Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (143 page)

“Bon jour, mon ami!”

At the cheerful greeting, Félicité turned to behold the most congenial-looking man she had yet seen among the ill-visaged crew, though that was in some sense a comment on the quality of those thus far brought to her notice. Dark-haired, rakish, he was a well-setup man of perhaps forty-odd years with Latin brown eyes staring from a once-handsome face marked by dissipation and the effects of the rum bottle. The warmth of his greeting and his grin were unfeigned, though there was a flicker of shrewdness in his quick scrutiny. Regardless, the return Félicité made was noncommittal.

“Permit me to introduce myself. I am Capitaine Jacques Bon homme, à votre service.”

The name was a common one, the most common, in fact, in all France, so common as to be definitely suspicious. For all that, it was more than she had thought to provide for herself in her masculine personification. She executed what she hoped was a passable bow to cover her confusion.

“How do you do? I am traveling with M’sieu Murat, as you must know. My name is Lafargue. Fé — François Lafargue.”

“You are a trifle young, are you not, to be seeking adventure?”

She must remember to lower the timbre of her voice. “Sometimes, M’sieu le Capitaine, the position is reversed, and adventure seeks one out.”

“Ah, a beardless philosopher. That should relieve the tedium.” The merry light in his eyes robbed the words of offense.

“Do you make this voyage often?”

His joie de vie was abruptly quenched. “I do nothing else.”

“You seem to have a great many men.”

“Certainement. A fine cutthroat crew, are they not? And I their elected captain, heigh-ho.”

“Elected.”

“For my sins and my beaux yeux, to say nothing of my skill at navigation. I am, in addition, thought to run a lucky ship, or at least a profitable one.”

“I am sure your backers appreciate that.”

“My backers? The Raven has none. What need of we for such when we have a fair wind and the favor of Dame Fortune?”

The Raven. The name tugged at her memory, but she resisted that slight pull, following instead another tangent. “None, M’sieu le Capitaine? I understood that Valcour Murat was one of their number.”

“You must have got it wrong. Murat has no greater or lesser share than any other officer on the ship. He has advanced far in the short time he has been with us, the reasons being his skill in hunting down quarry and his single-minded hatred of the Spanish which lets him smell one below any horizon. Authority he has as ship’s quarter-master, except when the fever of malaria has me in its grip. Only rum will rout the chills and release the talons that this pestilence sinks into my bones. Someone else must lead my crew of corsairs then. Of late, it has been Murat.”

For a stark instant of remembrance Félicité stared, her gaze fastened on his mobile features as they twisted in a wry grimace. Gathering her wits, she leaned forward in a smooth bow. “I would like to hear more, M’sieu le Capitaine, but I see the serving wench has breakfast ready. Perhaps I may speak with you another time?”

“Of a certainty,” the Frenchman replied, amusement tracing through his dismissal as he leaned on the rail to watch Félicité walk away.

Her excuse was valid. She collected Ashanti along with the ship’s biscuits the maid had toasted, the fried salt meat and dried fruit. They descended to the cabin. Allowing Ashanti to go before her, she stepped through the threshold and slammed the bulkhead door behind her. Valcour turned from the washstand, where he was shaving.

“What have you been up to?” he inquired.

“I have been speaking to Captain Bonhomme. Tell me, Valcour, how does it come about that we have taken passage on a pirate lugger?”

He deliberately finished scraping the side of his face, put down the well-honed blade he was using, and with a length of toweling, wiped away the soap. “It took less time than I expected for you to discover it.”

“Valcour, why—”

He lifted a brow. “It’s a ship like any other. Why pay for passage when it can be had without?”

“And I suppose if we run across a likely prize your friends, or should I say your followers, will run up a black flag and seize her?” So intent was she on the extent of Valcour’s duplicity that she scarcely noticed as Ashanti set down the breakfast tray, twitched a small packet from under the pillow in the bunk where she slept, and slipped from the cabin.

“Our good captain was garrulous, wasn’t he? I never knew pretty boys had any appeal for him.”

She ignored the jibes. “So it’s true. This is where you have been, where you have spent your time, while my father was in prison. Here on one of the most notorious pirate ships to ever ply the gulf!”

“What can you know of it, ma chère?”

“So black is the record of this ship that tales of the deeds committed aboard her penetrated even to New Orleans!”

“Greatly exaggerated, I’m sure. The captain did tell you that I command only on the odd occasion when he is under the weather?”

“Are you trying to deny responsibility for the atrocities attached to this ship’s name? I don’t think you can, not so long as you stayed—”

“Very well,” he grated, “I am of a most callous depravity, hungeringly cruel. Charge me also with incestuous lust, for I want you, my dear sister. I have longed for these many years to feel your soft body writhing under me, and I see no reason now to wait.”

“What—what are you saying?” she breathed, a strangled sound. The blood drained from her face, leaving it white and still. She had meant to accuse him only of guilt by association, for staying with the Raven after he had discovered what she was, for returning to her. His words struck a savage double blow.

“How can you not understand? I have shown you in a thousand ways since we were children that you were mine.”

She recognized the truth of what he said, realized also the protection of her willful blindness. “You — you are my brother.”

“No more am I, nor ever was!” He moved toward her with the springing steel of a swordsman in his step, and the expression rising slowly behind his eyes made the blood congeal in her veins.

“Valcour—” she breathed as she retreated.

“I am Valcour Murat, no brother of yours, no sibling, no safe relative. I am the man who watched you grow, watched you turn from a green girl into a woman ripe for plucking. You allowed another man to rob me of the first sweet fruit, a betrayal for which you must and shall feel the pain of punishment.”

She moistened dry lips. “I told you I could not prevent it. If you had not—”

“Not that again,” he cut viciously through her words. “The first folly was yours, my dear Félicité.” He picked up her wooden-backed hairbrush from the washstand where she had left it without slowing his advance.

“This — this is madness.” She flung a glance at the door, but he had maneuvered so that a quick lunge could cut her off the instant she made any movement toward it. She could scream, but if anyone came would they help, or would they be more likely to hold her spread-eagled while they waited their turn?

“But such a pleasurable insanity. How many times have I thought of this, of laying you across my knees face down, of throwing your skirts above your head, and while you squirm and cry for mercy, bringing the flat of my hand down upon the soft and tender whiteness of your derriére, leaving its imprint there like a brand? Instead of skirts, now you wear breeches to be pushed down around your ankles, but the final results will be the same.”

With abrupt decision, he discarded the hairbrush, tossing it onto the bunk. As Félicité’s attention was diverted by that movement, he swooped, jerking her toward him so that she stumbled and fell across him as he threw himself onto the bunk.

An exultant, uncontrolled laugh burst from his throat. His fingers dug into her, gouging muscles, paralyzing nerves so that she gasped in pain, twisting and turning with all the wretched weakness of a gaffed fish. His hand came down in a stinging, stunning blow upon her backside. As she stiffened, he reached for the buttons that held her breeches.

Above the sound of the blood drumming in her ears and her own difficult gasping for breath as she kicked and struggled, she did not hear the door open. Without warning Ashanti was there carrying a tray from which rose scalding steam.

“Your chocolate, M’sieu, Valcour,” came her quiet voice that held within it the essence of a threat.

Valcour went still, poised under the sudden danger of scalding liquid held inches from his face. Félicité scrambled from his lap, crouching on her knees on the heaving floor. Ashanti swayed slightly with the movement of the ship, the steam from the open tin pot rising in white, wavering eddies. The strain of the moment lengthened with twanging tautness, then Valcour reached for the nearest of the cups beside the pot.

“How very enterprising of you,” he said, snarling vindictiveness in his yellow-brown eyes as he watched the maid. “I won’t forget.”

Ashanti did not make the mistake of attempting an answer. Her movements deft, she poured chocolate into the cup he held, then filled one for Félicité and handed it to her. “There will be no chocolate tomorrow,” she said, her voice prosaic. “They slaughtered the cow this morning. Will you have breakfast now, mam’selle, m’sieu?”

“We — may as well,” Félicité agreed, recovering her aplomb with an effort.

“And then,” Valcour said, watching with malevolent closeness as Ashanti parceled out the last of the chocolate into her own cup, “you can go while we bring our business to a — satisfactory conclusion.”

Again Ashanti did not reply, only sending Valcour a long glance, her face smooth, dispassionate, as she watched him swallow a long draft of his chocolate in his anxiety to have done with it. She proffered a dry biscuit. He took it, bit into it, and drank once more.

Félicité grew slowly aware of an undercurrent of expectancy that had nothing to do with Valcour’s threats. She ate her meal, sipping from her cup. She looked at Ashanti, sedately lifting her own chocolate to her lips. Valcour drained his and flung the cup down with a disdainful flip of his wrist. He glanced at Félicité, then turned his gaze to the maid.

Uneasiness washed over his face. The blood receded from under his skin, leaving it tinged with yellow. Globules of perspiration burst from his pores. He swallowed, then swallowed again. He started up, cracking his skull against the overhead bunk. Swaying, with blood starting from a cut on his brow, he raised a hand to his throat, tearing at his ruffles.

“For the love of God,” he gasped, his wild gaze on Ashanti. “You’ve poisoned me!” He stumbled forward a step, then bolted for the door.

Valcour did not die. For the remainder of the day he hung from the after rail, giving up gall and bile into the sea, or else lay moaning, moistly pale, clutching his belly and muttering curses. The maid refused to help him. There was no antidote, she said with serene contempt.

Nor did the crew seem overly concerned. They eyed him now and then with a certain rude disdain, bawling obscenities at each other with leers and winks, and taking wagers on when they would be able to see his guts. The general consensus was that he would cast up a final accounting by eight bells of the afternoon watch, as night came down to buss the blue water.

Those who thought it was a sure thing lost their money. It was Captain Bonhomme who, with an offering of watered rum, effected the change. Moments after Valcour had drunk it down, he was upon his feet, staggering toward the head of the ship, bent over against the gripping in his bowels. There in that traditional shipboard ocean wide latrine, perched precariously on the braces of the bowsprit where the ship’s plunging into the waves would wash away the excrement, pawing at the forechains and screened by breast-high bulwarks, he stayed for the better part of the night.

The morning dawned red with a heavy swale. The wind had swung around so that they ran free before it with all sails set and straining. Toward noon, a lug topsail, patched and yellowed, split with a crack like lightning. The pirate crew swarmed aloft to take it down and spread another, but when it was done, they stood on the deck, quartering the horizon with their eyes. A sage comment or two was passed about a falling glass, the dread word “hurricane” was whispered from lip to lip, and a dark, wild-eyed Portuguese in a stocking cap was seen to cross himself. A growling reference was made to the Negro wench; it was bad luck, they said, to have a woman of any color aboard. The best thing they could do would be stretch her out upon the deck, and when they were through with her, throw her overboard. There was some mention of Valcour’s name, but as one wag pointed out, that mincing devil was in no shape to use her, or by God’s blood, to object if they did. None seemed ready to act, however.

It seemed best for Ashanti to stay out of sight. Félicité, after she had carried the warning below, was inclined to do the same, though she also took up Valcour’s sword from where he had left it the morning before, since he had not returned to the cabin, preferring to hang a hammock in the captain’s quarters, well out of Ashanti’s reach. Félicité strapped the blade around her, and felt if not better, at least better prepared.

At dusk of the third day out, the wind shifted once more, coming out of the southeast, blowing in an autumn gale. They shortened sail and rigged stormlines, swinging to skip before it. The ship pitched like a wild thing, flinging itself into the night-black maw of the storm. Lightning danced over the dark water with a terrible beauty. Thunder roared like the lions of hell, and the rain came down. It lashed them in wavering, wind-kicked shrouds, pouring across the decks, washing stench and noisome debris from the scuppers. The seas churned, rising to leviathan heights, spilling over the decks to add the tang of salt to the drubbing rain. It beat itself into valleys and mountains of water topped with foam. The hammering winds sent the scud flying, and seemed likely to bat the ship from the towering crests. League after league they ran with the tempest, holding the outer edge of its fury. Off course, they plunged onward, driven and harried like a mouse before a tiger, praying for clear seas without reef or shoal.