So, it was on a fateful summer night in 854 that, at the age of ten and nine, Arthur amassed a crew of young and roguish Picts and stealthily commandeered one of his father’s ships. They blackened the sails to hide them from those on watch and began an adventure that would last a lifetime and beyond.
The lads trolled the seas, boarding ships and sacking small coastal villages. In fact, they even sailed so far north as to raid a Viking village in the name of his father. By the time they returned to Oban, and the seat of King Cináed, all of Scotland was raging about Arthur’s atrocities. Confused, he tried to explain, but his father would not listen and would not allow him back into the castle.
King Cináed banished his youngest son from the land, condemned his acts as evil and told him he never wanted to see him again.
Enraged and experiencing an underlying layer of mortification, Arthur took to the seas, gathering men as he went, and building a family he could trust that would not shun him. They ravaged the sea as well as the land—using his clan’s name as a lasting insult to his father for turning him out.
The legendary Pirate King was rumored to be merciless, the type of vengeful pirate who would drown a babe in his mother’s own milk if she didn’t give him the pearls at her neck. But with most rumors, they were mostly steeped in falsehoods meant to intimidate. In fact, there may have been a wee boy or two he saved from an untimely fate. Whenever they came across a lad or lass in need, as Arthur himself had once been, they took them into the fold.
One ship became two. And then three, four, five, until a score of ships with blackened sails roamed the seas.
These were his warriors. A legion of men who adored him, respected him, followed him, and, together, they wreaked havoc on the blood ties that had sent him away. And generations upon generations, country upon country, they would spread far and wide until people feared them from horizon to horizon. Every pirate king to follow would be named MacAlpin, so his father’s banishment would never be forgotten.
Forever lords of the sea. A daring brotherhood, where honor among thieves reigns supreme, and crushing their enemies is a thrilling pastime.
These are the pirates of Britannia, and here are their stories….
Accused
Sevilla, Andalucía, España, 1760
“And so you see,” Alonzo Velázquez explained when he reached the end of the tale he’d recounted many times, “our ancestor was a famous Spanish marauder who gave the Pirates of Britannia a run for their money.”
His guests chuckled politely, as they always did, and raised their sherry glasses. “To Santiago Fernández,” they exclaimed. “Leader of the Demonios del Mar.”
It wasn’t every Spanish nobleman who boasted openly of pirate ancestors, but Alonzo Velázquez de Vallirana y La Granada was probably the richest man in Sevilla, founding owner of a profitable shipping company trading with Spanish colonies in the Americas.
Claiming not to care a whit for public opinion, he never failed to mention that his eldest son had been named for the infamous pirate king who’d lived three hundred years before. Like Fernández, Santiago Velázquez had indeed spent most of his life at sea, plying back and forth across the Atlantic in his favorite ship, the Santa María.
While enjoying the old tales, and proud of his family’s long seafaring history, Santiago considered himself more of a rogue than a pirate. Was he to blame that beautiful women lusted after handsome sea captains, especially ones who stood to inherit a fortune?
Sometimes it was difficult to keep track of his paramours. He had obviously offended Salomé Mendoza when he’d escorted his current ladylove into his father’s house earlier in the evening. She’d slapped his face and stormed off as if they had some sort of permanent arrangement, which he certainly was unaware of. He racked his brain for something he might have said or done to give her the wrong impression, but couldn’t think of anything.
Over the years he’d more or less abandoned the youthful notion of someday finding what his father had enjoyed with his late mother—a great love. And Salomé definitely wasn’t a woman he’d want to spend his life with. Beautiful, yes, but also conniving and given to fits of rage. He wasn’t entirely sure how he’d become involved with her in the first place, and resolved to be more careful in future.
Hours later, when all the guests had left, and his younger brothers and sisters had retired, he and his father sat in the salon, sharing a glass or two of Cuban rum.
“I apologize for the scene earlier,” he said, genuinely sorry for Salomé’s outburst. His father went to great lengths to ensure his social gatherings went off without a hitch. Instead, the humiliating slap would be the main topic of gossip among Sevilla’s social elite.
“It will pass,” his father replied. “Everyone knows Salomé takes after her mother.”
It was a gentle reminder that he was expected to exercise better judgement. It was never wise to alienate families of equal social rank.
He drained his glass, rose from his chair and bade his father goodnight. “Hopefully, one day I will acquire your wisdom, Papa,” he said before taking his leave.
Santiago shrugged off the hand shaking him awake. He opened one eye. Why was his valet waking him in the middle of the night? “It’s still dark, go away, Roberto.”
“Wake up, Santi.”
He rolled over, startled when he saw his father’s worried face, rendered all the more haggard by the flickering flame of the candle he held. “What’s wrong?”
“You must go to your ship. Salomé has accused you.”
He rubbed his eyes and sat up. “Of what?”
His father sat on the edge of the bed. “Sexual deviance,” he murmured.
Santiago snorted. He considered himself creative in his lovemaking, but deviant? “She’s off her head,” he replied with a yawn. “I’ll talk to her tomorrow. She’ll calm down.”
“The constables were already here.”
“Constables?”
“From the Suprema.”
He was tempted to laugh. “What on earth could she accuse me of that would interest the Inquisition?”
“Sodomy and homosexuality.”
His blood ran cold. Few men of his age accused of homosexuality escaped the noose, most of them tortured into confessing. Only boys deemed to have been sodomized unwillingly were punished with a whipping. “But you know this isn’t true,” he exclaimed.
“True or not, you must flee. Sail to Cuba. Lie low. I will send word when it’s safe to come home.”
He felt the weight of a heavy bag on his legs, and the thunk of a large amount of coin. He looked up at the tears streaming down his father’s face and his heart broke.
“Take this and go now, my son. I have diverted them, but they will be back.”
Two hours later, the Santa María was sailing down the Guadalquivir, after a hurried and gut-wrenching farewell. His valet had sobbed almost as much as his wailing sisters. His white-faced brothers had been unable to speak. His father had struggled unsuccessfully not to break down, finally mumbling a reassurance that his sainted mother would watch over him.
While supplies were being loaded in Cádiz, he explained to the crew that the ship wouldn’t be making the return voyage. They could either stay in Cádiz, return to Spain in another of his father’s ships or start a new life in the Americas with him. It was gratifying that the majority chose to sail with him, not surprising after he distributed some of his father’s coin as an incentive. As he sailed away from his beloved country and everyone he loved and cherished, he doubted his broken heart would ever mend. Never again would he allow a woman to destroy his life.
Appointment
Madrid, España, April 1762
Valentina was so excited, she couldn’t concentrate on her sewing. It was a tiresome pastime she hated, and her father had been expected back from his interview at the Royal Palace hours ago. “Where can he be?” she asked her mother who sat calmly sewing in an armchair.
“Be patient. He’ll be here so
on enough to tell us why he was summoned by the king.”
“How can you be so calm?” Valentina replied, getting up to pace back and forth in front of the hearty fire in the salon. “Will he be given some sort of appointment? A position at court? An ambassadorship? What?”
“You’ll wear a path in the carpet,” her mother replied without even looking up from the embroidery.
Valentina hurried into the foyer upon hearing the front door slam. She knew better than to rush into her father’s embrace. He loved her, of that there was no doubt, but they rarely hugged. It simply wasn’t done among noble Spanish families.
“That sort of thing is for the French,” her mother often reminded her.
“I can’t wait to hear your news, Papa,” she babbled, a little concerned that he didn’t seem overly happy.
He handed her a furled and beribboned parchment. “Hold this for a moment, Querida,” he said.
She held the document with a reverence worthy of the holy grail while he allowed the valet to take his cloak.
He pecked a kiss on her forehead, retrieved the parchment, then walked directly into the salon and handed it to her mother.
She narrowed her eyes and looked up at him before sliding off the ribbon.
“La Florida,” he rasped.
The color drained from her mother’s face as she clenched her jaw and threw the parchment to the floor. “No.”
“I cannot refuse,” he replied, retrieving the document.
Valentina could stand it no longer. “What? Tell me.”
“The king has appointed me Governor of La Florida.”
She struggled to understand as her mother sobbed. “In the Americas?”
Paula Melchor leapt to her feet, her sewing forgotten. “This is the great honor King Carlos has bestowed on you?” she asked sarcastically. “After everything you’ve done for that miserable excuse for a monarch.”
Her father gathered his wife into his embrace, something Valentina couldn’t recall witnessing before. Tears welled in her eyes. Things weren’t turning out the way she’d expected.
“Hush, Paula,” he said softly. “Those are treasonous words. The king believes I am the best man for the job.”
“But it’s so far away and we’re at war with the British. Everyone knows they have their eye on La Florida,” she protested.
“And I intend to do everything in my power to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Fear constricted Valentina’s throat. “The king cannot send you into a war.”
“We have no choice, Niña,” he replied. “We sail within the week.”
“Manuela will refuse to go,” his wife protested.
“We cannot make decisions based on the wishes of a maidservant,” he retorted, seemingly at the end of his patience.
“But what will I do without her?” she wailed before feeling the room.
The widowed Manuela had served as Paula Melchor’s lady’s maid and companion since before Valentina’s birth.
Her father slumped into the chair she had vacated and removed his powdered wig. “Your mother is upset, but she’ll come to see this as a good thing. The Americas offer a new world of opportunities, and the weather in La Florida is reputed to be a lot warmer than here. Tropical, in fact. It will be an adventure. But I am afraid it leaves no time to find a replacement for your betrothed. At least not in this country.”
Every aspect of Valentina’s life in Madrid had been regimented, her future mapped out before she was born. Her mother constantly lamented the sudden death of her betrothed, a man twice her age she’d been promised to in the womb.
May God forgive her, but she viewed it as a lucky escape from a crushing boor who had no conversation. The prospect of life with Don Diego de Ximena had loomed like a jagged rock on which she would founder and sink to the depths of despair.
Now had come the chance to escape the dirty streets of Madrid, to see the wider world. Should she feel guilty that the prospect excited her?
Something her tutor had told her surfaced. “Is La Florida part of the Spanish Main?”
Her father smiled. “Sí.”
A pulse thudded in her ears. “But pirates rule the Spanish Main.”
Isla Escondida
Bahía Escondida, Cuba, Summer 1762
Santiago supposed it was an uncharacteristic overindulgence in Cuban rum that had led to the giddy feeling making his head spin. But a man was allowed to celebrate two years since his fall from grace, wasn’t he?
Sprawled at the foot of the Santa María’s mainmast, he looked up to the stars spangling the night sky. On the long voyage across the Atlantic, not a single star had appeared in the cloudy night skies. If he’d been a superstitious man, he might have seen that as an omen of things to come once they arrived in Cuba.
“I discovered two things about this far-flung outpost of Spain,” he confessed to his first mate.
Christian took a swig of rum then went back to whittling.
“Man of few words,” Santiago mumbled. “That’s what I like about you.”
In truth, there were many things he admired about Christian Williams. Thousands of slaves from British and French possessions had fled to Spanish colonies, lured by the promise of freedom and citizenship. Christian was the only one who had sought out Bahía Escondida, the pirate hideaway on Cuba’s southern coast. Santiago had trusted the taciturn black man from their first meeting. The Jamaican had never betrayed his trust even when they’d got themselves into some risky situations.
“Two things,” Christian reminded him.
Santiago closed his eyes, trying to concentrate. “First, generous as my father’s gift was, it didn’t go very far and most of it was gone by the time I arrived in La Habana.”
Speaking of his father was painful. The man he respected more than any other in the world had died shortly after Santiago’s flight. When he received the news three months after the event, he blamed himself and carried his guilt around for months. Emilio was an intelligent, capable brother who would continue the success of the family business, but Santiago seethed that he had forfeited his birthright thanks to a conniving, vengeful woman.
“Second, it’s a sad truth that a man with nothing but sorrow in his heart cannot build up a shipping empire in a foreign country from scratch with no money and one ship.”
His failure to accomplish something he’d thought would be easy had been a sharp reminder that he wasn’t the man his father had been.
“And third,” Christian said, still whittling.
Santiago chuckled, which led to a fit of hiccups. “I’ve obviously told you this story before.”
“Many times.”
Santiago eventually managed to hold up three fingers. “Third, too many rich and powerful Spaniards had taken control of the shipping industry here. They weren’t interested in allowing an upstart from Andalucía to make inroads.”
He still had the bruises to prove it, but he’d survived and decided the only way to prosper was to emulate the pirate ancestor he’d never stopped thinking about on the voyage across the Atlantic—when he wasn’t busy plotting Salomé’s demise.
Three hundred years before, Santiago Fernandez had made his fortune plundering vessels in the Bay of Biscay and the English Channel aboard his ship the Santa María, the same name as Santiago’s ship. That was a good omen.
What better way to seek revenge on the country that had betrayed him than to steal from Spanish ships carrying goods and gold to and from the colonies scattered the length and breadth of the Spanish Main.
Not only Spanish ships. Britain and France had merchantmen servicing their colonies in the Americas. The pickings could be rich.
“So you became a pirate,” Christian said with a smile. “And a bloody good one.”
Santiago drained the last of the rum and settled the empty jug on his belly. “Because I have a good crew.”
“Loyal too.”
Even in his drunken state, Santiago heard a hint of warning in his first
mate’s voice. “I sense a caution.”
Christian stopped whittling. “So far we’ve managed to avoid the warships of the three nations fighting over the Americas, but, sooner or later, one of the navies will increase its efforts and win the war. We have to be careful.”
“I’m not known for being careful,” he said regretfully, recalling his father’s words. “My money’s on the Royal Navy.” He struggled to his feet with the help of the mast. “However, we can afford to sit tight here, our treasure safely hidden, thanks to you and me. We’ll pick and choose our targets.”
Christian got to his feet. “Just as well. I heard there’s a new governor on his way to Florida. New brooms like to sweep clean.”
“So we won’t go anywhere near San Agustín.”
Arrest
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Christian said as they pored over the latest charts they had of an area further east than they normally roved.
Santiago was also beginning to have misgivings about the lone merchantman they’d followed for days. “I’m not comfortable in these waters, either,” he confessed. “But we have to stay away from Cuba’s northern coast now La Habana has fallen to the British.”
Christian traced a finger along the chart. “The merchantman came out of Puerto Rico with Spanish flags, so I assumed she was bound for Hispaniola, but she’s heading north.”
Santiago nodded. “It’s possible she’s going to La Florida by a more northerly route for the same reason we’re avoiding Cuban waters.”
“Which means she’s carrying valuable cargo. She’s low in the water.”
Dogging a ship for days to ascertain her speed, numbers of crew, and possible firepower was a tactic Santiago had employed many times, with great success. He shouted to Xiang in the crow’s nest. “Any sight of land?”
He knew the answer before he asked. The jovial Chinaman would have alerted them immediately. He had the eyes of an eagle and had so far lived up to the promise of his name, which he claimed meant Good Luck.
Pirates of Britannia Box Set Page 19
