The Devil's Fire (3 page)

The chill winds cut deep into his skin and purged the warmth from the marrow of his bones. After nearly two decades at sea, Captain Jonathon Griffith had never developed a tolerance for the mounting cold that washed over the Atlantic as the winter months drew near.

As he stood on the forecastle deck, a cover of gray clouds filled the mid-afternoon sky, and only a few wayward blemishes of sapphire were visible through the narrowing gaps. The threat of a rainstorm or worse was imminent.

Winters along the east coast of North America were infamous for freezing ships in their docks with layers of ice so thick that their hulls might as well have been mounted in brick. As a result, merchant shipping slowed to a virtual standstill.

Griffith took it as a sign. Tomorrow he would call for a vote with the proposition of sailing to the West Indies. The hold of his ship,
Harbinger
, was bloated with barrels of gunpowder, bales of silk, expensive wines, chests full of women's jewelry, and countless other treasures. It had been an extremely lucrative year, and there was no better place to spend the winter season than the warm, crystal waters of the Caribbean.

However, Griffith's mind drifted beyond the fleeting pleasures of a single season. While the men were content to spend every piece of eight they had ever earned on whores and spirits, Griffith quietly hoarded his money for a greater purpose. He would live out the rest of his days under the warm sun, devoid of cares, on a plantation in the West Indies. He would die an old man in his bed, and history would not recall his fate.

Before this dream could be realized, he needed that elusive final plunder; the legendary kind of plunder that covetous pirates recounted in tall, hyperbolic tales around raging bonfires. It was out there somewhere, waiting to be plucked from the seas, and taking it would be no simple task.

Griffith was sick of captains who valued their lives above their cargos; surrenders effortlessly achieved because their goods were not worth dying for. He sought a captain whose life was secondary to the treasure in his hold. It would be a grand battle, he knew, and the outcome would decide his destiny.

But something had been missing. He had never been able to place it, and it wasn't until yesterday that he realized what his grand scheme lacked. It had been an aberrantly warm day for late September, and out of that warmth sprouted a gift from the sea herself.

The plunder of
Lady Katherine
had topped off
Harbinger
's hold, but a treasure of greater value now lingered in Griffith's cabin. Never in his many travels had he set eyes on such a creature. He could have sworn she was a mermaid changed into human form. Her fiery hair and porcelain skin enchanted him. The sight of her made him feel something in his chest that he had never experienced before; a kind of rising swell that he was hard-pressed to describe.

When he first beheld Katherine Lindsay, he had a vision of her on his future plantation, gliding through the tall grass in a sundress, moving toward him with open arms and an evocative smile. He desired her more than anything in the world, and he knew that his life would not be complete unless he possessed her.

He suffered no remorse for killing Thomas Lindsay. Griffith knew when he was being lied to, and Lindsay’s cooperation had been too easily earned, betraying the subtle nuances of a man with something to hide. Edward Livingston,
Harbinger
’s quartermaster, murdered one of Lindsay’s young crewmen, hacking the body to pieces in front of everyone. Griffith apologized for Livingston’s "rash actions" and insisted that Livingston had acted of his own accord. It was a technique he commonly employed when dealing with captains, and in most cases it was more effective than torture.

When Lindsay mentioned the name of his ship,
Lady Katherine
, Griffith glimpsed an uneasy shift in the man's eyes. He couldn't put his finger on it, but he was convinced that there was something valuable at stake; something that Lindsay would not dare reveal. Later that night, Griffith easily discovered her rather uninspired hiding place. He knew instantly that she was the woman the ship had been named after.

Taking the woman prisoner was the first time he had acted without first consulting the crew, and his drastic actions perplexed even him. Bringing a woman aboard a ship was bad luck, and everyone knew it. On most ships it was a forbidden offense, sometimes punishable by death. But he was
Harbinger
's elected captain, and he had led the crew to countless victories. They had come to trust him with their very lives, which afforded him a certain leeway.

He had set their initial grievances at bay, but he worried that a week's voyage or less would rekindle their concerns. Like birds, they reacted negatively to slight alterations in their environment, blindly accepting their circumstances so long as nothing changed. They maintained tried-and-true patterns, and obstacles in their path were almost always met with force.

A recent incident was fresh in Griffith’s mind. A crewman had nicely opted to take over the duties of a man who had overslept after consuming an entire bottle of rum the night prior. When the late-sleeper finally arrived to discover that his position was filled, he was overcome with jealousy. He shoved his dagger between the helpful crewman's shoulder blades. Livingston secured the murderer before anyone could retaliate, and, after a month's incarceration in the hold, he was stranded on the first island they happened across.

Thinking back on the incident prompted Griffith to wonder if keeping the woman in his cabin, which the crew frequented almost as often as he, might prove to be a similar such obstacle. There was also the problem of taming her. She obviously wouldn't warm to him after he had murdered her husband.

His mind was riddled with plaguing questions, and he hadn't uncovered any answers. His entire piratical career had been one of intricately executed plans. "Any problem can be fixed into a plan," his father used to say. Of course, his father’s plans probably hadn’t included a gambling addiction that prompted him to sell his Tobacco farm in Maryland and spend his remaining coin drinking himself to death. With no inheritance to speak of, and fearing a similar fate, Griffith signed on to a merchant vessel that mainly supplied flour to the West Indies. The decision changed his life forever.

"Any problem can be fixed into a plan." Despite his father’s failings, Griffith had lived by the wisdom of those words. However, he now found himself leaping into a treacherous situation with open arms, minus strategy. His father’s life had been propelled irrevocably into a downward spiral under a bout of pure impulse. Would his be no different?

Griffith shook his head in dismay, hoping to clear the uncharacteristically doubtful thoughts from his mind. He considered returning to his cabin to check on the girl, but thought better of it.

"I need a plan," he muttered to the wind.

Like the waters they cruised, the pirates were a blur of infinite motion as they tended to their respective duties. The mottled contrasts of their various ethnicities were nearly indistinguishable at this bustling pace, and the ship was of a single mind.

The crew numbered ninety-two, and most of them had reached their mid-twenties. The whites were primarily Englishmen from London and Bristol. Most had come from British merchant ships that Griffith had plundered here and there. Nine of them had been with Griffith from the beginning, including his confidant, Edward Livingston.

Livingston had proven to be the perfect choice for quartermaster. Aside from Griffith, he claimed no friends, and therefore could not be accused of bias when settling disagreements between the men. He was a tall, barrel-chested man with a darkly sunned scalp that he kept closely shaved, due to thinning hair. He had a strong jaw and hawk-like eyes that missed nothing, narrow beneath thin, straight eyebrows and a weathered forehead. Most respected him, and those few who didn’t were at least wise enough to steer clear of him.

After many years in the West Indies,
Harbinger
’s crew had gained several Jamaicans and Bahamans. The majority had been recruited from the port at Nassau on the island of New Providence. Griffith had also drafted a handful of American sailors from a merchant vessel he captured off of the coast of New York, six months prior. They were a spirited bunch that cared naught for their lives as legitimate merchantmen, and they eagerly joined the pirate crew without requiring any additional incentive.

Nearly a third of the crew was black. Most stemmed from slave ships, gladly accepting pirate life as an alternative to lifelong servitude under potentially cruel masters. While some pirate captains saw this as their opportunity to capitalize on the slave trade, Griffith didn't have the stomach. Seizing a slave ship was almost always accompanied with horrors that were best left unspoken of.

The blacks were hard workers, and Griffith was grateful for them, but he found them difficult to relate to. He wasn't even sure how many of them spoke English, aside from key nautical terms. Some made appearances at parties on the main deck, providing strangely entertaining dances for the whites, but mostly they kept to themselves. And the whites allowed them no say when it came to votes. "They monkeys don’t need a vote," Livingston argued. "They’re happy enough to be freed of shackle."

There was a group of seven blacks called, simply, ‘The Seven’. They had mutinied against their captors aboard a ship named Baraka, and were subsequently discovered by
Harbinger
. There was an animalistic ferocity in their eyes. The largest towered over seven feet tall. No one talked to them, not even the other blacks, unless it was utterly necessary.

There were several elite cliques aboard
Harbinger
, often marked by their various talents. The aptly named 'Musketmen' were five Englishmen who carried muskets. Of them, none was a finer marksman than young Louis Robertson.

The Americans were a class all their own. Presently, Griffith found four of them enjoying a tobacco break at the gunwale. Nathan Adams, the youngest of
Harbinger
's crew, leapt from his seat and took Griffith's hand in his, shaking it vigorously. He had a sandy-colored mop of thick hair that made many balding pirates jealous, apart from those who proudly sported hairless scalps, and his attractive young face was enhanced by a week's worth of blonde stubble. He was a good-natured boy, and even the more hardened pirates had taken a liking to him.

"Oy there, Captain," he said nervously.

"Nathan," Griffith smiled. "What's on your mind, lad?"

"Me and me boys was wondering if this dreadful cold will never end?"

Griffith glanced over Nathan's shoulder and saw the young man's companions leaning forward in eager anticipation of the answer. Of course, the cold was just beginning, and Nathan, having lived on the East Coast for most of his life, certainly knew this.

"I can hardly stand it myself," replied Griffith. "Tomorrow we alter course, and, if the vote calls fair, we set for warmer waters."

A massive grin lit Nathan's boyish face. "Certain it will, Captain. Certain it will."

When the sun had dipped to the horizon through a breach in the clouds, Griffith found himself standing before his cabin door. He was no more confident how to proceed than before. He turned away and looked toward the bow. The fiery rays of the setting sun reddened the circumference of the gap in the clouds, and looking at it made him think of her hair.

"Katherine," he whispered, testing the name on his tongue; the name he’d guessed without even being told.

And then, as if struck by lightning, he realized what he had been missing all along: Thomas Lindsay had inadvertently given his wife away. If the girl thought that her husband had revealed her hiding place in order to save his own skin, she would curse his memory! The lie would be fortified by Griffith's inexplicable knowledge of her name, and he doubted she would come to the conclusion that he had guessed it on his own. Of course, it was a risky plan, especially if he had been wrong about her name all along, but it was all he had going for him.

He felt silly for having doubted himself. There was something about Katherine Lindsay that sent his mind reeling, as though he were blindly feeling around in the dark.

"Any problem can be fixed into a plan," echoed his father’s voice, clear in his mind, despite the many years removed. There was strength in plans, and every plan required deliberation. He had deliberated long enough.

He faced the door and checked himself, smoothing his clothes and pushing hair out of his face. He took a deep breath, opened the door, and stepped into the cabin.

The blade blinded him as a flash of sunset reflected off of it. He felt a sharp pain in his left arm and a sudden pressure that knocked him off of his feet. The girl's slender silhouette stepped in front of the door.

Instinctively, he kicked out a heel and felt it make contact with her shin. She screamed and fell backwards. The blade crashed to the floor with the clang of steel against wood, and he was on top of her before she could retrieve it. He scooped up the cutlass and grinned, victorious.

Her knee caught his groin. He gagged for breath as the hollow pain reverberated into his stomach. She clawed at the hand that held the cutlass, trying to pry open his fingers and wrench the blade free. He smashed his forehead into her cheek. Her head snapped away and rebounded against the floor. She groaned and tried to roll over.

His mistake was thinking she was done. He took the briefest of moments to relax his muscles, which is what she must have been waiting for. Her mouth opened and she rose up to enclose it around his right ear. She bit down with the brawn of a steel trap, her teeth ripping through the fabric of his ear. The tremendous pain spiked throughout his skull like a flower that blossomed needles instead of pedals. When he pulled away, he saw that she had a chunk of his earlobe in her mouth with blood cascading down her chin. Before he could comprehend the horror of the moment, she spit the lobe into his face.