“Let’s see … hmmm, this has to be Greenland, therefore, this has to be Newfoundland, here’s Nova Scotia and . . . aha, this hook shape couldn’t indicate anything but the coast of Massachusetts.
“Huh, that’s weird. According to this map, there’s no East River; Long Island and Manhattan Island are joined. Hell, maybe they are, in this world. But where in the devil did the damned cartographers get some of these names? A few are French, yes, and some are obviously French adaptations of Spanish words, but some of these others look like no languages I’ve ever seen before. Indian? Maybe. These far northern ones are most probably Norse, at least the French transliterations of Norse.”
With a shake of his head, he sighed in helpless frustration. “Well, maybe Melchoro can tell me more of this when he’s done with the ship’s papers; after all, he’s soldiered in New Spain, years agone. Since they lay claim to all of it, surely the Spanish have at least some knowledge of the lands and people to their immediate north.”
Laying aside the last of the pages of crabbed French script, the bardn said, “Your grace, friend Bass, the ship we have but just taken at such dear cost was no more a ship of the French roi than are our ships of King Arthur. She was owned and financed by a group of French noblemen, true enough, but she was ere wed by a multinational pack of pirates. They had spent the last score of months in robbing the coasts and commerce of New Spain, Great Ireland, New France, and the Norse settlements. Laden with plunder, they were making for Bordeaux when we chanced across them. No wonder there were so many of them aboard. Less wonder that they fought so long and hard and well—it was their profession.”
Leaving the Arab and the Kalmyk to their counting and weighing, Bass, Melchoro, and Sir Calum left the cabin and went up on deck to find Walid Pasha and relay to him the surprising truth about the supposed French warship, the battered hulk of which Revenge was now towing back to England.
They found the ship captain on the quarterdeck, but he spoke before any of them could do so. “Sebastian Bey, we must send at least a score more of your soldiers to the prize, immediately. They are needed to work the pumps and help otherwise. If any of your fighters number amongst their accomplishments aught of the carpenter or joiner trades, Basheer stands in sore need of more hands to repair damages to the hull of the prize, else we soon may be faced with the unpleasant choice of jettisoning valuable pieces of ordnance or seeing the ship sink in the sea.”
While Sir Calum stalked off to find some galloglaiches, the round-faced Bar6n Melchoro, happily practicing his Turkish, told Walid of his findings in the papers of La Sentinelle du Nord, ending by saying, “It would seem that they attacked and robbed and killed most indiscriminately—Spanish, Irish, Norse, red indios, even their own king’s stations in New France.”
Walid pulled at his beard, nodding. “Yes, Melchoro effendi, what you here recount makes sense of matters I had pondered from early in our encounter with that ship. Culverins and demiculverins are long-range guns, painstakingly cast of fine bell bronze and hellishly expensive, designed to use a smaller caliber, lighter-weight ball, to provide finer accuracy at a distance than could any cannon.
“Cannon, on the other hand—your basilisks, cannon-royals, true full cannon, and demicannon—are relatively cheap, being cast of iron, have no accuracy to speak of at any range beyond that of a common arquebus, but can throw stone balls weighing upward of seventy pounds. Consequently, most broadside guns—the lower-deck guns, certainly—are cannon, while the long-range, long-barreled, high-priced culverins are rarely seen mounted other than in bow and stem as chasers.
“I had thought it quite odd that yonder galleon mounted a broadside consisting almost entirely of bronze culverins, demiculverins, and saker-royals, with but a bare handful of true iron cannon, and these all amidships on the lower gundeck. Now I can see why she was so armed.”
“And why was that?” asked the baron, his interest piqued.
“Weight, for one reason,” Walid answered. “A full broadside of large-caliber iron guns, together with the stone balls and the huge amounts of powder necessary for them, would have been significantly heavier, and much bulkier, than that which they did mount and carry. The lesser weight and bulk meant that they could ship aboard more men and provender for them for a longer voyage, while still mounting sufficient ordnance to achieve the purposes of that voyage.
“Look you, effendi, their choice quarry was lightly built, lightly armed merchanters, for which their existing broadside was surely more than sufficient—observe how badly their broadsides damaged Krystal’s fabric, compared to the relatively minor damages they wrought on my ship. Most likely they ran from any true warships they chanced to encounter, just as they tried to run from us, to start.
“For land raids, their culverin broadsides were perfect, for they could lie out beyond the range of a fort’s cannon and pound it with impunity, while their landing parties did their bloody work ashore. There exists ample proof that theirs was a most auspicious voyage . . . until they had the extreme misfortune to chance across this flotilla, that is.
“By the bye, the prisoners we freed from the hold of the prize are all anxious to express their thanks to his grace. One of them, a Spaniard, is most insistent. He has good English, far better than is mine own, but would Melchoro effendi care to meet with him before he is conducted to an audience with Sebastian Bey?”
Bass thought that the middle-aged Spaniard looked more Irish than Spanish, with his flaming-red hair and his sea-green eyes. The man was thick-limbed, obviously muscular, with a broad chest and a neck at least eighteen inches in circumference. He looks, thought Bass, like a slightly shortened version of Buddy Webster, except for the face, of course.
Aside from a thick and flaring dark-red mustache, the Spaniard was beardless, his cheeks and chin deeply and profusely pockmarked. A new scar ran down one side of his face from a split ear to his jawline, and there was a profusion of other, older scars. His nose was crooked and canted and a mite flattened. He was missing all or part of three fingers, his right ear lobe, and a goodly number of teeth.
He and the other prisoners had been found, heavily fettered, in the deepest, dankest hold of the French galleon. Two of them had been dead—long dead—and another had been so deranged that when he was brought up on deck for his fetters to be struck off, he had thrown himself overboard and sunk like a stone. Two of the survivors were Indians; this Spaniard was the other.
After his hour of conversation with the freed man, Bardn Melchoro had sought Bass out and prepared him for the interview he must grant.
“Esteemed friend, your grace of Norfolk, this Don Diego is a belted knight, but more than that, he is a gentleman of the old school. To one such as is he, responsibility and honoring of just debts are of even more importance than are right and privilege.
“It is because he is what he is that he was residing in Nueva Espana, having willingly relinquished his patrimony in Old Castile to a younger brother. Don Diego feels that honor is now dead in Spain . . . and, considering certain of the shameful acts and base practices of the kakistocracy that presently controls the King of Spain, Don Diego may well be of a correctness, entirely.
“Don Diego has, alas, lost a large proportion of all he once owned in Nueva Espana, due to the depredations of the French marauders. He has replaced the verminous, filthy rags in which we found him with items of decent clothing taken from off the bodies of dead French officers, from whence source he also was able to reclaim his good sword, his daggers, and other equipment. But these are ail that he now owns, he can pay no ransom, nor are there any who would ransom him. He will make you an offer of service. He means every word of that offer, I feel, and will fulfill his commitments to the very last jot and tittle, even unto his death.”
The leased ship of the line, Impressionant arrived in Palermo harbor a full four days ahead of Cardinal D’Este’s best estimate. That she did so was the sole responsibility of Le Chevalier Marc Marcel de Montjoie de Vires, who had seen to it that despite the long enforced stay in Livorno, the ship was kept ready for sea—fully watered, victualed, and supplied at all times—with no more than half of her officers and crew absent at any one time.