The Butcher's Daughter, page 29
“What is well, Mary?” Atwood asked.
“It is well to have a plan.”
“Martin,” Hunter interjected, “didn’t leave you with much of a plan, Mary. “Go forth,” he says with a grand sweep of his arm. “Humble Spanish arrogance,” he says with the hint of a smile on his face and then he tells us to “help yourselves to Spanish wealth.” And then he sails off looking for Drake. God’s blood, what foolishness is this? That’s hardly a plan Mary.”
“I know that look, Jacob,” I said, ignoring Hunter for the moment. “Out with it.”
“Ahem. Well, Mary, I wasn’t with you, James or the others of course when you went after Dowlin. But when I heard about your extraordinary parley off Old Head near Kinsale and your adventure at Saltee, I thought my God, now there’s a captain I could risk my life for! Of all things, there’s a woman I could fight for! And here I be. In for a penny in for a pound they say. Where you go Mary, with whatever plan you devise, I will gladly follow. This is who I was meant to be.”
Hunter drained his glass. “Sweet Jesus, you can lay it on thick, Jacob.”
The big Scot laughed and gave Hunter a hardy slap on the back. “Ha! Ha! Mary has no greater patron than you, James Hunter. We need to put food on the table just like our new friend Martin. I say: let the Spanish pay for it. Let’s pick an island, any island, and play pirate. These islands are ripe for the plucking.”
I stepped in-between the two men. I slipped one arm around Hunter, the other around Atwood and held them close. “The Island of Margarita is not far off and La Asunción is a pretty spot. Gentlemen, I have a taste for something beautiful, something lustrous, elegant and girlish.”
“Look up at the sky,” Hunter commanded, “I give you the full moon my good lady. Is she not beautiful and lustrous? Is she not enchantingly elegant and feminine?”
“A thoughtful and generous gift to be sure James. But I was thinking of something at bit more attainable, something I might wear. I was thinking pearls.”
“Silly me,” Hunter replied. “Very well. At first light, I’ll summon Mustafa and Michael for a council of war.”
I jumped when Hunter pinched my bottom. “Owie!”
“Are you all right, Mary?” Atwood asked, unaware of what Hunter had done.
“I’m fine, fine. Some horrid thing bit me.”
“Not much wind tonight,” Hunter said. “Those stinging gnats are out again. What do the Spanish call them?”
“Mosquitos, little flies,” the stout Scot replied. “Well, the mornin’ will come early. I best return to my ship, offer up a few prayers and catch a wink or two. I bid you both a good night.”
“If I find what bit me,” I said, “I’ll crush the life out of the damn thing. In the morning then Jacob, sleep well.”
After breakfast with all my officers, we held a council of war and then readied our small fleet to sail. We finally had ourselves a plan, a good plan, and one and all were excited to sail across the open sea for Margarita. We set out at once.
Kinkae stood before me bare-chested on the quarter deck. His ebony skin glistened in the warmth of the Caribbean sun. Coiling around his arm was a new tattoo of a lash, a reminder of his former days in bondage. The African was as black as night and ruggedly attractive. Life at sea had turned his lean body into hard muscle. A natural leader, he had assumed the role of petty officer over the other Africans with my blessing. Disliking the word Negro because of the taint it carried, I chose to call the Africans my Moors or Ethiopians. These were the men I had purchased from Cortés for a bag of pearls and I was glad to have them.
I caught myself staring at Kinkae’s fine physique for a moment too long. I covered a smile with my hand and looked away.
“How do things go for you and your people Kinkae?”
“Life is good, Lady Mary.”
“Ah, your English is improving.”
“Thank you, Lady Mary.”
“You and your brothers are free men and yet you continue to serve this ship.”
“Yes.”
“We are about to go to war with the Spanish. There will be killing and a lot of it I think.”
“Yes.”
“Ah, ha. Then you and your men are with us?”
“We are all with you, Lady Mary. You are life.”
“Life? No, no. I am your employer, nothing more.”
Kinkae took in his surroundings. He considered the ship under full sail. He took in the crew moving about and then considered the sea around us.
“You are,” he said and slapped his hands on the rail, adding power to his words, “life, Lady Mary! And this is good.”
I was about to reject Kinkae’s overly generous remarks again, but then I saw the tears pooling in his eyes, the slight quiver in his lower lip. I placed my hand over his. “Very well, Kinkae. I accept your gracious words. Let us talk of other matters. Have you ever done any acting?”
“Acting?” he asked me with a puzzled look.
After I explained my plan, and his part in it, Kinkae offered me a broad smile. He squeezed my hand reassuringly and quickly disappeared below, eager to prepare his division.
“Handsome fellow,” Hunter remarked, walking up beside me.
Well I knew Hunter was baiting me. “Aye, a girl could lose herself to those muscles.”
“Should I be jealous?”
“Not at all, Captain Hunter. I’ve seen you naked. I’ve seen your muscles and no girl would ever ask you to leave her bed. You’ve grown a tad soft though in the middle, mister. Some honest work shoulder-to-shoulder with the lads down on the main deck for a week or so would whip you into fighting trim, would harden-up those muscles.”
“Ah well now, Madam, there is hard and then there is hard again,” Hunter replied with a sly smile. “It is all a matter of understanding the body’s critical functions.”
“You mean like the heart, the brain and the lungs?”
“A bit south of those regions.”
“Good grief you are a bawdy fellow, sir!”
“Should you call for me later, Madam, I will show you bawdy. I will show you hard...”
My God, I thought silently to myself, how much I love this man. I wondered if other women loved as much. I wondered if men and women loved in the same way.
Sailing under fair skies, we cut smoothly through the calm waters of a grey and empty sea. My plan was simple. My plans were always simple. Complexity means clutter and my mind flinches at clutter as my body will flinch at a pot of scalding water when standing too close. We had transformed Abuelita into a slaver and MacGyver was to sail her into La Asunción with Kinkae and his Moors bound in chains. And as for me, well I had been demoted. I was nothing more than a lowly cook’s apprentice now if any outsider inquired. A female captain, a female captain privateer, a female captain privateer parading around in the Caribbean would hardly pass for discreet. Gone were my days of vanity, of carelessly, arrogantly, flaunting my prowess.
The Abuelita went in first with Hunter and MacGyver, followed an hour later by the Carib with Atwood and Efendi. The Abuelita was in port to market her cargo of Negro slaves. The Carib was in port to take on fresh provisions. I held Phantom back, less than a league off the coast, where I waited for the signal.
The signal was easy to spot when it came. Hunter fired off a red rocket over La Asunción’s modest fortress. I took the tiller and guided Phantom into the bay with our guns run out and my gunners at the ready. La Asunción’s small harbor was nearly deserted. Only a few fishing trawlers and an old barge or two were anchored in her waters. Abuelita and Carib were tied up against the main dock and I steered Phantom in behind them.
I cropped my hair up inside my hat and was, from head to toe, clothed like a common sailor. After we secured Phantom against the quay, I took fifty well-armed men with me and raced up a hill towards La Asunción’s fortress where I found Hunter and Kinkae standing at the gate waiting for me, smiling. The exhilaration of the moment filled me with indescribable joy.
“The fort,” I asked, winded from the run up the hill and gulping down air, “is secure?”
“The fort is ours,” Hunter replied proudly. “After we walked Kinkae and his Moors inside in chains and set them loose, we easily overpowered the garrison without spilling any blood. The town is ours as well. Jacob and Efendi are searching the shops and storehouses now. MacGyver is inside the fort spiking all the cannon.”
“Anyone hurt?”
“So far, not one man. Not one shot fired. The Spaniards were caught unawares and wisely accepted the change in their fortunes with a reasonable measure of aplomb.”
“You’ve rigged the fort’s powder magazines?”
Hunter laughed. “Mary! It’s hardly like you to ask frivolous questions. The fort’s powder stores will go ka-boom after we leave.”
I rested a hand on Kinkae’s shoulder. “Well done, Kinkae!”
The African broke into a wide grin. “Thank you, Lady Mary. I like this acting.”
“Excellent!” I said and laughed. “We shall need to find another role for you to play soon, something worthy of your natural talents!”
We all snapped our heads around when we heard the rumblings of a skirmish brewing down by the harbor. We heard crack of sporadic musket fire.
“You finish here, James,” I said. “I’ll meet you down at the docks. Whatever is left to do, you best be quick about it.”
Hunter and Kinkae hurried back inside the fort while I took my men and raced back down the hill where we found Spaniards, two dozen strong and dressed in full battle armor - metal helmets, breastplates and greaves - forming up into a battle square next to the docks. Conquistadors. They seemed determined to block our way back to our ships. They made a splendid sight in their polished armor, brandishing their long pikes tipped in whetted iron. Spanish bronze and steel glittered in the sunlight.
I could see Atwood and Efendi in the center of town rallying their men, one hundred souls in all. They were preparing to rush the battle square. The Spaniards would all be slaughtered.
I formed up my own company into two lines. The front rank fell to one knee. The second rank stood behind them. We faced the Spaniards with our muskets pointed at the sky. Atwood, Efendi and their men hurried over to join us. My one hundred and fifty seasoned veterans, with muskets at the ready, stood against twenty-four conquistadors in gleaming armor with pikes and swords and pride.
I stepped out in front of my men. “Rendir!” I cried out to the Spaniards. “Yield!”
“Honor forbids it,” a voice in the center of the Spanish square shouted back to me in English.
“Honor is about to rob you of your lives,” I said. “No good purpose is purchased by your deaths here today.”
“State your name!”
“Odd you think it fit and proper to make demands of us, from men far stronger than you. But if you must know, I’m John, the captain’s steward. My captain is presently up at the fort disarming the garrison and spiking the fort’s cannon. You’ll find no help from that quarter if that’s your plan. I expect our captain will be down directly and once he sees this sad demonstration, as honorable as it may be, he’ll waste no time killing you. He’ll blow you all away like dust.”
“And who is your captain, boy?”
“Nobody. Nobody is his name.”
The Spaniards looked uneasily at the force arrayed against them.
“And who are you?” I called out.
“I am Captain Ramirez Menendez from Cordoba,” the voice replied.
“Well, Captain Menendez, take your men and fall back to the town before my captain returns. His moods are, well, unpredictable. Go now and live to fight for your king another day. This day belongs to us. Lads, make way. Let these fine, brave soldiers pass. No need for any bloodletting.”
Menendez took a moment to mull things over, then gave the order for his men to shoulder their pikes and fall back into the town. We let them slip away unmolested.
Then Hunter and his men started pouring down the hill like a wild mob.
“Jacob, Mustafa, any booty?” I asked.
Efendi smiled as Atwood lifted a leather satchel off his shoulders and let me have a peek inside. I saw dozens of lovely pearls.
“And there’s more, Mary,” Atwood said. “Not many, it is not a fortune, but it is enough to call today a good day.”
And then BA-BOOOOOM! Every man flinched when the fort’s magazine blew. We all turned around to look up at the hill. A column of thick, black smoke mixed with cinders and ash was rising in the air above the fort. And then an instant later we heard a second, softer BOOM behind us. I spun around again and saw a puff of white smoke rising off one of Phantom’s guns with Henry standing next to it. I had left Henry behind with his Caribs to guard the ships. He began frantically waving at me.
“Quick lads!” I said. “Something’s amiss. Back to the ships! Not a moment to lose, run!”
It was easy to see what had spooked Henry once I stepped back on board. Six ships flying the royal colors of the Spanish navy were emerging from a fog bank and sailing straight for the bay. The lead ship was a fair-sized galleon, a two-decker with huge red crosses emblazoned on her sails and she was well-armed. Not the largest galleon I had ever seen, nor the smallest, she was a handsome craft. The other ships in the convoy trailing behind her, five ships in all, appeared to be freighters. The convoy was still a good bit off and I could not yet tell whether any of the merchant ships carried heavy guns.
Scores of Hunter’s men were still running down the hill while Atwood and his men scrambled across the docks to reach the ships. Some tripped over themselves and more than one man lost his footing and stumbled or was bumped off the quay and took a tumble into the water. But for the danger we were in I would have burst out laughing at all the buffoonery unfolding around me.
I debated what to do. Wait and hold the bay until all my men were back on board the ships, or sail out now with what I had before we were cut off from the open sea? I could return later with the Phantom to pick up any stragglers - had we discussed a rallying point at some village on the other side of the island. I cursed my own stupidity. I had no good plan to fetch my stranded later.
And I cursed my soft heart too. I couldn’t leave Hunter behind.
“Henry!”
“Yes, Lady Mary?”
“Quickly now! Take your lads aloft and start unfurling sail! As fast as you and your men are able!”
“Henry can do it, Henry can do it!” he said eagerly and rushed off like a madman, barking out orders in Carib as he raced past his men.
I looked at my crew spilling over the rails, trying to get back on board. “You men coming aboard - to the guns! We’ll ease her out into the bay some and cover our brothers on land. We need to give the others time to reach their ships.”
Once enough of my men had climbed back on board the Phantom, we slipped the mooring lines and pushed off. I shouted to the others stranded on the docks, told them to get themselves over to the Carib or Abuelita. Then I took the tiller myself and maneuvered Phantom out into the bay. Long minutes ticked by like painful hours. There was hardly any wind to fill our sails and precious little current to steer by. The bay was like a stagnant pond. Phantom was handling as sluggishly as I had ever seen her. I couldn’t coax any speed out of her at all. I cursed my foul luck. Farther out at sea, with a good, stiff breeze to fill their sails, the Spanish convoy was moving at a fairly good clip, heading straight for us in a single line.
It was plain to see we weren’t going reach deep water in time so I slowly brought our ship around to face the Spanish with our guns primed and loaded. We had one advantage: the Spanish navy did not yet know our purpose. They did not yet know that we had come to raid La Asunción. I looked back at the docks and saw the crews on both the Carib and Abuelita finally casting off lines and easing their ships out into the harbor. And I saw the plume of smoke billowing higher and higher above the fort. If nothing else, the Spanish would be on high alert after seeing the smoke and ready their own heavy guns for action - I prayed only the galleon had them.
I used Niccoló Taraglia’s gunner’s quadrant with a plumb bob to measure out the range. Hunter had purchased the newfangled device in Ireland on his last voyage and had taught me how to use it. When the galleon came to within one thousand yards or so I gave the order fire.
BOOM! BOOM! BA-BA-BOOM! BA-BA-BA-BOOM!
The great guns thundered, belching smoke and flame. I had my gunners target the lead ship, the galleon. We peppered the sea all around her with geysers of white water. The range was good.
“Again!” I cried out.
My gunners worked like demons, swabbing muzzles down, reloading and taking careful aim. They moved with purpose, they moved with gusto and then patiently waited for my command.
“Hold, wait for it, steady… and… FIRE!”
BOOM! BOOM! BA-BA-BA-BA-BOOM!
Every shot but one splashed harmless into the sea. My men erupted in a great cheer when that single ball struck the galleon’s forecastle!
Then the galleon made a sharp, ninety degree turn to bring her own firepower to bear. Her crew ran their guns out smartly and fired off an impressive broadside. Well over a dozen shots screamed above our heads. Several shells hit the docks behind us and a few landed in the town. Spanish aim was atrocious.
My men fired-off a third salvo. With a larger target to shoot at their marksmanship improved. Two shots struck the galleon’s hull. More shots punched holes in her canvas. I anxiously scanned the galleon for damage, but found none.
When the Spanish answered us in kind again, we cowered behind the bulwarks. We weren’t too proud to duck. We braced ourselves for pain when we saw puffs of smoke and tongues of flame reaching out for us.
BOOM! BOOM! BA-BA-BA-BA-BOOM!
Three shots struck our hull hard. I heard one plank crack. One ball smacked the deck in front of me, ricocheted over the rail and splashed into the water. Other shots went high, whistling past our heads and ripping through our sails. Spanish gunners had settled down. Their marksmanship was improving. We were in a fight I did not know if we could win.
