CHAPTER 1
Mother’s Pride Caribbean Sea between Jamaica and Southern Tip of Florida, 1829 “Hold your guard up and widen your stance. You’re not on solid ground. The sea is a tricky old bitch and she’ll test you.” The Scarlet Mistress presses her attack, causing her fifteen-year-old daughter to step back, barely able to meet her mother’s lightning-fast barrage of slashes and jabs with a rapier and dagger. The Scarlet Mistress never allows Brandy to practice with more than one blade at a time. Telling her if she can’t protect herself with one blade, then she has no right to live. The English manof-war cutter rolls slightly back, forcing the mother to lean forward to adjust her balance, which causes her to press hard with the thrust of her rapier. Brandy sees the opening and brings her rapier up and in a slight arc, catching the attacking blade. She then twists her rapier downward, causing her mother to lose control of the weapon. Brandy grabs it from her with her free hand. Before her mother can counter, Brandy takes both rapiers and brings them down on the dagger with a vicious stroke that sends it flying across the deck before it bounces up and over the rail and into the ocean. Using her right foot, she sweeps her mother’s front knee, causing the woman to fall back and land on her bottom. Brandy crosses both blades and steps in close, putting the two razor-sharp edges against her mother’s throat, and yells “Yield!” Mother and daughter stare at each other with the same intense green eyes. The deck is stone silent as two mates and the rest of the crew wait to see what will happen next. The Scarlet Mistress’s temper is legendary among the crew of The Red Witch. Many pirates and sailors alike have had the misfortune of being on the lethal end of her wrath. Few can match her skill with a blade or her lust for her enemy’s blood. She—along with her husband, Captain Eric Erasmus, aka “The Plague”—have sailed and marauded together for a quarter of a century.
“Take those blades from my throat, you little whore,” the Scarlet Mistress says as she slowly stands. Instead, Brandy presses the blunt sides of the rapiers harder into her mother’s neckline. “ARGH!” her mother screams. Her spittle sprinkles her daughter’s face. “That’s enough out of both of you. Kat, concede. Brandy bested you fair and square. You’d think her own mother would show pride in having such a lethal daughter.” Brandy drops her blades, and Katrina Mooney nods and yields while everyone on the deck turns to acknowledge The Red Witch’s captain. He steps out of his cabin, stretching his arms and yawning. Eric Erasmus has jet-black hair, a full mustache and beard, and deep blue eyes. He is a massively muscled man standing six feet, three inches tall and weighing 240 pounds. His forearms are almost as thick as his biceps and shoulders, after spending the last thirty-five years at sea working ropes and rigging as much as a rapier and dagger. He looks around the deck. He cups both hands around his mouth and yells up to the lookout nest some fifty feet up the main mast. “Skinner, do you see anything in the shipping line? They told me in Jamaica a whole convoy of merchant ships should be coming this way.” “Nothing yet, Captain, but I got me eyes open!” Skinner shouts. “That sea goat can’t see past the end of his nose. Why do we let him do lookout every morning, anyway?” Erasmus says to no one in particular. “Because he likes the exercise, Captain. Says it’s the reason he’s the best arm wrestler in any port. Says the winnings he gets makes up for the lack of profitsharing from his favorite cousin, our beloved captain.” Erasmus smiles at his first mate, Don Lomoche. He shakes his head and points his chin back up to the lookout nest. “That boneheaded rat lacks for nothing because of me. He’ll get his due when you all do. The Red Witch did not come cheap, you know. They say this redwood is the hardest in the world. We’ve never been bested.” Erasmus looks over at his daughter. “Brandy, make yourself useful. Climb up there and help your uncle find me some bounty.” Brandy throws a half salute. “Aye aye, Captain!” She looks around for something, and then looks at her mother. “Don’t look at me. You just threw my favorite dagger into the ocean, which I have half a mind to take out of your hide.”
Captain Erasmus reaches in his belt, pulls out a six-inch blade and tosses it to his daughter. She easily catches it by the handle, then clamps the blade between her teeth and climbs the main rigging up to the lookout. Like Skinner, she does not use her feet to climb but pulls herself up by the strength of her arms while holding the dagger in her teeth. Many a time while boarding another vessel, a pirate will have to put his blade in his teeth while climbing so as to not get it tangled in the rigging. Whenever Brandy has to climb, her mother and father insist that she have a blade in her mouth to perfect the skill. Not using her legs when she climbs is her Uncle Skinner’s idea. That, coupled with the constant sword-fighting lessons from her parents has endowed the girl with considerable upper-body strength. She puts most of the male crew on The Red Witch to shame. Captain Erasmus watches his daughter climb the rigging. The hot Caribbean Sea breeze makes her long, red hair swish through the air like wild flames dancing. He looks over at Kat. “You’re the only one I have ever seen climb the rigging like that, but not in a while. I fear she will someday outdo both of us.” The Scarlet Mistress looks at her husband with a sneer. “She still has a long way to go. Once she’s down, send her to me. She’ll replace that dagger. I’ll be in our cabin.” She turns and grabs the two rapiers that her daughter threw to the deck earlier and strides toward her quarters. Just before entering she takes a sideways glance up the main mast and sees Brandy standing in the lookout nest with her uncle, and her intense green eyes twinkle with enormous pride. She grabs the latch to the cabin doors and mutters under her breath, “Nicely done, Brandy. They’ve begun to fear you like they do me.” Brandy stands behind her uncle and shades her eyes with her right hand as she looks out over the early-morning eastern sky. Skinner has the frame of a gorilla. His arms are long and muscled. He sports a bright blond beard and a mustache that accentuates his blue eyes and has long blond hair that he wears in a ponytail. Many a maid in port has lost her heart to his infectious smile, and many a man his gold to the strength of his arm. The sun shows it to be around 8:00 a.m. Brandy knows they are looking for a convoy of merchant ships that left New York harbor two weeks ago and are headed to New Orleans. Her father’s plan is to catch the last one in the line and overtake it while the others flee to safety. The ship, its crew, goods, and passengers will be brought to a secret Caribbean pirate port where everyone
and everything, including the ship and the people aboard, will be divided up and sold. It is the pirate’s way of life; the only life she has ever known. She was born right on The Red Witch fifteen years ago during one of the biggest hurricanes anyone can remember. Captain Erasmus thought to get his wife to the mainland in Florida to give birth to what he then hoped would be a son and heir. Brandy did not oblige him on either count. She was brought into this world below deck while Erasmus and his crew struggled to save The Red Witch during the storm. The crew still talks about how when the first cries of the newborn daughter of Captain Eric Erasmus and the Scarlet Mistress sounded out, the storm died down and calm seas ensued. The timing of the ship entering the eye of the storm and then making port and hunkering down through the rest of it is thought by its crew to be a miracle and an omen that Brandy was a gift of good luck from the sea. She taps her uncle’s shoulder. “Uncle Skinner, I see something off port. It looks to be ships, but they’re too big to be merchants.” Skinner lowers his spyglass. “Aye, Brandy, those be ships all right—fullblown English man-of-war Royal Navy warships. I count five so far. They don’t sit as low in the water as we do because we’re made of the heavier redwood, which also means we can’t outrun them and there’s too many to fight off. I’ve been watching them. They’ll be on us soon.” Brandy rebukes her uncle for not sounding the alarm, but he puts up a hand. “Your parents and I have plans for something like this. You sound the alarm, and when you get down, do exactly what your mother tells you to do.” Brandy does not hesitate. She puts her hands to her mouth and yells, “Captain, English armada off port, five men-of-war! Thirty minutes out.” She looks back at her uncle and says, “Why did you wait?” Skinner reaches up and wipes the tear from his niece’s eye. “I only spotted them when you and your mother were dancing around down there, trying to kill one another. If I had said anything then, your father might have tried to run and keep them at bay with our aft cannon. But it’d been useless. Those ships are much faster than we are, and it’s a two-day sail to the nearest friendly port. It be best we surrender and pray for mercy from their admiral.” Down on the deck, Captain Erasmus points his spyglass in the direction Brandy had just announced and feels an unaccustomed cold wave of panic. The Royal Navy usually leaves him and his ship alone, unless … they finally figured out who his wife really is. Then he knows there could be a real fight.