Chapter One

Hyacinth Cottage

St. Swithin, Cornwall

1721

The sea was wild that night. Caroline Llewellyn called Callie by those whoknew and loved her, could hear it crashing on the shore at the base of thecliff on which her cottage stood. Andeven though she was snug in her bed, if she closed her eyes she could almostbelieve she was once more on the deck of the Crimson Vengeance, the notorious pirate ship captained by KitLlewellyn, her husband.

But those days were long past. Kit Llewellyn was dead, hanged in London atExecution Dock with his crew and left dangling at the end of a rope until threetides had washed over that once-handsome face. Callie should have been there beside him; she had been tried, foundguilty, and sentenced to death and but for the melee that had broken out on theway to the gallows, she would have been the first woman hanged for piracy inliving memory. Anne Bonney and Mary Readhad been convicted the year before but both had pleaded their bellies and soescaped the hangman’s noose.

The crowds had been enormous that day whenthe procession left Marchalsea Prison heading for Wapping and ExecutionDock. Callie wondered if it was vain ofher to think that their numbers were swelled because of her. Pirate executions were not uncommon but tosee a female pirate hanged, the paramour of the infamous Kit Llewellyn no less,she thought that might have been something to draw jaded Londoners out of theirhomes on a gloomy summer day.

The procession left Marchalsea at mid-morningled by the High Court Marshal mounted on a fine black horse, the silver oarthat bespoke the authority of the Admiralty prominently displayed. Two deputy marshals followed just in front ofthe cart that carried Callie, Kit, and five of Kit’s crewmen. A chaplain accompanied them but no oneavailed themselves of his services. Theywere surrounded by guards but even so, the cart stopped at a public house alongthe way to allow the prisoners to have the customary quart of ale to which allthose on their way to the gallows were entitled.

It was as they were nearing Execution Dockthat the explosion came. A barrel ofgunpowder exploded with no warning on a nearby dock. The jeers of the crowd became screams ofpanic. The horses reared and plunged;several spectators were trampled beneath their hooves and the motley gatheringof those who had come to bid farewell to the infamous Kit Llewellyn and hisraven-haired doxy, scattered, running this way and that, unsure if they wereunder attack.

While pandemonium reigned, Callie foundherself thrown from the cart. The ropebinding her wrists was cut, she did not know by whom, but she was free. She looked up at Kit, still bound in thecart, so tall and handsome. She tried tofight her way to him. If she could reachhim, she thought, she could free him as well and they could lose themselves inthe fracas. But he shook his head.

“Run, damn you!” His deep voice was barely audible above thescreams of the crowd. “Run!”

The crowd was calming, the marshalsreforming the procession, bringing order out of the chaos. Callie had one chance, only one, to make goodher escape. With a last look at the manto whom she’d pledged herself body and soul, with whom she’d sailed the oceans,the scourge of seafarers the world over, she pushed her way into the millingthrong and disappeared.

She was a few streets away when someoneseized her skirts. Panicking, she triedto jerk them away but they were held fast and a voice cried: “Callie, Callie stop, it’s Jem.”

She looked down into the bright blue eyesand freckled face of young Jem Wicke. He’d been a passenger on a merchant ship Kit had taken, traveling withhis mother to take up residence with his stepfather, a planter in Jamaica. He’d begged Kit to allow him to join thecrew, swearing that his stepfather beat him and his mother cared little abouthim. The mother did not seem overlyalarmed at the thought of her boy running away to become a buccaneer and so Kithad agreed, though the boy was but eight years old at the time. He’d been with them aboard the Crimson Vengeance for nearly two yearsacting as Kit’s cabin boy and as a powder monkey when they went intobattle. He’d been ashore when the Crimson Vengeance had been captured bythe British Navy and so had escaped the gallows. Callie had never thought to see him again andyet, here he was.

“We’ve got to get the captain!” he cried,still holding onto her skirt. “We’ve gotto save him.”

“We can’t, Jem,” she told him. “If we go back there, they’ll just hang ustoo.”

“We can’t just leave him,” he insisted,tears filling his blue eyes.

Callie took him by the narrow shoulders. “We have to, Jem. Kit told me to run when I was thrown from thewagon. He wanted me to get away. He’d want you to get away as well. Come on, they’ll be looking for us. You were known to be a member of Kit’s crew,you know. They condemned you inabsentia. We’ve got to get out ofLondon.”

Callie heard later that Kit died a gooddeath. Proud and unrepentant, he tookhis turn on the gallows with his men and was left for the tides to washover. They looked for Callie for days,searching the London slums even using bloodhounds to try and track her to noavail. The superstitious said the Devilhimself had come up from Hell to take her soul away. The truth was less divine . . . she stole acloak and Jem lifted a purse of gold from a man insensible with drink in apublic house and they boarded a mail coach. They were out of London before Kit’s body had been taken down from thegibbet where he’d met his end.

They made their way to Cornwall where, inthe crypt of an ancient, ruined chapel overlooking the sea, Callie filled a bagwith gold from the treasure Kit had hidden there, took a brace of pistols, apair of swords and a dirk for herself and one for Jem.

“Do you know where all Kit’s treasure cachesare?” Jem asked, tucking the sharp dagger into his belt.

“No,” she replied, dropping a pair of pearlearbobs and a string of black pearls into her bag. “Only Kit knew where they all were. He wrote them all down in the journal he kepton the Vengeance. I hope the navy doesn’t find it when theystart tearing the ship apart.”

“Thievin’ bastards,” Jem muttered,forgetting no doubt that the CrimsonVengeance itself had once been a merchantman called the Seabird until Kit had captured it and,deciding that it was superior to his own ship, had taken it for himself. “What will we do, Callie?”

“Start a new life.”

“Here?”

She nodded. “We can’t go back to the sea now, Jem. I don’t want to go back without Kit and you . . . well, they’ve hangedboys younger than you, you know. Someday, when you’re grown, I will give you your share of Kit’s treasureand you can do what you like, go where you will, be whatever you want. But for now, we need to remake ourselves,swathe ourselves in respectability and let the world forget that Jem Wicke andCallie Llewellyn exist.”

“Forget Kit?” Jem asked.

Callie smiled and touched his cheek. “We’ll never forget Kit. We’ll keep him inour hearts.”

Jem nodded silently but she knew he wasloathe to leave the past behind with its adventure and danger and wildexcitement.

For herself, had Kit not gone to thegallows, she would still be at his side, and he would still be striding acrossthe deck of his ship. It had taken anAdmiralty noose to end Kit’s love affair with the sea. Willingly she would have gone with him but hehad told her to run and she had obeyed and now, she knew, he would approve ofher taking young Jem to the furthermost reaches of Cornwall and shielding themboth from the judging world with its harsh and deadly justice.