Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (153 page)

As she spoke to Bast, she had glimpsed the British seaman loitering past. He returned now from the opposite direction, giving her a leer, his small eyes cunning as he slowed. It might have been a mistake, she recognized, for her to have personal contact with any of the men other than Morgan. It could so easily give rise to hopes that her favor was not fixed on one man.

A cold expression on her face, she lowered her gaze to the book in her lap. After a few minutes, the man moved on.

That was not the end of it. That evening as the sun slowly dipped below the stern and the lavender coolness of dusk settled over the ship, Félicité started along the companionway to the gangway leading to the deck. At the foot she paused, caught by the sound of men’s voices raised in a rollicking chantey. It was being led by a French rogue, and concerned, in obliquely ribald rhyme, a pretty lame girl who carried her beau petit pannier, beauteous little basket, to market. There, the song went on, she met a sailor who led her along, taking the advantage to fill her “basket” for her.

“On a feather bed he made her anchor, and takes three reefs in her apron,” the men sang between the repeating chorus. “Then he furls her petticoats, clewing up her lower sails—

“Then to get goin’, this smart topman, sends up his main topmast!”

It seemed best not to put in an appearance until the ditty, rolling verse after bawdy verse overhead, had come to an end. She waited, caught between embarrassment and amusement.

A scuffling footstep sounded behind her. She swung around to see the hatchet-faced man appearing out of the gloom of the stern companionway. He looked her up and down, his smile unpleasant. “Well, look who we have here.”

To stay where she was would not be wise, not now. Without speaking, Félicité turned to mount the steep gangway.

The sailor put out his hand, catching her arm. “What’s ye hurry? Bide awhile. I can promise to entertain ye well; my topmast be fair aching to get to the job.”

“Let me pass, or it will be the worst for you,” she snapped, jerking her arm free, climbing upward.

“Not so fast,” the man jeered, transferring his hold to the waist of her breeches. “I know of a place in the hold. There’s a nice bale of silk there that will feel just fine against your back while I fill your pretty little basket for you.”

“Let go!” She held to the sides of the gangway with both hands while she swung to plant her foot in the man’s belly, giving him a shove.

His grip broke and she hurried upward, only to be stopped by a hand on her ankle. The seaman climbed the steps behind her, shifting his hold higher.

“Get away, you sniveling canaille,” she cried, swinging the weight of her body so she slammed into him, forcing him against the side of the narrow way. He snarled in pain and frustrated rage, but would not be dislodged.

From above came the rasp of a sword sliding from its scabbard. The sailor jerked his head back, his face blanching as he looked up. Félicité swung to see Morgan standing above them, one hand braced on the door opening, one holding his rapier.

“Problems, my dear?” he drawled.

The events that followed, swift and terrible and relentlessly just, took on the aspect of a nightmare. The British seaman was hauled on the deck, dragged to the netting, and tied to it. Morgan gave a hard order, and the burly sailor who acted as bosun stepped forward. A cat-o’-nine-tails, unloaded but still deadly, was brought out. The man’s shirt was torn away, and to the droning count that would eventually reach thirty-nine, the blows began to fall.

Félicité stood it as long as she could, stood it until Valcour, weak, glassy-eyed, and bent over as he favored his wounded side, appeared on the deck to view the spectacle, until the Britisher began to jerk with hoarse screams tearing at his throat while the hands on deck grew silent. It was then she turned and with set face went below, not stopping until the door of her cabin had thudded to behind her.

Morgan joined her there within the hour. He paused on the threshold, meeting her dark-brown gaze as she turned to face him. Stepping inside, he closed the door.

“If you have come to serve me as you did that man, I warn you, you will have a fight, on your hands!” She glared at him, stiff with defiance.

“What makes you think I have any such idea?” He unbuckled his sword and flung it to one side, then began to tug his shirt from his breeches.

“It is usual in a case like this to consider both parties equally guilty.”

He lifted a brow. “Among the French, perhaps. As an Irishman, I fail to see the logic.”

The answer loomed suddenly as an embarrassment. Her voice stifled, she gave it anyway. “In most cases, the woman is considered to have encouraged him, or driven him to desperate measures by — by her teasing.”

“Oh, of that I acquit you without a moment’s thought, my dear Félicité. Such measures you would, I’m sure, reserve for men you know well, those who for some reason have earned your hatred.”

It was a blessing that he turned his back then. To gloss over that dangerous subject she said, “Then what are you here for?”

“To watch you.”

“If you don’t hold me to blame, why should you do that?” she demanded in sharp tones.

“I suppose I should have said to watch over you, to guard you. I have been somewhat remiss in that duty, especially as now, in the early evening.”

“There’s no need.”

“Isn’t there? Then a man has an aching back tonight for nothing.” He turned then to face her, his green eyes dark.

She met his gaze squarely and risked a question that had been hovering at the base of her mind. “Why, Morgan? Why so severe a chastisement when you, yourself—”

“Severe? I should have hanged the dog! But what is this display of concern? I would have thought you would be happy to see him flogged.”

She clenched her teeth against a shiver. “Never.”

“Why? Can it be you feel yourself to blame, no matter what I think?”

“I — I don’t know,” she said, moistening her lips as he moved nearer. “I shouldn’t be here.”

“Granted. Situations like this are what the old taboo against women at sea is designed to prevent. But it was no fault of your own that you were brought on board, was it?”

She shook her head in wordless negation.

“As for the rest, is it the fault of the gold, bright-shining and infinitely pleasurable to hold, that men steal it? Is it the fault of the rum that men drink themselves blind and dumb? Why then should it be a woman’s fault if a man throws away his self-control and succumbs to his most base desires? To hold it otherwise is no more than a feeble excuse for the crimes committed these centuries past against womankind. I say it is so, Félicité, and who should know better than I?”

She stared at him, lost in the jade-green certainty of his eyes, feeling his words seeping in quiet splendor through the tight-held turmoil of her mind. It was, she recognized, an unflinching apology for past offense. It was also a determination for the future, one she might test at will, with his compliments.

They prepared for bed then. Félicité sought her bunk first pulling the coverlet up to her chin. Morgan turned out the lantern and lifted himself into the upper bunk. And though the climb was laughably easy for someone of his strength, his breathing was hard for some time as they lay, together yet separate, staring into the dark.

16

“SAIL, HO! SAIL AWAY on the starboard bow!”

The cry came from a man high on the foremast just after daybreak of near fourteen days of fruitless sailing. Morgan put his glass to his eye and pronounced the ship to be a Yankee merchantman from the English colonies of North America. Her cargo might not be rich, but the ship itself, a trim snow, would be worth the taking. They were sailing on a parallel course, but the brigantine, much the faster vessel, could overtake her in short order.

He stepped from the rail to go below, there to consult with the Black Stallion’s master. Though Captain Jacques Bonhomme had not yet been seen on this voyage, it was still his duty to order the brigantine into a fight and, drunk or sober, to command her during it.

While Morgan was away from the deck, Valcour mounted, sidling, to the poop. His face twisted with grim glee as he surveyed the snow, which could be made out now to be the Prudence from the port of Boston. His voice shrill, he called, “Crack on all sail! We will close in for the kill!”

The men, after a moment’s hesitation, leaped to obey him. The Black Stallion swept forward like a spread-winged Pegasus.

Most broad-beamed merchant ships were designed to carry the greatest amount of cargo with the least amount of crew. Speed took second place to stability, and there was virtually no provision for heavy armament that would take up precious space. The vessels were owned by men of wealth who took shares in the ships to finance their voyages, thereby spreading the risks as well as profits among themselves. The captains and crews shared little in the cargo, the seamen being paid a mean wage and the masters being given only a small space in the hold to carry goods for their own benefit. There was then no great incentive for them to protect either the ship on which they sailed or her cargo. For these reasons, the merchantmen were looked on as easy prey. Taking one was hardly sport at all, like gaffing fish in a seine.

The brigantine closed in, the men standing by with grappling hooks ready to swarm over the ratlines onto the smaller ship. The stretch of water between them narrowed until men could be seen scurrying about on the snow.

Without warning, smoke blossomed and a hail of shot rattled onto the brigantine’s deck. The crew dived for cover, cursing. A man let out a shout. “Hell’s bells! She’s got murdering pieces!”

A less anxious captain would have noticed the light guns. At such close range their fire was murderous indeed. More than one man writhed with pain, his blood staining the holystoned planking. Valcour seemed not to notice. Intent on coming alongside he stood favoring his sore abdomen with his lips drawn back from his teeth. The helmsman at the whipstaff flung him a strained glance, but held the brigantine steady on the course.

Once more the falconets and minions spoke from the snow. Their missiles sang through the rigging. And then across the way, the merchant ship swung. From her bow a chase gun boomed, sending twelve-pound shot smoking through the topgallants. With slow grace, the white sails sagged, dangling from a broken yard, reaching toward the deck. The ship rolled with the glancing blow, and Valcour stumbled, falling to his knees.

“Hard aport! Helmsman, hard aport, for the love of God!”

The order rang loud and clear with the edge of command. Morgan, gaining the deck at a run, taking in the situation with a single hard glance, did not wait to see it obeyed.

“To your stations, men,” he called. “Look lively!”

They took another blasting before they could come about, and fire, water, and oak splinters spouted in the air. Men screamed in agony. A gap appeared in the rail near the bow. Black smoke lay on the sea, drifting around them with an acrid stench that caught in the lungs.

The distance between the two ships widened. Orders were rapped out, and men scrambled aloft. The brigantine veered onto a parallel run with the snow, moving sluggishly, but answering to her helm.

“Fire!”

The guns boomed, splitting the fabric of the morning asunder, sending the sound rolling outward in slow waves of concussion as they recoiled to the limit of their hemp breeching ropes. The starboard rail of the brigantine began an upward climb as the ship reacted to the kick of her own guns. A single white geyser spewed upward in the water to one side of the snow, but every other shot smashed home.

Félicité saw the mainmast of the merchantman topple like a felled tree, taking with it a tangle of sailcloth and cordage. She heard the screams of injured men, and saw with a tremulous sigh the colors of the snow as they were struck, pulled down and waved by a lone seaman in token of surrender.

It was then that Morgan, turning to survey the damage to the brigantine, saw Félicité. His face whitened beneath the layer of soot that coated him, and his eyes blazed with green fire.

“God in heaven!” he ground out. “Why aren’t you below where it’s safe? Aren’t you ever going to stay where you belong?”

The pirate crew fell over themselves boarding the snow. Any merchantman that went to such lengths to protect itself, they figured, must be laden with valuable cargo. They were disbelieving, then indignant, when they discovered the hold stuffed with barrel staves and salted cod, outward bound for Jamaica. But though they tore the ship apart searching, nothing else could they find.