Captain Adam (44 page)

Here it comes, thought Adam.

Then he saw that there was smoke languidly rising from the muzzle. He saw, too, that the thing on the bed was Maisie—or had been.

There was a smell of gunpowder in the room. Van Bramm had just fired, a discharge Adam hadn't heard in the noise he himself was making on the door.

"If I can't have her," van Bramm screamed, "nobody else will!"

He threw the smoking pistol at Adam's face. He snatched up his cutlass, and charged.

Adam had to drop the branch and seize up his own cutlass, which lay just outside the door. He retreated, doing this.

Van Bramm went right after him.

Not until they were both outside the inner partition did Adam Long make his stand. His pulses throbbed; and he felt like singing. I'm going to kill this man, he told himself.

The Dutchman had the arms of a gorilla, so that his reach was as long as Adam's. He sweated a lot but never seemed to breathe hard. He smiled all the while.

He held his guard high, his arm stiff, as in German schlaeger play; and his wrist must have been wonderfully strong. He did not move much, but his eyes were cat-keen, his stance firm.

I'm going to kill him, Adam thought again; and he went in.

He stepped back an instant later with the knowledge that something exceptional would be needed to get past that guard. Three times Adam had struck, and they were fast cuts. Three times he'd been countered; and once there was a riposte that Adam believed—though he could move it around and he felt no pain there—had laid open his left shoulder. Van Bramm did not appear to have stirred. He never made an unnecessary motion.

Adam went in next time low, only half-lunging, feinting. Van Bramm at first did not respond; but when the heavy cutlass did move it was with lightning speed, and it struck Adam's blade clangorously and high, all but slamming it out of Adam's grasp. Startled, scared, Adam retreated. Van Bramm went right after him.

Adam, whose own guard was high now, made him pay for this temerity vdth a slash that traveled down van Bramm's right cheek from ear to chin—a thin red line at first, and then the line thickened and bulged as blood rose, and at last a large soft wet flap of skin fell feebly outward, thereafter to flump there like a dewlap. Van Bramm paid it no mind. But he backed a bit.

Adam did not immediately pursue. The two stood staring at one another, each tense, alert, his hilt held high.

Then both jumped at once. There wasn't the bat of an eyelash difference in the time. They might have been released by the same spring.

For the rest of the fight, a matter of seconds, neither gave an inch. Neither dared to. They were strong men and they fought hard. Bits of burning shingle, trailing smoke, drifted down all around them, and the roar of flames filled the warehouse.

The end came when Adam Long, stooping even lower, caught a down-cut low, and rose with his parry, thrusting. This sent his point right at the Dutchman's face. He held his blade palm-up, as if it had been a rapier. He drove down, with all his might.

The steel entered van Bramm's slightly open mouth, and Adam could feel it cracking off the front teeth; he could feel it smash into the back of the skull. It came out the other side a little.

Van Bramm made no sound, not so much as a gurgle, though blood welled up at his mouth and ran rapidly down over his chin. He went backward, arms outspread; and he fell thumpily, jerkily, carrying the cutlass with him, wrrenching it right out of Adam's hand.

It took Adam some time to work that cutlass loose. He had to step on Everard van Bramm's face in order to do this. 272

Maisie was motionless and might have been dead. Her eyes were closed. Her face, unrouged, was horribly pale beneath the turbulent splendor of her hair. Her lips, too, had no color.

She wore a green silk wrapper, an Oriental thing embroidered with gold thread. He lifted her carefully.

Part of the roof fell in.

Bumping looters, who cursed him, he carried her outside. He put her down on the beach.

The hole was blackened by powder around its edges, a close-up shot. He took out his knife and cut away part of the wrapper. Maisie wore nothing underneath this, and the familiar flesh of her belly stunned him like a blow, so that he almost swooned.

"I'm going to die, ain't I, Adam?"

She was looking at him. She was trying to move; perhaps she couldn't. She could not see the wound he had exposed.

Adam looked at it; then he looked down the beach; he swallowed; and "Yes" he answered.

He held her close.

"I— I'm sorry I hurt you, Adam," she whispered once.

"You couldn't help it. No more'n I could."

"I want to be buried in England. You must get me there."

He promised. She told him the place, in the country, near where she had been born, and he repeated the name several times to make sure he had it right. They were both businesslike here. Then he took her in his arms again and she shut her eyes. She did not try to talk.

The pirates, maddened, scurried in and out of the warehouse, a mass of flames now, and every time one came out he carried an armful of loot. Revenge was forgotten, and danger, too. All they could think of was to pile high the gold and silver.

When the building at last did blow up, in the middle of the morning, it carried at least twenty of these grasping, hurrying men with it, and so great was the blast that for a full thirty seconds afterward bits and scraps of wood and stone and metal were falling into the sea and onto the sand as far off as where Adam lay with his love.

Maisie died about twenty minutes after that.

PART TWELVE

He Kept His Course

/?* ^ "I asked a direct question," Adam said. "I'm entitled to a

vy / direct answer."

The Earl of Tillinghast sighed. He was tired. He was a thin man, tall, with a skin like old ivory; and tiredness, you guessed, was his accustomed condition. Unlike so many aristocrats, he looked aristocratic. If there ever had been evil in him it was long since burnt out; but on the other hand there was nothing in his appearance to hint of positive goodness: his lordship showed rather as one who had oudived both of those attributes, and who, willing to die, perhaps even eager to, yet went on living—and doing his duty. He looked as though he hadn't got excited in years. He showed no resentment at the way Adam had burst in upon him, and even waved back a couple of footmen who offered, though not eagerly, to throw Adam out. His hands were marvelously thin and pale, the bones shining through the skin like the ribs of a delicate fan.

"You come from the American colonies?" he asked.

"Now how in the world did you know that?" Adam cried.

Slightly smiling, his lordship looked out the window. Adam, despite himself, did the same; and the sight caught at his throat. Spring had come early to Tillinghast, and loveliness lay over the fields like a lingering snow. Each tree and stile and hedgerow, every meandering lane, homely in itself perhaps, contributed to the serenity of the scene, as relieving to the soul as the blended greens and yellows were soothing to the eye of Adam, a man whose life of late had been pretty much all turmoil. Less than ever, since he'd seen something of the English countryside, could Adam understand why anybody would live in London. Not that he would care to live out here either! It was a shade too quiet! But he couldn't think of a better place to be buried in. If they were to lay you to rest here, the world would wag its way over your head pretty much as it had always done, he reckoned; and that might be a comfort to know.

True, there was no majesty in the prospect, any more than there was in that breathlessly beautiful little grove where the day before yesterday, under a weeping willow tree, he had witnessed the interment of Maisie 274

de Lynn Treadway-Paul. No, no majesty; but there was peace. These places lacked harsh corners and they were not subject to sudden shifts of light, so that they imposed no strain upon you. Even his grief at the grave had not been keen, as he'd expected, but gentle; he only wept quietly, upright; and he endured for fifteen minutes the old sexton's fret-fussing about the way Maisie's remains had been shipped, before he broke in to demand how otherwdse the man expected to move a corpse five thousand miles.

Yes, it was the countryside, which brought about dreams without slumber, rubbing all roughness away. Adam who had been in the tropics had never known anything as soporific as this.

But he hadn't come all the way out here, and paid all that horse hire, to admire the scenery. He cleared his throat.

"I asked you a question. I want an answer."

Lord Tillinghast nodded gravely. Though a man who had spent much of his life abroad, engaged in the honorable business of lying for his country, when he spoke it was not in the candied accents of the diplomat. He was unexpectedly straightforward. His voice, though not raised, carried conviction.

"The answer is 'No.' I am not your father."

He rose. Not glancing at his guest, he went to the window, where he stood, bathed in what in those parts passed for sunlight.

"I hope that whatever reason you may have to suspect me, you'll do nothing about it. I hope this for your own sake. Captain. Believe me, you would only make yourself appear ridiculous.

"I am not your father. I'm not anybody's father. I can't be. It, ah, it pains me to talk about this, and I shan't go into details, but you're entitled to know. Captain, that many years ago, before I inherited the title, a serving maid accused me of paternity. I denied this, but the case came to court. 1 would have settled it quietly, but my father insisted that I fight it out. He feared that half the female servants in the house, even half the women in the village, might start bringing suits if Maybelle was successful with hers. Well, I put up an unanswerable defense. Three distinguished physicians testified that they had examined me and that for reasons which they went into at great length—right there in open court— they were sure that I could not ever father a child. Oh, I won my case! And no doubt it was all very amusing—for everybody except me. I became a byword. Doggerel was written about me, songs were sung. In every taproom for fifty miles around you were bound to hear somebody or other tell some version or other of the story of how the Earl of Tillinghast lost his manhood. It was a boyhood accident, Captain, and sufficiently gruesome. But they didn't know that—wouldn't have cared if they did. They made up fantastic stories. For all I know, they still do.

That's why I've spent so Httle of my time at my seat, though I dearly love this part of the country. But it doesn't really hurt any more now. When you get as old as I am, Captain, nothing hurts very much. So I've come back."

Standing there at the window, shghtly stooped, his hands behind his back, his head bowed, he suggested a saint.

"Now I don't remember your mother. But I can only guess—and I mean this with all respect, Captain—I can only guess that perhaps she named me as your father for purposes of defiance. Maybe that was her answer to a world that had mistreated her. For you understand, Captain, that in these parts to say a child is the son or daughter of the Earl of Tillinghast is the equivalent of saying that you refuse to name the father. Or if somebody else says that, then it's with a sneer. In the old days when a wench got into trouble they used to giggle and say that it must have been the fairies that brought that baby. Nowadays, around here, they say that it must have been the Earl."

Adam wetted his lips.

"You mean, it's a—a sort of joke?"

"Yes, it's a—joke."

Adam rose, patting his back his cuffs, straightening his sword belt. He picked up his tricorne. He bowed.

"You have been extremely kind, sir. Permit me to avow to you that I'm obliged from the bottom of my heart. I sure am."

"Won't you stay a bit, Captain? Have a glass of wine? Or perhaps a cup of this tea they bring all the way from China?"

"Thank you, no, sir. I'm about to start for home."

"Ah? And where is your home, Captain?"

"Newport, sir. In the Colony of Rhode Island."

Under a rat-gray sky the seas were all chuff and spit; and it looked as if a spell of weather was making up; so Adam, though he would have admired to stage a gam, ordered full canvas kept on and no recognition of the pinkie, the fishing boat they had sighted.

The latter, however, refused to be snubbed. She yawed wildly, all but fouling Goodwill's rudder, and the two men aboard of her set up such a shouting and mad windmilling of their arms that Adam at last fell off. The pinkie came alongside.

"What in tarnation's the matter?" he grumped.

He knew both men, Newport men, who of course had recognized the

schooner; but he had never before seen them like this, jibbering, jabbering, waving their hands. Abe Moore and Henry Pearson certainly w^eren't drunk; nor were they in distress—their boat was tight, their faces full. Yet they hopped about like kids who have to go to the head.

A sudden fear flooded Adam.

"Say, nothing's happened to Deborah Selden, has there?"

They stared at him. They couldn't know about that letter he had written to Deborah from London, sending it on ahead. They were not to guess that he had opened his heart, pleading for forgiveness, saying, almost in so many words, that if she'd still have him he would be proud and happy to make her his wife; nor could Henry and Abe know that Adam had been fretting inwardly, worried as he was that Deborah would decide against union with so soiled a sailor.

"What's she got to do with it?"

"To do with what?" Adam said.

They looked around. Everybody was topside—and close at hand.

"Maybe we better go below," muttered Henry.

Mr. Holyoake, recently promoted from bosun, rubbered out his lower lip and caught it between fingers and let it plop back.

"You reckon he's scared?" a hand asked.

Mr. Holyoake shook an indignant head.

"He don't scare easy, that man."

Nevertheless the new mate knew that something was wrong. For some time now the skipper had been looking not morose exactly, nor even sad, but—well, sovther. He'd looked that way all through the run. Lately, the last few days, he had been twitchety—for him.