Page 123 of The Pirate and the Pagan
“Secretary of State Arlington?” asked Ruark. “Buckingham and Lauderdale?”
Charles nodded. “I don’t want any of them, not even my brother James, to know about these secret treaties with Holland and France. Not until they’re faits accomplis. They will give England the balance of power in Europe.”
“Accomplished by the grossest political chicanery,” said Ruark Helford grimly.
“God’s flesh, why can’t you be more like your brother Rory?” groaned Charles.
The two dark-visaged men glared at one another for a full minute, before their challenge to each other dissolved into laughter. Each knew they’d gone through too much together to walk separate paths at this late stage of the game.
Nellie’s screams were enough to awaken the dead. When Bludwart came to investigate the hullabaloo, Cat said, “She’s giving birth. We can deliver her, but not without hot water and some clean sheets and blankets.” Bludwart knew the cell wasn’t even a fit place for the rats that came up the drain at night. He should never have put the women there, but Oswald had insisted. Someday someone with higher authority might come and inspect and he wanted no trouble. Everyone must be accounted for; he didn’t want the woman dying when she’d been there less than a month.
Cat knew young Gert would be useless and she didn’t fancy Granny the abortionist having a hand in the matter. She looked at Sidney’s face set in its hard lines and knew she wasn’t about to help anyone. It would have to be Lardy. When they got the bucket of hot water, they used it to wash Nellie from head to foot Bludwart had supplied one sheet and one blanket, and they knew it was a miracle they’d gotten anything at all.
They wrapped Nellie in the sheet and tried to make her as comfortable as was possible under the circumstances. Her cries grew fainter with the long labor, and by the time the small, bluish baby was delivered she seemed to have sunk into an exhausted stupor. Nellie had bled a lot and as a result the sheet was now saturated. Cat washed the blood from the tiny baby girl, then dropped the fouled sheet into what now looked like a bucket of blood. They wrapped Nellie and the baby in the sole blanket and Cat stayed awake to keep the rats away.
When the gruel arrived in the morning, Lardy said, “I can live off my fat.”
Cat smiled at her. “She’s got to get her strength back or her milk might not come in.” They spooned the gruel into Nellie’s mouth, but she seemed completely apathetic and somehow detached. She didn’t speak, or look at her child, but at least she clasped the baby to her thin breast and they could hear it making tiny sucking sounds.
Cat kept another wooden spoon. Now she had three. Bludwart said nothing, but they got no more spoons. Cat knew she was much thinner than she had been a month past. She also felt so damned weak and weary she often wished she could sit against the wall and go to sleep forever. The smell of the place became a part of her. She soon adapted so that she could tolerate the abrasive company of the other women, and eventually when her stomach didn’t get enough food, it shrank and diminished her appetite. She experienced a dull gnawing in her gut which never went away but she trained herself to ignore it. She even began to get used to the dirt. If you resisted and railed against a thing night and day, you used up every last ounce of strength. The way to get through this ordeal, she told herself, if indeed there was a way to get through it, was acceptance. Quiet acceptance.
She used the power of her mind to free her from her cage. Each day and every night she spent long, pleasant hours in flights of fancy, far removed from the slimed wall of the dungeon she was propped against. She spent hours remembering her baby—the soft feel of the black down upon his head, the tiny black eyelashes forming crescents on his cheeks when he slept, the rosebud mouth which could smile or pucker or open in a rage to make a racket loud enough to raise the rent. And she remembered the sweet, clean smell of him and the way his dark green eyes followed her about the room, never leaving her.
Sometimes she would sail the Phantom to warm climes while the swarthy, grinning crew played merry tunes on their tin whistles and concertinas. Rory must have gathered his men from all over the world, for they looked Spanish, Turkish, Moorish, Sicilian. Corsairs signed on at the waterfronts of Marseilles or Genoa. Black Jack Flash—she could feel his hands covering hers while she stood at the ship’s wheel, feel his warm breath on her cheek and his rough beard brush against her throat. Whenever he had stood behind her, she had felt him quicken against her buttocks, then, oh how she’d enjoyed being carried down to the red, silk-draped bed. She could still feel his beard brush against her breast, her belly, her thighs. There had been no resisting Rory Helford and now she was glad she hadn’t resisted him. She realized that a woman never regrets the things she’s done in life; only the things she’s never done.
She would never be wholly imprisoned so long as she could picture him standing at the wheel on his slanting deck, his face wet with spray, his flash of hair wildly blowing in a gale as he trimmed his sails. A storm at sea exhilharated him as much as it did her, so she pictured him in that reckless way he had with his amused eyes laughing at something, everything.
One of her favorite escapes was on Ebony’s back. Their beach ever beckoned. The warm scented breeze, the azure sea, the coves where playful otters balanced crustaceans on their tummies. She could feel the soft velvet of Ebony’s nose, see his black, shiny flanks quiver to discourage an inquisitive wasp or dragonfly. If she ever had the chance again to greet the dawn astride her beloved animal, she would do so naked, in true pagan fashion. To be free—to be unfettered again would perhaps only come with death. She no longer feared death. Death was easy. It was life she feared. Living was hell. Except for the dreams, the daydreams.
The single most pleasurable thing she remembered in her entire life was Lord Ruark Helford. How he had loved to gather her into his lap so they could share a single chair. She could still feel the hardness of his mouth on hers, hear his words against her hair: “I love you, Summer, I love you with all my heart. I have never loved another woman.” When their mating was finished and his dark head rested against her breast and when he lifted his head to worship her with his eyes, she knew he was neither hard nor cruel. No one knows a man like a woman who shares his bed. The rare moments when she had caught the unfamiliar look of tenderness on his face, just for her, was enough to take her breath away. She remembered again and again how, in the dead of night, he lay deep within her, then spent the violence of his passion, unleashed and savage and never-to-be-forgotten. The single most precious memory was that rapt moment of silence when they looked into each other’s eyes, their smiles faded away, and the aching fire sprang to life between them.
She didn’t really give a tinker’s damn what happened to her, for she had had it all. She’d felt his love words whispered against her throat, felt his dark head between her hands as she’d held it close to her breast. She’d known the exhilaration of bantering words and arguing with him—aye, and sometimes besting him. So long as he walked proud and free, his dark head held high with unhumbled arrogance and she knew that he lived and laughed, it didn’t matter about herself, for she was part of him and would be throughout eternity.
Something woke Cat before morning had quite arrived. She was filled with an inexplicable dread, then she remembered this was the day of Oswald’s weekly visit. Her numbed mind became fully alert and she heard the squeaking and obscene rustling of the rats in Nellie’s corner. She sprang up and reached for the guttering stub of tallow candle from its iron bracket. She rushed to the corner, thrusting the meager flame at the long, sleek creatures, and fell back in horror. The baby’s body was covered by rat bites. She lifted the tiny blue body from its sleeping mother and saw that it had been dead for hours. Summer stood stunned and silent, biting her lips until the scream choking her throat subsided and did not escape. If she began to cry now, she would break, and she knew she must not break until after she’d seen Oswald.
When Nellie awoke, she seemed in a stupor. She simply set the little blue body aside as if it didn’t exist. Lardy was concerned about Nellie. She could see clearly the Grim Reaper hadn’t finished his business with them quite yet. Sidney’s face was set hard. “Death’s kingdom is the night. When the owl hunts, death reigns. The smell of death hovers like a charnel house.” Summer’s stomach heaved, but she had nothing in it to evacuate. After a few painful spasms the dry heaves ceased and she turned her face to the wall, trying not to think of Sergeant-Major Oswald.
By evening, when Bludwart came to remove the dead baby, Nellie had followed the child into the next world. Summer averted her eyes from the unpalatable sight of Bludwart dragging out her body. He showed great alarm and concern, but only for his own neck, of course. Sidney was in sole possession of Nellie’s blanket before her heels were dragged clear of the threshold.
Something inside Summer snapped. She went to the corner where she had hidden the three wooden spoons beneath the straw. She wedged each one between the iron candle bracket and the stone wall until it splintered in half lengthwise. Only one did not splinter the way she wanted it to, but before she was done she had five jagged wooden stakes which, wielded in the proper hands, could become five ugly lethal weapons. The other women pretended indifference, yet she knew each was aware of exactly what she did, and why. Cat had only enough time to cover the stakes with moldy straw before Oswald unlocked their cell door.
She did not look at him, instead she looked Gert in the eye, then Lardy. She turned her eyes upon Granny and then finally she looked long and deep at Sidney. She communicated without words. The message was crystal clear in its simplicity. They would all die, one by one, unless they helped each other.
When they were safely behind the locked door, Oswald surveyed with satisfaction the wraith she had become. Where she had been attractively slim, she was now a thin specter. Her short, dirty hair stuck out at odd angles and her beautiful face, once exquisite, was now haggard. Her cheekbones stood out and beneath them were sallow hollows. She almost had the look of a village idiot.
“Remove your clothes,” he ordered smoothly.
Cat didn’t move. She’d never take orders from him again. He’d have to kill her.
He came toward her and pulled open her shirt to survey her breasts. They had shrunk in size and were marred by dying bruises, yellow and green and purple. “You look and smell like a street whore from the slums. Did you know it is within regulations for me to brand you with the letter H for harlot?”
When he uttered the word “brand” a raw burning pain streaked from her thumb straight to her heart. He rummaged through the cast-iron rods for the iron, growing angry because he could not find the one he wanted. “Tomorrow night I will fetch the brand which imprints the scarlet letter. I think I will put it upon your breasts. Yes, an H upon each. Two H’s. They will brand you forever as Helford’s Harlot!”
He shoved her through the door and she hurriedly buttoned her shirt before they passed by the male prisoners, though in truth they no longer cast her a glance. She knew her time was running out. If only the others would help her. He unlocked the cell door and pushed her through, then he noticed that the woman who had been swollen with child was missing. He took an aggressive step through the doorway and demanded, “Where’s the pregnant bitch?”
Young Gert showed courage for the first time. “She’s dead … you killed her!”
His fist smashed her mouth so viciously he knocked her front teeth out and marred her young face forever. Then he heard the cell door crash behind him and at the same moment the old hag launched herself at him like a screaming banshee. Summer knew the old woman was no match for the burly Oswald. His big arm flung her off against the wall with a sickening thud, but when he looked down at his chest he was surprised to see a stream of blood coming from a small hole made by what looked like a pig sticker. He was off balance and fell to one knee. Lardy knocked him over and sat on him, jabbing him viciously in the throat with her stake.
