“I don’t do roughly, Rob.”
“Then I will come with you.”
“Don’t be daft. If I get caught I can bluff my way out. You will be horribly murdered. Aside, someone has to stay here in command.”
Jesamiah took Skylark with him. Slipping barefoot over the side, they half swam, half waded for the shore. They had daggers only, nothing on them that could chink or clatter. Keeping their heads down they ran up the narrow beach and over the sand dunes. Even this short way inland the smell was different; the scent of earth, of foliage and warm sand cooling after a day in the sun. The chirrup of insects, the sound of the wind whispering through the marsh grass, the sigh of the sea. The moon gave sufficient light as they ran, crouching low, their shadows leaping beside them, appearing like grotesque beasts keeping pace.
The laughter was louder, the clink of bottles, a man belching. Teach’s wild guffaw. A fiddle began to scrape a tune and several of Teach’s men began to sing – more laughter, and the hollow stamp of feet on the sand.
Jesamiah signalled to drop to their bellies and he and Skylark squirmed forward up another dune, found themselves peering down at three camp fires, men sprawled around in various poses, several dancing raucous jigs in the space between, many of the rest already in a drunken sleep. There were two boats at anchor here on the inner, sheltered side of the island, protected by the shoals and sandbanks. The Adventure and another Jesamiah did not recognise.
“Odell,” Skylark whispered into Jesamiah’s ear. “The Cormorant.” He recognised her immediately, for he had painted her likeness several times when keeping watch at Bath Town.
“How many in Odell’s crew?” Jesamiah asked.
“Hard to say; differed. Nine maximum. They won’t fight. Odell’s a trader, not a pirate.”
“An’ it don’t look like Teach has got any more men than when I was last ‘ere.”
A shout went up from around the fire, instinctively Jesamiah and Skylark ducked down, but it was only two of them squabbling. Jesamiah recognised them, Gibbens and Red Rufus.
“If only I had a pair of pistols. I’d take those two buggers out right now.”
“Not a good idea Cap’n.”
~ He is right, luvver; you would be dead before you could reload. ~
Tiola?
~ I am here, to your left. ~
Jesamiah motioned for Skylark to pull back, squirmed around and studied the tree over to his left. He had not noticed her, could not even be certain she had been there a moment ago, but it seemed as if she was stepping out from the very trunk itself as she showed herself.
“What the…!” he bit his tongue, he had almost shouted at her. ~ What the fok are you doing here? ~
~ I could ask the same. ~
~ Aye, but you’d not get a bloody answer! ~ He was cross because he had been startled, and the crossness rapidly shifted to anger as fear set in. This was no place for his wife! ~ I told you to stay away! ~
~ And I told you I had to come. It seems we do not listen to each other. ~ She was teasing, laughter was in her voice. Jesamiah could see nothing funny.
Signalling with his hand, he indicated that Meadows was to go back to the sloops. He pointed to Tiola then himself. Skylark nodded, grinned, his teeth flashing white in the moonlight. Then he was gone, running low over the dunes. If he wanted to know how Tiola had got there, or ask questions, he would have to bide his time and wait.
Jesamiah grasped Tiola’s arm and half marched, half dragged her northward, away from Teach and the two sloops. There was a generous stand of trees that he remembered about half a mile away. He’d slept there a couple of times when he had wanted a respite of privacy. Few of Teach’s men bothered wandering far from the shore. Walking required effort and effort was something they shied clear of.
“What are you doing here?” he snapped when they could talk, though in little more than a whisper. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
“Are you?” she answered with equal indignity. “You cannot kill Teach without my help.”
“Oh aye? Learnt to shoot now, have you?”
It was no good arguing. Tiola released her bottled anger, calmed and centred herself. “What possesses Teach protects him. Like me he can die, but it will not be easy to kill him.”
With her anger faded, Jesamiah too calmed down, although his fear for her safety was hammering at his heart. “So you will help us finish him? Use your spells?”
She laid her hand on his chest, dipped her head, scared to look at him, to tell him the truth, but she had to. “As soon as I can I will drive out the Dark, but I cannot kill him, Jesamiah. You know I cannot.”
He stepped away, turned his back on her, his anger spilling over the edge again. “You abort babies. That’s killing, ain’t it?”
That hurt. She was on the edge of crying. There had been so many cruel deaths, and her frayed emotions were shouting at her to put an end to Teach now – but she could not. She could not kill unless her own survival depended upon it.
“I rarely terminate a pregnancy, Jesamiah. When I do it is because the mother would not survive if I did not. I sometimes have to choose to end the life of a babe during birth, but it would die anyway, I merely hasten its end. And it is not a choice I make lightly.”
He hunched his shoulders, folded his arms, said, “Then let’s do it now. You do what you have to do and I will do my part.” He pulled the dagger from his belt, its blade glinting in the moonlight.
She shook her head. Men were going to die – Jesamiah too maybe – but there was nothing she could do to prevent it. Nothing. “I cannot. Until the balance shifts, I will not possess enough power to defeat him. If I tried now I would also die, the Dark and the Light are of equal status, Jesamiah. What I send out will return threefold if I am not careful with my control. I must wait until there is a fluctuation of Existence, then transform the negative energies into positive. And I can only do that when I am summoned, and Time becomes right.”
“Summoned? Who by?” Jesamiah demanded. His anger, his frustration, building. He did not understand a word of what she was talking about, but understood that she was trying to tell him there could be extreme danger for her. He had a sudden feeling that he did not want to hear an answer to his question.
Tiola put her hand on his arm, said quietly into his mind, ~ By the stopping and starting of Time, and by one who cannot die, for he is already dead. ~
“My father. My bloody father?”
She nodded.
Charles Mereno had not been honest with her, she was well aware there was much that he had not said, and she had sensed his presence here on the Ocracoke from the moment she stepped ashore. Just why he was here, what his intentions were, she had no idea. That they were interlinked with Edward Teach did not take much guessing. But was there something else? There was something troubling Charles Mereno, something deeply distressing him. But what?
Jesamiah walked away a few paces, stood in the cradle of silvered moonlight, his head bowed, tired, worried. Uncertain. “I’ve already told my father, several times over, that I do not want to know. The past is done, closed. I want only the future, Tiola.” He turned slowly around, looked so vulnerable, so sad. “All I want is you, my wife.”
“I am here, and I promise I will keep myself safe, if you will promise the same?”
He looked at her, she was so beautiful, even appearing as she was, a ragged-dressed, barefoot boy. Was she really his? Or was this some wicked faery trick of an illusion to make him believe he was the luckiest man alive?
“That is not a promise I can make,” he said sadly. “I cannot hang back and expect my men to fight for me.”
Tiola was quiet a moment. No, he could not, and if death was his fate, then…She released her breath in a quivering shudder of acceptance. He would die one day, that was a certainty. One day, she would be without him until they met again in the next world. That was his fate. She had no control over fate, the future or destiny. But she did have control over the here, the now.
“Make love to me,” she said, “so we can be as one for this night.”
He had no need to answer, no need to say that maybe this could be their first and only night as husband and wife. He did show her how much he loved her, though. Showed her in the way he knew best.
Fifty Two
Friday 22nd November
As the last stars faded the two sloops weighed anchor and crept towards the channel that took them to the other side of the island. Jesamiah had made it his business to study the lie of shoals and deeper waters while he had been here with Teach, but all the same, they asked Frank Blake, one of the Navy crew who had known this area for most of his life, to pilot them in. There was very little wind, and the dawn sky promised a fine, sun-rich day. What wind there was came in little gusts that sent the spindrift skimming and waves bouncing like skittish horses, but the flurries were few and far between. It was frustrating, the Adventure was in sight but they were almost becalmed, they could not get at her! And any moment now someone from over there could awake and see them.
Maynard decided to send out the small boat to sound the depth, and to run out the sweeps. “We’ll row in.”
“They’ll hear us,” Jesamiah warned.
“Aye, but with our oars and the boat going ahead, we may be on them before they gather their wits.”
It was a risk. Jesamiah shrugged, but he did not countermand the order. He did not have a better one.
Sandy Banks and Crawford went in the boat with a few of the Navy men, everyone else in the Jane took the sloop’s oars, save for Nat and Maynard at the tiller and Blake forward in the bow. Even Jesamiah took hold of an oar and prepared to help pull. Maynard raised an eyebrow, said nothing. All the same, Jesamiah answered the thought.
“I ain’t afraid of hard work. That’s another thing we do different to the Navy. We all put our backs into it when we need to.”
With the Ranger following under oar behind, they made slow progress forward. The strategy did not last long.
Gibbens awoke, needing to urinate. He stood, streaming his water against a bush, his rum-sodden mind not taking in that there were two sloops pulling towards the Adventure. Two sloops? Was this Acorne? Had he got those boats then? Already? That was quick work. He stood there, frowning, the thoughts struggling through his inebriated brain. If it was Acorne, why would he be rowing in? Why not wait for the tide and the wind and sail in as any of them did?
Then he realised. This was not Acorne! Without bothering to button his breeches, but clasping the waistband in his hands, he ran, shouting and bellowing the alarm, waking everyone.
The way of pirates: they could be filled with more drink than a keg full of rum, but when action was needed they took no second thought. Those with muskets fired off shots, others ran through the shallows, swam the last few yards and clambered aboard their ship. Teach, Gunner Norton, Jimmy Baker and the Negro, Caesar, were already aboard with the captain. Edward Teach had opted to sleep in his own bed, in his own cabin, not on the sand that irritated and itched when it got inside clothing.
As men came aboard, Caesar handed out weapons and the pirates ran to the rail, took aim. The Jane’s small jolly boat received the force of two volleys. The third was from one of the cannons, which whistled its shot across the water and fell wide in a plume of spray. With more men wounded than were unscathed, Nat ordered the boat back to the sloop. He had a flesh wound, Crawford too. Another cannon shot would have them sunk.
Sam Odell had stayed ashore. He scurried with his crew into the dunes and they hunkered as low as they could get, hands over their ears and heads, wanting no part of this. The boy who had been with them yesterday was completely forgotten.
“Cut the anchor cable!” Teach yelled, “Get them sails up! Morton, why bain’t them cannons reloaded!”
The odds were in the attackers’ favour – sixty men, two sloops, against nineteen in one boat. But Teach knew these waters well and he was not incompetent. With the flurries of wind, and some of the men at the sweeps, he headed for the narrow channel between the sandbanks, knowing exactly where it lay. This was his hunting ground, this was where he lured ships by making the vulnerable and innocent think the water was deep.
Maynard ordered the King’s Colours to be hoisted, and set off after him, as before, the Jane going ahead, the Ranger following. The sails of all three were worse than useless; the creak and splash of oars and the grunt of men pulling the only sounds. Jesamiah was standing beside Maynard, anxiously watching the varying hues of the water ahead and gauging what was deep, what was shallow.
Jesamiah was not happy about sailing under the King’s flag, but he had made a bargain and he intended to stick with it. He wanted no mention of his or the crew’s names to be written in the logbook, which Rob Maynard kept with meticulous detail. As far as legal records went, Jesamiah Acorne did not exist. All he wanted was his rightful share of treasure and recompense for damage to his sloops. If he lived he would take the reward and go. If he died, the prize money was to be sent to la Sorenta. To where he had also ordered Tiola, should she be left on her own. Tiola had not acknowledged his order. If she were left on her own…she did not know what she would do, where she would go.
Blake called out a warning – they were too far to starboard. And a bullet tore through his throat. The blood from the severed artery sprayed in an arc behind him as his body toppled from the bow into the sea. Almost at the same instant, the Jane and the Ranger ran aground.
Teach guffawed loudly then hurled a torrent of abuse, the still, almost windless air carrying his gruff voice clearly. “Damn thee for villains! Who bist thee? From where’d thee come? Blast thy eyes!”
“You can see very well from our Colours you knave! We are the King’s men!”
Teach ignored Maynard’s bold words. “I can see thee, Acorne! Damn thee and may the Devil take thee for a cursed traitor!” He had a bottle in his hand. He raised it in the air, crowed, “I give thee no quarter, Jesamiah Acorne! D’thee hear? No quarter t’none o’ thee or I’ll see thee in Hell!” He drank from the bottle and then hurled it at them to seal his macabre promise.
Jesamiah raised a pistol and fired at Teach, a wild shot, for the distance was too great. “I expect no quarter from you, Teach!” he shouted, “and you shall expect none in return!”
Finch was raging at the men to lighten the load – they had to get afloat. The drinking water went overboard, then he sent men down to haul up the ballast, send that over, his blustering and swearing motivating them to shift their arses. What little was left of the food – the stove, the wood to burn in it, the coffee, even the cups and drinking tankards went. About to start on hammering at the bricks of the stove’s chimney, the rising tide rocked them loose, and encouraged by Isiah Roberts, with some more heaving and pulling, the Jane floated free. A moment later, the Ranger too was afloat. The men cheered. The fight was on again!
They put their backs to it and rowed. The Ranger was a little way behind. Teach had brought the Adventure around slightly. Her guns had been loaded with swan shot, nails, and pieces of old iron. He fired a broadside. The resulting damage to the Ranger was catastrophic. Midshipman Hyde was killed instantly, his head half severed. Five of his men died outright also. Ten more wounded. With more than half her crew dead or injured, the Ranger ran aground again and stuck fast. There was no one to pull her off this time.
For a moment Maynard did not know what to do. With one broadside half his attacking force had gone. Jesamiah yelled for his best shots to come forward – Sandy Banks, Joe Meadows, Crawford, Nat Crocker..
“Shoot at his jib,” Jesamiah ordered, “concentrate your fire on those fore halyards. If we cripple her we can force her aground.”
They rested their muskets on the rail, took careful aim – nothing haphazard, nothing left to chance – and fired, reloaded, fired. Teach was returning fire with pistols and muskets. His guns were at last reloaded, were being run out – another broadside, but he was not so lucky this time. Some tore holes in the sai
ls, some gouged great splinters from the rails, but most of the shot fell short. Crawford fell back, a bullet through his shoulder; Sandy Banks screamed, dropped his musket. Blood burst from his eye as a bullet tore into his face. Other men fell writhing on the deck. Jesamiah, Nat and Skylark took no notice. They fired again and by sheer luck, the Adventure’s halyards snapped, the jib tore free and she slewed into a sandbank. Teach was stuck fast.
With no wind to clear it, smoke hung in a great pall between the two sloops. Those men who were not dead were coughing, their eyes watering from the stink and sting of gunpowder. Jesamiah’s ears were ringing from the gunshots; his hearing impaired, sounds were suddenly muffled, distant.
In the lull of firing, he hurried aft ordering the more seriously wounded to be taken below. On strict command he had told Tiola to stay down there. Strict orders. Bad enough having her aboard, but he would not allow her on deck. Would not. With wounded to care for, not really knowing where to start with their terrible injuries, Tiola had no opportunity to disobey.
Maynard found Jesamiah for’ard. “We’re drifting towards the Adventure, with one man on the tiller we’ll come straight up against her. Get your men ready to board.”
“No!” Vehemently, Jesamiah disagreed. “If we’re drifting let’s make Teach think we’re done for. Let him come to us. Get everyone below. Just you and me up here. When we are alongside, we can give Teach a warm welcome.”
Fifty Three
Jesamiah had not noticed that a bullet had nicked his arm. He felt the first twinge of pain as he grasped the tiller and encouraged the Jane to keep drifting in the right direction. Maynard, next to him, was half slumped over the binnacle box. He had enough blood on him from helping the wounded below to look convincingly dead.
Unaware of the ruse, unaware that he was not about to be boarded, Blackbeard retaliated as the Jane bumped alongside. Most of his crew were alive and relatively unscathed, for the Jane’s small arms had not been as effective as his cannon. His men tossed grenados made of bottles filled with gunpowder and scrap iron to the Jane’s deck, a quick-fuse in the bottle’s neck to ignite it. They exploded on the Jane with loud bangs and more smoke, but aside from those already dead her decks were empty, and little damage done. The noise abated. There had been no retaliatory fire. The smoke began to clear.
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