Ill Wind and Dead Reckoning: Caribbean Pirate Adventure (Valkyrie) (18 page)

The repairs were well under way, and Gaunt and Blackman had everything in hand. Frazer was still in his fever, and there was nothing I could do here. It was time to take the opportunity to explore Eckerstad with Cheval. He’d joined
Freedom
a couple of months before our encounter with Tarr. We’d taken his ship for a prize, and Frazer had recognized him as having sailed with Hornigold. We’d taken a chance on him as he’d fallen out with the buccaneers, and I hoped that, knowing their habits, he might prove useful. I’d put him forward for second mate as a play on his vanity, and hoped it was time to be rewarded. He knew Eckerstad and its people, and I wanted as much information as I could gather about Blake and Hornigold’s pet island without drawing too much attention to myself. My mother had been English, and I’d spoken the language since I was a child, plus I was in the company of a known French buccaneer, so hopefully no one would realize I was a hated Spaniard. I put on a wide-brimmed hat to hide my face, though, just in case.

I also wanted to know more about how he’d parted company with Tarr and the others. So far he’d been tight-lipped about his past, blustering past my questions, but I was determined to get his story. I needed to know if I could trust him as a man as I now knew I could as a sailor. He’d done well after the waterspout, but I hadn’t forgotten his earlier challenge. This little expedition would provide the perfect opportunity to find out more about him.

We rowed back out through the rocks in the longboat at high tide with a calm sea and sunshine. Once we were free of them, Cheval hauled up the sail and we let the wind do the work. It was only April, but already the days dawned stiflingly hot and still – apart from the odd squall. The building seabreeze and sunshine were perfect, and the little craft responded to every gust, pushing forward easily through the slight swell. Despite the recent problems and the knowledge that I was on a mission of revenge, my cares fell off my shoulders with each welcome puff of cooling wind.

‘I love this,’ I told Cheval. ‘The wind at my back, the pull of the sail and the way she takes on each wave. Do you know, I’ve been at sea eight years now, but I can never get enough of this – there can be no better place than at the helm of a sailing boat enjoying a salted breeze.’

‘Oui. I first came to the sea when I was eight and could never leave her now.’

‘What took you to sea so young?’

‘Mon père. It was just the two of us and Papa was one of the original boucaniers. We were amongst those invited to Port Royal by England, lured away from our life hunting on Hispaniola by the promise of the rich prizes.’

‘By Henry Morgan.’ It was a statement rather than a question, but he answered anyway.

‘Non, he was just an ordinary sailor then, one of many, but we did sail with him, until he blew up his ship, anyway.’

‘Which one, the
Oxford?
’ The
Oxford
had been Morgan’s impressive flagship, sent west by a grateful English parliament, and had had a crew over two hundred strong. She exploded one night off Cow Island, thanks to a well-stocked powder magazine, drunken sailors and a careless candle. Only the men carousing in the great cabin had survived. She’d hardly fired a shot in anger.

‘Oui. Papa was killed.’

‘I’m sorry. It’s hard to lose a father so young.’

He stayed quiet, lost in his memories. I sheeted the sail in and leaned back as I changed course to clear the headland, and waited for him to continue.

‘I was alone, and didn’t have anywhere to go, but I was damned if I’d set foot on the same deck as Henry Morgan again.’

‘I’m not surprised.’

‘I ended up on Tarr’s ship.’

I nodded, careful not to comment. I needed him to tell his story.

‘Blake and Hornigold, his first and second mates, were more interested in the gold than claiming and protecting land for England as Morgan was, and that suited me too. I didn’t give a damn for England. Nor anyplace else. Still don’t. I sailed with them sixteen years and have to say we were good at our trade.’

‘So you were at Panama with them?’ I held my breath.

Cheval shuddered. ‘Mon Dieu, non. I stayed behind to keep the ship with three others. The men didn’t want a child slowing them down in the jungle, though they took old Swan with them and he was eighty if he was a day.’

I was relieved. If he’d been part of the attack on my home, I’d have had to kill him.

‘Why did you leave them? What happened?’

‘Look up there, that’s where the gun is,’ he said, changing the subject.

Frustrated, I looked up, realizing I only had Cheval’s word that the gun was out of action.

‘Do you see those coconut trees up there? That’s where van Ecken lives. He brought them over from the East Indies. Insists on making his guests eat them, hate them myself.’

‘Who?’ I asked, wanting as much information as possible.

‘Erik van Ecken. He’s the Hollander who more or less owns the island. Tarr was his man, Blake and Hornigold still are. The buccaneers take the ships, then van Ecken buys them, refits them as slavers and sends them to Africa. He grows sugar and trades in other things too, but the slaves is where he makes his money, and he makes a lot. His plantation, Brisingamen, stretches the three leagues in every direction from this cliff face.’

‘He has a long reach.’

‘Oui.’

‘Does he live alone?’ I wanted to keep Cheval talking.

‘No, nothing like. He has an army of the slaves and plenty of English pirates to keep them in line. He never goes anywhere alone; even when he’s stepping out on his wife, he always has at least two of them with him.’

‘What’s the wife like?’

He paused. ‘Beaten.’

‘Beaten?’

‘Oui, in every way. I haven’t seen her in a long time, but I remember her when she arrived. Very young and excited, beautiful with the laugh that could melt even Blake’s heart. It didn’t last long.’

‘What, the marriage?’

‘No, the laugh.’

I looked at him, not sure what to say.

He shrugged. ‘C’est vrai.
It’s true. I don’t know what he did to her, but he took her laughter, and her looks. She’s too thin and creeps about like a rat trying to stay out of the way of the ship’s cat. A waste of a good woman if you ask me.’

‘It sounds it. Why does she stay? It doesn’t sound as if either of them want the marriage.’ Not that there was much she could do about it in this day and age, divorcements were hard to come by – especially for a wife.

‘She’s no more wife than possession, just like the slaves. Only she lives in better quarters.’ He shrugged again, not that interested. ‘He’ll never let her go. We should be able to see the town soon, the rocks become less past this last point.’

I looked forward again. Eckerstad was a sizeable collection of buildings nestled around a natural harbour and dwarfed by the cloud-shrouded mountain that towered over it. I wondered at the prudence of my decision to come here.

‘
Freyja!
’

I looked around at Cheval’s urgent whisper. We’d cleared the last headland, and there she was. Hornigold had survived both my attack and the waterspout.

I examined the other ships – was Blake here too? No. No
Edelweiss
, just a couple of slavers by the looks of it. I turned my attention back to
Freyja
and adjusted the tiller. Her rigging had been replaced and her hull looked sound from this distance, but I didn’t want to get any closer to make sure. If I had the opportunity I’d kill him, but I didn’t want to give
him
the opportunity to kill
me
. I’d stay well away from those guns. I checked her stern and rudder. Seaworthy. We had caused no lasting damage that I could see; I still had it all to do.

I scrutinised her decks as we sailed past – she seemed deserted. There must be someone on shipkeeping duty, surely, but I couldn’t see any movement at all.

‘Hornigold will be ashore,’ Cheval said. ‘He never did like staying aboard at anchor. He’ll be in one of the stews with some doxy.’

‘I’m not so sure.’ I’d watched the shore as we approached, and noticed that the men milling around the wharf were not actually milling. Nor were they drinking or sleeping in the sun. Something was going on.
Do they know we’re here? But how?

I guided the longboat to the near end of the wharf, out of the way, and Cheval jumped ashore, line in hand, to tie her off. I dropped the sail and followed, then looked up the cobbled wharf. Two heavily armed men were walking towards us, although patrolling might be a better description; they definitely moved with purpose.

‘We should go, Capitaine
,
’ Cheval whispered loudly. ‘They’re looking for us.’

‘If they were looking for us, why would they be looking here? Anyway, they’d be looking for a ship, not two men in a boat.’

‘Well, something’s wrong, I don’t like it.’

‘Hmm, but if Hornigold is distracted, I may get my chance at him. Come on, Second.’

I headed towards the nearest narrow street, and was stopped by a shout from the men walking the wharf.

‘What’s your business here, churl?’ one of them asked.

I stared at him, but decided not to react to his insult.

‘Just come ashore for a drink, mate,’ I said, doing my best to hide my Spanish accent, and gestured vaguely at the ships in the harbour. ‘We’ve had the devil of a day cleaning out the cable locker.’ The cable locker, where the enormous anchor cables were stowed when at sea, was low down in the ship, stank to high heaven, and needed heavy maintenance to keep the wood sound. It had to be scraped and tarred, and any rotten wood replaced before the anchors were weighed and the heavy, wet rope once again coiled down. The job was usually reserved as a punishment. The men laughed.

‘I reckon you’ll need more than a drink, mate – best alehouse is that way – the Crab and Anchor!’ He laughed again. ‘Watch out for the crabs!’ We hurried off in the direction he had indicated.

‘Merde!’

I looked at Cheval. Now what? Had he been that scared by a couple of deckhands? It would have been an even fight at worst. Then I realized he was staring at one of the alleyways ahead to our left, and had his hand on his sword. We did have pistols with us, but they were unloaded and stowed in our sashes out of the way. I hadn’t wanted to be quite so obvious about my intentions as to hang loaded pistols about my neck. We could load them in a minute, but by the look on his face we did not have a minute.

I followed his line of sight and saw the two men who were having such an effect on my second mate. I stiffened with surprise as I recognized the one-eyed man from Tarr’s ship – the one who had called down after Magdalena.

‘Who are they?’

‘Sharpe, Hornigold’s new quartermaster, and Little. We don’t get on.’

Something told me that was an understatement.

Sharpe spotted us and stopped in his tracks. A slow smile spread over his face, and he said something to Little, who laughed, but I did not think it was in humour. They changed direction and walked towards us.

‘Well, well, well,’ Sharpe said as he neared us, his hand on the hilt of his cutlass. ‘Look at this – you never know what you’ll find skulking in the backstreets of a sailortown. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you again, Cheval.’

‘I haven’t,’ Cheval muttered. I glanced at him in annoyance.

Sharpe and Little both laughed. I stepped to the side. All their attention was on Cheval and, if it came to a fight, I wanted the advantage.

Sharpe glared at me. Even with a patch covering one eye, the other conveyed his message, and I stopped moving.

‘You want to be careful mate, don’t turn your back to this one, he’ll have a knife in it afore you even know he’s there. Then he’ll toss you overboard for good measure.’

‘That’s a lie, Sharpe, and you know it,’ Cheval exclaimed.

‘Yes, you used a mainsheet block, didn’t you? But the sentiment’s true enough. Don’t think I don’t know it was no accident. I know you tried to kill me. You’re too good a steersman to be caught out by a gybe like that, just as I was standing in exactly the right place for your purposes. If I hadn’t seen that boom coming, the block would have knocked me overboard, and you wouldn’t have called an alarm, would you? As it was, I lost an eye and now I want restitution – I want both of yours!’

He drew his sword and lunged at Cheval. I pulled out my own blades, as did Little, and steel clashed in the narrow alley.

‘
I
was quartermaster –
me
!’ Cheval shouted. ‘You took that from me!’

‘No, you lost it! You’re a lazy leader of men and you were voted out. You only have yourself to blame!’

I ducked as Little swiped his cutlass where my head had been a second ago, and drove my elbow into his belly. I risked a quick look at Cheval and Sharpe. They were a good match; we weren’t going to get out of here quickly.

I brought my blade up to block another of Little’s hacks and pushed him back, managing to cut his swordarm. Then I heard a shout. More Freyjamen were coming, drawn by the sound of clanging steel. We had to go.

I lunged at Little, who dodged my blade and I barged into him, adding to his momentum. He hit the wall head first and slumped to the ground. I picked up a cask, threw it at Sharpe, and shouted to Cheval to run. He did not need telling twice.