trying to sire heirs on each other’s sisters and steal each other’s mistresses at the same time. Every one of these petty despots would cheerfully sacrifice his nearest rival to his deadliest enemy. If sense can be made of a time when upon the English throne sat a protestant Dutchman whose first language was French, while the Catholic Spanish were ruled by a bastard who swore fealty to a Holy Roman Emperor who was the German vassal of an Italian Pope, it cannot be made in these pages. Dear Reader, if you must read about it, go away and do so, but I vouch not to say where I shall be when you return.
After several tedious hours wandering through the labyrinth Polly had spread before us, I swear by Hecate’s figurehead each of us was as perplexed as another, until finally Ned spoke up:
“Beggin’ yer pard’n, Ma’am, but ‘tis sure thirsty work we’re about, and one or twain o’ these papers be a mite difficult to digest with a dry throat.” As he spoke, the Sailing-master was leaning back in a chair, both boot-heels on the table, turning this way and that a parchment upon which were delineated the intricate interweavings of the Hohenzollern family tree. Ned’s utter illiteracy being an open secret aboard Hecate, and the falsehoods embodied in the genealogy of that famous family being an open secret all over Europe, the irony of this remark was not lost.
My Quartermaster, who for all I knew was a graduate of a dozen different universities, was at that moment cross-referencing the casualty-lists of the battles of Ushant, Quiberon Bay and Cape St. Vincent, seeking any plausible candidate for my vengeance. Doubtless his research preferred those with portable fortunes above those with ancient titles, but so far his enquiries had been unrewarded. “Aye Ned,” he replied, “Ma’am, perhaps something to lubricate the investigation?”
“Polly!” I called, and in an instant my cabin-boy, who can only have been listening at the key-hole, drove his cocktail-trolley into the cabin. This astonishing vehicle he kept, by some Polynesian magic, ever stocked, ever at the ready to deliver whatever refreshment a circumstance demanded. Neither blockade nor embargo ever prevented Polly from procuring copious supplies of the most exotic spirits, elixirs and garnishes. Nor did he fail to appear bitterly crestfallen when, as ever, he was required to prepare rum-and-water for my lieutenants, and my own dirty martini with a pinch of pepper and a fat Aleppo olive. Polly’s dissatisfaction was mended by my invitation to make something for himself, though he could not do so without dashing away to change into a rather fetching emerald-green negligée trimmed with blood-red marabou, topped with a sequin-encrusted turban. Thus attired, he contentedly occupied a quarter-hour compiling a rainbow-hued concoction from which he sipped deliriously.
Some hours later, after sufficient rum had traversed Bonaparte’s tonsils to allow him to forget entirely that it had been his idea in the first place, I gave orders to come about and anchor in a sheltered cove scarce a league from the entrance to Montego Bay. There we would lie in wait for Orion, see whose pennant waved from her fore-top, and follow her whithersoever she went. I dispatched O’Sullivan and Bonaparte to their hammocks, bade Polly get into my own bed to warm it, and took a turn on deck alone.
Had I skill in words, I might attempt to describe the sensations perturbing my pounding heart. The moon had lately set below the horizon; uncountable stars glittered enchantingly in the heavens and the long, steady swell of the Caribbean sent a rippling phosphorescence across the waters, casting glistening spears of multi-coloured light that shattered like tiny, silent icicles against the hull. The rhythm of that unending swell pulsed like a heartbeat through the soles of my boots, drumming in the sinews of my calves and thighs, singing in my loins the sweet, stirring song of revenge. The mingled scents of salt and blood were in my nostrils and lust was in my heart.
Without a thought, without a reason, without a glance, I found the little dagger in my boot-top, and pressed it to my palm. Pricking with a tiny thrust, I bared a breast and smeared my own blood against it, swearing to Hecate, the witch-queen-goddess, that I would grasp my enemy’s heart in my hands and offer it, still beating, to her, her to choose whether to let it beat on, or to still it forever.
Inflamed, enraptured, I returned to my cabin. Polly lay asleep in my bed, a single fragrant candle illuminating his innocent face and the counterpane arranged around his magnificent torso creating a picture so enticing no artist could resist, or reproduce it. Shrugging off my blouse and skirt, I studied my reflection: a woman’s body, no longer a girl, but still firm and proud, a mass of jet-black curls cascading down my shoulders and a bloody hand-print on my naked bosom.
“Help me off with my boots, Polly,” I asked. With exaggerated courtesy, and with quaint contortions intended, I am certain, to keep hidden the fact that he was – there is no more polite expression for it – aroused, he peeled my boots off while pretending not to look at those parts of me with which I wield a power I can readily command, but not always control. I stretched back upon the mattress – indicating the stain on my breast, I begged him do what he might to cleanse it. I suppose he may have paled, or even blushed, but the effect of either under his nutmeg-coloured skin was imperceptible, and with a square of linen moistened at the gorgeous (if anachronistic) Sèvres ewer on my nightstand, he bent over me and dabbed tenderly at my bosom. In this posture it was futile to conceal the now much-amplified state of his excitement.
* * * * *
“Off you go now,” I said at last, “breakfast at six bells, thank you. Coffee, toast and marmalade, perhaps a boiled egg if there is one.”
And you, Dear Reader, may imagine what lies behind that modest curtain of asterisks, but never know.
V A False Flag
While the first soft, pink fingers of daybreak were teasing at my cabin windows, the lookout’s cry of “Sail, Ho!” awoke me. Springing from my bed to splash a little water on my face, I paused before the looking-glass to be sure that I was presentable and began to dress myself for a day at sea. Polly had thoughtfully laid out a pair of close-fitting black breeches, a clean white linen shirt (cut a little full in the sleeve for my liking, but Polly is, well, Polly) and a red-and-gold satin sash, fitted to carry the cutlass and brace of pistols, polished like jewels, that lay on my writing-desk.
Spy-glass in hand, I was soon on deck taking the salutes of the crew as I made my way to the foredeck, where my Sailing-Master stood peering into the half-light to the Northeast. Crammed with sail, but making little way in the light air, a smart-looking three-masted frigate was passing the harbour-mouth on an easterly course. Raising my glass, I made out a trim, dark-painted hull, a two-decker of probably forty or forty-eight guns. No figurehead, nor any other decoration could I discern, as though her makers wanted her to be anonymous. She looked quite deadly, but she was certainly not Orion.
My spy-glass, I should explain, is extraordinary. The lenses were left me by my father, who had them from an acquaintance of his, a Herr Zeiss, I believe. While every other glass in the Caribbean presented, if one had the art to see anything at all through its wobbly brass tube, a blurry upside-down view with an artificial rainbow around the edge, mine delivered an upright image of matchless clarity. I swear that when I die, as much blood will be spilled by my friends fighting over it as in avenging me.
When I made out the pennant swirling lazily from the unknown ship’s mizzen-top, I saw only an unintelligible clutter of quarterings – shields within shields, lions rampant in all directions and fleurs de lis strewn about like confetti. The eighteenth-century nobleman’s arms are his pedigree; in most cases a pictorial record of his generations of in-breeding. A few I could read quite well, but this one defeated me, though it stirred a portentous recollection from the previous evening’s reading.
“Quartermaster!” I called, “To the foredeck, at the double!” When Bonaparte arrived, wheezing mightily, I handed him my glass. “Read me that blazon, if you can,” I commanded.
Taking the precious instrument in a grip I can only describe as fond, the Quartermaster peered through it a long while. Licking his lips, he began a lengthy incantation in a peculiar sing-song tone:
“Quarterly, Prime barry of eight Gules and Argent impaling Azure semi-de-lis Or a label Gules…”
“Mr. Bonaparte, if you please, be