Across a Moonlit Sea

by Marsha Canham

  With the crumbs of one hastily devoured biscuit clinging to her lower lip, Beau threaded her way back to the stern, choosing to take a path belowdecks rather than crossing above. The air was dank and smelled of too many sweaty bodies cramped together in too close quarters. Hammocks were slung between every beam and board, many of them already occupied by men of both crews who had worked hard throughout the day. Most of them would be up again before dawn, engaged in normal ships routine.

  A small, clear section perhaps six foot square was devoid of any hanging canvas cocoons and it was there, around an upturned barrel, that a dozen or so men who were not slated for the early watch gathered to whittle and trade stories. A shielded lantern hung over their heads, swaying with the motion of the ship. Some chewed on knots of leather or sucked on hoarded sticks of sugarcane that had been left out in the sun long enough to ferment the juices.

  Most of the twelve were from the Egret and tugged a forelock respectfully as Beau passed by. One offered her a strip of cane, which she accepted and popped into her mouth, chewing and sucking the stringy pulp to release the sweet, strong liquor.

  Two of the men were off the Virago and watched her with curious eyes and slack mouths.

  “She don’t belong to nobody,” she overheard one of the men whisper in response to a muffled question. “And if ye know what’s best, ye’ll forget ye askt.”

  The narrow passage leading to the captain’s great cabin was dark, but Beau knew it as well as she knew the back of her hand. She ducked for the low beams and veered once to avoid clipping her hip on the ladder rail, a second time to maneuver around a barrel of water.

  Where there was usually one large cabin spanning the breadth of the ship’s stern and occupying most of the area beneath the raised aftercastle, on the Egret there were two. It was Spence’s only concession to Beau’s sex, that she have somewhere private to sleep and tend to her “woman’s things.” Thus the great cabin had been partitioned into two slightly unequal halves, with two separate doors and a wall of oak planking between. Spence’s was the larger of the two, overstuffed with furniture as stout and well seasoned as the man who used it. A wide, square berth filled one corner, a desk and a wire-fronted cabinet were crammed into the other. The door to the gallery—a two-foot-wide balcony that stretched across the stern—was located in Beau’s half, leaving that much more room for the captain’s sea chests and piles of assorted clutter that filled every spare inch of space. A large five-spoked wheel with simple brass lamps hung suspended from an overhead beam, spilling a pool of pale light over the top of a much-abused dining table and four sturdy chairs.

  Spence, Simon Dante, and Geoffrey Pitt were seated at the table, a fresh jar of rum between them. Beau’s approach had been silent and no one looked up or noticed her standing in the darkness of the companionway, the platter balanced in her hands.

  “Not near as fancy as yer Virago, I warrant,” Spence was saying. “But then I’m not a fancy man an’ it suits me just fine. Beau has the other half—fer her own safety, if ye know what I mean. Not that she wouldn’t sling herself in a hammock alongside the rest o’ the crew, given her druthers. Aye, an’ if it meets yer needs, Cap’n, ye can put up in her berth for the journey home. Beau won’t mind.”

  Out in the corridor Beau’s mouth fell open.

  “I’ll stay with my men. I don’t want to put anyone out of their bed.”

  “Nonsense. There’s a perfectly good sail closet Beau can make proper cozy. An’ I’m not wantin’ to be known as the man who slung Dante de Tourville in a canvas sack atween two beams.”

  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 offense 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, accidentallike, 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, nor o’ 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 Veracruz, 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 herse
lf 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 Veracruz 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. Veracruz 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 Veracruz. 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 nighttime 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 Veracruz; 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.”

  Dante glowered while Pitt stepped quickly into the breach. “You must have had an excellent navigator and pilot.”

  “We did,” she said evenly, turning to meet the smiling green eyes. “Me.”

  The smile was startled off Pitt’s mouth. “You?”

  Spence settled his weight back in his chair, balancing precariously on the two hind legs while he folded his arms across his chest. “Best damned pilot I ever had at the helm. Hell, she once took us through Magellan’s Straits in a storm. An’ her charts? Ye’ll see none their equal. If anyone can run us up the arse o’ yer rogue captain, it’s my Isabeau.”

  “A woman,” Dante muttered, still disbelieving, “at the helm of a ship? Has the world gone mad?”

  Beau glared at him. “Only the small portion with you in it.”

  “Well, regardless,” Pitt interjected quickly, “it does work to our advantage that we know precisely where Bloodstone is going.”

  “To London, ye mean.”

  “To London.” Pitt nodded. “He’ll waste no time boasting his prowess to the Queen and her counsel, likely taking all the credit for the venture in the same voice he uses to mourn the loss of Simon Dante.”

  “Aye, an’ he’ll do it all with yer gold in his pockets.”

  “My gold,” Dante agreed, finally tearing his gaze away from Beau. “Which could be half yours if you brought me within striking distance of the cowardly bastard.”