IT WAS unbearably hot in the little huts where the prisoners were kept. The three huts were strung out on a low rise with a rock wall behind them, blocking the wind, their fronts looking out on the harbor where three ships tugged gently on their anchor rodes, pumps working on the sloop and the schooner every three hours to keep them floating. Two pirate guards, one at either end of the line of huts, sat under lean-tos with muskets, a bucket of water at their sides. They were dirty and bored and partially drunk; well, it had been over a week since the battle. The only entertainment had been the two wounded prisoners who went raving mad before they died, hallucinating and calling for angels to take them to heaven. That may have happened, but they left without their bodies, which the pirates dragged to the beach and tossed in the surf so the barracuda could eat them.
One long hut held Sea Dog’s healthiest crewmen, that is to say the least grievously wounded; one held Fallon and several seriously wounded; and one held slaves taken from a slaver some weeks before—males only, for female slaves were never kept because they could not handle severe manual labor and would only cause fighting among the men to claim them. Every morning the slaves and the seamen who were healthy enough to work were marched to the beach and rowed out to the ships to pump in shifts, patch the hulls, and replace rigging. The pirates themselves did nothing but drink and lie under the trees. Except for Wicked Jak Clayton, who had a pirate woman with him and rarely came out of his hut. When he did appear, he was usually the worse for drink and in foul humor, having himself rowed out to the ships to inspect the work and, if he found fault, shooting someone for it.
He was a large man, with long black hair tied in a queue held by a scarlet ribbon. His face showed a sparse, ragged beard, with pockmarked skin and a bulbous nose that somehow was off center. Oddly, his voice was of a higher register, quite high when he screamed, which was often, and when he laughed, which was less often.
Several times Clayton had personally inspected the huts with the guards, commanding them to watch this prisoner or that one carefully. He was particularly interested in Fallon and whether he would live, for he particularly wanted him to. He had a plan for him if he did.
It was not clear if Fallon would accommodate him. He had been unconscious since the main boom had fallen on him like a tree, striking a glancing blow off his head before he could jerk completely away. If he didn’t awaken soon he would die of starvation or dehydration, or just plain die.
Beauty was in the hut with him. Though she was not hurt seriously—a lacerated arm from a sword—Clayton allowed her to tend Fallon in the hopes that she would have a positive effect on his progress. Cully was in the hut as well, his fractured leg having been set by Pence before the doctor died clutching his heart and was then fed to the barracuda. Two other seamen—the Swedes—were also in Fallon’s hut and slowly recovering from puncture wounds and splinters; they would live if infection didn’t do for them.
Beauty bathed all their wounds in seawater each day, the salt helping to heal them. She demanded a fresh bucket every morning; the guards refused at first but a swift kick to the groin of the biggest guard—causing a rare high laugh from Clayton—had the desired effect and a bucket of seawater was at the hut’s doorway every morning thereafter.
Mr. Boy had been shoved into the slave hut, still uncommunicative except for his obvious concern for Cully and Fallon. At night he would pry open a board in his hut and crawl between buildings on all fours. Then, at Fallon’s hut, he would push aside another board and crawl inside, saying nothing, just sitting on his haunches and staring wide-eyed in the darkness from the corner. Beauty would nod, letting him know things were unchanged, and the boy would leave as silently as he came.
The days passed like this, repetitive and punishing, with the healthy men going to work and the wounded struggling to live, fighting infection and flies and malnutrition.
And then one afternoon Fallon opened his eyes.
“Mother, am I going to die?” he asked softly.
Beauty’s hand froze on Fallon’s forehead, the wet rag sending rivulets down his temples and into his ears.
“I hope the hell not, you fucker,” she gushed in shock. “Or I’ve wasted my best years taking care of you.” She smiled, tears shooting from her eyes in spite of her usual stoicism. “God, you gave me a scare, Nico. Oh, my God, you’re back from the dead.”
Fallon managed the smallest smile himself, too weak to say more. Beauty tilted his head to take fresh water, while Cully and the Swedes crawled over to him smiling with joy.
“You’re going to be all right, Nico,” soothed Beauty. “Goddamn it you are.”
“Where are we? What happened? How long…?”
Beauty shushed him. “Not now. We’re prisoners somewhere is what I know. Some island where Clayton hides out. I think it’s Rum Cay. You need to drink some water now.” And with that she ladled a little more fresh water into his mouth, and after he swallowed he closed his eyes and went back to sleep.
Beauty studied his face. His beard was growing and covered much of the bruising from the boom, and he had withered. His broad shoulders and chest had shed muscle, which was most of the weight he’d lost. She thought about how much she should tell him, how to spoon-feed him the scale of their disaster and their predicament.
Sea Dog had lost more than forty seamen to outright killing or mortal wounds, which left them with nearly thirty in some sort of condition. When Fallon had gone down, they had fought gamely, with Beauty directing the battle until Clayton had moved to board the schooner and the hand-to-hand fighting had begun. Pirates swarmed over the side, screaming wildly, and Beauty had been wounded by a particularly fierce and ugly brute before pushing a pike through his chest. Seeing her men butchered and falling around her, with no hope of retreat, she had sunk to the deck in exhaustion and surrendered the ship.
Sea Dog had suffered horribly. Her bowsprit was gone, and with it the foresail and rigging. The main boom was on the deck, having detached from the mainmast to fall onto Fallon. Five guns had been totally upended, the deck gouged with deep furrows from cannon shot, and the helm all but shot away. Men and human parts were strewn on the deck like branches after a windstorm.
When Clayton had leapt aboard he had demanded to see the captain, and Beauty’s eyes had inadvertently glanced toward Fallon’s inert body, his legs protruding from under the mainsail, which the boom had pulled down. It had taken ten men to lift the boom off Fallon, it being the size of a tree, and Clayton had stared for a moment at his body, sizing up the man who had cost him two prizes, which were now over the horizon, not to mention a dismasted sloop and lost men.
The least wounded seamen were forced below decks, the dead were thrown overboard, the badly wounded left where they lay, and Renegade took Sea Dog under tow. The yellow sloop was left to fend for itself. All that afternoon and night they progressed slowly, Sea Dog trailing astern, a pirate prize crew aboard and in command. Below decks Beauty could sense they were sailing southeast, the way they had come through the Caicos Passage, and then the next day they had turned north, the wind now on starboard. Some days later they arrived at a small, rocky island with a tiny cove on the leeward side where Jak Clayton could anchor unknown and undetected. It was a perfect spot to hide, near the traditional route of salt packets and other prizes coming from the south.
If it was indeed Rum Cay, which Beauty had guessed, it was about ten square miles, with coral outcroppings and a few trees ringing the cove. The cove itself was a pristine Caribbean scene, with three ships at anchor, swaying palms on shore, marred only by the ramshackle huts and lean-tos. At the far end of the cove, a larger hut, almost a bungalow, and a number of smaller huts. At the near or eastern end, a string of smaller huts perched higher on a hill. It was to these huts the prisoners were escorted, with guards posted, their own ship’s food and water served to them. Fallon had been carried on a makeshift stretcher by his own men, as gently as they could carry him, though he never moved or groaned.
By midn
ight the cove was quiet. The torches were all but extinguished. The mood among the pirates was subdued and defeated. They had lost two fat prizes to a single schooner, a mystery to them. And a source of deep anger and humiliation to Wicked Jak Clayton.
TWENTY
IN TIME, the small packet carrying mail and supplies reached Bermuda, having sailed from Trinidad and called at Grand Turk Island for passengers and mail before sailing north again. Ezra Somers was at work at his desk, and Elinore had just brought lunch for the two of them. Somers could not help noticing the change in his daughter’s demeanor, her attentiveness to him, her respect. Why this had suddenly happened he hadn’t a clue, but a bond was growing between them, he knew that. He was worried lest he say or do anything to break it.
The dock boy brought the mail from Grand Turk, the usual reports from Nilson along with the news that there was no news of the lost ship. A letter of a different sort, addressed in a different hand, was the last item to leave the mailbag. Somers took a bite of lunch and opened it.
Elinore took notice when he stopped chewing. She saw a dark shadow cross her father’s face and worry creep into his eyes. She had seen her father in times of stress, had seen him hunker down to battle, and knew this was one of those times.
Slowly he passed the first page to her. Though she had never seen Fallon’s handwriting, she knew immediately it was from him. The letter outlined his feelings about Nilson and followed with his initial suspicion about Hewes. It described his plan to flush the rabbit, and Cully’s observations at the salt pans and later through the window at Hewes’s cottage. The second page, now passed to Elinore, described Fallon’s plan to winkle Clayton into battle with Bishop, his meeting with the Captains Smithers and Wallace, and his hope to return home to Grand Turk within a month.
The last page presupposed that might not happen. Fallon asked that he be remembered to Elinore, whom he had grown to love, not wanting to die without Ezra Somers knowing it, not wanting to betray the trust between the two men. Somers dropped the third page on the table and closed his eyes. Elinore picked up the page, read it with fear and courage in equal parts gathering inside her, and waited for her father’s probable explosion.
Instead, wisdom made an appearance. Unannounced as such, but dressed for the occasion.
“Elinore,” he said as he opened his eyes, “it’s been almost three weeks since he wrote this letter. We need to know what’s going on. And I need to deal with this bastard Hewes. Maybe Nilson, too. But most important, let’s find out about your young man. Would you like to come with me to Grand Turk?”
THEY LEFT on a Bermuda sloop after hurriedly arranging and provisioning for the brief trip south. The fresh breeze was invigorating and the trades carried the sloop quickly toward southern waters. Somers and Elinore spent most of their days below as the wind blew spume and spray across the decks; the sloop heeling dramatically, carrying perhaps more sail than was prudent, but Somers demanded speed. Below decks, a reunion of two people who basically had lived together their whole lives without noticing the color of the other’s eyes.
For Somers, the discovery of a daughter’s love that he thought he had lost, if he ever had it at all, was overwhelming—joyous, astonishing—name the word. All his life he had longed for the closeness that he found below decks as the sloop thrashed along to God-knew-what future. And for Elinore, sharing the secret of her love for Fallon, saying it out loud, freed her from her father’s judgment and made him her friend, finally.
When the sloop dropped anchor at last in Cockburn Harbor, two very different people disembarked. Nilson, who had come down at word of a strange ship coming into the harbor, saw with surprise that it was the owner and his daughter aboard, and he noticed they were holding hands as they stepped ashore.
CAPTAIN HAMMERSMITH Bishop watched the Bermuda sloop sail into Cockburn Harbor and drop anchor as well, and had an uneasy feeling. Since returning to Grand Turk for repairs to his ship and recuperation from his wound, he had been engaged in enlarging his role in getting the salt packets through to safety and decrying his inability to save Sea Dog. Well, it had been smoky and hot work that day and, what with his wound, it was difficult to remember events clearly. The pain he felt when Number Two gun had recoiled over his smallest toe, however, was real and clear. Even if it had been something of a lubber’s mistake, the toe had to be amputated and his foot still hurt like hell and he limped when he went ashore.
That was not often. Shame and cowardice have a way of working on a man’s soul, even a man skilled at pretense, and Bishop left his ship, indeed his cabin, less and less. Thank God he had a large store of wine aboard, for he had a bottle open continuously. His men hung their heads as they went about their duties, for you could not fool a seaman with pomp and gold lace, and they knew their captain’s cowardice had brought shame upon the ship. Even the bosun’s starter snapped with less pop on the men’s backsides, such was the black mood aboard.
Bishop had kept the truth of the battle with Renegade from Nilson, who had been congratulatory and appeared relieved that the biggest shipment they had for some time had made it through to Charleston. Nilson gave full credit to Bishop, who accepted it gratefully. Of course, Nilson had asked about Captain Fallon, though in truth he’d said he found him personally disagreeable. And, he noted, he had questioned the plan to sail the leeward passage but Fallon was insistent, even arrogant as he recalled. Still, Clayton seemed to have supernatural powers, somehow finding his prey no matter what the route, and he would be a constant menace until brought to heel. Bishop offered that he would be back in action soon after the repairs to Harp were completed. Perhaps next week she could resume her mission.
Now Bishop wondered about the older man and younger woman disembarking from the Bermuda sloop and being rowed to the dock. Who were they and why were they here? It was curious, odd, in fact. In his present state of mind he didn’t like surprises. His uneasiness only grew as he watched the old man stride quickly up the dock, limping a bit, but with purpose and passion in his step, like one-half a collision searching for the other.
TWENTY-ONE
SOMETIME IN the middle of the night Fallon awoke. He had been dreaming again, this time of Elinore, and his mind fought gamely to relive each detail. When he found he could not, he opened his eyes. Beauty was asleep close by, the Swedes asleep in the back of the hut, Cully asleep near the door, bathed in moonlight, and Mr. Boy was squatting in the corner with those wide eyes. Fallon tried to smile, and the boy smiled back, and then silently left on all fours, crawling under the loose board in the back of the hut.
Now the events of the battle with Clayton, and the betrayal and cowardice of Bishop came back to Fallon, albeit through a splitting headache. He could see it all unfold slowly: his decisions and orders, the acrid smell of powder, the concussive blast of Sea Dog’s first broadside, the thunderous crash as Renegade loosed her own broadside into his frail ship. His last memory was watching in disbelief as Harp sailed away, and then the world went dark. Beauty had said they were prisoners now, confined by Clayton on a small island in the Bahamas. He had to know more: Where were the other prisoners? What of his ship? Questions that had no answers in the middle of the night.
Morning came, and with it Jak Clayton, a bit blurry to Fallon’s eyes, but impressively big and, truth be told, wicked-looking all the same. Beauty was feeding Fallon a little gruel when the pirate stood over them both, hands on hips, an amused smile on his face.
“So, Captain, we meet on my little island,” said Clayton in his falsetto voice. “You seem to be recovering, which is good because I do not like to hang a wounded man. The men take it badly, thinking it’s bad luck or some other rot. On the other hand, I may not hang you at all. You could be useful to me in other ways, perhaps as a captain, eh?”
“I would rather hang than help you, Clayton,” answered Fallon through clenched teeth. “So get your rope ready.”
“Ah, a brave captain,” said Clayton. “Well, perhaps when you are fully aware of yo
ur predicament you will be more willing to talk about…options. For now, Captain, grow stronger. No matter your fate, I need you to at least be able to walk.” With that, Clayton issued a high-pitched laugh that had the effect of freezing everyone, a cruelly feminine laugh that was as frightening as it was otherworldly. And then he was gone.
Beauty resumed feeding Fallon. “Now, that was scary,” she said calmly, and Fallon thought he could see her spoon hand shaking. “Have you ever been hung before, Nico?”
“No,” he croaked, “it will be something new.”
Between mouthfuls, he listened to the full rundown on their situation on the island. Beauty had been careful in observing the changing of the guards, the distribution of prisoners, and the layout of the pirates’ sleeping huts. Two guards were left on Renegade each night, no guards on Sea Dog or the yellow sloop, inexplicably named Emerald, which had limped in two days previously under jury rig. To Beauty’s eye, it looked like repairs were very nearly complete on Renegade, while a new bowsprit had been fashioned for Sea Dog and the rigging was about to be run up. Her sides were still shot through, guns ahoo, but she still flew the British ensign.
“How are the men, Beauty?” Fallon asked.
“Well enough, I guess,” she answered. “They know you’re alive and that’s picked up their morale. Every day they work on the ships with the slaves, but with no real effort. Clayton shot two of them—Bridges and Sloane—for insolence in the first week. Now everyone keeps their eyes down. Clayton’s a brutal man, Nico, unpredictable and ruthless. His men are terrified of him—for good reason.”
The little hut was growing warmer now, lighter, and Fallon could get a sense of it. Slabs of driftwood and planking made up the walls, with a sail fothered over the top as a roof. The floor was dirt; there was no door as such, just an opening that looked down to the beach and the ships, a languid and peaceful scene if you weren’t a prisoner soon to be hanged.
The Bermuda Privateer Page 9
