Nightsong

by Valerie Sherwood

  A sudden noise from down the hall startled her into remembering where she was, and she snapped alert, her head swivelling around to view the door. A quick step coming this way and the cat dashed by. Oh, lor’, that meant the mistress was returning from upstairs, for the cat always accompanied Carolina on these journeys, running joyfully ahead of her and circling her skirts, rubbing against her when she arrived at her destination. But the mistress always stayed up on the rooftop longer than this! thought Gilly in consternation. Whatever had possessed her to come running down so soon?

  But that quick light step had alerted her to her danger and she cast her eyes about her. She would have run to the big wardrobe and hidden herself in that, but to her mind that was most likely Carolina’s goal. She must be coming downstairs to get a hat from the cedar wardrobe’s top shelf - a hat to shade her against this devilish tropical sun.

  In panic, every nerve quivering, Gilly tried to think of some other place. Under the bed? No, there she could be seen from the door for the light coverlet did not reach to the floor!

  On a sudden burst of inspiration, she threw herself into the trunk and cautiously pulled the top down. She gave it a last good tug and huddled inside, still clutching the necklace. She would give Carolina lots of time to clear the room because when she left this trunk and this room, Gilly intended to have the necklace clutched tight in her hand, her hand wrapped in a scarf. She would burst through the front door, claiming she’d cut her hand on Cook’s big butcher knife and must reach the doctor before she bled to death - no one would block her way.

  So she reasoned as she lay cautiously, half smothered among the chemises. And this time her timing had best be right or she’d be whipped - or hanged. Gilly shivered. And then the necklace - and her dreams of a new life -would be gone from her forever.

  The air inside the trunk was growing foul. Still she waited.

  In Carolina’s slim arms on her high perch above the house, Moonbeam was growing more and more perturbed, Carolina managed to get a better grip on the restless cat and hugged her comfortingly to her breast, murmuring soothing words. She cast one more longing look at the sea, so empty to her gaze for the right ship did not float upon it. Then with a sigh she turned to go back down the narrow stair that led from the rooftop walk.

  Abruptly she stopped and turned to give the sea a startled look. That big dismasted ship just now being rowed into the harbour looked suddenly familiar. She leaned forward, squinting into the sun’s glare, unable to make out the name, but her heart gave a lurch.

  Dismasted . . . part of its hull stove in ... it still could be the Sea Wolf! A glass, she must get a glass to make certain!

  Moonbeam was in a state of panic now, her claws digging into Carolina's arm. She put the cat down and Moonbeam raced frantically ahead of her as if being pursued.

  Almost afraid to hope, Carolina fled downstairs after her, seeking the glass. Past the longcase clock, past the musket Kells had left in her bedroom and that she had put outside the door - she did not even glance through the open door into her bedroom.

  As she searched for Kells’s spyglass in the drawing room, she heard Betts arguing with Cook and realized the two of them must have come into the dining room to cool off from the overpowering heat of the kitchen in this sweltering weather.

  ‘I don't believe in star gazers,’ Betts was saying energetically. ‘And I don’t see why you do. What an outlandish idea, him saying we’d have an earthquake that would crack the houses apart! Why, all I’ve ever felt here was a kind of gentle rocking that made the hanging lamps swing!’

  ‘That’s because you ain’t been here long, Betts. I was here four years ago, and that same prediction was made that we’d have a terrible earthquake and the weather was the same as now - ’

  ‘I don’t see what it’s got to do with the weather!’ sniffed Betts.

  ‘That’s what I’m telling you, Betts!’ Cook’s irritation showed in her voice. ‘For forty years now, folks say, we get those earthquakes the same way: first there’s a storm and then there’s hot muggy weather with nothing moving, same as this - and that’s when the earth starts to shake under your feet!’

  ‘You ain’t been here forty years,’ scoffed Betts. ‘And this town’s full of liars.’

  ‘I’ve been here almost five years,’ exploded Cook. ‘I was here four years ago when all them houses got shook down - why, the guns were even knocked loose from the gunports on ships in the harbour!’

  ‘That wouldn’t never happen in England!’ declared Betts, obviously shaken. ‘I suppose it might in an outlandish island like this one!’

  Carolina smiled. She had heard accounts of that quake four years ago, but her mind was not on such unlikely events as earthquakes, which she firmly believed no one could predict. She was tantalized by a certain familiarity in the lines of that ship being rowed into the harbour.

  She found the glass, seized a wide-brimmed hat and stuck it on her head. Perhaps it would prevent her from getting sunburned. And that was suddenly important.

  Leaving Moonbeam mewing piteously in the front hall and clawing at the door, she hurried back up to view the oncoming ship.

  Excitement pounded in her veins as she studied the ship through the glass. It was coming on steadily, the measured beat of the oars carrying it fast across the glassy ocean. It was in the harbour now, and those lines were unmistakable.

  Broken and damaged it might be, but one thing was certain: It was the Sea Wolf.

  Kells had come home!

  11

  Well, listen to that, would you?’ said Cook. She and Betts had retired to the kitchen, and Cook had just bent down to taste the simmering stew when the air was rent by a piteous wail from Moonbeam.

  ‘Do you think Gilly’s after her?’ demanded Betts.

  ‘Could be - she hates that cat.’ Cook put down her spoon as Betts went into the dining room to see what ailed Moonbeam. Cook propped the back door open.

  ‘Leave it this way,’ she told the young buccaneer who was sitting on his haunches outside, whittling a piece of whalebone with a sharp knife. ‘I can’t get my breath in here.' And she lumbered on through the kitchen to see why the cat’s wails still echoed through the downstairs.

  ‘It's all right,’ said Betts as Cook came through the dining room door. ‘At least it isn’t Gilly. Cat’s just sitting there huddled in the corner, meowing, with her fur all standing on end. Do you think she’s in heat?’

  ‘Most likely.’ Cook turned to go back to the kitchen.

  ‘Perhaps - ’ began Betts, but she never finished her sentence. Her voice was lost in a rumble that seemed to come from everywhere and engulf the earth. She gave a sudden scream as the room lurched sidewise.

  Cook, who was caught by the shock while just in the act of turning, lost her footing and staggered painfully against the heavy table in the centre of the room. Instead of holding her weight as it would normally have done, it glided away from her, letting her fall heavily to the floor.

  The big silver bowls and platters on the sideboard were dancing a jig, the unlit candles of the overhead chandelier fell out upon Cook’s prone body as the chandelier swung wildly, and suddenly the big stack of plates which Betts had set a little while ago on the edge of the dining room table slid off with a crash, sending broken blue and white delftware all around the room.

  ‘It’s an earthquake!’ shrieked Betts, who had staggered against the wall and now ricocheted from it and leaped towards the door.

  ‘Right you are!’ gasped Cook and scrambled to her feet.

  They both rushed into the hall and through the front door, which would have been jammed by the quake had not the buccaneer who guarded it just opened it as he was passing outward. The shock had thrown him forward on his face into the street, where he was promptly run over by a yowling Moonbeam, who streaked out into the street and took off running towards High Street.

  A moment later Cook and Betts nearly ran over him as well.

  ‘It’s an earthquake,’
he gasped, gaining his feet just as Cook’s solid form collided with him. And Betts fell to her knees in the street, wringing her hands and praying loudly. Her prayers were punctuated by screams as roof tiles came crashing down and a house up the street collapsed with a thunderous roar.

  All over town at that moment, people were praying or running or trying to extricate themselves from whatever had fallen on them. The air was rent by screams and shouts and indignant wails.

  Across the street from them came a tremendous pounding as Louis Deauville tried to open his front door which had jammed. In the excitement of overturned carts and falling masonry, nobody noticed him, and finally with a violent kick he catapulted into the street and looked around him wildly, sword drawn.

  It was his first earthquake.

  Behind the house it was the whittling young buccaneer’s last earthquake. He had looked up in alarm at the noise, been thrown sidewise by the shock - and had fallen, impaled upon the sharp knife held stiffly in his hand. The blade had pierced his heart.

  In the kitchen the stew pot went over, throwing boiling broth and steaming beef and turtle meat over everything - and sparks and sticks from the fireplace skittered across the stone flooring. In Littleton’s Tavern the stew went over, too - only there it scalded three of the kitchen helpers and sent burning brands from the fireplace against the staggering cook, setting the terrified woman’s skirts afire.

  All across Port Royal at that moment, such scenes were being repeated.

  Crouched inside the trunk in Carolina’s bedroom, Gilly never guessed it was an earthquake that was rocking the house. First she felt the trunk lurch and then there was a tremendous thump. In panic Gilly tried to raise the lid - and found she could not budge it. Trapped there among fans and chemises and gloves and with the diamond and ruby necklace wrapped around her wrist and tangled in her stubby fingers, she began to wail. The top of the trunk seemed to her to have jammed - but how could it be jammed so tight she couldn’t open it? She could not know that Carolina’s heavy cedar wardrobe had fallen atop the trunk and it would have taken two strong men to remove it. Inside, wailing in terror, it seemed to her that some devil’s hand was shaking the trunk.

  On the other side of town. Hawks, thrown to the ground by the first violent shock, was almost run over by a careening cart before he could rise. He rolled to the side - and just in time, for a hail of broken masonry and plaster thundered to the ground where he had just stood, burying the cart and its owner. He gave thought to making his way back to see how Carolina and the house were faring, but found his way blocked by buildings that had collapsed into the street. With Port Royal shaking down about his ears he took what he considered the only sensible course: He betook himself to the widest open space in all the town - those fortifications along the sea named for the famous buccaneer Henry Morgan and known as Morgan’s Line.

  On waterfront Thames Street, in Sadie’s bawdy house, Gilly’s Jarvis, in bed with a waterfront whore, leapt from the mattress at the first rumble from the hills that grew to a torrent of sound beneath and around them. The whore, spilled from her bed by Jarvis and tumbled end over end by the quake, gave a squeal of fright entirely masked by the howls that rose from the rest of the house.

  Sadie’s place was tucked in between big warehouses, and as Jarvis, reaching for his drawers, leapt out the window on the sea side, Sadie, thinking to do the same thing, leaned out a nearby window.

  Sadie screamed as she saw the beachfront and wharves that Thames Street faced on begin to writhe and buckle, saw long crevasses suddenly open - and it was into one of those crevasses sliced suddenly into Port Royal’s sandy face that Jarvis tumbled, head first.

  Not only Sadie’s scream but many others followed him down.

  Jarvis had not made the right move.

  Not that it would have mattered. Other crevasses, long rents in what had seemed to be solid earth, were opening up in roughly parallel lines, and Port Royal’s foundations were sliding into, falling into the sea.

  On either side of Sadie’s place big warehouses were the first to collapse, their massive walls cracking, their roofs giving first under the strain of the shifting sand beneath.

  They and their goods now rumbled into that sand, and Sadie felt her house tugged downward even as the roof fell in. Her wild scream was lost as her head was plunged brutally into the sand, and she was pummelled to death by falling bricks even before she could drown, for the ground now gave way and she and her bawdy house slid into the sea.

  In moments, it seemed, Thames Street was no more, and the street just behind it had become waterfront property.

  That street, unfortunately, was Queen’s Street, where Carolina lived.

  12

  Carolina was perched on top of her house, studying the sea rapturously through Kells’s long spyglass, when the first great shock struck Port Royal. Even as she gave a cry of joy when she recognized the Sea Wolf's rakish hull, there was a thunderous rumble from deep within the earth, seeming to come from the Blue Mountains far behind her, and all Port Royal shuddered. The first violent jolt tore the glass from her hand and sent it spinning over the roof. Carolina lost her balance and toppled over to slide along the now slanted captain’s walk.

  Around her the world seemed to spin about sickeningly. She struck her head as she fell and sat up, dazed and disoriented, to find her house rocking beneath her.

  Behind her the white limestone underlying that distant line of blue hills cracked so that the spine of the island was ripped apart and the mountains crumbled, sending down torrents of earth that plummeted into the rivers. A flood of muddy clay was already pouring down the Cobre River like an avalanche - but Port Royal did not know that yet. Port Royal was having troubles of its own.

  All about was the rumble of falling masonry. The air was full of shrieks and screams as Carolina stumbled to her feet, clinging to the railing to haul herself upright. The earth was rumbling savagely, the whole town wavered, all the bells were ringing. There were tremendous grinding thumps and crashes everywhere. The market bell plunged heavily to earth.

  Before Carolina’s horrified eyes, giant cracks appeared in the earth along the waterfront - cracks that heaved and twisted like a boa constrictor swallowing its prey - open, gaping crevasses that swallowed up people and carts and buildings. Screams and howls rent the air, and there was frenzy all about as people poured out of their houses, jumped or tumbled through windows, leaving the less lucky trapped inside under fallen ceilings and scrambled dancing furniture. Most of those the earthquake knocked down in the street struggled up and began to run. Others fell to their knees and prayed.

  Now Thames Street was buckling and swaying, the houses cracking and toppling, the great roofs of the warehouses sliding off or crashing down, the goods beneath shifting, sliding. All Port Royal seemed to be dancing and sliding merrily downhill - into the water.

  Hard put to keep her grip on the railing of the captain’s walk as the very house beneath her shimmied with the vibrations of an earthquake so violent it had all but brought the mountains down, Carolina screamed a warning to someone below who even as she spoke was buried under a falling chimney.

  Simultaneously there was an enormous crash as the bell tower of St Paul’s Church crashed down - and a hollow clanging of the fallen bell. From the mountains came a background noise even more ominous - a distant thunder rumbling up from below - and to that Devil’s chorus the entire waterfront convulsed and began to slide into the sea.

  Port Royal had been built not on bedrock but on sixty feet of sand. Some of the buildings jutted out on pilings. They went first as their foundations were shaken out from under them. Beneath the heavy buildings, most of them of brick or plaster construction, that unsteady foundation billowed and pitched, broke apart and closed again, pulling the unwary and their goods forever downward to be crushed and broken. The whole city shook and trembled. Although the houses built on pilings in the sand had collapsed first, they were swiftly followed by other buildings. The thick masonr
y walls of Fort Carlisle and Fort James cracked, and with a deafening roar both forts collapsed into the harbour. Thames Street followed, warehouses and wharves and waterfront dives crashing in upon each other as their foundations gave way . . . tons of sand slithered away from beneath them and tumbled the works of man into the sea.

  Carolina, holding on for dear life to her precarious perch atop her house, never heard the muffled screams of Gilly, caught in the dark confines of the curved-top trunk. She never saw Moonbeam streak down the street to disappear around the corner into a cloud of fallen plaster dust.

  But from her high vantage point atop her vibrating house, she saw Thames Street shake itself to pieces and, demolished, drop into the sea.

  She saw other things as well: Betts on her knees in the sandy street, praying. Cook and one of the burly buccaneers who guarded the place under Hawks’s supervision, urging her up ‘to save herself.’ Louis Deauville, whitefaced and appalled, trying to keep his footing as his house came down behind him, showering him with bricks which miraculously did him no harm save to knock him to his knees. He remained there, crouched and staring at his vanished house and vanished Thames Street, as if it could not be.

  Even as she watched, the earth below yawned suddenly and opened up. Carolina was looking down into a long crevasse that zigzagged through the street below her. It opened directly below Betts, who was on her knees, and Cook and the buccaneer, who were urging her to rise - and they all disappeared into its depths. It swallowed up Louis Deauville, too, for the second violent shock that opened it up catapulted him backward into it.