Chapter 19
LEO
18th March 1686
Sayba
Cheval had done well. We’d come in on the flood of the tide, and although he took the credit for this timing, it was really down to sailor’s luck—and maybe a slight storm surge. Either way, the result was the same; when the tide dropped, Sound of Freedom was left high and dry on the sand (or if not dry, at least high and draining—she still had a tun or two of water sloshing about her guts), and ready for work to begin.
Cheval had taken a couple of men to the island’s gun placement overnight—he was the only one who knew where it was, and was sure he could find it in the dark. He’d returned at first light, gun silenced. Now we had to set up our own defensive cannon before we did anything else.
“Call thysen a sailor, man? Have a care with that cannon! If she swings any harder, she’ll bring the mast down!”
I jumped in surprise at the shout behind me. Gaunt was back on deck, and I walked over to him to find out how Frazer fared.
“His battle’s with fever now, Cap. It’s up to Providence, I can do nowt else for him.” He paused. “Go and see him, Cap. I don’t know if he’ll know thee, but he might.” He looked past me at the gun slung over the mainyard and being lowered to the beach, then shouted again, “Have a care with that cannon! What have I already told thee?”
I looked at the cabin door for a moment, then turned away, back to the deck. I wasn’t ready to face Frazer yet. It was my fault he’d lost his leg, and if he died, that would be my fault too. We hadn’t sunk Hornigold; it had all been for nothing. How could I look him in the eye? Besides, there was nothing I could do for him. I gave my attention back to the ship.
Freedom needed new planking which meant we needed trees, and the only ones in sight were either growing out of the cliff face or atop it. At least the problem of getting them to the beach in one piece gave me something other than Frazer to worry about. I called Cheval and Gaunt to join me. The climb itself didn’t look too arduous—there was even a path—and the wind would blow us onto the cliff rather than off it, but it would still take some planning to get the wood to the beach.
Conversation was brief on the way up—all of us needed our full concentration to find safe footholds—and I for one had no breath to spare. At last, the loose dark stones of the path were behind us and the footing became surer. I stared out to sea—a view I never tired of—and studied the calm, deep blue water. It showed no trace of the storm that had pounded us more thoroughly than Hornigold’s cannon the day before. It looked so beautiful and peaceful; the storm, waterspout and loss of the Magdalena already felt like a dream. But it was all very real, and we’d have had him if not for that squall. Instead of glory, Freedom lay helpless on the sand directly below me. At this height she could have been the carcass of some great stranded sea creature. She didn’t belong on a beach, her body holed and her wings clipped.
I shook myself out of my reverie. We needed to get on with it and make this enforced stop as brief as possible. I turned inland to have a good look at our surroundings. The dense jungle looked just like my early home in Panama, except for the bare rock of the top half of the central volcano shrouded with gray cloud. I could see no sign of people, but Cheval assured me there was a grand estate close inland and the town of Eckerstad was three or four leagues along the coast to the south. Blake and Hornigold had close ties to that town, and we could learn something useful about them there. I resolved to visit it with my second mate once all the decisions regarding the repairs were made.
“Well, what do you think, Robert?” I asked my carpenter.
“Mahogany—it’s good wood, Freedom’ll do well with it, but it’ll be a beggar to work with.”
I nodded; this was going to take time then. “What do you want to do? Lower whole trees down or plank it up here?”
“Good question. I reckon it’ll be easy enough to rig up a gantry to lower the smaller trees. We’re not exactly short of cordage, and I can rig up a runner and tackle easy enough. I ain’t dragging all the tools up here so the strakes can be damaged on the passage back down.”
I nodded, that made sense.
“I’ll need a dozen men up here felling and lowering, and another half dozen below,” he went on. “Then it’ll take time to carve and fair each strake, and there’s only a handful of men who can do that work. I wouldn’t count on leaving inside of two week. Mebbe three.”
I nodded again. I wasn’t surprised; the ball had split several strakes, and there was a lot of splintered wood to replace. It was no easy job to shape the four-inch-thick planks we needed. We’d use the time to thoroughly clean, air and scrape Freedom’s hull to get her fighting fit and to her fastest again. I looked back down at the beach, noting the gun placements and lookout positions. I would want somebody up here as well and, once the gantry was rigged, a gun or two wouldn’t be a bad idea, as long as they were the smaller ones. If we used one to signal the beach, the other would protect us from the bearing of the cliff top and the estate. We weren’t quite as vulnerable as I’d feared. Nobody would find it easy to sneak up on us here, and if they did try, we were well prepared and heavily armed. The gun covering our passage out had been spiked, and if there was no perceptible threat to the island, there was no reason the sabotage would be found—and if it were, it would take time to deal with. It was a big task, but with a little thought and planning we should be able to make our repairs and put off again right under the noses of our enemies.
Chapter 20
LEO
2nd April 1686
The repairs were well under way, and Gaunt and Blackman had everything in hand. Frazer was still in his fever, and there was nothing I could do here. It was time to take the opportunity to explore Eckerstad with Cheval. He’d joined Freedom a couple of months before our encounter with Tarr. We’d taken his ship for a prize, and Frazer had recognized him as having sailed with Hornigold. We’d taken a chance on him as he’d fallen out with the buccaneers, and I hoped that, knowing their habits, he might prove useful. I’d put him forward for second mate as a play on his vanity, and hoped it was time to be rewarded. He knew Eckerstad and its people, and I wanted as much information as I could gather about Blake and Hornigold’s pet island without drawing too much attention to myself. My mother had been English, and I’d spoken the language since I was a child, plus I was in the company of a known French buccaneer, so hopefully no one would realize I was a hated Spaniard. I put on a wide-brimmed hat to hide my face, though, just in case.
I also wanted to know more about how he’d parted company with Tarr and the others. So far he’d been tight-lipped about his past, blustering past my questions, but I was determined to get his story. I needed to know if I could trust him as a man as I now knew I could as a sailor. He’d done well after the waterspout, but I hadn’t forgotten his earlier challenge. This little expedition would provide the perfect opportunity to find out more about him.
We rowed back out through the rocks in the longboat at high tide with a calm sea and sunshine. Once we were free of them, Cheval hauled up the sail and we let the wind do the work. It was only April, but already the days dawned stiflingly hot and still—apart from the odd squall. The building sea breeze and sunshine were perfect, and the little craft responded to every gust, pushing forward easily through the slight swell. Despite the recent problems and the knowledge that I was on a mission of revenge, my cares fell off my shoulders with each welcome puff of cooling wind.
“I love this,” I told Cheval. “The wind at my back, the pull of the sail and the way she takes on each wave. Do you know, I’ve been at sea eight years now, but I can never get enough of this—there can be no better place than at the helm of a sailing boat enjoying a salted breeze.”
“Oui. I first came to the sea when I was eight and could never leave ’er now.”
“What took you to sea so young?”
“Mon père. It was just the two of us and Papa was one of the original boucaniers. We were
amongst those invited to Port Royal by England, lured away from our life hunting on ’Ispaniola by the promise of the rich prizes.”
“By Henry Morgan.” It was a statement rather than a question, but he answered anyway.
“Non, ’e was just an ordinary sailor then, one of many, but we did sail with ’im, until ’e blew up ’is ship, anyway.”
“Which one, the Oxford?” The Oxford had been Morgan’s impressive flagship, sent west by a grateful English parliament, and had had a crew over two hundred strong. She exploded one night off Cow Island, thanks to a well-stocked powder magazine, drunken sailors and a careless candle. Only the men carousing in the great cabin had survived. She’d hardly fired a shot in anger.
“Oui. Papa was killed.”
“I’m sorry. It’s hard to lose a father so young.”
He stayed quiet, lost in his memories. I sheeted the sail in and leaned back as I changed course to clear the headland, and waited for him to continue.
“I was alone, and didn’t ’ave anywhere to go, but I was damned if I’d set foot on the same deck as ’Enry Morgan again.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“I ended up on Tarr’s ship.”
I nodded, careful not to comment. I needed him to tell his story.
“’E was more interested in the gold than claiming and protecting land for England as Morgan was, and that suited me too. I didn’t give a damn for England. Nor anyplace else. Still don’t. I sailed with them sixteen years and ’ave to say we were good at our trade.”
“So you were at Panama with them?” I held my breath.
Cheval shuddered. “Mon Dieu, non. I stayed behind to keep the ship with three others. The men didn’t want a child slowing them down in the jungle, though they took old Swan with them and ’e was eighty if ’e was a day.”
I was relieved. If he’d been part of the attack on my home, I’d have had to kill him.
“Why did you leave them? What happened?”
“Look up there, that’s where the gun is,” he said, changing the subject.
Frustrated, I looked up, realizing I only had Cheval’s word that the gun was out of action.
“Do you see those coconut trees up there? That’s where van Ecken lives. He brought them over from the East Indies. Insists on making his guests eat them, hate them myself.”
“Who?” I asked, wanting as much information as possible.
“Erik van Ecken. ’E’s the ’Ollander who more or less owns the island. Tarr was ’is man, Blake and ’Ornigold still are. The buccaneers take the ships, then van Ecken buys them, refits them as slavers and sends them to Africa. ’E grows sugar and trades in other things too, but the slaves is where ’e makes ’is coin, and ’e makes a lot. ’Is plantation, Brisingamen, stretches the three leagues in every direction from this cliff face.”
“He has a long reach.”
“Oui.”
“Does he live alone?” I wanted to keep Cheval talking.
“No, nothing like. ’E ’as an army of the slaves and plenty of English pirates to keep them in line. ’E never goes anywhere alone; even when ’e’s stepping out on ’is wife, ’e always ’as at least two of them with ’im.”
“What’s the wife like?”
He paused. “Beaten.”
“Beaten?”
“Oui, in every way. I ’aven’t seen ’er in a long time, but I remember ’er when she arrived. Young and excited, beautiful with the laugh that could melt even Blake’s ’eart. It didn’t last long.”
“What, the marriage?”
“No, the laugh.”
I looked at him, not sure what to say.
He shrugged. “C’est vrai. It’s true. I don’t know what ’e did to ’er, but ’e took ’er laughter, and ’er looks. She’s too thin and creeps about like a rat trying to stay out of the way of the ship’s cat. A waste of a good woman if you ask me.”
“It sounds it. Why does she stay? It doesn’t sound as if either of them want the marriage.” Not that there was much she could do about it in this day and age, divorcements were hard to come by—especially for a wife.
“She’s no more wife than possession, just like the slaves. Only she lives in better quarters.” He shrugged again, not that interested. “We should be able to see the town soon, the rocks become less past this last point.”
I looked forward again. Eckerstad was a sizable collection of buildings nestled around a natural harbor and dwarfed by the cloud-shrouded mountain that towered over it. I wondered at the prudence of my decision to come here.
Chapter 21
LEO
Eckerstad
“Freyja!”
I looked around at Cheval’s urgent whisper. We’d cleared the last headland, and there she was. Hornigold had survived both my attack and the waterspout.
I examined the other ships—was Blake here too? No. No Edelweiss, just a couple of slavers by the looks of it. I turned my attention back to Freyja and adjusted the tiller. Her rigging had been replaced and her hull looked sound from this distance, but I didn’t want to get any closer to make sure. If I had the opportunity I’d kill him, but I didn’t want to give him the opportunity to kill me. I’d stay well away from those guns. I checked her stern and rudder. Seaworthy. We had caused no lasting damage that I could see; I still had it all to do.
I scrutinized her decks as we sailed past—she seemed deserted. There must be someone on shipkeeping duty, surely, but I couldn’t see any movement at all.
“’Ornigold will be ashore,” Cheval said. “’E never did like staying aboard at anchor. ’e will be in one of the stews with some doxy.”
“I’m not so sure.” I’d watched the shore as we approached, and noticed that the men milling around the wharf were not actually milling. Nor were they drinking or sleeping in the sun. Something was going on. Do they know we’re here? But how?
I guided the longboat to the near end of the wharf, out of the way, and Cheval jumped ashore, line in hand, to tie her off. I dropped the sail and followed, then looked up the cobbled wharf. Two heavily armed men were walking toward us, although patrolling might be a better description; they moved with purpose.
“We should go, Capitaine,” Cheval whispered loudly. “They’re looking for us.”
“If they were looking for us, why would they be looking here? Anyway, they’d be looking for a ship, not two men in a boat.”
“Well, something’s wrong, I don’t like it.”
“Hmm, but if Hornigold is distracted, I may get my chance at him. Come on, Second.”
I headed toward the nearest narrow street, and was stopped by a shout from the men walking the wharf.
“What’s your business here, churl?” one of them asked.
I stared at him, but decided not to react to his insult.
“Just come ashore for a drink, mate,” I said, doing my best to hide my Spanish accent, and gestured vaguely at the ships in the harbor. “We’ve had the devil of a day cleaning out the cable locker.” The cable locker, where the enormous anchor cables were stowed when at sea, was low down in the ship, stank to high heaven, and needed heavy maintenance to keep the wood sound. It had to be scraped and tarred, and any rotten wood replaced before the anchors were weighed and the heavy, wet rope once again coiled down. The job was usually reserved as a punishment. The men laughed.
“I reckon you’ll need more than a drink, mate—best alehouse is that way—the Crab and Anchor!” He laughed again. “Watch out for the crabs!” We hurried off in the direction he had indicated.
“Merde!”
I looked at Cheval. Now what? Had he been that scared by a couple of deckhands? It would have been an even fight at worst. Then I realized he was staring at one of the alleyways ahead to our left, and had his hand on his sword. We did have pistols with us, but they were unloaded and stowed in our sashes out of the way. I hadn’t wanted to be quite so obvious about my intentions as to hang loaded pistols about my neck. We could load them in a minute, but by the look
on his face we did not have a minute.
I followed his line of sight and saw the two men who were having such an effect on my second mate. I stiffened with surprise as I recognized the one-eyed man from Tarr’s ship—the one who had called down after Magdalena.
“Who are they?”
“Sharpe, ’Ornigold’s new quartermaster, and Little. We don’t get on.”
Something told me that was an understatement.
Sharpe spotted us and stopped in his tracks. A slow smile spread over his face, and he said something to Little, who laughed, but I did not think it was in humor. They changed direction and walked toward us.
“Well, well, well,” Sharpe said as he neared us, his hand on the hilt of his cutlass. “Look at this—you never know what you’ll find skulking in the backstreets of a sailortown. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you again, Cheval.”
“I ’aven’t,” Cheval muttered. I glanced at him in annoyance.
Sharpe and Little both laughed. I stepped to the side. All their attention was on Cheval and, if it came to a fight, I wanted the advantage.
Sharpe glared at me. Even with a patch covering one eye, the other conveyed his message, and I stopped moving.
“You want to be careful, mate, don’t turn your back to this one, he’ll have a knife in it afore you even know he’s there. Then he’ll toss you overboard for good measure.”
“That’s a lie, Sharpe, and you know it,” Cheval exclaimed.
“Yes, you used a mainsheet block, didn’t you? But the sentiment’s true enough. Don’t think I don’t know it was no accident. I know you tried to kill me. You’re too good a steersman to be caught out by a jibe like that, just as I was standing in exactly the right place for your purposes. If I hadn’t seen that boom coming, the block would have knocked me overboard, and you wouldn’t have called an alarm, would you? As it was, I lost an eye and now I want restitution—I want both of yours!”
The Valkyrie Series: The First Fleet - (Books 1-3) Look Sharpe!, Ill Wind & Dead Reckoning: Caribbean Pirate Adventure Page 27
