“Shall we go find them, then?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Let’s.”
Clearing his throat, he allowed her to lead the way. Mara wasn’t sure where to start. Tortuga wasn’t the most savory of places. Rather, it was a favored haunt of the derelicts of humanity and otherworldly beings who preyed on those sordid creatures. If ever someone sought a reason as to why a zombie apocalypse should be allowed and why humanity should root for their enemies to win, this place gave them cause for it.
She pressed her hand to her nose and sought to breathe through her mouth so as not to gag on the unholy stench of it all. How anyone could stand to live here, she couldn’t imagine. Yet there were many who deemed this hellhole some kind of desired paradise. Jack Rackham. Anne Bonny. Blackbeard. Jean-Luc St. Noir. Even Rafael Santiago was known to frequent these shores with giddy delight.
They were all mad, if you asked her.
But as they searched the taverns, Mara and Kalder found no sign of Du. Only a number of their crew embroiled in things she’d have rather remained ignorant of.
Especially when she found Bart in a full-on orgy with not one, or two, but three buxom maids.
While the man’s dexterity and prowess impressed Kalder, it left her a bit piqued and embarrassed. And Bart seemed flustered as he scrambled for his pants.
“Well, then…” Mara paused outside in the hallway of the brothel as they left Bart in the room to finish with his doxies. “I think we’ve run the course of the stews on the island.”
“Aye to that.”
And she was honestly grateful that they’d found no sign of Du in any of them. More grateful than she’d ever admit to out loud.
But there had been no sign of Belle, William, Cameron, or Du anywhere at all. It was as if they’d vanished into thin air. She couldn’t imagine where they might be. “Any idea where to look for our missing members?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, mum.”
And her guess was worthless.
Although …
She felt a peculiar pull. The kind she hadn’t felt in a long time.
Unsure about it, she allowed it to guide her down the stairs and back to the street, through the filthy town where she saw nothing redeeming about the place. Only absolute misery lived here. Along with the pox, neglected children, women in need of stern morals, men in need of lectures and decent role models, and poultry possessing some kind of feather-molting plague that ailed them.
Even the cats and dogs seemed to have questionable virtues.
She wandered aimlessly, wishing she were anywhere else.
Until she reached the outer edges of the soiled, brightly painted buildings. Here, there was a pristine little white church. Well kept and inviting, with long, opened hurricane shutters. Yet by its isolated and lonely condition, it was obvious no one in this godforsaken place sought refuge for their immortal souls. Better-kept chickens ran freely around the building, along with three stray cows that grazed in the yard and several mud-covered pigs. Dried-out palm trees twisted around the building like skeletal guardians. It was strangely eerie.
Yet it beckoned her closer.
She had no idea why. Until she entered the building and stopped dead in her tracks at the absolute last thing she’d ever expected to find.
Kalder was so stunned he actually slammed into her back.
Gaping, she blinked, then blinked again, unable to trust her own eyesight as she stared in total stupefaction at what was in front of her.
Du sat on the rear porch with a little girl in his lap, surrounded by a herd of children, reading a collection of Aesop’s Fables to them. Nay, not just reading to them, but reenacting the stories to the children while Belle made poppets for the girls and William carved soldiers for the boys. Cameron was helping some of the children dress their toys with spare rags from a box on the floor.
Well, I’ll be …
Du looked up and caught her gaping stare.
The little girl in his lap pulled her thumb from her lips and scowled at Mara before she leaned back to stare up at Duel. “Is she an angel, Uncle Dubu?”
“Nay, Lizzy. She’s another member of our ship. That be your aunt Mara.”
“Oh. She looks just like them bootiful angels Father Jeffrey talks about.”
He didn’t comment on that. Rather, he took a deep breath and closed his book. Then he gave a light hug to the girl in his lap. “Well, children, it appears I should be going.”
They let out a loud sound of communal disappointment.
“Don’t let me disturb you,” Mara hastened to assure them.
“It’s all right. Their dinnertime approaches.”
“Will you come again?” A young boy rose from beside the chair to pull at Du’s arm.
Du brushed tenderly at the boy’s hair and smiled. “Of course, Robby. You know you’re my only reason for coming here.”
The boy threw himself against Du with a giddy yelp and hugged him before he rushed off.
Du stood with the girl in his arms and carried her to an old priest who’d come forward from a side door that had been left ajar. She reluctantly allowed the older man to take her from Du’s arms while Belle and the others finished up their tasks.
The priest, who must be Father Jeffrey, thanked Du for his reading and promised the girl that Du would come again, as was apparently his habit.
Kalder moved to help Cameron while Mara went to retrieve the book from where Du had left it in the whitewashed chair. It was one she recognized from Du’s private collection he kept in his cabin on board the ship.
Now that she thought about it, he’d always been strangely studious … as far back as she could recall. There had never been a night he didn’t read at least an hour before going to sleep or a morning that didn’t begin with an hour of quiet study time.
Even before Vine had joined them, he used to travel to monasteries to barter for books. Ofttimes they’d rebuffed him entirely for his pagan ways, or tried to convert him before allowing him to look through their collections. Several times he’d almost been killed by the Romans as he sought scrolls from them.
Yet it’d never deterred him from seeking their knowledge. He’d even haunted the Cornish docks where foreign merchants would come to trade, asking if they had any manuscripts or scrolls he could purchase.
It was as if knowledge and books were as much nourishment to him as food.
Suddenly, his shadow fell over her. Looking up, she caught the haunted ghosts that resided deep inside his soul, and for the first time, she was curious about them. Curious about him. “What made you love the written word so?”
“My grandfather. He always said that education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge during adversity. And that a learned mind is the only wealth worth hoarding, as it is the sole treasure that can never be stolen.”
“Yet you were a ruthless barbarian?”