There it was. The damnable woman knew her name, one she’d tried to keep from her when she was first captured, but a frightened sailor was tortured into telling Bloody Maude everything about her captive.
Princess Maria Astria Julia.
Daughter of a king.
Her father had been Sancho of Portugal, a once-powerful ruler with a great army and a penchant for political games. He was gone now, but her family still held the throne. Astria had been taken to Wales, she thought, but she couldn’t be certain. She’d heard some of Maude’s men speaking of Wales, so she assumed that the pirates intended to hide her from her family before ransoming her. She was to be used as a prize.
She’d never been so furious in her life.
Not frightened, but furious. She knew that Bloody Maude had no intention of harming her or killing her, so she was safe. For now. But she wasn’t sure how long that was going to last, and she didn’t like being a captive anyway, so her attempts to escape had been frequent. Hence the chains. She was just so bloody furious that she’d come to this point in her life that all she could think of doing was lashing out, at everyone and everything. But even she knew that wasn’t getting her anywhere.
She had to let her brains take precedent over her anger or all was lost.
“I did not attack them,” she said after a moment. “I was defending myself. But I suppose that does not matter now.”
Maude leaned on the side of the wagon. “Nay, it does not,” she said. Then she eyed her. “If I give ye something tae drink, ye willna spit it back at me, will ye?”
Astria shook her head. “Nay,” she said, sighing heavily. “That would be foolish because then you’d never give me anything to drink again, so I will not spit it at you.”
Maude motioned to someone out of Astria’s line of sight and soon enough, a bladder was produced. Maude herself opened it and held it up for Astria to drink, the watered wine coursing down her parched throat. She drank until she could drink no more and Maude sealed the bladder up and handed it back to one of her men.
But she was watching Astria closely.
“Ye’ve been with us for five months now,” she said. “Five months is a long time tae fight, lass. Are ye not tired?”
“Are you?” Astria shot back softly. “I can fight as long as I need to fight.”
“As can I.”
Astria sighed heavily and lifted her eyes, gazing at the woman. She was an older woman, but just how old was anyone’s guess. She had two grown sons, men who served her aboard herpirate ships, so she had to have seen forty-five summers at the very least, but probably more. She had pale, luminous skin and enormous blue eyes, all of it framed by glorious auburn hair she kept tied up with bands of cloth. Several of them. It looked as if hair was erupting out of these bands all over her head, and the hair was long, falling past her elbows. She hadn’t brushed it in some time and the ends of her hair had matted into tubes. For clothing, she wore breeches and boots and tunics cinched up with girdles that made her small waist smaller.
And she was barely five feet tall.
This was Bloody Maude, and had Astria not seen the woman in action, she would have never believed her to be a pirate. More than just a brigand on the high seas, but one that ruled with an iron fist.
Medusa’s Disciples.
That was what this band of Scots called themselves.
And Maude was, indeed, Medusa.
“Then it seems we have a problem,” Astria said after a moment. “I do not intend to remain a prisoner forever.”
“And ye willna be a prisoner forever.”
“Ransoming me to my father will be fruitless,” Astria said pointedly. “If that is your intention, then know that he is dead. My young nephew now sits upon the throne.”
Maude grinned. “Who says I’m going tae ransom ye?”
“Aren’t you?”
Maude shook her head. “Lass, ye’ve been fighting us for five long months,” she said. “Never once have we had a conversation about what I intend tae do with ye because ye’ve been like a wild horse ever since we found ye.”
“You did notfindme,” Astria said bitterly. “You captured me.”
“I did.”
“And the ships that were my escort.”
