“I do not know. That would be up to all to decide. I would say oui. They will not risk their hides with the rest of us. I also think it fair they split either the value of the cargo or the ship amongst themselves if they are to take her in alone. It is a gamble for someone, any way it is done.”
“Who else is capable of sailing her to port?”
“I would imagine Hastings.”
“So anyone who volunteered to be quartermaster.”
He nodded. “I need to finish your other foot.”
“Will this affect us?”
“I feel we should stay with Striker.”
I nodded and bit the stick again. I was not sure how much use I would be in crewing a ship, if I was actually expected to do something involving sailing. I realized I should probably continue the education I began on the King’s Hope.
I waited until he finished a stitch and removed the stick again to ask, “Can you navigate?”
“A little.”
“Would that be comparable to the little you know of medicine?”
“Possibly,” he grinned.
“And you call me competent,” I teased and bit the stick again. I had indeed married well.
He finished with my other foot, and bandaged both of them. They ached. Gaston cleaned his tools with the remainder of the wine. He mentioned he would need to have Michaels boil the needles before he used them again.
For a moment I considered licking the last drops from the bottle.
“I would like some wine,” I said. Gaston frowned and went to find some on the Spanish ship.
Most of the men were returning from the flute, some only to retrieve their belongings. There was a great deal of ill will in the air. In the strange post-battle anxiety I often experienced, I was concerned that the ship would cast off and Gaston and I would be stuck on different vessels. I knew it was absurd, but I found myself eyeing my musket where it was wrapped in the alcove. If I had it in hand, I could shoot anyone attempting to cut the ropes. Thankfully Gaston returned before I could crawl down to get it. He had rum and news.
“There will be a vote,” he said. “Hastings will sail her to port. The vote is over the division of the prize.”
I was relieved. I did not like Hastings, and sending him off with a load of wood seemed fitting. In the end, that is what we did. The vote was close; but it was even decided that he, and any who went with him, could retain the money for the cargo. The ship herself would be sold at auction; and that money would be shared amongst everyone who returned to Port Royal on the North Wind or any other prize she took. Ten men went with him, leaving us with fifty-five and considerably more deck space.
Bradley was concerned about the number of men remaining. He wished we had started with more. I could scarcely imagine how we could have crowded more on the sloop to begin with. And as it was my understanding that the North Wind could be sailed with six or so, that left a good fifty of us to take other vessels. After what I had witnessed today, it did not seem very hard.
That night there was a great party with the alcohol the Spanish had been carrying. I could not stand, let alone dance. So I sat with Gaston in our alcove and drank, while I looked at the dirty pictures in the one book and he watched the stars. When all finally quieted, I had been hard for hours, despite the pain in my feet.
Our wolves joined us, and we all bedded down. I waited patiently until they slept, lying as I often did, with my forehead against the wall, Gaston against my back, and my member firmly in hand. I felt him stir, and immediately stopped and waited to see if he was just rolling in his sleep. A perverse part of my soul wanted him to know what I was about, to see if it garnered any reaction. The rest of me was terrified that he should see or hear my dissipation.
I felt his hand in the center of my back. I held still, knowing him to know that I was awake. I withheld a sigh. His hand stroked tentatively.
“Will,” he whispered, “am I helping or hindering?”
My relief was so great I would have found release then and there if my hand had been in motion. “I do not know yet.”
“Is it a matter of touching?”
“At the moment, it is a matter of condemnation.”
“Oh.” He was silent a moment. “What can I do to show you I approve?” He moved closer, his body pressing along mine, his weight on my back. This position would normally have engendered fear, but at the moment, in the grips of arousal, it engendered quite the opposite.
“That will do,” I gasped; and stroked a dozen times and came harder than I had in months.
I slept better than I had in months, as well. I dreamed of the River Arno, running blood-red. But this time, it was because it ran red with blood, not because it reflected the setting sun. I wondered what the Gods were trying to tell me now.
Fifteen
Wherein We Descend Into Hell
Hastings sailed away with the prize, and the North Wind returned to working her way up and down the path the Flota would take to Havana. We were at it for the next two weeks, and it was very much like looking for a needle in a haystack. The prisoners we interrogated on the prize had not even known when the Flota would sail from Vera Cruz. The Spanish were very secretive about such matters. However, as it was the second week of May, and the Flota usually spent a month in Havana before sailing for Spain in June, we knew they should be en route now if they had not already slipped by us.
If we missed them going to Havana, we would be forced to wait a month until they departed, as we obviously could not attempt to take a ship in Havana’s harbor. Tales were told of many a rover taking one just outside the forts’ cannons, though. This seemed madness to me. Tales were also told of rovers missing a fleet they had waited weeks for, due to misjudging the time and careening or provisioning when the great ships passed. So we did not stop looking. Thankfully we had refreshed our water a few weeks before, and the boucan was holding up admirably. We had been reduced to rationing fruit, though.
It was decided that, if we did not spy the Flota in the next week, we would sail to Havana and take a look at their port to see if the fleet had slipped by us. If they had, we would find a place to provision along Cuba’s northern shore or in the cays of the Bahamas, and then catch the Flota in the Straits of Florida. If that failed, we would be forced to make a decision between returning to Jamaica empty-handed or sailing back around Cuba to await the Galleons coming up from the Main. They usually arrived in Havana in July.
I had begun to understand why no one could tell how long a roving voyage would be. We were at the mercy of so many variables that it was impossible to extrapolate a duration, unless one set limits on it in some fashion. I personally, probably owing to coming from cooler climes, hoped that with or without further prey we would return home by winter. I was actually beginning to become a little obsessed with this idea. The dreams I had on the King’s Hope, of sailing forever with sharks in our wake, had returned.
Of course, we did not need to return home by winter, as it would not become cold here. And the general mood of those about me was that we would not return poor. They had too many debts, and no money to keep them fed in Port Royal until the next cruise. This sloop was home for many of the buccaneers. They thought of no land as their own. They did not have houses they owned to return to. Here on the ship, they did not have to pay for any of the necessities of life with anything other than their share of the labor.
“How many months of the year do you spend on a ship?” I asked Gaston one afternoon.
He smiled and tousled my hair. “We should trim.”
“That long?”
He chuckled. “Is this another thing that you have failed to think through?”
“Oui.”
“Other than raiding ashore and careening, I have spent close to twenty-two of the last twenty-four months on a ship,” he said.
“That long,” I sighed.
I let him trim my hair back to stubble, for the second time since we had set sail a mere eight weeks before. I knew I had li
ttle to complain about. Yet the voyage to Jamaica, which was all I had to compare this with, had come to its end before eight weeks.
As he ran his fingers and a blade next to my scalp, I let myself think of how very much had changed in my life in a mere two months. I had a partner and lover. I was not alone. Despite my current restlessness, I was generally content. Other than the floor constantly moving, and being crammed together such that it was difficult to find a place to stand alone, and the monotony of our diet, and the lack of alcohol and horses, it was little different than any other place I had lived. I laughed to myself, though it was true. Even when I lived as I was accustomed – in large rooms with large beds, and ready wine, and horses to ride, and all of the other niceties of civilized life amongst the nobility – I had still spent most of any given day sitting about doing nothing or conversing with my associates. In that, life onboard the sloop truly did not differ from life in Florence, Paris, or Vienna.
And of course, such places had been devoid of Gaston. I lolled my head back onto his shoulder and kissed his jaw.
“Have I been complaining? If I have, I am sorry. There is no place that I would rather be than here with you.”
“Liar,” he whispered. “You would rather be someplace with more room and fewer people, with me.”
“Oui, with a door that closed and a bed and tub and servants and…”
He laughed briefly and sobered. “I have forgotten how to live that way. Theodore’s was very strange.”
“Do you find it uncomfortable or merely odd?”
“I do not know. You will laugh, but I am no longer accustomed to living amongst men, if I ever have been.”
Pete was napping almost atop my foot. I could see twelve men from where we sat. I laughed. “I do think I understand your meaning, though. You mean civilized men.”
He smirked, “These are civil.”
“Oui, they are all armed.”
He shrugged. “I understand the order of things here.”
“Will you spend time ashore with me as I have to?”
“Of course. There is no place I would rather be than with you.” He kissed my forehead.
I closed my eyes, and reveled in lying across his lap and feeling the breeze on my scalp.
The night after we took the flute had definitely begun a new phase of our relationship. He was far more receptive to my touch, and he actively participated, though at a distance of sorts, in my obtaining pleasure. Sometimes he would press against me from behind as he had that first night; and other times I would lie upon my back, and he would lie beside me with his head on my shoulder and a leg across my thigh, as I took myself in hand. He never came in contact with my manhood, or allowed me to caress him in a carnal fashion. I was content in this for the time being, as simply having his tacit consent brought me happiness.
Two days after my second sheering, we raised sail on the Flota, as ships popped one by one above the horizon. There were twenty-seven in all: five galleons and twenty-two well-armed merchantmen. They formed a ragged line along our southern horizon, as they beat their way upwind with as much canvas crowded on their yards as they could carry. We were running before a reaching wind, toward them. The Bard and Bradley conferred, and we shot toward the middle of the line and through it; and the Bard did truly begin to sail circles around them, as we hung on the rails and had a good look at each in turn.
I was sure one of the men of war would turn and pursue us, but then I noted two things: the galleons were too fat and big to ever chase our sloop, and thus they posed no danger to us as long as we did not come in range of their guns; and, we were not the only rovers pursuing the fleet. There were three other buccaneer ships following along like sharks.
So we were unmolested as we observed which of the Flota’s vessels sat low in the water, were well-armed, were lagging behind, seemed slow in making a tack, and anything else that might prove noteworthy and help us choose a target. To say they knew of our presence during this activity would have been an understatement. We could see the Spanish officers watching us while we watched them. They were hapless fat sheep trying to swim as fast as they could, while the sharks circled ever closer.
And they were fat ungainly things in the water, too. I now truly appreciated how sleek our sloop was in comparison. Not merely in terms of aesthetics, but also in relation to the function underlying her overall design. The Spanish ships were large and bloated from bow to stern, with towering fore- and aft-castles rising high above the water, as if small houses had been dropped at the front and back of her decks. The North Wind was designed to move swiftly on the water, and therefore she could not carry a large amount of cargo or guns; the galleons were designed for carrying weight, whether cargo or munitions. They were more floating buildings than craft designed to ride the winds. They could carry a great number of cannon, though; even the merchantmen had us outgunned several times over.
Despite the guns, their only hope lay in letting a few sacrificial lambs slow their pursuers while the rest beat their way to safety. In looking at the larger tapestry of the situation, it was a ridiculous notion. There is no true safety on the seas; they could be followed to Havana. But when one considered the speeds, where we sailed, and the exigencies of capturing a ship, it was obvious that if we rovers stopped to engage, it would be more difficult for us to catch the fleet again; and there was always the chance we would lose them until they were at harbor. Thus the ships at the front of the flotilla had the best chance of escaping: if we engaged there, we would become targets for the next ship in line. So it behooved us to pick prey from those in the rear.
However, the ships trailing the rest were the ones they viewed as the most likely to be lost. Since the Spanish would not choose to lose their most precious cargo, the ships lagging behind would not have it. So we did not want the easy pickings at the rear.
Of course, most of the gold was on the galleons, as those were floating fortresses of seven hundred or more tons, over fifty cannon, and at least five hundred men. They would be the real prizes; and yet they were out of reach, not by distance but by magnitude.
So we were tasked with picking the likeliest ship to have cargo we wanted, and waiting for it to become separated enough that we could pick it off without one of its fellows coming to its rescue. This was easier said than done, as all worthwhile things always are.
There were seven merchantmen loosely grouped in the lead, followed by a pair of galleons, including the general’s; then seven more merchantmen, once again loosely bunched, one galleon, five more ships, two more galleons, and the remaining two ships – one of which was trailing badly. The whole fleet took up several miles from front to back and was spread out quite widely, as they were all beating upwind and even disciplined navies do not have ships that tack together. From the middle, we swept swiftly around the back with the wind and then worked our way forward, tacking across their paths, always out of range.
Our deck was a bedlam of men arguing about this or that possibility, all of them staying off the cannon and staying evenly distributed, as there were enough of us to unbalance the ship and the Bard had threatened to start shooting if men did not stay out of the way of the sailors and the yard. Bradley and Striker had been studying every ship as we passed, and Siegfried had been making notes for them. Gaston and I joined the group on the quarterdeck in crossing back and forth to regard our potential prey as we sailed among them.
As we gave the lone galleon a wide berth, I watched her with longing.
“Ah, to dream,” I sighed in French.
Gaston rolled his eyes and snorted. When he spoke, he kept his already-quiet voice pitched for my ears alone. “It could be done. I doubt Bradley has the balls, but it is possible.”
“You think so?”
“They are arrogant, and rightly so with one of those. They think we would never dare. But look how low she sits, and all of her lower gun ports are closed. She is carrying cargo below, a great deal of it, and no cannon. So she only has the upper deck to def
end herself with. Look at the men on deck: most of them are not in uniform; they are passengers. There are so many people on her deck, the guns she does have are probably impeded. In a boarding, the passengers will impede everything.”
Pete was standing with us. “What?”
“How would you take her?” Gaston asked him in English.
“ComeInNormal. SweepHerPoop. BlockHer. HangOnHerFlank.”
It was what we had done with the flute, and was the standard buccaneer method of boarding a ship. I could have said the same.
Then Pete added, “Grenadoes. UseSlings.”
This departed from the usual tactics, but I could see his plan. One could kill or drive below a good number of men by lobbing grenadoes onto her decks.
“ThenGoSlow.”
Striker joined us, and I realized we had been overheard. “Get as many men on board as possible: not just boarders, but our musketeers as well. And then take her deck by deck until they surrender,” he said. “Release the rudder once you have the staff, and steer her away from the others. The lead galleon won’t come after if you’ve got this one’s cannon. Even if you haven’t taken the gun decks yet, they wouldn’t dare.”
Bradley was leaning on the rail, chuckling and shaking his head. “I’m getting old.”
Striker sidled up to him and said seductively, “Look at her. Look how low she sits. She’s just waiting to be liberated from those Spanish bastards. They’ll be telling their grandchildren about us.”
Our captain laughed harder. He looked over his shoulder at Siegfried and then the Bard. His matelot’s eyes gleamed; but his master of sail appeared distraught. Not as much as he had concerning the swine, but not enthusiastic in the least.
“What does she have?” the Bard asked.
I wondered at this until my companions turned as one and studied the galleon’s stern. Despite our somewhat oblique angle, it was evident she had four guns pointed behind her, or at least four gun ports.
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