CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The ship had already drifted deeply into a fog bank by the time Cristobal hauled Kitty topside. Whatever wind had drawn them into it had apparently faded, and the ship held relatively motionless and aimlessly adrift beneath them. Kitty could feel the heavy, still moisture of the fog, thick in the air around her; she could smell it like something distant and stale, and hear it dampening sounds around them, as thoroughly and effectively as a woolen cowl draped about her head.
“Ransom!” Cristobal shrieked, keeping one hand closed fiercely against Kitty’s hair, and wielding his pistol with the other, shoving it against her head as he dragged her toward the stern of the ship, beyond the mizzen mast. “I have your daughter, Ransom! Come and claim her, if you dare!”
“You are mad,” Kitty hissed, sucking in a sharp, hurting breath as he jerked against her hair. “He will not follow you blindly into a fog! He will skirt around it and come at you headlong from the other side!”
“He will follow me,” Cristobal said, sounding wholly convinced. “For his daughter, he would follow me through the very gates of Hell itself.” He turned his face away, calling out over the taffrail again. “Ransom! Come and claim her!”
Kitty frowned, trying vainly to pull away from him. “You are mad!” she cried again. “How can it be my father? We were laid up in La Coruna―he could not have known that! He is surely past us now and in Lisbon, waiting for you! He―!”
“He is there!” Cristobal snapped, wrenching against her hair, forcing a pained cry from her. “The man can track a ship through a driving gale or on a moonless night! He reads the sea as a Benedictine monk tends to his Bible! He knows her every current and undulation, every trough and furrow as some men only know their wives!”
“Those are stories!” Kitty cried. “Those are just stories―he is a man, the same as you!”
“He is the devil!” Cristobal exclaimed. “He is the devil and you are his whore-spawn! He cursed my father, just like you bewitched my brother! He has made a pact with Hell, and by God and my breath, I will send him there to claim it—just like I delivered Rafe to claim his!”
He dragged her forward, shoving her forcefully against the taffrail. Kitty gulped for breath as the railing slammed into her midriff, and then gasped in breathless terror as Cristobal shoved her recklessly forward, forcing her to bend over the railing. She could hear the sea beneath her somewhere distant and far below; the slap of water against the hull with nothing between it and her but Cristobal’s hand and the open air.
“I will kill her, Ransom!” he screamed into the fog. “I will scatter her brains to the seas, you son of a bitch, now show yourself!”
Kitty heard a sudden, peculiar sound rising above the slow, distinctive churn of the ocean in La Venganza’s wake. The ship had drawn almost to a complete standstill, but all at once, she heard a hissing sound―the surface of the sea sliced by the sharp line of a prow. She heard a slap of water, and then, from behind her, Cristobal’s crew erupted into startled panic, their voices fluttering and flying in a sudden, frightened din.
A ship cut out of the fog, somehow making the most of precious little wind and charting a course so viciously precise, that she drew sharply and abruptly alongside La Venganza, darting like a phantom from the thick, unyielding drape of the fog.
Kitty heard the carving of its wake against the bowline, heard the sudden creaking of its joists and riggings as it drew near, and even had a moment where she felt the fine spray cutting from its keel against her face before Cristobal jerked her back, pulling her roughly against him, pushing the gun to her temple.
“Daddy!” Kitty screamed, unable to prevent herself.
“Fire the cannons―!” Cristobal began to shriek, but it was too late. From the moment the ship had pulled alongside of them, her guns had been at the ready, and Kitty cried out in fright at the thunderous, rolling din of twenty-six cannons launching volatile rounds in simultaneous succession. The artillery ripped into La Venganza’s portside hull, rocking the ship to starboard on her keel and sending Cristobal and Kitty staggering across the quarterdeck. A round from one of the smaller-gauge, topside cannons smashed into the taffrail to Kitty’s immediate left. She and Cristobal floundered away from the point of impact as a large section of the railing exploded into splinters, leaving the rest of its balustrade and beams cracked and broken. Kitty smelled the sudden, acrid stink of gunfire, felt it sting her eyes and choke her nose and throat, and she gulped for helpless breath.
“Fire the cannons!” Cristobal screamed, his voice strained and hoarse. “Fire them now―!”
There was more, but his shriek was obliterated beneath the new thunder of cannonfire, as the guns aboard the La Venganza left unaffected by the assault returned fire toward the port. Again, the ship rocked beneath them, pummeled by the force, and when Kitty tried to take advantage of the moment and scramble away from Cristobal, he caught her fast and furious by the hair, wrenching her backward and making her cry out.
The English sailors began to board La Venganza, launching grappling lines from the decks and yards and swinging aboard, and dropping planks between the neighboring decks to surge forward en masse. Kitty could tell by the sudden sounds of battle from the main deck below them, the clattering of sword against sword, the overlapping grunts and cries of men engaged, the clapping and popping of pistol fire punctuating throughout.
“Ready the cannons again!” Cristobal shrieked, although surely it was useless; surely no one could hear him above such a din. “Ready the cannons and fire into them again! I said fire―!”
His voice abruptly faded, growing strained and then choked into sudden, unexpected silence. He danced clumsily backward, pulling Kitty smartly against his chest, immediately in front of him, as if he meant to use her as a shield. The pistol, which had wavered in its aim as he had tried vainly to shout out orders to his crew, pressed with new fervency against her brow, drawing her to immediate, frightened immobility.
“Oh, God,” Cristobal whispered against her ear, his voice small and frightened, like that of a little boy. “Swooping down off a rope from the boom…his coat flapping about…Madre de Dios, just like with Papa…!”
There was more, but he offered it in breathless, whimpering Spanish, and then Kitty heard a sudden sound―a heavy thud like something landed abruptly against the quarterdeck before them. She heard a rustling of fabric, impossible over the din of battle, but still it remained; the flap of woolen folds, a familiar sound she knew from countless homecomings to Rosneath Manor on the Wight. The sound an overcoat makes―the woolen greatcoat of a Naval officer, she thought, her heart trilling in sudden, urgent measure.
“Daddy…!” she cried, holding out her hands. “Daddy!”
“Keep your distance, Ransom!” Cristobal shrieked, his voice filled with bright, shrill panic. He backpedaled, hauling Kitty in tow, keeping the pistol leveled fiercely against her. “Do not come any closer, you bastard, or I will kill her! I will kill her―do you hear me?”
John Ransom said nothing, but Kitty heard his footsteps as he approached, his gait smooth, following Cristobal’s, his weight settling easily, confidently against the floor beams of the deck. She heard another sound as he walked, an unfamiliar whistling, like something swinging sharply through the air.
“Throw it down!” Cristobal cried out, shoving the pistol barrel against Kitty’s head in crude emphasis. “Throw down your staff and hold your hands up, empty and in surrender! Do it, Ransom! Do it now!”
Kitty gasped, her eyes flown wide in bewilderment. Throw down your staff, Cristobal had cried, but John Ransom had never wielded a quarterstaff in his life. He was an expert swordsman, and an unrivaled shot with a pistol. He had known no need for any other weapon but these in his Navy career.
My father would never carry such a thing, she had told Rafe. A quarterstaff is a poor man’s weapon, he says―that a proper gentleman prefers his saber or pistol.
It is a poor man’s weapon, Rafe had concurred, and she remembered how
easily he had used the staff to catch her on the beach at the Wight. No matter in which direction she had cut and run, Rafe had swung the shaft about to give her gentle, but firm pause. That does not make them ineffective…Lucio and I carried them to defend ourselves against any would-be bandits we might meet on our travels.
“Throw down your staff!” Cristobal roared, and Kitty choked for breath, her eyes flown wide.
It cannot be, she thought. It is impossible. I heard him dying―his choked cries of pain. I heard him, and besides, he could never captain a ship to catch us. He is a physician, not a pirate!
It was impossible, and yet when she heard the whip of wind as a quarterstaff swung sharply, demonstratively against a well-trained palm, she heard something else―something faint and indistinctive, and undoubtedly lost to Cristobal’s unfamiliar ear. Kitty heard it, however, the muffled rattle of metal against metal, chain links tucked beneath the broad panel of a greatcoat cuff to keep them hidden from view. Eight chain links, to be exact―fettered to two manacles, one of which stood open and empty.
“Rafe!” she gasped.