The ochre half-light of dusk was settling over the island, lending a
warm tint to the deep green of the hillside forests surrounding Forte
de la Roche. In the central yard of the fortress, directly beneath le
Basque's "dovecote," his uniformed guards loitered alongside the row of
heavy culverin, watching the mast lights of anchored frigates and
brigantines nod beneath the cloudless sky.
Tibaut de Fontenay had taken no note of the beauty of the evening. He
was busy tending the old-fashioned _boucan _Jacques had ordered
constructed just behind the cannon. Though he stood on the windward
side, he still coughed occasionally from the smoke that threaded
upward, over the "dovecote" and toward the hill above. The _boucan
_itself consisted of a rectangular wooden frame supporting a greenwood
grill, set atop four forked posts. Over the frame and grill a
thatchwork of banana leaves had been erected to hold in the piquant
smoke of the smoldering naseberry branches beneath. Several haunches of
beef lay flat on the grill, and now the fire was coating them with a
succulent red veneer. It was the traditional Taino Indian method of
cooking and preserving meat, _barbacoa_, that had been adopted intact
by the boucaniers decades before.
Jacques leaned against the railing at the edge of the platform above,
pewter tankard in hand, contentedly stroking his salt-and-pepper beard
as he gazed out over the harbor and the multihued sunset that washed
his domain in misty ambers. Finally, he turned with a murmur of
satisfaction and beckoned for Katherine to join him. She glanced
uneasily toward Winston, then moved to his side.
"The aroma of the _boucan_. Mademoiselle, was always the signal the day
was ending." He pointed across the wide bay, toward the green mountains
of Hispaniola. "Were we over there tonight, with the hunters, we would
still be scraping the last of the hides now, while our _boucan
_finished curing the day's kill for storing in our banana-leaf
_ajoupa_." He smiled warmly, then glanced down to see if her tankard
required attention. "Though, of course, we never had such a charming
Anglaise to leaven our rude company."
"I should have thought, Monsieur le Basque, you might have preferred a
Frenchwoman." Katherine studied him, trying to imagine the time when he
and Hugh had roamed the forests together. Jacques le Basque, for all
his rough exterior, conveyed an unsettling sensuality. She sensed his
desire for her as he stood alongside, and when he brushed her hand, she
caught herself trembling involuntarily.
"You do me an injustice, Mademoiselle, to suggest I would even attempt
passing such a judgment." He laughed. "For me, womankind is like a
garden, whose flowers each have their own beauty. Where is the man who
could be so dull as to waste a single moment comparing the deep hue of
the rose to the delicate pale of the lily. The petals of each are soft,
they both open invitingly at the touch."
"Do they always open so easily, Monsieur le Basque?"
"Please, you must call me Jacques." He brushed back a wisp of her hair
and paused to admire her face in the light of the sunset. "It is ever a
man's duty to awaken the beauty that lies sleeping in a woman's body.
Too many exquisite creatures never realize how truly lovely they are."
"Do those lovely creatures include handsome boys as well?" She glanced
down at de Fontenay, his long curls lying tangled across his delicate
shoulders.
Jacques drank thoughtfully from his tankard. "Mademoiselle, there is
something of beauty in all God's work. What can a man know of wine if
he samples only one vineyard?"
"A woman might say, Jacques, it depends on whether you prefer flowers,
or wine."
"_Touche_, Mademoiselle. But some of us have a taste for all of life.
Our years here are so brief."
As she stood beside him, she became conscious again of the short-
barreled flintlock--borrowed from Winston's sea chest, without his
knowing it--she had secreted in the waist of her petticoat, just below
her low-cut bodice. Now it seemed so foolish. Why had Hugh painted
Jacques as erratic and dangerous? Could it be because the old
_boucanier_ had managed to better him in that pistol duel they once
had, and he'd never quite lived it down? Maybe that was why he never
seemed to get around to explaining what really happened that time.
"Then perhaps you'll tell me how many of those years you spent
hunting." She abruptly turned and gestured toward the hazy shoreline
across the bay. Seen through the smoke of the _boucan_ below,
Hispaniola's forests seemed endless, impenetrable. "Over there, on the
big island?"
"Ah, Mademoiselle, thinking back now it seems like forever. Perhaps it
was almost that long." He laughed genially, then glanced toward
Winston, standing at the other end of the platform, and called out,
"Anglais, shall we tell your lovely mademoiselle something about the
way we lived back in the old days?"
"You can tell her anything you please, Jacques, just take care it's
true." Winston was studying the fleet of ships in the bay below.
"Remember this is our evening for straight talk."
"Then I will try not to make it sound too romantic." Jacques chuckled
and turned back. "Since the Anglais insists I must be precise, I should
begin by admitting it was a somewhat difficult existence. Mademoiselle.
We'd go afield for weeks at a time, usually six or eight of us together
in a party--to protect ourselves should we blunder across some of the
Spaniards' lancers, cavalry who roamed the island trying to be rid of
us. In truth, we scarcely knew where we would bed down from one day to
the next. . . ."
Winston was only half listening as he studied the musket-men in the
yard below. There seemed to be a restlessness, perhaps even a tension,
about them. Was it the _boucan_? The bother of the smoke? Or was it
something more? Some treachery in the making? He told himself to stay
alert, that this was no time to be lulled by Jacques's famed
courtliness. It could have been a big mistake not to bring Atiba, in
spite of Jacques's demand he be left.
"On most days we would rise at dawn, prime our muskets, then move out
to scout for game. Usually one of us went ahead with the dogs. Before
the Anglais came to live with us, that perilous assignment normally
fell to me, since I had the best aim." He lifted the onion-flask of
French brandy from the side of the veranda and replenished her tankard
with a smooth flourish. "When you stalk the wild bull, the _taureau
sauvage_, you'd best be able to bring him down with the first shot, or
hope there's a stout tree nearby to climb." He smiled and thumbed
toward Winston. "But after the Anglais joined us, we soon all agreed he
should have the honor of going first with the dogs. We had discovered
he was a born marksman." He toasted Winston with his tankard. "When the
dogs had a wild bull at bay, the Anglais would dispatch it with his
musket. Afterwards, one of our men would stay to butcher it and take
the hide while the rest of us would move on, following him."
"Then what?" She never knew before that Winston had actually been the
leader of the hunt, their marksman.
"Well, Mademoiselle, after the Anglais had bagged a bull for every man,
we'd bring all the meat and hides back to the base camp, the
rendezvous. Then we would put up a _boucan_,
like the one down there below us now, and begin smoking the meat while
we finished scraping the hides." He smiled through his graying beard.
"You would scarcely have recognized the Anglais, or me, in those days,
Mademoiselle. Half the time our breeches were so caked with blood they
looked like we'd been tarred." He glanced back at the island. "By
nightfall the _barbacoa_ would be finished, and we would eat some, then
salt the rest and put it away in an _ajoupa_, together with the hides.
Finally, we'd bed down beside the fire of the _boucan_, to smoke away
the mosquitoes, sleeping in those canvas sacks we used to keep off
ants. Then, at first light of dawn, we rose to go out again."
"And then you would sell your . . . _barbacoa_ and hides here on
Tortuga?"
"Exactly, Mademoiselle. I see my old friend the Anglais has already
told you something of those days." He smiled and caught her eye. "Yes,
often as not we'd come back over here and barter with the ships that
put in to refit. But then sometimes we'd just sell them over there.
When we had a load, we would start watching for a sail, and if we saw a
ship nearing the coast, we'd paddle out in our canoes . . ."
"Canoes?" She felt the night grow chill. Suddenly a memory from long
ago welled up again, bearded men firing on their ship, her mother
falling. . . .
"_Oui_, Mademoiselle. Dugout canoes. In truth they're all we had those
days. We made them by hollowing out the heart of a tree, burning it
away, just like the Indians on Hispaniola used to do." He sipped his
brandy, then motioned toward Winston. "They were quite seaworthy, _n
'est-ce pas_? Enough so we actually used them on our first raid." He
turned back. "Though after that we naturally had Spanish ships."
"And where . . . was your first raid, Monsieur le Basque?" She felt her
grip tighten involuntarily on the pewter handle of her tankard.
"Did the Anglais never tell you about that little episode,
Mademoiselle?" He laughed sarcastically. "No, perhaps it
is not something he chooses to remember. Though at the time we thought
we could depend on him. I have explained to you that no man among us
could shoot as well as he. We wanted him to fire the first shot, as he
did when we were hunting. Truly we had high hopes for him." Jacques
drank again, a broad silhouette against the panorama of the sunset.
"He told me how you got together to fight the Spaniards, but ..."
"Did he? _Bon_." He paused to check the _boucan_ below them, then the
men. Finally he shrugged and turned back. "It was the start of the
legend of the _boucaniers_, Mademoiselle. And you can take pride that
the Anglais was part of it. Few men are still alive now to tell that
tale."
"What happened to the others, Jacques?" Winston's voice hardened as he
moved next to one of the nine-pound cannon. "I seem to remember there
were almost thirty of us. Guy Bartholomew was on that raid, for one. I
saw him down below last night. I knew a lot of those men well."
"_Oui_, you had many friends. But after you . . . left us, a few
unfortunate incidents transpired."