The Painted Room Read online

Chapter 10

  Captured

  After about a half hour of rowing, Carlisle's face was flushed. Stopping to rest, he patted his shirt sleeve against his forehead. "Forgot my handkerchief," he explained apologetically.

  The rowing looked to May like hard work, and with the light ocean breeze blowing, the sun was alright if you weren't doing anything, but otherwise, unbearable. If the sailing ship wasn't friendly, and they couldn't hitch a ride across, it would be a long way for him to do all by himself.

  At this rate, she wasn't sure how long it would take either. Carlisle was petering out on them.

  "What time is it? Do you know?" asked May, picturing her cell phone on the small table in Sheila's living room where she had left it.

  "Ten o'clock?" said Carlisle, looking around for the sun.

  "Let me guess—you forgot your watch, too, did you?"

  He snapped back, "Does it really matter? What good is the time going to do you here? I thought it was afternoon. It looks like morning now." He made a quick, impatient gesture with his hand skyward, shook his head and started rolling up one of his full shirt sleeves with an annoyed flick of his wrist and a piercing glance in her direction.

  Well, well, well, looks like someone has a short fuse, thought May. She smiled and asked sweetly, "Are you tired? Do you need us to take over?"

  "Rowing? No," he said curtly, fumbling with his shirt sleeve which wasn't cooperating with him at all. He took in a long noisy breath through his crooked nose and bubbled down to a simmer.

  "I could grab one oar and Sheila could grab the other. We could work as a team."

  "Don't be silly," he said, dismissing her.

  "I'm not being silly. Why's that silly?"

  "It just is." He tapped himself audibly on the chest, his shirt sleeve flapping limply. "If there's any rowing to be done, I'll be the one to do it."

  May sat back and crossed her arms, watching him. "Oh, I see."

  "It's just a bad idea," he said, taking up the oar handles again.

  "Huh. Well, I don't understand why it's such a bad idea. I think you're just being stubborn. How many miles do you think you can do this by yourself? I don't mean to be rude, but in all honesty—just sitting around that castle for three years—you might be a little ..." May sized him up and made sure he knew it, "… well, let's just say 'out of shape'."

  "Out of—? I just need to get a second wind."

  "My point exactly."

  "Have you ever rowed a boat before?" he questioned with a look that said he already knew the answer.

  "Yes."

  "You're a bad liar, May."

  "No, really I have, and Sheila has too. Haven't you, Sheila?"

  Carlisle looked over his shoulder at Sheila. Her blue eyes were level. "No, I have not."

  "Thank you," he said, turning back to May and looking smug.

  "But I'd be willing to try," added Sheila. "You can't possibly do this all by yourself, Mr. Carlisle."

  May smiled at him.

  He was outnumbered again.

  "Mr. Carlisle?" prompted Sheila.

  He didn't even bother to argue this time. He got up and traded places with May as she and Sheila each took a place at an oar.

  No sooner than he sat down facing them he said, "You're holding the oar wrong, Sheila." He removed and repositioned her hands on the oar again, "Like that."

  He peered over the side of the rowboat like an old man reading a newspaper. "May, May! You're hitting the water too shallow. No, not like that. Too deep now. And you're going to have to coordinate with Sheila a little better."

  He sat back suddenly, his hands twitching, itching to have the oars back.

  "Will you just be quiet? I think we can figure it out," said May. "You were doing it. It can't be that hard!"

  As the girls began to row in earnest, Carlisle pointed a few times, opened his mouth to speak then finally covered his mouth with his hand. With a twinkle of amusement in his brown eyes, he watched in silence as the rowboat turned around in a circle.

  May and Sheila attempted to give the oars back, but Carlisle stayed where he was.

  "No, you're not giving up that easy," he said, sitting back and picking up May's sweatshirt that she had discarded on the seat next to him. "You wanted to row, now row. Keep working at it. You need to work together a little better is all." He unzipped the sweatshirt, then examined the zipper near-sightedly as he zipped it back up again, looking almost cross-eyed in the process.

  Bit by bit, May and Sheila improved, though the rowboat made remarkably little headway for the amount of effort they put in. When they were sufficiently exhausted, Carlisle took the oars back over with a look of relief from everyone in the boat.

  Sometime later, as they approached the ship, May began to recount what she could see to Carlisle, who had his back to it as he rowed.

  "There doesn't seem to be much activity," she said. "Most of the crew seems to be lying around on deck not doing much of anything. Talk about lazy." She could see about twenty men languishing on board, some dozing; others were sitting and talking, drinking, smoking pipes. Several times, the burst of a loud guffaw drifted over the waves.

  "One sailor just got up," she said, finally seeing some movement aboard the ship. "He's stumbling to the side. He's—oh, never mind."

  "What? He's what?" asked Carlisle.

  "He's taking a leak." When Carlisle just stared at her, she said, "What? Didn't you guys say that back then? He's—"

  "I know what you mean! Well, don't look!"

  "Relax. He's already turned around. He's talking to his shipmates now."

  "Have they spotted us?" he asked.

  "I think so. They're starting to run around like ants at a picnic. A few of them just got into a small boat. It looks like they're coming out to meet us."

  "Have either of you studied any French?" he asked suddenly.

  Sheila shook her head. "I take Spanish."

  May said, "I just started. How's yours?"

  "Bad."

  Three men from the sailing ship made their way out to them in a skiff. When the sailors were close enough, one of them said something incomprehensible in French. Carlisle stopped his work at the oars and turned to watch the small boat as it glided towards them.

  May could see them plainly now. They were a sorry looking bunch of sailors. Every spot of them was covered with some form of grime or another. The sun had burnt them all to a leathery blackish-brown. There was not one of them that was clean shaven, but all had several days to a week's worth of ragged stubble growing out of their weather beaten faces. Their clothes were equally dirty and ragged as the rest of them.

  "I don't like the looks of them," said May.

  "Nor do I," said Carlisle in a low tone.

  The wind shifted. "They smell awful," said Sheila, crinkling her nose.

  "And drunk," said May.

  Carlisle twisted around in his seat and surveyed the rangy silhouettes of the men standing in a row along the guardrail of the galleon like hungry crows. He slipped one of the oars in the water and attempted to turn the rowboat around, but it was too late.

  The skiff with the three drunken sailors in it scraped the side of the rowboat. The sailors were even worse up close. A man with a round face and bushy eyebrows gripped the side of their rowboat with a grubby paw and held it. He said something in French to them again.

  May asked, "Can you make out what he's saying?"

  "He wants us to do something," said Carlisle.

  "Well, I could have told you that!"

  The bushy-browed seaman spoke in English this time, with a voice as gravelly and hard as the rest of him. "What I said was, 'If ye could be so kind as to 'company me to the ship, I'd be much obliged.'" He pulled a long revolver from under his dirty green velvet waist-coat and pointed it at Carlisle.

  The pirate glanced at May out of the corner of his eye, then did a double take and looked her up and down plainly. He smiled wide, glinting a gold tooth. "And what do we have here?" He checked
over Sheila in the front of the boat. "A couple of lasses? In britches, no less!"

  The two other sailors in the skiff were suddenly agitated.

  "What? Are ye daft or just stinkin' drunk? The captain'll keel haul us if we go bringing lasses aboard," hollered a Scotsman with a blond ponytail and bright blue eyes, made even brighter in contrast to the tan and dirt on his face. Had he lived a kinder life he might have been handsome, but as it was, he had a long red scar from the top of his face running diagonally through his straight features.

  "He's right, Fowler," said the other, a sallow, pock marked man, the reminders of a disease fought years ago. "He'll kill us for sure."

  "I'll take the risk and the blame if it comes to that," the pirate named Fowler yelled, droplets of spit flying out of his mouth. "Nothing but cowards. I'm surprised the captain hasn't thrown the both of ye overboard fer yer nothin' but women yerselves."

  Fowler kept his revolver pinned on Carlisle while he climbed into the rowboat. He helped himself to the seat next to May, who had retreated backwards at the sight of the gun.

  The men in the skiff, glad to be relieved of the burden of Fowler, lost no time slicing through the waves back to the galleon. Fowler hollered out his unsavory opinion of them as they left, and his former skiffmates responded in kind.

  Fowler's attention shifted to Carlisle who was glaring at him openly. "Is it an engraved invitation ye'll be wantin', then? I suggest ye get rowin' unless ye'll want yer head blown off or are ye really as dumb as ye look?"

  Without taking his burning eyes off the pirate, Carlisle started rowing again.

  May heard the blood beat in her ears. Carlisle's face barely contained the hatred and contempt for the man sitting across from him. She was trying to judge if he was enough of a hothead to do something completely foolish and get them all killed.

  Fowler was barrel-chested, with thighs as thick as tree trunks under filthy, green velvet breeches, the knees shiny where the nap was worn off. The stench of him was incredible. It was a nauseating smell of stale sweat, alcohol and filth, and May kept as far from him as the narrow rowboat allowed.

  Fowler laughed heartily, feeding on Carlisle's daggered looks with obvious enjoyment. "Too bad. Ye're really not a very clever sort, are ye? Lettin' yerself and yer little friends get caught like this?" He finished with a sympathetic cluck of his tongue. "Ah, well. Brighten up. Ye know what they say—can't win 'em all."

  Fowler reached around May and put his meaty hand on her hip. He pulled her to him along the bench. "On the other hand, share and share alike's what I like to say."

  Carlisle forgot about rowing. "Let her go."

  Fowler smiled as he turned the revolver on May. "Keep rowin'."

  Carlisle clamped his mouth shut and started rowing again as the pirate put his greasy lips close to her ear. She felt the tip of the gun grind against her side. Fowler said in a whisper, "Yer father's got a bit of a temper, dear, but I daresay ye probably know that already, poor lamb. Though I think he just better get that look off his face if he knows what's good for him. Or for you for that matter."

  Something squirmed on the huge green shoulders next to her. She strained her eyes and saw that it was a fat louse.

  In an effort to make Fowler disappear, May closed her eyes. But his odor still remained, and the darkness only made her stomach reel with the rise and plummet of the waves. For the first time in her life, she felt seasick.

  Fowler cast his eyes on Sheila. He leered and smiled with his yellow-scummed teeth at her, until she ducked behind Carlisle, away from sight.

  "Yer other young friend's a bit shy. Oh, that's right. I meant to say—yer daughter?"

  Carlisle looked to be calculating how much time it would take him to wrestle one of the oars free of its pivot and clobber Fowler over the head with it 'till he was dead, dead, dead.

  Arriving at the galleon, they were forced up the rope ladder at gunpoint. The pirate went up last with the revolver pointed squarely at Carlisle's head.

  It seemed to take forever to climb the ladder. When May was several rungs away from the top, she heard Fowler shout, "What in blazes are ye stoppin' for? Get going or I'll put this shot through yer head."

  She looked below her. Carlisle was frozen on the rope ladder, not moving. He gazed up at her with a sick look that she had seen on his face before. She stepped down a few rungs. "You've got to get going."

  "I know."

  "Can't you just look up?"

  "I am looking up."

  Fowler was out of what little patience the man possessed. He fired a shot in the air. The blast of the report made her startle, and she nearly lost her grip on the ladder. Carlisle winced.

  "Get going!" Fowler screamed. He wrapped an elbow around a rung, drew up a horn of powder at his waist and popped the top off with his teeth. Cursing to himself, he began to empty some of the contents of the horn into the revolver.

  "What's he doing?" asked Carlisle, watching her face.

  She swallowed. "Reloading."

  Carlisle leaned his forehead on his white knuckles clutching the rung in front of him. Fowler closed one eye and took aim, and the cock of the revolver sounded loud as a cannon in May's ears. She screamed out, "Don't shoot! We're going."

  Staring down at the top of Carlisle's head, she willed him to move. But the man was stock still, except for the ends of his hair, glinting reddish in the blazing sunlight, which trembled.

  She looked out at the silver waves of the ocean and in her mind she saw rows of polished suits of armor. Perhaps if he couldn't summon the strength to save himself, an appeal to his overactive sense of chivalry might work.

  In the most desperate tone she could muster, she pleaded, "Please don't leave us here by ourselves, Mr. Carlisle. Please! Not with these men." And after she said it, she realized she meant it.

  She saw his shoulders slump. He said something that she couldn't make out.

  "What was that?" she asked hopefully.

  He lifted his head slowly and stared at his hand locked on the rung in front of him. He had the red imprint of the back of his knuckles on his forehead. "Nothing," he breathed out. She watched him uncurl one of his fingers from the rung.

  "We're going!" she shouted.

  "'Bout bloody time," yelled Fowler.

  May continued up the last few rungs of the ladder and arrived on deck where she was greeted by a disorderly mob of more unwashed, brutal looking men of every color and race. She sank back against the guardrail next to Sheila as a hubbub of alarm rose up in a confusion of male voices.

  The sallow, pock marked man from the skiff yelled, "It's not our doing. It's Fowler!"

  Carlisle spilled suddenly over the side, pushed by the man in back of him.

  Fowler burst up onto the deck next, "Coward," he screamed, his face red. Carlisle spun around and sprang towards the fat pirate with a murderous look in his eyes. A man, half a foot taller and three times as wide, grabbed him from behind and pinned his arms back.

  In a voice like the rumble of a foghorn, the huge pirate holding Carlisle said, "Fowler, the captain'll kill us all fer havin' those wenches aboard. Better to throw 'em overboard and drown 'em in the sea."

  May found herself expelling a breath she hadn't known she was holding.

  Fowler smiled and slid the revolver into the holster on his hip. He said, "The captain isn't due back 'til tomorrow, and we're celebrating. What's the harm? How's he gonna know and who's gonna tell 'im? Are you, Murdoch?" He turned to the crew, "How 'bout any of you?"

  The crowd of men, mostly drunk, gave a mixed response: afraid of the wrath of the captain and not altogether happy, either, to let their catch go. A skirmish erupted within the midst of them. Two men were pulled off one another.

  "See what it brings?" cried Murdoch, wrestling with Carlisle who succeeded in kicking him in the shin with his heel. Murdoch cursed, then shouted out, "Someone get me a rope."

  Three men rushed forward, one with a length of hemp and Carlisle was soon lost in a scuff
le of filthy shirt backs. The bundle of men tumbled and fell onto the floorboards. A tangle of kicking and scrabbling ensued from the pile. There was one exclamation of, "Get hold of his hands, will you?" and another of, "Blast it, he's wiry as an eel!" At last, they set Carlisle back on his feet with a bloody lip, glowering, his hair in his eyes and his hands tied behind him.

  "Get them all below fer now, 'til we sort this mess out," ordered Murdoch.

  The pock marked man grabbed May by the wrist. She struggled instinctively until he squeezed tighter, and she stopped squirming. "I got this one. She's not too bad, but kinda school marmy. She could use some fattenin' up."

  One of the crew shouted out something crude, and the crowd of men erupted into laughter.

  A balding red headed man with an eyepatch latched onto Sheila. "This one looks like an angel," he cooed toothlessly, drawing her closer. "I bet she smells like one too, don't you angel?" When she twisted away from him, he caught her ponytail and pulled her back.

  She screamed.

  "Shut that minx up," commanded the foghorn.

  The one eyed man clamped a dirt streaked hand over Sheila's mouth, and she stopped screaming. Over the soiled back of his hand, she breathed heavily through her nose, her sapphire eyes terrified and wide.

  "Mmm. And I was right, too," he whispered into her ear.

  From out of the bright sunshine, they were forced down a murky, narrow stairway into the belly of the ship. May hesitated on the second stair, momentarily blinded by the darkness. The pirate in front of her yanked on her wrist, and she stumbled down steps that were hardly wide enough for a child's foot. There was no railing, and she slid her hand along the rough wall to steady herself. She felt a spider run over her fingers.

  At the bottom of the stairs, it was pitch black. The moist air smelled of sour pickles and rotten fish. She and Sheila were hauled inside a small storeroom piled with boxes and barrels and abruptly let go. Minute shafts of sunshine shone down from the ceiling to the musty floorboards. Something scurried along a wall. There were no windows.

  Several loud male voices hooted and cussed at the top of the steep passageway. She heard Carlisle being hauled down the stairs next, his feet bumping and skidding the way down. Two pirates pulled him roughly into the room, then banged and bolted the door closed after them. She could hear them thumping up the stairs again, laughing and cussing.

  His hands still tied behind him, Carlisle whipped around and spit at the slammed door. He paced several times muttering to himself, then walked to the wall and plunked his forehead soundly against it.

  With her back against a wooden crate, May slid roughly to the floor. From behind her, she heard Sheila start to cry. Carlisle opened his eyes and looked warily over at the corner. Slowly, he walked out of May's sight.

  She heard his voice say softly in a lilting tone, "Oh, honey, don't do that. Please don't. It'll be alright. I'll get us out of here, I promise."

  May's eyes never left the door.

  His face suddenly appeared in her field of vision as he crouched down in front of her. He looked as though he had just bitten a lemon.

  He whispered, "May, can you get Sheila to stop crying? I won't be able to think if she keeps doing that." Then his face fell. "Are you alright?"

  She shook her head. "I'm having ... trouble."

  "Trouble? What kind of trouble?"

  "Catching my breath," she got out.

  "Did those—did they hurt you?"

  Her wrist was sore, but she didn't think it was broken. She shook her head.

  He looked relieved. "You're probably just upset."

  "No ... I just can't ... breathe."

  "May, I promise you. I'll get us out of here. Do you trust me?"

  "Do I have a choice?"

  "No."

  "Then I trust you."

  "Good. Do you feel better?"

  "No."

  He spun around on his heels in front of her. "Do you think you can help me with this knot?" His hands were purple.

  "I'll try." The rope was difficult to work on in the dim light. With this new activity to keep her occupied, the vice around her rib cage relaxed. His fingers were like ice. "What the heck kind of a knot is this?"

  "The deuce if I know, but it's tight."

  Sheila wiped her eyes and came over to help. Even with both of them working on it, the knot was still impossible to budge.

  "Use the knife, May!" said Carlisle.

  "The knife! I completely—" She shot Sheila an accusing look as she fished the butter knife out of her sock.

  "I didn't tell him. Honest!" said Sheila.

  May sawed at the coarse rope with the serrated blade. The outer fibers of the rope began to fray and break, but it was slow going.

  There was a scuffling overhead and angry male voices. She glanced up. "What the hell are they fighting about anyway?"

  "I don't know," he lied, looking at the ceiling. "Don't worry. I'll get us out of here."

  "I know you will," Sheila reassured him.

  "Aren't you done yet?" he asked.

  "Keep your pants on. It's almost through," said May.

  All at once, they heard the sound of loud footfalls descending the stairway.

  May forced the knife into his hands, and he stood up, moving away quickly to the opposite wall. She and Sheila hunkered down, huddled together with their backs against the wooden crate behind them.

  The door flew open and Fowler strutted in with two lackeys who grabbed Carlisle roughly by his arms then stood dumbly blinking down at the floorboards echoing with the sound of clattering metal.

  Fowler bent over and picked up the butter knife at his feet. "Well, well. Will ye look at that, lads, someone's been eatin' biscuits down here." He inspected the knot around Carlisle's hands. Then with a look thick with dissatisfaction, he kicked him from behind towards the door. The two lackeys picked Carlisle off the floor where he landed and thrust him up the stairwell.

  "I'll deal with you two later," Fowler said to the girls before slamming the door closed behind him.

  They heard Carlisle being shoved and bumped up the stairs. Sheila went white. "What're they going to do with him?"

  May swallowed. "I don't know."

  She heard loud laughter above them, then a hooping of voices. There was a shuffling of feet and then she heard something heavy hit the floorboards above. A burst of dirt filtered down. In a sunbeam, she followed its slow descent to the floor.

  Sheila stifled a sob, then covered her ears with her hands and closed her eyes tight.

  She looks ridiculous, thought May.

  There was another loud hooping of laughter over their heads.

  May clamped her hands to her ears and winced.