Paxton and the Gypsy Blade (12 page)

It was one o'clock in the morning and Colleen was more exhausted than she knew. At Jase's bedside when she heard the horses and Tom's call, she hurried downstairs in time to meet him in the foyer as he burst through the front door.

“Tom! Thank God!”

“What happened?”

“They … they …” The firm hold she'd kept on her emotions during the long hours since the kidnapping dissolved. “They're gone,” she sobbed, weeping openly against Tom's chest.

Tom hugged her a moment, then gently forced her from his embrace and held her at arm's length. “How?” he asked in a strained voice. “Who?”

“He said his name was Sanchez. Onofre Sanchez,” she said, fighting for control. “He was a pirate and he had three of his crew with him. There was nothing anyone could do. They took Jason and Joseph. Without warning, came and took them away.”

“They must be holding them for ransom,” Tom ground out. “I'll give them a ransom they'll wish they'd never gotten.”

Colleen shook her head. “He didn't take them for ransom,” she told him. “He was paid to take them. By Sir Theodotus Vincent. He said—”

“Sir Theodotus!” Tom whispered. “But how? He couldn't—”

“Vincent?” Maurice asked. “Ain't that—”

“Jenny's father,” Tom answered before Maurice could finish. “That
bastard
!”

“I'm sorry, Maurice,” Colleen said, trying to collect herself. “I didn't even say hello.”

“That's all right. It ain't time for hellos. What'd he say?”

“That he was taking the boys to Sir Theodotus because they were all that was left of Jenny, and that Sir Theodotus told him to tell you that the debt is paid, flesh for flesh.”

“We'll get 'em back, Tom,” Leakey said. A massive hand closed on Tom's arm. The thick fingers imparted strength and reassurance. “Don't you worry none about that. We'll get them boys back.”

“Yes,” Tom said as if from a long distance. “Yes.” A great emptiness gripped him, echoed meaninglessly through his mind. Gone? It was inconceivable, and yet … true, leaving him, for the moment, totally drained, incapable even of rage.

“You're hurt,” he said in surprise, noticing for the first time the dark-stained bandage on Colleen's arm. “Just a cut,” she said. “There was a fight …”

“And father?” Tom asked hollowly.

“In bed upstairs. Dr. Cleary finished setting his leg a couple of hours ago. I don't know if he'll wake up soon or not. A whole pint of corn whiskey …”

“Is he going to be all right?”

“I think so. I sent Forbes for help as soon as the pirates left. Poor Forbes has a lump on the head himself. Thank God they didn't slit his throat. Dr. Cleary says the break in Jase's leg was clean, and now that it's set and splinted it should mend well enough if he rests and stays off it.”

It wouldn't have been beyond Jase to give his own life in an attempt to prevent the kidnapping, and Tom found himself grateful that his father had gotten out of the situation with as little as a broken leg. “Maybe I'd better go talk to him anyway,” he said, starting up the stairs.

“Dr. Cleary says the leg will probably never be as strong as before,” Colleen said, catching up to Tom, “but I'm still thankful. Tom, it was terrible. I was afraid one of Sanchez's men was going to kill him.”

The master bedroom was brightly lighted. Jase was sound asleep and snoring loudly. Propped halfway up in bed, he was wearing a nightshirt. His broken left leg, splinted and heavily wrapped, was cradled in a row of supporting pillows. Tom stood by the bed, looked down at his father, and put a hand on his shoulder. “We're going after them,” he said in a low voice. “Don't worry, Father, we'll get them. Maurice is back, and he'll go with me.” Turning to his mother, he asked, “Anybody figure where they went after they left?”

“Sheriff McBride came over,” she answered. “He went back home, but told me to tell you to wake him up when you got here.”

Tom and Maurice exchanged glances. “Let's go,” Maurice said, already on his way out the bedroom door.

“Tom? That you?” Jase blinked against the light, tried to sit up, groaned, and slumped back down again. “Oh, Jesus!”

“It's Tom
and
Maurice, Jase. They're both here.” Colleen took a rag from the bedside stand and wiped his forehead. “But you have to lie still …”

“Wanna talk to Tom.”

“I'm right here,” Tom said, leaning over him. “Mother's told me everything, and Maurice and I are going to see McBride. You get some sleep. We'll talk in the morning.”

“They went north, prob'ly some cove up the coast. Tried to stop 'em, but …” His head fell back on the pillow. “Oh, shit, I'm drunk and my goddamn leg
still
hurts.” He tried to focus on Tom, gave up, and closed his eyes. “Got to get 'em back, Tom. Got to get 'em.…” With a sigh, he relaxed, and fell sound asleep again.

“Watch over him,” Tom said grimly, “and try to get some sleep yourself. We'll be back later on.” He took Colleen in his arms and held her. When he spoke, his voice was low and determined. “Don't worry, Mama. We'll bring them back somehow.”

The drapes were drawn so the light wouldn't hurt Jase's eyes. A cloth dipped in cool spring water lay over his forehead. “I've had hangovers before,” he said as Tom and Maurice settled wearily into chairs at the side of his bed, “but none like this. I told Cleary the next time he runs out of opium he'd better not come around trying to set any broken leg of mine. I'd've been better off letting him set it stone cold sober.”

“Well, I've seen that done,” Maurice said, “and it ain't a pretty sight. The muscles pull up tight and you got to do a lot of pulling to get the bone—”

“All right, all right!” Jase interrupted. “I've seen it too, so let's just drop the subject. Besides, we've more important things to talk about. What'd you find out?”

Tom and Maurice had spent the rest of the night and the early morning hours with Sheriff Tom McBride, and had been back at the house only long enough for a bite to eat and a cup of coffee. “You were right about going north,” Tom said. “We found three of Hugh Northrup's horses milling around at Bunker's Cove, and marks where they'd pulled a skiff to shore and shoved off again. Whoever this Sanchez is, he must know this part of the coast, because the bottom drops off pretty sharp there. He probably had his ship tack back and forth offshore and wait for him.”

“Problem is,” Maurice said, “where'd he take 'em once he got 'em on board? If we don't know that, we don't know where to chase 'em to.”

“Somewhere on this side of the world, I imagine,” Jase said. “I got thinking this morning after I woke up, and sure enough, the name Sanchez is familiar. One of our captains had a run-in with him about eight years ago just east of St. Kitts. Johnston it was, on the
Andrea
, that little fore-topsail schooner I got rid of a couple years ago. Anyway, Sanchez is a two-bit Caribbean pirate who I figured to be dead by now, except he isn't. The point is, I can't see him sailing to England, because I doubt if he has the ship or the intelligence.”

“He could've had a rendezvous with another ship somewhere up or down the coast,” Maurice suggested.

“Not necessarily,” Jase said. “We don't know that Vincent is still in England. You've had no communication with him, have you, Tom?”

“Not a word. Jenny wrote and so did I, but he never answered. In any case, he has to know I'll be looking for them. What am I supposed to do? Take an army with—damn!” He got up so fast his coffee sloshed all over his breeches. “Come on, Maurice, let's get out of here.”

“Where? Where you going?” Jase asked, alarmed.

“That one you hit last night. He—”

“I
hit
one of them?” Jase asked, amazed. “I thought—”

“They found him about a quarter mile up the road and took him to Doc Cleary this morning. He was still unconscious at sunup, and then I forgot about him in all the hullabaloo.”

“Well, I'll be damned,” Jase said. “I hit one of 'em!” Then he added, “Tom!”

“Yes, sir?” Tom asked from the door.

“Don't get your hopes up too much. I wasn't aimin' to wound—”

Tom didn't hear the rest. Followed closely by Maurice, he took the stairs in threes and was out the back door before Colleen could ask where they were going. Less than a minute later, riding bareback, he and Maurice were racing for town and Dr. Cleary's.

Cleary was half-dozing after a long night when they pounded on his door and then burst in without waiting. “Where is he?” Tom demanded, pulling the bewhiskered old doctor out of his chair.

“Who? Oh, it's you, Tom.” Cleary shook his head to clear the cobwebs. “That pirate? He's back in my surgery.”

“He still alive? Conscious?”

“Came to about an hour ago, but he's dying. The bullet's still in his chest somewhere, and there's no way to get it out without killing him.”

“Can he talk?”

Cleary shrugged and led the way toward his surgery. “Only way to tell is to go see. Whatever you want to learn, you'd best learn quick, though. He's lost a lot of blood, and the infection's got a start.”

The surgery was dimly lighted and smelted of unguents and salves and liniments. Cleary turned up a lantern and hung it next to a bed in the corner. The pirate was only in his early twenties, but pain had aged him overnight. His hair and beard were matted, his face and hands still covered with dirt from the fall he'd taken from the horse. A bandage that looked surprisingly clean was wrapped around his torso. “He doesn't look that good from the back,” Cleary explained, touching the pirate's forehead. “I got him lying this way because the wound was bubbling. Pressure'll keep it closed so his lung doesn't collapse.”

“He speak English?” Tom asked.

“Don't think so. What little he's said sounds like Spanish to me.”

“We'll get along just fine, then,” Maurice said with a death's-head grin. He stood over the pirate and bent low. “
De veras, amigo?
”

Cleary coughed. “Ah, if you don't mind,” he said, a little nervously, “I think I'll let you ask your questions in private.”

“That's a good idea,” Tom said. “We'll call when we need you.”

The door closed and the three were left alone. The pirate stared fearfully from Maurice to Tom and back. Maurice pulled up a chair, sat next to him, and thoughtfully changed the compress on his forehead for a cooler one. “Listen to me,” he said in Spanish. “I'm going to ask you some questions, and you're going to answer them.”

The pirate's eyes blazed with hatred and fever as he glared up at Maurice. “
Agua
,” he gasped, his voice raspy and tortured.

“There's the man who hands out the water,” Maurice explained, pointing at Tom. “You tell us what we want to know, and he'll give you some.”

The pirate focused with difficulty on Tom. “Tell you … nothing …” he croaked in Spanish. “Bastards … murdering bastards …”

“What'd he say?” Tom asked.

“Called you a bastard.”

“You tell him,” Tom said grimly, “that he helped steal my sons, and I want to know where they were taking them.”

Maurice translated and the pirate shook his head weakly. “Can't say,” he gasped. “Sanchez … would … kill me.”

“What's that?” Tom asked. “What's he—”

Maurice waved him into silence. His lips drew back in an expression that was more a grimace than a smile. “My friend says he doesn't want you to die,” he explained in Spanish, “that we have your best interests at heart.” His hand moved and his smile became even broader as the lantern light played on the double-edged blade that suddenly appeared in front of the pirate's eyes. “You still have that musket ball in you, and my friend is so concerned with your health that he wants me to remove it.” The blade dipped and slid between the bandages and the pirate's skin. “Now, if you'll just hold still, I'll cut off this bandage and roll you over, and I'll bet I can dig out that ball in no time.”

The sight of Maurice leering down at him and the feel of cold steel against his chest were terrifying. Dying was bad enough, but dying in agony, a blade digging slowly through his back, was beyond thought. The blade moved, cut through the first piece of bandage, slowly sawed through the second. “San Sebastian!” the pirate cried, fear and pain overcoming loyalty. “Sanchez is sailing for San Sebastian!”

Tom needed no translation. San Sebastian was a small island in the Caribbean, part of the British West Indies, one of the Leeward Islands. He and Maurice had called at the port there during those wild years they had been at sea, and as he met Maurice's eyes, he saw that he remembered as well.

“Why San Sebastian?” Maurice asked. “Why was Sanchez taking the boys there?”

“The governor … the governor there.… He was the one who paid Sanchez. His name is … is Vincent.”

Tom closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Sir Theodotus Vincent, the governor of San Sebastian. A lucky stroke, or had he wangled the appointment? In some ways, getting the twins off a tiny island would be more difficult than taking them from England. Only one port, an inhospitable shoreline.…

“Sanchez was taking the boys directly to Vincent?” Maurice was asking.

The pirate struggled for breath. “Don't know. Figured he would.… Oh, Sainted Mother, it hurts! I need a priest.” He raised his head and fell back weakly. “I've told you … the truth.… Water.… Confess me …”

His head lolled to one side and his breathing became rapid and shallow.

“Won't get any more out of him,” Maurice said, rising and slipping his knife back in its sheath. “We didn't get here any too soon. He'll be dead by nightfall.”