Mistress of the Stone

by Maria Zannini

  “Aye.” Luísa pulled out her father’s desiccated finger and wrapped it inside a fine kerchief. She tucked it into a drawer, standing over it in vigil. Whatever their rudder, it was sure to place the crew in danger. It was a trap. And well she knew it.

  Paqua came up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder, squeezing it in reassurance. “I’ll not leave my best friend to the French and their beastly ways. The crew is able-bodied. Whatever we find, we’ll be ready. If Inácio is still alive, we’ll get him back. And if he’s not—”

  Luísa’s face flushed with heat, the inferno of rage and equal parts of terror. He had to be alive, but if he wasn’t… She jerked a dagger out of its sheath and stabbed the top of the chest with a solemn oath, startling even Paqua. “If he’s not returned to us, his murderer will face my blade before the devil greets him. I swear it.”

  The discussion came to a brusque end when a litany of vulgar curses in different languages roared from the deck. Taunts turned to blows and within moments chaos broke out. The dull thud of a body slamming against a mast gave them pause, but not for long.

  Luísa slapped her forehead in disgust. “Agh! What in blazes are they fighting about now?”

  Paqua pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. This was the third open brawl in as many weeks. “We’ve been at sea too long. We’ll have a mutiny on our hands if we can’t find them a port full of soft breasts and rum.”

  The Coral was mistress to fifty sound men and twelve boys from all parts of the world. Hardly a sentence could be uttered without cobbling it in Spanish, Portuguese, Arab or Arawaken, and those were the major languages. Luísa could speak nine languages fluently, but none were adequate to express her current state of exasperation.

  She rushed past Paqua and threw open the door, scrambling to the quarterdeck and into the fray. She grabbed the first man she saw by a brace of his hair. It was Jomo, the gunner. Foul-mouthed and ugly as a drowned rat, he always found himself in the middle of a brawl.

  Jomo’s fist was already reared back and ready to swing when he recognized his captain. His arms fell limp to his sides, and he grinned sheepishly—right before she decked him.

  His legs buckled beneath him and he crumbled to the floor.

  “Jomo, you worthless pile of fish entrails. I’ve no doubt you started this.”

  “No, Mistress, no,” he cried as he scrambled up. “It was Montez. He slipped a crab down my breeches when I pulled them down for a piss.”

  “What’s one crab next to all the other vermin you keep in your breeches?” Luísa shoved him into a turn, then kicked him in the ass.

  The crew packed into a huddle and heckled Jomo, taunting him for earning the captain’s boot.

  “We’re less than days away from all the rum and women you can handle, but by God, I’ll clamp you in irons and let you rot below if I find you birthing another brawl.”

  “But the crab, Captain!”

  “Where is this crab?”

  Montez, the accused, produced a blue crab with two of its legs ripped off.

  Luísa picked it up from one of the remaining hind legs. “Were you raised to waste food too?” She threw it at a one-eyed sailor who fumbled it before catching it in his greasy apron. “Boil it for my dinner. Make sure you boil him good. No telling what sort of lice Jomo infested it with.”

  “Aye, Mistress. He’ll make fine eating despite seeing the inside of Jomo’s breeches.”

  Luísa turned and pointed a short sword at Jomo and Montez. “You’ll each take an extra watch tonight. Mind I don’t add to that sentence.”

  Each man raised two fingers to their temples. “Aye, Mistress,” they said in chorus.

  “Now get your ugly faces out of my—”

  “Sails!” a lookout cried.

  The crew raced to the railing, trampling each other for the best view. No one breathed a word, fearful to scare off their prey.

  Luísa worked her way up the ratlines. She could see nothing from her vantage point, but she trusted Cachon and his weasel eyes. The man could track a nit through pea soup. He’d get a better reckoning when both ships drew nearer.

  Precious moments sped past, the roll of the ocean keeping each ship from recognizing the other. Cachon’s steady gaze locked to the west.

  Her right foot reached for the next rung. “Where is it, Cachon? What is it?” The words rasped beneath her breath.

  Cachon’s mouth split into a grin. He yanked off his red stocking cap and waved it at Luísa. “A three-mast sloop, Captain, ma’am! Sleek and black.”

  Paqua vaulted onto the quarterdeck. “Her colors, man! What flag does she fly?”

  Cachon scanned the horizon once more, his brown hands shielding his eyes from the sun. “She’s runnin’ the English colors, Captain. And she’s draggin’,” he yelled down jubilantly. “Sails are ripped from stem to stern.”

  Luísa jumped off the rigging of the mainmast and shouted her orders in a full throaty voice. “Come about! Take her to the weather wind. Let’s see what old Bess has for us this time.”

  The groan of heavy timbers reverberated as the hull of the Coral scraped against her prey, a sleek cutter painted black as a raven. The men scrambled to the other ship like a swarm of Brazilian fire ants. They were giddy with the thrill of plunder within their grasp. But the battle they expected withered within minutes.

  Their quarry, already bloodied and spent, threw down their muskets and swords, unwilling—or unable—to suffer any further.

  “Look at her, Dooley,” Luísa yelled from a ratline. “She’s a ragged whore, wounded from belly to mast.”

  “Aye, Miss,” the cabin boy answered. The color from his naturally rosy cheeks washed away.

  The Persephone had been badly damaged from a previous fight, and her crew had lost all stomach for any more bloodshed. One by one they fell to their knees. Maimed and some half-dead, they offered no protest when they were clamped in irons.

  Luísa slid down the ropes to the quarterdeck, greeting Paqua with a proud grin. None of their men had been hurt and the Persephone was a gem. Even with her sails in tatters and a gaping hole in her side, she’d bring a fine price at market. Luísa slapped her co-captain on the back as they walked toward the loading plank. “Didn’t I tell you we’d bring her down without a man lost?”

  Paqua shook his head. “Nineteen years old with the bollocks of a bull. But it’s not much of a victory if you steal a dying man’s ship—even if he is an Inglés.”

  “Are we getting picky now, Capitán? What do I care how we brought her down or if someone else ravaged her before us? The Persephone is a pirate-hunter and her captain would have met my sword if he wasn’t already dead.”

  “But he’s not dead.”

  Luísa stopped in her tracks. “Say again.”

  Paqua grinned. “He’s not dead yet. We left him to rot in the galley where the Persephone’s surgeon removed a musket ball from his back. The quartermaster says he won’t live.”

  “I won’t shed any tears for one less Inglés. The Persephone is the prize. She ought to fetch a fine price in Barbados.” They reached the loading plank and Luísa thought it strange that her crew was still loading cargo from the seized vessel. What could possibly be left after the previous attack?

  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 ma
sk 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.