“It’s gray water, full of mud, and there are blind things swimmin’ in it. They’re waitin’ on the sea to finish its business wit’ me, see—and then they’ve business of their own.”
She could hear the horror of it in his voice, and was torn between wanting to edge farther away from him and the ingrained habit of offering comfort.
“It was only a dream,” she said at last, staring up at the boards of the deck, no more than three feet above her head. If only this were a dream!
“Ah, no,” he said, and his voice had dropped to little more than a whisper in the darkness beside her. “Ah, no. It’s the sea herself. Callin’ me, see?”
Quite suddenly, he rolled toward her, seizing her and pressing her hard against him. She gasped, stiffening, and he pressed harder, responding, sharklike, to her struggles.
To her own horror, she felt LeRoi rising, and forced herself to be still. Panic and the need to escape his dream might all too easily make him forget his aversion to having sex with pregnant women, and that was the very last thing, the very last thing . . .
“Sshh,” she said firmly, and clutched him round the head, forcing his face down into her shoulder, patting him, stroking his back. “Shh. It will be all right. It was only a dream. I won’t let it hurt you—I won’t let anything hurt you. Hush, hush now.”
She went on patting him, her eyes closed, trying to imagine herself holding Jemmy after such a nightmare, quiet in their cabin, the hearth fire low, Jem’s little body relaxing in trust, the sweet little-boy smell of his hair near her face. . . .
“I won’t let you drown,” she whispered. “I promise. I won’t let you drown.”
She said it over and over, and slowly, slowly, his breathing eased, and his grip on her slackened as sleep overcame him. Still she repeated it, a soft, hypnotic murmur, her words half-lost in the sound of water, hissing past the side of the ship, and she spoke no longer to the man beside her, but to the slumbering child within.
“I won’t let anything hurt you. Nothing will hurt you. I promise.”
106
RENDEZVOUS
ROGER PAUSED TO WIPE the sweat out of his eyes. He’d tied a folded kerchief round his head, but the humidity in the thick growth of the tidal forest was so high that sweat formed in his eye sockets, stinging and blurring his vision.
From a taproom in Edenton, the knowledge that Bonnet was—or would be—on Ocracoke had seemed all heady conviction; the search narrowed suddenly to one tiny sandbar, versus the millions of other places the pirate could have been; how difficult could it be? Once on the bloody sandbar, the perspective had altered. The frigging island was narrow, but several miles long, with large patches of scrub forest, and most of its coastline fraught with hidden bars and dangerous eddies.
The skipper of the fishing boat they’d hired had got them there in good time; then they’d spent two days sailing up and down the length of the damn thing, looking for possible landing spots, likely pirate hideouts, and herds of wild horses. So far, none of these had appeared.
Having spent long enough retching over the side—Claire hadn’t brought her acupuncture needles, having not foreseen the need of them—Jamie had insisted upon being put ashore. He would walk the length of the island, he said, keeping an eye out for anything untoward. They could pick him up at sundown.
“And what if you run smack into Stephen Bonnet, all on your own?” Claire had demanded, when he refused to allow her to accompany him.
“I’d rather be run through than puke to death,” was Jamie’s elegant reply, “and besides, Sassenach, I need ye to stay here and make sure yon misbegotten son of a—of a captain doesna sail away without us, aye?”
So they had rowed him ashore and left him, watching as he strode away, staggering only slightly, into the thicket of scrub pines and palmetto.
Another day of frustration, spent sailing slowly up and down the coast, seeing nothing but the occasional ramshackle fishing shack, and Roger and Ian had begun to see the wisdom of Jamie’s approach, as well.
“See yon houses?” Ian pointed at a tiny cluster of shacks on the shore.
“If ye want to call them that, yes.” Roger shaded his hand over his eyes to look, but the shacks looked deserted.
“If they can get boats off there, we can get one on. Let’s go ashore and see will the folk there tell us anything.”
Leaving Claire glowering behind them, they had rowed ashore to make inquiries—to no avail. The only inhabitants of the tiny settlement were a few women and children, all of whom heard the name “Bonnet” and scuttled into their homes like clams digging into the sand.
Still, having felt solid ground under their feet, they were less than eager to admit defeat and go back to the fishing shack. “Let’s have a look, then,” Ian had said, gazing thoughtfully into the sun-striped forest. “We’ll crisscross, aye?” He drew a quick series of X’s in the sand in illustration. “We’ll cover more ground, and meet up every so often. Whoever reaches the shore first each time will wait on the other.”
Roger had nodded agreement, and with a cheery wave at the fishing boat and the small, indignant figure on its bow, had turned inland.
It was hot and still under the pines, and his progress was impaired by all sorts of low bushes, creepers, patches of sandburs and other stickery things. The going was a little easier near the shore, as the forest thinned and gave way to stretches of coarse sea oats, with dozens of tiny crabs that scuttled out of his way—or occasionally crunched under his feet.
Still, it was a relief to move, to feel that somehow he was doing something, was making progress toward finding Bree—though he admitted to himself that he wasn’t sure exactly what they were looking for. Was she here? Had Bonnet arrived on the island already? Or would he be coming in a day or two, at the dark of the moon, as Hepzibah had said?
Despite the worry, the heat, and the millions of gnats and mosquitoes—they didn’t bite, for the most part, but insisted upon crawling into his ears, eyes, nose, and mouth—he smiled at the thought of Manfred. He’d been praying for the boy ever since his disappearance from the Ridge, that he might be restored to his family. Granted, to find him firmly attached to an ex-prostitute was likely not quite the answer to prayer that Ute McGillivray had been hoping for, but he’d learned before that God had His own methods.
Lord, let her be safe. He didn’t care how that prayer was answered, provided only that it was. Let me have her back, please.
It was well past mid-afternoon, and his clothes stuck to him with sweat, when he came to one of the dozens of small tidal inlets that cut into the island like the holes in Swiss cheese. It was too wide to leap across, so he made his way down the sandy bank and into the water. It was deeper than he’d thought—he was up to his neck by mid-channel, and had to swim a few strokes before he found solid footing on the other side.
The water pulled at him, rushing toward the sea; the tide had begun to turn. Likely the inlet would be much shallower when the tide was out—but he thought a boat could make it up the inlet easily, with the tide coming in.
That was promising. Encouraged, he crawled out on the far side and began to follow the channel inland. Within minutes, he heard a sound in the distance and stopped dead, listening.
Horses. He would swear it was the sound of neighing, though so far away he couldn’t be sure of it. He turned in a circle, trying to locate it, but the sound had vanished. Still, it seemed a sign, and he pushed on with renewed vigor, frightening a family of raccoons washing their meal in the water of the channel.
But then the inlet began to narrow, the water level dropping to no more than a foot—and then less, only a few inches of water running clear over dusky sand. He was loath to give up, though, and shoved his way under a low canopy of pine and twisted scrub oak. Then he stopped dead, skin tingling from scalp to sole.
Four of them. Crude stone pillars, pale in the shadow of the trees. One stood actually in the channel itself, tilted drunkenly by the action of the water. Another, on the bank, had carvings on its face, abstract symbols that he didn’t recognize. He stood frozen, as though they were live things that might see him if he moved.
It seemed abnormally silent; even the insects seemed temporarily to have deserted him. He had no doubt that this was the circle the man Donner had described to Brianna. Here, the five men had chanted, walked their pattern, and turned, passing to the left of the inscribed stone. And here at least one of them had died. A profound shiver ran through him, despite the oppressive heat.
He moved at last, very carefully, backing away, as though the stones might wake, but did not turn his back on them until he was a good distance away—so far away that the stones were lost to sight, buried in the heavy growth. Then he turned and walked back toward the sea, fast, and then faster, ’til the breath burned in his throat, feeling as though invisible eyes bored into his back.
I SAT IN THE SHADE of the forecastle, sipping cool beer and watching the shore. Just like bloody men, I thought, frowning at the tranquil stretch of sand. Charge in pigheaded, leaving the women to mind the store. Still . . . I wasn’t so sure that I would have wanted to slog the length of the beastly island on foot myself. By repute, Blackbeard and a number of his confederates had used the place as a lair, and the reason why was obvious. A less hospitable shore I’d seldom seen.
The chance of finding anything in that secretive, wooded place by randomly poking into holes was low. Still, sitting on my bum in a boat while Brianna was dealing with Stephen Bonnet was making me twitch with anxiety and the urgent desire to do something.
But there was nothing to do, and the afternoon wore slowly away. I watched the shore steadily; now and then, I would see Roger or Ian pop out of the undergrowth, then the two of them would confer briefly before popping back in. Now and then, I looked to the north—but there was no sign of Jamie.
Captain Roarke, who was in fact a misbegotten son of a poxed whore, as he cheerfully admitted himself, sat down with me for a time and accepted a bottle of beer. I congratulated myself on my forethought in having brought a few dozen, a few of which I’d put over the side in a net to keep cool; the beer was doing a lot to soothe my impatience, though my stomach was still knotted with worry.
“None o’ your men are what ye might call sailing men, are they?” Captain Roarke observed, after a thoughtful silence.
“Well, Mr. MacKenzie’s spent a bit of time on fishing boats in Scotland,” I said, dropping an empty bottle into the net. “But I wouldn’t say he’s an able seaman, no.”
“Ah.” He drank a bit more.
“All right,” I said finally. “Why?”
He lowered his bottle and belched loudly, then blinked.
“Oh. Well, ma’am—I believe I did hear one o’ the young men say as how there was a rondayvooz to occur, at dark o’ moon?”
“Yes,” I said a little guardedly. We had told the captain as little as possible, not knowing whether he might have some association with Bonnet. “The dark of the moon is tomorrow night, isn’t it?”