Wind and the Sea

by Marsha Canham

  She had been huddled motionless in the shadows for ten minutes waiting for her eyes and ears to adjust to the sounds of the ship at sleep. She was dressed in black breeches and a black silk shirt she had found among Garrett’s possessions. Her feet were bare, her vision as sharp as a cat’s and twice as canny as she felt her instincts rising to the challenge. It was a game she had played often with Duncan Farrow; a game he had devised to test her prowling abilities as well as her reflexes in a dangerous situation. The object had been to move from one end of the ship to the other without being detected or caught. She had always excelled in the playing of it, often able to tap on Duncan's shoulder without him even being aware she was close behind.

  In this case, the challenge was to move about on deck without being seen by any of the guards Shaw had posted to watch the prisoners. The darkness was her best ally. The moon was still below the treeline; she could see the faint bluish-white glow in the sky where it was pushing its way up. The stars were still so bright and plentiful, however, they cast their own light across the quiet cove. Crates, capstans, coils of cable were faintly distinguishable. The masts and yards loomed in silence overhead, like tall sentinels in a forest. The tarpaulin over the prisoners’ pen was ridged with peaks and valleys like desert dunes.

  Courtney pivoted on the balls of her feet and sidled closer to the outer barricade. She wriggled the last five feet on her belly, found a narrow gap, and slid beneath the ropes and between the crates without incident. Again she stopped and waited for her senses to adjust to the utter blackness. Most of the wounded Yankees were asleep. She could identify their positions by the snatches of laboured breathing, the involuntary moans which came when a wound was jostled. She could not see where she crawled, and progress was slowed by the need to grope carefully in small circles before she moved in any direction. The stench of infection and unwashed bodies helped guide her around the sprawled forms.

  She worked her way slowly and painstakingly across the miserable confines of the pen, not knowing how she would identify Ballantine from the other shapeless bodies, only trusting her instincts to do so. If he was as wide awake as she was, as wary of the guards, then more likely than not, he might even be alert to an intruder beneath the canopy.

  Even so, the hand that snaked out and clamped over her mouth was as unexpected as the arm that curled around her waist and lifted her noiselessly into a pocket formed by two overlapped crates. A man’s weight slammed down on top of her, an arm immediately locked against her throat cutting off both her air and her attempt to whisper who she was.

  “What the hell?” Ballantine’s exclamation was hardly louder than a breath as he realized the body wriggling beneath his did not belong to one of the burly guards. He shifted his weight from her legs and relaxed the grip at her throat enough to allow her to gasp for air. The hand clamped over her mouth was lifted, and she cursed freely as she pushed him away.

  “What, by all the saints, are you doing here?” Ballantine hissed. “I could have snapped your neck, you little fool."

  Courtney swallowed with difficulty and massaged her throat.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked again, calmly this time.

  “I came to cut you loose."

  “You what?”

  “You heard me!” A gasp was smothered beneath his hand—gentler this time, but emphatic none the less. She sensed more movement in the darkness next to Adrian, and she saw him turn his head and mutter a few brief words.

  “Dr. Rutger?” she whispered when the hand was removed from her mouth. He might have responded, but she could not hear past the low hum throbbing in her ears.

  “You were saying?” Adrian’s voice was clearer, his mouth a scant inch from hers. “Quietly.”

  “Garrett plans to weigh anchor in the morning. He has done what he can to plug the holes in the Eagle and he plans to tow her back to Tripoli. This may be your last chance—your only chance—to get off and get away before you are fitted for slave bracelets.”

  “You came to help me to escape?” There was an unmistakable air of suspicion in his voice. “Why would you want to do that?”

  “Do not think it is because of anything that happened today. I could care less if Shaw sold you to Karamanli or Abhat Khan the Slaver.”

  “Then why are you doing it?”

  “Does it matter?” She sighed with exasperation.

  “It might.”

  “Are you worried it is a trap? Do you think that is why I am out here risking my neck and my position on board this ship?”

  “If that was the case, it would hardly be much of a risk, would it?”

  Courtney’s eyes burned. His voice was cool and remote. His hand was resting lightly on her shoulder, but she had the feeling the gentleness would turn quickly against her at the first hint of treachery.

  I want to help you, you fool! She wanted to shout. I am trying to save your life, though God only knows why.

  “Shall we just say I pay my debts. You saved my life, and I am returning the favor. Once you are off this ship, all debts are cancelled. If I see you again, as my enemy, I will shoot to kill. Fair enough?”

  “Fair,” he agreed quietly.

  “How good are you at hiding in the desert, Yankee?”

  “Passable.”

  “I believe you already have a gun?”

  There was a slight pause, and she could swear she sensed him smiling. “I have it.”

  “Then if you...and doctor...are ready?”

  That won another pause. A startled pause, she thought, but he did not bother to question her sudden generosity.

  “Matt!” The name drifted into the blackness, and Rutger turned away from the barricade. He had not followed the muted exchange; their voices had been kept too low.

  “Matt, come on. We are getting out of here.”

  “Out of here?” The doctor stared into the shadows. “How?”

  “Over the side, I presume. Are you up to a swim?”

  Matt hesitated, and Courtney wanted to scream again.

  “I cannot leave the men,” he said finally. “I am the only thing standing between them and a canvas sack. They barely get any manner of care as it is. If I leave, they will get absolutely none.”

  “You will be able to do even less for them if you are in slave chains,” Adrian said quietly.

  “For pity's sake, we cannot sit here arguing about it,” Courtney hissed urgently.

  “There is no argument,” Matt said easily. "I am not leaving these men behind."

  Courtney looked to Adrian for some sign of support, but he remained a blank, silent shadow. She turned back to the doctor and, despite the danger that grew with each second’s delay, she tried one last time to convince him to go. “Once the lieutenant is found missing, I cannot guarantee Shaw will not take out his anger on the very men you are trying to save...or on you!”

  “I guess I will have to take that chance,” said Matt slowly. “Adrian? Good luck. God speed.”

  “I will be back,” Ballantine murmured grimly and clasped a hand to his friend’s shoulder to seal the promise.

  Courtney thought she saw some unspoken message pass between the two men, but there was no time to think about that now. The doctor would likely have been a liability anyway with his crippled leg and lacerated back.

  “There is a guard by the rail,” Courtney whispered, crouched in the shadows beside Ballantine. “In a few moments he will walk back to the other end of the deck. I will distract him long enough for you to go over the side, shinny down the anchor cable, and swim to shore. You should be fairly invisible as long as you do not flail about and blow water like a whale.”

  They were on the starboard side, facing the narrow mouth of the cover and the finger of land that curved around to form the bay. The Eagle was beside them. A swimmer could follow a straight line out to the peninsula and be relatively safe from prying eyes.

  “Shaw keeps three men on shore*s as lookouts,” she warned.

  “I will watch for the
m.”

  Courtney started to rise, but Ballantine’s hand shot out and grabbed her wrist.

  “What is it?” She stared at him through the shadows. His eyes were locked to hers and his mouth was a mere line, as if he wanted to say something, but could not quite formulate the words.

  “Will you be all right?” he asked finally.

  “I can take care of myself,” she murmured, conscious of the hollow echo in her voice. She had said much the same thing to Garrett Shaw moments before he had overpowered her with ridiculous ease and almost raped her.

  “Jennings is dead,” she said abruptly. “And the man you are after is Falworth.”

  Courtney felt the shock ripple along Ballantine’s arm.

  “What? What did you say?”

  “Shaw knows all about you, Captain. Falworth has told him who you are and why you were put on board the Eagle. He has admitted to selling Duncan information, and also to misdirecting your suspicions to Jennings.”

  Ballantine sat back on his heels, stunned. “Are you absolutely certain? It is Falworth?”

  “He joined us for dinner this evening like an honored guest. He not only told us everything, but he has convinced Shaw that you are a dangerous man to keep alive.”

  "Son of a bitch," he murmured.

  “Yes, he is. And he is trying to strike up a bargain with Shaw now. His freedom in exchange for safe conduct through the Straits of Gibraltar, past your blockade lines."

  A muscle jumped in Ballantine’s cheek, the only outward sign of the rage that was growing within him, throbbing through his veins, infusing him with a strength of purpose that would have been terrible to see had there been enough light to read it in his eyes.

  She was, however, more interested in another manner of fair trade. "I told you, Yankee, because I thought you had a right to know, after everything that has happened. But there are things I need to know as well. Can you tell me who betrayed my father?”

  He shook himself to rid his mind of the pictures he was conjuring—pictures of Otis Falworth, prim and self-righteous in his tailored uniforms. Falworth smiling slyly, assuring Adrian of his assistance in trapping Willard Jennings as the spy. Was Falworth responsible for Alan’s death as well?

  "Please," she said. "If you know anything...?"

  The gray eyes focussed, chasing away the cloying images. “I can only give you a code name, nothing more. No one ever saw him, no one ever talked to him face to face. It was all done through notes, left in prearranged locations, exchanged for gold.” A loud, scraping footstep nearby sent Adrian’s hand around Courtney’s shoulders to pull her hard against his chest. The guard was less than a dozen paces away, poised like a hound as he sniffed the night air trying to detect whatever had spooked him away from his indolent patrol.

  Two minutes...three passed without a sound, without the barest motion or sound from Courtney and Adrian. Her cheek was pressed against his shoulder, her senses flooded by the scent of his skin, his hair, the sweat of their mutual instincts for survival. The curve of his jaw was just above her brow; his hand was buried in her hair, holding her protectively, possessively against the shield of his body.

  Despite the danger she longed, suddenly, to fling her arms around him, to bury herself in his embrace one last time. In a few moments he would be gone and she would never see him again. Like a gust of wind, he would have blown into her life, shaken her defences, and left nothing in his wake but confusion and uncertainty.

  She became aware of the gray eyes staring down at her, and she knew the guard had moved on, the danger had passed. Yet he was in no hurry to release her. He must have sensed the desire quaking through her body, for his hand shifted to cradle her chin; his mouth tilted down and covered hers. The kiss was one of equally gentle desperation. He must have been left as confused as she by everything that had happened between them. She could feel it in the way he held her, in the way his lips demanded the last shreds of her pride, and at the same time surrendered his own. It was an admission, the closest he might ever come, she realized, and the knowledge that she had affected him so, made her cling fiercely to him, to prolong the moment until the ache in her breast became too strong to bear.

  She pushed out of his arms and darted swiftly along the deck, the tears blinding her to danger, real or imagined. She dashed them away, but not before she stumbled into a coil of rope, making enough noise to draw the guard over at a run.

  Davey Dunn finished swallowing the cud of tobacco he had partly inhaled down his throat, and the tension boiled over into a furious tirade.

  “What the hell are ye doin’ up here, girl? Have ye no brains in yer head to charge on a man like that, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a watch?”

  “I...I am sorry, Davey,” she gasped, hopping as she massaged a stubbed toe. She longed to turn around and search the shadows, for she knew that twenty or so paces behind them, Ballantine was easing over the rail and lowering himself down into the water.

  “Ere, what's wrong, lass? Ye look like ye've seen a ghost.”

  “What?”

  Dunn gripped her upper arms and guided her onto a seat on an anchor capstan.

  “Sit. Afore ye fall,” he commanded, and she obeyed without protest.

  “I'll kill him,” Davey Dunn muttered. “I vow I will. If he has touched so much as a hair on yer head, girl, tell me and I'll kill him with my bare hands. Slow, like, so he knows he's dyin’.”

  Dunn’s words broke through the turmoil of her emotions, and she stared up at the grizzled features.

  “It's a small ship,” he said gruffly. “There is no privat’cy on board, nor too many secrets. A body can hardly take a piss without some wise arse peerin’ at the color. Might be it is none of my business, and if that's so, tell me. If ye want Garrett Shaw pawin’ and stabbin’ at ye, tell me an’ I'll leave ye to him, even though yer father would be rollin’ in his grave and spittin’ maggots.”

  Courtney realized with a soft exhale of breath, that Dunn thought it was Shaw she was running from, and he was prepared to kill for her if she asked it of him.

  “Oh, Davey, I am so confused.” Fresh tears sprang hot and stinging into her eyes, forcing her to bow her head to keep such a blatant show of weakness from the blustery corsair.

  “Confused? About what?”

  “Davey—I hardly know who to turn to anymore. I do not know who to trust. I can barely think straight sometimes! Part of me knows I need to be strong, to show Garrett and the others that nothing has changed...another part of me wants to just run away and hide. Worst of all, I am so afraid of being alone. Verart, Duncan, Seagram...they are all gone and I cannot even be sure of how I feel anymore, or who I am, or who I should be.”

  The wiry fuzz around Davey Dunn’s mouth worked furiously to find a way to respond to such unexpected admissions. In the end, he sat down hard beside her and gripped her hand so tightly she feared her fingers would permanently mesh together.

  “Ye’re not alone, girl. Ye’ve never been alone. Ye’ve always had me, though I've maybe never been one to put it into words or deeds. I owe more to Duncan Farrow than ye’ll ever know, and I have a deal more respect for his daughter than she might believe. I know I were always tough and hard on ye, but it had to be so. Fact is, if ye was my own flesh and blood I would have treated ye no different. Harder mayhap, aye. But ye’re not alone. Ye’ll never be alone, so long as I have a breath in my body.”

  Courtney stared at the wiry little man she had always feared, had always kept her distance from. She knew almost nothing about Dunn’s past. He boasted no close friends apart from Duncan, and while Courtney had never actually considered it for longer than it took for the thought to pass through her head, she had wondered if he might have been the Judas among them.

  Trust no one, Seagram had warned, but surely there had to be some exceptions.

  “Davey,” she whispered, feeling suddenly weary beyond all measure. “Davey, I do not know what to do. Someone betrayed Duncan. Someone sold him—sold all
of us to the Yankees.”

  The red fuzz shifted. “Aye. I knew that.”

  “You knew?" She looked up, startled.

  “Aye. In’t pig’s blood flowin’ through these veins. I smell’t sum’mit wrong ten month back. Told Duncan about it too, but he were slower to believe it. Twice before someone were waitin’ on us where no one had’ve ought to be. Third time unlucky, I guess.”

  “Do you know who it was?” she breathed, alert again.

  “Someone real close to yer father, I warrant,” he said, low and guttural. “Someone he trusted. Someone who know’d his plans same time he did...and know'd how to step aside when the trap was bein' sprung.”

  Courtney’s fingers returned the vehemence in Davey’s grip.

  “Garrett?” she cried softly. “Oh no, Davey—no! He may be a lot of things, but...a traitor?”

  “I've nay proof,” Dunn said sharply. “But I've nay reason to think he is pure as a saint neither. Ye ought to know yerself after tonight, what with him sniffin’ after yer father’s gold.”

  "Wh-what are you talking about? What gold?”

  “Ye mean he were subt’ler than I thought he would be? He din’t outright ask ye about Duncan’s land, where it were, how to claim it, who to see in Virginny?”

  "Virginia, again," she whispered, slumping back. "So that is what he is after."

  Davey chuckled unpleasantly. “Bastard. Yer father weren’t even gone an hour and Shaw were goin' through his papers like a locust. Why do ye think he tore hell fer leather to the Island, and then went chasin' after the Eagle? Mind, if he had not, I would have taken the ship and gone huntin' myself, but Garrett, he were near frantic thinkin’ he had lost a chance at the gold.”

  Courtney detached her hand from his and pressed her fingertips against her temples, trying to stem the sudden hammering in her head.

  “Are you saying...?” she huffed out a breath but could not finish.

  “I'm sayin’, watch yerself, lass. I'm sayin’ I would not tell ‘im nothin’. I would not tell no one nothin’ they don't need to know.” He paused a moment and stared at the glitter of the emerald ring on her finger. “Unless of course ye want to tell ‘im.”