Two brawny sailors stashed the passengers' gear and weapons aboard the gig and helped them aboard. Then they shoved off and rowed east of north toward a channel that led around the tip of Anastasia Island, allowing a parting view of the old fort's coquina walls, agleam in a sunrise that blazed over the scarlet uniforms of soldiers on watch.
They pulled alongside the seventy-foot Gloria Maria, her hull painted a pumpkin orange, the green and red of Portugal as her ensign. Sailors steadied the gig. Tomás climbed the boarding net, and weapons and gear were hauled up.
Sophie boarded with the help of Mathias and Tomás. On deck, while the crew of twelve echoed commands in Portuguese and made departure preparations with line and shroud, she got a better view of the British ship-of-the-line and merchant brig anchored to the north, both close enough to spot men on deck and up in the shrouds. David, Mathias, and Jacques climbed aboard, and the passengers retrieved their property for Tomás's tour around the deck and down the companionway to their cabins.
In the narrow, lantern-lit corridor below, she noticed Mathias's dazed expression. "Are you all right?"
"Fine." He seemed to be concentrating. "Just fine."
Jacques whipped out his flask. "Bon voyage, mon neveu." Mathias motioned it away. "I see it in your eyes. It is the le Coeuvre curse. We were not meant to be sailors. Lovers, drinkers, and wanderers, oui. Sailors, non."
"I cannot stay drunk the entire voyage."
"Suit yourself." Jacques swigged brandy.
Their cabins, side by side, both measured all of five feet wide by ten feet long. Jacques and David took the second cabin. By the time Sophie toted in her gear as well as Mathias's — because a greenish cast had settled over his face — she found little room to move about the first cabin. Hands on hips, she surveyed hammocks, blankets, and pillows stowed along one bulkhead, a hinged desk opening out from the opposite bulkhead, and a stool, closed chamber pot, and bucket below the desk. The port light let in daylight, and an unlit lantern hung near the doorway. For this they had each paid a horse? The red wine had better be damned good.
Beneath her feet, the ship gave a lurch, and wonder filled her voice. "We're moving!"
But something other than wonder had captured Mathias's face. His mouth made a noise like, "Urp."
"Say, you'd better get back up on deck."
"Urp."
She helped him down the corridor, and they clambered back up the companionway. On deck he dashed to starboard just in time to retch over the railing.
She decided against checking on him. That he could be sick before they'd even reached the open sea didn't bode well. He'd probably have to stay drunk the entire voyage, like Jacques. Any fancies she'd entertained about picking up where they'd been interrupted the night before fizzled. Not that their cabin was conducive to such activity, anyway.
Jacques meandered from aft and offered the flask to his nephew again. Hanging over the railing, Mathias refused. David strolled over to Sophie. "A bloody shame he feels so badly. And how is your stomach?"
She inhaled the sun-warmed, salty breeze of early morning with pleasure. "Apparently the St. Jameses are a seafaring lot."
He craned his neck back to gaze at a sail unfurled. "She feels alive, doesn't she?"
Capitão Arriaga paused from striding aft to smile at Sophie and David. "Bom dia, my passengers!" He unfolded a spyglass, his smile on them sharpening. "Help me solve a mystery aft."
He continued on his way, and she eyed David. Arriaga's words hadn't sounded like a request. They found the captain aiming the spyglass at the ship-of-the-line. She didn't need it to spot two redcoats on deck watching the Gloria Maria take leave of St. Augustine. She and David exchanged a glance, and both swallowed.
Arriaga adjusted his spyglass. "Sebastião says the major and lieutenant queried him this morning, looking for an elderly colonist and a young Frenchman. They have the most peculiar expressions, like hunters who have lost prey." He handed her the spyglass. "See if it is not so."
Dry-mouthed, she aimed the spyglass toward the warship Zealot. There stood Edward, sunlight gilding his hair, Apollo determined to capture Daphne. At his right stood Fairfax, his face full of madness and undefeat, his russet hair like solar fire, King George's very own god of war. She clamped her lips together against the scream tearing her soul: Go back, Edward, and let us be!
"Senhor Hazelton, I remind you that Portugal is neutral in this war. I will not harbor rebel spies."
"I'm no rebel spy, capitão."
"But I saw recognition in both your faces just now. You know those soldiers. They seek you, too, do they not? Answer me quickly, or I drop anchor and allow them to board."
Chapter Twenty-Five
FOR ONCE DAVID was at a loss for a lie. Sophie handed the spyglass to the captain and infused her tone with haughtiness. "Yes, Daniel, do tell the captain about Major Hunt's quarrel with you. No doubt the captain can relate. He is, after all, a man."
David seized her implication and rubbed his chin with contrition. "I've — er — dallied with his mistress —" The sharp edge in Arriaga's gaze faded. "— for the past two years, and he's just now finding out about it."
"You have been sleeping with that man's mistress for two years, and he is just now finding out about it?"
"What can I tell you? He travels, she's lonely, and —"
"Bah! Britons, masters of the high seas, but what Briton could ever keep a mistress properly?" It was a question Sophie herself had pondered for several days.
David shrugged with one shoulder to convey indifference. "At times, they do seem a bit cold."
"Cold?" Contempt curled the captain's lip. "The stories I could tell you, and all from the lips of their ladies."
"Yes, ladies definitely know what they want, but some gentlemen simply cannot accept it when they fail to discern a woman's subtleties —"
"Or when they are ill-equipped to deliver."
The two men regarded each other a moment in silent accord. Then David's tone emerged blithe. "I presume you won't drop anchor and allow them to board."
Arriaga stomped forward, voice carrying over his shoulder. "We go on to La Habana...mistress...two years...bah..."
David muttered, "Thank you, Sophie. I was stumped."
She studied the Zealot. "Do you think they'll pursue us?"
"After everything that's happened on this trip, I shan't be surprised." He guided her fore, where the rising sun danced on the Atlantic.
She shaded her eyes. "How many guns has the Zealot?"
"Seventy-four. She's a full ship-of-the-line."
And the Gloria Maria had but six swivel guns and two signaling cannons.
Across the sparkling water, the Zealot was alive with sailor activity. Dread prodded her when she recalled David's warnings from the previous afternoon. She reminded herself that she was responsible for returning an inheritance, but it didn't ease her certainty that none of them had considered the tenacity and connections of two British officers. How difficult was it, then, to imagine them commandeering a warship to seize a sloop bound for Havana — and, as a bonus, a Portuguese brig?
***
Her head abuzz from red wine, her stomach full of beefsteak, Sophie declined Arriaga's offer of tawny port. The ship throbbed beneath her like a giant sea beast. With all the wining, dining, and rolling, her equilibrium didn't feel quite as stable as it had that afternoon.
The captain decanted port into David and Jacques's goblets. "Sim, we encounter pirates. With a decent wind, the Gloria Maria averages about eight knots." He closed the flagon and offered cheroots to the men. They lit up, and the cabin became even stuffier. "With a beam wind and ideal seas, we cover almost three hundred miles in a day."
Jacques blew a smoke ring. "You outrun them."
"Precisely. Their vessels offer no match for the speed and grace of the Gloria Maria. She is a sea goddess."
The men toasted the prosperity of the Gloria Maria and her crew. Arriaga regarded his three supper guests with faint humo
r. "We encounter few other ships while at sea. Often we make an entire run spotting only two or three away from port. I am curious." He pulled off the cheroot and exhaled. Sophie squirmed, certain she'd have to go up on deck soon to clear her head. Arriaga watched them. "I am curious whether there is a connection between all four of you and a sloop sailing ahead and a frigate sailing astern?"
A sloop and a frigate. Sophie was too mellowed from the wine to provide Arriaga with more than a bland expression. She glanced at David's card-playing face and watched him savor his cheroot. Jacques also betrayed nothing with his expression. But she sensed the captain wasn't fooled.
David blew a smoke ring finer than Jacques's. "A sloop, you say? Hmm. My agent heard a rumor that a competitor chartered a sloop out of St. Augustine yesterday morning down to Havana."
The captain smiled. "Did you dally with his mistress, too?"
"The agent's or the competitor's?"
Arriaga's smile sharpened again. "And what of the frigate?"
David sketched a small figure eight in the air with his cheroot. "I've no clue. I don't pay much attention to ships. Perhaps she's that British warship — what was her name? — at anchor just off St. Augustine."
"She is not the Zealot. The Zealot is a ship-of-the-line."
Sophie withheld a sigh of relief. Perhaps Edward and Fairfax would give them up for lost.
"I haven't the slightest idea of her mission or who might be commanding her." David leaned forward. "But might we get closer to that sloop, see whether she bears the name Annabelle?"
Arriaga's expression grew sly. "And just how badly do you want us to overtake the sloop?"
Sophie, not relishing the overtones of the conversation, coughed and rose. "Excuse me, gentlemen. I've enjoyed the supper and company, but I must check on my husband."
The three men rose and bowed. "It distresses me when a passenger becomes ill. Senhora, I hope he feels better soon."
"Thank you, capitão. I shall convey your concerns."
Amidships on deck, Sophie leaned over the port side and inhaled salty air for several minutes until the tobacco-and-wine cobwebs cleared from her brain. Rigging and sailcloth stretched. Block and tackle creaked. In between the Gulf Stream and the coast, the Gloria Maria flew southward on a wind from the east.
A gibbous moon, just risen, beamed a radiant road across the Atlantic and sparkled on foam where wood met water. A ghost ring around the moon symbolized for Sophie just how insubstantial her original motive for solving Will's murder had become, especially since Woodhouse's Tavern. To be sure, she'd find her father's killer. But in doing so, she no longer need prove her own worthiness as his daughter. Embracing the adventure had made her aware of another treasure to be claimed.
Aft, past lemon-yellow lantern light swaying with the ship, second mate Jorge and the helmsman wished her a pleasant night in broken, accented English. The ride aft was bumpy, and she held the railing while her gaze followed the luminous trail of the Milky Way. Even washed by moonlight, the sky seemed populated with hundreds more stars than she'd ever noticed on land.
Was that a light out there on the northern horizon, where the frigate had been sighted? She blinked and squinted but saw nothing except stars and sea. Unease nudged her again. Portugal was neutral in the war, but cocky frigate commanders had been rumored to not worry about such particulars. She scanned the north horizon again, unable to shake the feeling that something out there pursued them.
A minute later, she strolled forward, encountering the fore watch, who also wished her a pleasant night. Splotched with moonlight, the dark rectangle of Mathias's blankets blotted the pale deck, and on the blankets Sophie spied the shape of his body stretched out, still. "Are you awake?" He stirred and sat up, and she knelt beside him. "Full belly?"
"Yes. An excellent beefsteak."
"And how is it sitting?"
"Every now and then that sick feeling returns, but I'm much better now. José the cook was right. I needed a full stomach." He caught her hand in his. "Sit with me. How was supper?"
"Elegant. Not at all what I was expecting aboard ship."
"I wager Arriaga doesn't eat nearly so well by halfway across the Atlantic."
"No doubt. I left during the port, cheroots, and negotiations."
"Negotiations?"
"David was trying to convince the captain that we should overtake a sloop sighted southward."
Mathias sucked in a breath. "The Annabelle?"
"I shan't be surprised. With Arriaga's bragging about the speed of this ship, we could overtake her on the morrow." Exasperation trailed her nostrils in a stream of breath. "I assume David will engage the captain in cards to make him compliant with our request for a change of velocity. But don't think for a moment that he accepts our story about researching sugarcane in Havana, especially not with a frigate behind us."
She felt him tense. "Gods. A mystery sloop ahead, and a mystery frigate behind. Who'd have thought the Atlantic so well-trafficked? And where are the redcoats and the Rightful Blood?"
"Hush. You shall surely tempt the Fates."
"The Fates — bah!" He stroked her cheek once with the back of his hand. "In my next lifetime, I shall become a boulder. Boulders don't get seasick."
She smiled at the certainty in his expression, visible even in moonlight. "You won't recognize me if you're a boulder."
"Of course I'd recognize you. I've known you for thousands of years. If you returned to the world as a squirrel, I'd create hollows on my surface for you to hide your acorns in. If you returned as a tree, I'd roll over and shelter your sprout. And if you returned as another lovely woman, I'd smooth my surface and make it so inviting for you to rest upon — aye, nestle that firm, shapely arse of yours right atop me —"
"You are feeling better than you were this morning."
"It's all this fresh air, you see."
"Yes, I do see," she whispered and brushed his lips with hers, where she tasted the ocean. They let the kiss linger, metamorphose into deliberate, soft caresses that swelled the tide in Sophie's loins until her throat and breasts pounded with it. Shared air formed the sigh between them when they separated.
"You're even more beautiful now than you were eighteen years ago," he said, low.
She chuckled. "I don't have a girl's body anymore."
"No, indeed, your woman's body is all gifts of life and spirit, sweat and blood. Just like Earth, the great mother."
Mathias had written eighteen years of poetry to her — simple, clear, and powerful poetry — in his soul. He does not hunger for wealth of substance, Jacques had told her the night before they arrived in Cow Ford. He hungers for wealth of spirit...the companionship of people who appreciate his worth and accept him as he is. A partner. Someone who believed in what he did. Someone who recognized the way he transformed the poetry of his soul into masterpieces of metal and diplomacy.
She touched his hand. "How have you known me for thousands of years?"
"You've been in the spirit lake." He yawned.
She thought back to the night she'd wept on his shoulder. "What is this spirit lake? Twice now you've mentioned it."
He sounded groggy. "Creator stands on the shore of the spirit lake and withdraws a drop of water. 'What do you want to be in this lifetime?' Creator asks the drop of water, 'a rock, a blade of grass, an otter, a hawk?' The water drop is you or me. We decide what we want to learn in the new lifetime, and we take the form of it. Rock, grass, otter, hawk. When the spirit learns what it came to learn and discharges the form, it returns to the lake and disseminates the knowledge to all other spirits so they benefit from the knowledge. That is how I know you, from the lake."
How could the Indians not feel kinship for everything on the earth after being rocks, grass, otters, hawks? "What have you been in your past lives?"
He thought a moment. "A stag. A vein of copper. A hickory tree. A brook."
She smiled again. "Is this your first time as a human?"
"No. I've been a man before
. I've been a woman, too."
"You held Lila's baby just like a midwife would."
"And what have you been in your past lives?"
She'd never given the idea of multiple lifetimes much consideration, and yet from the way Mathias explained it, it sat far better with her than the Christians' dogma. Heaven had always sounded boring and pointless to her. "After what's happened the last eleven days, surely I must have been a man."
He laughed. "Indeed, a mighty warrior. A general who led armies to multiple victories." He yawned again.
"Perhaps you were my wife or mistress in that lifetime." They both tittered before subsiding into comfortable quietude. She contemplated the spirit lake a moment longer. "The lake must be changing with all that knowledge every spirit returns to it."
"Mmm. Evolving."
"Where is it evolving?"
"Toward the unity of all things, the Great Understanding." He yawned a third time.
She squeezed his hand. "Come back to our cabin."
"Ah, if only I could be certain the seasickness wouldn't return and spoil it for us. The last thing I want is to be interrupted again. Let us see how I feel in the morning."
She kissed his brow, disappointed, and nodded. "How much we both need rest. I'm so weary my hands shake."
"Go rest, then." He kissed her hand. "Good night."
Chapter Twenty-Six
THURSDAY MORNING, SOPHIE awakened with sunlight bobbing on her face, the smells of coffee and tar in her nostrils, and her bed swaying. When she recognized the creaking and straining noises as those of blocks and sheets, she realized she'd spent the night in her cabin on the Gloria Maria.
And she'd spent it there alone. Disappointment tugged at her at the sight of the second hammock swaying empty. After disentangling her feet from the blanket, she rolled from her hammock and used the chamber pot. Then she slipped on her shoes and followed her nose in search of coffee.
A haze rising from the east dimmed sunlight on deck. She squinted outward and wrinkled her nose. Gone were merry waves with foam dancing upon their crests, replaced by swells six feet in height, giving the ocean a swollen, feverish appearance. Clumps of seaweed the color of liver rode the swells, hair torn from the head of Tethys the titan. The Gloria Maria compensated for crests and troughs, her rhythm pronounced.
Paper Woman: A Mystery of the American Revolution Page 20
