Regardless how menial the task, he showed a willingness to learn. He spent an afternoon with Nathan being shown the finer points of how to set a sail, and when Nog Kelly demonstrated the proper way to nail together one of the gun carriages, it was Nog who took out a front tooth with a hammer, leaving Varian, his grin intact, to finish the job. He even went hunting one afternoon with Johnny Boy and while he skinned the inside of his forearm learning to shoot the longbow, he proudly presented Juliet with the coconut he had skewered through the heart.
Juliet was smiling more too. It seemed to start at first light when she opened her eyes and found herself curled against Varian’s big body, and it was the last thing she did at night when they lay naked and sated in each other’s arms. It was unfortunate that reality kept intruding or she would have been quite content to wile away her days swimming in the tidal pools and making long, languorous love.
“They should have been back by now,” she said, scanning the clear and disturbingly empty horizon with her spyglass. “It has been nearly three weeks. We’ve moved cannon, laid traps, built fortifications. Faith, we’ve even taught you how to climb a tree and bake crabs in the sand.”
At least once a day Juliet made the climb to the highest vantage point on the island. Most times Varian accompanied her, which meant they would not quite make it directly there or back without taking some manner of detour. On this particular day they had arrived at the top well before sunset and relieved the two lookouts an hour before the regular watch was due to be changed.
Standing behind her, he gathered her hair to one side and placed a kiss on the sensitive curve of her neck. “Your brothers strike me as being more than capable of looking after themselves. Indeed, I would allow they are the type who would show their backsides to the Spanish and run before them like hares taunting a hound.”
She lowered the glass and sighed. “But three weeks. The pinnaces we’ve sent out have seen nothing either. No ships. No fleet. No movement whatsoever in the Straits and frankly, Father is concerned some of the other captains may grow impatient and leave.”
“Maybe the French and Dutch privateers did their jobs too well and the Viceroy of Nuevo España has ordered the fleet to remain in port.”
“Maybe the next time you crack open a coconut you will find it filled with gold doubloons.”
His hands slid down from her shoulders and circled around to cradle her breasts. “You dare to mock me, madam? I, who this very day risked life and limb to catch a turtle so that you might dine on potage de tortue tonight?”
She leaned against his chest, her nipples rising instantly beneath his palms. After three weeks she would have thought the fires within would have burned down to more tolerant levels, but no. A touch, a look, the crooked little smile he seemed to have reserved for her alone could start an entire welter of sensations flaring to life inside her.
They flared now and within a few laughing breaths she had him on his back in the grass. Straddling his hips, she tugged his shirt free of his breeches, shoving the loosened folds up under his arms to expose the bulge of muscles across his chest. She laid her hands flat on the hard surface, letting the dark wealth of hair tickle her palms and fingers before dragging them down over the smoothness of his belly. When they encountered the wide black belt he wore, she watched his face while she unfastened it and reached for the buttons below.
The first few days they had been on Frenchman’s Cay he had attempted to maintain the neatly trimmed imperial and thin moustache, but for the past fortnight, he had forsaken the blade and the chestnut stubble on his face had filled in thick and smooth. He had also taken to wearing his hair in a tail with a bandana tied around his brow to keep the sweat out of his eyes. When combined with the loose cambric shirt, the chamois breeches, the tanned skin and gleaming white smile, he looked increasingly more like a pirate, less like a duke than she would ever have envisioned the first time she saw him on the deck of the Argus.
“Do you not miss your purple plumes at all?” she asked in a low murmur, her hands inside his breeches now, his body tensing beneath her.
“I, ah, beg your pardon? I’m afraid I wasn’t listening.”
She laughed and shook her head to negate the question and was about to bend over and distract him further when her gaze strayed to the rocky knob of land that marked the peak of Spaniard’s Cay. The vantage points of the two islands were perhaps three fourths of a mile apart, too far to hear the sound of an alarm bell, but close enough to see the small puff of white smoke that rose from the signal fire. She sat straight a moment, then reached for her spyglass and pushed to her feet.
“What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know, I can’t quite... ”
Juliet cursed the angle of the sun and the glare that was causing spheres of colored light to refract around the inside of her spyglass. It was just a speck well to the south, lost between every other trough of the waves, but she soon recognized the sleek lines of the Christiana. Geoffrey Pitt had taken her out three mornings ago to do a little reconnaissance of his own along the cays.
“It is Mr. Pitt, coming in hard and fast, under full sail.”
She trained the glass west and scanned the distant horizon but it was still clear. The Christiana, however, was skimming over the waves like she had a fire under her keel and Juliet thrust the glass in Varian’s hands.
“I have to get back down to the beach. Will you stay and wait for the watch change? It’s probably nothing, but if you see anything unusual... anything at all, light the signal fire and ring the bell.”
Varian nodded, fastening his breeches and tucking his shirt back inside. “Light the fire, ring the bell. Aye Captain.”
She did not acknowledge either his salute or his grin; she was already gone.
~~~
The Christiana barely cut her speed until she was through the channel. There, she backed her sails to make a graceful, sweeping turn behind the islands, but instead of ordering an anchor into the water, Pitt dove over the side, swimming ashore with long, easy strokes even as the Christiana ran up sail and caught the wind again.
By then there was quite a crowd gathered on the beach, including Simon, Isabeau, and Juliet.
“I was anchored off Running Rock when one of Captain Smith’s scouts came in,” Pitt said, emerging from the water, shaking droplets from his hair. “The fleet has left Havana. The vanguard should pass the southern end of the cays some time tomorrow. I’ve sent Spit north to spread the alert and give the other captains time to sober their crews.”
Simon Dante nodded. The wait was over. There was still a question in his eyes, however, one that Geoffrey Pitt could not answer.
“There’s no word. No one has seen or heard from either the Tribute or the Valor. Smith did say that his men ran down a French merchantman for sport and heard there had been a battle fought off Havana. They didn’t know who was involved, just that a couple of privateers were in a skirmish, and at the end of the day, two ships were sunk.”
“Were they ours?” Isabeau asked softly, standing by her husband’s side.
Geoffrey shook his head. “He didn’t know.”
~~~
No one slept that night. The last of the powder barrels were taken ashore and final preparations were made along both embankments. At first light, the Avenger weighed anchor and towed the almost useless hulk of the Santo Domingo to the western side of the cays. At Geoffrey Pitt’s suggestion, they had decided to revise their original plan slightly, using the galleon and the pirate wolf’s ship as bait. Without the Tribute or the Valor contributing their firepower, they needed the Dutchman’s guns on the other side of the channel. The Spaniards were not entirely stupid. If they saw a pair of privateers drifting in shallow water close to two islands, they might well see the trap for what it was, especially if they had just come under attack further south.
While her father towed the galleon into position, Juliet walked the beach for the tenth time, turning a critical eye to a
nything that might betray the presence of men or guns on the shoreline. The tents had all been struck, the barrels of powder were well back behind the trees and covered with scrub. The cannons had sheets of canvas draped over their snouts that had been painted with pitch and covered with sand to look like part of the landscape. No fires of any kind were permitted apart from the two covered pots of hot coals that were kept smoldering behind each gun line to light the fuses.
When there was nothing more to be done, she climbed to the peak accompanied by Varian and Geoffrey Pitt. Once they went on board their respective ships, they would be blind until they received a signal from the lookouts.
Juliet’s first thought, when they reached the top, was that the Avenger had towed the Santo Domingo surprisingly far out, well beyond the strip of turquoise that marked the edge of the coral bank. Her second thought was that if she hadn’t seen for her own eyes that the tatters and ruins were a ruse, she would have believed the Avenger was a wreck. Torn sheets of canvas hung from skewed yards. Rigging lines had been loosened, cables and spars hung over the rails dragging sails in the water to make it look as if the Avenger was dead in the water. They had even rubbed charcoal dust on the masts and rails to make it appear as though a fire had raged out of control on the decks. On a signal from the lookouts, buckets of oakum would be set alight on the decks of both ships to send up clouds of thick black smoke.
Beside her, Varian looked up at the stunningly clear sky. There had been a haze earlier in the morning, hanging like a pale shroud around the islands but the sun had burned it away and the sky was clear in all directions, which was why he frowned.
“What is that? Thunder?”
Juliet tipped her head, listen to the low, throbbing rumble that was barely audible above the sway of the trees.
“Not thunder,” she murmured. “Those are Captain Smith’s guns. It has begun.”
~~~
The vanguard of the Spanish treasure fleet came into view less than an hour later. Pitt, Juliet, and the two lookouts crouched down instinctively when the first sails appeared on the horizon, and while Varian knew it was quite impossible for anyone to detect their silhouettes from such a distance, he ducked as well. Two, three, five, eight majestic towers of sail and timber came into view, their sheets white against the blue sky, easily identifiable by the large red crosses painted on the canvas. The galleons in front were massive, equally as big if not bigger than the Santo Domingo and normally would have been sailing in an open vee formation behind the almirante like migrating geese, with the smaller treasure-bearing ships inside the protective shield of warships. But as the convoy drew closer, they could see something had staggered them.
“They look to be shy a few guards on their right flank,” Geoffrey muttered. “God bless Captains Smith and Wilbury. And look there, well in the rear... ”
He stabbed the air excitedly with a finger, training his glass on the far southern limit of their view. Juliet followed suit and smiled, though Varian could only squint and wonder what had caught their attention.
“Here.” Pitt laughed as he passed over his spyglass. “Look just past the point of Spaniard’s Cay.”
Varian put the leather-bound glass to his eye and brought the horizon into sharper focus. The ships were still small and he doubted if he could have distinguished a galleon from a longboat at this distance, but there was no mistaking the thin plume of smoke he could see tailing out in the wake of one of the ships that was separated from the pack and obviously struggling to rejoin the convoy.
“We’d best get down to the ships,” Pitt advised, standing and brushing the sand off his knees. But Juliet was already running ahead, her long legs scything through the long grasses, her hair streaming out in dark ribbons behind.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
It was almost too easy. The lead ship in the convoy—the almirante—ran up a series of flags signalling for the fleet to slow, for two of the warships to pull within hailing distance. After receiving their orders, the pair peeled away and, undoubtedly stinging from the first surprise attack on the fleet, came to investigate the two smoldering ships adrift along the banks. The Spaniards knew these deceptively tranquil ribbons of azure and cerulean well, marking the area Baja Mas—shallow waters—on their charts. They had lost enough vessels to know it was not outside the realm of possibility that a privateer could have become trapped by his own arrogance and not been able to escape the superior firepower of the galleon. Both ships looked badly crippled, and when they drew closer, they could see Spanish officers, their helmets winking in the sunlight, waving them on from the deck of the tall aftercastle.
On board the Avenger, Dante could almost pinpoint the moment when the capitán of the first galleon realized the wounded vessel belonged to the pirata lobo. The gun ports swung open prematurely on all decks. Sailors and soldiers alike crowded the rails, and clambered into the yards, some even leaping in the air and cheering at the thought of the ten thousand doubloons in reward that would now be theirs to share.
Dante ordered sails unfurled in the tops, only as many as were needed to swing the Avenger gently away and make it appear as though they were attempting to limp to sanctuary behind the two islands. When he was through the channel—impressed that he could not see a single gun beneath its camouflage— and clear on the other side, he ordered the rigging lashed tight and the tattered sails replaced with taut new sheets. He tacked hard and swift to starboard, taking the Avenger in a tight circle that would bring her back around in position to meet the warships when they emerged from the channel. Isabeau had relinquished command of the Dove to Pitt and he already had her in position on the leeward side of Frenchman’s Cay; together with Simon Dante, they would sandwich the galleons in a deadly crossfire.
Juliet, meanwhile, was set to bring the Iron Rose out from behind the island, sealing off any possible retreat by aiming her guns down the throat of the channel. Since ships did not move at the flip of a pence, the entire process took the better part of two hours, but by the time the galleons noticed the Rose bearing down on them, the first warship was already in the channel and the second one, encouraged by the waving, shouting crew on board the Santo Domingo—most of whom removed their helmets and lowered the backsides of their breeches as the galleon passed—was committed to follow.
The men on the shore batteries waited until both warships were caught between the islands. The pitch- and sand-coated tarps were removed, the fuses lit, and the first rounds of chain shot were blasting through the air before the Spaniards even realized they were trapped. Grape and sangrenel cut the men out of the tops, while the chain shot tore the rigging and ripped holes through the sails and decking. Not one in five guns on the galleons responded. Crews on the lower decks, shielded behind the bulkheads, managed to fire sporadically, but because the ships were built so high out of the water, every single shot flew well over the heads of the men on shore, kicking up explosive founts of sand, stone, and palm fronds hundreds of yards behind.
Conversely, once the galleons’ sails and rigging were obliterated, the guns on shore were adjusted and trained point blank on the hulls. The resulting damage from the thirty-two-pound culverins and eighty-pound mortars was terrible. With no where to turn and no effective means of fighting back, the Spaniards were forced to run the length of the deadly gauntlet only to emerge at the other end and find themselves facing the guns of the majestically resurrected Avenger and the Dove.
Dante’s gunners fired but one broadside before the first galleon ran up half a dozen white flags. One desperate officer who crawled up out of the smoking shambles of the high quarterdeck, stripped off his shirt and waved it frantically over his head to gain the privateer’s attention before another round tore them to shreds. The second galleon ran into Pitt’s guns and suffered the same fate, surrendering to the cheers and hoots of the men leaping out from behind the shore batteries.
The Iron Rose, gliding past the western end of the channel saw that her guns were not needed but fired a single round
into the trees by way of a salute. Juliet ordered the ship to come about, keeping one wary eye on the rest of the flota, another on the lookouts who had a better vantage from their height and would signal if any other ships broke away from the pack. From a purely avaricious standpoint, she hoped they did. Her men were eager and willing, her cannon were fully primed and hungry for action.
For a time she blockaded the mouth of the channel, assuming there were likely scores of steel-helmeted Spaniards making imprints of spyglasses around their eye sockets. They had seen the entire ambush unfold. They would know by the pillars of smoke rising behind the islands that their sister ships were lost. They would also have identified the Avenger and probably the Iron Rose; what they had no way of knowing was how many other privateers lurked out of sight behind the islands hoping to lure them into a trap.
“What do you suppose they’re going to do?” Varian asked quietly.
Juliet shook her head. “They may be predictable, but they are not cowards. They won’t be quick to run. See there, the almirante is already slowing, signalling the other guards to form a strong line.”
“Lovely sight, ain’t it?” Crisp remarked, standing on her other side. “How many do ye count?”
“Eight guards, twenty-three merchantmen,” Juliet said absently. “They’ll be trying to decide now if it is better to pile on speed and get the treasure ships to safer water above the banks, or delay and wait until the rest of the fleet closes the gap.”
She trained the glass further south, but there were only four or five stragglers on the horizon hastening to catch up to the first group. There was no doubt more would be coming, it just depended on how many ships had departed Havana in the first wave, how far they had become strung out, how quickly the slowest ship moved within the convoy.
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