The Following Sea (The Pirate Wolf series) (29 page)

“One day we were invited to watch a ceremony blessing the sun and giving thanks for the year’s harvest. One of the priests wore a robe decorated with silver coins, and when I looked up close, be damned if they weren’t off the
Nuestro Santisimo Victorio
. Took almost a full year before they could be persuaded to show me where they found the coins.”

“So then they would be able to lead Muertraigo to the wreck?”

William shook his head. “No. The village was well north of here and most of the men were carried off in a raid last spring. Only women and cripples were left behind and most of them, when they see a white man, scatter like a school of fish when they see a shark. When I wrote to Lawrence Ross to arrange a rendezvous, I chose Spanish Wells on purpose, thinking if anyone did intercept the letters, they could search for another twenty years without finding the treasure. Little did I know it was Ross himself I had to be wary of for his treachery.”

“It does solve another piece of the puzzle, however,” Eva said quietly. “If Lawrence told him of the rendezvous, it explains how Muertraigo knew to come here, to Espiritu Santu.”

“Aye, Daughter, to my sorry regret.”

“They were at least a full day behind us,” Dante said. “Another hard day’s march will see us to the Wells where we will have the advantage of surprise.”

William frowned. “An ambuscade? To what purpose? Men have searched for the broken lady for twenty years and not found her tomb. Ross may have the scent of gold in his nose, but he’ll not know where to begin to look.”

“We didn’t know where to look, but we found you,” Dante pointed out. “Happy reunions aside, I have my own reasons for wanting to arrange another meeting. Muertraigo will know as well.”

“Fair odds, I would say.” Gabriel grinned. “We managed to bring some small casks of black powder with us, but I noticed you have barrels of it in your stores.”

“Aye. Enough to arrange a warm welcome if you have the knowledge to use it.” Chandler glanced across the fire. “Billy likes to play with the stuff and ‘tis a wonder he’s not blown us both up before now. But if a man knew where and how to lay a charge against the hull, it would make the work go a deal faster.”

“I might have just the man,” Dante said. “He enjoys blowing things up as well. But for now, I need his expertise at Spanish Wells. If I can pare Muertraigo’s numbers down it will buy us time—enough, hopefully, for the
Endurance
to return from Pigeon Cay with a few others eager to meet Estevan Quintano Muertraigo.”

William’s bushy eyebrows came together over his nose as he imagined his years of solitary work being loaded into the holds of the Dante ships.

“I will personally vouchsafe my family’s disinterest in your treasure ship, Master Chandler,” Dante said again. “Help us, and we will gladly help you and leave here with our pockets as empty as they were when we arrived.”

William studied the younger man with a cryptic eye. “You’ve an odd manner for a pirate.”

Dante’s mouth curved slightly. “I am content with a sturdy deck beneath my feet and the freedom to follow the sea to the far edge of the horizon. I need nothing more.”

“Nothing?”

The amber eyes flicked briefly to where Eva sat studiously avoiding his gaze.

“A challenge or two to keep me from becoming too complacent,” Dante said, amending his requirements with a broader smile. “And an ample supply of food. I am hungry enough to hear my belly moaning to my spine.”

William chuckled. “Follow your noses to the capon, then, before young Billy devours what’s left of it. We’ve coconuts and mangos, maise biscuits and a full jug of fine red wine to empty while I feast my eyes on my daughter and she tells me all that has been happening back home in my absence.”

~~

Three hours and three bottles of Madeira later, William placed his hands on his knees and made to rise. “Rest a while, Good Captain, then we’ll get you into a boat and row you to your camp before the day breaks. Daughter… you’ll forgive an old man if he lays his head down for a spell? I’m that happy you’re here, but the day has been too full of surprises and tomorrow promises even more.”

He swayed a little as he stood and Eva jumped up quickly, supporting him under his arm. “Are you all right, Father?”

He patted her head and kissed her forehead, then bellowed through wine-soaked vapors. “I’m fitter than ever I was sitting behind a desk watching my ships sail out of port. But I have spent the last four years worrying day and night about that damned treasure and I’m both relieved and happy to share the burden with younger, stronger shoulders. You will have to pinch me in the morning to prove I’ve not dreamt all of this.” He cradled her face between his hands and pressed a heartily affectionate kiss to her brow. “And if I have… well… I pray I don’t wake at all. Now… show me to my bed. Billy, you rapscallion, lead the way! Then fetch blankets for the good captain, for I warrant he’ll not be sleeping much over the next few days.”

With the young giant holding a lantern on one side and Eva on the other, they managed to steer the weaving William Chandler to a thick pile of blankets laid in a niche in the cavern wall. By the light of the dim lantern, Eva saw rough shelves with books against one end of the niche, a small writing table and stacks of loose papers covered with her father’s tightly scrolled handwriting. There was a small iron brazier beside the pallet, which Billy filled with hot coals from the fire.

“Home sweet home,” William said, struggling to remove his boots and failing miserably.

Eva shooed his hands aside and accomplished the task for him. “I’m just happy that I found you; I wouldn’t care if you were living in a tree and wore a grass skirt.”

Light glinted off the locket as she leaned over to kiss him on the brow and William smiled. “I gave that locket to my dear Elizabeth the day I asked her to marry me, and it took all I had to scrape up enough money to buy it. She loved me true, Daughter, and gave up everything for me… court life, favors from the king, even a rich handsome fellow who could have given her the life she deserved. Took me near a decade to build up Chandler Shipping and she never made a squeak of protest. As much as I loved her, I often wondered, if she had been in the country with a rich husband, the fever might not have caught her…”

“Father, hush.” Eva smoothed a hand across his forehead. “Mother loved you and knew she was loved in return. That mattered more to her than all the riches in the world.”

“Aye. Maybe so.” A tear sparkled in the corner of his eye. “But now that we have all the riches in the world, she’s not here to share them, so they mean far less.” He paused and his gaze roved slowly over her face. “You look so much like her. And aye, if she’d been alive, I warrant she would have climbed aboard a ship and travelled halfway around the world to find me too.” He patted her hand and gave out a great, long sigh. “Now let me sleep girl. The floor is twirling around like a spinning top and I’d as soon not puke into my boots.”

Eva kissed him again, then covered him up to the chin with a blanket. She sat with him until he had mumbled himself into a deep sleep and only then did she return to the firepit.

Dante was still there, hunched forward, his head propped between his hands. His eyes were closed and for a moment she thought he was asleep. Billy was nowhere to be seen, but he had placed a stack of folded blankets beside the fire.

Looking at the blankets, she realized how utterly exhausted she was. It seemed like days ago, not just that morning, they had set out to march across the island.

Dante, who surely had to be as tired as she was, stood with an ease that almost made her whimper. He shook the folds and dust out of several of the woolen blankets and spread them into a thick nest on a smooth patch of dry ground. He scooped her into his arms and set her gently down on the bedding, then stripped off her boots and set them beside the makeshift pallet.

“Better?” he asked.

“I am a little cold,” she said in a small voice, muffled to the chin in the last blanket.

Gabriel smiled at the transparent pretence and stretched out carefully beside her. He gathered her into his arms, letting her share his body heat and use his shoulder as a pillow.

“Is this better now?”

She nodded and pressed her face into the side of his neck, breathing in the scent of his skin. “Are you really going to set an ambush for Muertraigo?”

“No. You can’t. You most definitely, emphatically cannot come with us. And this time, madam, I
will
put you in manacles, hand and foot, and leave you locked to a post.”

She merely nuzzled deeper into his neck and murmured, “Yes, Captain. Manacles and a post.”

“I am quite serious, Evangeline. You are
not
coming with us.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Gabriel awoke to the sound of a boot treading softly across the ground beside him. He had his dagger in hand so fast that Billy Crab nearly stumbled into the firepit.

“Cap’n Will told me to come wake you,” he whispered, holding his hands high and spread wide. “Not quite sunrise yet but best to leave while the tide be out.”

Dante lowered the knife and, after a moment needed to chase the sleep out of his eyes, glanced beside him. Eva was still asleep… as was his right arm where she was wedged up tight against him.

Taking great care not to jostle her too much, he slid his shoulder out from under her head and replaced it with a wadded blanket. She made a purring sound and shifted slightly on the bedding, but she did not waken and for that Dante was thankful. He studied her profile for a long moment and curled his fingers against the urge to brush aside some of the soft yellow wisps that had fallen over her cheek. It happened rarely—if ever—that he spent the night with a beautiful woman held close in his arms, with both of them remaining fully clothed. The thought put a rueful smile on his lips and he hoped he would be able to make up for the oversight in the near future.

~~

Glencairn Rowlandson was enjoying a stretch and a full-bodied yawn when two dark figures loomed up out of the shadows. The eastern sky was barely showing a rime of pink along the horizon and it was sheer luck that he had set his arquebus aside while he was relieving himself against the base of a palm tree, or he might have shot off his own toes. One of the figures was a giant, with massive shoulders made to appear even more so by the thick rounds of cable he carried slung crosswise over his chest. The other, he recognized with a curse of relief, was Gabriel Dante.

“Ye near got yer heads blowed off,” he scowled, keeping one wary eye on the giant. “Where did ye find this one?”

“This is Billy Crab,” Gabriel said. “And he more or less found me. Rouse the men, we have work to do.”

He walked past Rowly and followed the stream to the rise he and Eva had climbed the previous night. With the sky growing lighter by the minute, there were no blue-green streaks to use as a guide and it took Dante well over half an hour to carefully search the many overgrown cracks in the limestone rock before he found the one that opened into the cavern below. Once it was located, Billy started tying knots in the cable every two feet or so and lowered the end through the crevice. By then Rowly and a dozen others had climbed the rise and were watching with ever-increasing curiosity.

Up to this point, Dante had not uttered a whisper about the
Nuestro Santisimo Victorio
, not even to Stubs. As far as anyone in the crew knew or believed, La Fantasma and the lost treasure she carried was a legend, and while he trusted each and every man’s loyalty in battle, they were considered pirates for a reason, and that reason was shiny and played havoc with a man’s common sense.

He had been wrestling with the problem of what to do, when to tell them, how to explain the whole convoluted story since the moment he had set eyes on the wreck and he still had no clear answer. He had discussed it around the fire with Eva and William Chandler but neither of them had suggested an easy solution. For the time being it was enough for the crew to believe Dante’s intent, before crossing paths with Muertraigo, had been to reunite the mermaid with her father.

After securing the rope ladder to a large boulder, Dante shimmied down and found Eva and her father waiting below. Using a wooden sledge, William had dragged several twenty pound kegs of black powder from his stores into the cavern. Loading them three at a time into a net, the casks were hauled topside by Billy Crab, who rolled them out of the net and lowered it again to be refilled. William also sent up several heavy barrels, the contents of which he kept to himself, promising only that Dante would be grateful to have them.

Rowly dispatched men to transport the kegs and barrels back to camp, along with thirty trumpet-nosed blunderbusses, spools of rope soaked in saltpetre to use as fuses, several wide planks of timber to build sledges, and one very fine-looking crossbow with two quivers full of iron bolts.

“Johnny-boy would weep to see this,” Rowly remarked as he ran a hand along the polished wood. “But he’s aboard the
Iron Rose
an’ strike me dead if anyone else knows how to fire one.”