However, the dead man, whose desecrated corpse had already started to putrefy in the sun, was impossible to ignore. What could he possibly have done to deserve such a fate? Had he tried to run? Where did he think he could have gone? He was stupid, she rationalized. He made a stupid mistake and died for it. An example of what will happen if we don’t cooperate.
As midday neared, ominous gray clouds gathered rapidly on all sides of the horizon.
The pirates rolled the final barrels of gunpowder across the planks. Most of the crew had ventured back to the brigantine, leaving only a small garrison on Lady Katherine. The captain left Katherine's side and approached Thomas. Thomas tilted his head and greeted the man with an uneasy smile. The captain adopted a surly demeanor that seemed to catch Thomas off guard. "Is something amiss?" Thomas asked gently.
"You might have obliged our first cannon fire," replied the captain. He rested his hand on the pommel of his cutlass and gestured to the black flag atop his brigantine. "I have a reputation to preserve, you understand."
"But sir!" Thomas protested. "You promised you wouldn’t harm anyone else!"
The captain’s emotionless expression held. "I promised I wouldn’t harm any of the crew, beyond that unfortunate young man over there, and I will uphold that end of the bargain. However, I said nothing of sparing the ship’s captain."
In the blink of an eye, the captain unsheathed his cutlass and plunged the blade into Thomas's chest. Thomas choked blood and clutched the captain’s shoulder. The captain slapped his hand away and ripped the cutlass from his chest. The blade flashed crimson in the sunlight before it was swiftly returned to its sheath. Thomas managed a glance in Katherine's direction before collapsing facedown onto the deck. His blood spread in a puddle beneath him, and he did not move again.
Katherine loosed a bloodcurdling wail that would have rattled a banshee. She sprung to her feet and lunged for Thomas, but was held back by the sweaty hands of two pirates. She fought to move forward, her legs going through the motions but advancing her no further, feet slipping on the wet deck. She shook her right arm free and slammed her elbow into one pirate's nose, spurting blood from his nostrils. She spun, aiming a fist at the left pirate's jaw, but it did not connect. The man ducked and caught her midsection. He lifted her up and carried her kicking and screaming to the captain, dropping her in front of him. She sprawled gracelessly onto the deck.
"Watch yourselves, mates," chuckled the pirate with the bleeding nose. "This lass has spirit."
The captain smiled charmingly down at her, as though he hadn't murdered her husband only seconds prior. She scrambled onto her hands and knees and smashed into his legs, thinking she might knock him off his feet, but she might as well have tried to topple a statue. He gathered a handful of her hair and dragged her across the deck, toward the planks that connected the two ships. She kicked at his legs and punched at his waist as he hefted her onto a plank. When her mightiest struggles proved pathetically ineffective, she reached pleadingly to Lady Katherine's crew. Two of them stared woefully at her; the rest did not even hazard a glance.
"Help me!" she shrieked. "Help me, you cowards!" At that, the two who had been watching her turned away. "You bloody cowards!" she shrieked, voice breaking.
She frantically searched for an escape. The train of her mantua snagged on a splinter, and the captain's feet nearly flew out from under him. He gathered the skirt in his hand and tugged vigorously at it, until the train started to tear. As he wrestled with the dress, Katherine looked to the sea below the planks, wondering if she could dive into the water and escape between the two ships. Unfortunately, the pirates would probably shoot her before she could make her way to safety, and even if they missed, she didn't fancy herself much of a swimmer.
By the time she fully understood the futility of her dilemma, the train ripped free of the splinter, and the captain hefted her off of the plank and deposited her unceremoniously onto the deck of the pirate brigantine. The pirates slid the planks back onto their deck, and the brigantine started to pull away from Lady Katherine. She scrambled to the bulwark, fumbling beneath the bustle of pirates, and pulled herself up for a final glimpse of her ship. She was contemplating leaping over the wall when the captain snatched her and dragged her kicking and screaming toward his cabin. He shoved her inside and slammed the door, leaving her alone.
The cabin was dimly lit by a couple of milky windows that faced aft. After her vision adapted to the darkness, she saw a small round table in the center of the room and a desk at the starboard end. A dresser and a cabinet hugged the aft wall beneath the windows. A king-sized bed filled most of the port end of the room. The cabin was cramped and the pathways between the furniture were narrow.
She went for the desk first, opening all of the drawers except the top one, which was locked. She tugged at the handle, figuring that something important must have been concealed within, but eventually gave up on it. She moved to the dresser, but found only undergarments and useless trinkets.
She heard a number of voices out on the main deck, but only when she heard the word "girl" did she stop to listen. Individual comments were too difficult to distinguish amid the angry rabble, until one man loudly made clear the general feelings of the crew: "Bad luck, the lot of them . . . worse yet on a ship. How's this one any different?"
She shuddered as she considered the implications. Her worst fears were confirmed when a pirate with a gruff voice bellowed, "Let the sharks work through her troubles," followed by a deafening roar of laughter and cheering. There were more comments still, most of them detailing gruesomely ingenious tortures.
Another man said, "Better to put her at a stove. Haven’t had a decent meal in ages."
"At a stove, or on it," added another. "Whichever tastes better!"
Thankfully, the captain bombastically proclaimed, "I'll not give the woman to the sea till I have determined her worth!" And then he chuckled. "Nor would I wish her ravaged by stove or otherwise!"
There was no further discussion on the matter.
Katherine fell to the floor, overcome with feelings of dread. Her stomach gave to convulsions, and she gasped hoarsely for air that would not come. Warm streams of tears rolled down her cheeks and touched her lips. She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed that while they were closed some miracle would spirit her back to London. Back to her friends. Back to her husband.
A plethora of memories assaulted her.
She saw Thomas, on the day they were introduced, as he lifted his arms to help her from a carriage. She stumbled purposefully into his arms, doing her best to make the misstep appear genuine. Their lips brushed, but they did not kiss. They remained in that position, his hands around her waist, her red mane enveloping his face like a veil. Their faces flushed nearly the same color as her hair, and they broke into a set of shy giggles.
She saw Thomas with his arm slung across a park bench, awaiting her approach with a fervent smile. He stood and took off his hat and embellished a bow, sending her into a spasm of bubbling laughter. They strolled through the park, coming to a small bridge that formed an arch over a tiny stream. It was here that they kissed for the first time.
She saw Thomas on his knees, presenting her with the most spectacular diamond ring she had ever seen. She knew it had cost him a fortune. She was fraught with words, struggling to explain to him how much he meant to her, and that no diamond could compare.
She saw Thomas on their wedding day, looking more debonair any man present. He held her cheeks and drew her to him until their lips pressed together. Everything seemed to melt away around them, and she wanted the moment to last an eternity.
If only it had.
She saw Thomas dead on the deck of Lady Katherine, facedown in a widening pool of his own blood. The blood spread until it filled the deck and cascaded over the sides. The ship hemorrhaged into the sea like an open wound, dyeing the water crimson.
Katherine opened her eyes.
Regrettably, she had not been spirited back to London
. She remained trapped in a cabin belonging to her husband's murderer. But she was no longer devastated or afraid. Instead her eyes were fixated on the first thing they saw.
The answer had been right in front of her all along.
On the wall above the captain's desk was a painting of a brigantine at sea, and mounted underneath it were two polished cutlasses with intersecting blades.
GRIFFITH
The chill winds cut deep into his skin and purged the warmth from the marrow of his bones. After nearly two decades at sea, Captain Jonathon Griffith had never developed a tolerance for the mounting cold that washed over the Atlantic as the winter months drew near.
As he stood on the forecastle deck, a cover of gray clouds filled the mid-afternoon sky, and only a few wayward blemishes of sapphire were visible through the narrowing gaps. The threat of a rainstorm or worse was imminent.
Winters along the east coast of North America were infamous for freezing ships in their docks with layers of ice so thick that their hulls might as well have been mounted in brick. As a result, merchant shipping slowed to a virtual standstill.
Griffith took it as a sign. Tomorrow he would call for a vote with the proposition of sailing to the West Indies. The hold of his ship, Harbinger, was bloated with barrels of gunpowder, bales of silk, expensive wines, chests full of women's jewelry, and countless other treasures. It had been an extremely lucrative year, and there was no better place to spend the winter season than the warm, crystal waters of the Caribbean.
However, Griffith's mind drifted beyond the fleeting pleasures of a single season. While the men were content to spend every piece of eight they had ever earned on whores and spirits, Griffith quietly hoarded his money for a greater purpose. He would live out the rest of his days under the warm sun, devoid of cares, on a plantation in the West Indies. He would die an old man in his bed, and history would not recall his fate.
Before this dream could be realized, he needed that elusive final plunder; the legendary kind of plunder that covetous pirates recounted in tall, hyperbolic tales around raging bonfires. It was out there somewhere, waiting to be plucked from the seas, and taking it would be no simple task.
Griffith was sick of captains who valued their lives above their cargos; surrenders effortlessly achieved because their goods were not worth dying for. He sought a captain whose life was secondary to the treasure in his hold. It would be a grand battle, he knew, and the outcome would decide his destiny.
But something had been missing. He had never been able to place it, and it wasn't until yesterday that he realized what his grand scheme lacked. It had been an aberrantly warm day for late September, and out of that warmth sprouted a gift from the sea herself.
The plunder of Lady Katherine had topped off Harbinger's hold, but a treasure of greater value now lingered in Griffith's cabin. Never in his many travels had he set eyes on such a creature. He could have sworn she was a mermaid changed into human form. Her fiery hair and porcelain skin enchanted him. The sight of her made him feel something in his chest that he had never experienced before; a kind of rising swell that he was hard-pressed to describe.
When he first beheld Katherine Lindsay, he had a vision of her on his future plantation, gliding through the tall grass in a sundress, moving toward him with open arms and an evocative smile. He desired her more than anything in the world, and he knew that his life would not be complete unless he possessed her.
He suffered no remorse for killing Thomas Lindsay. Griffith knew when he was being lied to, and Lindsay’s cooperation had been too easily earned, betraying the subtle nuances of a man with something to hide. Edward Livingston, Harbinger’s quartermaster, murdered one of Lindsay’s young crewmen, hacking the body to pieces in front of everyone. Griffith apologized for Livingston’s "rash actions" and insisted that Livingston had acted of his own accord. It was a technique he commonly employed when dealing with captains, and in most cases it was more effective than torture.
When Lindsay mentioned the name of his ship, Lady Katherine, Griffith glimpsed an uneasy shift in the man's eyes. He couldn't put his finger on it, but he was convinced that there was something valuable at stake; something that Lindsay would not dare reveal. Later that night, Griffith easily discovered her rather uninspired hiding place. He knew instantly that she was the woman the ship had been named after.
Taking the woman prisoner was the first time he had acted without first consulting the crew, and his drastic actions perplexed even him. Bringing a woman aboard a ship was bad luck, and everyone knew it. On most ships it was a forbidden offense, sometimes punishable by death. But he was Harbinger's elected captain, and he had led the crew to countless victories. They had come to trust him with their very lives, which afforded him a certain leeway.
He had set their initial grievances at bay, but he worried that a week's voyage or less would rekindle their concerns. Like birds, they reacted negatively to slight alterations in their environment, blindly accepting their circumstances so long as nothing changed. They maintained tried-and-true patterns, and obstacles in their path were almost always met with force.
A recent incident was fresh in Griffith’s mind. A crewman had nicely opted to take over the duties of a man who had overslept after consuming an entire bottle of rum the night prior. When the late-sleeper finally arrived to discover that his position was filled, he was overcome with jealousy. He shoved his dagger between the helpful crewman's shoulder blades. Livingston secured the murderer before anyone could retaliate, and, after a month's incarceration in the hold, he was stranded on the first island they happened across.
Thinking back on the incident prompted Griffith to wonder if keeping the woman in his cabin, which the crew frequented almost as often as he, might prove to be a similar such obstacle. There was also the problem of taming her. She obviously wouldn't warm to him after he had murdered her husband.
His mind was riddled with plaguing questions, and he hadn't uncovered any answers. His entire piratical career had been one of intricately executed plans. "Any problem can be fixed into a plan," his father used to say. Of course, his father’s plans probably hadn’t included a gambling addiction that prompted him to sell his Tobacco farm in Maryland and spend his remaining coin drinking himself to death. With no inheritance to speak of, and fearing a similar fate, Griffith signed on to a merchant vessel that mainly supplied flour to the West Indies. The decision changed his life forever.
"Any problem can be fixed into a plan." Despite his father’s failings, Griffith had lived by the wisdom of those words. However, he now found himself leaping into a treacherous situation with open arms, minus strategy. His father’s life had been propelled irrevocably into a downward spiral under a bout of pure impulse. Would his be no different?
Griffith shook his head in dismay, hoping to clear the uncharacteristically doubtful thoughts from his mind. He considered returning to his cabin to check on the girl, but thought better of it.
"I need a plan," he muttered to the wind.
Like the waters they cruised, the pirates were a blur of infinite motion as they tended to their respective duties. The mottled contrasts of their various ethnicities were nearly indistinguishable at this bustling pace, and the ship was of a single mind.
The crew numbered ninety-two, and most of them had reached their mid-twenties. The whites were primarily Englishmen from London and Bristol. Most had come from British merchant ships that Griffith had plundered here and there. Nine of them had been with Griffith from the beginning, including his confidant, Edward Livingston.
Livingston had proven to be the perfect choice for quartermaster. Aside from Griffith, he claimed no friends, and therefore could not be accused of bias when settling disagreements between the men. He was a tall, barrel-chested man with a darkly sunned scalp that he kept closely shaved, due to thinning hair. He had a strong jaw and hawk-like eyes that missed nothing, narrow beneath thin, straight eyebrows and a weathered forehead. Most respected him, and those few who didn’t we
re at least wise enough to steer clear of him.
After many years in the West Indies, Harbinger’s crew had gained several Jamaicans and Bahamans. The majority had been recruited from the port at Nassau on the island of New Providence. Griffith had also drafted a handful of American sailors from a merchant vessel he captured off of the coast of New York, six months prior. They were a spirited bunch that cared naught for their lives as legitimate merchantmen, and they eagerly joined the pirate crew without requiring any additional incentive.
Nearly a third of the crew was black. Most stemmed from slave ships, gladly accepting pirate life as an alternative to lifelong servitude under potentially cruel masters. While some pirate captains saw this as their opportunity to capitalize on the slave trade, Griffith didn't have the stomach. Seizing a slave ship was almost always accompanied with horrors that were best left unspoken of.
The blacks were hard workers, and Griffith was grateful for them, but he found them difficult to relate to. He wasn't even sure how many of them spoke English, aside from key nautical terms. Some made appearances at parties on the main deck, providing strangely entertaining dances for the whites, but mostly they kept to themselves. And the whites allowed them no say when it came to votes. "They monkeys don’t need a vote," Livingston argued. "They’re happy enough to be freed of shackle."
There was a group of seven blacks called, simply, ‘The Seven’. They had mutinied against their captors aboard a ship named Baraka, and were subsequently discovered by Harbinger. There was an animalistic ferocity in their eyes. The largest towered over seven feet tall. No one talked to them, not even the other blacks, unless it was utterly necessary.
There were several elite cliques aboard Harbinger, often marked by their various talents. The aptly named 'Musketmen' were five Englishmen who carried muskets. Of them, none was a finer marksman than young Louis Robertson.
The Devil's Fire Page 2