The pounding footfalls came nearer. Félicité’s breathing was so labored after the exertions of swordplay that she knew she could not outstrip him. Most sailors could not swim, however. Without a second’s hesitation, she splashed into the water. A great wave of the incoming moontide staggered her. At the same time she was caught from behind. Thrown off balance, she and her assailant fell, and the creaming surf washed over them, wetting them to the shoulders. Félicité struggled, but Morgan pinned her to the washing sand. He leaned over her, his eyes burning into hers.
“Dear God, Félicité,” he said, the words a rasp of strain, “what more will it come to you to do to flay my soul?”
His mouth tasted of salt and rum and the warm, honeyed sweetness of remorse. Did he believe she had not been a party to the capture of his ship, or did he not? What could it matter so long as he held her, and with his sure and gentle touch, brought the surging of the restless sea to mingle with her blood?
They stripped away their clothing and flung it in sodden rags onto the shore. The flowing, melted turquoise water was warm against their skin, and if the sand gritted and clung, they did not feel it. With fast-cleaving mouths and entwined limbs, they disported themselves, primitive and beatific, nude and without lewdness. Félicité could feel the pounding of his heart, the pressing of his thighs against her, and the pounding shocks of pleasure that had the same ceaseless rhythm as the tide. Faint but fiery with desire, she took him deep inside her, and heard in the stillness of her own mind the explosive rush of the blood in her veins. Drowning in sensation, awash with joy, she saw the brightness of the moonlight behind her eyelids, felt its white-hot shining along the wet and lustrous surface of her skin. The luminous night surrounded her. The water sparkled and the sand shone like sifted yellow diamond dust. But deep in her eyes as she gazed into the face of the man above her was tangible ecstasy, scintillating and shimmering, the most radiant thing of all.
The morning was half gone when the women came straggling from the woods, doing up catches and laces and picking bits of trash from their hair. The men followed behind them. A few moaned in self-pity, declaring themselves barely able to walk; others were morose and foul-tempered if spoken to, but most seemed in charity with the world and ready for their breakfasts.
Disheveled women and rumpled, scratching men, they scrounged for food, mixing manioc cakes and slicing smoked meat while the gray smoke of freshly made fires curled into the sky. Every plate on the island being thick with congealed grease, they did without, tossing the hot cakes and meat from hand to hand until it was cool enough to hold. They washed the food down with palm wine and rum, and daintily or wolfishly, according to their personal habits, licked their fingers.
Done, the women rose and stretched, then began to look toward the La Paloma swinging at anchor in the cove.
Though the men tried, the female crew of the ship could not be dissuaded from leaving. They must not overstay their welcome, they said, or strain the hospitality of such a fine group of men. Isabella, sitting in the curve of the French captain’s arm, seemed reluctant to make a move. But she too insisted, in spite of the soft whispers of Captain Bonhomme in her ear, that they must leave. Still protesting and pleading, the pirate crew ferried the women out to the ship, though so slow was the sweep of their oars that all were agreed it would have been much faster if the ladies had rowed themselves.
Isabella was among the last to leave. She stepped to where Morgan and Félicité stood to one side with Captain Bonhomme. A smile tinged with melancholy lighting the severe lines of her face, she gave her hand to Morgan.
“I take my leave of this island with regret,” she said. “The world expects a great deal of people, does it not, my old friend? I had never realized until now just how much.”
“Duty,” Morgan said, his gaze direct, unfathomable, “is a four-letter word. Perhaps you should follow my example and forswear it.”
“The temptation is strong, but I must resist, though perhaps some way can be found to be dutiful only in part,” Isabella agreed, her eyes bright.
Their words were plain, and yet they carried an undercurrent of hidden meaning Félicité could sense, but not comprehend. Her stare was puzzled; then, as Isabella turned to her, all speculation fled.
“I give you my thanks,” the Spanish-Irish noblewoman said. “Making one’s bed in the sand has much to recommend it. I am indebted to you for the suggestion.”
Félicité found suddenly that she liked this woman with her forthright manner and independent reserve. Given the circumstances and time, they might have been friends. For the moment, she was too aware of the interested gaze of the two men beside them for comment. Smiling, she said, “It may be that we will meet again.”
“Yes, I pray it will be so,” La Paloma replied, and moved on, finally, to the French captain. “Farewell,” she said, laying her hand in his.
“It is only au revoir,” he answered. “I refuse to say goodbye; there is no sea wide enough to keep me from finding you again.”
“Perhaps,” she said, her smile arch, faintly challenging. “If the rum doesn’t make your track too weaving ever to cross mine.”
“From this day, I am a sober man.” Captain Jacques Bonhomme said the words with all the reverence of a vow.
“A fine boast, but can you sustain it?”
“We shall see.”
“Yes,” Isabella said, “it may be we shall.”
They drew apart from the others then, and the French pirate captain held the noblewoman with loving closeness, pressing his lips to hers. She broke from him then and hurried to the longboat drawn up upon the sand. Stepping in, taking her place in the bow, she lifted her hand in a final wave, then turned her face toward the ship that waited.
They watched her go, watched the La Paloma weigh anchor, raise sail, and beat slowly out of the cove. The men dispersed, going about their business. Still Morgan and Félicité stood staring out to sea. Captain Bonhomme stood not far away, his hands on his hips and feet widespread as he stared after the grim and graceful brigantine.
“Why now?” he queried, his voice ragged. “Why after all these years, when I am no more than a rotting hull, should I meet the woman who could make life worth living?”
“A very good question, my friend,” Morgan said, though his brooding green gaze was on Félicité’s face.
With the departure of the women, the work on the two ships resumed. The Black Stallion was maneuvered closer to shore and farther along the cove where the trees came down to the water. The ship was then careened. Blocks and tackles were hitched from the bases of the masts to the trees, and the hull was pulled over until almost on beam ends, flat on its side. Floating about it in boats, the seamen scrapped the incrustation of barnacles and other shell creatures from the hull thus drawn from below the water line. That done, they caulked and pitched the seams of the planking, daubed them with sulfur as a deterrent to burrowing sea life, and coated them with tallow. They left that side for a day to dry, then turned the brigantine around and repeated the process on the other.
When this enormously taxing undertaking was done, they stepped the new mizzenmast, reattached the topmasts, bent on new sails, and spliced and restrung her rigging. They touched up her paint, brightwork varnish, and gilt, polished her brass, and holystoned her decks. There was some discussion between Captain Bonhomme, the bluff captain of the Prudence, and Morgan of changing the name of the ship, christening her the Raven II in spite of her stallion figurehead. The deciding vote was against it. Still the French captain ran his personal flag brought from the lugger, the black raven on a red ground, to the topmast before pronouncing the ship ready to sail.
They could not leave yet. There was still the Prudence to be put in order. Spurred by rum and curses and a belaying pin in the hands of the Black Stallion’s bosun, the men turned their attention toward the smaller vessel.
The days continued hot and dry, with the trades becoming no more than a warm breeze that did nothing to alleviate the
heat. The rustling of the palms became a dusty clatter, hordes of flies gathered, stinging the bare, sweaty backs of the working men, and gnats danced around their heads, clogging their nostrils as they breathed. One day the men, tiring of pork and fish, chased down one of the big, ungainly iguanas. They roasted the meat, basting it with pork drippings. Some few of the men declared it to be good, a great delicacy, while laughing at the disgusted looks of their fellows, but most of the carcass was thrown back into the forest to make fodder for the ants and maggot-worms.
At night the men drank sitting around the fires. They told tales of roaring fights, of beautiful ladies and ugly bawds and the strange customs of exotic ports. Sometimes they sang or made up impromptu theatricals, and once on a night of particular creativity, they got up a mock court.
The captain of Prudence was drafted as the judge, and the bosun was named as the criminal; the ship’s carpenter served as attorney general, while twelve men tried and true took their oaths as the jury, and a man armed with a marlin spike had the honor of being the bailiff.
The judge slung a muddy, much-tarred tarpaulin around his shoulders, stuck a woman’s wig upon his head, and settled a pair of spectacles upon his nose. Thus attired in dignity, he swung himself upon the limb of a tree. The sailors, armed with crowbars, hand spikes, and oars, gathered below him, and the criminal was brought out with the long face of an innocent man falsely accused.
The attorney general, with his waistcoat properly buttoned for once in his life, assumed an air of great knowledge. Clutching his lapels, he called out the charges.
Drawn by the general hilarity, Félicité and Morgan stepped from their hut, walking closer to the fires to watch the proceedings.
“And it pleases your lordship and the gentlemen of the jury,” the attorney general intoned, “here is a fellow before you who is a sad dog, a sad and sorry sea dog. It is my most earnest hope that your lordship will order him to be hanged out of hand, forthwith!”
“Why, what has the man done?” the judge asked, bending a sour look on the bosun.
“He has committed piracy upon the high seas, and it is my purpose to prove, and it please your lordship, that this base criminal, this sad sea dog brought up before you, has run before a thousand storms, escaping them entire, and yea, has got himself safe ashore when the ship he rode was completely cast away and lost. This, as all men know, is a positive sign he was not born to be drowned! And still, not having the fear of hanging before his eyes, he went on ravishing and robbing, man, woman, and child, plundering the cargoes of ships fore and aft, burning and sinking schooner and sloop, barque and boat, as if the devil himself lived inside him. And this is not all, my lord. He has even worse vices and villainies to his name, for we shall prove that he has been guilty of drinking belly vengeance, thin and sour stuff, and your lordship knows that never was there a sober fellow but was a dangerous rogue!”
At this a great rumble of laughter went out from the men before they quieted enough to hear again.
“My lord,” the attorney general went on, “I’m sure I could have spoken much finer than I have, but as your worship knows, the rum is running low, and how should a man remember to spout the law that has not sipped his dram? That aside, I hope your lordship will order this pesky rascal to be hanged!”
The judge looked over his spectacles at the criminal, who was trying valiantly not to laugh. “Hark ye to me, sir! You are a lice-ridden, pitiful, and ugly-visaged dog; what can you say for yourself that will persuade us not to string you up immediately and set you a-drying in the sun like a skeleton on a gibbet? How do you plead, guilty, or not?”
“Not guilty, and it please your lordship,” the prisoner sighed.
“Not guilty! Dare to repeat those words, sir, and I will have you hanged forthwith, trial or no.”
The bosun hung his head. “And it please your honor, my fine sir, I am but a poor honest seaman, as good a man as ever went between stem and stern of a ship. I can hand, reef, steer, and clap two ends of a rope together as well as any man that ever crossed salt water, but I was taken by one bastard of a pirate, the most notorious gentleman-thief that ever was unhung, the captain of the fair ship Prudence, and it was he who forced me to become a pirate myself, your honor, all against my will.”
The judge, the self-same captain of the Prudence, bent a terrible stare upon the bosun. “Answer me, sir. How will you be tried?”
“By God and my country!”
“The devil you will! Why then, gentlemen of the jury, I think we have nothing to do but to deliberate and pass judgment.”
The attorney general gave a firm nod. “My thoughts exactly, my lord, for if this dastardly fellow be allowed to speak, he may clear himself, and that would, without a doubt, be an insult to the court!”
“But kind sirs, gentlemen, all of ye,” the prisoner pleaded, “I hope you will consider—”
“Consider?” the judge demanded with great affront. “How dare you talk of considering, sir? I never considered in all my life, if that be the same as taking thought. Why, I’ll make it a hanging offense to consider!”
“But I hope your lordship will listen to reason.”
“Listen to the scoundrel! What have we to do with reason? I’ll have you know there is nothing here that smacks of reason, we having instead the law!”
This sally too found favor with the pirates, perhaps because it so nearly coincided with their own thoughts and experiences with judgments handed down by the legal communities of the world.
The judge signaled for silence, demanding to know if dinner was ready.
“Yes, my lord,” the attorney general answered.
“Then hark ye to me, ye scoundrel at the bar. It is the decision of this court, sir, that you must suffer the most extreme penalty. For this there are three reasons. First, because it is not fit that I should sit here as judge and nobody be hanged. Second, you must swing because you have a damned swinging look. And third, you must be hanged because I am hungry, and because as you know, sir, it is the custom of the court that whenever the judge’s dinner is ready before the trial is done we cut short the proceedings with a hanging. There is the law of the land for you, ye sad dog. Nay, stay! I have a better decree. You shall eat at my right hand. By the time you fill your stomach with the belly timber we have had of late, you will wish, by damn, you had been hanged!”
There were a great many truths to be found in the play-acting of the men; too many, Félicité found, thinking of her father and the other men condemned as traitors in New Orleans, and of the judgments so summarily handed down against them.
Another truth concerned the rum. They were running low of this necessary commodity. If they were to have enough to see them through the repairs to the Prudence and the days of sailing it would take them to reach a port where the supply might be replenished, they must ration it.
This decision did not sit well with men used to swilling all they could hold, men who needed forgetfulness, who worked all day in the broiling sun and had need of liquid to put back their lost fluids and who refused to drink water unless it was laced liberally with alcohol. As everyone knew, it was bad water that gave men fluxes and fevers.
Tempers grew short. So important loomed the possibility of being without rum that when a man was discovered trying to steal more than his share one night, he was beaten senseless and would have been kicked to death if Morgan had not put a stop to it.
Captain Bonhomme, once able to rally his men with a jest and his presence, kept to himself after the sailing of La Paloma. Though he touched not a drop of liquor, he was a changed man, brooding and silent, fighting his need in private as he walked the beaches.
Deprived of much of their greatest solace, smarting under the authority of Morgan, a man who should have had no more than they; after long hours of hard work with little hope of reward in the shares to be had from the cargo of the Prudence, perhaps it was not surprising that the men began to mutter among themselves, gathering in small groups. As the days followed
one after the other, turning into a week, then two, Valcour was often seen in a circle of men, speaking earnestly, keeping his voice low and a watchful eye out for Morgan’s or Bonhomme’s approach. The men from the Prudence and the Black Stallion kept clear of him for the most part, but he found a ready audience in the motley crew from the old Raven.
What with their hard work and the toil in the sun, Félicité and Morgan visited the bathing pool in the cave at the end of every evening. It was, for Félicité, her favorite time of the day, when she and Morgan could be alone, away from the encampment and the constant brawling, cursing, and stares of the sailors. It was a time of quiet and serenity, when the last of the sun’s slanting rays played over the green slopes of the island and coolness crept from the fern edge forest glades, when the waves sighed onto the shore and the sea birds quartered the sky one last time before making for their roosts. It was a time of repose, a time when she and Morgan, afterward, could retreat to their hut, leaving the world and its problems outside, and seek in each other the surcease that kept them sane.
One evening as they left the cave, climbing down its limestone face to start back along the beach, there was a different feeling in the air. Though the pink afterglow of the sunset lit the western sky, to the northeast a gray haze lay upon the sea and the waves breaking at their feet seemed heavy, washing back and forth with an oily surge. The air was hushed and still, so that their footsteps in the sand grated and crunched. Overhead a blue heron winged inland, though the rest of the sky was empty of life.
“It looks like we may get some rain,” Félicité said.
“It does that,” Morgan agreed, a frown between his eyes.
“Is it going to storm?”
“Who can say? It’s always possible in these latitudes, though it’s late in the season now for a big blow.”
They walked a few yards in silence. Driven by the sullen oppression around her, so similar to the atmosphere among the seamen these days, she moistened her lips. “Morgan?”
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