Heart of Steele

by Brad Strickland

  Not a word was said, but after a moment’s contemplation Don Esteban bowed his head slightly in agreement. He murmured rapidly in Spanish, and the grim Sergeant Gonzalez slowly began to smile, exposing blindingly white teeth.

  I shivered. The Spanish Fury, I thought. May the Lord deliver us from it.

  We all sat silent in the longboat as we rowed back to the waiting Aurora. I huddled next to my hulking uncle and let the full extent of what we were doing flood over me. This could be it. This could be the final showdown with the Red Queen.

  And Jack Steele.

  I had actually seen the great pirate king before. Jessie and I had looked on when Steele killed a man as calmly as a normal man would kill a chicken. It was in Tortuga, when he had been masquerading as Mr. Meade, the business manager for the man we saw him kill. I saw him again now in my mind’s eye: tall, thin, pale as parchment, and wearing a long white wig. I’d often wondered if his real hair was as white, because for the life of me I couldn’t imagine it being any other color. Still, what I remembered most were his eyes. They were a cold blue, like chips of winter ice, empty windows that opened to bleak death and destruction. Even in the smothering tropic heat I couldn’t quite suppress a shudder.

  Uncle Patch must have taken it for some fear of the coming battle, for he patted me awkwardly on the shoulder. “Don’t let worry be a trouble to you, Davy,” he whispered so the others wouldn’t hear. “It’s not fear, it’s just good sense. In old Shakespeare’s play about Henry IV, fat Falstaff said the better part of valor was discretion, you know. Sure, the brave know when to run and when to stand.”

  My uncle was completely wrong about what made me shudder, but he was a good man and he did try to understand. It was more than most would have done. So we sat until the great solid walls of the good old Aurora loomed up over us.

  That night I stood once again at the Aurora’s railing, watching the longboats setting out again on their missions. In the distance, the Concepcíon did her best to blot out moon and stars, but I could just make out sleek shapes slipping away from her. They would be filled with Don Esteban’s coldly efficient marines, and I almost fancied I saw the moonlight gleam off Sergeant Gonzalez’s smile—all teeth, no humor.

  I wish I could make a better show of myself, but I must admit that I was sulking. I would have sailed with our men even though I knew in my heart that for this kind of bloody work a boy was the last thing needed. And boy I was for all my work with Uncle Patch and my spying and problem solving. My thirteenth birthday was not quite two weeks away. Still, not being able to sail with the men gnawed at me and made me feel childish.

  “You’re sharp to go, are ye not?” asked my uncle, who could move silent as fog when he wished.

  It was no use to deny it. “Aye.”

  He came to stand beside me in the darkness. “Would it do any good to say that dead doctors sew up no wounds?”

  “It would not.”

  He gave his peculiar creaking chuckle. “One thing I will say for ye, Davy: Of all the Sheas, you must might be the most truthful.”

  I turned and looked at him, this man who was my only living relative. Captain Hunter had ordered that no lanterns were to be lit, but I could make Uncle Patch out in the darkness. He leaned there, slumped over the railing like a rumpled Irish bear.

  “I saw you fight Shark,” I said suddenly. “I knew you could use a sword, for I used to watch you spar with Captain Hunter. But I didn’t know you were as good as that.”

  “Not good enough to keep from being clipped from behind as if I’d just fallen off a cart from County Clare.”

  “Where did you learn to fight, Uncle?”

  For a short time he did not answer. Then, carelessly, he said, “’Tis a skill that lingers from my misspent youth at Trinity College in Dublin.”

  “And do they teach swordsmanship in college?”

  “You’d be amazed what you can learn in college, my lad.” Uncle Patch sniffed the night air and absently added, “And not all of it in a lecture hall. Ah, we were a contentious lot in those days, and me more than most. I went out for duels at least once a month. ’Tis a wonder I’ve still got all my parts.” He paused and stared into the silent night. “Did I ever tell you that I tried to call out Gerald? That I challenged him to a duel, though nothing came of it?”

  “G-Gerald?” I stammered. “My father?”

  “Your father, my brother, Gerald Shea, stalwart as an oak, thick as a brick. Oh, our quarrel was a high old Irish donnybrook, so it was, with us cursing each other, and your sainted mother, pretty Kathleen Sullivan she was then, in the middle of it whaling away at the two of us with a broomstick. She was a spirited girl, Kathleen Sullivan.”

  He fell silent again, and I asked, “But why did you quarrel at all?”

  Uncle Patch grunted. “Oh, a vast host of reasons. I was a young wastrel squandering my talents and schooling. He was a fool and a prig for taking a commission in the army of the King of England. Mother favored him. Father favored me. The dog couldn’t decide between the two of us. But most of all …” Here his voice faded off for a moment. When he spoke again, it was no louder than a whisper. “But most of all because sweet Kathleen Sullivan favored him over me. In the end, I stormed out of Ireland and into the navy, and never the two of them I saw again. The more fool I.”

  I stood there next to him, thankful that the night hid my face. Faith, my uncle had told me more about himself and my parents in five minutes than he had in a year. I swallowed and went for more. “He was always away from home, my father. Tell me, what was he like?”

  “Take a look in a mirror, David Michael Shea, and sure he’ll be looking back at you. I know he looks at me, only he does it through your sweet mother’s hazel eyes, her gift to you. Ah, bless ye, Kathleen, ye made the right choice, though it tears my heart for me to confess it.”

  Then the still, hot night exploded, erupted into a column of fire that lit the sky up from sea to heaven. Moments later the sound slammed into us, seeming to squeeze the air from my lungs. Half deaf we stood there, my uncle pounding the railing with his fist.

  “They’ve done it, by heaven and all the saints! They’ve done it! That was the powder magazine at Bloodhaven!”

  The Trap

  BEFORE THE ECHOES of the great explosion had died away, Captain Hunter ordered the sails hoisted. Not half an hour passed before our three craft drew in close to land, and we could look in toward the harbor of Bloodhaven.

  Fires raged there, rolling red and orange high into the night, and against the glare I could see the humped forms of the two fortified islands guarding the fairway. The nearer was long and smooth, and I thought of it as Hog Island, for it had the same shape as a sow half sunk in the mud. The farther one was harder to see, but it was smaller and rounder. Turtle Island, I decided, since it was like the back of a sea turtle.

  Gazing between them into the harbor, I could see the black shapes of the anchored ships stark against the flames. And across the dark water came the crackle of gunfire. Captain Hunter tacked, making for the fairway, and I glanced nervously at Hog and Turtle Islands. “I hope Don Esteban’s men have taken the forts.”

  At my shoulder my uncle said softly, “If they have not, we shall soon find out in the most unpleasant way.”

  Onward we glided, and suddenly the fortification atop Hog Island thundered with cannon fire. But it was not aimed at us. The guns had been hauled around to point toward the harbor, and they began to pound the shipping, the sloops and brigs that were fighting to win their anchors and put to sea.

  And then the guns on Turtle Island, farther away, blazed out, but they clearly were striking at our friends on Hog Island. Don Esteban’s marines had not taken that fort, after all.

  “Silence those guns!” roared Captain Hunter. To starboard, the Concepcíon heeled suddenly, and at once I understood that Don Esteban had the same idea. She was closer, and her guns spoke before ours had a chance. The Turtle Island guns were now divided, some of them aiming at Hog
Island, others at the Concepcíon, and a few at the Aurora as we hauled up rapidly. I could smell the sharp reek of a sizzling slow match as the gunners bent over their weapons.

  Then two guns on the island went off, revealing themselves in flashes of light, and our broadside rolled from bow to stern. It was too dark to see the flight and fall of cannonballs, but all of a sudden a red explosion blossomed on the face of the night like a burning rose, and our men sent up a hearty cheer. Our fire had found something, a store of powder, perhaps, and had set it alight.

  “Torches!” bawled the lookout from the masthead. “I see torches waving! Belay! Cease firing! I think our men have the island!”

  Clearly they had part of it, for half the line of cannons on Turtle Island spoke no more. The Concepcíon delivered one last broadside at the guns firing at her, and again an explosion lit the night. Against the light, I could see at least two tumbling cannon barrels. Within moments a bonfire flamed up on the island, and in its ruddy glare a gold-and-crimson flag ran up an improvised flagpole. It was Spanish. Don Esteban’s men held both islands now, and a few longboats sped across the harbor, taking the last of the fleeing pirate defenders from Turtle Island.

  From the quarterdeck I heard Captain Hunter growl, “If only the Red Queen were here!”

  A brig and two sloops were making for us from the harbor, but as the Hog Island cannons opened on them, the brig quickly struck her colors. Shot crashed into both sloops, taking the mast from one and sending up fountains of water alongside the second. Both of the smaller craft tried to double back, with the dismasted one being rowed by its desperate crew. In the flickering light from the burning town I could see the deck of the brig, crowded with men holding their arms in the air.

  I don’t know how much time had passed since that first explosion. It seemed like nothing in one way, and in another it seemed as though the firing had been going on for hours and hours. But as we stood in toward the burning town, making slow work of it against a foul wind, I became aware that the sky was turning gray, the sun coming up astern of the ship. The wind from shore brought us the unpleasant odors of burning wood and powder, but I had the impression that the pirates in the town must have fled, for I heard no more gunfire.

  And then the Fury, which had held back from the cannon fire, ranged alongside, with John Barrel clinging to the shrouds. “Ahoy!” he bawled in a voice that carried across the water. “Astern! Look astern! The Red Queen is bearing in!”

  I sprang into the shrouds and climbed halfway to the mizzentop, gazing back over the water. Standing out against the growing light of dawn, an enormous black bulk of ship towered up from the sea. I felt the shrouds twitch, and my uncle laboriously clambered up to me, where he clung awkwardly, panting. “I must see this prodigy,” he grunted.

  “There,” I said, pointing.

  For a moment Uncle Patch was silent, holding his breath. Then he exhaled and whispered, “Sweet mother of—’tis clean impossible! Nothing that big can float!”

  I knew how he felt. The skin of my arms crawled as I realized the Red Queen was still a good two miles away. She loomed as though she were much closer. The Concepcíon, to starboard of our ship, was so large that the Aurora looked like a fisherman’s sloop next to her. But the Red Queen dwarfed even the Concepcíon. She was so large that the Aurora could have been placed on her main deck with room to spare fore, aft, and to both sides.

  Steele’s ship was under a pyramid of billowed sails, standing in for all she was worth. I heard Captain Hunter bellowing orders, and our ship wore, turning away from the wind, to head toward this new threat. Don Esteban followed suit, but more slowly, for his ship could not maneuver so well as ours. I noticed that the Fury, the smallest of us all, was making for the security of Hog Island.

  Uncle Patch and I scrambled back down to the deck, ran forward, and stood staring at the monster approaching us. The rim of the sun gleamed above the eastern horizon, first lighting her topgallants, then her topsails, and so down to the courses and decks. When the sun’s rays struck her sides, the Red Queen became a crimson blaze, nearly glowing. Mr. Jeffers, the master gunner, came and whistled. “Three gun decks,” he said softly. “And I make no doubt the bigger cannons throw thirty-two-, thirty-six-pound balls. Mates, she’s a floating fortress, she is.”

  “God help us all,” muttered my uncle. “That is what William proposes to fight!”

  Despite all her sails the Red Queen made poor headway against the foul wind, for she stood only a matter of eight points free. That is, she could not sail directly toward us, for that would put the wind dead against her. Instead, the bloodred ship tacked, now swinging her prow to one side of the head-wind, now to the other.

  The Concepcíon, after our turn, lay to the left, or larboard, of the Aurora, and one hundred yards away and astern of us. Uncle Patch and I hurried back to the quarterdeck. “William!” my uncle barked. “For the love of mercy, let Don Esteban catch up. If Steele hits us one at a time, we have not even a prayer.”

  Captain Hunter clenched his hands, staring ahead at the oncoming pirate ship. Then he nodded. “Very well.” Raising his voice, he ordered, “Take a reef in the mainsail! Lower the topsails!”

  It took only a few moments for the Concepcíon to come abreast of us. Then the captain drew his sword. “Steady, lads! Steele means to sail right between us!”

  I kept expecting my uncle to order me to accompany him below to the sick berth, which was our battle station. But he seemed frozen by the sight of the Red Queen and stood at the rail staring at her. I did not speak to him at all, but gazed at the figurehead of the closing ship, a woman dressed in flowing robes and wearing a crown. She had a billow of brilliant red hair, but where her face should have been I could see merely a grinning skull.

  “Port your helm!” roared Captain Hunter. “Fire as they bear!”

  The Aurora turned smoothly to the right, and beginning at the bows the guns went off one right after the other, a rippling crash. Jets of water leaped at the Red Queen’s waterline, and scarlet splinters flew from her bloodred hull where our guns struck true. At the same time, the Concepcíon had wheeled to larboard, and her own three decks of twenty-four-pound cannons blazed away. Some of her shot flew shockingly wild, but much of it battered into the Red Queen. Still the pirate ship came on, clearly meaning to sail between us and fire both sides.

  We would be within pistol shot of her decks. We had fired two broadsides at her and were nearly ready with a third when her guns came within play. My uncle grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and thrust me down to the deck, falling beside me, as the Red Queen began to fire. The explosion of sound was incredible. I heard huge shot howling just overhead, or so it seemed, and heard the crash and crack of cannonballs hitting us.

  But our cannons replied, at point-blank range. They stabbed into the open gunports of the pirate ship’s lowest deck. Through the din I heard the clang of one of our cannonballs striking a gun or an anchor on the other ship. Men in our tops, armed with muskets, blazed away, though to hit anything on the Red Queen’s towering main deck they had to fire horizontally.

  The Red Queen began to wear, turning her red bulk away from the wind and from us, and I guessed that Steele counted the larger Concepcíon as his main foe. The Red Queen lurched suddenly, for no reason that I could see until I realized that she had just fired her whole broadside at Don Esteban’s ship. A moment later, the guns on our side fired again, but the shot mostly went wild, for the huge ship had heeled far over from the broadside opposite us.

  Then we were past her stern, and I could see the Concepcíon had taken great punishment. Her sails were rags, with broken spars dangling from every mast. Two of her gunports had been smashed into one. She was desperately turning to get her larboard broadside into action.

  Captain Hunter’s orders had brought us into a turn as well. Now both the Aurora and the Concepcíon were astern of the Red Queen. The huge ship could not turn as nimbly as ours. Don Esteban and Captain Hunter were going to have a cl
ear shot at the Red Queen’s starboard side.

  We hammered her again, throwing everything we had, but to my eyes the striking cannonballs made no impression on the huge crimson ship. Don Esteban had given the order just that much too slowly, and before his gunners could fire, the Red Queen hit the Concepcíon again, splinters flying and the fore-topmast plunging down. But the Spanish gunners loosed a broadside, smashing hard into the Red Queen’s bows.

  The top row of Steele’s guns went off then, aiming over the Concepcíon and at us. The shot whistled high, but struck the mizzenmast at the partners. The sharpshooters in the top screamed as the mast toppled, and a tangle of splintered spars and cordage thumped to the quarterdeck, barely missing Captain Hunter.

  The Red Queen fled ahead of us now, standing off and making good time to the east. Clearly Steele knew his position and realized he could not fight two fortified islands and three vessels at once. I ran forward, ducking dangling lines and leaping over an upset cannon, until I reached the bowsprit and clambered out onto it. I could see a figure aboard the Red Queen looking backward at us over the gold-and-scarlet taffrail. It was a thin man with long silvery white hair or a wig. He caught sight of me and mockingly drew a rapier and lifted it in a duelist’s salute. But I could see no humor in the somber face of Jack Steele.

  I hurried back to my uncle. Captain Hunter had climbed into the rigging, but now he dropped back to the deck. “He got away!” he shouted in a voice of despair. His words came faintly to me, for my ears were numb from the thunderous din of battle.

  Uncle Patch clapped a hand onto his shoulder. In a hoarse shout, he said, “Aye, but you’ve hurt him badly, William! You’ve hit him hard twice. You’ve deprived him of two safe havens, and sure, that’s more than all the navies in the world have done. Come away, now, come away! Your ship needs ye.”

  Captain Hunter pounded the rail with his fist. “I shall find him again, I swear it. I will never rest until the bloody Red Queen lies on the bottom of the sea, with Jack Steele in her arms!”