The Windflower

by Laura London

  “Then it’s a trick,” she said bitterly. “What happened to the real Arab?”

  “Captured in the Rappahannock River and sent to Halifax. It’s not common knowledge yet.” Watching her face, he said, “Does this shock you? Your country does it too.” When she would not answer him, he said, this time with amusement, “Ah, yes. I comprehend from your eloquently contemptuous eyes. You’re raptly condemning the hateful trade of piracy. It’s good of you to spare me a lecture. You had better leave the room before your discipline collapses. Good day.”

  Merry’s sole consolation was that he hadn’t been able to tell her to take her swine with her. Morgan’s cabin door was too heavy to slam, but it made a satisfying loud thwack as she pulled it closed behind her.

  An hour later she watched from her cabin window as Devon, looking beautiful and distinguished as an American privateer captain, got into a ship’s boat with a small crew.

  The weather was worse. A thin drizzle spanked the dark, roiling sea, and the restless air was kneaded by sticky-fingered fog. Cold reached out to her from the thick window glass.

  Merry was about to give up her watch when she noticed a second small boat, moving like a shadow between the waves. As the boat approached she was able to identify its occupant as Joe Griffith, the Joke’s master gunner. Evidently he had taken advantage of the Joke’s halt to fish. The poor weather must have discouraged him though, for he rowed back to the ship, secured the small boat to a cleat, and agilely climbed a rope to the deck. For more than an hour Merry returned time and again to the window. The boat was still there. It amazed her that they hadn’t hauled it up, with a storm threatening. Joe Griffith must have forgotten it; he had a tendency to lose interest quickly in things that weren’t connected with the ship’s cannons. If the boat took the storm damaged, Tom Valentine would probably have Griffith punished. Burdened with an overactive conscience, Merry went toward the door to remind Mr. Griffith about the neglected boat. She stopped, her hand on the door handle, a new and overwhelming idea sizzling like frying shark meat in her brain.

  Her chest roasting, her hands cold as granite, Merry spun the idea through her mind, as if she couldn’t believe that she’d come up with the thought by herself. Pulling a brown wool jacket over her suddenly chilly arms, straining to keep her voice low, Merry repeated the slowly emerging plan to the stalwart table, to Devon’s desk, to a maddeningly noncommittal face she drew in the window mist. In the little fishing craft bobbing below she was going to row to the Good Shepherd. With a kernel of a smile she decided that if that name didn’t betoken succor and divine benevolence for her plan, nothing ever would. She wondered if Devon would remember later that the last thing he’d said to her was: You had better leave the room before your discipline collapses. Good day. Perhaps, just perhaps it was going to be a better day for Merry Wilding than the man suspected. And somehow, in time, she would learn to live with the knowledge that she would never see Devon again. And Cat and Raven. No. None of that. No second thoughts. She couldn’t afford to care. Aunt April was going to see her missing niece again.…

  She waited until the bells told her that it was time for dinner before running lightly up the stairs to flatten herself against the boards and watch the rain-spattered deck. The mess pennant flew over the fo’c’sle, and in another minute Cook came with his helper, carrying covered kids of victuals toward the crew’s quarters. They made three trips, with rain beating the wooden covers over the hot food and rising again as silver vapor.

  Cook and his man would eat with the crew, and for more than twenty crucial minutes the ship’s kitchen would be deserted. Breathing quickly, she forced herself to count to three hundred in case Cook had forgotten something and then pulled the jacket over her hair and stepped into the open. Around her the deck rang with water song. Thick rain clots drummed against billowing canvas, polished boards, and gun metal. Streams gurgled in the scuppers. The watch, in their steaming oilskins, were hardly in a mood to stop her for a chat, though Erik Shay—the fleshy giant who, long ago at the Musket and Muskrat, had let Merry and Sally leave the tavern—waved from the upper deck.

  Once in the galley Merry rapidly located and stole a small paring knife, a discarded apron covered with grease, some coals, and a tinderbox.

  She wrapped the tinderbox, the coals, and the knife in the apron, and buttoned her jacket and stuffed the wadded apron underneath. Running from the galley with her head down like a mole, she slammed into Tom Valentine’s chest.

  “Oh, my! Oh, dear heavens!” she cried out, disengaging instantly from him, to leave a wet spot on his immaculate flannel shirt.

  “Anyone would assume,” Valentine said, “that by now somebody would have taught you to curse. Don’t wring your hands at me, you little fool. I’m not going to debauch you. You look guilty. What have you been up to?”

  “Nothing! Nothing at all! I was only startled to see you. I went into the galley to get a—a biscuit. Because of the storm. I was hungry, and I thought in this bad weather it might take Cat a long time to get around to bringing a tray for me.”

  “It’s only a rain,” he said, “not a typhoon. Cat can bring you something to eat right away if you’re hungry. I’ll talk to him.”

  “No! That is, thank you, but—I’m not as hungry as I was when I—” It was awkward to lie stupidly to Thomas Valentine; it would be disastrous to try to lie to Cat. “The damp… the heaving of the ship… have made me a little sick. I should go lie down, I think, and sleep. If you see Cat, I wish you would tell him please not to bring food.”

  Back in her cabin Merry whipped the door shut behind her and leaned onto it with pounding relief. It was a good thing that Valentine’s life experience had convinced him that white women were imbeciles, or he would hardly have let his suspicions pass. But what if he repeated the story of their encounter in the hearing of Saunders or Cook, who knew that she might try to escape? Perhaps her whereabouts were of such little interest to Valentine that he would forget the whole thing immediately—or perhaps not.

  She made a short, unsatisfactory attempt at prayer, and then a feverish review of her plan, which reminded her to be methodical. So, methodically she checked to be sure the windows were closed, and with ears tuned for footsteps in the passage she pried open Devon’s locked desk. Inside she found letters, neatly bundled; notebooks filled with coded entries in an educated masculine hand; a packet of maps, some beautifully detailed, some less so; and desk supplies: a walnut sandbox, pencils with a cast brass sharpener, a green glass ink bottle, a whalebone letter opener, a pen-knife, and a tin tray of pens.

  Overcoming an instinctive repugnance for stealing, she drew the damp apron bundle from her sodden jacket and replaced it with the letters; the notebooks were too big to take, the maps too bulky. There was no time to read the letters and discover their mysteries. It was enough to know they belonged to Devon, and that he possessed them meant that they must be somehow useful to his country’s cause, which also meant the converse, that if her country had them, it would help the United States and hurt Britain, at least in the hazy realms of theory. If, on the other hand, all that she was getting away with was last year’s bills to Devon from his linen draper, then Devon was going to have the last laugh when he found them missing. Any thought that it would be preferable to have Devon laughing when he found out her theft rather than in a murderous rage Merry quakingly dismissed as fainthearted and unpatriotic. Of course the worst would be if she were still here, on the Joke, when he learned what she was trying to do. This had better work. Or else.

  Her frightened clumsy fingers spilled the water from the water can into the chamber pot and stuffed the water can with the coals and one of the better maps from Devon’s drawer. And although the contents of the tinderbox were clean and dry, it took Merry five gut-wrenching minutes to draw a spark. The map flared, a soft licking flame that left black curled paper ash as it went out. It took another five minutes of unpleasant experiments before she created a fire that gave dark smoke without flame. T
hick heat singed her face as she wrapped her hands in her jacket and thrust the can between its supports near the shaped splashboard, to prevent a fiery spill that might start a real blaze. She waited as long as she could in the storm of smoke and dead flying cinders. When finally her eyes ran and her skin cooked, she threw open a window, flung wide the door, and stumbled, choking, into the passage. Racing to the upper deck, croaking “Fire! Fire!” to Erik Shay, she didn’t need to be an actress; black billows from the lower passage contrasted splendidly with the cherry color of her eye whites and the white tear tracks on her cherry cheeks.

  It worked better than her best hopes. If fire was feared on land, it had a hundredfold the terrors at sea. On many ships it was a capital offense to smoke an uncovered pipe belowdecks, or in hours of darkness. Merry stood forgotten near the gunwale as the alarm spread and men rushed across the rain-slicked decks with sand buckets and water tubs. Dennis, the pink pig, skidding across the deck on wet trotters, bumping men and upsetting sand buckets, was the only one who saw Merry slip overboard.

  In the detachment of undiluted panic she felt the turmoil on deck fade, and what she could hear best was the thunder of her breathing as she found the free-swinging rope ladder leading to the small boat and took the weight of her body on her arms. The rough jute burned her palms, and the sting of instant welts distracted her, when she ought to be remembering to brace her feet against the ship. The next wave trench that rocked the great vessel smashed her face-first into damp timber. Pain blinded her. She clung, swaying on the rope, while air curdled sickeningly in her lungs. Slowly she began to move again, lowering herself in inept movements that cut shoulder blades into cringing muscles.

  Below, in the bottom of the boat, there were two inches of seawater, gray-green and frigid. As she set her feet in it the chill sucked through her moccasins and bit her flesh like an iron trap. Icy drizzle fell on her, and her hair whipped in wide circles as she opened the knot that held the boat to its cleat. She shoved off through the leaping sea as waves threw her boat against the massive pirate ship with a power that threatened to disintegrate her tiny craft to splinters. The boat capered and swirled with giddy violence until it and she were caught in a friendly undertow and hurled into the empty ocean and fresh breezes.

  It’s one thing to watch someone row; it’s quite another to try it oneself in heavy seas, and this was a bad moment to begin wondering if the American privateers on the Good Shepherd would be certain to help her and if there was any chance that Devon might have lied about the Shepherd’s identity.

  Around her the water shone dully, a desert of wet stucco pocked with black rain blisters. The sea spit streaks of spray at her and into her eyes. She shut her lids and sliced the slapping waves with the oars. Again. Again. She was wet everywhere. The air was dense with the cold steam of rain volleys and lacy wind-borne foam. Narcotic cold began to seep into her tearing muscles, and she could row faster. Misery mingled with half-crazed exhilaration.

  In the pressing gloom she didn’t know that the water in the boat rinsed the hem of her breeches. The ocean had come midway up her calves before she admitted there was more water in the boat with her than could be accounted for by rain and sea spray. Too late she understood why Joe Griffith had brought the boat back so quickly to the Joke. It hadn’t been because the weather was bad. It had been because the boat was leaking.

  Twisting her head, she looked through the driving shower toward the Shepherd, a toneless oblong riding distant wave heads. It was too far. The Joke, great and gleaming behind her, was also too far. Not that it mattered. That bridge was well burnt behind her.

  Her desperation mounted as she tried to find the leak and stop it with her foot. Seawater rolled in around her, a frothy jelly soured with rotting kelp and marine slag. Below, the sea beasts waited, eager-jawed, cold as clay, and hungry. Every one of her inhibitions evaporated at once. Merry snatched off her flaccid moccasin and began to bail furiously, but soon water sluiced over the sides, and the boat fell away gently beneath her, and she was kicking water while the sea gripped her legs and tried to suck her head under.

  She knew, remotely, that it was ridiculous, but her hands kept bailing with the dissolving ruin of her moccasin, and her feet kept moving heavily through the water, treading to keep her afloat. Her back was toward the Shepherd, and she didn’t see the longboat’s swift approach. In all her hasty thoughts it had never occurred to her that Devon, on the Good Shepherd, would see the smoke billowing from her cabin window and, because of it, return quickly to the Joke.

  From the bow of the longboat Devon watched her trying to beat back the sea with her sieve of a moccasin. He was not the kind of man who did things like rolling his eyes skyward, but that gesture would have come close to capturing the flavor of his emotions. Behind him, working hard at an oar, he heard Max Reade guffaw.

  “Lil gamecock, ain’t she?” Reade called forward. “Look at ’er. Pluck to the backbone, eh? Damme, she’s got bottom.”

  “To hell,” said Devon, “with her bottom.” It didn’t make things substantially worse, though it hardly improved his temper that by the time they reached her, she was under the water and he had to go into the sea to save her.

  The arm that came from nowhere to drag Merry toward the surface was obviously that of a giant squid, and she clawed at it, screaming seawater into her lungs until she was turned and could see as in a crazed time jump in a dream that it was Devon who held her. With chilled arms and quivering flesh she shot into his arms, clinging to him like a baby spider monkey.

  Above wind and sea and rain she heard him say, “Well. You’re all affectionate now. This is a dandy time for that.”

  His hand tangled into her hair, and when the grip was good enough, he took a second hold on the seat of her trousers and heaved her up and into the longboat.

  Once before Merry had found herself drenched and frightened on the deck of a longboat, but this time there was no Cat here to wrap her in a greatcoat, blow her nose, and wring the sea from her hair. Now the raindrops were stinging arrows on her back as she sat doubled on her knees, shaking, coughing, and spitting up seawater into her cupped hands. Aside from Reade, who was cruel enough to laugh at her, pirate faces watched her impassively. Merry squeezed her eyelids shut.

  She opened them again on Devon as he came into the boat beside her, wet hair in his face, the bright gold made dark and streaming. His eyes were amber jewels, dappled and self-luminous. He reached for her, and she was too tired to fight him; her limbs too much like brittle sticks as he sank his fingers into her upper arms and shook her hard. There was no strength in her jaw, and her small chattering teeth bit into her tongue. Blood mixed on her chin with dribbled seawater, and suddenly, below her chest, Merry felt the sudden movement of a forgotten bundle. Her shirt slid from its tuck in her trousers, and the stolen letters slipped out and landed in a sodden clump at Devon’s feet.

  Back aboard the Black Joke Cat had been the first to understand why there was a simulated fire in Merry’s cabin and had spied through a telescope the distant frenzied figure in the waves. But Saunders across the deck had come to the same conclusion two seconds later and caught Cat going over the side. As gently as he could, Saunders put Cat to sleep with a belaying pin. Lowering the narrow body carefully to the deck, Saunders shouted over his shoulder to one of the hands nearby, “Get a pair of chains up here and keep ’em on Cat until that girl’s either rescued or dead. And don’t give me that look. She’s too far from us. Just too damned far.”

  Saunders picked up the telescope Cat had let go and watched Merry’s flounderings with guilt and anxiety and tried to estimate whether the longboat moving out from the Shepherd would reach her in time. The visibility was poor, and he couldn’t tell who was in the longboat, but Devon must be there, and Devon, with his superior competence, would do everything that could be done to save her.

  If Saunders’s heart was an apple, no woman had ever had a bite of it. Habit worked to erase the emotions Merry’s struggles had rais
ed in him. She was nothing to him; a random female victim, oddly adopted by the ship’s crew from boredom just as the pig had been, although Cat had implied once that the captain might have played a role in that. Impossible. Morgan would never interest himself in a casual ride-under of Devon’s, and an unreliable one at that, judging from the frequent nights Devon slept away from his bed.

  Saunders raised the glass again, fighting the picture of a slender girl in boy’s clothes and a huge preposterous hat, awkwardly clutching a cannonball, her eyes as colorful as bluebells, laughing at some silly joke of Raven’s. Raven. The name entered his mind like a scream. Will Saunders twisted quickly and raced with a jumping heartbeat across the heaving, rain-soaked deck, over barrels, around rope coils. He reached the after deck in the midst of shouting and saw Tom Valentine try to grab Raven, to be brought up short by a glittering blade in Raven’s brown fist. In the flash of a second Raven had dived over the side.

  Calm-handed and cursing, Saunders ordered the third ship’s boat put in the water and went after Raven with Shay, Cook, and two others. Raven was such a strong swimmer that they had trouble catching up to him. They yelled to him that Merry was safe, that Devon had gotten to her, but either the boy couldn’t hear them over the roaring sea, or worry had sapped his reason. In the end they had to haul him into the boat by force and beat him senseless to keep him from going back into the ocean.

  When Devon carried Merry aboard the Joke and tossed her, dripping, on the deck, they were still trying to revive Raven. With a light stride Devon crossed to where Raven lay in a cocoon of wet canvas and blankets. The teenager’s long lashes were curling dark fibers that dipped childishly against young cheeks grayed by the sea’s cold touch. Behind him Devon heard Morgan answer the question in his mind.