Lisbon (73 page)

He had known then that he could keep up the charade no longer.

Nor could he bring himself to tell her. He could not bear to watch that warm expression he so treasured change and chill. He could not endure her scorn, her hatred.

So he had chosen another way. He had sent Charlotte off to the Varváez reception for Lord Derwent, knowing full well she could not escape meeting the guest of honor. And he had told Charlotte not to disturb him, that he would go to early Mass, that he would not be back until after ten.

He had given her a night with her lover. And even now, jealousy was grinding in his heart.

He had meant to do it differently. He had meant to linger with her as long as he could, to confess and be given last rites, he had intended to make his peace with the God of his fathers and to depart this life cherishing the hope of an uneasy heaven where perhaps he would see her again someday.

Now, sitting in this great drafty church, listening to the priest’s voice droning on, he knew that it was not to be. He had kept Charlotte apart from her lover all these years. Now, in a last handsome gesture, he would restore him to her—and in a way that would leave her without shame.

He would forget confession, he who had so much to confess, for upon leaving this church he meant to go home and lock his door and cry out loudly that the pain was too much to bear—and then he would fall upon his sword and die a suicide.

And Charlotte could go back to the man she had never stopped loving.

It would be his gift to her. Perhaps the best thing he had ever done in a wasted life. And all it would cost him would be his immortal soul, for from his early rigid upbringing in Holy Mother Church he knew in the depths of him that to die by his own hand an unconfessed sinner and be buried in unconsecrated ground would cast him into a burning hell forever.

For her, he would endure the flames.

Don Carlos’ face was very set on this All Hallows’ Day, and suddenly through his dark thoughts penetrated a terrible rumbling noise that might have come from the very hell he had been envisioning. And simultaneously the floor beneath him dipped and swayed. About him people were lurching to their feet, shouting, screaming, running over each other in frenzy, trying to escape as the walls cracked and the holy statues toppled.

Don Carlos looked up. The ceiling above him bore a long crack, a crack which fanned out into a hundred others. The lofty roof of the church was collapsing upon those within.

Don Carlos’ gaze remained fixed upward during those moments when, wrenched loose by the fury of the quake, roof and ceiling came hurtling down upon the packed multitude below. The air was filled with screams—but among the screams there was one who laughed.

God had been good to him—he would not have to take his own life after all. And perhaps in some merciful heaven he would find her once again—someday.

It was the last thought Don Carlos was ever to have, as the heavy roof caved in, crushing the faithful below.

For Clive, Lord Houghton, who had gone down into the town, the situation was different. He had been standing near the Cays Depreda, the new stone quay that had been erected on the riverfront, when the first tremor struck. It had not even occurred to him to go back into the town to look for Lady Farrington or her daughter. He had cowered back onto the quay, joined by thousands of others who had sought its safety as well, and watched in fear as the ruined 
city now became a raging inferno, its hundreds of fires whipped into one vast conflagration by the high winds that fanned it. It was a fearful sight indeed, the new-made ruins evilly lit up by licking wind-driven flames beneath an overhanging blackness made up of smoke and dust and laced by lightning bolts. To the frightened thousands who jostled each other upon the stone quay, that was a far more electrifying spectacle than the view upon their other side, where the waters of the Tagus River seemed to be draining fast away.

They never learned what that would mean.

Just as the second great earthquake struck, the foundations were jolted from beneath the Cays Depreda and the entire stone quay plunged into the river, carrying Clive and screaming thousands of men, women, and children with it. What happened in those dark churning waters, no one ever knew, but none of them were ever found.

Not all who died in Lisbon that day were on land. Some were on the river, some upon the sea.

And one of the many tall ships caught irresistibly in the holocaust was the
Storm Castle
—the white-sailed merchantman that carried Phoebe.

Beneath the blue Atlantic over which the
Storm Castle
had sailed so placidly, the great continental plates bearing Africa and Europe were locked in titanic struggle. Unseen, that mighty undersea escarpment southwest of Lisbon that would come to be known as the Gorringe Bank, racked and stretched by unbearable strains that reached down and down to depths unimaginable, was reaching the breaking point as the
Storm Castle
sailed over it.

Many ships were unlucky that day, but none unluckier than the
Storm Castle.
She was just in position to feel the main force of the catastrophic shift below as the fault broke open beneath the strain and Africa lurched against Europe, sending a violent shudder through the planet Earth.

At sea they had heard a sound like a distant rumbling thunder coming from the east. The passengers, crowded on deck with their possessions, for they were soon to disembark, had looked at each other uneasily. A heavy storm, no doubt.

Phoebe, watching that distant dark cloud rising from the earth, had been, like the others, unaware of the water’s first imperceptible rising. She watched that low dark cloud raptly, for beneath it was where she had been told she would have her first glimpse of Lisbon’s distant skyline. She leaned upon the rail at the prow, uncaring that the salt spray might mar the lustrous dark green velvet of her gown, which—like everything else in her life now—had not been paid for.

Phoebe had never looked better. Her high cheekbones were flushed beneath the rouge she always wore these days to heighten her own slightly sallow color. Her dark hair shone in its fashionable coiffure beneath a three-cornered hat of dark green felt that became her rather witchlike features enormously.

Oh, it would be so good to find Clive again! His love was worth all the humiliation, all the bailiffs. In her desperation to join him, Phoebe had sunk lower than ever before. In Liverpool she had wangled a job as chambermaid to a wealthy family, and on her first night there she had passed all the family plate out the window to an accomplice—and used her share of the money they got from the fence to purchase her passage on board the 
Storm Castle.
But she had been suspected, and now it would be chancy for her to return to England. No matter, she and Clive could wander about Europe as expatriates, making new debts!

Her dreaming face broke into a sudden frown and she leaned forward, peering ahead. Something was wrong up there! That sullen dark cloud laced by lightning seemed to lie on glowing coals—no, it was flames, the city was ablaze!

Even as that fact was borne in on her, a terrible torrent of sound engulfed her, a deep growling roar that seemed to her in her fright to come out of that distant burning city—an enormous and terrifying blast of sound that roared in her ears with no beginning and no end.

Her green-gloved hands seized the rail.

To Phoebe it was as if the ship were being lifted by giant hands, up and up, and being flung forward.

The wind blew her hair, and her hat was gone. Phoebe 
clung to the rail with all her strength, suddenly aware of being caught up by mighty forces beyond her understanding.

Around her men shouted and women screamed, their voices lost in the general tumult.

It was not the sail-billowing wind that carried them forward now. It was a force from below that swept them inexorably up the mouth of the Tagus, rising higher and higher as millions of tons of raging water bursting in from the ocean flooded up a narrowing river that had now become a bottleneck. The
Storm Castle
—and Phoebe with it—was riding the crest of a giant wave that would break over Lisbon.

Before that wave, helpless and doomed, the city waited.

Those flung ashore by that first great wave that broke over Lisbon would never live to tell it. But for Phoebe the mighty "tidal wave" had done something else—it had saved her from being dishonored one more time.

Indeed fate dealt out a strange kind of mercy that day—at least to Phoebe. She died never knowing that the man she loved so desperately had intended to kill her.

Wend had waited in Charlotte s bedroom at the Royal Cockerel for Charlotte to return from the reception. Exhausted from the excitement of the day, she had fallen asleep and had not waked until morning. Although it seemed logical that Charlotte had returned and slept the night, then dressed without waking her and gone off with Don Carlos, who had already left for church, the sight of that unslept-in bed disturbed Wend and she went outside and wandered about, hoping to catch sight of Charlotte.

And so it was that that terrible first shock that reduced the Royal Cockerel to a rubbish heap, killed everyone inside, and shuddered through the entire street, showering stones and roof tiles and debris onto the cobbles in a deadly downpour, found Wend in the center of the street staring into the distance at a well-dressed woman she hoped might be Charlotte. The shock was so great that it knocked her feet out from under her and sent her, feeling nauseated and dizzy, onto the cobbles in a choking cloud of dust.

Coughing and battered from—luckily—small stones rather 
than the huge ones piled all about, Wend scrambled to her feet in terror and stumbled through that dusty smokescreen in she knew not what direction. But when, choking, she broke through the dust enough to see ahead, she realized that she was heading for the high ground and forthwith broke into a run, with the frowning castle on the heights as a beckoning lodestar.

Her instinct to seek the high ground was correct, and as she stumbled over fallen debris, she was calling out, moaning actually, that none of them should ever have left England—nothing like this ever happened there!

Annette had only just been able to crawl out of the ruins of her millinery shop when that first great wave, approaching at incredible speed, roared up the Tagus. She had heard the distant roar of it and had with difficulty struggled to her feet from a welter of fallen masonry that had left her bruised and bleeding.

Her one thought, as she fought free of the debris, had been,
Let this earthquake have finished off both of them
— 
Charlotte and her daughter by that other man!

She gained her feet in time to see the great wave coming, towering, it seemed to her, a hundred feet into the air above her. Always a survivor, Annette turned to run, but she was too late. The wave smashed into the city and a wall of water crashed through the smoldering ruins, carrying ships and small boats and the debris of the streets and buildings far inland and then retreating to sea with all the broken bits of a civilization—and blanketing the sea nearby with the dead.

The waters of that wave had not even subsided before a second great convulsion struck Lisbon, breaking up what had not been broken before, collapsing what had been only cracked, churning the earth beneath the waters and leaving a destroyed, gutted area in its wake.

In the inn, with his arm cradled around Cassandra, Drew had waked early that morning. And lain there worrying. The tale Cassandra had told him last night was a wild one, but one thing was certain: she was not safe here. The feeling that the prince’s enemies would seek her out was so strong that he leapt up and told Cassandra that they 
were leaving Lisbon. At once. No, they would not stop for breakfast, they would secure that on the road. They would not attempt to leave Lisbon by ship—the prince or someone else might reach out long arms to stop them. They would travel north overland to Oporto and take ship from there.

Cassandra would have liked to say good-bye to her mother, but Drew told her roughly that there was no time.

He was right, but not for the reasons he thought. They were making their way out of town and were passing a pretty house with a long veranda when the first great earthquake struck. Cassandra, just taking a step, caught her foot in the cobbles and staggered against Drew who, not expecting it and thrown off balance himself, gave ground. Around them the world was crashing down. The long veranda collapsed immediately and the rest of the house came tumbling after it, scattering stones and pillars and roof tiles in the street about them. All the streets around them were instantly clogged with rubble and made dangerous as well by the instant fires that sprang up to lick the ruins.

“My Mother s inn cried Cassandra. “She and Wend are there! It lies that way.” She waved her hand in the direction of the Royal Cockerel. “We must go there and try to save them.”

Drew looked about him grimly at the impassable streets, the great piles of dust-choked debris. “We'll be lucky to clamber over this rubble to safety before the fires reach us,” he warned—and even as he spoke, flames spurted out of the fallen structure beside them. “And how we escaped that first rain of stones as those walls collapsed, I cannot understand. Oh, yes—you had just lurched against me. The stones are heavy where we were standing. Had you not flung yourself against me, we would both be dead.” He gave her a sardonic look, this woman who had run away for fear she would bring him disaster. “So it seems you have brought me luck!”