Kingston by Starlight

by Christopher John Farley

  “Now I am haunted by dreams of this affair,” said John, “enough to remove my senses and leave me prone, as you found me.”

  “So can there be no mission?” said Read.

  My heart sank, as if my chest had been tied with iron chains dropped into a deep river. Our mission was aborted even before it started. John caught my eye and no doubt read my disappointment. I truly was my father’s child after all this long while, for dirt, and farming, were to be my future. Ahhh— in every relationship, something in someone dies, and it is almost invariably within the woman. When two souls meet, one must give up its former habits and adapt to the other. The only hope is that the new life at least has some charms to rival the old. But damn to hell our fields and fruit trees— how could they ever compete with the spray of salt sea in the mouth and the wind at one’s back? I would never smell the sweet aroma of the Chocolate Gale again. I could feel tears coming on, but I fought them back.

  “We must stay here,” I said. “For Governor Rogers, and his agent Nicholas Lawes, will be ever vigilant.”

  “I see the wisdom in such caution,” said Read.

  “On the contrary,” said John quietly. “We must go.”

  “What?” I said. “Have I missed the point of your tale?”

  “Entirely,” he said.

  “I must confess,” said Read, “I, too, have lost the sense of the thing.”

  “A ship on the move is hard to board,” said John. “If we stay still, the Governor will find us.”

  “Is that your tale in its entirety?” said Read. “I am someone who has left his share of yarns half-told himself, and I sense you have more to relate.”

  “That is all I have to say.”

  “Then our course is clear,” I said, my blood rising up to the new challenge. “We must do what the governors least expect— strike!”

  And so we packed what supplies we had and all of us, John, Read, Poop, and I, headed out into the rain. John checked his garden of gray roses one last time as we left our farm. No flowers had taken root. All that was there was mud.

  chapter 29.

  I cannot say what drew us back into the life. Was it the love of gold or the thirst for such enterprises that stir the blood? Or perhaps it was some strange infatuation with death, whose sweet perfume, danger, could not so much as be whiffed in our comfortable landlock’d country life. Then, too, perhaps we were drawn by that same force that sets the patterns of storms, and gives rhythm to the tides, draws sea-turtles to their spawning grounds with each season, and placed the constellations in their eternal vectors.

  But ahhh— I do not believe in fate. Cassandra whispers her prophesies in my ear and I laugh, as if her words were merely riddles for the amusement of children. I did not argue with John, nor with Read, because I did not want to; there were a legion of reasons I could have muster’d in an argument to remain, but I did not sound the battle cry. When one has a skill at a certain thing, it is hard to set aside that talent. If we are true to our souls, we must follow our facility even if it dooms us. Proficiency applied makes us feel unburdened and free; ignored and unused, it follows us like a lead shadow, dragging on our lives interminably. I did believe, at one time, that I was playing the role of my life, like smooth-tongued Viola searching for her drown’d brother in Illyria. I knew my lines, but the question was begged: who was the actor beneath the costume? Now, in my return to action, I at last recognized the truth of it: unlike some thespian, I understood I was not slipping into some part, but slipping out of a character, such as wrongly besmirched Hermione or sad-eyed Ophelia, and finally leaving the stage for the honest streets. The role was real.

  * * *

  It seem’d, at first, that the heavens smiled on our journey. As we took the path toward our destination, the rain, which had fallen these many days, stopped. Next the sky, which had been somber, faded from gray to a happy blue, and the sun came playfully from its place of hiding and danced across the sky, shining brighter than a newly minted doubloon. We walked carrying only light leather packs, pistols, and cutlasses, with John at the head, Read and me following, and Poop trailing.

  We continued on, passing Scots Cove and Hudson’s Hole and Parrot’s Bay. The forests shifted from scattered groves of trees to denser thickets, and soon we were beneath a high canopy of branches that blotted out the sky. The ground was matted with decayed fallen leaves. The earth here was springy and spongy and seemed to add bounce to the step as we walked. The trees, however, seemed engaged in a struggle to gain footing in the loose soil, which sagged away even as their roots reached out to take hold of it. The roots of the trees— which looked like the gnarled hands of crones— were, in most cases, naked and exposed; the loamy earth around them had been washed away by flood or blown away by wind. Many of the trees were of Olympian stature, and their root systems were the size of houses. Not long into our trek, our small party passed underneath a huge, ancient cedar tree whose exposed roots spread out on either side of us, leaving enough space for all in our party to walk through upright.

  * * *

  Near the close of day, we came to a waterfall. The foliage of the forested land near the sea had proved to be thick and very near impassable. We had therefore continued our trek a bit farther inland, where the trees and scrub were less dense. But we had encountered an unexpected obstacle. Before us now was a vast green ridge, stretching for miles on either side. The ridge was a near-vertical slope and covered with trees. To climb this ridge would be more difficult than scaling a mountain.

  Still, there might be a way. In the center of the ridge, a waterfall cut through the trees. The water had eroded the rock, making the slope of its stream more gentle than the ridge around it. The fall was long, extending many feet upward. The top of the falls was shrouded in white mist and spray and merged with the white sky. The waterfall, then, seemed to flow straight from heaven and down to the earth.

  In the end this was what was decided: being the nimblest climber of the group, I scaled the falls in the lead, with a rope tied around my waist. Next came Read, holding the rope, and then followed Poop, with John taking up the rear. In the early going the current was a mere trickle of water on the rock. Soon, it was a flood, crashing all around. Spray flew in our faces and into our eyes. The current was less swift at the sides of the fall, where the water cascaded over the rocky earth alongside the forest. So we scaled up the sides only to find that the rocky ground there was slippery with slimy moss. I found it difficult to gain sure footing and harder still to hold on to the rocks ahead and pull forward.

  The flood crashed down around us as we went farther up the sides of the waterfall. The current grew even stronger. It was a roar in the ear, like a thousand dogs howling in rough chorus. It was hard to hear anything else but the roar of water, hard to think on anything else but the water. It seemed to fill the whole world with spray and foam. The falling flood soaked the clothes to the skin and tugged at the arms and legs, pulling us all downward even as we strove to climb upward.

  But soon the top of the falls was in sight; I could see it ahead through a curtain of mist. Read lost his footing and Poop began to go down with him, but, finding a toehold on the rock, Read maintain’d his grip on the rope and pulled them back up.

  “Why did we come back to this life?” I shouted to Read.

  “I did not come back for gold, or for glory,” he hollered back. “I came back for you!”

  * * *

  At last I reached the top. I waded through the rushing water to the bank of the river that fed the waterfall and waited for the others to come to the summit. The sun was setting now and the last light of the day was shining through the mist at the summit of the fall. The air was filled with rainbows. They danced in the air. I looked through the rainbows and the mist and over the crest of the waterfall. The forest was spread out before us.

  Through the mists and colors, in the distance, I could see Dry Harbor Bay.

  chapter 30.

  We reached the harbor in the late afternoon
. Seabirds floated above the drink like white petals thrown into the wind; below, vessels of varying sizes glided along the water, gentle as prayers. Farther out to sea, dolphins splashed and played, arching over foam-tipped waves. Read, holding his cutlass in his left hand with the tip toward the harbor, pointed out the treasure ship. The Adventure, her name was, and she was a two-masted vessel with all her sheets down, lying anchor’d in the water.

  “We’ll need a boat to take her,” said John.

  We left our packs buried under the sand in a strip near the harbor and carried with us only our light weaponry— pistols, swords, and the like. We swam out to sea a short distance and came upon a fishing vessel with one mast. I boarded first, being the strongest swimmer, and I told the crew that their craft was taken; Read and John climbed on board hard after and, with their drawn weapons, echoed my claim and gave it additional force.

  I then recognized both members of the fishing duo.

  “Hunahpu? Xbalanque?”

  “Yes, it is I,” said Xbalanque, my old foil.

  “I see you still practice the profession that Xbalanque and I have abandoned,” said Hunahpu.

  I looked upon the twins with some amazement. Xbalanque’s face was much changed: where before there was sinister intent, there was now placidity; his mouth, which had been set in a sneer, was fixed in something resembling the beginnings of a smile. His eyes, once full of mischief, now regarded me with what seem’d to be a bit of pity. And Hunahpu, always the more genial, seem’d even more friendly than in our days on the Will.

  “We ply an honest trade now,” said Xbalanque. “We are fishermen, like our ancestors.”

  “We used our privateer winnings to establish ourselves,” explained Hunahpu.

  “You are both well met,” I said, “but we are in need of a vessel.”

  “We have no valuables aboard this ship,” said Xbalanque.

  “And no fish either,” continued Hunahpu. “We have caught naught but a single bluefish all day and, in my opinion, they are horrible eating. Surely there are better catch for privateers in these waters than the likes of us.”

  “Put your mind at ease,” said John. “We give you our word that we will give you back your boat when we have concluded our business. You know my word is good.”

  With that, Read took the oars from Hunahpu and steered the boat toward the treasure ship.

  “You know the Governor is looking to hang you,” Xbalanque told John. “Rogers hung a privateer every day this month. Whatever mission you’re on, abandon it. We’re all better off fishing.”

  “Or trying to fish, anyway,” said Hunahpu. “We have caught nothing sizable or salable for two weeks.”

  “Come with us and you’ll have a catch you can boast about,” John replied.

  Now the treasure ship came into view. The Adventure was a sleek vessel— two elegant masts, a sturdy oak hull, an elegant carving of a mermaid on the prow— but, as Read had predicted, the ship was clearly undermanned. There were just two hands aboard her deck, and one of the men lay under the forecastle, his cap slid down over his eyes and a loud snoring in the air around him.

  John motioned for us to creep up astern. There were ropes dangling from the vessel’s hull. John took the lead and Read and I follow’d him while Poop, hands shaking, watched the fishermen, a pistol in his unsteady grip. Xbalanque look’d amused by the proceedings, but in Hunahpu’s face, I saw the lacertilian look, which I remember’d from his brother’s visage when I knew them on the Will, slowly slither into his features and his eyes.

  “Will you join us?” asked John.

  “Let them go their way,” said Xbalanque to his brother. “It’ll lead to no good.”

  “What’s my share?” said Hunahpu.

  “Same as ours,” said John, “if you can still hold a pistol.”

  “I can, indeed,” answered Hunahpu. “And I can fire one, too.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” implored Xbalanque. “If you go with them, and they get caught, the Governor will hang us both.”

  “Do you want to stink of fish parts your whole life?”

  “This is how our fathers lived.”

  “Our fathers are dead!”

  “They live through us.”

  But it was too late— Hunahpu was already standing up in the boat. Rackam offer’d him a gun, but Hunahpu drew his own pistol from his waistband.

  “You seem ready for action.”

  “You might say I’ve been waiting for you,” said Hunahpu.

  Hunahpu shimmied up the ropes after us. Xbalanque, shaking his head and sighing in resignation, pulled a long flat knife from his belt and followed his brother up the ropes.

  Now all six of us— Rackam, Read, Xbalanque, Hunahpu, Poop, and I— stood on the deck of the ship. The two hands who had been asleep at their watch had woken up and regarded us with surprising calm.

  “This ship is taken,” said John.

  At this, Poop put his fingers to his mouth and let loose a sharp whistle.

  “What are you doing?” said Read. “You’ll be heard!”

  “I am dangerous,” said Poop. “I told you I was.”

  The deck quickly filled with fighting men— dozens pouring from every doorway and hatchway like some ant mound disturbed with a kick and now on the march. One of the crewmen kneeled, aimed his musket, and fired. Xbalanque’s throat was blown out and he fell to the deck, clutching at the wound.

  “No!” screamed Hunahpu, followed by another utterance in his native tongue.

  John, amidst this commotion, pulled his pistol and fired— but no shot sounded, as his weapon was wet from our swimming. He reached for another pistol off his bandolier.

  “Throw down your arms!” shouted one of the opposing crewmen, taking aim.

  “We’ll kill your companions first,” said another. “We’ve got orders from Lawes!”

  At that, John paused.

  “Don’t you halt the fight on our account!” I said. “If we are to die, it’ll be as men!”

  But it was too late— John, head bowed, had let his weapon slip from his hand and had fallen to his knees in surrender.

  “Lawes and Rogers want me, not you,” said John. “We’re finished.”

  At this, Read let loose a battle-whoop and, running forward, brandished his pistol and fired it— and when it, too, failed, he drew his sword and waded into the crush of men flooding the deck.

  “Ride or die!” he shouted.

  I drew my cutlass and found my place beside him.

  I do wish, with all my heart’s blood, that our final battle was worthy of a song. Ahh, how I desire that I could relate to you that the length of our battle was such that the sun was well above the skyline when we began our fight and that the moon had shone her face ere the conflict was concluded. How poetic it would be, if I could but report that the ship’s deck was slippery with blood, and that the air was filled with the cries of men and the smell of gunpowder and yet still we fought on!

  Alas, moments after I had drawn my sword, the thing was decided, and I was fallen, wounded, on the deck. I never saw the gun flash that struck me, nor did I hear its report. I saw only Poop standing over me, pistol smoking, tears running down his cheeks.

  chapter 31.

  After an initial period of imprisonment in Bridewell Prison, which is in the ruin’d city of Port Royal, I was taken by an armed escort of one score and six soldiers of his majesty to St. Jago de la Vega, which means “St. James on the plain” in Spanish; the town is also called, by the English who now rule it, Spanish Town. I had not seen John in many weeks or perhaps months; I did not know the exact time because I had lost sight of the sun and the moon during my incarceration. Accounts of the whereabouts of my fellows— most notably, Read— had also been kept from me. All I knew was this: Rogers and Lawes, once a few of my former crewmates had fallen into their snare, had been able to expand their search and catch nearly all who served aboard the Will. I now shared a cell with First-Rate, who had, some weeks before, spurned a
n invitation from Read to join the mission, explaining that he had a flourishing business as a saddler. Now his establishment was seized and he shared our fate.

  First-Rate sat in the corner of the cell we shared, his arms limp at his sides, his face as blank as a piece of parchment. The guards had cruelly beaten him, and, in wide red strokes, they had painted a Star of David across his bared chest. I waved my hand in front of his face and initially received no response. Then First-Rate began to cry.

  “Pull yourself together, man,” I said. “You’ve faced worse.”