Lions of the Sea

23

Marina fought back her curiosity when Claude took the coach past the port and Cayona's main stores. Behind the headland there was only the shipyard's dry docks and the poorest neighborhood of Cayona. She figured surely her mother wanted to go there for one of her charity activities with Fray Bernard. But she'd be damned if she didn't leave her mother visiting her helpless families and went to see old Lombard.

However, Claude rode the coach straight to the shipyard. The workers were only arriving, or getting ready to start their work when the Velazquez stepped out of the coach. Marina noticed the way the men greeted Cecilia. Everybody in the island knew her mother. Going to Cayona with her was always like a procession, while Cecilia replied to each and every greeting and paused to trade a word with this one or that one. But the shipyard workers smiled at her as if seeing her there was usual.

Lombard himself came out to greet them a moment later, all bows and courtesy, to invite them to the small house by the workshops where he had his office. Cecilia thanked him and declined the invitation. Lombard looked puzzled, his eyes moving from mother to daughter and back.

"Please, give me a minute," he said, and hurried toward the workshops in a flurry of his white wig and his suit full of laces.

Before he came back, a horse galloped into the shipyard's yard. Marina glanced over her shoulder and was surprised to see Morris, who jumped off the horse and rushed to join them.

"Good morning! Thought I wouldn't make it in time," he said, panting.

Cecilia smiled at him, as if meeting there that early was the most natural thing in the world. "It's my fault. I have to meet with Fray Bernard by ten."

Morris winked at Marina. "How about picking a ship, pearl? Doña Cecilia here agreed to give me a loan and I'm not about to let that slip away, right?"

The girl managed to hide her disappointment. So that was it all about. For a moment she'd harbored the crazy idea that they were there to find a boat for her. She was able to smile back at her friend, telling herself she was still such a naïve child. Thinking her mother would encourage her to follow such a plan! When she hadn't even told her anything about it! However, she got the completely unusual feeling that Morris wasn't being straight with her. There was something more going on.

Lombard was back and he led them to one of the workshops. They walked across the large space opening under a tall ceiling, the dirt floor covered in sawdust. Marina was flabbergasted, watching all the works in progress around her: masts and yardarms, straight and curved planks, figureheads, even a transom, which took up a third of the whole place. Lombard opened a small door at the other end and waved for them to walk out.

The morning sun sparkled on the quiet waters of the inlet, where they pieced together what came out of the workshops, and tended to the ships brought there for repairs and maintenance.

Marina wandered away from Cecilia and Morris, into that labyrinth of bare frames resting on long logs, half-built hulls and boats waiting to be caulked and painted. When she reached the shore, she recognized the Royal Eagle, moored there to have the damage from the battle repaired.

But her eyes were captivated by one particular ship. It was afloat, secured with hawsers between two docks, and almost ready to sail. Its bow pointed ashore, so she couldn't read the name, if it had any. At first sight, it only needed to have its rigging and masts fully mounted. Surely it also needed the decks readied to store food and guns.

Seen from the side, it was similar to the Lion: a three-mast warship with two decks, its size halfway between a brigantine's and a frigate's. However, its lines were much more slender, like the Sovereign's had been, promising to be as weatherly as a brigantine, and reach a speed no warrior or frigate could match.