Paxton and the Gypsy Blade (16 page)

Adriana had been in New Orleans for nine months, and felt no particular fear of the men who waited to watch her dance. Sure of her power over them, she calmly descended the narrow staircase as all eyes in the room turned to her. The music changed, became softer as she neared the bottom of the stairs. By that time, she was gliding, flowing down the stairs and past the musicians to stop at the edge of the crowd. Chairs squeaked as men turned for a better view. A sigh of longing was answered by laughter, which was immediately shushed as Adriana lifted her hands palms upward, fingers spread and imploring, and began to dance.

Beer, rum, and whiskey were forgotten. Adriana's arms described the gliding flight of birds, the ripple of mountain streams, the soft flow of wind-bent grass. Swaying, undulating, her hips whispered promises of loneliness banished and passion slaked. She wended her way among the tables. Her hem brushed one man's knee, and he shuddered. A veil flicked across another's face, and he blushed furiously. When she reached the center of the room, she stepped lightly onto the chair, where, for a long, excruciating moment while the music stopped, she stood perfectly still.

Suddenly, the music began again, and a roar of appreciation erupted from the crowd as Adriana ripped one of the veils from her face, leaped onto the table, and began to dance. The tempo increased, and the desire in the spectators' eyes burned as brightly as the tavern fires as she lifted her skirt, revealing her feet and tantalizing glimpses of her calves.

The dance became a wild, frenzied display of abandonment, and to everyone there, Adriana appeared lost in the passion of the moment. She was, in truth, coldly conscious of her every move: for her the dance she performed was but a distant cousin to her dances in the Gypsy tribe's encampments throughout the English countryside. The Gypsy dances had been true and honest, and she had felt them in her soul as well as in her body. The dance in the Cottonmouth was only a performance, a show calculated to please men starved for both affection and the mere sight of a woman so that they would shower her with coins when the music ended, and later pay a visit to the table in the corner where she read palms and told fortunes. Like the dance, the palm reading was only for entertainment. And if the men liked to hear that good fortune awaited them, that fate had many wonderful surprises in store for them, she told them nothing more than she wished might come true for herself.

Fate's greatest kindness to her would be the death, at her hands, of Trevor Bliss. Ten months earlier, when she had fled England, she had feared that Bliss was beyond her reach forever. Exhausted to the point of collapse, she'd been found on board by Isaiah Hawkins and, after being given warm clothes and food, had hidden away to sleep off the effects of her ordeal. When she woke, the
Swan of Yorkshire
was in the English Channel heading west past the cliffs of Dover.

Life at sea demanded a hardheaded pragmatism and yet at the same time fostered a high degree of superstition, for no matter how practical a man might be, luck often determined success or failure. Captain Isaiah Hawkins ran a taut ship and was a man who'd survived a long run of bad luck only through unstinting diligence and determination. The bad luck, though, seemed to dissolve and become good luck the moment they cleared Land's End: for the next three days, the
Swan of Yorkshire
was driven west by winds favorable beyond his experience. The crew attributed its good fortune to Adriana, and though Isaiah was at first skeptical, he was soon convinced. On the fourth day out, the taffrail log showed over two hundred fifty nautical miles for the preceding twenty-four hours. On the fifth day, the number was still over two hundred. On the sixth day, Adriana read Hawkins's palm and predicted a speedy voyage without mishap. Six short weeks later, she was the toast of the
Swan of Yorkshire
, and was cheered by the crew as she went ashore in New Orleans.

New Orleans. Six thousand miles, an ocean and a gulf, separated Adriana from Bliss. Desire for revenge still burned in her heart, and despite the adoration of the
Swan of Yorkshire
's crew, she had been utterly demoralized. Her salvation had been Captain Hawkins, who had proclaimed her powers far and wide and who—after obtaining her promise to have dinner with him when she repaid him on his next call to New Orleans—had advanced her enough money for a change of clothing, led her to the French Quarter, and introduced her to Zebediah Gibbs, who after a brief audition, hired her on the spot.

Her life, Adriana soon discovered, could have been worse. Zebediah Gibbs was a hot-tempered man with a propensity for dispensing quick justice where his customers were concerned, but, unlike most saloon keepers, he treated his help fairly and well. Harriet, his wife, took Adriana under her wing, and, in spite of her gruff masculinity, proved to be the perfect confidante. Within three months of her arrival, Adriana found her spirit restored, and she once again began to think in terms of finding Bliss.

Hope soared with the return of Isaiah Hawkins, though Hawkins's bad luck had assumed monumental proportions in the six months since he and Adriana had seen each other. Destitute, bitter, and uttering dire oaths that he would wreak vengeance on an uncaring world, he drank away the loan Adriana repaid and stumbled into the night—but not without first passing on the news that Trevor Bliss had been posted to San Sebastian. From that moment on, an ebullient Adriana hoarded her money and longed for the day when, finally, her knife would find its mark and Bliss would pay in full for Giuseppe's life.

In the meantime, she danced. Her skirt spun higher, her veils fell one by one. Her legs, tawny, lithe, and lovely, glowed like promises. Her arms beckoned, her fingers traced lines of fire on imaginations run wild, her breasts unloosed impossible hopes. Music, alcohol, food, and brawling receded into the dim past, leaving only the sound of bells, the whisper of slippers on a tabletop, and the hushed expectancy of the dreams of men who yearned to make her their own. It was said that a man who tasted Adriana's charms would surely die with a smile on his lips and a song in his heart.

The music and dance ended abruptly. Adriana silently, slowly turned to acknowledge the deafening cheers and applause that rocked the room, and then jumped down from the table. Someone called for more beer. Someone else laughed. An angry roar was punctuated by the sound of a chair splitting. Adriana made her way slowly across the room, stopping to say hello to a bosun mate who was an old friend of Gibbs's and to chat with an acquaintance. By the time she settled in her chair by the wall, pandemonium reigned once again in the Cottonmouth. Things were back to normal.

Giselle Depree, a coarse-featured eighteen-year-old redhead, collapsed wearily in the chair across the table from Adriana. “God, my feet hurt,” she said by way of greeting.

“You should soak them each morning before you sleep,” Adriana replied in the awkward French she'd been trying to learn since her arrival in New Orleans.

Giselle clutched a round wooden tray laden with clay mugs of rye whiskey to her large breasts and looked around the room. “I would, but I'm always too tired to carry the water.” She sighed and arched her back in an attempt to relieve the stiffness. “Sometimes, Adriana,” she went on in a discouraged voice, “I think I will never be able to leave this place. I wish some man would come in here and take me away from these Americans with their boasts and their fights. This is no life for either of us. These fellows have pinched my bottom until it is black-and-blue. And when I complain, they laugh and ask to see the bruises. We deserve better, no?”

Adriana laughed. “Naturally,” she agreed. “And it will come to pass, Giselle. Two very handsome young gentlemen will someday enter this den of pestilence and make us their own. We will be married in a cathedral and live in fine homes with flower gardens and fountains. And our husbands will be devoted to us and shower us with lovely gifts every day.”

“Do you really think so?” Giselle asked breathlessly, caught in the fantasy Adriana painted.

Adriana smiled mysteriously. “I have the power to see into the future, do I not?” she asked, glad that she was able to transport Giselle out of her dreary surroundings, even momentarily, into the realm of imagination.

Zebediah Gibbs broke the spell. “Giselle!” he roared from his perch behind the bar. “Spread them drinks around, girl. They won't sell themselves.”

Giselle's aching back and feet would have to ache. “Yes, Mr. Gibbs,” she answered, reverting to English and jumping up hastily. A sad smile crossed her face. “I know it's a dream, but I shall hold on to it anyway,” she said, and plunged into the crowd. And the first man she passed reached out and pinched her bottom.

The smile remained on Adriana's lips as she waited for her first customer. She, too, longed for the day when she could leave the tavern, but not to the future she had spun for Giselle. There was no room in her plans for handsome strangers and fountains and flowers and love. Such things were only fantasies with which to titillate the fancies of gullible young girls, and not for her—at least until Trevor Bliss lay in his grave.

“All right, missy!” One of the riverboat men, a thickly bearded fellow almost as broad as he was tall, jerked the other chair back and sat down. He thrust out a grimy, callused palm and grinned at Adriana. “Tell me what ye see in that, other than twenty more years of hard work.”

Adriana ignored the dirt and the sharp smell of whiskey on the man's breath as she took his hand, leaned forward, and made a show of studying his palm. “I see,” she began, “a turn of good fortune in your future, my friend …”

Another night in the Cottonmouth Tavern wore on.

CHAPTER IX

The first leg of the journey to San Sebastian was nearly over. They sailed upriver with Maurice handling the sheet and Tom the tiller, though either one of them could have handled the small boat alone. “There she is,” Maurice called as the
Marie
cleared the last bit of land between them and the great bend of the Mississippi where New Orleans was situated. “Almost there, Tom. One long tack and another hour ought to do it.”

They were too far from the docks to identify individual ships, but Tom tried anyway. When he failed to distinguish a Paxton vessel, he slumped against the bulwark. “We'll come about just past that buoy,” he said tonelessly.

And that, Maurice thought sourly, looking at his listless friend, was how the voyage had gone. Ten days down the East Coast, through the keys, up the west coast of Florida. A whale of a storm had caught them during the sixth night and they'd almost foundered. They'd had a smooth run westward to the Mississippi Delta, that flat, rich plain that had grown from silt carried by untold millions of gallons of water over unreckoned years. Tom ate when Maurice handed him food. He slept when Maurice directed him to one of the two bunks in the tiny cabin. He handled the
Marie
when it was his turn. He spoke only when asked a question or when necessary. And he stared blankly across the water for hours on end. All told, Maurice had decided on the second day out, a horse was a more lively partner and stimulating conversationalist.

Coming about served as a sort of signal for Tom, and his spirits brightened as the
Marie
picked up speed. At last he could do something. There was a ship to be obtained and provisioned, a crew to be hired, a course to be set. The ten-day wait was over, and he sensed that he needed activity every bit as much as a starving man needed food. Alive now, suddenly charged with energy, he searched through the keelboats and flatboats from upriver and the oceangoing schooners, ketches, and brigs that lined the docks for a ship that he recognized. “Well,” he announced at last as they wove through the thick water traffic on their way to the Paxton dock, “Barton will know. Anything that'll get us there.…”

Two ships, a schooner and a brig, were tied up at the Paxton docks. “Either of 'em in the family?” Maurice asked as he dropped the sail.

Tom glumly shook his head as the
Marie
drifted closer and he began to paddle. “Leasing dock space, probably. Damn!”

Maurice busied himself stowing the sail. “Don't panic yet,” he counseled. “Plenty of ships we ain't seen yet. Look lively there, Tom!” he yelled, pushing them away from a splintered piling. “Keep her bow upstream long as you can.”

Docking a small boat at a pier designed for ocean going vessels was a tricky job. Great care was needed to avoid being pushed between the piles by the force of the river, and by the time they'd paddled under the bow of the schooner and made fast to a ladder, both Tom and Maurice were sweating freely. “Hey, you!” a voice from above called. “This here's a Paxton dock. If you ain't got business here, stand off.”

“This is a Paxton boat,” Tom called back as Maurice tossed him his duffel. “I'm Tom Paxton,” he added as he began to climb the ladder, “and that's the
Marie
, out of Brandborough.”

A burly man covered with tattoos greeted Tom with a helping hand. “Great jumpin' Jehoshaphat,” he said in wonder. “You boys sailed that little bitty thing all the way around Florida?”

“That's right.” Tom turned to give Maurice a hand. “Is Mr. Barton around?”

“Yes, sir. In the office. Tom Paxton, eh?” He stuck out a gnarled and rope-scarred hand. “Jamie Ragland. Knowed your daddy from way back. Fought at Kings Mountain with him and sailed on the old
Marie
, which was a damned sight more ship than that dinky puddle-jumper.”

“It got us here,” Tom said shortly. “Father's told a tale or two about you. You still work for him?”

“Long as I can hoist a sail or splice a line.”

“Good.” Tom grinned and clapped the older man on the shoulder. “We'll swap war stories later. Right now, I've got urgent business. Can you round up someone to help you get this little bitty thing to a small boat basin? I'd hate to see her get stove up.”