Succession

By Martin Hilyard

It is 1782 and the Catholic Supremacy in England is coming to an end under the incompetent rule of Charles Edward Stuart, known widely as 'The Stuart Pretender' for the weakness and disasters of his reign.
When his grandfather James II repulsed William of Orange's invasion in 1688 and then allied with the Sun King, Louis XIV, to invade and destroy the Dutch Republic, he ushered in a golden age, earning the title James The Great. The Catholic Church is restored, the Jesuits and monastic orders re-established, Protestantism and dissent suppressed. In war after war England's armies triumph to reach a pinnacle of power. But then comes old age, illness and dissolution. When James III dies in 1766, England is at her lowest ebb, wracked by civil unrest and riot, rampant poverty and inequality, religious oppression.
Abroad war is endless as mighty empires grapple with each other. Beneath the banners, little-known to the marching armies and powerful fleets, a shadow war also rages, a war of intrigue, spying and violent death. All across Europe, on every front where the great powers – France, Spain and England – confront each other, a vast network of agents fight a secret war, sometimes for their masters, often for themselves.
Now Lieutenant Randall Chastain is returning to England from the Caribbean where he has survived war, siege, rebellion and the murderous intrigues of Catholic fanatics. Soon he is sent on a new mission to war-torn Germany and a real Stuart pretender, James Fitz-James, 4th Duke of Berwick. Braving murderous plots and arrest, he goes on to the Mediterranean where he must rescue a spy to save a throne.

Book 1 in the The Stuart Supremacy series (Pretenders War) sees Randall Chastain drawn into a web of murderous intrigue as rival powers vie to control the wealth of the Caribbean and the Americas

• Language: English
• Publisher: Martin Hilyard
• Release date: Aug 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005740191

Martin Hilyard

Martin Hilyard is the son of a Polish father conscripted into the German army and liberated during the Normandy landings. His father was an affectionate but distant and deeply religious man. Martin is an atheist but some of his earliest memories are of sonorous Latin chants, incense, the chime of quiet bells summoning the divine. He wrote poetry in school, science-fiction later, mostly (completely) for his own enjoyment.He went to India as a teenager: the Mughal palaces and imperial reminders of the Raj. The high Karakorams, the timelessness of Srinagar. The bustle and drama of Bombay. Then university, a fairly sterile time but he loved the histories he discovered of unfamiliar countries and unremembered times.He settled in Liverpool in the 1980s. There he learned that we can’t always change the world but in trying to the world may change us. He became interested in role-playing games, creating history-based sagas, realising how much he enjoyed shaping worlds then having his design overthrown by the characters that entered his world.Martin has returned to writing to share through story-telling something of what he believes. He has a charming, homely, loving partner and they live in a forever home in Liverpool. He is personable, engaging, serious, a thinker and listener, gets on well with people, works hard and likes to write quickly and fluently. He likes nothing better than conversation. So if you're ever in Liverpool, stand him a pint on a Saturday afternoon.

Book preview

Succession

by

Martin Hilyard

Audacity Publishing

All rights reserved

Audacity Publishing

Liverpool, England

Copyright © Martin Hilyard 2019

Martin Hilyard asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

First Published in Britain 2019

Foreword

It is Spring 1782. The Catholic Supremacy in England is coming to an end under the incompetent rule of Charles Edward Stuart, known widely as 'The Stuart Pretender' for the weakness and disasters of his reign. How did it come to this? When James II repulsed William of Orange's invasion in 1688 and then allied with the Sun King, Louis XIV, to invade and destroy the Dutch Republic, he ushered in a golden age, rightly earning the title James The Great. The Catholic Church was restored, the Jesuits and monastic orders re-established, Protestantism and dissent suppressed. In war after war England's armies triumphed to reach a pinnacle of power under his son, James III.

But then came old age, illness and dissolution, the secession of Scotland and Ulster in 1745 enabled by the arrogance and poor generalship of the heir to the Stuart throne. Next the disasters of the Four Years War in the 1750s, the growing power of France and Spain in Europe, across the world and in the Americas. When James III died in 1766, England was at her lowest ebb, wracked by civil unrest and riot, rampant poverty and inequality, religious oppression. Slowly she begins to awaken to new ideas trumpeted by Protestant orators, politicians and pamphleteers. The demand is now for emancipation, justice, universal rights. There is conflict in Parliament and at Court, on the streets and in the factory: riot, rebellion, repression. The country groans in pain, seethes with hatred and anger.

And abroad real war is endless as mighty empires grapple with each other. Beneath the banners, little-known to the marching armies and powerful fleets, a shadow war also rages, a war of intrigue, spying and violent death. All across Europe, on every front where the great powers – France, Spain and England – confront each other, a vast network of agents fight a secret war, sometimes for their masters, often for themselves.

In 1781 Lieutenant Randall Chastain, of His Catholic Majesty's Ship Audacity, a 30 gun frigate, joins the Caribbean Fleet commanded by George Brydges Rodney. Rodney has come not for some grand strategic purpose but to plunder St Eustatius, an island grown rich with illegal trade to England's rebellious colonies in the Americas, in order to pay off his enormous debts. Seeking a pathway to wealth himself, the young lieutenant pursues his own interests and unknowingly comes under the eye of two agents, Charles and Anthony Linwood, serving aboard The Calvary. True sons of the Catholic Church, they secretly support the plan of the Spanish King to seat a puppet prince on the throne of England when Charles Stuart dies.

As the weeks go by and Rodney's looting goes on, all minds begin to think of the treasure fleet he will send back to England. When will it sail, by what route? And for what purpose will the money be used? Sent to Florida where an enemy fleet blockaded Pensacola, Chastain is suspected of carrying this information to the French. The word is sent and the treasure ships captured and taken to France. He is now entangled in a web of intrigue and murder. Seeking only wealth, he found danger instead.

After the fall of Pensacola Audacity is given a cruise across the eastern Caribbean where it captures a privateer being used by the shadowy independentists to weaken Spanish power in the Caribbean. Chastain meets the leaders of this conspiracy and once more puts himself in danger: such a man, with such wide acquaintance among traitors and rebels, can only be an agent for King Louis. He must be destroyed.

Rodney, desperate for vindication after the fall of the Floridas, decides to aid a slave revolt on Hispaniola. Audacity and its sister ship Dart are sent to aid the slaves but fall into a trap set by the Linwoods. The English ships are to be destroyed by a bigger French squadron and Chastain will die, a victim of war not malice. But Audacity escapes the trap and Chastain returns when the slave revolt collapses, to accuse Anthony Linwood of treason. A duel is demanded. The French agents who have been using Chastain as a convenient foil decide he is too valuable to be lost and despatch one of their own to kill Linwood, an apparent suicide. The French cause is triumphant.

His plan for vindication thwarted by the collapse of the slave revolt, Admiral Rodney sets sails to seek out the French fleet, meets it in the Dominique Passage and is defeated. Rodney himself dies when his flagship, Formidable, blows up near the end of the battle. Audacity sails north, only to be captured by privateers from the rebel colony of Georgia. Taken to Savannah, Chastain is offered the chance to escape by taking command of a blockade-running ship, bound first for besieged Charleston and then to New York and home. He takes that chance and boards The Flower of Richmond with his slave concubine, Emily, and two of Audacity's seamen. They escape but only by Chastain destroying an English cutter intent on their capture. He has killed fellow Englishmen and is plunged into grief and self-doubt. And when Emily deserts him in New York, he sees no choice but to go home to England, hoping his lies and betrayals will go undetected, little realising he is the marked man of powerful enemies.

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Martin Hilyard

Chapter 1 - Meetings

Three men sit by a table in an ornate room, intending to converse. The room has high windows open to the sun and a cool breeze enters on its way to the sea. Its walls are lined with shelves of books, though between them there are devotional paintings and to one side a blank wall adorned only by a large crucifix depicting Christ in his agony. Pointedly there is no painting of Spain's current King, Carlos. A carafe of wine stands between them but none drink. One of them speaks at last, a bearded man of middle years, wearing an embroidered coat with much lace, a shirt with many convoluted ruffles. His fingers drum upon the table as he speaks.

I have had word from Grimaldi, from Aranjuez. He thinks it can be done.

Guillermo d'Arravaya, Grand Master of the Knights of Montesa, Duke of Resilla, Ambassador to the Court of King Charles waits for their response, anticipating another argument.

I do not trust this Italian, replies the man to his left, a priest and more: Juan de Cardonas, a Jesuit, whose order had been expelled from Spain. He is very tall though this becomes apparent only when he stands to pace the room. His beard is thinner, more pointed, his hair black, hands and face darkened by foreign suns.

"He loves El Rey Alcalde too much."

King Carlos fears the power of England uniting with that of France, said d'Arravaya. This might happen. England's recent defeats might make the Stuart Pretender sue for peace. Louis might insist on an alliance, a secret alliance, to divide the world between them, Old and New.

All the more reason to act now. You must see this, I'm sure.

Too soon, interjects the third man impatiently. You know it is so. King Charles will die eventually. We must first remove any rival to Charles Emmanuel’s claim. But no-one should accuse Spain of having a hand in it. Nor the Temple. Nothing could be more injurious to our cause.

Francis Blount, Minorite brother, stares implacably at the Jesuit, disliking the man.

You are too cautious, Brother Blount, too cautious by far. You Franciscans are all the same. The priest stops pacing to fix Blount with a steely eye, angry now.

And you Jesuits reach too far and too fast, replies Blount mildly, joining his hands across his stomach to annoy the other with his apparent complacency. Juan, you move too fast.

Father de Cardonas, the priest snarls. I will have the title God and His Holiness gave me.

Aye, but which King Carlos took away. And which His Holiness has never given back. You Jesuits.

Gentlemen, please, interjects d'Arravaya. We do God's work here and He expects better from us. Come, return to your seat, Father, and let us finish our business.

The priest stares for a moment at the Duke of Resilla, hating him. King Carlos might trust this ambassador to the English court, but he never would.

It is all very well for you, d'Arravaya. Your Knights of Montesa were not disbanded, outlawed. You never had your lands confiscated, your rights and privileges cancelled, your schools and seminaries seized.

His voice rises and rather than sitting down, he towers above the Grand Master and brings a fist down to strike the table, almost overturning it.

Sit down Cardonas, I beg you. Here, have some wine, it will ease your spirits.

Seeing no point in further complaint, Father de Cardonas sits and accepts the proffered glass with an ill grace.

How is it to be done? he grates. Will one of his paramours slit his throat in the night? Will a cannon take off his head?

Come Father, chides d'Arravaya. You speak too easily of taking an immortal soul. The Duke is descended from a king after all, even if his ancestor was a bastard. De Cardonas snorts and consents to drink when the Grand Master pushes the glass towards him.

Berwick reviews his troops regularly, goes out to inspect his lines, the fortresses he might have to attack. There is a man I know who can put a bullet through a gold ring at one hundred paces. And a heart is so much larger.

But there must be a goat, someone else to take the blame, says Blount. A man unknown, just arrived in the vicinity, perhaps an English fanatic. I have a man in mind, and all is in motion.

When? asked de Cardonas casually, twirling the stem of his glass. And who?

In answer Blount stands and takes hold of a cord hanging against the wall and pulls it. Far off a bell rings and all three turn towards the door where a man knocks and enters. He is dressed for riding, leather jerkin and trousers of the same tucked into high boots. He sweeps off his hat and bows to the three men.

Ah, Sencillo, always ready. You have the letters? The courier nods.

Yes, my lord, he says in his accented Spanish. Your secretary gave them to me. They are in the secret place under the saddle of the horse outside.

Cristoforo here is one of our most trusted men, says d'Arravaya. I commend him to you. Cristoforo, you are to carry my letters to Saxony. The usual place. If not there, follow him to Koln, urge him on. There have been rumours of peace with the Empire I do not like. He ignores de Cardonas' muttered objection, his quiet cursing.

An accident, yes? A chance bullet.

The courier looks from one to the other of the men, seeming to test their resolve and nods at last.

Then go, orders d'Arravaya. Go with God.

Blount stands and moves to the window where he is joined by the Grand Master who had paused to drape a sash across his chest. They look down into the courtyard where their messenger is just emerging.

They watch him mount his horse and follow his progress out of the monastery and down the hill towards Hythe where a ship awaits. His business finished, satisfied that events were now moving in the right direction and tired of delay, de Cardonas rises, bows and stalks from the room. They hear the door behind them open and close and turn back to the window.

I fear that man, Guillermo, says Blount, nodding towards the door.

The Grand Master of the Knights of Montesa sighs and turns to face the Franciscan monk.

I know, Brother. But ours is a holy cause and we must use what tools God sends us.

I wonder though, muses Blount. It is 1782. The War of the Spanish Succession, the Austrian Succession. The King of Poland who none remembers. Did they change anything? Does God play chess? Moving a king here, a queen there? Or just roll dice?

Blasphemy, Brother, chides the Grand Master. I am glad Father de Cardonas did not hear you say so. But you are right. The fall of a great house, the rise of new men. They are the weather vanes pointing to the power that is strongest, the nation God favours the most. Today it is France. Tomorrow, if God wills it and the Duke of Berwick dies, it will be Spain.

And the Emperor, adds Blount pointedly.

Of course, Brother, d'Arravaya replies. Of course. More wine?

***

Out in the Bristol Channel, Randall Chastain sat in the cabin he had barely left for three weeks. He was oblivious to the working of the ship. Orders and oaths, the creaking of the masts, the slap of the sea against her sides; all barely registered on his mind. Twenty-three days out of New York, The Holy Cross was now coasting up the Bristol Channel with the making tide and in a few hours would tie up in the great naval dockyard. He could not care less.

Head down, he continued to write though his arms and back ached. His fingers were smeared with ink, the paper too but he did not care. His anger sustained him, the betrayal he felt. Still, he must finish before the call of the land put an end to this grey interlude. Scattered the words he needed to write to the four winds.

It is not that I have no past. It is that I am continually cut on the sharp blades of the present. I see him still, deep underground. Anger cut short, hatred unfulfilled. He haunts my mind, my past. Will he also haunt my present? Treason is not the worst of crimes, I find. It is a lawyer's word. But disloyalty is understood by all. And the disloyal man is hated for it. Betrayal is another word I fear. Was I disloyal? Did I betray? Or was I betrayed? And is there explanation? Expiation?

He got up unsteadily to ease the pain between his shoulder blades. He walked out of the cabin he had been given into the gunroom and looked out of the quarter-gallery. Portishead, so soon?

It was a fine day in late June. He could clearly see the town straggling across the hill, the heights above, but not the mortella tower with its six great guns. Where Bristol itself lay, smoke rose in threads of grey and brown against the blue of the sky, though it had rained yesterday and no doubt would rain again. He thought of England's always dirty rain, smearing roofs, windows, people. Filling the streets with mud smelling of the black-wet of drowned ashes, sticking to boots and pattens. And in doing so recalled the clean air of the Caribbean, where fires were hardly needed and the trade winds instead carried the scent of the sea, of fruit and spices and the green smell of the trees.

He stared moodily at the coast inching past, adjusting his stance when the ship heeled as it turned in towards the port. The tide was making, carrying The Holy Cross up the Channel. But there was also a brisk wind from the north, raising a cross sea. On deck flags would be flying the ship's number, the private signal, the all-important flags for carrying dispatches. He assumed that news of the great defeat in the Dominique Channel would have reached England by now, three months later. But the loss of Audacity, the victory of the rebel navy, his incarceration in Georgia awaiting exchange, his later escape? He was not so sure.

Now was a time of great danger. As the coast came closer and as he began to see people ashore, he realized he would soon have to tell his lies once more. All his faculties had to be focussed on one thing and one thing alone: survival. He had told the port-captain in New York - a foolish, gullible, conversable man - a false tale of a daring escape. He had swallowed every word. But what of here? Many of its admirals might be fools, aristocratic nonentities promoted at the whim of a venal and weak King, but the Navy's officials were not. They were suspicious, grasping, ambitious men, who delighted in doing a man down to look taller themselves.

Returning to the desk, he put the papers away in a leather satchel and began to gather up his belongings. He could have asked his servant, Matthew Makepeace, to do it for him. But their relationship had been strained by Randall’s brooding silences, his great sense of loss at Emily’s flight - he could call it nothing else – and the heavy freight of lies and secrets they both carried.

It was Makepeace who had smuggled the slave girl Emily onto The Flower of Richmond once the decision to escape Georgia had been made. Who had advised young Midshipman Henrys to abandon his allegiance to king and country and take service with the rebel navy who had captured them all. Makepeace, and the Genoan thief Jacob Varghese, had helped confirm Randall's fanciful tale of a heroic escape and kept the truth to themselves. That he had had captained a blockade-running in order to escape. First to Charleston, besieged by the English and slowly starving. And then from Charleston to New York with tobacco, rum, coffee, silk and indigo, each cargo earning an immense profit for his employer, its owner. And himself.

But there was worse. The blockade-runner had been intercepted by an English cutter, The Mermaid. Chastain had been forced to sweep its quarterdeck with fire from the swivel guns The Flower carried, killing its captain, the helmsman beside him and a boy of not more than twelve. Perhaps his own son or nephew. It was an act of desperation. But afterwards he had realised that those men, and they alone, might have been able to identify him should they ever reach England. Did some part of him know that and give the order to fire?

A seaman’s word would carry no weight against his own. There were many men in the Americas with dark hair and a bright eye that could captain a ship. But if a commissioned officer were to point a finger, backed by the testimony of a master’s mate who had the con, the mud might stick. That danger had been ended with a single wave of his hand. Matthew and Jacob had said nothing. He could only pray they never would.

He took off the pea jacket he had been wearing against the cold and put on his blue uniform coat, mildewed and threadbare. He felt lumpish in the ill-fitting coat, chafed against its tight restrictions as he tried to smooth down his unruly hair. No-one looking at him would think Randall an officer of promise or distinction. Short, broad-shouldered, his long arms meant the sleeves of shirt and jacket usually ended well-above above the wrist. He knew it and wished he had been able to bring himself to use some of the money he had earned in the Caribbean to buy better-fitting uniforms in New York. But his family's debts and what he owed to the uncle who had adopted an illegitimate child meant he must harbour every penny.

Staring into the small looking glass on the wall of his cabin, he wondered if he had changed at all. Veiled eyes in a weather-beaten face looked back at him, hazel in colour, questioning and judging. In that moment he seemed to see two faces, the one he had and the other disfigured by the shame, guilt and fear he felt. Shame for the things not done, guilt for the acts committed, fear of present condemnation. Unmanly thoughts, he decided. Not worthy of a naval officer, recriminations he must overcome or thrust back down into the deep places of his soul.

Clapping a hat onto his head he took a small telescope out of a case suspended from a hook in the room’s partition, then braced himself and went on deck. Having no wish to brave the stares of the ship's officers, he walked along the gangway to the foc’sle and took out his glass. It had been two years since he had seen this land. Two years in which he felt he had become an old man. He shook off such morbid and unmanly thoughts, berating himself.

The Cross was standing into Portbury under heavy canvas in the blustery weather. His eyes were drawn to a launch coming out from the shore instead of the usual pilot boat but thought nothing of it. Come for their despatches no doubt. He stared once more at the great fortress on the southern headland protecting the harbour and its naval dockyard, though the civilian port itself had a forlorn air. The emancipation of the slaves, the loss of colonies and trading rights in the Americas and the East, the incessant warfare in the Mediterranean, Caribbean and beyond had suppressed all trade, at least for western ports like Bristol. Ramsgate, Tilbury, London itself, these remained busy with trade to the Baltic Sea and Muscovy. Trade necessary for the wars England was fighting. Hemp, timber, iron ore, cordage, sails, resins and tar, all these were vital and all came from the relatively safe waters ruled by Denmark, Sweden and the Russian Empire.

As his thoughts meandered, he heard shouting beyond the normal working of the ship, now no more than a mile from shore. He turned to find the eyes of the whole crew upon him. Moving to the rail he looked down at the launch as it rose and fell below the waist of the ship and at the man standing in its bows, one arm wrapped around the mainyard.

I say again, is Lieutenant Chastain aboard?

He was a pale and watery sort of fellow. Thin hair plastered to his head in the rain. Old for his years and looking strained, unhappy. He clutched a backstay with both hands, calling out in an unsteady voice. He was wearing dark clothes: coat and breeches, an oilskin griego over all, though undone. A white cravat at his throat. The man stared impatiently up at The Holy Cross, wondering no doubt why no-one had yet replied.

Randall moved along the waist and said simply, I am Chastain.

The man's gaze turned from the officers of The Cross to his own. He stared for a moment and called, Then come, sir, you are wanted.

Randall swallowed nervously, trying to judge the moment and the man's intent. But he saw nothing but expectancy and impatience. There were no Marines with him, no port officials. Perhaps everything would be alright.

The boat put off a few yards to wait for him, turning to match the course of the larger ship. Randall turned to one of the sailors nearby and said, My servants, their gear and my own, as quick as you please.

The man hurried off, turned to look back and collided with one of the other seamen standing and watching in wonderment.

In no time at all, for they too knew what o'clock it was, Makepeace and Varghese joined him at the entry port with their gear. They made an ill-fitting pair despite the way they moved in unison as the ship heeled to the wind. The one was middle-aged, with thinning hair, simple-seeming, bow-legged as seamen often were though Matthew had been bred to the land. And Varghese, the Genoan thief and killer. Black-haired, scarred, with a crooked nose and eyes that glittered dangerously when angered. On land he limped from a broken bone that had not healed properly and was sometimes taunted as a cripple. But never twice.

By the time they arrived, Chastain had crossed to the captain of The Cross, a middle-aged man of few words and a sullen disposition. Randall gestured helplessly at the boat standing off their stern and was told sourly Get along, Lieutenant, get along. It has been an honour to carry you home. But a higher duty calls, it seems.

He turned away to call brail up! and set the crew into motion once more. Now ignored, Chastain had no choice but to cross to the rail, wait for the launch to come surging up the side and clamber down into its bows, followed by Matthew and Jacob.

The official – for so he must be – took him by the hand and with great enthusiasm cried, Welcome home sir, welcome home. An honour, by God's good grace, an honour to meet you.

He swayed as the launch turned and once more looped his arm around the yard, clutching one of the stays and getting in the way of the crew trying to raise the sail.

And these?

My servants, followers. They shared my adventures and I could not leave them in the Americas.

Well, if so they are welcome too. But come sir, let us all get out of this infernal wind!

He led them aft to where canvas had been stretched to create some shelter for the helmsman and a place to brew coffee or tea when it could be got. They crouched under it and were handed mugs of a watery brew and swallowed. He eyed the three men and wondered at their being together. Chastain, a bold looking fellow with a wild mop of dark brown hair, unshaven after weeks at sea. Brown eyed, weather beaten. Barrel-chested, a fighter by all accounts. And his servants, a simple-looking older man, sparse of hair, with the calloused hands of a sailor. The other, a black haired villain: scarred, hair awry, one leg shorter than the other. Well, it was not for him to judge.

My name is Pratchett. Martin Pratchett. I have been sent by the Admiralty to bring you to London as quick as may be.

Makepeace and Varghese exchanged a knowing look and smiled. London, with all its pleasures. And surely some prize money was coming to them, their wages. Chastain had spent part of the journey home preparing papers that would enable the pair to claim what was owed for their service. Though what it might be worth was anyone’s guess.

He hoped the clerks of the Prize Board and Ticket Office would prove venal and accept a douceur. But the circumstances were unusual. Usually the dockets must be signed by the captain or the last surviving officer. But Chastain was neither. Just someone who had managed to return home by devious ways. Captain Seymour remained in Georgia no doubt, still recovering from the loss of a leg.

"You were known to be coming by The Holy Cross, which made its number off Newquay some days ago. The word was carried by the semaphore and back and here I am, he said beaming. An honour, I say again."

But I still do not understand, said Chastain. All this for the second lieutenant of a captured ship. Am I to be shot?

Shot, sir? Why no. You are a hero!

Pratchett clearly thought about shaking Chastain's hand again but with one hand for the ship and the other for his coffee that would have been a feat indeed.

A hero? asked Chastain, baffled but with a growing exasperation. Could the man not get to the point?

Yes, sir, Pratchett answered. A hero. For a few days at least. And while you are, the Lords Commissioners mean to make the most of you.

Seeing Chastain's continuing bewilderment he went on, "Your despatches, sir, and that of Captain Sheldon from New York. Your bravery when Audacity was captured. Your daring escape from the damned rebels. The news reached England ten days ago and has been published in every London and provincial paper. Ballads have been composed and sell like hotcakes I assure you. A play on Drury Lane is being proposed that His Majesty might grace. Oh, he does so love the Navy!"

Chastain could not believe his ears. He had left Savannah to escape weary months of imprisonment until he was exchanged with the other officers of Audacity. And for the $800 in gold he had been paid to captain the blockade-runner to New York. And from fear?

He had asked himself that question many times on the long voyage home. In the Caribbean he had been drawn into the murderous intrigues of those who served France and Spain, both seeking to control the fabulously wealthy trade of the region. Had been used by agents of King Louis to do much damage to imperial Spain. And now those he had hurt wanted his blood.

Captured when his ship was taken and carried to Savannah in Georgia, he had never been more in danger. England was at war with a Spain allied to England's rebel colonies, Virginia, the Carolinas