Home > Free Reads > Excerpt from Cast in Dark Waters by Ed Gorman & Tom Piccirilli

He needed air. Maycomb had barely closed the door to his cabin when he heard his wife begin to sob once again within. The plaintive sounds made him champ his teeth and, for a moment, the black rage filled his chest and his vision grew bright at the edges. He had to prop himself against the cold timbers of the inner hull before his eyes cleared. The Virginian felt a relentless sense of guilt burning in him about leaving Eileen behind, but he’d spent the entire night trying to comfort her in their narrow berth and he’d failed for all his efforts. Today was their daughter Daphna’s nineteenth birthday and Eileen was inconsolable.

Trevor Maycomb wanted a taste of the Caribbean sea breeze—to fill him with renewed vigor after five days and nights of lying in the small and poorly ventilated cabin. As if the lice and rats and stench of bilge water weren’t already bad enough on this damnable voyage. By now he was desperate enough for relief that he’d even put up with the scamps and pirates who navigated this creaking, leaking vessel.

“This pounding sea is cleaving my skull in two,” he muttered, resting before he went up. He wanted his pipe but there was no point in retrieving it. One of the men was a pickpocket who’d cut the strings on Maycomb’s pouch of tobacco minutes after he’d boarded. The irony was not lost on him that a tobacco farmer couldn’t even have a smoke on this dreadful voyage.

“Rotters.”

He’d come to America from England to raise his crops almost five years ago. He’d brought Eileen with him though he feared the distance between them and Daphna might prove to be too great a burden. The girl had remained behind in private school considered to offer the best in education, surrounded by relatives and given a greater sense of freedom than most girls her age. Though the Maycombs stayed in contact with their daughter via correspondence and made an annual trek back to Britain, the separation took its toll on all of them.

But the colonies were no place for Daphna. Virginia was a more primitive land than he’d expected and the townships were often fierce and uncivilized places. There was little law and he’d been forced to become a much different man than he’d once been. He was accustomed to a life of elegance, and though the profits in Virginia had been worth the pains, life remained filled with fearful uncertainties.

And they became even worse in the Basin.

“I know the scent of my own tobacco, you miscreants.” He checked his flintlock, making certain the gunpowder had not gotten too wet in this damp air. “If I catch the smell on any of you, you’ll be hefted over the side.”

With the original buccaneers driven out by the local ruling powers and routed by the Crown, the Caribbean had become a region of chaos. The first freebooters, for all their awful faults, had brought a certain semblance of order to the area. New Providence, Madagascar, and Johanna Isle all flourished under rule of the pirates. Their decrees had been domineering but usually fair, especially for the Americas, and their codes of protection had been strictly enforced.

Now, however, there were only armed vessels run by independent smugglers available to take you to privateer sea ports in the West Indies or beyond. And the stories of the sea wolves robbing and killing their own passengers were legion. Maycomb knew that despite all his precautions he and Eileen would be lucky to survive this voyage.

He was about to go up on deck to the foc’s’le, which also served as the galley, when he saw two urchins standing at the top of the stairwell. Not even the warm, sunny sea morning improved their ragged and sinister appearance. Indeed, sunlight only showed them to look more like the dregs of the London slums than ever: striped short-sleeve shirts, wide leather belts, filthy pants, and their cudgels sloppily concealed. Ugly, faded tattoos adorned their arms and necks, and scar tissue festooned the boys like jewelry. Neither could have been more than sixteen years old but their faces bore the disfigurement of many battles, fought in the back alleys of the East End as well as upon the turbulent ocean.

“Guvner, suh.”

“Lads.”

“Have a bit’a whiskey here if you’d like to ‘ave a sip.”

“Thank you, no,” Maycomb said softly, knowing where this would soon lead. He primed himself for it, prepared to draw his pistol if necessary.

“Reckon you might extend the invitation to the lady, suh.”

“No, I think not.”

“And here we was thinkin’ that the aristocratic folks was a genial bunch.”

All the freebooters on this vessel had scrutinized Eileen with open desire, and it was only through his own forceful presence and show of arms—his flintlock and sword—that no one had yet forced himself upon her. Maycomb again cursed himself for being a fool and bringing her on this voyage, and yet he was a fool with little choice in these matters.

“Ah now, suh, no need to be pullin’ such a face. We only come seekin’ our fortunes to this land same as you, no different than yerself. Why, if we only had us fine wives as you tucked into our berths instead, there’d—”

A stinging salty breeze flowed down to him and he could taste a summer storm in the air. He wreathed his hand around the chain of silver he wore around his neck, grasping hold of both the silver cross and the stone medallion bearing the face of the Celtic deity Anu, mother of the gods. For a moment he almost let himself be swept up in the urge to mount the stairs and beat back the two boys, but it would only serve to cause greater enmity with the others on board.

“Die and be damned, you scurvy rotters.”

The guttersnipes sniggered and gestured for him to come up and the sword at his hip was a reassuring pressure, yet with a grunt of shame he turned and returned at once to his cabin.

But far worse than murderers, he feared that even the dead were at his heels.

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(from Cast in Dark Waters copyright by Ed Gorman and Tom Piccirilli)