The Emerald Embrace

by Briskin, Jacqueline;

  He blinked and picking up my cloak, wrapped it around me.

  “Are you all right?” he asked in shaken English.

  I huddled under the soft wool.

  “Rais Guzman, when I serve aboard a ship, I don’t permit ladies to be treated this way!” His heavily accented Spanish was low with fury.

  “You’re new as first mate, Mr. Stephens. You haven’t yet learned that mine is the sole voice aboard the Hassam. I always protect our booty. And as for this being a lady! No lady travels on such a miserable little tub. What we have is a magnificent young peasant worth a fortune.”

  “You’ll treat her honorably!” roared Mr. Stephens.

  “One more word and you’re a dead man,” said the captain coldly.

  “By God, so are you,” growled his first mate. Then Mr. Stephens’ jaw tightened and, as if by tremendous effort, he grew calmer. “Rais Guzman, believe me, I know my countrywomen. High or low, they demand respect. You want profit? Well, believe me, our captive won’t respond well to rough handling.”

  “Then she’ll be treated like royalty. We want her blooming when we sell her at the Tripoli slave souk.”

  Slave? My trembling increased.

  Rais Guzman said, “Take her aboard the Hassam.”

  Mr. Stephens lifted me easily. As he held me to his chest, I could feel the beat of his heart, smell the clean aroma of salt, and through me tingled a wan, foolish warmth. It was banished when we emerged from the hatch.

  With all the rifle fire and screaming, I’d been positive that every man aboard the Ithaca had been slaughtered. But only six bodies were laid out on the deck—and four were pirates. Most of the Ithaca’s crew stood in a dejected line by the taffrail.

  Captain Yarby, however, sprawled against the mainmast, the deck around him bright with blood, his head bent at an improbable angle.

  He was dead.

  My throat moved convulsively and I gagged. I was held yet closer to a strongly muscled chest and the hood of my cloak was drawn up.

  He swung down the boarding net. Whatever else he might be, he was brave—and a superb seaman. He carried me as easily as if the rope webbing were a flight of stairs. Around us, pirates were lugging the Ithaca’s few valuables onto the Hassam.

  Mr. Stephens halted on the poop deck.

  Below us, Captain Yarby’s body jounced with every movement of his brig.

  Poor Mrs. Yarby, I thought, her sturdy bulldog of a husband is dead. And I remembered the carved curios that the captain had brought me when I was a child, gruffly pretending some merchant had included the gewgaw mistakenly in barrels. I remembered the rainy night my godfather had faced down Amos Thornton to save me. I could feel reverberations in the manly chest next to mine, and I hated Mr. Stephens—or whoever he was—for being alive.

  Rais Guzman clambered aboard his ship. Straightening his gold-laced cuff with aristocratic detachment, he nodded at Mr. Stephens. I could feel his chest expand as he called out an order in the corsair argot. The crew rolled up the boarding nets.

  The American carried me below. In a large after-cabin, he set me on a broad, soft bunk.

  “There’s no time to talk now,” he said urgently. “But one thing’s imperative. Nobody must know we’ve met before.” His pallor had increased. “Oh my God, I don’t know what to say or how to apologize.”

  Still frozen in my nightmare, I gave no sign of having heard.

  “You’ll be safe now, I promise you. The men’ll keep away from you. Rais is Arabic for captain. Rais Guzman’s discipline is stronger than most. He kills for minor infractions. Liberty, I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  The door closed on him. The key turned.

  My porthole didn’t have the usual ship’s glass through which only light and darkness show. It was clear. And a section of the Ithaca’s timbers were visible. With a sudden lurch we moved away from her. Flaming torches were being hurled onto her deck.

  I did not weep. In me was no grief, no fear, only the emptiness of a hideous nightmare.

  A key grated in the lock. A stout black man, with a turban that rose like a vast white sugar cube above his dark, smooth face, bustled in with a towel that he draped ceremoniously over the washbowl. Behind him a skinny brown boy humped my sea chest on his back. With a grunt the boy let it slide onto the deck. Wordless, the pair disappeared.

  I couldn’t believe I’d seen the odd duo. Yet my sea chest was in the cabin.

  The rolling motion increased. We were under sail. Leaning against the bunk, I sponged my naked body with a corner of the towel. In the nine weeks of travel my welts had disappeared entirely. For a long time I washed between my legs. So that’s how it’s done, I thought. The man forces that ugly, inflamed member into the most private part of a woman.

  My broken wrist made it difficult to dress, and I put on the evening frock that Mrs. Yarby had sewed for me while I stayed in her house. The crisp new black poplin was the only short-sleeved dress I owned.

  I was sitting on the bunk when the stout black man admitted Mr. Stephens.

  He, too, had changed. He wore a plain fawn jacket that made his shoulders appear yet wider, and his officer’s white nankeen trousers set off his slender waist and narrow hips. As he entered the cabin, the black man folded his pudgy arms and stood watching.

  Mr. Stephens bowed. “He knows no English, so we can say what we want. Otherwise we must act like strangers.”

  My numbness had left me. My emotions were so wildly contradictory that I could scarcely breathe. I was humiliated to the core that he’d seen me naked. Yet I was unwillingly thrilled by his nearness. I hated him for the part he’d played in Captain Yarby’s death and the sinking of the Ithaca.

  “That’s what we are,” I said. “Strangers.”

  “Whatever you think of me now, Liberty—and I don’t blame you for it—you cared for my safety that night Washington burned. And I’ve thought of very little besides getting back to you.” He had his back to the door and though his posture remained relaxed and casual, his expression was so intense that he appeared almost shy.

  “So this is the duty that held you. Sacking your country’s merchantmen.”

  Pain flickered in his brown eyes and for a moment I felt a baffling urge to comfort him.

  “I’m not free to explain,” he said.

  “I suppose you’re keeping back information for the same reason you didn’t tell me your name.” I heard my own thin sarcasm. “You’re afraid of endangering me!”

  “This time both of us. Liberty, it’s vital that nobody aboard the Hassam learns that I was in Washington three months ago. They can’t know why I’m here now.”

  “You must enjoy games!” I cried vehemently.

  “Please, please, sweetheart, use normal tones.”

  “How does your normal captive sound?”

  “That was the first ship we’ve taken since I’ve been with the corsairs.”

  “You said we should be fighting them, not the British. What were you doing in Washington? Spying for the redcoats? Blowing up their captured powder magazines for us? Playing both ends against the middle for a profit?”

  “Rais Guzman pays well,” he said quietly.

  “How much better off you are than the Ithaca’s crew,” I said.

  “They launched their life gigs faster than they ever did in drill, and now they’re rowing toward the Falklands.”

  “Not my godfather,” I said, swallowing. “He’ll not command another ship.”

  “The captain was your godfather?” Mr. Stephens asked.

  My throat tightened and I could argue no more.

  “Liberty, I’m an outcast, so I won’t insult you by offering my condolences.” He stared down at me. “What happened to your wrist?”

  I shook my head, unable to speak.

  He squatted by the bunk. The black man took a heavy step inside, his white turban bending over us, a flabby-faced, unlikely chaperone. The American unknotted my handkerchief. Though his fingers were gentle, pain shot up my ar
m. And when he touched the swollen, discolored flesh, I couldn’t keep back a gasp.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “The bone’s broken.” He looked up, speaking to the black man in the corsair argot, which seemed a mixture of Spanish, French, Italian and possibly Arabic.

  The black man replied in falsetto.

  Mr. Stephens turned back to me. “The eunuch knows medicine. He’ll set it.”

  “I don’t want to see anybody else,” I sighed.

  “He’s the eunuch.”

  I had read the word in numerous books, but Father never had explained its meaning.

  Mr. Stephens still cupped my wrist tenderly in his tanned, warm hand. “You don’t understand, do you?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “When he was young they performed the same operation on him that makes a bull into an ox. They removed his testicles. Then they buried him up to his waist in sand—they think it’s the best way to heal that particular wound. But many die. Anyway, he’s not a man in the usual way. That is, he can’t grow a beard, and his voice, as you’ve noticed, remains that of a boy. Most important, he has no interest in women. None. He can’t physically love a woman. That’s why Rais Guzman trusts him with you.”

  Glancing up into the impassive black face, sympathy filled me. “How terrible to take manhood from a boy.”

  “In Islam, life is very different. Poor boys’re glad to be operated on—once it’s over. A eunuch can often become high in government.”

  “It’s evil.”

  “Moral judgments don’t transplant easily.”

  “Is that what you tell yourself when you sell your services to the highest bidder?”

  A muscle quivered at his jaw. “The point is, you don’t have to worry about him. He’ll look after you and protect you until we land in Tripoli. There, you’ll be ransomed.”

  Ransomed?

  The practice, of course, was known to me. Governments often paid for the release of their nationals. Rais Guzman, though, hadn’t said the word ransom. He had said I would be sold. It was on the tip of my tongue to face Mr. Stephens up with his lie, but then I realized that my secret knowledge of Spanish might give me some small advantage.

  Gently he placed my wrist on my lap. “Until we get to Tripoli and you’re free, I’ll do everything I can for you.”

  Again his eyes shone with awkward sincerity, as if he were exposing his deepest feelings. How magnificently he lies, I thought, remembering that melting time he’d kissed me. That kiss was a lie, too.

  Waves slapped against the timbers of the corsair ship. After a minute he stood. At the door he bowed.

  “Is Mr. Stephens your real name?” I heard myself ask.

  For the first time on this terrible day he smiled. “Stephen,” he said. “Call me Stephen.”

  The eunuch remained with me, sending the skinny ship’s boy for a silver medical case. I gritted my teeth as skilled black fingers bound bamboo splints from my left knuckles to my elbow.

  When I was alone again, an awesome depression crushed me and I lay back in the soft bunk. I was no longer thinking of Stephen’s perfidy, or of my own plight. Grief, raw and primitive, had overwhelmed me.

  At last, I began to weep in great, tearing sobs for Captain Yarby.

  Three

  The next two days I moved only when forced by bodily functions. The rest of the time I lay grief-stricken on the bunk, flat as though my spine rather than my wrist were broken. The eunuch waddled in with the fresh foods for which I’d yearned aboard the Ithaca. He carried away my trays untouched.

  On the third morning I had sipped a little of the sweet, thick coffee, and I was dresssing when a splintering crash sent me reeling. Grappling irons thudded. Screams mingled with corsair exultation. The Hassam was plundering another luckless ship.

  Some time later, a child was thrust into my cabin. The key turned behind her, but she kept her face buried in small, cupped hands. Her narrow shoulders quaked with sobs.

  She was dressed with exquisite fragility. A pink satin riband circled her short, dark curls. The most delicate rosebuds were embroidered on her high bodice, short puffed sleeves and narrow hem, which since she was a little girl ended above her thin ankles. Not even the grown daughters of the wealthiest planters wore silk stockings in daytime, yet this little girl had on white silk hose.

  “You’re quite safe now,” I said.

  Her head jerked up. Her tear-streaked face was milky white, tears made her huge brown eyes yet larger and her small chin quivered helplessly. She was in a paroxysm of terror.

  “Nothing’s going to harm you here,” I said.

  I draped my shabby but warm cloak around her, and drew her to sit on the bunk, giving her my handkerchief, putting a comforting arm about her frail, heaving shoulders.

  Finally she wiped her eyes. “Are you a captive too?”

  Her high, clear voice was English-acccented. And for a brief moment I thought of the fire-gutted Capitol and White House, of my own home, razed to the ground. Then I was hotly ashamed. What did this terrified child have to do with any of that?

  “Yes,” I replied. “My name’s Liberty Moore.”

  “And I’m Lady Arabella Vaughan. My father’s the Duke of Eastmoreland.” She paused. “Liberty, your accent—are you from the colon—are you from the Americas?”

  “Yes. The United States. But here, let’s pretend our countries have signed a truce.”

  “’Tis rumored in London that they soon will,” she murmured. “How long have you been aboard?”

  “This is my third day.”

  “Three whole days! Oh, Liberty, I vow I’ll go stark mad if I’m a captive that long. Whatever will they do to me?”

  “You’ll be properly fed and delivered in good health to Tripoli. There, you’ll be ransomed,” I said, feeling sure that, in her case at least, it was true. The practical Rais Guzman would get less for this child in the slave market than he would receive in ransom from her father, an English duke.

  “Is that what they told you? They spoke to you? I’m such a rabbit I’d be terrified if a pirate said one word to me.”

  “Are you familiar with the corsair dialect? Or Spanish?”

  She shook her head. “Neither.”

  “Then you have little to fear. Only one corsair speaks English.” As I said this, my knuckles went to my mouth. A perverse blade of iced fear for Stephen was stabbing me. “Were any of them hurt?”

  “I saw blood,” said Lady Arabella, shivering.

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” I soothed. “Nobody’s going to harm us in any way. We’re very well guarded by a eunuch.” Remembering my own ignorance, I explained, “He had an operation that’s taken away his interest in ah, women.”

  “To be sure it has.” She wiped her eyes. “I’ve heard castrati perform in King’s Theatre at Haymarket. Their voices resemble a woman’s, but are far more powerful.”

  Her sophistication took me aback. Could she be older than she appeared?

  She blew her nose on an exquisite square of linen. “Tell me about the pirate who speaks English,” she begged. “What’s he like? Will he help us?”

  “He’s an American,” I replied with hesitation. It would comfort Lady Arabella to know how bravely he had rescued me. On the other hand, Stephen had impressed on me that he would be endangered should anyone aboard the Hassam know he’d been in Washington three months earlier. There were so many mysteries about him—and not the least of these mysteries was the surging emotions he roused in me.

  “You’re ablush. Did he ravish you?” Her eyes were round with fright.

  Again, I fought down telling of his courage. “No.”

  “But don’t corsairs always ravish their lady captives?”

  “Not aboard Rais Guzman’s ship.”

  She noticed my splint. “Your poor wrist! ’Tis broken. Did they beat you? Will they beat me?”

  “I fell in my cabin aboard the Ithaca. Lady Arabella, truly, there’s nothing to fear. Rais Guzman, the captain,
is very strict. And he’s interested solely in profits, and he knows we’re more valuable pure and undamaged. He intends to keep us that way.”

  As a kind of physical reassurance, I picked up one of the green apples on the breakfast tray and gave it to her. As she bit into it, I started the other.

  Eating soothed us both.

  Lady Arabella delicately put aside the core and began to tell me about herself. The ship she was on, a French vessel, had been bound for Nice. Her mother, a noble French émigré, owned an estate in Provence. The duke and duchess were already there, waiting for Arabella. “They decided I must pass this winter in a warm climate,” she said, sighing. “They worry about me so, Liberty. ’Tis a burden, being an only child.” She had been accompanied by three maids, two grooms, her governess and her personal physician. “Of course my parents had a proper entourage. Thirty-one.” She spoke without any hint of boastfulness. She had a child’s simplicity, taking it for granted that I, an American girl wearing homemade mourning, would understand her life as one of England’s greatest heiresses. With artless modesty she concluded “’Twill be the same in France, as England. Men will present themselves because they’re interested in my income.”

  “Marriage is a long way off,” I smiled.

  “This December I will turn eighteen.”

  “Then we’re both seventeen!” I couldn’t restrain my surprise.

  The door burst open. Lady Arabella sank into the recesses of the bunk. The eunuch entered, followed by the skinny ship’s boy laboring under a huge, leather-tooled trunk. As they fastened it down with ropes, Lady Arabella breathed in anxious gulps. I clasped her small, cold hand reassuringly.

  When we were again alone, I told her about myself: that, like her, I’d been traveling to France, and I confided my purposes, escaping my guardian and restoring Father’s reputation. I made light of Amos Thornton and of my own scholarly pretensions, and she giggled and called me a bluestocking.

  That night as Lady Arabella, her frail body draped in a China silk night shift, crawled to the inside of the wide bunk, she sighed, “With you here, dearest Liberty, I’ll be able to sleep. You’re so strong and brave.”