Pirate Wolf Trilogy (56 page)

She would have
liked to fling her arms wide and take Crisp into a bear hug, but
she knew their easy friendship had its boundaries. Instead, she
looked forward to seeing the startled and much aggrieved
expressions on her brothers’ faces. The best they had managed on
their own hunts were a brace of carracks full of reeking
boucan-eaters off the coast of Columbia.

“Jonas and
Gabriel will be green with envy. Positively green.”

“Aye, they’ll
not take it kindly that their sister captured the biggest prize in
the Caribbee. Ye’ll have to watch yer back an’ have a care not to
walk out alone at night.”

Juliet sobered
a moment and frowned. “You don’t think they would—?”

“
Praemonitus, praemunitus
. Forewarned is forearmed.”

Juliet
dismissed the admonishment with a wave of her hand. “With hunting
season about to begin, they’ll be too busy for childish
pranks.”

“They painted
ye blue the last time ye vexed them. That pair is never too busy
for pranks, an’ well ye know it.”

She
studied Crisp’s face through the eerie glow of moonlight. “You
realize that with the
Santo Domingo
, we now have six ships. It would not just be the plate
fleets that would sail in fear of the Pirate Wolf, for we now have
the firepower to attack Cartagena, Maracaibo, even Panama
itself.”

“
Ho,
there lass. Ye’ve set yer sights a mite high, have ye not?
Maracaibo? Cartagena?
Panama
?”

“The whole of
the Spanish Main would be ours for the taking. Jonas and Gabriel
would be the first to agree—”

Crisp
interrupted with an expletive. “Aye, an’ stab my liver with a spoon
if I’m surprised yer brothers would be game for such lunacy. As for
the Spanish, d’ye think they’ve run out of ships to send after
us?”

“Perhaps if
they would just stop hunting Father like a dog—”

“
Simon
Dante would not return the favor an’ well ye know it. It were a
Spaniard what put the scars on his back, an’ it were a bloody
papist Spaniard what cost yer mother her arm. Nay, he has a long
list of reasons to keep hatin’ the dons, but there’s a devil of a
difference between attackin’ ships on the open water an’ formin’ up
a fleet to raid a well-protected port.” He paused long enough to
thrust his empty pipe into his mouth. “Such a thing hasn’t been
done since Drake attacked Maracaibo near forty years ago an’ since
then they’ve reinforced their land defences, increased their
garrisons by a few hundred thousand soldiers, an’ built ships like
the
Santo
Domingo
to
patrol the sea lanes an’ keep ‘em clear of dogs like
us.”

Juliet knew
better than to argue with Crisp, especially when his teeth were
clamping down on his pipe hard enough to snap the stem. In truth,
there was little to argue. Simon Dante had spent five years chained
to the oars of a Spanish galleyass, and if the scars were not
enough of a reminder of the hatred he bore the Spaniards, he needed
only to see the empty sleeve that hung below his wife’s left
elbow.

It had
happened almost five years ago. Simon Dante had taken his ships,
the
Avenger
and
the
Black
Swan
on a hunt off the
Florida Straits. With Isabeau assuming her usual command at the
helm of the
Swan
, they had
stalked the galleons of the plate fleet and set their sights on two
smaller ships that moved slower than the rest of the pack. A third
galleon sailed protectively in their shadow, one of the India
guards, and at first glance, it seemed to be wallowing as if it was
suffering steerage problems.

If the
warship appeared to lumber, however, it was because of the weight
of the sixty-four guns she carried on three decks, the lowest
painted a dull black to disguise the row of closed gunports. If she
seemed to have a foolish captain who steered her away from the main
fleet, it was because she was eager to lure each of the privateers
into a confrontation, beginning with the smallest of the raiders:
the
Black
Swan
.

Never one
to balk from a fight, and knowing Dante’s
Avenger
was circling around to attack the galleon’s stern,
Isabeau had sallied forth to answer the challenge. It was not until
they were well within range of the Spaniard’s guns that the ports
on the lower deck opened and Isabeau saw the trap for what it was.
Before she could break away the gunners unleashed a horrendous
broadside that blew away most of the
Swan’s
main sails, the tops of two masts, and raked her upper deck
with terrible results. Standing helpless in the water, she could
only watch as the great galleon bore down with the intent to ram
her amidships.

Simon
Dante had come beating in with moments to spare, the
Avenger’s
guns blasting the Spaniard with
unrelenting broadsides as he placed himself as a shield between the
galleon and the wounded
Swan
.
Round after blistering round discouraged the Spanish captain from
pursuing his advantage and allowed the
Black Swan
to limp out of range. Suffering heavy damage
himself, Simon broke off and escorted Isabeau into safer waters,
but it was not until several hours later that the two ships were
able to come alongside one another and exchange hails.

That was
when Simon learned his wife had been gravely injured. A round of
Spanish shot—rendered inferior by the practise of cooling the iron
too quickly—had disintegrated on impact, the pieces of exploding
metal had swept the forecastle deck, killing three crewmen and
nearly taking Isabeau’s forearm off at the elbow. Despite the best
efforts of both ships’ surgeons, it had been necessary to remove
the damaged bone and flesh before the threat of gangrene finished
the Spaniard’s bloody work. To add further insult, the
Black Swan’s
wounds proved fatal and she had
to be abandoned before the day was out.

The loss
of her ship had affected Isabeau almost more than the loss of her
arm, and while she had never shown any outward reluctance to take
to the sea again, she had not sought the command of another ship.
Indeed, it was Isabeau Dante who had insisted the
Iron Rose
be given to Juliet, and not a
day passed that Juliet did not do everything in her power to
justify her mother’s faith. Simon’s had been harder to earn, for
each time she took the
Iron Rose
out of port she could see, deep in his eyes, a little of
the unutterable horror that had been on his face when he had
brought his injured wife home.

Juliet’s
navigational skills, her fighting spirit, her seamanship was the
equal of any man. If her father needed any further proof that he
had taught her well, it was sailing behind her now, docile and
subdued and flying the British flag on her foremast.

“The
Spaniard—Aquayo,” she murmured through a frown. “He praised us for
being so well informed.”

“Aye,” Crisp
said. “What of it.”

“
The
Santo Domingo
was brought to the Indies to patrol the sea lanes between
Cartagena and Havana, and to keep rogues like us at bay. Odd then,”
she continued, thinking aloud, “that we found silver bars stamped
by the mint in Vera Cruz in the same cargo bay as pearls from
Margarite Island and emeralds from Baranquilla. Even odder that so
much treasure should be packed on board a warship.”

“Aye, well,”
Crisp blew out a long breath. “If ye want to spend the next few
hours pourin’ over the manifests, I’m sure ye’ll find an answer to
the puzzle. Me? Since I can’t read that fancy Spanish bilge, I’d be
no help, so I’m for a big plate of biscuits, a slab of cold mutton,
an’ enough ale to set me on my arse till mornin’.”

“You deserve
it. All the men deserve it, and if you haven’t done so already,
break out an extra ration of rum.”

Crisp tugged a
scruffy brown forelock. “I’ll do that, Cap’n. Right after I set the
watches an’ trim the sails. Smells like a storm comin’ up, an’ if
Loftus can’t squeeze more speed out o’ that sow, we’ll be waddlin’
right into it.”

CHAPTER
FIVE

An hour
later, Juliet was still pouring over the manifests taken from
the
Santo
Domingo
. She had not
found the answer as to why a warship would be carrying cargo from
three very distinct regions of the Spanish Main. She did, however,
find the name of the officer whose ears she had made a little
shorter and the discovery made her own ears perk a little higher.
Capitán Cristobal Nufio Espinosa y Recalde. He was listed in the
crew manifest as the
capitán del navio
, the military commander on board the ship, second only in
importance to the
capitán de mar
,
Diego Flores de Aquayo.

What triggered
Juliet’s intrigue, was that up to a month ago—and she had no reason
to doubt the accuracy of the reports her father’s partner of thirty
years, Geoffrey Pitt, gleaned from his legion of spies along the
Main—Recalde had been the commander of the military garrison at
Nombre de Dios. It was the main port for Panama and Peru, sited
near a huge, festering swamp that was almost impossible to fortify
by normal methods. Francis Drake had plundered it twice in his
seafaring days, once in 1572 when he took over the governor’s house
for a week while his men sacked and burned the city. The second
time, less than a year later, he ambushed the treasure train coming
across the isthmus from Peru, but there was so much silver and gold
on the mules, he had to leave half of it in the swamp.

Since then, the
viceroy of Nuevo España had insisted on having the best, most
vicious and tyrannical officers posted at Nombre de Dios. They were
placed in charge of the misfits and miscreants culled from
garrisons elsewhere along the Main, the more brutal and
bloodthirsty the better.

As
the
capitán
del navio
, Recalde would
have been in charge of the attack on the
Argus
. Aquayo was little more than a figurehead, a
nobleman who had been rewarded with a prestigious command as a show
of favor by the Spanish king, but Recalde had chosen his profession
and he obviously excelled in his work if he had been in command at
Nombre de Dios.

Nathan might
have been right. It might have been better had she been as
cold-blooded as her brother Jonas, who would have placed the two
shots right through Recalde’s eyes without troubling to wait for
any justification.

Sighing,
rubbing her temple with a weary hand, Juliet removed her bandanna
and used it to swab the dampness on the back of her neck. The air
in the cabin was stifling. She frowned at the blackened tarps, then
at the shadowy outline in her berth. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t made a
sound since she had returned to the cabin.

She filled her
goblet with the last of the rumbustion in the bottle and glanced
over at the second body. Beacom was stretched out on the floor like
a corpse, his hands folded over his chest, the heels of his shoes
touching together, the toes pointing straight up.

“Damned
Englishmen,” she muttered.

Taking
the goblet with her, she pulled aside the section of tarp that
covered the narrow door to the gallery and opened it. Almost
instantly, she could feel the heat being sucked out of the cabin
and she opened it wider, listening to the sound of the wake curling
out behind her ship. The clouds were thicker, completely blanketing
the sky, and the wind had picked up considerably, tugging peevishly
at the loose threads of her hair. The darkness made it more
difficult to see the
Santo Domingo
riding off their stern, but she was there, a dark shape
against a smothered sky.

For the
fleetest of moments, Juliet allowed her mind to reconstruct the
picture of the Spanish warship closing on the crippled
Argus
, the
monstrous cannon belching smoke and flame in such a continuous
barrage the two ships had become engulfed in the sulphurous yellow
clouds. Crisp had thought she was mad to take the
Iron Rose
in, but she had been flung back
five years in her mind, imagining it to be similar to the
predicament her mother had found herself in: a galleon bearing
down, the valiant
Black Swan
in
shambles, her decks on fire, her crew struggling to prevent the
inevitable.

Fate, in
the form of a hideous boil on the bottom of her foot, had kept
Juliet at home on Pigeon Cay otherwise she would have been on board
the
Swan
during that
doomed voyage. She knew... she
knew
there was little she could have done to affect the outcome
one way or another, but it still weighed heavily on her mind and
conscience that she had not been at her normal place on the
Swan’s
quarterdeck. Instead, she had
been lying on a beach studying astral charts while her father kept
a terrible vigil by his wife’s side.

Juliet closed
her eyes and concentrated on steadying her hands.

Yes indeed, she
had proved herself the equal of any man in the years that followed.
Her crew deemed her fearless and looked to her to bring them
victory and glory despite impossible odds, despite the clawing
doubts that gripped her every time she gave the command that sent
the gunners to their posts. They thought her iron-willed and
iron-clad, afraid of nothing, never hesitating to answer a
challenge with her sword or her ship.