Santa Domingo, Hispaniola
1656

She paid the jailers in good Spanish coin for the privilege of seeing the condemned killer.

He was locked away in an old storage room, ball-and-chain on every limb, collared to the stone wall of the Spanish fortress dungeon. By the time Simone saw the buccaneer he had become near catatonic. Beaten and starved, he had retreated within himself so far that his keepers bothered him no more. His dreadlocks were matted and crusted with his blood. His jaw and ribs ached where the troops had put their boots to him. The Spanish were harsh and they saved the worst of their savagery for those they feared. They feared none more than those they called boucaniers.

Simone Belit was now mistress to the Spanish Governor of Hispaniola and a beautiful woman. A Mulatto, she had secretly invested her “gifts” from her patrons in brothels in Port Royal and was a wealthy woman now in her own right. She remained a courtesan as it was the only a way a woman of her position could have access to political connections.

Braver than another lady of her station would have deemed prudent, Simone insisted upon seeing Sabbath alone. She entered the dark, stinking room in a rustle of lace, bringing with her an aura of perfumed lavender and luxury.

If Sabbath noticed this incongruous arrival he gave no indication. The courtesan gracefully took a seat upon a rough three-legged stool provided by the astonished but well-paid guard. She smoothed her petticoats and idly toyed with her strands of pearls until the musketeer retreated, leaving her alone.

“They say you are a savage.” Her voice was musical. “They say you have killed many of the King’s sailors and soldiers. That you drink their blood and piss on their corpses.”

Sabbath did not reply. He kept his bearded face to the wall and hid behind the hanging tangle of his hair.

“They say you served as first officer with Captain Delacroix under letters of Marquee bought by an English lord and plantation owner named Sinclair.”

She paused but still Sabbath did not answer. If she was perturbed by the dirty prisoner’s silence she did not show it.

“They also say Sinclair stole your woman and the Brethren of the Coast didn’t stand by you when you tried for vengeance. That your attempt failed and Sinclair sold you to the Spanish. . . and now you will hang.”

By now Simone did not expect an answer. Her eyes were less calculating as she regarded the man before her. She saw handsome features under abuse and filth, a once fine specimen laboring under betrayal and heartbreak and the loss of hope. When she next spoke her voice was soft from a mouth framed by the most sensual lips in the Caribbean.

“We are not so different, you and I,” she whispered. A new note in her voice stirred something in Sabbath and for the first time he turned to regard this strange vision of femininity and beauty that had invaded the squalor of his prison smelling of lavender and dressed in silks and lace. Simone saw and taking heart, pushed on.

“Our mothers were both escaped slaves, our fathers European.” She held him with a steady gaze. “We both labor with broken hearts. For mine there is a chance, Monsieur Sabbath. For you there is nothing but what I can offer; a chance for vengeance.”

Simone, courtesan of the Spanish governor of Hispaniola, steeled herself for Sabbath’s reaction when she answered the question she saw now naked and growing in Sabbath's eyes.

“Yes, she is dead, Jean-Mark. Sinclair used your Marie up and threw her away. Now he has the most precious person in the world to me.”

Sabbath’s cry was like the scream of an animal in a trap and made the blood of the guards run cold so that they scrambled in their fear to unlock the door and get into the cell to ensure the lady still lived.

Sabbath was alone.

With sure, steady strokes he propelled the dugout through the surf towards the rocky shoreline, leaving Rodriguez and the fishing vessel behind. Sabbath and Rodriguez had grown up together in Tortuga, that most notorious of pirate enclaves. Their bond was as strong as it was old. As soon as Sabbath’s dugout was caught up in the shore-bound surf, his old friend picked up anchor and began to sail.

Wrapped in oilskin at Sabbath’s feet was an arsenal. He was a cutthroat killer now armed and outfitted like an officer of a royal court, which in her own way Simone Belit was. Ahead, silhouetted against the setting of the sun, stood the mansion house of Alexander Sinclair, financier of pirates and plantation owner on the English-held island of Jamaica.

The elaborate, sprawling building stood atop the cliff edge overlooking the sea. Once the vessel behind him was out of sight in the fading twilight, Sabbath steered his course to the west of the bay under Sinclair’s mansion. There a point of land jutted out and the minor English nobleman kept a personal dock.

Simone’s money had purchased Sabbath’s “release,” if not his pardon. Her influence had seen him safely to his home island of Tortuga with enough in silver to outfit his venture and grease the wheels facilitating the undertaking.

Other than his childhood friend with the fishing boat, Sabbath approached no one else among the Brethren. The buccaneers had failed him before and now he took Spanish money in Spanish service. None of the Brethren of the Coast would lift a finger to help a Spanish interest.

“If I were your friend I would not help you kill yourself,” Rodriguez had said.

Sabbath hadn’t answered him.

“This is folly for a woman who is, now, no more than a memory.” Rodriguez had argued. “This won’t bring her back, and there will be other women. . .”

Sabbath had turned to him then.

“No. No there will not, not like Marie. What am I to do? Am I to heal? To continue on with only memories, because life is for the living and Marie is dead?” Sabbath shook his head, eyes flat. “Let others take their feelings out and examine them like treasure. I tell you I loved her, and if you don’t understand that then understand that I do and leave it alone, my friend.”

Rodriguez had nodded his acceptance then, avoiding Sabbath’s eyes and drinking deeply.

Now Sabbath steered his dugout directly towards the wharf where two of Sinclair’s servants stood a lazy guard. He engineered his approach so that the setting sun was at his back and in the eyes of his enemy. Feeling safely out of site of their employer, the two men diced to pass the time, unaware how close grace was in coming.

Sabbath’s own grace had been a beautiful prostitute of mixed blood. A girl finally taken from him by a powerful man of great influence; Sinclair. A girl now dead like so many other of Sinclair’s playthings. In his house now lay another young and beautiful girl, this one loved as passionately as he had loved his Marie. Loved by a woman of means and influence.

“Why will the Governor not negotiate her release to please you?” He had asked Simone.

Sabbath shook memories from his mind with a swig of honest English rum. The time for reminiscence was past. The time for killing was at hand.

The watchmen looked up from their dice in surprise as Sabbath slid the dugout next to the wharf ladder. A man rowing a dugout out of the open ocean was ludicrous. They came to their feet picking up .65 caliber flintlock carbines.

“What’s this now?” Said one in English.

“Right bleedin' navigator coming in here like this.” Said the other, a pale redhead with an Irish accent.

Sabbath smiled up at them as they squinted against the dying rays of the Caribbean sun. In one smooth motion the buccaneer swept up his flintlock blunderbuss loaded with 8g of shot. The faces of the Englishmen froze in horror as they fumbled at the locks of their own weapons.

The Blunderbuss exploded like a cannon across the short range and the lead caught both men. The first sentry took most of the shot in the gut and was punched backwards while the Irishman spun away, his elbow shattered by the spreading pattern of the shotgun. Each man cried out as he was knocked to the salted wood of the dock. The first landed hard on his back and blood flowed like liquor in the streets of Port Royal from the horrid wound in his stomach.

His dying was hard.

The Irishman twisted at his carbine with his good arm. His other hung loose at a canted angle and shock was a pallor on his face. He managed to scoop the flintlock up and struggling, brought it to bear.

Just as he had scrambled up over the side of a hundred Spanish merchant ships, Sabbath scaled the wharf ladder and came up over the top of the dock. In his hands swung a short, broad-bladed cutlass with a heavy basket hilt. His face was twisted in rage and bloodlust, his scream shrilly frightening.

Sabbath had learned the art of close quarter battle at no dueling academy and the cutlass was not a rapier, but a crude butcher’s weapon. He used it as such. He brought the heavy curved sword down overhand in hacking chops. His first blow tossed the wounded and desperate Irishman’s flintlock to the side, tearing loose metal barrel from wooden fore grip.

His second and third blows separated the man’s head from his shoulders so that it bounced and rolled off the dock. It splashed into the water, sinking like a stone. Blood pumped out onto the dock, mixing with the other man’s.

Breathing hard, Sabbath returned to his dugout and finished outfitting himself. He would have little time to reload once he reached the mansion and Sabbath was literally festooned with weapons as he made his way to where the sentries’ horses shied skittish against their reins at the stench of spilled blood.

Sabbath struggled up into the saddle and pointed his horse towards the coast road. The killing had just begun but the hour of his vengeance was now. He felt good. Good as he had ever felt flush with Spanish gold and rolling drunk in Port Royal or Tortuga after taking a galleon. But a long, long way from as good as he had ever felt when he was with Marie.

That kind of good was gone forever and it left room now only for the killing.

Sinclair liked the feel of the whip in his hands.

The riding crop dangled from his hand, his grip loose with his sweat. His heart pounded with exertion. The girl was bound, naked as himself, to the bed. Her back was a mass of stripes from the kiss of the whip.

Her anguished cries caused his heart to beat faster. The site of her squirming under the lash inflamed him past the point of reason more than strong drink ever could. He wiped a trembling hand across a spittle-lined mouth. The girl wept softly in the lull of his beating.

Sinclair reached out gently and trailed the whip down her back. She gasped and squirmed at the cool touch of the cruel leather. Sinclair watched the taunt muscles of her buttocks flex in anticipation of another blow.

It made him feel good.

A rich plantation owner, Sinclair kept a stable of slaves to pick his tobacco. To keep the slaves he hired overseers and assistants. As Secretary-Governor and primary tax collector he was entitled to an allotment of troops like the Governor. Unlike the Governor, however, Sinclair used local men to solidify his ties with the privateer community in Port Royal. As such, his estate, while not the military fortress that was the Governor's, did boast at least a platoon's strength of able-bodied men with ready access to weaponry.

Slaves worked the fields as Sabbath galloped past. Overseers looked up in puzzlement as the man raced by hell-bent-for-leather towards the main house. Sabbath was using the primary tactics of a pirate attack to raid Sinclair's estate; speed, surprise, and bestial aggression.

His horse snorted widely as Sabbath reined him in. The beast was lathered white with sweat by the time the pirate reached the mansion's front door. A man racing in such manner brought Sinclair's retainers on the run. An old black slave ran forward from the stable to take the excited horse as Sabbath leapt from the saddle.

One sight of the crazed Sabbath was enough to stop the old man in his tracks. The slave had worked this plantation for twenty years and with Sinclair he had grown used to the comings and goings of hard men. He would have, in fact, recognized Sabbath from his days with Captain Delacroix had he looked closely. All the frightened man could see now, however, was a plethora of loaded pistols and the hilts of knives and the bloody cutlass hanging at the rider's side.

The two guards at the door took a moment to call out to the house before coming down the steps from the wide veranda. Panting from his exertion, Sabbath nodded once towards them, drawing closer. The men each held .65 caliber Fusil flintlocks.

"What's the problem, man?" One asked.

"Message." Sabbath said. "I have a message for Sinclair."

"That's Master Sinclair to you," the other snapped.

"Right."

Sabbath pulled a Naval pistol from a sash with one hand and a .40 caliber Duck's Foot pistol with the other. The men's eyes widened and Sabbath leapt forward.

Without hesitation he jammed a pistol barrel into each man's chest and pulled the triggers. The percussion banged loud across the yard and the stench of cordite rose with the billowing clouds of smoke from the fired weapons. The Naval pistol's .51 caliber ball shattered the guard's sternum and punched a hole through his lungs big as a piece 'o eight.

The man was knocked back hard and thrown to the steps of the house.

The Duck's Foot failed to discharge. The powder flashed but the load was bad and the lead ball didn’t fire. The man stumbled backwards in anticipation of a killing round that never came. In surprise the man struggled to bring his Fusil around to bear.

Lunging forward Sabbath smashed his forehead into the man's face. The henchman staggered and Sabbath clubbed him hard across the temple with the heavy barrel of the Duck's Foot pistol. The man crumpled to the dirt. Dropping his pistols, Sabbath snatched up the man's fallen firearm.

Reversing the weapon Sabbath brought the heavy shoulder butt down. Lifted it, brought it down again. There was a shout behind him and Sabbath whirled to see an armed man racing from an outbuilding. They both went to one knee and brought their weapons up simultaneously. There was a bang as they fired and then the cloud of gunpowder smoke blinded Sabbath. He heard the other man's shot whiz by his head like an angry hornet and he came to his feet pulling a big Durs Egg Holster Pistol from his belt as he did so.

Through the smoke he saw the other man across the yard stretched out like Christ on the cross, blood pouring from a wound in the his throat. Sensing movement Sabbath spun, bringing his pistol up. It was the stable hand racing in the other direction.

Sabbath turned and ran up the steps and through the door to Sinclair's mansion.

Sinclair was on the woman.

Every touch was a fiery agony causing her to cry out in pain. Each gasp of anguish caused Sinclair to grow more and more aroused. To him this was the culmination of all his endeavors. The wealth, the acquisition of power, all had been maneuvered to allow this freedom of sadistic perversion.

He was like Caligula reveling in his excess and cruelty in ancient Rome. Here in the New World a man of station and influence was free to handle those of lesser status as he deemed fit. In their suffering Sinclair found his pleasure.

He heard a volley of shot outside and wondered if a slave had tried to escape. The thought that he would be attacked in his own home was beyond his ability to comprehend.

When the story was later told there were those who refused to believe Sabbath’s motivations. The idea that a cutthroat could love so passionately as to be distraught as an effeminate writer of French sonnets was beyond their ken. No one, Sabbath least of all, would have tried to dissuade them from their cynical notions.

Sabbath did what he did for the reasons he did them; it was that simple and those who heard the story would choose to believe it or not. He did it not for them, and in the end he did not do it even for Marie. She was dead and gone and the idea of heaven to Sabbath was an impossibility. He believed in the sea and in gold and in man’s vengeance.

Sabbath came through the door of the mansion like a hurricane blowing in off the Lesser Antilles. In the entrance hall he spied lamps hung on their wall brackets. Drawing his cutlass he burst open the oil reservoirs so that the liquid splashed down the wall and soaked into the rich tapestries, carpets, and fine linen curtains.

Drawing a long wooden fusilier’s match from his boot he struck it and set the mess alight. Oil soaked cloth and wood caught readily and smoke roiled, thick as Scottish fog. Hell had come to Sinclair Manor.

Through the entrance Sabbath came into the main hall. In front of him an ornately wrought staircase ran up to the second level in the shape of a Y with branches of stair running off to either side. At the divide was a landing with a huge picture window overlooking the sea below.

From the main door behind him came sounds and Sabbath turned, firing a shot through the billowing smoke to keep them back. His heart beat like a racing horse and blood lust burned hot in his veins. The urge to kill was maniacal in the heart of battle and the pirate’s visage terrible.

Drawing a .52 caliber Highland pistol Sabbath cast about him. A female slave in a maid’s uniform cowered in the hall, eyes rolling with fear. Sabbath growled low in his throat and leapt to her. He held the blood smeared blade of his cutlass before her terrified eyes.

“Sinclair; where is Sinclair?!” He demanded. “And Petite Annette, is she with him? Tell me!”

The woman screamed her fear, but she pointed a shaking hand up towards the left branch of the staircase.

“In the master’s chambers,” she cried.

Sabbath sprang from her side, running for the stairs. The hall filled with smoke and the flames spread rapidly behind him. He heard the main doors give way and the angry shouts of men as reinforcements poured inside. Reaching the landing Sabbath turned to face them. He threw his cutlass to the ground and drew another Naval pistol from the sash at his waist.

Dropping to one knee he thumbed back the hammers on both weapons.

Sinclair rose from the girl tied to the bed.

Was it the Spanish? Had the slaves rebelled?

He could little ignore screams and weapon fire coming from inside his own house. Throwing on a robe that had been all the fashion in Paris last season, he crossed to his armoire. From out of it he pulled a gold inlaid, impeccably-balanced Wogdon Dueller. He lifted the pistol up, cocking it with his other hand. He heard a ragged volley of musket fire from downstairs and, scooping up his whip, started towards the door.

From the landing Sabbath commanded the field of battle and he kept his peace as he waited to see what came through the front door. Already flames licked out around the edges of the entrance and ran up the walls of the main hall. Below him the cowering slave had finally bolted for the safety of a downstairs door.

Sinclair’s men tumbled into the room in a loose phalanx, five of them hard-eyed veterans holdings sabers and pistols. An overseer’s whip dangled from the belt of one. They shouted in violent recognition at the kneeling Sabbath and he sighted down one long barrel, triggering his pistol into the chaotic knot of men.

The overseer caught the .51 caliber ball high on his thigh and went down. He triggered his weapon, firing into the floor. Sabbath brought his other pistol up, squinted through the cordite stench and pistol smoke. He fired again and took another man in the belly. The man fired as he went down, this round flying wide, shattering part of the big window behind Sabbath.

The unwounded men scattered out in the hall, firing back at Sabbath. Sabbath scooped up his cutlass and drew his final pistol. Two pistol balls shattered out other parts of the window behind him as he turned. The last man stepped forward and fired his weapon in a quick, smooth motion.

The 8g of shot spat out of the Blunderbuss like a volcano erupting and the pattern was spread wide when it reached Sabbath. Shot struck the running pirate in his shoulder, arm, and the meaty side of his thigh. He was knocked over halfway up the stairs to the second level and his side drenched with his blood.

Like a wounded animal Sabbath snarled his pain. He stuck his wounded arm out, triggering his pistol. The ball splintered wood on the door frame beside the head of the man who‘d shot him. Scattering out, the man sought cover and began reloading.

Sabbath pushed up, climbed the stairs, his cutlass a heavy weight in the grip of his unwounded arm. He stumbled down the balcony, limping and trailing blood behind him.

Sinclair stepped from his room onto the balcony.

The Englishman’s face flashed stark surprise followed hard by incredulous indignation. In one hand he held his .45 caliber pistol, in the other he gripped the blood slicked riding crop.

“Sabbath!” He spat. He raised the Wogdon Dueller.

Two thoughts tripped hard on each other in Sabbath‘s spinning mind. The first was that he would never close the distance in time. Then came the second. He saw the bloody whip in Sinclair’s hand and felt more than imagined how Marie must have suffered. He lifted his cutlass high and charged forward, his screaming face a twisted mask of rage.

Sinclair was no leader of men. He was a politician and financier. He took great profit from the murder and theft of others but he was not one to sully his hands with the grime of illicit labor. When the blood-mad pirate Sabbath roared and charged, Sinclair’s fear struck him like a physical blow. He dropped back a half-step as if to run and he felt the hard wrench of his bowels twisting in fear. His hand shook as he fired the Dueller.

Still, the range was point blank when he fired and it was impossible even with those imprecise weapons to miss at such range. Blood spouted in a geyser high on Sabbath’s chest where shoulder joined torso. The impact of the .45 caliber ball jarred into the charging pirate so that he was half twisted around by the force of the round.

Then the cutlass fell like a butcher’s cleaver. The heavy blade bit down into the lump of muscle binding neck and back. It cut down hard and cracked through Sinclair’s matchstick collar bone before cutting like an axe into wood deep into the bone of Sinclair’s sternum.

Sinclair was slammed to the side, eyes wide in stunned death and the air was rich with the stink of a slaughterhouse. Sabbath let his cutlass go and it stuck out like the handle of a pot from Sinclair’s corpse. The man hit up against the balcony railing and then tumbled over. The wet sound when he landed below was grotesque as it was final.

Leaving bloody footprints Sabbath entered the bedroom while below him fire swept the house.

Annette was a mess and even as half-crazed as Sabbath was it turned his stomach to see her. Using a seaman’s knife he cut the petite girl from her bounds. She cried out at his touch and he made soothing sounds, hushing her fears. And if he called her by the name of a woman already dead in his pain and confusion, she didn’t protest.

Once he had her up she clung to him like a child. He stepped back out through the door, heard the outcry as he appeared, and ducked back in. Rounds tore through the open space where he had stood.

Holding the girl he burst back out through the door and raced back down the balcony. Men were running for the stairs below him. The blades of swords and bayonets flashed the light of the flames burning all around them now.

Reaching the stairs, Sabbath started down. Annette kept her face buried in the bloody crook of his shoulder. The smell of sweat and of gunpowder and of blood--the smells of battle, filled her nose.

One of Sinclair’s men rushed up the stairs to meet Sabbath, a basket-hilted broadsword raised overhead. Sabbath leapt from the stair with the girl still held tightly in his arms. The combined weight of the pair crashed heavily into the stunned man. He crumbled beneath the force and Sabbath landed full on top of him. Using his good fist Sabbath struck the man’s face hard.

Others shouted from the bottom of the stairs. Everywhere there were weapons and shouting, angry men. Sabbath rose like a phoenix from the tumult and turned. He ran forward, screaming--but not as the riot below him expected.

Sabbath crashed through the dangling fragments of the picture window, holding Annette tight in a fierce grip. For a brief moment there was a rush of cool, clean sea air, startling after the heat and smoke of the mansion.

Then they were falling, faster and faster. Glass twinkled like snowflakes around them and they hit the blood-warm water of the Caribbean.

The salt water was agony on their open wounds and the impact was near enough to drive the air from their lungs. Annette screamed once from the sharp, sudden pain before the water closed over her head and she fell unconscious. Pain jolted Sabbath awake with fresh surges of adrenaline and he kicked for the surface.

From above them he heard weapons fire over the shouting men. Musket balls struck the water to every side and he kicked free of his boots. Reaching out with his good arm he swam in a clumsy sidestroke, towing the limp girl.

Ahead Sabbath saw the bow of his childhood friend’s fishing vessel and he struck out all the harder. Behind him smoke rose in black pillars from the burning mansion. Cursing, Rodriguez leaned over and hauled the struggling Sabbath and the girl over the side into the safety of the boat. Annette sprawled weakly across the deck, her breath shallow and rapid.

Exhausted, hurt but living, Sabbath sprawled across deck planks as Rodriguez first covered the shivering girl and then got the fishing vessel underway, catching the breeze running out of the harbor. Sabbath recalled the crunch as his blade bit through bone and flesh, deep into Sinclair’s body, the jar as the impact traveled up his arm. The hot, salty taste as the Englishman’s blood had splattered across his lips.

Sabbath smiled. It wouldn’t bring Marie back, but it was a good memory just the same.