Chapter 2
Alexandra awoke to see another bucket of slop sluiced onto Nicholas. Was it to be a daily ritual?
Damiano cupped his hands around his ears, his pockmarked face possessing the appearance of a pebbled goblin. “Enjoy your garbage with the rats.”
Alexandra shared her better rations with Nicholas, experiencing the heat of his fingers touching hers.
She put her shoulders back, refusing to succumb to the feeling of helplessness in the face of her hideous fate. “Don’t let your thoughts fall prey to the must not’s, the don’ts, or the impossible. We will escape,” Alexandra confirmed to Lord Rutland to keep her optimism alive.
She burrowed into her father’s coat, inhaling his scent, and then moved her hands into the pockets and pulled out his spectacles, fingering the thick lenses. How he needed them to see. She gulped. Even that small luxury she had taken from him. She pinned the cool lenses into her bodice, a silly gesture to keep him close to her heart.
Lord Rutland broke through her reverie. “It will be an absolute triumph if I can hold down the garbage they give us for food. Despite your happy confidence, we are heading to a country controlled by Portugal, far from England, a different language and a sea captain bent on his profits.”
“There is no room for petty doubt,” she sighed, clinging to the hope of seeing her father again. To ask for his forgiveness. “We must exercise to keep our muscles from weakening, and to use our energies to devise our escape, to imagine what scenarios we might encounter. We will survive. I feel it in my bones.” Her breath caught in her chest, less sure of the outcome than she touted.
“Keep wiggling that worm of hope. We’ll give the escape a try.”
A storm was coming. She could smell the thickness in the air. Her hearing adjusted itself beyond the crack of sails and the plunging sweep of spray around the hull.
The wave-racked confluence of the westerlies moving across the Atlantic now battled with the easterlies off the coast of Africa. Such forces she had learned about from her sea captain father.
Hurricane.
Destructive storms that raged across the sea, leaving no soul alive. The rusty lock on the hatch stayed secure. Cold ropy tentacles of fear wrapped around her chest and suddenly she couldn’t breathe. Would she die a prisoner in a watery grave at the bottom of the sea as Damiano had predicted?
The masthead lookout’s cry was muffled by the wind and the lively pop of sails. The seas grew choppier, and then gigantic waves swept over the decks, rushing like a fierce terrier.
For four days, the wind raged with terrible ferocity, the Santanas and its crew at the mercy of the storm, scudding away to be swallowed up by the sea.
“Let us out,” demanded Nicolas, but his voice was lost to the wind and fury. Alexandra jumped, grabbed the grate, swinging back and forth. She stuck her free hand out and waved. “Have mercy. Let us out.” Seawater rushed over the hatch, Alexandra fell, sputtering, gagging. She stood again, gasping for air. The ship lifted and a wave ripped along the Santanas port beams, then wallowed over, throwing the ship backward. Alexandra slipped and slid. She could imagine any man not tied to the decks aloft survived.
Damiano clutched the grate. “Senhorita, I will give you pleasure now.”
“You dare to go against Captain Diogo?” Nicholas snarled, his demand drowned out by the wind.
“I killed him. We are all going to die from this storm, but I will have the woman before I do.” Damiano threw open the hatch. Alexandra bared her teeth, but her knees shook. “I will not make it easy for you.”
Damiano laughed.
At the same time, Nicholas leaped upward, head butted him. Damiano fell back. Nicholas hurdled from the hold, thrust his hand down for Alexandra. She grabbed on. Nicholas yanked her upward with such strength she rammed into him and flattened him to the deck. The Santanas tacked violently, her sails in confusion as she plunged into the storm.
“Tie yourself to something,” Nicholas ordered like he was Poseidon.
She rolled off him, crawled across the slippery planks, curling her fingers over the edge of the iron hatch.
Damiano came to his feet and lunged. “I will make you pay, Lord Rutland for making me look a fool.”
She watched Nicholas sidestep and bring his right forearm viciously down across the back of the seaman’s neck. A wave swept over the ship, carrying the two across the deck and slamming them into the rails. Damiano rose first, his lip bleeding where his teeth went through. He wiped his mouth on his shirt and leaped on Nicholas.
With a deceptive lunge to the right, followed by a snakelike twist to the left, Nicholas swung his powerful right fist into Damiano’s face. As the Portuguese sailor’s head snapped back, Nicholas doubled-up his own head and shoulder and drove into the man’s stomach like a battering ram.
Alexandra rose to her feet. The canvas slapped around her ears and still the men fought on. Madness. That was what it was. Pure insanity. The planks beneath her vibrated with the storm’s fury. The hull staggered violently, blocks screamed, the Santanas heeled steeply to take the wind under her stern sails, lifting then filled to its thrust. The mast topgallant seemed to bend forward, the masthead pendant flicking straight out towards the bows, as if to point the way.
Through the slanting rain, a few men stood like men facing an execution, so stricken they were unable to think or respond. Others fought the wind, and pushed a lifeboat over the gunnels, and then scrambled into the vessel. Someone shouted a warning. The ship heaved. Alexandra fell, hurled on her back. She reached out, clawed at the capstan.
Damiano staggered backward, fell onto the deck, rose and came at Nicholas with a barrage of fists, punching Nicholas’s head hard with the force of a bull. Nicholas slipped on the wet deck and Damiano dropped onto him. Nicholas flicked the wet hair from his forehead. Looking weakened and thin from lack of nutrition, he feinted to the right and then the left and dodged the fists coming at him. He needed help.
Just as she thought it, a belaying pin rolled by Alexandra. She stretched her fingers and snatched it up. She let go of the capstan, and inched toward the rail, her eyes passing over swivel gunners, the unprotected wheel, two grim-faced sailors stringing futilely at the sails above. The most forward shrouds and rigging hung like black weeds above the Santanas deck, the brig staggering drunkenly under the onslaught.
A seaman shrieked as he fell from the yardarm above, his body making a sickening thud on impact, landing on the deck next to her. His eyes and mouth still open, blood pooled around his head. The Santanas gave a violent shudder, tacking listlessly to the side.
Alexandra slammed into the rail. The dead seaman rolled over her and into the sea. Water churned below, the waves like tumbling white-horses. Gone was the lifeboat, into the sea upside down, men’s cries to their savior lost in the screaming wind.
Hand over hand she pulled on one pilaster and then another. Nicholas and Damiano tumbled on the deck, fists flying and cursing at each other. The Santanas’ fore and mainmasts staggered and then began to topple sideways, the sails jerking to the bombardment of wind.
A crippled wreck, the frigate’s sails ripped and punctured like rags. Lightning exploded, and the ships’ foremast vanished in a mass of rigging and ripped canvas. Still clutching the belaying pin, she edged toward the men. Damiano pulled a knife from his belt.
Death coming up the hawse, Nicholas dodged Damiano’s knife thrusts. She stared at Lord Rutland, her eyes critical. For just those few moments, she had seen the real man beneath and it frightened her. Nicholas punched, feinted, and taunted Damiano again and again, never giving the sailor a chance to recover.
Alexandra reached the quarterdeck, yanked her wet hair from her eyes. The mast was shattering and ready to fall. “Watch out, Nicholas.”
Damiano bellowed, dropped his knife. Nicholas broke off as the splintering crash of the main topgallant canted over, the sail whipping madly in a web of parted rigging, while the yard itself snapped into equal halves before pitching toward the sea. Alexandra covered her head as an avalanche of wood and cording suddenly rained down upon her. Where was Nicholas? On her hands and knees, the slippery deck raised as she crawled over fallen rigging.
Damiano. Her gaze went to his corpse, his body severed by the weight of the cordage draped over the larboard and trailing along the sea. She swallowed the sour bile in her mouth, squeezed her eyes shut and forced her limbs to creep around Damiano’s body to find Nicholas.
Below, flotsam clawed at the Santanas, the storm a battering ram splitting her seams wide open. Alexandra combed the deck and the sea. Rain slashed at different angles from the wind changing direction and blinding her. Through the haze, she saw Nicholas bobbing on the mast dragged from the ship, the foremast shrouds catching him in a giant web. The Santanas shrieked, tilted more to port. Alexandra screamed, stretched her arms out, freed the halyard and grasped Damiano’s knife. In a matter of seconds the ship would sink, the rigging trapping Nicolas and dragging him into the jaws of the sea.
Clasping the knife between her teeth, she dove into the water, her skirts and coat, a lodestone, that dragged her downward to a watery grave. She tore them off and kicked. The sea tumbled her round and round in a rolling motion. In the dark waters, she had no idea what was up or what was down. She could drown and no one would know.
No. She was not going to die in the sea. Swim. She had to swim. Her lungs about to burst, she gave another valiant kick. Swim, Alexandra. The muscles in her body ached. Her shoulders burned. Lights danced in front of her eyes.
At last, she broke the surface, grabbed the knife from her mouth, and spitting water, sucked in a lungful of air before another wave rolled over her. With saltwater stinging her eyes as she peered through the grey mist, she called out, “Nicholas!”
She pulled in another long draught of oxygen, dove and came up through the rigging. Found Nicholas limp, and with blood pouring from an ugly gash across his forehead. No. No. She heard a moan. Nicholas? Or was that the wind? She placed trembling fingers on his chest, felt a slight movement, then a thump under her fingers. Tears welled in her eyes. Her chest squeezed. Oh, God. Thank God.
But, like the tentacles of an octopus, the rigging held him fast. Suddenly numb to the storm, she sawed at his bonds, looking behind, the ship yawed over them. Any minute it would succumb to its weight and carry them below. She tugged the last rope free. His wrists slipped from her grasp and she lunged, grabbing one of his hands. Hold on. Don’t let go.
Spray dashed across their heads, and then a wave curled over them, sucking them down in its wrath. One. Two. Three…ten seconds elapsed before they surfaced in the air. So little time. Grabbing flotsam large enough for one person, and with long portions of the remaining rope, she tied him to the top of it, wrapped a rope around his wrist to hers, and then secured herself on top of him, tucking her precious knife in her bodice with her father’s spectacles. She kicked her little craft away from the straying rigging.
She looked up as a giant wall of water crashed over them, possessing an otherworldly, wicked force. Its curved hollow felt like the inside of a clenching fist as it hurled them across the unknown waters of the Atlantic. They fell into another trough, and again the wave threw them into its belly. No air. Her head exploded. Lights went out in her brain. Air. Death. We are the interlopers. The sea will have its retaliation. It will devour us.
For hours, feathers of spray lifted from wave after wave, spinning, and then plunging their little craft hard into the grey crescents, surrendering them to the mercy of the long-drawn out shrieking of the wind as if a thousand devils had been freed from the sea itself.
Currents whirled them toward a shadowy land form. Sharp rocks loomed, the land more dangerous than the sea. A raging, mountain-like wave rolled astern with such fury and was their final coup de grâce. In a chest-squeezing panic, a sense arose within that the ocean held all the power.
Shadows blanketed and fogged at the edges of her mind, in time with the sea that undulated and yawed. So weak. Losing all sense of where and who she was…she wanted to let go. Fatigue settled in, and with it, she allowed the monster to swallow her up.