Chapter Seven
I opened one eye to the dark low ceiling of a dungeon jail, the other too swollen to even blink.
It was obvious from the stone and mortar of the cell around that I was in the keep. I could hear the constant dripping of water from the ever present tide that rose and fell in pools beneath the building's foundation. Nature had started to eat away at the structure even while people lived inside it. It was a damp and cold place, too dark to see even your own hand in front of your face at first, until your eyes had adjusted to the darkness.
When finally I heard the sounds of voices echoing down to where I was, I wasn't exactly sure how long it had been. It felt like hours but it could have only been a few minutes. I squinted as the light from a torch illuminated my cell.
"De Saviola, you're coming with us," said a gruff soldier, armed with a pistol. I hated guns.
The men unlocked my cell and pulled me out, clapping a pair of cuffs on my wrists. The chain between them was heavy and rusted, and could easily be broken under the right type of pressure. The men marched me up a flight of corroding stairs up into a basement level of stone, and then into the first floor of the keep, where sunlight actually shone through windows. They led me into an open room where a dining table and several tall backed chairs were occupied by the babbling governor of Oporto, Don Cabrillo and, to my surprise, Elena.
She looked as beautiful as ever, dressed now in the dress that I had bought for her at the market, the sea green a perfect match for her eyes. She looked at me with half a smile and a raised eyebrow, one of the flowers I had left her tucked away neatly into her hair. She was still angry.
"Ah, De Saviola," said Don Cabrillo from his chair when he noticed Elena had stopped paying attention to his story. He pushed his seat out and stood up from the table with a flourish of his hand and a little mocking bow. "How good of you to join us," he spoke, in heavily accented Spanish. "I was beginning to wonder when you would wake up."
"Governer," I half growled, pushing the guards off me. My rapier was sitting on the table between the two of them, no doubt Don Cabrillo had wanted to throw it in my face that he had it. I shook the curls out of my eyes. "My Lady," I bowed my head to Elena with a wink. She was a countess, after all.
"This is her," was Elena's only response, and that she made to Don Cabrillo. She set down her knife and fork primly. "This is the pirate who kidnapped me."
Don Cabrillo turned from Elena to me, a look of disgust spreading across his features. He regarded me with his close set eyes, squinting. "The Countess has told me of all the troubles you have caused her, De Saviola," Don Cabrillo began. I listened eagerly, as it was all news to me. "Pillaging her town, killing her household, mortally wounding her husband-"
I snapped my head up to meet Elena's eyes with one of my own. She would not look at me. "I never meant to kill him," I blurted out.
"Kidnapping a noble lady, raping her!" Don Cabrillo continued on, each accusation stinging more then the last. I would never have kidnapped her, nor forced myself upon her. What reason would she have to lie, unless her husband truly had been killed, and Elena and I were at the end of our little game? Don Cabrillo back handed me across the face when he saw I was not listening. Elena gasped audibly at my pain.
I lifted my eyes to meet the governor's gaze with my lip bloodied and bruised eyes pounding. "Is that all?" I spat, too angry and rebellious not to answer with fire.
"For your crimes against the state you shall be beheaded," Don Cabrillo announced. He placed a hand on Elena's arm from across the table. "What more would you have me do with her, my lady?"
Elena looked at me with a twinkle in her eyes and stood, the Don standing also. Despite protests from Don Cabrillo, she took my rapier up from the table and held it up before her face, advancing on me until we were close enough to whisper. "I should kill you," she told me, not for the first time, looking up into my eyes with shining green ones of her own. She dropped her hands, setting the pommel of the sword into my waiting palms. "But I would much rather love you, instead," she finished, stepping away.
What happened after that all seemed to occur at once, both Elena and I mere blurs of movement. With a two handed downward slash I disabled the first guard, and a kick to the groin disabled the next just as he fired off a wayward shot from a clumsy pistol. Elena hemmed Don Cabrillo in a quick and easy attack, stabbing him in thr windpipe with her fingers and watching as he struggled for air. I tossed her the rapier which she caught with a flourish, and then swiped through my chains, the rusted metal giving easily under the sharp foreign blade. My father would turn in his grave to see me knicking his blade so brazenly.
"Tie him up," I told her, searching the wounded soldiers for rope. The second soldier seemed to be recovering, but a twist of his arm and a quick knee to the stomach was all it took to subdue him, and although he had no rope, the loop of keys around his belt would more then help.
Elena pushed sputtering Don Cabrillo into his chair and held him there, choking, until I used the soldiers belt to secure the governor in place.
When we were safe I grabbed Elena by the hips and pulled her close, our chests heaving from the exertions of the past moments. "Dont ever leave like that again," I warned her, leaning down to kiss her the way I had our first meeting. Someday I could picture telling our grandchildren the story.
"Don't ever doubt that I love you," she breathed, her fingers twisting in my hair. I grinned impishly.
"You must love me greatly indeed to save me from beheading," I responded, letting her go. She looked upset by the idea, caressing my neck with her soft hands.
"I could never let anyone kill you," she smiled, looking for all the world like an angel in green.
I continued to undress the bleeding soldier at my feet, taking first his good trimmed blue jacket and then his pants, handing them to Elena. "Nor I you," I smiled back at her, returning the compliment. "Now," I handed her the key ring and held out both wrists, "off with these shackles."
But Elena only laughed and turned away, pushing the soldiers uniform back into my arms. "Leave them, so you don't forget this," she told me with a giggle that was frustratingly endearing. "Hurry, change. It's going to be too late for any lady to be out on the docks with a gentleman soon, and we won't want to be spotted comandeering Callahanеs boat, would we?"
I shook my head at her stubbornness but nodded, changing into the soldiers clothes quickly, sheathing the rapier into the scabbard on the dining table and holding my hands out to Elena, who followed me, timidly at first.
"Are you angry with me?" she asked a moment later as I worked on navigating our way through the keep back to where I'd been held prisoner. My crew would most likely be there.
We could hear the muffled screams of Don Cabrillo who was just recovering the ability to utilize his vocal chords. Elena threaded her fingers through mine and pulled me faster through the candle lit house, having obviously been through it once before. "The Don is my husband's cousin," she added when it became evident that I was not going to answer her first question. "So wherever you plan to sail Callahan's ship to had better to be very far away from Oporto and Tarsus, Remy."
"At least I didn't kill him," I retorted as she took a flight of stone steps quickly, two at a time. I followed her blindly, lost in the underground maze of the keep. "No doubt he will have cut himself loose by the time we free my men and reach the docks."
"The docks are closer then you think," Elena smiled at me with a wink. "Just bring those keys and I'll lead us out of here."
I followed her with a creased brow deep into the decaying bowels of the keep skeptically. She had brought us back to where I had woken up after a short while, and I was able to fumble in the dark to open the other cells of the dungeon. "All those who would fight with Ridolpha De Saviola against the Lord Provost of Oporto and the Governor for gold and glory rise, to me!" I called, my voice echoing into the far reaches of the cages.
Everywhere the grunts of men in their cells grew until a near mob quickly followed behind me, and me behind Elena. We continued until the sea water started to rise around our waists and knees, and then Elena turned to me holding the lantern high. "Through here we swim and on the other side of this wall is the dock."
I nodded, trusting her enough to breath deeply and follow her beneath the water. With a host of men at my back and Elena at my side there was no ship we couldn't conquer.