Pirate Wolf Trilogy (50 page)

“Yes. Yes, of
course. Wh-what are your intentions toward the crew of the
galleon?”

“Do you
care?”

The
undamaged half of Beck’s face tightened beneath the oily sheen of
sweat and filth as he cast a slow glance around the broken ruin of
the
Argus
. “They
attacked without provocation and would have sunk us without qualm.
Do I care what becomes of them? No. At this precise moment, God
save me but no.”

“Then get about
your duties, Lieutenant, and leave the troublesome details to
us.”

He held
Juliet’s unwavering gaze for another moment, then offered a stiffly
executed bow before leaving to supervise his crew.

Juliet watched
him limp away then pursed her lips and murmured thoughtfully, “A
courier? What on earth would a naval courier ship be doing in these
waters?”

Crisp was
already moving in the direction of the stern cabins. “His Majesty’s
officers are almost as meticulous as the Spanish in keeping good
accounts of where they have been an’ where they are bound. I’ll see
to any dispatches an’ charts; you get yerself back over to
the
Rose
.”

He vanished
into the wall of belching smoke and Juliet was taking a last look
around when an incongruous splash of color caught her eye. Two
bodies were tangled together in the midst of the blackened ruins
near the base of the mainmast. The uppermost one was wearing a
lavender velvet doublet and lying beside him was the cavalier’s hat
that had been so gallantly tipped by way of a salute on board the
Spaniard.

Juliet had
almost forgotten about the champion who had come to her aid in the
heat of battle. He looked dead and she guessed he had been caught
in the blast that had destroyed the ship’s magazine, for everything
else around him was smoldering, scorched by the force of the
exploding gunpowder. Patches of charred velvet smoked across his
shoulders and buttocks. He had a lump the size of a gull’s egg at
the back of his skull, and a thin thread of blood was leaking from
his ear from the concussion. The splendid fan of plumes on his hat
had been reduced to burnt and bristled shafts, while the
exquisitely jewelled dagger she had last seen clutched in his hand
lay several feet away, glittering brightly against the rubble.

He was sprawled
face down, his arms spread wide like a crucifix. Above his
shoulders—which were impressively wide for a man who chose to wear
lavender velvet—his features were obscure by the tumbled waves of
long chestnut hair. But his clothes were very fine indeed. The lace
at his throat and cuffs was worth almost as much as the solid
silver buckles on his shoes. The peasecod doublet was trimmed in
gold braid, emphasising the high waist in back and, if memory
served, the deep vee in front. The sleeves were fitted, with a
rolled band at the shoulder embroidered with gold stripes. Legs
that were long and well formed were clad in trunk hose padded to a
bell shape, worn over silk stockings that would have been the envy
of a king.

Juliet’s gaze
returned to the dagger. It was as rich a trophy as any she had
taken in a year’s worth of plunder and she had to think it would be
a shame not to have some memento of this stranger’s courageous
death.

She stepped
over a broken spar and was reaching down to collect the dagger when
a hand shot out and grabbed her around the wrist.

The Samaritan
was not dead after all. He was very much alive and glaring up at
her.

“Is it your
habit, boy, to rob the men who save your life?”

She balled her
fist and attempted to pull it free. “I thought you were dead.”

He held fast to
her wrist and gave his head a small shake to clear his wits. If the
blood leaking from his ear was any indication, he was likely
hearing a chorus of ringing bells, and the only thing he
accomplished by shaking his head was to scatter a few droplets of
red across the deck.

“Jesus God!”
His fingers sprang open, releasing her. They rose to gingerly probe
the lump at back of his skull and he groaned again.

The sound was
echoed by the body crushed beneath him.

“Beacom?” A
lavender arm lifted to see what was beneath. “Good God, man, what
are you doing under there?”

“Waiting for
you to rouse, your grace,” came the gasped reply. “Hoping that in
your boundless compassion, you might even be willing to heave off
me!”

“I would be
more than happy to oblige,” his grace said, “ just as soon as I can
coax my limbs to work again. You there, lad. Stop gawking at the
bobble on my dagger—consider it lost to you now anyway—and lend us
your assistance here.”

Juliet arched
an eyebrow and glanced to either side, but there was no one else
close by. Ignoring the hand he extended, she straddled a leg on
either side of his narrow hips instead and, taking up fistfuls of
charred purple velvet, hoisted his upper body and held him while
the man pinned underneath him wriggled free.

When the deed
was accomplished, Juliet dropped him unceremoniously back to the
deck while Beacom, who had his back turned and was dusting the soot
and grime off his clothes, paused to flutter his hands in
gratitude.

“Oh, I thank
you, good sir. I thank you so very much indeed. My lord, his grace
the duke, has been most uncooperative in answering my many attempts
to waken him and I began to fear I might die for lack of air before
anyone came to our rescue.”

Contrasting the
colorful garments his master wore, Beacom was dressed head to toe
in somber, fastidious black. He had a long, bony face to match the
long bony body and his teeth, when he spoke, clicked together like
castanets.

“I am roused
now,” said the duke, swaying to his knees. “Give me a hand, damn
you Beacom.”

Juliet watched,
somewhat bemused, as Beacom paused in the act of straightening his
shortcoat. A cry, not unlike the squawk of a pinched chicken, saw
him whirl around and bend to assist his master who appeared to be
on the verge of careening nose down onto the deck again.

“Your limbs, my
lord. Are they sound?”

“Sound as a
newborn babe’s,” the duke muttered. “It is the deck that is
spinning like a bloody dervish.”

Beacom looked
hardly strong enough for the task, but he managed with a great deal
of grunting, pulling, and straining to haul his master to his feet.
As soon as he was able to stand unassisted, Beacom gingerly probed
the scorched layers of velvet and lace searching for injuries.

Juliet was more
intrigued by the duke himself, for apart from her father, who had
been awarded a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth, he was the first
member of the English nobility she had encountered. His face, when
he pushed the lanky strands of hair out of the way, was neither
pointy nor vapid, as she expected it to be. The nose was long and
regal, the eyes deep-set and shielded by lashes the same gleaming
chestnut as his hair. His eyebrows were full and straight, meeting
almost in the middle. A slender moustache marked a perfect line
along his upper lip, while the neatly trimmed imperial elongated
the squareness of his jaw. She remembered seeing a full rack of
even white teeth—a rarity among sea-faring men—and although his
mouth was compressed now against the pain and dizziness, a smile
that had been somewhat breathtaking.

Despite the
lace ruffles at his throat and cuffs, the silk stockings and padded
trunk hose, he had also wielded an extremely fine sword, one that
did not hang about his hips solely for decoration or pomp. It was
lying on the deck a few feet away and while Juliet went to retrieve
it, Beacom continued to fuss and fret.

“There would
appear to be no serious perforations, my lord. It is probably to
your good account that you were not a step or two closer to the
middle of the vessel.”

The duke
scowled his way through another stab of pain. “You will forgive me,
Beacom, if I wait for these devils to stop dancing in my head
before I celebrate?”

“
I should
not wait too long,” Juliet said as she handed Beacom the sword as
well as the jewelled dagger. “The pair of you would be wise to haul
yourselves over the rail before the
Argus
takes on too much more water. Will you be able to manage
him on your own?” she asked Beacom. “Or do you need
help?”

The pinched
nostrils flared. “I am quite capable of guiding his grace to
safety. We will, however, require assistance with our belongings.
If you can spare another moment, young man, there will be a coin in
it for you.”

“A coin?”
Juliet rounded her eyes. “Gold or silver?”

“More than
you’ll earn by standing here and—”

Beacom’s
words were cut short on another squawk as the ship listed suddenly.
The
Argus
settled
deeper in the bows, sending the manservant and his burden
staggering sideways against the base of the mast. From somewhere in
the bowels of the ship came the sound of straining, popping timbers
and a roar not unlike a monster rising up from the deep. Men
swarmed up the ladderways, including Nathan Crisp who was soaked to
the neck with sea water, enveloped in a huge cloud of steam that
boiled out of the hatchway behind him. He carried charts and maps
and a thick ledger bound in leather, tied with a red
ribband.

“There’s a hole
as big as Lucifer’s arse in the hull where the powder barrels blew
out,” he shouted. “Her back is broken. A minute or two, no more,
an’ she won’t be able to keep her head up. We’d best cut loose or
she’ll drag the Spanish bitch down with her.”

Juliet
turned to Beacom. “You are certainly free to swim below and
squander your life fetching milord’s silver shaving cup if you
like, but if I were you, I would hasten over the side
now
.”

“
Well,
I... ” The beginnings of what might have been an instinctive
protest died on a startled gasp as the
Argus
rolled and wailed again. A flurry of chopping
sounds could be heard as men began to take axes to the grappling
lines to cut her free, each strained rope giving off a sharp
ping
as it snapped apart. “Yes. Yes,
of course. To the side. At once. Come, milord.
Milord
—!”

The duke was
still leaning up against the broken mast. His eyes were open and
although they were fixed on Juliet with a kind of puzzled
confusion, his jaw had gone slack and his body was starting to
slide down the smooth wood.

Juliet
cursed and slung his free arm around her shoulder. Hoisting the
deadweight between them, she and Beacom dragged the barely
conscious duke to the side of the ship where members of the
Iron Rose’s
crew stood on lengths of heavy
cargo netting to help heave the survivors up and over the rail onto
the
Santo
Domingo
.

Swirling
green water churned no more than ten feet below the level of the
English carrack’s deck but Juliet waited until the last possible
moment before she gave the signal for the final tethering lines to
be chopped. With one arm looped through the cables, she hung on as
the galleon rolled free and righted herself. Cut adrift, the
drowning frigate struggled to remain afloat through the surging
backwash of waves but it was no use. In less than a minute, with
the surface of the water bubbling and hissing, and with the weak
cries of the men who could not be saved echoing across the
distance, the
Argus
went down
by the stern, leaving a wide circle of broken spars and burning
canvas scraps to mark her demise.

CHAPTER
TWO

Juliet
wasted little time or energy on niceties. The Spanish prisoners
were bound together wrist and ankle. There were well over three
hundred captives crammed on two decks and even though they had
surrendered their ship and waited in dazed clusters to hear their
fate, they outnumbered the combined crew of the
Iron Rose
and the survivors of the
Argus
by more than two to
one.

Juliet’s first
priority was to ensure there were no hidden pockets of Spaniards
burrowed below on any of the decks. Ten enterprising soldiers with
muskets could undo the day’s efforts and turn defeat into victory.
She dispatched armed parties to scour each of the four decks,
rooting out another score of men to add to the crush on deck.

Nathan
Crisp led one such party to search the cargo bays and what he found
there caused him to swallow his cud of tobacco whole. There were
storerooms filled with crates of silver bars, all bearing the stamp
of the mint in Vera Cruz. Four huge barrels contained pearls the
size of a man’s thumbnail. There were sacks of uncut emeralds from
Cartagena, chests of gold from the mines in Peru, bales of spices
and rubber in such quantities that the initial euphoria Juliet and
Nathan felt upon opening door after door, turned to consternation
for it would take days to transfer all the treasure to the
Rose
. Even then,
it was likely the privateer would sink under half the
burden.

While it
was not unusual for warships to carry treasure, it was definitely
curious that a ship with the firepower and reputation of the
Santo Domingo
should be weighted so heavily
with cargo. It implied she was going to be sent back to Spain with
the September plate fleet. Twice yearly, in spring and fall, fleets
of galleons loaded with treasure rendezvoused in Havana. They came
from Vera Cruz in Mexico, from Nombre de Dios in Panama, from
Maracaibo, Cartagena, and Baranquilla along the northern coast of
Peru and Colombia. The trading vessels went from port to port along
the Spanish Main, circling the vast Gulf, touching on the islands
of the Antilles and Caribbean until they arrived back in Havana,
where they gathered into a single fleet to make the journey back to
Spain.