The Dust of 100 Dogs - A. S. King [85]
“No, we should be all right from here, thank you,” Seanie said, knowing for sure, right then, that something had been going on between the two of them.
They arrived at the bed in her room, and Seanie made Emer sit down and hold her boot out to him. He gently shimmied it off and removed the thick bandages that were now soaked with blood. “I’m going to fetch the doctor.” He walked out of the cabin.
When neither Seanie nor the doctor returned, Emer reached for a bottle of rum and gulped. What a day this had been. She’d finally punished the Spanish, and yet she didn’t care what jewels the searching men found or what gold she’d just stolen. All she thought about was Seanie and the questions that surrounded him. What would they do now? Where would they go? Would they go back to Ireland? Was she able to become a proper Irish woman again?
Seanie returned. “David wanted me to tell you that the fleet is splitting now. He reckons we’ll all meet in Port Royal over the next week, if that’s all right by you.”
She nodded, and the doctor arrived. He washed her foot with salts and warm water. He located the bleeding wound and treated it. “That could be septic, Captain. You’d want to rest awhile now and stay still.”
“I see no reason to go anywhere today anyway,” Emer replied. “Come and check on me tomorrow.”
Seanie locked the door behind him and sat down on the bed. He made sure Emer was comfortable and fixed her a tray of food. They had a bed picnic, snuggled safe beneath the warmth of blankets, and giggled a lot. When they were finished eating, neither took a minute to say much before they undressed and disappeared into each other’s skin for the first time. It was as easy as performing an underwater somersault for Emer, and made her stomach feel similar butterflies. As the sun set on the day Emer Morrisey finally sunk the Spanish fleet to the bottom of the sea, she and Seanie made love eight times. Once for each of her remaining toes.
As the Vera Cruz sailed southwest toward Port Royal, her crew took turns drinking and dreaming aloud.
“I reckon I’ll settle down. Buy some pigs. My Pa kept pigs,” one said.
“A ship of my own! Arg!” another replied. “And a fine wench in my bed!”
Only two other ships from their fleet were still visible. The rest had gone in different directions after moving the bulk of Spanish plunder into the hull of the Vera Cruz.
Emer woke up quietly and turned to face Seanie. She stared at his sleeping face and tucked him in tightly with her blanket. She rose, testing her foot, then put on her trousers and limped out the door through the men’s quarters. She produced a large key from her pocket. Once inside the cargo hold, Emer locked the door and lit the lamp that hung next to it. The room sparkled.
“Spanish fools,” she thought, shaking her head. She leaned down over two open boxes and touched a few shimmering things, then found a crate to sit comfortably on. She pulled out her dagger.
The first four boxes she opened were filled with standard gold doubloons, more than she’d ever seen before, but somehow they didn’t excite her. She leaned toward one of the locked chests and dragged it forcefully over the planks. Try as she might, she couldn’t get the chest open, so she moved to the next one and tried it, concentrating on two loose hinge pins. When it opened, Emer felt a lick of surprise to see nothing but black fabric staring back at her. She dug her hands in beneath it and found three tied sacks.
Getting up, she moved to the door for the lamp, brought it to the pile of crates, and placed it on a hook above her head. Then she picked up one of the sacks and untied the knot at the opening. Polished gems poured out of the bag like fast water, onto the black fabric. Most were red or burgundy—rubies, a few garnets or amethysts, some small and round, others as big as her big toe, or bigger. Emer soon found that the sacks of gems were divided by color. The second one held mostly emeralds, jade, and malachite, and the last one mostly opals and a few sapphires. She searched the bottom of the chest and found