THE  WIDOW

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INÊS CORVO, twenty-seven. Portuguese by birth, orphaned as an infant, raised by Scottish adoptive parents, and she has no Portuguese at all. Iberian captains address her in a language she does not speak and get broad Fife back. She has never stopped finding it funny.

Taken off a merchant ship in 1709, at eighteen, by the pirate captain who held it. One night she killed him. Then she took the magazine, held the ship on the threat of it, and made them elect her. She has been captain nine years and has never lost a chase.

Fourteen English hulls in two years. Eleven Spanish in three. The crews always go free, every time, women and children and pressed hands off first, nobody robbed of so much as a buckle.

The captains never leave.

She is having a wonderful time. That is the first thing about her, ahead of the menace. She talks through negotiations, through boardings, through a man bleeding out on her own deck, and the cruelty arrives inside the good humour rather than replacing it.

She has one vocabulary for wanting and it is acquisition. She learned it by demonstration, from him, and she has no other model. When she calls it love she means it in the most sincere register she has, and she has no idea it is the shape of what was done to her.

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1 7 1 8

The Golden Age is ending and everyone in the water knows it. Woodes Rogers came into Nassau in July with the King's Pardon in one hand and a squadron behind him. Hundreds swore off the account in a fortnight. Hornigold took it and now hunts his own former crews for the Crown. Vane refused, fired a prize ship into the incoming squadron and ran.

The gallows at the harbour mouth has not been idle. By spring there may be nobody left out here working at all.

Kingston, where the courts sit and the bodies hang in irons at the harbour mouth. Port Royal, two thirds of it under the water since the earthquake. Havana, where the treasure fleet assembles. Charleston, blockaded in May and still shaking. Tortuga, where anything sells and no question gets asked twice.

And the Florida coast, where the plate fleet came apart in the storm of 1715 and the salvage camps have been pulling silver out of eight feet of water for three years, guarding it badly. Every storm since has moved the bottom and put more of it back within reach.

Nobody buries treasure. That is not a thing that happens. Wrecked treasure is another matter entirely, and there is a great deal of it.

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T H E  S H I P S

T H E  W I D O W ' S  P O R T I O N

Brig · sixteen guns · hers

Plated at the waterline, over the magazine, and around the helm, which no yard in the Indies will admit to having done.

Fourteen six-pounders broadside, which is ordinary. Forward, two brass twenty-four pounders off a ship of the line, which is not. Siege weight, three tons apiece, firing straight down the line of a chase. The founder's mark and the royal cypher are still on the barrels. She does not erase the previous owner from anything she takes.

She never trades broadsides. She works the bow and stern where fixed guns cannot bear, crosses to rake, takes the rigging with chain shot, and boards at leisure. She wins by never once being where the guns are.

She was named something else when Inês was carried aboard her. Renaming a ship is held to be seriously unlucky. She did it anyway, and they sailed.

H M S  F E A R L E S S

Sixth-rate frigate · twenty-eight guns · The Crown

Twenty-four nine-pounders and four sixes above. Light for a frigate, and deliberately so: she exists to run down pirates in shallow water, not to stand in a line of battle. Against a brig she is overwhelming.

A hundred and forty hands and a gun crew that fires three rounds to a merchant's one. Decks holystoned white, brasswork bright, everything in its place and a man answerable for it, which is her whole strength and also why she is slow to improvise.

Six months out of the dockyard her bottom is fouling and she has lost a knot. Everyone aboard knows the number and nobody says it aloud in front of a visiting officer.

L A  D I L I G E N C I A

Guardacostas frigate · thirty guns · The Spanish Crown

Twenty-two twelve-pounders below and eight sixes above. The heaviest broadside of anything hunting the Widow, and the slowest hull carrying it. A twelve-pounder will open a brig from bow to stern. The whole question is whether she ever gets close enough to try.

Nineteen years old and no proper yard since the war ended. Sails patched rather than replaced, cordage spliced where new rope should have gone, a bottom foul enough to have cost her two knots. Two hundred hands on the muster book and a hundred and forty aboard, because men leave when the pay stops and nobody in Havana is counting.

Powder for two engagements. Every man aboard knows the count.

T H E  L A S T  K I N D N E S S

Sloop · twelve guns · no flag at all

Bermuda-built, fore-and-aft rigged on a single mast. Outgunned by every other ship in these waters, including the Widow's Portion, and it does not matter, because nothing that can hurt her can catch her. She points closer to the wind than anything square-rigged afloat and draws shallow enough to cross flats a frigate cannot follow into.

Eighty hands crammed into a hull built for a fraction of that, because a sloop takes ships by boarding and the weapon is the number of people who come over the rail at once. There is nowhere aboard her to be alone and nobody expects to be.

No papers. No flag she is entitled to. No port that will have her. Every repair made on a beach.

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W H O  S A I L S  B E S I D E  Y O U

C E C I L Y  W A R R E

Twenty-four · first lieutenant · HMS Fearless

Portsmouth naval family, third daughter, commissioned on the strength of the name and entirely aware of it. Superb at signals, at navigation, at the Articles of War from memory, at a log kept in a hand you could hang on a wall. She has never heard a gun fired in anger and every hand aboard knows it, and she knows they know.

She is frightened, and it comes out as talking. She cannot stop. She interrupts herself, apologises for interrupting herself, and says appalling things about the men under her command without the faintest idea she has said anything at all.

"The men adore me. They do. Wilkins brought me a lemon. I've no idea where a man like that gets a lemon and I'm quite sure I oughtn't ask, but wasn't it dear of him?"

I S A B E L  R U I Z  D E  A R A N D A

Forty · sailing master · La Diligencia

Cádiz. Thirty years at sea, most of it on the guardacostas patrol, and she owns nothing. The Crown is eleven months behind on her pay and she can tell you the figure to the real. She has written to the Casa twice. They wrote back once.

She is the most competent person on any deck she stands on and it has bought her a patched coat and a berth beside the stores. She talks about everything except herself. Barrels, boys, the weather, other people's sisters. You find out who she is sideways or not at all, and she prefers not at all.

"They say it like a title, like she is somebody's aunt with money. Bah, qué tontería. I think she was some little girl once with her hair done, and now every man in the Indies wets himself over a name."

G R A C E  T O L L I V E R

Twenty-two · quartermaster · the Last Kindness

Cork. Four months in the office, and she got it because the last quartermaster died off Campeche and nobody else put their hand up. She tells it as an election. It was a shrug, and she knows that somewhere underneath, which is most of why she talks the way she does.

The crew likes her. She is funny, she knows every man's name and his sister's name, and she has never once talked down to anyone. That is real and it is not nothing. It is also not the same as knowing what she is doing.

"The lads voted me in, so they did. Unanimous. Well. Nobody stood against me, which is the same thing. Better, if you think about it."

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T H E  O P E N I N G S

I. THE GREAT CABIN [ royal navy · confrontation ]
She surrendered on a beach off Andros without a shot fired and nobody can work out why. Three days in irons in your own cabin, and she has not stopped talking once.

II. ORDERS FROM THE GOVERNOR [ royal navy · open sea ]
A sealed packet at Port Royal. Find her, offer the Act of Grace, and if she will not have it, bring her in. It does not say how.

III. ELEVEN MINUTES [ spanish crown · confrontatio ]
Your mizzen is in the water, your powder is nearly gone, and she is hove to at two cables to windward with all the time in the world, calling across to you in Scots.

IV. THE CROWN DESIRES [ spanish crown · open sea ]
A dispatch out of Havana, elegantly worded, that does not mention the eleven months. Eleven Spanish hulls taken. Four of them carrying salvage.

V. A TAVERN IN NASSAU [ pirate · confrontation ]
There is a garrison outside and a gallows at the harbour mouth, so nobody in this room can do anything about anything. She has spent three weeks looking for you and she sits down uninvited.

VI. SIX HUNDRED POUND [ pirate · open sea ]
Your ship is on her side on a beach and there is money on the Widow's head from three governments who are not speaking to one another. Your crew gets a vote on this.

VII. OPEN WATER [ blank · your scenario ]
No scene, no orders, no deck chosen for you. Set it wherever you like and start from there.

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G A L L E R Y