Seacrets (5 page)

The thing he hated
most was nervous stammering. He glared at her with a contemptuous look.

"I, I was just wantin' ta try and make ya feel better if ya was sick… with a headache, ‘tis all". Maura had forgotten her self for just a moment and her voice was far too feminine for both their liking.

"Off with ya now, boy, and fetch the evening meal. I'd like ta get it done, have my bath and get ta bed early. We'll have a long days work ahead of us in the mornin'. Tis time that ya started ta earn ya keep 'round here. No more makin' ya out to be the helpless lass."

Maura immediately became furious within and began to seethe as if
she were embers in a fire.
“
Ooo that man, helpless lass, indeed!
Why
, she thought
, I’ll show him I am not helpless if it is the last thing I do on this trip. Mark my words!”
With her jaw hardened and her fists clenched Maura stormed out of the cabin, slamming the door behind her.

Daniel w
as left astounded with his mouth agape feeling as though he'd just had a raging argument with a hot headed female.
Stunned, he shook his head in disbeleif and asked himself,
“Am I going insensible?”
Again, that feeling of being around a woman, he could not shake.

§

Chapter Five

Maura stomped through the gangway, making her route toward the galley. Her pride still stung from Daniel’s careless barbs. So swathed was she, in her anger over his treatment of her, she failed to notice she was being followed.

Seconds before reaching the galley door, she was pulled into darkness. The shrill scraping sound of metal on metal, followed by the heavy echoed clang of the cabin’s slide
bolt lock confirmed to her there would be no escaping this nightmare.

Her breath stuck in her throat as she stood frozen against the wall just inside the door arch, daring not to make a move. She could not fit yet one more single breath of air into her lungs as each inhalation was shorter than the one before it. The pain from her breast bindings cut into her chest like a knife. She was beginning to feel faint from
the lack of air and feared she would lose consciousness.

              After several endless agonizing seconds she heard the slow scrape of match stick striking carbon and then smelled the pungent odor of sulfur. The haunting glow of candlelight produced the sinister image of the quarter master, Kilern.

"Well now, lad, is it?” His whisper echoed throughout the sparsely furnished cabin. “I've been watchin' ya for over a week now and I've been noticin’ some things about ya.”

Maura’s chest continued to heave with each rapid shallow breath as she struggled to remain conscious, despite the growing numbness of her body. 

“That's right. I've been lookin' at ya going through the mess line. I've seen many a scrawny lad, but you be a bit too feminine, shall I say? Wasn't exactly sure if I heard right, on the last day in port, when ya was talkin' to Godsey in the Cap’n’s archway. So I waited and observed ya for a while. But I feel I now know ya little secret, lass."

Maura's eyes grew wide as saucers and full of terror.

"Yes that's right lass, you've been found out. But I've told no one and don't plan to, unless
, that is, ya give me reason ta tell. Ya see I know our Cap'n. He can be a mean one, he can. One thing he can't abide is trickery and lyin'." Kilern was now just inches from Maura’s face. She could smell his brandied breath in her nostrils and she was almost going to be sick.

He reached up to cup her face with one grimy calloused hand and traced the outline of her cheek and chin with his rough thumb.
He ran his finger the length of her neck to the first button of her flannel shirt.

Her heart pounded hard with
fear.

"Am I wrong, then? Are ya a lass or a lad? I guess I'll have ta find out for myself, now, won't I?" I
n one fluid movement he ripped open her shirt to find the bindings that wrapped about her midsection. Paralyzed with fear Maura could not scream nor move.

"So this be how ya kept your identity secret. First I thought ya just a school girl, but now I can see you're more than that."

He ran his tongue across his dry cracked bottom lip, and then ran a shirtsleeve across his brow as he was sweating from the excitement of his find and what awaited his eyes beneath those bindings. He took his blade and slowly, meticulously sliced away at the thin cloth from above her breast line to below her waist, being careful not to nick the skin.

Her chest heaved
at a painful rate. Terror gripped her mind, not knowing what he planned to do to her. Maura’s eyes shifted to the blade he held at eye level to assure her he meant to do harm if not gotten his way. His muscular forearm pressed against her throat, holding her inplace against the cabin wall, while his free hand peeled away at the bindings.

"Oh, Lass, you're a beauty, ya are." His mouth went dry with excitement. He reached his large calloused hand inside the crumpled bands of cloth to cup her soft, firm breast.

Maura let out a muffled scream and startled him into losing his grip on her.

She scrambled beneath his arm and ran to the opposite side of a table in the center of the room. When she bent to escape him her cap fell to the floor and her long black tresses fell freely to just beyond her shoulders.

He crossed the room in a flash and had a hold of her in one fell swoop.

"Awe don't you worry ya pretty head none, lass. I ain't gonna take ya here and now. No, I got plans for ya when we get ta port in New England. All I want 'tis but a little taste of ya now and then."
He covered her mouth with his, in one twisting movement, forcing his tongue deep withn her mouth, while cupping her breasts in his hands and crushing her between himself and the cabin wall.

She fought him with everything she had but it was for naught. The quartermaster was too strong for her diminutive frame. She could not fight him off. He forced his reach down the front of her trousers and slipped his fingers into her velvety sheath.

With a muffled cry, she begged him to stop. "Please don't. I beg of you Mr. Kilern."

Her pleas fell upon deaf ears. He continued onward. When Kilern tried to penetrate her with his encrusted fingers he encountered a familiar tightness and suddenly he realized what he actually had, right there, in his hand. He pulled back from her and looked into her eyes. With utter astonishment in his voice he exclaimed, “You’re a virgin! I've found me a bluddee pot o' gold, I have!” He ceased his advance
s. He leaned himself back against the table and let loose a most evil and insidious laughter that resonated the sound of lunacy. Then with a wide and malevolent grin spread across his sickenly repulsive face he said, "I'm gonna sell ya ta the highest bidder when we get ta port. Some rich gov’ll pay a lot o' money ta have ya for the first time. And after that I'll sell ya ta some bawdy house in Boston. Yes m’am, I'm gonna be a rich man. No more traipsin' across the ocean ta make my way in life." Kilern broke from his trance and snapped his orders at her. "Fix yourself girl, I don't want the Cap'n gettin' suspicious ya been gone too long."

With tears in her eyes and fury within her heart she spat back her venomous threats at him. "I'll make certain Godsey knows of this violation of me. You'll be sorry, for sure."

He let forth a snort of laughter at her weak attempts to avenge her pride.

"No ya won't, girl. Ya see if ya say a word of this ta anyone, the Cap'n’ll find out and he'll give Godsey the lash for sneakin' ya aboard and so shall you get the same, maybe worse. Why, Cap'n Hargendon might just make ya swing from the yardarm or throw ya overboard. No you won't tell. You'll keep my secret and I'll keep yours, heh, heh, heh". He opened the cabin door, gave her a sinister wink, tipped his cap to her in sarcasm
, then closed the door behind him.

Maura quickly put herself back together, then got herself to the galley and retrieved the Captain’s evening meal. When she finally returned
to the cabin she discovered Daniel had gone. This was a welcome relief, she thought. It gave her a little more time to safeguard her disguise.

With her head held high she went directly to her usual duties of rolling in the great copper tub, as she had been doing for weeks. She began boiling the kettles f
or Daniel's bath and wished she could sink into the water and wash off the vile mauls of that pig, Kilern. Oh how she would scrub and scrub until her skin fell off. Even then she probably never would be able to get over being touched in such a way as that.

Just as she had finished her tasks she could sense the heavy footfalls of agitation as the cabin door swung open and Daniel entered in a hurried and perturbed manner, slamming the portal door behind him.

"Where in hell's name did ya go, boy. I sent ya to the galley a half an hour ago! Doddlin’ were ya? I knew I was being too lenient with ya. Well, is my meal here!?" He barked at her.

Maura could not speak for fear of giving away what had transpired between herself and quartermaster. She simply mot
ioned to the table where he noticed the table was nicely set for dinner with candles lit and also the tub was already in the cabin awaiting the warming kettles.

Quietly he sat down and began to pick away at the plate of seasoned meats and yams.

Maura poured him a tankard of ale from the pitcher then silently retreated to her side of the cabin to sit atop her bunk and await the next sequence of orders.

It did not go unnoticed by Daniel that Maura’s plate of food sat in front of her growing cold. The thick gravy congealed atop the meat.

She turned her head away from the plate for she could not eat a thing. She kept rolling over, in her mind, the events that had taken place between herself and the quartermaster.

She could still smell his disgusting breath and taste the vile tang of stale brandy along the insides of her mouth, not to mention feeling his fingers crawling inside of her most private area.

Maura began to shudder at her own thoughts of disgust for Kilern, and for a brief moment, hatred for her father for putting her in this predicament. The future that awaits her in Boston is the same fate her father had tried so desperately to protect her from. “
What a waste
,” she thought.

The deafening silence between the two was about to drive Daniel mad. Usually he welcomed the quiet solitude of his cabin, but knowing someone was across the room made him feel an obligation to converse.

"Ya really should eat, boy. Ya won't be able ta keep up with ya duties if ya let yourself get too much skinnier than ya are." He spoke, never looking in her direction.

Maura
remained silent.

He lifted the tankard to his lips and looked up at her ov
er the rim. Still believing he was looking at a male he had to shake his head profusely to stop feeling as though he needed to console his
cabin boy
.
For complete loss of words he tried to think of something to say that would not sound berating or trite. Then he remembered the chess board she had set up. He remarked. "Do ya play much chess when at home?" Hoping this would break the dead silence in the room.

Maura looked up
with a half smile. "Yes, I'm very fond o’ the game, sir." She responded in her deepest male voice. "I used ta play every evenin’ with my father, after dinner."

"Are ya any good, then?" Daniel remarked sarcastically.

"I think so. I've been playin’ since the age of eight summers." She straightened her back and answered in a proud voice.

"What did ya father do for a livin?'" speaking of her father in the past tense, as if he were no longer living.

Maura swallowed hard against his words but guessed she'd have to get used to speaking of him in those terms, for one day he would be gone from this earth. "He was a longshoreman. Like yourself, sir.” She answered with an aire of pride.

"And he never took ya with him on board any ships?" He remarked with a hint of astonishme
nt in his voice. "Seems odd he did naught. Why, my father started takin' me aboard when I was much younger than you, boy. Most fathers want their sons ta be strappin' lads, rough around the edges. You're much too frail ta be the son of a longshoreman.” He continued to interrogate her in a cool insulting manner. "You must have spent ya time in the classroom of a school house, whereas I've spent mine in the classroom of the sea. He continued on with an odd easy flow to his conversation. “Sure I went ta grade school. I read and write and such but, only what I needed ta make my way in the business world o’ tradin’ goods." He chugged more ale and sat staring at Maura.

Maura
stood anxiously wringing her hands as she caught herself intently hanging onto every word that graced his thoroughly masculine mouth. There was another long silence as Maura busied herself pouring the hot kettles into the tub to ready the water for Daniel's bath.

"After my bath would ya like to show me just how good ya really are?” He flashed his gorgeous smile in her direction.

Stunned, Maura stopped her flurry of activity and timidly shifted her eyes in his direction.