The Devil's Wind

by Steve Goble

  Spider watched the man from a vantage just before the forecastle. Others watched him, too. Whispers and nervous glances worked their way through the crew.

  Wright stood aft, on the quarterdeck and above the cabin where Captain Brentwood was wrapped in his shroud. Wright called out his orders and fought sleepiness but did not seem to notice the worried hands around him.

  “Goddamned fool of a lobcock,” Spider muttered.

  Shadows from the masts and sails spilled over the forecastle. “Goddamn,” Spider whispered again.

  “What is it?”

  Spider turned toward Hob rather fiercely. “I thought I told you to go up and have a look!”

  Hob gulped. “You looked haunted. I was worried.” The boy ran to a foremast ratline and started to ascend. Spider chased after him.

  “I am sorry, Hob. I am. We slipped away from the frigate and the rest in the night, and if I am not mistaken, we are headed toward that island the cap’n so loved, there to bury him. I think our new cap’n Wright is eager to prove his worth to Miss Brentwood, whether the rest of us get buggered by it or not.”

  “Truly?” The boy halted his climb and seemed pleased.

  “This is not a good thing, Hob.” Spider lowered his voice to a whisper barely audible under the flapping of sails and humming of taut stays. “This is flirting with the devil’s wind. Hell, not flirting. Sailing right along with it, letting it drive us to goddamned perdition. We are headed into a string of isles, boy. Pirate waters. Ned Low might be hiding somewhere among those isles right now, do you hear?”

  “Yes, I hear, and I have been in pirate waters before, as you well know, Spider John.”

  “Look at this vessel, boy. Do you see a single gun mounted? Do we even have a long nine stored below? No, we do not. And we’ve got a pirate aboard in Sam Smoke, and a murderer, and . . .”

  “Mister Wright loves Abigail Brentwood,” Hob said. “But she don’t love him, it seems. He will do anything to win her. Wouldn’t you do anything for your Em?”

  Spider’s jaw opened, but no words came out.

  “I think it’s a good thing Mister Wright has done. A brave thing. And if we have to outwit some pirates and do a little fighting, well, I am not a coward and neither are you.” Hob continued his ascent but stopped after a moment. “If you love a woman, you dare anything, right? Would you not?”

  Spider didn’t answer. He watched the lad climb higher and higher, until he was out of sight, hidden by the swelling sails. “You don’t have anyone waiting for you,” Spider said softly, now that Hob was beyond earshot.

  Spider, sullen, headed aft. Wright had descended from the quarterdeck, and it was all Spider could do to keep himself from striding across the weather deck and slapping the son of a bitch.

  “What have you done, sir?” Spider asked, close enough to assure his words were not overheard. If there was a chance to talk Wright out of this rash course, that chance would be spoiled if Spider embarrassed the captain in front of his crew.

  Wright leaned in close. “I have done what I had to do. She would go alone if she could, to see her father laid to rest. She cannot, so I will . . . we will do it for her.”

  The captain noticed men trying to eavesdrop and raised his voice. “Is there a man aboard who did not love the captain? Is there a man aboard who wants to see that girl watch her father’s remains buried at some lonely spot at sea?”

  He was answered with silence.

  “We will slip into the bay at Eden Isle. We will conduct our business and honor our deceased friend and captain. And we will depart with haste. In and out, quick as may be. The navy has decimated the pirates, lads. There are few left. Our odds of running into any of them are quite low. We should be brave enough to risk it for our captain and for his daughter. Now, pass the bread and grog and let us be about our work.”

  Heads nodded, a few sighs rose, and the words “aye, aye” were heard here and there, though Spider thought they lacked conviction. Then the men parted to make way for a newcomer.

  Abigail had ascended from the passenger berths, the mysterious Anne in her wake. Both marched straight toward Wright. Hadley followed at a distance.

  “Sir.” Abigail aimed the word like a dagger, and Wright turned slowly to face her. “I am told we have diverted our course?” She stared, her arms crossed. Anne glanced over the rails to port and starboard. Spider gave Abigail and Wright a bit of leeway, pretending to be on his way somewhere.

  “Abby.” Wright ran a hand through his disheveled hair. “Yes. Your father will be laid to rest in a place of his own choosing, not in the midst of a lonely sea.” Wright noticed Hadley eavesdropping. “You have duties, do you not?”

  “Aye.”

  “See to them.”

  “Aye.” Hadley moved forward reluctantly.

  “You fool,” Abigail said. Anne caught Spider paying close attention, so he wandered farther away—but not too far. He busied himself checking the fit of a hatch cover and the sturdiness of the coaming, then spotted the wreckage of the captain’s door, still clinging awkwardly to the doorframe. The wood shards had been swept from the deck, but the shattered wood and broken hinges hanging there were things Spider should have attended to. Everyone on Redemption was distracted, and Spider counted himself lucky Captain Wright hadn’t slapped him for neglect of duty.

  He suddenly recalled something else he was neglecting. He had the key Odin had discovered in Hadley’s trunk. Spider was determined to see if the key and lock were mates. He prayed they were not.

  The voices nearby rose in volume, and Spider realized he could eavesdrop while doing his duty. He began examining the shattered remains. The broken wood was useless for anything save the cook’s fire or perhaps a bit of whittling, but he could salvage the hinges. Spider also hoped to save the intricate carvings that trimmed the top of the door. That was the work of an artist, and he could not let that simply die. He regretted not having his tools with him, but he wanted to listen and so did not go fetch them. He tore away what he could with his hands and eavesdropped.

  “Gallantry is not for the navy alone, Abby,” Wright said. “I am doing this for you.”

  “It is a sweet gesture, but a foolish one,” she answered. “You heard what Lieutenant Price said. . . .”

  “Lieutenant Price,” Wright snapped back. “You were ready to sail into peril with him, weren’t you?”

  “Well,” Abigail said, shaking her head slowly, peering at Anne, then looking back at Wright. “Well, the lieutenant has trained fighters and big, bloody damned guns, does he not?”

  “Abigail!” Wright seemed shocked.

  She stared at Wright for several long seconds, unapologetic about her use of sailorly language. Wright stared back aghast, as though the universe had just spun down a maelstrom.

  Anne covered a smile with a kerchief pulled from somewhere within her blouse. Spider tried to remember he had work to do, but his fingers strayed to Em’s pendant hanging from his neck and the key next to it. “Betwattled bastard,” Spider whispered, glaring at Wright. Spider inhaled deeply and pondered whether he could seize the damned ship himself and set her course for Boston. Odin would help him, he was certain. Hob, too. The little shit would love to be a goddamned mutineer.

  Spider would have lopped off another finger for a bottle of kill-devil at that moment.

  “Enough!” Wright’s voice exploded like a cannon shot.

  Redemption’s hands, some eating hot morning bread or drinking their grog rations, suddenly found something else to arrest their attention.

  “It’s done,” Wright said. “Consider it a service to your father if you do not appreciate it yourself. But truth is, I did it for you, not for him.”

  “This is a dangerous course,” Abigail said. She turned to walk toward the bow. Anne followed, caught up quickly, and placed an arm around the girl’s shoulder. Spider watched them go and thought he detected the outline of a flintlock tucked beneath Anne’s dress, at the small of her back.

  “
What the bloody hell goes on here?” Spider whispered to himself.

  “Fetch me a compass,” Wright called, noting the hands staring at him. “We’ve a fine wind, lads; let us use her, and we’ll bid the captain farewell soon enough, then on to Boston. Topgallants! Studding sails!”

  Spider gathered the good trim from the shattered cabin door into his arms, glanced at the hinges, and determined to return with tools to collect them. Then he headed toward the lumber hold and climbed down.

  Once the trim had been stowed safely away, he retrieved the chunk of timber that bore the captain’s lock. He freed the key from his neck. He had only faint sunlight streaming down into the hold to see by, and in it he half convinced himself the key looked different from the one he remembered. But when he placed the key into the lock, it was a perfect fit.

  “Hadley,” Spider whispered, “why the hell did you have this?”

  He threw the lock into the tool chest with a curse, fit the cord around his neck, and hurried up the ladder to the weather deck. Lazare stood amidships, bucket and ladle in hand. Spider strode toward him with purpose. A variety of pewter and wooden cups filled a net slung across the cook’s back, and Spider fished one out.

  Spider held out the cup, and Lazare ladled in some grog, a mixture of rum and water that Spider considered a waste of good liquor, but it was the best he could do at the moment, and, by thunder, he needed a goddamned drink.

  Spider swallowed his ration in a rush and snarled savagely at Lazare. “Another.”

  “No, sir,” Lazare said. “We have our rations.”

  Spider leaned forward and pitched his voice in a low, menacing growl. “I spent the night in the hold, dodging rats and searching for a killer. And now I see our goddamned besotted captain has steered us away from the naval escort meant to blast the fucking hell out of any pirates who might think our cargo ought to be theirs. So unless you can turn this goddamned ship north right now, Lazare, you had better fill my cup again.”

  Lazare filled it, Spider drained it, and Lazare filled it once more. During the entire operation, Lazare did not look Spider in the eyes again.

  15

  “You’re swayin’ more than the damned ship,” Odin said.

  Redemption had just come about on the southwesterly tack and was settling into the gentle wind. Watches had just changed, the sun was lowering, and Odin had dropped from a ratline to land in front of Spider. Once the cabin door had been repaired and other chores were finished, Spider had found a flask on a hammock in the forecastle and traded good tobacco for it. The flask, half empty now of the good whiskey it contained, was tucked into his belt and hidden under his shirt. The captain was distracted, and discipline was lax aboard the ship now, but it still would not do to be caught with strong drink on deck.

  “I have acquired a few drams,” Spider quietly told the one-eyed sailor. “I am headed to the bowsprit to think. Join me, and I will share.”

  “Ha! I will, but I must thrash a ninny first. Clod nearly cost me a good sheet today for want of a good knot, and he’ll either learn to tie a goddamned knot or learn what I can do with a good knot lashed across his back.”

  The old pirate wandered away, and Spider continued forward. All about him, whether they were starting their watch or taking their rest, men glanced out to sea in search of pirates or, perhaps, a miraculous appearance of the navy frigate. It was out there somewhere, probably to the north and east. Many aboard seemed to think Southampton would come searching for them immediately and would appear any moment riding over a distant swell, full canvas mounted and all gun ports open.

  Spider found himself gazing into the distance, too, but he did not expect to see the frigate. Southampton had other ships to worry about, and if a fool merchant captain decided to veer away from the frigate’s protective guns, well, so be it. Southampton would guard those smart enough to stay with her, and let Redemption’s lovesick captain endure the consequences of his mistake.

  There was the matter of Abigail Brentwood, though. Lieutenant Price had seemed smitten with her. Was he smitten enough to convince his captain that his duty as an Englishman, by God, was to race to the young lady’s aid? Would Southampton’s captain be swayed by such an appeal?

  Spider didn’t think so, nor did he truly believe Price would suggest such a course. He had scant direct knowledge of navy captains, but he had sailed with many men who had served in His Majesty’s Navy. The image of a naval captain that had emerged from many grog-fueled discussions in the forecastle was that of a rigid sort, who would do what his orders told him to do, and to hell with any circumstances that might arise and indicate he ought to do otherwise. Southampton’s captain had a mission to escort a merchant convoy to Boston, and that was what he most likely would do. A merchantman straying off into pirate seas? The Admiralty could not have envisioned that, and so its orders certainly did not cover that contingency. Southampton probably continued northward.

  Meanwhile, Redemption sailed on the devil’s wind.

  Spider was glad the workday was done, but the melancholy strains from a well-scraped fiddle somewhere in the forecastle seemed the perfect accompaniment to his worries. He’d thought the whiskey might help ease his mind. Instead, it seemed to usher in an ungodly clarity. He was on a ship plying outlaw waters and, for all he knew, rushing straight into the grasp of that goddamned fiend Ned Low. Em and little Johnny seemed like ghosts, something he’d heard of but could not quite believe in. He wondered if he would ever see them, and the doubt gnawed at him.

  He had concocted a simple plan. He would climb out on the bowsprit, his favorite thinking spot aboard any vessel. There, dangling his feet over the ocean and listening to the water swish past Redemption’s bow, he would slowly sip the whiskey away, buying silence from witnesses with a swig or two. He would drink until he could forget his troubles, at least for a while, or until the whiskey was gone.

  A jarring tug at his elbow stopped him, and he turned to face the Reverend Abraham Down.

  “Are we truly headed into pirate waters? I have heard the talk.” The man’s jaws kept working even after he’d finished his sentence, and he clutched a leather-bound Bible against his chest as though it might try to get away.

  “Judging by my past luck,” Spider answered, “I expect we shall run into pirates, hurricanes, sea monsters, and the bloody goddamned ghost of fucking Blackbeard.”

  The reverend stepped backward and ducked as though Spider had swung a blade at him. “Blasphemy will profit you not,” Down said after an awkward moment. “Fear the Lord, carpenter, fear the Lord, and embrace him as he would embrace you. Your trade was his, you know. He was a carpenter. Embrace him. Then you shall have no need to fear pirates!”

  “Your knees are shaking, Reverend.” Spider turned, leaving the sputtering Reverend Down behind him.

  Spider ascended the ladder, climbed atop the forecastle, took two steps—and saw Anne McCormac staring off across the ocean. His first thought was that she just might be the most alluring woman he’d ever seen. His second thought was that, according to Hob, she just might have killed Captain Brentwood. His third thought was the memory that he had previously noticed what seemed to be a gun hidden at the small of her back beneath the gray dress.

  He was still trying to decide whether to speak to her when she turned to face him.

  Once he’d pondered the wind-swept red hair and piercing green eyes, Spider realized she had spoken to him. “John Coombs, is that right? Ship’s carpenter?”

  The accent was as Irish as it was devastating.

  “Yes,” he answered. “John Coombs.”

  “I am Anne McCormac,” she said. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “Aye.” Spider nodded. He was fairly certain courtesy required more than that, but he’d not the slightest idea what else to say. He guessed her age at anywhere from nineteen to twenty-five. The wedding band caught sunlight as she brushed back her hair.

  “Did you know our captain well?” She turned back to stare across the sea. In th
e distance to the north lay dark gray lines that were islands. The last time Spider had seen these isles, he had been a pirate, sailing under the bloody black flag of Bent Thomas aboard Lamia. Her question reminded him that there was a dead man aboard, slain by an unknown agent, and that Hob had heard this woman say she had come to kill someone. Spider swallowed, joined her at the rail, and inhaled deeply. If he could not aim Redemption toward his beloved, perhaps he could solve the puzzle of how a ship’s captain had been murdered in his locked quarters and keep his promise to Abigail Brentwood.

  “I signed on for this voyage,” he said, “and that was my first experience of Cap’n Brentwood. He treated me fair, though, and I liked him. And he was proud of this ship, too, a rare beauty, he called her.”

  “She is that,” Anne said. Her gaze was not on the islands, as Spider had first surmised. Her lovely eyes went left and right, as though she was looking for a ship.

  “Looking for pirates, I suppose,” Spider said and instantly regretted it. But she seemed amused, not frightened.

  “I am, indeed, John.” She smiled wickedly.

  “You do not seem afraid.”

  She turned the sparkling green eyes on him. “I do not frighten easily, sir.”

  “Is that because you’ve a gun tucked beneath that pretty dress?”

  She tilted her head and smiled. “You notice things, don’t you?”

  “It has kept me alive.”

  “I have a gun, yes,” she whispered. “And a couple of knives, if you must know, but if you notice those you are looking far too closely.” She winked.

  Good Lord, Spider thought, what a dangerous creature she is. He was now ready to believe she had killed the captain and was plotting to kill everyone else.

  “It seems, um, not ladylike, I guess,” he replied after an uncomfortable pause.

  “I am a woman, traveling alone, in a ship full of men,” she told him. “I notice the hungry gazes, John. Even if there was no possibility of pirates, even if we yet sailed under the protective wing of the Royal Navy, I would keep my blades and pistol at the ready. I am the last woman you want to trifle with.”