Prologue
The village of Carantec
Coast of Brittany
August, 1445 A.D.
Sweet, silky, and tender to the touch…
But she tasted like stale ale. And the smell… well, he wasn’t a picky man at times when it came to bed partners, so he could stand it. At least long enough for him to get what he’d come for.
“Do not make me wait,” the woman begged him, grasping at his breeches in an attempt to pull them down. “I must feel your heated rod between my legs, thrust up into my body. Impale me!”
Had Constantine le Brecque not been so consumed with lust, he might have laughed at that. Impale me! He could think of at least three different ways to impale her with his stiff manhood.
Which orifice, exactly, did she mean?
“Patience,” he whispered, hand on her breast, pulling at her taut nipple. “All in good time, my lady. In good time.”
“Non!” she cried, throwing her legs open as wide as they would go and trying to maneuver him between them so she could feel his erection through his breeches. “Now!”
Somewhere, he caught a whiff of rank body odor, more than likely from the bed linens they were frolicking on. It was a seedy room, after all, in a seedy tavern located in an equally seedy town along the coast of Brittany. A fog was rolling in from the sea and the scent of salt and water were heavy in the air, mingling with the dirt of the town and creating a layer of filth that covered everything. Men, women, buildings… even the food. It was all covered with the grimy filth.
But it was the price one paid to visit this pirate’s enclave by the sea.
One could find anything here, for a price. Even the wife of a French pirate who, in order to seek revenge against her philandering husband, was willing to deliver most of her husband’s wealth to his English enemy on the condition that he would spend the night with her, doing things to her that her husband no longer would.
That was the easy part for Constantine. He’d bedded so many women in his lifetime that one more needy whore wasn’t going to make a difference. The act would bring him a great deal of wealth and plant a figurative English dagger in the back of one of his most hated enemies. He’d been negotiating this particular event for almost six months, by way of messages sent through servants, luring the wife of the Dureau Van Rompay right into his own little trap. Only for the money, of course.
Always for the money.
Dureau was the brother of Nicolas Van Rompay, the great French Pirate King, and a particular thorn in the side of Constantine and his Britannic pirate allies. The man had been raiding along the southern and western coast of Cornwall as of late, right into Constantine’s territory, and taking what did not belong to him. Constantine had engaged the man when he could catch up to him, using his newly-confiscated 22-gun Flemish warship that still wasn’t fully operational, but Dureau had always been a step ahead of him.
Six months ago, Dureau returned to his home port of Carantec, and that was when Constantine began to undermine the pirate where it hurt – in his home, with his wife. If Constantine couldn’t get the man on the sea, then he’d most certainly get him on land.
Or, in bed, so to speak.
Dureau played dirty, but Constantine played dirtier.
Now, he had Dureau’s wife where he wanted her, writhing and begging for him to impale her in any hole of his choice. But he wasn’t going to do it unless she showed him the money she’d brought – Dureau’s money. That might take some coercing considering how hot the woman was at the moment. She squirmed around like a bitch in heat. To appease her, Constantine dipped his head down and suckled on a nipple, nearly bringing her off the bed.
“Soon, ma chérie, soon,” he said huskily. “But you do not think this will be so easy without you holding up your end of the bargain, do you? You want something and I want something. Show me your reward and you shall receive mine.”
The woman groaned unhappily as she bucked and twisted beneath him. “Now?”
“Now.”
A heavy sigh. “In my bags.”
Constantine continued to tease her even as he looked over his shoulder to a series of trunks and satchels against the wall near the door. The woman didn’t travel lightly; she’d come to the tavern with an entourage of six women and several guards. Constantine had seen her arrive but he never showed himself to her attendants, knowing it would get back to her husband. Of course, he wanted Dureau to know, but only when it was safe for Constantine that he should. To have someone run for the husband now would be deadly.
But what he should have known was that he’d already been seen. He was well-known along these shores. Men talked.
And men were coming.
But Constantine wasn’t thinking about that now. He was only concerned with the moment at hand, the great deal of wealth he’d been promised, and the fact that the tide would soon be coming in. His ship, The Breath of Gaia, wasn’t far off shore. The tide would bring it closer in and he could make a swifter escape. He didn’t want to linger in this hellhole any longer than he had to.
Kissing the woman’s face, her hands, and her shoulder, Constantine pushed himself from the smelly bed and went to the bags against the wall. He began to yank them open as the woman sat up, a frown on her flushed face.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. “Must you look at it now?”
Constantine grinned at her, a devilish gesture that was sure to soothe and tame any female fits. He used the grin like a weapon at times, disarming as it was.
“I must, ma chérie,” he said. “Business before pleasure, you know.”
He yanked open the top of a particularly large and heavy satchel, and was immediately greeted with the great treasure inside. It was a good thing the satchel was leather because of the sheer weight of the contents; gold and silver groats with the face of Henry V pressed upon them glittered weakly in the dim light, some of them hardly used. There were also strands of valuable pearls, bejeweled rings, and a spectacular gold necklace inlaid with precious stones, jade, and chalcedony. Great emerald pendants strung on golden chains or silk ribbons were thrown haphazardly into the pile, joined by exquisite brooches that proudly displayed their ruby gems.
In all, it was a rather astonishing cache and extremely valuable. In fact, Constantine hadn’t seen so many rare valuables like this in a very long time and he couldn’t help his reaction as he turned to the woman on the bed.
“This all belongs to Dureau?” he asked, surprised.
The woman was propped up on her elbows, looking at him with a mixture of lust and impatience. “I took all I could,” she said. “There is little left at this point. Not only is that satchel full, but so is the one beneath it. All of it full of my husband’s treasures. Take it and welcome, but if you do not come to bed immediately, I may take it all back.”
Ignoring her warning, Constantine untied the leather straps on the top of the second satchel and yanked that one open, too. As she’d said, it was full of more of the same and Constantine could hardly believe his eyes. He had no idea the prince of the French pirates, men known as the Les Porteurs d’eau, or The Water Bearers, was so wealthy. Their ships weren’t particularly fine and they lived in rather unspectacular hovels but, evidently, they hoarded their wealth and didn’t spend it on foolish things like fine homes or fine ships.
This put the situation in a whole new light.
Grabbing the satchels, Constantine quickly made his way to the only window in the room, one that faced north over the channel. Lashing out a big foot, he kicked open the wooden shutters, breaking the sash on one of them, and as they slammed back, Constantine thrust his head from the second-floor window.
There were men below, standing in the torch-lit darkness of a damp night. Taking the time to secure the leather ties tightly on both satchels, Constantine tossed out one and then the other to his men waiting below. They scrambled, catching the heavy bags, grunting with the sheer weight of them.
“What do you have in these, Con?” one of the men hissed up to him. “Rocks?”
Constantine waved the man off. “Get to the ship,” he said. “But send the skiff back for me as soon as you can. High tide will be here soon and we must push off. Hurry, Kerk!”
Kerk le Sander, an excellent knight and shipmate who had been with Constantine since before he’d taken on a life of piracy, flashed his toothy grin as he grabbed both bags and rushed towards the shoreline where a small ferrying vessel, manned by four of Constantine’s men to row it, sat just on the edge of the water at low tide. It was beached, essentially, and as Constantine watched Kerk run for it, he could see the lights of the Gaia close by the coast, flickering faintly as the fog rolled in. Soon enough, those lights would disappear, which meant that Constantine needed to leave his situation sooner rather than later if he wanted to make it back to the ship without becoming lost in the fog.
The sense of urgency was building.
“Do you want us to remain here, Con?” Another man below caught his attention. “Shall we wait for you?”
Constantine nodded quickly. “I shan’t be long,” he assured the man. “Stay out of sight, Gus. Be ready to run.”
Augustin de Russe, a very big man with a mean streak in him, nodded seriously. “Hurry, Con,” he rumbled, looking about suspiciously. “I do not like the rabble I am seeing. I think I have seen some of those men before, if you get my meaning.”
Constantine did. The man meant he’d seen enemy pirates that he recognized, men that possibly belonged to Dureau. “I will,” he said, pointing at the man. “But you watch the door. If you see Van Rompay, you will whistle.”
“Is he even here in town?”
Constantine’s gaze flicked up and down the dirty avenue. “Anything is possible,” he said. “Be on your guard.”
Augustin’s gaze lingered on Constantine before he faded back into the shadows of the small huts and businesses across the dirty avenue. Wrapped in a boat cloak, Augustin blended in nicely with his surroundings. But Constantine knew he had a big broadsword beneath that cloak. Like all of Constantine’s senior officers – including a powerful knight named Remy de Moray and a dark ex-priest known simply as Lucifer – Augustin came from a fine family and had been trained as a knight, now finding himself in the odd position of using those skills on the high sea to purse a life of wealth and glory.
But his attitude was the same as the other highly-trained knights on the high seas, Constantine included. Whether they were to have remained on land in the service of a king who demanded they go forth and conquer against other kings and men, or whether they remained on the sea and pursued their own form of conquest and wealth-gathering, it was all the same. They all had to make their own way in life, by hook or by crook. Sometimes, knights did things under the guise of honor that weren’t necessarily so honorable.
But no one was losing any sleep over it.
“Come back to bed!” the woman demanded. “You have what you came for and I am growing cold waiting for you!”
Jolted from his thoughts of his men and the glory they sought, Constantine came away from the window.
“I doubt that you could become cold, in any case,” he said rather seductively. “But I would like to know where your husband is this night. Surely he is nearby? This is his village, after all.”
The woman shook her head. “I left him and his whore at St. Yves,” she said bitterly. When Constantine shook his head, not knowing what she meant, she threw her hand around irritably. “The home we share on the outskirts of town. He is home, back in the hills. As long as he has wine and that woman, he will not care where I have gone. But I will not wait much longer for you, Anglais, so you will come to me now.”
It wasn’t a request. Constantine knew he could no longer delay the inevitable, so he leapt into bed beside the woman, rolling on top of her and listening to her seductive giggles. Her hands were in his breeches now, trying to force them down, and he obliged her by unfastening the ties and removing them. When she grabbed his manhood, he flinched because her hands were cold. But her mouth wasn’t. When she turned him onto his back, her hot and skilled mouth began to work his manroot in a move that had Constantine rather eager to experience.
Laying on his back and staring up at the ceiling, Constantine allowed himself to give in to the carnal delight of a woman pleasuring him. He had no intention of holding back his release because the sooner he found his climax, the sooner he could leave. Sometimes, he could hold out for a very long time – he had that kind of control. But it depended on how attracted he was to the woman and how much he wanted his pleasure to last. In this case, it would be a fast event and, he was certain, faster than Dureau’s wife wanted it to be, but he had a schedule to keep. A ship to board, as it were. And then he had to make it home before Dureau came after him, looking for that massive treasure.
Constantine grinned at the mental image of Dureau realizing the money he’d lost.
But the grin didn’t last long. Suddenly, a piercing whistle filled the heavy night hair and Constantine knew exactly what it was. He’d know de Russe’s whistle anywhere. Leaping up from the bed, with his erection jutting out from his body like a great flesh sword, he raced to the window only to see de Russe in the middle of the avenue, motioning frantically to him. Constantine knew he had to leave; he didn’t question de Moray in any fashion, but he very much wanted his breeches.
Yet, it was not to be. The chamber door suddenly shuddered and, as Constantine leapt onto the windowsill, the door half-exploded in a shower of splinters. The woman upon the bed screamed. It was enough of a jolt for Constantine to leap for his life from the second-floor window, miraculously landing on his feet in the mud outside the tavern. Mud splashed up all over him but he didn’t give it a thought as he caught the boat cloak de Russe tossed at him, wrapping it around his body to cover his nakedness as both he and Augustin ran as fast as they could for the cove where the skiff had just pushed off with Kerk at the helm.
Men were shouting from the window of the bedchamber and Constantine could hear Mme. Van Rompay crying and screaming, but he didn’t dare turn around to look. Clearly, Dureau’s men had somehow discovered their tryst and as he and Augustin neared the shore at low-tide, they knew they’d have to swim for the skiff. Kerk wasn’t going to turn it around, and for good reason, but he did order the men to stop rowing as Constantine and Augustin plunged into the icy water and began swimming as fast as they could.
They could hear Kerk urging them on, telling them to hurry, and hurry they did, but Constantine was hampered by the fact that his erection was now being assaulted by icy sea water, so the swim was becoming rather painful for him. Still, he soldiered on, his powerful body plowing through the water until he reached the rear of the skiff. Augustin was a little slower, being that he was weighted down by his clothing, and by the time Constantine was on the boat, Augustin was hauled in a few seconds behind him.
Then, the men began rowing as hard and as fast as they could.
Then, and only then, did Constantine turn to see what he’d been running from and he wasn’t surprised to see several men that he recognized rushing into the sea up to their ankles but coming to a halt when they realized they could not catch up to their prey. The light from the village behind them was just enough to illuminate the angry men on the sand, several of them, and he thought he caught a glimpse of Dureau himself. Dureau was a tall man, slender, so his silhouette was a distinctive one. But a shout from the pursuers dissolved any doubt as to who, exactly, had been chasing them.
“Le Brecque!” came a man’s angry voice. It sounded very much like Dureau. “You bastard! I will have my vengeance upon you!”
With his men rowing furiously around him, Constantine stood up on the rocking boat to better see the man who was shouting threats at him. “Dureau, my love,” he called out in return. “This is all you shall have of me!”
With that, he turned around and bent over at the waist, thrusting his white arse in Dureau’s direction. He knew the man could see it, reflected in the weak light of the village, when he heard him laugh. But it was not a happy laugh.
“That is the best part of you!” Dureau boomed.
Constantine stood up and turned to face him, blowing the man a kiss. “Your wife thought so, too,” he said sarcastically, blowing him another kiss. “I adore you, my dear friend. Until we meet again!”
By now, the fog that was rolling in from the sea began to envelope them as it moved towards the shore. Constantine lost sight of the angry French pirates but not before he heard Dureau’s voice one last time.
“It shall be sooner than you think!”
Constantine knew that was probably true. Dureau’s ships were probably inland at this point but he could move them out to sea quickly if he wanted to. The only saving grace at this point was the fog. For once, it would be their friend as it discouraged the French from pursuing them in it. But from this point on, Constantine knew he would have to be more careful of the French than usual.
The dirty game between them would get dirtier.
Such was the life of the commander of Poseidon’s Legion.