Lisbon (46 page)

"Because, my dear”—he was always at his worst when he called her “my dear”—“I have no thought to be accused of your murder. You will take care of that for me yourself when you assess your situation and decide to take your own life. I leave the method to you—you are very inventive, so I am sure you will find a way to end it successfully.”

“I will never take my own life!” she flared. “Release me at once or I will scream the house down!”

His gaze upon her was almost fond. “I am sure you would delight in doing that,” he said. “For tis clear your spirit is not yet broken. But it will be, I assure you, although regrettably I will not be here to see it. If you scream, you will be promptly gagged again. I am sure you have had enough experience of that to make you prudent. ” Panic welled up in her. “Rowan, this is monstrous! Surely even you—”

He cut through her protests silkily. “In the unfortunate event that you are discovered here in Lisbon after I have gone, my only crime will be that I have set up a sham funeral and left my mad wife in the custody of kind servants to avoid the humiliation of parading her back to England to be held up for ridicule. I have sworn statements from the doctor and two other witnesses that you were raving mad before you ‘died.’ ” He paused in the doorway, those dark gleaming eyes devouring the stunned expression on her white face. She saw in them the same look—was it triumph?—that he had worn when Katherine Talybont had whirled upon him that night in the inn, accusing him of murdering her husband. And, sure enough, he spoke of her. “I thought Katherine was bad, Charlotte, but you are worse. Katherine broke only her promise to wed.
You
broke your marriage vows.”

“I came back to you,” she pointed out dully.

“Back to me?” He brushed that aside with scorn. “But only until Westing whistled you away again!”

It was true
,
it was true. If Tom had been able to take her away with him
,
she would have gone—and gladly
. She was silent before the truth of it.

“I searched for you throughout the city. God, I was 
gone only a matter of hours. You must have arranged ahead with him, you must have been waiting for the moment when I would leave. ”

“No, it was a chance meeting.”
But knew he would never believe her.

He seemed not to have heard. “And then it came to me that I had no need to storm out into the countryside to find you. You would come back for the children. I had only to wait.”

She gazed at him hopelessly. “I had told Tom good-bye. I never expected to see him again. ”

“Oh, spare me further lies, Charlotte!” he said impatiently. He turned to go.

Charlotte made one more desperate try. “Katherine Talybont will put it about that you have done away with me,” she warned. “If only to reinforce her claim that you instigated Talybont’s murder. ” Her eyes narrowed.
“Which now I know you did.”

That seemed to reach him. He did not even bother to deny it. He strode back and stood towering over her. “How many lies I have had to weave to make you feel comfortable in this marriage!” he marveled. “You, the adulteress! You, whom I set upon a pedestal and worshipped at your feet!” His teeth ground. “You are another Sophia Dorothea and you deserve the same fate!
And shall have it!”

Charlotte leaned forward. “You are a devil,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Straight from hell.”

For a moment their blazing eyes locked and held like the blades of duelists, locked hilt to basket hilt. Then he flung away from her and his contemptuous laughter floated over his shoulder as he left the room. Not until she heard his boots clatter down the stairway, heard the front door shut behind him, did a sob well up in her throat.

As if on signal, when the front door closed, a heavyset woman came in carrying a bowl of broth. “I am Alta Bilbao,” she stated.

“That monster is taking my children away!” Charlotte cried tearfully. “Untie me, I must go and stop him!” In her anxiety, she had spoken in English, and as the woman 
set down the broth and untied her wrists, she tried to repeat her words in Portuguese.

The woman looked upset. She spoke in Portuguese so fast that Charlotte could catch only a word here and there— but what she made of it was that the
senhora
was not to concern herself, it was only for a little while—until she was better! Desperate to reach the ship before Rowan sailed away with Cassandra and Phoebe, Charlotte tried to untie her own ankles. At this point she was pushed back firmly into her chair and broth was proffered. When Charlotte struck away the broth, Alta sighed and seized Charlotte’s wrists and, despite Charlotte s struggles, tied them up again.

When the woman had gone, Charlotte sagged against the heavy chair and deep sobs racked her body. Rowan would sail in an hour . . . with the children . . . her lovely little Cassandra, her tiny Phoebe. In an hour ... in an hour. . .

The next morning Alta Bilbao again brought the broth, and with it a large slab of bread.

This time Charlotte ate it.

That night, gagged and wrapped in blankets, she was again moved to a new location—to some hilly spot, she judged, from the lurching gait of the donkey or whatever it was her shrouded body had been thrown across. Cramped and half-suffocated, it was almost as if she had been sewn in a sack—and that made her think again of Tom. Had five days gone by? she asked herself wildly. Was Tom, even now, sinking into the green depths, drowning in a sack?

It was indeed the fifth day.

Tom had awakened with a groan and a sickeningly throbbing head in the darkness and stench of a filthy hold. He was aboard ship—too well his nose knew the smell of rotting fish and ship’s biscuit and moldy cheese, too well his ears picked up the creaking of the timbers and the crack of the sails. For a moment he was disoriented, seemingly suspended in time and space.

Then a cultivated voice out of the darkness nearby said, “Ah, you’re awake. I was here when they brought you 
in—‘tossed you in’ might be more accurate. I am Sebasti
ã
o da Severn. ”

“Tom Westing. ” As he spoke his own name, it all came back to Tom—all of it, hearing Charlotte scream and rushing into that flat-fronted mansion and being attacked from all sides, and then the world exploding and dropping him into a bottomless pit. He tried to sit up and found that he was clanking chains—indeed he was firmly chained by the foot to a huge iron ring. He tugged at that ring and began to curse.

“Ah, that is how I felt when they first brought me here, ” observed the same cultivated Portuguese voice that had spoken before. “Now I am more sanguine, my friend. If one is to die, one may as well accept it in good grace.

“Why are you here?” demanded Tom harshly, his voice rasping because the sudden exertion on top of his head injury had made him feel sick.

He could almost feel the other man’s shrug. “I have enemies,” was the response. “Enemies who lured me to Lisbon so that they could finish me off and then find a way to claim my lands in Brazil.” The voice was wry. “It could be said that I walked into a trap. ”

“So did I.” Tom was thinking about Charlotte. Her desperate scream still rang through his mind. God, what had they done to her? “Have you thought about getting out of here?” he inquired.

“I have thought of nothing else. Indeed, it seems forever that I have been in this dark hole. From time to time I have been brought water and bread. But the sailor who brings it is a mute and cannot answer any of my questions. ” The timbers creaked again and there was a sharp slap of sails overhead.

“How long since we cast off? asked Tom.

“Some hours now. I think our captain must plan to take us out to sea and there dispose of us.”

Yes, that seemed likely. Tom’s mind was racing. “You say you have lands in Brazil, Senhor da Severa. Have you tried bribery?”

“I would,” sighed da Severa, “if I could talk to someone. ” As time went on, they got to know each other rather 
well, these two unfortunates, as they ate their coarse brown bread, and grew to like each other. Da Severa was a wealthy landowner—he did not say how wealthy, but Tom gathered that his wealth was considerable. He was a childless widower who had chosen not to marry again. In Lisbon his nephew—who had refused all offers to come out to Brazil, since it was clear that that might entail work—had plotted against him with a man called Cortinas. And one night da Severa had been set upon and placed aboard this vessel. If her captain could be persuaded to sail for Brazil instead of wherever he was bound, da Severa could pay him more than whatever sum he had had of Cortinas.

Tom took note of that.

On the fifth day the mute disappeared and a cabin boy brought in a bucket of water and a dipper. And a broken slab of brown bread that the prisoners could share between them. “Wind’s coming up,” he reported. “Looks like a gale.”

“What ship is this?” asked Tom.

“She’s had half a dozen names since I’ve been aboard her,” was the lad’s cheerful reply. “Scrape and paint, scrape and paint. Just now she’s called the
Douro."

Named for a Portuguese river.

“What was she before?” asked Tom.

“She was
La Lune.”
He laughed.

La Lune.
The name meant nothing to Tom. “And before that?”

“The
Swallow.
And before that the
Merrie Harlot.”

Ah, there was a name that rang a ship’s bell in Tom’s mind. “She’s been the
Merrie Harlot
more than once, I’ll wager,” he said softly.

“How would you know that?”

“Because that was her name a long time ago, when she sailed the waters around Madagascar.”

“Won’t matter to you none,” said the lad uncertainly. “Because now that we're five days out, they’re going to throw you both overboard. Tonight. The captain sends you his compliments and tells you both to be sayin’ your prayers.”

“Does he indeed?” Tom’s voice was ironic but his heart was beating fast. “Tell your captain—”

“Tell your captain what?” boomed a rough voice, and Tom found himself blinking into yet another circle of light. In the lantern’s tawny light a graying man, built like a barrel, came in and stood looking down at him. “I’ve been commissioned to drop you overboard in deep water, sewn in a sack,” the man said abruptly. “And I’ve a curiosity before I do it to know the why of it. What’s your crime, lad?”

Blinking into the lantern’s light, Tom looked up warily at his captor.

“No crime,” he said. “I loved a woman—and her husband objected.”

“Oh, so that’s the way of it.” The harsh voice above him had gone humorous. “Some husbands have no sense of humor about their wives dallying!”

“She was mine before she was his,” growled Tom. “He and a gang of murderers set upon me and pushed me over a cliff. They thought they’d done for me and they told her I was dead. He got her by a trick.”

“Clever of him,” was the cool observation above him. And then, more thoughtfully, “I took him to be a clever man.”

“I came looking for her,” Tom told him moodily. “And now he’s got you to do for me, and God knows what he’ll do to her. ”

“Like as not,” was the callous agreement.

That brusque indifferent voice, that burly neck, that way of standing—a few more scars, maybe, but it was the same man.

“Could it be you’re Captain Yarbrough?” Tom wondered. “Aye, you’ll have seen me around.”

“That I have,” agreed Tom. “But not here. In Madagascar. ” “What do you know about Madagascar?” the captain asked sharply. He was peering down at his captive now with more interest.

“I’ve dined with you there and shared a few bottles of rum when this ship was called the
Merrie Harlot.
Don’t you remember me? I’m Tom Westing, Captain Ben West
ing’s son. I shipped out to Madagascar with him aboard the
Shark.’’

“Devil Ben’s son? I can’t believe it. Ben Westing told me you’d jumped ship somewhere, he hadn’t seen you since.’’

“Aye, I was chasing a skirt,” lied Tom.

Above him, Captain Yarbrough swore softly. He pointed a finger at Sebastião da Severa. “You’ve got a reprieve for the moment, Portagee. I want to talk to this lad!

An hour later, bathed and shaved, Tom was sitting across from Captain Yarbrough in his great cabin and the captain was pouring him out a glass of Madeira wine.

“When did you last see my father?” Tom asked, sipping the wine.

“Just before his ship went down—with him on it. Broke up on a coral reef near the isle of Nosy Be. None was saved, not one.”

Tom felt a ripple of misery go through him. His father and he had never seen eye to eye, but it was a shock to learn that Devil Ben was dead. Lost in the Indian Ocean. . . .

“Sure it’s sorry I am to be the one to have to tell you,” said Captain Yarbrough morosely. “Have some more wine, boy.”

Tom watched the golden wine splash down into his glass. Memories flooded back, not all of them bad. His father had loved Madagascar. For a moment Tom remembered the sights and sounds of the place: impossibly blue water washing white beaches with their fringe of waving coconut palms, the overpowering sweetness of the yellow-green ylang-ylang flowers, clove trees, aromatic lemon grass, vanilla ... a world apart. A world bloodied by the sword and drunk with rum.