The Wilde Flower Saga: A Contrary Wind (Historical Adventure Series) Read online

  "No, don't get up, I'll find my own way,” she said very low.

  She opened the cabin door and looked out. There was a Marine on guard. He was looking to the starboard, but he was incredibly still. Kate suspected he was dozing, which was often done, even though the penalty was severe. She was able to sidle over the rail on the port side of the ship and down the rope net ladder to a jolly boat that was waiting below.

  Cast off and away, Kate glanced back at the Stalwart, fighting to steer the boat as well as she could, which wasn’t that well at all, given the boat was usually meant for four to six men. There were several ships anchored in the harbor, but she was the only jolly boat out at this time of night. Sailors about with no orders or officers accompanying them would be taken as deserters and flogged or possibly hanged, she knew. While she’d never be mistaken for one of His Majesty’s sailors, in truth, she was now a thief.

  It couldn’t be helped. Still, she sighed.

  It was calm and the half moon gave her some light. She heard the ships' bells gently pealing another half hour had passed as she made her way through and around the huge dark hulls. It might have been luck on her part or carelessness on theirs, but Kate was glad to get away without difficulty. She was now closer to the quay than most of the ships.

  If only I could see where I’m going, she thought. Kate stopped for a moment to turn around and study the shoreline. Finally she got her bearings again and headed for the familiar shape. The warehouse near her ship was almost like home now. Not many knew she was there, and she didn't feel like answering any more foolish questions just now . . . mostly because she didn't have anything but foolish answers.

  "What are you doing there?" she said gruffly. It was a remarkably close rendition of the British captain’s own deep Cornish accent.

  Her nose wrinkled at the sour smell of the harbor water as the boat gently collided with the pier. Kate tied up and climbed out, then chewed on her bottom lip as she tried to decide what to do with the boat. Tie it and leave a clue? Would he come looking or send someone else? For her or the boat? Kate had to admit that it mattered to her.

  She decided to tie it and deal with in the morning. One of his crew might find it then with the help of a waterfront brat in need of a few pocket pennies from her. There were many of those about. Most knew the ways of the quay and its sordid souls well enough to keep their mouths shut.

  Kate pushed at the warehouse door. It creaked open without much effort. She caught the animal smell like the brush of an unfriendly hand. Inside, livestock waited to be hauled to the ships soon sailing out.

  An old man sat in the corner, supposedly guarding the lot. He was upright, but sleeping soundly with very little shame. His hat had slipped to the side, and his mouth was lagging open. The snoring sound blended in with the rest of the beasts, and Kate thought that maybe they didn't have much trouble with theft around here.

  The penalty for stealing from the Royal Navy was steep. Impressment or hanging wasn’t much of a choice. Kate glanced down at her own items of plunder: the liquor bottle, then back towards the boat. She couldn’t help the boat, but maybe she should not have taken the bottle.

  But it was too late now.

  With her hems held high, she walked carefully through the muck to the far end of the warehouse and nearest the carriage horses. One horse was standing with his head over the half-gate of his stall. She didn't know his name, but she called him Dandy for his gentlemanly ways.

  She set the bottle aside, and then lifted her skirt, rummaging in her petticoat pocket to get a handful. She picked out her own choice bits, but what remained were some tasty seeds and dried-up berries leftover from the autumn before. And one last piece of honey and horehound candy, a lozenge good for coughs, but she knew that Dandy had a sweet tooth, and anything would do.

  The horse sniffed, then nuzzled hungrily at the palm of her hand. He sighed as he chewed on the goodies. Kate rubbed his ears.

  "Some men are easy to please."

  He bobbed his head up and down, as if agreeing. It made her laugh. The old man in the corner snorted and shifted, but started snoring again without changing rhythm. The movement made his musket slip away. Kate was afraid it would clatter to the floor and wake him, or worse, go off. But his broad hand reached out to grab it out of habit, or instinct, or some primal urge to preserve the calmness in the animals and his own sleep.

  Kate studied him a moment. He didn't move again. She grabbed the back hem of her dress and pulled it between her legs, twisting it around until it made a sort of rope. She did the same to the front, and then tied the two together to make rough pantaloons. She was then able to climb the ladder to the loft with one hand free for climbing and one to hold her ill-gotten booty: the bottle of Scotch.

  Up there, her things were still undisturbed. A couple of crates, several small barrels, and a well-worn trunk held most of her worldly possessions. They didn't look impressive, but these things were the world to her, literally.

  She opened the trunk and pulled out a quilt that her grandmother made when Kate was a child. It used to be colorful, now it was faded, but flaunting colorful patches. The quilt had traveled the world with her, and the patches were made of cloth from exotic places. She hadn't actually been to land in many of the ports. Her father made her stay on the ship in the harbor to watch life on the shore from the distance.

  A safe distance, her father used to say. But he always brought her back something: cloth, dried flowers and herbs, sweet oils, little pictures, or books. Many times, work would be done on the ship in those places. Kate talked to the locals who came on board to help out then. It was as close as she came to their society, customs and language. So like her mother before her, she wrote much of it down.

  As she unfolded the quilt, three thick old scrapbooks slid free and thumped to the floor. Some chickens below were disturbed by the noise. Kate listened for them to calm, but there was nothing more, the old man still slept on.

  The books had been her mother's journals, now they were her own. Kate stooped to pick them up.

  One was a medicinal diary of things her mother had learned from frontier women and shaman from various native clans. The pages were stained, and their edges were tattered from use.

  Inside were drawings of plants and little maps of areas long forgotten or changed by the growing American expansion. You could find nothing there now, she knew, as there were now fields where there used to be meadows. Some streams were disrupted and diverted for a new settlement’s use. Even some forests, she assumed, were long ago cut down and the timber used.

  Often her mother had written little rhymes to help remember the ingredients or the concoctions to brew or salve or swallow, or even how to get them down a reluctant patient:

  “Honey in tea, or on a skinned knee;

  honey in the bitter is better for thee.

  But too much sweet in a smiling mouth;

  and the pearly white teeth may all fall out.

  So brush with a bristle, or an apple will do;

  then people will smile right back at you.”

  Kate could still hear her mother singing in the kitchen. Or as they walked together in the woods, gathering mushrooms, berries, and bark strips. The birds would sing too, and the squirrels rustled in the bushes nearby.

  Sometimes Katie followed as her mother climbed up to sunny mountain ridges where plentiful sunflowers with silvery green leaves flowed like waves in the wind. They were smaller than the sunflowers grown in the garden, but they smelled twice as sweet in the hot sun.

  When they went fishing, the boys had their poles, but Katie and her mother took their baskets instead. Katie ended up with wild flowers and pretty rocks, while her mother had gems of her own. But sometimes they were not so different; her mother liked magical things too.

  At least, Kate thought she remembered those moments. Perhaps they were dreams. Perhaps it had not happened like that at all, and she was only wishing it so. Some things she remembered so clearly, and some seemed li
ke glimpses through a fast-moving stormy fogbank.

  She set the book aside, but brushed its cover with a loving hand.

  Another book was of cultural remembrances from days in the company of so many different types of people. Her mother had come from a well-to-do family in New England with well-known old roots in Europe. Katherine St. John had traveled before she married, and then with Kate's father until the boys got too old. They had to stay on land to go to a proper school, it was said. Not that they stayed in civilization very long.

  This book was filled with customs, drawings of modes of dress, how men and women talked and walked and ate. Words of songs and measures of music, festivals and rituals, religious commentary, quotes from sermons, and even some notes and drawings on pagan rites.

  It was all written with loving detail, and sometimes-philosophical insight. Her mother said that people were like plants: Some were pretty and some were poison, but all were interesting in some way. You only needed to take some care when you’re picking.

  The third book was a family history, a listing of the bloodlines that defined her mother's family from an early time, even before there were countries like now. Kate thought of the stories as fairy tales as much as history.

  She turned a few random pages. A distant lord from long ago rode the waves in open ships to conquest in sunnier lands. North men, Normans, they had raided until land was given to them, a trade for peace. They were not nice men, they stole things, raped and killed, Kate imagined. She glanced to the bottle guiltily and told herself that pillaging must be in her blood.

  One man was a noble who died in battle at some bridge whose name was now obscured by grease or candle wax. The battle was long over, and Kate sometimes wondered if the bridge was still there. Or if anyone could remember why they had to fight then and there.

  This was a baron who had served his king until they both reached a wise old age. Long friends it would seem, but who was left to remember them now? Such titles and boundaries were long gone by now.

  Here was a woman who fell in battle defending the keep while the master was far away dying in the Holy Land on Crusade. They had died on the same day. Fate took a hand even then, Kate always thought. She was a big believer in fate, especially these days.

  There were maps and sketches of houses and castles and keeps. There were colored drawings of heralds and banners and things Kate did not understand anymore. They were all meaningless to her now as far as family was concerned—maybe because they were so familiar. Maybe because she had no family left. Uncles and aunts, and plenty of cousins, but those in her immediate family were all dead or long disappeared. Besides, those remaining were on her father’s side, and nothing to do with her mother.

  She closed her eyes and felt the hot rush of tears. She blinked them back and wiped at her nose. Kate set the books aside and draped the quilt on the hay. She stood for a moment in thought, and then pulled up the quilt, pushing and poking at the alfalfa hay. Very nice quality, she decided, probably for a nobleman’s horses. She curled up on one side of the quilt and pulled the other side up over her head.

  The peace didn't last long. She sat up, scratching with a fury. Kate pulled off her boots and started picking at the burrs in her stockings.

  "Damn, another hole. You should take more care when you torment—“

  Then she remembered the words.

  They were not her own.

  She had never known his name. She hadn't seen him in years. He was only slightly more than a child himself when she last saw him. He was a youngster in the Royal Navy, himself as green as the sea, she'd wager. And if the British captain hadn't been in such a peaceful slumber there on his ship just now, she might not have recognized him again.

  "What with that scowl he wore there in the park."

  But he had saved her then, and he saved her now. She smiled and suddenly felt rather warm. You never really forget your first love—not someone like that. She wrapped her arms around herself for a moment, and then pulled off her hose.

  That’s better, she thought, no more burrs to bother her now. Kate punched at the lumpy hay one more time, then slumped back and quickly fell asleep.

  Downstairs in the stalls, the groggy, old man looked around at the animals in curiosity. He could have sworn he heard one of them snoring. He shrugged; there had been lots of strange things happening around here lately. In a moment, he was back to sleep.

  * * * * *

  CHAPTER 05 - Ambrose Standish

  Kate heard rustling below. She stretched herself into a yawn amongst the dust and the spiders that also seemed to be enjoying these quiet moments just after dawn. The old man wouldn't come up the ladder; she didn't fear that. He left that task for the younger lads, but she did wonder if he could hear the rumbling of her stomach.

  As she started pulling on her stockings, someone called from below, "Kate? Katie?"

  She fought back a sneeze. "Up here," she yelled back.

  The head that appeared belonged to Ambrose Standish, an old family friend and now a diplomat for the newly United States.

  "How did you find me?" she said.

  "Saw Mr. Whayles in the pub, he told me to try here."

  She sneezed, then again, finally pausing to see what came next. Nothing did, but his expression and the scampering of the rodents in the corner made her laugh.

  He said, "Good Lord, woman, you'd think you didn't have a single six-pence to your name."

  "I have over a pound worth of pence right over there in the trunk. Perhaps I am just rich in coin and shy in common sense."

  "Which is why you slept in this barn? Why not a hotel? Why not on the Wilde?"

  Her flagship, the Wilde, was in port for massive alterations to accommodate the whims of an English earl. She had leased the ship to him for the year or more to come. The earl would be taking it to India. The rest was a long story, and she wondered if Ambrose already knew it. He had a habit of knowing more than he should.

  Hotels were not an option, she had never stayed in one, and she wouldn’t know how to go about it. But he had a good point about the Wilde. It was more home than anywhere else.

  "It's too dusty with the renovations," she said. "It makes me wheeze at night if I stay for too long. And this isn't a barn, it's a wharf warehouse used by the Royal Navy. Allow me some sense of place and position."

  Besides, if she stayed on the Wilde, people would know where to find her. She didn’t like the idea of being found by someone she had not expected. Nothing good would come of that, she remembered that much, at least.

  She glanced over—he was studying her. His mouth turned up at the corner in his familiar half-grin. "When will his lordship take possession?"

  "Soon, to my thinking. They're working on his quarters now, putting in extra water tanks for his bathing room."

  “Tanks?”

  “So the sailors don’t have to constantly haul water to his bath room,” Kate said as she pulled at some straw in her hair. “The tanks will catch enough rain water, I’m hoping, and if needs be, it can serve as surplus drinking water.”

  "A room just for a bath on a ship? How extraordinary. You're very generous, Katie. You'll have the gentry thinking they can travel as comfortably on the sea as they have it on dry land. Soon the Royal Navy will be burdened with a lot of pompous jackanapes roaming the world on a lark. What were you thinking?"

  "Obviously not of the Royal Navy. He pays for the alterations, but the ship is still ours. Not a bad business arrangement in the long run. It's only the short haul that has me suffering. And His Majesty's Navy can see to their own."

  Ambrose was nodding in appreciation. "Not bad reasoning, provided your ship doesn't sink around the Cape, or fall prey to pirates in the Indian Ocean."

  "Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Or is that nothing adventured, nothing pained?"

  "So your Uncle Lewis always says. When is he due from Africa?"

  "Not for a few weeks at best, but I promised myself that I will not worry for a couple of month
s. I heard rumors of a war between the tribesmen, and the crop might come in later than usual. Besides, he’s stopping at Madeira, and you know how he enjoys their liquor."

  Her uncle was currently in command of the other four ships in their Atlantic-based squadron. They were bringing up a cargo of hemp and gems from Africa. The Senlis Family Trust had seventeen ships, in good to excellent condition, scattered around the globe in small, protective squadrons. That was more ships than the current United States government could claim in their fledgling navy.

  That is, barring bad storms, rotting hulls, and pirates, also known as privateers in these troubled waters. So far, they had been lucky. At least as far as Kate had so far heard.

  Besides interests in Africa, the Senlis Trust had plantations in the West Indies and India. They grew tea, tobacco, jute, hemp, and sugar cane. Also trading in gems and spices, they contracted the routes to India and Asia and all ports between from the major trade companies that operated there. The stocked any outpost of any country that would pay.

  And the Trust also had scattered factories around the supposedly civilized world, which made gunpowder, bullets, and heavy wagons. No matter what the condition of the world and mankind, in ravages of war or the excesses of peace, the Senlis Family Trust would prosper.

  Kate sneezed again.

  "Let's get you up out of that hay field," Standish said, offering her a hand up.

  It was a weak hold he had on her with his clammy big hand. Kate didn't mean to shy away, but he didn't seem to notice as he picked some hay from her hair.

  He said, "I was going to ask you to accompany me to a society dinner at the Vice-Admiral's house tonight. But if your earl is in town, you might have other plans. If I were you, I’d go with the earl, for I know how the hereditary aristocracy can sometimes look down their noses at their military peers. For better or worse, there it is."

  "I have no plans, but that doesn't mean I want to sit in proper company with nothing interesting to say and no one to speak to anyway. People always look at me strangely at those affairs. It makes me want to give them something to stare at, and you know how that turns out."