Sea Witch Read online

  To My Readers

  A personal message from Helen Hollick

  Writing can be a silly occupation. Solitary, often hard, tedious work for few rewards. But it is compulsive, and those few rewards can be great indeed: seeing your novel on a shelf in a bookstore; receiving an e-mail from an appreciative fan; a fabulous review; a nomination for an award. There is the sheer pleasure of starting with a blank page and experiencing the excitement of bringing a character to full and glorious life. Of delving beneath the facts of what happened and when, and filling in all the missing bits of why, how and with whom. That is the joy of writing!

  Having a book published, however, is not always plain sailing. Several years ago my backlist was dropped by William Heinemann – historical fiction had gone out of fashion – and simultaneously my agent abandoned me. I was on my own and facing the prospect of not writing another novel.

  I spent two weeks sobbing, then pulled myself together and set out to find an alternative publisher.

  I discovered an independent company who, as a part of their small mainstream imprint, took my backlist and my new venture: the first of the Sea Witch voyages. There were hiccups, but the office staff were enthusiastic and I had high hopes for the future. Sadly, the current economic climate is not kind to small firms, and for a second time I found myself facing the prospect of being out of print. I had four choices:

  Give up writing

  Find an alternative mainstream publisher

  Go self-publish (produce my books myself)

  Find a company that provided assisted publishing

  For me, 1 was not an option. I cannot give up writing, not while I still have a story in my head to share. Choice 2: I am mainstream published in the US and other countries, but approaching a similar UK publishing house, with their full lists and tight printing schedules, could have resulted in my novels being unavailable for several months. I have many friends who would be so disappointed to see them temporarily disappear, as would I. Lacking the technical knowledge, or time, to go self publish was not viable or practical, although the thought of running my own company was tempting. However, excited by the prospect of being in control of my destiny – and my books – I decided to opt for choice 4.

  I have known Helen Hart of SilverWood Books for several years and it was therefore an easy choice to send my precious novels into her good care, confident she would produce quality editions, quickly and efficiently.

  Transferring my list of seven books has been hard and dedicated work, not just for me, but for the team at SilverWood Books, my graphic designer Cathy Helms of AvalonGraphics, and my editors Jo Field and Michaela Unterbarnscheidt.

  Nor have the production costs been cheap – more on the ‘gulp’ level – but it’s been worth it… I love my characters and have great respect and fondness for all my followers, fans, friends and readers. Your encouragement and enthusiasm was all the incentive I needed to make the decision to keep my characters alive and well. And in print.

  For that, I thank you.

  For Mal

  Who has sailed the seven seas

  and who is my best friend.

  Published in paperback 2011 by SilverWood Books of Bristol

  www.silverwoodbooks.co.uk

  Text copyright © Helen Hollick 2011

  Genealogies by Avalon Graphics 2011

  eBook by www.bristolebooks.co.uk

  The right of Helen Hollick to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the copyright holder.

  Paperback ISBN 978-1-906236-60-1

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Paperback is set in Palatino Light by SilverWood Books

  Printed in England on paper from responsible sources

  Jesamiah

  Beware of Pirates, for danger lurks behind their smiles…

  In the depths, in the abyss of darkness at the very

  bottom of the oceans Tethys stirred.

  She was the Soul of the sea, the Spirit of the waves

  and was capable, as the mood took her, of benign

  complaisance or malicious rage.

  She was without form or solidity yet she saw, heard, and

  became aware of everything within her jurisdiction.

  And she ruled her water realm with unchallenged power

  and a terrible omnipotence.

  One

  Late January – 1716

  Mermaid was moving fast, the ship bowling along with her sails filled, the canvas billowing, cordage creaking and straining. She climbed over the next wave, her bow lifting to linger a moment before swooping down into another deluge of spray. Completing the seesaw movement her stern soared high as the roller trundled beneath her keel. The wind smelt of hot, dry and dusty land, of jungle and grass savannah. Of Africa.

  The look out, clad in an old shirt and sailor’s breeches was perched high in the crosstrees, one hundred and thirty feet above the deck. Excited, he pointed to the horizon. “Over there Jesamiah, that’s where I saw ‘er. I swear I saw a sail!”

  With the ease of years of practice, Jesamiah Acorne stepped from the rigging on to the narrow platform that swayed with the lift and plunge of the ship. He hooked his arm through a t’gallant shroud and brought his telescope to his eye, scanned the ocean. Nothing. Nothing except a flat expanse of blue emptiness going on, unbroken, for twenty miles. And beyond that? Another twenty, and another.

  These were the waters of the Gulf of Guinea, the huge stretch of sea beneath the bulb of land where the trade wealth of West Africa was turned into fat profit: gold, ivory and slaves. The African coast, where merchants found their plentiful supply of human misery and where an entire ships’ crew could be wiped out by fever within a week.

  Where pirates hunted in search of easy prey.

  The crew of the Mermaid were not interested in slavers or the foetid coast. Their rough-voiced, ragged-faced captain, Malachias Taylor, had more lucrative things in mind – the sighting of another ship, preferably a full-laden, poorly manned merchantman with a rich cargo worth plundering.

  “What can y’see?” he shouted from the deck, squinting upwards at his quartermaster, the relentless sun dazzling his eyes. His second-in-command, Jesamiah, like his father before him, was one of the best seamen Taylor knew.

  “Nothing! If young Daniel here did see a sail he has better sight than

  I ‘ave,” Jesamiah called down, the frustration clear in his voice. All the same, he studied the sea again with the telescope.

  Jesamiah Acorne. Quick to smile, formidable when angered. Tall, tanned, with strong arms and a seaman’s tar-stained and callused hands. His black hair fell as an untidy chaos of natural curls to his shoulders, laced into it, lengths of blue ribbon which streamed about his face in the wind, the whipping ends stinging his cheeks. The ladies ashore thought them a wonderful prize when he occasionally offered one as a keepsake.

  If there was a ship, Daniel would only have glimpsed her highest sails, the topgallants; the rest of her would still be hull down, unseen below the curve of the horizon. “I think you had too much rum last night, my lad,” Jesamiah grinned. “Your eyes are playing tricks on you.”

  Young Daniel was adamant. “I saw her I say. I’ll wager m’next wedge of baccy I did!”

  “You know I cannot abide the stuff,” Jesamiah chuckled good-natured as he stretched out his arm to ruffle the lad’s mop of hair. He had turned
his back on anything to do with tobacco – except stealing it – seven years ago when his elder brother had thrown him off their dead father’s plantation, with the threat he would hang if ever he returned. But then, Phillipe Mereno was only a half brother and he had always been a cheat and a bully. One day, for the misery of his childhood, Jesamiah would find the opportunity to go back and finish beating the bastard to a pulp.

  Out of habit he touched the gold charm dangling from his right earlobe: an acorn, to match the signet ring he had worn since early youth. Presents from his Spanish mother, God rest her soul. She had always thought the acorn, the fruit of the solid and dependable oak tree to be lucky. It had been the first word to come to mind when he had needed a new name in a hurry.

  Acorne, with an “e” to make the name unique, and his own.

  About to shut the telescope a flash caught his eye and Jesamiah whisked the bring it close upwards again. The sun reflecting on something?

  “Wait…Damn it, Daniel – I’ve got her!” The sudden enthusiasm carried in an eager flurry as he shouted down to the deck, his words greeted by a hollered cheer from the rag-tag of men who made up the Mermaid’s crew.

  Even the usually dour-faced Malachias Taylor managed a smile. “Probably a slaver,” he muttered, “but we’ll set all sail an’ pay her a visit.” His gap-toothed smile broadened into a grin. “She might be wantin’ company, eh lads?”

  Aye she might, but not the sort of company the Mermaid would be offering. Respectable traders and East India merchantmen did not care for pirates.

  Half an hour. Three-quarters. The sand trickled through the half-hour glass as if it were sticky with tar, and although the Mermaid was under full sail the distance between the two ships seemed to take an interminable time to lessen. Each man was trying to pretend he did not care whether they were on to a possible Prize or not, but for all that, finding a variety of excuses to be on deck or clambering about the rigging. In the end Jesamiah, back on the quarterdeck, put a stop to it, cursing them for the dregs they were.

  “Looking ain’t going to bring us closer to a Chase any the quicker!” he barked, resisting the temptation to have yet another squint through the telescope for himself. “Cease this ‘opping about as if you’ve an army of ants crawling up yer backsides! We stay on this course and make out we’re minding our own business. We ain’t interested in her, savvy?” All the same, he touched his gold earring for luck.

  From his high vantage point Daniel finally put them out of their misery. “On deck there! She’s a trader!” he shouted. “A dirty great, huge, East Indiaman – God’s breath, would you believe it? There’s something smaller following in her wake.” He cursed again and spat chewed tobacco into the sea. “We wait all this damned time then get two Chases at once!”

  The Captain climbed aloft himself, a satisfied smile spread over his weatherworn face as he lifted the telescope to his eye. The Indiaman must have been keeping lookout too, for as he watched she showed her identity, the tri-coloured Dutch ensign clearly hoisted to her mainmast. Britain was not at war with the Dutch. A minor fact which did not perturb Taylor in the slightest.

  Privateering during periods of declared war was legal, providing the captain carried a Letter of Marque giving him government permission to harass enemy ships. Naturally, Captain Taylor possessed his formal letter, and naturally, he preyed on any Spanish or French enemy ship daring to show a sail over the horizon. He saw no reason to ignore everything else also coming within range of his cannon though, British or Dutch included. Now that was not privateering, but piracy – a crime punished by the death penalty of hanging.

  “Show British colours, let her think we’re friendly,” he called down. He winked at Daniel. “We take the trader, put a scratch crew aboard then think about chasing after the other one as well, eh? What say you, young Wickersley?”

  Daniel grinned a half-moon smile at Taylor, a fairer, more profitable captain than his previous one aboard an English Royal Navy frigate. “Aye Sir, sounds good t’me!”

  Jesamiah was waiting for orders, his hand curled loosely around the hilt of a cutlass slung from a leather baldric worn aslant across his faded waistcoat, the strap concealing a rough-patched, bloodstained hole where some while ago a pistol’s lead shot had penetrated. He wore canvas breeches as soft and comfortable as moleskin, knee-high boots and a cotton shirt that had once been white but was now a dirty grey. One cuff was beginning to fray into a ragged edge. He stood, his other hand fiddling with his blue ribbons, legs straddled, balancing against the rise and fall of the ship.

  Taylor slid hand over hand down the backstay; watching him, Jesamiah ran his finger and thumb across the moustache trailing each side of his mouth into a beard trimmed close along his Jaw. He lifted his chin slightly as Taylor’s feet touched the deck. The Captain looked towards his second-in-command. “If you please, Mr. Acorne.”

  Acknowledging, Jesamiah paused, knowing the crew of eighty rogues were set to jump at his command. He held them a moment…“All hands! Clear for action!”

  A whoop of delight, a scuffing patter of bare feet on the sun-hot deck, the tarred caulking sticky between the boards, the men scattering in various directions to ready the ship for fighting. A task they could do day or night, drunk or sober.

  As captain of a pirate ship Taylor only held unquestionable command when it came to the engagement of an enemy ship. At other times decisions were made by discussion and a vote. And if a captain got it wrong too often? The crew simply elected another one.

  Taylor was safe. He was skilled at piracy, his achievements obvious by his long standing as master of the Mermaid over a contented crew.

  “Make ready the guns,” he called to Jesamiah, “but don’t run out yet. Keep some of the crew out o’ sight, too. I want this Dutchman thinkin’ we’re a poorly manned merchant, no threat, for as long as possible.”

  Jesamiah grinned, the light of easy laughter darting into his face. He wanted that too. The easier the chase and the fight at the end of it, the better.

  He had no fear of dying for everyone had to go some day. Hoped when his turn came it would be quick and painless, for it was the long, drawn-out agony he and any pirate, any man, dreaded. But today? This fine, clear blue day was not a day for dying. This was a day for taking treasure!

  Two

  Aboard the Christina Giselle, a girl, Tiola, stood peering over the rail, mesmerised by the foaming water churning away along the side of the hull. Yesterday a school of dolphins had kept them company for several miles, their silver bodies leaping and glistening as they flashed and darted. Today, it seemed they had a different companion, one unwanted and uninvited.

  Tiola. Fifteen. Named for her grandmother, an old, old name, Te-o-la, short and quick, not Ti-oh-la as some, wrongly, said. She was slim and not very tall; a tumble of midnight-black hair, with eyes as dark. Her features were fine, almost delicate, her mother used to jest she was a fairy child. She was, in a way.

  England, Cornwall, was many miles, many weeks and many tears behind. She would not see her home or brothers again. Nor her mother. Mother was already in the next world, gone to God. Except, while she had hanged, the jeering mob had shouted that a woman who plunged a knife into the heart of her own husband, was of the Devil’s breeding; would burn in Hell. From there it had been an easy step for someone to shout “Witch!” and for the blood-fever of superstition to spread. Had it not been for one of her elder brothers hurrying her to safety, Tiola would also have been lynched. Her father’s blood had been spattered on her clothes also.

  The irony? It was not Mother who was the witch.

  Tiola’s guardian, Jenna Pendeen, shielded her eyes against the glare of the sun and peered at the approaching vessel. “Is it not a British flag she flies? Surely, she is of no threat to us?”

  Behind her the Dutchman, Captain van Noord, shrugged. “I grant she may be British,” he proclaimed in perfect English, “but if that is all she is, then I am the King of Spain!” His manner was easy and confi
dent; neatly dressed and polite he roamed the decks of his ship, hands clasped behind his back, his darting glare missing nothing. Rightly, he took pride in the sleek vessel he commanded.

  Realising what he meant Jenna squeaked alarm. “You suspect her to be a pirate?” Her hand jerked to her throat. “Are we in danger?”

  The Captain offered a polite bow. “Ah no, Ma’am, I do not suspect them to be pirates, I am certain of it. From experience, I know her crew for what they are, rogues and thieves. Degenerates who deserve to kick from the gallows. As no doubt they shall one day.”

  Tiola said nothing. No one deserved to hang, it was a wicked death. Only if the victim had friends or relatives to act as hangers-on, to add their weight to the jerking torso, was the slow strangulation hastened to its gruesome end.

  “Ought we not show more speed?” Jenna asked nervously, glancing up at the billow of the sails. She fluttered her hand at Tiola. “You understand, my concern is for my ward Miss Oldstagh, not for myself. I promised her mother I would take care of her. In the hands of pirates I dread to think what indecencies she may suffer.”

  Jenna, unable to do anything to save her beloved mistress had transferred her devotion and duty to the only daughter instead. Someone had to accompany the child she had insisted, she could not leave England, flee for her life, alone.

  “It would be interesting to meet a pirate,” Tiola announced, turning to smile at van Noord. “Do they all have eye patches and gold teeth?”

  The Captain smiled at her naive innocence. “Alas child, the pirates I have had the misfortune to cross a course with have all been dirt-grimed drunkards with black, foul teeth and even fouler language and manners.”