The Following Sea (The Pirate Wolf series) Read online

  Gabriel had personally torn down the huge square of white silk emblazoned with the former capitan's coat of arms. High on the main mast, the galleon now flew the distinctive flag bearing black wolves on a crimson background that identified the ship as a prize of the Dante clan. The crew had set to work clearing the decks of debris and scouring the oak surfaces free of bloodstains. The gilded letters across the stern had been hastily covered with a sheet of black canvas upon which her new name, Endurance, was being painted in tall, bold characters. There was not an idle hand below or above decks, for each man knew the importance of becoming familiar with every aspect of the galleon, as well as the need to prime her for any potential trouble that might cross their path.

  The former quartermaster, Riley, had died on board the Valour and Gabriel assigned one of his best gun captains to the position. Stubs MacLeish—so named because of the three half fingers on his left hand—was short and stout, with a face that resembled crumpled canvas. He had been in the thick of the fighting and half of the dark cropped curls on his head had been scorched off by an exploding shell, making him look like two different men, depending on which profile was in view. He had proudly assumed Riley’s place beside the captain, relaying each of the Dante’s orders with enough vigor to make Gabriel's head pound like a drummer’s snare.

  "Full and by, Stubs," Gabriel ordered quietly. "Take us home."

  "Aye Cap'n!" Stubs formed a cup with his hands and shouted aloft. "Man the braces! Look alive there! Full an' by, lads, full an' by. We be goin' home!"

  The men on the yards cheered as they strained on the lines, heaving and panting until the great sheets of canvas were unfurled and lashed to the rigging. The sails luffed like curtains in an open window until the wind became trapped and began to bell them forward. Lines were winched tight and whined like a throng of sin-eaters. The men heaved on the braces again and with sequential booms of thunder, the sails exploded full-bellied before the wind, curling out hard as marble.

  The Endurance balked a moment, as if unsure of her new masters, but in the end, she responded and glided forward, groaning and creaking her way toward the southern horizon.

  The distance of a pistol shot ahead, the Iron Rose was making similar headway. Off the starboard bow, the Avenger, carrying the Pirate Wolf and his wife Isabeau, and the Tribute, captained by Jonas Dante, were both surging forward, tall pyramids of white sail against the shocking blue of the sky.

  "You have the helm, Stubs," Dante said wearily. "Try to keep this beast apace with the others and on course, east by southeast, until we are well into the Providence Channel."

  "Aye Cap'n." Stubs touched a finger to the melted stubble on the left side of his head. He scowled a moment as he groped the singed patches, then cursed and turned his attention back to the setting of the yards.

  Gabriel moved painfully across the deck and down the ladderway, ducking through the hatch and following a companionway into the stern where the captain’s quarters were located. As on most Spanish ships, the great-cabin was lavishly decorated in velvets and gilt, with ornately carved furnishings better suited to a royal brothel than a warship. The capitans were mostly figureheads, members of court who were appointed by the king and not accustomed to suffering the hardships and discomforts of common seamen. Most surrounded themselves with rich trappings from home, placing creature comforts well above practicality.

  Directly overhead was a smaller, far less pretentious cabin assigned to the ship’s sailing maestro, the true commander of a galleon. Gabriel briefly debated abandoning all the crimson velvet and gold curlicues for simple wood and wool, but his legs had barely held up coming down the ladderway and he did not think it prudent to be seen crawling along the companionway on hands and knees.

  Gabriel scanned the luxurious cabin with his one good eye and grimaced... a painful gesture which sent him searching hesitantly for a mirror. He spied one, cracked with battle damage, hanging over a porcelain washstand. He approached it with no small amount of trepidation, for his captors had applied both the lash and their fists, beating him savagely for three days and nights. His back and shoulders were whipped raw and if the widespread patches of black and blue flesh on his chest, arms, belly and legs were any indication, his face was likely just as grotesque.

  Jonas often mocked his younger brother's cavalier good looks saying there was no place for vanity on board a fighting ship. Bracing himself, Gabriel inched up to the mirror but the thing that stared back at him was even worse than he expected. His left eye was purple, swollen to the size of a small coconut, sealed shut with a crust of dried blood that had leaked from a deep cut across the eyebrow. His right eye was red with broken blood vessels, making the tarnished amber iris look inflamed. A second deep gash along his cheek puffed and distorted the square lines of his jaw. Lips that could normally make a wench lick her own in anticipation were split and scabbed. The long thick waves of chestnut hair were caked with blood and filth, and hung in dirty strings to his shoulders.

  A wave of nausea swept through him. There was water in the pitcher and he poured some into the basin then took a square of linen and began to carefully wash away the layers of dried blood and grime. When he finished, there was not much of an improvement; he still resembled one of the gargoyles mounted on cathedral roofs to scare off the demons.

  He tossed the cloth aside and looked around. He could not remember the last time he slept, and every muscle and sinew in his body was crying out for rest.

  The Spaniard's berth was no berth at all but an actual four-poster bed draped in a crimson canopy. Gabriel stared at it a moment, then went to the desk instead and began to sort through the piles of maps, charts, and logbooks that had been salvaged from the Valour.

  He was interrupted once by the cabin boy, Eduardo, who brought in a tray laden with biscuits and cheese and heaps of cold mutton. There was a pot of broth too, which was steaming hot and coursed through Dante's battered body with much-welcomed restorative powers. The Spanish capitan had had good taste in wine and after several goblets, with his belly full and his aches starting to go numb, Gabriel gave in to the temptation to rest his head on the desktop for a moment.

  At some point he woke and found himself on the bed under a thickly quilted blanket. The cabin was dark save for a single glowing lantern that flickered above the desk, suggesting he had slept through the entire day. Since there were no sounds of gunfire or thundering footsteps overhead, he surmised their progress out of the Straits was steady and uneventful. His eye closed again and he buried his head in the feather bolster, letting the motion of the ship rock him gently back to sleep.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Somewhere in the Providence Channel

  The ship was dying around her.

  The death knell had sounded a week ago when one of the crewmen had collapsed on deck with a blood-curdling scream. His body had been soaked in sweat, his skin covered in ugly, festering pustules, and his eyes glassy from a raging fever. The men who had slept, eaten, or gamed in his vicinity followed in horrifyingly swift succession. The surgeon, a drunkard and a fool, had been among the first to succumb, which had left no one to offer relief to the sick and dying.

  After six weeks at sea, the Eliza Jane had dropped anchor in Fox Town, a port on the island of Eluthera. It was the captain’s grim supposition that the first feverish crewman had caught the sickness from one of the island whores. He had ordered the ailing men confined belowdecks, but it was already too late. The stench of death engulfed the Eliza Jane like a cocoon, bringing even the strongest, stoutest men to their knees. The last valiant act the captain was able to perform was to raise the yellow flag on the mainmast, a signal to all passing ships to steer well clear.

  Evangeline Chandler felt her brow twenty times a day, expecting the worst. Her maid had died in her arms and since then, she imagined every ache to be the onslaught of the fever, every roil of her belly to be the beginning of the bloody flux that would mark the beginning of the end. Captain Fitch had ordered her to stay in
her tiny cabin but that had proved to be a different kind of hell. There was no porthole, no source of fresh air. The cabin was five paces by six paces, with a good portion taken up by a narrow berth and a sea chest containing her meager belongings. A small commode cupboard and washstand occupied one of the corners but the boy who had been assigned to empty the pot and provide her with fresh water had not been seen in two days.

  Even worse was the silence. Over the course of the long voyage from Portsmouth, Eva had become accustomed to the rapping of hammers, off-key singing, running feet overhead, shouts to haul in sail or play more on. Day by day those familiar sounds had diminished, leaving only the groaning of timbers and the rush of seawater beneath the hull. There were no further knocks on her door signalling a tray of food had been left outside. There were no gruff voices in the companionway asking if she was still alive.

  There was no water left in the pitcher and she’d had nothing to eat for two days. Her reflection, when she dared to hold up the tiny polished mirror, was shocking. Her normally clear, sea-green eyes were ringed with shadows, her skin was sallow, her lips starting to crack from thirst.

  Eva looked at the door and listened to the silence. She was running out of options. She had to leave the cabin, find water, and see for herself what was happening out there. She wasn’t sure why the disease had not claimed her; perhaps there were others wondering the same thing, keeping themselves hidden away from the lethal vapors.

  She did not even know if it was day or night.

  She bit the inside of her lip and reached for her cloak. There had seemed to be little point in trying to lace herself into a stomacher each day or to pace the cabin in fancy brocades, thus she had taken to dressing in the comfort of a simple white smock. With little else to do to pass the time, her hair was brushed smooth and fell in a gleaming golden curtain to below the curve of her bottom.

  Donning the cloak, she pulled the hood up to cover her head and opened the door a crack. The companionway was dark; the lamp that usually burned outside the captain’s door, which was opposite her own, was unlit.

  After another moment of trembling uncertainty she returned to the berth and lifted the long-snouted flintlock pistol that had been her constant companion through the past six weeks. Despite the Chandler name and the respect that came with it, she had not been oblivious to the dangers of being a woman outnumbered two-hundred-to-one on a long sea voyage. Captain Fitch had guaranteed her safety but he was dead now. The crew had been suitably deferential for the most part, limiting their lewd comments to when she was almost out of earshot, but fever and death made for altered priorities.

  With the pistol primed and hidden in the folds of her cloak, Eva crept out of the cabin and made her way by wary inches along the narrow companionway to the bottom of the wooden steps that led up to the open deck. There she paused and stared up at the patch of sky showing through the hatch. It was not the crisp blue of morning or the bright heated turquoise of noon. The sky was a washed-out gray as if the light was fading, suggesting it was late afternoon... or early evening.

  She mounted the steps slowly, unaware she was holding her breath. She had no idea what to expect to see at the top, and hoped it would be a normal scene of men bent over sails with needle and thread, or scrubbing planks with a holystone, or hanging from the rigging and working the lines.

  Perhaps the danger had passed and she had merely been forgotten, locked away in her tiny cabin.

  Pulling the cloak tighter, she stepped over the coaming and emerged from the shadows onto the open deck. The sun was, indeed, low in the westerly sky yet it took several blinks for her eyes to adjust after living so long with yellowish lamplight.

  At first she saw nothing out of the ordinary. The sails were furled, rolled and tied into fat sausages along each yardarm overhead. Only the uppermost triangles of canvas, which she had come to know were used for steerage and not speed, hung open to catch the wind. The ugly yellow flag still luffed softly on the mainmast; the miles of naked rigging lines seemed to hang from the yards like empty cobwebs.

  Then she saw the bodies.

  The first one was slumped across a capstan, arms and legs limp, mouth open and crusted with dried vomit. Another was sprawled near the rail and might have looked as if he was sleeping but for the sockets of his eyes, which were empty and black, the flesh around them shredded by rats that seemed immune to any manner of disease.

  Clutching the gun tighter she turned away from the sickening sight and stepped further out onto the deck. There were more bodies, dozens of them frozen in a terrible tableau. She turned quickly on her heel, her cloak dragging over the timbers, and looked up at the quarterdeck.

  There was no one standing at the helm. She could not recall when she had last heard the ship's bell rung. The hourglass on the binnacle had not been turned. Moreover, the long wooden arm of the tiller had been bound in rope and tied to the rail, something that would cause the ship to sail in a continuous circle.

  "My God," she whispered. "My God."

  She made another quick turn and mounted the steps to the quarterdeck, too stunned to do more than stare at the rope binding the tiller. Even if she untied it, she had no idea how to steer or sail a ship.

  She whirled and ran to the side, exchanging the grip she had on the pistol for a new and terrified grip on the wooden rail. From this elevated view she could see down the length of the Eliza Jane, at the bodies scattered stem to stern, all of them silent, all of them motionless.

  "H-hello? Is anyone there?"

  Silence greeted the panicked shout.

  "Hello! Please! Is someone... anyone... there!"

  She scanned the ocean in a full circle but there was nothing but open water and sky in all directions.

  "Hello! Hello!" She gripped the rail tighter, feeling tears sting into her eyes. "Please, someone answer! Hello! Hello!"

  She pushed away from the rail and ran back down the steps, then along the deck to the bow. Each frantic step was accompanied by a shout, a cry, a disbelieving plea for someone to answer. She found the captain slumped over a barrel amidships. His eyes and cheeks were gone, gnawed by rats and gulls; blackened streaks of dried blood trailed down onto his chest. When she looked closer, the trail of blood rippled with a thousand crawling, gorging flies.

  Eva clutched her belly and ran past the horror to the foredeck.

  She could not be the only one left alive on board the entire ship! It was not possible! It was not believable! It was madness! Insanity!

  Why, of the two hundred souls on board, would she be the only one spared?

  "Father," she whispered. "Dear God... Father... what do I do now? What do I do now?"

  She stumbled against the thick oaken arm of the bowsprit, blinded by tears. She tried to scream but her throat was too dry. She tried to quell the panic blooming in her chest but it rose and squeezed around her lungs until her vision turned dark. She felt herself crumpling and something banged her head, causing a brief starburst of pain... then nothing but the nightmare she had already endured a hundred times...

  ~~

  "I want to go with you."

  "No. Absolutely not."

  "He is my father. If you are sailing to the Indies to search for him, I want to go with you."

  Lawrence Ross looked up from the pile of papers he was sorting on his desk. "This is not going to be a pleasurable jaunt for a few days across the Channel. This is going to be weeks, possibly months of sailing in all manner of weather, good and bad, in tropical heat, landing on hostile islands covered in jungles, dealing with pirates and blackguards and men who would think of you as a delicacy to roast over an open fire... after they had their fill of using you."

  Eva was adamant. "I am well aware of the hardships and the danger, but he is my father."

  "Yes, and the chances are he's dead and I will be spending months looking for a rotting corpse!"

  Eva flinched and Ross cursed his bluntness. "Eva, darling, I'm sorry. But the harsh reality is that he's been gone
four years. There hasn't been a sighting, a letter, or a message in over three. There are a thousand islands in the tropics; he could be on any one of them. Or he could be on none of them. His ship could have been lost to a storm, or to pirates. He might have been captured by the Spaniards or the French or the Portuguese. Ships go missing. Men go missing. If he was alive, surely after all this time, he would have found some way to get a message to one of us, but there has been no communication, no letters, not even a verbal message passed from mouth to ear."

  "He was alive when the Gull sailed home to England."

  "Yes, he was alive." The need to force patience into his voice caused Ross's thin, angular face to darken a shade. "The captain of the Gull said your father insisted on being left behind, that he would find another ship to bring him home. That was over three years ago. Three long years in the tropics, travelling around islands infested with cannibals and Spaniards and all manner of pestilence. He is dead, Eva. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you can get on with your life. The sooner we can both get on with our lives."

  Eva curled her hands into fists to stop them trembling.

  "He is not dead," she insisted quietly. "If he was dead, I would know. I would feel the loss here—" she pressed a hand over her heart. "Father is alive. And if we have not heard from him it is because he is in trouble. Or he is hurt or lost or being held captive. The Spanish take captives all the time."

  "Indeed they do, to hold them for ransom. We have had no demands."

  "They may not know who he is. They may have put him to work in the mines or... or on a cane plantation, or—"

  Ross twisted his lips. "And if they have, the average life span of a white captive forced into slavery is about two months."

  "He is a big, strong man."

  "Who would eat more and cost more to keep alive than five scrawnier men."