Bridge of Fire, page 27
She had to warn him.
The moment Jean left to supervise the preparation of the fire ship, she hurried into the menservants’ quarters, empty now since everyone had been pressed into service on the ramparts. Her eye went over the row of garments hung on pegs from one wall. She took down a stained pair of breeches and a coat she thought would fit her best. Back in her room she quickly exchanged clothing, thinking wryly of the times she had done this before and that if she ever came out of this episode in one piece, she would never don a pair of man’s breeches again.
Observing herself in a mirror, she saw that the coat barely hid the swell of her breasts. But it couldn’t be helped. Perhaps in the dark no one would notice. She hid her hair under a pirate’s kerchief such as Blanchard’s men wore and stuffed a cutlass in her belt. Carrying several of the gunpowder pots in a gunnysack, she went out. Calling to the sentry who guarded the ladder, she explained that she had been instructed to bring extra explosives in case the men attacking the emplacements should need them.
With this dubious excuse Francisca managed to reach the bottom of the cliff. The fired houses had burnt themselves out, and the town lay in blackness under the shadow of the mountain. The streets were as still as death, with not even a barking dog to break the silence. Francisca, stumbling about over the cobbles, began to feel that she might not be in time to reach Miguel’s gun emplacement. Nevertheless, there was still the chance that Blanchard’s men had been delayed, or perhaps that the fuses would go out before the gunpowder could be ignited.
Moving quickly, she was threading her way past the standing wall of a rubbled house when suddenly she was grabbed from behind. The oath Madre María! escaped from her lips a split second before a rough hand went over her mouth, stifling a scream.
The hand relaxed, then fell. She was turned about. “Estás español?”
She could not see her captor’s face. But the voice, the touch—she would know it anywhere.
Chapter XXII
As she went into Miguel’s arms, an explosion shattered the night, rocking the ground beneath their feet. Miguel pressed her close, holding her protectively while a series of thunderous blasts followed, lighting the sky in shooting rockets of flame.
“They must have hit a magazine on one of the ships,” he murmured.
At the sound of running footsteps, he pulled Francisca through an open door of a charred house. Half the roof had been burned away when the town had been sacked, and they could see a bright orange glow, together with flashes of crimson and torrents of fiery sparks, above them, paling the stars.
“Will it come ashore?” Francisca whispered. Billows of gray-yellow smoke redolent of tar and pitch began to roll heavenward.
“I don’t think so. It will burn itself out on the water.” He closed the door. “For the moment we are as safe here as elsewhere.”
So much to say, so much to ask. But for now it was enough to be held by Miguel again and to feel the beat of his heart under her cheek. She sighed, and then, suddenly not sure that he might be real or part of a dream she had dreamt so many times, she turned her face upward to look at him, devouring his features, staring into his smiling sea-blue gaze.
“Miguel…?” she asked tentatively, her voice catching as she touched his cheek.
His lips met hers in a long, tender kiss, his mouth, his arms, and his solid chest telling her that this was no dream. He was real, he was here.
“I thought they had killed you,” she said, leaning against him, speaking with difficulty past the painful contraction in her throat. “But then I had a dream—and I knew that you were alive and that…that someday we would be together again.”
His mouth caressed the tip of her nose, the sweet, rosy lips, her cheeks wet with tears of joy.
“Francisca,” he whispered, almost as unbelieving as she had been a moment before. He drew the kerchief from her head, running his hands through the dark, tumbling hair. “My Francisca.” His arms clasped her tightly, their bodies melding in a long kiss, their hungry lips seeking to reaffirm the miracle that had brought them together again.
At last when they drew breath, Miguel spoke. “The thought of you was the only thing that kept me going, Francisca. I could have died several times over, but for you.” He cradled her against him for a few silent moments before he went on.
“I had known Blanchard would take you to Tortuga long before I heard it as a fact from a band of buccaneers.”
“You are with the Spanish warships?”
“Not exactly. I am one of a crew of the Dolores, a privateer whose captain has a grudge against Blanchard. We came along with the galleons for the promise of revenge and booty.”
“You have been with the privateer all this time?”
“No. I will tell you what happened. Come, let us sit.” He led her to a charred bench. Outside the fire still raged. Tall flames leaped up and receded, dying, then leaping up again. Somewhere a cannon was booming, but from the street beyond the door there was no sound.
“When they heaved me overboard from the Espíritu, I was barely conscious,” Miguel began. “Blanchard’s sword thrust was not lethal, thanks to God. The cold water must have revived me and somehow staunched the blood. After I came to the surface, I had enough strength in me to keep from going under again. Fortunately, I came across a floating plank, part of the debris the pirates had thrown into the sea. How long I clung to it, I cannot tell you. Thirst was my worst enemy, thirst and the blazing sun. I must have sunk into momentary black forgetfulness more than once, only to wake and find myself slipping beneath the waves.”
Francisca held his hand tightly while he spoke, her eyes fixed on his face, half-hidden by shadow. His beard, grown to fullness, was peppered with gray. There was a scar on his right cheek she had never seen before. He looked older, harder.
“By the grace of God,” he went on, “I was washed ashore. Indians searching for clams found me and took me to their camp. I later learned they were Calusa, whose habitat is southeastern Florida. To say they were unfriendly would be putting it mildly. Apparently their experience with the white man, especially the Spanish, had not been a happy one. They immediately began building a huge fire, and from their gestures I was made to understand that I would be torn limb from limb, each part slowly roasted over the flames.”
Francisca, shuddering, slipped her arm around his waist, holding him protectively, as if to shield him from the pain of memory.
“I asked for water,” Miguel continued, “the last wish of a doomed man. There was an argument between an old woman and a man I took to be their chief. A few minutes later she came forward with a calabash of water. It seems that she had seen me in a dream, a man with hair like the sun, a gift of the gods that spelled good fortune.
“They believed her—for the moment, at any rate. I was treated as an honored guest, nursed back to health, taught their language, and on numerous occasions, asked for advice. As luck would have it, this particular band did prosper, and the old lady’s prophecy came true. However, I realized early on that I was also their prisoner. They were not about to let their live talisman go, and forestalling the possibility of my leaving, guarded their canoes.
“One morning, searching for a land route, I came across a band of buccaneers who had beached their pinnace for repairs on a creek that ran into the sea. I warned them that if the Calusa discovered their presence, they would be massacred.
“They left in a hurry, and I went with them. It was from them I learned that you were still on Tortuga. Six months later we joined up with the Spanish fleet who sailed on the king’s orders from Santo Domingo with instructions to capture the island. Needless to say, I was happy with this turn of events, since I had been trying to persuade my buccaneer friends to put in at Tortuga from the start.”
Francisca asked, “Do you think the Spanish will prevail?”
“Yes. De Fontenay is putting up a good fight, but I think he will eventually capitulate. But you and I are not going to remain to see that happen. We’ll take one of the smaller boats, a pinnace or a ketch, whatever I can manage, and sail to Jamaica. The sooner we quit this island—and the Spanish, for I don’t trust them—the better.”
We. You and I. Were there happier words? Francisca nuzzled her cheek against Miguel’s broad shoulder.
He smiled at her. “Tell me, Francisca, why you are dressed as a boy?”
“I saw you through a glass. I wanted to get to you, and it was the only way I could pass through the sentries.” She explained about Blanchard’s plan to blow up the gun emplacements.
“You were being held for ransom?” Miguel asked.
“Why…yes.”
But her affirmation was too late. He had caught the hesitancy in her voice. He grasped her shoulders and held her away, his blue eyes blazing as he scrutinized her face. The fire’s glow had died to a smoky red. But there was still enough light to see by.
“You were Blanchard’s mistress?” His voice was hard, uncompromising. It was the voice of a man who, discovering infidelity, will never forgive.
“I thought you were dead, Miguel.”
“That is no excuse.”
“I had little choice. He threatened to give me to his men if I did not comply.”
“You should have killed yourself first.”
She looked at him in disbelief. “How can you say that? Do you think I wanted to die? Did you want to die?”
“It was different in my case.”
“Then you hold your life more dearly than you hold mine.”
“You don’t understand.” This was the woman he had risked all for, would gladly die for. Yet thinking of her in the arms of that dog, submitting to his foul caresses, made him want to tear her apart.
Yet he loved her. That was the simple, painful truth. Francisca could sense the inner struggle going on in his mind. A proud man did not take lightly to the news of his woman bedding another man. But she wasn’t any woman, she was his loved one, and she had given herself to Blanchard because there had been no alternative.
“It is you who do not understand.” She shrugged out of his grasp, angry because he refused to see the dilemma she had been forced to face. “You never have! I could have lied to you, but I chose to tell the truth. I see now where you would have preferred the lie.”
Was she right? He thought of the moments he had spent as a captive himself, his every move watched. Made to conform to village life, he had relied on the shaky goodwill of the Calusa chief and an old woman to keep him alive until he could find a way to escape. Surely Francisca’s predicament had not been too different from his own?
The silence between them stretched on. Even the guns were still. The fire, except for a few spurts of flame, had almost burned itself out.
“We are quarreling,” Miguel said finally, thinking, what did it matter? She had come to him chaste. He had been the first, her only love. “Ten minutes together and we are at it. I didn’t want it to be this way.”
“Nor I.” She felt the sting of hot tears, but kept her voice steady. “Perhaps you should go on without me.”
His fingers grasped her shoulders again, biting into the flesh. “Never! Don’t say that even in jest.” He touched a crystal tear trickling down her cheek, then kissed it away. “My beautiful Francisca,” he said in a softer tone, drawing her into his arms. “Let us not contend. You are the one constant in my life. I have my faults. So be it. But my love for you is without blemish. If you had not been here…But we shan’t speak of it. Whatever has happened is in the past. Now we must think only of the future.”
Miguel found an untended shallop—a small open boat fitted with oars and a sail—beached under the shadow of the fort above. It was still night. The moon had gone in, and the only light was the faint gleam of embers from the ship still smoldering in the harbor. The cannoneers and those armed with muskets, unable to see their targets in the darkness, bided their time until dawn.
The shallop was stocked with a cask of water and a sack of dried fish, enough provender, Miguel said, to get them to Jamaica. Francisca would have liked to take her jewels, or at least a few of them, for Miguel had very little money, and they would need some when they reached their destination. But she did not dare return to Blanchard’s house on the cliff. In any case, there was no time. Miguel felt they should be well away by daylight.
He rowed them out under the guns of the fort, past the sinking masts of the fired galleon, past the anchor lights of the Spanish and the darkened pirate ships. It seemed to Francisca that the creak of their unoiled oarlocks could be heard from one end of Tortuga to the other. At any moment she expected to hear a voice shouting the alarm, followed by a fusillade of shots spattering across the water. But they made it to the open sea safely, and Miguel hoisted the shallop’s sail. Guided by the light of the stars, he brought the little skiff about and pointed her nose toward Jamaica.
Toward evening of the following day they could see storm clouds gathering on the southeastern horizon, and presently the wind picked up. The waves swelled, the sky grew dark, and before Miguel could lower his sail, the storm in all its fury was upon them.
Angry blasts of wind tore the sail from his hands, snapping the mast in two, whipping the sea into a frothing rage. The shallop rode up one mountainous wave and down into a trough so deep, Francisca could see the white comber poised above them. But the little boat, shaking itself like a terrier, was lifted up again, only to sink once more into the dark green abyss. The winds increased in velocity, the sea sweeping over them in great battering waves. The rudder went; the oars were ripped from their sockets. Francisca, wet through, her hair plastered to her skull, clung to the sides of the boat.
With the rudder, mast, and oars gone, they were completely at the mercy of the storm. Miguel, crawling forward to where Francisca sat, shouted in her ear that they must bail. He pushed a bucket into her hands, and she began to scoop frantically at the rising water. Soon it was up to her knees. Each comber seemed to be larger than the next, crashing mercilessly down upon them. She could feel the seams of their vessel expanding, coming apart under the onslaught.
“We are foundering!” Miguel shouted.
He emptied the water cask and tied Francisca to it.
“No!” she screamed. She did not want to live if he drowned.
But the knots were tight, and though she tried, she could not undo them. Then a huge wave lifted her from the sinking boat. She saw the gray, pitiless skies, the boiling turmoil of the sea, felt the lashing rain, and then—nothing.
Sunlight beating on the side of her face woke her. She was on a calmed sea, still bound around the waist to the cask. She coughed, spitting sea water. Her lungs ached; her throat felt raw. Nothing was in sight, not a floating spar on the lapping waves, not a single flying bird, nothing but the blue sea and a cloudless sky. Limitless, lonely horizons stretched all around her, an emptiness that was terrifying as it was complete.
“Miguel?” Her lips formed his name, but no sound formed on her swollen tongue.
She closed her eyes against the blinding light reflected from sky and water. Fate had separated her from Miguel again. Fate, perhaps death. No, she wouldn’t think of dying. She wouldn’t think of the fathomless sea below her dangling legs or the sharks that roamed these waters. She would think only of possibilities, of…
A splashing sound brought her slitted eyes open. Miguel, buoyed by a section of the overturned shallop, was slowly kicking his way toward her.
She didn’t know whether to weep or laugh, but was too exhausted to do either.
That afternoon an English merchantman, the Sea Bear, picked them up. The captain, after having been assured that Miguel, despite his dress, was not a shipwrecked pirate, had given them a tiny cabin and loaned them a change of clothing. Francisca’s gown, donated by a female passenger, hung in unsightly folds about her. But she was so happy to be wearing it, so happy to be alive and reunited with Miguel, she did not much care how she looked.
To her astonishment, the captain informed them that the de Bustos, former Christian friends of her father’s, were aboard.
“Yes, Señora Castillo, they are also fleeing from the Inquisition.” To avoid embarrassment, Miguel had claimed that Francisca was his wife.
“But they are good Catholics,” Francisca protested.
“Someone—they think, perhaps an envious business rival—accused them of blasphemy and Protestantism, and they thought it best to leave at once.”
“They have come recently from Mexico City? Then perhaps they have news of my family. Please take me to them at once.”
Although she had once felt resentful toward the de Bustos because they had shied away from offering her family help when they were in jeopardy, she now greeted them like long lost friends. Their own plight brought them closer to her.
Their news was not good.
“We had heard the rumor that your father, mother, and husband died under torture,” Doña Ana told Francisca. “They are to be burned in effigy in the next auto. Your aunt Juliana’s fate is uncertain; whether she is alive of dead, no one can say. Your sister languishes in the convent of the Carmelites. They tell us she is quite mad. Of Jorge we know nothing. He and his foster parents disappeared from Mexico City some time ago.”
In the past Francisca had hoped that at least her father’s and Juliana’s lives might have been spared, that they might have been let off with a prison sentence, an order to wear the sanbenito for a number of years. But now all had gone, either dead or possibly dead or mad. Only Jorge remained, living somewhere among savages.
The ship was bound for New Amsterdam, where Miguel proposed that he and Francisca settle. There was no question of returning to Spain, even briefly, where they risked being recognized. The continent of Europe, embroiled in disputes and wars, offered no peaceful haven. But New Amsterdam did. Of all the colonies on the north continent, Miguel said, this seemed to him the most promising.
