Heart of Steele (12 page)

“I came with my granduncle, Sir Reginald, who is a member of the council,” she said. “This way, gentlemen.”

She showed us into a parlor, where a tall, bony old man sat in a fancy chair. A bottle of wine and a glass stood on a round table at his elbow, and I could see pretty well the symptoms of some determined drinking on his face. But he rose, and he
greeted us with a polite smile and not the least slurring of his speech.

Before Miss Fairfax could speak, the captain bowed again and said, “Sir Reginald, I understand. I am Captain Hunt, with some business for Sir Henry. Permit me to introduce my friend Mr. Patrick, and Mr. Barr, a fellow sea captain.”

“Pleasure,” murmured Sir Reginald. “I believe Sir Henry will be available shortly. My dear niece, do you mind playing the hostess? I am somewhat fatigued and was just going up to bed.”

“Not at all, Uncle,” said Miss Fairfax.

I noticed that Sir Reginald took his bottle of wine with him. “My uncle is a very discreet man when he wants to be,” Miss Fairfax confided. “Now, Captain, you must tell me of your adventures.”

“They are hardly fit for your ears,” said Captain Hunter with a shake of his head.

“Must I be disappointed? Very well, then. Let me show you to Sir Henry’s study. He should be with you shortly.”

She took us to a spacious room with a desk, a long mahogany table, and plenty of chairs, and there she took her leave of us. But we were not
alone for long. I heard slow, heavy footsteps in the hall, the door swung open, and Sir Henry Morgan, the old buccaneer himself, stepped into the room. He threw his head back and laughed, and then said, “Blast my eyes! Old John Barrel, in the flesh! They haven’t hung you yet, man?”

Captain Barrel had not taken a seat. He laughed too and limped forward on his timber leg to give Sir Henry a hearty handshake. “No, Your Honor,” he said. “They’ve shot me an’ they’ve cut me an’ beat me an’ chained me, but nobody’s hung me yet. Not ’less ye plans to do it now!”

“Sit, sit,” said Morgan, and he collapsed into his own chair at the big desk. Only then did I notice how pale and ill he looked. He was a big man, but he seemed to have lost weight everywhere but in his belly, which looked swollen. And my uncle stirred at the sound of Morgan’s heavy, labored breathing. After a few seconds, Morgan tilted his head at Captain Hunter. “You’ve done pretty well, William. I suppose you need help, though.”

“I’ll not hide it from you, Sir Henry,” Captain Hunter told him. “I’m short of hands and short of hope, and look to you for a new supply of both.”

Morgan nodded. “Sawbones?”

“Faith,” muttered my uncle. “I came but to see whether you’ve been taking your medicine and staying to your diet. And one glimpse of you tells me you have not!”

With a wave of his hand, Morgan said, “I have other doctors. They are treating me.” With a gleam in his eye, he turned to Captain Barrel. “And you, old shipmate?”

Captain Barrel coughed. “Well, Your Honor, we’ve had word that you’re back in favor. Me an’ the lads were hoping ye might have a king’s pardon about ye.”

Morgan shook with rumbling laughter. “By the Powers! I never thought the day would come. D’ye stand there, John Barrel, and tell me you’re turning honest?”

With a shrug, Captain Barrel answered, “Aye! I’ll tell ye the truth, Morgan. I’ve sailed for the devil hisself, or for Jack Steele, which amounts to the same. What have I got for it? My ship stove in, an’ me clapped in irons by that swab that called hisself Shark. Shiver me timbers, but if Steele treats me such a way, why, I won’t say no to sailin’ for King
James. After Steele, Lusty Charlie’s boy will be a step up.”

Morgan sat silent for a little space. Then he opened a drawer, withdrew from it a piece of parchment, and reached for a quill pen. He dipped it in ink and signed the document, then sprinkled sand onto the fresh ink. He blew this off carelessly, waved the parchment, and passed it over to Barrel. “There’s your pardon, John Barrel. And I hope you and your men have learned your lesson.”

“That we have,” said Captain Barrel with a wide grin. “Ye have my affydavy on that!”

Sir Henry took two or three deep breaths, and my uncle leaped from his place. “Let me feel your pulse, sir!” he ordered.

“I’ll be well enough,” Morgan said, shaking his head. “William, you need men and you need hope, you say. I can help you with the former. I think my other guest may help you with the latter.” He raised his voice and called, “Miss Fairfax!”

She opened the door an instant later, and I realized she had been waiting in the adjoining room. “Yes, Sir Henry?”

Morgan gave Captain Hunter a strange, sly smile.
“You may show His Excellency in now, my dear,” he told Miss Fairfax.

She disappeared back into the other room, and I heard her murmuring voice. And then something beyond astonishing happened.

Don Esteban de Reyes, the Spanish captain who once had vowed to kill Captain Hunter, stepped into the room.

Deal with the Devil

“
I BELIEVE YOU
know everyone here, Your Excellency?” Morgan rumbled in the sudden silence. I have heard about it being so quiet you could hear a pin drop, but I’d never experienced it until that very moment. No one spoke, no one moved. No one even breathed.

Don Esteban de Reyes, the captain and owner of the dread Spanish pirate hunter ship
Concepcíon,
stared back at us, the slightest of smiles on his face. He was a short, stocky dark man in a plain black uniform with a single silver starburst on the right breast. The sword at his side was unadorned and serviceable.

“Pity I went to all the trouble o’ patchin’ the captain up, Davy,” my uncle muttered next to me, “just to have it all to do again.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see both Captain Hunter and Captain Barrel slowly moving their hands toward their swords. Don Esteban casually raised one eyebrow and they both stopped. There was something heavy and methodical about the stocky Don, and both the captains were still recovering from their wounds taken in defense of the
Aurora.
Yet even if they had been in prime shape, I do not think they could have easily taken Don Esteban. Finally he nodded slightly in acknowledgment of Sir Henry’s question.

“Yes, Sir Henry, I do know everyone in this room, at least by reputation.”

“By the Powers, Harry,” Captain Barrel exploded. “Have ye taken leave of your senses? Have ye no idea of who this be?”

“Of course I know who it is!” Sir Henry roared like a wounded lion. “I make it a habit to know everyone I invite into me own house! And that’s Sir Henry to you, John Barrel, you old reprobate!”

During this exchange, Captain Hunter was
working to overcome his shock. A grim smile finally touched his lips, and he made a curt bow in the direction of the Spaniard, though his hand stayed close to his sword. “A good evening to you, Don Esteban. I had hoped to make your acquaintance one day, though this is sooner than I had expected.”

“Life is full of little surprises, Captain Hunter.”

“This is ever so entertaining,” snapped Miss Fairfax with a note of exasperation in her voice. “But I suggest you gentlemen make yourselves comfortable so that Sir Henry can tell you of his plan. I shall see to some wine—assuming my dear uncle has left any!” And with that, she swept from the room, radiating contempt for every man since Adam named the animals.

“A very formidable young woman,” said Don Esteban, sighing.

“You, sir, do not know the half of it,” agreed Captain Hunter.

“Then I suggest you all take your seats,” snapped Sir Henry, gesturing toward the great table in the center of the room and the ornate chairs around it. “Don Esteban and I have been parleying for a reason.
Now that you are all here, I want you to share in the talk. I care not for what has gone before or what will come after! Now we have need of one another!”

“It is not easy to set aside deep differences just for convenience’s sake, Sir Henry,” Don Esteban said in a cold, flat voice, not taking his eyes from Captain Hunter, who coldly nodded back. With a collapsing rumble, Morgan slowly settled into his own great chair.

“Aye, there is a difference, Your Excellency. I have presented you with ample evidence that it was not Captain Hunter and the
Aurora
who sacked poor little San Angel. If you were not convinced, you would not be here. The truth of it is, sir, we all have blood enough on our hands to paint this room red. But another man has enough to fill it. So the question is what is more important? Your differences or putting an end to Jack Steele?”

Once again the room was deadly quiet. Then Captain Hunter took his hand away from his sword, pulled out an ornately carved chair, and sat himself down at Sir Henry Morgan’s table. Don Esteban hesitated but a second longer and then he, too, drew out a chair and sat down.

“Oh, well, in for a penny, in for a pound,” grumbled my uncle, and he and John Barrel also sat down.

“Well begun is half done,” Sir Henry said, taking another long, deep breath. “First, let us share a bit of information. I have not spent the last months simply ignoring your advice, Doctor Shea. I have been at work gathering information. The two of you dealt Jack Steele a grand defeat at Tortuga. You smashed the independent Brotherhood of the Coast before they could join up with the
Red Queen.
But you didn’t put a finish to him!” He settled back into his chair, suddenly looking pale and clammy. “Now I have new word, and I am almost sure I know what he plans to do.”

“You have all our attention, Sir Henry,” said the dark Spaniard.

Sir Henry nodded. “Then listen closely, for it covers all of us. Ships are disappearing. Ships are being looted and stripped. The monster is picking up the pieces you two left floating about. Ships and captains and crews. This time it’s no league made up of gentlemen o’ fortune. He’s building his own navy. He’s buying ships that will sail under the command of their very own pirate admiral!”

A servant had softly entered the room and was quietly placing glasses of deep red wine in front of everyone. He was ignored.

Sir Henry spread his hands on the table. “If he’d succeeded at Tortuga, Steele would have commanded fifty motley vessels. Instead he will now command a tight fleet of twenty, with the bloody
Red Queen
herself to lead them on! He means to take territory, Captain Hunter, mark my words. Make himself king o’ Jamaica or some such.”

“How can a man be so mad and so cunning, all at once?” asked my uncle in a wondering voice.

“He’s a remarkable villain,” Sir Henry countered. “We know so much about the pirate but so little about the man.” He took a sip of wine and gasped for air. Then roughly he said, “Been lookin’ into that, too. We think he was a merchant from out of Plymouth by the name of Jonathan Steele. Well respected he was, had a wife and a daughter and a good business dealing in soaps and perfumes and such.”

“Jack Steele was a perfumer?” said John Barrel, amazement in every word.

“So we think. Then he and his family set out on
one of his ships for the Virginia colony. Never made it. She vanished as completely as if she’d never been built. Months later, someone like him took a sloop and massacred everyone who wouldn’t join him, and that was the birth of Jack Steele. Something happened out there on the high seas. Something terrible. I haven’t been able to find out what it was, but it turned an anonymous little merchant into a cold and calculating killing machine.”

I stood quiet in the shadows, taking in everything Sir Henry was saying. There had been something—no, some
one
—before the monster who was Jack Steele. And like Sir Henry, I found myself wondering what could have happened to make so startling a change in a man.

“So life dealt him a rough hand,” growled John Barrel. “Life’s hard, an’ that’s that. But where the devil did Steele get his hands on that ship o’ his? Sixty guns she had to begin with, an’ she’s got a powerful sight more’n that now. Big ’uns, too. But where the devil did he get her, that’s what I wants to know.”

“Ah, well,” murmured Don Esteban, finally taking a sip of his wine. “I fear that’s our fault.”
Everyone turned to stare at him. He sighed. “You will be the first English to hear this tale; it is not one the Royal Court particularly wants spread about.”

“I can’t wait to hear this,” said my uncle to John Barrel as he eased back into his chair. Captain Barrel nodded his agreement and also settled back.

Don Esteban sighed again. “There was a commission made to the shipbuilders of Holland to construct a gigantic merchant galleon for the flota.”

“Spanish treasure fleet,” said Captain Barrel, nodding wisely at me, though I already knew what the flota was.

“Yes, Captain Barrel, the great silver fleet that sails once a year for Spain. She was the
Sangreal,
the Holy Grail, much larger than most of her class and heavily armed. However, she was storm damaged in her first crossing and was sent to Havana Harbor for repairs. It was there, one dark night after the repair work was completed, that she was boarded and her caretaker crew slaughtered, their bodies tossed overboard. Before the garrisons in the great castles guarding the harbor became aware of what had happened, she had set sail and slipped away into the night.”