The Iron Rose

by Marsha Canham

  “As soon as they’re primed I want the gunners to fire a full broadside.”

  “A broadside, sir? But we’re still well out of range and won’t accomplish more than letting them know we’re not wogs.”

  “I suspect they know that already. But if you can think of a better way to get my brother’s attention, I am all ears.”

  The helmsman grinned. “Aye sir. Full broadside it is.”

  “Oh, and Riley … since we’re not doing more than spitting in the pond, load the guns with double charges of powder. Might as well give the bastards an impressive show of fireworks while we’re at it.”

  Recalde groaned. Lucia was abusing him with the same degree of determined savagery he had displayed earlier, and he was not only seeing stars, he was seeing lights explode across his vision. Moments later, he saw more lights, but by now the muffled volley of thunder from the first explosions had rolled over the harbor and Recalde knew it had nothing to do with Lucia’s skills with her mouth.

  “Jesús Cristo!” He twisted his fingers in her hair and jerked her head away from his groin, all but kicking her aside in his haste to run to the rail. Far out in the soupy darkness of the night, a ship was firing its cannon, the concussions reflecting orange and gold across the water and in the hovering thickness of the air.

  There were running footsteps above and below him as other members of the Contadora’s crew were drawn by the exchange, likely the same reaction as on board every galleon in Havana harbor. Fingers pointed and stabbed the air excitedly as a second ship opened fire, then a third … then a fourth! There were two smaller silhouettes in front—one of them shockingly close to the harbor—and three much larger ones behind. The two smaller vessels were being driven toward land, but as they piled on sail, their speed increased and they were able to peel away, one to the east, one to the west.

  The one to the west found open water, but the one heading east was met by the patrolling pataches, bristling with ten guns apiece. As the pataches drew within range and opened fire, the vessel had to veer yet again to avoid sailing into range, but by then the galleons had used their forward speed to good advantage and were emptying their batteries as fast as the crews could load and fire.

  Recalde was transfixed by the scene unfolding less than a league away, as was every other man on board. His hands gripped the rail as if to crush it, for he could tell by the silhouette that the trapped vessel was an English privateer.

  “Use your chain shot,” he urged, willing his command to carry across the distance. “Take down her sails. Close in tight, by God, and you’ll have her!”

  Like a fascinating dance executed in excruciatingly slow measures, the privateer backed his sails, hoping to elude the converging pataches and outrun them to the open sea, but instead, he ran straight into the guns of the two closing galleons. All five ships were spitting orange flames, some of the shots striking their targets, some throwing up tall spouts of white water on the sea. The echoes of the shots did not take quite so long to reach the harbor now, but the ships were engulfed in clouds of white smoke that hung in the air like a blanket and drifted toward shore, cloaking the action from view.

  In the last clear glimpse Recalde had, the privateer was struggling. Her sails had been holed by shot and some hung in tatters. There was a fire on the upper deck, almost indistinguishable from the constant blasts of the guns on both decks, and when she moved out of sight behind a low promontory of land, she left a wide streamer of smoke boiling out behind.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It had taken twelve backbreaking days to remove the guns from the Santo Domingo and mount them in batteries onshore. Frenchman’s Cay had a natural embankment that sat like a shelf along the length of the beach, but the earthworks on Spaniard’s Cay had to be laboriously trenched and built. There were few complaints aside from aching muscles, however. Food was plentiful and the days, stretching into September, were neither as hot nor as humid as they might have been a month earlier. Morning came with the ringing of a ship’s bell and the men would work until well after dark before crawling into the hammocks they’d strung among the trees. Canvas tents were erected along both beaches but most of the men preferred to sleep under the stars.

  Juliet worked alongside her crew. The culverins each weighed between four and five thousand pounds, fired shots that weighed thirty-two pounds apiece, and required a powder charge of eighteen pounds each time they were primed, all of which had to be transferred from the galleon to the tents erected on shore. What Juliet lacked in brute strength she made up for by supervising the reassembly of each gun carriage on shore. The brass barrels had to be bolted to the trunnions, then the sights adjusted by driving in a quoin for the proper elevation. When the last monster was winched overboard, rowed to one of the beaches, and hauled to its final resting place, she ordered Crisp to sail the Iron Rose through the channel so that each gun could be aimed to achieve maximum damage when fired.

  Four types of shot were stacked in makeshift magazines built behind the tree line. Ball shot was effective for holing the decks and hulls. Chain shot, consisting of two cast iron balls attached by a length of chain, would wrap around spars or yards and reduce them to splinters. Grapeshot was used mainly for keeping an enemy under cover. Dozens of small round balls were packed into the throat of the cannon and, when fired, would spray across a deck in a wide fan, killing or maiming anyone exposed. The fourth and last type of shot was sangrenel, a cloth bag filled with jagged scraps of metal. The bag disintegrated when the powder ignited, and the razor-sharp bits of iron sheared through flesh and bone like hot knives through lard.

  Varian St. Clare worked, stripped to the waist, alongside the other members of the crew. Spending long days in the sun, his skin started to turn a deep bronze, making his smile appear wider and whiter than before. Muscles that had not been soft to begin with hardened to oak, and laughter that had not seemed to come easily before had the men around him grinning, especially when he was laughing at his own inability to do things that came second nature to seamen. As good as he was with a sword, he was all thumbs when it came to wielding a glaive or a black bill, both weapons that were used for fighting in close quarters when there was no room for fancy footwork or orderly quadrants. When instructed on the use of a boarding pike, he managed to somehow hook his own breeches and fling himself through the open gangway. And when he climbed the rigging one day, he shouted at Juliet to show her how well he had done, only to twist his foot around a ratline and dangle upside down in a shroud until someone stopped laughing long enough to go up and rescue him.

  Regardless of how menial the task, he showed a willingness to learn. He spent an afternoon with Nathan being shown the finer points of how to set a sail, and when Nog Kelly demonstrated the proper way to nail together one of the gun carriages, it was Nog who took out a front tooth with a hammer, leaving Varian, his grin intact, to finish the job. He even went hunting one afternoon with Johnny Boy and while he skinned the inside of his forearm learning to shoot the longbow, he proudly presented Juliet with the coconut he had skewered through the heart.

  Juliet was smiling more, too. It seemed to start at first light when she opened her eyes and found herself curled against Varian’s big body, and it was the last thing she did at night when they lay naked and sated in each other’s arms. It was unfortunate that reality kept intruding or she would have been quite content to while away her days swimming in the tidal pools and making long, languorous love.

  “They should have been back by now,” she said, scanning the clear and disturbingly empty horizon with her spyglass. “It has been nearly three weeks. We’ve moved cannon, laid traps, built fortifications. Faith, we’ve even taught you how to climb a tree and bake crabs in the sand.”

  At least once a day Juliet made the climb to the highest vantage point on the island. Most times Varian accompanied her, which meant they would not quite make it directly there or back without taking some manner of detour. On this particular day they had arrived at the top
well before sunset and relieved the two lookouts an hour before the regular watch was due to be changed.

  Standing behind her, he swept her hair to one side and placed a kiss on the sensitive curve of her neck. “Your brothers strike me as being more than capable of looking after themselves. Indeed, I would allow they are the type who would show their backsides to the Spanish and run before them like hares taunting a hound.”

  She lowered the glass and sighed. “But three weeks. The pinnaces we’ve sent out have seen nothing either. No ships. No fleet. No movement whatsoever in the Straits and frankly, Father is concerned some of the other captains may grow impatient and leave.”

  “Maybe the French and Dutch privateers did their jobs too well and the viceroy of Nueva España has ordered the fleet to remain in port.”

  “Maybe the next time you crack open a coconut you will find it filled with gold doubloons.”

  His hands slid down from her shoulders and circled around to cradle her breasts. “You dare to mock me, madam? I, who this very day risked life and limb to catch a turtle so that you might dine on potage de tortue tonight?”

  She leaned against his chest, her nipples rising instantly beneath his palms. After three weeks she would have thought the fires within would have burned down to more tolerant levels, but no. A touch, a look, the crooked little smile he seemed to have reserved for her alone, could start an entire welter of sensations flaring to life inside her.

  They flared now and within a few laughing breaths she had him on his back in the grass. Straddling his hips, she tugged his shirt free of his breeches, shoving the loosened folds up under his arms to expose the bulge of muscles across his chest. She laid her hands flat on the hard surface, letting the dark wealth of hair tickle her palms and fingers before dragging them down over the smoothness of his belly. When they encountered the wide black belt he wore, she watched his face while she unfastened it and reached for the buttons below.

  The first few days they had been on Frenchman’s Cay he had attempted to maintain the neatly trimmed imperial and thin moustache, but for the past fortnight, he had forsaken the blade and the chestnut stubble on his face had filled in thick and smooth. He had also taken to wearing his hair in a tail with a bandana tied around his brow to keep the sweat out of his eyes. When combined with the loose cambric shirt, the chamois breeches, the tanned skin and gleaming white smile, he looked increasingly more like a pirate, less like a duke, than she would ever have envisioned the first time she saw him on the deck of the Argus.

  “Do you not miss your purple plumes at all?” she asked in a low murmur, her hands inside his breeches now, his body tensing beneath her.

  “I, ah, beg your pardon? I’m afraid I wasn’t listening.”

  She laughed and shook her head to negate the question and was about to bend over and distract him further when her gaze strayed to the rocky knob of land that marked the peak of Spaniard’s Cay. The vantage points of the two islands were perhaps three-fourths of a mile apart, too far to hear the sound of an alarm bell, but close enough to see the small puff of white smoke that rose from the signal fire. She sat straight a moment, then reached for her spyglass and pushed to her feet.

  “What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t quite …”

  Juliet cursed the angle of the sun and the glare that was causing spheres of colored light to refract around the inside of her spyglass. It was just a speck well to the south, lost between every other trough of the waves, but she soon recognized the sleek lines of the Christiana. Geoffrey Pitt had taken her out three mornings ago to do a little reconnaissance of his own along the cays.

  “It is Mr. Pitt, coming in hard and fast.”

  She trained the glass west and scanned the distant horizon but it was still clear. The Christiana, however, was skimming over the waves like she had a fire under her keel, and Juliet thrust the glass in Varian’s hands.

  “I have to get back down to the beach. Will you stay and wait for the watch change? It’s probably nothing, but if you see anything unusual … anything at all, light the signal fire and ring the bell.”

  Varian nodded, fastening his breeches and tucking his shirt back inside. “Light the fire, ring the bell. Aye, Captain.”

  She did not acknowledge either his salute or his grin; she was already gone.

  The Christiana barely cut her speed until she was through the channel. There, she backed her sails to make a graceful, sweeping turn behind the islands, but instead of ordering an anchor into the water, Pitt dived over the side, swimming ashore with long, easy strokes even as the Christiana ran up sail and caught the wind again.

  By then there was quite a crowd gathered on the beach, including Simon, Isabeau, and Juliet.

  “I was anchored off Running Rock when one of Captain Smith’s scouts came in,” Pitt said, emerging from the water, shaking droplets from his hair. “The fleet has left Havana. The vanguard should pass the southern end of the cays some time tomorrow. I’ve sent Spit north to spread the alert and give the other captains time to sober their crews.”

  Simon Dante nodded. The wait was over. There was still a question in his eyes, however, one that Geoffrey Pitt could not answer.

  “There’s no word. No one has seen or heard from either the Tribute or the Valour. Smith did say that his men ran down a French merchantman for sport and heard there had been a battle fought off Havana. They didn’t know who was involved, just that a couple of privateers were in a skirmish, and at the end of the day, two ships were sunk.”

  “Were they ours?” Isabeau asked softly, standing by her husband’s side.

  Geoffrey shook his head. “He didn’t know.”

  No one slept that night. The last of the powder barrels were taken ashore and final preparations were made along both embankments. At first light, the Avenger weighed anchor and towed the almost useless hulk of the Santo Domingo to the western side of the cays. At Geoffrey Pitt’s suggestion, they had decided to revise their original plan slightly, using the galleon and the Pirate Wolf’s ship as bait. Without the Tribute or the Valour contributing their firepower, they needed the Dutchman’s guns on the other side of the channel. The Spaniards were not entirely stupid. If they saw a pair of privateers drifting in shallow water close to two islands, they might well see the trap for what it was, especially if they had just come under attack farther south.

  While her father towed the galleon into position, Juliet walked the beach for the tenth time, turning a critical eye to anything that might betray the presence of men or guns on the shoreline. The tents had all been struck, the barrels of powder were well back behind the trees and covered with scrub. The cannon had sheets of canvas draped over their snouts, which had been painted with pitch and covered with sand to look like part of the landscape. No fires of any kind were permitted apart from the two covered pots of hot coals that were kept smoldering behind each gun line to light the fuses.

  When there was nothing more to be done, she climbed to the peak accompanied by Varian and Geoffrey Pitt, for once they went on board their respective ships, they would be blind until they received a signal from the lookouts.

  Juliet’s first thought when they reached the top was that the Avenger had towed the Santo Domingo surprisingly far out, well beyond the strip of turquoise that marked the edge of the coral bank. Her second thought was that if she hadn’t seen for her own eyes that the tatters and ruins were a ruse, she would have believed the Avenger was a wreck. Torn sheets of canvas hung from skewed yards. Rigging lines had been loosened; cables and spars hung over the rails dragging sails in the water to make it look as if the Avenger were dead in the water. They had even rubbed charcoal dust on the masts and rails to make it appear as though a fire had raged out of control on the decks. On a signal from the lookouts, buckets of oakum would be set alight on the decks of both ships to send up clouds of thick black smoke.

  Beside her, Varian looked up at the stunningly clear sky. There had been a haze ea
rlier in the morning, hanging like a pale shroud around the islands, but the sun had burned it away and the sky was clear in all directions, which was why he frowned.

  “What is that? Thunder?”

  Juliet tipped her head, listening to the low, throbbing rumble that was barely audible above the sway of the trees.

  “Not thunder,” she murmured. “Those are Captain Smith’s guns. It has begun.”

  The vanguard of the Spanish treasure fleet came into view less than an hour later. Pitt, Juliet, and the two lookouts crouched down instinctively when the first sails appeared on the horizon, and while Varian knew it was quite impossible for anyone to detect their silhouettes from such a distance, he ducked as well. Two, three, five, eight majestic towers of sail and timber came into view, their sheets white against the blue sky, easily identifiable by the large red crosses painted on the canvas. The galleons in front were massive, equally as big if not bigger than the Santo Domingo, and normally would have been sailing in an open vee formation behind the almirante, like migrating geese, with the smaller treasure-bearing ships inside the protective shield of warships. But as the convoy drew closer, they could see something had staggered them.

  “They look to be shy a few guards on their right flank,” Geoffrey muttered. “God bless Captains Smith and Wilbury. And look there, well in the rear …”

  He stabbed the air excitedly with a finger, training his glass on the far southern limit of their view. Juliet followed suit and smiled, though Varian could only squint and wonder what had caught their attention.

  “Here.” Pitt laughed as he passed over his spyglass. “Look just past the point of Spaniard’s Cay.”

  Varian put the leather-bound glass to his eye and brought the horizon into sharper focus. The ships were still small and he doubted if he could have distinguished a galleon from a longboat at this distance, but there was no mistaking the thin plume of smoke he could see tailing out in the wake of one of the ships that was separated from the pack and obviously struggling to rejoin the convoy.