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, and a third time, roaring with laughter as he did so. With a feral shout, half a dozen buccaneers hoisted him up and flung him overboard, cheered their own boldness, then broke up to hunt down any other lurking survivors.
Boudreaux nodded with sad pleasure to see Fusilier blanch and dash to the opposite bulwarks to puke up his meagre breakfast. At his side was the teenaged boy who'd fetched up the latest victim. He was heaving because he had no stomach for seafaring, and even a moderate chop turned him grass-green, quite unlike his older brother, Pierre.
Fusilier had no stomach for this, bon! Balfa thought. And this would be the last voyage for both of them. There was so much silver stowed below, their shares could support their lands for the next hundred years if they were frugal. No buccaneering scum as friends…
Pierre and the seasick younger Jean, those itinerant La Fitte brothers, had come up the bayou between cruises, looking for land and opportunities, they'd claimed. They had idled on his hospitality, did the least possible to repay it, and spent most of their time spooning his lovely but naive daughter, Evangeline, and turning Fusilier's head with tales of loot and plunder. Balfa had trusted neither one out of his sight, sure they were sniffing round for his hidden wealth! He'd been ready to run them off when the de Guilleris turned up, and once this adventure was done, he'd be glad to see the backs of the La Fittes.
"We did it, Boudreaux, mon vieux! We did it after all!" Jerome Lanxade cheered, capering and performing a creaky horn-pipe, coming up to embrace him, buss him French fashion on both cheeks, then pound him on the back. "So easy, it was nothing! Spaniards… pah! What a pack of toothless monkeys!"
Yes, it had been easy, so incredibly easy. The intelligence in the letter to banker Maurepas had been like all vaunting Spanish self-delusions, but an empty sham. That so-called company of stalwart soldiers had been thirty-odd idle, seasick Mestizos in shabby uniforms with poorly kept weapons, half-Aztec riffraff led by a fat sergeant, a brace of equally low-down corporals, and a pair of down-at-the-heels officers, one of whom, the senior capitano, had offered to surrender if he could join their merry marauding band for a share of the money!
The cannon were good, but their powder was poorly milled, damp with age and indifferent storage, and the "well-drilled" naval gunners-one per piece as gun-captains-outnumbered by spiritless, cowardly, and clumsy gutter-sweepings. Only the schooner's capitano and his naval officers had put up much of a fight once their vessel had stalked up to cannon-range, and those hellish, quick-firing air-rifles had put him and his quarterdeck party and helmsmen down in the first minutes, leaving the rest of the crew leader-less and adrift. Le Revenant had more swivel-guns-in the old days, they'd not been termed "murderers" for nothing!-and they'd had those air-rifles in the capable and deadly accurate hands of the de Guilleris, so the gun-captains, loaders, and rammers, along with the frightened, swaying infantrymen, were blasted off their feet faster than any troops could bear, with half the soldiers shot in a single, brutal minute! After that, no one could resist their howling, shrieking, sword-waving boarders, and the thing was done.
"Too bad we can't keep this schooner of theirs," Jerome Lanxade went on. "Might salvage her guns if we had the time, but…"
"No disguising her," Balfa spat. "She gotta go down, wit' all de evidence, by Gar."
"Give her a good cleaning, Boudreaux, a clean sweep down fore and aft, she could serve as our second raider," Lanxade posed, sweeping at his thin and rakish mustachios, "like scrubbin' up a whore over in Havana before you board her, hah? We'll get you a suitable ship, never fear."
"Won't need one, Jerome," Balfa said in a covert growl, telling truth if only to his longtime compatriot, perhaps the only man aboard whom he could trust. "So much silver, come to hand so easy… like I gets de shivers dat another prize push our luck. My luck, hein? By damn, I see all dat silver, I feels de rabbits runnin'. We get all o' dis ashore and split up, I callin' it quits."
"Damn the bastards!" Helio de Guilleri was raging as he came stamping heavy boot-heels up the companionway ladder from below. "Bedamned to all lying Spanish bastards! Cochons, salauds!"
"What is the matter, m'sieur?" Lanxade broke away to ask him.
"I've counted kegs, Capitaine Lanxade, counted them twice, and there aren't enough to make six million dollars!" de Guilleri seethed, lowering his voice at Lanxade's urgent hand gestures so their sailors wouldn't hear that they'd been denied a single sou. "There is not one ten-gallon barrico aboard, just five-gallon kegs. A thousand dollars each, none of the ones that hold two thousand!"
"Putain, mon Dieu!" Lanxade spat, blanching beneath his swarthy lifetime sea tan. "Mon cul!" he gravelled, teeth grinding.
"My ass!" Balfa groaned, too. "Dey didn' hide some down among d'eir water butts an' salt-meat kegs? How many barricos you find?"
"Only two thousand, Capitaine," Helio de Guilleri told him in a grim mutter, nigh snarling as if it was he who'd been robbed. "That only makes fifty-five tons of silver, no gold. Here!" he spat, making them look at a small ledger book. "Hippolyte found this aft, in their capitaine's cabins, in the mint official's bags. It says they carried only a third of the total shipment!"
"By damn, d'ose Spaniards get clever after all!" Balfa hooted with inexplicable laughter after a moment of thought. "Sent one ship close inshore to Texas Province, like lubbers feelin' d'eir way scared o' open water. But, dey done put de rest in two more fast schooners! Figure dey lose one, but de rest sail far out at sea… Might now be off Fort Balise, safe as lambs! But, mes amis," he slyly pointed out, "we still got two millions of it!"
"Lads won't be happy, though, cher, " Lanxade griped, plucking at his finery most fretfully. "They think we're fools, they've been cheated somehow… bad thing to do, to fail in our trade."
"Ah, mais oui, " Balfa uneasily agreed, grimacing over the tales of what had happened to even the greatest pirates who'd lost the trust of their crews… who'd seemed to lose their magic "touch."
"For now, there is rum, wine, food, and loot," Lanxade supposed, peering about the schooner's decks to see his crew busy with newly captured muskets and pistols, new cutlasses and infantry hangers hung by new baldrics over their shoulders. Dead men's hats were being quarreled over and gambled for, as were coats, waist-coats, shoes, and the few pairs of salvaged boots. "Rest of her cargo, the butts of Mexicano wine, and that peasant-brewed pulque and arrack… that can keep them satisfied for a while. Quiet, fuddled, and too drunk for a proper counting. Proper thinking."
"Enough silver for each hand t'get two, three keg apiece, right away," Balfa cannily speculated. "Delay de reckonin', n'est-ce pas? Set aside dead men's shares, in plain sight?"
Poor and poltroonish as the Spanish resistance had been, they still had managed to slay or mortally wound at least seven of their buccaneers before going under. Wives, children, and lovers were due a lost man's "lay." Or what Balfa and Lanxade could later swear was a proper share, after… deductions. Those wounded, but not mortally, were owed bonuses, too, depending on whether they'd lost something off their bodies; an eye, hand, digit, or foot, a leg… a "pension" paid in one lump sum if their seagoing life was curtailed by disabilities.
"You fear your own men?" Helio de Guilleri asked with a gasp of surprise. But then, he was used to absolute obedience and deference from house slaves and street negres, those below his social class. It never occurred to him, would never occur to any of his cohorts, that the piratical trade was the freest sort of democracy.
"They discover the sum we took is off, yes," Lanxade whispered, wondering if old Boudreaux might not be quitting the trade at the best time, after all… and might it not be in his interest to do so, too.
"Well, this schooner is worth a lot, too, so couldn't they wait until it, and that British prize, were sold, and we-" Helio asked.
"Non, mon cher!" Lanxade hastily objected. "This schooner must disappear, and quickly, before the Spanish begin a search for her. If they lose a guarda costa lugger, a few local merchant ships, that they could abide. Blame the Anglais. But a royal vessel, with two million dollars aboard? Even they would be stirred to action."
"Well, take her back to Grand Terre, unload her, and strip her of anything useful," Helio pressed, sounding almost whiny to them.
"Tow her back outta Barataria Bay, den sink her in deep water," Balfa cagily suggested, "so nobody ever see her again, by damn."
"Sink her?" Helio gawped, louder than he'd meant to. "Why can't she be sold… to some stupid Yankees, perhaps?" he plaintively posed as if ruing the loss of a single ecu of her worth.
"Sink her?" his sister Charite demanded, stalking up from astern to join them, her dainty left hand fisted about the hilt of her smallsword in sudden dismay, and her knee-high boots drumming on the decks. "Sink her, will you, messieurs!' She's the equal of Le Revenant, with better guns aboard her. We need her to begin building our own fleet! Helio, tell them! Carriages could be built, the artillery could then be used ashore… for our Creole army, for our coming revolution!"
"We were just discussing that, Charite, ma soeur, uh… " he lamely stammered, blushing under his sister's indignant glare.
"Capitaine Balfa has been promised a ship of his own," Charite continued, her colour high over any less-than-zealous enthusiasm for their cherished cause. "Et voila, here she is. When word gets out, hundreds of men will come forward to crew her. Capitaine Balfa then can choose only the best. The others can enlist in your regiment, mon frere. They will come like… that!" she exulted with a boyish snap of the fingers of her free right hand.
"Tiens, there is a difficulty, Charite," Helio muttered, gazing away, unable to meet her eyes. "We will speak of it later, if… "
"Let us speak of it now, Helio," she countered. "Or is it too complicated a matter for a mere woman to understand, hein?"
" Quel dommage. We're out of targets, alas," Don Rubio Monaster pretended to mourn as he and her cousin Jean-Marie casually sauntered up to join the leaders of the expedition, which was to their minds a natural right. They were still smirking over the "hunter's bag" they had shot or skewered while there yet had been survivors from the Spanish vessel's crew or armed guard. "Eh, something is amiss? Why all the long faces? We did just win a great victory, did we not?"
"They insist that we must sink this ship after looting her," Charite informed him with the slightest plaintive sound, as if looking for a supportive voice to champion her argument.
"Well, I suppose we should," Rubio said with a simper. "When a blind Spaniard could recognise her a mile off, ha ha! A pity surely. But, we can salvage her artillery and such."
"Hidden far up Barataria Bay, she'd be safe enough, as safe as Le Revenant has been," Charite hotly pointed out. "Cher Capitaine Balfa to command her, with two ships to prey on the Spanish cochons."
"I quittin', me," Balfa baldly told her.
"What?" Charite spat, aghast at that news. "But, you cannot!"
"Losin' dis ship, de Spaniards git too stirred up," Balfa laid out in a calm voice. "My share be more'n enough t'get by a long time. Got a bad feelin', mademoiselle. A longtime sailor's 'sight,' " he added with a shiver.
"But!" Charite spluttered for a moment, then turned icy cold. "Tres bien, m'sieur, " she said, distancing her demeanour. "If you have a… foreboding, then… we could promote a promising mate for command of this schooner. And honour you for your contributions."
"We cannot keep her, cherie, " Helio gravely told her. "It is a risk we cannot take."
"But we do need a second ship, yes?" Charite snapped, rounding on him as if he'd let her down, too. "If not at once, we could make a third cruise with Le Revenant and take a suitable merchant ship, then add to her armament with this ship's guns, yes? With news of this success, recruit more eager volunteers to man her, yes?"
"Well, of course, but…" Helio quickly agreed with a shrug of his shoulders, mostly to cool her ardour.
"Then I have a promising man in mind who seems more than eager for adventure," Charite schemed. "That mercenary former Anglais Navy man, Willoughby." She blushed as she raised that possibility to them, the mention of his name and nation. "He is nearly penniless, dismissed his service, and will do anything for riches. A very useful man who can be… lured." She blushed, too, to describe her lover in such a harsh fashion when the thrilling memory of his hands, his lips, his thrusting body was still fresh in her mind. "He would do anything for me, n'est-ce pas?" she intimated with a cruel grin forced to her lips.
"Not if he's run off in terror!" cousin Jean-Marie Rancour hooted with dismissive scorn and glee.
"Jean!" Rubio cautioned, but it was too late, and Jean-Marie waded in deeper despite the elbow aimed at his mid-ribs.
"We did for both of those uppity poseurs, didn't we, Rubio? The Anglais and that nosey Americain Ellison who followed you, Charite… that night you bearded the Anglais?"
"What… did… you… do?" she angrily demanded, breathing slowly but hard enough to flare and collapse her delicate nostrils.
"Shot both of them," Rubio gruffly confessed, nose-high for his motives, his actions, to be questioned. "Just before we gathered at your house to leave. They were not gentlemen!" he haughtily declared.
"Oh, you arrogant… stupid…" Charite raged, surprising all of them by leaping at Rubio to hammer her fists on his chest, driving him towards the starboard bulwarks; surprising them, too, by loosing a sudden flood of tears amid her ire.
"Rubio didn't kill him, the Anglais I mean, Charite!" Jean-Marie cried, trying to seize one of her arms as Helio went for another. "He put a scare on him, was all. He ducked too quick for a clean shot, he got off three shots at us, and got away! Helio and Hippolyte did for that El-isson. He and his men were dirty Americain spies, and I wager your Anglais pig is one, too, so…"
"Pompous, idiot. Vain and jealous!" Charite shrieked just as they peeled her off the startled Don Rubio, squirming and kicking at his shins in vain. Don Rubio Monaster went as pale as a winding-sheet, slack-jawed in astonishment at her reaction. In that instant, he realized he'd never possess her, that all that had passed between them had been "kissing cousin" teasing. Another, a despicable other, held her heart, and Rubio suddenly despised her, hating that Anglais with an equal revulsion-could have shot her as gladly as he'd shot at the Englishman. A new weapon, the man's agility and return shots; to get that close yet fail because he didn't use his old Jaeger rifle, hadn't been familiar with the Girandoni! His own righteous action had slain his hopes and dreams… and someone would have to pay!
Charite calmed, much too suddenly for any of them to credit, as if the eye of a Gulf storm claimed her rage. Her arms went out at her sides to fend off those who held her, nodding in grim understanding… brought her hands prayerfully together under the tip of her nose, to think… to bide.
"Tres bien," she finally muttered. "Very well. You enrage the Americains to find who shot their leader. You enrage the British merchant company, and they will try to avenge Alain," she bleakly sketched for them, clearing her too-tight throat several times.
"We can deal with any-" her brother Hippolyte disparaged.
"No! Mon Dieu, you have even wakened the Spanish!" she retorted. "Better you had… but it is much too late for second thoughts or sense, is it, messieurs?" she accused. And, like the gust-front of an ouragan, her icily controlled rage sent a frisson of Arctic chill over the bloodied deck. "Zut, putain! Goddamn your foolishness! You have put everything we've worked for at risk. You may have just destroyed our most cherished dream!"
It was too much for her. At last Charite Angelette de Guilleri hitched up a wracking sob, unable to master it, and girlishly dashed at her tears. Damned if she'd weep in front of them, but… she spun on her heels and ran aft for the looted Spanish captain's quarters for a precious space of privacy.
"Hmmm… well then," Capitaine Lanxade said, breaking their stricken tableau. He twirled one end of his mustachio, frowning as he listened carefully. It was much too quiet, suddenly. Even the rowdy, brawling, drunken buccaneers had been silenced by her unseemly cries, her attack on that arrogant, half-dago fop, Monaster.
Fierce and merciless as they could be, Le Revenant'?, buccaneers were sailors after all. Simple folk for the most part, they carried their emotions close to the skin, could slay a longtime shipmate over trifles in a drunken rage, then weep for days over the deed once they sobered up. Superstitious- even religious when all else failed-they'd been appalled to have a woman aboard ship at first, for that was as dangerous as whistling on deck, which might summon vengeful wind at such disrespect for the old sea gods.
Yet Mlle Charite had proved so entrancingly lovely to behold, so sunnily dispositioned, that she had endeared herself to them, and their string of successes with her aboard had made her almost a talisman, the scrappy mascot that brings good luck.
And didn't she handle a smallsword or light hanger as well as a man? Wasn't she a passing-fair shot, also? They could eagerly, and had eagerly, raped and murdered women passengers or slaves aboard some of their prizes, but this young girl of theirs was different! She was sacrosanct, not to be groped, touched, taken, or even spoken of by any hand in a scurrilous manner. What upset her, then, upset them, and if they got angry enough over the sight of their "cet jeune fille" raging in such a brokenhearted way, so contrary to her usual demeanour, then those who caused it stood in peril of being chopped into stew meat!
All Lanxade could hear for several long moments were the creaks and groans of the two lashed-together hulls, the slats and bangs aloft from un-tended yards and booms, and the drum-slapping of freed rigging. Then there came a faint growl and rumble of displeasure from several sailors, and he and his old mate Boudreaux Balfa shared a queasy look. From their long experience of dealing with the fractious and unpredictable sort of men who'd go pirating, they both feared that there would be trouble over this… even before the revelation of the shortage of expected loot.
"Women!" Don Rubio said with a lofty sniff, as if he had never placed much hope in so frail a vessel. "Were she not so foolish, she might eventually come to understand…"
"Shut up!" Lanxade harshly barked at him, taking sides in front of his men so they wouldn't end up turning him to chutney. "You men! There's tons of silver to be shifted, oceans of drink to salvage. Get back to work, before a British or Spanish man-o'-war interrupts us!"
"Mais oui!" Balfa quickly seconded. "Let's gather our spoils, mes amis. Allez, vite, ah-yee!"
The de Guilleri brothers, with cousin Jean-Marie, wandered off to commiserate with poor old Rubio, closely grouped about him to give their condolences for the vagaries of brainless girls.
Lanxade and Balfa drifted forward towards the prize schooner's forecastle and belfry, where they could confide in each other, casually stepping over the odd stripped and looted body that hadn't been tossed overside, as if they were no more than ring-bolts or coils of rigging.
" Un emmerdement, Jerome," Balfa said in a raspy voice. "We've really tromped through de shit dis time, by Gar."
"We need to get this ship off the sea and out of sight, vite," Lanxade muttered from the corner of his mouth, a confident grin plastered on his phyz for the crew's sake.
"Get de lads drunk an' stuffed wit' meat, too, before dey start cuttin' dose bebe' t'roats, too. Our crew likes her."
"Boudreaux," Lanxade said, leaning on the lee bulwark cap-rails and gazing out to the empty southern horizon, where even more trouble might pop up, all guns and officiousness. "Do you remember what it was we said, back at the Dry Tortugas? About showing these amateurs what real piracy looks like?"
"Hmm, ouais," Balfa said with a shrug, trying to recall.
"Two million dollars won't go that far with our lads," Lanxade fretted. "Not with Bistineau, Maurepas, and that goddamned Rebellion Fund of theirs each taking a cut, what is due our very young, stupid… employers, too, n'est-ce pas ? How are your shivers, mon vieux?"
"Oh, dere be a whole herd o' rabbit run up an' down my spine!" Balfa told him with an uneasy chuckle. "Why?"
"All of a sudden, I feel them, too, cher, " Lanxade confessed to him, turning to smirk. "Your talk of retiring makes me think that it may be a good time for me to 'swallow the anchor' as well. Havana or Cartagena… they are both delightful cities, where a well-respected-dare I even say famous!-former privateer could retire ashore," he said, preening at his mustachios and posing with a hand on the hilt of his smallsword like a grandee. "Well settled, famous, and rich. A well-built house overlooking the bay, perhaps? An honourable and respected and wealthy gentlemen, hein?"
"Oho!" Balfa gleefully grunted. "Some aspirin' lad of ours will take Le Revenant, sail her away to better pickin's. We can't kill dat girl, though," he speculated, making no real objection to a betrayal as he leaped on the most troublesome matter with his usual blunt acuity. "I stagger back to N'awlins, tell Maurepas an' dem a tale o' mutiny when de lads see all dat money, and I got away by de skin o' my balls. Who know where dey go after dey cut dem bebes'heads off, haw haw!"
"And I was slain after a gallant and heroic bit of swordplay?" Lanxade airily fantasised, drawing in his corseted stomach to make a more dangerous figure to his own mind. "Fierce as I tried to defend the poor young gentlemen, ah… quel dommage, " he said, simpering.
"Oh, mais oui, you kill a dozen before dyin'." Balfa snickered.
"But then… what will we do with our little mademoiselle?" Lanxade quibbled with a sober sigh. "She lives, she'll talk sooner or later, and her parents, the Spanish authorities will run us down. I wish to fuck my way to my dotage, Boudreaux, not get garotted before I've had a chance to amuse all the pretty wenches of Cartagena."
"We come up wit' somethin'," Balfa muttered, though what that would be, he hadn't a clue. He really didn 't want little Charite fed to the 'gators and crabs, but what other course was there?