Peter Wicked

by Broos Campbell

  “Have a seat,” I said to the first one—Manson or Jakes, one or the other. He looked around for a chair. “On the deck,” I said. “You may lean your back against the bulkhead. Now then.” I folded my arms and looked down at him. “Mr. Peebles here will write down what we say. It’s for your benefit as well as my own. State your name, first of all.”

  “For why should I answer?”

  “So you can be entered on the ship’s books.”

  “I ain’t enlistin’, so bugger off.”

  “I can’t issue you rations without you’re entered, you know.”

  “Me name’s Edward Teach, an’ I’m cap’n of the Queen Anne’s Revenge. Stick that in your pipe an’ smoke it, mate.” He gave me a leer.

  I counted his teeth—all seven of them. “Very well, Mr. Blackbeard,” says I. “Since you been dead near about a century, I don’t calculate you’ll be needing any rations.” I raised my voice. “Mr. Horne! Put this man back in the hold and bring me one of the others.”

  “No, wait, mate—me name’s Wat Manson. No need for haste, aye?”

  “Write that down, Mr. Peebles. Now then, Manson, begin at the beginning and tell me what happened.”

  “I was born when I was little, and me muvva nevva loved me.”

  “And my mother’s dead. Life’s hard. Let’s skip your personal life and get to the recent events at Birds Island. The men in the pit—who were they?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Where did they come from?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Manson, would you rather be hanged, or flogged around the fleet?”

  “Oh, really, I don’t know what yer mean. Hanged? Flogged? For what, if I may make so bold as to ax?”

  “Hanged for piracy and murder, flogged for desertion. Either’ll kill you, but I guess one would be more painful than the other.”

  “Pish. I’m a Yankee deep-water man what was pressed by pirates.”

  “Yankee, my granny! Your accent is closer to Hampshire than New Hampshire.”

  Manson grinned. “So I’m a immigrant. I bet half your crew spent time in one of His Majesty’s ships. That don’t prove nuffink.”

  “I don’t have to prove anything. I just have to turn you over to the Royal Navy.” I pointed out the stern window at a small island with a wide earthen scar across its face. “That’s Dead Chest over there. We’re lying in Deadman’s Bay, off Peter’s Island in the Virgins. It’s an easy run down to Tortola from here. Whether I hunt up a King’s frigate tomorrow depends on what you and your mates tell me today. Do you understand?”

  “Can I talk it over wiv me mates?”

  “No.”

  “Then I got nuffink to say, mate.”

  “I’m sure your mates will be impressed with your loyalty. Maybe they’ll even drink your health when you’re swinging in a gibbet. Mr. Horne, take this man away and bring in the next.”

  Morris proved no more pliable than Manson, but Jakes was already quavering when he entered the cabin. “Please, sir,” he said when we had dispensed with the preliminaries, “I’m a deserter, true enough, but not from your navy. And I ain’t no pirate, sir, and I didn’t kill nobody.”

  “That’s not up to me to decide, Jakes,” I said. “But since you mention it, who are the dead men in the pit?”

  “Why, the Shearwater’s orficers. Capting Martin and Mr. Ducker, who was the first lieutenant, and the master, bosun, carpenter—all the orficers right down to the reefers, sir. Billy Thomas was on’y nine year old, but Mr. Agnell cut him down as if he was a grown man. The poor little nipper took it like a man, though. Looked Agnell right in the eye, but he struck him down all the same, so he did, sir, God blast him! He said we was on’y to maroon ’em, sir.”

  He spoke all in a rush, as if once he started he couldn’t hold back. He told a sordid story of butchery, claiming that he had hacked at the bodies for fear the mutineers would turn on him, but that he had killed no one himself. Some of the foremast hands had repented themselves when it was too late, and they, too, now lay in the pit—which explained why some of the bodies were wearing well-tarred slop trousers.

  I said, “Were the Americans involved?”

  “Oh, no, sir. And what could they have done even if they had knowed what was afoot? Them was on’y fifteen or twenty, but we was forty and more. Nearer seventy, counting them as stayed loyal. There was a ruckus, I’ll tell you that. Brother Jonathan must’ve seen what we done, for he cut his cable an’ run for it. Left his hook on the bottom of the cove, I expect.”

  I pictured it in my mind’s eye—the British mutineers marching their captives up the beach, a bored lookout aloft in the Suffisant watching with growing interest and then alarm, the sunlight glinting on slashing blades, the hasty recall, and then the cutting of the cable in their frenzy to leave that place. Poor Doc with his peg-leg would’ve had a hard time running in the sand—assuming he even noticed the commotion. If he’d been off hunting turtle eggs like he said, the squawking of the birds could’ve kept him from hearing anything till it was too late.

  “No blame to Brother Jonathan, neither,” Jakes was saying. “Who among us wouldn’t have done what he done, eh?”

  I hauled my mind back to the present. “Who’s to say what’s right, you mean?”

  “That’s right, sir, who’s to say. Agnell said the Brother Jonathans would hang anyway for stealin’ the sloop, was they to squeak.”

  He stared at me a long minute, and then put his head in his hands.

  Despite my threats, I didn’t want to have any dealings with British cruisers—partly because I couldn’t have explained Peter’s presence, and partly because I wasn’t sure if my three fish were still of any use to me or not. We took a roundabout course north through Drake’s Bay and into the Atlantic between the Camanoes and the Dogs, and west past Guana Island with the strange saurian outcropping that gave it its name. There we turned south inside Vandyke’s Island, through the sound west of Saint John, and kept west along the coast of Saint Thomas and its lush sugar plantations until by and by we arrived at the mouth of Long Bay, where there was a busy harbor. The island was Danish, but no questions were asked and no explanations were offered in the free port of Charlotte Amalie. Which didn’t mean I couldn’t see what I could see, just that I should be careful where I look, lest someone poke me in the eye.

  So much small craft had crowded into the bay that it looked like a basket full of chickens on market day. There was a dispirited-looking naval brig with the white on red of Denmark drooping from her peak, and a few island schooners that had a dangerous air about them, but no Suffisant and nary a cutter answering Shearwater’s description lay among them. It was a pleasant day, mild as ever in the Caribbean except when it tries to blow you halfway to Peru. We came to an anchor in eighteen fathoms, with the star fort bearing north and Skytsborg Tower, the castle where Blackbeard was said to have scanned the sea for victims, on its hill above the point bearing north-northeast.

  I sighted our bearings again to be sure the anchor was holding, and checked Mr. Peebles’s figures to see if he was coming along any in his sextant work, and checked Horne’s figures just to make Peebles feel better, and wrote up the result on the slate so there’d be no mistake, and said, “Let’s hoist out the boat, Mr. Horne. I’m going ashore.”

  “I’ll come with you, sir.”

  “No, you won’t neither. You’ll stay here with Mr. Peebles.” I nodded at the swarm of bumboats that was pulling for us, laden with fruit and monkeys and parrots and sure-as-shootin’ enough rum to get every man aboard drunker as a bag of judges before the day was out. “Pass out small arms and rig the boarding nets. The men may buy fruit and other foodstuffs, but no liquor and no pets. Cash only—no trading away their clothes. And no women nor anybody else aboard that don’t belong aboard.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “You needn’t look so sour, Mr. Horne, I ain’t going ashore because I like it. Where’s Gundy?” I buttonholed him as he trotted by in the cheerful rus
h of Tomahawks getting ready for market. “Gundy, do you have any experience with smuggling? I mean, with smugglers?”

  He grinned in his beard. “Either way, zur, might be I do.”

  “Good. Mr. Horne, if we’re not back by first light . . .”

  “Please don’t say I mustn’t come and look for you, sir.”

  “How you talk. I was going to say come and fetch us off.”

  Charlotte Amalie by day was a sullen hole, but it came alive as the sun went down—alive like a dead dog is alive with maggots. It gave me a strange and lonely feeling to see the boat’s crew heading back to the Tomahawk without me and Gundy. She looked fine in her blue paint and yellow trim, and across the water I could hear Horne roaring at the bumboat women to mind the paint, damn their poxy whatevers.

  Dressed in white slop trousers and plain blue jackets, Gundy and I walked up and down the narrow strip of streets and alleys along the waterfront till we come to a tavern that spilled out a little light and a lot of noise. It wasn’t the only such place, but it was the first one I was willing to set foot in. On the signboard over the door were the words drie lus and a painting of a trio of lice on a blue background.

  “On a field azure, three gray ladies, rampant,” I said. “What’s ‘Drie Lus’ mean?”

  “Three lice, zur.”

  “What I thought.”

  “Just like home,” he said, and I wondered if he was kidding. The shutters of the Drie Lus stood open, and enough candles were burning in there that you could see a knife coming. I looked at Gundy.

  He shrugged. “Good a place as any, zur. Us probably won’t get our throats cut if us don’t get drunk.” He patted the cutlass in his belt as if to reassure himself, which didn’t reassure me much at all. I touched the hilt of my own sword, just to remind myself that it was there.

  A wave of liquor fumes and tobacco smoke rolled over us as we stepped through the door. There was customers just about everywhere, seamen mostly, but a few swelled-up merchants and sugar planters sat among them as they took their ease on chairs, benches, or overturned barrels, or slouched against the whitewashed walls. Every man I could see clutched pewter tankards and clay pipes in every hand, babbling away in as many languages as were spoke in the West Indies. There was even some Chinee, though most of the rascals seemed to be Danish or French from their language. Over by the bar I saw a couple of Danish sea officers, and I pulled my hat low. I didn’t guess they’d care about us one way or another, but I’d hate to have them ask me any awkward questions about pratique and quarantine. In the darker recesses, men turned away from my glance or dipped their heads as if to hide their faces. Way in the back I thought I saw the red britches and vest of a French officer, but he’d pulled his hat low, too, and it was plenty dark back there, and I was willing to ignore him if he ignored me.

  From the number of heads that came together and the glances that came our way, though, I guessed the coins in our pockets were already being counted against the possible quickness of our blades. I put my hand on the hilt of my sword and marched over to a table by a side door, trying to catch a phrase or two as I went. I’d think I’d caught a thread of English or French, only to find it led off into something else entire. We sat down, trying to see everything at once without looking like we were looking.

  I leaned my head close to the old quartermaster’s. “What’re they talking, Gundy, some kind of creole?”

  “Negerhollands, zur, or Hoch Kreol, as some calls ’un. ’Ee’s mostly Dutch and Danish, with a vair measure of English and Vrench, and a bit of Spanish thrown in gratis and vree.”

  “Do you speak it?”

  “Nay, zur, but I can understand ’un well enough.” He took off his neckerchief and swabbed his face. “The day gets no cooler by night, dos’t?”

  “No, but at least the sun ain’t burning our eyes out. How do we go about finding someone who’ll talk to us?”

  “Us don’t, zur. Order a bottle of rum and several glasses, if ’ee be zo kind, zur, and us’ll zee what is to zee.”

  I ordered from a passing black man in a grimy apron and got us a couple of tobacco pipes as well. We’d barely had time to pack and light them before two colored men approached us.

  “Pardoon, manier,” said the smaller one. He wore a red silk vest but no shirt.

  “‘Pardon me, sir,’ say my friend,” said the other. His eyes were black, and his hair was black, and his teeth were black, but his skin was no darker than my own. He wore a yellow scarf on his head, and he jingled when he moved on account of all the gold rings in his ears.

  “My name is Graves. This is Gundy.”

  “Every man is called something. I am called Cocro. This one is called Kakerlak.”

  “Cocro no bang kakerlak, kakerlak no bang cocro,” said Kakerlak.

  “He say, ‘The crocodile is not afraid of the cocker-roach, and the cocker-roach is not afraid of the crocodile.’ He always say this. Is not true. Fear is the great friend of the little man, yes?”

  I puffed smoke.

  “You are United States American, from the schooner, yes?”

  “Yes. What do you want?”

  “This is direct. I like it. What I want? I want rum.”

  “That’s easily solved.” I sloshed out two generous portions, and they sloshed them down.

  Cocro smacked his lips and sighed. “A better question, what is you want?”

  “Een man dod’, een ander man brod,” said Kakerlak.

  “‘One man’s death, another man’s bread,’ he say. You want someone kill, maybe?”

  “No, I don’t want someone kill, maybe. I want to find someone, though.”

  “Kapitan Mèche.”

  “How’d you know?”

  Cocro shrugged. “He is not French. He is United States American, I think. You are United States American.” He smacked his hands together.

  “How often does he come to this port?”

  He shrugged. “He is mumbo-jumbi, a ghost. He is here, he is not here.”

  “Is he here now?”

  He looked over his shoulder while Kakerlak stared at me. “Yes. No.”

  “Have another drink.” I followed his glance. The man in the red vest and britches had put on a blue coat—definitely a French naval officer—and was working his way along the wall toward the side door behind our two friends. As I looked, he bent his head and said something to a fellow sitting at a table. They both laughed.

  “Water kok fo fes, fes no weet,” said Kakerlak, watching as Cocro filled our glasses. They both drank, but Gundy had touched my arm under the table and I let mine sit.

  “You don’t drink?” said Cocro.

  “Poor tender worm,” said Gundy, “dost ’ee think us a paar o’ country louts?” He shifted just a little, but his legs were under his weight now, and I tensed as well. He jerked his beard at Kakerlak. “Wilt tell what Jack-o’-Lent just said?”

  “It is nothing,” said Cocro. “A saying only.”

  “Iss, it’s a sayin’: ‘The water’s boilin’ for the fish but the fish doesn’t know it.’ Do ’ee take we for a paar of anticks?”

  “Oh, no, sir,” said Cocro, putting up his hands and wrenching his lips in a grin. “Truly it’s—”

  The French officer was stepping lively toward the door. He passed under a swaying lamp. His eyes met mine.

  I started to stand, started to call out his name, when something—the monkey grin on Cocro’s face, an eagerness in Kakerlak’s, a rush of air—made me twist out of the way as a heavy blade smashed into the table where I’d been leaning. And there was Ben Crouch on the other end of the cutlass, trying to shake a hunk of splintered wood off his blade.

  Gundy went one direction and I went the other. No time to draw steel. I tried to roll away, but Cocro wrapped his arms around my ankles. I tried to brain him with a chair and missed. Shrieking, he clawed his way up my leg. Beyond him I saw Crouch had cleared his blade. His arm swung up. Cocro’s grubby fingers were on my face, in my mouth, searching for my nec
k. I bit down. I’d amputate his damn fingers with my teeth if I could. He screamed, but a stiletto glittered in his other hand. He raised his fist, grinning in triumph. I punched him in the throat. I hit him again and his head snapped back. And a cutlass swept down and split his skull.

  “Oh, God fuck me!” cried Crouch. He yanked his blade out of the bone, but the French officer grabbed his arm and hissed, “Stop it, you peasant!”

  I spat out a mouthful of Cocro’s blood. “Corbeau!”

  Corbeau smiled beautifully and swept off his hat. “Bonsoir, monsieur!”

  I kicked out from under Cocro’s body. “Stand where you are!”

  “I choose not to. Au revoir!” And with that he pushed Crouch through the door and followed him out.

  Our little confab hadn’t gone unnoticed, of course, not even in that den. Money was changing hands, and there weren’t just a few disappointed looks thrown our way—disappointed that we’d survived, I guess, and they’d lost their bets. But more important than that, the Danish officers had swords in their fists and were trying to make their way through the milling crowd.

  Kakerlak was rolling on the floor, clutching his walnuts. Gundy drew his foot back and kicked him again.

  “No time for that!” I grabbed the back of Gundy’s shirt, and then we were through the door and hooking along down an alley.

  Gundy was sprier than he looked. Maybe it was just on account of my short legs, but I couldn’t hardly keep up with him at first. We tore up one street and down the next, looking for a dark doorway that didn’t have a thief or a drunk or a whore in it, but the town was full up. By the third or fourth time down an alley that was getting mighty familiar, he began to flag at last. I pulled him into the shadow of a dray wagon.

  “Who were they fellows?” he puffed.

  “Fugitives from the Suffisant. But where is she? She wasn’t in the harbor.”

  “No—” His chest was heaving. He fetched up against a wheel to catch his breath. “No, me cabbun, but could be she’s in Magen’s Bay, on the var zide of the island.” He stopped to listen for sounds of pursuit. Glass broke somewhere, followed by a burst of drunken laughter. “It’s not more than a few mile, maybe, though a bit up and down. A younger maan than I could make it in a short while.”