Nightsong

by Valerie Sherwood

  ‘My husband is tall,’ she began. ‘And dark - ’

  ‘I’ve seen your husband, mistress, many’s the time,' one of the divers cut in.

  The other nodded his wet head and agreed, ‘Everyone in Port Royal knows Captain Kells.’

  So they would know him when they saw him . . . She wasn’t sure whether that made her feel better or worse.

  She looked about her. There were bodies floating everywhere. She remembered hearing someone say thousands had died.

  As if he caught her thought, one of the divers said conversationally, ‘The quake ripped up the burying place at Palisadoes and the water tore up the graves and scattered them as was buried.’

  Carolina felt sick. Hawks turned and gave the speaker a level look, and he fell silent.

  They had reached the chimney now, wet pink bricks with water lapping around where smoke should have been coming out . . . Hands clenched, Carolina sat and watched while the divers went over the side.

  The hull was indeed down there, they came back to report - half of it at least.

  ‘Bow or stern?’ asked Hawks, who was no diver.

  ‘Stern. We made out the name Sea Wolf.'

  ‘Look in the great cabin!’ cried Carolina.

  ‘He wouldn’t be in there with all that was going on,’ protested Hawks.

  ‘He might have been.’

  Hawks shrugged. ‘Look in the great cabin like she says.’

  The divers went down again into the murky water. They came up bearing a gold money chain. Hawks snatched it. ‘Now you’ll get paid in gold,’ he said.

  The next dive brought up another money chain.

  ‘Must have been from the dons aboard the Santo Domingo,' muttered Hawks, fingering the gold links that could be twisted free and used for money.

  ‘But - did you see anyone?’ Carolina asked faintly.

  ‘Not Captain Kells.’ The first diver, a burly man, turned to Hawks with a frown. ‘You ought to give us one of those chains.’

  ‘No, you’ll get diver’s usual pay,’ said Hawks.

  ‘We get more’n that today,’ the other said menacingly. ‘By rights we should have three-quarters - we take all the risk. Besides, there’s a sea of mud pourin’ down the Cobre and everything down there’ - he turned a thumb downward to the sunken city - ‘is still slippin’ out to sea. And sinkin’. Soon we won’t be able to see nothin’ in this ooze. We got to get on to other jobs where there’s known valuables - like the goldsmith’s over yonder.’

  ‘They’ve already dived on that,’ Hawks said calmly.

  ‘Yes, but they didn’t get it all!’

  During this battle of words Carolina noticed that the rowboat had somehow edged a little away from the chimney. She tensed.

  ‘Dive again, please,’ she pleaded. 'See if he’s down there.’

  'Dive again,’ Hawks commanded harshly.

  The two divers exchanged angry looks. One muttered something to the other but they submerged as ordered. When they came up the first diver said sulkily, 'He was there all right. But we didn’t find no map.’

  Carolina gave a great heartbroken cry.

  'How come you didn’t see him sooner?’ demanded Hawks. The rowboat was now a few feet farther from the chimney.

  'Because a great pile of stuff had fallen on him when the hull broke and the ship went over,’ was the impatient reply. ‘Now we’ve done what we come for. Pay us and let’s go.’

  'Bring him up.’

  'What?’

  ‘I said bring him up!' thundered Hawks.

  'Like hell we will! It ain’t safe down there - ’

  As if to confirm that, another of the frequent aftershocks rocked the surface and there was a sudden rumble. The chimney on which the divers sat crumbled, spilling them into the water. They gave a shout and broke towards the boat.

  Hawks had seized the oars and was pulling swiftly away. 'We’ll leave your money with the governor and you can collect it from him,’ he called. ‘Diver’s pay.’

  There were angry shouts behind him as the divers tried to swim towards the boat.

  Carolina looked up at Hawks through her tears. ‘If they won’t dive down and bring him up, Hawks - ’

  'Nobody will. Too dangerous now with the houses settlin’ down and breakin’ up.’

  ‘But we have two gold money chains! Surely that’s enough!’

  Hawks shrugged. ‘Any other day it might be. But not today.’

  Carolina leaned forward tensely. ‘But how do I know they haven’t made a mistake in that murk? How do I know it’s Kells they saw down there?’

  ‘They’re all down there,’ Hawks said softly, and there was sorrow in his voice. ‘And all dead. Can’t do them no good now. But I knew you wouldn’t be satisfied till you saw him for yourself. That’s why I asked them to pull him up.’

  Carolina’s hands clenched. ‘I won’t believe it!’ she cried. ‘I won’t believe he’s dead. He’s alive, I tell you. He was a fine swimmer. He - ’ She broke off, staring at Hawks, horrified that she had said was and not is.

  ‘If he’d been alive he’d’ve found you afore now,' Hawks said solemnly. ‘Not nothing would have deterred him, not the cap’n.’ There was admiration in his voice, and regret. Hawks had lost more than a captain - he had lost a friend. All of them gone . . .’

  And Betts and Cook and Gilly, too - and oh, so many others. Vanished . . .

  As if he had had the same thought, Hawks’s voice penetrated her gloom. ‘Buried under the houses,’ he muttered, pulling hard on the oars as if by strenuous exercise he could dull emotion. ‘With the sea closed over their heads.’

  Sunk beneath the sea, fathoms down, trapped in wet green darkness - forever . . .

  Carolina made a little choked protesting sound and Hawks turned a pitying look on her. ‘You got to be thinking of yourself now, mistress.’

  Unable to bear the pity in his blue eyes, Carolina swung her attention to the pair of divers, swimming strongly towards the next chimney that stuck up through the water. ‘We should go back and pick them up, Hawks,’ she sighed.

  ‘And have them kill us for these money chains? Let them swim to their next job!’ Hawks was pulling mightily on the oars as he spoke. There’s no law in this town today, mistress. A man can kill for what he wants, throw his victim in the sea and none be the wiser!’ His face was grim. ‘That fellow back there who’d lost his wife - if that pair of divers bring up enough plate or jewellery, do you think he’ll live to see another morning? Why should they share it with him? You heard them - they take all the risks!’ He snorted.

  Silence fell in the boat.

  What he said was true, thought Carolina, dashing the tears from her eyes and looking out over the ruins of the submerged city, afloat with dead bodies. There was treasure in these houses, for Port Royal had been a rich trading town: silver bars, ingots, plate, jewellery, money chains, golden doubloons, pieces of eight. Treasure men thought worth fighting for, dying for.

  ‘Indeed, mistress,’ said Hawks, who had already thought about it. ‘I think ye should get ye gone before nightfall. I see there’s new ships in the harbour now that the wind’s come up and ye should speak to the governor about getting ye on one of them.’

  ‘Oh, Hawks,’ she murmured. ‘What have I to live for? One place is as good as another.’

  ‘Time heals,’ he said roughly. ‘And the cap’n wouldn’t like it if he thought I let anything happen to you now he’s gone.’

  Dear kind Hawks! And she had given him so much trouble in times past! With a full heart, Carolina reached over impulsively and gripped his wrist - it was a substitute for a hug.

  He gave her a reproachful look as if to say a kindly pat wouldn’t swerve him from his plain duty - which was to see that no harm came to the captain’s lovely lady. She was a treasure, too, didn’t she know it? With her wealth of silver-gold hair and her silver eyes, her silken skin and her sumptuous figure - ah, she was a prize many a man would prefer to all the gold in Spain!


  ‘They’re still fighting for the gold today,’ he ruminated, looking away from her. ‘But by tonight or tomorrow night they’ll already have it all. Then they’ll be fighting for the women.’

  And one man with a cutlass could not defend her . . . Hawks had made his point.

  Carolina’s back stiffened. She was not going to let Hawks, who had been through so much, die for her.

  ‘We must go find Governor White,’ she said. ‘And leave links from the money chain to pay the divers.’

  They found Governor White aboard the Storm Merchant, one of the few ships that had survived the wave. He was harassed on all sides, and his patience was wearing thin. But he accepted the gold links of the money chain that Carolina proffered, and he promised to pay them over to the divers. Instinctively Carolina did not tell him that Kells was dead. It was only just coming to her how great a protector Kells had been - from everything. She let the governor think the divers had been diving on her own house, searching out plate and treasure.

  ‘They are diving on my house now,’ he said, running a hand over his shaved head, for he had lost his wig in the earthquake. It made him look strange to her eyes. ‘My wife is broken-hearted, for the house is gone and we have lost everything.’

  But at least you have her, thought Carolina.

  ‘There will be no rebuilding the town,’ he sighed. There is nothing left. Perhaps someday sand will pile up and rebuild the cay which once stood here - and of which we have only a remnant left - but not in my time. Not in my time.’

  She could sympathize with his despondency for he was an ambitious man who had meant to return home someday - rich.

  ‘Where do you think you will go now?’ he asked her. ‘To that plantation up the Cobre that Kells sought to buy?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not there.’ She almost burst into tears for if she had not foolishly sent away the necklace, Kells might even now be up the Cobre - safe. Remembering Hawks and the danger her presence placed him in, she straightened. ‘I have decided it would be best for me to seek passage to England and - and wait for Kells there.’ She tripped slightly over the words. But it was true in a way, for in her heart she would always wait for him. Always. ‘Can you help me arrange it?’

  ‘I might.’ He gestured seaward and Carolina saw another ship. ‘The Ordeal has just cast anchor and has a longboat rowing towards us at this moment. Her captain is a friend of mine and he told me the last time he was here that he would make this voyage but one more time from Port Royal to London and then he would retire to his home in Philadelphia and let his son take command of his ship.’

  ‘He may have many friends here who will take precedence over me,’ Carolina said nervously.

  Governor White gave her a bleak look. ‘Captain Simmons will take no one who cannot pay cash, if I am any judge. And few can pay cash when their houses, their fortunes have been swept away - as my own has been,’ he added bitterly. ‘But you have gold.’ He studied the money chains she held in her hand. These buccaneers and their women always seem to have gold, he was thinking.

  Beside Carolina, Hawks moved restlessly.

  'Stay here,’ the acting governor said curtly. ‘I will see what I can do.’ He shook his head. ‘The price of passage anywhere this day is likely to be high!’

  ‘The Ordeal,' she muttered. ‘That’s an odd name for a ship!’

  ‘Yes, well, I can tell you where she got the name,’ he flung over his shoulder. ‘She was named the Enterprise when Captain Simmons first commanded her. She sailed into Port Royal - it was long before my time - when yellow fever had struck the city. And sailed out again, a fever ship. Captain Simmons made his home port of Philadelphia but he was the sole survivor - everybody else aboard had perished. That was when he renamed her the Ordeal.'

  ‘That’s all this town needs now - fever. Or plague,’ rumbled a voice nearby.

  Heads lifted. What was this about fever? Or plague? There was alarm written on every face.

  Now rumours would spread, thought Carolina. By this afternoon there’d be talk of plague and fever all about the city!

  ‘Hawks,’ she muttered impulsively, ‘come with me to London.’

  Hawks gave her an uneasy look. ‘I’d like to go,’ he said under his breath. ‘But best not perhaps.’

  He meant that he was still a wanted man. As Kells had been.

  ‘Hawks,’ she said in a low voice, ‘I will send for you. When I have visited the goldsmiths in London, I will see what can be done to arrange a pardon. You will live to see Essex again, I promise you that!’

  Hawks swallowed. She would do it if she could, his captain’s valiant lady.

  ‘And keep - keep looking for Moonbeam, won’t you?’

  Her voice broke. ‘She was in my arms just before the earthquake struck . .

  She watched him nod solemnly and was about to say more - about hiring other divers when the earth stopped shaking, for the tremors were still continuing in the stricken city, and would be for a long time to come. But she bit back the words. She must get hold of herself - in another moment she would burst into tears.

  ‘I - I need some air, Hawks. It’s too crowded here. Come over by the rail. We’ll wait for word.’

  Silently Hawks followed her to the ship’s rail.

  ‘Perhaps we should walk about,’ she said restlessly. ‘And not just stand here.’

  Hawks cleared his throat. ‘Won’t do no good to run away,’ he declared in a compassionate voice.

  About to clamber over a coil of rope, Carolina stopped in her tracks. Hawks was right. She was trying to run away - from herself, from her memories, trying to escape the thought that Kells was dead . . .

  BOOK 2

  Rouge

  Child of the night wind, daughter of sighs,

  Heart full of passion, head in the skies,

  Sing me a lovesong sweetened with lust -

  Someday all dreams come to dust!

  ABOARD THE ORDEAL

  June 1692

  14

  A feeling of unreality still haunted Carolina as, aboard the merchantman Ordeal, she sailed out of what was left of Port Royal’s harbour. As the ship pulled out into the open ocean she looked not ahead, but wistfully behind her at a water wasteland.

  The tragedy in Port Royal had been of mind-boggling proportions. At least two thousand people had perished; there were bodies floating everywhere. To top the remaining inhabitants’ woes, an avalanche of mud had poured down the Cobre River from the broken mountains, inundating the turtle crawls, smothering the loggerheads and hawksbills confined in their wooden-fenced pens, some of whom, with flippers tied as was the custom, had not even had a chance to try to swim. The raging tide of mud had fouled the ruins of the submerged town, already made hideous by floating unburied corpses, and muddied the sea roundabout.

  It was an eerie scene Carolina viewed as the Ordeal sailed away. A sunken city built on sand - and still sinking. For chimneys and parts of roofs, and the uppermost parts of the masts of ships that had gone down in the holocaust, still remained visible in the muddy waters. Even that fragment of the town the sea had left standing was broken and ruined by the three great tremors that had changed the fortunes of the buccaneers forever.

  From Fort James to Fort Carlisle, divers, homeowners and scavengers were busy breaking through those roofs that still peeked out of the water trying to salvage what they could from the sunken buildings below. In the distance Carolina could watch them crawling and scrambling like busy ants over the broken buildings of what seemed a destroyed Venice. But at its deepest part Port Royal already lay fifty feet deep beneath the sea - and slipping ever downward. Around her the sea was alive with sharks.

  Wild rumours had circulated, increasing the hysteria of the survivors: Spanish Town was gone, washed away on a sea of mud, great new crevasses now slashed through the Blue Mountains above them, other parts of the island had fallen into the sea; indeed the entire island was atilt and slowly following Port Royal into the blue depths of the Caribb
ean!

  Carolina had discounted the rumours, heard them dully. For there was an aching background refrain ever roaring through her head, pounding at her temples, making her throat ache: Kells was gone, Kells was gone . . .

  And with him, her world.

  Governor White had been surprised and chagrined to discover that the Captain Simmons of the Ordeal was not the Captain Simmons he had known for several years, but the captain’s son. This Captain Simmons was young and inexperienced, and his Adam’s apple worked a great deal. His father, who had been owner and captain of the Ordeal, had died in his sleep two nights earlier and young Simmons had found command thrust upon him. Lacking his father’s control over men, Simmons found the job harrowing. The rowdiness of the seamen, the bluff heartiness of the giant first mate as well as his bone-crushing handshake, the reserved wariness of his fellow officers all intimidated him. He brought the Ordeal into Port Royal harbour almost empty, for it had been his father’s plan to sail fast to Port Royal, pick up goods on the quay cheap for cash and take his son to England on this his first voyage - for young Simmons had been brought up exclusively by his mother and by a maiden aunt who hated the sea. After a time in England, the plan had been to return to their home port of Philadelphia where the old man would retire, leaving his son the ship that had been their livelihood for so many years.

  Young Captain Simmons was horrified by what he found in Port Royal harbour.

  ‘Bodies all about!’ he had cried. ‘Floating all around us! And where are the wharves? Half the city seems gone - we’re looking at the chimneys and the rooftops!’