24 January 1818
Kingston, Jamaica
Dear Emmie,
He did not perish. He is alive.
This afternoon, hearing the news from the gossips, I could hardly contain myself: I was so full of both joy and anguish. In silence and secrecy for a month I have mourned him. Yet he lives!
When I asked about the bandits, the gossips peered at me as though I were a child inventing stories. There were no bandits. Instead the women whispered of his mistress in Montego Bay with whom he spent his last nights on the island—nights during which I waited for him, longed for him, and—like a trusting child—loved him.
I know now that it was all a lie. He was merely sporting with a gullible girl—for amusement’s sake, I suppose, for diversion. Or perhaps he did care for me, yet apart he swiftly forgot me.
His ship now crosses the ocean, they say, although no one seems to know to where it is bound. Wherever it goes, I should take no interest in it. He is not mine to miss. He never was.
Oh, Emmie—Am I wicked to pray for his safety, or merely foolish to do so when he has dealt me this hurt? I know it is the latter—yet still I pray. How unguarded, how simpleminded I have been. And how foolish I am even now to wish this a terrible dream that will vanish upon waking.
I am all confusion, knowing that I have done wrong, that I do wrong still, yet unable—unwilling—to end my own unhappiness. For then, it will truly be over, and that I cannot yet bear.
(25 January)
Last night I wept myself to sleep, hiding my tears from my husband. Today, however, I am changed: wiser, more sober. Papa once warned that my heart trusts too swiftly and too deeply. I did not understand the warning then. I do now, for a naval officer has taught me a fine lesson: to believe a man’s words and deeds rather than my heart’s desire.
I will never make that mistake again.
—A.
July 1818
HMS Theia
Lat. –34.35, Long. 18.46
The hull heaved to starboard and rent the already deafening cacophony of thunder pounding the heavens, and rain pounding the deck, with a creak to send a sailor’s heart scurrying to the soles of his feet.
Captain Gabriel Hume, commander of His Majesty’s frigate Theia, having had no functioning heart to speak of for seven months, stood with legs braced hard and hands tight about the wheel, and closed his mouth and nose against the sea that rushed over him. His arms and back burned with the strain as, with a mighty groan, his ship righted herself then plummeted into another swirling green gully.
“Foremast’ll go first, Cap’n! Mark me words!” shouted his bosun over the roar of the storm. Strapped to the mizzen with a rope, he had refused to go below as Gabriel had ordered.
Another wave rose portside, a flash of lightning illumining hills of water all about. Forcing his sixteen stone against the helm, Gabriel drove it, cutting the prow toward the oncoming swell. It burst against the hull, a river of foam and black flooding the forecastle. As Theia dipped again and he hauled the wheel back, the eerie crackle of wood snapping came to him through the clamor.
“There she go—!”
His bosun’s next words were lost in thunder.
But the foremast held, rain cascading from reefed canvas in waterfalls.
“The next one’ll take her, Cap’n!” his bosun shouted. “Mark me—”
“Blast it, man!” Gabriel hollered. “Bind your flapping lips or when we’re through this I’ll sew them shut!”
“Aye, Cap’n!” his bosun replied over the rain beating at the quarterdeck. “But the gods have it in for us this time!”
“’Tis no’ the gods that sent this squall,” came through his gritted teeth as a wave rose. Tilting, Theia began her slow roll into the trough.
Gabriel pulled the wheel, every muscle and tendon and bone strained to snapping. Through the thunder came the howl of a wild animal. As the swell crested and his chest throbbed with agony he knew the sound was coming from his throat, his mouth.
Eighty-four men.
Eighty-four men under his command. Men given into his care alone.
And one vengeful storm.
Ten months earlier he had cheated a hurricane. The devil apparently was not satisfied with the punishment he had already been dealt for that.
He threw his strength against the helm.
“You’ll no’ take any o’ them, you son o’—”
A wall of sea swallowed the forward half of his ship and a spar flew at him from the darkness. Pain exploded in his head.
When he opened his eyes, he was falling with the helm. With a tearing of every muscle in his body, he fought, pulled, pushed to his feet, slipping in icy water, righting himself, struggling against the fog between his ears.
“You’ve got it right, Cap’n,” his bosun burbled, waterlogged now. “This ain’t the gods. This storm be Satan himself come to carry we all home.”
Funnels of water streamed from the ink above. Lightning snapped, showing the sailor slumped against the mast. Thunder like cannon blasted the wind. Gabriel closed his ears against the devil’s madness. His exhausted fingers slipped on the wood.
No.
Not yet.
Not his ship.
Not his crew.
“What do you want, then?” he called out, clinging to the pegs as the lash of rain against his cheeks and hands washed all but savage audacity away. “What’ll the Prince o’ Darkness have from me in return for these men’s lives?”
A spear of lightning split open the blackness from cloud to deck, and a barrel tied to the railing burst into flames.
“All right.” Gabriel watched the fire sputter out beneath the rain. “You’re listening. Excellent!”
Wind swept over the deck. He pressed his shoulder into it and held the helm steady. But he could feel the weakening, the end of his strength coming finally, with no end to the storm in sight.
“You already know what I want!” he shouted into the fury of Hell.
The only thing he wanted.
“Now, you bastard—”
Portside, a curtain of black arose, darker than the foam, darker than the rain, a towering mountain of ocean. Beneath the screaming wind Gabriel growled, “Let’s make a deal.”