Читать книгу Shipwrecked and Seduced - Amanda McCabe, Amanda McCabe - Страница 5

Chapter One

The Spanish Main, 1535

She was going to die.

That sure knowledge should have created panic, tears, screams. But all Maria Gonzales felt was a strange, cold calm. A distance from the whole hellish scene.

The storm raged up suddenly as their ship, the Santa Theresa, traversed the Mona Passage, a tempestuous strait between the islands of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. Black, boiling clouds scudded across the sky, blocking out the light and casting them into abject darkness. Wind howled from astern, shoving their mighty vessel across the waves as if it was a mere handful of kindling.

Rain pounded down; waves broke across the bow, high and strong enough to sweep a man overboard in an instant. The ship pitched and rolled like a child’s toy. When the masts, denuded of their sails, snapped, leaving them entirely at the mercy of the sea, Maria knew they were doomed.

She huddled below decks, with Contessa Isabella de Valadez and her other maids, kneeling in the briny water as Father Ignacio prayed.

“Oh, Almighty and merciful God, who hast commissioned Thy angels to guide and protect us…” he cried, his voice high-pitched with panic despite the comforting words. Contessa Isabella’s eyes were tightly closed, her soft fingers white as bone on the rosary beads. Her other ladies sobbed, clutching to her velvet cloak, but Maria’s eyes were wide open. If these were her last moments, she wanted to see everything. See her end coming, death borne on a cold, silvery wave.

All she saw was the cramped hold, barrels of provisions floating in the rising water, splintered masts driving into the ship at angles. Torrents of rain pouring down on them from the cracks overhead. The howling wind drowned out the women’s sobs, the priest’s prayers, and all she heard was the silence in her own head.

This was not what she had hoped for when she left Seville. Her parents long dead, abandoned by the blacksmith’s son she thought she loved, she’d known all that waited for her was a future as a tavern maid. Of scrubbing and fetching, of serving sweaty old men with grasping hands. A black prospect indeed.

But then, like a gift from the Virgin Herself, had come this chance to join the service of Contessa Isabella. Isabella was going to meet her betrothed, the nephew of His Majesty’s governor of the island of Cuba in the New World. A fresh chance, far away from Spain.

Maria had heard frightening tales of the islands, of course. Stories of murderous, heathen natives, bloodthirsty pirates, deadly fevers, strange foods. But surely it could not be worse than her life in Seville! In Havana, she could be someone else entirely.

The voyage went well at first. There was plenty of food, new clothes, a berth to sleep in with the other maids—and no fat old men with pinching hands. Her duties were simple enough—sewing with the contessa, helping her dress in the morning, listening to her read aloud from the lives of the saints. The contessa was young, shy, kindhearted and very, very devout.

And, unlike Maria, very afraid of what awaited her in Havana.

“I wanted so much to be a nun,” she confided once to Maria, whispering to her as they strolled the deck. “But my father insisted I marry his choice. What if—oh, what if he hates me? What if I cannot bear to be so far from home?”

Maria thought it did not sound so terrible, being married to the nephew of a royal governor, mistress of her own fine household. A household that was a real home, not a rough garret like Maria’s former lodging, or even the blacksmith’s soot-stained cottage. To possess fine gowns and jewels, and never worry about being hungry.

But she just nodded to Isabella, murmuring sympathetically, and Isabella decided they were confidantes. She began to speak of the future in the islands, of Maria remaining in her household there.

None of that mattered now, with the ship tossing and twisting beneath them. They were all doomed.

Still wrapped in that strange calm, Maria gazed around at the terrified faces. Were they the last thing she would see? The stench of salt water, tar, rotting fish and acrid fear the last smell in her nose?

A cold needle of panic pierced her calm bubble, and she tangled her hands in the soft linen of her chemise. The storm had blown up so suddenly there had been no time to dress. To prepare to meet the saints Isabella loved so much.

I’m only twenty, Maria thought sadly. There should have been so much more to life.

Isabella opened her eyes, meeting Maria’s stare. In her brown eyes, the same color and shape as Maria’s own, there was no sadness or dread. None of the shrieking terror of the other maids. There was only exultation.

“God is calling to us, Maria,” she said, holding out her hand. Her ruby betrothal ring gleamed like fresh blood on her white finger. “Can you not feel it?”

All Maria could feel was the terrible cold of the water. She shivered, and Isabella quickly swung her own velvet cloak around Maria’s shoulders. She also removed her necklace, a heavy emerald cross on a gold chain, and looped it around Maria’s neck.

“There is nothing to fear,” Isabella said. She stood up, clad only in her own white silk chemise, and held up her arms as if to greet a lover.

At that moment, a deafening cracking noise sounded all around them, like a cannon shot. Maria clapped her hands to her ears, screaming as the ship broke up beneath them. All the terror her frozen calm had kept at bay swept over her.

They all plunged into the sea, the stormy waves sucking them down and down, into the black depths.

For an instant she could think of nothing. The water hit her like a hundred swords. But then she heard a voice in her head. Not God or the saints, but her father. A sailor who had died when she was a child.

“Never fear the water, Maria mia,” he said, from somewhere deep in her memory. “Work with it—make it your friend. Move through the waves, kicking your legs and moving your arms, like a frog. Let yourself just float free.”

Maria wrenched herself free of the heavy cloak, kicking up toward the faint light above her head. She broke free, into the violent world of foamy waves, driving rain, the splintered wreckage of the ship.

The screams of the dying.

Gulping in a deep breath, she kept kicking, kept moving, until she could latch on to a large floating plank. She dragged herself up onto its surface, wrapping her arms tightly around its rough length, and holding on as the sea raged around her.

She felt the emerald cross press against her breastbone. “Help me,” she whispered. “Please, I want to live!”