Pirate Wolf Trilogy (20 page)

“
I always
expect treachery. In this case I am almost sure of it. You may or
may not have noticed, but the
San Pedro
is no ordinary treasure ship. I did not see it myself until
we were fairly close, but look to the mizzen
top—
merde
, it’s
gone. Someone must have worked fast to remove it.”

“Remove
what?”

“A small gold
pennant, mounted on the mast just beneath the captain-general’s
flag. It means a member of the King’s court is on board, probably
acting as an ambassador, returning from the Indies or Panama.”

“Is that
important?”

“It could be.
Ambassadors carry papers, documents intended for the King’s eyes
only.”

“
I
thought you already had documents; the ones you took from Vera
Cruz.”

“They are
important, and revealing to be sure, but easily interpreted as
nothing more than export manifests. Royal communiqués, sealed for
the King’s eyes only, would surely prove interesting reading to a
queen’s eyes, especially if she was searching for ways to defend
her country against an invasion.” He paused and seemed to debate
something for a moment before he added, “And there might be another
benefit to having a member of the royal family on board.”

“To ensure our
safe passage to England?” Beau guessed.

Dante’s eyes
kindled warmly. “You are going to have to stop doing that, you
know.”

“Doing
what?”

“Being so quick
with your tongue and your wit.”

“You prefer a
woman to be slow and dull?”

“Not at all.
But perhaps just a little kinder to a … what was it now? An
arrogant, ill-mannered French bull rogue?”

Beau’s eyes,
which grew as large and bright as medallions, remained steadfast on
Dante’s face as the heat rose up her neck, darkening the honeyed
tan of her complexion. For the first time he noticed a fine spray
of freckles glowing across the bridge of her nose.

“When I said
that, I … did not know you were listening.”

“Would it have
stopped you from saying it?”

She considered
the smile he gave her before she smiled herself, openly and
frankly. “No. Probably not.”

Her smile, and
the total change it wrought in her face took him by surprise again.
Beneath the grime and soot and blood smudging her skin and clothes,
she still managed to look fresh and far too vulnerable to be so
well acquainted with the stench and violence of battle. And those
eyes, God love him. They would be his downfall yet. Sparkling like
new-minted gold, lashed with strands of pure silk, they were
infinitely more desirable to behold with pleasure creasing their
corners rather than contempt or anger … and he was not altogether
certain he liked this unsubtle shift in his perceptions. Despite
Pitt’s advice he would feel much safer if he continued to regard
her as a doublet-clad, knife-wielding hellion who fought any
suggestion of an underlying softness.

He brushed the
pad of his thumb gently over the cut on her lip, wiping off the
small smear of blood, then took what he hoped was a casual step
back.

“
Spit is
calling for the grappling lines,” he said, indicating the sudden
flurry of hooks, ropes, and planks being readied by the
Egret’s
rails. “I guess it means we
have ourselves a prize.”

Beau
followed his gaze, startled to see they had come within hailing
distance of the smoking Spaniard. She had left Billy Cuthbert at
the helm and he was gently easing the
Egret
alongside the treasure ship, awed, no doubt, by the sheer
size and towering magnitude of what they had
accomplished.

“I should help
Billy,” she began.

“Billy is doing
fine. You should go below and try to restore some of that ferocity
I so admired the first time I saw you.”

Beau followed
his gaze again and saw where the tear in her shirt had widened over
the sleeveless gap, revealing more than a comfortable amount of
soft, sloping flesh over her breast.

She caught up
the torn flap and a second flood of heat darkened her skin but
Dante was already moving away, descending the ladder to the main
deck, looking every inch the pirate wolf with his sword and pistols
glittering as he shouted orders for the men to stand ready by the
lines.

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

When the
two ships were within a dozen yards of each other the grappling
lines were launched across the gap, the metal hooks biting into the
rails and planking of the
San Pedro
, tethering the galleons together. Most of the fires on
board the Spaniard had been doused, but there were still clouds of
hissing steam and smoke rising from the debris on deck. The Spanish
officers were clustered below the forecastle, rigid in their
humiliation. Spit McCutcheon and his men had herded all the
able-bodied seamen and soldiers together in the stern and were
keeping watchful, wary eyes on them as well as on the large pile of
weaponry—swords, muskets, pikes, and arquebuses that had been
collected on the main deck.

The
captain-general identified himself with suitable pomp as Don Alonzo
de Valdez, a Knight of Santiago, Marquis of Niebla, twelfth Señor
and fifth Marquis of Moncada. He had spent the last four years in
the service of his most revered king, Philip II of Spain, and it
was, he declared in a high-pitched voice, trembling with outrage, a
blatant act of piracy to have attacked them. Moreover, it was an
overt act of war against a country whose king was, at that very
moment, engaged in serious negotiations with England’s monarch for
a lasting peace.

Dante de
Tourville claimed formal possession of the prize ship. He ignored
Moncada’s initial outburst and strode purposefully onto the main
deck, his eyes moving intently side to side, bow to stern,
absorbing everything from the smashed superstructures to the torn
and sagging rigging.

Geoffrey
Pitt, Beau Spence, and a large complement of smartly armed men
flanked Dante as he assessed the extent of damages to the galleon,
all of them trying to look as nonchalant as their ebony-haired
leader, but none quite managing to keep his excitement in check.
Dante was no stranger to laying claim to captured vessels, but for
most of the crew of the
Egret
,
this was their first foray onto the deck of a surrendered Spanish
treasure ship.

If
the
Egret
had seemed
dwarfed beside the huge, castellated monster, her crew members felt
like urchins stumbling uninvited into a rich man’s drawing room.
The rails around the decks, the trim scrolled around the bulkheads,
the lavish designs that formed the molding around the doors,
hatchways, and portals, were coated in gold leaf. The whole of her
high stern, the panels and rails of the quarter galleries, were a
solid mass of beautiful carving, all of it painted crimson and gold
and resembling a church tabernacle. Remnants of a large silk canopy
hung over the fore-deck with shreds of the exquisitely embroidered
fabric snagged around the golden crowns that surmounted the two
enormous stern lanterns.

Equally
impressive in appearance were the Spanish officers, garbed in
silver breastplates worn over velvet doublets and slashed satin
balloon breeches. There were twenty in all, ranging in age and
stature from the captain-general to his adjutants, obviously all
wealthy hidalgos unaccustomed to defeat at any level, let alone at
the hands of English heretics. Half a dozen priests swathed in red
robes and capes stood in a cluster behind their captain-general,
their hands clasped around ivory crucifixes, their eyes blazing
with religious fervor. Standing in the rear, lowest in rank, was
the captain in charge of the sailors. His helmet was gone, leaving
his hair standing upright in sweaty spikes; his plain white shirt
was stained from the filth of battle, his breastplate dented and
dulled by smoke. He kept his eyes focused straight ahead, fixed on
some nameless point on the horizon, refusing to so much as
acknowledge the presence of the tall privateer on his gundeck.

Deciding
it was too big an audience, Dante removed himself and Lucifer,
along with Beau, Pitt, and McCutcheon to the massive great cabin of
the
San
Pedro
, inviting Moncada
and two of his officers to join them there and vent any complaints
he might have.

For an hour the
incensed captain-general vented.

Dante de
Tourville, sitting in the shambles of the great cabin, propped his
long legs on the grandly carved oak desk and steepled his hands
together under his chin. He listened to Moncada’s shrill
denunciations, barely interrupting except to signal Spit to pour
more wine. Spit had found several jewel-encrusted goblets in the
debris that littered the cabin, and a tall flagon of Madeira wine,
which he both served and drank enthusiastically at each crook of
Dante’s long, tapered finger.

Pitt, who as
usual had managed to set aside his motion sickness during the heat
of battle, lounged against a wall of the cabin, his arms folded
across his chest as much to help keep his stomach in place as to
try to appear casual. Beau, on the other hand, appeared to be
vastly amused watching Dante deflect the flecks of spittle and acid
vitriol that flew from Moncada’s lips. She knew her father would
not have handled the situation half so well, for Jonas Spence was
man of flamboyant blasphemies and great courage, but he was no
diplomat. He was quite happy to take what he wanted at the end of a
sword, but close him into a room with too many words and he grew
impatient with his own shortcomings.

Lucifer hung
back in the shadows of the doorway, his eyes fixed on the three
Spaniards, the coal-black centers burning like brands. Every now
and then he would caress the silver hilts of his scimitars, earning
stares and nervous twitches from the two hidalgos.

Their leader,
the fifth Marquis of Moncada, was a rotund strut of a man with a
face like a boil of dough stretched too thin over spidery red
veins. He had small, dark eyes set so close together, they seemed
to touch at the bridge, and he had made a feeble attempt to hide a
weak chin under an abram beard trimmed to a perfect point. He spoke
in faultless, unbroken English, a deliberate counterpoint to
Dante’s initial address delivered in equally flawless
Castilian.

The two other
officers were, by contrast, tall and lean, handsome men with short,
curly hair and liquid brown eyes that flicked nervously from face
to face.

“Blatant
piracy!” Moncada was screaming. “And at a time when you English
should be doing everything in your power to convince my king and
country you are not ruled by thieves and bloodthirsty
heretics.”

“Bloodthirsty,”
Dante mused, speaking more out of boredom than a need to defend
anyone’s habits. “An interesting turn of phrase coming from a
people who advocate the use of torture and mutilation in the name
of their faith.”

“
The
devil can be a difficult entity to eradicate, and his stain must be
scorched off the face of the earth, as must all heretics who
worship him! Like you, señor,” he added, lashing the air with an
accusing finger. “¡
Picarón!”

“Me?” A pirate,
señor? I am but a humble merchant trying to go about my lawful
trade.”

Moncada snarled
and leaned forward, slamming his fist on the desk. “You attacked my
ship without cause!”

Lucifer bared
his filed teeth and started forward with a growl, but Dante stopped
him, then spread his hands in a gesture of innocence. “If you will
recall, señor, you fired the first shot. We were only defending
ourselves.”

“
Defending?
Defending?”

“Aye, and now
we intend only to take a fair measure of compensation for our
trouble and for the damage your guns have wrought on our ship. We
sail these waters with no intent to commit acts of war. You can see
for yourself, we travel with women”—he waved a hand airily in
Beau’s direction—“and old men.”

Spit McCutcheon
gave a toothless smile on cue. It was enough to send another flush
of red fury spreading down Moncada’s face and throat, and another
spray of venom across the desk.

“
You do
not fight like simple merchants! Nor do you
look
like a simple merchant, señor. You give your name
as Jonas Spence and you may believe that I will remember it. I will
remember your name, your face, your ship, and I will pray hourly
for the pleasure of crossing your path again one day!”

“The pleasure
will be all mine,” Dante assured him. “For now, however, you may
please us all by giving my quartermaster a copy of your cargo
manifests so that he might be saved the trouble of having to search
the entire ship plank by plank.”

Moncada glared
at McCutcheon. “Rot in hell, señor. And you may trouble yourself
until that hell freezes, for we will none of us lift a finger to
assist you in this profane act of thievery.”

Spit scratched
at his jaw and curled his lips at the corners. “Well, now, I’m
pricked to have to disappoint ye, but I won’t be rottin’ anywheres
just yet. I already seen me a storeroom bulgin’ with bales o’
spices; another filled with wood crates heavy as a whore’s arse an’
stamped with the mint seal o’ the governor o’ Mexico. Onliest thing
profane is our holds might not be big enough to carry it all away.
We’ll surely try, o’ course, Cap’n,” he added, winking at Dante.
“We’ll surely try.”

Dante crooked
his head to indicate McCutcheon could go and begin an inventory of
the treasure, then turned back to address Moncada.