Chapter Seven
A Pirate By Any Other Name
in which a crime is committed
Cora woke over and over again during the night, every time with her lips still tingling, as if Stephen had come to her to kiss her again. The last time she woke she sat straight up, her hand extended, expecting to really find him there. She unearthed the bottle of rum they'd shared and drank as much as she could stand before she curled her body around it and tried to sleep once more. It occurred to her without warning that the last time she'd been kissed was six years before.
You took lashes for that kiss too. The niggling voice that had spoken to her during the storm warned. Are you prepared to do it again?
Yes. The answer came as suddenly as her memory and hit her with as much force. She wasn't prepared for it the first time, although she knew Finn far longer than she had Stephen.
She raised the bottle again only to find that the bottom staring down at her.
"Have you found happiness yet?"
He was standing nearby, shirt still creased with sleep, no shoes on his feet, his short hair more messy than before, if possible.
"Not quite." She remembered to answer, setting the bottle down on the hammock and sitting up. She'd forgotten to put her bandana back on and her hair was riled with sleep, poking out at a dozen different angles. They both realized it at once and began to laugh as Cora made a vain attempt to settle it by running her fingers through the wild strands again and again.
Stephen watched her and then stepped forward, replacing her hand with his. She winced at the knots and he made murmured apologies she didn't really hear. Her hands found a new home on his arms and she tugged on them until he bent low enough for her to kiss him.
He reacted by tightening his grip on her neck, crushing her to him. The hammock swayed dangerously when he tried to deepen the kiss and she pulled back, afraid of falling. It would hurt to come down off the high.
The look in his pale eyes changed, and the consuming hunger she'd glimpsed was gone. Instead there was one of something close to tenderness- maybe even sadness.
Then the dreaded footsteps on the staircase sounded again, and they barely had time to find a sort of propriety before Mr. Blakeney dropped into their midst, not even waiting to catch his balance before he blurted his message.
"Sir, sir, there's dolphins! Riding in the wake of the ship! Come quickly before they leave!" With that he darted back up the staircase towards the happy calls of the other sailors.
"Dolphins," Stephen breathed. "I've been expecting them ever since we've reached the Caribbean, but we've had the most uncommon bad luck. Only sharks. I'm with child to see dolphins..."
Cora smiled to herself, remembering a time when she too saw dolphins as a sign of good fortune, a smile from the gods of the sea. He stood in his own world now, one she couldn't keep him from if she tried.
"By all means, go and see your dolphins." She leaned back in her hammock. "I'm in no hurry to leave."
He glanced to her and she saw the debate form in his mind before he dashed back into his cabin and returned with his sketchbook. She was just composing herself for sleep again, not expecting to see him until the dolphins were long gone, when to her surprise he bent at her side and pressed a lingering kiss onto her lips. She didn't even have time to catch her breath before he was running up the stairs. She felt no sense of loss as he left- only expectation for his return.
The trip from his orlop to the deck had never seemed shorter to Stephen. He hadn't even breathed since he'd kissed Cora good-bye- he could still feel the moisture of her lips on his and felt like a thief whose treasure was safely hidden. He only thought to breathe again when he stood at the bow beside Jack and saw the graceful grey bodies inches away.
"There you are, Stephen. You look uncommon flushed- surely they aren't that exciting!" Jack smiled.
"Only to you, and you have no appreciation for nature." He quipped, already bracing his book against the rise and fall of the sea. The Surprise was making a good clip, creating waves along the bow that the dolphins were leaping off of. Perhaps they hadn't been going fast enough before to attract them- this he jotted down quickly.
"We could find out how many knots we're making." Jack supplied, looking over Stephen's shoulder. He pulled his book closer to himself in response and gave the captain a withering stare.
"That wouldn't help, since you know full well I can't remember what a knot is besides a complication in a piece of string."
"Don't glare at me so, dear, it was only a suggestion. I wasn't trying to make you look the fool."
Killick was hovering nearby them, attempting to give Stephen a cup of coffee that he waved off. He soon turned to Jack again with a full plate.
"Which it is your breakfast that you left in the cabin."
"Thankee, Killick, but I'm not hungry." He picked up a slice of ham. "Perhaps the dolphins would enjoy some."
"Do not molest these creatures, Jack Aubrey. You'll scare them off, and I've been waiting for months aboard this blasted boat to see them."
"Ship, Stephen, ship. You're in a rare mood this morning! I'll leave you to your dolphins, seeing as how they're better company than I am."
With the captain's departure, most of the officers followed him. Stephen just caught Mowett's parting words on the breeze:
"There's a sign of good luck if ever I saw one. We'll catch those pirates for sure."
Blakeney remained with him, having fetched his own book from the mid's berth. The dolphins leapt alongside the ship and further out in the water made fantastic shapes in the air. Time slipped by- Stephen had his eye on a particular pair, a mother and child, the mother with long teeth marks down her flank. He was just sketching her side when all at once the dolphins dropped away, sinking like grey shadows into the deep without a backward glance for the sunny reaches above them.
"I wonder what frightened them." Stephen said with a frown, standing and leaning over the rail for further sight of them. "Perhaps they shall come back." Blakeney said nothing. His young face was screwed up with worry- for if the presence of dolphins was the best kind of luck out at sea, what did their sudden absence mean?
Then the shout came.
"She's murdered him! She's murdered him!"
Everyone turned to see Jonah Davies bursting from below deck, his chest heaving and his squinted eyes livid.
"Mr. Andersen has been murdered!"
Stephen pressed his sketchbook into Blakeney's hands and followed the sailing master below deck, his mind already racing. Who would've stabbed Andersen? Unless...
But he refused to follow that thought to its conclusion.
He doubled his pace, conscious of the other officers behind him, and found Davies crouched beside a pale form on the landing before the orlop. The wound was a stab in the solar plexus- he was already dead.
"Call the men to order. I want an account of every man's whereabouts for the last half hour." Jack instructed Mr. Mowett, then knelt at Stephen's side.
"Poor soul."
"There will be no need to call the men to order, sir." Davies said. "I know who did this."
The two friends froze.
"Do you have proof, sir?"
"I found this in the poor boy." He put into the captain's hand a long knife- practically a dirk. It was covered in blood, and long enough to uphold Stephen's theory that the boy was killed by an upward stab into his heart, one that angled under the ribcage.
"I don't see what this proves." Jack said after a moment.
"Look to the hilt, sir."
Stephen leaned closer so that he too could see the hilt. It was wrapped in leather to form a solid grip, and on the pommel of the blade was engraved a four point star. Jack turned it over in his hand and neither of them could restrain a hiss of horror.
The name Coraline Turner was stitched into the grip.
"It couldn't have been." Stephen whispered. But it was all too possible. With the sighting of the dolphins nearly every man on the ship had come on deck. Cora had been alone in the orlop all this time. And surely in all the excitement no one would've noticed if one sailor slipped down below... "Don't act rashly, Jack. There must be some explanation."
It was too late. Jack had already stood and gone to the stairs and shouted to pass the word for Mr. Howard and his marines.
"Doesn't it strike you as suspicious that Davies was the one to find the body?" Stephen hissed when Jack returned.
"Are you accusing me of murdering an innocent sailor, sir? I've called men out for less!"
"And I've killed greater men than you for less. How is it that you've come to have blood on your hands in any case?"
Davies clenched his red right hand.
"I pulled out the blade and tried to stop the bleeding."
"Surely a weathered sailor such as yourself has seen that a man survives longer with the blade in rather than out?"
"He was dead when I arrived."
"Then why did you try and stop the bleeding?"
There was no time to continue. He could hear the marines above him, and Jack speaking in low angry tones. He ran down to the orlop and found Cora sleeping there, shook her awake and pulled her out of the hammock.
"What? What is it?"
"They're coming for you."
"Who? What?"
"Andersen is dead. The knife they found in his body has your name on it." He took a deep breath and cupped her face in his hands. "Please, tell me it wasn't you."
Cora dropped to her knees for a moment, and stood holding her right boot. She reached inside, feeling around for something, and dropped it with a word Stephen had never heard a lady say before in his life.
"My knife is gone. It was the only weapon they missed when I was taken prisoner." She reached up to run her hand through her hair.
Stephen's heart stopped when he saw the red smudge it left on her forehead.
"Your hand... what's on your hand?"
She looked down at her right hand in befuddlement and drew in a sharp breath of surprise. Stephen held her hand palm up and saw that it was covered with blood.
"It's my blood." She whispered. "The wounds on my ribs- they reopened. I must've slept with my hand on them." Her eyes were wild with fear- they could hear the marines now. "You must believe me!"
It was too much to hide too late. The marines burst into the orlop, Jack behind them. Cora was snatched away from him, thrown against the nearby wall and held there, manacles slapped onto her wrists. She didn't struggle.
Jack came to stand before her, searching her eyes. She looked right back at him. A myriad of emotions ran through her eyes- fear, desperation, anger, and finally... resignation.
"Take her away." The captain said.
"At least listen to what she has to say!" Stephen called as they turned to take her.
"She has nothing to say." Jack said in a toneless voice.
He turned to his friend with a look of disbelief on his face.
"Jack- Jack-"
"You shouldn't be so surprised, Doctor." Davies said from his place by the stairs. "You can't expect much better from a pirate."
There was a flurry of motion near the entrance as Cora pulled herself from the grasp of the marines so she could turn and face the room once more.
"And what is that supposed to mean, Mr. Davies? What is a pirate? Is it loving the sea and the freedom of the wind at your back and the horizon before you? Is it the thrill of chasing an enemy ship and counting the money it will bring you long before it has struck its colors? Is it the necessity of killing another man to stay alive?" She met eyes with every man in the room. "By that definition, every man here is a pirate."
No one could respond to her assertion, not for a good minute. Then the captain repeated his request:
"Take her away. Put her in the hold and keep a constant watch on her. She is to hang at dawn tomorrow at Isla Cruces for the murder of Kevin Andersen."
Then they were gone. Jack looked back once to Stephen, then left. Stephen sat on the hammock Cora had left. He could still feel her warmth. A little later, when it was fading, Blakeney came down to him and handed him his sketchbook.
"You left this on deck, sir."
"Thank you, Mr. Blakeney."
He began to flip through the pages, but he was unable to absorb what he had drawn or written. Mr. Blakeney lingered at his side.
"I thought we knew her. Miss Turner, I mean."
His words caught Stephen on the page with his unfinished sketch of the mother dolphin and her scars. The whole situation struck him at once- it was unfinished. He hadn't said and done everything possible. Cora was innocent, and he was damned if he'd let her swing for a crime she didn't commit.
"It's a shame about her." Blakeney whispered, oblivious to the thoughts flying through his mentor's brain.
Stephen slammed shut his book.
"Not yet, it isn't."
A/N-- Wow, I actually didn't intend for that to happen. It was one of those twists that sort of popped out at me. Stay tuned to see how Stephen tries to save Cora! Reviews are always lovely. (especially those like FuchsiaII's, which was absolutely hysterical)
