Virgin Star (36 page)

Chuckling merrily, Butcher had patted Shalyn's shoulder as he ordered her back into the carpenter's room for the duration of the battle. Which was absolutely the last place she would be, though she was smart enough not to tell him that. She wanted to see this battle.

After the shouts and thunder of the explosions reached an irresistible pitch, she slipped out again and joined an excited Oliver at the rail just outside her door. Smoke painted the blue sky an ominous and made her cough. Waving her hand across her face, she watched as the Wind Muse closed on its victim fast. Another stray cannonball exploded. Water splashed onto the deck, spilling over her.

Upon Seanessy's orders, the gunners fired back. The crest of the slaver's bow blew sky-high. Fire sprang from the spot. Another cannonball exploded straight into the lower mast, sending the great piece of timber falling with a thunderous crack to the deck.

Smoke and shouts and confusion sounded.

The laughter of Seanessy and his men sounded as a profane exclamation point. This was a game Seanessy loved and had long ago perfected. The trick was to disable the villainous ship just enough to draw alongside with impunity, just close enough for his well-trained gunners to aim, fire, and fell the mainmast. There were few casualties this way, and if he wanted the ship, it would still be intact.

"Hold your fire!" Seanessy shouted to the gunners as Edward trimmed the rigging that slowly moved the Wind Muse before their prize. "Easy. Steady now, mates. Steady as she goes—" He suddenly froze as the sound of her laughter echoed like a dream. His gaze found her at the rail, three dangerous feet from Harris at the guns, squealing as Oliver shook water from his coat over her.

Furious, Seanessy boomed across the deck louder than a cannon explosion, "Girl, get your feet off that deck and down below!"

A much smaller voice called up, "Oh, but—"

His voice thundered, "Move it! Preston, get that blasted dog below before he goes over the side as well!"

"Aye, aye!"

Lips pressed together, she disappeared into the carpenter's room, slamming the door behind her. He was so mean! Impossible, absolutely impossible. Like a king he was, or ruler of the world—

Or captain of the ship ... ,

She looked up at the changed sound. What now?

How strange! All the great clamor and noise had disappeared. The loudest sound came from the licks of sea at the side of the ship. Oliver whimpered as Preston made him retreat down below and shut and locked the latch before running back to his place at the gantline. In the distance came shouts from the other ship.

What had happened?

She had to look, she just had to!

She cracked open the door an inch. She saw Talman's backside as he bent over the gun hole. She slipped out to the side and almost screamed. They were less than three dozen paces from the slaver!

The sight of the slave ship up close felt mesmerizing; she couldn't move as the two ships slowly sided each other. Their crew scrambled amid the chaos and smoke to put out the flames. Sean's gunners waited with lit fuses at the cannons.

Seanessy's voice boomed, "Fire!"

Five seconds later three cannons blew fire at the doomed ship. Shalyn grabbed the rail, the explosion knocking her feet from under her and throwing her against the carpenter's room. She tried to rise but the wake of the explosion sent the great ship up and knocked her back against the wall.

"Butcher!"

"Aye, Cap'n, I see her!"

"You have the helm!"

"Aye, aye!"

A shadow fell over her. She looked up to see Seanessy himself standing above her. He was not smiling. He shouted out an order to a nearby deckhand, cursed her life as he bent and picked her off the ground. She screamed as he tossed her over a shoulder unceremoniously, swung round, and shouted a quick series of parting orders before stopping outside his quarters and picking up a neat coil of rope.

Then he opened the door and disappeared inside.

Seanessy's curses sounded softly and viciously and seemed to center on the question of her sense or lack thereof, and how if she could not follow the clearest of orders to keep her safe he would simply tie her up. He dropped her on his bed and removed a dagger to cut the rope. He did not see the look in her eyes as she stared at the rope. He might have been cautioned by it, by the stark terror as she watched him cut it in halves, but he was intent on his task.

He grabbed her hands and began circling them.

She went numb as blood vacated her limbs and pumped a sick dread into her heart. The pink kimono and the ropes, the terrible ropes that tied her hands and left her helpless. She couldn't move. She could only shut her eyes as it happened to her. As the pink silk came off and—

Tears gathered thickly in her throat and she tried to shake her head, to stop this, to stop him. She managed only, "Seanessy help me—"

One look at those eyes and he dropped the rope from his hands suddenly. "Dear God ..." He drew her swiftly in his arms. Instantly she clung to his neck, his hand came to her hair, and he held her tight against his strength.

"I won't hurt you, Shalyn. Never, Shalyn, never ..."

She tried to shake her head, to tell him she knew this, but she could only cling to him more desperately as the emotions washed over her in waves. It was Seanessy, Seanessy, her mind kept repeating. Seanessy ...

The battle was brief. The slaver's captain and crew surrendered, only to be led at gunpoint onto the Wind Muse where they were quickly tied to a wood rail near the head with its foul air. The captain, a middle-aged ruddy man named Rand, wasted an hour alternately pleading, bribing, and bargaining for his worthless life with the stone-deaf members of the Wind Muse's crew. They led over two hundred terrified and naked savages across a plank that had been laid between the two ships for the purpose, no easy task with iron chains around their feet. Once aboard the Wind Muse, the dark-skinned men were lined up and asked to sit.

Of course there was a language problem.

In frustration, Cherry Joe attempted to push one of the terrified men down, managing because the Negro's knees were weaker than pond reeds with fear. The slaves were certain their already dismal circumstances had just taken a dramatic shift for the worse—which meant they all thought they would soon be tossed over the side. They chose to face death standing and with as much dignity as any man could muster in the face of a drowning. So, the man came back to his feet as soon as the hands left him.

Edward and a half-dozen other crew members had found these two hundred and twelve savages stacked four deep in the hull—literally piled on top of one another like sacks of potatoes or bales of cotton—for what would have been a two-month-long trip. On the more "humane" ships, the savages were let topside for ten minutes once a day where they might be given a ration of water and a bowl of mush. And on these more humane slavers less than a quarter of the humanity would have survived. Less than a quarter. That quarter would have been enough to fill the captain's pocket with cold hard gold. Not long ago Sean and Edward had found themselves in a tavern with a crew that made their living in the slave trade and, curious, Edward had asked how they could stand the anguished cries of so many.

"Ah, a bloke gets used to it is all."

He had flattened the man with a fist. "Get used to that you whoreson." Every time the man came up, he put him down again and again, careful to hit him hard enough to cause damage. but not enough to let him pass out. And he kept hitting him like that until the man was a blubbering mess. Seanessy had watched dispassionately until he realized, "Why, I'll be damned. One does grow accustomed to it."

The stark reality of the utter folly and stupidity of man's cruelty to his fellows always put Edward in the foulest of moods. Over the years Seanessy had attempted to show Edward the problem lay in his expectations, that he needed only to accept that "the dampness of the night is driven deep within the human soul..." Edward knew Sean was right, he was always right, but that didn't mean he had to muster the stoic cynicism necessary to save his fury.

Attempting to untie a rope and toss it over to the other ship, Edward abruptly realized the background noise about British naval law issued from this Captain Rand. "And what's more;" the man was saying. "Half these black sods are stolen property, escapees, you see, and from the very place they be goin' back to ..."

"Butcher!" Edward wanted to kill, or at the very least seriously maim the man. "Put a knife in the bastard's mouth and cut out his tongue, will you?"

With waving arms and enormous grins, Butcher was still trying to communicate with the savages. He had no idea how he looked to the poor Negro men: like a frightening leering demon marked by battle scars, sporting numerous queer knives for unimaginable purposes. Upon Edward's call he stopped his effort and looked over to see Rand's face go white. Whiter as Butcher removed one of his daggers and turned toward him. "Ah, look, he finally shut up. Just like that."

Seanessy sat against the wall of his quarters with his long legs stretched out in front of him and Shalyn held securely on his lap. She had finally stopped crying. His hand smoothed her long hair over and over again as he watched her fingers, light as a feather and infinitely more maddening, toy with a scar on his biceps. He was doing difficult mathematical equations in his mind.

For he knew it did not matter that he wanted her more than he ever had, and that it was a good deal more than he had ever wanted anything in his life, that his entire body was hot, aching, waiting to take her lips and lay her down on the bed as his senses filled with her scent, her softness, the promise of a time that waited for them. None of it mattered.

For 'twas too close to the memory she had just escaped, far too close. When he had her, it would not be associated with another. No matter what, he would not do that to her, he kept telling himself over and over.

The whole terrifying thing made perfect sense: the beast would have had to tie her up or suffer the consequences of the only woman in the world who could defend herself so well. He could not imagine the rest without his hands trembling with the need for violence. Though how this beast actually managed to get her arms tied was a mystery, one he knew unwise to contemplate.

A knock sounded on the door, an intrusion on their solitude. "Aye, come in."

Butcher opened the door. His gaze found them quickly; he asked no questions. Relieved to see their clothes were still on, he came to the point: 'Two hundred and twelve stacked four deep in the hull. A sorry sight."

Seanessy never looked up as he wondered why no one had ever warned him what a woman's eyes could do to a man. "Damage?"

"The masts are down. A four-foot crack in the bow is all. Sink or tow, Cap'n?"

"Tow. Casualties?"

"A few. Toothless is at 'em as we speak."

"And what was their heading?"

"I haven't started the interrogation yet. I thought you might want to do it yourself."

Sean nodded. "Very well." The door shut. In a moment he said, "I have to go."

Shalyn nodded. Seanessy brought her face up gently. "Smile, Shalyn mine, and by this treasure, I will know you are all right."

She graced him with a smile, and in that smile he saw something else he knew unwise to contemplate. In a determined swoop, he lifted her off his lap and onto the bed. He never looked back; he could not leave if he looked back.

She was glad for the moment's solitude.

She stood on shaky legs, then sat again, then stood. She felt so curiously on the edge of discovery. She could not see the face of the man who had tied her up; she tried but saw only a darkness she could not penetrate.

Yet she needed to remember. She felt close. So terribly close. She focused all her thoughts on the Oriental man. Was he the same man who tried to warn her mother before she fell? She tried to focus on his face, but it was a painful blur as she saw her mother falling.

She focused all her energy on the man dancing the Oriental dance. Turn around! Let me see you! For the love of God, help' me remember ...

Seanessy walked out into the bright sunlight. Activity abounded as his crew worked to get a towline on the other ship, no easy feat. The decks were crammed with the two hundred standing savages as a dozen of his men attempted to rid them of their iron chains. Fear worked into almost all their faces as they watched this with incomprehension, obviously thinking only death could wait if the white men were taking off their chains. This despite the high comedy of Butcher trying desperately to explain they would be set free: in English, and as if he just said the word "free" long enough they would grasp the happy fact, never mind the terrifying grin planted ridiculously on Butcher's less than reassuring face.