by kps
FAR FROM THE SENSUOUS SHORES OF LOVE'S EMBRACE ...
the gallant buccaneer Kells sailed away again
to win his fortunes. Yet no intrigue of the seas could
ever fade the image of his Colonial belle,
the glorious Carolina. Then nature's rage destroyed the
small Jamaican port that was to be their
rendezvous ... and Kells, a dazed survivor, no longer
knew his own bewitching bride.
Sold into his household as a maid, Carolina must
once more entice him into love. For Kells believes
himself to be a Spaniard, surrounded by the
Spanish King's grandees ... a desperate plight, for
he is their most hated foe!
Now he must dare to trust
this silverblonde beauty who stirs his blood anew.
or lose forever the haunting, faint refrain of their ..
NIGHTSONG.
Don Diego Vivar Stepped Briskly into the Big Front Bedroom . ..
"Oh, it is you!" Carolina cried. She threw herself into his arms and silenced anything he might have to say with her soft eager lips . . .
His lips left hers and trailed tantalizingly down her white throat, across her smooth bosom, he was loosening the hooks that held her bodice, it was slipping away . . .
He swept her up into his arms, and fell with her onto the big square bed. The moments sped by-delicious golden moments snatched from time. She had lost Kells, but she had him back again! Every breath, every rasp of his skin against her own thrilled her.
"Oh, Kells," she whispered. "I thought-that you were dead."
"Senorita," he said regretfully, "it seems you have mistaken me for somebody else. I am Diego Vivar, late of Castile . . ."
WARNING
Readers are hereby warned not to use any of the cosmetics, unusual food, medications or other treatments referred to herein without first consulting and securing the approval of a medical doctor. These items are included only to enhance the authentic seventeenth-century atmosphere and are in no way recommended for use by anyone.
DEDICATION
In loving memory of Tarbaby-son of Princess, my very first cat-lovelyTarbaby of the gleaming black fur and brilliant green eyes; vivacious Tarbaby, who whirled gracefully high up into the summer air, trying to catch butterflies-always a second too late; Tarbaby, who gave back the challenge of the mocking jays who screeched at him from the tree branches above the grapevines; Tarbaby, who played with me so joyously along the maze I constructed in the deep snows of our garden one winter; Tarbaby, who was always gentle with me and yet kept all the dogs in the neighborhood cowed-to Tarbaby, bright companion of my youth, this book is dedicated.
Author'S NOTE
In this rousing tale of the exciting1600's, I bring to you the wild adventures-both amorous and desperate-that now befall that reckless Colonial beauty, Carolina Lightfoot, and her gallant buccaneer lover, Captain Kells.
Their tempestuous story is set in the Golden Era of that Colonial center of trade and fashion, old Port Royal. In reconstructing this interesting seventeenth-century town-and I have been meticulous as to streets, topography, the location of its various forts and shops, etc.-I have employed ancient records and maps and the latest archaeological research, but I have tried as well to recapture and bring to you in vivid life the exuberance, the extravagant gaiety, the rich fashions, indeed the whole glamorous way of life being enjoyed when this fabled port of the West Indies was at its height, its harbor flapping with the sails of many nations, its handsome four-story brick residences and enormous warehouses bursting with the booty of golden galleons, its sandy streets rattling with buccaneer cutlasses. The old port is given to you in all its infamous glory-a jewellike setting for that jewel of the Caribbean, Carolina Lightfoot, the dazzling Silver Wench of the Spanish Main.
Although the characters and events in this story, save for those noted here, are entirely of my own imagination, I have relied heavily upon historical detail. For example, the short wild voyage of that gallant frigate, the H.M.S. Swan, did indeed take place, and Hawks's mind-boggling adventure, which seems well nigh incredible, is based upon the actual experience of one Lewis Galdy, which is carved in stone-indeed Hawks's epitaph is borrowed almost intact from Galdy's headstone in a Port Royal churchyard.
Even Moonbeam the eat's decorous dining, course by course, at the family dining table in Essex to the delight of invited guests, is based upon an actual cat from English history whose devoted owner enjoyed her pet's company so much that she trained the cat in "good table manners" and allowed her to sup with the family.
As to Acting Governor John White, he was indeed acting governor of Jamaica at the time, and an eye witness account of the Rector of St. Paul's Church, one Dr. Heath, places him on board the ship Storm Mer-chant where my heroine finds him, but whether he continued governing from aboard her I have no idea; indeed I was able to learn nothing about Acting Governor White, save that he drank wormwood wine! So everything concerning him and his family is entirely of my own invention-I hope I have not unduly ma-ligned him.
You will also find in these pages a faithful recording of one of the great catastrophes of the Western World -and I have spared no effort in delving into historical and archaeological research, using eye witness accounts wherever possible, to bring it to you in all its fantastic panorama. Where fact could not be established, I have of necessity relied upon invention. For example, I was able to find out what the weather had been preceding the event-but not after.
As to "Diego Vivar," both Spanish intelligence and Spanish records were very good in the time period of my novel, and he could easily have met his end in such a place and in such a manner.
When the buccaneers lost their foothold in Jamaica, they really had nowhere to go.
Tortuga was unattractive by comparison-and it was French (France and En-gland were engaged in naval warfare at the time). Those buccaneers who were left-and remember that many were at sea at that time-regrouped and headed for the numberless low sandy cays of "The Shallows," which today we call the Bahamas.
The town they flocked to was the pirate base of Charles Towneon New Providence Island, which in 1690 had come to be called Nassau. Although the migration of the buccaneers to the Bahamas really marked the end of buccaneering as it was in Morgan's time (Morgan was four years dead when the buccaneers left), the pirates of Nassau (which had become in all probability the wildest town any-where) continued to roam the Straits of Florida and to haunt the Windward Passage and the Mona Passage. There were several attempts to uproot them, and it is of one of these, a combined attempt of the French and Spanish to subdue these fierce sea rovers, that I write-although I have set the date a little earlier than it actually happened, the better to fit my story.
In the attack herein described, the men-those that could be caught-were promptly slaughtered, the women taken as slaves to Havana. And so it is also of old Havana that I write, in the days when brooding EI Morro, standing guard over Havana harbor, was just over a hundred years old, and pirates and buccaneers alike were hanged without mercy and without regret on the Plaza de Armas.
Although the Spanish may not have planned to raid Jamaica in 1692, it was certainly believed that they did plan to raid Jamaica and drive the English from the West Indies in Morgan's time, and it was Governor Modyford who, realizing there was no English fleet to help him, persuaded Morgan to collect the buccaneers and mount a raid on Porto Bello, thus keeping the Spanish occupied with other matters than invasion of their neighbors. Thus, although the timing is a little off, the situation I have described-though imaginative-could well be an accurate one. S
pies were sent in to assess military might then as now, and could not one of those spies be handsome-and susceptible to a woman as beautiful as Carolina?
Perhaps my family background predisposes me to a special interest in buccaneers-and other valiant patriots who in times past have fought for their country in unorthodox ways. For my maiden name was McNeill. I am the great-great-great-granddaughter of Captain Daniel McNeill of whom young George Washington wrote in a letter (duly preserved and framed in the Library of Congress) from Winchester, Virginia, that Captain Daniel McNeill across the mountain could furnish him with three hundred men (for Dunmore's War). During my Pentagon years, I took pleasure in researching in the Army Library the seafaring efforts of a later Captain Daniel McNeill, privateer, who sailed his own vessel to North Africa to subdue the Barbary pirates on behalf of his country. And it was pleasant to realize, when in residence at Dragon's Lair in Washington, D.C., that but a few short blocks away was the home of Stephen Decatur, one of our country's heroes, who had sailed as a young officer under that same Captain Daniel McNeill. Somehow it brought history close and privateers even closer. And Captain Dan'l, as family tradition calls him, would surely-had he lived in buccaneering times--have been a buccaneerl
As to the buccaneers, those myriad unfortunates who sought exile for political reasons, many of whom-like the hero of my story-had felt the jaws of Spain clamp down upon them and been brushed by the dread fires of the Inquisition, how they must have savored their gains against a nation that had driven them from island to island and tried to sweep the seas clear of them! It was the buccaneers (who by rights should be called "privateers" since they fought no flag but Spain's) who saved the West Indies from Spanish invasion and kept those lovely islands of the British, French and Dutch from becoming mere links in a necklace of Spanish might that girdled the Western Hemisphere!
And ask yourself, without the buccaneers, could we have held our coast? How thinly scattered then were our tiny Colonies along the east coast of North America! Had Spain swept the Caribbean clean of opposition, what then?
I say we owe a debt to these buccaneers. A debt that will never be repaid, true, but at least we can honor them in memory. This may well be the last novel I ever write with a buccaneering background-that back-ground I love so well!-so I invite you now to sail with me into the glories of a lost world, to learn its secrets and thrill to its challenges.
Should anyone ask "Who speaks for the buccaneers?" they will assuredly have their answer: I speak for the buccaneers!
Do you speak of buccaneers?
Oh, remember them with tears,
Those men we hanged 'twixt high tide and the low,
For we owe them all so much,
We, the British, French and Dutch,
Those men that we dishonored and brought low!
For they saved the Indies then
And though they were desperate men,
They'll be recalled wherever trade winds blow,
Their stories sung wherever free men go,
Their ghosts sail out across the sunset's glow. . . .
-Valerie Sherwood
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE: PORT ROYAL, JAMAICA SPRING 1692· 1
BOOK I: THE SILVER WENCH • 9
PART ONE: THE BELLE OF PORT ROYAL· 11
PART Two: CATASTROPHE 153
BOOK II: ROUGE· 199
BOOK III: THE BEAUTIFUL CAPTIVE . 241
PART ONE: THE SPANISH CAVALIER· 243
PART Two: THE DANGEROUS RIVAL·297
BOOK IV: KELLS· 375 EPILOGUE . 475
PROLOGUE PORT ROYAL, JAMAICA
Spring 1692
In love's fair arms they lie tonight, Embracing in the pale moonlight, Convinced no earthly storm could sever Their bonds of love, drawn taut forever!
Beneath a pale moon that shed its light upon Jamaica's southern coast, a slender curving sandspit cut like a scimitar into the deep dark sapphire of a night-silvered sea. Scattered across that white waste of sand and cut off from the mainland by a gloomy mangrove swamp, evil in the half light, lay the wickedest city in the western world-Port Royal, home port of the buccaneers.
On Queen's Street, a block from the waterfront down Sea Lane, the trade winds blew softly through the open second-floor windows of a handsome brick house and cooled with scented breezes the gleaming bodies of the dark-haired man and the moonlight-blonde woman who tumbled in wild embrace upon the big carved bed.
The lean buccaneer who sprawled there with his lady was accounted the best blade in all the Caribbean. He was the notorious captain Kells, whose name resounded like a great gong across the Spanish Main. A name the very mention of which caused the captains of Spanish treasure galleons to blanch or redden angrily according to their natures. The pale moonlight gilded his long muscular legs, his narrow buttocks and broad handsome back, and cast in shadow his hawklike sardonic face just now so intent.
For the lady he clasped so fervently in his arms was the light of his life-and he knew he soon must leave.
She trembled and sighed against him. A soft moan escaped her lips and his hard face softened as he pressed tender kisses upon her smooth hot cheeks. And from his heart went up a silent prayer to a God he no longer believed in that she would be safe in this wild town in which he must leave her.
She was not, he knew, apt to go unremarked. For the woman he clasped in his arms, her lissome body silvered by moonlight, her hair a starlit mass spread out upon the pillow, wore the most famous face in all Port Royal. Endless stories were told of her: of her breathtaking beauty (apparent to all and staggering to those who first glimpsed her). Of her wild but aristocratic past (much exaggerated by gossips, who ever choose to believe the worst). Of her tempestuous romantic entanglement with the most dangerous sea rover of all in a port populated by dangerous sea rovers-Captain Kells (all too true!).
Some said he had married her, some said he had not. Others laughingly maintained that he was an insatiable bridegroom and so determined had he been to bind her to him that he had married her again and again: On Tortuga, in Virginia's Tidewater from whence she came, in Essex, in London-even in the Azores. And some of the stories were true.
But true or not, she would ever be the bride of his heart. All Port Royal envied him her favors. They called her-affectionately, these buccaneers from so many nations-the Silver Wench, and in the moonlight she was more than lustrous, she was magnificent. Her sweet young body (she was only one-and-twenty) fitted sublimely to the sinewy lines of her tall determined lover and they lay locked in ecstasy, oblivious to the wild carouse that as usual was making the nighttime streets of Port Royal horrendous with noise.
Even though the clocks had all chimed midnight, the din of carousing in the rows of taverns had scarcely diminished-indeed, many had roared to greater fervor as men who had come by their gold in mortal combat lightly gambled it away or tossed it to the nearest inviting wench for her favors.
But the singing and the yelling, the clatter of tankards and the rattle of cutlasses, the howls and tinny laughter, came only faintly to the tall brick house on Queen's Street, and the pair who strained upon the big square bed heard it not at all.
Their concentration, sublime in its intensity as they shuddered in ecstasy and then drifted down from the heights, was only upon each other-and on the sudden question the woman with the starlight hair now put to her able lover between their bouts of fiery lovemaking.
"Kells," she said, using the name the buccaneers called him, although in truth he was Rye Evistock of Essex and that was the name he had married her under on shipboard just off the Azores. "You don't really want to leave me, do you?"
Her voice was wistful and the strong arm of the buccaneer, just now lying outfiung beneath her as she lay on her back studying the stars, tightened as if to shield her from the world. "I never want to leave you," he said in his deep rich voice-and it was the God's truth that he was speaking. "Don't you know that, Christabel?"
He had used the name the buccaneers called her,
for to them she was-would always be-Christabel Willing, the Silver Wench of the Caribbean, who had set Tortuga aflame with her caprices and had married at last the Lord Admiral of the Buccaneers-Captain Kells. She smiled that he should call her that but indeed here in Port Royal she had almost forgotten that she had been born Carolina Lightfoot, aristocratic daughter of Virginia's Tidewater country, or that her mother ruled in queenly splendor the great domain of Level Green upon the York River, largest and finest house to be found in all of Colonial Virginia.
"But . . . you are going?" she murmured at last.
"I must," he sighed.
"I know you feel you must go but-s-oh, Kells, please don't." Her voice was wheedling and her slender hands traced a fiery persuasive path down his belly and groin, burrowed enticingly below. "Don't sail away-stay with me."
It was a siren's song-and Kells was not slow to respond to it.
Wakened to passion again, he turned over and drew her slim, yielding body against his own, caressing her tenderly. But he did not answer, although he took her again, driving her to frenzy with his ardor, and let her go at last with yearning.
"This is a terrible place for you to leave me," she murmured sleepily.
His grin was a white flash in the starlight, half seen. "Terrible?" he said humorously.
"There is no better house in the town than this one. It is strong and defensible and decorated to your. taste. You have servants, the latest Paris gowns, jewels, the city at your feet. Would you trade all that for a meager life at sea, storms that howl in the rigging, mouldly bread, water turned green in the casks, the ever-present danger of meeting the entire might of the Spanish treasure flota at one time-or the Vera Cruz squadron-and being blown out of the water?"
"Yes," she said, as definite as he.
"I'd given you credit for better sense," he laughed. And, sounding pleased with himself, he rolled over and was immediately asleep.
The longcase clock in the hall chimed the hour-it was two A.M.
