Mistress of the Stone (3 page)

A huge cache of tobacco passed by and then several crates of rum. Paqua folded his arms across his chest, as proud as a preacher on Sunday. “Aye, Luísa. The
Persephone
was savaged, but they left all her gold—her cargo. The only thing they did was shoot her
capitán
in the back before leaving the ship to drift at sea.”

Luísa stared at him in disbelief. “
Madonna.
They left the stores intact? Who hunts a pirate-hunter without taking the booty?”

Paqua didn’t seem to want to answer at first. He feigned interest in a pair of horned goats being led aboard and rubbed his hand across the back of a fine-haired doe.

“Paqua?”

The lines around his mouth tightened into a grimace, making him look more like a carved African mask than flesh. Paqua turned his head and spat over the ship’s rail. He nodded to a captured sailor now being dragged to the
Persephone’s
hold. “Their quartermaster says that Saint-Sauveur boarded them and shot
Capitán
Daltry in the back.”

Luísa’s stomach felt like it had hit the deck. She hated the
Inglés
, but she hated the French more, one Frenchman in particular. Saint-Sauveur. The last man to have seen her father alive. A pirate-hunter like Daltry, Saint-Sauveur supported the Church with shiploads of gold and jewels in return for the closed eye of the Pope. It was said the Holy Father even provided him with a papal writ declaring him a servant of God.

Saint-Sauveur was as pious as a wart on a pig’s ass.

He dressed with the panache of a dandy and all the arrogance due a Frenchman at birth. Saint-Sauveur needed the whole world to dress him. His coats were made from the finest broadcloth and velvet. Young crocodiles donated their hides for his boots, and exotic birds plumed the broad black hat he wore to match his swagger. For years, he adorned his ears with fat gold rings, but some ferocious accident had left one ear a ragged stump. Now he wore his gold on fingers and throat alone.

He completed his attire with matching ivory muskets that hung from his belt to make up for the bollocks in his breeches. It was irony perhaps that he hid his wealth and pomposity beneath an abbot’s plain black cloak. The priest, they called him. But everyone knew he was the devil incarnate.

“Which way did the Frenchman sail?”

“They say the winds took him west. He’s long gone by now and away from our bow. We can rest—”

“Get
Capitán
Daltry aboard.” She slid her cutlass back into its leather sleeve. The cold scrape of metal skimmed against the collar of the sheath, echoing the hardness in her voice.

Paqua stared at her as if she were mad. “What good is he to you? He’s deep in the arms of fever and rot.”

“Get him aboard,” she repeated, brooking no argument. “That heretic is the closest link we have to finding Saint-Sauveur.”

“The man is nearly dead.”

“He’ll die when I say he can die! Get him below. I’ll make him well enough to talk if I have to strike a deal with the devil myself.”

Paqua ordered two men to take the
Persephone’s
captain aboard. They watched as the men carried him below, pale as a cadaver, smelling as foul as flesh could get on a man clinging to life.

They put him in the galley’s meat locker, the only hold with a table big enough to cut off limbs and sear jagged wounds shut. With luck, his surgery was finished. All they needed now was to keep him alive long enough to make his confession.

The shaman spit over the rail again. “We are better off drowning these devils to silence. The French are already looking for us. We don’t need the
Inglés
on our wake too. Daltry is a pirate-hunter of influence.”

“Daltry will tell us what we need to know and then you can throw him overboard. I don’t intend to keep an Englishman on board my father’s ship.”

“I doubt the
Inglés
will be very accommodating when he finds out you’ve taken his ship.”

A crewman passed by with a sack of fresh sugarcane, its sweet scent tickling Luísa’s nose. It was the one weakness she indulged at every opportunity. Luísa grabbed the crewman by the shirtsleeve and ordered him to halt, giving her a chance to saw off a ragged knuckle from the cane with her boot knife.

“The
Inglés
won’t be the wiser—at least not right away. When he regains consciousness, I’ll tell him that the
Persephone
was lost and he was the sole survivor.” She peeled the tough green skin of the sugarcane and breathed in its sweet seduction. “I’m sending Sandoval and a small contingent to sail the
Persephone
to Aguilar where she can be repaired and sold.”

Paqua snatched the cane with one hand and the knife with the other. “Bad enough that you ruin your teeth with this rot, and then to use a sacred knife.”

“My knife and my sugarcane,” she said, robbing him of both before he could react. She wiped the blade on her breeches. “The only thing sacred about this knife is that it keeps me in sugarcane.”

Paqua made the sign of the cross before blessing the four winds. “Insolent wench. The blade is magicked. You should have more respect.”

“Aye, so you’ve said. But I’ve not come across any dragons or ogres, so it’ll have to serve as my peeling knife until they show up.”

“You’re not so old that I can’t take a switch to you, Luísa. Mind what I tell you. It could save your life one day.” Paqua’s withered brown face turned back into a mask. “Danger lies in the most mundane.” His gaze drifted to the hatch leading below. “Even in the remains of a half dead pirate-hunter.”

“If the
Inglés
will grace me with a few minutes of confession, I will send what’s left of him to the devil.”

“Careful, Luísa. Daltry is no fool.”

“Neither am I,
viejo
.” She took a nibble off the tip of the sweet meat then rolled it in her mouth like a fine cigar. Her gaze returned to Paqua and his grudging scowl. “I’ve had nothing guiding me but a severed finger and rumors. Now I come across a half dead Englishman and a French coward who would shoot a man in the back for no apparent reason. Two pirate-hunters, and one tries to kill the other without taking his ship or stores? There’s a connection there, Paqua, and I mean to find out what it is.”

“Very well,” Paqua conceded with a tired groan. “You can have the
Inglés
—but not the sugarcane.” He snatched it from her once more, careful to keep it out of her reach. “It was your father’s plan to marry you off this year. I intend to honor that request, but I can’t give you away if you have a mouth full of rotten teeth.” He knighted her with the chewed off sugarcane with a tap on the head, then tossed it overboard. “You have the determination of a Jesuit when it comes to sweets, but you’ll not win this hand.”

Cruel man. Had he no sympathy for her addiction?

Luísa worked her way past the captive crew of the
Persephone
, hoping to come across another bundle of cane. One prisoner dared to gawk at her too long and earned three broken teeth from a carpenter’s mate who took exception to the Englishman’s cheek.

Fool, she thought. He was lucky all he lost were his teeth.

Women were a rarity on board sailing ships, but a few did sail, proving themselves tougher than their brothers. Luísa hadn’t been given a choice. When Papa retrieved her from the Spanish mainland, she knew she would never see home again.

The crew grumbled about the bad luck a girl-child would bring aboard ship, but Paqua calmed them with an enchantment and told them the bones had foretold good bounty as long as she was kept safe.

The old bone-juggler. He could bend the truth better than a French whore at confession.

A streak of pride coursed through her as she watched the crew strip the
Persephone
with brute efficiency, making her ready to sail. They were a sound lot and Papa had trained them well. Few had opted to leave him after she’d been brought aboard.

Papa had trained her well too. He might not have been a doting father, but he’d been a mindful one. If his daughter was to live a life at sea with him, she had to learn not only the makings of a ship but the makings of a crew.

She didn’t often miss the lace or the long skirts, but as she grew into womanhood, she missed something far more intimate. Surrounded by men day and night, it had become harder and harder to overcome her need for the company of a man—any man.

And there lay the challenge.

As her father protected her virtue, so did every crewman on board ship, sworn by a blood oath when they signed the
Articles of Conduct
. Finding a man willing to tempt the wrath of so many protectors proved next to impossible.

No one defied
Capitán
Tavares, and the men on the ship regarded her as a daughter, lest they lose their manhood at the end of the captain’s blade.

Despite her protests, Papa had sworn to marry her off in her nineteenth year—this year. A calculating man, he’d been making alliances with governors and rich merchants of influence for years. When the time came, his daughter would marry well.

Luísa didn’t want to marry a stranger, but celibacy wasn’t much of a future either, especially lately. Her skin flushed with heat. She was ashamed to admit she had been reduced to spying on a couple of the younger men as they masturbated. There wasn’t enough confession to absolve her sins now.

Luísa squeezed past a row of sun-baked crewmen stretching towlines then worked her way to the lower deck. Dooley, the
Coral’s
youngest crewmember, raced ahead of her and opened the door to the cabins below.

“Thank you, Dooley,” she said absently.

“Yes’um, Miss Luísa.” Dooley’s eyes sparkled in earnest.

He knew enough never to touch her, but he was still in love. A whelp’s love, Paqua had teased her.

Dooley was the only
Inglés
on board who hadn’t earned the knotted end of a slave collar. Papa had found Dooley when he was no more than a child, hiding in a half-spent water barrel on board the
Victory
. Anyone else would have given him the lash for fouling the drinking water, but Papa took pity on the lad and brought him aboard to serve his ship. The boy was a few years younger than Luísa, and her father thought someone closer to her age would make a better companion than the rough and bawdy crew of the
Coral
.

Dooley followed her downstairs. “Can I do anything else for you, Miss Luísa?”

Luísa turned toward the boy and rewarded him with a smile. “Why, yes you can, Dooley. Fetch me some hot water and clean rags, then meet me in the galley.”

“Yes, Miss. Right away.”

Luísa followed the steady torrent of Scottish curses coming from the storeroom. Ian McLeod was the closest thing they had to a surgeon—not that anyone could mistake him for one. They had pressed him into service when they liberated him from the bowels of an English frigate too far from home. The giant Scotsman was good at closing wounds and extracting musket balls, but little else.

She entered without knocking at the door.

“What’s wrong now, surgeon?” The question dripped with sarcasm. McLeod wouldn’t know a sunny day if it hit him on the ass.

“This bastard’s goin’ to die on us, and Paqua will have me head when he does. I can’t do nothing about this fever. He’s burnt up with it.”

Luísa leaned over Daltry’s sweat-soaked body. The reek of sickness rose from him like bad air, and she covered her mouth with the sleeve of her shirt. She felt his face, almost too hot to touch. “Damn English constitutions. I just need him awake for a few minutes.”

“Ha!” McLeod grunted a laugh. “’Tis what they get for fouling their bloodlines.”

Luísa looked around the room. They’d had to kill the milk cow when her udder went to rot, and her carcass was still hanging all about them.

Mice scampered at Luísa’s approach, despite Fat Jack’s constant vigilance. She flinched when he pounced from the shadows and caught two of the vermin with one swipe. The mouse squeals ended abruptly and Fat Jack hauled them away so he could eat in peace. If Daltry didn’t die of his own rot, he’d surely die in the surgeon’s care.

Dooley kicked at the door as a means of knocking, and then entered, his arms loaded with rags and a big bucket of water.

“Take those to my cabin, Dooley, and set up a hammock at the far side. We’re moving this man to my quarters.”

Dooley’s eyes widened as big as oysters. “Ma’am?”

“Go on. Do as I say.”

Dooley turned to leave, but McLeod threw a dagger at the doorpost. The shiny hilt waggled on the beam, halting the cabin boy dead in his tracks.

“Belay that order, lad.” The surgeon turned to Luísa. “Ye can’t have a man in your quarters, Mistress. Yer father—what would he say?”

“I need this heathen to live, McLeod. And he can’t do it in this squalor.” She snapped her fingers at Dooley. “Get going, boy. I’ll get a couple of men to carry him.”

Dooley took off, but McLeod refused to give in.

“Luísa, lass, be reasonable. Paqua will report this to yer father when we find him.”

“We won’t find Papa without information. Besides, this man is nearly dead. What exactly do you think is going to happen?”

McLeod wrung his hands. “That little shaman will take it out on me for sure. Ye know how he likes to use his weirding ways.”