The Scarlet Queen

By Eric Leif Davin

Anne Bonny, the Scarlet Queen of the Pirates, has vowed eternal war against the British Empire. In response, the Empire has sent notorious pirate-catcher Hook Hornigold, in command of a mighty fleet of warships, to hunt her down and hang her. But Anne has a more immediate concern. A vampire among her crew threatens to turn pirate against pirate. Which is the greater danger: The Empire’s pursuing war fleet, or the vampire on her own ship?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spero Publishing
• Release date: Nov 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781944956394

Eric Leif Davin

Eric Leif Davin is professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh, winner of the Eugene V. Debs Foundation's Bryant Spann Memorial Prize in Literature for his historical writing, and author of Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926-1965.

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The Scarlet Queen

By

Eric Leif Davin

The Scarlet Queen

by Eric Leif Davin

Eternal Press


A division of Caliburn Press, LLC.


P.O. Box 8747


Madison, WI 53714


www.eternalpress.biz

Digital ISBN: 978-1-944956-39-4

Print ISBN: 978-1-944956-38-7

Cover art by: Cinsearae Santiago

Copyright 2016 Eric Leif Davin

Worldwide Electronic & Digital Rights

Worldwide English Language Print Rights

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any form, including digital and electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the Publisher, except for brief quotes for use in reviews.

This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

For female pirates everywhere.

Chapter One

Left for Dead

She had been left for dead. Yet she was not dead. Pain held her in its fist. Her flesh, torn and ripped where the ravenous horde bit into her, was drenched in blood, both her own and the blood of those she had killed.

But she was not dead.

As consciousness returned, the pirate Mary Read groaned and shoved at the pile of bodies under which she was buried. The stench of their rotting flesh nauseated. Her stomach heaved, but she did not vomit. Instead, she clenched her teeth and pushed even harder at the corpses that covered her. They tumbled from her as she forced herself upward toward open air to be free of the fetid foulness that enveloped her. As the last oozing body fell away, Mary Read pulled herself free of the decaying mass that had entombed her. She staggered to her feet, precariously balanced on the mound of bodies, and swiped blood from her eyes, but smeared more over her already torn and bloody face.

It was a clear night and the silver-blue illumination of the moonlight revealed a charnel house. All around her were piled the bodies of the dead. Heads were cloven from crown to jawbone or shattered into gory spectacles by rifle balls. Mary committed some of that savagery herself. It had been necessary to make sure that the dead were truly dead, for they were zombies, and no one wanted to be forced to kill them again.

Mary remembered the furious assault on the fort overlooking Nassau. The infamous pirate Blackbeard seized it with an army of zombie pirates under his command. From it he ruled over the pirate haven of Nassau and took for his own the treasure of a fleet of pirate ships anchored in the harbor. He also took the young girl, Catalina Sierra, for his own foul designs.

Led by the dread pirate Bartholomew Roberts, a man as dangerous as Blackbeard himself, the pirates of Nassau rebelled. Mary Read, along with Anne Bonny and Calico Jack Rackham, and hundreds of other enraged pirates, fought their way into Blackbeard’s fort and slaughtered his zombie army.

Mary became separated from the others. She was surrounded by the clawing and rending zombie horde, and went down under their onslaught as they ripped and tore at her flesh. Mary now stood atop the pile of zombie corpses, remembering it all as it came back to her.

She heard noise in the distance. In pain, she turned to look in the direction from which it came. At the edge of the field of corpses she saw a huge bonfire, its flames roaring up into the hot tropical night. Pirates burned zombie corpses to make sure nothing was left of them. Mary realized she couldn’t go to them for help. Her flesh was ripped and torn; she was dripping blood from dozens of savage wounds. She was not recognizable as a living human. They would take her for a zombie that had somehow escaped the butchery. They would attack her to make sure that she was dead, truly dead.

They would be right to do so. Had Mary Read been human, she would have died beneath the zombie horde and come back as a zombie. They would have to kill her again and burn her body. But Mary Read was not human, at least so far as the pirates knew humans. She had ceased to be human long ago. For longer than she could remember, centuries no doubt, she had been something else—a vampire.

That was why she was not dead. It took a lot to kill a vampire. True, she could be killed by a wooden stake in the heart, or perhaps by a pistol ball in the heart, but not by a simple sword thrust in the gut, and not by the teeth of a zombie.

As a vampire she would heal from the zombie wounds. It would take time, however. During that time her pirate comrades must not see her. They had left her for dead. They must think her dead until she was ready to return to the living.

Mary Read looked around at the terrible killing field for a last time. She struggled over the piles of zombie bodies and staggered into the dark shadows along the walls of the fort. She found the shattered gate through which she and her comrades had fought their way that morning, stumbled through it, and disappeared into the silvery-blue of the moonlit night.

Chapter Two

The Devil-Damned Queen

The strange ship came swiftly toward them out of the horizon. Even at a distance, Josiah Mather, owner and captain of the merchant sloop, The City of Charleston, saw it was massive. Despite its size, it gained on them rapidly. Mather stood at the stern of his ship and stared at the oncoming one through his spyglass, straining to discern its flag. By the time he recognized the black flag with the skull and crossbones that flapped at the top of its main mast it was too late. The pirate came straight for them under full sail far too quickly for them to outrun.

A cold fist squeezed Mather’s heart. He recently watched Major Stede Bonnet, captured on the Cape Fear River, dance at the end of a hangman’s noose on the docks of Charleston, South Carolina. That pirate captain once sailed with the infamous Blackbeard to maraud the entire coastline of southern colonies. Indeed, Stede Bonnet was the part of Blackbeard’s pirate flotilla that once blockaded Charleston and held the city for ransom.

People of Charleston felt a measure of just revenge watching the pirate chieftain dance in air at the end of a rope. With Bonnet’s capture and execution, and with the disappearance of Blackbeard somewhere in the Caribbean, Mather and the other merchants of Charleston hoped that they had finally eradicated the pirate menace along the coasts of Britain’s American colonies. But now, here was yet another pirate ship looming as large as Blackbeard’s own, heading right for him. There was nothing for it but to strike his colors and hope for the best.

Captain Mather ordered a sailor to lower the banner of St. George from the mainmast and bellowed for others to swarm up the ratlines to reef the sails. As they did so, The City of Charleston lost speed and drifted forward on momentum alone. Mather could see men swarming into the rigging of the approaching pirate ship to also reef its sails. The two ships slowed and drifted toward each other.

As they neared, Mather saw the railings of the big ship crowded with a horde of pirates, waving swords, and screaming bloodcurdling curses. He stared again through his spyglass at the bow of the pirate ship, attempting to make out its name. The name came into focus, and what he saw chilled the heart of Captain Mather even more. Blackbeard was not gone after all, for there, in bold and ornate black letters outlined in gold running along the bow was the well-known and dreaded name of Blackbeard’s ship: Queen Anne’s Revenge.

As the two ships came alongside each other the pirates threw out a myriad of grappling hooks at the end of secured lines. The hooks bit into the railing and side of the merchant sloop. As the maze of lines grew suddenly taut, the two ships shuddered and stalled in the water, and then crunched together with the sound of grinding timber. As they bobbed next to each other, a multitude of howling pirates swung across from the big ship, and dropped to the deck of the merchantman.

The sailors on board the merchant vessel raised their hands in front of them and backed away from the shouting throng, offering no resistance. From his place at the railing of the quarterdeck, Captain Mather shouted down to the glowering pirates, We yield! We yield!

Below him Mather’s men cowered as the pirates advanced on them. The rogues surrounded the merchant sailors and whacked at them with the flats of their swords, herding them into a huddled clump in a corner of the deck. Off with your clothes, the big pirate growled at them. Strip, and be quick about it! Naked men were less likely to offer resistance and, in addition, the pirates would want most of their clothes. Everything pirates possessed they took from captured ships, and that included new clothing to replace their well-weathered rags.

As the threatening pirates encircled them, Mather’s men shed their clothes, dropping them in heaps upon the deck. Meanwhile, other pirates were already pulling off the hatches to the hold so that they could drop down and inspect their prospects. Lusty shouts of joy rose from below as the pirates discovered the rum crates. The cutthroats around Mather’s now-nude men grinned at the sound, but didn’t take their eyes off the captured sailors, or lower their swords.

Pirates at the open hold tossed ropes down to their compatriots below. Soon they were hauling huge wooden crates up the slanting stairs of the hold. As soon as one was on the deck, the ruffians eagerly crowded around it. Several at a time slid their swords under the slats to pry open the lids. When they were able to lift a slat enough for a handhold, a dozen rough hands clawed at the slat and wrenched it up and off with a screeching of nails and a splintering of wood.

Inside each crate were row upon neat row of dark brown bottles filled with an even darker liquid. Callused hands fumbled desperately at the bottles, pulling them quickly out to the sound of dangerous clinks as the bottles banged against each other. Not one of the pirates who managed to grab a bottle bothered to pull out the cork. Instead, he smashed the neck of his bottle against the nearest mast, stanchion, or wooden upright. Shattered brown glass shards clattered to the deck like sharp hail and the amber liquid spewed in foamy geysers from the broken bottlenecks. Soon the deck was slippery with the stuff. Each pirate upended his broken bottle and gulped down the rum, careless of remaining small slivers of broken glass still swirling in the bottle.

The rum flooded over the faces of the pirates as they swigged down as much as they could, as fast as they could. They quickly emptied their bottles and just as quickly tossed them aside to shatter on the deck, which was already awash in flowing rum. Each pirate grasped amid the flailing hands of his fellows for another bottle to smash and gulp down in the same mad fashion. They whooped and laughed as they did so, swiping at their bleeding lips, and wiping the rum over their faces as if washing away the grime of a long, desolate time of sobriety.

Some of the laughing pirates staggered over to the huddled mass of merchant sailors to replace the pirates who guarded them. Soon those pirates, too, were grabbing and smashing bottles from the crates, splashing the foamy rum over their faces and down their throats, spilling most of it over their soaked clothing and to the wet deck in a shower of excess. In a short time every pirate on the merchant ship was drenched and reeking of rum. Captain Mather feared what would happen next.

An elegant figure swung over from the quarterdeck of the big pirate ship and dropped lightly to the slippery deck of the merchantman. A smaller version of the figure was close behind and also dropped to the deck, as lithe as a cat. With a start, Captain Mather realized that both were female. Wild hair the color of flickering red flame danced in the sea breeze around the head of the larger woman.

As she swung over from the pirate ship she had gripped in her teeth the brim of a large emerald green hat with an enormous white plume. Now, safely on the merchantman’s deck, she placed the hat firmly on her head, the brim curling upwards on both sides and the white plume fluttering in the breeze. It brought a modicum of order to her tousled red hair.

Mather quickly noted that she wore high sea boots of Spanish leather, snug dark pants, and a frilled bodice that cupped her bosom with wine-dark scallops. White lace as fine as a wedding veil flared from the sleeves of her short green damask coat, which also boasted large white sleeves trimmed with gold thread. At her throat was a small diamond cross on a delicate gold chain. On the brown leather belt encircling her slim waist was a small dirk. Diagonally across her chest was a wide black leather strap that held a scabbard at her left side. In that scabbard was a sword, the handle of which, Mather saw, was embellished with finely wrought silver filigree. The woman gripped the handle of the sword. Mather, like the merchant he was, registered the blood red ruby that glittered in a silver setting on her forefinger.

The female figure at her side was a smaller replica of the woman, except that her skin was of light olive and her long dark hair shone with the luster of a raven’s breast. She too wore a small diamond cross on a delicate gold chain around her neck and a dirk at her waist. She also gripped in her teeth a wide-brimmed emerald green hat with a flowing white plume. Upon landing on the deck she placed her plumed hat firmly upon her head.

The woman glanced sternly over the carousing pirates until her gaze settled on the brute who had led the pirates in their invasion of the merchantman. Miss Nanny! she called to the pirate.

The fierce pirate stopped laughing and turned at his name, a rum bottle with a broken neck still in his hand. Aye, captain? he answered.

Join me on the quarterdeck.

Aye, captain. The pirate took a last swig from his broken bottle and handed it off to a mate. Leave some for me, he ordered. With a gleeful laugh the grateful recipient grabbed the bottle and splashed the contents over his face into his mouth. Miss Nanny glowered at him, but turned to accompany his captain up the stairs to the quarterdeck where Josiah Mather watched and waited.

The merchant captain backed away cautiously as the woman reached the quarterdeck. The smaller woman followed, and behind her was Miss Nanny, rum dripping from his clothing. The woman stopped as she reached the merchant captain and firmly planted her booted feet wide apart