Prologue PROLOGUE
Hôpital, Saint-Domingue, January 1656

JACQUOTTE DELAHAYE was alone. The prison cell was small and dark, and the smell of brine and piss hung heavy in the humid air. It was monsoon season and rain flooded the streets. The prison was close to the sea, so close that it taunted her. Salt water dripped from the cracks in the wall and pooled at her feet, stinging her open wounds. The gash on her leg had gone green and, had she been able, she would have cut it off for fear of mortification. The jagged edges had turned black, and the exposed skin was slick with thick yellow pus. Though she could move it, the feeling had been lost there days ago.

She had no need to worry about sickness any longer. In a way, she was lucky to die a swift death. A death to be remembered. And she wanted to be remembered. For tales of her great deeds to reach the far corners of the earth, for harrowing sea shanties to be sung in her honor, and for green cabin boys to whisper at night, terrified that her ghost haunted them. Now she would live on forever, in infamy.

Jacquotte had expected the French to do away with her quickly. King Louis detested pirates and had taken to decimating all those who threatened his vast lands. She had expected her head on a spike within an hour of setting foot onshore. It would have been wise to kill her sooner, so there was no chance of a great escape back to her beloved Dayana’s Revenge. But they had taken their time, and Jacquotte had spent weeks lying on the soiled straw of her cell, forced to shit in a bucket and eat rancid scraps. No one had come to rescue her. She was completely alone, all but for the rats.

Weak light streamed through the single barred window of her cell. Dawn. The bells began to toll. This morning was not the customary clangor, one chime for each hour of the day; instead, the bells pealed and trilled. At her home in Yáquimo they only played the bells so jubilantly for the weddings of Spanish admirals. But these bells were for a much grimmer affair: her execution.

Footsteps echoed down the corridor. Her heart leapt into her throat. She wished she could do something, fight, scream, cry, but when the guard opened the heavy metal door of the cell and clamped irons down on her wrists and ankles, there was no fight left in her. Not since Tortuga. Her capture had left her sore and weak. She was glad her crew could not see her now; Captain Delahaye, scourge of the Caribbean Sea, shackled by a Frenchman.

The guard led her from the cell. The prison was a labyrinthine mess; long corridors with cramped cells stacked on top of each other, filled with prisoners, their skin tarred with blood and dirt.

The men gaped as she was marched past. They had seen the proclamations bearing King Louis’s seal. Captain Jacquotte Delahaye. The mulatto who killed the Governor of Yáquimo. The woman pirate captain. The red-haired menace. They knew of her, and they knew of the five-hundred-livre reward for her capture. She was infamous, a living legend. To them, she was a sign of hope, of freedom. But soon she would be nothing more than a corpse dangling from a rope.

The guard shoved her outside. The rain hit like a wave, hot and sharp. The sun was hidden behind the clouds. Jacquotte would not get to see the light of day before it was over. The air washed over her, salty on her tongue. At least she was close to the sea, set out across the horizon like a washerwoman’s finest sheet. A knot formed in her stomach. A pang to return to the water. To her ship. Her home.

A chorus of angry voices broke through her reverie. She looked out across the courtyard where a crowd had gathered. There were sailors amongst them, officers of the French Royal Navy, but there were also regular townsfolk, who booed and jeered as she was ushered toward the gallows. They had come to watch her die. Had they heard stories of how she had clawed and scraped her way to her captaincy? Of her fearsome crew, three hundred strong? Or had they simply come to watch a woman hang? It was a rare enough occasion to warrant such a large crowd.

The executions were already underway. The crowd was in a frenzy. They shoved at each other and the guards, fists pumping in the air, their bloodlust still unsated despite the two bodies that already hung from the gallows.

She held her head up high. She would face her death with dignity. Captain Delahaye would stand tall, shake her hair from her face, and smile as the noose was tied around her neck. That would show them she wasn’t afraid. But when she went to shake out her beautiful soft red curls, she found they were grimy and knotted, matted to her head and choked with lice. They’d taken away her gold teeth, and her brown skin was filthy; grime clung to her like a hard shell, and what was left of her clothes hung about her in tatters. Jacquotte looked like a beggar, not a woman to be feared or adored.

The gallows loomed over the courtyard, a huge wooden structure affixed with three nooses, three stools, and three hanging pits. After she was hung, they would gibbet her. The iron cage awaited, and once she danced the hempen jig, they would put her on display. A warning to all pirates that they too would be carrion for the crows one day.

Lightning flashed above, and rain whipped her face. With all her remaining composure, Jacquotte ascended the stairs to the gallows. Her knees were weak as the guard dragged her up onto the stool. She rocked back and forth, trying to keep still. She looked down. Beneath her the floor of the pit was stained with excrement from when those before her had loosed their bowels in fear.

A young man, face scarred by the pox, stood beside the gallows. He was dressed in the finest red and blue French livery.

“Before us stands a woman condemned,” he said, his voice booming across the courtyard. “Jacquotte Delahaye, notorious pirate captain of Dayana’s Revenge. Delahaye has been found guilty of treason against our beloved king, His Most Christian Majesty, the King of France, Louis Dieudonné de Bourbon XIV.”

As the boy spoke, a murmur rose amongst the crowd. Jacquotte looked at them, unable to stand the sight of the pit any longer. Far fewer of them were French than she expected, and the crowd was even larger than she had first thought. Most seemed to be mulattoes like her, and there were maroons and freed slaves amongst them. Many of the French were not fond of their freedom and tensions had been strong between them for as long as Jacquotte could remember.

“The punishment for her crimes most heinous has been decreed thusly,” the crier said. The crowd’s voices had grown so loud that he had to shout to be heard. “Delahaye shall be hanged from the neck until dead.”

The noose was placed over her head. It was thick and heavy and scratched at her skin.

The crowd bellowed. The guards called for silence over the hammering rain, but it was for nought. They moved forward as one, pressing so close to the gallows that the guards had to restrain them. Jacquotte could no longer hear the boy as he decried her various treasons. The crowd shouted and yelled, shoving the guards, and some even threw refuse. Did they want her dead so badly?

The guard put his foot on the stool. Her legs quivered. The pit taunted her.

A crash. A man in the crowd struck a guard over the head. Everything descended into chaos. The crowd threw themselves at the guards. For what reason she could not tell. Rage? Joy?

Jacquotte’s heart pounded. She could have sworn she saw a face she recognized. Long dark hair. Honeyed brown skin. Was it her? Or was Jacquotte merely imagining the face she yearned for more than anything? The face she most wanted to be her last sight on this earth.

A man pulled himself up onto the gallows. In his hand was a machete. He charged the guard beside her and, with one swift motion, cut a notch from his head. While the two men became locked in battle, she strained to get another look at the crowd. She tried searching for the familiar face, but the crowd was unrelenting. Each person blurred into the next. As the mob surged toward her, the guard fell backward into the hanging pit, and knocked the stool out from beneath her.

The noose tightened around Jacquotte’s neck.

Her legs went out from under her.

She fell.


Chapter One CHAPTER ONE
Yáquimo, Santo Domingo, October 1655

JACQUOTTE WALKED the length of the ship with purpose. The storm had hit El Triunfo Dorado hard. The galleon was a beautiful piece of work, but it was no match for the unrelenting nature of monsoon season. Despite the crew’s best efforts, it had struck a reef just off the coast of Santo Domingo, prow-first, piercing the hull. Somehow, most of their crew had managed to make it to shore. Of the eight ships to leave Cartagena on their voyage to the outer reaches of the Spanish Empire, only the Dorado had survived the storms, not to mention the pirates. The chaos they had wrought upon the fleet was harrowing to hear, but she found herself rapt by every grisly detail.

Occasionally, she scribbled in her journal with her sheepskin-wrapped lead pencil, much to the annoyance of the crew. It seemed they wanted nothing more than to have their ship fixed and be on their way back to Spain after their failed mission. They didn’t tell Jacquotte why they had planned to come to Santo Domingo, but she assumed it had something to do with the plantations scattered across the island. They would never discuss such a thing with someone like her.

There was a lot of work to be done. The bowsprit had snapped in two, with one half lodged into the deck. The steps of the companionway had been completely destroyed. The bow was practically shattered along the port side. The scuppers were clogged with dung, dead crabs, and fish, and there were major scratches and structural damage to the hull. But it could be salvaged.

Across the Yáquimo shore, deep blue water lapped against white sand and pink stone. Beside the Dorado, five ships were moored at the jetty: a small sloop, two barques flying the French flag, a ketch, and Jacquotte’s favorite, Richelieu’s caravel, Sérendipité.

Moored alongside the Governor’s grand fleet, it was clear the Dorado had been built by a master craftsman. The quarter galleries at the stern were built expertly, surrounding the raised, angled quarterdeck. The beakhead platform was still intact, and there were decorations carved into its rails. They were damaged, flowers and birds, perhaps chickens, but the figurehead beneath was unharmed. Carved from a deep, solid wood, it showed two women holding hands, the wind in their hair, looking onward.

Jacquotte had worked on many ships in her time as a shipwright; she had trained and apprenticed for nine years, since she was just eleven years old, and had spent the last year running the business after her mentor Richelieu’s passing, but she had never worked on anything of this caliber. Every decision that had been made, every board and nail placed, had been done with an exact purpose. The design was leagues ahead of anything she had ever seen before. It was no wonder the Dorado had survived after all it had been through. It was a marvel.

Though she was a shipwright, aside from the occasional fishing vessel, she had never built a ship from scratch herself. She had never had the coin or the time, though her fingers always itched to put her skills to the test. It was what she had been trained for, but all she was able to do in Yáquimo was maintenance. Up at dawn and home at dusk, Jacquotte labored over broken and damaged ships. Repairing hulls, carving new boards and masts, rigging the ropes and sails until her limbs ached and her fingers bled.

The surviving crew eyed Jacquotte suspiciously. They were tired and injured. Half had been sent to the local doctor for their ailments and the rest were remanded to the ship.

Jacquotte had done her best to look the part of the shipwright. She wore the same loose white shirt that Richelieu had worn every day she had apprenticed under him, long britches, and boots. She’d even tied back her hair. Red hair was bad luck on a ship, but then, so were women. Richelieu always said that since she was both, she canceled out her own bad luck. It was a pity not all sailors felt the same way.

The crew used what little strength they had left to follow her about the deck with their eyes, watching her every move.

The only man who didn’t look at her as though she’d been sent from the devil himself was a huge man, a head taller than the others, with a wide chest and thick strong arms. His skin was so dark that it was practically black, and his face was marked with white scars. On the back of his neck was a pink slave’s brand. He couldn’t have been much older than Jacquotte, who had recently turned twenty.

When she had finished her inspection, Jacquotte made her way back to the purser and the bosun. She laid out the work that needed to be done, and the cost.

“How much?” the purser asked. “That is outrageous.”

He had a peculiar accent, for a Spaniard. The crew all had that same, lilting tone to their voices. Had she the mind to, she might have tried out her Portuguese, but as it stood, she had neither the time nor the patience. Jacquotte forced a smile. “I can assure you, the work is worth the price,” she said. “It’ll take perhaps a month to fix the damages.”

“No, that’s too long,” the bosun interjected. “We must leave within the fortnight, else the weather will turn and we’ll be stuck through till winter in this godforsaken hellhole.”

“It’s not just the repairs, sir. We must also send out for materials,” she said. “Unless you wish for your boat to be patched with palm trees and coconut shells?”

The bosun glared. “That would not do.”

“I have a team of four men and myself,” she told them. “We do good work and stay long hours, until nightfall, and sometimes longer if we’re properly compensated. You won’t find anyone as good on this side of Santo Domingo.”

The men traded knowing glances. She knew their ploy, and she wouldn’t be so easily tricked. She had met many a man like them in her time as a shipwright, and she would meet a hundred more before her life was done. The purser wanted to gouge her on the price, as any money handler worth his salt would. And the bosun wanted that extra money to hire new crewmen, to make up for those they’d lost at sea. Sailors, like their gear, were replaceable in the eyes of those in command.

“We won’t pay,” the purser said firmly. “Where is Monsieur Richelieu? I was told this was his business. Let us speak with him at once or we shall take our leave. We do not do business with women.”

“Certainly not mulatto women,” the bosun spat.

Her mentor’s name was a stab to the gut. She did not dignify them with a response. Instead, she steeled herself and looked around. The Dorado was in bad shape and the remainder of the crew were battered and broken, worn down by their years at sea, the barrage of storms, and their encounters with pirates. They were scrawny, close to starving, and she could tell by sight that they had eaten the calfskin off the ropes for food. They were weak and desperate.

“Judging by the condition of your ship, you aren’t going anywhere,” Jacquotte said with another, much more genuine smile. “As I am sure you know, the best shipwrights are on the other side of Hispaniola, and you won’t make it that far. The next town over with a decent shipwright, one who, for the price you want, could patch up your sails with ratty cloth and nail rotten wood to the front of your ship, would be in Marigot. That’s at least fifteen miles on a good day. Please, raise your tattered sails on your frayed ropes, turn your broken prow seaward, and head east with your punctured hull. Perhaps if I leap into the water and swim, I shall pass by in time to see you drown.”

The men looked taken aback, then red-faced with fury. They knew they had been beaten. By a woman. By a mulatto. They had no choice but to pay her. Richelieu used to tell her that sailors were often made unkind, not by the harsh conditions in which they chose to live, but by their own foolishness. They traveled to unknown waters with inadequate rutters to guide them, and without extreme care and precision, the nautical guidebook was useless. Most were unprepared, with lax barrelmen in their crow’s nests, and crashed into reefs and cliffs along unfamiliar shorelines. But even the cruelest, most sea-hardened man could be beaten with the right amount of wit and certainty.

Finally, the purser sighed. “How many reals?”

As dusk fell, Jacquotte walked home with a spring in her step. The repair wasn’t going to make her rich, but it was a fortune compared to her recent pitiful undertakings. She would have her brother help with the arithmetic, she’d never had much of a head for numbers, but even after sending out for materials, Jacquotte and her crew would each receive a hefty sum.

In just a few short years she would have enough to travel to Fort de Rocher, heart of the once-great pirate haven of Tortuga, an island just off Hispaniola’s northernmost coast. An impenetrable coastal town founded by Jean La Vasseur, boasting a legendary fort so formidable that no army had been able to invade. Until Juan Felipe had outsmarted them.

The Governor of Yáquimo himself had been the one to orchestrate the attack. Jacquotte had keenly listened to his tales as a child, sitting cross-legged on the hard wooden floorboards of the Governor’s manor. Wide-eyed and breathless, she had mapped his strategies in her mind: cutting off the means of escape, sending a ship filled with explosives in to break the first line of defense, tearing down parts of the impenetrable fortress.

Now, from what she could glean from the idle chatter of those passing through, Tortuga was full of sailors and fishermen, as well as buccaneers and pirates. The island was left to its own devices after the execution of La Vasseur, and surrounded by sea on all sides, the greatest shipwrights in the Caribbean had flocked there to provide them with worthy vessels. They came from all over the world, bringing with them unrivaled expertise and the finest materials. They were treated like kings, gods amongst men, and were paid handsomely for their efforts. Fort de Rocher might only have been a small town there, but its history was legendary, and it held a special place in Jacquotte’s heart.

That was where she wanted to be, amongst the masters of her craft. To learn and grow and be celebrated. To make a name for herself. She had been saving her money for years, ever since Richelieu began paying her for her work, waiting until she finally had enough to set off with her younger brother, Marceau, who had been apprenticing with a doctor and could find work anywhere. She kept her earnings at home in a cloth sack, hidden in a hole in the wall behind the bureau. Her father would never intentionally steal from her, but he could be unpredictable when he drank.

The Delahaye home was away from the business of town, off a dirt road along the hill leading to the mountain where the Governor and Spanish nobles lived. It was the only house in the lower town with four rooms: her father’s chambers, his study, Jacquotte and Marceau’s chambers, and a kitchen. It was larger than most other homes in the lower town, but compared to the stone houses on the mountain it did not look so grand. A crude wooden fence marked off the territory Arnolde had claimed, and within was her mother’s frangipani tree. Its narrow trunk, wide-arching branches, and thick, dark leaves provided little shade for the house, but the scent of its blooming white flowers was overpowering, sweet and lush. The smell reminded her of her mother. It was one of the only memories she had of Dayana, sitting beneath the shade of the tree as her mother’s nimble fingers twisted her hair into braids.

The house was quiet when she arrived. Her brother and father must have still been at work. Within, the house was decorated with the items Arnolde had salvaged from his life in France, relics of an exiled lord. There were fine books and tomes; gold, silver, and bronze trinkets and jewels; and fine clothes on display. But alongside them were the trappings of an ordinary life, the life his pittance of a salary from the Governor afforded him. Ancient pots and pans, an uneven chair salvaged from the tavern, hand-stuffed straw mattresses and threadbare sheets. Arnolde always said it was an honor just to be chosen to work for the Governor, but she could earn far more than him in a month if the weather and the sailing conditions were poor.

Jacquotte entered Arnolde’s study. She had spent countless hours there as a child, learning diction and elocution, French and Latin, arithmetic, and her letters. She would practice her script until her cramping fingers were black with ink while Arnolde supervised, so that when he took her with him to the manor in the morning, the noblemen would praise him on the excellent work he had done educating an island girl.

Jacquotte left a portion of her earnings on her father’s desk, when she noticed a letter, startlingly white, still tucked carefully inside its envelope. She turned it over to admire the penmanship, formed of long, languid strokes of a quill. The ink danced across the page, elegant curls printed onto thick parchment by a deft and confident hand. It was written in French. PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL.

Jacquotte hesitated. It alarmed her to see her father’s native tongue written in a hand other than his own. She supposed she oughtn’t be surprised at her father conversing with another Frenchman. He had never been coy about his life before coming to Yáquimo with Richelieu. Before his exile all those years ago, Arnolde Delahaye had been a lesser nobleman from Lyon. He’d had a family before them. A wife. Three children.

She opened the letter.

Dear Monsieur A. Delahaye,

Despite our initial aversion, we find ourselves most impressed with your initiative. The Governor of Yáquimo clearly considers you a great asset. Not just a scribe, but an adviser. Notwithstanding your unfortunate history with the Duke of Savoy, we can see why he would be reluctant to let you go.

Although this proposition did give us pause, your confidence in your ability to achieve such a feat made quite the impression on all of us.

While I am sure you are aware your plan is not the only course of action we are considering, we find your demands agreeable. After much discussion, we are pleased to say we have decided in your favor.

Should you agree to our terms as previously set out, your requests shall be met regarding your exile, and we will send word to your family in France once your obligations are fulfilled.

We eagerly await your response.

Mon. L M

Jacquotte stared at the page, ears ringing. The words ran through her mind. It had been years since she’d heard Arnolde speak of his family in France. What had her father promised to this man?

Anger rose within her. Was he planning to leave them? Arnolde had been away from France for over twenty years. Yáquimo was his home. She and Marceau had been there for him for all those years. They would do anything for him.

When Jacquotte and Marceau were old enough to understand, Arnolde told them of his treason. How he had befriended the Duke of Savoy and been led astray. He’d sided against France in the dispute for Mantua and was exiled to Saint-Domingue for crimes against the Crown, forced to leave behind his family and fortune.

Jacquotte’s childhood was filled with nights where Arnolde would stumble home from the tavern, so drunk he could hardly see. He’d collapse onto his straw mattress, ranting to himself. He wished he could return to his real home, that it was unfair he had lost everything he’d ever loved, and that now he was stuck here and wanted nothing more than to die. Jacquotte and Marceau would pretend they couldn’t hear him until he cried himself to sleep.

His family in France never had to lie awake at night, worried Arnolde wouldn’t make it home, that they would receive news that he had drowned, or owed the wrong man a gambling debt he couldn’t pay off. They never had to search high and low through the town when Arnolde went missing, only to find him unconscious beneath a palm tree, badly burned by the sun. They didn’t have to wash his clothes after a particularly hard night of drinking, so hard that his clothes were drenched in sweat and caked in vomit. They didn’t have to do any of that. Because they weren’t here with him. Jacquotte was.

The study door opened, and Jacquotte whirled to see her father. Arnolde looked older and more tired as of late. The auburn hair that they once had in common was turning gray. His formerly pale skin was leathery and worn from years in the sun, his face worried with lines like a peasant and fingers stained with ink.

He glanced at the letter in her hand. Neither of them said anything. The air between them was hot and humid, as though it were summer, clawing at Jacquotte’s skin and wresting the breath from her.

“I would ask that you refrain from going through my personal effects, Jacquotte,” he said at last.

“What does it mean?” Her hands shook, the letter quivering in her grasp. “What are you doing with the French?”

Arnolde set down his things. “I taught you to read French as well as you do Spanish,” he said. “If you are too dull to understand then that is by no fault of mine.”

She winced. She didn’t want to ignite his temper, but she had to know. What did it all mean? What was he planning? Would he really leave Jacquotte and Marceau behind, or would he take them with him?

She scolded herself for the thought. They were two mulatto bastards. He would leave them without a second thought, she knew. She wondered if it would have been different if her mother were still alive. The way he spoke of her, how in love they’d been, besotted with one another, that she was his true love, not his French wife. She had heard the stories he told of Dayana, a free black woman who completed him. She was everything he was not, and more. Beautiful and demure. Would he have left their mother too?

Arnolde walked the short length of the room and stood before her expectantly. She realized she had crumpled the letter. A feeling of deep shame welled up inside her. Arnolde was made for a life in France. He was born to have servants wait on him with expensive food and the wines he cried for when he was drunk on rum. He should have been visiting the opera house and the theater in fine clothes that he didn’t have to mend himself.

She passed him the letter.

Arnolde smiled. Once again, she found herself thankful for his forgiving nature. Many of the mulattoes in Yáquimo were treated far worse. They had scars on their backs and legs from their punishments, or they were married away so young. Some even died in childbirth before they turned fifteen.

Her father hadn’t beaten her since she was young, a rebellious child who needed to be set straight. Now that she was earning, he would never marry her away. Because of him she didn’t have to be a wife. Not the fishmonger’s wife or the brewer’s wife or the tanner’s wife. She could be a shipwright. She could have a man’s job; earn a man’s wage. She wasn’t subservient to a husband.

Deep down, she knew that her father allowed her to be a shipwright not from the goodness of his own heart, but because there were consequences to her marrying. He would have to pay her dowry, and he would lose her income. The price of her freedom was a portion of her earnings that Arnolde took for “upkeep.” It was a small price to pay.

Arnolde placed the letter back inside his bureau and closed the lid. “It is my business and mine alone. That shall be the end of it.”

Jacquotte nodded once, standing straight. “Yes, Father.”

She knew better than to argue. She knew her place. She would get nothing more from him.

She watched as he picked up her earnings off the desk without a word, then left the room. She only let herself relax once he was out of sight, feeling the tension seep from her body. There was no doubt in her mind that he was headed to the tavern.

She tugged at his bureau drawers, but all were locked. One question lingered in her mind: What was her father hiding?