The Scot Corsair Read online

Roderick thought quickly. Stirling, though a fool in some ways, was absolutely not a man to cross in a fight and he was as fiercely loyal to Roderick as only an exiled Highlander could be to a fellow countryman. Stirling had his blade at the Pearl King's throat, though Veneno was ignoring it and acting as if Roderick and he were the only two men present. Roderick knew Stirling. If he thought his Captain's life was threatened, he would make quick and ruthless work of the older buccaneer, and hang the consequences.

  Roderick, on the other hand, had no intention of triggering an all-out war on the island, where fighting with blades was banned by long custom. Veneno's crew was more than twice the size of his own, and they were famously loyal. Even if some of the more ambitious might be secretly pleased to have the chance to take over his mantle, the first thing any successor would do would be to hunt down and slaughter the King's assassins, and probably the rest of the crew for good measure. Even now, Roderick was worried about retaliation for the crime of seducing his woman.

  "Veneno," he said, dancing backwards, keeping his blade steady, "we don't have to fight. If we break the peace, if we hurt each other, our men will seek revenge. It's to nobody's advantage if the island descends into chaos."

  "This is nothing to do with the island or with our men, you son of a sea dog. This is between you and me!" He swayed and lunged.

  Roderick dodged the slashing cutlass with ease. "Veneno, I swear by every plank and rivet in the Chieftain of the Seas that I did no dishonour by your lady. But if it will make you happy, I'll take my men and clear right out of Ilha de Perolas for now."

  Stirling was perilously close behind Veneno, and looked ready to grab him by the neck and plunge his knife into his throat if provoked.

  Veneno halted his advance on Roderick. By the quick sideways flick of his eyes, Roderick saw that he was perfectly aware of the danger of the blade near his neck. The Pearl King had not gained command of a vessel like the Viper, nor won the loyalty of at least two hundred men, without being canny as well as bold. He had taken the risk of coming to confront his rival alone, perhaps not wanting to expose Miriam to shame or himself to scorn, and he was paying the price for that; he had probably expected a single, sleeping, befuddled man, not two of them armed and alert. Roderick could see the calculation going on behind the weathered grey eyes.

  Then in one extravagant motion, Veneno sheathed his sword. "Gahhh, no wench is worth the purchase. Begone with you, cur."

  With a significant glance at Stirling, Roderick indicated silently that he should withdraw his blade. His First Mate glowered, but took a step back, the knife still aimed at Veneno's jugular. Roderick sheathed his own cutlass slowly and moved carefully around to join him.

  They were almost out of the door, backing away cautiously as if it had been they who had been outnumbered and overpowered rather than the other way around, when some insane instinct of chivalry overcame Roderick. "Senhora Miriam!" he said in Portuguese. "You don't have to stay with him if you're unhappy—come with us if you want."

  Veneno drew himself to his full, considerable height and rounded on them, his hand going to his swordbelt again.

  "You?" Miriam spat. Her beautiful face was contorted with contempt. "You—coward. You no fight. You talk talk talk." She made a mocking chat motion with her hand.

  It got Veneno's attention for long enough for Roderick and Stirling to slip out, Stirling actually tugging his Captain by the shirtsleeve to make him move. They heard Veneno say, in a low growl, "Aye, and you're getting more than talk from me, my girl. I'll teach you to spread your legs for anyone but the Pearl King."

  He actually did call himself the Pearl King, Roderick realised with a sense of wonder. He exchanged glances with Stirling, where he saw his amusement, just momentarily, reflected.

  There was a squawk and the sound of a brief scuffle, and then the highly distinctive crack of leather on bare flesh. Roderick stole one glance back into the lodging-room, and was rewarded by the sight of Miriam, quite naked, turned over Captain Veneno's knee. His belt was doubled in his hand and he was applying it with vigour to her perfect, plump, white backside.

  The racket of shrieks and sobs and incomprehensible curses, and the implacable lash of the belt, followed them quite a way down the hill.

  "At least she's getting what was due to her," Roderick muttered.

  "I'm sorry, Captain." Stirling stopped, and looked aside.

  Knots of Veneno's men were congregating at the side of the road, at the corners of buildings, and watching them. Nobody made an overtly threatening move, nobody so much as put their hand meaningfully to their sword-belt, but their attitude of menace was unmistakable. Let night fall and the rum start to flow, and someone would let a spark fall on what would have become a tinder-box.

  "We'd better round up the crew and weigh anchor within the hour," said Roderick. "God's teeth, Stirling. I hope she was worth it."

  "Captain! Captain Scot!"

  For the second time in only a few weeks, Roderick was torn from befuddled dreams by the Bombardier shouting his name. It was not the way he preferred to be roused from slumber. For a moment or two, he lay tangled in sheets and blankets, wondering if he had been dreaming about that morning. He felt the gentle reassuring rocking of the ship below him, and for a sweet second felt the relief of waking from a dream into a brighter reality.

  Then the door to his cabin banged open, and Roderick knew he was wide awake.

  In fact he was scrambling to his feet and grabbing his cutlass before he was fully aware of it. The urgency in the Bombardier's voice had called his body to arms before his mind caught up.

  "Americans!" he elaborated. "The American Navy."

  "Have they seen us?"

  "Not in the water, Captain. Ahead—in port at Ilha de Perolas. At least ten ships in the harbour."

  Roderick was already wearing his breeches. He pulled on a shirt and jacket, sheathed his sword and scrambled up to deck, where a concerned knot of crewmen were already crowded onto the fo'c's'le, including Stirling and Washington, the Chieftain's Quartermaster. They parted with alacrity to let him through to the front, and Stirling handed him a telescope.

  The island shimmered on the horizon, only barely visible to the naked eye.

  "Luiz spotted them from the crow's nest," Stirling said. "I told him to look out for any signs of—trouble."

  If they were still unwelcome on Ilha de Perolas after six weeks of mostly unsuccessful skulking around the trade lanes towards Barbados, then Roderick was not sure how this would be apparent from a distance. It was hardly as if the Pearl King was going to drape a banner across the harbour front, painted with the words 'Avast ye, scurvy sea dogs of the Chieftain'. But the men were getting restive, supplies were running low, and they had a few bushels of spices—the only booty they had to show for their efforts—to sell. It was time to go home, and hope that the Viper was out on the seas and doing well enough to put the King in a good enough humour to forget the insult of many weeks' past.

  Roderick turned the telescope's lens, and the island suddenly jumped into clear view. The sight was like a physical blow beneath his ribs.

  There were considerably more than ten ships in the island's little harbour. The whole coast was black with them, all flying the ominous red, white and blue flag, a veritable fleet. After the first shock, he realised that the impression of blackness was created by more than the crowding of ships' hulks along the shore. Smoke was rising in billows from the harbour and beyond. He squinted the telescope's sight upwards, wondering for a wild moment if the ancient volcano had indeed sprung to life and spewed its fiery guts over the town. Then he realised that the buildings on the slope were simply on fire, here and there. Close to, there must be shouting and running and screaming and the splintering of burning timber, but from this distance all was ominously silent. He could see tiny blossoms of flame and hazy clouds of smoke, and hear nothing but the calling of seabirds.

  "They raid the island," said Washington slowly, stating the obvious with his usua
l calm and slightly incomprehensible majesty. He was a huge man who had fled from a British sugar plantation, after some dark deed involving a woman and a corpse. Roderick had never asked for the details, partly because such things were irrelevant and partly because he could scarcely understand the President's thickly exotic English. He was also just a little intimidated by the Quartermaster, though of course he did his best not to show it. He was well aware that if he, Roderick, ever lost the favour of the crew, the massive and fearsome-looking President would be next in line for Captain.

  "They've torched the whole town," said Stirling, sounding more bewildered than outraged. "All my things were there!"

  "Everyone's things were there," said Roderick shortly, thinking rapidly. He glanced up at the mast. They were flying no colours, thank God. Even if there was a lookout, they were not immediately identifiable as a pirate vessel. But, he thought, looking around at his colourfully arraigned officers, nobody who saw them close to would be in any doubt for a moment. "Turn around!" He raised his voice to a shout. "Hard to port! All hands to it!"

  The men scattered in practised confusion, giving Roderick an incongruous moment of pride as they scrambled expertly to haul the ship around from its course with all possible speed.

  "Where to, Captain?" shouted Steerforth, the aptly-named sailing master.

  Roderick hesitated. Both Washington and Stirling turned to him, and on Washington's flat, broad face at least, there was a calculating, challenging look.

  Where to, indeed. Ever since he had fitted out and crewed the Chieftain of the Seas, Ilha de Perolas had been the ship's home port. In fact he knew of no other safe port between here and St Lucia. Between them, the American and British navies were fast making the pursuit of liberty and fortune on the high seas a thing of the past.

  "We will find another base!" Roderick raised his voice so that most of the men could hear, above the slapping of the waves and the creaking of timber. "We'll head for Venezuela to offload the spices and lie low from the Americans, and then—we'll begin again! There are hundreds of islands, we'll build a port ourselves if we need to! And this time, the Chieftain will rule!"

  There were a few ragged cheers in response, enough for Roderick to feel that he was carrying his men with him. But they had lived on ship's rations for weeks now, there was a lingering suspicion that despite Stirling being the one who had in fact enjoyed the favours of the Queen, he, Roderick, had somehow been responsible for the debacle that had abruptly shortened their shore leave, and the sight of their safe harbour burning was a heavy blow to every man aboard.

  He wondered with a dart of pity what had happened to the beautiful, smoky-eyed woman, who had not looked quite so regal turned over the Pearl King's knee and receiving her due reward. Had she been put to the sword? Had she suffered a worse fate at the hands of the American sailors?

  Stirling clapped him on the back as he headed to his cabin to study maps of the South American coast, but Roderick could feel Washington's gaze boring into the space just between his shoulders.

  Chapter Four

  Only the fact that lying belowdeck made her feel considerably more sick than she ever had in her life prevented Elspeth from carrying out her plan to spend the whole voyage shut up in her cabin, with the covers over her head. In the first week or so it had been vitally important to seek fresh air and the sight of the horizon, before she died. And while she had theoretically been considering death as an alternative to the fate that lay before her, she discovered when it came to it that she was quite keen on continuing to live. After a night of the acutest misery, retching into a bucket until she felt she might turn herself inside out, she staggered up to the deck at first light.

  The air was freezing, but so raw and salt that it was like gulping down great draughts of Bath spa water. And despite the wretchedness of her situation and the giddy sickness wracking her body, she marvelled at the immensity of the sky, and the emptiness of the prospect all around. It gave her, paradoxically, a momentary sense of freedom. Scotland was quite vanished. Her brother, her father, the whole Dunwoodie estate and Sir Duncan Buccleuch had fallen off the face of the world. If only she could have forgotten that she was heading into bondage, as surely as some wretched blackamoor aboard a slave ship, then she would have felt happiness.

  After about a week, all of a sudden, she woke up and realised that the nausea was gone. It did not settle down or tail off, it vanished completely between one night's sleep and the morning. The relief was so powerful that again, it buoyed her spirits almost to joy, and she could by no means bear to give up her excursions onto deck. There was never anything to see beyond gray heaving ocean and circling seabirds, but she never tired of gazing at the open expanses of nothingness. It was so strange, so unlike anywhere she had ever imagined.

  This sense of freedom was enhanced by the lack of supervision. She was officially under the care of Captain Cardrew, who was a friend or acquaintance or some such connection of her second oldest brother Charles, father of Robert the unpromising heir-apparent and Admiral of the Royal Navy; but the Captain was far too busy to pay much attention to her, beyond inviting her to dine with him and the other officers when they had formal table. Literally the only other female on board ship was the maid they had sent with her, an inferior creature called Birnie whom the Dunwoodie housekeeper Mrs Swankie seemed to have scrounged up from amidst the sewing maids. Her real maid, Mercier, had begged in tears not to be made to go to Barbados. The French girl had found love with an Aberdeenshire ploughboy, and could not bear to be parted from him.

  Elspeth felt that the refined lady's maid might have aimed higher, but she could not bring herself to break anyone else's heart. Her own was sad and scared enough. A word with her brother, and Mercier was reassigned within Dunwoodie, presumably to await her rustic nuptials. And Elspeth found that she was to be waited upon by a scared sewing maid, with the promise of a better class of native servant when she arrived at her new home.

  Oh to be a simple servant, Elspeth thought bitterly, and on the point of marrying a man she loved, than the finest lady in the land, en route to be bound for eternity to a man she had never met.

  She tried not to think about the last few days at Dunwoodie. Not all her tears, all her attempts at rational pleading, all her temper tantrums had made one bit of difference to James's resolution, except to render him angrier and colder. In the end, he would not talk to her at all, and what could she do on the final morning except allow Mercier to dress her one last time and walk numbly down to the carriage that awaited her at the door? James had delivered a stiff and formal farewell speech, more for the sake of how it appeared to the servants than because he really cared about the fact that he would likely never see his sister again. She kept her face averted, and would not look at him; would not even glance back as the carriage began its stately progress down the drive of the house that was no longer her home.

  And once he was out of sight, and despite the presence of the sewing maid, her tears had flowed freely. Who was there that loved her? Nobody any longer. She was leaving the last place she had ever been happy, she was leaving the last place she had ever been loved, and her life—at twenty years old—was a blank before her.

  In the vastness and liberty of the ocean, once she stopped feeling ill, she managed to forget all of that for a while. But it could not last. One morning, when she went out on deck, there was a long ominous dark line on the horizon.

  Her heart dropped. She spotted one of the ship's first lieutenants, a Mr Wardle, a fine young gentleman whom she had often talked with at the Captain's table. "Mr Wardle!" she called.

  He approached her and bowed. He really was very handsome in a windswept, fine-boned way. "Good morning, your ladyship. It's a fair day, is it not."

  "Is that Barbados ahead?"

  He laughed. "By no means, your ladyship. We're still a good three weeks out of Bridgetown. That ahead is the coast of West Africa. We make port at Freetown before taking the trade winds to Barbados."

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sp; Africa! That was why the sea air was balmy now, and smelled not only of salt but of spices. Despite everything, Elspeth felt a rush of excitement at the very thought of really being near a place she had expected to encounter only in story books and travelogues and the big atlas in the library at Dunwoodie.

  As soon as she stepped ashore she was overwhelmed by the strangeness of it all. The suffocating heat, the noise, the little white houses mounting the hills covered thickly by trees with fat, green fan-like leaves; the cacophony of voices that were speaking something that was almost but so very far from English, and above all the people with their skin shining as black as coal. She caught a glimpse of all of this before being shut into the shade of a carriage, and whisked away to the Governor's house, where James had arranged she should stay while her ship was in port.

  It was a foretaste of her captivity to come, she thought. It disconcerted her that James's hand reached far across the sea to control her from the very moment she had stepped from the boarding-plank. The Governor, Colonel Harding, was very courteous, and his wife was positively fawning; but as she lay under crisp white linen sheets, watching muslin billowing at windows that stood wide open to the night, on a bed that did not rock her to sleep, she knew she was a prisoner.

  What would happen, she wondered, if she simply got up in the night, dressed herself, slipped out of the villa and left the grounds? If she kept walking along the road, into the jungle or whatever was beyond the town?

  Even if nobody stopped her, there was absolutely nowhere she could go. Not only did she know nothing about this country, her lily-pale skin would mark her out immediately. In Scotland, she supposed she might have been able to throw a shawl over her head and pretend to be a peasant girl, but here that was quite impossible. Even at home, she knew it was not a charade she would have been able to keep up for long. She was a fine lady, bred to the gentlest of existences, and she could never be other than that. Nor did she wish any other life; she just did not want to live that life in exile, sweltering to death and stewing in tropical diseases, married to an unknown Mr Crowther.