by Steve Goble
“He didn’t tell you?” Fawkes grinned. “He’s trying to collect something. But he’ll fail, though. Utterly.”
Spider blinked. “I do not understand.”
Fawkes laughed, heavily, and now Spider detected rum on his breath. “These men are like you and me, Spider John! Plied the sweet trade, they did. Pirates! Devil’s already claimed their souls, and Oakes can’t have them!”
Fawkes laughed so hard he coughed, throwing odors of booze and tobacco into the air. Once his fit subsided, he was leaning against a shelf near Ben’s perch.
“You still deathly afraid of the birds, Spider John?”
Spider said nothing.
“Damnedest thing, a man as quick with a knife or a cutlass as you, ready for battle as any I’ve seen, and yet cowed by something almost light as air.”
Fawkes placed his finger against Ben’s talons, stroking them. He looked at Spider. “Even this one, old and mostly blind as he is, I can see he concerns you. Does he not?”
Ben lifted a foot and stepped onto Fawkes’ finger. “Of course, your friend is old and half blind, and by God he killed a lot of men last night. So maybe old Ben has some death to deal yet. Aye, Ben? Aye?”
Spider inhaled deeply and strained against his bonds. “The master said to free me.”
“Aye,” Fawkes said. He leaned his crutch against the shelf, then hopped to Spider’s bedside with Ben on his finger. He avoided putting weight on the peg leg, Spider noticed, but it thumped the floor twice nonetheless.
Fawkes leaned against the table.
“Jim, keep that . . .”
Fawkes placed the raven on Spider’s chest. It flapped wings, and opened its beak. The bird’s shiny black eye looked hard as marble.
“Jim . . .”
Ben turned, slowly, talons scratching at Spider’s skin.
Fawkes laughed. “Ben won’t hurt you.” He freed a knife from his belt. “Ben won’t.”
Sweat filled Spider’s eyes, and his throat burned with fear. Ben turned some more, and now the bird’s empty eye socket loomed, like a small cave.
Fawkes brandished the knife. Spider struggled to fight free. Ben flapped wings.
The blade dropped suddenly, catching firelight as it did. Spider’s left arm suddenly was free. Fawkes had cut the rope.
Spider swatted recklessly at the raven, which lifted into the air in a wild flurry of black feathers. Fawkes cackled dementedly.
Spider grabbed Fawkes by the wrist and twisted it, hard. The knife dropped from the man’s hand, onto the table where Spider could not see it. He reached around blindly until he felt the hilt, then snatched it up and rammed it into the man’s stomach.
He’d grabbed it backward, striking with the pommel.
Fawkes, off balance, fell to the floor as Spider cut free his right arm.
Ben cawed enough to account for an entire flock, crossing the room in random directions and toppling vials and candles.
Spider slashed at the remaining ropes and rose quickly, making himself dizzy. Standing, and clutching at the table lest he fall, he gazed right and left, his head lashing back and forth like a flag in a wild wind as he tried to keep both the crippled pirate and the damned bird in view. He backed toward the door, knife ready to strike at Ben or Fawkes if necessary. He nearly slipped in the dead man’s blood.
Fawkes merely laughed. “Damnedest thing I ever saw! A fucking bird!”
Spider exited the room and tried to get his bearings. He heaved and thought he might vomit. Shaking, he headed toward the stairs leading below. He passed door after door and wondered whether Hob was behind one of them. He tried one, then another. They were locked.
Behind him, he could hear Fawkes crawling across the floor toward his crutch. Ahead, Gold Peter was ascending the stairs. Spider tucked away the knife.
“You lived, I see,” Peter said, not sounding much like he cared.
“Aye,” Spider said. “Lived to fight another day, as they say.” If the man had recently crossed Odin, he showed no sign of it.
Spider pushed his way past Gold Peter and headed downstairs. He needed to find Odin and form a plan. If Hob was in this madhouse, they had to get him out.
And if the whole goddamned place burned to the ground behind them, the world would be better off.
31
He found a shirt that was not drenched in blood and was glad to find his hat and pipe on his hammock. Spider covered his naked torso and headed to the kitchen in search of tobacco and a light, and to ask about Odin.
“I have not seen him,” Mrs. Fitch whispered, handing Spider a hunk of bread. “I hope your friend survived the fighting.” She did not sound particularly sincere.
“I am told he did.” Spider filled his pipe and lit it with a brand from the fire. Then he filled his pouch and found the ripped cloth he’d tucked there. Course thin fabric, possibly from a shirt.
“Who attacked us, John?”
He tucked the cloth into his hatband and filled his pouch with leaf. “I am not certain, Missus Fitch.”
“It’s enemies of these criminals,” she said, shaking her head. “I am sure of it! Violence and crime swarm around these men like maggots crawling on a dung heap!”
She stared at Spider as though expecting to see maggots on him.
“I am glad no harm came to you, Missus Fitch.”
He headed outside.
“Spider John, up and walking like a living, breathing man. Ha!”
Odin and three others knelt around an inverted bucket, using it as a table to toss crude dice. They used small wooden chunks, badly squared and badly painted. Spider doubted they rolled true and wondered if Odin realized that. Spider himself once had made a pair of cheat dice for his friend Ezra, with blunted corners that led to snake eyes more often than mere chance could account for. He and Ezra had won a lot of extra drinks and duff with those dice.
These fellows might be using cheat dice, too, but only a few coins dotted the bucket. The stakes appeared to be small, so Spider didn’t make any accusations. Odin did not have much money to lose, by any account.
“I am feeling well, Odin, though a bit swirly in the head. Mister Oakes thought a slow walk about the grounds might do me well. Would you come along, should I need a bit of help?”
Odin picked up three coins. “Aye.”
Once they were beyond earshot, Odin spat. “You fell like a goddamned slack sail last night. I thought you were dead!”
“I was not feeling well before the fight,” Spider said. “Remember? I guess that’s what toppled me. You fought like your old self, though. Where did you get that axe you were swinging?”
Odin laughed. “Stole it from the barn the first time I poked around, and hid it near my post in case I needed it. I certainly needed it last night, ha!”
“Aye. Did you try to sneak up on Half-Jim today? He said someone had followed him.”
“I did. Followed him to the house, thought I might kill him and pretend I’d found him, killed by one of the attackers maybe.”
“That would have been rash,” Spider warned. “We don’t want to show our hand too soon.”
“You almost fucked his woman and told her what we were up to,” Odin said. “Remember? So do not lecture me about patience you know I lack anyway. I didn’t get the chance to stab him, though. I think he heard me or something, and he hurried and glanced about a lot. He reached the house, and I veered off. Didn’t think I could get away with killing him in there. Rash, you’d have called that.”
“Good thing you did not follow him inside. You were correct, he knew someone trailed him and laid a trap. Gold Peter and Simon were ready for you.”
“I hope I’ll have another chance at Half-Jim. Ha!”
“Those were Bonny’s men, Odin, that attacked us.”
“Aye. I saw Little Bob among the dead. I looked for Hob, too, but did not see him. If he was with that gang, he got away.”
“Little Bob said Hob had been taken when the smugglers were attacked.”
/> “Little Bob lied by nature. If he told me he was pissing, I wouldn’t believe him even if my leg was getting wet.”
“He had no reason to lie about this. If Hob was involved in the fight at all, it would have been on our side. But I think Hob’s either run from here or locked away as a patient.” Or dead and buried.
Spider tried not to think of that possibility. “Where are our weapons?”
“Gathered up after the fight, we’re to get them when we go on post. But I got that knife of Hob’s.” He plucked it from his belt. “I know you have a silly sentiment toward that knife.”
Spider took it. “I gave this to Hob.”
“Aye.”
“Anyway, Hob was attached to this knife, too. And if Hob and Little Bob was still part of the same group, Hob would’ve got this knife back.”
“Perhaps,” Odin said.
“I am certain of it. Do you see Hob letting Little Bob keep this blade?”
“No.”
“No. So Hob was not among the attackers, then.” Spider inhaled deeply and the pipe fired bright.
They came across a fallen oak and sat upon it. They were quiet for a while, both lost in thought, until Spider emptied his spent pipe. “We have a great deal to puzzle out, my friend. But I think I begin to see what we are against. Or, well, I thought I did. Then I found another dead man, Raldo.”
“He was killed in the battle,” Odin said.
“No. I found him dead, already stiff and cold, and the battle was just barely begun. He wasn’t fresh dead. Someone killed him before the fight. Drove a knife into his brain, from behind. Up, like this.” He made a stabbing motion with his empty hand at the base of Odin’s skull to demonstrate.
Odin lifted a finger. “Well, suppose it was one of Bonny’s lads scouting? Raldo catches him, and the fellow kills him.”
“He was stabbed from behind, I said. If Raldo caught him, he’d have been facing him, aye?”
“Aye.” Odin scratched his head. “So he snuck up on Raldo.”
“Maybe,” Spider said. “But maybe not. He could have been a scout, I suppose, and killed Raldo before reporting back to his mates. But a sneak attack from behind . . . well, why the base of the skull like that, then? It’s an odd angle. I’d have gone lower.”
“Aye, probably,” Odin conceded.
“I’d have dragged him away, too, so as to not alert anyone an attack was coming,” Spider mused. “Sunk him in that pond, not too far from where I found him.”
“Aye,” Odin said. “That would have been my way, I think.”
“So this death, then, it wasn’t in the battle and it won’t fit nice into any part of the pattern,” Spider continued.
“Pattern?”
“Aye. Missus Fitch, she spoke of patients getting sick and dying. Well, that is not the same as getting stabbed or shot, is it? So, I thought I had started getting the weather gauge on these murders, and now here is Raldo all dead by violence and shifting the winds.”
“You’re certain he didn’t just die in the fight?”
“I’ve seen a lot of fresh new corpses, Odin. His wasn’t. He was killed during the day, probably, not sooner, else he’d have been missed. And I don’t see a scout like that operating by day, anyway, now that I think on it. Do you? Is that how you’d do it? Or would you sneak in by cover of darkness?”
“Aye, then. Dumb as Little Bob Higgins is, not even he would have planned it that way.”
“Before I nearly tripped over Raldo’s corpse, I thought I had part of this all reckoned out,” Spider said after a while.
“So tell me.”
“Young men are brought here, pirates and smugglers, but we don’t find them. I think they are locked away as patients and end up in the ground.”
“Someone pays Oakes to cure them of thievery?”
Spider shook his head. “No. It is something else entirely. Young men vanished first from nearby farms, raising a ruckus and drawing attention. Oakes did not like that, did he? What does a pirate do, when things get too hot where he’s operating?”
“He sails to safer waters,” Odin said.
“Aye. So then Ambrose Oakes sends his dog Half-Jim Fawkes to arrange an ambush on some smugglers and bring some of them back here captive. Hob among them.”
“He was capturing young men here, then sent fucking Half-Jim to get him some men elsewhere once Mister Wilson started poking around?”
“Aye, Odin. Aye.”
“Why does he capture men?”
“I think I know why,” Spider answered. “But I shall be damned if I understand it. But ambushing a bunch of no-good, unloved smugglers gives him some fellows that no one is likely to come after. Aside from their shipmates, who is going to care if a few pirates disappear forever?”
Odin blinked his lone eye. “So, he’s pressing them to serve him?”
“I do not reckon so. These men Fawkes hired did not come from Bonny’s crew. No. They were hired to help protect the grounds, and to go get Oakes some captives he needs for a damned foul purpose. I began to suspect what that is, but I ain’t reckoned it all out. But I think they were brought here and killed one at a time.”
“Oakes murdered them, not some illness?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps, I say. But,” Spider shook his head, “he did not kill me, and he easily could have. I was bound to his table, senseless, asleep, and yet he plastered my cut. He might have killed me then and there, but he did not. So maybe my wild notion of what goes on here is just that, a wild notion, and my mind is just not working right after being hurt.”
“You fell hard, but that cut did not look so bad.”
“Aye,” Spider said. “I thought perhaps Little Bob had dipped his blade in venom or something, but Oakes says he did not.”
“We both will go mad if we stay here. Ha!”
“Aye.” Spider sighed. “You speak true. I am not sure I care who is killing who. Jesus, I just want to find Hob and leave this place behind us!”
“I never really did care who is killing who, or about finding that dumbass Hob, ha! He created his own problems, Spider John, when he followed pretty Miss Bonny across the ocean!”
Spider closed his eyes tightly. “I am of a mind to get our weapons and just confront these bastards right now, start slitting necks and bursting skulls until they give us Hob.”
“I like a fight, you know that, but we are but two men. And these fellows are no newcomers to bloodshed, Spider.”
“True, but there are not so many of them now as there were.”
“Well, then, perhaps we remain under our false flag and reduce their numbers a bit more?”
“No. Our time is up already, I think. Maybe we can snatch up Oakes, or Fawkes, and put a gun to a head and make these bastards bring Hob to us. I don’t know. Ruth knows we are looking for a shipmate, and it is a . . . fuck and bugger!”
Spider pointed toward a fat oak. A man crouching behind it suddenly broke cover, running hard for the house.
“Do you think he heard us?”
“Yes.”
Spider was already on the run, Hob’s knife in hand. The fellow was swift, but so was Spider—and Spider did not need to cover the whole distance between them.
Once he was close enough, Spider halted, poised himself, and threw. It was a skill he’d developed during the long periods of boredom between action on the Spanish Main.
Hob’s knife, designed for throwing, plunged between the man’s shoulder blades and he fell instantly. He was still squirming and crying when Spider got to him.
“Spying on us, are you?”
“One of Oakes’ boys,” Odin said, catching up from behind. “I’ve seen him about. Don’t recall his name, though.”
Spider watched the man die, then hung his head. He wanted more than anything to leave all the killing behind, but the violent life seemed to cling to him. He told himself that this man would have raised the alarm, warned Oakes that Spider and Odin were up to something and ruined any chance they had of rescuing Hob, i
f the lad still lived. Knowing that did not keep the bile from rising in Spider’s throat, though.
Of course, Ruth may have warned Fawkes anyway, because of my foolish maneuver.
“You had to kill him, and Half-Jim recruited all these men from the sweet trade,” Odin said. “This fellow has probably known for years a blade or a ball or a hangman’s noose would be his end. His soul is not worth your mourning.”
“If that be true, then our souls are beyond mourning, too,” Spider muttered. “Such things are likely to be our ends, too. But not before we get Hob.”
“So we get our guns, and some extra guns, and then take the fight to them! Oh, and we get whatever Stingo lobbed at them! The explosions! Jesus, whatever that was, I want some!”
“Something Oakes cooked up in his laboratory. Little Bob mentioned something similar when he talked about the assault on the smugglers. But we can’t just go in like madmen. Not yet,” Spider said, looking at the dead man. He freed his knife from the body, and wiped it on the man’s breeches. “I have a notion this man’s death may help us even the odds a wee bit more.”
32
“We found him, dying,” Spider said. He and Odin held the dead man between them, his arms over their shoulders and his feet dragging. “He told us he saw two men before he died.”
Fawkes, far more sober than the last time Spider had seen him, nodded. “Farewell, Timothy.” Then his voice boomed like a cannon. “Men! Alarm! We’ve more of those bastards on the grounds! Weapons, lads! Guns and balls! Both watches to duty now!”
That prompted groans as tired men scurried for weapons.
Spider and Odin dropped their burden, then wiped at the man’s blood that smeared their clothes. Men gathered about them, the ship’s bell rang out, and guns and swords were passed about. Spider and Odin each found themselves with two guns, of Spanish make and already primed. Spider still had Hob’s knife.
“Each to his usual post and scream bloody hell if you see any of these pricks!” Fawkes threw a weapon belt over his shoulder, then looked directly at Spider. “I am in a killing mood,” he said. “You might pray I am able to indulge it before we meet again.” He tapped his belly where Spider had hit him. Spider hoped that was the only reason Fawkes had to confront him, and it seemed likely. If Ruth’s already told him why I am here, he’d just shoot me.
