Louisiana History Collection - Part 1

by Jennifer Blake

  Cutlasses they were, with curving blades like sabers, sharp on one side and the tip, and fixed with rounded bell guards of brass at the hilts. They were the preferred cut-and-thrust sidearm of seamen instead of straight, double-edged swords. They flashed blue light as the two men saluted, then rasped together with a shower of orange sparks as Valcour lunged, snatching the first offensive.

  Morgan parried, giving ground, meeting the wickedly darting blade in quinte, in sixte, swirling into a sudden riposte that sobered Valcour so that the grin drawing his thin lips back from his teeth faded. Cautiously, they circled, the blades tapping, chiming, singing together with the lick of fire.

  The gleam of sweat appeared on Valcour’s face. He watched his opponent with avid eyes, waiting for signs of weakness, feinting, testing. Morgan kept his guard, recoiling smoothly. His wrist was tempered, pliant, as he flicked Valcour’s blade aside again and again, displaying a complete command of swordsman’s tricks with which to defend himself.

  Slow rage seeped into Valcour’s face. He grew cunning, pressing and then withdrawing, so that they moved back and forth across the sand, their booted feet scuffling, their blades slipping, slithering, winking in the lanternlight. Both men were breathing hard, bellows-deep and gasping.

  Abruptly Valcour thrust forward with bent knee. Morgan twisted, leaping aside, parrying in seconde so nearly too late that the cutlasses scraped grittingly, their hand guards coming together with a bell-like clang. They strained body to body, their faces inches apart, their eyes clashing.

  “What price vengeance?” Morgan queried, the words quiet and clear with the breathless mockery of a goad. He wrenched free, springing backward, recovering in form, but the red-brown splotches that stained the back of his shirt had darkened and spread, widening until they ran together.

  Valcour’s swordplay took on a vicious crackle. It was plain he meant to beat down the man who opposed him with sheer brilliance. Toward that end, he called upon every nuance and variation ever displayed by a New Orleans maître d’armes, those master swordsmen who were teachers of their art. A whirl of glittering, incipient death carried before him, he began his advance.

  He could not sustain it. Five minutes passed. Ten. Morgan was a wraith that could not be touched, could not be overborne. He countered every artifice, every rare ruse, with its companion defense stratagem, and though perspiration ran down his face and his breathing was a harsh rasp, he conserved his energy, watching for the next of Valcour’s many devices. His concentration was narrowed to the shining point of the other man’s sword. His brain, no less agile than muscle and sinew, directed his movements with an intensity that if he had been less impaired by injury might have been swiftly lethal. And yet, it almost seemed he was containing himself, deliberately refraining from the attack, waiting with close-gripped patience.

  Félicité’s eyes burned as without blinking she followed the dancing blades. She was suffocating, unable to expand her chest for air. She recognized in some detached part of her mind that she was watching a magnificent contest, but she could not appreciate it. Raw terror surrounded her, tearing at the cocoon of numbness in which she had encased herself, burrowing inward toward her heart. The snick and scream of the steel blades gave her a feeling of aching vulnerability in the center of her being.

  Behind her, the oarsmen had not moved in a quarter of an hour, and the latecomers who had leaped from their boats were still standing hock deep in the washing surf.

  Morgan stumbled. He was tiring, his pallor becoming more pronounced as his shirt grew wet with sweat and blood, and the waist of his breeches took on a soaked and scarlet sheen. His parries were less clean, scraping. He began, infinitesimally, to give ground.

  Fiendish glee rose in Valcour’s yellow-brown eyes. He redoubled his efforts, driving Morgan back step by step toward a goal chosen from the outset. It lay at the periphery of his vision, shining with brightwork varnish, the pistol case half hidden in the shadow of the longboat.

  Félicité saw it and made a quick, abortive gesture, then dropped her hand. To distract Morgan’s attention might be fatal. That a few among the crew had discovered Valcour’s goal also was plain from the uneasy expressions that flitted across their weathered faces. To resort to trickery, abandoning honor and a corrupt society’s rules of fair play, to defeat a troublesome opponent was no more than was to be expected. Any man nimble enough to keep his skin unpricked this long should know to look for such.

  Did Morgan? He retreated before the clattering flurry of Valcour’s sword like a blown leaf before a squall. He seemed to be hard-pressed, barely able to find the strength to hold the heavy cutlass steady. Failing, spent, he brought his heel down on the slippery surface of the wooden case and lurched, sprawling.

  Valcour drew a hissing breath and extended himself, launching a yard of whistling death straight for Morgan’s heart.

  It was caught in prime on an arch of steel. Morgan, ready and fully expecting the ploy, braced on one arm and recoiled from the sand with his sword at a diagonal slant across his body. Edge to edge, the blades grated with a shower of fiery light. Morgan’s circled, adhering with lightning speed and leverage, bending, binding, perfectly timed. Valcour’s grip was broken. His cutlass sprang free, and flew like a comet to bury itself with quivering hilt in the damp salt and sand.

  Lithe, renewed, Morgan pushed erect, pressing the point of his sword to Valcour’s breastbone. Staring into the man’s stunned, unbelieving eyes, he said, “My victory, I think. The penalty, my friend, for overestimation.”

  Valcour drew a retching breath, his eyes darting from Morgan to Félicité.

  The French captain moved suddenly, as if unable to endure the cramped stillness. “I grant your victory, Captain McCormack, if he will not. Have done with it, mon ami!”

  Morgan looked beyond the French captain, his gaze coming to rest on Félicité’s pale face before he lowered his emerald eyes to Valcour once more.

  “Will it be an end, Murat, or for the sake of your sister and a truce to quarreling, will you cry quarter?”

  To accept his life from a man to whom he had denied the boon was an annihilating abasement, a black and bottomless retreat into cowardice. Valcour took it without hesitation.

  “Quarter,” he croaked.

  14

  THE TWO LONGBOATS PULLED back to the Black Stallion. Over one hung brooding silence, that carrying the captain, Félicité, and Valcour. From the other came lurid oaths in jocular tones as the pirate crewmen congratulated Morgan, who sat among them, and refought the passage at arms blow by blow, recalling other great bouts they had witnessed between men of prowess.

  Félicité sat in frowning thought. They were nearly upon the brigantine when she realized there was no place for her upon it. Even if there had not been an article prohibiting her presence, she had no place to bunk except with Valcour, an impossible position now that he need not fear Ashanti’s potions.

  She turned in her seat. “Captain Bonhomme, I’m sorry. But I must ask you to turn about and put me ashore.”

  “At this time of night? Such a thing would be most ungallant; I cannot do it.”

  “But your articles concerning women—”

  “We have bent them before, for short periods. It will not be a tragedy if we do so again.”

  “I have nowhere to stay,” she protested.

  “Considering what has happened, I can understand your reluctance to go on as before, most certainly. Do not worry your head. A berth will be found for you — somewhere.”

  The men at the sweeps would not turn about without a direct order. Already they were shipping the long oars to allow the boat to glide up to the looming bulwark of what had been Morgan’s ship. She was more aware than she cared to be of the French captain’s presence beside her on the forward seat, and of the soft huskiness of his voice as he addressed her.

  “I — suppose I must thank you,” she said.

  “Mais non. There is no need. We are — friends, are we not?” He reached to p
ut an arm around her in a carelessly affectionate gesture.

  “Yes, certainly,” she replied, edging away.

  “You are cold, chérie, and still damp in the self-same gown you had on when you went into the sea. What imbeciles we are, not to allow you to change! We can count ourselves lucky if some twice-cursed tropical fever doesn’t take you off!”

  “I will be fine. My hair is almost dry.” He was chafing her arm, holding her tightly against him, ignoring her efforts to draw away.

  “I saw a copper tub in the captain’s cabin aboard the brigantine. I will order for you a hot soak and a dram of rum. That should help protect your health.”

  How could she refuse? The rum she could do without, but the tub of water! Pray God there was soap as well.

  There was, though of the roughest kind, harsh with leached lye and with a smell she associated more with scrubbing floors than her own skin. It was, nonetheless, heavenly. She would worry about how she was to deflect the captain’s ardor another time. For now, she meant to be clean.

  In the privacy of the captain’s cabin, she soaped herself, rubbing so hard her skin reddened and stung. She washed her hair, squeezing the lather through it again and again, rinsing until the last trace of soap was gone, then letting it dangle in wet strands over the side. She sat back then, with her knees drawn up and her eyes closed as she allowed the heat to seep into her bones, permitting muscles and nerves to relax that had not done so in weeks.

  She had heard the sound of extraordinary activity ever since coming aboard. That the watch and the crew left behind had been busy was also evident. Several of the green turtles loaded on the lugger had been transferred to the larger vessel, and she had discovered in. the second officer’s cabin, while waiting for her bath to heat, the bundle containing her own clothing. The pirates, it seemed, could be efficient when they cared to be.

  What would become of the Raven? She had served her purpose and would doubtless be sold. In times like these, a ship was too valuable a commodity to be abandoned.

  How things changed. Who would have thought that Morgan, so staunch a defender of the Spanish regime, intent on becoming a landed proprietor and upstanding citizen in the newest colony of King Carlos, would turn again to a career on the high seas? What had taken place to bring it about? She would give much to know.

  On a more personal level, who would have thought, only a day ago, that she would be affected by any injustice directed against the Irishman, no matter what form it took? Who could have predicted she would feel such overwhelming gladness that it was Morgan who had beaten Valcour to his knees, instead of the other way around?

  Life was peculiar. People changed overnight; or was it just that the way others saw them changed?

  The water in her tub dipped and rose with the movements of the ship at anchor. Overhead, there came a boom like a muffled explosion, and of a sudden the water surged in a miniature tidal wave, rising to Félicité’s throat and spilling over the tub lip beside her before receding to splash over the edge beyond her knees. Félicité sat bolt upright. She knew enough to recognize that muffled explosion. It was the great mainsail of the brigantine filling with wind, stretching fat-bellied and wide. The Black Stallion was off and running. They had set sail.

  Félicité stepped from the tub, and as the level of water dropped, it ceased its imitation of a cataract. Grimacing, she reached to pick up the glass the French captain had sent to her by his cabinboy. She drank down a mouthful of rum. She didn’t want it, but he had acted as if he would be insulted if she allowed it to go to waste. She had no intention of becoming drunk, however; nothing so convenient, either for him or for herself.

  Setting the glass back down, she dried herself on a length of linen toweling laid for that purpose on the washstand. With it wrapped around her, she stood considering the contents of her bundle. She could put on the nightrail she desired above all things, don chemise, petticoats, and gown, or return to her breeches and shirt. The first would be entirely too provocative if the captain returned soon to allot her a sleeping space, and the last needed a good wash. That left her female attire, but the stays and petticoats it needed had been soaked in seawater along with the ruined velvet gown.

  While she tried to make up her mind, she picked up her wooden comb, drawing it through the tangles of her hair. Her frowning glance fell on a sword that lay across a chair near the officer’s desk in one corner of the cabin. By its military scabbard and insignia and its lines, she knew it at once. It was Morgan’s uniform sword. It had been taken from him when he was unconscious after the attack. Since the meeting with Valcour required cutlasses, he had not needed it later. Had someone brought it here to his former quarters as a gesture of courtesy, or was it a part of the code that the sword of the deposed captain became the property of the victor?

  It didn’t matter. She swung away, moving to the chest against one wall. The lid lifted easily on well-oiled hinges. Inside was clothing — Morgan’s shirts, cravats, discarded uniforms, and another set of breeches, coat, and waistcoat in shades of blue and buff.

  That settled it. She would borrow a clean shirt from his store and return to her same breeches and her role as a young man. It would fool no one, but would be better suited to shipboard conditions — and to her newly formed, most acutely conscious, resolve.

  No more would she play the part of helpless female, constrained by circumstances to accept her fate. From this moment she would gird herself to be her own protection. She was done with false positions. Alone, unfettered, she owed no duty, no loyalty, to anyone other than herself. Against all odds and the threat of superior strength, she would remain her own person, neither the chattel, the drudge, nor the plaything of any man.

  There was a small steel mirror above the washstand for shaving. In its dim surface, her face appeared touched with the tint of golden apricots by the sun, a delicate contrast to the pristine white linen of Morgan’s shirt. Her hair as it dried seemed burnished with soft golden light, paling nearly to silver around her face. What she looked like mattered not, except perhaps as a handicap, she told herself. Swinging away, she pulled on her clothing, then, returning to the sea chest, bent to search for something with which to confine her long and troublesome tresses.

  Behind her, the cabin door swung open. It was Valcour who stood there. She let fall the chest lid and turned to face him, every nerve alert. His eyes narrowed, shielding a rabid glitter as they ran over her. She was not the only one who had had a taste of rum, for she could smell the fumes that engulfed him from where she stood, see its effects in his loose-limbed stance and the precarious way he leaned to shut the door.

  “I thought I would find you here,” he said. “Trust you to run with the leader of the pack, whoever he may be. To the victor go the spoils.”

  There was more, in terms of sickening crudeness. She cut across it. “What do you want?”

  “There is a matter of — importance — that is unfinished between us, if you will remember?”

  “That is over,” she said, her voice cold. “You have befouled the memory of my childhood and made me regret that my father ever had the misfortune to cross your path. I never want to speak to you again. And if you touch me again, ever, for any reason, I will make you regret it.”

  “Mighty words, ma chère. Are you certain you can live up to them? I may have been bested by a superior swordsman, but you I can still turn over my knee at any time. That knowledge has sustained me for these long years.”

  She stared at him. “For years? What are you talking about?”

  “Do you remember how when you were eight, chère, and I ten years older, you ran and hid from me in the armoire? I joined you there in the dark and — took delicious liberties while you squirmed and cried; nothing to harm you, but so very pleasurable. You told Ashanti’s mother, and afterward she watched you closer, but I was enraptured.”

  She did remember, abruptly. How could she ever have forgotten, unless it had been in some way a protection? The sting of that peculiar
, shaming spanking was as hurtful now as it had been then, when she had not understood but had only been afraid.

  “I am glad,” she said distinctly, “that Ashanti fed you poisoned herbs.”

  “Even if it cost her her life?”

  She stared at him, though less in shock, it seemed, than from the fact that he would admit it. “You? It was you who did that unspeakable thing to her?”

  “She had been asking for it for a long time.”

  He was a monster, mentally deformed, wholly immoral. His wishes, his desires, what was best for him, these were his sole guide. It seemed suddenly a great pity that Morgan had withheld from him the death he so richly deserved.

  “Get out,” she whispered.

  “Oh, no. No, indeed.” He shook his head, moving toward her with the slow stalk of a hunting jackal scenting injured prey. “You cheated me this evening when you pleaded for your lover, Morgan. You caused him to be set free, to have a chance at me with pistol and cutlass. Because of you, I was bested, I who have always prevailed in such encounters, my one source of pride.”

  “What of the night Morgan sent you and two others running like whipped curs in the dark?” She would not back away from him, not if he killed her.

  “My own men got in my way, the stupid whoresons. One even mistook me for Morgan so that I had to prick him. That is not something I care to remember. We will not speak of it.”

  “Why not?” she jeered. “Don’t you want to admit that Morgan is a better man—”

  Before she could finish, he lifted his arm and swung backhanded at her mouth. She turned her head at the last minute; still, she tasted blood as his knuckles grazed her lips. Rage surged to her brain, bringing a red haze before her eyes. Without taking time to think, she drew back and struck her brother a ringing slap in the face.

  He growled, reaching for her throat. She dodged and slipped under his arm, but he whirled to dive after her, catching her waist, bearing her down to the floor.

  Gritting pain flared in her hip as she struck. It fueled the frenzy of the kick she drove into his legs. Her foot caught him a glancing blow in the crotch, and he grunted, releasing her. Twisting, scrambling away, getting her feet under her, she rose to one knee. He lunged after her, catching the fullness of her too-large shirt, dragging her slowly back.