The Following Sea (The Pirate Wolf series) (3 page)

Evangeline Chandler felt her brow twenty times a day, expecting the worst. Her maid had died in her arms and since then, she imagined every ache to be the onslaught of the fever, every roil of her belly to be the beginning of the bloody flux that would mark the beginning of the end. Captain Fitch had ordered her to stay in her tiny cabin but that had proved to be a different kind of hell. There was no porthole, no source of fresh air. The cabin was five paces by six paces, with a good portion taken up by a narrow berth and a sea chest containing her meager belongings. A small commode cupboard and washstand occupied one of the corners but the boy who had been assigned to empty the pot and provide her with fresh water had not been seen in two days.

Even worse was the silence. Over the course of the long voyage from Portsmouth, Eva had become accustomed to the rapping of hammers, off-key singing, running feet overhead, shouts to haul in sail or play more on. Day by day those familiar sounds had diminished, leaving only the groaning of timbers and the rush of seawater beneath the hull. There were no further knocks on her door signalling a tray of food had been left outside. There were no gruff voices in the companionway asking if she was still alive.

There was no water left in the pitcher and she’d had nothing to eat for two days. Her reflection, when she dared to hold up the tiny polished mirror, was shocking. Her normally clear, sea-green eyes were ringed with shadows, her skin was sallow, her lips starting to crack from thirst.

Eva looked at the door and listened to the silence. She was running out of options. She had to leave the cabin, find water, and see for herself what was happening out there. She wasn’t sure why the disease had not claimed her; perhaps there were others wondering the same thing, keeping themselves hidden away from the lethal vapors.

She did not even know if it was day or night.

She bit the inside of her lip and reached for her cloak. There had seemed to be little point in trying to lace herself into a stomacher each day or to pace the cabin in fancy brocades, thus she had taken to dressing in the comfort of a simple white smock. With little else to do to pass the time, her hair was brushed smooth and fell in a gleaming golden curtain to below the curve of her bottom.

Donning the cloak, she pulled the hood up to cover her head and opened the door a crack. The companionway was dark; the lamp that usually burned outside the captain’s door, which was opposite her own, was unlit.

After another moment of trembling uncertainty she returned to the berth and lifted the long-snouted flintlock pistol that had been her constant companion through the past six weeks. Despite the Chandler name and the respect that came with it, she had not been oblivious to the dangers of being a woman outnumbered two-hundred-to-one on a long sea voyage. Captain Fitch had guaranteed her safety but he was dead now. The crew had been suitably deferential for the most part, limiting their lewd comments to when she was almost out of earshot, but fever and death made for altered priorities.

With the pistol primed and hidden in the folds of her cloak, Eva crept out of the cabin and made her way by wary inches along the narrow companionway to the bottom of the wooden steps that led up to the open deck. There she paused and stared up at the patch of sky showing through the hatch. It was not the crisp blue of morning or the bright heated turquoise of noon. The sky was a washed-out gray as if the light was fading, suggesting it was late afternoon... or early evening.

She mounted the steps slowly, unaware she was holding her breath. She had no idea what to expect to see at the top, and hoped it would be a normal scene of men bent over sails with needle and thread, or scrubbing planks with a holystone, or hanging from the rigging and working the lines.

Perhaps the danger had passed and she had merely been forgotten, locked away in her tiny cabin.

Pulling the cloak tighter, she stepped over the coaming and emerged from the shadows onto the open deck. The sun was, indeed, low in the westerly sky yet it took several blinks for her eyes to adjust after living so long with yellowish lamplight.

At first she saw nothing out of the ordinary. The sails were furled, rolled and tied into fat sausages along each yardarm overhead. Only the uppermost triangles of canvas, which she had come to know were used for steerage and not speed, hung open to catch the wind. The ugly yellow flag still luffed softly on the mainmast; the miles of naked rigging lines seemed to hang from the yards like empty cobwebs.

Then she saw the bodies.

The first one was slumped across a capstan, arms and legs limp, mouth open and crusted with dried vomit. Another was sprawled near the rail and might have looked as if he was sleeping but for the sockets of his eyes, which were empty and black, the flesh around them shredded by rats that seemed immune to any manner of disease.

Clutching the gun tighter she turned away from the sickening sight and stepped further out onto the deck. There were more bodies, dozens of them frozen in a terrible tableau. She turned quickly on her heel, her cloak dragging over the timbers, and looked up at the quarterdeck.

There was no one standing at the helm. She could not recall when she had last heard the ship's bell rung. The hourglass on the binnacle had not been turned. Moreover, the long wooden arm of the tiller had been bound in rope and tied to the rail, something that would cause the ship to sail in a continuous circle.

"My God," she whispered. "My God."

She made another quick turn and mounted the steps to the quarterdeck, too stunned to do more than stare at the rope binding the tiller. Even if she untied it, she had no idea how to steer or sail a ship.

She whirled and ran to the side, exchanging the grip she had on the pistol for a new and terrified grip on the wooden rail. From this elevated view she could see down the length of the
Eliza Jane,
at the bodies scattered stem to stern, all of them silent, all of them motionless.

"H-hello? Is anyone there?"

Silence greeted the panicked shout.

"Hello!
Please!
Is someone... anyone... there!"

She scanned the ocean in a full circle but there was nothing but open water and sky in all directions.

"Hello!
Hello!
" She gripped the rail tighter, feeling tears sting into her eyes. "Please, someone answer! Hello!
Hello!
"

She pushed away from the rail and ran back down the steps, then along the deck to the bow. Each frantic step was accompanied by a shout, a cry, a disbelieving plea for someone to answer. She found the captain slumped over a barrel amidships. His eyes and cheeks were gone, gnawed by rats and gulls; blackened streaks of dried blood trailed down onto his chest. When she looked closer, the trail of blood rippled with a thousand crawling, gorging flies.

Eva clutched her belly and ran past the horror to the foredeck.

She could not be the only one left alive on board the entire ship! It was not possible! It was not believable! It was madness! Insanity!

Why, of the two hundred souls on board, would she be the only one spared?

"Father," she whispered. "Dear God... Father... what do I do now?
What do I do now
?"

She stumbled against the thick oaken arm of the bowsprit, blinded by tears. She tried to scream but her throat was too dry. She tried to quell the panic blooming in her chest but it rose and squeezed around her lungs until her vision turned dark. She felt herself crumpling and something banged her head, causing a brief starburst of pain... then nothing but the nightmare she had already endured a hundred times...

~~

Lawrence Ross looked up from the pile of papers he was sorting on his desk. "This is not going to be a pleasurable jaunt for a few days across the Channel. This is going to be weeks, possibly months of sailing in all manner of weather, good and bad, in tropical heat, landing on hostile islands covered in jungles, dealing with pirates and blackguards and men who would think of you as a delicacy to roast over an open fire... after they had their fill of using you."

Eva was adamant. "I am well aware of the hardships and the danger, but he is my father."

"Yes, and the chances are he's dead and I will be spending months looking for a rotting corpse!"

Eva flinched and Ross cursed his bluntness. "Eva, darling, I'm sorry. But the harsh reality is that he's been gone four years. There hasn't been a sighting, a letter, or a message in over three. There are a thousand islands in the tropics; he could be on any one of them. Or he could be on none of them. His ship could have been lost to a storm, or to pirates. He might have been captured by the Spaniards or the French or the Portuguese. Ships go missing. Men go missing. If he was alive, surely after all this time, he would have found some way to get a message to one of us, but there has been no communication, no letters, not even a verbal message passed from mouth to ear."

"He was alive when the
Gull
sailed home to England."

"Yes, he was alive." The need to force patience into his voice caused Ross's thin, angular face to darken a shade. "The captain of the
Gull
said your father insisted on being left behind, that he would find another ship to bring him home. That was over three years ago. Three long years in the tropics, travelling around islands infested with cannibals and Spaniards and all manner of pestilence. He is dead, Eva. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you can get on with your life. The sooner we can both get on with our lives."

Eva curled her hands into fists to stop them trembling.

"He is not dead," she insisted quietly. "If he was dead, I would know. I would feel the loss here—" she pressed a hand over her heart. "Father is alive. And if we have not heard from him it is because he is in trouble. Or he is hurt or lost or being held captive. The Spanish take captives all the time."

"Indeed they do, to hold them for ransom. We have had no demands."

"They may not know who he is. They may have put him to work in the mines or... or on a cane plantation, or—"

Ross twisted his lips. "And if they have, the average life span of a white captive forced into slavery is about two months."

"He is a big, strong man."

"Who would eat more and cost more to keep alive than five scrawnier men."

She whirled around, muttering a distinctly unladylike curse, and paced to the window. "Why are you being so obstinate? If you believe so strongly that he is dead, why are you taking the
Cormorant
to look for him?"

"Because we still have a business to run. We still need to find new ports for trade. This company is hanging on by threads. East India Shipping is swallowing up all of the smaller export lines and establishing itself as a Goliath. We've lost a dozen trade deals with the cane growers because we cannot afford to pay the bribes or match the prices the Dutch offer. That was the part of the reason, four years ago, that your father undertook the voyage, but since then we've had to sell two more ships to pay off debts. We've had to borrow against everything we own, even the clothes on our backs."

Eva turned slowly from the window. "I had no idea it was that bad."

"You wouldn't have any reason to know because I've tried to protect you. I've tried to maintain everything the way your father would have wanted." He came around the desk and stood alongside her at the window, and when he spoke again his words were softer, his hands gentle where they touched her shoulders. "I am not wishing his death, Eva. Believe me. William Chandler was my best friend as well as my business partner. He was like a father to me and if there is any chance he is still alive, do you not think I will search as if my own life depended on it?"

"It may be
his
life that depends on it," she said stubbornly.

"Indeed it may. And the last thing I need is an entourage of lady’s maids squealing over snakes and spiders or fussing over which gown is best to wear in the jungle.”

“I don’t need an entourage.”

“Eva…no."

Eva sighed. He was right. Of course he was right but at the same time, she could not shake the feeling that her father was in trouble, and if no one came to his rescue, then he truly would die.

"Eva…?" Ross gently tucked a finger under her chin to tip it up to his. "We need to get on with our lives. William would not have wanted either of us to squander our happiness over one of his adventures gone wrong. You have postponed the wedding twice and so far I have been a patient groom."

She shifted uncomfortably. "Yes. I know. And I don’t mean to be so..."

"Obstinate?"

She made a little sound that he took as assent and bent his mouth to hers. The kiss, like the man, was polite and without embellishment, and she found herself resenting the two full seconds he thought suitable for such a display of unbridled passion.

He was younger than her father by a decade, tall with a pleasant enough countenance most women found appealing. Eva thought his eyes were slightly too close together over a long, thin nose that was usually tilted upward, as if the air was better near the ceiling.

With William gone it had seemed only natural for Lawrence to assume the responsibilities of looking after Evangeline as well as the business, but she knew full well there was another reason why he wanted the wedding to take place sooner rather than later: the twenty thousand pounds her mother had left in trust for her dowry.

She had been sixteen when he had proposed—two short months after the
Gull
had returned to Portsmouth without her father on board. She had accepted more out of a sense of duty than anything resembling love, a sentiment she suspected he wholly shared. He had wanted to marry right away, but she had insisted on waiting until her father returned from the Indies, a decision he had reluctantly accepted, but as the months passed and the debts grew, his belligerence was becoming uncomfortable. With her nineteenth birthday looming, she did not know how much longer his patience would last, and for that reason alone, she was almost happy he was adamant about undertaking this voyage to the Indies without her.