A Bottle of Rum

by Steve Goble

  Spider held the knife ready; it occurred to him she might have hidden a dirk between the divan cushions in advance of her little operation. “Does Fawkes know you are doing this?”

  “Perhaps he does, perhaps he does not. I do, however, have my own mind. Jim is no fool, though.”

  Spider winced. “Well, then, I’d best avoid him.”

  Her eyes became icy. “What are you looking for? Are you a scout?”

  “A scout?”

  “For Wilson, or for Bonny’s men?”

  Spider stepped forward quickly, knife ready. “Bonny’s men? So you know about that?”

  She blinked. “That is it, then. You are here seeking revenge.”

  “No, no, no,” Spider said. He lowered the knife. These were difficult waters to navigate, and he was still dizzy from illness and from Ruth’s attempt at seduction. He took a moment to gather his thoughts.

  “I did not come seeking revenge,” he said after he and Ruth stared at each other for half a minute. “although if I find anything I need to avenge, well, by bloody goddamned hell I will avenge it.”

  “Why did you come here?”

  “Bonny’s men, the smugglers. I was not a part of her crew, but a friend of mine did sail with her. A foolish young rake, he is, his head easily turned by a good-looking woman.”

  “That just makes him a man,” Ruth said.

  “Aye,” Spider answered. “I came here seeking him. His name is Hob, he is young and strong and better looking than me by a few leagues. Blond hair, horny as a cat in the summer. I’m sure he would have noticed you. Have you noticed him?”

  She shook her head. “I have not seen anyone like that here.”

  “Fuck and bugger!” Spider spun around, madly. He’d thought himself close to the answer to all these mysteries.

  Ruth stood, reminding Spider that she was a dangerous adversary. He focused his attention on her once again, and was happy to see her hands were not reaching behind her.

  “Are any of these men working for Fawkes from Bonny’s crew? Did he press them into service?”

  “No,” she said. “These men are, mostly, his old shipmates. One or two he met in Lymington or Bristol.”

  “Then why the bloody hell did Fawkes ambush a bunch of smugglers in the middle of the night? And my friend among them?”

  “I do not know that,” Ruth said. “I truly do not. I did not accompany Jim when he went to do that, nor when he arranged the whole thing. It was just a bunch of new patients, he said. Men who’d gone mad at sea after serving a mad captain. He said they’d been starved and lashed and driven mad.”

  “What I heard was Jim had made a deal of some sort with a taverner in Lymington, a gent named Bonnymeade.”

  “I’ve heard the name, but I do not know him, nor do I know anything about all this for certain.” Ruth took a step toward him. “I do know that men who pry into Jim Fawkes’ affairs do not live very long at all. He is a rougher man than you may know.”

  “You and he have an understanding, do you not?”

  She crossed her arms. “Of sorts. It is not your concern.”

  “Aye.”

  “Spider, I give you credit. You turned tables on me. But I think if this conversation goes further, you and I might both find ourselves in dire straits with Jim Fawkes.”

  “I am beyond caring about that,” Spider growled. “Where is my friend?”

  “I told you, I do not know,” she said through clenched teeth. “Oakes only speaks to Jim, and Jim tells people only what he wants them to know.”

  Spider’s next question died in his mind when Ruth leapt to her right and placed a hand behind her back. Spider stepped to his own right and crouched, ready to fend off whatever weapon she had back there and wondering how the hell it had escaped his attentions when they were locked in an embrace.

  But Ruth had no weapon. It was a feint, and now she could escape with ease. She smiled and bolted out the door.

  Spider gave chase, and saw Ruth head out the front entrance. He froze though, when he heard Odin’s voice behind him. The one-eyed sailor was emerging from the down the hall.

  “Spider! I have news!”

  “So do I, Odin.”

  27

  Once Odin caught up to Spider, they rushed outside. Ruth had vanished.

  “If you see Half-Jim, let me know.”

  Odin spat. “Why?”

  “Because I almost diddled his woman and now she knows we came here looking for Hob.”

  “When did diddling and tattling become part of our plan, Spider John?”

  “It was not a thing I . . .”

  “So if one of us has to diddle a wench, can it be me?”

  “Odin . . .”

  “It should be me. I think I can manage to get my pecker wet without telling the lass our whole fucking . . .”

  “Listen to me, you ugly, shit-stinking, cock-sucking son of an old whore’s mule!”

  Odin stopped complaining to Spider and stared at him. “You accuse me of cock-sucking, Spider?”

  Spider sighed heavily. “Well, sorry. As for my actions, whatever damage I may have done it seems pretty Ruth is gone from us for now. Let’s find a copse to hide in. Tell me your news.”

  “Aye,” Odin answered. They walked, seeking cover. “I am supposing drink addled your brain, as usual.”

  “I do regret drinking this time, Odin, for certain.”

  “While you were drunk and horny and talking too goddamned much, I was rolling bones in the barn with some gents.”

  “Oh?”

  Odin nodded. “Aye. One of those boys I was dicing with, Edward, says the folk in the town up north are convinced that Daphne wench, or some other crazed person, escapes from these grounds and kills young men.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Aye. Three deaths. Well, one death and two disappearances. But everyone thinks the vanished lads are dead.”

  “Is that what this Wilson fellow is about, the man Oakes mentioned sneaking about his grounds?”

  “His boy Joe was the one they found dead, yes.”

  Spider pondered. “Good cover here.” They stepped into a space surrounded by five oaks with great, broad trunks, one of which sported a broken limb that dangled low and obscured the view from the house. “I have a story forming in my head, Odin. Trying to fit parts together, make a good dovetail joint between what you are telling me and what I’ve learned myself. Go on. How long ago was the most recent disappearance from the village?”

  “Maybe eight months, maybe more. Lads were drinking, and arguing a bit.”

  “Hmmmm.” Spider scratched his beard. “And they found no bodies?”

  “Just Joe’s. He’d been in a brawl and lost, they said.” Odin lowered his breeches to take a piss.

  “Was his death the last of the three instances?”

  “Aye.”

  “What makes the villagers think Oakes is involved? Or Daphne, I should say?”

  Odin finished and tucked up his breeches. “The very first lad disappeared not long after Oakes started boarding madmen, Spider. Not quite a year ago. Daphne was his first patient, they say. Rumor is they’ve seen a woman in white in the village, too.”

  “She escapes now and then, does she?”

  “Aye, she gets out of the house sometimes, although the dicing boys tell me she ain’t never got that far away. She’s made it to the road a time or two, pestering passersby and asking for rides. But they say they always find her quick.”

  “I know someone else who gets off the grounds now and again.” He was thinking of Michael, the huge farmhand. “Continue.”

  “The second disappearance was a few weeks after that first one. Both lads, first and second, just gone, one went to milk cows and never came back. The other had been courting a girl but went gone on his way home. And then the Wilson boy, killed in the middle of the night, a fortnight or two after that. They’d started a patrol at night, in the village, because lads kept disappearing, and he had the watch the night he got
killed.”

  “And those deaths drew some attention, aye? Riled everyone up?” Spider crossed his arms and looked at Odin.

  “Well, aye,” Odin said. “Wilson and others have been peeping around here, sometimes sneaking, sometimes hollering for blood.”

  “You said the Wilson boy lost a brawl.”

  “Aye, they found him dead. Looked like he’d taken on Blackbeard or fucking Ned Low or some other scallywag. Broken arm, bloody face, deep gashes, lots of blood.”

  “That little girl Daphne did not do all that,” Spider said. But Michael could have done it.

  Odin shrugged. “Probably not. Ruth?”

  “She probably could do it,” Spider said, “but why would she?”

  “Who knows why a woman does anything?”

  “Not me,” Spider said. “I reckon women know why they do things, though.”

  “Do they?”

  The watch bell rang.

  “Odin, we are in a deep smelly privy here. Ruth knows we are looking for Hob.”

  “Why did you tell her that?”

  “I thought I might learn where he is.”

  “Did you?”

  “No.”

  “Is that why you didn’t fuck her?”

  Spider grasped Odin’s shoulders. “She knows why we are here. And Half-Jim is her man. She said he was away, busy or something. And I do not know if she spoke the truth. Maybe Jim told her to try to find out why I was here, maybe it was her that suggested it to him, or maybe she really just wanted to find out what we were about on her own. I don’t know. As you said, who knows why a woman does anything? Anyway, Jim could be anywhere, he could have maybe even been in the next room listening to Ruth and me talking. Even if he wasn’t, when she sees him she probably will tell him why we came here.”

  Odin considered that. “Will he care if we came here looking for a friend?”

  “I have no idea,” Spider said. “He might, he might not. The answer to that probably lies in why the smugglers were snatched in the first place. Jim won’t like being lied to, though, I can vouch for that, but if it does not involve danger to Oakes—and it does not have to, if we can find Hob and get him away from here—then Half-Jim may not care much.”

  “So what do we do?”

  Spider rubbed his hands together. “I do not know. I have an idea of what is happening here, I think, or at least a wee hint, and it is damned ugly, Odin. Damned ugly. That little girl might not have killed Wilson’s boy—hell, I am certain she did not—but she might well be killing men around here. She might be the source of the illness that keeps killing patients.”

  “Aye,” Odin said.

  “Aye,” Spider said. “She looks at death the way you look at a tart in Tortuga. She is fascinated by it. And she is allowed to take rum to the patients. Poisoned rum, it may be.”

  “Why would a girl do that?”

  Spider shook his head. “Maybe she just wants to watch them be buried. Maybe she listens outside their doors while their breath rattles. I don’t know. I just know she is a scary little wench.”

  “She is, indeed.”

  Odin shrugged. “Well, then. I am done with booze until we reach some civilized place, Spider John. What do we do?”

  The watch bell rang.

  “We’d best muster for our watches, I think, so we don’t arouse notice. We will be late as it is, I fear. But let us go to our posts, and be ready for Half-Jim or Ruth or, fuck, everybody to come after us.”

  “Just like our old days on the account. Ha!”

  28

  Spider patrolled the south wall, after skipping the proffered bread and cheese. His stomach had settled, mostly, but well water had not been able to cleanse the burning feeling from his throat. He was no longer dizzy, though, and he was beginning to feel hungry, so he counted that a good omen.

  Spider was still pondering some ruse that might get him upstairs to see if Hob was locked away in one of those rooms when a shadow dropped over the wall some two dozen yards away.

  It was too small to be Michael again. A dog, perhaps.

  Spider dodged behind a tree and watched the dark shape rush toward an oak and vanish there. It was no dog. It was a man, or perhaps a woman, intent on silence and on not being seen.

  Spider freed a gun from his belt and crept toward the spot where the shadow had disappeared. He crouched, took three slow steps, and plucked free a dagger in his left hand. Just as he thought he was close enough to rush the interloper he saw a second shadow, and a third, drop over the wall.

  Damn! This was an attack.

  Spider little cared if Oakes or Fawkes or any of their hired fighters were ambushed. But Odin was out there in the darkness, and perhaps Hob as well, and there were Daphne and Mrs. Fitch to consider. Odin might curse that chivalrous thought, but by thunder, it was against the odds that both of them might be ruthless killers. Surely, one of them might be worth saving.

  He thought about rushing the intruders himself but erased that thought almost as soon as it had formed. He’d seen three. He figured he could kill one quickly enough in an act of surprise, and perhaps finish the second in a head-on fight. The third, though, likely would kill him, and there might well be more coming over the wall soon. Or perhaps others had breached the wall further away, unseen. The attack could be coming from several directions, too.

  Familiar feelings stirred within him. He had survived more than a few chaotic battles in his life as a pirate. Whatever happened next would leave him with regrets of violence, or it would leave him dead. The difference would be how quickly and efficiently he could stab or slash or shoot, without thought for the fellows on the other side of the fight. He’d learned that lesson well over the years.

  Life or death also would hinge on whether these interlopers were expert skirmishers or angry villagers with no experience in a real fight. Whether these were Anne Bonny’s men or a mob led by Wilson, Spider had no idea. Either way, the prudent course was to raise a warning.

  So he crouched and ran as quietly as he could toward the house, using oaks and shadows as cover and praying he would not hear a shout of alarm or the crack of a pistol behind him.

  He counted on his own familiarity with the terrain to help him move with haste in the darkness. The attackers, on strange territory, would have to move more cautiously to avoid tripping on a root or stepping into a rabbit hole.

  A life of piracy prepares a man for action, so Spider was not quite winded by the time he saw the light in the window of the drawing room. He bounded up the steps to the front door, surprised his head was spinning a bit. The goddamned booze. He entered the house, rushed to the drawing room and found Oakes and Fawkes talking before the fireplace, brandy in hand.

  So Fawkes is not away after all, he thought. Fuck.

  “We are besieged, sir,” Spider said. “Three men at least crept over the south wall. Likely there are more.”

  “Damn,” Oakes said. “Wilson?”

  “That man is not so bold,” Fawkes said, grabbing the crutch that leaned against the hearth. He drained his brandy, set the snifter on the table beside him, and rose. “We’ll fight them off, no matter who they be.” If he had heard anything about Spider’s intentions from Ruth, he showed no sign.

  The more Spider thought about it, the more he suspected Little Bob and his friends had been able to trace the men who had ambushed Anne Bonny’s smugglers to Pryor Pond. If they’d been angry enough to murder Thomas Bonnymeade, it would be no surprise to see them seek vengeance on the men who had snatched their shipmates. It would be far more surprising if they didn’t.

  Spider did not mention any of this to Oakes and Fawkes, though.

  Oakes lifted his bulk from his chair. “I shall be in my laboratory, Mister Fawkes. I want this skirmish ended quickly!”

  “Aye, master.” Fawkes winced, as though he did not like his choices. “Spider John, go rouse the day watch, lead them out to meet the oncoming party,” Fawkes said. “I’ll sound the alarm and stir men to watch for flanker
s. Move!”

  “Aye.”

  At the top of the cellar steps, Spider bellowed. “Attack coming, lads! Men with guns and swords! To battle, now! South wall!” Then he rushed to the kitchen and toward the back door, nearly knocking a large kettle out of Mrs. Fitch’s hands.

  “Oh, what happens, John?”

  “We are under attack,” he said. “Grab a big knife or a cleaver and hide yourself!”

  “Oh! Oh!” She opened a drawer and pulled out a ladle. “Damn!” She threw that aside and withdrew a sharp knife. “Better!”

  “Go hide!” Spider rushed out the door.

  Fawkes was clanging the ship’s bell in a cadence, three loud rings followed by a pause. He repeated this pattern as Spider and the day watch rushed past him, arms in hand. Stingo, Spider noted, wobbled considerably.

  “Let none through, lads!” Fawkes’ voice boomed like a cannon. “Waste no powder, aim true and careful! I want to fill a few more holes tonight, I do!”

  Spider ran toward the south wall. He felt the effort now, and pain clutched at his stomach. The remains of a fallen oak provided nice cover, and he dove for it. “Good place here, gents! They’ll be up to us soon!”

  A couple of men joined him, while others took up positions behind standing oaks. They all peered into the darkness, waiting for their adversaries.

  Shouts rang through the night, first to the south where the attackers were approaching, then all around.

  “They’ve heard the bell, boys, and they’ve given up on stealth!”

  “They come in a rush! Meet them with lead and blades!”

  “Blood and ruin, lads! Blood and ruin!”

  Spider’s two flintlock pistols were ready to go. In addition, he had Hob’s throwing knife and two daggers, all sharp. He also counted on snatching weapons from anyone he killed.

  He wondered how Odin fared. The old man could fight, but that injured leg worried Spider.

  Spider lifted his head and peeked over the fallen trunk. Shadows rushed up the hill, gliding from tree to tree, boulder to bole. One of them seemed to be the size of a child.

  “Is that you, Little Bob Higgins?” Spider muttered quietly. “I owe you a fucking knock or two.”