Footfalls outside of the cabin grew louder. There were two great bangs against the door before Billy Jukes and Smee stormed into the room. “Oh,” said Smee. “We thought…”
“It was here,” I said. The men stood at the doorway, dumbstruck. “A fairy. Secure the deck.”
They sprinted out of the room and shouted orders.
I knelt at the foot of the wrecked grandfather clock and scrambled to pick up the pieces. I reached for a spring and caught sight of Jack Elroy’s blood on my sleeve. I stumbled to the mirrored glass. An emptiness grew in my chest.
“My name is Captain Hook. I was … James. My father … No, Billy Jukes is … my shipmate and he is a great man.”
The dark well in my heart sank deep into the pit of my stomach and a singular loneliness gripped me.
Tears streaked down the sides of my face. I screamed and my shouts faded away. Nothing lasted, especially not me. Not for long and certainly not here.
Then you can die. Not a day sooner.
The mermaid’s words came to me like a drowning man’s last breath. How long did I have until even my hatred was gone? Once through the passageway, will all return to me? If I abandon this siege on Neverland and my hunt for the boy, will I be whole again?
“The deck’s secure, Captain,” Billy Jukes said from the doorway.
I stared into the face of my oldest friend and felt nothing for him.
“Mr. Jukes,” I said, “prepare the men to go ashore.”
“Aye, sir. How many?”
“All of them.”
Chapter Seventeen
“You men have a choice to make. Jack Elroy’s death could have been any one of ours. He didn’t feel as though he had a choice, but he was wrong.” I paused to watch the gathered crewmen mumble to one another, then tapped the railing on the quarter deck to quiet them down. “There is a way home and I can take you all there. Today. Right now.”
The men looked at each other with cautious excitement.
“What course?” Robert Mullins asked.
“No course,” I said. “It is through the island.”
“The cave on the north side?” asked Cecco.
“Not that way,” I told them. “There’s a passage behind the waterfall. A cave with a pool of water at the back of it. A quick swim and you come out the other end in our world.”
I expected them to ask me how I knew about this passage and for how long. I was even prepared to tell them. Instead, a different question greeted me.
“So we’re just abandoning ship?” Teynte asked.
“That is where the power of choice comes into play,” I said. “We can choose to stay here and give up much of what we know. With that choice comes possession of the ship and any treasures on this island, along with all of the dangers. The second choice is to take the passage back to our world. We’ll lose the ship and be stranded on a deserted island, but, with hope, we’ll regain what we have lost.”
“With hope?” Starkey asked. More mumbles followed, these ones louder than the last. Some men shouted. I raised my hand and quieted them again.
“Yes,” I said. “Hope is the best that the second choice offers without yet having been tried.”
“Then why not try it, then?” Smee asked. “We could send an advance group.”
“No,” Ed Teynte said. “We’re done watching small groups go out to the island while we waste here.”
Some of the men cheered, Starkey one of them.
“And besides,” Starkey said, “how do we know that any group we send would come back?” The men grumbled at that. “It’s not about trust. It’s just that if we forget about our world here, isn’t it possible that we would forget about this world once we are there?”
“Yea,” Mullins said, speaking after Starkey but clearly not following his line of thought. “Why can’t some choose to stay and others choose to go?”
“I thought about that, Robert,” I told him. “Each man should choose whether to stay, but only after recovering himself first. Only then would he have the faculties to make such a decision.”
“I’m with that,” Starkey said.
“Me too,” followed Ed Teynte. He turned and some of the men nodded their agreement with him.
Billy Jukes stepped up beside me. “So it’s a vote.”
“Aye, Mr. Jukes,” I said, “but not here.” The large man shot me a questioning look then nodded.
“Right, we all go through the passage first,” Smee said. “Even me? Even though I know I’m staying?”
For some reason, Smee’s certainty caught me by surprise. It shouldn’t have. He spent most of his life not remembering his parents, drifting from one fight to another. And then there was the blow to the head that he suffered in Port Royal that slowed him a half-step every day since. After an ounce of thought, it would be more surprising if he chose to go back.
“Yes,” I told him, “You’ll make a better decision when you know all of the facts.”
“I don’t want to know all the facts,” Smee said, growing angrier with each breath. “I’m fine never knowing it all ever again.”
At this a half-dozen men cheered.
“You said we have a choice, that’s my choice,” Smee said, putting a final point on it.
“That’s a foolish decision,” Starkey said. Smee turned on him in an instant, snarling. The Irishman advanced a step and Starkey back-peddled. “But it is yours to make.”
“Agreed,” I said. “For all those who wish to stay no matter what, you can stay on the ship under Smee’s command. Everyone else, you’re with me. Gather your things so that you have them should you decide to go for good. We leave in an hour.”
I climbed down to the main deck and slid into the cabin.
Billy Jukes followed me in, but only to duck halfway through the door and ask, “Which way are you leaning?”
I tapped my fingers against the desk in silence.
“Alright then,” he said and closed the door behind him, leaving me to weigh my options.
A far candle burned out and the room became dark. I relit it, then ran my fingers along the spines of books I had not yet read. I rolled the remaining maps and tied them together into neat bundles. I even knelt down and picked up as many pieces of the old clock as I could. There was a calm in tidying the cabin that I found hard to explain. Order, perhaps, was the goal and I used the time to set our course clear in my mind. When the hour was nearly up, I tucked two pistols and my sword into my belt, blew out the candle, and stepped out onto the deck.
George Scourie climbed up on to the main deck and set a small box aside. He then pulled a trinket from his vest pocket and stared at it. I watched him examine the piece of jewelry for a moment and began making silent guesses as to what it was. A gift from a long-dead wife? Did George have a daughter? Did it belong to his mother? The questions rolled in my mind until I realized that George didn’t know these answers any better than I did. I walked over to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Soon enough,” I said. He wiped a tear from his face and put the trinket back in his vest pocket. He picked up the small box and lined up alongside the rest of the men.
We sailed the ship as close to the island as we could and dropped anchor. The men made short work gathering their belongings. Collazo and Doherty carried Jack Elroy’s body up from the hold and laid him across the deck of one of the cutters. We stood for a minute too long.
“Well, you’re leaving aren’t you?” Smee asked. Cecco and Gustavo stood next to him, alongside Matthew Dover, Robert Del Buono, Brian Peterson, and Ross Koch. I almost envied their ability to make choices based solely on faith. I looked over to the cutter at Collazo, who had been a priest once, and saw the nervous anticipation in his eyes as he looked to the island. What Smee and the other men who elected to stay used to make their decision wasn’t faith. It was willful ignorance. All things being as they are, they are near cousins. An uninformed choice is still a choice and even ignorance is a decision that has to be respected if all men are to b
e considered equal.
“Yeah,” I said. “We’re going. Be well, Mr. Smee.”
“Aye, Captain,” he said. “Now don’t go losing any more bits of you.” Had any other man said that aloud, I’d have cut him dead. Smee knew that. He had to. I smiled, I may even have laughed, and afforded him the nod of command that could only come to the person bold enough to say that to me and respected enough to live through it.
With that, I made a final count: fifteen men going ashore, sixteen counting myself. We split eight to a boat then lowered the cutters to the water and began the final preparations. Starkey, Skylights, and Alf Mason rigged the sails for the trip on my boat. Kasey, Mather, and Fast rigged the other one. Within minutes, we were away.
Shades haunted me as we sailed into the bay. I gave one last look at the Jolly Roger and memories pushed themselves forward, but they were so clouded that the wind scattered them. Despite this, every moment in Neverland was as clear as day. The Green Knight and the Lost Boy. The man-eating plant. The fire. The fighting. I regretted leaving Tiger Lily behind. Her tribe will never forgive me for abandoning them. All the better that I was leaving. A silvery flash caught my eye in the water and I looked away, thinking it was one of the mermaids playing their horrible game of commerce with men’s pasts.
Something itched in my mind. A thought. I dismissed it at first, but it came back like a hungry dog, angrier each time I pushed it away. It was only an idea based on suppositions and assumptions, but from that idea a loose plan emerged. By the time the men tethered the boats to the rocks along the bay, it was workable, or at least worth a shot. The only catch was that it requires me to stay. Indefinitely.
I stepped off of the cutter last and approached Billy Jukes and Robert Mullins. “Eighteen degrees north-north-west, by the way of the river.”
“What?” Mullins asked.
“Right into the mountain,” I said. I missed Jack Elroy already. That’s not a feeling I have for most people. The men were quiet as Cookson and Max Kasey dug a grave for him. Collazo prepared a few words. The sermon was short, which was good as we were all on a ticking clock.
Once Jack was in the ground and we’d all made our peace with his sacrifice, we wasted no time walking to the waterfall. We waded through jungle heat and chill winds for several silent minutes as the mountain cast a shadow that made the terrain dark and difficult to manage. Even still, it would have been impossible to get lost as long as you kept it in front of you or listened to the rush of water. Grass became dirt. Dirt became rock. Soon, the mountain loomed over us, gray and ominous. We reached the base of the falls quickly and I did a second headcount.
We were a man short.
“Where’s Michael Fast?” I asked. The men looked around and shrugged. “How does no one know?”
“He stepped away,” Max Kasey said finally.
“And no one went with him?”
“Am I supposed to watch the man piss?” Kasey asked in return.
“New rule,” I said. “No man goes off alone. Three to a group. No less. Do you all understand?” The men’s faces hung like scolded children, not with guilt, but with the hope that their silence would end the scolding that much sooner. “The passage is behind the falls.”
“You told us that, Captain,” said Teynte. “But you didn’t tell us which one.”
My anger over losing a man so quickly blinded me to Teynte’s meaning. I looked up behind the falls at three caves, each one indistinguishable from the other. “That’s different,” I said. “There was only one before.” I paused. “Or maybe because I was so young I only saw one. The low one. That has to be it.”
“Are you sure?” Jukes asked.
“Sure? Not at all,” I said. “But I only walked through one before and I didn’t pass others as I climbed to it.”
Jukes shrugged. “That’s good enough for me.”
The fifteen of us scaled the side of the mountain and stood at the cave opening. A stream of water flowed inward, leading us to the far side of the cave. Only then did I remember the darkness. We crept for several yards. Then, only a few more yards in, a faint light played on the cave walls, leading us forward.
I didn’t talk. I didn’t wait. I just plunged into the water.
I sank for several feet and opened my eyes. Below me, sharp rocks jutted upwards. It was the same above and on either side. Ahead, just a few feet, was another opening. I swam for it. The water pushed all around as Jukes and the men dove in behind me one after the other.
I surfaced as though waking from a dream, groggy and confused.
Billy Jukes rose out of the water behind me, followed by Teynte, then Starkey.
We stumbled through the cave and into the humidity of a fresh summer rain in the Caribbean. Clouds parted slowly. Rays of sunlight shone through, thin at first, but grew wider and brighter with each passing second.
I knew the feeling.
Each moment brought with it a memory. Each breath sharpened a face in my mind and assigned a name and meaning to that face. Old horrors gripped me again as though happening for the first time. I felt the loss of my father and that of Blackbeard, who I regarded with a sympathy that confused me even now. I remembered the shock of my mother’s death and the weight of Emily’s lifeless body in my arms. I remembered the vengeance I took in their names and savored the recollection.
I had read all of these events on the papers in my cabin and had hoped that I was being melodramatic or, ideally, insane. Thinking on these horrors now, a part of me still wished I were. What if this moment were the one break of clarity in an ongoing madness? If so, then so be it.
More images came to me in waves. Some were mundane. Some, like my father’s watch, stabbed me in the heart as I relived its fall to the croc along with my hand. I knelt on the rocks outside of the cave mouth and tried to let the image pass. It didn’t. Like all pain, it settled in my awareness just beneath the surface and waited for my quiet moments to remind me of its presence.
I looked at my missing hand and concentrated on the throbbing ache that remained. I unpinned the cuff and rolled the sleeve up my arm. I examined the purple skin that folded over clean cut bone and recounted my many failures in Neverland. Losing myself was an embarrassment and although I knew enough all along to acknowledge my decline, I could do nothing to stop my slow and total fall. The knowledge of one’s downfall does nothing to lessen the impact.
Disjointed ideas collided within the web of books I read and conversations from decades ago. The Green Knight, his wife, the woman behind the door, all of it became clear to me. But like all good answers, they brought more questions. A pleasant frustration bristled the hair on my neck. It felt good to wonder again, even if these discoveries defied reason.
I rolled my sleeve back down and pinned the cuff.
“Mr. Jukes,” I called out, then thought for a moment. “William.”
I craned my neck in search of my first officer and oldest friend. A few yards away, past Max Kasey’s self-pity and George Scourie’s tears, I found Collazo and Jason Doherty talking.
“Any better?” I asked. Collazo went as white as a sheet. He had lost a wife and unborn child, a family he stole from a parishioner who turned out to be a rather unforgiving military man. Recalling their slaughter is a trial that I wouldn’t want to share. Doherty put a hand on his shoulder.
“Far clearer,” Doherty said. “The game is rigged back there.”
“Naturally, Jason,” I said. “If one does not like the game, reset the board.”
“Aye, Captain,” he said.
“Where’s Jukes?” I asked. The men pointed away down toward the beach.
Only twenty paces further, Billy Jukes sat on the grass, staring at his tattoos.
“William,” I said. “Are you ready?”
Jukes laughed, never raising his eyes from his forearm. “For what?”
“We need to go back.”
“I thought you were done.”
“I can’t be done,” I said. Seeing William unmove
d, I continued. “Look at what he did to us. This cannot be allowed to stand, not without evening the score.”
“Oh, Pan has parents and a sister?”
He was right. There was nothing that I could do to match his offense. He hardly holds anything dear, let alone something so close that it would bring him the pain that I felt now, again.
Billy Jukes turned his forearm to see the rest of the tattoo.
“Who is that one for?” I asked.
He sighed and turned it over again. “I’m not sure. Some of these are early. They’re easy to figure out.” He pointed to one on the back of his left hand. “Emily.” He then pointed to the one on the back of his right hand. “Dad.” He stared at another one up his right arm and shook his head. “I don’t know this one. I just kept getting more.” Jukes pulled his shirt over his head, revealing a canvas of ink across his back. Some were ships. Others were women. Among them were fresh hearts, anchors, and thorns.
“Why so many?” I asked.
“Every little bit makes up the whole,” William said.
“But we are whole again.”
“Are we?” he asked. “And for how long? You want to go back.”
“I have to.”
“Yeah, but I don’t.”
“You should,” I said. “You’re going to want to see this. I have it figured out.”
“Of course you do,” William said, shaking his head. He looked at me for a full minute before standing. He said nothing. He just walked past me and into the cave.
Noodler, Starkey, and Teynte followed without a word.
George Scourie tucked his little silver trinket back into a vest pocket and wiped his face. “There’s nothing left for me here,” he said, maybe to me, then walked into the cave alongside Charles Turley and Max Kasey.
Collazo whispered a silent prayer, then he and Doherty left. Cookson, Thomas Mather, and Skylights followed Mullins and Mason.
Captain James Hook and the Siege of Neverland Page 13
