My Overseer, Tobias Montgomery, reports that the building is going well, and that all of the building materials transported by your Captain Sparrow arrived promptly and Safely. I am very pleased with the young Captain, and believe that he may have a promising Future with the Company.
Lady Hortense and I have been trying out names for our new home. What think you, Cutler, of “Sweet Providence”? Since our principal crop is to be, of course, sugarcane, it seems to us Appropriate!
Which brings me to my main reason for writing. Montgomery has been working a minimal crew of Blacks to clear fields and prepare them for planting, but he needs more Hands. I can think of no one in whom to put my trust more suitably, with a clear conscience that the task will be performed thoroughly and well, than yourself, Cutler. Accordingly, will you please begin gathering a cargo of approximately two hundred prime Blacks for shipment to my new plantation on New Avalon? At least one hundred and fifty will need to be prime strong Bucks, and the rest may be Wenches, preferably those of gentle nature, and trainable in the Arts of keeping a Civilized Household. Montgomery will need the cargo before the spring planting is to begin. If your Captain Sparrow is available to take them, that would also be most Pleasing to me. That young mariner is so careful with cargo, I feel sure that under his Oversight, we will lose no more than, one hopes, a quarter of the cargo during the Crossing.
I did pay a visit to Court a fortnight ago, and spoke to several of my Acquaintances there about your service to the EITC and how, under your supervision, our profits had increased a full twenty-five percent. Such devotion to Duty of course enriches the Royal coffers, too, as the natural flow of economics in our Society dictates. I believe I made a good case for your receiving some Official Recognition of your contribution. (I dare not be more specific, but I believe you fully comprehend my meaning.)
With that in mind, my dear Cutler, please plan on journeying with me next Spring to see “Sweet Providence,” where my lady wife and I shall be only too pleased to begin repaying some of your gracious hospitality to me. Following your visit, I believe it would be most Advisable for we two to take a ship back to England, so that I may introduce you to my Friends at Court, so they may, as they say, “put a face” to the man whose Name and Record they shall be bringing before the King.
Until we meet again, I remain, faithfully, your Advisor and Friend.
Yrs Truly,
Viscount, Lord Penwallow
Cutler Beckett ran his thumb over the elegant seal, smiling. At last! Things were falling into place. All of those evenings spent endlessly smiling as he listened to the never-ending drivel of minutia regarding His Lordship’s life and the lives of his relations were finally bearing fruit. Soon, possibly by this time next year, he seemed certain to be Sir Cutler Beckett.
His smile widened as he pictured himself at Court, in the presence of the king, undergoing the ceremony that would make him a Peer of the Realm. Something none of the other Becketts had ever been able to accomplish.
And he had done it all on his own. He had power and wealth. Soon, he would have the title to go with them.
Beckett was sitting there, leaning back in his chair, idly twirling a new, just-trimmed quill pen, eyes unfocused while resplendent visions of himself being knighted filled his vision, when his secretary tapped at the door, then opened it. Cutler Beckett started as guiltily as though he’d been caught out doing something unsavory with barnyard animals. He glared at Chalmers. “What is it, Chalmers? I was working.”
Chalmers was far too intelligent and experienced to contradict his employer. “Yes, Mr. Beckett, I see that. My apologies, but Mr. Mercer is here, and he said he has come at your request.”
“Oh, yes. I’ve been waiting for his return. Please show him in.”
“Very good, Mr. Beckett.”
Ian Mercer entered the office moments later. He nodded at his employer as he removed his hat, then his trademark black gloves.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Mercer,” Beckett said. “How is your investigation progressing?”
“I fear I’ve run into a snag, sir,” Mercer said.
Beckett raised an eyebrow and waved him to a seat. “Indeed? What has happened?”
“As I reported to you, sir, I believed I had traced the big male slave to the Dalton farm. I went out there this morning, prepared to purchase the buck, only to discover that he disappeared over a week ago.”
“Escaped?”
“Apparently so, sir. Mr. Dalton reported that he vanished from the male slave barracks one night. The dogs traced his scent to the road leading into Calabar, then they lost it.”
Beckett’s gaze sharpened as he gazed at Mercer. “Wait a moment. You said he disappeared…when?”
The operative nodded confirmation. “Exactly, Mr. Beckett. He escaped the same night that the Wicked Wench left Calabar.”
Beckett settled back into his chair. “Not a coincidence, then.”
“Doesn’t seem likely, sir.”
“Jack, Jack, Jack…” Beckett murmured. “My, you certainly were thorough, I’ll give you that.” He looked back at Mercer. “All we can do now is wait for his return, then.”
Mercer didn’t quite grimace, but his expression was definitely on the sour side. “I suppose so, Mr. Beckett,” he agreed grudgingly.
“There’s no way to know when Sparrow will return,” Beckett said. “We have no idea where Kerma is. He said if he discovers that the J. Ward book is correct, and it’s not far from the African coast, he’ll go there, verify its location, then turn around and return to Calabar without going on to Antigua. But it could be out there in the middle of the Atlantic. Or off the coast of South America, or the Colonies. There’s no way to know.”
“How big is it?” Mercer asked.
“Nobody knows. Not terribly large, I should think, or someone would have discovered it by now, magic notwithstanding. That reminds me, Mr. Mercer. We need to start planning our assault on the island.”
“There’s no way to know if Sparrow will return,” Mercer pointed out.
“I have faith in Jack,” Cutler Beckett said, with a faint smile. “At any rate, getting plans in place now will enable us to move all the more swiftly when he returns with the bearings. I anticipate it will take a good-sized force—for a private undertaking, at least—to capture and subdue the main city, Zerzura. Of course, having modern technology will help considerably. Judging by what Duke said, they’re barely using iron for spear blades.”
“To capture an entire city, Mr. Beckett, will take a private army.”
“Which I intend to have,” Cutler Beckett said. “I can divert perhaps a hundred of the EITC defensive troops from Calabar and the other nearby slaving ports. And of course I can use the EITC defensive warship, the brig Sentinel, to add to the firepower of the merchant ships I divert for this project. But we must have additional troops, and supplies.”
Mercer thought for a moment. “I’d say to be safe, Mr. Beckett, you’ll need a force of at least three hundred fighting men, that includes both foot soldiers and officers, and four, perhaps five ships to transport them. And of course you’ll need crews for those vessels, and support personnel for the troops, as well as supplies. Plus sufficient quantities of ammunition and powder.”
“An additional two hundred soldiers,” Cutler Beckett put his chin in his hand as he thought. “We won’t find them in Africa.”
“Not if you want men who know how to use firearms, Mr. Beckett. I’ll need to recruit in England, and on the Continent. It’s a good thing we’re currently at peace; there are bound to be more cashiered soldiers willing to do mercenary work.” Mercer thought for a moment. “How particular do you want me to be, Mr. Beckett? There are men of every stripe wandering the stews of every major city. And of course there are men in prisons whose fines could be paid, thus making them available to us—and beholden to us.”
“As long as they’re good shots and can follow orders, I don’t care what their relationship with the authorities is, Mr. Merc
er.” Beckett waved a hand. “Prisoners are fine.”
“Sometimes you can find seagoing mercenaries, too,” Mercer said. “Privateers, pirates, and—”
“No pirates,” Beckett said sharply, his voice gone cold. “I loathe pirates.”
“Right, Mr. Beckett,” Mercer said. “Untrustworthy murdering scoundrels.”
“Precisely,” Beckett said.
Mercer stood up. “I’ll write up some lists, Mr. Beckett, and bring them to you for your approval, if that’s acceptable.”
Beckett nodded. “That’s fine, Mercer. You obviously have the skills needed to organize an expedition of this type. Thank you.”
“Of course, Mr. Beckett,” Mercer said. “I’ll get right on it.”
After Mercer left his office, Cutler Beckett sat in silence, as visions once again filled his mind’s eye. But these visions, unlike the previous ones, were grim and terrifying—the stuff of nightmares that still plagued him.
After he’d left home so precipitously to work for the EITC, young Cutler Beckett had only worked in the London office for a few months. Once his superiors had verified that he was competent, they’d assigned him to a tour of duty at the EITC office on Gibraltar. Beckett had boarded the Lindesfarne in London, excited to be fulfilling his ambition of seeing the world.
All had gone well with the voyage until, off the coast of Spain, the Lindesfarne was captured by pirates—taken without a single shot being fired. Herded up on deck by the pirate crew of Le Requin, Beckett, seething with fury, had stood with the other passengers, many incoherent or weeping with terror. Finally, the pirate captain appeared. He was a handsome villain who wore an elegant emerald coat. Moving with a leisurely swagger, he’d inspected his captives in silence, then introduced himself as “Captain de Rapièr.”
While his crew of cutthroats stripped the Lindesfarne of everything valuable, the captain interviewed his captives, so he could decide whether they should be held for ransom or sold into slavery.
When the captain approached Cutler, the eighteen-year-old, in a red rage at having his career plans thwarted, defied him, demanding their release, promising that he’d see them all hang. At first Captain de Rapièr had been amused by Beckett’s audacity and spirit, chuckling at him as though he were a cute, but yappy, puppy. Then Cutler had unwisely informed the captain that the cut of his elegant coat and its fastenings was considered completely out of fashion in both London and Paris. Seeing from Captain de Rapièr’s expression that he’d finally scored a palpable hit, Cutler had then laughed in his face.
The pirate captain got his revenge by turning Cutler over to his crew, saying they could “play” with this one. With cries of joy, the pirate crew slapped young Beckett around, then formed a gauntlet and spanked him with the flat of their swords. But that was just the beginning of his ordeal.
Stripping him naked, they hoisted him upside down, to dangle fifty feet in the air. Cutler had hung there, spinning slowly, hearing them laugh, too terrified to struggle. By the time they’d lowered him down, he was choking and sobbing incoherently. Captain de Rapièr had laughed uproariously.
The worst threat was yet to come. As Cutler lay sprawled on the deck, surrounded by the jeering cutthroats, several of them announced their intention of torturing him. They took out their knives, remarking that he really didn’t need all of his fingers and toes, did he?
Before the pirates could fulfill their threat, Beckett, terrified beyond reason, had simply…gone away, just as he had that long-ago day outside the schoolhouse. His glassy, unblinking stare and uncanny stillness had spooked the superstitious pirates. Even when they prodded him to the point of drawing blood, he failed to react. Uneasily, Cutler’s would-be torturers backed away; they’d wanted a lively, thrashing victim. A near-catatonic one was…unappealing. Muttering about demonic possession, they’d left him alone.
By the time Beckett recovered his wits, and was allowed to put on what was left of his clothing, all his earlier defiance was gone. Tears streaking his face, he’d confessed to Captain de Rapièr that he came from a wealthy family, and that they should send their ransom demand to Jonathan Beckett. Cutler also told the captain that he worked for the EITC, and this bit of information, unthinkingly revealed, would be his salvation.
Having dispatched the ransom notices, the pirates anchored off a remote section of the Spanish coast to wait for replies. To pass the time, the crew put their captives to work, forcing them—in some cases using the lash—to perform the most difficult, menial, and disgusting shipboard chores. They assigned Cutler to cleaning the bilges, a task so revolting it was the equivalent of trying to empty a sewer, bucket by bucket.
As the weeks went by, the ship grew fearfully clean, ransom money arrived, and Beckett’s fellow passengers were freed. But no word arrived from Jonathan Beckett. Cutler watched other captives exchanged for ransom money, day-by-day, week-by-week, until he was the only one left.
With a bitterness that scoured his soul of whatever remnants of kindness and decency it had still possessed, Cutler realized that his father had gotten the ultimate revenge for the accusations his son had hurled at him during their last meeting—he’d ignored the ransom demand.
Rather than spend his life as a slave, Cutler resolved to seize any opportunity to leap overboard and end it all. But, at the last possible moment, the captain received a letter from the EITC. An EITC official had authorized the office to offer a modest sum for the return of their new employee. The official who had signed the letter offering the ransom was none other than Viscount, Lord Penwallow.
Captain de Rapièr had sneeringly announced to Beckett that the ransom offered by the EITC was probably more than young Cutler would fetch in a slave auction, undersized and scrawny as he was, so he’d decided to let him go. The exchange was arranged.
After Captain de Rapièr had gotten the ransom money, he turned Cutler loose. Reeking, starved, and scarred, the young man stumbled back onto dry land. The first thing Beckett had done when he reached his posting in Gibraltar was to write a letter to the EITC official, Lord Penwallow, thanking him for the EITC’s faith in him, and promising to pay back the ransom amount.
Pay it back he had, and the next ten years had seen him rise rapidly in the EITC ranks.
Beckett had never spoken a word about his ordeal to anyone. He still suffered from nightmares, dreams where he was lying on the deck of the Lindesfarne, unable to move, while filthy, leering faces peered down at him, spat on him, and stabbed him with cutlasses. Some men might have turned to drink, or gambling, or wenching in an effort to drown those memories…but that wasn’t Cutler Beckett’s nature. He found surcease in accumulating power. Wealth, too, but if you had power, he’d found, wealth was easy to accrue.
And once he’d taken Zerzura, his power would be increased immeasurably. A knighthood would be just the beginning.…
Sitting in his Calabar office, Cutler Beckett determinedly dipped his new quill into his inkwell, then began making notes to himself, based on his discussion with Mercer. His mind busily sorted through the roster of EITC merchant ships, determining which ones would be best employed as troop carriers for the expedition to Kerma.
As Mercer had noted, if their strategy would be to bombard Zerzura until the inhabitants were too disorganized to mount an effective resistance, they would need plenty of ammunition and powder. So the ships he selected for the expedition would need to be large, to carry as many troops as possible, and they’d need to be heavily armed.
Beckett smiled slightly as he wrote the first name down on his list.
Wicked Wench.
How fitting, he thought. Jack, hurry back. We have a lot to do.…
CHAPTER TWELVE
Shabako
AS THOUGH TO APOLOGIZE for their earlier rough treatment, the sea and the winds were kind to Ayisha during the Wicked Wench’s voyage westward. Midway across the Atlantic, they experienced several days of steady rain, but it was a warm rain, not accompanied by high winds or thunderstorms. During
the temperate seasons, rain was welcome—it allowed crew members to wash clothes and replenish their water supplies. The breezes carrying them westward moderated the oppressive heat they’d experienced off the African coast. All in all, the crossing was as favorable as she could have wished.
Her initial seasickness did not return, and Ayisha rapidly regained her appetite and her strength. As the days went by, she could feel the months of constant fear and tension slipping away, becoming memory instead of the reality of her daily life. She regained her smile, and even laughed at times, especially with Tarek. It was good to speak her native tongue and spend time with someone from home; it nourished her soul. She began teaching him English.
Ayisha had never been the type of royal to sit idle. She was accustomed to working, using the talent given her by her god to weave cloth for the temple priests and priestesses, or assisting her mother with the day-to-day oversight and rule of the kingdom. Queen Tiyy had developed the custom of making a circuit of the island for five days out of every month, to stay in contact with her people, and pass judgment in civil matters. Ayisha accompanied her on these circuits, riding with her mother’s honor guard on her spirited mare, while the queen drove her chariot. Enforced idleness did not sit well with the princess; she needed to move, to exercise her mind, her body, and her skills. As soon as she could keep food down, she began walking circuits of the weather deck, her shawl tied around her waist during good weather, or draped over her head when it rained.
True to his word, Jack called his crew together and spun them a very creative tale to explain Ayisha and Tarek’s presence on his ship, as well as their current mission to locate and free Shabako. Ayisha had been in Jack’s cabin while he spoke to them, and had heard him quite clearly through the keyhole as he addressed them. According to the captain, Ayisha and Tarek were members of a previously unknown tribe in northern Africa. The “Kermalayan” tribe, Jack explained, produced beautiful cloth, textiles, and embroidery that the EITC was eager to acquire.
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