by Jan Needle
For two full minutes there was no response. He could see that Kaye was sweating, it was running out beneath his wig, towards his hazel eyes. He saw him fill his lungs again.
“Ahoy there! Hey – Ah… ah, there you are. Ah.”
The last words were at talking level, and Kaye glanced down at Will.
“The bastards,” he said, quietly. “Yes, there they are indeed, Bentley. And where’s my little Bob, I wonder? Where’s my little Bob…”
Two of the Lamont brothers walked out of the stockade and down towards the water’s edge. Behind them the third appeared, Wee Dod, with a musket in his hand, but casually, held by the muzzle, the butt-end trailing in the sand. Then came Thompson, and Fat Mick.
“I will come ashore,” said Kaye. “You need have no fear, there will be no trickery. I come on island business.”
The boat sat in the gentle swell, her oarsmen dipping from time to time to hold her station. Kaye gave no further order, so she moved no nearer to the beach. In the heat, the stillness, this struck Will as unreal. Were they to go ashore, or was Kaye afraid? Would the Lamonts allow it, anyway? A fly flew out and settled on his eyelid. He brushed it away, the starboard yoke-line bunched in his hand. And it returned.
“Ye can come ashore,” said Angus. “If so ye care to. We winna harm ye, Mr Kaye.” He took two paces forward, which were mirrored by his companions, save for Dod. Dod just stood, and rested on his musket. He scratched his nose. Angus added: “We’ve got yer wee black loon.”
Kaye made a noise that Will could not interpret, a noise of pain or rage perhaps, suppressed. The Scotsman laughed. He knew its meaning well, it seemed.
“Well, Cap’n Dickie? Will ye step ashore wi’ us? Ye’re more’n welcome.”
“Go,” said Kaye, to Will. And “Give way together,” Will instructed. “Gently, now. Way enough. Hold water. Bowman there! Ashore.”
The forefoot touched the sand and a sailor leapt ashore to take the stemhead. Will kept the oars out, the oarsmen hovering. They could go astern and off at any moment.
But Kaye was not constrained by caution. He gripped the stroke oarsman by his tarry head and used him as a stanchion to project himself forward along the thwarts. In an instant he was balanced in the bow, then leapt lightly to the sand. As he approached the nearest men, Angus stuck out his hand, ironically. Slack Dickie, to Lamont’s surprise, took it and shook it, as if warmly.
“If you harm the boy you will be killed,” he said. “Apart from that, well met. Captain Swift is on that other ship, the Pourquoi Pas. Captain Swift, you may have heard of him; a most unforgiving man. There is an army coming through on foot to join us. We are not seeking you, however, but the rebel Marlowe and his slaughterers. There will be a pardon in it if you do your proper duty.”
“Pardon fer fit?” said Lamont, scornfully. “We dinna need yer pardons, man. If’n ye want tae buy oor services ye’ll hae t’name yer price. Is it the white quine ye’re after? Is there a ransom oot fer her?”
“White what?” said Kaye. “What’s that you say?”
Lamont’s face was a picture of contempt.
“Wumman,” he said. “Dae ye no’ speak yer ain king’s English?” He laughed. “But come tae think, he disnae neether, diz’ee? The white wumman,” he repeated. “The broon-haired quine the mannie’s captured. She looks aye worth a baubee or twa.”
Kaye understood. Momentarily, he forgot that Will was in the boat a mere few feet behind him.
“For me,” he said, “she can – Ah. The woman. Indeed, Lamont. There is an interest in the woman, too. All can be settled, I am sure. But firstly – we must have Captain Swift ashore. I told him we would give a musket signal. Do not misinterpret it, I beg of you. But also first – before that even – I must have the boy. Or shall I signal Swift to blow you all to Kingdom Come?”
Will, reaching for a musket in the boat, could not believe his ears, but Lamont, fortunately, could not either, it would seem. He looked at Kaye distastefully, then beyond him into the bay. Even before a shot was fired in the air the Pourquoi Pas was rounding up, to drop her anchor not far from the Jacqueline’s. She was rounding up, but hardly under way. The wind was almost nothing.
“He’d be hard put tae,” said Lamont, laconically. “It’d tak him a week tae get a gun to bear. And ye canna have the loon, fit dae ye tak me fer? Ye can mebbe see him later, an’ that’s a’. He’s fine well, that’s a’ ye need tae know. He’s being well looked after, nae lang wauk frae here. A short wauk where ye’ll never find him, neether. But ye can trust tae me, ma mannie, I’m a Lamont. Ye can trust tae me, and dinna ye fergit tha’.”
With Swift ashore, and his small body of seamen bearing arms, all parties, strangely, were more relaxed. The Lamont brothers led the Navy officers to the stockade entrance, but the sailors stood outside, muskets and cutlasses ever ready, just in case. The Scotsmen though, had neither reason nor intent to engineer betrayal; their position as profit-takers, in their eyes, was getting better all the time. They had vital information, they had Slack Dickie by his balls, they had a small army and a thick terrain to cover them if things went wrong, they had sunken treasure and a trove already hidden in the ground. Rabbie was like a laird at castle gate when Swift walked in: he offered brandy from a glass decanter.
Whatever Kaye and Bentley thought, Swift had no opinion of the Scots on moral grounds. He surveyed the inner courtyard of the fortress – just makeshift furniture and piles of small arms and sharpened blades, a few black men looking servile as decreed – and it seemed exactly as it should be. These men had found themselves a place, had intelligence that was theirs alone to sell, and knew how to conduct themselves for dignity and comfort. That they were murderers and thieves was well enough, for if they tried such tricks on him then they would die, and as for the rest of humankind he was indifferent; how much of it was worth the saving? The brandy he declined, but made no sign when Kaye accepted some and drank it greedily; it was not material.
Kaye’s eyes had darted round the inner stockade like a tigress looking for its cub. He had moved his body so that he could see all round the inner hut, then had pushed inside it without a by your leave. He saw a table, stools, beds, pistols, pots, a kettle. They had told the truth: Black Bob was in another place. Outside again he took more brandy, despite the Scotsmen’s look of quiet condescension.
“Well,” said Swift, when Kaye had drunk it down. “The Captain here tells me you can take us to the black man, Marlowe. How far is it, how long to get there, is he well-armed, and will he fight?”
Big Angus sucked his teeth.
“And fit’s yer offer, Captain? Mr Kaye there telt me you were some hard case, but so am I, and so’s ma brithers Rab and Doddie. We tak ye nowhere unless ye pay. And swear tae us safe passage hame again.”
Swift smiled. He was warming to this man, Bentley could see the signals, and was not surprised; his Uncle Swift was an infamous misreader of men’s characters.
As Angus laid it out, it was not the distance to Marlowe’s hideaway (or “town”) that was the hardship, but the terrain. There were mountain paths a goat would think twice about, there were woodland paths that wild boars would walk a score of miles just to avoid – and either of these alternatives was designed to facilitate an ambush. Men were shot off the mountain tracks with bullets, or spears, or rocks rolled down like thunderbolts from the blue, while in the wooded parts nemesis was silent and invisible. Swift did not bluster or complain, but pondered long and carefully.
“Mm,” he said, at last. “So tell me if I’ve got this wrong. We need to block their paths out to the eastward, and we need to have men enough to lose some as we close in? Once we have them bottled they have nowhere to escape to westward except the sea? But I presume they have a lookout network? No chance that we can come upon them all unknown? How did you find them out, then, and not be cut into little bits and fried?”
“We were hunting someone,” Angus said. “The wee white quine. She had a black yin wi’ her. Marlowe wan
ted them as well. For the ransom, mebbe. He ran out to meet them, we met him. She was no’ worth shedding blude fer, but some of my blacks can track. We know their town; we know where we can find them. Or them us…” His thin lips formed into a smile. “Ye hae the recht o’ it,” he said. “We must put them in a bottle. Verra neat.”
It did not take Swift much longer to decide his plan. He withdrew a map of Jamaica from his inner pocket and spread it out. Kaye, Bentley and two of the Scotsmen moved close to him and followed his finger. Will noted, with some surprise, the glaring scars and mangled tissue, which had never been referred to by his uncle. Swift stubbed a nail-less stump onto a south coast indentation.
“Us here, yes?” he grunted. “And Marlowe must be in those hills and hummocks there? So the bloodhounds and militia must be coming now along this coastal fringe, because that is where the roads exist, is that the right of it? Aye, I thought it must be. And they’ve come from here, west of Port Royal, to snake down here and – and how long to push through here, in the middle, and then spread north and southwards, to put in the plug? They’ve got horses and mules, fast Africans on foot, and they will not be bringing cannon, that’s impossible, they say. So if they set off two days ago from Kingston, and I now sail round here to land, Montego Bay, and then we march due south around the mountain fringes, while you lot and the Jacquelines thrust north – well, in two more days or three from now, as I compute it, all three prongs of us can be turned on to here, which is the spot I have agreed with Andrew Mather. And which you will tell me, Mr Scotchmen – is in striking distance. Am I right?”
The two Lamonts pored over the map, keeping their fingers off as if they feared they’d give too much away. Swift pulled out a silver box of snuff with ostentation from his waistcoat, took a clumsy snifter with his damaged fingers, and sucked it mightily into his head. He did not sneeze, but blew his nose uproariously.
“I had it from your father,” he told Kaye. “Cuban. Who said nothing but bad came from these islands? Well, Lamonts? What of my stratagem? I agree to all your terms, you have my word on that. If I have learned anything, it is to be generous in a bargain, and that way it will work.” He laughed. “Especially when the cost to me is less than old Jack Shit, eh! Have your freedom, boys! You’re welcome to it!”
Until the blade slides in your back, Will thought. A nest of vipers. The Lamonts, his uncle, all of them. A bloody pool of fangs and venom. And they were smiling broadly, all the best of friends.
“Captain Swift,” he said. “There is one hole in the net that I can see, especially as you have mentioned Cuba. Marlowe has one boat at least, for I have seen him in it. Not precisely ocean-rigged, but the straits are not so wide, and she may be seaworthy for aught I know. Indeed, he might have others hidden in some secret bay. If we attack him, who’s to say he’ll not just disappear again? Or fade away before we get a sniff?”
Swift smiled his broadest smile, clapping his nephew so hard he almost broke his shoulder.
“Excellent, my boy,” he said. “But I had thought of that already. Which is why when I sail round the corner in the Pourquoi Pas, you will sail in consort until we reach the area that you met him in before. You will lie off or sail close in, whichever you deem best, and try to search out this hidden bay, if it exists, or wherever else he keeps his war canoe. Good God, mayhap he has a little fleet itself! You can destroy it on the ground!”
Will had a swooping in his stomach. Mayhap he could go ashore indeed, and pick up Deb, and save her. He would take the Worm and make contact with the lookouts, somehow. But Kaye was speaking, and his voice was strained.
“What mean you, sir?” he asked of Swift. “Will Bentley sails in a gig again, or a cutter? You surely do not mean the Jacqueline?”
“Oh, do I not? And why not, pray? We cannot leave her here at anchor, can we? These men might be black, but they can sail a vessel, and that right well, in my experience. Mr Lamont, sir – if we left the vessel here, would you guarantee your cohorts would not make off with her?”
The Lamonts were not noted for their humour, but they shared a smile with Swift. Who then told Kaye he was needed at the head of the shore party from the south, and could not be spared to “merely run a ship.” He would take most of the Jacquelines, plus Carver and those other white men, and push up into the interior to a meeting point they would fix upon the map.
“What, with the Lamonts, and Black Bob?” said Kaye, but Swift only frowned at him.
“I know nothing of this Bob,” he said. “And I must say I care less. You may take one of the brothers if one of them agrees, but I want two of them at least. No, I will take all three. I do not wish this Marlowe to know we have them as our guides, and at sea with me in Pourquoi Pas they’ll be as secret as the grave. Your force is vital, man. You will deploy it to block off any exit eastward, from the centre of the island down to this bay. It is a mighty trust, young Richard. Let no foolish fancy get into its way.”
Wee Dod was almost kindly, fired doubtless to match this patronising with his own quite subtle insult. He reached out a hand to touch Kaye on the sleeve, smiling harder as he flinched.
“Dinna fear aboot the wee black loon,” he said. “We hae him verra safe and fast. Ah promise ye he’s no’ in a state tae run. He’s like a wee brid in a cage. But no’ sae keen tae sing.”
The plan now struck, Swift had had enough of chattering. He moved among them like a bundle of impatience, sweeping officers and men before him to the boats. Bentley and Kaye were pulled out to their brig as in a race, fine style, with Lieutenant Anderson of the Pourquoi Pas urging his boat’s crew away from the beach as if there was a hundred pound on it. Still the Jacquelines pipped them, which pleased Kaye mightily, although their boat was lighter, to be sure. Will was indifferent. He would be sailing soon to war on Marlowe and on Deb, whichever way he cared to look at it, and Holt agreed.
“But we will have the Jacqueline,” he said. “So we might get Deb off and save her, even if Marlowe will not come. Good Christ, Will, they found us last time fast enough. This time he’ll know there is an army closing in.”
“Aye, we’ll have the Jacqueline, which we’d make into a prison for him, would we not? We are not free agents, Sam, we cannot whisk him off to safety, and he wouldn’t let Deb come to us alone, because her worth to him is as a bargainer, a hostage for safe passage. We’ll not convince him that they’d hang her just as happily as him.”
Discussion, though, was soon cut short by preparation. Kaye chose the best men that he could to go along with him to the interior, and Purser Black was sweating soon in working out quantities of meat, bread, and liquor so they did not run out of vittles on the march. It took both ships two days of sweating labour to have the shore contingents ready, and Swift’s last surprise was his order that the stockade should be destroyed before they went, in case it should be taken over by Maroons or other villains, and later cause them trouble. Swift left the firing to Will and Sam’s contingent, and it suited them to see the Pourquoi Pas get under way before them. It meant that Marlowe’s watchers way down west would see one ship heave into view then disappear, before the second one pitched up alone, less likely to be perceived as threatening.
Bentley did not order his own anchor broken out until the Pourquoi Pas was gone, and until Kaye and his unwieldy battle force had cleared off the beach into the undergrowth. It was some time beyond midday and although the breeze was brisk onshore, they had room enough to clear the western headland with Jack Gunning at the con. Kaye had nabbed Jem Taylor, the marines, and Ashdown – whom he assumed “could talk nigger to the blacks” – but had not even mentioned “taking” London Jack as a possibility. Very wise. Jack had waved an ironic brandy bottle at him as Kaye had left; then stowed it away, joke over, when Kaye was gone. To Will, a very great relief.
As they sailed off, Holt and Bentley gazed back at the beach, now empty of the two hundred men and more who had been mustered there to strike inland and fight like common soldiers, ill-dressed for land wo
rk, ill-shod (if shod at all) and deeply disaffected. The two friends did not even answer back with great conviction when Gunning said the Jacquelines would rise up against Kaye and “slice his Adam’s apple out” if they got the chance. They were happy only that they were at sea, with, for William, the added hope he might save Deborah.
The scene they left was strangely desolate, just littered sand, and scrub, the smoking ruin of the fortress. Somehow it seemed to have an air about it, a sense of dereliction and foreboding.
Only Jack Gunning did not find it ominous.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The ease and beauty of their passage west in Jacqueline, the limpid vision of Jamaica in unending sun, had an odd effect on Will. It seemed unreal somehow, the possibility that beyond that green and lovely shoreline a war was going on, to break out very soon in carnage and depravity. It seemed unreal that he had seen Deb again, still loved her, still yearned for her like a lovesick boy. He had visions of her in a clearing in the trees, her muslin dress, her long curls, her clear brown eyes, her breasts. It seemed impossible more harm might come to her. The world was too gentle. It could not be so.
They dropped hook upward of a mile from land at last, because the shore was generally a lee one and Caribbean winds could go from nothing to a violent tempest in a shockingly short time, then held a conference on what to do for best. They had backed and filled about for near two days close-in, but to their disappointment had seen nobody watching for them. The two lieutenants had taken the gig off alone one time, and had hovered just beyond the line of surf. They had dropped the sail, taken off their jackets, and generally made out as seekers after pleasure, idle and no sort of threat, drifting in the easy waves. To no avail.
Gunning, inevitably, was happy to swing at anchor “till the cows came home.” One reason he had never joined the Navy, he reminded them, was because no one, in general terms, had it in mind to “cleave my head in two with some bloody axe.” But he did point out, more sensibly, that it would be stupid, and a crime, for them to go ashore “just on the off-chance you would sniff a bit of tail.” Literally a crime, as they were there with battle duties to perform, but stupid, more importantly, as they would be walking blindly into dangers they could not even guess at. In the end they called the Worm and put the proposition thus: go ashore for us, old friend, and try to track down Marlowe, and the English maid, and Mildred. Tell them if they can come to us, we can save them, all three. Tell them they will soon be overwhelmed. Tell them there are armies from the north and south and east.
