Seize the Fire Page 10

  "Give me the damned thing," Sir Sheridan said. His arm brushed her roughly as he groped downward in the dark.

  Olympia withheld the instrument. "Never mind. I won't play anymore."

  "Give it to me," he said.

  It was a tone she was learning to recognize. Reluctantly, she allowed him to lift the harmonica out of her hand.

  He made several sharp, huffing noises, as if he were forcing air through cupped fingers. Out of the blackness above her came a slow rill of notes—up the scale, down again. Olympia stiffened, about to tell him to leave Fish's gift alone and give it back.

  Until he began to play.

  The soft, sweet melody of "Greensleeves" started simply. It seemed to curl around the cabin and then fill it, embellished by runs and cascades that surpassed anything Fish had ever coaxed from the tiny instrument. Olympia listened in wonder, storing up through the darkness. The music seemed unreal, so unexpected was it in its mastery of the familiar tune, so sure and certain in its variations, like an easy conversation between intimate friends.

  He came to an end of "Greensleeves" and began another melody, one she'd never heard before. It had a rhythm that made her want to pat the blanket in time, and hum along with the gliding wail of the notes. He played on without pausing, old tunes sometimes, but oftener there were unfamiliar ones, strange in composition, atonal but lovely, pouring out a plaintive beauty into the winter night.

  The haunting songs seemed to come out of nowhere. She could not see him, yet she knew he was there—the hero who'd saved his admiral and his ship, the captain who'd kissed her and caressed her throat with white gloves, the man who'd found music where she'd made nothing but donkey's braying. And it was his own kind of music—uncanny in its combinations and rhythms, compelling and hard to predict.

  As she listened to him, she knew that magic was beyond her. She could never learn to play like this. She could not draw such strange, fluid splendor from a piece of metal and reed. Not with years of trying. And what was more, she didn't want to.

  She wanted only to listen to him play.

  She wanted to listen forever.

  Six

  * * *

  They left Ramsgate on the Post Office packet bound for Madeira and Gibraltar. After a fortnight in his company, Olympia stood in awe of the convoluted turn of Captain Sir Sheridan's mind—she could scarcely recognize herself in the chubby adolescent boy she played, far less believe anyone else would, or could possibly trace them through the series of false names and shabby lodgings on the Ramsgate strand.

  But they had finally emerged from this threadbare chrysalis as an affluent, widely traveled gentleman and his invalid sister, bound for a sojourn in more salubrious climes. Representing one of those oddities picked up in the rambles of the true world traveler, Mustafa had rejoined them from out of nowhere, to go along as valet, cook, servant and all-around slave, leaving nothing for the maid Sir Sheridan had hired to do but dress Olympia. Which was just as well, she thought, because the girl was a singularly inferior lady's maid, having a marked tendency to sleep through the night and day both.

  Olympia had no intention of complaining about such a trivial detail, however. She sat on deck, in a chair wedged snugly between a mast and a coil of rope, her only company an elderly consumptive lady in the next chair. Sir Sheridan had hung about asking solicitous questions while Mustafa tucked a blanket around her, and then they'd both disappeared with frustrating alacrity—as they'd done yesterday and the day before—to attend to obscure male business of their own.

  Olympia sat gazing out at the sea, excited and restless and disappointed in the smooth course of events. Of all the things she had expected from her great adventure, boredom was not one of them. She'd spent most of the last two weeks staring at the various tattered curtains and chipped washbasins and grimy windows in one cheap set of rooms after another, not allowed to go out in public, not allowed to speak to anyone and not seeing much at all of her gallant protector, who'd spent the days outfitting and the nights elsewhere.

  When she'd ventured to ask where, he'd said she had no business poking her nose into that kind of thing.

  Olympia imagined secret meetings with agents of clandestine organizations: darkened rooms and passwords, letters signed with the aliases of high-placed, important men; and felt a thrill of admiration in spite of her annoyance.

  The elderly lady's son came up and woke her in time to take her below for her afternoon nap, but no one came for Olympia. So she sat, supposedly not healthy enough to move about the ship on her own.

  A sailor approached with a bucket of tar. He nodded at her shyly, his sandy pigtail blowing in the breeze, and knelt nearby, daubing at the cracks around the mast. He yawned as he worked, and yawned again.

  "You must be sleepy," Olympia said, to start a conversation.

  He twisted around, looking as shocked as if one of the stanchions had spoken. "Mum?"

  "I said, you must be quite sleepy. You've yawned three times in the last few moments."

  "Aye, mum." He shrugged. "That's just the way of it aboard this 'ere brig. We only gets four hours o' sleep afore they calls the watch again."

  "Four hours?" Her eyes widened. "Why?"

  "Cap'n's orders, mum. And excuse me, mum, but we ain't to converse wi' no one while we're on watch, neither—'specially the passengers."

  "Whyever not?" she asked indignantly.

  He shook his head. "Dunno, mum." He gave the stern a significant glance. "Cap'n said so."

  Olympia was silent. The crewman went back to work. She chewed her lower lip thoughtfully. As the sailor moved nearer to reach a spot behind her, she whispered, "Is he very cruel?"

  The man paused. He glanced around and then went back to work. With his head down, he said in a low voice, "Bad enough. Work all day Sundays and not a kind word spoken. Grub ain't fit for dogs, neither. Salt beef's rotten."

  "Rotten! But surely—have you spoken to him about it?"

  He cast her a quick look. "Common sailor don't speak to the cap'n, mum. That ain't the way't is. He gives orders an' we jump to. We daren't make no complaints, mum."

  "But that makes you no better than slaves! Have you no rights?"

  He didn't answer. Olympia took a gulp of air, feeling her blood quicken.

  "Sir," she whispered, "I think—I believe I might be able to give you some help."

  He slid her a sidelong look of surprise.

  She went on stoutly. "I'm well versed in the matter. I know precisely how to go about obtaining relief and fair treatment for you." It was perfectly true; she had memorized all the pamphets and treatises on the proper methods of instigating reform, but his expression changed to such incredulous skepticism that she was stung into adding, "You may think I'm only a female, but I assure you—" She stopped short of proclaiming her identity. He stared at her. Frustrated, she said, "You may well believe me. I tell you this in complete confidence, but I'm traveling incognito with"—she bit her lip—"with my brother. You may not recognize him, and you must not repeat this, but he is Captain Sir Sheridan Drake, and as friends of democracy, we're on our way to…to a place where revolution is imminent."

  The sailor's mouth had dropped. "Gor!" he breathed. "Aboard this here tub? Cap'n Drake? The real bloke?"

  She nodded. "A truly enlightened man. But you must not tell anyone, or let on that you know."

  He licked his lips and shook his head.

  She smiled. "So you see, I can help you, if you're willing to work with me. Are you?"

  He wiped his mouth. At his tanned throat, she saw his Adam's apple bob convulsively. "Gor!" he repeated. "Aye! Aye, mum, I'm wi' you."

  Olympia bit back the rise of elation. It was exactly as she'd known it would be—just a breath of the sweet wind of freedom was enough to make a poor downtrodden wretch sit up straighter. The sailor's face had a light of awe and joy in it. It warmed her heart to bursting to know that she was the source of it.

  She would not fail him. Her destiny called.

&nb
sp; "I knew it." The door slammed. Sir Sheridan braced his shoulders back against the wood, his face set in dark flame. "I should have tied you to the damned bed."

  Olympia closed her mouth and let her hand slide from her throat with an exhalation of relief. "You startled me." She looked down at the portable desk in her lap. "I'm afraid I've smudged the Declaration of Grievances. But I'm glad you've come. Do you have any idea what the sailors on this ship are expected to eat? The poorest, most pathetic portions! The beef is actually rotten, I swear to you. And the biscuit! It's full of maggots." She shuddered. "I broke one open and saw them myself. Not fit for animals! And the captain orders the crew on deck every four hours around the clock, trying to get two days' work out of one! It's beyond imagination. Oh—and I wished to ask: do you think two pounds of plum duff a day is adequate to a sailor's health?"

  "Gagged you. Tied you in a sack and drowned you. Give me that." He seized the paper from her hand, glanced at it, snarled in disgust and crushed it between his palms. He threw it down. The ball of parchment rolled across the deck to her feet and back again under the sway of the ship.

  "Have I done something wrong?" she asked anxiously.

  He stared at her with a nightmare gleam in his gray eyes. The ship rose on a wave, a collection of sound and sensation that was familiar now after ten days at sea out of Ramsgate: the wailing creak of wood on wood, the pause at the crest, the wallowing slide into the trough on a long, low-pitched groan.

  Olympia moistened her lips. "I've done something wrong, haven't I?"

  "You're my invalid sister," he snapped. "We're on our way to Italy for your health."

  She nodded quickly.

  "Then why," he asked with soft menace, "do I find that the crew believes there's going to be an insurrection on behalf of the Rights of Man on this ship?" His eyes narrowed. "And why do they think…that…I'm…going…to…lead it?"

  Olympia sat back, pressing her spine against the curve of the hull. "No, no, I never precisely told them—"

  "And why," he interrupted savagely, "did a crewman pull his knife on the first mate when he didn't get an extra ration of rum?"

  "Oh, yes—but you mustn't misunderstand that, you see. These poor men are practically starving on their paltry provisions. And he never meant to use it. It was simply to make a point about—"

  "A point, for God's sake! It was a knife, ma'am—a lethal weapon drawn on an officer!" He pushed away from the door. "That bastard had better thank his God-given stars I'm not in command."

  "And what should I think you'd have done?" she cried in perplexity. "Had the poor man shot?"

  "I'd have made him wish he'd been shot." Sir Sheridan braced his hands on the edge of the berth and leaned toward her. "Listen here, Your Bloody Highness—d'you think the crew on this ship's got it hard? D'you think they've got grievances? They don't. Maggots are nothing—I've eaten more than my damned share of maggots and weevils and worse, and I'll tell you about grievance. Grievance is a man who's made to work when his mouth's so swollen with scurvy that he can't breathe for the blood. Grievance is an officer who flogs a midshipman to death for forgetting to set one flag on a signal. Grievance is a paranoic madman of a captain who orders unbroken silence in quarters and then withholds water rations from two hundred sailors for breaking it." His lip curled. "Do you know why? Because he heard an officer humming—after a month of keeping his damned stinking silence. Humming!" He pushed his face close to hers. "I know what grievance is. You aren't talking redress. You're talking mutiny."

  She managed to hold her eyes level with his. "I don't understand. I thought you would wish to help me."

  "I don't help idiots."

  The contempt in his voice stung like a backhanded slap. She made a sound of distress, a wordless whimper: all that would come out past the jam of furious confusion in her throat.

  "Why should I?" he demanded above the creak of the ship. "If I wanted to be shot at sunrise, I'd commit some crime a sight more amusing than mutinous conspiracy with a noble-minded moron."

  She opened her mouth, breathing hard and heatedly as she cast about for an appropriate answer. He was too close to her; his aggressive stance made the berth a prison; each roll of the ship brought his face almost nose to nose with hers. With her wits in a turmoil, she cried, "But it's for the cause!"

  "Jesus." He pulled back. "You'll ruin my dinner."

  "At least you have a dinner to ruin!"

  "Well, I haven't always, so I like to enjoy it when it's on the table." He caught at an overhead beam to balance himself against an unexpected bucketing of the ship. "You muddle-brained mooncalf—what the hell do you know about going hungry? You've never missed a meal in your life, from the looks of you."

  She pressed her hands over her mouth. She would not cry. A brave person would not cry, or turn away from the truth, no matter how ruthlessly it wounded.

  "Get up," he said. "I'll be damned if I'll let you sit down here making lists of grievances while I hang for it. If anybody has to pay for this, you can jolly well volunteer."

  Olympia obeyed woodenly, propelled by the snap of command in his voice. She tried to walk with her chin up, but the motion of the ship and his grip on her arms made her clumsy. She tripped on the companionway stairs. He caught her around the waist and lifted her bodily on deck.

  As she blinked in the warm Atlantic sunlight he took her arm, providing a steady support against the constant wave motion, and strolled in the direction of the quarterdeck. Olympia became aware of men drifting toward them. She slanted a look sideways, but Sir Sheridan's hand tightened on her arm. A few more steps and there was a murmur of voices, more crewmen, a scuffing of feet on the white-sanded wood.

  A sailor nodded at her: the pigtailed crewman who'd been helping her draw up the Grievances, but word seemed somehow to have spread much farther than that. One by one they looked up, every man on deck; dropped their tasks and fell in with the growing number. Up on the quarterdeck, near the great wheel, she saw an officer lean over and touch the captain's shoulder.

  He swung around, a lean giant with big, awkward hands. For a moment he stared at the gathering men. "What the devil's the meaning of this?"

  The grip on Olympia's arm vanished. She looked aside and found herself alone in the crowd of sailors. Sir Sheridan was gone; there was only the press of muttering men, carrying her with them toward the quarterdeck stairs.

  Panic clutched her. She tried to stop and turn, to find him amid the huddle, but lost her balance in the movement and stumbled with the ceaseless heave of the deck. She fell against the shoulder of the crewman next to her, who grinned and set her upright, his marlinspike pressing into her arm as he steadied her. Around and behind, in the hands of the crowd, sharp metal gleamed and flashed in the sun.

  "Stop," the captain demanded. "Stand by."

  The sailors ignored him, shuffling forward with Olympia in their midst until she was standing at the foot of the steps. There, as if by unspoken agreement, they paused. All human sounds ceased, leaving only the rush of the water and wind, the creak of rigging and the snap of the flag at the stern. The captain eyed them. With an impassive face, he pulled a pistol from beneath his coat.

  Terror pulsed through her. Her eyes were on a perfect level with the firearm as he stood with it loosely in his hand, pointed down toward the deck. She could see nothing but that gun, feel nothing but the bodies at her back and the wooden plank of the bottom step pressed across her ankles. The sound of her blood roared in her ears.

  "Ma'am," the captain said to her, in a voice that seemed to come from very far away, "I can't credit this. You and your brother should be ashamed."

  Olympia swallowed and looked up. The captain's expression was still unmoved, but she saw his fingers rub restlessly on the butt of the gun. When she had envisioned this moment, somehow she had always seen Sir Sheridan at her side. It was his voice she'd imagined, declaring the sailors' grievances in a steady and stirring tone that no reasonable person could ignore. Trying to summon words
out of her own throat, she found that she was in dizzy danger of turning faint. The gallant image of Sir Sheridan standing forth for the cause of justice and human rights evaporated into a picture of herself—in a crumpled, cowardly heap at the captain's feet.

  "What do you want?" The captain glared down, shifting his gaze to a man next to her. "Speak up or be sorry."

  A hostile murmur rose behind her.

  "Drake," the seaman said. There was alcohol on his breath. "We wants a decent man for a cap'n. We wants Drake."

  Olympia turned on him in astonishment. "No!" She caught his arm, leaning heavily as the ship rolled. "That isn't what you want!"

  He shook her off, amid a shuffle and rumble of agitation from the rest. "Aye, 'tis." He raised his voice. "Cap'n Drake—we all know 'im, by God, and what he done! We know he'll treat us fair! All the rum we wants—that's what he give the men sailin' under him."

  "No. No, you've misunderstood," she cried above the tumult of agreement. "Not rum! You wish to present your grievances—better food rations, and reasonable hours, and—"

  "Drake!" The chant rose to drown her words. Spikes and belaying pins waved in rhythm above the crowd. "Drake…Drake…Drake…"

  She whirled around. The captain and the other two officers lined the quarterdeck, all armed with pistols leveled into the crowd. The captain rubbed his sleeve across his mouth, glancing at Olympia and away and back again. The chanting grew louder and faster. She stumbled at the push from behind as the sailors began to thrust past her to reach the steps.

  The captain aimed. For an instant she was looking into the black muzzle of a pistol. It wavered downward; the captain backed up with an alarmed curse, pointed it again toward Olympia and the surge at the stairs. She stared at it and thought, He won't…and then she staggered to her knees under the push from behind. A loud crack hit her ears just as something struck her shoulder. A ragged volley of gunfire followed.

  He shot me, she thought in bewilderment, kneeling with her hands braced on the stairs. For a stunned instant, the crowd went still. Olympia raised her head, her shoulder throbbing in pain. She looked at the captain, standing with his pistol aimed at the sky, and then stared down at her shoulder.