Chapter 20 The Black Swan by Rafael Sabatini
Sir Henry Morgan
Miss Priscilla went down the beach to the boat which Halliwell's men had launched. She walked between Monsieur de Bernis and Major Sands, with Ellis and Bundry hanging on either flank, Pierre following at their heels, and a few of the buccaneers straggling after them; and she walked as she had walked in dreams, her mind clouded by a mist of unreality.
Few words had been employed. When the matter was settled between Monsieur de Bernis and the buccaneers, the Frenchman had stepped up to her.
'You have heard what is required of you, Priscilla?' he had said, and he was gently smiling encouragement.
She nodded. 'I have heard,' she said, and there checked, staring at him, her face blenched, deepest trouble in her clear eyes.
Gravely he answered that look: 'You have nothing to fear. Sir Henry Morgan will treat you with consideration.'
'I could not suppose that you would send me unless you were convinced of that,' she answered steadily. Then she asked the question that revealed the real source of her fear. 'But you?'
'I?' His smile deepened a little. He shrugged. 'I am in the hands of Fate. I do not think he will treat me unkindly. It depends now upon you.'
'Upon me?'
'Upon your bearing this message for us and upon how you deliver it.'
'If that is really so; if this is really for your good, you can depend upon me indeed.'
He inclined his head in acknowledgement.
'Come, then. We have no time to lose. The boat is ready. I will recite the message for you as we go.'
Thus they had set out, the Major silent, endeavouring to preserve a stolidity upon his broad florid countenance, least he should betray his surprise and satisfaction at beholding the opening of a door of escape from circumstances which to him had been intolerable as a nightmare.
As they went, Monsieur de Bernis gave her the terms of the message she was to deliver, and he desired Major Sands' attention to it also. They were simply to offer Morgan the head of Tom Leach, upon which he had placed the price of five hundred pounds, in exchange for the lives and freedom to depart, at their own leisure in their own ships, of all those now upon Maldita. If more were needed, and as an earnest of their good faith and their intention to quit piracy, they would disarm their ships, and cast their guns into the sea under Morgan's eyes.
If Morgan would not agree these terms, then let him know that, abundantly supplied with provisions and ammunition, they would take to the woods, and if he chose to pursue them there, he would do so at his peril. In such circumstances, they would be in a position to hold out indefinitely.
At his request, she repeated the words after him, as did also Major Sands. Ellis and Bundry nodded their gloomy approval of the message, and so they came to the wet sand at the water's edge, where half a dozen men, knee-deep in the sea, held the longboat in readiness.
Halliwell offered to carry the lady to the boat, the Major and Pierre could wade for themselves.
But now Priscilla, white and trembling, turned suddenly fully to face de Bernis, and caught him by the arms above the elbow.
'Charles!' was all that she could say. 'Charles!' But there was agony in her voice, a haunting fear in her eyes.
He bowed his tall uncovered head, and a smile of encouragement, sweet and rather wistful, irradiated the swarthy gloom of it.
'Child! I repeat, you have nothing to fear. Nothing. Morgan does not make war upon women.'
There was a flash that was almost of anger from her eyes. 'Have you not yet understood that it is not for myself that I am afraid? Must you always think so meanly of me?'
The smile passed from his face; pain was reflected in it; his eyes, considering her, grew sad.
'Brave little soul...' he began, and there checked. He turned to Ellis and Bundry who stood by. 'Sirs, give us leave apart a moment. It is possible that I may never see her again.'
Ellis made shift to move away. But the cold, calculating Bundry resolutely stood his ground. He tightened his thin lips, and shook his head.
'It will not serve, Charley. We know the message that she carries now. We don't know the message she may carry if you speak to her apart.'
'You don't trust me?' He seemed genuinely taken aback.
Bundry spat thoughtfully. 'I'ld rather trust myself if it comes to trusting anybody.'
'But what could I do? What other message could I possibly send? What bargain could I drive for myself, since that must be what's in your mind?'
'I don't know. But, not knowing, we'll keep on the safe side. Come, man. Take your leaves here. What the devil! You're man and wife, ain't ye? What need to be so coy?'
Monsieur de Bernis sighed, and smiled again, a little sadly. 'So, Priscilla. There is no more to say. It is perhaps just as well.' He bent and kissed her. It was his intention to kiss her cheek; but she turned her lips fully to meet his own.
'Charles!' she said again, in that low, anguished voice.
Monsieur de Bernis stepped back, and waved to Halliwell. The corpulent shipmaster obeying the signal picked her up in his arms, and waded out to bestow her in the stern-sheets of the waiting boat. Then the Major and Pierre followed, swung each a leg over the side, took their places on the thwarts, and got out the sweeps. The buccaneers gave the boat a forward thrust, and so she was launched upon her voyage, a little white flag of truce fluttering in her bows.
Monsieur de Bernis stood with the wavelets rustling at his feet watching the boat for a little while. Priscilla did not look back. She sat in the stern-sheets, with her shoulders to the shore, a little crumpled figure in green. At last he turned, and very slowly, with his chin sinking into the ruffles at his throat, he moved up the beach, Bundry and Ellis following him with no word spoken.
In the longboat Priscilla was softly weeping, so that at last Pierre, who sat beyond the Major, was moved to comfort her. He spoke to her over the Major's shoulder.
'Mademoiselle,' he begged her in French, 'do not weep. There is no need. All will be well with Monsieur de Bernis. He knows what he is doing. Believe me, all will be well with him.'
'And, anyway,' said the Major, 'it's no great matter if it isn't.'
Thus he expressed the bitterness aroused in him by that little scene he had witnessed at the water's edge. It provided a fitting, exasperating climax to all that he had been constrained to endure in this past month. It was high time, he thought, to restore things to their proper places in their lives, high time that Priscilla should recover the perspective which she appeared, from her latest conduct, utterly to have lost. The vision of that kiss was something that haunted the Major, and set his memory shuddering with horror. Roughly, then, did he attack the business of correcting the focus of Miss Priscilla's mental sight.
His words certainly had the immediate effect of checking her tears. Momentarily, at least, her concern, anxiety, and grief were overcome by indignation. From a white, tear-stained face her eyes blazed as they encountered the Major's.
'What do you dare to say?' she asked him, with such scornful anger that he would not have had the temerity to repeat his words even if she had given him time. 'Is that how you speak of a man who has placed himself in danger, who has pledged his very life to ensure our safety, to provide us with a means of escape?'
The Major, meeting resentment with resentment, answered sullenly.
'I don't perceive that at all. Stab me if I do.'
'You don't? Then you are even more stupid than I have been supposing you.'
'Priscilla!' He stopped rowing in his unutterable stupefaction.
Pierre's oars, sweeping rhythmically forward, struck his own suspended ones, and jarred him unpleasantly, and almost knocked him off his thwart. But he paid little heed to that. Recovering his balance mechanically, he sat with fallen jaw and goggling eyes, staring incredulously at this fledgeling who had dared to say such a thing to him. It was the end of the world. Only the realization that, overwrought, she was not responsible for her words enabled him to condone it. He smiled with the patient, exasperatingly indulgent amusement of noble minds. 'How rash you are in your conclusions! You display the intolerance of youth and inexperience.'
'Better than the mean intolerance of age from which you appear to be suffering, sir.'
This was a cruel thrust under the Major's guard. But, having recovered from one stupefaction, he was now prepared for anything. In the same indulgent tone he continued.
'This pirate fellow is using us for his own ends. If you can't see that, you must be purblind, Priscilla. Consider the terms of the message...'
'There is nothing to consider but what he is doing. No perversity, no meanness, can change the appearance of that. He has had no thought but to deliver us. It is noble of him. It justifies all my steady faith in him.'
The Major permitted himself to laugh at this. Looking at his face, distorted by that sardonic hilarity, she considered it the most repulsive she had ever seen.
'Noble!' he mocked, and went on to explain his point of view. 'That nobility is rooted in concern for his own skin. Finding himself caught, this thieving pirate hopes to make terms; and he counts himself lucky to have us under his hand, so that he may send us with his message. That's his nobility, as you shall see, child.'
From behind him came the gentle voice and the imperfect English of Pierre.
'If Monsieur de Bernis escape himself from t'is, he shall be tol' what a good opinion you 'ave of him.'
'Why, so he shall! I shall tell him so, myself,' the Major snorted, in fresh anger at this further opposition.
Ill-humouredly he bent to the oars again, and after that an angry silence reigned in the boat, Priscilla disdaining to push the argument further.
In this mood they came bumping alongside of the Royal Mary, Morgan's flagship, until Pierre, standing at the bows, steadied the longboat at the foot of the entrance-ladder.
Miss Priscilla, disdaining the assistance of the Major's proffered hand, but accepting that which Pierre extended, was the first to climb the tall red side of the ship, with Major Sands following close behind to save her from falling, in case of need.
At the head of the ladder she was received by a middle-aged, overdressed man of an almost obese habit of body, whose yellow fleshly face, adorned by a pair of drooping moustaches, was coarse and unprepossessing. This was Sir Henry Morgan. From the bulwarks he had watched her ascent of the accommodation ladder with a scowling stare. He advanced to hand her down into the waist of the ship. Having done so he stood back a pace to survey her. Behind him, beyond the main-hatch stood a score of musketeers drawn up in file, a youthful-looking officer standing a few paces in front of them. Like Morgan they, too, stared, when they saw the lady standing at the head of the accommodation ladder.
'Save us! What's here?' he asked, when he stood level with her in the waist. 'In God's name, who may you be, madam?'
She answered him steadily. 'I am Priscilla Harradine, daughter of Sir John Harradine, who was lately Captain-General of the Leeward Islands.' And she added: 'You will be Sir Henry Morgan?'
He removed his gaudily plumed hat from his heavy periwig, and made a leg. There was something ponderously sardonic in his manner, yet with a hint of gallantry behind it, as if in that obese and sagging body still smouldered embers of the romantic fires of sprightlier days.
'To serve you, madam. But what may Miss Priscilla Harradine be doing in the blackguardly company of Tom Leach and his crew? Odd company that for a Captain-General's daughter.'
'I come as an ambassador, Sir Henry.'
'From those cut-throats? Od rot me, madam! But how do you happen amongst them?'
The Major who had meanwhile climbed the ladder, and for a moment had paused at the head of it, stepped down into the waist and thrust himself forward self-sufficiently. At last he found himself among men who could not ignore his rank and consequence.
'I am Major Sands,' he announced. 'Major Bartholomew Sands, second-in-command at Antigua to the late Sir John Harradine.'
The dark eyes of Morgan considered him, and the Major was not reassured. He found those eyes of a singular, mocking malevolence. The heavy face, darkened by a frown at the root of the prominent predatory nose, reflected none of the deference the Major had hoped to command by the announcement of his name and rank.
'That being so, and Sir John being dead, what the devil are you doing so far from your command? Were you both kidnapped from Antigua by any chance? If so, I hadn't heard of it.'
In dignified resentment of Sir Henry's manner, the Major answered loftily. 'We were on our way to England on a ship named the Centaur. She's over there.' He pointed to her where she rode within the lagoon. 'With us travelled a French ruffian named de Bernis, who once, I believe, was your lieutenant.'
'Ah!' the dull yellow face lighted suddenly with interest. The sneering malevolence of its expression seemed to deepen. 'That ruffian de Bernis, eh? Continue, pray.'
Miss Priscilla would here have interrupted the Major. But he would not be interrupted. He swept on headlong with his tale of the boarding of the Centaur by Tom Leach, and the manner in which de Bernis had revealed himself to the pirates. He was still sketching what had followed and abusively qualifying de Bernis' name at every mention of it, when Sir Henry, standing before him with wide-planted feet and arms akimbo, roughly interrupted him.
'If ye're telling me the truth,' he said, 'seems to me this de Bernis has saved your lives and perhaps more.'
'If I am telling you the truth?' quoth the Major, with immense dignity. 'If I am telling you the truth, do you say, Sir Henry? That is very nearly to give me the lie circumstantial.'
'Devil take your vapours, sir,' Morgan roared at him. 'What then? Unless you're a liar, you're the meanest pimp I've met in years.'
The Major, going red and white by turns, drew himself up. 'Sir Henry, I have the honour to hold the King's commission, and...'
'Why, so have I, sir. So have I. And so has many another scoundrel. That proves nothing.' He made a repudiating gesture with an enormous freckled hand. 'We're wasting time. What I desire to know is how you come here aboard my ship, and why.' He swung to the lady with a smirk and a bow. 'Perhaps you will tell me, madam.'
Eagerly she complied, glad that the poison Major Sands had been pouring forth was stemmed at last. 'We bring you a message, Sir Henry, from Monsieur de Bernis.'
'Ah!' He was all attention, ignoring the Major, who had fallen back, and livid with anger was biting his lip.
'An offer of terms, Sir Henry.'
'Terms?' He blew out his enormous cheeks. 'Terms!' He turned with a hoarse, fat laugh to the officer behind him. 'There's impudence! An offer of terms when we have them at the pistol-muzzle. Well, well! A God's name! What are these terms?'
She began to explain to him, as she had been instructed, that the buccaneers were not quite at the pistol-muzzle; that they could take to the woods, where they might not be followed save at great peril. She was still eloquently at this when he interrupted her, a rude, overbearing man.
'The terms! The terms!' he demanded impatiently.
She stated them. Monsieur de Bernis offered to give up Tom Leach, alive or dead, to disarm the ships and fling their guns into the sea, in return for the honours of war in other respects and freedom for the buccaneers to depart in their own time. Those were the terms. But she did more than state them; her tone pleaded for their acceptance as if she were advocating the cause of Monsieur de Bernis.
The dark eyes embedded in those bulging cheeks watched her curiously the while, the keen ears and keen wits missing nothing. Then Sir Henry looked at the livid Major, leaning with affectations of wounded dignity against the bulwarks, and under cover of his drooping moustache his heavy lips writhed with sardonic mirth.
'The honours of war!' he echoed slowly, a man infinitely amused.
It provoked from her a resumption of the argument of what the buccaneers could still do if their terms were not accepted. This time he listened to her, the fleshly face creased in a sly amusement that she found almost exasperating. This fat, oily, sinister man was without mercy; a man who loved cruelty for its own sake. She saw this plainly, and yet, faint and nauseated, she gallantly held her ground before him, fighting the battle of Monsieur de Bernis.
'Ah!' he said, when she had done. 'Madam, you are well delivered out of your dangers, and so are you, Major. I congratulate you both upon that. It is no wonder, madam, that you plead the case of that rascal de Bernis so eloquently. I perceive and respect the gratitude that moves you.'
'And you will agree his terms?' In her eagerness she stepped close up to him.
He smiled down upon her, and again there was in his manner that hint of gallantry. Then his eyes travelled beyond her to the Major. 'You, sir, are not so deeply concerned, I think?'
'At the risk of being misunderstood again,' the Major answered importantly, 'I must confess that I am not. Right is right, and wrong is wrong. I have a clear perception, I hope, of one and the other. As for gratitude, I do not perceive the occasion for it. This fellow de Bernis has found us convenient tools for his work. There was no man of all that crew of cut-throats who would have ventured within your reach to deliver his message.'
The great body shook with sudden laughter. 'That I can believe, by God! They've a respect for my yardarms. You may be right, Major. You may be right.' He turned abruptly to the young officer in command of the musketeers.
'Take a dozen men, Sharples, and go ashore with a white flag. Tell those sons of dogs that before I'll so much as discuss terms with them, I demand the surrender, not only of Tom Leach, but of this rascal de Bernis as well. When I have those two aboard here, I'll consider what's to do. Not before. And tell them that my guns are trained on the beach, and that if I see any sign of a movement towards the woods, I'll sweep them to hell with langrel. Is that clear? Away with you.'
The fair-faced lieutenant's salute was eloquent of understanding. His fresh young voice rang out in a sharp command. Musketeers stepped briskly forward in obedience, and filed towards the entrance-ladder.
The Major was smiling. For this he could forgive Morgan everything. The fellow might be a rude scoundrelly turncoat pirate, but he knew how to handle a situation.
Miss Priscilla, white now to the lips, took a stumbling step towards Sir Henry, and laid a timid, trembling hand upon his massive arm.
'Sir...Sir...' she stammered pleadingly.
Peremptorily the stout gentleman waved his officer away, and turned to hear her. 'Your servant, madam.'
'Sir, what the Major has said is scarcely true. I am sure that, in sending us, Monsieur de Bernis' main thought was to deliver us from danger. I owe so much to him...so very much. He has behaved so gallantly...so gallantly...'
Sir Henry laughed a deep, throaty laugh that made her shudder. Then he frowned and the frown brought back that evil, sinister wrinkle to the base of his nose.
'Oh, oh! To be sure. To be sure. Vastly gallant fellows these Frenchmen. And who more gallant than de Bernis? Oh, I'll be sworn he behaved gallantly. He was never the man to waste opportunities.' And Sir Henry winked at the Major, who thought him a fellow of unspeakable vulgarity and accounted it an outrage that such a man should hold a knighthood and a governorship.
'Sir, you misunderstand me!' cried Priscilla, distraught.
'Not I, madam. Not I. That ruffian de Bernis was never the man to waste his opportunities, any more than I was when I was no better than is he. I understand perfectly. May I be flayed else. Oh, and sympathetically. I grow fat and old, madam; but I carry a young heart under all this blubber.'
She thought him disgusting, and she shuddered under his leering eyes. But bravely she stifled her feelings.
'Sir Henry, I desire you to hear me. I implore you to hear me.'
'Be sure, ma'am, that beauty never implored Harry Morgan in vain.' He seemed to laugh inwardly, as if at memories. 'You would say, madam?'
'It is of Monsieur de Bernis, sir. I owe life and more than life to him...'
'Why, so I had understood.' The dark eyes twinkled odiously. She ignored the interruption. 'My father was a loyal and valued servant of the Crown. Surely, Sir...Surely the service rendered by Monsieur de Bernis to my father's daughter should weigh for something in his favour. Should be accounted to him in any judgement.'
He considered her with mock-gravity. Then the horrible fellow was moved again to mirth. 'It's a romantical plea and a novel. Od's heart! I rendered in my day services to many a father's daughter; but none ever counted them to my credit. I lacked your advocacy, madam.' He was turning away.
'But, Sir Henry...' She began again in desperation.
But Sir Henry could not stay. 'No more now, madam.' Unceremoniously he turned on his heel, and rolled away on his elephantine legs, bawling for bos'n and gunner, and issuing orders right and left.