Quintspinner (43 page)

Carlos could hardly believe it. She would not be infecting him with any women’s foul smelling diseases or chancers, and lying under him, still she fought and silently struggled. Carlos was delighted.

He had never enjoyed himself more.

From then on, he had kept Cassie exclusively as his own, and his
Bloodhorn
brand would mark her as such to all.

Keeping her constantly tethered to the foot of his cot, Carlos had expected Cassie to become resigned to her circumstances, but each time he had advanced on her she had met him with renewed feral resistance, attacking him like a cornered jaguar, biting him and clawing at him with her nails.

Her resistance was thrilling. It made sex freshly exhilarating and at the end of each day, he hungered intensely for his new plaything awaiting him in his cabin.

And so, the day after her return to the
Bloodhorn,
when Cassie’s eyes had suddenly rolled back into her head and she had begun to convulse underneath him, it had been with much distress verging on hidden terror that he had sent for immediate help from Tess.

It had not escaped Carlos’s notice that one new recruit–the navigator called Smith–had shown a barely concealed admiration for Cassie, and so, expecting that the intensity of the young sailor’s interest in her would speed him along, Carlos had chosen Smith to captain a return boat over to the
Mary Jane.
His assessment had been correct, for Smith had frantically urged his three fellow mates onward, setting a wicked pace by rowing like a frenzied madman himself.

Directly upon arriving on the
Bloodhorn,
Tess was quickly ushered into Carlos’s quarters where she found Cassie on the floor, only semi-conscious and still lying on her back where Carlos had left her. His only concession to Cassie’s predicament had been to pull the thin linen tunic that she wore back down over her body.

Tess noted that Cassie’s fingertips were pale and waxy looking, but her fingernails were blood-stained–apparently she had fought him fiercely even during this last time. Small flecks of foamy blood-streaked saliva clung to the corners of Cassie’s mouth and a pool of vomit collared her head. Tess knelt low and sniffed, her nostrils twitching with the acrid scent of bile. How she wished she had William’s ability to smell! He seemed able to pick out even the faintest differences in scents. Closing her eyes, she focused on the odor.

There! A small whiff of mint. And ever so faintly, a sweetness.
Her worst suspicions confirmed, and without requiring further proof, Tess set about rousing Cassie as best she could.

The odors had offered proof that Cassie had ingested dried Pennyroyal, a powerful abortificant. Its distinctive minty smell was still present both on her breath and in her spewed stomach contents. Tess was guessing that the sweet odor was Blue Cohosh, often used in combination with the first herb to induce deliveries. She had brewed the two into teas on several occasions back in London for her father, whenever a fetus had obviously died before a pregnancy had come to term, and it had been necessary to have it expelled from its poor mother’s womb. Unofficially, as well, such a mixture had often been sought after by many others, wishing to terminate the evidence of illicit affairs.

Her father had been very explicit in his teachings to her. The teas could be flavored with the addition of peppermint or cinnamon to make the concoction more palatable without diluting its strength. Either herb, if taken in a concentrated oil form however, was known to be commonly fatal, inducing splitting headache and extreme nausea, before convulsions and massive hemorrhaging set in. There was no way to know for sure, the effective strength of the dried contents.

Whether it was out of nervous habit or because her belief in the rings grew stronger the more that she focused on them, Tess spun the rings and listened to the thoughts filling her head. Confidence in the accuracy of her assessment of this situation flowed through her.

Cassie had had access to neither of those flavorings and had apparently washed the dried herbs down with only a few mouthfuls of rancid wine. The frailty of a newly pregnant woman’s constitution had tipped the scale in favor of Cassie’s survival. Not all of the herbs had been absorbed, Tess grimly noted. She fervently hoped that little enough had been digested to be ineffective at starting a life threatening uterine bleed.

From the time that Tess had entered his cabin, Carlos had not shown any interest in her assessment of Cassie. In fact, he had not entered the cabin at all, refusing to show, in front of his crew, any further concern for his captive. Smith, however, had remained hovering in the cabin’s doorway, and at Tess’s beckoning, he rushed in at once, and knelt at Cassie’s side. His jaw was clenched hard with tension and he searched Tess’s face for answers to his unspoken questions.

“She is pregnant. With Carlos’s child.” Tess’s words sounded harsh, even to her.

Smith’s work-worn fingers balled up into tight fists of fury and he turned his face towards Tess “I couldn’t protect her …” he moaned softly before his voice faded away.

Tess stared. His own face was desperately stricken, with lines deeply drawn by a mixture of frustrated anger and grief.

It was the face of a young man about to lose someone most precious.

In a moment of startling clarity, Tess understood his motivation.

He loves her! He ‘joined’ the crew to be here on this ship, to be near her! His actions were so plain! How could we have not figured that out?

“Is she–is she dead, then?” he stumbled.

“No,” Tess replied quickly, wanting to reassure him, to reassure herself. “She tried to rid herself of his child, and she has taken herbs to that effect, I think.”

Confusion spread across his brow and a low breath escaped his lips. “She’ll live?”

“I’m not sure how much she took–” Tess’s words died in her throat as she stared at the thin tunic that Cassie wore. A small but bright red patch had seeped into the material at the junction of Cassie’s legs.

Oh dear God!

It had started.

The antidote! While
still aboard the
Mary Jane,
Tess had followed her hunch and had filled a medicine bag with anticipated needs–needle, sutures, packing–and had grabbed several pouches containing dried products known to staunch bleeding, as well as a pouch containing a small amount of clean water with which to mix them. There was no time now to properly prepare and steep the tea–she would have to rouse Cassie as best she could and spoon the cold mixture down her throat.

“Help me sit her up,” she instructed Smith. As the young sailor held Cassie steady against his own chest, Tess spooned the watery mixture past Cassie’s lips, firmly stroking her sister’s throat to bring on reflexive swallowing. When she was satisfied that enough of the medicinal liquid had been ingested, Tess sat back and looked at Smith. The effectiveness of her antidote preparation would become apparent shortly.

“That’s it. Now we wait.” Tess saw that Smith nodded nearly imperceptibly at her words. He had seen Tess’s treatment of the sick before and seemed to have full confidence in her regimens. Tess saw no reason to burden him now with her nagging fear.

There was one more item missing from the trunk, besides the Pennyroyal and Blue Cohosh. What has Cassie done with it? Where is the Monkshood?
Hurriedly she reviewed what she knew of it.

The root of the deadly Monkshood plant was by far, the most potent to be found in any pharmacological collection. Many exotic cultures used the root’s juices as a powerful and fatal arrow poison. The mere contact of abraded flesh with the juice, she had been told, could bring on death due to a paralytic action on the respiratory centre. Nevertheless, physicians cautiously used it in drastically minute quantities for its therapeutic effects of producing pain-relieving numbness and its ability to slow the pulse in those suffering heart palpitations.

Where is it, damn it!
Tess scanned the room; its contents were few and rather stark.
Surely she hasn’t swallowed that fatal preparation as well?

“I am doomed” she had said ….

Tess felt Cassie’s throat.

The pulse there was sluggish and faint. Not nearly as fast as she would have expected nor as strong as she would have liked.

Tess’s own heart hammered in her chest. If Cassie had taken even a relatively small amount of the Monkshood, there would be no saving her. On the other hand, a slow pulse produced from any other reason would mean less bleeding ….

If only I knew for sure!
Tess realized that her uncertainty would have no effect on her actions either way. She had done all that she could to counteract the effect of the Pennyroyal and Blue Cohosh, and there was no antidote at all for Monkshood.

Wait! There
was
one thing more ….

The healing emeralds would have to do the rest. And the ruby spinner–supposedly able to influence people’s actions–would it be able to influence desired outcomes? Tess started the rings in motion, and laying one hand on the crown of Cassie’s head and the other on her sister’s abdomen, she began to focus on Cassie’s face, quietly intoning her words of healing, while trying to ignore her own building feelings of despair.

The shouts from the deck of the
Bloodhorn
blasted Tess out of her meditation at Cassie’s side. The cabin’s door flew open as a pirate burst through. The man was as intimidating as any of the crew but Tess detected a strip of fear in his voice as he grabbed for her, shouting, “You! Healer! Get out here now! It’s Carlos!”

Caught in his grip, with no choice but to stumble out after him, Tess realized that she was trembling herself. Not knowing if the man’s fear was
because of
Carlos or
for
Carlos, she panicked for several heartbeats, confused as to why she had been summoned.

What has happened?

She was unable to see past the grime encrusted backs of the unwashed men in front of her, but realized that they had gathered around something. Or someone. Lying on the deck.

Carlos?

“Make way, ya’ dung-souled buggers!” Tess’s escort bellowed as he pushed his way through, dragging her along behind him. The crowd of sailors parted and stepped back, giving Tess a first glimpse of a body lying crumpled on the deck. Warily she stepped forward and peered at the man lying at her feet. Tess gasped a sharp intake of breath as the shock of what she was seeing coursed through her.

Carlos lay face up, still and helpless, his body paralyzed.

Monkshood! That is the only explanation! But how could he have been exposed to it?

His respirations failing, Carlos struggled as each breath became slower and shallower. Tess could only watch as the paralytic effects of the Monkshood quickly and surely ravaged his central nervous system.

Hers eyes drifted over Carlos’s torso and riveted on the dozens of fresh and deep scratches crisscrossing his chest. The memory of Cassie’s blood-stained fingernails slammed back into Tess’s head.

That’s it!
Cassie had used them as the only weapons she had available. A certainty of the events flooded Tess’s thoughts. Cassie had tipped her fingernails with the powdered monkshood root, probably having reconstituted it with a few drops of wine, and the poisonous chemicals had quickly entered Carlos’s system, starting their deadly work at the moment of the very first tearing of his skin with her nails.