Hunting Diablo

Excerpt from: Hunting Diablo

Port Royal, Jamaica. 1691

“I am sorry to tell you, Miss Stone, that you have come an awfully long way just to hear bad news.” The attorney peered over the top of his spectacles at her as she stood flanked by the local minister and his wife. Bad news!

“Is it about Edward and why he was not on the quayside to meet us?” Phoebe Stone asked, her brows drawn tightly together.

“It is. That, and your inheritance,” the elderly attorney replied with a slow shake of his head.

The scrubbed floorboards of William Pilkington’s overcrowded office seemed to come up to meet her before resuming their usual place below her feet. Edward!

“What has happened to Miss Stone’s fiancé?” the young woman beside her asked from under her black, close fitting bonnet.

William Pilkington leaned forwards and laid a blue-veined hand over Phoebe’s small white one.

“I am afraid the Reverend Mr. Edward Matthews is dead,” he said simply as both women gasped. “Killed by Diablo Ned, one of the most notorious pirates in the Spanish Main.”

Phoebe dived into her carpetbag to retrieve a handkerchief.

Martha Truman squeezed her shoulder. “There, there, my dear,” Martha said, then looked back to the attorney behind the table. “And Miss Stone’s inheritance?”

Mr. Pilkington picked up a parchment with a heavy wax seal hanging from the bottom. “Well firstly, three months before he died, Jack sent the bulk of his fortune, ten thousand pounds, to one Mr. Penn, who I understand is a Quaker and engaged in many charitable works in the northern colonies. The remaining two thousand pounds has gone.”

“Gone! What, all of it?” the Reverend Mr. Isaac Truman barked.

“Yes, except this.” Mr. Pilkington slid a worn, leather bound Bible across the table to Phoebe. “It was with Jack when he died, and there is a personal letter to you inside,” he told her.

Phoebe picked up the well-thumbed book and clutched it to her chest. She would read dear Uncle Jack’s letter later, in private.

“Where, pray, has Miss Stone’s two thousand pounds ‘gone’?” Isaac asked, resting his hand lightly on Phoebe’s shoulder.

“Mr. Matthews collected it, and it was in his possession when he was taken,” the attorney told them.

“Edward,” whispered Phoebe, who had just gone from heiress to pauper in three sentences. No one seemed to hear her.

Visions of Edward filled her mind. Edward smiling. Edward walking her to church. Edward swearing undying love for her.

The light touch on her shoulder changed to a painful grip. “Put not your faith in earthly riches, my dear,” Isaac Truman said.

She pressed her lips firmly together. She glanced up at him then back to the lawyer behind the desk.

“When? How?” she asked, as visions of the man she had travelled the Atlantic Ocean to marry continued to float through her mind.

“I am not sure of the details.” Mr. Pilkington reached inside the drawer of his desk and extracted a small, pigskin, drawstring purse. “The sailor who brought me the news of your fiancé also returned his personal effects.”

He emptied the contents onto the desk.

“Where is his pendant?” Phoebe asked as she rummaged through the pens, papers, buckles and buttons.

“Pendant?”

“A small, silver token on a chain. He never took it off.”

“This was all that was returned,” Mr. Pilkington told her.

“Maybe whoever killed him stole the pendant,” Martha said.

Phoebe shook her head. “Why would they steal a silver pendant but return his gold ring? Was his body brought back?”

“Good heavens, no. The sailor who returned these had been six weeks at sea. The body would have putrefied by then. We would have had to pour Edward Matthews into his grave,” Mr. Pilkington told her.

Phoebe put her hand to her mouth.

“Uh, yes—well, your pardon, Miss Stone,” the lawyer said gruffly. “He was buried at sea.”

“But why did they return his belongings?” Phoebe asked.

“The sailor muttered something about it being bad luck.” Mr. Pilkington leaned back and regarded her for a moment. “You look very like Old Jack, Miss Stone. Same brown-green eyes and mass of unruly golden hair.”

Phoebe repositioned a stray lock.

“Same determined chin. Knew Jack since he arrived on the island twenty years ago, old friends we were, old friends.” He gave a dry laugh. “We were young men then, both of us. He was one of old Cromwell’s soldiers come from England, and I a young lawyer still wet behind the ears.” He gave her a sympathetic look. “What will you do now?”

Mr. Truman coughed. “Go home, of course. What else could a respectable young woman do? I will secure Miss Stone a berth on a homebound ship in a day or so.”

Phoebe crossed her arms. “I’m not going home yet. Certainly not until I find out why Edward has been reported dead.”

“Mr. Matthews has been reported dead because he is dead,” Mr. Pilkington said with a sad smile on his face.

“I don’t believe it and I’m staying here in Port Royal until I find out exactly what has happened to him.” Her eyes snapped a challenge to Isaac Truman who loomed over her. “I will request a meeting with Governor Morris and also make some enquires in the town.”

The elderly lawyer’s eyes flickered to the window. The noise from the teeming street below drifted up to the room.

“Have a care, Miss Stone. Those who ask too many questions in Port Royal are apt to meet an unsavoury end.”

Phoebe stood and offered Mr. Pilkington her hand. “Thank you for your concern. But surely a couple of questions about a missing clergyman won’t harm anyone?”