes. In a moment the decks were clogged with the fight. Men struggled, grunting and cursing, heaving and slashing before sinking in gurgling death. Swords whipped the air to clang and scrape in engagement. Blood splattered, spread, gathered into trails that crept along the deck seams and seeped into the scuppers.

  Pilar, on deck when the Barbary corsair was sighted, had been ordered below to her cabin. She had gone at first, but the confinement had been too close, the dread of being cornered there too great; she had stayed only a moment. She ventured first into the passageway, then to the salon. The young priest was there, kneeling beside a chair with head bent over his clasped hands and his low voice droning in fervent prayer. She thought he was alone, until she saw the merchant cowering under a table with his eyes squeezed shut and his hands over his ears. Pilar stood staring at them for a moment, then picked up an empty wine bottle by its neck and made for the hatch that led to the deck.

  She had no idea what she meant to do with the bottle; it was just that she felt the need for a weapon of some kind and that was all that lay to hand. She had scant idea of being much help in the melee above, but could not bear to remain shivering below like a rabbit in a hole, or like the Havana merchant. The Barbary pirates sometimes took captured ships back to port, but more often they took passengers and crew captive then set fire to the vessels. She could not bear the thought of perhaps being trapped in the flames, and if she was going to become a slave in the house of some Muslim, it would at least not be without resistance.

  As she emerged on deck, she heard the shouting that rose above the tumult, strong, exultant voices crying a name over and over like some benison of faith. “Gonzalvo! “ they cried. “Gonzalvo! Gonzalvo!”

  It was a magnet, that sound. It drew her forward, though she kept in the lea of the poop deck with her back flattened against it. There on the larboard quarter where the grappling hooks were thickest and the pirates swarmed like flies on a carcass, she saw a phalanx of men, a fighting wedge with Charro and Baltasar and Enrique at its triangular core and Refugio at its head. Their calls had brought others running, strengthening the human plow they pushed forward. With savage tenacity and vicious force they were holding their place and slowly, irreversibly, pushing the turbaned pirates back. At the same time, Refugio's voice, incisive and carrying, rang out with an order that brought the ship's scattered contingent of musketeers clambering to the poop, where they formed ranks. A moment later there came the crash of a murderous volley, then another, and another.

  There was a stretch of breathless time when it seemed that nothing could end the fighting except death to all, that the ferocity and the prodigal spending of strength and will and blood would go on until none were left alive. Then came a sway in the line of turbaned attackers. A man fell back, then another. A bearded Levantine threw down his broken sword with a curs
e. He whirled and fled. A half-dozen more followed. The Spanish surged forward with redoubled effort.

  Aboard the pirate ship the watching corsair captain, marked by the feather held in his turban by a winking jewel, cried out an order. Nubian giants stationed on the decks drew sword and began to slash the grappling lines free. Suddenly it was a rout of yelling, scrambling men. They leaped from the Celestina, swinging on cut sheets, springing from the railing, diving into waves so that great fountains of blue water spouted. Surfacing, they swam toward trailing ropes as the two ships drew apart.

  Refugio and his followers harried the retreat, wading into the thickest of the stragglers. The firing began to die away. The acrid smoke of gunpowder swirled about the masts, obscuring the wounded and the dying and the figures that still struggled here and there along the deck. Refugio, with sweat streaming from his hair, and his chest heaving with effort, began to drop back, to turn as he swept the deck with a comprehensive and vigilant glance. His questing gaze stopped, became fixed. Stillness touched his features. His lips parted as if he would call out.

  A last muffled shot exploded. Refugio flinched, staggering back as bone splintered and muscle ruptured in a bright red decoration on his chest. He lowered the tip of his sword to the deck with slow grace. In the midst of the fulsome shouts for the Spanish victory, his eyes closed. He sank boneless and heavy toward the deck.

  It was Baltasar who caught him, who lowered him to the planking. Enrique and Charro, their faces white, closed in with swords in their fists, uselessly protective as they blocked his body from view. The shouting died away. For a brief instant there was stunned and weary silence.

  Pilar dropped the wine bottle she held. It rolled across the slanting deck and plunged into the sea. Along the deck the injured groaned and cried out. Spanish seamen, savage in the release of fear, moved here and there, kicking the bodies of the pirates over the side, and also those not yet dead. No one moved to help the injured Spanish seamen or tend the dying. No one moved to help Refugio.