Madalena

by Sheila Walsh

  Madalena made him lie down, for it was obvious that so much talking had taken all his strength. She would think later.

  ‘You have lost a great deal too much blood,’ she said distractedly.

  ‘Must get rid of this accursed bullet,’ he muttered. ‘I have a twenty mile ride … ahead of me.’

  ‘Dieu! How can you talk of riding in such a state!’

  ‘I must.’ His eyes glazed and cleared. He grasped her hand with sudden urgency. ‘You will have to remove the bullet.’

  Madalena was shocked into immobility. ‘That is a monstrous suggestion!’ she gasped. ‘You are delirious to even think it!’

  ‘No ‒ I promise you. It is not so difficult a task … it needs only a steady hand … and a degree of concentration.’

  ‘No!’

  He drew a steadying breath. ‘Is it the blood?’ he queried harshly. ‘Are you squeamish?’

  Madalena snatched her hand away. Her eyes blazed. ‘No ‒ oh, how can you think me so poor a creature! It is …’ her voice faltered, ‘… it is that I might kill you!’

  His breath caught on a wild laugh. ‘And if you … do not make the attempt, this lump of lead will certainly kill me. I was … ever a gambler, infant … I prefer to take my … chances with you.’

  Panic gripped her. ‘Perhaps Jason will recover.’

  ‘And if he does not or if he is too late?’

  He was right and she knew it, but even so. ‘You do not know what it is you ask,’ she whispered.

  ‘Yes I do.’ His voice was beginning to sound unbearably strained. ‘Come here and look at me, mignonne.’

  She met his eyes, now luminous with pain, but steady. ‘I had not told you … but I had made … certain arrangements for your father …’ She stiffened. ‘His safety may depend … upon my recovery … so I am asking you to trust yourself … as I trust you!’

  After a moment she nodded, unable to speak, but flinched as he went on, ‘… should things go badly for me … and Jason … I cannot direct you … stay with the boat. Someone will come …’

  ‘You are talking too much!’ Madalena complained fiercely.

  ‘I’ve almost finished,’ he rasped. ‘Now, you will find a special small knife in the top drawer of that cabinet … and in the cupboard … a bottle of brandy.’

  Madalena laid everything ready that she would need, made all her preparations in an orderly fashion. She poured brandy over the knife blade as Dev instructed her, but her hand shook so much that she spilt it.

  ‘Easy with that bottle!’ He rescued if from her trembling fingers and drank deeply. ‘Now ‒ when you are ready.’

  She raised the knife and her agonized glance flew to his face. ‘I cannot!’

  ‘For God’s sake, Madalena!’ The brandy was slurring his voice; it loosed also a groan of pure despair. ‘This way I have a chance. Do you want me to die of a poisoned wound?’

  Her breath caught on a shocked sob. ‘Pardon, chéri ‒ I am now quite ready ‒ and you will not die at all, I promise you.’

  What followed was to remain with Madalena ever after as a hideous nightmare. She deliberately emptied her mind of everything but what she must do; her jaw was clamped tight with concentration. The light from the lamp was not good, but it mattered little since she could see nothing but the blood which welled up faster than she could wipe it away.

  Her nerves were stretched as steel grated against bone for the second time in a matter of hours, but with grim determination she continued her careful probe. When the tip of the knife found the bullet she could hardly believe it.

  ‘Get the … blade … underneath,’ Devereux ground the words out, still unbelievably conscious. ‘Lever … gently.’

  The first time it skidded away and she cursed it, sobbing.

  ‘Easy,’ he gasped.

  The palm of her hand was slippery with sweat. She rubbed it on her breeches and took a fresh grip. This time, very slowly, the bullet began to move ‒ and suddenly it slithered out, splattering her with blood, and rolled on the floor at her feet.

  In the same instant she felt Dev sag under her hand and terror rose in her throat. But he had simply swooned away. Working with feverish haste, she swabbed away as much of the blood as she could and, taking the bottle from his limp hand, poured brandy recklessly into the wound only the Bon Dieu knew if it would help, but one hoped. She tied the final strip of bandage into place, and was aware quite suddenly that in spite of the cold, sweat was running down her face and sticking the shirt to her aching shoulders.

  Her trembling legs carried her as far as the deck. There, the cold air hit her lungs and sent her crawling to the rail, where she retched violently again and again until she leaned her head against the rail at last, exhausted and shivering.

  It was daylight now, but a mist had descended, enveloping all. There was no sound in the world beyond the cold slap of the surf and somewhere, the mournful cry of a solitary gull.

  Madalena wondered about Jason; he would assuredly die of the cold out there. She brought blankets from the spare bunk and managed to drag him into the shelter of an overhanging rock before wrapping the blankets around him. His pulse seemed stronger, but he did not stir.

  Back in the cabin the air reeked of brandy and congealing blood. Dev’s breathing was noisy and fitful. Madalena pushed the tousled hair from his face, touching the silver wings that lent him so much distinction. In repose the pale features lost much of their cynicism and he looked oddly defenceless.

  She covered him with an extra blanket and then, pulling one about her own shoulders, she sank to her knees, her head resting beside him on the bunk. She cried a little and she prayed a lot ‒ and then she must have slept, for she awoke to fingers moving in her hair and a voice, weak but blessedly sardonic.

  ‘What’s this, my Madalena? On your knees for me, like your little Madonna. Am I not past praying for?’

  Slowly she lifted her head. Dev’s eyes were fever-bright and the fingers that brushed her cheek burned hot and dry.

  ‘Madonnas should not have tear-ravaged faces,’ he murmured.

  With a sob, she buried her face in his hand and fresh tears flowed. ‘I am s-sorry, but I am so happy!' she stammered in confusion. ‘I had so great a fear that I might kill you.’

  ‘Devil a bit,’ he protested feebly. ‘If you will return my brandy to me, I shall do very well.’

  Madalena scrambled to her feet. She observed the two bright patches of colour in his cheeks. ‘I think more brandy will not help you now,’ she said uncertainly. ‘It will enrich too much the blood.’

  ‘Good,’ he snapped, with some of the old arrogance. ‘I like my blood rich. Don’t be officious, child ‒ my brandy if you please.’

  But she shook her head resolutely and found him some cordial, which he took with an ill grace. As the morning wore on, his fever mounted. Periods of awareness alternated with bouts of delirium and Madalena watched with increasing anxiety; a doctor would doubtless recommend that he should be bled, but Dieu! had he not bled enough?

  Once, his eyes focused on her like red-hot coals. ‘Damned stupid … this,’ he muttered, shivering. ‘Never happened before …’

  Madalena piled another blanket on him, tucking it in so that he could not throw it off. ‘It is the fever, mon amour ‒ it will pass,’ she reassured him, but he was already rambling again.

  She decided quite suddenly that she must at least try to find a doctor.

  Outside, the mist had finally drifted away, but it was a grey day with flurries of snow in the wind. The boat was safely berthed in a tiny inlet screened by the rocks, which should safeguard it from the prying eyes of anyone foolhardy enough to approach the beach on such a day.

  Madalena stopped briefly to look at Jason. His pulse was undoubtedly growing stronger; with luck he might soon recover his senses and Dev would not be alone.

  She fastened her cloak tightly about her and turned, a small rather forlorn figure plodding with great determination up the beach.

 
; She found the farmhouse, but when repeated banging on the door produced no results, she walked round to the rear of the building and found the grey gelding tethered in its stall.

  ‘Good day, my friend,’ she greeted him. ‘You do not appear to have an owner, so I believe I must borrow you without permission.’

  Here, a difficulty presented itself. ‘For it is impossible for me to put that great, heavy saddle on you,’ she told him and the placid animal whinnied agreement. ‘Assuredly it is many years since I rode bare-back, but one must contrive!’

  She found the bridle and, with much stretching and tugging, she fitted it on, talking all the while to the horse. ‘And now I must mount you ‒ and I do not at all see how I am to do so.’

  Some kind of mounting block was required. There were signs that the stables were used for storage and a thorough search unearthed a lone half-anker of brandy. ‘The very thing: doubtless you are contraband!’

  She found the squat barrel not tall enough, but the sides of the stall were of slatted wood sufficient to support her tiny foot, and after several abortive attempts and many Gallic epithets, she sat triumphantly astride the horse’s back. ‘Bon! And now, my friend, en avant!’

  Chapter Thirteen

  A sudden, spume-laden squall snatched at Madalena’s cloak and lifted it high. She roused from a weary stupor to clutch its folds close again. She straightened her aching back and yawned. Dieu merci ‒ they were not lost as she had feared, for here at last was the track to the beach.

  She had been riding for ever, it seemed ‒ and with nothing to show. Dev had been right; there was no doctor to be found. She had asked at ‒ oh, so many doors, to be met for the most part with apathy, sometimes with downright hostility from dispirited women whose own men had long since been lost to them and who therefore cared nothing for the plight of a stranger.

  Only one poor, wandering soul had invited her into a tiny, pitifully bare kitchen and had insisted that Madalena should take a bowl of hot, watery broth. She had rambled on unceasingly on all manner of topics, but on the subject of doctors she had been persistently vague ‒ and for Madalena, whose derrière had long since lost all sensation, and for whom the descent from the horse and the greater difficulty of remounting had been a painful experience, the hospitality had been more frustrating than comforting.

  The gusty wind was chasing ominous black clouds across the moon. Its biting edge began to clear her brain and she wondered how she would find Dev. She hoped that he had not thrown off his blankets and taken a chill. She supposed that it must be close on midnight, for the horse had grown tired and had taken his time. At last he turned, of his own volition, into the cobbled yard ‒ and stopped.

  And then, without quite knowing why, Madalena felt the back hairs lift on her scalp.

  From close by there came a scraping sound ‒ and a torch was set aflame ‒ and then another ‒ and another, until she was encircled by blazing flambeaux, trailing their smoke into the wind.

  In the silence her heart seemed to be hammering against her ribs; she searched the shadows beyond the flames to the still faces etched like masks, with no vestige of humanity.

  Her glance came to rest on a giant of a man who held no torch ‒ a flamboyant, swaggering figure dressed in a rag-bag of assorted finery. A fine, embroidered waistcoat gleamed in the light, straining over the beginning of a paunch. His head thrust forward, bull-necked, from massive shoulders and ‒ Dieu me sauve! Madalena mentally crossed herself ‒ what a head! All black hair and whiskers! One arm was flung in genial fashion about the shoulders of a young boy, and while his bright black eyes looked her over, he unhurriedly winkled his teeth with a fine gold and ivory toothpick. This he finally stabbed in Madalena’s direction.

  ‘This is the one, Jean Paul? You are sure?’

  There was excited, stumbling affirmation from the boy. ‘It is him ‒ I swear it! He was with the Anglais when they murdered Phillipe and Guidal. I saw him as plain as now ‒ one cannot mistake that hair ‒ and I saw him again when he took Brutus from the stable.’

  There was a muttering amongst the men. The circle closed tighter so that the acrid fumes from the torches caught at her throat and made her eyes smart.

  ‘And now he rides in again, my friends, and Le Loup-garou wonders, does the Anglais come again from the sea, heh?’

  These last words were flung at Madalena.

  ‘No,’ she gasped.

  ‘I think we go down to see for ourselves. Already I have lost four men.’

  He can’t even count, thought Madalena in disgust ‒ and stopped herself just in time from saying so. To admit any knowledge of the men on the beach was to admit that she knew how they died.

  She was dragged from the horse, stiff-legged and with every muscle quivering, and with a musket barrel in her ribs she was prodded down the track to the beach.

  Ahead of her, the gross man who called himself Le Loup-garou ‒ the werewolf ‒ had stopped. The bodies of the two men were lying where she and Dev had left them; she watched him lift the first with the toe of his boot and roll it face up; he grunted and repeated the process with the other. It seemed to her a strangely callous way to treat a friend ‒ and why had they been left here all this time? The tide had been up and had soaked them through.

  The big man tossed a clove of garlic into his mouth and chewed noisily before looking up.

  ‘You know this scum, any of you? No?’

  Madalena was now more bewildered than ever; her tired brain could make no sense of it. If these were not Phillipe and Guidal, then who were they? A sharp dig in the ribs propelled her forward again. Soon the other body would be found, and Jason also, if he was not recovered … and then the Seamew would come into view. She could think of no way to turn these men aside.

  And then panic, so far contained, swept over her in frightening waves. The little anchorage was now visible, but Jason had gone ‒ and of the Seamew there was no trace! It was as if she had never been!

  Back at the farmhouse, the door was pushed wide and Madalena was sent stumbling, to measure her length on the uneven flags. She lay fighting for the return of her breath while feet trampled and shuffled around and over her. Lamps were being lit and a fire was started in the huge cavern of a grate.

  In the darkness and the dust there were other scufflings, too ‒ something ran across her hair and she bit back a scream. To distract her thoughts from this new terror, she fell to considering the exigences of her situation. Men had been left to watch on the beach, so sure were these brigands that the Anglais would come. But she knew differently.

  Dev had gone ‒ and since she utterly rejected the possibility that he would abandon her, she must suppose that Jason had discovered him, still insensible, and had sailed at once for home. The thought that he might perhaps be dead, lay as a stone against her heart.

  So ‒ she was alone. The knowledge chilled her, for certainly these men were of a breed quite without mercy.

  As if to confirm her fears, she was presently hauled to her feet by a squat gorilla of a man, who bent her arm agonizingly behind her back. With her free hand she attempted to brush away some of the dust and cobwebs which clung to her face and clothes, a display of fastidiousness much enjoyed by those who pressed around her. The close proximity of so many unwashed bodies made her feel sick.

  They were in a kitchen of sorts, scantily furnished and obviously used by these men from time to time. Two badly smoking lamps hung from hooks along a beam in the centre of the room and, gracing a rough-hewn table, an eight-branch solid silver candelabra glowed with incongruous beauty, flanked by an earthenware flagon of wine and a stick of bread and some cheese.

  Here, the big man spread himself in the only reasonable chair, directing operations. Now and again he speared a hunk of cheese on the end of a wicked looking stiletto and as he chewed, he watched the antics of Jean Paul, who had relieved Madalena of her splendid cloak and now swaggered before them all, twirling its folds.

  ‘Enough!’ he growled at last.
‘Now then, pretty boy, we will have some answers.’

  ‘Stupide!’ she retorted. ‘I will tell you nothing.’

  She heard the hiss of his drawn breath.

  ‘The pup needs a lesson in manners,’ grunted a harsh voice. ‘Perhaps he would then respect his elders.’

  Indignation momentarily swamped every other emotion in Madalena’s breast. ‘Ma foi! Should I respect such as you, who are ignorant and uncouth and live like pigs! And if we are to talk of manners …’ This injudicious catalogue of their shortcomings ended on a gasp, as her arm was given a vicious twist.

  The brigand’s whiskers twitched petulantly and his voice grew soft. ‘You think old Loup-garou stupid, heh? You are not the first to make such an error.’ The blade of his stiletto slid beneath her chin, its touch like silk. ‘Now you listen, my fine brave friend ‒ and you listen good. If I want answers, you will give me answers. And no little mistakes ‒ understand? Because Frochot here has a very keen ear and he would not like it.’

  The face of the gorilla loomed hopefully at her shoulder ‒ and Madalena knew despair. The knife was removed ‒ and she breathed.

  ‘Your name, boy?’

  ‘Armand,’ she lied, stammering in spite of herself.

  ‘Good ‒ that is good! And now Armand, you will tell me, when do you expect the Anglais and what is his business here?’

  She was silent, thinking suddenly of her papa; would he still get to safety now that Dev was gone?

  On a signal, the hold on her arm tightened another notch and pain, like red hot needles, shot up into her shoulders. The brigand chief watched her reactions with interest; almost casually he began to pare his nails with the stiletto, pausing once to drink copiously from the flagon of wine.

  Madalena was conscious of a growing air of expectancy amongst the men. When the silence had stretched her nerve endings to their limit, Le Loup-garou looked up, his pig eyes bright, as though he had thought of one big joke.