The Bride of Blackbeard Read online

  Lying flat on her stomach, her hand swiped inside the hole to make sure it hadn’t been pushed farther in, but not a coin jingled its reply.

  She knew immediately where the money had gone—unfortunately she knew nothing about retrieving it from a person’s veins.

  Without pause she stormed into her father’s office, where certificates and awards galore decorated the walls of the erstwhile great man.

  The once great man with his face on the desk in a pool of drool.

  “Father! Wake up!”

  His bleary eyes cracked a slit, but quickly fell shut. They seemed to have a mind of their own. Attempting to rouse him again, Constanza furiously shook his shoulders, which only resulted in his sitting up, whilst his neck lolled grotesquely about. A marionette let loose of his strings, courtesy of liquor.

  With no hesitation, she poked him—hard. “You must wake up! We have a grave problem. The apothecary expects payment today, and our money is gone. Do you have money hidden anywhere else?”

  He didn’t respond.

  Her open palm slapped his cheek, leaving an instant welt. Doctor Smythe roused, the anger of the devil burning in his eyes. Constanza felt a rush of air pass her cheek as his first swipe missed. Without time to step back, the second connected with her jawbone. Her father slumped back to his unconscious position as quickly as he’d awakened.

  The force of the blow propelled her, cartwheeling her backward. Clutching her cheek, she thought, not for the first time, that she wanted to run. That she had to leave. She couldn’t bear this suffering any longer. His beatings and spending all of his days living in the past, while she was expected to continue to live on in the present—alone—wasn’t right. She wanted to run away as far as she could and never look back.

  As sure as the beating of her heart, she knew she couldn’t. Knew she wouldn’t.

  Trudging up the stairs, muffled sounds issued from behind the nursery door.

  Will's crying filled the hallway when she opened the door. Quickly wrapping his tiny body in the fullest blanket she could find, she set out to save them—yet again. She swallowed a threatening sob as she headed outside, balancing Will on her hip.

  She fought her way through the blackened snow-filled streets of Bristol.

  After what seemed an eternity, they entered the warm pub. Sitting her baby brother on the bar, she dropped her eyes to the floor.

  The bartender, an attractive woman in her fortieth year, took one look at the shiner on her cheek. “Not again. What is it this time, love?”

  Tears welled in her eyes.

  No, I will not cry. If I cry, he wins again and I only bring shame upon myself.

  Pressing her lips together, she squared her shoulders and blinked back the tears. “The apothecary needs payment, or we will only have the medicines from the herb garden. Unfortunately, last year was not a productive crop and my supplies are low.”

  “All right then. Take William upstairs, love.”

  After complying, Constanza re-entered the bar and drew an apron tightly around her slim body, then picked up the first night’s round of drinks. If she worked ‘til closing, she should have enough to get through—this time.

  ~ * ~

  Eyes fluttering open to the day, Constanza smiled. As far as she could cipher, this grand morning was day one hundred and twenty, and land—beautiful dry unmoving land—should be within sight in the next twenty-four hours. The three of them had made it through their ordeal alive, albeit each was a good fifteen pounds lighter.

  Katrina of course was the most distressed. “Constanza? How will I ever land a husband with a body so frail? Why, I look like you!”

  Will's eyes were shadowed with dark half moons below them, which she knew to be a mineral deficiency of some sort. She was only able to bring a few of her medical books aboard as they had barely enough for the reduced passage on what she’d surmised to be a rumrunner.

  A small hole had been chewed in one of the hold’s barrels by Teredo worms. The ship must have been in tropical climates prior to this voyage by her estimation. Tropical water weeds were still being removed from the ship’s hull, and the mollusks, or pileworms, had not only burrowed into some of the barrels of the precious rum, but into the ship’s wooden hull as well. Their tube like shell structures could be seen outside as long as six feet in some places. She’d spied them while hanging her head over the side during the first two weeks. Vomiting into the sea had become her favorite way to pass the time. From years spent with her uncle, she knew the worms could actually compromise the stability of a ship.

  Wouldn’t that be just grand if, during the last days of the voyage, the ship sprung a leak and sent us to the bottom for naught?

  She suppressed a bitter smile. On this subject she uttered a word to no one.

  Before their departure, she’d given her books to her uncle and had decided she would write to him and have them sent when funds and circumstances permitted.

  A loud bang rent the air. Musket fire? All about the cabin, tired heads lifted in response to the unusual early morning sound.

  Boom! The entire hull shook with the vibration.

  Constanza saw Will place a protective arm about Katrina's shoulders, as she filed in with the queue of men headed topside to investigate the disturbance.

  The men's upturned faces were drenched by a deluge streaming from the topside hole. A storm, a squall raged in the sky above. Pushing her way through the sodden crowd, she saw sailors quickly battening down hatches and preparing for the storm. The captain ferociously barked orders right and left, his huge frame working at steering the craft.

  Constanza lurched as the boat's starboard side raised high on a wave. All men topside plummeted to the deck. An ear-splitting crack occurred as the vessel ran aground. Massive swells, sheer walls of water, pummeled the deck. Every man tied himself to the rigging. She wondered if this were a hurricane.

  “The Diamond Shoals, Captain! We are done for!” yelled one crewmember.

  “You directionless fool!” Teache screamed at his first mate. The captain’s hand strayed to his pistol, but then his gaze met Stanzy's and he replaced it on the wheel.

  She squinted and shielded her eyes to ward off the driving rain, trying to assess how far from shore the vessel had lodged itself.

  Who is that? Or what is that?

  A lone figure stood on the sands of what was presumably the Hatteras coastline waving his arms. He beckoned them eerily to the shore. Jack, the Sheep dog, bounded from below deck as if hearing a dog whistle and began to run back and forth beside the rail. The first mate came over and tied a rope to Jack’s neck and pitched the dog into the roaring waves.

  Stanzy screamed, “What are you doing?” She was soon joined by a wailing Will who’d just witnessed his dog chucked overboard.

  “Miss, it may be our only chance. Me last squall, a horse was thrown over and took the rope to shore, and we were able to make it through the waves.”

  Constanza crawled up onto the deck. “No, Will, stay down there!”

  Katrina appeared as hands pulling her brother out of sight and back into the hull’s topside hole.

  Constanza struggled with the wet knot as she tethered herself to the rigging. She held her breath as she watched the Sheep dog’s progress through the Atlantic water. His furry ears dipped below the waves and reappeared too many times for her to count. All the while, the stranger at the shore kept beckoning.

  After what seemed like years, the dog reached the shore, and the man placed the rope around a huge tree.

  “Get rid of the cargo!” yelled the first mate. He entered the hull, adding, “If ye want to live, do as I say!”

  ~ Chapter Two ~

  Passengers lined up on the ladder and underneath in the hull, waiting to take the plunge into the Atlantic water.

  “Will, Kitty, come to me!” Constanza screamed over the howling wind. They hurried to her side. “Kitty, go first, I will watch you and keep Will with me.” Taking a rope, she tied Will to her to
rso.

  Kitty slowly ascended down the rope. The ship lunged toward the water, nearly on its side, plunging her into the water.

  Constanza tried to push her uncle’s voice from her head which echoed the sailor’s nickname for the sea off the barrier islands—The Graveyard of the Atlantic.

  “Don’t let go!” Constanza screamed into the gale. She began her own descent and felt Will struggling behind her. “Pray, Will,” she yelled over the cacophonous combination of wind, water, and wailing passengers.

  She felt rather than heard him mumble, until waves hit and forced them under. Wave after wave pushed them beneath the salty water. Desperately clutching the rope with both hands, she inched her way toward the shore. Fear surged through her as she realized something was in front of her. Tentatively reaching out, she felt her sister's hair.

  Stanzy gently shoved Kitty to indicate her presence behind her on the rope. “We are going to make it,” she muttered optimistically. I have to keep them safe. Please, God, do not let them die. I am responsible—for them—for all of this. Please, not here. Do not let us die under the waves.

  A wall of water crashed down on them, sending them surging to the sandy floor. They had reached the breakers. With every ounce of remaining strength, Stanzy kicked and swam toward the surface. Then she watched with joy as Katrina fought past the breakers.

  Will was still tied to Constanza’s back, but even with her excellent physical strength, she knew the battle was futile. She gasped for air moments before another swell hit. She knew Will wouldn’t be able to hold on much longer, his eleven-year-old lungs not strong enough.

  Miraculously, sand scraped against the side of her face as she hit the sandbar. Sand! We are close to shore. I must get to the top of the water. She forced her legs beneath her and flailed for the bottom, for somewhere to stand.

  Unsure of what she was feeling next, she realized hands were pulling her up—up to the water’s surface. They breached the surface and gasped for air; she couldn’t see her rescuer. When she glanced to the right, she saw many men in the surf, fishing humans out from under the waves. All the while, the storm raged. Water fell in diagonal sheets across the white tipped waves.

  Oh thank you. Thank you.

  Jack stood on the shore, cowering under a tree, loyally awaiting his master. Blackness closed her vision to a pinprick... then all went quiet.

  ~ * ~

  The smell of bread baking permeated her senses. For a moment she was disoriented. Mama baked bread almost every morning, but Mama was long gone. Stanzy bolted stark upright, her eyes searching as she assessed her surroundings. Vaulting out of bed—the world swooned like a night spent drinking. Vertigo smacked her in the head, the room undulating around her. She collapsed to her knees, disgorging seawater all over the floor.

  On all fours, she crawled away from the remnants of her last meal, forcing herself across the room. Another bed was barely visible in the moonlight. Struggling to a stand, she peered over its side. In the dim candlelight, she made out the forms of her brother and sister.

  We are all alive, but where are we? How did we get here?

  Silently slumping to the floor, her face in her hands, she muffled uncontrollable sobs. Not often did she permit herself the luxury of crying. At an early age she’d learned that weeping in her household was a useless emotion, and never made any of her problems disappear. Ever since Mama died eleven years ago at the time of Will’s birth, Stanzy, at sixteen, had started living the life of an adult. Katrina and Will’s reliance on her used to frighten her. But now she had little time to worry, her daily thoughts consumed with the responsibility of trying to keep all of them alive and out of harm’s way.

  Tears stung her sand chafed cheeks like acid. Once she opened the floodgates, it became almost impossible to halt. All the closed Pandora’s boxes of her mind, filled with hateful memories, sprung open. Her mama had once said, ‘Once the door to a closed soul is opened, it is not easily shut.’ How right she was!

  Mama, why did you have to leave me to care for them alone? I do not think I can live one more day in this soul. We are destitute, and I don’t know if I will even be able to feed them tonight. What was I thinking...to leave all I have known behind? I do not know the land, the customs, or where to begin. I am not strong enough to bear this much longer.

  For just a moment, she allowed herself the luxury of imagining what it would be like to have someone hold her and tell her everything would be all right. She hadn’t been comforted in such a way since the age of sixteen.

  A low moan arose from the bed as Will thrashed against the blankets wrapped about him. A small column of light shone across the bed. Framed in the doorway, a man was in silhouette. At five feet nine inches, Stanzy was considered tall for a woman, and she guessed the stranger to be about six feet.

  His voice whispered into the darkness, “Miss Smythe, are you all right?”

  Startled, she responded, “How do you know my name?”

  “Come out here, let the others sleep. Especially the boy, he was almost overcome.” His shadowy hand beckoned to her in the darkness.

  She walked toward him into the faint candlelight. She stopped in her tracks dumbfounded.

  He is beautiful.

  The man’s hair and eyes were dark and somber, his face housed a small half moon scar by the corner of his mouth.

  Is he blushing because I am staring at him? Stop staring! I am an imbecile!

  One hand fidgeted, twirling his hat round and round. The other he thrust out. “I am Lucian Blackwell. I was sent to Hattaras by my employer to collect you and your family to bring you all back to StoneWater.”

  “Oh, I see.” A raucous laugh shifted her staring at the man. Looking down over a banister, she deduced the accommodations to be a pub. Morning patrons shuffled about, intent on breakfast.

  “As you surmised, I am Constanza Smythe, and in the bed are my sister, Katrina, and my brother, William. I am the one who has been hired to be the governess to the Hopkins’ children.”

  “Yea, I figured you were the governess as you are the older one...” He blushed scarlet, apparently realizing too late the faux pas. He added hastily, “I mean older is fine. I am older...” With that final pronouncement, he turned a shade of puce she’d never witnessed in all of her days.

  “Pa!” called a boy from behind the man. “Is the boy around yet?”

  Lucian held up a hand to quiet the lad. “That’s my boy. His name is Benjamin. Ever since he heard you were arriving he has been very anxious to meet your brother. StoneWater has few boys and many girls, so he insisted I bring him despite the ‘cane. Besides, I was born and raised here; we Bankers see canes each and every year.”

  Constanza smiled at him.

  His countenance is so open. I wonder if he is always this way. Not that I care—the child sitting at the bar is proof he is not available. Even if I were interested—which I am not.

  “Who pulled me from the water?” she asked, trying not to think about his handsome appearance; trying to ignore how close he stood and how wonderful he smelled—a decidedly masculine scent of soap and leather.

  “I did.” He smiled and it took her breath away. “I saw you with the boy tied to your back, so I knew you would not last long in that surf. The swells must have been fifteen feet. You were very brave to come here with them in tow.”

  “Not too brave, but practical. We do what we must to get along.”

  “The doctor will be here soon to check on them, but earlier he stopped by and said your family would make a full recovery.”

  “Yes, I looked at them myself.”

  He raised an eyebrow in silent question.

  “My father was a physician, and I assisted him for many years before his death. Also my mother was a midwife and healer, so I know a bit about it.”

  “Mr. Hopkins did choose well then, to have a dual governess and healer.” He led her down the stairs to the bar room. “He will well get his money’s worth.”

  She thought sh
e detected a note of sarcasm in his last words, but he didn’t speak again.

  What he did next confused her. Lucian placed a hand on the small of her back and led her through the crowd. As he did, she felt his hand tremble.

  ~ * ~

  The carriage rattled its way along twisting dirt roads, leading them away from the ocean’s edge into the Pamlico Sound area.

  Will virtually risked death—his head hung so far out of the carriage window in a vain attempt to drink in every piece of scenery.

  “Stanzy, look at those bogs!” His voice barely discernible on the inside of the carriage. “Do you know what kind of animals they have at the plantation? Do you think it will be all right if Jack sleeps in my room? How many boys are there?”

  Constanza yelled, doubting he could hear her, “Will! I have no idea how to answer any of those questions, except there are two boys I know of—Mr. Hopkins’ boy, Lucas, and the farm manager’s boy, Benjamin Blackwell.”

  “Yes, Mr. Blackwell is very easy on the eyes!” This from Katrina, who was busy wrapping her dark brown ringlets around her fingers attempting to curl them into submission. “This air makes my hair straight. I thought once we were off that floating death trap the air would improve. Only Mr. Teache made the trip tolerable.”

  “Katrina. Katrina, pay attention! I realize he was attracted to you, but let us try to set our sights higher than the likes of Mr. Teache.”

  “Oh, do be honest. Before things went awry, I saw you examining his fine male anatomy on a number of occasions.”

  “Well, in a barbaric sort of way, he is attractive—very tall and muscular, but I am afraid I will need more than that to hold my interest.”

  “Oh, you are so tiresome,” Katrina retorted and resumed staring out the window.

  They were silent when the carriage turned the corner onto the path to StoneWater and an imposing manor came into view. It was one of the largest manor’s the three had ever seen. The estate proper sat on a raised area, evidently by design in case of flooding, and slave quarters, barns and liveries were situated about the property.