“Captain! Oh, look, your side—”
“I’m fine, for God’s sake; it’s nothing but a few burst stitches!” Gripping their hands she swung onto the deck, the familiarity of her own ship infusing her with a sudden burst of life and energy. This was her command, the one place in the world that was a safe refuge, a trusted haven, home. Already she could feel the schooner’s spirit surging into her soul, that quick thrill of heady exaltation, and utter invincibility. The admiral would never catch her now; not in that massive and mighty flagship, not in a million years, not ever, damn his lying, wenching, blackhearted soul!
“Captain!”
She whirled, neatly catching the cutlass Aisling tossed to her, the weight of it nearly
bringing her down. Tia threw a light jacket over her for the sake of modesty and, trailed by the two Irish girls, Maeve ran toward the tiller, feeling the blood oozing hot from her side but knowing she had no time to worry about it now. He would send someone after her, she knew he would send someone after her, if only to save his rotten pride, if only to prove his ownership over this latest addition to his pirate collection, if only to make her life hell— Orla was at the helm, her eyes dark and condemning. “Maeve—”
“Not now, Orla, just get me away from that suffering bastard, and the sooner the better! I hope I never set eyes on that snake again!”
“Snake, Captain?” Sorcha cried, her eyes widening in horror at the bloodstained nightshirt just visible beneath Maeve’s jacket. Already her sister was running to get fresh bandages.
“Whatever has poor Sir Graham done now?”
Maeve exploded. “Poor Sir Graham flaunted his mistress right under my nose, that’s what he did! I hope he rots in hell, the bastard, the wretch, the slimy, two-timing, bucket of bilge-rotted scum!”
Orla merely set her lips and staring past Kestrel's plunging jibboom, said quietly, “Your orders, Captain?”
Maeve bent her head to her palm, wanting to kill, wanting to scream, wanting—
“Trim for beam reach, I think—yes, yes, a beam reach, a bloody, blasted beam reach, and
set the t’gallants too!”
“I think you’re being hasty,” Sorcha said smugly as she drew a knife, sliced through
Maeve’s soaked shirt, and, with the help of her sister, began rebandaging Maeve’s side. “The admiral loves you.”
Maeve’s head jerked up. “Well darling, here’s a lesson for you! Men like the admiral don’t know how to love! He’s a slinking slimy dog, just like the rest of his kind! He doesn’t love me; the only thing he loves is gratifying the itch between his legs! He’ll not leave his precious mistress for me, he’ll send someone else, and then, only because he’s obsessed with pirates and I’m a pirate and the most interesting addition to his COLLECTION! Blast it, don’t you understand, don’t any of you understand? If he was my Gallant Knight, he wouldn’t relegate his dirty work to a subordinate, he’d damn well come for me himself!”
Enolia was standing at the rail with a glass to her eye.
“He is.”
Her sides heaving, Maeve came up short. “What did you say? ”
Enolia lowered the glass and looked at Maeve. “I said, he is.”
The blood drained from Maeve’s face. She turned and stared dumbly at one of the starboard guns, unable to speak, her lips going gray with shock.
“Captain? You all right?”
Relief. And then fear, guilt, elation, and anger all bubbled up in her breast. She grabbed a telescope from Aisling and pressed it to her eye, the wind whipping loose strands of wet hair around her neck and making it sting her cheeks. Sure enough, she could see the frantic activity even from here; officers gesturing wildly, seamen running down the gangways, a boat being swayed out, a frigate— oh God, he was summoning the frigate Harleigh, the fastest ship he had!
—charging down toward the big flagship—
Trembling, she dropped the glass.
“He’s coming after you, isn’t he?” Aisling taunted.
“Of course he’s coming after her,” Sorcha cried, with a look of triumph on her face. “He’s her Gallant Knight. Do you think he’s just going to let her go? ”
Shrieking with delight, both girls ran to the rail, jumped atop the guns, and, waving their arms and cupping their hands over their mouths, began yelling at the very top of their lungs.
“Come on, Sir Graham! Come get her!”
In a daze, Maeve pressed a hand to her rebandaged side and stared out over the frothy sea.
She felt the strength and intensity of the admiral’s determination even from here—and saw the white flag with the red cross dropping from Triton's mizzen and shooting to the top of the frigate Harleigh’s.
“He’s aboard the frigate, Captain!”
“Here he comes!”
Maeve shut her eyes, ripped her braid apart, and stumbled to the weather rail, seized by a hysterical urge to laugh, to cry, to sit down and curl herself into a little ball where she could hide from herself, and hide from the truth of what Gray was doing: coming for her whether she wanted him to or not. She gripped the shrouds in both hands and looked down, where the blue, frothing mirror of the sea threw her words back at her. “You’re not supposed to come after me, Gray,” she whispered, closing her eyes against her whipping hair as the schooner smashed through the swells and spray licked her cheeks. “You were supposed to stay with her. . .”
“Come on, Sir Graham! Look, Ash, there’s the admiral himself. Hello, Admiral! Yoo-hoo,
Sir Gra—ham!”
Maeve got up, crossed the short distance to the helm, and pressing her hand to her throbbing side, stood beside Orla. Together they watched Harleigh, neither saying a word, as beneath them the brave Kestrel leapt and plunged through the waves in a race she could never win.
“I give up, Orla,” Maeve whispered, on a bleak little laugh. Her heart was now pounding,
pulsing, echoing in her ears, and thrilling tingles shot through her at the sight of that glorious English frigate, charging forward and piling on every stitch of sail she carried. “I just— plain —
give up . . . ”
“Shall we heave to and let the admiral close the distance, then?” Orla asked, her eyes grave as she peered at the new bandage just visible beneath Maeve’s coat. Already, fresh blood was soaking through it.
Maeve’s head snapped around so fast her hair took a full second to follow. “What’re you,
insane?! Heave to, and fail Sir Graham’s expectations of me? Heave to, and let him down? No way in bloody hell, Orla, will I heave to! Merricks do not give up! Pirate Queens do not give up!
The chase is not over yet, for we have Kestrel, my father’s ship, the most famous vessel in the American Revolution, the swiftest schooner afloat, a living legend—”
BOOM! Smoke burst from the frigate’s bows in a plume of gray, and the ball threw a waterspout as high as Kestrel's mainsail boom.
The Irish sisters howled with delight. “He’s firing on us!”
Of course he wasn't, Maeve thought, closing her eyes. But he was demanding they heave to, and demanding that they do so immediately.
Clutching the old coat around her like a shield and laughing with sudden, sheer exultation, the Pirate Queen leapt atop the old gun her mother had long ago dubbed Freedom. The cannon’s hot iron surface nearly burned the calluses off her soles and, brandishing her sword, she yelled: “Come and get me, Sir Bloody Graham Falconer! You want me so damned much? Hah! If
you can catch me, I’m yours!”
Orla’s voice, urgent and quick: “Captain?”
“Come on Sir Graham! I dare you! Come on, Admiral, show me what you’re made of!”
“Captain!”
The desperate urgency in Orla’s voice lanced her exultation, and whirling, she followed her friend’s arm, nearly tumbling from the gun.
“Strange sail off the starboard bows,” Orla murmured. “Far off the starboard bows. Look.”
Maeve grabbed a telescope and
nearly slammed it into her eye—one ship, two ships,
frigates, and several miles beyond them, cloaked in drifting haze, huge, massive shapes, rippling flags, a fleet the size and might to rival if not surpass Nelson’s—
“Holy bloody HELL!” she cried, dropping the telescope. “We’ve stumbled onto the
combined Franco-Spanish fleet! It’s Villeneuve!”
Chapter 25
“Ready about!” Maeve cried, desperately.
“But Captain, you said—”
“To hell with what I said, that’s the French fleet out there and Sir Graham must be warned!”
But even as the Pirate Queen clutched the edges of the coat around her wet body and ran to the side, even as Kestrel swung herself neatly through the wind, even as a low chorus of awed disbelief rose from the crew around her, Maeve knew the admiral had seen it, too. A mighty, invincible line of twenty battleships and seven frigates stretching from one end of the horizon to the other, buried in haze, barely discernible, the might and strength of Napoleon Bonaparte’s Combined Franco-Spanish fleet— “Go below and change, Captain.”
“Orla, there’s no time!”
“Go below, Captain—if he sees you all bloodied, he won’t go, he’ll not do what he must to save his convoy, his ships, himself! ”
“But—”
“Go, Maeve!” Orla cried. “For God’s sake, go!”
Maeve shot one look at the oncoming English frigate and fled down the hatch. With Aisling hot on her heels she burst into her cabin, flung open her wardrobe, hurled clothes over her shoulder until she found the purple satin gown.
“Captain, hurry, hurry! ”
“Aisling, these buttons, I can’t do them, I can’t reach them—”
The girl struggled to help.
“Oh, do hurry, Aisling, hurry! ” she cried.
“Just go, Captain!” Aisling shoved her toward the door, and together the two raced topside.
Orla had the schooner close-hauled, and wind and spray hit them in the face; they reached the rail just as Sir Graham's frigate met them, came about, and, paralleling their course, plunged through the sea alongside them.
“Maeve!” It was him, him! standing on the quarterdeck with Harleigh’s company assembled behind him, his feet planted against the desperate plunge of the ship—
She leaned over the rail, one hand thrust toward him as though she could reach across the waves and touch him. “Gray, forgive me, I was rash, oh please forgive me—”
“Maeve, listen to me! ” The two ships were running neck and neck now, the frigate a savage, dashing warrior, the schooner a pert little predator, so close they could’ve grappled, the crews staring at each other across the short, rushing space.
He stood between two cannons, the wind blowing his hair out from under his hat and
whipping it across his cheeks, and she knew then that she had been wrong about him, wrong!—
that he loved her and her alone. In his face, in his words, in the desperation of his stance, she saw the truth. “You must listen to me!” He cupped his hands over his mouth to be heard over the roar of wind and sea. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes!”
The sea thundered at the bows, spray drove over the rail, the wind keened, and far off in the distance, one of the scouting frigates of the enemy fleet was detaching itself from the others, turning its bowsprit toward them— The admiral spared it one glance, grabbed a speaking trumpet, and shouted, “You must carry word back to Nelson! He has the Fleet! The fate of a nation depends upon your obeying my command, do you understand me, Maeve, obeying my command! ” He tore the speaking trumpet from his lips, flung it aside, and across the wind-whipped gulf that separated them, yelled, “The fate of a nation depends on your finding Nelson! Go to Antigua and bring him back!”
Miles to windward, the French scout set her topgallants and another, just beyond it, left the line of battleships to follow suit. Another . . . And another . . .
“No!” Maeve cried, planting her feet and clawing her whipping hair out of her eyes. “I won’t leave you, Gray! Damn it, I won't abandon you! ”
“GO FIND NELSON AND BRING HIM BACK!”
Gray had already yelled something to Harleigh's captain, and then the English frigate was showing her copper as she bore off to carry the admiral back to his flagship. Already flags were going up Harleigh's halyards, sending Sir Graham’s urgent instructions to Captain Lord aboard the mighty Triton; already he had made up his mind what course of action he would take. He had one battleship and three frigates against the might of Villeneuve’s fleet, nothing more, nothing less, and the meaning of the Vision she’d had upon leaving Barbados—the blood, the death, the sea fight—was suddenly clear in all its ghastly horror.
He would die—honorably, gallantly— like an officer.
And there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it.
Maeve saw the convoy beginning to disperse in compliance with Sir Graham’s signals,
already scattering and fleeing to leeward while the massive Triton and the remaining two English frigates, Cricket and Chatham, piled on sail and, beating against the wind, drove forward to meet their admiral aboard Harleigh.
“Captain,” she heard Enolia saying, “if we don’t get ourselves out of here now . . . we never will. One broadside from those Frenchies and we’re done for.”
Not trusting herself to speak, Maeve nodded her head in a quick, jerky motion, her gaze
fastened on the diminishing shape of Harleigh as she ran down to meet the oncoming Triton, Cricket, and Chatham. Harleigh was stern-on to them, giant pillars of sail rising gloriously skyward. Signals were bursting at her halyards, answered by equally rapid acknowledgments from the mighty flagship.
She raised a telescope and put it to her eye. A single, commanding figure had strode to
Harleigh' s taffrail, there to stand rigid and alone. Gray, the officer. Gray, the admiral. Gray, the one and only prayer the convoy—and maybe even England—had.
Her gaze met the admiral’s across the rapidly widening sea. Tears choked her throat, and
Maeve saw him cup his hands to his mouth a final time. The wind snatched away his words, but she already heard them in her heart.
I love you.
###
From the gundecks above came the roll of drums calling the crew to action, the squeal of
trucks and deep, rumbling thunder as the big cannons were dragged up to their ports; barked commands from the officers; pounding footsteps just overhead, yells of encouragement,
blasphemous oaths, and cheers and shouts of excitement.
Aboard HMS Triton, el Perro Negro and his companions waited for the organized confusion to cover their escape from the hold. Tricking the young marine guard into opening the door, they killed him with a blow from the stock of his own musket, tossed his body into the hold, and escaped into the depths of the flagship, there to hide until the time was right for el Perro Negro to put his plan into action.
And in the desperate race to get the mighty ship ready for battle, no one noticed.
###
Aboard Harleigh, Sir Graham stood on the quarterdeck with her commander, Captain Ben Warner, and watched the French frigates—seven of them, all told—closing the distance aft.
Thank God Maeve had gotten safely away. . .
“Shall I turn and fight, sir?” Warner smashed his fist into his palm, his blue eyes glowing.
“Please sir, let me at them, I’ll bloody their noses good—”
“In good time, Captain, all in good time,” Sir Graham murmured, resting the heel of his
hand atop his sword hilt. “We must dally for a bit, buy time so the convoy can scatter and get out of the area.”
“Your orders then, sir?”
“Clear for action and beat to quarters.”
To the ominous beat of a marine’s drum, the British frigate prepared for battle as men ran to their stations. The guns were run out, shot was carried up from below, and t
he lieutenants barked orders through speaking trumpets.
“Look lively there, look lively!”
“Get a move on, damn your eyes!”
Aft, the leading French ship fired her bow chaser, and a ball raised a harmless waterspout in Harleigh's wake as the enemy gunner tried to find the range. Harleigh's crew sent up a chorus of jeers, raising their fists in challenge and defiance. Some yelled obscene threats, others roared with derision, all looked toward the admiral whose command they would obey, even if it might mean their deaths before this day was over.
“I daresay, Warner, your people have spunk!” Gray said, with boyish delight.
The French frigate fired again.
“Poor Nelson,” the admiral mused, watching the enemy ship closing the distance. “Imagine, Captain Warner! Here he’s chased this very fleet nearly thirty-five hundred miles across the Atlantic and we are the ones who shall get to fight it! What Nelson wouldn’t give to be in my shoes right now . . .”
“Sir?”
The admiral grinned and wagged a finger. “But mark me, I’d not trade places with him for
the world!”
Thunder rolled again from the French frigate, and another ball splashed into the sea a
hundred feet off the starboard quarter. The next shot might be a hit.
“Take in your t’gallants, Captain Warner, and allow the enemy to catch up. At this rate
they’ll spot the convoy before it is safely over the horizon. And please, do not look so woeful!
You’ll get your chance to fight today, I can assure you. And now, while we are waiting for Captain Lord to collect me, it is time to put my plan for confusing and confounding the enemy into effect. Where is my flag-lieutenant? Ah, there you are, Mr. Stern!”
The young officer clapped his hat to his head and tearing his gaze from the enemy frigates and the immense enemy fleet beyond, turned and walked briskly across the deck. He was
terrified; Gray could see it in his eyes, in his stance, in the color of his skin.
“Muster your signals party, Mr. Stern, and be quick about it,” the admiral said. “I have a number of messages I will be making directly, is that understood?”
My Lady Pirate Page 24
