Princess of the Blood. Roxana Malaventura

the early eighteenth century, the only ammunition in ready supply made the flintlock pistol the best choice. With only one shot available, a woman’s marksmanship ought to be precise, and I am ever diligent in rehearsing mine.

      Within an hour of taking the Governor’s leave, I was aboard Hecate , in my cabin exchanging a ladylike crinoline for garb more seaworthy. In one respect the tale I had told the Governor was quite truthful – the person who had dressed my hair the day before was indeed known as Polly, and Polly it was who assisted me now, teasing the ridiculous ringlets from my hair, stowing away the dainty emerald earrings and folding my petticoats into the chest I kept for such occasions. Polly is a Tahitian, muscled like an athlete, handsome as a cinnamon-skinned Adonis and a reformed cannibal. He is my cabin-boy – the first words he spoke when I took him on were “Call me Ishmael.” This I declined to do.

      Courtesy suggests I should introduce the rest of my crew to a Reader borne to this point by whatever interest my tale has inflamed, but ere I do so, I must provide some description of the sleek little vessel they sail.

      Hecate is a French-built brigantine, two-masted, copper-bottomed and handy, of fourteen guns. She was almost new when two British ships cornered her off the coast of Ireland in ’96 and her captain struck his colours before a shot was fired. She saw service with the British, with some distinction, I am told, before being reported lost in ’99. What the Lords of the Admiralty never knew was that my parents had stolen her, crossed the Atlantic and sailed between the loose threads in an open seam of the Bermuda triangle, dropping anchor in Tortuga a hundred years before they set sail. I need scarcely say that Hecate was not her original name.

      She was, of course, the fastest thing afloat in the Caribbean, and her flintlock guns far outmatched those on anything she was like to encounter. Perhaps, lest the Reader is unfamiliar with the conduct of an action at sea, I should furnish the rudiments of an explanation. Gunnery, in the age of sail, is an extremely imprecise art. Each gun, and on a ship o’ the line there are eighty and more weighing sometimes two ton apiece, is manned by its own crew, under the command of a gun-captain. The process of preparing, loading, aiming and discharging the gun must be imagined to take place in the following sequence:

      First, the gun-carriage is drawn inboard and the bore swabbed with a wet mop, to douse any smouldering residue from the previous shot. The powder charge, usually in a calico bag, is next loaded and rammed down, followed by a wad of rags and old rope, greased with pork or mutton fat. Atop that the shot is loaded – iron balls, sometimes two or three of ‘em, sometimes a pair chained together, perhaps a handful of musket balls, carpenter’s nails or any old rubbish. With another wad to stop the whole lot tipping out as the ship rolls, the carriage is rolled back to the gun-port and lashed into place. Finally, the gun-captain primes the touch-hole with a hollow quill filled with fine powder. He must then stand behind the gun, linstock in hand, and attempt something resembling aim. The Reader might imagine him peering out, looking for a target, training the gun to right or left – nothing could possibly be further from the truth. It is the helmsman’s job to lay a target under the ship’s guns and until the gun-captain’s view through the port is entirely full of the enemy, his shot will likely miss. He must dab the smouldering match at the end of the linstock to the touch-hole, guessing how much time will pass before the charge actually ignites, matching that time to his guess as to whether, when and how far the ship will roll, hope for the best and try not to be killed by the recoil of his own gun.

      All this in a space where a man cannot stand upright.

      What this simple description fails to make clear is that the noise and smoke of one’s own guns renders all communication among the crew entirely impossible, while the shock and bloodshed inflicted by those of the enemy makes every endeavour terrifying, dangerous and difficult. If the Reader imagines orders to aim and fire being given by smart officers in cocked hats and crisp hollywood-white trousers, the Reader is, I am sorry to say, deceived.

      Aboard Hecate, by contrast, matters are conducted more scientifically, owing to her peculiar advantages. Her guns are, as I said, discharged by matchlocks – these allow the gun-captain to stand well behind his piece, sighting from breech to muzzle and firing the weapon with an instantaneous tug on a lanyard. They also have rifled bores, imparting a radial spin to a ball which actually fits the barrel, thereby increasing both its range and accuracy, to the point where the gunners can reasonably expect the shot to fall where the gun is trained. These advantages, great as they are, are nothing compared to the benefit of my father’s own invention, the Coriolis Compass. This ingenious device, based upon the apparent motion (relative to an observer, of course) of a pea rolling across a gramophone-record, gives the helmsman the capacity to steer not only the ship, but when conditions are right, her shot as well. On a fair day Hecate’s guns have in a single volley dismasted a Spanish three-decker, shot through her rudder-chains and destroyed the captain’s harpsichord before he knew he was under attack.

      Hecate could, in short, out-run, out-sail and out-gun almost any vessel afloat.

      As for her crew, I never knew a finer, more loyal or more able gang of desperate cut-throats in all my life. With them, I am able to sail and fight my little ship with a crew smaller than many would think possible. In French hands she had a crew of eighty; under the British about fifty (there is a lesson there in the relative merits of those two nations as seafarers). Under my command, two dozen and some damned fine officers are quite enough.

      Quartermaster and, when needed, ship’s Doctor, is Hasdrubal Bonaparte, a lanky, string-bean octoroon with eyes and teeth the colour of vanilla and skin like old parchment. He has claimed to be ninety-nine years old for as long as I have known him, and he seems to be telling the truth. In him I place my absolute trust in every matter on which seaworthiness and battle-readiness depend. Aboard many a pirate ship may be found a greater degree of egalitarianism than one might imagine, the Captain and Quartermaster commonly being elected by the crew. So democratic a model of Governance is hardly to my taste – Hecate is my ship; my least whim is absolute, her crew is my crew and I grant to the Quartermaster the duty of maintaining order among them. He discharges this duty with the understanding that he may bring to me any grievance he is unable to settle by his own methods. He is, of course, yet to do so. Breaches of discipline are rare – when they occur, a flogging, customary at sea in that century under any flag, is the result. I beg the Reader to know that while I hate to whip a man, I hate it more to bid another man whip him for me, and no man of my crew has yet died under my lash.

      My Sailing Master is Nebuchadnezzar O’Sullivan, a scrawny and wily little beetle of a man with an ear and a thumb missing. The ear he lost in a brothel-brawl in Nassau, the thumb to the public executioner at the court of a Babylonian potentate – no man knows why and none dare ask. He told me the tale once, in an intemperate moment, but I shall never repeat it. His grandfather was with Colonna at Lepanto, and I know no man alive, nor many dead, who can handle a ship better than he.

      Boatswain is a Nubian giant who goes by the name of Achilles MacDonald and speaks a curious and unintelligible patois of Arabic and Finnish. His parentage is unknown, presumably mixed, and he governs every activity of the crewmen on deck and aloft – the handling of sails and the management of all the gear and tackle that entails. Whatever his deficiency in oral communication, it is more than made up by his ability to direct the crew to the most complex duties by the curl of a lip, the twitch of an eyebrow and the trill of a whistle. Raised by Berbers, in the style of that tribe he keeps most of his scalp clean-shaven with a long, shaggy top-knot. I am told that the purpose of this tonsure is that, should he lose his head in battle, his enemy might carry it off without putting an unclean finger into his eye or mouth. He is a dangerous man, and loyal to the last drop of blood.

      Ship’s cook is Michel Escoffier. We all call him Michelin because he is barely four and-a-half feet tall. His reputation in the bedroom and perhaps his prowess in the kitchen both suggest that he may well sire a long line of excellent chefs.

      Ship’s Carpenter is a morose Visigoth known as Atilla Árheimar. He was among the first men I recruited, as a common seaman, and I know of none deadlier in close-quarters combat. On his maiden voyage he presented me with a magnificent figurehead carved with a jack-knife from a mahogany log he stole from a Honduran. His knowledge of the Greek myths being