Subsequent within the #1 Sunday Occasions bestselling collection, New York Occasions bestselling creator Kate Mosse returns with The Ghost Ship, a sweeping historic epic of journey on the excessive seas. Begin studying an excerpt right here!
Prologue
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
Friday, 8 October 1621
In the present day I’m sentenced to swing. Earlier than the solar rises, I might be taken from right here to a spot of execution and there, hanged by the neck till I’m useless.
My fairly white neck.
Buddies, I’m harmless of the cost set towards me. My different crimes, I don’t deny. My actions had been measured, they had been simply. I can nonetheless really feel the slip of blood between my fingers, nonetheless odor the worry. Later, the hate down under deck and the stench of males confined at sea for month upon month. Their disbelief, too, {that a} girl might be so merciless. So, sure, I confess I’ve killed, however solely ever in self-defence or to guard these I really like. By no means for achieve. By no means with out due trigger.
These had been the phrases I spoke at my trial, however the males of the Spanish court docket didn’t hear. The judges – hypocrites all – gasping for particulars. They might not imagine a lady able to such devilry, but they pronounced me responsible all the identical.
Outdoors my window, the sky is rising white, giving form again to the scaffold and to my cell: the tough bunk affixed to the ground; a blanket awful with fleas; my trencher and tankard; an evening pot. I’ve scratched my initials upon the bricks so future pris- oners will know that, for nigh-on six weeks within the 12 months of Our Lord 1621, a lady was right here confined: LRJ, captain and commander, harmless of the crime for which she was condemned.
I can hear the bells of the cathedral of Santa Ana marking the beginning of one other day. On the port, the fishermen might be mending their nets, their wives gutting the morning’s catch and their kids curing seaweed with smoke on the sand. Within the harbour, the wind might be whispering within the shrouds and snap- ping on the rigging of the tall ships as they put together to journey south to the Cape of Good Hope the place two oceans meet.
How I miss the lilt and sway of the waves beneath my ft, the buck and the lean. The solitude of the night-watch and the black sky scattered silver with stars. The limitless, treacherous, lovely shifting water.
Such freedom, such liberty.
Within the Casas Consistoriales, the City Corridor, scribes might be making ready their paper and ink. The priest might be sharpening his prayers and making ready to listen to my confession, anticipating repent- ance and a want for absolution. I shall not give him that satisfaction.
Buddies, it was my grandmother who taught me the impor- tance of telling one’s personal story, of not permitting the phrases of others to face for us. Lies that snare and entice. So, in these final moments, I’ve a remaining query to place earlier than you, a query I discover I nonetheless can’t reply for myself.
Is a assassin born, or is she made?
The Bible says that God put his mark on Cain and condemned him to be a stressed wanderer. Do I’ve such a mark? Is there such a factor as unhealthy blood?
Some are born to evil. That’s what the prosecutor mentioned as he pronounced sentence. And the way may I – the daughter of a assassin, the granddaughter of a assassin – refute that? Have been the seeds already sown in my childhood spent among the many wood masts of the fluyts and flat-bottomed barges of Amsterdam? In that boarding home in Kalverstraat after I grew to become what I’m? In La Rochelle crusing with the Previous Moon into harbour on that late October tide one 12 months in the past? Or the moment I realised I used to be in love, and so had the whole lot to lose? Even at this eleventh hour, I nonetheless imagine my lover will save me. After the whole lot we’ve seen, all we’ve been to 1 one other, I’ve religion.
The sky is now the palest of blues. I believed myself composed, however I see how my hand is shaking as I write these remaining phrases. I’ve paid the guard properly to smuggle away these papers, and I’ve to hope that he might be trustworthy.
It’s quiet within the gaol. I’m instructed it’s at all times so on a day of execution. Are you able to hear it, the silence? No banging on the bars, no shouting or pleas for clemency, tobacco or water, no imagined illness come on in the course of the midnights. Even the rats are nonetheless. There may be solely the clink of keys and boots because the gaoler makes his means, flanked by 4 troopers, for they suppose I’m wild.
Outdoors the jail partitions, it’s totally different. I can hear the rising roar and clamour of the populace gathering on the gate. Armed with their needlework and their lace, flasks stuffed with Canarian wine and parasols to shelter them from the rising solar. Till in the present day, this has been the most popular autumn on file.
It’s practically time.
I’ve rejected the hood. I wish to see the burguesía and the widespread individuals alike, all who’ve come on this uninteresting morning in October to witness the execution of the hellion, the infamous she-captain of the seas. I’ll give them a spectacle, make no mistake. They may get their leisure, despite the fact that they’ve dressed me in girls’s weeds and I can barely breathe. I petitioned to be allowed my very own garments, however they compelled on me this final indignation of petticoats and stays. I got here into this world as a lady, and I’m condemned to depart it as one.
I’ve heard the guards say that it will likely be the biggest crowd ever for a dangling and that, I admit, additionally pleases me. They’ve seen corsairs swing earlier than, at this assembly level of the Atlantic Ocean and the Barbary Coast the place piracy is a reality of life, however it’s only proper that I must be such a draw. I’m, certainly, infamous, feared over sea and land. I’m the one they didn’t imagine may exist.
I’m the commander of the Ghost Ship.
Copyright © 2023 by Kate Mosse. All rights reserved.
About The Ghost Ship by Kate Mosse:
The Barbary Coast, 1621. A mysterious vessel floats silently on the water. It’s identified solely because the Ghost Ship. For months it has hunted pirates to liberate these enslaved by corsairs, manned by a brave crew of mariners from Italy and France, Holland and the Canary Islands.
However the bravest males on board usually are not who they appear. And the stakes couldn’t be increased. If arrested, they are going to be hanged for his or her crimes. Can they survive the journey and escape their destiny?
A sweeping and epic love story, starting from France in 1610 to Amsterdam and the Canary Islands within the 1620s, The Ghost Ship is an exhilarating novel of journey and buccaneering, love and revenge, stolen fortunes and hidden secrets and techniques on the excessive seas.
