'We took her, monsieur,' Bart said. 'Off the coast of Hispaniola. Not two days gone.'
'Took her, by God,' Modyford said. 'With this band of butchers?'
Bart grinned. 'It was butchery we needed, Your Excellency.' 'You've a cabin?' asked the big man.
Bart indicated the companion-way. Modyford stepped past the waiting men, but his companion checked before Kit, frowning. 'I know your face, boy,' he said. 'Have you sailed with me before?'
Kit's heart started to pound. The voice had a Welsh lilt to it.
'No, sir,' he said. 'Perhaps you knew my father. My name is Christopher Hilton.' 'Tony Hilton's boy?' 'His grandson, sir.'
'Then you're a rascal, by Christ. I've known no greater scoundrel than Tony Hilton, and I'm no stranger to villainy.'
Kit felt his cheeks burn. But mainly with anger. His name, and Susan's memory, were his only worthwhile possessions. 'You'll acknowledge he was also a man of courage and ability, sir.'
'What, Tony Hilton?'
'Or must I make you,' Kit shouted, his hand dropping to his sword hilt.
'Draw on your betters, would you?' Modyford cried. 'Kit, be careful,' Jean begged.
But the big man laughed. 'Tony Hilton's grandson, by Christ. You've the manner more than the appearance. When first I came to these accursed islands I sailed with Tony Hilton. Aye, he had courage, and ability, and he was my friend. As will you be. Give me your hand, boy. My name is Henry Morgan.'
Kit had his fingers crushed.
'Christopher Hilton.' Modyford was frowning. 'You're from Tortuga?'
'Some time ago, sir,' Kit said.
'Aye. Your name was mentioned to me but a few months back, as I recall. Why, 'tis a small world, to be sure.' 'My name, sir?' Kit was incredulous.
'In St John's, it was. I've estates in Barbados, you understand, and was on my way home to Jamaica from a tour of inspection, when a contrary wind blew me into Antigua. There I was the guest of the Deputy Governor, Colonel Philip Warner.'
'And he asked after me, sir?'
'He mentioned your name, Master Hilton, but in no very complimentary terms, I am sorry to say. I spoke of the projects planned by my friend here, Admiral Morgan, and Colonel Warner wondered that we did not recruit in Tortuga. A den of cutthroats, was his description of the place. Of whom, he said, the Hiltons are the worst. There are but two left, thank God, he said, the old whore and her pirate grandson.'
'My grandmother is dead, sir.'
'Then you've my sympathy.' Modyford's face relaxed into a smile; his eyes remained cold. 'But you're not without a friend in the Warner household, lad, if it's any solace to you. The Governor's daughter, young Mrs Templeton, took me aside and asked if indeed we planned to visit Tortuga. They were then unaware that it had been taken by the Dons.'
'Mrs Templeton?' Kit's heart pounded more than when he had boarded the coaster. 'Would her name be Marguerite?'
'Aye. The most beautiful creature I have ever seen. There's the truth. And married to a man four times her age. A sad waste.'
Sad? And Marguerite had asked after him? Marguerite, whom he had all but forgotten? Marguerite, whom he had caused to hate him, he was sure. 'But, sir,' he cried, as Modyford would have turned away again. 'What did she say?'
Again the frosty smile. 'Why, I forget most of it, indeed I do. Something about giving you her regards, as she had decided to forgive you. And I did not even find out what you had done to the gorgeous creature. But I formed the impression, as much from her father's dislike as from her own consideration, that you were a man of parts. The lad is your sailing master, no doubt,' he remarked to Bart.
'Eh? Oh, yes, indeed, sir,' Bart agreed. 'He is that. And a devil when it comes to action. Why, that is what we call him, amongst ourselves. The devil's own spawn.'
'The devil's own,' Morgan said, and laughed again. 'Aye, a good name for a Hilton. A good name for you, boyo.'
'She remembers me,' Kit said to Jean, ignoring the men. 'By God. After all these years, she remembers me.'
'And perhaps me also,' Jean said with a smile. 'Will you not allow me to meet these gentlemen?'
'Oh, forgive me, dear friend. I am quite overwhelmed. Quite
... allow me to present my friend, Jean DuCasse, Captain Morgan.'
Morgan frowned through his smile. 'Admiral, Kit. You'll call me Admiral. The pleasure is mine, Monsieur DuCasse. You've wine on board this ship?'
'Oh, indeed, monsieur,' Bart said, and led the way into the great cabin.
'A Spanish merchantman.' Modyford sat at the table, still without removing his hat. 'And taken by a handful of boucaniers, by God.'
'You came in through the stern, there.' Morgan did remove his hat, placing it carefully beside him. He had found the bullet marks on the deck-head, while the stain on the table was clearly blood.
'Kit led the way,' Bart said. 'Why, he'd have taken her single-handed if we'd lagged behind.'
'Tony Hilton's grandson,' Morgan said again, smiling at the boy. 'Your grandfather had a gift of command, Kit, lad. You'd do well to follow in his footsteps. He might have made a great name for himself, but his interests lay at home, with that magnificent woman of his. She's dead, you say?'
'She was hanged by the Dons when they took Tortuga.'
'By God,' Morgan said. 'Hanged, by God.'
'So you've a score to settle,' Modyford said.
Kit stared at him. The thought of Marguerite remembering him had quite driven every other concept, even his reason for being here, from his mind. But how could he remember her, without also remembering everything else. 'Aye, sir,' he said. 'I've a score.'
'You all have, Mr Hilton,' Modyford said. 'As you were boucaniers. First thing, you'll hoist the English flag.'
'I am a Frenchman, sir,' Bart said. 'And so are all my crew, saving only Kit.'
'If you sail with me,' Morgan said. 'It is as Englishmen.'
'And do we sail with you, Admiral?' Jean asked.
'These ships are not here to rest,' Morgan said. 'I've accumulated them all the year. This ship of yours will carry a hundred men.'
'She'll sail, and fight, better with forty,' Kit said.
'Spoken like a seaman, Kit. But I need men. Men are even more important than ships. The ships must carry them without sinking. Nothing more.'
'Carry them where, Admiral?' Bart asked.
Morgan smiled at him. 'Where Henry Morgan sails is known to Henry Morgan alone,' he said. 'Saving my good friend Governor Modyford here. But I'll promise you all the riches in the world, Captain Le Grand. Ask those who were with me at Porto Bello, or Maracaibo.'
Bart glanced at the two boys. ' 'Tis what we came for.'
'Aye,' Kit said. 'We'll sail with you to hell itself, Admiral Morgan.'
Still Morgan smiled. 'It may well come to that, Mr Hilton. And you will, indeed, sail with me.' He caught the expression on Kit's face. 'And your friend, Monsieur DuCasse. We'll find you another sailing master, Captain Le Grand. These two young men are my special charge. Why, the very name of Hilton will inspire the fleet.'
Because it was, after all, a fleet. There were more than a score of ships, led by the two galleons, but dwindling down to little ten-man cockleshells, wallowing in the long Caribbean swell. A fleet, carrying him to fame and wealth? Morgan promised him no less. And what would he do then? How the mention of her had indeed brought memory flooding back, every gesture, every movement, every change in her tone. Married to a man four times her age. And a mother? He did not know. But thinking of an episode from her past. Suppose, then, he did reappear, famous and wealthy?
Supposing it were possible. He stood on the poopdeck of the Monarch, the larger of the two galleons, and watched the rest through his glass. They had been at sea for over a week, making ever south-west across an empty ocean, and throughout that time they had been favoured with a light beam wind. Yet on nearly all the ships the pumps had clacked ceaselessly, and streams of dirty brown water poured over the sides; leave vessels as rotten as these for twenty-four hou
rs and they took six feet of water in the hold. How they were ever manoeuvred or fought, what would happen were the slightest wind to spring up ...
'It does not bear thinking about.' Morgan stood beside him.
Now that they were at sea he had discarded the coat and the rings and the rapier, and wore only an open-necked shirt and breeches, with a cutlass hanging from the belt at his waist. Yet his hair was as carefully dressed as ever; he had his surgeon attend to it every morning.
'You're a mind-reader, sir,' Kit said.
'Faith, 'tis not difficult to read your mind, Kit. You spend more time on the helm, more time staring at the charts and studying the set of the sails, more time watching those other ships, than you do sleeping. The sea is in your blood.'
'And is it not in yours, sir?'
'By God, the very sight of it turns my stomach. My people were farmers. Good farmers, lad. You've a knowledge of Wales?'
'I've a knowledge of no land save Tortuga and Hispaniola, sir.'
Morgan nodded. 'What will you do, where will you go, when you've pockets full of gold?'
'You speak as if this is to be your last venture, sir.'
'Every venture is my last, boyo. Until I am sure I'm alive at the end of it. But this one ... I pursue a dream. 'Tis a thought I have had for years. Where do you think we are headed? Look through your glass. Forward for a change.'
Kit peered at the dark line of trees, fringed with surf, which suddenly filled the horizon. ' 'Tis a large island, to be sure.'
' 'Tis the Main, boy.'
Kit brought up the glass again. The very thought made his heart pound. 'Then it is Porto Bello we seek, Admiral? I would have thought, after the attention paid it by Drake, and yourself, and God knows how many in between, that it was scarce worth sacking.'
'Porto Bello is not worth sacking,' Morgan said. 'And there is fever. Oh, 'tis an unwholesome coast. I seek more. That bay opening to port is the mouth of the River Chagres. We will anchor there. I know the place well; I reconnoitred it three years ago, which is when this plan first came to me. I have arranged with the Indians who inhabit this coast to supply us with canoes, and we shall make our way up the river. It is quite practical at this season. When the rains come, then it is a violent torrent. But now it will be calm and quiet.'
'You mean to go inland?'
'There is a lake from whence this river rises. That is our first destination. You'll command a canoe, Kit. But mark me well. This venture, like all such ventures, will be a perilous business. Keep your wits about you, and even more, stay close to my pennant. Bear that in mind, boy. Now, and afterwards. Now see to your gear. Take your friend with you.'
For the land was opening fast, and a few hours later the Monarch was slowly entering the bay, sail shortened to mere scraps of canvas, leadsman hanging in the bows to call the depths, while the deep blue shaded to a deep green, and then to pale green, so clear that they could pick out every rock and every patch of seaweed below the surface, before suddenly changing to an opaque brown as they entered the discharge from the river.
Kit stared at the shore through his glass; the beach seemed to stretch interminably in either direction, broken only by the gush of slow-moving brown water. But there were also people on the beach, just visible against the crowding trees. He had never seen an Indian, although Grandmama had told him sufficient tales of the Caribs who infested the islands south of Antigua, and against whom the Warners had waged an unceasing war of survival, despite the love shared by old Sir Thomas and the Princess Yarico. Or was the enmity because of that love, and its result, the legendary Indian Tom Warner?
But these would not be Caribs, on the mainland. Indeed, they did not look very warlike, being small, squat, brown-skinned men, wearing only breech-clouts, carrying wooden spears and bows and arrows, surrounded by dogs, and by naked children. There were women, too, gathered behind them, some entirely naked, others wearing little aprons; they would be the married ones. But if he had hoped to be excited or even interested by them, he was again disappointed. Shorter than their menfolk, with protruding bellies and sagging breasts, with flat, ugly features and dank black hair lying below their shoulders, he thought them repulsive. Or would he find any woman so, at this moment?
'The Admiral wishes us to disembark,' Jean said, and at that moment the order was given and the huge rusting anchor plunged through the suddenly dirty water to disappear into the mud of the bottom. Jean's eyes gleamed, and he was clearly excited. Like Kit, he had stripped to the waist, and wore only a pair of breeches, and the belt from which hung his pistols and his cutlass and his powderhorn, while he carried a musket across his shoulder. He was prepared for war.
Kit went to the gunwale where the twelve men who were to form his section waited. As villainous a group of cut-throats as he had ever seen, scarred and vicious. Without exception they reminded him of Bale, the villain who had dogged Grandmama with pathetic adoration, and who had no doubt long since found himself at the end of a Spanish pike. Yet all were prepared to accept a boy as their commander, because the Admiral had said they must, and because the boy's name was Hilton. He had never anticipated this kind of fame, in all his dreams of power.
But the fame of a Morgan, now, there was something to be dreamed of. A farmer, from the hills of Llanrhymny, who could snap his fingers and have every villain in the New World dancing to his tune. Because he carried the aura of success. He let no obstacles stop him. At Porto Bello he had driven priests and nuns in front of his men to receive the fire of the Spanish soldiery, and won. At Maracaibo he had taken the town without difficulty, only to find himself bottled up by a Spanish fleet and by a fort which had so fortuitously seemed abandoned when the buccaneers had entered the lagoon. He had scattered the enemy vessels with fireships and avoided the guns of the fort by a splendid piece of subterfuge, and extracted his men and himself with all their gold and hardly a casualty. And when, soon afterwards, the magazine of his ship had exploded while he was entertaining his captains to dinner, and sent them all to perdition, he had been the sole survivor, merely blown overboard. So these cutthroats would indeed follow him to hell, confident that he would lead them back again.
Or did it merely mean that to be one of Morgan's captains was a highly dangerous business? Because clearly he had been marked for such a distinction, Kit thought.
Now the rest of the fleet was bringing up; anchors rattled through their hawse pipes as sails were furled, and the ships swung to the gentle breeze while boats were lowered. The Admiral's barge was already at the beach, and Morgan was haranguing the Indians who clustered forward to receive the handfuls of beads and the few rusty muskets which they valued more than all the gold in America. Meanwhile a coxswain had planted the huge staff from which flew the Cross of St George, as a rallying point for the boat commanders, and these, as soon as the various pinnaces had disgorged the landing parties, were gathered beneath the flapping cloth. Kit and Jean hurried to join them, to stand in the company of all the weather-beaten hell-hounds who had sent more Spaniards to their deaths than he had even seen in his life. He felt suitably humbled, but more exhilarated. Gone were his doubts. Why, there must be nearly two thousand men on this beach. Two thousand of the toughest scoundrels on the face of the earth. And they waited only for the word from their Admiral.
Morgan came towards them, his boots crunching on the sand. The chieftain walked at his side, peering down the muzzle of the musket he had been given.
Morgan stopped before the three score men he had selected to lead his cohorts. He grinned at them, while the sweat stained the shoulders and armpits of his shirt.
'The chief has found us one hundred and forty canoes,' he said. 'And to do that he has scoured the entire country. Each canoe will take ten men. That means we march with fourteen hundred. I'd have liked more, but beggars can't be choosers. And it means we leave a sizeable force to guard the ships and this bay. For we must come back the way we go.'
'Up that river?' someone demanded.
Morgan drew
his cutlass, began to make marks upon the sand. 'Fifteen miles to the lake. There'll be no problem up to there. Then the lake itself stretches for some ten. But after that it's walking. Through that.' He pointed with his cutlass at the wall of green jungle, matted and intertwined, which lay only a few feet away. 'I'd have no man be under any misapprehension as to what he's at.'
'Begging your pardon, Admiral Morgan,' Captain Jackman said. 'But are we not being over-elaborate? You may be sure that by now the Dons know there is a buccaneer fleet on this coast, and they will also know, by simple arithmetic, that we can mean one of only three places. Porto Bello and Nombre de Dios are plucked bones. As we must head for Nicaragua, why not let us do it direct? To ascend the Chagres can only add several days to our journey, and as it will mislead nobody, it seems to me to be no more than a waste of time and energy.'
HF - 03 - The Devil's Own Page 7
