by Various
Dr. Pratt, on the other hand, accompanied Carmelita Aponte over to the pirates’ schooner, where Robin hoped she would rest more easily, safely distant from the site of her fellow Spaniards’ mysterious disappearance. Robin also took pains to spare Carmelita the dreadful sight of her father’s stripped and bloodless corpse; only after the faltering senorita had been taken aboard Neptune’s Lady did the Slayer cut down Capitan Aponte’s body from the whipstaff and, purely as a precaution, sever the doomed mariner’s head before, with a bowed head and a moment’s prayer, consigning the unfortunate man’s body to the deep.
Many mouths, she mused, recalling the obscene stigmata branding the dead captain’s flesh. Aye, but whose?
* * *
Night fell quickly in the tropics, and soon the blazing Caribbean sun dipped beneath the waves. Heavy clouds, pregnant with unshed rain, obscured the moon and stars, rendering the night as black as a leech’s heart. Choppy seas and strong winds made lamps too dangerous, so the El Dorado sailed by the light of a single candle, lodged in the wooden binnacle fore of the tiller so that the helmsmen could read his compass by the candle’s flickering glow.
Alone in the crow’s nest, overlooking the night-shrouded galleon, Robin cursed the clouds concealing the moon. How could she hope to watch over the ship and her crew when the elements themselves conspired to hide her faceless adversary from sight? Even her superb eyes had their limits.
A warm, salty wind blew from the northeast, stirring the fabric of her loose frock coat. Robin felt the roll of the ship, almost a hundred feet below her current perch. Keeping lookout from atop the mainmast was not a captain’s duty, but it was a slayer’s; in truth Robin was more concerned with watching out for whatever might be prowling the ship’s decks than in surveying the turbulent seas through which they sailed.
From the crow’s-nest the upper decks of the galleon appeared deceptively quiet. Only a handful of men worked the sails in concert with the helmsmen; the bulk of the crew, some four and twenty men, had retired to their freshly-acquired berths within the forecastle. Pacing impatiently, Robin stared down into the shadows, her concentrated gaze sweeping the El Dorado from stem to stern. Although the day’s searches had yielded no clandestine nest of leeches, she felt certain that some foul and loathsome bloodsucker still dwelt aboard the captured galleon, hungry to feast upon the lifeblood of her loyal buccaneers.
“Where are ye, you soul-lackin’ lubber?” she muttered. The toe of her boot tapped restlessly against the floor of the nest. “I’ve better things to do with me time than wait upon your vile pleasure.”
Glancing away from the ship below, she looked out past the bow. If she strained her eyes, she could barely glimpse the tops of Neptune’s Lady’s familiar masts. The treasure-laden schooner, sparing no effort in her haste to return to port, had easily outdistanced the much slower galleon. Robin felt a stab of irritation at being so blithely left behind by her own ship. I shall have to deal with George Newgate in due course, she resolved with a scowl. Alas, the duly-elected quartermaster was popular with the men, if not with their captain.
She turned her gaze toward the sea behind her. Lambent phosphorescence, glowing like faerie fire atop the cascading rollers, trailed behind the El Dorado in her wake. Robin wondered about the dead Spanish captain they had buried at sea many leagues astern. Did light of any sort penetrate the abysmal gloom of his watery resting place, or had his unfettered soul already ascended beyond such concerns?
Feeling a kinship toward a fellow seaman, regardless of his nationality, Robin vowed to avenge the other captain’s wretched death—if only the guilty party would show its hideous face!
Too restless to stay still, too weary to bear easily this endless nocturnal vigil, Robin yawned and returned to watching over the placid decks below, which remained maddeningly free of leeches, zombies, witch doctors, were-beasts, succubi, Flying Dutchmen, or any other malevolent emissary of Erebus. Her fingers hovered expectantly over the grip of her silver cutlass, yet hours passed without incident, and, as dawn approached, Robin began to suspect that her vigil had been in vain—until the echoes of a distant shriek caused her head to jerk upright and her sword hand to tighten around the hilt of her weapon.
“What the devil?” she swore, for the faint-yet-tormented keening came not from the ship below, but from somewhere just beyond the horizon. The schooner! she deduced at once, realizing to her horror that she had chosen to guard the wrong ship.
A heartbeat later she remembered just which vessel her watcher and Carmelita were sailing upon.
“William!”
* * *
They caught up with Neptune’s Lady just before dawn. The schooner was lying-to upon the aquamarine sea, its sails artfully set in opposition to each other so as to keep the ship more or less stationary. Robin chose to take this as a good omen, proof that, at the very least, someone remained alive aboard the other vessel.
Drawing nearer, she breathed a sigh of relief as she spied clusters of seemingly unscathed seaman milling about upon the schooner’s upper decks. Nonetheless, she wasted no time boarding Neptune’s Lady as soon as they overhauled the pirate craft, leaping over the galleon’s gunwales onto the planks of the smaller ship. Her boots touched down just forward of the mainmast, where the majority of the crew appeared gathered.
She knew at once that something was amiss. A foreboding silence greeted her arrival, while the faces of the men, which had positively shone with triumph and lustful anticipation when last she saw them, now seemed drawn and discontented, their sour expressions composed of equal parts fear and anger.
“About time ye got here, Cap’n,” George Newgate said with a sneer, as though he had not expressly chosen to place long, rolling leagues between the schooner and the El Dorado. A great hairy bear of a man, with a livid white scar over one eye, the quartermaster leaned insolently against the mainmast, his beefy arms crossed atop his naked chest. His bristling, blond beard had been bleached nearly white by the West Indian sun. “Ye fairly missed all the commotion!”
Robin ignored Newgate’s flagrant insubordination . . . for now. Craning her neck to peer over the head and shoulders of the motley throng crowding the schooner’s waist, she spotted Dr. Pratt and Carmelita standing apart from the others, in the shadow of the quarterdeck, their backs against the forward wall of the captain’s cabin. The physician had one arm draped protectively over the senorita’s shoulders while his other hand clutched the grip of a ready flintlock pistol. His countenance was, if possible, even more somber than customary.
“Well?” Robin demanded, striding across the deck toward the doctor and his charge. An empty bottle of rum, its neck snapped off by an impatient pirate, rolled fore and aft between the sailors’ feet. “What ill tidings do ye have for me?” Her probing eyes surveyed the crowd of sailors, finding certain faces disturbingly absent. “Where be Ezra Davies . . . and One-Eyed Ned?”
“Gone, Captain!” Newgate growled, stalking away from the mast. “And an ’alf-dozen others besides. Vanished without a trace in the dead of night!” He shoved his way through the mob to confront Robin face-to-face. Spittle flew past his tawny whiskers as he hurled his words at her like smoldering grenades. “Just like the Dons on that God-accursed galleon you led us to!”
Damnation! Robin thought bitterly. She blamed herself for not anticipating that the faceless evil upon the El Dorado might transfer itself from one vessel to another. “This be a dark, dastardly business, I grant ye,” she said, shaking her head mournfully before assuming a more determined mien, “but fear not, maties. I’ll track this contagion to its root, ye have me word on that!”
“Why, ye needn’t look very hard, Cap’n.” Newgate drew himself up dramatically and shook an accusing finger at Carmelita Aponte, still cowering beneath Dr. Pratt’s arm, her tremulous lips mouthing a ceaseless plea for deliverance. “There’s the baneful albatross that cost our shipmates their lives: that damned Spanish witch!”
“Belay that talk!” Robin barked. “Are
ye mad? Look at her! She’s no more dangerous than a wisp of seaweed. Less so, I warrant!”
“So ye say, Cap’n, but I ’ave me doubts.” He raised his voice so that all present could attend to his words. “Be it just a coincidence that this slip of a girl survived where so many able-bodied soldiers and seamen perished? We brought ’er aboard the Lady, out of the goodness of our ’earts, and now eight of our brethren have been spirited away to the Good Lord knows where.” A smirk betrayed his seditious designs as he stared pointedly at Robin. “ ’Tis well known that a woman aboard a ship brings nothin’ but ill luck!”
Robin swallowed hard behind her knotted silk cravat. A gaping pit formed in her stomach as she felt the mood of the men turning against her. Loyal crewmen, who had fought beside her through fire and steel, now looked away, refusing to meet her gaze. How many of them know my true sex, she wondered anxiously, and for how long have they known? Angry muttering mixed with sullen glances and sneers seemed to surround Robin as she backed warily toward Dr. Pratt and Carmelita. “Toss the Spanish whore overboard,” a scowling buccaneer snarled, spitting in the senorita’s direction, and Robin heard truculent voices murmur in agreement.
Her spine stiffened and she drew her cutlass. Although her deepest, most private doubts and fears appeared to be coming true before her eyes, she was not yet ready to cede command to the likes of George Newgate. “Stay back!” she warned, cutting a swath through the air with the blessed blade of her cutlass. “I’ve never sacrificed a defenseless hostage before, and, by thunder, I’ll be hanged if I’m startin’ now!” She snorted contemptuously at the panicky buccaneers. “The Spaniards’ gold came aboard this here ship as well, same as Senorita Aponte,” she reminded them. “Yet I don’t hear anyone suggestin’ that we heave all that glitterin’ booty over the sides!”
Her slashing blade drove the crowd of pirates back a few paces, so that they formed a half-circle around Robin, the doctor, and Carmelita, with the front of the quarterdeck at their backs. Robin hoped her stinging rebuke would take the wind out of this incipient mutiny, but George Newgate, damn his perfidious soul, pressed the issue further.
“Whose side are ye takin’, Cap’n?” he challenged her, all but flinging that last word. He drew his own sword and snatched a loaded pistol from his belt. “Maybe if ye’d worried more about yer own shipmates and less about some papist slut, Ezra Davies and the others would still be walkin’ these planks beside us, not condemned to suffer for all eternity in some unholy limbo!”
I thought the danger was aboard the El Dorado, she thought, racked with anguish and regret, else I would never have left Neptune’s Lady without a slayer! Her heart bled for the squandered souls of the missing buccaneers.
She knew better, though, than to justify herself to a rebellious crew. “Quite the orator ye’ve become, George Newgate, but do ye care to test me mettle with more than just empty words?” A murderous smile upon her lips, she beckoned him with her free hand while holding her silver cutlass aloft. “Come then, if ye have the stomach for it. I can always find another quartermaster.”
The scar-faced man blanched behind his beard, perhaps recalling Robin’s preternatural strength and speed. “This isn’t about takin’ command,” he blustered, lying through his teeth. “It’s about the safety of this crew!” He looked about him expectantly, seeking support. “Isn’t that right, lads?”
“I’m not riskin’ my skin for some halfbreed jinx!” another crewman called. Newgate’s cronies seconded the sentiment, crowding forward to lend their tattooed and sunburned weight to the quartermaster’s defiance. Of the rest, none seemed willing to stand up to the rebels for the sake of the captain or Carmelita. Be their fear that great, Robin had to wonder, or be it that we’re naught but mere women? It despaired her to think that her crew’s loyalty ran no deeper than her slender facade of masculinity.
In any event, it was clear as fresh spring water that more than a one-on-one duel with Newgate was in the offing. Her azure eyes narrowed as she coolly assessed her position.
Even counting Dr. Pratt’s flintlock, the odds were woefully against her. Very well, she thought, resolved to sell her life dearly if needs be. She smiled bleakly at the dark humor of it; after battling the ravening legions of hell for all these many voyages, in the end it was her own merry band of cutthroats that slipped her the Black Spot!
“Watch me stern,” she sharply instructed Dr. Pratt, concerned that furtive mutineers might attempt to drop down on them from atop the quarterdeck or perhaps from the spider’s web of rigging strung out above them. “And, pray, keep your eyes lifted.”
“Understood,” her watcher intoned solemnly.
Robin kept her own gaze squarely fixed on Newgate and his belligerent cohorts. “So,” she dared them, “shall we get to fightin’? Let us see whose blood will flood the scuppers!”
An uneasy silence ensued as Robin faced off against the encroaching pirates. None, it appeared, wanted to be the first to tempt the captain’s cutlass. “Damn ye all!” Newgate finally howled in frustration. “She’s just one scoundrel, by the powers, and a goddamned woman to boot! Rush her!”
An icy chill stabbed Robin’s heart as Newgate unfurled her most tightly wrapped secret. So be it, she concluded resolutely. After the initial shock, she felt strangely relieved to have the matter dredged up to the surface at last. No more flying under false colors.
“Wait!” another voice cried out, belonging to Jeremiah Pyle, the helmsman whose leathery neck Robin had but recently rescued from a leech’s fangs. “There be no need for bloodshed, mates! We have two ships, don’t we? Let each man choose with whom he sails, then let us go our separate ways!”
A chorus of approving shouts and exclamations applauded the proposed compromise, and even George Newgate appeared to welcome the chance to duck a battle to the death against Robin and her allies. “The ayes ’ave it!” he declared with magnanimous shrug. “But I claim the El Dorado, by virtue of me clear majority.”
Robin was more than willing to cede him the grander vessel, whose ominous history had now been overshadowed by the yet fresher depredations aboard Neptune’s Lady. For once, she found herself in agreement with the scheming quartermaster; as Newgate himself doubtless did, Robin prayed that the curse of the doomed galleon, which had seemingly shifted to the luckless schooner, would not move on again.
* * *
In the end Newgate and the El Dorado got the lion’s share of the crew. He therefore insisted that the bulk of the treasure be transferred to the galleon as well, an onerous and back-breaking chore that took up the better part of the morning. Soon enough, however, both vessels unfurled their sails and set course for the pirate refuge of Port Royal.
Now it was Robin’s turn to leave Newgate behind. Even with naught but a skeleton crew to man the sails, Neptune’s Lady quickly outpaced the lumbering galleon, ploughing the waves as nimbly as a leaping porpoise. The schooner’s own figurehead, carved in the likeness of a comely mermaid, with chiseled golden ringlets tumbling down her back toward a fishy emerald tail, looked out, as did Robin, over the churning expanse of sea before them. With a favorable wind drawing her sails, the Lady might well come within sight of Jamaica in two days’ time.
Robin wondered if any aboard the schooner would still be alive to see land again.
After ensuring that all was shipshape, and thanking the remaining crew for their steadfastness, she retreated to her cabin beneath the quarterdeck, where she found Dr. Pratt engrossed in his studies. The dead captain’s logbook was spread open atop the lacquered walnut desk, while ancient volumes of arcane lore were piled high upon the floor beside his chair.
Carmelita Aponte, fallen into an unsettled sleep, occupied Robin’s cozy berth in the side compartment, visible through an open doorway. By the piteous moans that escaped her lips, and the spastic twitching of her limbs, it was heart-breakingly apparent that slumber offered the poor maiden no relief from the nightmare visions and hellish memories plaguing her troubled mind. “Muchas
bocas,” she whimpered, not quite so softly that Robin’s keen ears could not hear her cryptic lament. “Tantas bocas!”
A shudder passed through Robin as she translated the foreign phrases into proper English. Many mouths. So many, many mouths . . .
“Have ye found anything?” she asked Dr. Pratt. Barely literate herself, she depended on her watcher for any scholarly assistance that might be required.
“I fear not,” he answered, raising his eyes from the handwritten text before him. He glanced cautiously at Carmelita’s sleeping form and lowered his voice before continuing. “The late Capitan Aponte’s log describes how, night after night, his entire crew gradually disappeared. It’s a classic pattern, which nearly always signals the presence of a lurking vampire aboard the afflicted vessel. This undead stowaway lurks in the lower reaches of the ship by day, emerging at night to prey upon hapless crew members, whose bloodless bodies the vampire then heaves over the rails, thus concealing his own presence.” Puzzlement was written upon his saturnine features. “And yet you say you found no evidence of an infestation aboard either ship?”
Robin shook her head. “I searched the El Dorado from stem to stern when we first found her, and just did the same for the Lady. I’ll prowl the ship again if ye like, but I’ll tell you plain that it would be a fool’s errand.” She paced restlessly about the narrow cabin. “If some foul thing be aboard, it’s beyond mortal eyes to see.”