blocked by the side of the ship going by. She looked up at the stricken pirate faces over the rail…
And then she hit the water.
Chapter 2: Purgatory, or Just Hell?
Hitting the water was painful. Worse than falling from a speeding horse, the impact knocked the breath from her. The sea was surprisingly warm, the comfort she had sought, a mother’s embrace. The chaos and smoke now gone; she was enshrouded by the peace so long needed. The weight of her skirts dragged her down and the sun’s brilliance faded.
All would be well; it would all be over soon. She bore no fear: as a child, she had been told Heaven meant floating. Spreading her arms as an angel might, she leaned her head back. High overhead, the Constancy’s keel was a diminishing dark wedge, the pirate boats gathered at her sides like chicks.
Time came in blissful increments. Her heart pulsed, a hollow echo of itself, once…twice…slower…thrice…
A voice, deep and so very familiar, said, “Not yet.”
She yearned to remain, but knew she must go. It was what he wanted. She allowed the hands, ones she knew as intimately as the voice, to propel her upward, back to the light.
Rough handling shattered her euphoria.
A bit more gentleness was to be expected in the Dear Beyond, she thought crossly, as she was lifted and pulled. As if her complaints had been heard, peace was returned, gently rocking. Her hopes soared anew. She was being taken. This was the journey of which she had been told. Her heart raced with the anticipation of waiting glories, reunions with loved ones.
The journey, however, came to an abrupt end. She was manhandled once more, coarsely passed through a progression of hands. She thrashed in protest, desiring to be returned to the blessed exultation. To be shown such rapture only to have it taken was too cruel. The unpleasantness increased. She was dropped on a hard surface with the same care as the day’s catch. Her senses congealed enough for her to know that she laid half on her stomach, an arm pinned under her, in a growing pool of water. The vibration of approaching footsteps was felt through the wood under her cheek.
Through water-clogged ears she heard, “She breathin’?”
“Barely,” came in a male voice.
Breathing. Air!
Cate’s chest spasmed and she was caught between the gurgling wheezes of inhaling, while at the same time retching up foul-tasting sea water and bile.
“Aye, well, she lives now,” said the first.
On the small hope that she had been returned to the Constancy, she opened her eyes to a sideways view of a deck, but an unfamiliar one. Feet, bare and shod, surrounded her. She looked up into the faces of strangers staring down, with expressions of everything from curiosity to bemusement. A touch on the shoulder startled her and she swung out. With one arm pinned, however, she could only squirm like an exposed worm in the wetness, the feeble efforts bringing a chuckle from the onlookers. The hand returned to run from the crest of her shoulder down her back.
“Great Caesar’s ghost, lookit this, Cap’n.”
“Bloody hell! What the…?”
“Looks like a sword blade,” murmured another voice, gruffer than the first.
“Looks like she’s been through a war.”
Amid their wonderment and shock, came an inner voice.
Run!
Cate sprang up and fled. In a part of her mind, she sprinted like a startled deer, evading those giving chase. Another part knew she was but floundering, rubbery-legged and heavy-footed. Whether her path was aft or forward she had no notion. Foremost in her mind was the rail, and then the water. The pirates readily caught up and ran alongside, herding her away from her goal. Taunting, they plucked and snatched, shouting insults at her, until she came up against the raised face of the forecastle. She was trapped.
The pirates closed in. Cate elbowed a tall one in the throat and kneed a smaller one in the gut before she was seized and pressed against the wall. Ducking away from the mouths seeking hers, she screamed, a pitiful half-choked thing. They tore at her meager scraps of clothing to grope her breasts and plunge their hands between her legs.
A shout from somewhere amid them caused them to fall back. Cate was pinned to the wall, as if in presentation to a single man. A scar angled from brow to jaw across his brutish face. The thick braid hanging from the side of his head, studded with beads and bones, swung with his step as he strolled toward her.