Quintspinner (36 page)

Tearing dementedly at Carlos’s face and eyes with her bare hands, Elizabeth Willoughby slashed at him with unbridled fury. Caught off guard, he attempted to protect himself with his free hand, while he continued to hold the dangling baby with the other.

The baby’s screaming had intensified momentarily with the burn of the knife wound, but his screams suddenly lapsed into a choking gasp that always heralded his seizures. His small body stiffened and spasmed, his distended head bobbing violently at the end of his fragile neck. The seizures swept over the baby’s body in fierce waves, magnified in their strength by the increased pressure on his brain in the inverted position.

And then, just as suddenly as they had started, the paroxysms stopped. Elizabeth abruptly ended her attack on Carlos and directed her attention towards her child. The infant dangled from Carlos’s hand, his tiny body hanging ominously still. Elizabeth tore her son from Carlos’s grasp and cradled the baby to her chest, collapsing down onto the deck.

A grievous keening escaped from her lips as she stared into her son’s sightless eyes, his tiny pouty lips already turning a dusky blue in early death.

“You’ve blinded me, you bitch!” Carlos clutched at his face, his hands suddenly free. Reaching down, he yanked Elizabeth roughly to her feet and threw her against the deck railing. A momentary flurry of activity broke out as Captain Crowell and a few others from the
Argus
crew lunged towards the woman in a useless gesture of assistance, their attempts to help her cut short by the restraining strength of the pirates around them.

“Is it dead?” Carlos sneered, clutching the side of his face that bled freely where his eye socket and cheek hung open in dripping strips of torn flesh. “Extending your misery and pain is going to provide me with such great pleasure!” he laughed viciously, “and I
always
get what I want!”

“When I am finished with you,” he continued his threat, “you will be begging me to let you join your abomination of a son in death!” He slowly advanced upon Elizabeth with deliberate steps. Struggling to her feet, she clutched the tiny corpse to her chest, backing up firmly against the railing, until retreat was no longer possible.

“It is
you
who are the abomination!” Elizabeth spat the words out loudly and clearly. “And I will take from you, all possibility of such a pleasure.”

Carlos hesitated a moment, surprised by the strength and conviction in her words.

“You will have no choice in what happens to you!” he snarled.

“You are … so very wrong,” Elizabeth taunted, and smiling as confidently as Tess had ever seen her mother smile, Elizabeth catapulted herself soundlessly backwards over the railing into the waiting ocean depths below.

“No-o-o-o!”

It was as close to the sound of a man’s soul breaking as any could imagine.

Although Dr. Willoughby had remained firmly pinned to the deck, he had managed to twist his face towards his wife’s last words and had seen her feet disappear from his view. Enraged with the strength of one who has nothing left to live for, he tore himself from the grasps of those holding him down and launched himself at Carlos, his hands throttling the pirate’s neck.

Carlos’s eyes bulged, at first with surprise and then with ensuing strangulation, as the doctor’s deadly grip crushed inward on his windpipe, its rings of cartilage beneath his fingers yielding and snapping under the force of such pressure. Things had happened so fast that for a heartbeat or two, no one moved, no one comprehended what was happening.

Suddenly Dr. Willoughby gave a soft grunt and released his grip on Carlos’s neck. Both men collapsed simultaneously to their knees, Carlos grasping his mutilated face and crushed windpipe, and Dr. Willoughby clutching his abdomen. A large dagger hilt protruded between his hands.

Looking down at the weapon, his mouth opened and closed though no words came out, as the shock of his injury sank in. Lifting his eyes up to scan the faces of those gathered around him, Dr. Willoughby locked his gaze for a few moments on the horrified faces of Mrs. Hanley, then Cassie, and finally on Tess.

His face crumbled in grief and his eyes filled with unspoken emotion, full of longing for words that had never been said, and of regret, too late, for the ones that had. He slowly returned his gaze to Mrs. Hanley’s face which was now streaked with tears, their pathways having washed small ruts down her cheeks through the blood and soot and odorous muck that caked her skin.

“Take care of my girls, won’t you?” he pleaded out loud to her, his voice cracking with emotion, and then grasping the dagger’s bloody handle, he gave a fierce tug and watched as the blood pumped from his body, his life’s force splashing onto the deck at his knees, watched until his eyes became sightless and he collapsed down into the already gelling pool of his own blood.

“Girls?”
The word had not escaped Carlos’s notice. “What
girls?”
he wheezed, his voice already strident with the swelling of his bruised vocal cords.

“Father!
” Cassie and Tess screamed out in unison, and heedless of their disguises, threw themselves upon his lifeless body.

“Eduardo!” Carlos beckoned while casting a glance about with his remaining eye. “You have
more
women on board? Just how many surprises do you have for me?”

Rushing forward, Edward grabbed Tess by her arm and hauled her to her feet. “What in the hell are you doing in this filthy garb?” he demanded, his face screwing up in disgust. Spinning around, he addressed Carlos. “This is Tess Willoughby. My fiancée. And,” he hesitated for a moment as he peered at the other sailor lying prostrate across the doctor’s body, “I believe this is her house servant. This one is called Cassie.”

“She’s my
sister!
” Tess spat the words out at both him and Carlos.

“Attractive as she is, it’s obvious that you don’t share one drop of blood with her!” Edward retorted. “And
bloodlines
are the only thing that matter.”

“Bloodlines!” Tess’s loathing for Edward surfaced, numbing her grief. You think
bloodlines
are important? Then you should know that your brother–”

Tess’s words were choked off as Edward quickly smothered her mouth with his hand, snarling at her. “I will not tolerate insubordination from you or any other. Do I make myself clear?” She saw the familiar blackness fill his eyes, and she froze under his grip.

“That one is merely a servant,” Edward reiterated to Carlos, “and there should be a garrulous housekeeper somewhere ….”

“She is
careless?
This housekeeper? Why do you tell me this?” Carlos’s brow furrowed in confusion.

“Garrulous! Garrulous! Not
careless,”
Edward laughed brashly. “Can you not hear out of your ears? Or has your command of the English language deteriorated in all of this time?”

“I can speak as well as you!” Carlos retorted in a wheezy gasp, “and it is my eye and throat that need help, not my ears! Which one is el medico?”

“That one.” Edward pointed at the doctor’s body.

Alarm spread over Carlos’s face as the realization sunk in.

“You see, Carlos, your hotheaded temper will be the death of you yet!” Edward chuckled and shook his head. “But don’t despair, my friend, as my fiancée here has learned well from her father before his untimely passing. She herself brought me back from the brink of death.”

Now it was Carlos’s turn to laugh. His swollen throat made it sound more like the hiss of a serpent than a chuckle. “Another rescue from the doorway of death? How many times do you get to visit it and talk your way back before you are to be shown in?”

“Ah ha! That, perhaps, is the question we would all like to have answered for ourselves, wouldn’t we?” Edward smiled. “And with such help from Evangelina,” he murmured, brandishing the brass box still in his palm, “I may have all of the outcomes that I could ever want!”

Jerking roughly on Tess’s arm, he scowled at her, while speaking in general to all those present, and to Carlos specifically. “So now, if we may be allowed to exit from this welcoming party, I shall ready my fiancée to return to the sick bay with the
proper tools
… and much cleaner attire.” He grasped her tightly to him and began to walk towards the companionway, before turning around once more.

“Oh yes, Carlos. One more thing. The others–” He nodded his head in the direction of the remaining captives. “Do with them what you will. My gift to you.”

Tess found herself alone with Edward in his cabin and once again she struck out offensively. “Who is Evangelina? And what was it that she sent to you, delivered by that–that
monster up
there?”

Tess’s questions hung sharply in the air between them. Edward laughed and replied mockingly, “Do I detect a tone of jealousy? Could it be that my bride-to-be is already madly in love with me and objects to hearing another woman’s name on my lips?”

“You flatter yourself!” Tess spat angrily. “No woman who knew
you–really knew you
and the kind of person you are–would ever have anything to do with you! She must be desperate, insane even, to have any interest in you!” she seethed.

At this accusation, Edward’s eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched as he bent over to open the secret drawer in his cabin.

“Evangelina … is … my sister, if you must know,” he stated non-chalantly as he manipulated the small star knob on the drawer front. “We were not just twins you see, my brother and I, but two of a surviving set of triplets. She, the girl child, shortly after being weaned, was sent back to be nurtured by my mother’s people, whilst Thomas and I were raised in the London court, with the appropriate court training as befit us.”

“A sister?” Tess was momentarily struck dumb by this revelation.

“Yes. And now married to Carlos,” he added with an amused smile.

“Married
to him? Is such insanity a
family
trait then?” Tess’s anger had returned and her tone was scathing.

“You are brave and foolish all at once, to aggravate me so, Tess,” Edward sighed, “and I warn you now that when
we
are married, I will break your high spiritedness down into proper submission, suitable for a wife. It can only go badly for you if you continue to insist on such insubordination.” He turned around to face her and held out his hand. “Put these on.”

Edward was giving the rings back to her. “You will need them to heal Carlos. The blue of the tourmalines will produce strong intuition–clarity to see possible outcomes, and the emeralds, as before, will ensure the success of your treatment choices.”

Outraged at Edward’s assumption, Tess shrieked “He killed my father!” and then her voice broke and trembled. “He killed my father … I will not lift a finger to save him.”

“You
will
do so because
I
wish it to be so,” Edward whispered calmly, stepping so close to her that she could feel his heart beating as he clutched her to his chest. She stiffened at his touch and attempted to pull her face away from him as his lips brushed her earlobe. “And if I am kept happy,” he continued, his voice soft and dangerous, “and if Carlos is kept alive of course, it may go better for your housekeeper and servant.” Tess’s own heart thudded in alarm at this spoken threat.

Edward’s hand brushed her hair, tucking a loose strand behind her ear. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a gleam of gold on blood-red, reflecting the lantern’s dim glow.