Page 20 of Maggie and the Pirate’s Son (Brides of Chattan #3)

Chapter Nineteen

T he sun rose bright and cheerful, as though no storm had forced them into hiding, as though Maggie’s world wasn’t about to be torn asunder. She woke with a stomachache that had nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with the empty, Bash-shaped hole about to be punched through her heart.

Careful not to wake him, she donned her old clothes. They no longer fit, belonging to a different girl in a whole different lifetime. Despite having bound her breasts flat for weeks, the bodice felt tight and restrictive, like one more cage from which she couldn’t escape. The skirts were too loose, the sleeves of her chemise much too tight, where new muscles had formed, and she longed to wear the comfy sailor attire she’d quickly grown accustomed to.

As Bash dozed in fitful slumber, she inspected the pendant he’d given her. He’d offered no words of explanation, merely hung it around her neck as though it had always belonged there. It was a lovely oval carved from soft wood, with a marquetry flower inlaid in lighter shades. And though she’d feared the wood might swell and be ruined from the damp, it looked as perfect as it had when he’d given it to her.

Like her own folding frame, inside it held two tiny sketches. One showed a beautiful black woman with long coiled hair, the other was unmistakably baby Bash. Unlike the wood, the portrait of his mother had begun to curl from the damp. Maggie blotted it gently, but it fell out of the locket into her hand.

There was writing on the back. The faded inscription was difficult to read so she moved to the mouth of the cave for better light.

Mahogany, cedar in a row

Coconut palm and pimento

Bury not my body there

In earth too rich and scented air

Dogwood blossoms, moonlight glow

Fondest dreams of sweet mango

A shiver ran down Maggie’s spine. It was the song Bash had awoken singing after taking the medicinal hashish, sure as beans , as Langley would say. He’d been humming it for weeks, struggling in vain to remember all the long-lost words. Carefully, she peeled the picture of baby Bash from the left side of the locket and turned it over in her palm.

The king once built a town so fair

Red hibiscus lined the square

Dance a waltz, then dance again

Down the hill, an empty lane

Andrew’s spire calls out to the e

Hear the bells but do not see

“All right?” Bash asked in a groggy croak, and Maggie whirled guiltily around to find him raising up on an elbow and blinking at her through sleepy eyes.

“I’m not sure,” she whispered.

“Mmm?”

She knelt beside him, opening her hands for him to see. “The pictures got wet, and I tried to dry them out, and well—she’s your mother, isn’t she?”

“Aye,” he said, gazing fondly down at the likeness.

“Could she have been sending you a message with her song?”

“Her song?” he asked, running a hand through his sleep-tousled hair.

She wanted to run her fingers through it too, but now was not the time.

He shook his head. “It was just a song—just a nonsense rhyme.”

“Or was it?” she asked, growing excited as her mind whirled with all the possibilities. “Your father loved her enough to make a baby with her. Maybe he told her where he buried the gold,” she said excitedly, but Bash frowned, and reached for her hand as if afraid to impart bad news.

“I don’t know if he loved her or not, but she was already gone when he buried it.”

“Are you certain?” she asked, deflating.

“Mad had a woman in every port. Perhaps she was one of his particular favorites, but that’s all she was. She didn’t even know he was a pirate until she arrived in Lewis. My auntie tried to tell her he was no good, but she was dazzled by him. So when she realized she was with child, she took herself to the Hebrides to find him and gave birth to me on the journey. I was born at sea, and I’ll die at sea,” he muttered the morose afterthought to himself.

Maggie squeezed his shoulder. “The captain said he buried the gold for his son,” she reminded him.

“Aye. Coming to Kingston meant coming to see her. Only she wasn’t there. Folks told him she’d taken her babe to find its father. He knew about me, and he knew where she was, but he never came looking until years after she died. Maybe in a drunken moment of paternal pride he thought to save it for me, but she couldn’t have known it existed, let alone where he left it.”

He seemed to realize he was clenching his fists and opened them to study the words written on the backs of the pictures, his eyes misting over.

“It’s her song, isn’t it?” Maggie asked. “The one you woke up singing after…” Her eyes darted to his unbandaged ear, which looked almost as good as new, though she still caught him cupping it protectively as though it pained him from time to time.

Bash brushed his dark locks down to cover the ear self-consciously and turned the portraits over again to gaze on mother and son.

“ The king once built a town so fair ,” he whispered. “She used to make me sing this song over and over. ‘Memorize it, Basti, and one day…’?” He squinted. “One day it will lead you home.”

His eyes widened and he stared at Maggie in wonder.

“Could he have buried it at her house when he went to find her?”

He shook his head, dazed by the idea.

“Your auntie, the one who told her he was no good, what happened to her?”

Bash shook his head again. “I tried to go and see her once. When I was twelve. I snuck off the ship at Port Royal but I didn’t make it to Kingston before Mad caught me.”

“The scars on your back?” she whispered, knowing his answer even before he nodded, lost in the distant memory.

“ Andrew’s spire calls out to thee .” He blinked twice. “There was a church spire. I could just see the top of it from Gallows Point. I remember thinking it must be the tallest thing I’d ever seen, when Mad’s shadow fell across me. I’d never felt so suddenly cold as I did then. ”

He blinked again, a few more times, as if coming back to himself. “We have to get you to the harbor.”

“What? Now?”

Bash nodded. “You’ve helped tremendously. I promise I’ll go and look for the gold. If it’s there, I’ll find it. But after all the business with Willy Walsh, Mad’s going to tear up this island looking for it too, and God help anyone in his way.”

Maggie understood this was something Bash felt he needed to do alone. She didn’t like it, but she understood.

So she didn’t argue when he folded his plaid and made a gift of it to her. She didn’t protest when he put out the last dying embers of their fire.

They set off for Kingston arm in arm, and she didn’t even complain when he gave her the money for her passage back to Scotland, or cry when he embraced her on the outskirts of town. They held on to each other as if they were drowning, and part of her wanted to drown. She bit her lip to keep from crying.

“It’s too dangerous for you. I can go on from here alone,” she reasoned. “You must go and seek your fortune.”

He frowned. “The port can be rough. Perhaps I should take you all the way.”

She shook her head. “You mustn’t be seen. Go. Now. And after, you can come back and find me.”

Then she gave him the little frame with pictures of Ellen and Jory. “Find them, and you’ll find me,” she whispered. She clung to him, fighting off tears as she added, “I will wait for you, Bastian MacLeod. I saved you once, and that makes you mine. Our souls are bound, stronger together than apart. I could never love another as dearly as I love you.”

With a last embrace and a kiss on the cheek, she headed off towards the port with the prickle of his eyes on her sweat-slicked neck, determined that this wouldn’t be goodbye.

Bash watched until Maggie disappeared from view and then he kept right on standing at the edge of the road like a lovesick fool, watching and waiting and wishing she’d run back to him, though he was the one who’d sent her away, his heart as raw as an open wound in need of scarring to protect it.

He searched the sky for answers and found only Andrew’s spire standing watch like a sentinel over the town.

Inside, the church was cool and empty, and Bash chose a pew in the back corner where he could observe all who entered and escape quickly should the need arise.

Was this the same spire he’d seen from Gallows Point that day ten years ago, before Mad caught him and dragged him back to the ship to be whipped within an inch of his life? He liked to think so, anyway.

He might have broken free there and then had he not been distracted by the corpse of his old friend Calico Jack, hanging over the harbor in an iron gibbet while birds pecked out his eyes. Bash hadn’t been able to stomach the taste of sorghum ever since.

There had been a wild look in Mad’s eye that day. What had the old man been so afraid of? Did he imagine his lover to be some sort of witch, able to divine the location of his precious gold and share it with young Bash? Stuff and nonsense.

Mad was a paranoid son of a bitch, and though his intuition was often right, Bash’s mother wasn’t a witch.

So what had she been trying to tell him with her song?

After the flogging, Mad had visited Bash where he lay huddled in a heap, too broken to find solace in his hammock. Delirium had turned the visitations into grotesque nightmares, but Bash realized now they may have been real, as were the confusing questions the captain asked, repeatedly demanding Bash reveal the location of his lost bounty.

Could the directions have possibly been there, locked in Bash’s brain and inscribed in his mother’s locket all along?

Of course, Maggie had no intention of booking passage back to Scotland and leaving Bash to struggle on his own. He’d been fighting his own side with almost no one to help him since he was just a little boy being passed from home to home, and she would never let him fight alone again.

But he was stubborn. Being more than a little hard-headed herself, she knew he wouldn’t give in. He wanted to protect her, and she loved him for it. He believed he had to go on from here alone as he’d always done before, and she understood that, too. She just didn’t accept it.

Maggie reckoned, though, if she could just lie low near the harbor, she might be able to wait him out. She had every faith he’d find Mad’s old treasure. He would find it, and then he’d rush back for her, and she’d be ready. If he didn’t make it back today, well, she had a little bit of money, perhaps enough to rent a room for one night. And if he didn’t find it by the morning, then he couldn’t be too angry when she turned up to help him.

Everything in Kingston harbor was new and strange, and the people seemed to think the same of her, so clearly overdressed in her earasaid and skirts, with her usually pale skin now sun-browned from her journey.

Finally locating a reputable looking ale house, she slipped inside. It was mostly empty, so she took a seat in the corner, daring the few denizens to stare.

A cautious barmaid approached her. “Bread and butter?” the girl asked.

Maggie nodded eagerly, licking her parched lips and hearing Bash’s guttural, Drink , as though he were standing right beside her. “And tea, if you have it.”

“Three pence,” the girl replied, eyeing Maggie’s somewhat disheveled appearance with a skeptical air.

When she withdrew her purse to pay for the meal, inside she found Bash’s locket. Maggie gasped, but quickly handed over the coins, and once the girl left, she examined the necklace again, hoping he’d at least kept the pictures and the poem.

He hadn’t of course, and she couldn’t help stroking a finger down his likeness’s little cheek where a scar would one day speak the cruelty he’d endured. Panic swelled within her.

What if he couldn’t remember the words without seeing them? What if he couldn’t find the gold without the locket? What if he never had any intention of trying? She had to find him, to return the pendant, pictures and all.

She flipped them over once more.

The king once built a town so fair

If this was indeed Kingston, that was a good start at least.

Red hibiscus lined the square

Maggie didn’t know what a hibiscus was, but it was time she found out.

The moment her food arrived, she wrapped up the bread and shoved it in her pocket, regretfully leaving the piping hot tea untouched. Bash would be displeased with her, but she’d have to find him first.

Bash rolled his head against the church wall behind him. There was nothing here. He was no closer to figuring out the poem than he had been an hour ago. Why had he started with the church? Did any of it even mean anything?

The king once built a town so fair , obviously referred to Kingston. Red hibiscus lined the square. Bash and Maggie had come upon the town from the jungle outskirts instead of the port, but he seemed to recall massive hibiscus flowers around the harbor all those years before.

Dance a waltz, then dance again. Down the hill an empty lane.

Some sort of dance hall in the town center? Or directions from there? He should have asked Maggie to teach him how to waltz. She would look so lovely floating through the air in a flowing ball gown on someone else’s arm.

He banged his head against the wall. Had he come this far to be stymied by social graces?

Sing the words, Basti , his mother used to say. She drilled him on it over and over. He’d thought it was a game, but she’d given him everything he needed, as they danced around the beach singing.

They danced, with him on her feet as she glided.

Bash closed his eyes, and he could see her feet beneath his babyish ones as she moved: right foot back, left foot to the left, right foot to the left, left foot forward, right foot to the right, left foot to the right.

His eyes snapped open. Right, left, left. Left, right, right. He slipped out a door towards the harbor and the town square.

When Bash reached the square, the church bells began to ring, and a heaviness settled on him like the bells were heralding Maggie’s ship’s departure.

He shook himself back to the moment .

Dance a waltz. Right, left, left .

He turned right down the first road off the square, then left at the first corner, which took him down a long and winding hill.

Andrew’s spire calls out to thee. Hear the bells but do not see.

He’d misremembered the line, supposing it was about the ocean. Pausing to look back, he could still make out the spire above the trees.

At the bottom of the hill, he turned left once more, then another left, and then right, and right again. The bells still rang, but from this vantage point he could no longer see that towering spire.

The town square was easy enough to locate, and once there, Maggie stood gawping at a massive red flower, its petals spread as wide as a dinner plate, its color more vibrant than an ocean sunset. There were dozens of them planted all around the square, and she was losing precious time, staring transfixed at the flowers, these hibiscus, and their ghostly, scentless beauty.

“Ya lost?” a voice at her elbow asked, and Maggie whirled around to find a young man with dark brown skin and luminous eyes staring curiously at her.

She shook her head quickly. Thirsty? Yes. Frightened? A bit. But she wasn’t lost. She had a feeling she was right where she needed to be.

When the boy shrugged and wandered away, Maggie drew back into nearby shrubbery and shadows, and opened the locket once more.

Dance a waltz, then dance again

Down the hill, an empty lan e

What on earth could it mean? How was this any kind of map? Unless Amoy meant for her son to follow the steps of a dance… where each turn about the floor indicated a turn down another lane or byway? Mercy, the poet was clever. Maggie was starting to understand where Bash got his sharp mind for languages and mathematics from.

If her hunch was correct, that meant the first turn off the square was to the right. She turned and her gaze was drawn to a figure with warm, golden-brown skin, disappearing around the corner. Throttling her impulse to run after him, she kept low and out of sight as she followed. He needed to do this on his own.

Before Bash lay a lane of tidy houses. The path was lined with fragrant trees.

Mahogany, cedar in a row. Coconut palm and pimento.

Gardens were dotted with coconut palms to be sure, but none held pimento trees.

He heaved a sigh, and perhaps it was wishful thinking, but he could almost taste the spicy fragrance of pimento on the breeze, growing stronger as he continued down the lane.

And then he saw it. In front of a dilapidated house where the roof had recently caved in, there stood a pimento tree, its scraggly branches raised like wide, open arms, its ripe, purplish berries hanging in clumps just begging to be picked and dried. Tears sprang to his eyes, as though with recognition. Was this old place where his mother had lived with his auntie and fallen in love with working the soil to make things grow? What had become of that wise woman who warned her little sister about Cornelius MacLeod all those years ago ?

Bury not my body there, in earth too rich and scented air. Dogwood blossoms, moonlight glow, fondest dreams of sweet mango.

Slowly Bash circled the house. White dogwoods bloomed at the corner. What a difference it must have been for his mother compared to the windswept Isle of Lewis.

He’d enjoyed a happy boyhood there, but he could see why she spent so many hours attempting to transform her little patch of earth into a paradise like this one. She was a marvel in the garden, and there was something familiar about this place, like the imprint of her soul upon the soil.

In the back corner of the property, where the garden grew feral trying to catch up with the surrounding bush, he spied a mango tree.

He should have brought a shovel, but he hadn’t planned on treasure hunting when he whisked Maggie off the ship. He had only his hands. And so, under the shade of the mango tree, he clawed away the damp, rich soil, shifting it easily until his blackened nails scraped against the wood of an old chest.

Working faster, he dug away the earth all around the top until there was almost enough room to pry it out.

Bash held his breath as he knelt in the dirt and worked first one side and then the other to free its handles. When it wouldn’t budge, he attempted to lever it open with his knife, just to be sure it was worth the trouble. For all he knew, this might be a box of rocks. But whatever it contained was locked up tight inside.

“Good work, boy,” Mad’s drawl sounded, low and to Bash’s right. He should’ve known. The captain had probably been following since the moment they slipped off the ship.

He glanced up at his sire, expecting to see a blunderbuss leveled at his heart, but it was so much worse than a blunderbuss. Mad stood about ten feet away, one arm all but choking Maggie, a knife to her throat.

Using only his eyes, Bash tried to tell her to stay calm, not to worry, everything would be all right. He’d make sure of it. Inside, though, his stomach tied itself in the tightest of knots, his mind racing with impossible ideas. All he could think to do was keep Mad talking.

“I always suspected the bitch knew where it was,” Mad sneered.

“My mother? How could she have?”

“Savryna. Amoy’s sister. Your aunt. She must have seen me bury it that night. But over there. She’ll have moved it. I turned this place upside-down year after year, and all along, she knew.”

“You could have come to Lewis any time,” Bash spat. “Asked Ma about your precious gold. Why didn’t you?”

“I knew there was nothing for me on Lewis.”

Bash nodded. It was maybe the most truthful thing his sire had ever said. But then something else occurred to him. “If you thought I knew where it was, why didn’t you keep following me ten years ago instead of dragging me back to the ship?”

Mad’s lips curved into a cruel and calculating smile. “Couldn’t give you an inch, could I? And risk you getting the idea I wasn’t the one in command? Look how well it worked. Tamed you into a perfect little lapdog. At least ’til this one came along,” he added, tightening his chokehold on Maggie, making her grunt. “Now which is it? A boy in girl’s clothing or the other way around? Shall we check?” He reached into her bodice and groped her breasts, squeezing them hard enough she winced.

A fiery rage was building in Bash’s stomach, but again he tried to communicate to Maggie that everything would be all right. Her eyes were locked on his, and she didn’t seem angry or frightened, only sad, but in a way, he thought perhaps she understood.

“I’ll take that back now,” Mad said, nodding to the chest still in the ground. “You’ll forgo your cut, of course, on account of the mutiny and insubordination. But I’ll let you live. For now.”

“A tempting offer,” Bash said. “But you’re not getting anything while your knife is at her throat.”

“You’re not in much of a position to bargain,” Mad sneered .

“You want the chest, don’t you? I’ll trade you the girl for the gold.”

From behind his back, Mad raised his other hand, aiming a blunderbuss. Check and mate. “Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear, boy. Bring my gold over here and put it in the cabin boy’s hands, and if you try anything funny…” he finished the sentence by turning the muzzle of his gun to point at Maggie’s head.

Bash had committed a multitude of sins over the last decade, but perhaps none so egregious as the hate now coursing through him for the man who was his sire, because murder was a sin, and in his heart, he knew they couldn’t both come out of this alive.