Page 39

C ayo Hueso may not have been currently occupied by cannibals.

But when the Cygnet reached it forty-eight hours later, it did have other unexpected occupants.

In a bay on the leeward side of the island, there were men in the water bathing and fishing; men on the beach sitting around campfires cooking, laughing.

And anchored in the deepest part of the bay was the Black Wind , the tops of her three masts festooned with palm fronds.

“What the bloody hell?” Rose muttered.

Stubb scratched his chin and chuckled at the palm branches. “Clever bastard. That be why we didn’t see ‘is masts stickin’ above the trees. Rest o’ the island be too damned flat to hide the big bitch proper-like.”

Sparing any praise, Rose called for a boat to be lowered at once and for Duardo to row her ashore. There she was directed to a tent set back against the fringe of palm trees where Sebastien Fonteyne sat comfortably in the shade, in a makeshift canvas chair and smoking one of his rolled cigars.

Rose tramped alone through the soft sand, her anger up for a confrontation.

“What … are you doing here?”

He shrugged. “I gave it some thought and decided it wouldn’t be fair to let you have all the fun.”

“I thought you said it was a crack-brained idea.”

“I still think it is. But I also think it’s crack-brained enough that it just might work. Lafitte needs time. Jackson most of all needs time and if we can buy them a little extra …?”

“Plus, you can take all the credit if it does work.”

“Hell no. The credit is yours. I’m merely here to watch your back.”

“The day I believe that …”

“… will be the day you finally, fully trust me. A day I look forward to with equal anticipation and trepidation.” He flashed one of his most charming and disarming grins.

“Now then, would you like a drink or something to eat? You’re looking a little strained.

I have rum, wine, lemon water if you prefer and the men just brought out a platter of freshly grilled fish. ”

Without answering, she turned on her heel and retraced her steps across the sand to the water’s edge where Duardo was waiting with the jolly boat.

The sun was high in the sky and blazing hot.

The water was clear and sparkling. She stripped off her coat and waistcoat and tossed them in the boat along with her hat.

She kicked off her boots and stockings and, wearing just a cambric shirt and breeches, waded into the surf and swam back to her ship.

Over the next two days it became a game of preparation, then waiting.

Under Billy’s supervision, the crew made good use of their time transforming several longboats into single masted fishing boats. The bottoms and gunwales were lined with casks of black powder. Fuses were tested as to how much time would be needed for a man to light them and swim clear.

When that was done, with no sign of the fleet on the horizon, the Cygnet was scrubbed and cleaned top to bottom.

Rose would have liked to beach her and scrape her hull clean of barnacles, but that could take weeks, not hours or days.

Instead, she challenged the crew to races to find the best swimmers and from that sadly small number, volunteers were chosen to man the fireships.

Men with the keenest eyesight built crow’s nests atop the tallest palm trees located on the highest rise of land, but after four days of sighting nothing but empty sea, clouds, and gulls, the tension on board grew palpable.

Each night Rose met with Stubb, Duardo, Billy, and Digby Fitch in her cabin and each night they went over their plans to debate what could go right or very wrong.

During all this time, Fonteyne either remained on his ship or sat in the shade on the beach. Communication between ships was nearly non-existent.

Stubb shook his head. “Ye never should ‘ave give the bastard ‘is ship back.”

“You seem to think I had a choice,” Rose said.

“Ye would ‘ave if ye’d’ve kept ‘im bound in irons instead o’ wrappin’ yer legs around ‘im an’ thinkin’ that would change ‘is nature.

Ye bloody well know he ‘as no loyalties, cept to the color ‘o gold. Mark my words, he be not ‘ere to help, but to hinder. First chance he gets, he’ll double-cross ye. He be like a bloody big cat just bidin’ ‘is time afore he pounces.”

Duardo shot the little man a warning glance and growled low in his throat, but Rose lifted the tips of her fingers off the table to restrain him.

“I am not his keeper, nor is he mine. As for trusting him, if you think so little of me to believe I would allow a man’s body to command the way I think or act, then you obviously do not know me at all and have wasted the last five years on board my ship. ”

With four pairs of ice-cold eyes glaring at him, Stubb shrank back in his chair and grumbled. “Only speakin’ my mind an’ if ye don’t expect that from me after all these years, then ye don’t be knowin’ me a’tall.”

Rose sighed. “I expect you to be honest with me, which you are, most of the time.”

“Bein’ honest now,” he muttered under his breath, undaunted. “You an’ Billy: both addled as newts.”

Billy was in the middle of peeling a mango and stabbed the tip of the dagger into the top of the table. “One more word and I vow it will be your last.”

So it went on the fourth day. And the fifth. Most of that time the sky was thick with clouds and frequent squalls passed over the islands. The humid air did nothing to ease the heat or banish the swarms of vicious mosquitoes.

Archie Penman spent those same long days exploring the island.

He discovered the island’s name, isle of bones, was exactly that.

He trekked out daily with his sketch pad and found vast pits filled with human skeletons that had once been buried but were now exposed and bleached white by the tropical sun.

Thankfully, he did not find any graves that were relatively fresh.

He also carried with him his little string of baskets to search for leaves, herbs, and bugs to add to his apothecary supplies on board.

It was during one of his treks he found a small freshwater pond that was cool and deep and seemed the ideal place to strip naked and enjoy a private swim away from prying eyes.

He was floating on his back, his arms stretched up behind his head, eyes closed and a few contented sighs away from drifting off to sleep when he heard a splash nearby.

Jerking himself upright, he saw Billy by the water’s edge a few feet away.

“Forgive me, I did not mean to startle you. I thought sure you must have heard me.”

“No, I … my head was half under the water. All I could hear was my own breathing.”

“Would you rather I leave you on your own? I know how difficult it is to find some privacy on board a ship.”

“Please, no. Don’t leave. We haven’t had the chance to spend much time together lately.”

Billy offered up a knowing smile. “Our captains are each as stubborn as the other.”

“Indeed. It is like standing between two panes of glass and wondering which one will shatter first.”

She hesitated and looked like she might turn away.

“Please don’t go,” he said again. “The water is cool and lovely.”

Billy noted where his clothing was laid out on a nearby rock.

“I promise to be a complete gentleman and keep my hands entirely to myself.”

Billy debated the watery blur of naked flesh, then unfastened the thong at her waist. She slipped out of her short canvas trousers and dropped them in a crumple on the mossy bank.

Archie’s tongue became stuck to the roof of his mouth as he watched her lift her shirt up over her head.

Her body was lean and taut, tanned brown as a berry from the knees down and the arms up but with a sailor’s snow-white skin in between.

Her body was scarred in a dozen places, not the least of which was the continuation of the puckered burn on the side of her face and neck that stretched down almost to her breast.

“Why do you do what you do?” he asked, the question blurted before he had a chance to think about it. “Why the guns? Why something so dangerous?”

She dunked her head under the water and scrubbed at her face and hair for a moment to remove the day’s sweat before answering.

“My father was a gunsmith. He worked in a cannon foundry that also made various types of weapons.

I knew how to load and fire a blunderbuss before my arms were strong enough to carry one.

When I was six, he caught me trying to load one of the cannons.

I was doing it all wrong and likely would have blown both my hands off, so he taught me the right way.

“Spain was very territorial and someone was always at war with a rival kingdom or principality. He was always being sent to teach the soldiers how to work the guns and I learned by his side until I was twelve or thirteen. Then one day he was accused of being a spy and shot. I would have been shot as well but I fled to Marseille and stowed away on board a ship disguised as a boy. The rest is a long and tangled story that brought me over to this side of the Ocean-Sea, and when I heard that a female captain was taking on a crew, I had to check it out. Rose was there, looking every bit a sea captain. She was overseeing the signing of the articles and when it came to my turn, somehow she saw beneath the disguise … a disguise I had lived in for almost ten years. She told me to discard it, she had no use for pretense on board her ship. For that, I thank her every day for letting me just be me.”

“I would add my thanks as well,” Penman said, drifting closer to her. “Such loveliness should not be bound up to look like a scruffian.”

She turned the ruined side of her face away. “I am hardly lovely.”

“You are to me, and I’ve been told I have a very acute eye and extremely good judgement when it comes to the opposite sex.”

“You are also a doctor.”

“Yes. And I wish I had been on board your ship when this happened to you.” He reached out and gently grasped her chin, forcing her to turn her face toward him again. “Whoever treated your burns … well … he wasn’t very good. And that falls on him, not you.”

He moved again, bringing his body close enough they shared the aura of warmer water between them.

Penman traced a fingertip from her chin down to her breast, holding his breath when he felt the tiny shivers beneath her skin. “Does it trouble you for your crew to know that we … have become closer?”

“No. It does not trouble me one whit.”

He leaned forward and kissed the tip of her nose. “I’m glad to hear it, because I would be quite happy to stand naked at the top of a mast and shout it to the world.”

Now she was the one short on breath. “I’ve never … I mean, I haven’t …”

He smiled gently and took her face between his hands, kissing her so tenderly and so deeply, she sighed into his mouth and wrapped her arms, her legs instinctively around him.

With their mouths still molded together, Penman lifted her and carried her out of the water.

There, slick and sluicing water, with Billy’s legs still wrapped tightly around his waist, he was beginning to press into her warmth when they heard a familiar voice through the surrounding fringe of vegetation.

“By Neptune’s holy turds! I vow I be the last sane body on this island. All this frolickin’ an’ fornicatin.’ ‘Tis nay wonder aught gets done around here. There be a ship out in the Straits, ye lummocks. Did ye not hear the alarm?”

“I vow I will, one day, pin Stubb’s nose to the mast,” Billy said, breathless. “He pokes it in so many places where it is not wanted, I’m surprised he has kept it this long.”

Archie started to pull away but her legs tightened and her hands grasped at his buttocks. “Don’t you dare. Or I vow something of yours will be pinned on the mast along side his nose.”

Archie grinned and much to Stubb’s chagrin, did not respond to the first, second, or third conch-horn alarm that echoed across the island.

By the time they were dressed and had gathered up the baskets Penman had collected, the single ship had become a line of white dots neatly spaced apart, riding low on the horizon.

“Too many to be merchants,” Billy said. “It has to be the English fleet.”

They started quickly back to the bay. Both were grinning, too satiated and flushed with renewed energy to notice or care that the buttons on Penman’s waistcoat were matched to the wrong holes or that Billy Burr had moss in her hair.