Pirate Wolf Trilogy (11 page)

Dante gave the
red-bearded ship’s master a curious look. “A few hours ago you
would have gladly slung me in a noose.”

Spence
shrugged. “That were a few hours ago. Since then I’ve come to think
ye’re an honorable bastard despite yer lapse o’ manners.”

Pitt grinned
over the rim of his cup. “He’s actually fairly well housebroken
when he isn’t chewing nails and spitting fire.”

Spence
guffawed. “Aye. I figured as much when he didn’t rape my daughter
when he had the chance—likely the provocation as well.”

"
Was she
disappointed?” Dante asked dryly.

“Only that yer
gun did not fire. She thought it a dirty trick to blow out the
prime.”

“Lucky for me I
did or she would have blown out my gizzard.”

“Lucky fer ye
she did not carve it out anyroad. She probably had more blades on
her,” he added matter-of-factly. “Even stripped naked an’ searched
ten ways to Sunday, she would have had one hid somewheres.”

“I’ll keep it
in mind.”

“Just keep it
in yer breeches, Cap’n,” Spence said with a not-so-jovial smile.
“I’ve yet to see a man take somethin’ from her she did not want to
give. Just like her mother, rest her soul. Regular hellcat when her
fur was ruffled. Gave me this”—he tilted his chin and lifted a
hoary handful of red fuzz out of the way to reveal a six-inch-long
scar running down the side of his windpipe—“on our weddin’ night,
an’ this”—he pulled open the V of his shirt to display another
badge of honor high on his shoulder—“the day she told me she were
with child.”

“Her way of
celebrating happy occasions?”

Spence
chuckled again. “She were Portugee. A rare dark-eyed Gipsy with hot
blood an’ mischief in her soul. I took her off a ship we raided an’
wed her the same night; she took offence we did not stand before a
priest, so she did not consider us married. When she found she was
with child, she could scarce bear the shame an’ forced me, at
gunpoint, to seek out a Catholic sermoner. The gun went off,
accidental-like, an’ she wept fer two days thinkin’ she’d killed
me. When she judged I would live, she packed me into a cart an’
propped me in front of a priest anyway.” He paused and smiled
wistfully at the memory. “Only wench I knew could give a man the
sweetest taste o’ heaven one minute an’ the hottest bite o’ hell
the next. Have ye a wife o’ yer own?”

“I had one.
Once.” Dante said flatly. “But she was out of my life a long time
ago and we are both happier for it.”

Spence
chuckled. “Not a pleasurable experience, I gather?”

“No more
pleasurable than falling into a pit full of snakes.”

“
Now ye
sound just like my Beau, Claims she wants no part o’ a husband, ner
any man who would pull her away from the sea.”

“Who put her
here in the first place?”

Spence snorted.
“She put herself.”

He
assumed his companions’ cups were as empty as his and refilled all
three before setting aside the crock and taking a slow, leisurely
scratch at his armpit. “Aye, so now I can tell ye all about what
put my Isabeau on board the
Egret
…
if ye need more time to decide if ye can trust me … or ye can tell
me what killed yer ship.”

Pitt and Dante
exchanged a glance. Pitt’s shrug was almost imperceptible and Dante
lowered the cup from his lips, swallowing carefully.

“Greed, Captain
Spence. I warrant it was greed and cowardice that killed my
ship.”

Spence’s
beard shifted over a thoughtful grimace. “When we heard about the
raid on Vera Cruz, we also heard there were two ships sailed away,
stuffed beam to bilges with gold.”

Dante nodded.
“When the venture was first conceived, I knew it would need two
ships. The risk was enormous, as you can appreciate, but the prize
was worth ten times what a single vessel could hope to earn on a
dozen voyages. The Queen herself put forward the candidate. She
assured me he was … cut of good cloth.”

Spence grunted.
“Even the strongest canvas comes with flaws, lad. Some with great
gapin’ holes.”

“Aye, well, you
can be sure Victor Bloodstone will have a great gaping hole in him
ere I’m finished.”

“Bloodstone?
Walsingham’s bastard?”

“
He
prefers the term
nephew
, but aye.
One and the same.”

“Last I heard,
he were the new darling o’ the Court, the prettiest face to amuse
the Queen.”

“
Indeed,
he has a pretty face and Elizabeth likes to surround herself with
beauty in the hopes it might be contagious. He also knows how to
sail a ship, damn his soul; I can’t fault him for lack of skill or
experience. It was the only reason I agreed to take Bloodstone on,
and in the beginning he did not disappoint. We sailed for Vera Cruz
like two hungry wolves stalking fresh meat.” He hesitated and
stared blankly out the darkened gallery windows. “Do you know the
Spanish harbor at all?”

Spence
shifted in his seat, obviously not wanting to appear ignorant, but
at the same time not wanting to admit he had never risked so deep a
foray into Spanish waters. Vera Cruz was a terminus for the mule
trains that carried gold and silver out of the mountains of Mexico.
It had confidently been declared by the Spanish to be out of reach
and impregnable to any foreign sail, as heavily fortified as any
madman would expect a treasure depot to be.

“
At any
rate,” Dante continued, talking now to his rum, “thanks to Lucifer,
we knew of a secluded bay on the Island of Sacrifices, not five
leagues from Vera Cruz. It was big enough to hide two ships and
easily within striking distance of the harbor. We each carried the
framework for several pinnaces in our holds on the voyage down, and
when we reached the inlet, it was a small matter to assemble the
vessels and launch our tiny fleet on a surprise night
raid.

“
No one
expected us, No one raised an alarm, for we looked like harmless
fishing boats. We landed a mile or so up the coast and went
overland into Vera Cruz; eighty men in all, and each came away with
as many bars of gold as he could load onto a mule. Christ, the
cocky bastards even left the stables unguarded.

“
By
morning, of course, all hell broke loose, for we had not exactly
been tidy with the bodies at the treasure house. As luck would have
it, however, a squall blew up and delayed their pursuit by a full
two days—plenty of time for two nimble wolves to slink away and use
those same winds to blow us clear across the Caribbean. We were
successful too. We broke into open sea and were more than halfway
home before misfortune struck. A gale, the likes of which I had not
seen in twenty years, swept us along like spindrift for seven days
and nights. It battered the
Virago
so badly, she ended up on a reef with a hole in her hull
wide enough to swim through.

“
Our
first thought was to find someplace safe where we could haul her
over and make repairs. We were as yet unsure of where we were but
the lookouts spied a small island and we made for it, hoping for
time to make repairs. Once there, we lightened the
Virago’s
burden by off-loading our
weight of gold bars along with every spare barrel and crate we
carried—including most of our food and fresh water.

We had the
cables attached and the men on shore to careen her when we saw
sails on the horizon.” He stopped and snorted at some terrible
irony, which he shared a moment later with Spence. “They were
bloody zabras. Six India guards unluckily driven off course by the
same storm that ripped at us.”

“Blow my
ballocks,” Spence muttered. “What did ye do?”

“
The only
thing we could do: We stood and fought. The
Virago
was wounded, aye, but we had Bloodstone at our
back; we should have taken them in a trice. He was to remain out of
sight behind the island while we drew fire and led the zabras away.
The intention was to catch them with their eyes looking forward,
not back, and while the
Talon
bore some damage to her mainmast, she still had full
steerage and an equally full battery of guns to call
upon.”

Dante’s voice
grew brittle and a tremor appeared in the hand that gripped the
pewter cup.

“
The
zabras took the bait, as we expected they would, and came on, all
six of them bristling with their own importance. We sallied forth
to meet them, feigning we were in worse straits than we were,
knowing that Victor Bloodstone, courtier to the Queen, nephew of
Elizabeth’s chief counsel, would be running out from behind the
island with all guns blazing.” He paused and tossed the
considerable contents of the cup down his throat. “He ran, all
right. Bearing due north and east the last glimpse we had of him,
with every square inch of canvas warped into the wind. He ran and
just left us there, one against six, knowing full well that this
time
we
were the
fresh, bleeding meat, and the Spaniards were the stalking
wolves.”

Dante’s
throat was beginning to roughen from the spirits, but the blazing
blue eyes remained fixed and burning on the pewter cup. “My brave,
brave
Virago”
he
whispered.

“
She took
them. Sank four and sent the other two limp pricks off, dragging
their sails behind them. There were sixty of us left at the end of
the day … sixty out of one hundred and thirty men, fighting on
decks that ran red with their own blood. When we returned to the
island to lick our wounds, everything was gone. All of it: the
gold, the silver, even the barrels of food and water. And what they
could not load on board the
Talon
,
they smashed and threw into the sea. The wounded,” Dante finished
on a savage hiss of fury, “did not stand a chance.”

He fell
silent and Pitt took up the remainder of the story. “We patched
the
Virago
as best
we could and rigged enough sail to catch the prevailing winds, not
knowing whether or not the two zabras managed to limp into a nearby
port to relay our identity and position. The ship was too badly
damaged and the crew too weak to have held off another attack …
which might explain, although not excuse, our extreme caution and
lack of manners this morning when we saw you sliding out of the
mist.”

Spence
nodded pensively. He was dumbfounded, and more than a little
outraged himself at the treachery perpetrated on the crew of
the
Virago.
There
were unwritten laws, codes of honor among seafarers as sacred and
unbreakable as the laws of God. First among others was never to
abandon a sister ship in distress, and De Tourville, though half
French himself, had sailed the
Virago
under English colors with a mostly English crew. He was a
privateer and an adventurer. To be sure, some even called him an
opportunist and a pirate, but he was also a respected member of the
elite group of sea hawks whose skill and daring on the high seas
was the only thing standing in the way of Spain’s complete
dominance of the oceans as well as the New World.

While publicly
commiserating with the King of Spain over the losses suffered at
the hands of the sea hawks, behind closed doors Elizabeth not only
encouraged her privateers to plunder and raid the rich treasure
ships that sailed between Panama and Lisbon, she was the largest
single investor in many of their planned expeditions. There had
been rumors flooding England for over a year now that King Philip
was at the end of his patience over Elizabeth’s feigned innocence.
Her fledgling navy of merchant marauders was costing Spain
staggering losses in shipping and prestige, and there were stories
of an enormous fleet of galleons being amassed in Spanish harbors,
a great armada of warships being built to carry an army of conquest
across the English Channel.

It was no time
to hear of open treachery and cowardice among the English ranks.
Elizabeth would need all her best captains, her fastest and
deadliest ships, to counter any threat Spain might present.

This was not to
say all the sea hawks were friends. Most were bitter rivals who
would no sooner reveal their plans and destinations to a fellow
privateer than they would voluntarily report the full value of
their plunder to the Crown. Even Jonas Spence had his secret
compartments and false walls, though both were sadly empty at the
moment. Nor was he above a little larceny or piracy if the acts
were warranted. But to abandon a sister ship? Or to tuck his tail
and run for safety while someone else fought to the death? He had
not lost two fingers and half a leg because he went out of his way
to avoid confrontations.

“Blow me,” he
muttered again. “I can well see why ye’d be wantin’ to chase after
the fellow. An’ with more guns than a mere merchant trader would
have to offer.”

Dante shook his
head, causing his earring to glitter in the lamplight. “He has more
than a two-week start on us. Even burdened as he is, I have come to
believe over the past few hours, it would be sheer foolhardiness to
think we could catch him.

Spence’s
brow pleated over a frown but it was Beau, still looking on in
silence from the doorway, who felt her spine prickle at the
implication that the
Egret
was too
slow and unrefined to merit the pirate wolf’s respect.

“
I would
have you know, sir,” she said, striding briskly into the pool of
brighter light, “with a fair wind in our sheets we can run at
fifteen knots and better.” She dropped the platter without ceremony
on the table and leaned forward on the heels of her hands. “We have
sailed from Plymouth to the Tortugas in under six weeks. I doubt
even your
Virago
could
have outrun us.”