Quintspinner (41 page)

“So do I tell Edward about this or not?” Tess had been pondering this for awhile.

Her grandmother’s eyebrows pulled together in quick thought. “I think not. An engagement with the man can always be undone. A family blood tie cannot.”

At the end of the first week, under heavy supervision, William and Mr. Lancaster were rowed over to the
Bloodhorn
to assess her damage from the battle and to oversee any needed repairs. Besides being on the lookout for Cassie, William wondered about the plight of Captain Crowell and of Tommy, both of whom had been forcibly removed to the
Bloodhorn.

Arriving on the pirate ship for the first visit of several that they would make, William was distressed to see a sailor squatted on the open deck, chained by one ankle to the main mast and dressed only in tattered remains of his former
Mary Jane
uniform. William recognized him as the officer to whom he had given his flute. The man seemed not to recognize William. In fact he seemed to have lost all sense of reality, as he clutched the well worn flute to his bare chest and rocked himself back and forth. His shoulders bore the evidence of numerous burns and vicious whippings. Some of the ravaging gashes were new–still open, bleeding and weeping–and some had barely scabbed over. His frame was already painfully thin and his eyes had a hollow starved look about them.

“Ha ha! You like our music monkey?” Carlos’s voice rang out. Already his vocal cords seemed to be healing. His voice was strong again. “He tried to escape– only once, mind you–and had to be taught a lesson.” He lashed out at the man’s shoulder with a short quirt. Fresh slashes split the taut skin across the tortured man’s shoulders, and he cried out in agony. Carlos snorted in disgust at the man’s show of pain. “If we had had another decent musician, we might not have needed to keep this one alive.” William shuddered at the thought that had he not given up his flute, it might have been
him
chained to the mast, enduring the daily floggings from this demented captain.

“Play!” Carlos roared at the chained sailor. “Play for our guests!”

The flute’s notes were as sweet and clear as William remembered they could be, but the sailor’s melody was a haunting one. It was entirely fitting, William realized with a bolt of recognition.

A simple English funeral largo.

Because of the need for so many supplies to be brought back on board from shore, Carlos decreed that two jolly boats were to be made over, one to be in working shape for each of the mother ships. It was obvious that this would require that the two remaining, more heavily damaged boats be dismantled and their lumber be reused in the repairs.

William’s knee injury had left him with a pronounced limp as the joint did not yet fully bend. Squatting down in the more crowded spaces inside decks was not an easy task; even Carlos had seen the practicality of assigning the jolly boat repairs on the open deck to William, while Mr. Lancaster would be responsible for all remaining main ship repairs.

Returning from their first visit to the
Bloodhorn,
Mr. Lancaster murmured to William, “Them boats is the only way off the main ships. If a man could gradually store up a few essentials in, say … a secret compartment what was built into the jolly’s wall ….”

William frowned. “I don’t think I understand. What–”

“’Course ya’ do,” the old carpenter continued softly, looking straight ahead. “The opportunity’s there–nearly’s landed in yer nest, hasn’t it? ‘Course it has! But ya’ got to be brave and tricky enough to make such a situation work fer ya’ ….”

Nest?
Captain Crowell’s cryptic proverb came back to William.

The wily carpenter was on to something! The chance was there. But was William willing to act upon it? That night as he lay sleepless in his hammock, his tormented mind alternated between composing a list of things that he would need to survive if they ever made it to a shore, and presenting the unbidden picture of an agonized, tortured soul–the result of a failed escape–chained to a mast, dying a little bit at a time, while playing out the miserable remainder of his abbreviated future.

If life as a passenger on a merchant ship had been unfamiliar and boringly repetitive, life as a prisoner on a pirate ship for Tess was continually unnerving and full of dreadful apprehension. Skirmishes with other vessels took place on a regular basis and it fell to her to continue to mend the crews after such assaults.

Carlos and his two crews overtook, pilfered, and on occasion, destroyed any smaller vessels within their sights. Having no destination to call home, the
Bloodhorn
spent all of her time cruising the warm shallow waters of the islands, pursuing merchant ships laden with riches–coins, sugar, coffee, tobacco, rot-resistant cedar wood–that had been intended to be sent back to European ports.

Such ships and their crews were generally easy prey, unfortunate enough to be using the same waterways, but usually intelligent enough to give up all of their cargo without much of a struggle, in exchange for their lives being spared. Resistance from their quarry was rare. The pirates’ fierce appearances and reputation for barbaric and merciless treatment of those who gave resistance continued to be all that was needed to subdue the overtaken vessels.

There came the day, however, that a lucky merchant ship outran the
Bloodhorn.
The
Bloodhorn’s
outer skin had become roughened and thickened in places with barnacles, and slimy in others with the weedy growth of the tropical waters, increasing the drag, making her slow and difficult to steer. It was time to careen her.

The ships were sailed into the privacy of a cay of a small island, and for the first time since the pirates’ attack on them, those crew members and prisoners of the
Mary Jane
who had resided aboard the
Bloodhorn,
were rowed over to the merchant ship.

“That’s likely so none can escape on land,” Tess’s grandmother had observed. “He’s a careful scumbag, that Captain. Wily as they come, but still a scumbag.”

Tess awaited the arrival of the
Bloodhorn’s
jolly boat with a mixture of excitement and fear. She had grilled William for details about Cassie on each of his returns from the
Bloodhorn,
but he had not seen Cassie on the open deck even once. His only news had been that Captain Crowell was a chained prisoner and Tommy had been forced to become a cabin boy to Captain Carlos. Tess played nervously with her rings and tried to focus on the broken bits of images which flickered through her thoughts.

Cassie is alive.

Tess felt certain of that, but an uncomfortable wariness flooded her thoughts of her sister. Was Cassie sick or injured? What had these months of Carlos’s treatment done to her? Tess’s unease grew.

And why should things be right?
she chided herself. William’s description of the horrid treatment of the flute player had continued to haunt her.

More ominously, Cassie had been Carlos’s captive for nearly three months.

Tess shielded her eyes against the glare of the sun and squinted in the direction of the oncoming yawl. Captain Crowell’s fair hair was easy enough to distinguish. There had been no encounter with another navy warship in which his usefulness as a captive to ransom would be proven, yet still the pirates had kept him alive. Tess skimmed past the faces of the others in the small boat and gasped.

There. At the stern of the jolly boat. Cassie’s black hair hung loosely down, like a thick cape over her shoulders and back. She sat upright, her spine stiff, and her mouth was set in a determined flat line.

“Cassie!” Tess cried, as Cassie was helped over the railing onto the
Mary Jane’s
deck. She hugged her sister firmly to her, and felt Cassie’s arms automatically encircle her. Cassie made no sound but clung fiercely to Tess and buried her face in Tess’s neck and hair. Silent shudders rocked her frame and Tess felt her neck become wet with Cassie’s tears. “Oh God, Cass, I have worried about you!” Tess pulled back from Cassie and tried to see her face but Cassie clung to her even more determinedly.

“Are you alright?” Tess whispered into her sister’s ear. “How have you been treated?”

Even as the words left her mouth, Tess’s hands slid down to her sister’s shoulders and froze over top of a thickened weal on Cassie’s right shoulder. Tess pulled her hand away and stared.

“Oh my God, Cass,” she whispered hoarsely. “What has he done to you?”

Under the inquiring touch of Tess’s fingertips, an angry raised mound of fresh and tender scar tissue stood out. Clearly it was a miniature form of the powder horn depicted on the pirates’ flag.

“He–he
branded
you?” Tess gasped.

A brand. Carlos’s brand.

Burned deeply into the soft flesh of Cassie’s shoulder, it marked Cassie forever as his own.

Tess swallowed hard as sudden waves of nausea threatened to expel a rush of bitter bile. Anger deeper than any she had ever known cascaded over her in a hot rush.

“That bastard!
” she seethed. Looking into Cassie’s tear filled eyes, and seeing the intense anguish there, she clasped her sister hard to her chest once more. “He
will pay
for
whatever he
has done to you!”

“No-o-o,” Cassie moaned. “He will kill you if you try anything.” Her eyes pleaded with Tess. “Save yourself if you can.” She laid her own hand gently over her branded tissue. Her voice was barely a whisper.

“I am doomed.”

Tess watched from the railing of the main deck of the
Mary Jane.

“Aye, ‘twill take at least a day fer each side, it will,” Mr. Lancaster explained. “First they’ll take her guns ashore, but before they can do that, they’ll be building earth mounds fer them.” To transport the heavy cannons to shore and then mount them on the hastily built mounds seemed like a lot of extra trouble to Tess.

“That’s in case we’re discovered an’ put under attack,” Mr. Lancaster explained. “Can’t be takin’ a chance of being attacked an’ no guns now, can they? Course they can’t.” Hope brightened Tess’s face.

“If another ship came along now we could be rescued!” she exclaimed.

“Be careful what ya’ wish fer,” the carpenter shook his head. “Any incomin’ craft would see only two pirate ships, now that her flag’s been replaced.” He pointed up to the mast where a makeshift flag nearly identical to the
Bloodhorn’s
fluttered. “Watch now,” he suggested, pointing to the beached
Bloodhorn.