The Valkyrie Series: The First Fleet - (Books 1-3) Look Sharpe!, Ill Wind & Dead Reckoning: Caribbean Pirate Adventure

by Karen Perkins

  Leo let go of me, looking a little embarrassed, and joined Frazer in the center of the circle. “Yes, caballeros, gentlemen. Let’s get down to business before all the rum goes down the hatch.”

  They cheered again and I thought idly that there’d be a lot of sore throats tomorrow, with or without gunpowder in the rum.

  “Battle honors go to Thomas as first aboard Adelheid, and he has the pick of the prize for his reward.”

  “Thomas!” Another beaker of rum was swallowed in a toast, now thankfully without the earlier fiery flavoring.

  “As you know, two men took injuries,” Leo carried on. He’d moved around the circle and stopped by Jack. “Jack here lost a finger when a cannon crushed his hand on firing. As it was his trigger finger, he’s due an extra half share, and an extra share to Alonso who took a blade to the eye.”

  “Never mind, Alonso, you’ve got another one!”

  “Gracias, Newton. Frazer, do the calculations and start doling it out!”

  Not surprisingly, yet another cheer and toast to the Adelheid rang out.

  “How do you split it?” I asked Leo.

  “It’s all in the articles,” he said, still smiling. “A full share to each man, six to the captain, four each to the quartermaster and carpenter, and two to the second mate and bo’sun. The first man to board the prize takes an item from the haul before we split it, and extra shares are given for injuries—how much depends on the injury.”

  “Sounds fair,” I said, surprised. I couldn’t imagine Erik giving any man extra money or gold because he’d been injured carrying out his orders.

  “It’s the only way a ship like this can sail,” Leo continued. “We’re all equals, or most of us are anyway.”

  “Except captain, quartermaster, carpenter, second mate and bo’sun,” I said, laughing.

  “Yes, but each of those positions carries extra responsibilities and certain skills. If I don’t do my job, we don’t find or win prizes and we don’t make any profit. I wouldn’t be captain if I couldn’t fill their seachests, and we all know it. I’d be voted out or mutinied on. Same goes for Frazer and the others. Believe me, the extra shares are earned.”

  I nodded. However they agreed it, it seemed to work.

  Mr. Gaunt interrupted us, smiling. “Here thee is, Gabriella, Klara, welcome to the crew.” He held two canvas bags and when I looked inside the one he gave me, I gasped. “This is for me?”

  Mr. Gaunt and Leo both laughed at my reaction.

  “You mean we get full shares?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t you want it?

  “Yes, why?”

  “You played a full part in the attack.”

  “We were in the pinnace, out of the way, learning to sail.”

  “Yes. Somebody’s always in the pinnace. You’d have been needed if Freedom had been damaged.”

  “But Mr. Gaunt was with us.”

  “Don’t you think he deserves his share either?”

  “Yes, of course he does, but if he was already in the pinnace you didn’t need us there too.”

  “Yes we did,” Leo replied. “We always have at least two in the pinnace, you took Jimmy’s place today and gave him a chance at the fight.”

  “And I’ll be in the pinnace next time an’all, lovey,” he butted in. “Don’t think you’re taking ma place there, too.”

  “You’ll be where I tell you to be, Jimmy, and don’t you forget it.”

  “Aye, Cap’n,” he said, still sullen.

  “You also fought off an attacking sailor and saved Thomas, Gibson and myself an unwelcome swim.”

  “But you were angry with me for doing that.”

  “No, I was angry that I’d put you in danger, and relieved you weren’t hurt. And, to be honest, embarrassed that you rescued me in front of my crew.”

  “Ahhh.”

  “Yes.”

  “So how much is a full share worth?”

  “Aye, she’s a pirate all right,” Frazer said as he passed us.

  I started counting up the mass of coins. I looked up at Mr. Gaunt.

  “Thirty-odd pieces of eight, twenty shillings, a few guilder and a couple of ducats. Oh, and one or two stones,” he answered.

  “A good first haul,” said Leo. “Piracy tends to pay better than a blackbirder.” He laughed.

  Chapter 43

  GABRIELLA

  13th April 1686

  La Isla Magdalena

  I woke at dawn, still on the beach; the magical green and blue driftwood fire of the night before reduced to a few glowing embers. I blinked my eyes open and tried to remember why I was lying on sand. Oh yes, treasure party. Voted onto the crew. Rich in my own right. Pirate. My eyes flew open and I sat up to look about me.

  “Buenos días.”

  I looked down and realized I’d borrowed Leo’s arm for a pillow.

  “Buenos días,” I replied, smiling, then winced at a pain in my head. I put my hands to my brow and groaned at its ache.

  Leo laughed. “You didn’t last very long. If you want to be a pirate, you’ll have to learn to stay awake through the carousing!”

  “No thanks, my headache’s bad enough as it is.” Then I remembered something. “You promised to teach me to shoot today!”

  “Sí. Are you sure you want to? With a headache, I mean.”

  I nodded, grimacing in the early heat. Nothing was going to stop me learning how to defend myself; I was a pirate now. He stood and walked a few paces to the waterline, then stretched. I looked around for Klara and saw her curled up with Obi. I smiled, got up, and followed Leo, taking in the spectacle of the sky.

  “It’s beautiful,” I breathed. “Like the top of a rainbow rising out of the ocean.”

  “Sí, beautiful it is, but don’t be fooled by it. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky at morn, sailors be warned.”

  I looked again at the beauty of the sky—red and pink bathed the clouds and was reflected in leagues of water. How could something so beautiful be a warning? Leo must have seen the doubt on my face.

  “There’ll be a blow afore it gets dark, and the wind’s backing. We haven’t got long; I’ll need to get back to the ship before the storm hits. It’ll have to be a short lesson, Gabriella.”

  *

  Due to the threat etched in the sky, Freedom hadn’t been laid over, so it was still possible to move about her decks. There was no time to waste and everyone was at work; whether scraping barnacles off the hull, fetching fresh water or securing anything and everything that was loose. I helped Mr. Davys coil the great anchor hawser, listening to him grumble about losing his good fishing.

  “Don’t listen to him, lass, he’s such a poor fisherman the only way he can catch them is with the help of the barnacles to draw them in. He grumbles every time we scrape, thee’s doing the rest of us no favors by giving him an ear,” Mr. Gaunt said from behind me. “I’ll take over here, the Cap wants thee.”

  I left them to it with relief.

  “Is it time to go shooting?” I asked Leo when I found him on the maindeck.

  “Sí, come with me.” He led me to the chartroom, took a horn of powder and gave it to me with a small, heavy canvas bag. I tucked them both into my sash.

  “I know I have another pair of pistols in here somewhere,” he muttered, rooting about in his seachest. “I won’t be a minute.” I looked at the papers scattered over the table. Most looked to be charts, but there were books there too, one inscribed with a name: Adelheid.

  “Oh, the Adelheid, what’s this, her logbook?”

  Leo left the chest, took the book out of my hands and threw it back on the table.

  “Never mind that, we haven’t the time. It’s best you don’t have your own pistols anyway until you’re competent, you’ll use mine for now,” he said, marching back out onto deck. I looked back at the Adelheid logbook, wondering what was in it that he didn’t want me to see.

  “Don’t forget that powder!”

>   I left the book and hurried after him. Whatever was in it could wait; I was going to learn to shoot. I caught up with Leo at the starboard rail.

  “Ladies first.” He smiled. I swung over the side, and started to climb down the battens fitted to the hull.

  “Oh, here she goes, shirking all the hard work! I thought you wanted to be one of us, darling. You share in our plunder; you’ll share in our work!”

  I looked aft and saw Newton perched on a plank of wood suspended over the hull by ropes. His face was bright red as he attacked the lower hull with an iron scraper in the early morning heat. Oh, why had we not climbed down the larboard side?

  “I decide who does what work on this ship, Newton. As you said, Gabriella is one of us, and you know as well as I do she needs to be competent with small arms.”

  “Load, point and pull the trigger, that’s all she needs to know,” Newton retorted.

  “If you’re not careful, I’ll reassess and teach her on deck with you employed as the target! Get your scraper working, not your mouth!

  “Never mind him, Gabriella,” Leo said as we walked along the beach, my legs shaking after walking on a moving deck for so long. “He’s too concerned with what everybody else is doing and not on what he’s supposed to be doing himself. He complains to or about everyone—don’t take it to heart.”

  I nodded, but stayed quiet.

  “Has he tried to lay a hand on you again?”

  I shook my head. “No, he’s stayed away from me and I do my best to keep it that way.”

  “Muy bien. That’s for the best. Keep your wits about you and stay out of his way, and if you can’t, stick close to me.”

  I nodded again. I didn’t need to be told to stick close to him; I already did that as much as I could.

  The beach was gorgeous, a paradise, and already hot. Sand blew about us, but we were sheltered from the worst of the rising wind as we turned north. Still reflecting pink from the sky, it glittered with coral and there was hardly a mark on it, just a few animal tracks. The heavy swell rolled in, rippling the sand as the water threw itself ashore after crossing an ocean.

  “Oh, look!” There was a group of pelicans on the beach ahead of us, lumbering into the sky at our approach, bellied beaks flattened in flight. “They’re beautiful.”

  “Ugh.” Leo shuddered. “I hate those birds. I had nightmares as a boy, I kept thinking they’d eat me after my Papá told me I’d fit in one of those beaks.”

  I laughed. Leo afraid of birds? “And you call yourself a fearless pirate!”

  “No I don’t—I’ve never called myself fearless. A fearless man is a stupid man, especially in my line of business.”

  I’d put my foot in it again. It seemed Leo didn’t like to be laughed at. “What’s that? It looks like a chicken!”

  “Oh, yes.” Leo seemed as relieved as I was at the change of subject—or change of bird, at least. “We use the island often and have left stock here to breed. The chickens have struggled a bit, but there are plenty of goats and boar if you trek through the trees and have the patience to catch them. The rats have thrived as well.”

  “How big is the island?”

  “About four leagues north to south and the same across at its widest, last time I looked.”

  “Last time you looked? Why do you say that?”

  “It’s vulnerable to the sea here, and changes shape with every storm. That’s why you’ll never find anyone living here, there’s no real shelter—do you see the trees?”

  I did, they all leaned westward, to leeward.

  “Why did you become a pirate?” I asked.

  Chapter 44

  “Look!” Leo stopped and grabbed my arm, pointing along the beach. An enormous turtle was half-buried in the sand. “Fantástico! Turtle eggs for breakfast, they’re always a treat.”

  I looked at him, he seemed a little too pleased at the opportunity to avoid answering my question, but then I hadn’t been too forthcoming with my own life story, either. As much as I wanted to know him better, I decided to allow him his reprieve.

  “What’s it doing?” Sayba didn’t have many turtles, it was too rocky, and I’d never been this close to one before. Her shell was as long across as my arm, and she looked heavy and tired as she worked in the morning sun.

  “Look after these,” Leo said and stood before taking the silk ribbon from around his neck and draping it around my own. Each end had a pistol secured to it, and was surprisingly heavy, but most of my attention was on the touch of his hands on my shoulders and my realization that we were out of sight of the ship and crew. My heart speeded up and I looked up at him, hoping he hadn’t noticed. Then I thought about what this might mean.

  “I’m not going to shoot the turtle!” I said, alarmed, as he stepped away.

  “I’m not suggesting you do,” he said, laughing. “Although if you can’t shoot a turtle, how are you going to shoot a man?”

  “That’s different, I’d shoot a man who was trying to shoot or cut me down, but that turtle isn’t threatening either of us.”

  “No, but she’s good meat.”

  “What, you’d eat her?”

  “Yes, of course, we all need fresh meat, and as often as possible in our way of life. It’s not always so easy to come by, and turtle meat is delicious.”

  “How on earth would you eat something like that? How would you even cook it?”

  “She’s very handily carrying her cooking pot on her back.”

  I made no reply, it seemed cruel to just take her and eat her. She was paying us no heed at all—she had no idea of the danger she was in.

  Leo laughed again. “Be calm, we’ll leave her, we don’t have time for a turtle hunt to feed the whole crew, but I do want her eggs.”

  “Is that what she’s doing, laying eggs?” I asked, trying to ignore the fact that Leo was pulling his shirt over his head and off, but I found it hard to look away from the powerful shoulders and chest that marked him as a sailor. The tattoos pricked out on his skin stood out: a mermaid with an elaborate M underneath was a good likeness to the Sound of Freedom’s figurehead, and I noticed a sandglass inside a heart as well before I realized Leo was smiling at me.

  Embarrassed to be caught staring at him, I said, “She’s finished.” The turtle’s flippers dragged her bulk slowly out of the hole in the sand, and I had to admire her determination and obstinacy as she inched up the shallow sandy incline. She flung sand about to re-cover the hole, then started her slow shuffle back toward the water. Leo dug the sand back out and placed all the eggs into his shirt, then tied it carefully into a protective packet before the oblivious shelled leviathan had made it back to sea and relative safety.

  “We’ll have to get a move on,” Leo said, all captain again. “That sun’s crept a lot further west than I thought. There—see that lump of driftwood?”

  I nodded, strangely reluctant. I’d enjoyed the easy companionship we’d shared, but now he was all business. The wood was the first sizable piece I’d seen on the beach, probably due to last night’s fire. Leo placed his shirt and egg parcel a few paces away, then stood to face me and lifted one of the guns still hanging from my neck. About the length of my forearm it was pretty unremarkable—except for the grinning horse’s head carved into the butt. The flintlock mechanism sat atop and just afore the butt, and I wondered why Leo referred to it as a pecking bird. I thought it looked more like a man clutching the flint to his chest as if he were about to run off with his booty.

  “Have you held one of these before?”

  “No, Erik wouldn’t let me near his guns—he kept them either locked up or on his person. I’m sure he knew who would be in my sights if he were careless.”

  “He didn’t strike me as a careless man.”

  “No.”

  He held it out to me. “Feel the weight of it.”

  I took it off him and grasped the butt.

  “Don’t point it at me!”

  “My apologies.” Chastened, I turned and pointed the
heavy gun at the lump of driftwood, then pulled the trigger. The flint struck the steel striking plate but, apart from a spark, nothing else happened.

  “They don’t work very well if they’re not loaded,” Leo said, smiling anew at my embarrassment. Then he looked serious again.

  “I’ll show you how to use this, but I need you to pay attention. One stray ball could kill anyone aboard, and I’m not ready to fall just yet—certainly not by your hand.”

  I nodded, but he hadn’t finished.

  “However difficult you find this on land, it will be three times as hard on the deck of a moving ship, especially charging your powder. One stray spark in the wrong place could send Freedom ablaze to the bottom. Do not spill it.

  “Another thing, neither pistols nor muskets match well with water, so make sure you always keep them dry. If your powder gets wet, or the metal rusts, you may die when you could have lived.

  “Next, if you have a gun in your hand you are more likely to be shot at in return.” He paused. “And you’ll be more likely to kill.”

  I looked at him, not knowing how to respond to that, but I didn’t have to.

  “Loading is simple.” He took the horn of powder from me and poured a capful down the barrel before re-securing it and tucking it into the red sash wound around his waist. “Ball?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You have the balls—the shot,” he said, smiling.

  “Oh . . . yes.” I dug the small canvas bag out from the sash he’d given me when I first came aboard. My fingers were shaking slightly and I cursed them—and the fumble I made of untying the bag and extracting a lead ball about the size of my smallest fingernail.

  Leo, still smiling, dropped it down the barrel, along with a greased patch of cloth which I also fumbled out of the bag. He slid out the ramrod from under the barrel, tapped down firmly and replaced the rod. Next he pulled out the pan to the right of the cock holding the flint, and poured in a little fine powder. He pulled the cock back halfway and asked, “Are you sure you want to do this? You don’t have to, no one will think any the less of you.”