Bowie's Gold

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2 “Your ears on a necklace.”

Renato gripped his brush with a firm but supple wrist, applying a deft stroke of glimmering gold. Leaning back in his chair, he examined the canvas with a critical eye. This was a fine day’s work. The Last Great Terror of the Gulf, it would be called, a bold and graceful prince of pirates, wide of shoulder, trim of waist, and up to his kneeboots in treasure.

The booty as yet had little definition, appearing almost a hillock of molten gold, but that would soon change. Renato hoped it would include a little of everything: goblets, vases, necklaces, crowns, statuary, and his personal favorite—chests spilling over with glittering coins.

“Er, ah, Cap’n…”

Renato scowled up at the burly buccaneer posing against the ship’s rail. The man’s attire was truly magnificent. A shining breastplate of hammered silver, a flowing red velvet cloak and a wide-brimmed hat adorned with a band of rubies. But the vision was marred by the man’s brutish features, dull and common as mud.

“Cap’n, sir, by yer leave, might I be returning to my station?”

Renato wrinkled his nose. The fellow’s fist-like face and harsh voice had driven his muse away. “Go, damn you. But see that you remove that clothing and stow it in my cabin. And take care, LaChaise. Should I find the slightest rip or stain, you’ll be wearing your ears on a necklace.”

As the oaf lumbered off, Renato laid his brush aside and examined the painting yet again. Fine as it was, it would be vastly improved once he filled in the face—a task that could only be performed in a mirror.

Renato slipped a hand into his coat pocket and extracted the smooth oilskin pouch holding the key to his future. The pouch contained a map, the object of a five-year search, that would make him the richest man in the western world—perhaps wealthier than all the kings of Europe.

The map held the secret to the treasure the vaunted Lafitte had sought—and failed—to find. Lafitte, who had deemed himself Prince of Pirates, had slunk off to die on a forlorn island, while most of his contemporaries had been driven to ground. The once great Dominique You now prowled the streets of the French Quarter, selling tired tales for the price of a drink, and Renato’s own stepfather, the famed Renato Beluche, had switched sides, helping Simón Bolívar rout the last privateers out of Cuba.

The true pirates of the modern day, Renato knew, were the rich merchants of New York and London. They had usurped the smuggling trade that once belonged to the buccaneers. That he himself still thrived was a credit to his cunning, and his nimble ship’s ability to navigate the shoals and coves lining the Gulf of Mexico. For the past few years he had plied his trade between the mouth of the Mississippi and the shores of Texas, always alert for word of the map that was his by right, the map that would lead him to his destiny.

The map had come to him only recently—and at great cost—and he had not yet had an opportunity to study it in detail. He was about to do just that when he heard the telltale clack of Faraday’s boots on the deck behind.

Returning the oilskin pouch to his pocket, Renato fixed the man with a glare. “Mr. Faraday. I gave orders we should make for Texas at all possible speed. Why are we still at anchor?”

“Your pardon, Captain.” In place of a bow, the man offered a barely perceptible nod. “We are taking on provisions, and it will be late afternoon before we’re fit to sail.”

Faraday wore ragged burlap trousers and a simple blouse of once-white cotton—hardly an outfit to rival Renato’s gold-trimmed frock coat, plumed tricorn hat, black silk breeches and silver-laced boots. His straw-blond hair, blowing free in the wind, paled beside Renato’s black-lacquered curls. Still, the man had a certain presence, and Renato had already begun to regret appointing him quartermaster.

Faraday was a shade too handsome, dimming Renato’s luster with the ladies—and a shade too tall, forcing Renato into heels higher than he liked. But the man’s ultimate offense lay in becoming too popular with the crew.

He recalled the first time he had seen Faraday, a gangly youth barely in his teens. He’d taken the boy under his wing, taught him the ways of pirating, even saw him as a substitute for his dead brother Rayón. But those hopes were long gone.

It was at times like this he missed Rayón most. True, he’d been only a half-brother, but twice the man of any now among his crew. And Rayón would still be with him if not for that backwoods braggart Bowie and the lordly ways of Lafitte. But Renato would soon have his vengeance on them both. The treasure would bring him power Lafitte had only dreamed of. And from the height of his glory, he would reach down and obliterate Bowie and all his kin.

But for now, he was stuck with Faraday.

“I am not well pleased,” he said. “I wish to lay hands upon my treasure without delay.”

“The men and I are equally eager, Captain.” And when Renato merely stared at him, Faraday added, “to claim our own allotted shares, of course.”

Renato recalled a favorite saying of his famous stepfather. Dead men require no shares.

“Oh, of course,” he agreed. “You and the men shall get all that you deserve.”

The schooner L’Intrepide lay at anchor in a secluded cove on Barataria Bay, fifty miles south of New Orleans. The place had been ideally suited for Lafitte’s headquarters, accessible to the city by small boat, but shielded from the Gulf by two barrier islands. By 1814 it had become an open marketplace for smuggled goods and slaves, popular with citizens eager to avoid the heavy duties imposed by the state. But in that year, a fleet of U.S. ships and gunboats had made a concerted attack on the bay. Jean Lafitte, along with his brother Pierre and most of their four hundred-odd men—Renato included—escaped on pirogues into the bayous, but a good number were captured, along with more than two dozen pirate vessels.

Renato’s mouth still watered at the thought of that lost booty. Thousands of dollars in silver bullion, gold coins and paper bank notes. Uncounted gallons of wine, brandy and other spirits. Warehouses full of silk, cigars, chocolate, coffee and other merchandise.

Following the raid, the Lafittes had moved their base of operations to Galveston Island and prospered anew. Illicit trade in Barataria Bay did not end, but was greatly diminished, and now, more than a dozen years later, it was one of many places Renato found refuge from his enemies.

At one end of the bay was a Cajun trading post, and Renato found it convenient to exchange stolen cargoes of tobacco, cotton and other items for necessities such as gunpowder and spirits.

While boats ferried such goods back and forth, shore parties filled casks of fresh water and baskets of fruit from the shore.

Renato found the process maddeningly slow. He paced the deck, finding fault at every turn, and damning men, beasts, fishes, the sun, the moon and all the gods in the heavens.

And he was in this frame of mind when an apparition climbed over the rail to deposit itself on deck.

The thing appeared to be a woman, but that could hardly be. The Cajun women on this stretch of the coast were tawny, rough-skinned creatures, and the plump and toothless slatterns found in nearby taverns were equally undesirable.

The vision before him, slim-waisted with delectable curves above and below, was coiffed, rouged and adorned in a hooped gown, looking for all the world like she’d stepped from a New Orleans bordello. Her features were delicate, her skin smoothly pink, her hair lustrous as black pearls, and her eyes startlingly green. When she smiled at him his heart forgot to beat.

“What?” he said haltingly. “Who? How?”

Then reality came crashing upon him as another apparition stepped over the rail, one he recognized and had hoped never to see again.

“Andre!” he snarled. “You dare show your face upon my ship?”

The man was altogether as hideous as the girl was fair. His coat was ragged, his trousers stained, and his hat appeared to have been regurgitated by an alligator. In face as well as form, he resembled nothing so much as a giant toad.

Andre had been a fixture among the pirates of the Gulf for decades, but always as a creature of Lafitte’s. After the great poseur died, the man had even sailed for a brief time with Renato himself. But he’d been unable to control his tongue, constantly veiling criticism as advice, as in That’s not how Lafitte woulda done it, or as Lafitte always said… Renato soon had his fill of the blatherskite, and had him cast ashore.

The thing called Andre performed a mock bow. “Beggin’ your pardon, Cap’n Renato, sir. On me own hook, I’d never have come, but when me dear daughter learned ye was anchored here, she was afire to meet thee. She’s heard much of your exploits, see, and when she wants a thing it’s beyond me to deny her.”

“Daughter?” Renato was dumbstruck. “This—this beauty is your daughter?”

“Mariette, dear,” Andre said, “the gentleman deserves a proper greetin’, does he not?”

And as Renato stood rooted to the spot, the vision floated toward him. Placing white-gloved hands upon his chest, she stretched to plant a wondrously soft kiss upon his cheek. The sweetness of her perfume made his head swim.

“I am so pleased to meet you, Monsieur. It has long been a girlish dream of mine.”

The next few minutes were a daze. Renato readily acquiesced to the lady’s request to see his cabin, where she greatly admired his paintings. Twitching in every nerve for want of her, he poured large goblets of wine.

“Oh, Monsieur Captain! That is far too much. I suspect you wish to make me tipsy.”

“Nonsense,” he said. “This is nothing.” And to demonstrate, he downed his own glass to the last drop.

“Well,” she said, ever the coquette, “only if you will join me.”

And he quickly refilled his goblet, while she sipped at her own.

Several glasses later, she removed her dress, while he doffed his coat and trousers.

Her elegantly soft arms were about his neck, her lips tantalizingly near, her heart beating in time with his own, when he felt himself slipping away, tumbling into the depths of her enormous sea green eyes. And then he knew no more.