Bridge of Fire, page 25
“What I own is beside the point. We had an agreement, and you broke it.”
“If we had an agreement, it was one entirely on your side.”
He bent and brought his face close to hers, his dark eyes smoldering. “Liar!”
She drew back. The smell of brandy on his breath was overpowering. He must have been drinking glass after glass while she was sitting next to Levasseur in the salon.
“You’re drunk,” she said, her stomach clenching.
“Not too drunk to know a liar. But…” he said, straightening, “it comes as no surprise. I’ve known for some time how smoothly you can fabricate a story that is utterly false.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said haughtily.
“Don’t you?” He seated himself on the edge of a table, swinging one booted leg, his eyes going over her, slowly. This was not an indifferent assessment like the one she had encountered when she first faced Blanchard, but an appraisal deliberately stripping her bare, a narrow-eyed survey lingering on her white breasts with a frank sexuality that sent a shiver up her spine.
“You can hardly blame me for attempting to use any means to gain my freedom,” she said reasonably, giving him a small smile to hide her growing fear. “Wouldn’t you do the same?”
“Let me warn you, Señora, if you are thinking to appeal to my better nature, I have none. Furthermore, I do not suffer liars.”
He walked to a cupboard where a supply of liquor was kept. Sloshing rum into a glass, he came back, resuming his seat on the edge of the table. “I drink to you, Doña Francisca de Silva de Diaz y Roche. At least you gave me your correct name. But for the rest…”He raised his glass to her, then drained it.
Blanchard eyed her for several long moments. “Where would you go if I did set you free?” he asked abruptly.
Francisca hadn’t thought that far ahead. All she wanted to do was to get as far away from Blanchard and his freebooters as she could. Spain was out of the question now that Miguel was dead and could not give her the protection she needed. Nevertheless, she lifted her chin and answered. “Seville.”
“Liar,” he said softly, his voice silky smooth. “The Inquisition is waiting for you in Spain, isn’t it?” Then roughly, “Isn’t it? Well, answer me!”
“Yes.”
“And you have no uncle in Acapulco.”
“But I—”
“He is fictitious, made up out of whole cloth. Am I right? Speak!”
“Yes.” She wet her dry lips. Then, as he continued to glare at her, “How long have you known?”
“Oh, I suspected from the first. And my suspicions were confirmed by a certain attorney, representing the Holy Office, Señor Lopez. Does that name touch a chord in your memory? I thought so. He happened to be a passenger on the Spanish galleon we raided, and when it was mentioned that we had a compatriotess of his as prisoner, calling you by name, he wanted you turned over to him. And I assure you, if he could have paid your ransom, there would have been no hesitation on my part.”
“Then why didn’t you do it?” she threw at him bitterly, despising him. “Why didn’t you hand me over to Lopez if you knew that I had no uncle—or family, for that matter— who could redeem me?”
“I never give anything away unless I have no use for it.” Again his eyes rested on her breasts, traveling to her throat, to her warm, red lips. “You are a very beautiful woman and should be worth something in the marketplace. Perhaps one or two of my own men might bargain for you, share and share alike.”
If he had thought to reduce her to pleading for compassion or mercy, he was wrong. Above all, she would not show fear, though her heart trembled and shook in her breast.
He got up and strolled aimlessly about the room, finally circling behind Francisca’s chair. She sat rigid, not moving, hardly daring to breathe.
“I have been trying to make up my mind what to do for some time now.” Casually, he placed his hand on her bare shoulder.
She suppressed a shudder. Of fear? Or was it something more? The strong hand resting on her flesh, its implied virile strength recalling another hand, perhaps?
For a long time he stood motionless in that pose, not speaking, while Francisca sat as if made of stone, wondering what he was thinking, yet afraid to turn her head.
Still behind her, he lifted her from the chair by the elbows and stood holding her, her back to him, the chair between them.
“Have you nothing to say on your behalf, Señora?”
She tried to wrest free, but he shifted his hands to her arms, gripping them so tightly, she nearly cried out with pain. “You disappoint me. Doña Francisca. I would have thought you had some clever retort. Another lie, perhaps.”
She drew in her breath. “I refuse to give your insults the dignity of an answer.” She was too angry now to be afraid. “You are nothing more than a beast!”
With a violent motion he booted the chair aside and whirled her around. His face was dark as thunder, his eyes burning into hers. “You are right. I am a beast and have acted the gentleman too long.”
Slamming her against his chest, he caught her mouth in a brutal, ravaging kiss. She tried to arch away from him, but a steely arm brought her back, flattening her breasts against the cold, hard buttons of his coat. His tongue pried her stiff lips open, darting inside, pillaging her mouth. Then he was kissing her again, bruising her lips, moving with hot hunger to her cheeks, her throat, then down to the soft mounds of her breasts.
When he finally lifted his head, she could only say weakly, “Let me go.”
He laughed, and his laughter was more chilling than his kisses. Still holding her with one arm snaked about her waist, he traced the outline of her breasts with a finger and smiled diabolically as he felt the nipples rise through the silken cloth. “So you do not hate me as much as you pretend.”
“I spit on you!”
He drew her back, sinking his teeth into her shoulder. When she cried out, he ripped at the neckline of her gown, tearing it down the front. Using the last of her reserve, she tried to struggle free, but his hand gripped and held the tangled mass of her hair while the other hand tore at her gown, stripping it away.
In a matter of moments she was naked, thrown across the bed, feeling his weight on her. She closed her eyes as he fumbled with his clothing, hot tears running down her cheeks, waiting helplessly for him to take her.
But nothing happened. He remained poised over her. She could feel the pounding of his heart, his heavy breathing. But he made no move to part her legs, no move to fondle her breasts, no move at all.
Cautiously she opened her eyes, round and luminous with tears. Resting on his elbows, he was staring at her with a look she could not fathom, a deep, dark gaze, pensive and brooding. Then he lowered his head and kissed her gently on the tip of her nose, on her bruised and swollen lips, brushing her cheek, her throat, her breasts, with a tenderness she found strange and, despite herself, moving.
“La Belle Francisca,” he whispered. “Tu es très belle.”
He made love to her slowly, with evocative lips and hands, taking great care to rouse her. She kept telling herself that she hated him, that he had killed Miguel. But she was of flesh and blood, young and vibrantly alive. Soon, despite herself, she felt a familiar warmth stealing through her body, drowning her in a treacherous sensual languor. She closed her eyes again, pretending it was Miguel kissing her, Miguel stroking her arms, caressing her breasts, Miguel’s mouth trailing fire along her inner thighs, his tongue flicking and teasing until she found herself moaning with pleasure.
When the buccaneer separated her flanks and entered her, she responded, rising to meet him, matching wild passion for passion in a frenzy of mounting joy. And at the last, she cried out Miguel’s name.
The buccaneer lay beside her. He had lit a cigar and silently puffed at it while he absently stroked Francisca’s hair.
“So he was your lover,” he said at last, “the captain of the ill-fated Espíritu?”
“Yes.”
“Did you love him very much?”
“Yes. Very much.”
He turned to her in the dark. “But he is dead, ma chérie.”
“Yes, he is dead.” She paused, adding softly, “But not for me. Never for me.”
Chapter XX
Determined to have her forget Miguel and make her completely his, Blanchard showered her with jewels: emerald and diamond baubles from Brazil, bloodred rubies from Hindustan, and lustrous pearls from the fisheries of Rancheris. He provided her with silks and brocades from China, and set a gold, gem-encrusted coronet from Peru upon her dark head.
Yet he never declared his love, never once spoke a word that would indicate he had given his heart to her. Francisca often wondered if he did have a heart. She did not love him, would never love him. The kind of love she had for Miguel could only happen once in a lifetime. But she thought it odd that this man who could display such ardor, who could huskily whisper ardent French words of endearment in her ear, never once, even at the height of his passion, murmured “Je t’aime.”
She knew almost nothing of his past. Whether his good manners had been inculcated by a genteel upbringing or whether he had come from plebeian stock and somehow had acquired a smooth patina of civility was a mystery. How or why he had fallen into piracy was also a secret he apparently did not care to divulge.
Yet he showed no reluctance in discussing the present situation, explaining the workings of his marauding fleet, its structure and method of operation, and sometimes in his cups, even boasting of his personal exploits. She knew that he, like all buccaneer captains, had been elected by the men and that they divided the booty according to a set of articles agreed upon before each voyage, the captain and the officers receiving a larger share than the ordinary seaman. The first man to spy out a ship’s sail on the horizon, and the first man to board a prize, earned a bonus. There were five other captains besides himself, all subordinate, and all elected because of their bravery and their expert seamanship. Asked why, if the spoils were divided so fairly, he lived so luxuriously while the others seemed to get by in comparative squalor, he gave her a simple answer.
“I do not squander my ill-gotten gains, as those brutes do. They spend everything they make on wine and whores as fast as it comes into their hands. I’ve known some who will buy barrels of wine just to splash it on passersby in the street. After an orgy on Saint Kitts, you might find the prostitutes of the town wearing diamonds and sapphires. On the other hand, I’ve not only retained my gold and jewels, but have made some sound investments, which have paid handsomely.”
“What sort of investments?” Francisca had asked out of curiosity.
“Various ones. There are always fools begging to be duped out of their money.”
He was a scoundrel and gloried in it. He had no use for the English shopkeepers who fleeced his crew nor the French planters who lived off the backs of slaves. The Spanish he scorned the most.
The pirates, he told her, had no corner on brigandage or cruelty. When one thought of the plunder the conquistadors had taken from the Aztecs, their wanton massacre of thousands of Indians, how they had slowly worked to death thousands more in their mines and on their haciendas, Blanchard and his freebooters seemed like a band of light-fingered thieves.
As for the Inquisition, he could not think of a more nefarious and inane institution.
“I don’t give a tinker’s damn whether you observe the law of Moses or that of a Toltec’s,” he told Francisca. “What is hard for me to comprehend is why anyone would go through so much anguish for the sake of a creed. Wouldn’t it have been simpler for you and your family to embrace the Catholic church?”
How could she explain that faith had not only bound the Judaizers to their God but to one another as well? She recalled with a lump in her throat the Sabbath eves at home, the glowing lights of the candled menorah, her father’s voice, the soft, sweet smile on her mother’s face, and the love that had wrapped them all in warmth.
“You would never understand,” Francisca said. “A man without conscience, who is unprincipled and godless, could never conceive of the spiritual joy that comes in the belief of Jehovah, God of Israel.”
“And I suppose your lover understood. Señor Lopez mentioned that he was a Roman Catholic who had committed the heinous sin of helping you escape the Inquisition’s clutches. Very commendable. And even as a son of Mother Church, he accepted your adherence to Judaism?”
“Of course he did,” she lied, remembering her last quarrel with Miguel. Now, in retrospect, the angry words they had exchanged seemed even more petty. She had loved him so much, what difference did it make if he wanted his sons to be Catholic?
“I suppose,” Blanchard said casually, “he was a finer man than I gave him credit for.”
“He was…” Francisca began, then suddenly found that, again, words failed her. She could not describe Miguel to a cutthroat ruffian like Jean Blanchard any more than she could describe her feelings for Judaism. Miguel was as strong, intelligent, and brave as Jean, but there the similarity ended.
While the buccaneer was motivated solely by selfish expediency, Miguel lived by a code of honor, a chivalric ideal which tempered violence with pardon. And the more she knew Blanchard, the more Miguel’s luster brightened.
Soon she could no longer pretend to herself that it was Miguel making love to her. When she tried to resist Blanchard, he fought her with bruising relish, enjoying the struggle and his ultimate—always foreordained—victory. Unwilling to give him the satisfaction of bringing her to submission, Francisca endured Jean’s caresses, never forgetting that hanging over her head was his threat to dispose of her in a way that would humiliate and degrade and, in the end, kill her. She was his possession, just as the gowns and the jewels she wore were his possessions, and she chafed under the knowledge, secretly despising him, waiting, hoping for an opportunity to break free.
He had told her that if her behavior warranted it, she would have the run of the island, but she was not advised to wander about alone. “Too dangerous,” he told her. So he appointed a disabled freebooter, Pierre Barrot, to act as her guard.
Pierre was older than the general run of buccaneer, or perhaps it was his scarred face, from which one eye gleamed balefully, that made it seem so. In addition, he had lost both hands and wore iron hooks in their place, instruments that he used with chilling deftness. He made no secret of his distaste in being assigned to escort a woman about. And it was some weeks before Francisca learned that he spoke Spanish as well as French and English.
She made another discovery. He had no particular fondness for Jean Blanchard. Though he never spoke a word against him, Francisca sensed by a look or an occasional meaningful shrug or muttered curse that Pierre viewed his captain with a great deal less than respect. She stored this knowledge away, though how she would use it, she hadn’t decided.
In the meanwhile, he performed his duties with maddening tenacity. She could not take a step outside the door but that he wasn’t there. He was a constant presence, either over her shoulder or as a shadow on the wall, when she strolled the path that skirted the house. If she was to climb down the ladder, he was there above her. Some days, thinking to get away, she would select a horse from Blanchard’s stable located at the edge of the town. Galloping over a stretch of savanna and through the woods, her hair streaming in the wind, she would head for the Côte-de-Fer, feeling that at last she had shaken Pierre. But before long a glance behind revealed him trotting doggedly after.
Blanchard and his fleet would be away for weeks at a time, plundering ships and sacking unprotected settlements on the islands of the Greater Antilles and along the coast of Panama and Venezuela. They would return to Tortuga, their holds filled with silver ingots, dyewoods, cloth, indigo, damask, and confiscated brass cannon. Then from the town below would come sounds of high revelry, shots, shouts, screams, and drunken laughter. But Jean rarely lingered in the taverns with his men. He would stride into the house, swing Francisca in his arms, throw her on the bed, and make hungry, passionate love.
Life was precarious and lived for the moment. No one cared about the future or who governed the island as along as they had a middleman who gave them a fair price for their goods. This indifference to local rule, combined with a callous disregard for human life, was illustrated by Blanchard’s lack of concern when Levasseur was assassinated by his two adopted sons in a quarrel over Madame Lenoir’s favors.
The adopted sons, Thibault and Martin, subsequently declared themselves joint governors of Tortuga. Not a soul, least of all Jean, protested or thought overmuch about it. That was the way the world went. Plunder was their business, not politics.
Francisca thought often of her family. She could not forget her mother’s face as she lay dying. She wondered about poor, mad Leonor, about the fate of her father and Aunt Juliana. She agonized over the loss of Jorge, hoping he was alive, that his captors were not treating him cruelly, and that someday, praise God, she would see him again.
But it was her dreams of Miguel that disturbed her the most, eerie nightmares in which he tried to reach her through leaping flames as she stood tied to the stake. Sometimes it would be he who was bound and she who was desperately trying to bridge the fire and release him. One night she had a particularly vivid dream. He was sitting in a circle of dark-skinned Indians, dressed like them in a leather-fringed breechclout, his face painted with blue and yellow streaks. Suddenly he sprang to his feet. She could see his face so clearly, the sapphire-blue eyes, the flaring nostrils, the copper-colored beard. He spoke her name, “Francisca.” Just her name, that was all. But spoken so clearly, she could have sworn he was in the room and that his voice had awakened her.
He wasn’t in the room. The man sleeping beside her was Jean Blanchard, not Miguel Velasquez del Castillo. But she knew then just as surely as she knew she had a beating heart and breath in her lungs that Miguel was alive. He was not lying on the bottom of the ocean, a drowned corpse, half-eaten by fish, but whole and alive. Logic told her that this could not be true, that her own eyes had seen him run through with a sword and thrown overboard. But logic and intuition were not the same. In the very depths of her soul she knew that somewhere, somehow, he lived.
