He knocked, there was a booming “Come in!” and he flung wide the door. Carolina took a step inside. Before her stretched a more luxurious cabin than any merchant ship was likely to boast. It was very spacious, handsomely appointed in the severe Spanish style with tall-backed mahogany chairs, heavily carved, a large and heavy mahogany table, and a bank of windows at the stern. Her gaze passed over the rows of books with Moroccan leather bindings, the crimson velvet cushions, the heavy maroon velvet draperies that seemed to be everywhere—and focused on the giant who stood opposite her.
He was the very picture she carried in her mind of a buccaneer. By size alone he seemed to dominate the room. His thick curly black hair bushed out from beneath a battered black tricorne hat, set slightly askew, and ornamented with tarnished gold braid. A gold earring dangled from one of his ears. She thought his eyes were gray—or possibly blue, but they looked out at her from beneath thick lowering black brows and were at the moment too narrowed to tell what color they actually were. He was wearing loose-fitting leathern breeches and the remnants of what had once been a wine velvet coat with the sleeves torn out. It hung open to the waist and since he wore no shirt, it revealed a deep barrellike chest covered with coarse hair almost as thick and curly as the black beard that bristled from a massive square jaw.
A formidable fellow indeed! Doña Hernanda shrank against her.
“Captain Kells,” said Lars, and she noted that his manner was more formal than it had been before; indeed there was something military in it as there was in his bearing. “I have brought you the ladies from the Valeroso. The younger one”—he indicated Carolina—“is Mistress Christabel Willing, who was taken off her ship against her will when the dons attacked.”
“A Spanish captive?” the giant echoed in a cavernous voice, and his great head seemed to sink into his massive shoulders as he looked down at her. “I am told you were forced to become this Spanish lady’s personal maid, Mistress Willing.”
“That is true,” said Carolina, feeling inadequate before this huge man who seemed to dwarf even the massive Spanish furniture.
“As buccaneers we band against Spain and give insult for insult,” he rumbled. She thought he was saying these words by rote, as if he had said them many times before. Now his big head came out of his broad shoulders and he seemed to rear up. “This Spanish lady who reduced you to serving maid will find the tables turned. Henceforth she shall be your serving maid, if you like.”
So truculent was his mien, so surprising his words, and such was her relief that this powerful buccaneer seemed to be on her side, that Carolina felt laughter bubble to her lips. “Poor Doña Hernanda isn’t up to it,” she chuckled. “And besides she was kind to me. She did not even chide me for tearing her mantilla and stepping on the hem of her gown and ripping it.”
That formidable countenance looked taken aback, and Lars swiftly intervened. “It would seem that Mistress Christabel came in fighting, even though her captain did not,” he said dryly. “I have learnt that he surrendered his ship, the Fair Alice, without firing a shot.”
“No, it was not that I attacked Doña Hernanda—it was the storm that made me so awkward,” Carolina felt called upon to explain. “You see”—she smiled ingenuously at them both—“I have had no practice at all in being a lady’s maid. And the ship lurched and rolled and threw me about the cabin. It is indeed a wonder that I did not fall against poor Doña Hernanda and bear her to the floor with me! As for the Fair Alice surrendering, we were becalmed and those great galleons simply rowed across the glassy water and took us. Not to have surrendered would have been madness.” She didn’t know whether it would have been madness or not but she wanted to defend Captain Frobisher whose poorly armed merchantman could not have been expected to stand up against three Spanish warships!
“You will both be my guests in Tortuga,” boomed the big man. “Meanwhile, Lars, put a padlock on their door. These latches will not stand up against the shoulder thrust of a buccaneer.” Looking at his shoulders, Carolina could well believe it As they were leaving, a slender buccaneer whose cutlass, Carolina thought, looked too big for him, hurried up.
“The dons had three buccaneers they’d captured somewhere chained to the oars,” he cried in an excited voice. “Would you tell Captain Kells the doctor says they’re in a bad way, two may not live, and they have messages for their families before they go.”
“Tell him yourself,” said Lars. “He’s in there.” He nodded his head at the cabin they had just left.
At that point the preoccupied young buccaneer seemed to discover the ladies. He gave Carolina a dazed look and his breath came through his teeth in a silent whistle. “I didn’t know we’d captured a wench like this one!”
“We didn’t,” said Lars, shoving past him. “We rescued this lady from the Spanish, Nat. She’s to be a guest of Captain Kells on Tortuga.”
“Who was that?” asked Carolina as Lars hurried them away to their own cabin.
“Nat Larkin—he assists our ship’s doctor. He’s learning his trade.”
“Ship’s doctor?”
“Aboard the Sea Wolf, Captain Kells’s flagship.”
“Is the ship as large and formidable as her captain?” asked Carolina humorously, for she now felt that she had not landed in bad hands and that she would soon be freed.
“The Sea Wolfs not large, as ships go,” said Lars dryly. “But she’s formidable. She’s a sleek gray ship, is the Sea Wolf, and she’s devoured many a galleon and proud galleass.” His engaging grin flashed. “Ye may feel safe from the dons on any of Captain Kells’s ships, Mistress Christabel—he’s never lost an engagement yet!”
“You make him sound like an admiral with—with a navy!” she protested.
“And so he is regarded among the Brethren of the Coast, Mistress Christabel. Ask anyone. He’s an admiral without the title. Lord Admiral of the Buccaneers!” He laughed. “And though we all be men without a country now, there’s many a lad among us has done naval service before deciding to turn buccaneer.”
Of which he himself was one, she suspected, considering his military bearing!
“If Doña Hernanda and I are so safe,” she said, turning to glance at the Spanish lady who trudged along beside her, looking tired and worried, “why do we need a lock on the outside of our door as well as a latch inside?”
“Ah, that’s just for your protection, Mistress Christabel,” Lars told her with a roguish inflection. “The captain’s of the opinion that you’re too pretty for mortal man to gaze upon without desiring you—and it could be that he’s right. So he’ll be locking you in just like the jewels and plate and coin we found upon the Spanish vessels!”
Carolina gave Lars an indignant look. It was all very well to be treasured, but to be locked in—!
“What did he say, Christabel?” Doña Hernanda asked anxiously once they were back in their own cabin and listening to the heavy lock being hammered into the door from outside. “Captain Kells looked to me a very devil—I was afraid to speak!”
“He isn’t a devil,” sighed Carolina. “Just an invincible fighter. And we’re to be his guests in Tortuga, which seems to be where we’re headed.”
The older woman shook her head and shuddered. “Tortuga is a terrible place, I am told. We will be lucky to survive it. I’ve no doubt Captain Kells fancies you,” she added gloomily. “Else why would he be putting a large lock on our door?”
Carolina caught her breath. That was one thing she wasn’t prepared to face—that Captain Kells might have become enamored of her!
PART TWO
Kells
* * *
“There are many wounds of which a man may die,”
He said, and looked her squarely in the eye,
“But love gives no such wounds to such as I.”
Her mocking smile said, “I will prove you lie!”
* * *
THE ISLAND OF TORTUGA
Summer 1688
* * *
Chapter 2
4
Carolina found Tortuga full of surprises, but the greatest surprise of all awaited her at Captain Kells’s rambling masonry house, its whitewashed walls starkly bleak in the molten tropical sun.
She and Doña Hernanda were not allowed off the ship their first day in harbor. They chafed as they heard through their locked door all of the activity of a vessel being unloaded of both its human and its nonhuman cargo. Their only contact was through a towheaded cabin boy who seemed struck dumb by Carolina’s beauty. He never took his wistful gaze from her as he served them their meals and always seemed to leave the room walking slightly aslant. He responded to questions with confusion as if caught out in some underhanded endeavor.
“He fancies you,” Doña Hernanda told her.
Carolina wished Doña Hernanda would not tell her that every man and boy they ran across “fancied” her. She was beginning to feel very nervous about going ashore to what she privately considered a “pirates’ lair,” and this constant harping on the effect she had on the male population did not help!
They finally disembarked in bright sunlight on their second day there and Carolina was amazed to see that the rock-bound harbor with its tall cliffs rising sheer was filled with French and Dutch and English ships. Commerce was being carried on briskly along the quay, where merchants inspected great piles of confiscated Spanish goods. And above the town, which was mostly a ragged collection of taverns and brothels with an occasional white-painted residence baking in the afternoon sun, brooded a formidable-looking mountain fort of stone construction where captured Spanish guns guarded the entrance to Cayona Bay.
Their passage through the quayside crowd caused some excitement for hot bathwater had been brought to the ladies on board ship and they had had time to bathe and to mend the clothing that had been ripped during the storm. Their hair was carefully dressed and although Carolina had refused to wear the black lace mantilla that Doña Hernanda, in an excess of generosity, had tried to thrust upon her, she almost wished she had it to help hide her blushes as loud admiring comments reached her ears.
“Now there’s a little lady who could share my bed any day!” exclaimed a half-drunk buccaneer whose sheathed cutlass clanked against his leg as he shouldered his way toward her.
“Ripe, ain’t she?” came another awed voice.
“Be ye here to work for one of the madams?” rumbled another male voice. “Speak up, little lady—I’m talking to you with the blonde hair!”
“Ye’d best not let Captain Kells hear you ask her that, Deke,” warned Lars Lindstrom, who was leading the two women surrounded by an honor guard of four slouching buccaneers, across the quay. “For she’s on her way to his house as his guest.”
“Ye might have known Kells’d cream off the best o’ the lot!” groaned an inebriated fellow who rocked unsteadily on his feet. “Just like he does o’ the Spanish ships that sail these seas!”
“ ’Tis the luck of the Irish,” laughed Lars. He gave the speaker a good-natured cuff on the shoulder as he went by. “They’re famous for it—and what better proof could you have than this wench?”
On they went, shouldering their way past merchants who gave Carolina curious glances, and bold-looking men she took to be buccaneers. She was surprised at the number of women, many of them quite young, some dragging young children, who sidled through the crowd, occasionally fixing her with an envious stare. One even stopped to glare at her and spat.
“Harlots,” muttered Doña Hernanda with a shudder. “We are in Hell, I tell you, Christabel.”
“Oh, they can’t all be harlots,” objected Carolina. “There must be some honest wives and daughters among them!”
Doña Hernanda gave an expressive sniff and kept her mantillaed head high as they left the quay and set out through the narrow streets of the town.
“Where are we going?” asked Carolina.
“Up,” said Lars promptly. “Where the air is better.” Soon they had left the jumble of taverns and brothels and were walking over a road of pitilessly white coral that led upward through a grove of lemon and avocado trees.
“All this belongs to Captain Kells,” Lars told her, waving a hand expansively. “And see, there is his house—that is where you’ll be staying.”
She had not expected anything so large. It seemed to be a sprawling medley of buildings, all whitewashed and with green shutters but set on different levels and yet connected.
“Is there more than one house?” she asked doubtfully.
“There was,” said Lars. “But Kells bought out his neighbors and connected the houses with passageways built by captured Spanish stonemasons. The ironwork” —he indicated the heavy black-painted grillwork that from this distance looked like black lace over the windows and doors— “is Spanish too. It was destined for Porto Bello and other Spanish towns when Kells took it off the ships. Here, you’ll be down here—in his guest quarters.”
He led the women to a high-walled courtyard which they entered through a green wooden door. Inside they found themselves in a riotous though somewhat overgrown tropical garden. Bougainvillea tumbled over the wall, spilling brilliant red flowers, and on another white wall a climbing pink rose vine was blooming its heart out.
Lars nodded toward the green door. “Captain Kells bids me tell you you’ll be quite safe here, Mistress Christabel,” he told Carolina. “This wing of the house is where he keeps his guests. And now that you’re here, that garden door will be kept locked—and at night the other doors will be locked as well so that you may sleep sound.’’
“This wing? Will we not have free run of the house?’’
“I’m afraid not,” Lars said regretfully. “Although the central portion of the house is Kells’s private quarters, the far end of the house is occupied by his officers, and not all of us”—he grinned roguishly—“are so peaceable when we’re drunk! He thought it best that a locked door be kept between such a morsel as yourself and carousing buccaneers.”
She was to be a prisoner then. . . . The thought sobered her.
They moved on through a heavy iron grillwork door into a short dim passageway which led through yet another similar door into an inner courtyard floored with stone, where a stone fountain tinkled. Beside it were a pair of blue-tiled stone benches and even here the tropical flowers had fought their way up through broken patches in the stone, making the air fragrant. The courtyard was shaded by an enormous pepper tree through whose branches the hot West Indian sunlight filtered down to make patterns of light and shade upon the stone flooring. Several stout wooden doors opened onto the courtyard and there were windows as well but Carolina, coming out of the brilliant sun, could not make out the dim interior of the rooms beyond. Across the far end of the courtyard stretched a roofed gallery supported by arched pillars and beneath that roof what appeared to be an outdoor dining room, for there was a stone table, its top covered with blue tile like the benches, and several heavy wooden chairs. From one of the arches dangled a large hoop and clinging to that hoop a large red and green and gold parrot squawked a greeting. “Pieces of eight, pieces of eight!” it cried, and beside Carolina, Doña Hernanda jumped nervously.
Lars laughed. “Yon bird knows what counts!”
“Kells! Kells!” screamed the bird, suddenly swinging upside down from the hoop and peering at them over its hooked beak—and even in this island paradise, Carolina felt a little shiver of apprehension go through her at the name. Doña Hernanda’s, He fancies you . . . came back to her.
Her attention was attracted then by a sturdy girl in a cool white cotton dress cinched at the waist by a little blue linen corselet that emphasized her abundant breasts and wide swinging hips. Her bright yellow hair hung down in two long fat braids. She gave them all a graceful curtsy but her smiling blue eyes rested on Lars.
“Katje is bidding you welcome,” said Lars. “I hope you speak Dutch for that is Katje’s only language.”
“Is she Captain Kells’s wife?” asked Carolina in bewilderment.
“
No, she’s his housekeeper.” Lars’s gaze kindled as he looked at the abundant Katje.
Perhaps she was his mistress then? Carolina gave Katje a doubtful look.
Lars caught that look and laughed. “Katje is an impregnable fortress,” he told her, answering her unspoken question. “Many have tried, all have failed!”
Carolina blushed. She saw that Katje was giving her a puzzled look.
“The vessel that was taking Katje to Curacao—that’s a Dutch island—to join her betrothed struck a reef and most of the passengers were lost. Katje was lucky. She was discovered clinging to a spar after drifting for hours at sea. She said that God must have been looking out for her, for those were barracuda waters where the Sea Wolf found her. She would have been sent on to Curacao but she learnt quite by accident that her betrothed had married somebody else and she refused to go. Kells would have been glad to give her guest quarters in his house but she insists on working for her keep.” He began speaking rapidly to Katje in Dutch. She beamed at him and bobbed her golden head. Carolina had a feeling from the way the girl smiled at Lars that Katje would never reach the Netherlands Antilles—she would move into the arms and bed of this handsome buccaneer.
Unless of course she was already warming Captain Kells’s bed for him and Lars did not know about it!
Which brought her mind squarely back to bedrooms and Doña Hernanda’s insistence that the huge buccaneer captain “fancied” her. She frowned when Lars handed them over to the smiling girl with a shrug: “Katje will take care of you.”
Katje led Doña Hernanda into a pleasantly appointed bedroom to their right. Instead of following, Carolina paused and turned to Lars.
“Will we see you again?” she asked wistfully, for she liked the attractive young buccaneer.
Lovesong Page 36
