The cook was English, enticed off a visiting vessel with absurdly high wages and a small harem of his own. He was good, but that did not mean he was trusted.
Each bit of food had a small piece carefully cut away where Yancy’s taster had taken his sample-cut cleanly to retain the neatness of the presentation, but cut obviously enough that Yancy knew that the food had been tested. A man as powerful as he had powerful enemies. He had to defend against assassination.
Lord Yancy reached for the bread, realized he was hungry, then stopped. What if his taster were part of a plot? He was the one person who could easily poison Yancy’s food. Taste it, declare it fit, then slip some poison or other in it.
He pulled his hand back slowly, as if the food might strike out at him like a snake if he made a sudden move. He felt his appetite melt away. He tried to recall if the taster had a family, a wife, children? If so, should he arrest one or more of them, hold them as collateral, with the promise that they would be tortured to death if he died of poisoning?
He was staring at the food, trying to formulate a plan of action, when he heard boots on the cobblestone veranda, walking fast, confident. Henry Nagel, Yancy’s quartermaster during his days on the account, his second in command now, his chief adviser, his lord chamberlain. No one else would dare approach so boldly. He held a canvas bag in one meaty hand.
“Ship just come to anchor, my lord,” Nagel said as he approached. “Arrived from London, forty days out. Brought mail. Captain brought it ashore, right off.”
Yancy turned and looked at Nagel, who stood a respectful five feet away. Nagel was the physical opposite of Yancy-a big, powerful brute of a man, a seaman and pirate through and through, but with enough insight to realize that it was brains, such as Yancy had, and not brawn like his, that made a man a leader.
“Henry, how loyal are the men of this island to me?”
“My lord,” Nagel began, and Yancy could hear the placating tone in his voice.
“Tell me true.”
Nagel straightened, tried to summon the words. He was the only man on the island who was not afraid of Yancy, and if his loyalty were not so far beyond question, Yancy would have had him killed. As it was, he could not imagine ruling St. Mary’s without Nagel, the only man who dared tell him the truth.
“My lord, the men here, they’re pirates. End of the day, they don’t give a tinker’s damn for any but themselves, but that ain’t something you don’t know. All us from the Terror, we what came here with you, we’d die for you and never think on it. You know that. The others? I reckon most of ’em would fight for you-if they thought there was a better than even chance you’d win against who you was fighting.”
Yancy nodded. “What of our defenses? How are they?” The battery and stockade on Quail Island looked formidable indeed, with ten heavy guns trained out over the water. Any ship going in or out had to run the narrow entrance, with the big guns at point-blank range.
But the appearance was deceiving. The guns had been there since Baldridge’s time. Indeed, in Baldridge’s time there had been forty of them, but Yancy had sold off most of them, reckoning ten were more than enough for the job.
Those that remained had received no maintenance for years. They were blacked now and the carriages repaired, but blacking and new carriages would not prevent them from blowing apart if the metal had grown weak through age or defects in the casting. Yancy had never fired them. He did not dare.
“Well, as to that,” Nagel said, “the stockade’s in pretty good shape. There’s some parts are rotting, but I mean to get some men on that, shore it up. Guns, well…”
“Yes, yes, very well.” Yancy had heard enough. He was suddenly tired of that conversation. “Is this the mail?”
“Yes, yes, my lord.” Nagel knew when to let a subject drop. He hefted the canvas bag and gently poured the contents onto the low stone wall. “Ain’t sorted it out. Thought you would want to see it first.”
“Yes, yes…” Yancy said, sifting through the letters that were piled on the wall. They were not all for him, of course. Some were for other denizens of St. Mary’s, those well enough established to receive correspondence there, those few men who could read and write or knew someone who could read and write.
Two letters from Yancy’s merchant in London, another from his merchant in Newport, Rhode Island. “Bloody thieves…” he muttered, setting those letters aside. They were his middlemen, and they robbed him with never a scruple, but he needed them.
He continued through the pile, separating his letters from the others. Here was a letter for Bartleby Finch, who operated one of the taverns near the harbor. Yancy had granted him permission, but still he did not trust the villain. “Let us see who is writing to this dog,” Yancy muttered, and he set Finch’s letter with his own.
A letter from his wife in New York; he wondered how she had smoked his whereabouts. She had been a pretty thing, the last time he had seen her, pale-skinned and blue-eyed.
His gaze wandered off for a moment, unfocused, as he thought of her. He loved the girls of his harem, every one of them, their dusky skin and dark hair. But he missed the creamy skin and soft blond hair of the white women he had known. He had had a surfeit of Malagasy girls. He longed for a woman of European blood.
Yancy shook off that thought, turned back to the letters. More nonsense from merchants, a letter from the governor of New York…
His hand paused in midreach as he saw a familiar seal. He lifted the letter from the pile, gently, as if it might break, and turned it over. Richard Atwood. He had not heard from him in over a year.
Atwood was one of Yancy’s triumphs, a well-placed secretary within the British East India Company. Yancy sent him yearly tribute in the amount of five hundred pounds. To Yancy it was a trifle, but it was more than twice the salary that the East Indian Company paid. In exchange, Atwood forwarded along shipping schedules, naval information, intelligence on the doings of the Great Mogul. Yancy had used that information to earn back many times what he had paid for it.
He unsheathed the ornate stiletto that he always wore at his hip. The razor-sharp blade sliced away the seal, and he unfolded the letter. The paper was covered with Atwood’s neat clerk’s handwriting in even lines. “Lord Yancy, I trust this finds you well…” it began, as Atwood’s letters always did. He knew to address his benefactor with respect.
As you, sir, are all too Aware, the Company has at Various times in the Past endeavored to make sundry attacks on what they perceive as the great threat of Pyrates in Madagascar. They have never met with any great success, in part, I flatter myself to think, due to my timely warnings of their pending Action, but also in part due to a want of intelligent or active officers to lead such an Enterprise.
There is now in the making another such Enterprise, but this one of a more Secretive Nature than the others. A few of the more influential members of the Company have undertaken to Outfit a private man-ofwar and tender for the purpose of routing out Pyracy in Madagascar and there is reason to believe that their enterprise will meet with greater success than those past. In part this is due to their affording every request of the commander in the article of weaponry, supplies, and men, who are well paid and very numerous, and this being just the beginnings of their Preparations.
The men who are secretly arranging this Expedition, with the consent of the Queen, have hired a privateer captain well known for his active nature and in whom they place great confidence. His name is Roger Press…
Yancy gasped as if he had been doused with cold water, felt his hands clench, heard the crackle of Atwood’s letter as he crushed it in his fist.
Press!
It was not possible. Yancy stared out over the water, but he did not see it. He saw only Roger Press’s ugly, pockmarked face, that damned toothpick wagging between his lips like a little accusing finger.
No, it is not possible. Press could not have escaped…
But how many were there with that name? And of all of them, how many would be of such a kidney as to lead a raid against a pirates’ stronghold? It was not inconceivable that Press had somehow redeemed himself, worked his way to a place of trust, at least trust enough that he might be given a secret and dangerous mission such as this.
Nagel stood patient but worried. He knew better than to ask Yancy what the trouble was.
Yancy looked at the date on top of the letter. The second of August, 1706. Almost three months past. If Press had sailed at the same time as the ship that had brought it, he could arrive any day. Even if he had not, he would not be far behind.
