The Pirate Captain (66 page)

“He destroyed you once. Are you willing to risk that again?” Thomas asked gravely.

“I've been waiting for this opportunity for a very long time; a
very
long time,” was Nathan’s even response. “Would you care to join us?”

“As what?” Thomas shot back, intrigued.

Nathan tipped his head considering, his bells glinting in the firelight. “We could use a bit o' help. A consort could assure they shan’t break to open sea when the
Morganse
makes her move.”

“You'll have the entire Royal Navy and every privateer in these waters after you.”

“More is the reason two ships be the better.” Nathan watched as Thomas considered. “I'll give you twenty-five per cent of me plunder.”

A wry lift of a sandy brow came with, “Used to be fifty.”

“I've more important needs to consider these days,” Nathan said, cryptically.

Thomas laughed loudly to the night sky. “For that small cause, I’ll consider it a donation. You’ll allow me to consult with my men, but so long as there is a profit at the end, they are babes. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

Nathan rose and faded into the nearby shadows to relieve himself. Weary of sitting, Cate stood, groaning with stiffness. As she shook the sand from her skirts, Thomas appeared at her side with surprising gracefulness for someone of his size and swept an even more graceful bow.

“Pray, would you care to walk?” He displayed a charming smile.

It had been a very long time since she had taken a stroll with a man. Its appeal outweighed the caution of going into the night with a relative stranger. She needed to get a hold of the emotions that had been set churning. She considered it might provide an interim in which she could face down her shock at Thomas without Nathan’s hawkish eye on her.

They headed down the beach, side by side, but a careful distance between.

She kicked off her shoes at the water’s edge and waded in the surf. The water lapping her ankles was as warm as the night air. The sand squished between her toes in little jets. Thomas waded beside her, unmindful of the waves washing over his boots. She was growing familiar with the Caribbean’s brilliant stellar displays. The moon not yet risen, allowing the night’s display to be particularly dazzling. Whoever the ruling goddess of the stars might be was at her finest.

At first, they engaged in the idle chat of strangers, probing to find common grounds. The most obvious was Nathan and it didn’t take long for conversation to work around to him.

“You’ve known each other a long time?” Cate asked. She remembered Nathan had mentioned an age, but had been too distracted to attend.

“Aye.” Thomas nodded amiably, hands folded behind his back. “I’ve known Ol’ Scupperbait for a long time. The hair was barely sproutin’ on our chins.”

“Scupperbait?”

He laughed with the malicious pleasure that came with revealing an embarrassment from someone’s past. “Aye, that’s what we called him. The name followed from his first voyage. He was so small and scrawny, he’d get washed across the decks and caught in the scuppers. We were fifteen or sixteen,” he said, getting back to her original query. “I saw Nathan make third mate at eighteen.”

“At eighteen?” From what she knew of life at sea, it was an impressive accomplishment.

“Nathan always had a way; the men naturally follow him…women, too.”

She caught the meaningful lilt and saw the speculative smile that lurked.

“Still do, the men, I mean,” she said looking away.

“I’d say the women, too,” he mused. “Anyway, we crewed together for years. I was his First Mate on his first command.”

“You were pirates, then?”

He laughed at her innocence. “No, merchantmen. Nathan didn’t tell you of his first command, the
Beneficent
?

Silence was her answer.

“You’ve seen his brand?” he asked, wary.

“Blessedly difficult not to,” she said tartly. “He told me about when it happened and—”

“He told you that, eh?” Thomas nodded approvingly. They were still near enough for the light of the scattered campfires to gild his profile. “He must set a great store in you. He doesn’t speak of it to anybody, not even me, and I was with him when Creswicke did it.”

“Creswicke!” Cate stopped, gaping. “Lord Breaston Creswicke?”

“Aye, didn’t he tell you?” His caution returned, alert to having overestimated the extent of Nathan’s confidence.

Cate stared into the night, straining to recall what Nathan had told her one stormy night, of manipulation, deception, and discovery. “He told me about the brand, but he never said who did it. He said he had riled his employer.”

“Aye, well, there’s a bit of truth there.”

“He was accused of smuggling.” The statement was more a seeking of assurance that she wasn’t confused.

“Smuggling?” He chuckled humorlessly. “If only it had been that damned simple.”

“You mean he lied?” It came as no great shock. She had suspected from the first that Nathan hadn’t told her everything.

Thomas looked to his feet. “He wasn’t like that at first. Oh, aye, he was always a smooth talker and could charm the yellow off the sun. To his way of thinking, it’s not lying, it’s just telling the truth he needs at the time.”

Biting his lower lip, he narrowed his eyes, measuring both her and how much more to reveal. Lifting a shoulder and dropping it, his decision was made.

“Nathan had won the
Beneficent
gambling—and they were the other man’s dice. He always was the lucky one,” he added in wonderment. “Anyway, she was a fair ship. Nathan was a customer’s dream: fast delivery, rarely a loss, a master at evading pirates, and all the while undercutting his competitors.”

“Creswicke?”

Thomas nodded, pleased by her acuity. “Creswicke had been granted the charter for the Royal West Indies Mercantile Company. It was a favor from the Crown.” The edge in his voice suggested further intrigue was involved, but was disinclined to elaborate. “Nathan had Creswicke’s eye from the very first.”

“Because of his success?”

He glanced sideways at her, and then away. The wide shoulders squirmed under the linen of his shirt. “Ehh, let’s just say Creswicke has unique appetites and Nathan made him particularly hungry.”

Cate tasted the bile of disgust. Having lived in London for several years, she was familiar with such “tastes:” sodomy, bestiality, fetishes, depravities, and other deviations yet to be named. She was yet to meet the man, but already possessed a deep hatred.

She ground her feet deeper into the surf’s sand, as if it might abrade away the sickening sensation. “And?”

“And, eventually Creswicke made Nathan an offer he couldn’t refuse: sail for him or never sail again. It was a credible threat. He’d seen Creswicke destroy others who had dared defy him. Being the pragmatic sort, Nathan agreed. He figured sooner or later he’d find a way out of it. It wasn’t an all-bad arrangement: he was the youngest captain in the Company and still sailing his own ship.

“It wasn’t long after,” Thomas went on, “before Creswicke made Nathan another offer, aiming to make Nathan a part of his scheme. Indentured servants come cheap and die by the hundreds in transit. Creswicke was manipulating the books, listing people as dead, and then selling them for the profits. If anyone in London was to question, he’d claim the losses were due to pirates.”

Indentured servants.

It was nothing more than a polite term in delicate circles for slavery. Some were prisoners, banished into it. A good many more sold themselves to a benefactor as a means of gaining passage to the Colonies or elsewhere, where they would work off the debt in a given period of years. The reality—often discovered too late—was years could be added at the benefactor’s whim for anything from food and shelter, to labor lost due to illness or pregnancy. Many owners preferred indentured servants to Guinea slaves. They were considerably cheaper, came with none of the language barriers, and fewer rules governing them.

Brian had been transported as an indentured. Slavery was what it was, which was how she knew he was dead: he would never live that way. She closed her eyes, sickened further to think Brian might have been a victim in Creswicke’s insidious scheme.

Suddenly too restless to remain still, Cate started down the beach once more. Thomas easily fell in step beside her. The rhythm of his long strides next to her was disquieting, like a ghost walking at her elbow. They were away from the light of the campfires by then, the brim of his hat casting a shadow by starlight.

“Nathan told him to go to hell, at least that’s the version that can be repeated to a lady. The sniveling worm drug Nathan into it anyway, and gave him a shipload of them,” Thomas said grimly.

Her hatred of Creswicke rose exponentially. Even if Brian hadn’t been a victim, the possibility was enough to ignite a deep loathing.

“Nathan tried to refuse, but Creswicke was his boss, his word final. Every man has his limits and Creswicke found Nathan’s that day. It’s a rare thing to see, but Nathan has a black temper: he came near to killing the man. We wondered why Creswicke didn’t have him arrested on the spot. We didn’t know that would have disrupted his grander scheme: he didn’t want Nathan miserable, he wanted him destroyed.”

“Why didn’t Nathan just go captain somewhere else?”

There was a flash of white in the darkness as he gave a tolerant smile. “Creswicke’s charter gave him the same control of the West Indies as the Company has in the East. To refuse him would mean to never sail as a merchant again. Besides, the
Beneficent
was Nathan’s first command; ’tis a special place in a man’s heart.”

She flinched at seeing Thomas rub the back of his neck under the heavy tail of hair, just as Brian would have done.

“None of us liked it. We sailed for Nathan; we didn’t give a goddamn about Creswicke or his company. The manifest looked well enough. We thought it odd when there were Company guards at the gangways, but they represented it was an uncommon bad lot, and we believed them,” he said, sounding even more miserable. “We’d barely set the courses, when we began to hear such caterwauling from the hold, ’twas like the Sirens themselves. And the smell…”

Thomas coughed and cleared his throat of a sudden unpleasantness.

“With a bit of strong-arming, we overcame the guards and went below. They were children, over two hundred, packed like sheep in a pen. A better price in Charles Town was just Creswicke’s excuse to manipulate Nathan. Those poor wretches were nothing more than a blot on a ledger to him.”

He clamped his lower lip between his teeth and fell quiet. He took several strides before he spoke again, his voice tightened.

“Some had been sold by their parents, so the rest of the family might eat. Others were from the poor houses and orphanages. The rest: abducted, kidnapped; use whatever word you wish.”

The marketing of children wasn’t new. After the Rising, the streets of Edinburgh had been rife with rumors of raiding parties, sometimes uniformed, spreading through the night’s streets like a plague, sweeping through poor houses or tearing a child from a mother’s arms, if old enough to be weaned. The plague hadn’t been confined to Scotland. In many seaport towns and even London, gangs roamed stealing children.

He fell quiet so long that she thought perhaps he wouldn’t—or couldn’t—go on. The mournful cry of a killdeer came from the darkness, scurrying in circuitous patterns ahead of them.

“They were dying before the braces were sheeted home. We couldn’t bear it, especially Nathan,” Thomas said. “We tried to care for the poor things, but there were so many, sick and starved. Most were walking skeletons and some couldn’t even walk. They were dying a dozen a day. The screaming and the crying…” His words choked off, his hands spreading as he relived the helplessness. “The canvas we buried them in weighed more than the poor waif inside.”

The lobster and butter, swimming in chowder, took a turn for the worse in Cate’s stomach.

“Finally, Nathan had enough. Hell, none of us could bear it. He thought he knew of a place to go and someone to help. All we could think was to get those poor souls to land, food, and help.”

His countenance grew grimmer. “From Bridgetown to Charles Town was no secret; anyone worth his salt knew what our course would be. A privateer was waiting, one of Creswicke’s marauding wolves. There was no offer of quarter or parlay, nothing. They fired on sight.”

Thomas closed his eyes, the sandy brows drawing together.

“We were out-gunned from the beginning. They were a twenty-eight to our fourteen and those only eight-pounders to their sixteens. When the balls started finding their target, the screaming only got worse.” The last came in a tight whisper.

Cate had repaired what fragments of iron and arm-long shards of wood could do to full-grown man. The destruction on small bodies, packed tightly together, was too easily envisioned. In such close quarters, the air choked by screams and smoke, below decks would have been a grisly chaos.

“We broke off. The
Beneficent
was fast, and Nathan can beg more speed out of a ship than any man at sea, but she was shot up. Their chasers pounded us in the stern the whole way. Finally, a ball hit the rudder, and when the
Beneficent
swung around, they had us in a broadside.”

He made several attempts before he was able to resume. “She broke into flames straight away. Afire, listing hard and no rudder, Nathan managed to keep the crew’s wits about them enough to run her aground, but easy like, so’s not to bring the rigging down on us,” he said, with no small amount of admiration. “What with those bastards still firing on us, we tried to get as many of those poor wretches ashore as possible. Those what could, ran, while we carried as many as we might, but the ones too sick, the ones we couldn’t get to…”

Thomas’s voice shook. He blinked several times and roughly swiped his face with his sleeve.

“Nathan sent us into the jungle, told us to keep going. Last I saw, he was on that flaming afterdeck, firing the swivel gun like a demon possessed.”

They ran until their burning limbs and lungs would allow no further. They pressed on through the jungle, confident of being pursued. But it wasn’t the two men or the children the enemy was after.