need.”
“I need an invention,” Hunter said. “You must fabricate something which does not exist.”
The Jew wiped tears from his eyes. “Tell me,” he said. “Tell me.”
…
MR. ENDERS, THE barber-surgeon and sea artist, delicately applied the leech to his patient’s neck. The man, leaning back in the chair, his face covered with a towel, groaned as the sluglike creature touched his flesh. Immediately, the leech began to swell with blood.
Mr. Enders hummed quietly to himself. “There now,” he said. “A few moments and you will feel much better. Mark me, you will breathe easier, and show the ladies a thing or two, as well.” He patted the cheek that was under the towel. “I shall just step outside for a breath of air, and return in a moment.”
With that, Mr. Enders left the shop, for he had seen Hunter beckoning to him outside. Mr. Enders was a short man with quick, delicate movements; he seemed to dance rather than walk. He did a modest business in the port, because many of his patients survived his ministrations, unlike those of other surgeons. But his greatest skill, and his true love, was piloting a vessel under sail. Enders, a genuine sea artist, was that rare creature, a perfect helmsman, a man who seemed to find communion between himself and the ship he guided.
“Are you needing a shave, Captain?” he asked Hunter.
“A crew.”
“Then you have found your surgeon,” Enders said. “And what’s the nature of the voyage?”
“Logwood cutting,” Hunter said, and grinned.
“I am always pleased to cut logwood,” Enders said. “And whose logwood might it be?”
“Cazalla’s.”
Immediately, Enders dropped his bantering mood. “Cazalla? You are going to Matanceros?”
“Softly,” Hunter said, glancing around the street.
“Captain, Captain, suicide is an offense against God.”
“You know that I need you,” Hunter said.
“But life is sweet, Captain.”
“So is gold,” Hunter said.
Enders was silent, frowning. He knew, as the Jew knew, as everyone knew in Port Royal, that there was no gold in the fortress of Matanceros. “Perhaps you will explain?”
“It is better that I do not.”
“When do you sail?”
“In two days’ time.”
“And we will hear the reasons in Bull Bay?”
“You have my word.”
Enders silently extended his hand, and Hunter shook it. There was a writhing and grunting from the patient in the shop. “Oh dear, the poor fellow,” Enders said, and ran back into the room. The leech was fat with blood, and dripping red drops onto the wooden floor. Enders lifted the leech away and the patient screamed. “Now, now, do be calm, Your Excellency.”
“You are nothing but a damned pirate and rascal,” said Sir James Almont, whipping the cloth off his face and daubing his bitten neck with it.
…
LAZUE WAS IN a bawdy house on Lime Road, surrounded by giggling women. Lazue was French; the name was a bastardization of Les Yeux, for this sailor’s eyes were large, and bright, and legendary. Lazue could see better than anyone in the dark of night; many times, Hunter had gotten his ships through reefs and shoal water with the help of Lazue on the forecastle. It was also true that this slender, catlike person was an extraordinary marksman.
“Hunter,” Lazue growled, with an arm around a buxom girl. “Hunter, join us.” The girls giggled and played with their hair.
“A word in private, Lazue.”
“You are so tedious,” Lazue said, and kissed each of the girls in turn. “I shall return, my sweets,” Lazue said, and crossed with Hunter to a far corner. A girl brought them a crock of kill-devil, and each a glass.
Hunter looked at Lazue’s shoulder-length tangled hair and beardless face. “Are you drunk, Lazue?”
“Not too drunk, Captain,” Lazue said, with a raucous laugh. “Speak your mind.”
“I am making a voyage in two days.”
“Yes?” Lazue seemed to become suddenly sober. The large, watchful eyes focused intently on Hunter. “A voyage to what end?”
“Matanceros.”
Lazue laughed, a deep, rumbling growl of a laugh. It was an odd sound to come from so slight a body.
“Matanceros means slaughter, and it is well-named, from all that I hear.”
“Nonetheless,” Hunter said.
“Your reasons must be good.”
“They are.”
Lazue nodded, not expecting to hear more. A clever captain did not reveal much about a raid until the crew was under way.
“Are the reasons as good as the dangers are great?”
“They are.”
Lazue searched Hunter’s face. “You want a woman on this voyage?”
“That is why I am here.”
Lazue laughed again. She scratched her small breasts absently. Though she dressed and acted and fought like a man, Lazue was a woman. Her story was known to few, but Hunter was one.
Lazue was the daughter of a Brittany seaman’s wife. Her husband was at sea when the wife found she was pregnant and subsequently delivered a son. However, the husband never returned - indeed, he was never heard from again - and after some months, the woman found herself pregnant a second time. Fearing scandal, she moved to another village in the province, where she delivered a daughter, Lazue.
A year passed and the son died. Meanwhile, the mother ran out of funds, and found it necessary to return to her native village to live with her parents. To avoid dishonor, she dressed her daughter as her son and the deception was so complete that no one in the village, including the child’s grandparents, ever suspected the truth. Lazue grew up as a boy, and at thirteen was made a coachman for a local nobleman; later she joined the French army, and lived for several years among troops without ever being discovered. Finally - at least as she told the story - she fell in love with a handsome young cavalry officer and revealed her secret to him. They had a passionate affair but he never married her, and when it ended, she chose to come to the West Indies, where she again resumed her masculine role.
In a town like Port Royal, such a secret could not be kept long, and indeed everyone knew that Lazue was a woman. In any case, during privateering raids, she was in the habit of baring her breasts in order to confuse and terrify the enemy. But in the port, she was customarily treated like a man, and no one made any great cause over it.
Now, Lazue laughed. “You are mad, Hunter, to attack Matanceros.”
“Will you come?”
She laughed again. “Only because I have nothing better to do.” And she went back to the giggling whores at the far table.
…
HUNTER FOUND THE Moor, in the early-morning hours, playing a hand of gleek with two Dutch corsairs at a gaming house called The Yellow Scamp.
The Moor, also called Bassa, was a huge man with a giant head, flat slabs of muscle on his shoulders and chest, heavy arms, and thick hands, which curled around the playing cards and made them seem tiny. He was called the Moor for reasons long since forgotten; and even if he were inclined to tell of his origins, he could not do so, for his tongue had been cut out by a Spanish plantation-owner on Hispañola. It was generally agreed that the Moor was not Moorish at all but had come from the region of Africa called Nubia, a desert land along the Nile, populated by enormous black men.
