Her head haloed by that flat soft honey-colored hair, she saw him looking down at her. She did not smile, but she did not wear her customary sulky pout. Her eyes, a darker blue than usual, were open very wide.
The John and Elizabeth barely moved, speaking very faintly under the forefoot, her wake awash like satin. The timbers emitted small querulous squeals. A spray of sunlight, reflected from the water, leapt through a porthole and swung back and forth across the cabin ceiling.
“Anne—” he started softly.
“Yes?”
She twitched the piece of linen, so that it slid off, leaving her utterly exposed.
“No, no,” he said. “It’s too hot for that now anyway. But I’ve meant to ask you, before this—how did you ever happen to get here?”
She kept looking at him.
“Do you really want to know?” she asked at last.
“Yes,” he said, “I really want to know.”
She closed her eyes, almost as though she welcomed the announcement. She raised her arms, the movement causing those small round breasts to rise a little, and she clasped her hands behind her head.
“All right, I’ll tell you.”
CHAPTER XI
“THEY TELL me my name was Ryan. Anyway that was my father’s name. Anyway he was supposed to be my father. I never knew my mother, making it sort of the other way around for me—I mean, from the way it usually is with a bastard.”
Absent-mindedly she slipped the knife out from under her pillow and took a hone from the rack at her side, and soon to the swash of the wake and the squeak of timbers was added a steady wet slap as she put an even keener edge on what already had been razor-sharp. She was never without the knife, the same bright one she had flashed in George Rounsivel’s face ten minutes after he met her in the glade on Hunchback Key. Her habit of keeping it under the pillow irritated George, especially during their more intimate moments. “Some night I’m going to nut myself on that thing,” he’d grumble.
She tut-tutted this. “If you are gelded, my dear,” she assured him, “it won’t be by accident.”
Now, propped on one elbow, he looked down at her.
“So you’re—illegitimate?”
“Why, yes.” She seemed surprised. “I came from Cork,” she added, as though that explained everything.
In Philadelphia, where the Quaker influence was strong, babies born out of wedlock, though surely not unknown, were not taken for granted. In London, George remembered, the better class of persons seldom mentioned this matter. Seemingly it was not so in Cork.
“My mother, whoever she was, must have been the one that gave me my temper. Father was a quiet man. He was a physician, and he drank a great deal of gin but didn’t show it much—I mean, he never fell down. Sometimes when he’d be called in the middle of the night, and I’d help him pack his bag, I used to feel sorry for the person he was going to work on. He never let me go along on those occasions. Said that sort of thing wasn’t for young ladies. He always called me a young lady.”
She was speaking in a low dreamy voice, almost as though to herself. She held the knife up to what light there was, and squinted thoughtfully at it, and then she went on honing it, more slowly now.
“He doesn’t sound like a father of mine, maybe? But I’m sure he was. The reason I’m so sure is that he’s very near the only man I ever knew who had the chance but never tried to get my skirt and petticoats up. Don’t you think that practically proves it?”
“Well, I suppose so.”
“I had an easy time. Father made money. He didn’t beat me. Everybody seemed to like him. I always had plenty to eat, and good clothes. I even had a maid. In fact, that was the trouble—the maid.”
“Oh?”
“She was English, and I don’t like English women. So many English people have Irish maids that I was pleased to be Irish and have an English maid. But she was really there because of Father. I wasn’t supposed to know that, but I was fourteen years old and it would have been hard to keep anything from me. She was supposed to sleep on a pallet in the same room with me, but as soon as she’d think I was asleep she’d sneak out to Father’s room. I used to go after her, and I’d listen at the door. Naturally I hated her.”
“Naturally.”
“She wasn’t even pretty. I hated her hands. And her ankles. And most of all the way she talked. I used to drop things and make her pick them up. I used to kick her under the table. Father knew this, but he was afraid to scold me, He was always afraid of me. Most men are. And so was she, the fool. She had a bum you could’ve served tea on. I never have been able to see what my father saw in her.”
Anne replaced the hone, and very carefully sheathed the knife. All naked, she stretched.
“They both thought I’d get over it—get over that dislike of her, I mean. They must have both been flummoxed when I went after her with a pair of scissors. But I wasn’t. It’d been a long time coming. The wonder was I didn’t kill her. I certainly meant to.
“Father was out on a case that afternoon. We were sewing, in the upstairs parlor, Nellie and me—that was her nasty name: Nellie—and something she said made me wild. I can’t even remember what it was, now. Something about my father. She was always smirking about Father, always hinting that they might have a big secret to tell me some day. If he’d ever thought of marrying that bitch I’d have gone after him too.”
She spoke without passion, and without looking directly at George.
“Anyway, I snatched up the scissors and went for her. You never saw anybody so gawped. She all but stayed right there and let me slash her. She only started to run away barely in time. She tried to go downstairs, but I blocked her off. She was twice as big as me, but she was afraid of me, I . . . I must have looked fierce.
“I caught her in the upstairs hall. She went all down in a heap, trying to cover her head with her arms, and I slashed and slashed at her. And every time she felt those scissors tear into her skin she’d let out a scream. She didn’t wriggle, just screamed.
“The neighbors were hammering at the door, but they couldn’t get in, and I was going to stab her, but my father came back. As soon as I saw him I stopped what I was doing. But I wouldn’t say I was sorry. The only thing I was sorry about was that I hadn’t killed her. I might almost as well have. She couldn’t walk. She could hardly move. Father nursed her for four days, keeping her in a dark room, but I wouldn’t go near her myself. She never said anything. But on the afternoon of the fourth day, bandages and all, she somehow got downstairs and out into the street, leaving the door open. We didn’t dare go after her. We knew she’d make for the sheriff.”
His stomach wambling, George had lain back in his bunk, and he stared at the ceiling.
“My father never put a hand on me. Maybe he was afraid to. But we got out of the house that very night, and aboard a ship. Almost anybody could get passage for America if they were willing to sign an indenture for seven years, but a physician didn’t have to sign anything. The sheriff’s men never even came looking for us, the ship’s captain kept it so quiet. And two days later we sailed. We went to the Carolinas.”
George, who was looking over the edge of the bunk again now, nodded knowingly. Physicians, like clergymen, always were welcomed in the colonies, and on a no-questions-asked basis.
Anne was looking earnestly at him with those dark blue eyes. Her own story, the very telling of it, the memory, seemed to have stirred her. She shifted her buttocks a little. She pointed to a place.
“Why don’t you come down?” she suggested.
He swallowed.
“Not just now. Go on.”
“Well, I never liked Charles Town. Too quiet. Father did well enough. But I wanted to get married, and he wanted me to stay home, and when I finally married Bonney he was furious. It was the only time I’d ever seen him that way.
“Bonney was a sailor, and he wasn’t much. He was not as bad as Father said, but I could have done better if I’d waited. But anyway I didn’t
wait. And when I saw Jack Rackham I wished I had.”
“You met Rackham in Charles Town?”
“Yes. He was with Vane. They used to operate off the Carolinas, before they came down here. Well, Bonney was away on a voyage, and I . . . oh, I just let Jack do whatever he wanted with me. I was old enough then. I was sixteen.
“But Bonney was no man, not like Jack Rackham. When he came back—Bonney, I mean—Jack had sailed away. Well, I talked him into taking me down to New Providence, where I knew Jack would be. Father’d heard that we were married, and he wouldn’t support me any more anyway.”
“Did Bonney know about Rackham?”
“Not till we got down there. Then I told him. And Jack told him too. Jack offered to fight it out with him anywhere he wanted, with any weapons. But Bonney was afraid. Jack had gone off the account when that new governor came along with the pardon proclamation, and he’d taken the oath of allegiance. But there were still certain things against him, some goods he hadn’t declared. And Bonney knew it. So we thought the best thing to do was get out of there. So we went to Vane, on Jorobado. And you know the rest.”
His joints hurting, George crawled out of the upper bunk. The cabin had been hot; now it was fetid as well. He thought that if he didn’t get to the deck he would vomit.
But Anne seized his hand.
“Come on. You know you feel like it.”
He stiffened, not looking at her. But he could smell her flesh, and soon he felt her hands slither up his sides, and she started to unbutton his shirt. She pressed against him.
“Lock the door, dear,” she whispered.
Sweat stood out all over him and the blood pounded wildly at his temples.
But now there was another pounding, outside. Some pirate who in his excitement had forgotten the taboo fisted the cabin door even as George reached for the latch.
“A sail, Captain! A sail!”
CHAPTER XII
SHE CARRIED no canvas, which is the reason the lookout had not spotted her until they were very near. This vessel, rocking a little in the lazy seas, was small, a squat apple-cheeked boat, probably flat-bottomed, certainly slow. Because she showed no sails—indeed, as they saw when they got closer, no standing rigging of any sort—it was difficult to classify her. There were three spars on her mainmast. She carried no foremast, and the mizzen, a small one, was in the extreme stern and seemed about to topple out of the ship. She might have been what the Dutch called a gallot, a sturdy if unexciting trader generally used for coastal work.
Aboard of the John and Elizabeth the false gunwales had been run up forward, and the crew gathered there, arms being passed out. But, as there was clearly to be no chase, and no sign of life showed in the other vessel, it seemed stupid to crouch in hiding, and one by one the pirates rose, intently studying their prey.
“I don’t like it.”
“Couldn’t get me to go aboard of her.”
“Plague, you think?”
“Might be.”
George made known that he himself would visit the derelict, if such she was. He strapped on a cutlass. He loaded two large pistols and thrust them behind his belt. He had the Moses boat put overside.
“If she really is a derelict she belongs to us,” he told Tom Walker, who was to be left in charge.
“She does anyway. But do we want her?”
“You’ve got the big fellow shotted?”
“I have. And laid. In this sea the helmsman can easily hold ns on, and if there’s any hanky-panky I could blow that tub out of the water in five minutes.”
“Better wait till I leave it first.”
He sat in the sternsheets, paying little attention to the two rowers, who were constantly looking ahead, over their shoulders, not liking to have their backs turned to a ghost—if that’s what it was.
George had his own doubts. Perhaps a full boarding party would have been better, in the longboat. There was a possibility that the crew of the gallot, having seen the John and Elizabeth before the pirates saw them, and having guessed the nature of their business, had hidden themselves below in deadly fear. It was unlikely, but it was conceivable. They might have armed themselves below in preparation for one wild rush.
George could read the name on the counter now, Schatje, which looked Dutch, confirming his first impression, but still there was no stir. No smoke rose from the galley. The tiller swung back and forth, untended. That tiller and a section of Jacob’s ladder hanging conveniently over the side George approached.
He reached the vessel from windward, and it was not until he had climbed to the deck that his nose told him the terrible story.
A plague ship? Say rather a charnel house!
He staggered, gasping, as though he’d been struck in the chest, the stench was so strong, so abrupt.
“Are you all right, cap’n?” one of the men in the Moses called.
“I’m all right,” he replied, shaking his head. “I’m just dreading what I’ve got to find. You stay there.”
He started with the forecasde, which had been stripped of every bit of bedding, the pegs cleaned of clothes. There was not even a personal knickknack, an ignored, dropped trifle.
The galley was just abaft the forecastle hatch, but it was found only by stains on the deck, for the very bricks of the stove had been removed, and the sandbox dismantled.
There was only one hold, one cargo hatchway. The hatch itself was missing; perhaps it had been broken up for firewood. George leaned over the opening, a large one, and in the sunlight he could see virtually all of the hold, which was empty. There was an acrid smell of bilge, which for the first time George Rounsivel found actually welcome as offsetting, at least for a moment, that other horrid stink that lay like a miasma upon the vessel. He could hear the bilge too as it swished idly back and forth with the slight motion of the gallot, but he heard no scurrying of rats, a sound that might have been expected to greet his appearance. “Is anyone down there?” he called, knowing that nobody was. Then for some time he listened to the eerie echoes of his voice as they were batted back and forth, until at last the swish of the bilge took over again.
He sighed. He rose from his knees, and started for the cabin.
Sooner or later he had to come to the cabin. It was small, square, a deck house that obviously had served as the officers’ quarters.
There were two small square windows cut into this deck house, both facing forward, and a door, facing aft. All three were closed, and firmly locked.
The forward part and all the starboard side had been blackened, and below them was a fitter of charred chunks of wood and bits of rag. It was clear that this fire had been no accident. Why the attempt to burn the gallot had failed George Rounsivel could not know, but he might guess that it was because of one of those sudden drenching tropical showers so common at that time of the year.
The windows were curtained on the inside. He looked around for something heavy enough to use for smashing the lock of the door, and at last was reduced to drawing the charge from one of his pistols and hammering with its heavy butt.
The men in the Moses, jumpy, yet unwilling to climb a-board the gallot, heard him and instantly called a query.
“I’m all right,” he growled. “You stand by.”
It was strenuous work, and he was wet with sweat when at last the lock snapped and the door flew open—and he wished that it hadn’t.
He knew now why there were no rats in the hold.
Usually your bold rat is a hungry rat, the hungrier it is the bolder. These, blinking balefully up at him from the hideous mess, had been gorged. Their eyes were glassy, their snoots beslobbered with blood. They did not scamper away, only lurched and lumbered off, for they were fat with carrion, gassy, greasy, stupefied.
The scene they left, the feast they quit, once, not long ago, must have been three men—or at least three human beings. They had probably been white, though there was precious little skin left anywhere. Even the color of their hair was difficult to determine. No
r could George do more than guess at the manner of their death. The ankles of each, mere bone now, were tied, the wrists of each as well. The men probably had been kneeling in a row. The ceiling of the cabin was high, for such a structure, and there would have been room to swing a eutlass—or an axe. The men must have been naked, for there was not a scrap of clothing in sight. The pirates were an economical lot, who let nothing go to waste.
Who, then, had these men been? The officers, presumably, the captain and mates of the Schatje, cut down in cold blood when they refused to join the pirates or when their own seamen, hating them, deserting to the attacking force, had taken vengeance on them. It didn’t matter now. The thing had been done, and not long ago.
The rats were watching George Rounsivel. He saw now that many of them had not sought out their holes after all, but crouched, waiting, in corners. One even returned to the morsel he’d left in the middle of the floor—a long section of the human intestine—and this he dragged to a corner, moving backward all the while, keeping a careful eye on George, and there he began again to eat it.
“All right, I’ll go,” George snarled.
Made savage by disgust, he yanked out his loaded pistol and fired it squarely at that rat.
The noise was terrific and smoke so filled the cabin that he couldn’t even see whether he’d hit the thing. Nor did he care. He backed out, kicking the door shut behind him.
This time the two seamen in the Moses did more than call, they came tumbling.
“It’s all right,” George said. “I just blasted a rat.”
“Scared the wits half out of us, cap’n.”
“I know. I’m sorry. It was a stupid thing to do. Anyway, let’s get back. There’s nothing here to interest us—not a thing.”
He reported only informally. The word, he knew, would be passed around, and since there wasn’t any loot there was no call for an accounting. The pirates generally nodded their heads, saying with certainty that it sounded like Charles Vane. Their former king, then, must be operating in this vicinity, not far from New Providence.
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