To Chase the Storm, Page 2

  Rafe raised his fingers to the powder-grimed collarbone exposed by his torn doublet and touched the aged scar that bisected a birthmark in the shape of a scimitar. If Encina had been able to open the faded scar with a slash of his ebony gaze, Rafe was certain he would be spilling his lifeblood on the salt-coated deck.

  He felt the deck shift beneath him as the ship heeled leeward, its bow easing toward the Spanish galleons clustered on the distant sea, but his eyes stayed locked on the Inquisitor's enigmatic countenance. Encina's stiletto-thin nose carved between the sharp angles of his cheekbones. His carnal lips curled in a mysterious half-smile. All the ugliness in the religious fanaticism infesting Rafe's homeland seemed to lurk beneath that slight curve of the Inquisitor’s lips—the blackest curses, the hideous mysteries, the darkest terrors.

  Rafe’s memory filled with the terror-stricken faces of men and women, screaming as the flames of the auto-da-fé ate away sanity, then life itself.

  Pain raked Rafe as he remembered the ever-gentle Brother Ambrose, the holy man who had taken in an orphaned boy and then, years later, had died rather than betray a fugitive Jewess to the Inquisition's crucible of death. In that instant Ambrose's beloved countenance blurred into delicate, angelic features drowning in horror.

  Rafe's mother...

  His gut lurched at the hazy memory, the sense of danger from the Inquisitor sweeping through him even more fiercely than Drake's grave threat. He saw Encina cross himself and turn eyes, glittering with a strange kind of triumph, heavenward. Then the haze of gunpowder closed about the Inquisitor, hiding him once more in a swirl of mist.

  Rafe spun again to his task, battling beside a dozen of his men to rid the Lady of her crippled mast. But he had scarce driven his blade through a single length of the stubborn cord when a cry rang out from below the deck that drove all color from the face of every man who heard it.

  "Fire!”

  Rafe staggered as if a cannonball had slammed into his gut, his gaze struggling to pierce the pall of gunpowder that all but obscured the deck from his view.

  Cries of terror erupted from the soldiers, and Rafe's own sailors turned to him, their eyes wide with horror. Fire... that most dreaded of all calamities on the sea. The disaster that would most likely kill them all.

  Enrique's ashen face swirled before Rafe's eyes in a whirl of smoke that already carried the sharp tang of burning pitch.

  "Go below and get the wounded,” Rafe bellowed. “Then abandon ship, each whole man carrying one who is injured. Manolo, prepare the boats!"

  Rafe's eyes swept in an agonized path across the Lady's hull, the one home that had ever really been his, the only place he had truly belonged. His jaw clenched.

  Bastion's face was white as he aided Manolo and the terrified cabin boy in settling a groaning soldier into one of the longboats.

  "How... how did the blaze start?" the wounded man moaned.

  "Cannon fire," Rafe bit out. "Drake's cursed cannons."

  "Nay, sir." Rique's voice quavered with fear and confusion.

  "What?" Rafe's hands closed on Enrique's spindly arms.

  "It was not cannon fire. Could not have been. Lopez said the fire started among the dry stores, below the waterline."

  "Below the waterline? How could that be?" Rafe’s stomach twisted. No man should have been near the storage hold. Every lantern and fire had been extinguished long before the Lady had first engaged Drake. Then how...?

  A soft splash at the side of the ship startled Rafe. He turned in surprise to where the first of the longboats was being launched. Nay, impossible, Rafe thought. Even in the throes of panic the men could not have launched the craft so swiftly. Yet there was the longboat, cutting cleanly through the swells.

  Rafe could see only the outlines of the figures who manned the craft's oars, but the person who stood in the small vessel's prow was illuminated as if by some hell-born flame, his graceful hands folded in prayer, his lean face turned toward the heavens.

  Encina.

  "Rafe!" Bastion's voice was raspy with smoke. The billowing clouds were searing the lungs of the men as smoke poured from the hatches. "The last boat is ready. We have to abandon ship before she goes down."

  The fury that had been building in Rafe through the endless weeks at sea roiled through him. Frustration and helplessness and the grating necessity of bowing to those less skilled than he. "I'll not consign her to the sea for nothing, Bastion," Rafe said. "Drake will pay the price for the Lady's death and for the death of my men."

  "Damn it, Rafe—"

  "I'm going to sail her into the Revenge, Bastion, and pray God I reach Drake before the powder magazine explodes."

  “You can't mean—" Bastion's mouth hardened, and Rafe could see understanding flit across the young nobleman's face. "So, we take that bastard Drake down with us, eh, compañero?"

  "I take Drake down with me. You join the others."

  "You can't sail this hulk alone, crippled as she is," Bastion bit out. "We'll finish this together, Rafe, as we started it."

  Rafe saw the stubborn set to Bastion's jaw and acknowledged the bitter truth to his words. He couldn't see to maneuver the Lady and steer her toward Drake at the same time. A hot fist seemed to crush his throat. He raised one hand and gripped Bastion's shoulder. Their eyes held for an instant. "Friend." The single, choked word from Rafe's throat brought a reckless smile to Bastion's face.

  "You would do well not to spread such ugly rumors, amigo, else—"

  "Captain, sir?"

  Bastion's words were cut off by a quavering voice, and Rafe wheeled to where the gangly Enrique now stood.

  "I—I'd like to stay, too." The boy raised his dark eyes to Rafe, gazing up at him with the worshipful expression Rafe had ever tried to quell. "Manolo and I could man the sails well enough so that you'd have a better chance."

  Rafe drove his fingers back through his hair, his mouth twisting in pain. "Rique, this ship is going to be blasted into bits. You can't—"

  As if to mock him, the tattered sails flapped in the wind, slowing down the Lady's already waning speed.

  "Damn King Philip! Damn me!" Rafe felt a sickness roiling in his chest. "Manolo, Rique, set the topgallant to leeward. Bastion—"

  "I'll take the helm. The others will need you on deck." He spun and bolted toward the hatch.

  "Bastion!" Rafe called. The man paused and turned. "Ease toward Drake with the greatest of care, so he won’t be alerted that there is fire aboard. We have to dupe him into thinking the Lady is sinking—and lure the greedy bastard close."

  Bastion gave a short nod then plunged into the veil of smoke. "Cast off!" Rafe bellowed to the men waiting to lower the last of the longboats. A sick sensation shot through him as his last hope of survival was blotted out. He had courted death a thousand times and had even laughed at it.

  But now, as he met the Reaper's stare, he knew it was no longer some rakehell adventure to be embraced with the same heedlessness as a courtesan. Death's face was hideous and haunting, the face of a phantom he’d met in a nightmare twenty-eight years ago.

  With an oath Rafe shook himself as the sound of Rique's reedy voice babbling prayers and Manolo's grunting and cursing snapped him back to the present. His eyes stung, and his lungs burned. Heat penetrated the soles of his boots from the inferno blazing below as he yelled directions to Bastion, but Rafe could not banish his mother's face from his memory.

  Features, once beautiful, lost in a tangle of honey-colored hair, deep blue eyes fierce with love for him, yet devastated by terror and loss, pleading. It was too late, too late to delve into the desperation in those memory-shrouded eyes, too late to do anything but confront his own mortality. The image of her face hung in the haze as Rafe gripped the gunwale, his eyes straining, his mouth cursing, desperate as the ship inched toward Drake's own... closer... closer.

  The English artillery roared, and the sound that had filled him with anger and bitterness moments before now twisted his mouth with a savage joy, because it assure
d him that Drake was not yet aware of the flames eating through the Lady from within.

  "Windward, Bastion, a sword's breadth windward," Rafe directed in a hoarse voice all but lost in the choked coughs of Bastion. "If we can just hold on for a minute more—"

  "Captain!"

  "Holy Mary!"

  Rafe wheeled at the sound of Rique's sob, glimpsing in that instant a burst of flame roaring through the Lady’s pitch-encrusted deck. Rafe's hand flashed up instinctively to cross himself as the world exploded into a thousand shards of pain.

  Chapter 2

  The sea was crying again, low and mournful, in tones that Tessa alone could hear. She turned her face into the wind sweeping the jagged stretch of coastline, wishing the gusts could dash away the pain clenched about her heart. But the melancholy only bit deeper, mingling with the sharp tang of gunpowder rolling in with the tide.

  Hagar was dying.

  Tessa tried to stop her lips from trembling, her teeth catching at the fullness a dozen swains had dreamed of tasting. Though she willed the tears from her onyx-bright eyes, she could not keep her gaze from straying to the withered figure curled up on a boulder at the sea's edge.

  Though she was wracked with pain, Hagar's whole being seemed to strain with impatience. Her wide, childlike eyes roved out across the waves. Her face, shrunken and sweet as a dried apple, was alive with the eagerness of a maiden awaiting her lover. Even the wreath of heather fastened askew in her silver hair looked like an ornament fit for a bridal bower, while gnarled fingers that could be infinitely gentle tossed purple blossoms into the lacings of foam cresting the swells.

  She was waiting for him, Tessa knew. The husband Hagar had lost to those relentless waves nearly a decade before. Tessa could see it in the old woman's smile—that beautiful, innocent smile that bold William Ravenscroft had carried in his heart across the sea—the smile that could warm even the chill touching the mists.

  "Are you coming for her, Papa? Will you come again to bring her treasures?" Tessa whispered softly, memories of the man who had loved her like his own daughter tugging at her heart. She swallowed hard, picturing Ravenscroft's gray eyes, the corners crinkled from squinting out across the glimmering waves, his salt-weathered features echoing the strength of a sea cliff and the gentleness of the safest of harbors.

  The image her mind had conjured smiled, rope-scarred fingers reaching out as if to offer comfort, and she could almost hear that much-loved gravelly voice saying "Quit yer stewin' about, Tessa girl. 'Twill all come right in the end."

  Despite her grief, Tessa’s lips curve in an answering smile. The burning sense of loss that had filled the past month eased with the strange certainty that soon the long dead sailor would come to carry off his beloved.

  Peace would be the gift brave William would offer his Hagar this time. And Tessa knew it would be the most welcome gift of all.

  Her fingers clenched, the bitter memories and fears that had eaten away at her these past weeks intruding once more as she turned her gaze back to her mother. Peace had been scarce in the gentle Hagar's life since the night the kind Tarrant St. Cyr, Earl of Valcour, had summoned them to his castle and told them that the Mistress Gallant had met her doom. Silhouetted against the crimson backdrop of a banner bearing the Valcour device of a stag courant—a running deer—the earl had solemnly informed the assembled families of the sailors that all hands had been lost.

  The anguish of that moment had been seared into Tessa's memory forever, and she had wanted to hate the nobleman who had owned the ship on which her father had served. But she could not, even in the first rush of grief. For despite the mighty earl's majesty and grandeur, Tessa knew he had once experienced a sorrow as great as her own.

  Murder's blood-hued shadow dripped over the walls of Valcour Castle, casting a dark pall over what had once been the most glittering of estates, leaving the earl hopeless.

  Tessa could remember laying on her pallet in the darkness, listening as her father whispered to Hagar of the tragedy that had befallen his master, the earl. It had happened in that distant, fear-inspiring land called Spain—the disaster that had robbed the earl of his cherished only daughter and the little grandson he had won permission from parliament to have succeed him. A band of cutthroats, William said, had descended upon the delicate Anne St. Cyr, her bold Spanish grandee husband, and their young son, killing them and scattering their bones in an attempt to hide the hellish deed, so that the desperate earl had not even been given the solace of laying his loved ones to rest in the vast St. Cyr crypt.

  Grief? Aye, Tarrant St. Cyr had borne it in plenty. But that emotion had been a luxury Hagar and Tessa could ill afford as they were forced to fend for themselves outside of the safe haven offered them as William Ravenscroft's own. A gawky girl, Tessa had been. Useless. Her head stuffed with fantasies fed by dreamy William's rich store of wondrous tales. While Hagar had no skill, no strength, except the beauty that had once turned men's loins to flame.

  Flame… in truth the desperate woman had been in hell after William's death. Rage swept through Tessa, as fierce as though she were again confronting the vicious brute Hagar had been forced to wed in order that she and Tessa might survive.

  Jervis Keegan had taken all the wonders William Ravenscroft had given his wife and daughter and had sold those symbols of the sailor's abiding love, destroying Hagar's sanity. Even years after Keegan had met his end, people guarded against the evil eye whenever the old woman passed.

  Witch. How many times had Tessa heard the superstitious villagers of Gnarlymeade whisper that dreaded word as they pointed surreptitiously to the aged woman who clung so fiercely to her love of the sea? They loathed Hagar, thought her touched by the Dark One. Yet neither their fear nor the old woman's increasing frailty had stopped them from seeking her out, to beg for love potions or possets to cure fever or far more sinister brews Hagar had always refused to make.

  Even that morning while Tessa was on the beach gathering mussels for breakfast, an ebony-masked woman had stolen up to bedevil Hagar, demanding a deadly mixture destined, no doubt, for some faithless lover's flagon of malmsey.

  Hagar had cackled with glee over the woman's fury at her refusal, telling Tessa of the incident with childlike relish. Tessa had seen no humor in the situation. She had felt only the thickening of the deadly cloak of mystery the villagers were weaving around them, a superstitious dread that would one day destroy them both.

  No, Tessa thought fiercely, the blood-thirsting dolts would have no time to vent their hatred upon Hagar, or on Tessa. For soon death would scoop the old woman from their midst. And then Tessa would leave this place forever.

  She swallowed the knot of grief in her throat, shielding her face from Hagar's eyes with her own rippling raven tresses. Anguish filled her every time she thought of the deadly mass swelling on Hagar's breast. For months Tessa had watched the lump grow, burning hot and painful, as she had gently bathed the old woman. And now, the end must surely be near.

  "Child?" The reedy voice held the petulant tone of a fractious babe. Tessa shoved back her curls and her sorrow, still clutching the roots she had been grubbing to brew a heartening tea.

  "All is well, Mama. I'm here."

  "Nay, you must come! Call William at once, so—"

  "Papa is away, Mama," Tessa interrupted, trying to keep the tremor from her voice as she thought longingly of the man who had taught her to use wood-carving tools, the man who had shown her what wonder dreams could hold.

  A twinge of resentment nipped her as she regarded Hagar's blissful oblivion. But Tessa crushed even that slight annoyance, ashamed. By now she should be used to deflecting her foster mother's questions about the husband the aged woman had adored. Yet Hagar's innocent words, spoken in gentle madness, always opened old wounds, old grief, preventing William Ravenscroft from sleeping in peace, even in Tessa's own heart.

  "Remember, Mama? Papa is off at sea," Tessa said evenly, levering herself to her feet and thrusting the roots into the leather pou
ch tied to her waist. "But perhaps I can help until... until he comes." Brushing the dirt from her fingers, she hastened over to where Hagar sat. The blue eyes that had been confused for so long now reflected a clarity Tessa had not seen for years. A mingling of outrage, anger, and fear was trapped beneath the sparse lashes.

  "Someone be trying to catch the fairies," Hagar said. "Ropes. They be trying to bind them."

  Tessa followed the direction of the old woman's palsied hand as it pointed out over the waves to where coils of torn rigging and charred lengths of timber had washed in from the day's fierce battle. Though the whole of England had held its breath awaiting the outcome of the clash in the Channel, even the approach of Spain's great armada hadn’t penetrated Tessa’s sorrow.

  Tessa forced a smile to her lips and knelt beside her foster mother, wrapping one arm around the bent shoulders. "Whist, now, all is well."

  "But we must warn them—William's fairies."

  "Papa's fairies are far too canny to be trapped by mere ropes. Most likely they will knot the cords up into flower petals and weave a charm about them."

  "A charm? William would like that." Hagar's face brightened a little; then the brief light faded. "But perhaps they'll work a charm on you," the woman said softly. "Perhaps they'll send their sea ghost to wed you."

  Bittersweet memories tugged at Tessa as Hagar spoke. William Ravenscroft had so loved to spin the tale of the sea sprites for Tessa when she was a child. He claimed the sprites had given Tessa to him and Hagar in exchange for their promise that when it was time for the girl to wed, they would release her to a phantom from the sea.

  Tessa had embraced the mystical story eagerly until the harsh realities of death, despair, and life with Jervis Keegan had driven the dream dust from her eyes.

  Tessa smoothed her callused palm over Hagar's wrinkled cheek and pressed a kiss on her silver hair. "I'll not run off with any sea ghost this day," Tessa said softly. "Nor any other, so long as you have need of me." She took Hagar's fragile hand in her own, carefully drawing the old woman to her feet. "Come now. It is time we got back to the cottage. The stew is most likely done, and I'll brew you some tea."