Chapter One
Bristol Channel, several months later
The channel was choppy, the sea a gray-green color after the passing of the most recent storm. Constantine’s vessel The Breath of Gaia, or simply the Gaia, was returning from a journey up the River Severn and a visit to the town of Frampton, just south of Gloucester. There were three other vessels with him, smaller caravels that carried about thirty men each – the Persephone, the Melinoe, and the Orpheus – smaller ships that could move down river when the bottom became too shallow for the Gaia.
As Constantine stood on the poop deck, a light breeze lifted his shaggy blond hair. He could see his smaller ships flanking the larger vessel as they headed out of the mouth of the Severn and into the Bristol Channel. His home base was along the Cornwall coast to the south, and they would be there by morning. As he stood there looking over the side, trying to gauge just how much of the sandy bottom the storm had moved about and if his ship would run aground on it, a very large man with gold-tinted eyes walked up behind him.
“The denizens of Frampton were quite generous, my lord,” he said. “In fact, it was all we could do to catch the valuables they were throwing at us.”
Constantine turned to look at his First Mate; Lucifer, they called him. An ex-priest who had been with Constantine so long that he could hardly remember a day when Lucifer hadn’t been by his side, his intimidating and ominous presence frightening the dog-water out of every man, woman, and child he came across. He was the best assassin in the fleet, surprisingly, and Constantine had seen the man do many a thing that would assure him a place at Satan’s right hand.
But Lucifer wasn’t much for aimless conversation, and he only spoke when he had something important to say. But he spoke in a voice that was as dark and raspy as one would imagine the devil’s voice to be. Now, that voice had a hint of humor in it and Constantine merely shook his head.
“They were not throwing valuables at us to be generous,” he said, turning his attention back to the channel. “They were doing it because you were standing at the mouth of the main avenue with a sword as long as a man is tall. No one wanted to be cut down by that thing.”
A flicker of a smile creased Lucifer’s lips. “I would like to think it is my pleasing personality that causes men to do as I wish.”
Constantine snorted. “It is, my friend, it is,” he assured him sarcastically. “Besides, as far as men of our sort go, we are generally very amenable when it comes to harvesting the towns.”
Harvesting was a term Constantine used rather than the word he really meant – raiding and stealing. Things that pirates were known for. But Lucifer knew exactly what he meant.
“We are far more amenable than some of the others that gather along these coasts,” he muttered, leaning on the rail as the sea breeze lifted his dark, curly hair. “The French, for example. At least we do not cut off the feet of our captives so they cannot run away.”
Constantine grunted in agreement. “I will never understand the need for that kind of brutality,” he said, watching the southern coast of Wales in the distance. “When we were in Perranporth last month, a man came to town telling tales of the French going as far as the coast of Ireland. They evidently raided a small fishing village and captured several men to row one of the new vessels they confiscated from the Portuguese. Those who did not have their feet cut off were chained to the cannons. It was a horrific tale, to say the least.”
Lucifer had heard the story. “It was Nicolas Van Rompay, I heard,” he said quietly. “He’s amassing a fleet, Con. You know he wants to punish you for what you did to his brother but, more than that, he wants to challenge us for supremacy over these waters. He will challenge Shaw’s Devils as well.”
Constantine didn’t seem worried. “The day Nicolas Van Rompay can best me and Shaw MacDougall is the day we no longer deserve this great empire that we have acquired,” he said. “Henry, our great king, and all of his fleets cannot defeat me in his own waters, so what makes the French think they can?”
Lucifer shrugged. “They are arrogant bastards, Con. They have more pride than common sense.”
Constantine knew that and, true to form, was unruffled by the thought of a French threat, even after what had happened with Dureau those months back. “I am certain Shaw can hold off Nicolas,” he said. “He hates the man, you know. But he hates the Spaniards more.”
That was the truth.
Shaw “Savage” MacDougall was an ally of Constantine’s, a Highlander from Scotland and the prince of all pirates along the shores of western England, Wales, and Scotland. It was well-known that the Spanish were his particular nemesis, but Shaw and Constantine had formed a powerful bond over the years, a bond that had been the result of a series of violent actions.
The first had been when Shaw had attacked the merchant vessel that Constantine had been sailing on, a vessel owned by his adoptive father. That had been years ago, when both of them were young men, but it was something Constantine had never forgotten. He’d sworn his vengeance upon the Scottish pirate and in their second encounter, it had been Constantine who had nearly robbed Shaw of not only his vessel, but of his life.
It had all been over a woman, of course. A woman had misled Constantine with her wicked wiles, blaming Shaw for something that had never occurred. But when the moment came to slit Shaw’s throat, something strange occurred – Constantine had realized not only the lies of the woman, but the error of his ways. His apology to Shaw had been the seed of trust between them and in a world where men were brutal and deceitful, an honest man in the midst of such things was a rare jewel, indeed. Shaw had understood that, as had Constantine, and an unlikely alliance was born.
Joining forces with their substantial fleets, they called themselves the Pirates of Britannia and ruled the stretch of coastline from Scarba all the way to Plymouth. It was a valuable and vast stretch of coast, and most coveted by their enemies. And with death on the line, both Shaw and Constantine knew they could depend on each other no matter what.
Such was the strength of their honor.
Lucifer knew all of this, of course. He knew of the hated Spanish, the wicked French, and everything in between. He looked out to sea as he pondered the Scottish pirate prince, a man he respected a great deal.
“Shaw hates the Spanish and Santiago Fernandez is the recipient of most of that animosity,” he finally muttered. “Even though the feeling is mutual, Santiago has plenty of hate for you also. You know he is repairing that man o’ war he acquired a few months ago in the battle against the Dutch fleet.”
“I know.”
“Rumor says he intends to bring it into our territory once it is fully operational.”
Constantine turned to the man, smiling because Lucifer was. “And we shall be ready for him,” he said. “If Santiago and his dogs think they can damage my coast, I will ensure it is more painful for them than it is for me. They would do well to stay away.”
“But you are hoping they come, anyway.”
Constantine laughed, clapping him on the shoulder. “Of course I am,” he said. “How else can I prove my superiority? Besides – I will bombard them from the shore with my cannons and Shaw will bring his fleet in from the north to box them in. We will sink them to the bottom of the ocean. What a joyful day that will be.”
Lucifer chuckled softly because, in truth, he knew Constantine meant it. The man would be positively ecstatic should he be able to destroy the arrogant Spanish fleet. As the two of them shared the mental image of such a bloody victory, they were joined by Augustin.
Having just come up from the hold where he had been inventorying the harvest from Frampton, Augustin drew in a deep breath as the salty sea air hit his nostrils. Oddly enough, the quartermaster for Constantine’s fleet was prone to sea sickness. Augustin’s position as quartermaster was a new one, in fact, having only received the title after Constantine’s long-time quartermaster had been captured by Nicolas Van Rompay two years earlier, strapped to the bow of the ship, and left to die in torment. Augustin, serving as Constantine’s lead swordsman at the time, had fought valiantly to recover the old quartermaster, but he could not be saved.
It was that kind of loyalty that Constantine respected and, in spite of his sea-sickness, Augustin was one of the fiercest pirates Constantine had ever seen. He could, and would, complete his duties no matter how badly he felt, now as the man who literally controlled the wealth and men of Constantine’s ships. Nearly throwing himself over the rail, Augustin breathed deeply.
As the man tried to calm his nervous stomach, Remy de Moray came up beside him. Remy was muscular and rather young, a handsome rake of a man who shared Constantine’s philosophy about women. Often, they shared women, something that Augustin and Lucifer refrained from. Augustin was married and Lucifer was the celibate type, but Constantine and Remy more than made up for it.
“It should be smooth sailing all the way home,” Remy said, shielding his dark eyes from the sun as he gazed up at the main sail. “The storm that blew through here this morning has drifted off to sea, fortunately.”
Constantine nodded, seeing the black clouds from the earlier storm off to the west. “It is bombarding Ireland now,” he said before turning to Remy and Augustin. “Is everything secured below deck?”
Remy nodded because Augustin couldn’t seem to pull himself away from the rail yet. As Constantine’s second mate aboard the Gaia, he was efficient and dependable.
“It is,” he said. “We have goats and horses in the hold along with enough supplies to see us through the next few months. Plus, there are some lovely women’s garments that a certain young woman in Perranporth might appreciate. She might very well demonstrate that appreciation and I should be happy to receive it.”
He lifted his dark eyebrows rather lasciviously as Augustin stood up from the rail. “Those are for my wife,” he said in a tone that Remy was afraid to refute. “She spends enough time alone at Perran Castle, waiting for me to return. The least I can do is reward the woman for her loyalty.”
As Augustin glared threateningly at Remy as if daring the man to argue with him, Lucifer scratched his chin. “What about Margam Abbey, Con?” he asked thoughtfully. “We shall be passing close to it and they have never shown us any resistance. Why not stop and ask for a… donation to our cause from a rather wealthy abbey?”
Before Constantine could answer, Remy spoke. “They will not want to see us so soon after what happened the last time we were there,” he said, stifling laughter. “Do you recall? We forced the nuns to drink and when they were drunk enough, the men forced them to strip off their clothing.”
He was off in a fit of giggles as Lucifer shook his head with great disgust. “Upon your death, there will be a special place in hell designated especially for you,” he said. “I still do not understand why you encouraged such a thing.”
Remy couldn’t stop laughing and, in fact, Constantine and Augustin were joining him because it had been rather humorous, if not rather dastardly.
“No one was harmed,” Constantine pointed out. “I did not let the men ravage the women. In fact, some of the nuns seemed rather eager to remove those cloying habits. You see? It was not as bad as you seem to think it was.”
Lucifer didn’t think it was at all humorous. “You were throwing money at them,” he pointed out angrily. “Of course they took their clothing off. You were throwing gold coins at them!”
Remy was chuckling uncontrollably as Augustin pushed him aside, away from Lucifer before the man became truly enraged. Ever the calming influence, Augustin held up a quelling hand.
“It was wrong to get the nuns drunk, I agree,” he said. “But Con is right; they were not harmed other than their modesty. But I must say that stripping nuns is something I never thought I would see.”
Disgusted by the entire conversation, Lucifer simply shook his head and turned away. “As I said,” he muttered, “there will be a special place in hell for those of you who forced the nuns to disrobe.”
Constantine was fighting off a grin simply because Remy was so far gone with laughter. In remembering the incident, it had been rather funny because the drunk nuns truly hadn’t been distressed by any of it. At least, not at the time. Afterwards, when the drink wore off, was another matter entirely, but Constantine’s men had plied the women with drink purely as entertainment. Simply another sin in a long line of sins for men who were rife with them. To be certain, he was going to hell anyway as Lucifer pointed out, and one more mark against him wouldn’t matter in the long run. In any case, he sought to ease Lucifer just as Augustin had meant to.
“No more drunken nuns, I swear it,” he said. “In fact, I intend that we should return to Perran Castle for a long rest. We have been quite occupied as of late and I think I should like to return home, just for a time. I might even go and see my sister, who has just given birth to her first child. A trip south to St. Ives to visit her and her husband might be in order.”
The mood of the men seemed to ease at that point and Remy’s incessant giggling ceased at the thought of returning home for a time. “It would be good to spend time with my wife,” Augustin said, somewhat wistfully as he thought of the fair Merryn. “It has been a while since I have spent any length of time with her.”
Thoughts immediately turned to their home base of Perran Castle along the western Cornwall coast, which was Constantine’s main stronghold. He had two other castles as well – Holywell Castle to the north of Perran, and Mithian Castle further inland, which had belonged to the le Brecque family for many decades. It had passed to him when his adoptive father had passed away years ago and his sister used to live there before she married and moved south to St. Ives. Although returning home was always a pleasant thought, Constantine found himself restless if he stayed on dry land for too long. He had more enemies there than he did at sea, and he was much more comfortable dealing with the enemies at sea.
Still, he’d promised the men a rest and he could hear the longing in Augustin’s voice as he spoke of his wife. They were in the month of October now and soon, the Christmas season would be upon them. Perhaps they would remain on land until the Christmas season passed providing the French and Spanish behaved themselves. But that was his last calm thought before the distant sounds of thunder boomed across the gray waters of the channel. Since there were no clouds in the sky, Constantine knew it wasn’t thunder.
It was the sound of a cannon volley.
“Down!” he bellowed to his men. “Everyone down!”
Men began falling to the deck, a reflex reaction to Constantine’s booming command. Only Lucifer and Augustin didn’t fall to the deck; they began screaming at the other men further down the deck, near the forecastle, who might not have heard the command. There were men up on the mizzenmast, laying out the blackened pirate sails, and those men were like sitting ducks as a volley a cannon fire shot across the decks, tearing up everything in its path.
Wood splintered, spraying out over the men like shards of glass. More than one man was pierced by the wood. Great projectiles of iron balls ripped through the foremast and the shrouds, the rope ladders that were attached to the masts. Men who had been up on the sails were now either plummeting into the ocean or spilling down onto the deck. Once the cannonballs had sailed passed the ship and out to sea on the opposite side, Lucifer and Augustin began screaming at the men to man the cannons.
It was time to fight back.
Constantine raced to the port side of the ship, facing south at this point, in time to see a large French warship pulling out of a small inlet. The French were well into the Bristol Channel, which was Constantine’s territory. Remy was suddenly beside him, handing him a spyglass so he could get a better look. The spyglass had come with a horde of treasure they’d stolen from Grecian pirates off the coast of Spain, something they’d never seen before, and Constantine used it constantly. With it, he could see the emerging French warship, a vessel he’d seen before. Disgust – and some apprehension – filled him.
“Damn,” he hissed. “It is Dureau’s vessel, the Ganymede. It looks as if the man has surprised us.”
Remy nodded seriously. “Do you see any other vessels with him?”
Constantine shook his head. “With that beast, he does not need any other support,” he said. “Send our other ships onward; I do not want them caught up in a battle of the bigger ships. Dureau’s eighteen cannons can devastate the smaller ships, so tell them to go. They are not to stand and fight.”
Remy was off, preparing to signal the smaller vessels, as Lucifer joined Constantine on the poop deck.
“They must have been following us,” he hissed. “They stayed out of range just enough to watch us go up the Severn and then wait for us to emerge, loaded with goods.”
Constantine was annoyed to say the least. “It is the Ganymede,” he said. “Dureau is in my waters now. Are the port side cannons ready?”
“Aye.”
“He is heading in our direction, so it would be useless to return fire at a slimmer profile,” he said, his mind working quickly. “Turn the vessel south so we can come alongside him. Even loaded down as we are, the Gaia is more maneuverable than that behemoth, so bring us into position, Lucifer. Quickly. The man has caught us at a disadvantage and we must gain the upper hand.”
Lucifer was off, bellowing orders to the helmsman to turn the rudder hard a-port, quickly turning the Gaia and giving her a much smaller profile to shoot at. Now, they were heading right for the Ganymede and Constantine’s men were rushing to their posts even as some of them were removing the wounded to below deck. The big, black flag with the red serpent-like dragon on it, signifying Poseidon’s Legion, was raised on the mainmast. Now, the French would know exactly who they were dealing with.
And the Legion was out for blood.
“Minimal damage, Con,” Augustin said as he clambered up the ladder towards Constantine’s position. “Those bastards could not hit anything if they tried. Women must be manning the cannons this day.”
Constantine flashed a grin. “Fortunate for us,” he said. He snorted. “They caught us off-guard, Gus. It was sheer luck that they did not do more damage. We have the deck cannon on the bow?”
“Aye.”
“Use it. We are heading straight for them; one good shot at their foremast and we can weaken them significantly. Do it to them before they do it to us.”
Augustin nodded shortly. “We are already taking aim,” he said. “Look; see Lucifer up with the cannon?”
Constantine had to peer through the dangling ropes and pierced sails to see what Augustin was talking about. He could, indeed, see the man using timber wedges to control the barrel’s elevation, moving it into position. Given the movement of the ship, and the constantly changing angle, it was no mean feat, but Lucifer was skilled that way. Constantine grasped Augustin by the arm.
“Fire at their foremast,” he said. “When we come alongside, give them all port cannons and take out their rudder. But after that, we continue home as quickly as we can. The Gaia only has twelve guns and that beautiful Flemish warship of mine is still at Perranporth and all of her twenty-two guns. We need that ship to have superiority over Dureau and he knows it, so hit him as much as we can and then we run. Hopefully we can damage him enough not to follow us.”
Augustin was off, going to relay orders to the gun crews and to Lucifer. Constantine maintained his position on the poop deck to the rear, his eyes on every aspect of the operations of his vessel. It was his intention to make it home in one piece, with the least loss of life, so strategy would come into play at this point. Dureau had tried to ambush him but the man was going to suffer in return.
The French weren’t going to have him; not this time.
He would live to fight another day.
Lucifer’s aim was true that day; he managed to destroy the foremast, knocking the entire thing down into the sea, and the seven guns on the port side did a good deal of damage as they passed the ship, including damaging the rudder, as Constantine had hoped.
But Dureau had time to prepare for their pass and he’d countered with a blast from nine cannons, most of them chewing up the port side deck and into the gun crews on the port side. Constantine was able to flee home much faster than Dureau was, leaving the French ship in the channel to limp away, but Constantine’s boat wasn’t without loss. It had been a costly encounter in that he’d lost four men, with twelve wounded, and seriously damaged the Gaia. Without significant repairs, she wasn’t going anywhere.
The sight of Perran Castle at dawn the next day was a welcome sight for all.