Mistress by Magick

by Laura Navarre

  Here and there, the golden glow of lanterns bobbed among hammocks slung like cocoons across the decks. More sleepers huddled on the bare boards beneath.

  On the gun deck, a knot of men hunched around a glowing brazier and a handful of dice. The echo of rough voices, sprinkled with the colorful curses of seafaring men, drifted to her ears. Judging by their restless jostling and angry mutters, relations remained tense between Calyx’s crew and Nicanor’s tercio. She hoped another brawl was not brewing.

  As though she had conjured it, an explosion of loud voices broke out. Among the sleepers, groggy curses and threats rose to salt the volatile mix.

  At her side, Zamiel appeared, drawn by the commotion.

  “Another scrap already?” He tutted. “They’ve already come to blows tonight over the boiled beef.”

  She chafed her arms against the chill. She must venture below for a warm doublet, but she dreaded the thought of encountering Calyx. She’d rather freeze than be forced to endure another painful confrontation.

  The shing of steel dragged her back to the threat of violence below. One man had unsheathed his sword, and others were quick to follow.

  “Someone, I think, will die tonight,” Zamiel whispered.

  A commanding figure strode into the circle of light, towering head and shoulders above the crowd. Jayne’s heart clenched as she recognized the gleam of firelight on moon-pale hair, the confident authority in his prowling tread.

  “Late in the day to practice your swordplay, señors.” Calyx’s calm voice floated on the wind. “Save your steel for the English.”

  “I’ll save it for your scurvy crew!” A scruffy-looking figure in a gunner’s uniform shoved forward. “Your boatswain here plays with loaded dice. I’ll not abide a cheat and a liar.”

  An ugly snarl of voices echoed the sentiment. When another lout in uniform bulled forward with steel in his fist, Calyx unsheathed his saber, lightning swift, and leveled the blade at his chest.

  “One more step and it’ll be your last.” His voice, icy with purpose, sent chills scudding down her spine. Hemmed in by a throng of drunken men bristling with steel and violence, his bearing shouted cool control.

  Jayne sensed he was poised on the bare edge of violence.

  Behind him, the mass of men shifted. When they parted, a rangy soldado levered a musket toward Calyx’s unprotected back.

  Her heart lodged in her throat. A scream of warning clawed from her chest.

  “Calyx!”

  Smoothly the captain pivoted, saber sweeping across his body in a glittering arc that knocked the weapon aside. With a deafening roar, the musket fired. A man in an officer’s jacket screamed and fell, a crimson cavern gaping where his chest had been.

  The scene exploded into violence.

  She could see nothing beyond a heaving clump of bodies. Calyx’s broad-shouldered form towered over mayhem as he lunged and parried.

  Beside her, Zamiel stared as though his eyes would fall from his head—riveted on Calyx. A fresh pang of fear swamped her.

  “Hell’s Bells,” Zamiel breathed. “Michael.”

  Stupefied, she whirled back toward the battle. In a sea of struggling bodies, space had opened around Calyx, as though no man cared to venture within his deadly orbit. Fierce as an avenging angel, he brought the battle to them, advancing with deadly purpose across the sloping deck. Panicked men screamed and scrambled from his path. Where he struck, swords sailed from nerveless grips. Men staggered aside, clutching bloody limbs.

  Jayne had seen her share of violence, thanks to the civil war raging in the streets of Paris. Yet she’d never seen a fighting man so formidable, so terrifying, so utterly unstoppable.

  In her Sight, his eyes burned like pools of molten fire.

  The words whispered through her mind.

  Angel fire.

  When Diego Domingo fell in behind him, a wedge of sturdy sailors at his back, the worst of the terror loosened its grip on her heart. After that, the violence faltered. Men lowered their swords and fell back grumbling, clutching wounds and dragging injured comrades aside.

  A handful of men lay groaning or ominously still, blood soaking the boards around them. Calyx towered over them, unharmed, the fiery glow in his eyes fading.

  Beside her, Zamiel shook his head, incredulous laughter bubbling to his lips.

  “Joshua’s Trumpet!” he gasped. “Michael.”

  Thoroughly unnerved, Jayne barely restrained the urge to take him by the doublet and shake him. “For pity’s sake, what are you saying? That Calyx is the Archangel Michael, walking the earth in mortal form?”

  “No, no, it’s not that.” He pressed steepled fingers to his mouth in an obvious effort to contain himself. “He’s not an angel. But I swear he’s the living image of Michael, particularly in battle. Michael is the Angel of War.”

  He pronounced the name in an archaic manner, drawing it out to three syllables, like Mikayel. She’d begun to suspect it herself, had she not, after all that talk of angels and half angels?

  Before her bewildered gaze, Zamiel smoothed back his dark hair and searched for words.

  “Among the celestial host, Michael is first among us. We call him the Strength of God. He’s an Archangel of the Presence, as Uriel was. Along with Gabriele the Angel of Mercy, and Raphael the Angel of Light, they’re the lord constables of the celestial realm. They keep the peace up there, if you will, for Jehovah. But all is not well these days in the Seven Heavens.”

  “Never mind your Seven Heavens.” Uneasily she watched as Calyx strode about restoring order, rather like a constable himself. “What about Michael?”

  “I never much liked him.” Zamiel shrugged, indifferent to this casual blasphemy. “The Archangels are the enforcers of the celestial realm, and I was the anarchist, the rebel, the outcast. It’s why Uriel and I have our little squabbles. Michael is even more rigid and dogmatic. He guards the Gate of Heaven. No one, man or angel, comes or goes without his leave.

  “In brief, he’s the last angel in Heaven I’d ever suspect of sneaking down the back stairs, as it were, for a tumble in the hay with the maid.”

  Somehow she couldn’t bring herself to comprehend his meaning. Slowly, feeling her way through it, her mouth shaped the words.

  “Calyx believes his father was a Spanish grandee, the Conde de Zamorra. He killed that man in a duel as vengeance for his mother’s death.” She sucked in a ragged breath. “If...if his mother’s fantasies were real, and his father somehow was Michael...”

  “Then he’s a Nephilim.” Zamiel surveyed the capitán with interest. “He certainly looks and acts the part. It’s been eons since I’ve seen one, unless you count my twins and Uriel’s boy, still infants in our time.”

  Calyx had restored order, dispersed the brawlers and sent them grumbling to their hammocks. Now he gathered the limp form of an injured sailor gently in his arms and forged toward the surgeon’s cabin, located beneath them on the quarterdeck. Watching the care he took with the wounded man, Jayne’s heart fluttered painfully as she imagined herself cradled so gently against his powerful chest.

  But that would never happen. She had lost his trust forever.

  If he refused to believe a word from her lips, she could hardly blame him. But she must at least try to convince him he was no murderer’s spawn, that his mother had not been mad. Aye, he stood apart from those around him. Yet his origins were not demonic.

  They were divine.

  As Calyx neared the stern with his bloody burden, Zamiel’s breath hissed. Glancing toward the former Dominion, she could almost see the current of suppressed excitement running through him.

  “Is there something more?” she asked sharply. “Is he not Nephilim after all?”

  “Oh, he’s Nephilim all right,” Zamiel murmured. “But, aye, there’s something more.”

  Fear squeezed her chest. “What is it?”

  “I think...he must be bearing a sacred talisman, one of the high holies. Something like the Holy Grail.”


  “The Holy Grail?” Her voice cracked. “What’s next, the True Cross?”

  “It’s not the Grail. Trust me to know.” His mouth quirked. “Nay, it’s something else. Something he’s wearing around his neck.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “What the Devil is happening out there, Diego?”

  Calyx greeted his primero’s return to the Arcángel with a chafing impatience he could barely suppress. Before him, scarcely a mile ahead of the avenging archangel on his bow, the northern Spanish harbor of Corunna shimmered in the morning sun.

  Behind him, the Armada lay in chaos. Another violent squall had blown up during the night. While his ship, Don Alonso’s flagship and the galleons in his squadron had sailed to safe harbor, the more vulnerable vessels—including the supply hulks and an entire squadron of sturdy carracks—had been scattered and blown out to sea.

  Diego Domingo, just returned with the longboat from a hard row to the San Martin, looked grim.

  “Don Alonso believes this storm, so sudden and severe, is a sign from God.” His primero, who’d apparently manned an oar himself, swiped a sleeve across his sweating brow and accepted a flask of ale. “The don’s spirits are very low. He sent orders ahead for fresh provisions to be stationed in supply hulks off Cape Finisterre, si? Now those ships are nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, the San Martin’s down to half rations, along with half the fleet. Their salted fish turned out to be foul, and their biscuit full of worms.”

  “We shouldn’t have launched in such a damned rush.” Calyx accepted the flask from Diego and took a hearty pull of the sour beer. With no drinking water to speak of, it was small beer for the men and wine for the officers until they replaced their shattered water casks. “Why in blazes was Philip in such a tearing rush? If we’d sailed a sennight later, Elizabeth Tudor would still be there.”

  Privately he wondered about the weather. Jayne wouldn’t have caused this storm, not deliberately, though he’d begun to suspect the weather somehow mirrored her turbulent emotions. Still, she’d have no motive to delay their landing.

  After last night’s disastrous encounter, after she left his heart in splinters on the floor, he’d no notion where she’d passed the night. The possibility that she’d spent it in another officer’s cabin—and his bed—still drove him half-mad.

  But the shimmer of tears in her haunted eyes, her shattered voice when she spoke of her lost son—he was no longer certain what she was capable of. She was as much an enigma to him as the night she’d come aboard.

  Now he was losing her for good.

  Grimly he applied his mind to the business at hand. “What are the admiral’s orders?”

  “We put in and resupply, amigo. What else can we do?” Diego shrugged. “Thanks to your care in Lisbon, our rations are holding out, but the weather’s damaged sails and rigging on most of the galleons, including ours. Don Alonso wants to wait until the lost ships return. He’s writing to the King for guidance—against the Blade of God’s advice, I should add. Mordred rowed over with me, chafing with impatience at this new delay. I left him there, huddled with the don.”

  “Cristo!” Calyx swore. “Another pleading missive? Our good admiral’s going to give Philip apoplexy. What does he hope to accomplish?”

  Diego’s mustache twitched. “You know he never wanted this command. He was bullied into it when Santa Cruz keeled over. Don Alonso still prays Philip will change his royal mind and call off this whole Enterprise.”

  “Small chance of that,” Calyx muttered.

  Still, the prospect of delay had its advantages.

  If they were marooned in Corunna, waiting on the fleet, perhaps he and Jayne...

  “Where is she?” he asked abruptly.

  “The condesa?” Diego wiped ale from his mustache and shot him a wry look. “She waylaid me below.”

  “Demanding to know when she’ll be put ashore, no doubt.” Calyx scowled. She was a spy and a saboteur, working for England by her own admission. For her own safety, he’d all but ordered her off his ship. By all appearances, she was more than eager to comply.

  Why he failed to share her enthusiasm was anyone’s guess.

  “Actually, she’s demanding an audience with you.” Diego’s teeth flashed in his swarthy face. “With our charming Señor Nicanor prowling the decks, she’s keeping a low profile.”

  He wrestled with conflicting impulses. After last night, what more could they possibly have to say? He should order her tossed into the longboat and salute her from the quarterdeck as they rowed her away.

  Somehow, he hadn’t the stomach to do it.

  Meeting the older man’s knowing gaze, he cursed. Diego’s grin widened.

  “Have her brought to the longboat,” Calyx said curtly. “I’ll put her ashore myself.”

  * * *

  Jayne perched tensely in the prow as the oars dipped and rose, pulling the longboat smoothly through azure waters. Around her, the harbor was a beehive of activity as swarms of coracles and wherries darted between scattered galleons and the port. The entire fleet was putting in, apparently, to replenish depleted supplies and await their wayward fellows.

  For her part, she planned to pawn the cloth-of-gold underskirt of her crimson gown and hire the fastest pinnacle she could find. If she sailed at once, she should easily outrace the cumbersome Armada.

  The golden nuggets of intelligence she’d gleaned—the landing sites and Mordred’s plot—should prove more than sufficient to buy her a personal meeting with the Queen’s spymaster.

  After ten years of exile, she was returning to England.

  Towering over her, one boot braced on the gunwale, Calyx sliced her an impenetrable glance.

  “Try not to look so bloody eager to get rid of me.” He addressed her in English, a tongue their rowers did not share. “You’re still supposed to be my mistress, si? My men will think I’ve lost my touch.”

  Jayne shielded her eyes from the brilliant sun and gazed up at him, etched against the cobalt heavens. Slowly her eyes slid over his impressive height. For this visit ashore, he’d transformed from pirate to dashing gallant. A doublet and hose of shattering sapphire clung to the powerful muscles of shoulders and sinewed thighs. A white lace ruff frothed at his tanned throat. Sunlight blazed in his fair hair.

  When her eyes locked with his mocha-dark gaze, smoldering with intensity, the sight of him struck her heart like a hammer.

  “Lost your touch, capitán?” she murmured, throat thick with emotions she dared not reveal. “I do not believe you need to worry.”

  “What a relief.” His voice deepened. The amber flecks swimming in his eyes mesmerized her. The way his eyes glowed with golden fire when he waded into battle...

  Angel fire.

  Jayne frowned and glanced away, fingers knotting in her lap. Within minutes, they’d reach the shore. In all likelihood, she would never see him again. He might very well be sailing to his death.

  The thought twisted her heart. Desperation fluttered in her belly like a wind-whipped candle. How could she bear it when he sailed off to meet his fate?

  You’ll bear it because he has left you no alternative. Brow knitting, she gazed blindly toward the shore. You asked him to transfer his loyalties to England. He refused you. And you cannot transfer yours to Spain.

  “Jayne.” He hunkered on one knee beside her, intent on her averted features. “What is it?”

  Now came her moment, though she wished he’d granted the private interview she’d begged for. Body of God, how could he possibly believe her? Still, she owed it to him to try.

  “Calyx,” she said slowly, feeling her way, “I have to tell you something. But I cannot tell you how I learned it.”

  She was grimly aware this bit of evasion did not aid her cause. But she dared not betray the presence of Uriel, Zamiel and Linnet aboard his galleon. They planned to slip away among the crew when Calyx granted shore leave. Until they made their escape, it was vital he know naught of their presence.

  A muscle
flexed in his jaw. “Another secret, is it? Or another bid for my services?”

  Warily she thought of the rowers behind them. In high spirits with the prospect of shore leave before them, they bantered, the liquid cascade of Spanish punctuated with hoots of laughter.

  Biting her lip, she leaned toward Calyx and placed a hand on his thigh—two lovers trading intimacies. The powerful muscle bulged beneath her fingers. His heat seared her palm.

  “Jayne,” he said huskily.

  “I know who your father is,” she whispered.

  Beneath her touch he went rigid. She risked an upward glance and found his features blank with shock. Then his jaw knotted with anger.

  “My father was Rodrigo, the Conde de Zamorra, a brute and a bloody bastard. There’s nothing else to say.”

  Rapidly she cast about for the words she’d scripted when she planned this exchange, though no encounter she’d ever had with Calyx de Zamorra seemed to go off as planned.

  “All those angels in your cabin,” she blurted. “Angels in your books, on your walls, on your ship, in your very name.”

  Carlos Alejandro Angelo. Another way his mother had tried to tell him.

  “Are they merely a scholarly interest?” she pressed. “Or do you believe they actually exist?”

  His brow furrowed as he frowned toward the shore. Before them loomed the low blocky fortress of the castillo that guarded the rocky coast. Inland, an ancient Roman lighthouse speared into cerulean skies.

  “The Devil if I know,” he said at last, curtly. “Some claim we all have guardian angels watching over us. My ships have a reputation for luck—always have. They say I sail under a lucky star. The truth is, I cast my horoscope before every voyage. If the planets are aligned against it, I heed their warning.

  “Could the angels be speaking through my stars?” His big shoulders lifted in a shrug. “God knows.”

  This was not entirely discouraging. At least he did not flatly deny their existence.