I shut the patio gate after her with a considerable feeling of relief, stripped off my sticky, filthy clothes with even more relief, and made my toilet as well as might be managed with cold water and no comb.
Clad decently, if oddly, in Father Fogden’s extra robe, I combed out my wet hair with my fingers, contemplating my peculiar host. I wasn’t sure whether the priest’s excursions into oddness were some form of dementia, or only the side effects of long-term alcoholism and cannabis intoxication, but he seemed a gentle, kindly soul, in spite of it. His servant—if that’s what she was—was another question altogether.
Mamacita made me more than slightly nervous. Mr. Stern had announced his intention of going down to the seaside to bathe, and I was reluctant to go back into the house until he returned. There had been quite a lot of sangria left, and I suspected that Father Fogden—if he was still conscious—would be little protection by this time against that basilisk glare.
Still, I couldn’t stay outside all afternoon; I was very tired, and wanted to sit down at least, though I would have preferred to find a bed and sleep for a week. There was a door opening into the house from my small patio; I pushed it open and stepped into the dark interior.
I was in a small bedroom. I looked around, amazed; it didn’t seem part of the same house as the Spartan main room and the shabby patios. The bed was made up with feather pillows and a coverlet of soft red wool. Four huge patterned fans were spread like bright wings across the whitewashed walls, and wax candles in a branched brass candelabrum sat on the table.
The furniture was simply but carefully made, and polished with oil to a soft, deep gloss. A curtain of striped cotton hung across the end of the room. It was pushed partway back, and I could see a row of dresses hung on hooks behind it, in a rainbow of silken color.
These must be Ermenegilda’s dresses, the ones that Father Fogden had mentioned. I walked forward to look at them, my bare feet quiet on the floor. The room was dustless and clean, but very quiet, without the scent or vibration of human occupancy. No one lived in this room anymore.
The dresses were beautiful; all of silk and velvet, moiré and satin, mousse-line and panne. Even hanging lifeless here from their hooks, they had the sheen and beauty of an animal’s pelt, where some essence of life lingers in the fur.
I touched one bodice, purple velvet, heavy with embroidered silver pansies, centered with pearls. She had been small, this Ermenegilda, and slightly built—several of the dresses had ruffles and pads cleverly sewn inside the bodices, to add to the illusion of a bust. The room was comfortable, though not luxurious; the dresses were splendid—things that might have been worn at Court in Madrid.
Ermenegilda was gone, but the room still seemed inhabited. I touched a sleeve of peacock blue in farewell and tiptoed away, leaving the dresses to their dreams.
I found Lawrence Stern on the veranda at the back of the house, overlooking a precipitous slope of aloe and guava. In the distance, a small humped island sat cradled in a sea of glimmering turquoise. He rose in courtesy, giving me a small bow and a look of surprise.
“Mrs. Fraser! You are in greatly improved looks, I must say. The Father’s robe suits you somewhat more than it does him.” He smiled at me, hazel eyes creasing in a flattering expression of admiration.
“I expect the absence of dirt has more to do with it,” I said, sitting down in the chair he offered me. “Is that something to drink?” There was a pitcher on the rickety wooden table between the chairs; moisture had condensed in a heavy dew on the sides and droplets ran enticingly down the sides. I had been thirsty so long that the sight of anything liquid automatically made my cheeks draw in with longing.
“More sangria,” Stern said. He poured out a small cupful for each of us, and sipped his own, sighing with enjoyment. “I hope you will not think me intemperate, Mrs. Fraser, but after months of tramping country, drinking nothing but water and the slaves’ crude rum—” He closed his eyes in bliss. “Ambrosia.”
I was rather disposed to agree.
“Er…is Father Fogden…?” I hesitated, looking for some tactful way of inquiring after our host’s state. I needn’t have bothered.
“Drunk,” Stern said frankly. “Limp as a worm, laid out on the table in the sala. He nearly always is, by the time the sun’s gone down,” he added.
“I see.” I settled back in the chair, sipping my own sangria. “Have you known Father Fogden long?”
Stern rubbed a hand over his forehead, thinking. “Oh, for a few years.” He glanced at me. “I was wondering—do you by chance know a James Fraser, from Edinburgh? I realize it is a common name, but—oh, you do?”
I hadn’t spoken, but my face had given me away, as it always did, unless I was carefully prepared to lie.
“My husband’s name is James Fraser,” I said.
Stern’s face lighted with interest. “Indeed!” he exclaimed. “And is he a very large fellow, with—”
“Red hair,” I agreed. “Yes, that’s Jamie.” Something occurred to me. “He told me he’d met a natural philosopher in Edinburgh, and had a most interesting conversation about…various things.” What I was wondering was where Stern had learned Jamie’s real name. Most people in Edinburgh would have known him only as “Jamie Roy,” the smuggler, or as Alexander Malcolm, the respectable printer of Carfax Close. Surely Dr. Stern, with his distinct German accent, couldn’t be the “Englishman” Tompkins had spoken of?
“Spiders,” Stern said promptly. “Yes, I recall perfectly. Spiders and caves. We met in a—a—” His face went blank for a moment. Then he coughed, masterfully covering the lapse. “In a, um, drinking establishment. One of the—ah— female employees happened to encounter a large specimen of Arachmida hanging from the ceiling in her—that is, from the ceiling as she was engaged in…ah, conversation with me. Being somewhat frightened in consequence, she burst into the passageway, shrieking incoherently.” Stern took a large gulp of sangria as a restorative, evidently finding the memory stressful.
“I had just succeeded in capturing the animal and securing it in a specimen jar when Mr. Fraser burst into the room, pointed a species of firearm at me, and said—” Here Stern developed a prolonged coughing fit, pounding himself vigorously on the chest.
“Eheu! Do you not find this particular pitcher perhaps a trifle strong, Mrs. Fraser? I suspect that the old woman has added too many sliced lemons.”
I suspected that Mamacita would have added cyanide, had she any to hand, but in fact the sangria was excellent.
“I hadn’t noticed,” I said, sipping. “But do go on. Jamie came in with a pistol and said—?”
“Oh. Well, in fact, I cannot say I recall precisely what was said. There appeared to have been a slight misapprehension, owing to his impression that the lady’s outcry was occasioned by some inopportune motion or speech of my own, rather than by the arachnid. Fortunately, I was able to display the beast to him, whereupon the lady was induced to come so far as the door—we could not persuade her to enter the room again—and identify it as the cause of her distress.”
“I see,” I said. I could envision the scene very well indeed, save for one point of paramount interest. “Do you happen to recall what he was wearing? Jamie?”
Lawrence Stern looked blank. “Wearing? Why…no. My impression is that he was clad for the street, rather than in dishabille, but—”
“That’s quite all right,” I assured him. “I only wondered.” “Clad,” after all, was the operative word. “So he introduced himself to you?”
Stern frowned, running a hand through his thick black curls. “I don’t believe he did. As I recall, the lady referred to him as Mr. Fraser; sometime later in the conversation—we availed ourselves of suitable refreshment and remained conversing nearly until the dawn, finding considerable interest in each other’s company, you see. At some point, he invited me to address him by his given name.” He raised one eyebrow sardonically. “I trust you do not think it overfamiliar of me to have done so, upon such brief acquaintance?”
“No, no. Of course not.” Wanting to change the subject, I continued, “You said you talked about spiders and caves? Why caves?”
“By way of Robert the Bruce and the story—which your husband was inclined to think apocryphal—regarding his inspiration to persevere in his quest for the throne of Scotland. Presumably, the Bruce was in hiding in a cave, pursued by his enemies, and—”
“Yes, I know the story,” I interrupted.
“It was James’s opinion that spiders do not frequent caves in which humans dwell; an opinion with which I basically concurred, though pointing out that in the larger type of cave, such as occurs on this island—”
“There are caves here?” I was surprised, and then felt foolish. “But of course, there must be, if there are cave fish, like the one in the spring. I always thought Caribbean islands were made of coral, though. I shouldn’t have thought you’d find caves in coral.”
“Well, it is possible, though not highly likely,” Stern said judiciously. “However, the island of Hispaniola is not a coral atoll but is basically volcanic in origin—with the addition of crystalline schists, fossiliferous sedimentary deposits of a considerable antiquity, and widespread deposits of limestone. The limestone is particularly karstic in spots.”
“You don’t say.” I poured a fresh cup of spiced wine.
“Oh, yes.” Lawrence leaned over to pick up his bag from the floor of the veranda. Pulling out a notebook, he tore a sheet of paper from it and crumpled it in his fist.
“There,” he said, holding out his hand. The paper slowly unfolded itself, leaving a mazed topography of creases and crumpled peaks. “That is what this island is like—you remember what Father Fogden was saying about the Maroons? The runaway slaves who have taken refuge in these hills? It is not lack of pursuit on the part of their masters that allows them to vanish with such ease. There are many parts of this island where no man—white or black, I daresay—has yet set foot. And in the lost hills, there are caves still more lost, whose existence no one knows save perhaps the aboriginal inhabitants of this place—and they are long gone, Mrs. Fraser.
“I have seen one such cave,” he added reflectively. “Abandawe, the Maroons call it. They consider it a most sinister and sacred spot, though I do not know why.”
Encouraged by my close attention, he took another gulp of sangria and continued his natural history lecture.
“Now that small island”—he nodded at the floating island visible in the sea beyond—“that is the Ile de la Tortue—Tortuga. That one is in fact a coral atoll, its lagoon long since filled in by the actions of the coral animalculae. Did you know it was once the haunt of pirates?” he asked, apparently feeling that he ought to infuse his lecture with something of more general interest than karstic formations and crystalline schists.
“Real pirates? Buccaneers, you mean?” I viewed the little island with more interest. “That’s rather romantic.”
Stern laughed, and I glanced at him in surprise.
“I am not laughing at you, Mrs. Fraser,” he assured me. A smile lingered on his lips as he gestured at the Ile de la Tortue. “It is merely that I had occasion once to talk with an elderly resident of Kingston, regarding the habits of the buccaneers who had at one point made their headquarters in the nearby village of Port Royal.”
He pursed his lips, decided to speak, decided otherwise, then, with a sideways glance at me, decided to risk it. “You will pardon the indelicacy, Mrs. Fraser, but as you are a married woman, and as I understand, have some familiarity with the practice of medicine—” He paused, and might have stopped there, but he had drunk nearly two-thirds of the pitcher; the broad, pleasant face was deeply flushed.
“You have perhaps heard of the abominable practices of sodomy?” he asked, looking at me sideways.
“I have,” I said. “Do you mean—”
“I assure you,” he said, with a magisterial nod. “My informant was most discursive upon the habits of the buccaneers. Sodomites to a man,” he said, shaking his head.
“What?”
“It was a matter of public knowledge,” he said. “My informant told me that when Port Royal fell into the sea some sixty years ago, it was widely assumed to be an act of divine vengeance upon these wicked persons in retribution for their vile and unnatural usages.”
“Gracious,” I said. I wondered what the voluptuous Tessa of The Impetuous Pirate would have thought about this.
He nodded, solemn as an owl.
“They say you can hear the bells of the drowned churches of Port Royal when a storm is coming, ringing for the souls of the damned pirates.”
I thought of inquiring further into the precise nature of the vile and unnatural usages, but at this point in the proceedings, Mamacita stumped out onto the veranda, said curtly, “Food,” and disappeared again.
“I wonder which cave Father Fogden found her in,” I said, shoving back my chair.
Stern glanced at me in surprise. “Found her? But I forgot,” he said, face clearing, “you don’t know.” He peered at the open door where the old woman had vanished, but the interior of the house was quiet and dark as a cave.
“He found her in Habana,” he said, and told me the rest of the story.
Father Fogden had been a priest for ten years, a missionary of the order of St. Anselm, when he had come to Cuba fifteen years before. Devoted to the needs of the poor, he had worked among the slums and stews of Habana for several years, thinking of nothing more than the relief of suffering and the love of God—until the day he met Ermenegilda Ruiz Alcantara y Meroz in the marketplace.
“I don’t suppose he knows, even now, how it happened,” Stern said. He wiped away a drop of wine that ran down the side of his cup, and drank again. “Perhaps she didn’t know, either, or perhaps she planned it from the moment she saw him.”
In any case, six months later the city of Habana was agog at the news that the young wife of Don Armando Alcantara had run away—with a priest.
“And her mother,” I said, under my breath, but he heard me, and smiled slightly.
“Ermenegilda would never leave Mamacita behind,” he said. “Nor her dog Ludo.”
They would never have succeeded in escaping—for the reach of Don Armando was long and powerful—save for the fact that the English conveniently chose the day of their elopement to invade the island of Cuba, and Don Armando had many things more important to worry him than the whereabouts of his runaway young wife.
The fugitives rode to Bayamo—much hampered by Ermenegilda’s dresses, with which she would not part—and there hired a fishing boat, which carried them to safety on Hispaniola.
“She died two years later,” Stern said abruptly. He set down his cup, and refilled it from the sweating pitcher. “He buried her himself, under the bougainvillaea.”
“And here they’ve stayed since,” I said. “The priest, and Ludo and Mamacita.”
“Oh, yes.” Stern closed his eyes, his profile dark against the setting sun. “Ermenegilda would not leave Mamacita, and Mamacita will never leave Ermenegilda.”
He tossed back the rest of his cup of sangria.
“No one comes here,” he said. “The villagers won’t set foot on the hill. They’re afraid of Ermenegilda’s ghost. A damned sinner, buried by a reprobate priest in unhallowed ground—of course she will not lie quiet.”
The sea breeze was cool on the back of my neck. Behind us, even the chickens in the patio had grown quiet with falling twilight. The Hacienda de la Fuente lay still.
“You come,” I said, and he smiled. The scent of oranges rose up from the empty cup in my hands, sweet as bridal flowers.
“Ah, well,” he said. “I am a scientist. I don’t believe in ghosts.” He extended a hand to me, somewhat unsteadily. “Shall we dine, Mrs. Fraser?”
* * *
After breakfast the next morning, Stern was ready to set off for St. Luis. Before leaving, though, I had a question or two about the ship the priest had mentioned; if it were the Porpoise, I wanted to steer clear of it.
“What sort of ship was it?” I asked, pouring a cup of goat’s milk to go with the breakfast of fried plantain.
Father Fogden, apparently little the worse for his excesses of the day before, was stroking his coconut, humming dreamily to himself.
“Ah?” he said, startled out of his reverie by Stern’s poking him in the ribs. I patiently repeated my query.
“Oh.” He squinted in deep thought, then his face relaxed. “A wooden one.”
Lawrence bent his broad face over his plate, hiding a smile. I took a breath and tried again.
“The sailors who killed Arabella—did you see them?”
His narrow brows rose.
“Well, of course I saw them. How else would I know they had done it?”
I seized on this evidence of logical thought.
“Naturally. And did you see what they were wearing? I mean”—I saw him opening his mouth to say “clothes,” and hastily forestalled him—“did they seem to be wearing any sort of uniform?” The crew of the Porpoise commonly wore “slops” when not performing any ceremonial duty, but even these rough clothes bore the semblance of a uniform, being mostly all of a dirty white and similar in cut.
Father Fogden laid down his cup, leaving a milky mustache across his upper lip. He brushed at this with the back of his hand, frowning and shaking his head.
“No, I think not. All I recall of them, though, is that the leader wore a hook—missing a hand, I mean.” He waggled his own long fingers at me in illustration.
I dropped my cup, which exploded on the tabletop. Stern sprang up with an exclamation, but the priest sat still, watching in surprise as a thin white stream ran across the table and into his lap.
“Whatever did you do that for?” he said reproachfully.
“I’m sorry,” I said. My hands were trembling so that I couldn’t even manage to pick up the shards of the shattered cup. I was afraid to ask the next question. “Father—has the ship sailed away?”
“Why no,” he said, looking up in surprise from his damp robe. “How could it? It’s on the beach.”
* * *
Father Fogden led the way, his skinny shanks a gleaming white as he kirtled his cassock about his thighs. I was obliged to do the same, for the hillside above the house was thick with grass and thorny shrubs that caught at the coarse wool skirts of my borrowed robe.
The hill was crisscrossed with sheep paths, but these were narrow and faint, losing themselves under the trees and disappearing abruptly in thick grass. The priest seemed confident about his destination, though, and scampered briskly through the vegetation, never looking back.
I was breathing hard by the time we reached the crest of the hill, even though Lawrence Stern had gallantly assisted me, pushing branches out of my way, and taking my arm to haul me up the steeper slopes.
“Do you think there really is a ship?” I said to him, low-voiced, as we approached the top of the hill. Given our host’s behavior so far, I wasn’t so sure he might not have imagined it, just to be sociable.
Stern shrugged, wiping a trickle of sweat that ran down his bronzed cheek.
“I suppose there will be something there,” he replied. “After all, there is a dead sheep.”
A qualm ran over me in memory of the late departed Arabella. Someone had killed the sheep, and I walked as quietly as I could, as we approached the top of the hill. It couldn’t be the Porpoise; none of her officers or men wore a hook. I tried to tell myself that it likely wasn’t the Artemis, either, but my heart beat still faster as we came to a stand of giant agave on the crest of the hill.
I could see the Caribbean glowing blue through the succulent’s branches, and a narrow strip of white beach. Father Fogden had come to a halt, beckoning us to his side.
“There they are, the wicked creatures,” he muttered. His blue eyes glittered bright with fury, and his scanty hair fairly bristled, like a moth-eaten porcupine. “Butchers!” he said, hushed but vehement, as though talking to himself. “Cannibals!”
I gave him a startled look, but then Lawrence Stern grasped my arm, drawing me to a wider opening between two trees.
“Oy! There is a ship,” he said.
There was. It was lying tilted on its side, drawn up on the beach, its masts unstepped, untidy piles of cargo, sails, rigging, and water casks scattered all about it. Men crawled over the beached carcass like ants. Shouts and hammer blows rang out like gunshots, and the smell of hot pitch was thick on the air. The unloaded cargo gleamed dully in the sun; copper and tin, slightly tarnished by the sea air. Tanned hides had been laid flat on the sand, brown stiff blotches drying in the sun.
“It is them! It’s the Artemis!” The matter was settled by the appearance near the hull of a squat, one-legged figure, head shaded from the sun by a gaudy kerchief of yellow silk.
“Murphy!” I shouted. “Fergus! Jamie!” I broke from Stern’s grasp and ran down the far side of the hill, his cry of caution disregarded in the excitement of seeing the Artemis.
Murphy whirled at my shout, but was unable to get out of my way. Carried by momentum and moving like a runaway freight, I crashed straight into him, knocking him flat.
“Murphy!” I said, and kissed him, caught up in the joy of the moment.
“Hoy!” he said, shocked. He wriggled madly, trying to get out from under me.
“Milady!” Fergus appeared at my side, crumpled and vivid, his beautiful smile dazzling in a sun-dark face. “Milady!” He helped me off the grunting Murphy, then grabbed me to him in a rib-cracking hug. Marsali appeared behind him, a broad smile on her face.
“Merci aux les saints!” he said in my ear. “I was afraid we would never see