Crimson.
The name was spoken in English, German, Italian, Spanish and the mixed musical tongues of the slaves brought from Africa. The French, as was their way, added a touch of romantic milieu to the killer and called her La Belle Dame a Sanglant Cheveaux-the beautiful woman of bloody hair. It made for some middling poetry and the occasional three-verse song.
She inspired a variety of feelings in rogues of all sorts-at least during the course of the tales told on a heavy night of drinking, or while crouched beside a dying campfire… fascination, respect, fear, skepticism, and an angry, bitter lust.
A tiny creature she was, from what they said, but one with a strange hold on most men of the Caribbean Basin, both white and black alike. There was even some talk of a deposed marquis who dueled for her honor although he'd never so much as laid eyes on the lady of sanguine hair. As he thrashed in agony for over an hour, dying from a sword thrust through both lungs, he whispered her name with a beatific smile.
Perhaps it was true.
But one had to be wily-as crafty as she was-for she could be enlisted by anybody who matched her price, and you could never be certain whose employ she was in at any given time. In London, Barcelona, Berlin, and Paris there were such hirelings as this, and they were called confidential agents. Mercenary investigators who would, if paid well enough, help take care of obstacles and quandaries. Perhaps retrieving a jewel stolen from your mistress…or finding useful secrets about your enemies…or tracking down a lost son or corrupt business partner…or carrying cargo past the navies of foreign governments.
Rumor, gossip, fact and exaggeration all lent to a slowly-evolving myth.
This was Crimson, a dark-eyed corsair. La Belle Dame a Sanglant Cheveaux grinning across a floor of broken men, with the molten sun draping over her shoulders…and there were always writhing shadows in the depths of the dark waters she sailed.
He needed air. Maycomb had barely closed the door to his cabin when he heard his wife begin to sob once again within. The plaintive sounds made him champ his teeth and, for a moment, the black rage filled his chest and his vision grew bright at the edges. He had to prop himself against the cold timbers of the inner hull before his eyes cleared. The Virginian felt a relentless sense of guilt burning in him about leaving Eileen behind, but he'd spent the entire night trying to comfort her in their narrow berth and he'd failed for all his efforts. Today was their daughter Daphna's nineteenth birthday and Eileen was inconsolable.
Trevor Maycomb wanted a taste of the Caribbean sea breeze-to fill him with renewed vigor after five days and nights of lying in the small and poorly ventilated cabin, with the loud and drunken carousing of the sailors on board keeping him from any rest at all. As if the lice and rats and stench of bilge water weren't already bad enough on this damnable voyage. By now he was desperate enough for relief that he'd even put up with facing the scamps and pirates who navigated this creaking, leaking vessel.
"This pounding sea is cleaving my skull in two," he muttered before he went up. He wanted his pipe but there was no point in retrieving it. One of the men was a pickpocket who'd cut the strings on Maycomb's tobacco pouch minutes after he'd boarded. The irony was not lost on him that a tobacco farmer couldn't even have a decent smoke on this dreadful voyage.
"Rotters."
He'd come to America from England to raise his crops almost seven years ago. He'd brought Eileen with him though he feared the distance between them and Daphna might prove to be too great a burden. The girl had remained behind in a private school considered to offer the best in education, surrounded by relatives and given a greater sense of freedom than most girls her age. Though the Maycombs stayed in contact with their daughter via correspondence and made an annual trek back to Britain, the separation took its toll on all of them.
But the colonies were no place for Daphna. Virginia was a more primitive land than he'd expected, and the townships were often fierce and uncivilized places. There was little law and he'd been forced to become a much different man than he'd once been. He was accustomed to a life of elegance, and though the profits in Virginia had been worth the pains, life remained filled with fearful uncertainties.
And they became even worse in the Basin.
"I know the scent of my own tobacco, you miscreants." He checked his flintlock, making certain the gunpowder had not gotten too wet in this damp air. Six years ago he'd never even fired a pistol, and now he could reload his shot in fifteen seconds. "If I catch the smell on any of you, you'll be hefted over the side."
