Including the cat, there were forty-one survivors removed from the Virago. When the guns were shifted and warnings issued that it would be unsafe to remain aboard her much longer, they filed slowly across the wide planks and, to a man, remained by the Egret’s rails, their faces taut, their bodies rigid, as they watched Pitt and Dante make a final search through the wreckage on deck. It was Simon Dante, with his ship groaning and trembling beneath him, who climbed the shrouds to the top of the broken mainmast and removed her flags. Carrying them in his clenched fist, with his limp more pronounced and the pain graying his face, he was the last to make the crossing. Pitt ordered the cables cut, and under the faint stirrings of a breeze, he called for enough sail in the tops to ease the Egret slowly away.
The sun was setting behind the Virago, painting her ruined and battered hull in gold. The blaze spread across the surface of the ocean and fanned orange and red across the sky. One by one the eyes of the men turned away from the sea and focused on the solitary figure standing on the afterdeck, his hands gripping the rail, his profile etched against the crimson sky as he watched his ship die.
Even Spence, who had fed off his anger most of the afternoon, mellowed somewhat, respecting the pain of a fellow captain forced to watch the last bit of shadowy hull slide beneath the whispering sea.
“One clean shot, Father,” Beau murmured, standing at Spence’s side. “I could pick him off from here with one clean shot.”
“Aye, I’m sure ye could, lass. An’ I’ll keep the thought in mind if I don’t hear any answers I like.”
“You’re going to let him talk his way out of this?”
“I’ll admit I’m curious to hear what he has to say. A man o’ Dante de Tourville’s reputation simply does not behave like a petty thief unless he has a damned good reason.”
“He has stolen your ship!” Beau hissed, wary of Pitt and the Cimaroon standing half a deck away. “He has forcibly taken command and stolen your ship! It is hardly petty thievery!”
“He hasn’t stolen it very far yet,” Spence remarked dryly. “Nor will he so as long as we outnumber him two to one.”
Spit McCutcheon came up beside them, swabbing his face and neck with a large square of red linen. There were lanterns and cressets burning amidships where the men still worked in the thickening darkness.
“I can take naught away from them brutes,” he said, hooking a gnarled thumb over his shoulder. “Finest bronze bastards I’ve seen in my day or any other. No more’n a year or two out o’ the foundry, but well seasoned an’ not a crack or split showin’. They’ll fetch a damned pretty price in Plymouth; he weren’t pullin’ your nose on that count.”
Spence grunted, allowing the cannon might be a valuable commodity, but it did not explain their hellfire importance.
“I … er, been watchin’ an’ listenin’ to some o’ those Virago men, like ye asked,” Spit said, lowering his voice. “Damnedest thing I ever saw. Most o’ them should have been happy just to have their bellies filled an’ a sound deck beneath them. But to a man they’ve put their backs into the work, restin’ only when our men rest, askin’ no favors an’ takin’ no more’n a fair share o’ water an’ victuals. An’ all the while, it’s ‘Aye, sir,’ ‘No, sir,’ ‘Begging pardon, sir.’ ’Tisn’t natural. Got my skin crawlin’ worse than if I’d got a passle o’ maggots nestin’ under my codpiece.”
He spat over the side of the ship and swabbed his face again, muttering under his breath as he walked back to where a crew was struggling to seat the last of the bronze monsters in its wooden carriage. The foremast had been sheered of sail and put to use as a hoist. With timber creaking and yards straining, ten men on cables hauled and grunted over the huge barrel of the gun while half a dozen more pushed and prodded with tackle and pikes to swing it up and over its cradle of ten-inch square beams. The carpenter, Thomas Moone, had cut a new port in the hull and was affixing the last hinge and length of bracing tackle when the hoist lines were slackened and the full weight of the gun settled into its carriage.
The Egret heeled slightly, riding a low swell on the sea. Someone had neglected to wedge chocks under the wheels of the gun carriage and the two-ton monster started to roll forward with the motion of the deck. Thomas Moone heard the warning shouts and the ominous rumble of wooden wheels, and turned in time to see the great black hole of the muzzle lunging toward his face.
He tried to jump out of the way but his foot snagged on a cable and he went sprawling flat on the deck, his leg sandwiched between the muzzle and the raw edge of the gunport. His scream brought Simon Dante to the rail of the afterdeck. Not bothering to seek the ladder, he vaulted over the top and landed heavily on the main deck, barely stopping to register the pain from his injured leg. Two long strides brought him to the side of the gun at the same time as Jonas Spence, who grabbed the nearest cable and shouted orders to the men to take up the slack on the tackle. One of the large wheels had split under the weight and the gun would not move. Dante, his muscles bulging with the strain, thrust a steel pike beneath the barrel of the cannon and put all of his strength into levering the cannon long enough for Spit and Geoffrey Pitt to drag Moone clear of the port. A split second later the steel pike snapped, the wheel shattered, and the cannon slid forward, stopping only when it was wedged fast in the gunport.
Spit looked from the gun, to Moone’s bruised but intact leg, then to Dante and the broken pike. He found Spence next, giving him a pointed I-told-you-it-weren’t-natural glare.
Simon Dante, meanwhile, had slumped down beside the gun carriage, his face streaming sweat, his hands trembling where they were squeezed around the bloom of fresh red blood staining his hose.
“Simon?” Pitt dropped onto one knee beside him.
Dante shook his head and spoke through a gleaming rack of tightly clenched teeth. “It’s nothing. It will pass.”
Spence pushed his way around to the side of the gun. “What is it? What’s amiss?”
“His leg,” Pitt said. “The stubborn bastard insists there’s nothing wrong with it, but in two weeks, it should have healed by now. Have you a barber or anyone with doctoring skills on board?”
“Cook knows how to set bones an’ lance boils.” Spence nodded. “An’ we’ve a sailmaker who turns a fair stitch with needle an’ thread.”
“It’s just a bloody cut,” Dante insisted. “Jostled one too many times.”
“It isn’t just a cut,” Beau said quietly, stepping out from behind the bulk of her father. “I saw it earlier when he unwrapped it and there is far too much swelling and bruising for just a cut.”
“Save my soul,” Dante spat through the sheen of sweat glistening on his face, “and tell me you are neither the cook nor the sailmaker.”
Beau looked amused for the first time. “Your soul is safe, Captain. Not even a starving man would eat my cooking, and I stitch more holes in my fingers than I do in canvas.”
“Pray alleviate my ignorance and tell me what you do do on board this ship.”
Beau’s eyes glowed the same smoky amber as the nearby lantern as she squatted down beside him, her elbows propped on her bent knees. “I doubt such a simple measure would remedy such a vast shortfall. Besides which, it is your limb in immediate danger from your ignorance. A simpleton would have had the sense to swallow his pride and seek help for it.”
Quicker than it took a protest to form on his tongue, she drew her stiletto and put the tip to the bloodied hose, slicing a long enough opening in the wool to part the edges and expose the wound on his calf. The slash was as long as her hand, the surrounding flesh was shiny from the swelling, mottled red and blue. There was evidence it had scabbed over and split open a time or two, but it did not take a physic’s eye or nose to detect the source of the oozing white pus that was draining along with the thready rivulets of blood.
“There must be something lodged in there,” Beau said, prodding the angry swelling with the point of her knife. “No wonder it hasn’t healed properly.”
“Wh
atever it is, can you get it out?” Pitt asked.
Beau straightened. “I am not a doctor. And if it has been in there for two weeks, it may have to be cut out.”
“The alternative is infection and gangrene.”
Spence shifted uncomfortably. “Aye, so it is.”
Dante’s head rolled and he focused on Pitt’s face with a scowl made even more menacing by the black bearding. “You do it. Or Lucifer. Don’t even think… of giving the wench the pleasure of cutting me.”
Beau arched an eyebrow. Without waiting for anyone’s decision—or permission—she dipped her knife to the wound, dug until the point found something solid, then pried it out with a quick jerk of her wrist.
Dante roared and Pitt swore. Spence jumped forward to pin the captain’s shoulders to the gun carriage, while Pitt grabbed his wrists to keep him from lunging at Beau. She, quite calmly, held up her knife, displaying a four-inch-long sliver of oak impaled on the tip.
“Christ Jesus,” Dante spat. “You enjoyed that, didn’t you?”
“No,” she replied. “But I am going to enjoy this.”
She flicked the bloodied sliver to the deck and bent over the wound again. There was fresh blood welling to fill the hole in the muscle, and with a few efficient strokes she cut away the old scabbing and squeezed the swollen flesh until the pustules were all drained and the blood ran clear red. Spit held a lantern over her head while she worked. Thomas Moone, despite his tender leg, fetched a pannikin of vinegar to wash away the purulence, and Spence, being more practical by nature, ordered someone to fetch a stone crock from his cabin along with a couple of pewter cups.
When the crock came, he used his teeth to remove the wax bung and filled one of the cups to the brim.
“Wrap yer lips around this, Cap’n Dante. Yer gut will burn so fierce, ye won’t even remember ye have a leg. All at once now, mind. Don’t waste time dippin’ yer tongue or ye might regret it before ye start.”
Dante’s long fingers curled around the cup and Beau met his eyes briefly, suspecting it was her throat he regretted he could not be squeezing instead.
The knife flashed again and Dante tossed back the full measure of amber liquid. Spence, who had filled himself a cup as well, smacked his lips with relish as the liquid fireball plummeted into his belly. Dante had to suck at a breath and steady himself until the shock of the flames receded. But Spence had been right; he paid no heed to what Beau was doing to his leg, he cared only if he had a throat and gullet left at the end of the burn.
Spence chuckled inwardly and asked, with all the innocence of a babe, “Care for another?”
“If I were you,” Dante rasped, “I would be trying to find some way to throw me and my men overboard. I doubt I would be tending wounds and offering to share a draft of rumbullion… unless of course it was poisoned.”
“The thought crossed my mind, lad, believe me. But in this case, ‘twould be a waste o’ good Indies Gold to sour it with poison.”
“So it would,” Dante agreed, holding out his cup for a refill. “God’s teeth, but it does have a keen bite to it.”
“Brewed by the brown-skinned heathens on Tortuga who drink the stuff like water an’ only have to piss on a piece o’ wood to start a fire.”
Dante drained the second measure and let his head fall back on the support of the wheel. His gaze strayed down to Beau, caught as she was in the glow of the lantern light. Over the course of the long afternoon and evening, a fine mist of hair had escaped the restrictive confines of her braid, framing her face in a soft reddish halo. She had removed her doublet sometime during the day, betraying softer, fuller breasts than Dante had originally envisioned. Her shirt was laced tight to her throat, but he could see where curves and indents formed impressions beneath the cloth, and where the plump, firm strain of young flesh stretched the cloth flat.
“I suppose you drink this like water as well?” he asked dryly.
“I don’t gasp and wheeze like a child when I do,” she said brusquely, and finished binding his calf snugly with a wide strip of cloth.
He grinned unexpectedly and reached for the crock himself, filling his cup and handing it to Beau. Without wavering her gaze by so much as an eyelash, she took the cup and swallowed the contents, displaying the same hearty degree of appreciation Spence had.
Jonas chuckled aloud this time. “That’s my little black swan. Sooner pluck her own eyeballs out with a dull stick than refuse a challenge.”
“Why does it not surprise me?” Dante murmured.
“No reason it should,” Spence agreed, “unless ye’re a poorer judge o’ character than I make ye out to be.”
De Tourville offered up a faint smile. His leg was throbbing dully but the outpouring of sweat had stopped along with the tremors in his hands and arms. The rum had warmed his belly considerably and he had no great urge to move or retreat from the cooling night air. He could have slept then and there quite happily and left the explanations to the morning—or to Geoffrey Pitt—but he knew the captain of the Egret deserved better.
“Is there somewhere we can go and talk in private?” he asked Jonas.
“My cabin. If it’s still my cabin, that is.”
"It is your cabin, sir. Your cabin and your ship, and you have my heartfelt apologies if I made it seem any other way. Mister Pitt will join us, if you have no objection, and your navigator, if he can be spared. We lost our pilot and most of our instruments in the storm that blew us to hell and gone; with the fighting and the drift and the heavy cloud cover we could be within hailing distance of Cathay and I’d not know it.”
“We’ve been plagued by the same cloud cover, but near as we can fix it, we are a week south o’ the Canaries, thereabouts. Another three after that, with luck, an’ we’ll be home.”
Dante nodded, deliberately avoiding the glance Pitt shot his way. He did not refuse the hand his first mate offered to help him up, however, and after testing his weight on the wounded leg, he found the pain vastly diminished. He still swayed unsteadily on his feet. Fatigue and two cups of Indies Gold on an empty stomach put his head into such a spin, when he squinted upward and tried to focus on the darkness overhead, he saw two north stars twinkling brightly off the bow.
Jonas started to lead the way along the deck toward the stern of the ship. “Beau—will ye not see if Cook has aught in the way o’ hot victuals in the stewpot? Bring along a biscuit or two as well; a man can think an’ talk better when he isn’t listenin’ to his belly rub on his ribs.”
Beau planted her hands on her hips and glared mutinously after her father. “I’m not an errand boy either,” she muttered, watching with hot, flashing eyes as the three men ducked through the after hatch. Her last glimpse was of Dante’s flowing white shirt as he lagged behind, favoring the newly bandaged leg.
“And a gracious 'you’re welcome’ to you too,” she snorted.
CHAPTER SIX
Beau was still grousing as she descended the shallow ladder into the area beneath the forecastle where the cook held rein over the ship’s stores. He was a bellicose man, lean as a whip, ugly as a wart, with the unparalleled talent of being able to pass wind upon request. Beau’s query for food won a resounding demonstration of his skill, followed by a hand waved sullenly in the direction of the huge iron cauldron. Assuming it meant help yourself, she did. There was a thick miasma of rice and beans bubbling sluggishly in the kettle, some of which she ladled into a large wooden bowl. Two thick slabs of boiled, salted fish were tossed onto a tin platter along with a handful of rock-hard biscuits and a wedge of yellow cheese.
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 i
n 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.
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