The Opal-Eyed Fan
By Andre Norton
Though Lost Lady Key does not exist, features of two coastal islands and one key are combined to furnish its checkered history. On Sanibel a mysterious race built a city of canals and mounds composed of shells and rammed earth, as well as shell-paved roads. These unknown people are rumored to have been exterminated by an uneasy combination of Spaniards and imported Seminoles, leaving only evidences of a civilization somehow linked with that of the Mayans of South America.
Captiva, Sanibel’s twin island, is supposed to have served as a prison for women taken during the pirate raids of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
But Indian Key provided the house with its escape route through the sea turtle pens, its master who refused to acknowledge the power of Key West, and its doctor who pioneered in growing tropical fruits in Florida. An Indian massacre in the middle 1800s brought an abrupt end to this small empire—the fabulous house (known for its luxury, up and down the coast) was burned. A pall fell over the site and no attempt was made to rebuild or reuse the land.
1
The room was dusky dark, but it was quiet. Where was the wind—that threatening, screaming wind which had engulfed the whole world, whipped the sea mountain high?
Persis Rooke turned her head slightly, though she did not yet open her eyes. Here was no musty odor underlaid with the stench of bilges. Rather, a faintly spicy fragrance. Her mind seemed as sluggish as her body, and the latter bore painful bruises that made her wince as she shifted position a little.
She stretched out her hands. Under them was the smoothness of linen. Was this a dream? She did not want to open her eyes and find herself once more wedged into the narrow ship’s bunk. She lay still, grateful for the silence, the feel of the linen, and tried to remember as she slowly, at last, opened her eyes.
This was—a room! Not the tiny stifling cabin into which she had barely been able to squeeze herself and her belongings. She lay on a real bed—she must be in a house—on land!
A drapery of netting hung about the bed, making the rest of the room dim and misty looking in the morning light. Solemnly, as she had sometimes done as a child, she gave the skin on her right wrist a sharp pinch. The resulting pain was reassuring. She was awake. Now Persis braced herself up on the wide expanse of the bed to look around. Her head whirled a little and she fought that giddiness stoutly.
She must remember— She had been on a ship, there had been a grating crash as the Arrow had brought bow up on a reef. Then—
The wrecker!
Persis shook her head in spite of the giddiness that it caused. She felt the warmth of the returning outrage. That—that pirate! The one who had loomed out of the storm to where she clung to a rail, had shouted some incomprehensible words at her, and then carried her, in spite of her screams and her attempts to fight free, to toss her down into the small boat below, her hair streaming about her, the protests battered out of her by the wind along with the air from her lungs. She had been so angry at his high-handedness that she had almost lost her fear. But after she was in the boat—
Persis shut her eyes again. No, it was very queer. She thought she would never, never forget that pirate’s face, his treatment of her as if she were a bale of goods. But later—there was just nothing.
Uncle Augustin!
What had happened to Uncle Augustin?
Persis, now thoroughly aroused, slid to the edge of the bed, hooked fingers in the netting, and jerked it along until she could find an opening in it. That sense of duty long drilled into her was completely awake. She hardly glanced about the shadowy room where only an edging of light showed around the massively shuttered windows. She must find her uncle. He had been only a feeble shadow of himself before the storm. Perhaps—
She looked around a little wildly; she simply could not go charging out of this room wearing only her night rail. And that, she noted now, was not one of her own fine lawn ones, but a garment too big and of coarser stuff. Where was her clothing?
At least that wind was gone. But under her feet the floor still seemed to sway as if it were the deck of the lost Arrow. She made her way to the nearest window by holding on to the edge of the bed as a support.
To throw open the shutters was a task she fumbled over, though she was usually quick with her fingers. Then she looked out into a still morning. At first nothing was visible but the crowns of palms. Then, by leaning forward on the broad windowsill, she discovered that she was on the second story of a house which had been, in turn, erected on a mound of—shells? Could they be shells? How could so substantial a dwelling have been placed on a foundation of shells?
There was water below, and a wharf on which were piled boxes and barrels and—yes—her very own trunk!
Also, there were people; Persis watched three dark-skinned men trundle a large box by wheelbarrow back toward a building of which she could see only a bit of roof. The three wore breeches cut off at the knees, leaving their brown legs bare, and their shirts were much patched, faded, and salt stained.
Wreckers—like that brute aboard the Arrow.
Persis felt distaste and a touch of fear. Though Uncle Augustin had said that the wreckers of the Keys saved lives and goods, she remembered talk in New York of their greediness, tales of conspiracy between some captains and the Key men to lose ships on marked reefs. They were certainly not very far removed from the pirates who had earlier made these same waters their own and had had hiding places hereabouts.
But what had happened to Uncle Augustin?
Now that there was more light, Persis saw a wrapper lying across a chair by the bureau. As she snatched that up, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the wall. It was a very ornate mirror, perhaps better suited for a formal parlor, deeply framed in gilt which was a little dimmed. But the dimming had not extended to the glass.
What a miserable sight she was!
No neat braided knot to top off her coiffure, no carefully disciplined bunches of side curls, just a mass of tangled brown hair sticky and matted, as she discovered when she poked and pulled at it. She looked like one of those noisome hags illustrating one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s weird stories. Persis was no beauty, but she had never allowed herself to be untidy. Now her reflection appalled her. She was startled by a tap at the door and whirled about to call:
“Come!” Then she added, “Molly!” with deep relief, running to throw her arms about the woman who entered, a liberty Molly would never have allowed normally. For she was as set in her idea of the perfect lady’s maid as Persis was schooled to be the lady in charge of Uncle Augustin’s household.
“Miss Persis, you’ll catch your death!” Molly freed herself and shook out a light cloak from the bundle she carried, putting it around the girl’s shoulders. “It’s a mercy we ain’t all at the bottom of that there sea, so it is!”
“Where’s Uncle Augustin?”
“Now you have no call to fret, Miss Persis. He’s as snug set as a baby in a hearth cradle. Shubal has took him some soup and he swallowed near all of it. That the good Lord brought us safe to land is a mighty mercy—”
“But where are we?”
“This is Lost Lady Key, leastways that is what they call it. And you’ve been sleeping right in Captain Leverett’s own bed. This is his house.”
“Who is Captain Leverett?” Persis’ head ached. If Uncle Augustin had his faithful Shubal in attendance, she need not worry about him for the moment. Molly’s calm had its effect, for she was acting as if it were the most natural thing in the world for Persis Rooke, a most respectable lady, to wake up in the bed of an unknown captain in a house she did not even remember entering.
“Why he’s the one who rescued us. It was he as got you into the boat so his men could bring us ashore. Don’t you remember that, Miss Persis?”
The pirate—oh, she remembered all right! Persis set her teeth. It was not likely she’d ever forget being thrown about. Molly could talk of being saved, but surely one did not have to be treated like that!