The Captain`s Vengeance

think it was a saint's day pageant. Fireworks, band, and all, by-'

'And did they say, ah… how much was coming, Mister Caldecott?' Pollock asked, his eyes slit in avaricious calculations.

'Oh, bloody millions, sir!' Caldecott happily replied, pouring himself a glass of wine from the sideboard carafe. 'A million pounds in real money. And that was the low guess. The more wine, the higher.'

'Damme!' Lewrie marvelled at their pirates' daring. 'They're not fleeing, Mister Pollock… they're off to try to take it!'

'Henri Maurepas,' Pollock shrewdly mused. 'Is he bound up with the conspiracy, he must have been the one that told them about it.'

'All the more reason for haste, sir,' Lewrie exclaimed. 'Catch them in the act, nab ' em red-handed. Your boat, sir… instanter!'

'With the bloody treasure ship alongside, arrah?' Liam Desmond muttered in awe of the possibilities. 'Jaysus, Joseph, an' Mary!'

God A'mighty! Lewrie frenziedly speculated; A million Spanish dollars'd be a quarter million pounds. Captain 's share is two-eighths so… sixty-two thousand, five hund… JESUS CHRIST!

'Right, lads, we're off!' Lewrie cried, banging his hands together in urgency. 'There's nought we may do to the local villains, this Maurepas or Bistineau, Mister Pollock. No time to scrag 'em, but… did someone put a flea in the Spanish authorities' ears once the money is taken, hmmm? Let those idle bastards in the Cabildo do our work?'

'I do imagine something could be, ah… arranged,' Mr. Pollock decided with one brow slyly, contemplatively cocked.

'And look to the safety of your emporium hulk as we sail, sir,' Lewrie further said, gathering up his discarded things. 'Bistineau's store… is it nearby to anything you value?'

'I don't…'

'We came t'get our prize ship back, but that ain't in the cards, Mister Pollock,' Lewrie quickly explained. 'Her cargo's lost to us as well, safely cached in that bastard's store and warehouse. We can't have either, I mean to make sure no one profits from her. Just before we set off, I intend to set 'em all afire and burn 'em to the ground… and the waterline!'

BOOK FIVE

Prospero: Now does my project gather to a head.

My charms crack not, my spirits obey, and time

Goes upright with his carriage. How's the day?

– The Tempest, Act V, Scene 1

William Shakespeare

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Boudreaux Balfa squatted on the lip of the canvas-covered cargo hatch, horny bare feet and stout, suntanned shins splayed either side of a smallish wooden keg, a prosaic bulge-sided 5-gallon barrico that one could find anywhere liquid goods were sold… though this one had neither tap nor bung. The lid, which had been hatcheted open, had the King of Spain's royal crest burned into it, so one might have mistaken the barrico for one containing only the costliest, smoothest, brandy for aristocratic tables, but…

Capitaine Boudreaux Balfa, L'Affame, dipped his hands into that 5-gallon barrico and ran his fingers through silver, not spirits. If the Mexico City mint workers hadn't cheated their masters, a 5-gallon wooden barrico should contain 1,000 pieces of silver, 1,000 Spanish dollars. Less the tare weight of the keg, Balfa knew from his previous lootings, the mint simply shovelled loose coins into a barrico 'til the heavy scales balanced at 55 pounds, about as much as a government dock worker or slave employed at public works could lift by himself. If a mint employee pocketed a few on the sly, well… it was almost expected. Balfa rather doubted that the count would come out exact, but then… who the Devil cared?

'Ahh-yeee!' Balfa cried in a high, thin two-note howl of victory. 'By Gar!' he shouted, drumming his heels on the deck and tossing a double handful of coins high aloft, without a care where they landed.

A pistol shot drew his attention. That whippet-lean boy, Jean-Marie Rancour, was flinging silver dollars over the side so his friend Don Rubio could shoot them like ducks on the wing. Most shots went wide of the mark, but again… who the Devil cared when there was so much money for the taking? A quick pair of shots below-decks sounded, muffled but distinct, followed by the scream of a mortally wounded man and the keening howl of a survivor of the ship's crew whose hiding place had been found, as he was dragged from the side of his slain comrade and hauled up from below for the further amusement of the triumphant pirates.

Balfa squinted with concern when he saw that one of the sailors who fetched the survivor up was his own son, Fusilier; he was a bit relieved, though, to note how his son hung back from actually manhandling the poor, doomed bastard. No, it was those two brothers, Pierre and Jean, who held the man by his upper arms and lugged him onto the deck, laughing and taunting the fellow, crying out to their fellow buccaneers that a fresh victim had been discovered.

Fusilier trailed behind their victim's scrabbling bare feet, an ashen cast to his features, eyes flicking right and left as if in some fever, his cheeks red, and gulping in trepidation.

Boudreaux Balfa did not want his son to follow in his bloodied footsteps; he'd adamantly decreed, for his poor, dead wife's sake, that L'Affame would be the last pirate of their clan, that he would make an honest living on the land that piracy had bought them, that Boudreaux would make sure that Fusilier and Evangeline would grow up respectable and in the fear of the Lord, if he had to kill them to do it. He would leave them property six arpents wide and fifty arpents deep, from their good dock on Bayou Barataria to far back into the cypress swamps, with channels and sloughs for rice fields, enough solid land for cotton and sugarcane, enough cleared land where thirty or fourty head of cattle could graze, on his vacherie, twice the herd any neighbour could boast.

Three hundred arpents, over 250 British acres, enough to support generations of Balfas in comfort and self-sufficiency-if it wasn't in debt now and then in bad years with bankers and crop factors in the city. His old 'trade' could provide a hedge against its loss.

So when the de Guilleri brats and their cohorts had come ghosting up to his landing the night that Boudreaux had invited friends and neighbours over for his monthly rustique, to sing the old French homeland tunes and those of long-lost Acadia, to dance barefooted on hard-packed dirt or softer grass, to drink and feast and court and carry on, well… Even if they'd come 'dressed down' like the old feudal landlords or aristos of the Court at Versailles did when playing peasant among their lessers, once they'd gotten him aside and had imparted their fabulous news, the temptation had simply been too great. His son, Fusilier, had begged and pleaded for just one adventure by his side, and Fusilier had been too hot-blooded and eager to be denied, despite his promises to his dead wife.

'Madre de Dios, por favor, senores, no!' the fresh victim cried in a squeaky child's despairing voice, crawling on his knees with tears streaking his face, searching for just one with mercy in his heart.

Instead, he was hauled to his feet, held pinioned from either side as a burly but sweet-faced crewman strode up to him, laid a hand on his shoulder as if to reassure him, then jabbed a wide dagger into his belly..: once, twice,