Scandal's Daughter (29 page)

“But it may not. Suppose—”

At that moment a hail rang across the water. “Ahoy, there! What ship?” English, oddly accented, yet not foreign.

“Americans!” James breathed.

No response issued from the merchantman.

“Should we not shout for help?” Cordelia begged.

“They might not hear us at this distance without a speaking trumpet, but our captors surely would. Lord knows what they’d do.”

“Ahoy!” The frigate’s sails were coming down and she was losing what little way she had.

“
Flor do Campo
, bound for Lisbon,” someone shouted in mispronounced Portuguese from the deck outside the cabin. “Who are you?”

“
Columbia
, frigate, out of Boston.”

“They will go,” Cordelia moaned. “We must attract their attention. Help me climb out!”

“But...”

“There’s no time to argue.” She swung round to face him. “Lift me up so I can go feet first.”

Without further ado, James picked her up, hoisted her over his shoulder, and manoeuvred her feet out of the window. Her skirts caught on something and ripped, then bunched up around her waist. With a squirm and a wriggle she squeezed her hips through. Her bare feet hit the deck.

The window’s inflexible frame caught her by the shoulders.

“Let go my neck, cross your arms, and hunch your shoulders.” James kissed her nose.

“But I might fall backwards. The gangway is very narrow here.”

“I’ve got you. I shan’t let you go,” he promised. “Don’t give up half way. You don’t want them to catch you like this.”

“No!” Of all the ignominious defeats!

With a twist she was out. There was the ladder she remembered, leading up to the poop deck.

“Give me a sheet. Hurry!”

She did not dare look to see what the
Columbia
was doing. A distant voice shouted an order. Nearer, amidships, she heard the corsairs in muttered consultation. Any moment they might decide to check on their prisoners.

The sheet slung around her neck, she scrambled up the ladder. She turned to see, through rapidly dissipating mists, the frigate’s sails creeping slowly back up the masts.

If only someone were watching! Madly she flapped the sheet.

A faint shout. The sails stopped rising. Cordelia flapped and flapped until she thought her arms would fall off.

A loud shout, nearer. Much nearer. The corsairs had spotted her. She had nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide, so she went on flailing desperately with the sheet. A swarthy face rose above the edge of the roof, dark eyes gleaming as bright as the dagger clenched in its grinning teeth.

Another shout from below, in Turkish: “They are lowering a boat!”

The grinning head turned, then abruptly disappeared. Letting her exhausted arms sink to her sides, Cordelia watched the
Columbia
’s boat splash down. The spray rose sparkling in the sun’s first rays. Sailors swarmed down ropes into the gig and set to the oars.

A moment later, a ragged rattle of musket fire erupted from the deck of the
Flor do Campo
. A hail of bullets whizzed across the waves to greet the Americans.

The
Columbia
promptly responded with a disciplined volley. A hole appeared in Cordelia’s sheet. As she dropped flat on the deck, a scream came from below. More shots rang out, followed by the boom of a cannon.

Cordelia snaked her way to the far side of the ship and down the ladder. Huddled on the narrow strip of gangway, she at last had time to be frightened.

Quaking, she heard the cannon roar again. Were the rescuers going to sink the corsairs’ prisoners with the ship? And if they survived, would she and James be any better off with the Americans than with the corsairs? For all their talk of liberty and justice, Americans also kept slaves, she recalled, and the Syracuse jeweller had said America and England were at odds. They might simply end up as two slaves on a cotton plantation instead of one in a harem and one quarrying rock.

The deck beneath her shuddered to a sudden shock.

If she was about to drown, she wanted to be with James. What was going on? She crept to the corner and peered around.

Chapter 26

The ship shuddered.

“Direct hit,” James muttered to the carpet in front of his nose. Were the overenthusiastic representatives of a youthful nation trying to rescue them or to sink them?

Where was Cordelia? If it was her antics which had led to this bombardment, surely the Americans would try to avoid shooting at her, but a stray shot might hit her. Or the corsairs might have grabbed her. His heart stuck in his throat, choking him.

“‘A plague a both your houses!’“ he swore.

Unable to escape the cabin, he could do nothing to help her, or himself, but if he was about to drown anyway, he wanted to know what was going on.

Cautiously he raised himself far enough to peep out of the forward window.

Behind him Captain de Castilho, flat on the floor by now, spoke sharply: “
Cuidado, senhor
!”

No doubt advising him to keep his head down. Since he did not understand, it was easy to ignore.

Outside, the pirates had taken cover behind capstans, coils of rope, water-barrels—to add to his troubles, James remembered he was dying of thirst. Every now and then a man would raise his head and his musket and let off a shot. Answering shots from the
Columbia
gouged the planking. One corsair sat slumped, groaning, in the shelter of the mainmast’s base, a bloody cloth tied around his upper arm.

Of Cordelia, nor sight nor sound. Without sticking his head out to make a nice target for both sides, James could see no more.

But he heard the splash of oars. Thuds and thumps followed, somewhere below. A boarding party? The corsairs reached for pikes, loosened scimitars in their belts, gripped daggers between their teeth.

While they were distracted and the Americans not shooting—he hoped—for  fear of hitting their own men, James decided to risk a quick look about. He inched his head out through the window until he could see the frigate. She had launched two more boats, which were rapidly rowing towards bow and stern of the merchantman. He turned his head to look the other way.

The motion caught the eye of a corsair. Swift as thought, he flung his dagger.

Even as James ducked, he saw Cordelia’s fair head peeking around the corner of the poop deck structure. She was all right! But what the devil did the little peagoose think—?

A yelp behind him told that the dagger had found an unintended mark. Captain de Castilho clutched his thigh, staring at the blood staining his breeches in a circle spreading from the protruding blade. “I am not a military man,” he moaned, and fainted.

However much James wanted to see what was going on outside, he could not leave the captain to bleed like a stuck pig. Making no attempt to bring him round, he ripped open the leg of his breeches. In a locker he found clean linen, which he fashioned into a bandage. Then he carefully drew out the dagger. Blood welled up. He pressed a pad to the wound and sat on the floor holding it, listening to the clash of steel against steel just beyond the cabin wall.

Cutlass struck sparks from scimitar. Cordelia watched, frozen in place by competing instincts. Half her mind told her to hurry forward to succour the wounded. The other half strongly advised removing her person as far and as fast as possible from the battle.

An abandoned pike slithered across the swaying deck to her feet. That convinced her she was much too close for comfort. She was about to perform a strategic retreat when she noticed the corsair who had been shot earlier.

Crouched behind the mast, he had so far taken no part in repelling the boarders. What attracted Cordelia’s attention was the flash of sunlight on the blade of his scimitar as he raised it. Following his gaze, she saw that one of the American sailors had penetrated through the ranks of the pirates and was fighting with his back to her. The wounded man was in a perfect position to take him by surprise from the rear.

As the corsair sprang forward, Cordelia seized the pike at her feet. It was heavier than she expected, but after the travails of her travels she was stronger than was quite proper in a proper young lady.

She dashed after the corsair, swung the pike haft in a wild arc, and whacked him on the side of the head. He slumped to the deck just as a score of Americans swarmed from bows and stern to the aid of their comrades.

Cordelia stood with the pike in her hands, staring down at the man she had felled. One of the Americans, a black man—a slave?—gently removed the weapon from her grasp and led her away from where the others were rapidly disarming the corsairs.

“Well done, lady,” he said.

“Did I kill him?” She looked back.

“Dunno, lady. You hit him with the blunt end.”

“I could not bring myself to stab him. Not that I had time to think.”

“And don’t you think no more about it. Here.”

She found he had taken off his jacket and was draping it over her shoulders. The top of her gown had torn as badly as her skirt in her scramble through the window, she realized.

“Heavens, I must change! That’s my cabin, there.”

The sailor escorted her to the door, gravely accepted the return of his coat, and said in parting, “You take it easy, lady. You’re safe now.”

Cordelia did not feel safe. Was he a slave? Had he been so kind and sympathetic because he guessed she too was bound for slavery in America? She locked the cabin door and sat down on her bunk, shivering though the early morning air was already warming. If she stayed quietly in here perhaps the black man would not mention her and the Americans would let the
Flor do Campo
sail on with her still aboard.

But what about James? They would find him when they released the captain.

Someone battered on the door. She shrank back.

“Cordelia, are you there?” James sounded frantic. “Cordelia! Oh lord, where is she?”

“James!” She flung herself across the cabin, unlocked the door, and fell into the safety of his arms.

“My dear girl,” he murmured into her hair. “My dear girl.”

She rested her forehead against his shoulder, feeling the fear drain from her body. Then she looked up at him and said proudly, “I did it! They saw me and they stayed.”

His smile was a trifle wobbly. “You did it. But I have been scared half to death for you. You are not hurt?”

“Not a scratch. And you?” Remembering the dagger thrown at him, she pulled away a little to see him properly.

“Not a scratch, but de Castilho...” His gaze fell on her ripped bodice and his eyes widened. “Who the deuce did—?”

“That was the window,” she said defensively, crossing her arms over her bosom. “I forgot, I must change.”

He glanced back over his shoulder as if he half expected to see sailors of every nation gathered to enjoy the sight of her dishabille. The corsairs sat in a sullen group under guard, makeshift bandages evident on both sides. The near-naked Portuguese filed sheepishly up from their prison. A young American, an officer by his coat, came out of the captain’s cabin, looked around, and started towards James and Cordelia. She fled.

Before putting on a fresh dress, Cordelia drank every drop of water in her pitcher. She was still thirsty, and hungry now also. She hoped the Americans at least fed their slaves well.

Perhaps they were not to be enslaved. James had not seemed concerned about having jumped from the frying pan into the fire—but he had been too worried about her to think ahead. Suddenly she needed desperately to be with him, to find out what lay in store. She hurried into her pink muslin with white ribbons, and to give herself confidence she donned her white rose trimmed hat.

Taking a deep breath, she was about to venture forth when James called her name and tapped on the door. She opened it.

“Are you ready? Yes, and dressed up to the nines!” He grinned. “Trying to impress our American cousins?”

“Cousins? James, they keep slaves, don’t they?”

Looking puzzled, he nodded, then his look changed to enlightenment. “Are you afraid they will make slaves of us? No, my dear, unlike the impartial Mohammedans, they keep only black slaves these days. Besides, the
Columbia
is from Boston, in Massachusetts which is, I believe, a free state.”

“Then they will let us stay on the
Flor do Campo
?”

“Better than that. At least, Lieutenant Carmichael, the excellent fellow who led the boarding party, thinks his captain may allow us to sail with them. They are westward bound, whereas de Castilho intends to put into Sardinia for repairs to himself and his ship—there’s a whacking great hole in the bows, above the waterline, fortunately. Poor chap, his wound has put him quite out of humour and he is almost as annoyed at the damage to the ship as grateful for the rescue.”

“How on earth was he wounded?”

“He was hit by a knife meant for me,” James explained dryly.

“When you stuck your head through the window? How could you have been so muttonheaded!”

“Quite as muttonheaded as a certain young lady who was peering round corners when she should have been hiding! But never mind that now. Pack up your things quickly and Carmichael will take us over to the
Columbia
. He says Captain Barlow is signalling for them to return posthaste as a breeze has come up and he’s in a hurry to sail. If we are there, the chances are he will take us.”

“What about the corsairs?” Cordelia asked, hastening to pack the few things she had out.

“De Castilho is taking them to Sardinia to be tried. With his evidence and his crew’s, they shan’t escape justice.”

“Good. I’m feeling vengeful, if only because I’m excessively hungry and thirsty!”

“Remember not to ask for tea,” James advised with a grin.

“Whyever not?”

“It’s a sensitive subject to Bostonians. They boast of having tossed several shiploads into their harbour. Though it was over thirty years ago, I’ve met those who still think tea and King George III are practically synonymous.”

In the boat crossing to the
Columbia
, Cordelia mentioned the pangs of hunger and thirst to Lieutenant Carmichael, a fair young man with a round, boyish face. Beaming, he promised breakfast as soon as Captain Barlow had pronounced their fate.