Chapter Six
Laura jumped at the percussive burst of laughter from the sailors standing around the forward mast. Tears filled her eyes. She gritted her teeth against it, hating the way she was driven so much by her emotions these days.
Every morning, she woke in a panic, expecting to see the familiar walls of the harem, hear the sounds of the call to prayer. She could only calm herself by touching the objects of her surroundings in the captain’s quarters. Every morning, it was the same – touch the bedding, the chair, the lamp sconces, the cool glass on the cabinet – to assure herself where she was.
The absolute terror of Malik’s daily arrival at their chambers had been so much a part of her life for so long, that to walk out on deck because she simply wanted to seemed like a rebellious act.
Sophia had suggested she bring her paints out on deck, but now she could only stare at the blank art board before her – white, pristine, pure, and unsullied by a past. A limitless future lay before it. Laura dabbed her dampened brush into a pastille of color and hesitated.
What if she ruined it?
She’d had no trouble painting when she was imprisoned in Al-Min, so why did she have trouble now? Was it the babe she carried? Did that make a difference?
She closed her eyes and imagined the picture she wanted to paint. It would not form. It looked like a garden in a rainstorm, grey and indistinct. The brush returned to the tray. It seemed clear enough she was painting the wrong thing. New inspiration – that’s what she needed.
Laura widened her eyes and forced herself to look at the world as it appeared before her, not as it was in her mind. It hardly seemed that two years ago she sat in this very spot and painted the Calliope’s officers. Proud Jonathan Afua in his dress uniform, a man with such an authoritative bearing he would not be out of place as an officer in the Royal Navy. Today, he was taking readings with the sextant and making notes in the log. He called out a course correction to Elias Nash at the helm.
Kit Hardacre – she had painted him as an arrogant captain with the telescope across his chest and his foot on a small pyramid of cannon balls.
Did Sophia ever give the painting to him? Did they keep it? In a perverse way, she hoped they hadn’t. The voyage from England was a lifetime ago. In some respects, she shuddered to recall the works. If she saw them, she would be sure to hate them. What did she know other than the mechanical skills of adding paint to paper? She had been thoughtless and naive back then.
Such a long time ago.
Laura expected to see every eye on her. But no. If anything, the men on the Calliope regarded her with a benign, friendly disinterest. All except one.
Elias Nash watched her, although he’d kept his distance after that first morning following her rescue. She would have sworn she had driven him away for good and, for a short time, had been glad of it.
Yet something special had happened last night as they sang together, a connection that made her less afraid to draw close. Perhaps it had ended with the night. Now, in the bright light of this morning, the distance seemed greater than ever. Still, she didn’t see disgust in his eyes, or contempt. Laura struggled to put a name to the expression. Instead it was… well, watchful.
So she watched him in return. At this moment, he didn’t seem to be aware of her as he worked.
What of the battle which was supposed to have destroyed the Calliope? Had Elias been wounded? With her painter’s eye, she observed the scars on his arms, revealed only because he had his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. They had not been there before. Laura knew that with a certainty because she had painted him thus on their voyage out. It had been the only painting of the Calliope’s officers which had not been formally posed.
Little did Elias know she had spent hours studying him back then. He had been the subject of a new technique she was trying. She had sketched a series of studies of the Calliope’s first officer and had created a composite image of him up in the ship’s shrouds, reaching out to secure a loose line on one of the cross trees.
With Marco gone and the captain still sorely injured, the Calliope was short-handed. She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop but had heard Elias talk to Jonathan about manning the watch.
Laura watched another man slap Elias on the back and the first officer relinquished the wheel to the new arrival. Did Elias Nash sleep at all? He stepped out into the sun and raised his face to it. The only hint of his tiredness was darkness under the eyes until he indulged in a wide, open-mouthed yawn when he thought no one was watching.
This man had saved her life.
She wanted to call out to him, but the words were stuck, so she stared at her blank board. When she glanced back, he was gone.
Laura cast her eyes over the deck, still looking for inspiration. Sophia caught her notice and she saw again her cousin wearing that deeply satisfied smile of a woman who had found a safe harbor. Her home.
And Laura wasn’t the only one to notice. Kit Hardacre looked up from his duties and returned his wife’s smile. It was as though no one else in the universe existed. Kit descended from the quarterdeck and picked up Sophia’s hand to kiss it. They spoke in low tones for a moment. Sophia blushed, then took her chair and retrieved her book.
She was happy for them and wouldn’t begrudge Sophia a moment of it. If anyone deserved happiness it was her cousin and the man she loved. But still, she felt the ache of longing in her own breast.
Kit approached her.
Laura hadn’t really noticed before but the captain seemed to favor his right leg. Then she recalled the pronounced limp as he ran with the body of the cabin boy. He had more lives than a cat this man.
“What happened to your leg?” she asked without preamble.
He stopped mid-stride. “I could give you the truth, or I could give you the heroic version.”
“Go the heroic version!” yelled another man nearby, which was met with laughter from the crew. Kit turned to the men and bowed theatrically, which was met with even more laughter.
“Back to work!” Jonathan bellowed. “Make good time and we’ll be at Catallus by dawn!”
The promise elicited more cheers.
“In fact,” Laura continued firmly, “tell me how you came to be at Al-Min at all. We were told… Sophia was told you were dead and the Calliope nearly sunk.”
Kit eased himself into a chair beside her and stretched out his right leg.
“We very nearly were. What you see before you was a man so consumed with bitterness and revenge it nearly cost me something more precious than my life.” He glanced over at Sophia who remained absorbed in her book. “It also nearly cost this ship and all the fine men aboard her.”
His eyes, hazel in color – not quite green, not quite brown – wandered over her face a moment.
“Even so and even now,” he added. “I can’t bring myself to regret what I did, despite those things. When faced with no good choices, taking the least worst is an act of courage.”
Laura felt something shift inside her at these words, like a break in the ice heralding an upcoming spring. Something that felt like a trickle of icy water ran along her spine. How did Kit do this? To reach into a place she had locked tight and force her into the light?
“Take it from someone who understands what you’ve been through better than most,” he continued. “Looking forward is much better than looking back. But how you choose to move forward is up to you.”
“How?” The single word was a lump in her throat, released as a harsh whisper. “How can I? Every time I close my eyes, I see his face and nothing else. I still feel his hands… his body… on me.
“The things he made me do…” Laura closed her eyes. Her mind recalled everything so vividly, it was like she had never left. She could even feel and smell the man’s sweat on her skin. “I have no words to describe them. I’m so shamed.”
“No.”
Laura opened her eyes, startled at the forcefully delivered word. The face of Selim Omar loomed.
“Look at me, Laura.” For a moment Selim Omar had Kit’s voice. “Come back, open your eyes and see me.”
She released a shuddering breath and blinked until her vision was clear and the man before her was, indeed, Captain Kit Hardacre. Then her hearing returned and, with it, the familiar sounds of a ship at sea.
“Your ordeal is a fever,” he said. “It burns within you. Your mind wants to sweat it out. Let it out, Laura. It will lessen over time.”
Laura tried a weak smile and was rewarded with Kit’s approving look. Then he shifted on his chair, making to stand.
“How long did it take for you?” she asked.
Kit stopped and she felt the weight of his full attention on her. His strength and his vulnerability was etched on his face. And when he answered, it was a confession.
“Much longer than it should have done.”
Laura couldn’t look in his eyes any longer. She fidgeted with her hands on her lap instead.
“You have a home with Sophia and me for as long as you wish, or Sophia will write to Samuel and arrange your passage back to England. For two years, you had every choice taken from you. But you have choices now. It is up to you to use them.
“Just think about it.” Kit levered himself off the chair and limped away.
*
Let all that dwell above the sky,
And air and earth and seas,
Conspire to lift Thy glories high,
And speak Thine endless praise!
The whole creation joins in one,
To bless the sacred name
Of Him who sits upon the throne,
And to adore the Lamb.
Laura opened her eyes as the final refrain of the familiar hymn faded away, the singer now moving to another part of the ship.
The noise on deck seemed louder than it had been on the voyage. She threw off her blanket to escape the stifling heat of the cabin where the mid-morning sun streamed through the porthole.
Another thing was different. The ship was barely moving. Strange how quickly she’d become accustomed to the roll of the seagoing deck beneath her feet over the past two days, and she missed it now.
She had packed her small trunk and laid out a dress, a pretty one in blue, the night before. Laura dressed and made her way up onto the now deserted deck.
The Calliope stood at a long, wooden pier in a lagoon. She blinked rapidly at the sight of land. Before her was something out of a fairytale. The island sloped steeply down to the lagoon embraced on either side by ridges of black basalt. Little, whitewashed cottages nestled into the hillside. Terraced vineyards zig-zagged their way up to the summit where the hint of a larger structure appeared beyond the rise.
“Welcome to Catallus.”
She turned and found Kit leaning against the deck skylight. She noticed his sleeves rolled up and, like Elias, there were scars on his arms. If she was not mistaken, there was also a scar at his temple that disappeared beneath his longish, blond hair.
“This is your island.” It was a statement, not a question.
“It’s my home – and Sophia’s. We’re a day’s sailing from Sicily.”
Laura recalled Sophia leaving for here once before. What was supposed to have been a short trip to Catallus for Uncle Jonas to examine ancient ruins, turned out to be a bitter farewell because of how furious Samuel was when Kit announced he and Sophia were secretly wed.
She recalled the day she’d stood at the dock at Palermo waving goodbye to her beloved cousin. She had not expected to see Sophia ever again and had only just started to come to terms with it when she was taken…
When she returned her attention to Kit, the grave manner he’d maintained since their escape from Al-Min had disappeared. He became the showman he’d been on the voyage from London.
“This is an Eden on Earth, an island of order in a sea of chaos. A place for the displaced, a home for the homeless,” he said, spreading his arms wide. “We grow the finest Nero d’Avola grapes this side of the Aegean. Catallus is the home and headquarters of the feared pirates of the Calliope.”
Kit paused. “And you’re welcome to stay here for as long as you wish.”
His theatrical introduction brought memories of him dropping down from a cargo net onto the deck, announcing he was Captain Christopher Hardacre. It brought a brief smile of remembrance to her face.
Kit caught her expression and smiled also.
“It’s all right to smile, you know. You’re safe here, and among friends.”
He reached out his hand, but made no move to touch her. Laura hesitated, then took his hand, squeezed it once, and let it go.
“Sophia is blessed to have someone like you, Captain. You never gave up. You came for her and, because of your love for her, I’m free. I’ll always be grateful. But the cost to you and your crew, I can never…”
Her voice failed her and she cursed her storm-tossed emotions, so near the surface. She battled them, until the turmoil of her soul settled.
“You’re not alone here,” said Kit, his mood serious once more. How had Sophia described him? Ah yes, mercurial. “Everyone on Catallus has a story to tell. Some will, others won’t. You’re free to talk about your own experiences, or not – the choice is yours. If anything defines Catallus, it is choice.
“The only thing we ask is that if you decide to stay, you play your part in this community. It’s a small place. What you see is what you get, we all work together.”
“Even Sophia?”
Kit smiled but not at her. She turned, following his direction of his look. Sophia had emerged and joined them. He drew Sophia close, then pointed to a large, rectangular structure, part way up the hill.
“She started a school in the storehouse before she left,” he said.
Sophia nodded in confirmation. “This is a beautiful place to paint. Perhaps, if you wish, you could teach some of the people here, too.”
Laura smiled, although her heart wasn’t in it.
“Ready to see your new home?” Sophia put her arm through Laura’s and urged her toward the gangway that led to the long, timber dock.
Laura hesitated. The Calliope represented freedom. She could be trapped here if she left it…
“My trunk.” She turned back.
“Don’t worry about that,” said her cousin, oblivious to her inner turmoil. “Elias or one of the boys will bring it up to the house.”
Kit and Sophia made a gentle pace up the steep path. Still, Laura was becoming a little tired but, every now and again, she would stop and just look. The cottages clung to the slope like limpets on storm-tossed rocks – solid but weather-beaten. There were no tiled decorations or elaborate pierced timber screens to differentiate them. The only color was in the tubs of herbs and small vegetable plots that seemed to do well in the rich, black, volcanic soil.
People stopped to welcome Kit home and cheered when they saw Sophia with him. The inhabitants were dressed plainly – no satins and silks here – just plain, serviceable fabrics. Some of the women wore scarves covering their hair, but she could see their faces. None of them kept their faces lowered or eyes downcast.
Walking further up, Laura paused to take in the view of the lagoon where she could see four small fishing vessels at anchor, but all were dwarfed by the Calliope. She took a deep breath and faced the sun. How extraordinary it felt – to walk anywhere she wished without walls or locked doors. The only limit was the sea that surrounded them. And for now, that was freedom enough.