~~
The sergeant of the marines approached the burly, shaggy-maned giant with trepidation. Bloodied from a dozen scratches and in possession of two of the blackest, fiercest eyes Rowntree had ever seen, the pirate stood protectively by the young boy’s side, his massive hands flexing and unflexing in a mute challenge. His arms were as solid as tree trunks, his torso powerful enough to rival Ulysses’. The sergeant halted and a dry tongue scraped nervously around his lips.
Seagram, Courtney, and six others were the last of the prisoners waiting on the beach for transportation to the ship. Behind them, belching clouds of black smoke curled over the knoll that concealed the main village from sight. Every hut, shed, and fencepost had been smashed and put to the torch, and no one on the beach had needed to see the nestled village to know how widespread the destruction was. Stores of food, caches of gold and silver plate, silks, priceless gemstones, as well as a small mountain of rum puncheons had been carried down to the shoreline and were surrounded by grinning, clawing men whose task it was to sort and itemize the booty before transferring it to the Eagle.
Musket-fire sounded sporadically from beyond the dunes. Once, an immense explosion ripped the evening air wide apart, signifying that the powder magazine had been found and the surplus destroyed. The smell of smoke and charred flesh stung the nostrils; dozens of glowing fires robbed the summer sunset of its cool beauty.
“I am ordered to put you all in chains,” Rowntree said, fortified by the presence of armed guards on either side of him. “Anyone resisting is to be shot.”
Seagram’s eyes narrowed. “You'll not be putting chains on me, boy. I cut my teeth on bones larger than you.”
The sergeant paled. He was young and earnest-faced, and the chains trembled in his hands. “Y-you have my final warning, sir: the manacles...or a lead ball.”
Courtney raised her head and laid a hand on Billy Seagram’s forearm, halting the rumble of anger that was rising in the corsair’s throat. “It would serve no purpose to die for such a trifling matter,” she said softly.
She stepped out from behind the shield of Seagram’s bulk and walked rigidly toward the young officer, meeting his gaze unflinchingly as she held out both wrists.
Rowntree faintly smiled both his thanks and his apologies as he snapped the heavy iron bands around her slender wrists. The weight of the manacles and their linking chain dragged Courtney’s arms downward, but she countered the strain and determinedly raised them to chest level again, holding them steady while the bolt was threaded and locked.
A four foot length of iron chain separated her from the next pair of manacles, and she felt the startled tug as Rowntree looked up to find that Seagram had moved forward. The bracelets proved too small for the hairy wrists, and it took several minutes for the lieutenant to jury-rig an adequate way to lock Seagram in line. In the end there were two twisted bolts and a good deal of damage to the hard flesh, but Seagram only grinned and glared down at Rowntree with a silent promise.
The rest of the men shuffled forward, accepting the manacles with balled fists and tautly compressed lips.
The sun had dipped below the horizon and the sky was painted deep maroon and gold as the prisoners were led through the shallow surf to the waiting longboat. The water was surprisingly clear and dark where it rushed across the shale and, farther out, was like a velvet seat on which the graceful silhouette of the Eagle gently rocked. Damaged spars and rigging had already been removed and men were busy making repairs by lantern light. Marines had shed their battle dress and toiled alongside the ordinary seamen to haul away debris and wash down the bloodstained decks. Cannon blown from their carriages were being winched upright and reseated. Torn canvas sails were spread out on the spar deck and were being set to by the sailmaker and his league of frantically stitching apprentices.
The Eagle was a light frigate, one hundred and fifty feet long from bow to stern, carrying an armory of forty guns and a crew of two-hundred-and-seventy-five. Her three masts rose high above the cocoons of lamplight; her rigging sparkled against the sunset, bejeweled in droplets of fine, clinging evening mist.
The longboat scraped against the hull of the frigate, and a bowline was tossed to a waiting sailor. A huge pair of emerald eyes gazed slowly up the curved side of planking, halting only when they came to the yawning lower level of gunports.
“On your feet,” a guard ordered gruffly, prodding the prisoner closest to him with the butt of his musket. “Step lively now. One slip and you all go down. Not a one of us about to jump in the drink to save you, either.”
Seagram tilted his head, giving a signal, and a small, scruffy corsair stood and grasped hold of the first ladder rung. He moved nimbly despite the cumbersome chains and led the seven others up and over the curve of the ship. Courtney was last in line, grateful to have Seagram ahead of her to take up the slack of the chain; she doubted whether there was enough strength left in her legs to make the climb without his help.
She stepped through the open gangway onto the main deck. All around them sailors stopped working to stare, curse, or jeer at the last of the Barbary captives. Many wore stained bandages to show for their efforts in battle; many more fingered the dirks they had strapped to their waists as if desirous of continuing the fight. That the crew did not appear to have been excessively depleted by the day-long battle was yet another blow to the men of Snake Island. Would that they had had the support of the Falconer or the Wild Goose! The Yankees would not be standing quite so smugly on their deck now; they would not be looking quite so contemptuous of the men filing slowly past them.
Courtney felt a resurgence of the hatred that had been numbed temporarily by the death of her uncle. She stared at the neat row of bodies stretched out under canvas and knew there would be great pomp and ceremony accompanying their burial at sea. The brave men of Snake Island lay where they had fallen, exposed to the broiling sun and flies, defenseless against the two- and four-legged predators that would strip them to bleached bone before many days had passed. She thought of Everart Farrow, sprawled with the other corpses on the pure white sand of the dunes.
They will be made to pay, she vowed bitterly as she cast her eyes around the cluttered deck. All of them. Somehow, in some way, they will be made to pay for Verart’s death and for the death of each and every man left behind to rot on the beaches of Snake Island.
The creak of tackle overhead caused Courtney to lift her gaze to the upper mainsail yard. The Yankee captain had said that Duncan Farrow swung from just such a yard, but she refused to believe it. Handsome, daring, and reckless, Duncan Farrow had commanded the men of Snake Island with a skill and boldness that had kept the rival bands of corsairs at a respectful distance. He had no use for the Dey of Algiers, no interest in the petty squabbles between the ruler of Tripoli and the nations whose merchant ships were regularly plundered and held to ransom. Farrow’s was a private odyssey and if, as it happened, his goals coincided with those of the Tripolitans, he took advantage of the Pasha’s protection, just as the Pasha took full advantage of the reputations of the Falconer and the Wild Goose.
Courtney could not believe—she refused to believe—he was dead. The idea that Duncan Farrow could have been caught by these primped and overstuffed popinjays was laughable. It had been a ploy by the captain to shock Verart Farrow into revealing himself, and it had worked. But she, Courtney, would make them pay dearly for their treachery.
A pair of pale, steel-gray eyes stole into her consciousness.
He was standing on the quarter-deck, his hands braced on the carved oak fife rail, his tall, broad frame highlighted by the blood-red sunset. He wore a slight frown, as if he had been observing her for some time and suspected that something about her was wrong, out of place.
The bindings Verart had insisted she wrap around her breasts cut into her flesh, preventing Courtney from taking the deep swallows of air that would have helped control the anger rising within her. She knew her only chance to survive—and to escape—lay in he
r remaining an anonymous face among the prisoners. To reveal her sex or identity would place her in the hands of the Eagle’s captain and expose her to his thirst for retribution. At the very least it would leave her to share a fate no better than that of the other women of Snake Island. Both Verart and Seagram had insisted on the ruse; it was necessary for her survival.
That the blond-haired lieutenant knew at least half of her secret should have prompted her to lower her eyes and keep them lowered, yet she was drawn to the threat like a magnet: the Irish curse was with her, the need to see and know an enemy, to show lack of fear so there could be no doubt about the outcome of a confrontation.
Lieutenant Ballantine felt the hatred ripple across the open deck, glowing from the depths of the eyes that had turned almost black with intensity. The blood pounded in his temples, and his knuckles turned white on the railing. The challenge was unmistakable. He could almost see his own death in the boy's eyes, and he had the distinct feeling he would come to regret not having used his sword earlier this afternoon.
The spell was broken by the rough hand of a guard shoving against Courtney’s shoulders. The line of prisoners was ushered along the main deck to the afterhatch and led down two levels of steep, dark stairs to the musty airlessness of the orlop deck. They were below the waterline, and the sounds of the chains clinking and dragging were muted in the dankness. A command was barked from somewhere ahead in the narrow confines, and the line shuffled forward in darkness.
The deck housed, among other things, the infirmary and the surgeon’s cockpit. Courtney tried to block out the groans and the cries of the wounded, but she could not avoid glimpses of the two lighted rooms they passed where men in white aprons leaned over bloody worktables. Nor could she completely ignore the stench of cauterized flesh, of boiled tar and sickly sweet camphor. She saw a man, dressed in a chaplain’s collar and black apron, holding a cup of rum to a sailor’s lips with one hand, and making repeated signs of the cross over the patient’s legless stumps with the other.
A strained, weary voice halted the prisoners.
“Any wounded in this lot?”
The guard shrugged and waved a hand casually. “Dunno, doc. This is the last of ‘em, though.”
The doctor moved slowly along the manacled line, studying limbs and faces and torsos for signs of damage. When he came to Seagram, he stopped and tilted his head up in appreciative awe.
“I do not suppose you want medical attention for any of those scratches, do you?”
Seagram bared his teeth and grunted, “Bugger off.”
“I didn't think so.” The doctor’s mouth twisted wryly, and he was about to return to his small anteroom when he caught sight of Courtney’s blue bandanna. He craned his neck to see around Seagram and saw the ugly, weeping wound high on her arm.
“What about you, son? Care to let me take a look at that?”
“Bugger off,” she said, duplicating Seagram’s low hiss. “I will live.”
“Perhaps.” He limped slightly, favoring a game leg, as he moved past Seagram. “And perhaps not, if you keep losing blood at that rate.”
Courtney’s eyes narrowed, but she said nothing as the doctor’s hands deftly probed beneath the soiled bandanna.
“Right,” he pronounced crisply. “I will see this one. Cut him loose.”
The guard warily unlocked the bar connecting Courtney’s chains to the others. “You want me to wait, doc?”
“Are you suggesting the boy could overpower me? Or perhaps you think he will try to make a run for the side and swim ashore? No, corporal,” the doctor sighed when his sarcasm was lost on the soldier, “leave the boy and leave the key and get on with what you were doing. I will send him down when I have finished.”
“Aye,” grumbled the guard, clearly not pleased by the tone of the dismissal.
The doctor started back for the surgery. “Come along, lad. Quicker in, quicker out.”
Courtney exchanged a terse glance with Seagram as he was led away down the dark corridor. She remained standing in the spill of light from the surgery, listening to the fading clink of chains. When there was nothing more to see or hear, she moved tentatively toward the lantern light, blinking uncertainly as she stopped in the entranceway.
The doctor was busy at the far side of the room pouring clean water into a chipped enamel basin. He was of medium height and build, and his hawkish profile was softened by curly, cropped chestnut-brown hair. He could have been any age: a young man cursed with a mature face, or an older man favored with smooth features. Only the deep-set hazel eyes betrayed the fact that he would probably not see his thirtieth year again. They were haunted by the many hours spent witnessing the suffering of others.
“Come along, boy,” he muttered, noting the inspection. “I haven’t all day.”
Courtney ventured into the surgery, warily examining the dreadful assortment of files and pincers, saws and knives that lay spread out on a long wooden bench. Her gaze was drawn to a particularly thin, razor-like blade that seemed to beckon to her from across the table.
“I can move surprisingly fast,” the doctor murmured, not looking up from the basin he was filling with water, “crippled leg or not.”
Courtney released her pent-up breath, acknowledging the warning. She also saw that they were not the only ones in the surgery. A thin, wide-eyed boy of ten or eleven years stood by a steaming vat of hot water into which he stirred soiled rags and bandages to be washed and reused.
“That is Dickie,” Dr. Rutger said, by way of an introduction. “Dickie Little. He helps me out with odd jobs.”
The doctor smiled at the boy and moved his hands in a series of gestures. The boy studied the doctor’s hands, nodded, and crossed over to stand by the table of instruments.
“He is also stone deaf,” the doctor added. “The ship he was on exploded, taking his family, his identity, and his hearing with it. We have developed a rather rudimentary method of communicating. Crude, but effective. Have a seat. I will need to clear away a few layers of grime on your arm before I can see what has to be done. How did it happen?”
Courtney sat on the edge of the chair and kept her lips pressed firmly shut. To her chagrin, the doctor smiled again.
“So I have myself a tough, seasoned pirate, eh? Well, let me see then—” He rolled her sleeve up to her shoulder and swabbed at the crusted blood and dirt. The scrap of cotton that had been tied around the wound to staunch the flow of blood came away with difficulty, making Courtney grind her teeth together to stop from crying out. It took three squares of linen to completely clean the wounded flesh, then a separate dry cloth to dab at the fresh trickles of blood while the doctor decided what to do.
“I would guess it to be from a fragment of an exploding shell. Would that be close?”
The emerald eyes lifted to his.
“Among my many other attributes, I have been in the navy for seven years.” His smile slipped under the intensity of her gaze, and he straightened. “How old are you, son?”
“I am not your son.”
“True enough. You do have a name though, do you not?”
“Court,” she said after a pause.
“Curt? Very well then, Curt, how old are you?”
“Old enough to slit your throat ear to ear and take pleasure in snapping your head off."
The doctor glanced up, mildly startled. He almost laughed at the attempted bravado, but when he sensed it wasn't entirely trumped-up boastings, he thought better of it. Instead he gestured to Dickie Little which instruments to fetch from the table. “Then I suppose you are old enough to sit still while I attempt to sew this together?”
Courtney glanced involuntarily at the wound. She had not seen it without the benefit of the ragged cloth but she knew by the pain and the amount of blood clotted on her arm that it was no small cut. The sight of the jagged, furrowed flesh caused a bubble of nausea to rise in her throat, and she swiftly turned her head away.
“The laceration goes rather deep, I am afra
id. Lucky for you the main blood lines were missed and the bone seems to be in one piece.” He saw her eyes close and her throat move in a heavy swallow. “You can take your shirt off before we begin. I will find something clean for you to put on later.”
“No,” she said sharply, the queasiness vanishing instantly. “No, I—” She clamped her mouth shut and turned away.
“Suit yourself,” he shrugged. “Although I fail to see how an absence of filth and odor could be construed as cowardice by your associates. Here, take this.”
Courtney frowned at the wedge of wood he held out to her.
“What is this for?”
“You hold it in your fist and squeeze,” he said gently. “Or if you prefer you can bite down on it when I begin. Even the bravest of men have limits to the amount of pain they can endure in silence.”
Courtney looked from the doctor’s face to the chunk of wood.
“By the way, my name is Matthew. Matthew Rutger. You may, from time to time, hear the men address me fondly as “Rotgut”, but pay no heed. They know full well their wretched lives depend on my mercy. Consequently they know when to lose at dice, the type of brandy I enjoy in the evening, and the general temperament of the women I prefer. It helps if you breathe.”
Courtney gasped and squeezed her eyes tightly shut. He was talking to distract her, to divert her attention from the needle and thread punching through her flesh, but he was unsuccessful. She felt the sweat beading across her brow, and she gripped the edge of the bench so hard her arms trembled and her fingers burned with the agony.
“Almost done,” he murmured. “Two more...one....finished.”
Courtney exhaled loudly, shuddering as the shock jolted through her body. Her arm throbbed so badly it took several minutes for her vision to clear and the pounding to leave her temples. The deaf boy touched her shoulder and held out a cup of rum.
Wind and the Sea Page 3
