the Warrior's Path (1980)

by L'amour, Louis - Sackett's 03

  Or was it simply that something deep inside me still longed for the sea, something inherited, something only half held, some unnamed yearning? What man truly understands his motives?

  Yet there was something else, something of which I had heard my father speak when talking to Jeremy or the others, that where man was, there must be law, for without it man descends to less than he is, certainly less than he can become. Even on the frontier where no law had yet come, man must have order, and evil must be restrained or punished.

  No man had made me my brother's keeper, but if no other moved to restrain evil, then I must do it myself. These men had injured one whom I--I could not complete the idea. It was not true. It was only that--

  I went to sleep.

  Morning dawned, cool and damp with a wind from off the bay. Yance and I walked outside into the sea wind and stood together. "Don't worry about my crop," I said. "The birds and the squirrels will harvest for me. Tell them where I am gone and that when spring comes I shall be with them again."

  "Kin, be warned. They are not easy men."

  "Aye. That I know."

  "Where will you go?"

  "To Jamaica at first to ask about where many sailors come. I do not think there are secrets at sea even though some may believe so. At Damariscove, where I go to find a ship, I shall also ask."

  "Kin, do you remember John Tilly? And Pike? They were trading to the Indies in the Abigail, named for our mother. And the Eagle, too, the craft that took mother to England. That one traded to the Indies, also."

  "Aye. I remember."

  Henry came to the door. "Do we go now? I am ready."

  "And I. Good-by, Yance. Care for things until I return. And do not go off a-hunting. Stay close to Temperance for a bit."

  "You know how to give advice," a voice said, "and do you take your own?"

  It was Diana, standing alone and very still just outside the gate. I blinked at her, not quite understanding, but I held out my hand. "I will come back," I said.

  "Oh, will you?" She looked straight at me, her eyes wide. "And what then, Kin Sackett? What then?"

  "An end to this bad business," I said.

  Her fingertips scarcely touched mine, and then she turned sharply away. What in the devil was the matter with the girl?

  "Go, then," she said over her shoulder. "Go."

  Chapter XI

  Quiet lay the water over which we moved, with no sound but the ripple of our passing and the steady chunk of the oars. Fog lay thick about us and somewhere ahead an island. A long, thin, wooded island, and there was the harbor, Damariscove, settled, it was said, by a Captain Dammerill.

  Yet the fisherman whose boat we hired shrugged when I said it. "Aye, it may be, but there were lads as came ashore there to dry their fish many a year before he ever caught the shadow of it."

  My father, too, had spoken of this, for fishers from the Grand Banks had come here to smoke or dry their fish before heading homeward for the shores of Europe. I spoke of this, and he looked at me again.

  "Did he have a name, then?"

  "He did. Barnabas Sackett, it was."

  He chuckled. "I ken the man. Ah, a rare one he was, too! A rare one! Tricky and sharp but strong! He made a name for himself amongst we who come from Newfoundland, for we love a daring man, and that he was."

  He turned to glance my way. "You do favor him, although you're taller. D' you ken Tilly and Pike, then? They were his friends, and if it is to sea you are going, you'll be in luck, for there's a ship of theirs at the island now, or there was."

  "Of John Tilly's?"

  "Aye. The Abigail. She's been about a bit but seaworthy. She's been taking on water and trading for fur."

  My father's old ship and in port here! Suddenly I was impatient at the chunking of the oars, the slow, steady movement through the water. I had been relaxed, resting, waiting to arrive at Damariscove and thinking if I was lucky we might--I swore softly, bitterly. The ship might be gone before we arrived. Why could I not have known?

  As if in answer to my impatience a small breeze blew up, and the fog began to thin. The old man went forward and hoisted the sail. Yet even so our progress was slow, too slow.

  There was naught to be done but to hope she would not sail until we arrived. Henry looked around, amused by my impatience. "There will be other ships," he said.

  "Aye, but yon's a special ship, and I would dearly love to sail in her, be her master whoever he may be. If he be John Tilly--"

  The fog lifted, and the wind picked up a little. It was not yet midday, but Damariscove was far off. A gull dipped low above us, and I felt a queer excitement stir within me.

  I was at sea! How often had I heard stories of the sea and of ships! Of my father's battles with pirates. What was the man's name? Bardle, Nick Bardle. There was another, too, but I had seen him, knew him from long ago when Yance and I had slipped aboard his ship at Jamestown and spiked his guns. A rare bit of action that and one that pleased our father, although it was done without his knowledge.

  Jonathan Delve, that was the name. An evil man and one who hated our father.

  Finally I dozed, rocked by the movement of the boat, and when I awakened again, it was fairly dark, and there was a darker line along the sky with a light showing low down near the sea.

  "Are we there, then?"

  "Yon," our boatman said. "Would ye be landed?"

  "Not if the Abigail is close by. I'd like to board her."

  "At night? They are a touchy lot aboard there and wary. I'd say you'd best be known to them if you'd board, but I'll take you alongside. And there she lies, two points abaft the beam. I'll bring her around, and we can hail her."

  There was a stern light showing and an anchor light in the chains. We edged in close, and a hail came from her. "Lay off there! Lay off!"

  "Is John Tilly aboard? If he is, I'd speak with him."

  "The cap'n? Lay off there. Who be you?"

  "The name is Sackett," I said. "I think it will have a familiar sound."

  "Sackett?" The watchman exclaimed. "Well, I'll be!" In another tone he called out, evidently to someone else on deck. "Joel? Call the captain. Tell him we've a Sackett out here."

  I saw light come into the darkness as the door yawned open; then there was a rush of feet, and a strong voice, which I knew at once, called down, "Sackett? Is it you, Barnabas?"

  "It's Kin," I answered. "Kin Sackett, his eldest, and seeking passage to the Indies if it is there you'll be going."

  "Come aboard, lad, come aboard!"

  They dropped a ladder over, and I went up with Henry after me. My first time on a rope ladder, but I had the hang of it from words my father had spoken. The boatman had been paid, and there was naught to do but hoist our gear aboard, and little enough we had of it.

  He was a strongly made man, his hair white and his beard neatly trimmed. "Ah, lad! It is good to see you! How is my old friend, your father?"

  "He is gone, captain. The Senecas killed him ... finally. Black Tom Watkins was with him, and they died well."

  "That he would do." He paused for a moment. "So he is gone! It is hard to believe."

  "My mother is in England. She took Noelle and Brian there for their education."

  "Aye. I knew of that, and I have seen them both ... in London. It was only a short time ago."

  "You saw them?"

  "Aye. I had brought my ship up the Thames and sought them out. Your brother is a handsome lad, strongly built and something of a scholar. But your sister? She is a beauty, Kin, a beauty! I declare, lovely as your mother was. She will be even more beautiful when she becomes a woman, and she has not long to wait, believe me! Ah, what a handsome pair they are!

  "Brian is a scholar. He has been reading for the law but much else besides. But there's been trouble, too, over your land in the fens. William, of whom your father often spoke and who was by all accounts an honest man, died. His nephew fell heir to his holdings and has laid claim to your father's land as well. I fear there will be troub
le."

  "Brian will know what to do, and if it is help he needs, we will come."

  "Help is less important now than friends in positions of power. I do not know, Kin, what will happen."

  We walked aft together, and in the comfort of his cabin over a pot of coffee we talked long into the night of the old days and the new, and in the end I told him what I wished to do.

  "To find one girl, Kin, I doubt if it can be done, yet you are your father's son, and he was not a man to be stayed by doubt. What I can do I will do."

  "There is gossip alongshore; this I know. I want to know the gossip about the ships of Joseph Pittingel and what I can discover about a man named Max Bauer. I believe these stolen girls would be sold to outlying plantations where they could be kept unseen."

  "If it is waterfront gossip you will be wanting, then Port Royal is the place. They be a packet of rascals there but friendly enough if they like you, and you'll have a good name among them."

  "I will?"

  "Aye, they'll know the name Sackett, for Barnabas made a name. Have you heard the story told of how he took the pirate ship in Newfoundland and then hung high the pirate Duval until he cooled down? Pirates favor a bold man, and your father was that, lad, he was all of that."

  He glanced at Henry. "A slave?"

  "A friend. He volunteered to help. He's an Ashanti."

  "I know them. He will find some of his people in the islands, but most of them have taken to the hills in what is called the Cockpit County, and the wise do not go a-searching for them. There be those who call it the Land of Look Behind because you'd better or they'll be all over you. On Jamaica and elsewhere, too, they are called maroons."

  "They will receive me," Henry said coolly. "I was a king among them."

  "But these are long from Africa, most of them," John Tilly suggested. "Will they remember?"

  "They will," Henry replied, "and if not, I shall remind them."

  Fair blew the winds for Jamaica, and the good ship Abigail, named for my mother, proved a good sailer. Soon I was lending a hand at the sailing, learning the ropes, as the saying was, and taking a turn at the helm.

  Each night we had a man or two back from the fo'c'sle to tell us what he knew of Joseph Pittingel, his ships, and of Max Bauer. Soon a picture began to come forth, a picture of a man both shrewd and dangerous, a man who had many friends or at least associates throughout the islands and along the coast of the mainland. A man even more formidable than we had assumed and a situation that must be handled with extreme care, for he had friends in important positions who could cast a man into jail or have him hanged.

  That he was a slaver came as a surprise to many of those to whom we talked. This he had apparently kept from anyone, yet here and there a seaman would drop a word to let us realize that there were those who did know. A picture of the man became clearer, a picture of an adroit, cunning man who presented one picture to officials and to merchants and another entirely to those he considered menials.

  John Tilly listened, asked a question or two, and when the last of the seamen had left the cabin, he said quietly, "This is no easy matter you have taken upon yourself, for if the man has the least suspicion of what you do, he will surely have you murdered or thrown into prison, and he will have the power, you can be sure."

  "I think of Noelle. What if it had been she?"

  "Aye, and the poor lasses with no man to stand by them. It must be done, lad. It must be done."

  "First, to find that girl. Henry will help, for you know as well as I that there are no secrets from the slaves. He can go among them and among the maroons as I could not, for they would tell me nothing."

  Several times we passed ships at sea, but they were either too far off to be seen clearly or they made haste to seek distance. It was a time when piracy was rampant, and many a ship would not hesitate to seize another if opportunity allowed.

  Wet blew the wind against our faces, leaving the taste of salt upon our lips. Much was the time I spent upon deck, my body growing accustomed to the dip and roll of the vessel and the sails overhead, all strong with wind. At times the rain beat against our faces like hailstones, but I could see how a man could grow to love such a life, and how easily he could come to live upon the sea.

  There was a power there, a power in the roll and swell of the waves that told a man he was but tolerated here. This was a world of fish under the sea and gulls or frigate birds above it.

  Captain Tilly was a cunning man with wind and sea, knowing very well how to get the most from his ship, and we went swiftly along the coast to the south, and I never knew when we passed our old shore along the Carolina coast.

  The seas grew warmer. We worked often without shirts, and the whiteness disappeared from our bodies, and they grew red, then brown, strongly tanned by tropical suns. Jamaica was a long green shore of a deeper green than found in our northern lands.

  We sighted Great Plumb Point and the Pallisadoes, a long neck of land staggered here and there with trees that gave the neck of land its name, for they appeared a long broken wall to keep men out. We held our course along shore to Little Plumb Point and passed between it and Gun Key, then round-ing the point and coming at last to the well-sheltered bay.

  Captain Tilly stopped beside me as I stared shoreward. Never had I seen so many houses or stores and drinking places along the waterfront. If there was one, there were at least twenty ships in the harbor, and more seemed to lie deeper within the bight of land.

  No other place had I seen but Jamestown, and you could have tucked all of it into a corner of this.

  "Be not trusting, lad," Tilly warned. "They are knaves aboard there and proud of it. They'll have your money, and if you say the wrong word, you will be killed out of hand. Port Royal is said to be the wickedest city on earth, the Babylon of the west, they call it. They be pirates and those who prey upon them and more jewels and gold than you'll see ever m London town."

  We dropped our hook close in before the town, and a boat was got over the side. Tilly eyed me as I got into the boat. "To a tailor first, Kin Sackett, for in that outfit of buckskins you'll stand out like a lone tree on a headland, and every man in town will know where you go. And I've just the man for you."

  "I've no great sum about me, captain," I said doubtfully. "Yonder we lived off the country, and while we've gold at Shooting Creek, I'd naught with me when we came along to Cape Ann and Shawmut."

  He chuckled. "Ah, lad! Think nothing of it. I'll be your banker here. This ship was given me by your father, and all I have is by his favor. You'll be needing money, for nothing speaks but money. Money and a man's cunning or strength, for they be fighting men here, and strength is respected."

  He glanced at me suddenly. "Can you handle a blade, Kin? You'll no be wearing more than a pistol in your sash. Here is the cutlass and the knife."

  "Aye," I said doubtfully. "I've been well taught as a boy, for my father was a swordsman and Jeremy Ring as well and in another way Sakim, also. We fenced much as boys, but I've never fought for blood with a blade."

  I caught myself at that. "Except with a knife," I said, "among the Indians. No year passed in those mountains without attacks by Indians, so we'd had our taste of that."

  "Aye. I've heard of those attacks on your forts." He looked at me and shook his head. "Your father gone! 'Tis hard to believe. He was so strong, so fierce a fighting man, and he seemed like one to live forever."

  He had seemed so to me, as a child. He was a gentle but powerfully muscled man, trained in the arts of war by his father, who had been a professional soldier. He came from the fens, in the country of Hereward the Wake, and many a story did I hear of wars and struggle by land and sea.

  "It is a jungle yon," Tilly warned, "and the men and women are savages. Port Royal is no place for the good or the weak. Killings happen by day and night, rights are many, and rum is the greatest evil of all."

  Captain Tilly, I recalled, was not only a ship's captain but an ordained minister. It was he who had married m
y father and mother these many years agone. Yet minister of the gospel or not, I knew well what he spoke of Port Royal was the truth, for many a tale had I heard of the place whilst mingling with the seamen in Jamestown on our rare visits there.

  With four stout seamen at the oars, we pulled for shore, Captain Tilly, Henry, and I, and soon were alongside the landing. I was first up the ladder. Beyond the rough planks of the landing was a stone-built dock and beyond that a line of dives, sailors' "rests," and the like. A drunken sailor, kerchief tied about his head and gold, diamond-studded rings in his ears, staggered past.

  Tilly pointed with his thumb at a narrow street. "Up there," he said, "there be a tavern that's clean. It be called the Bristol. Go there, and tell them I sent you, and have something to eat and wait. I shall send a tailor to you."

  Henry looked at me. "If it is well with you, I will be looking about for some of my people."

  The narrow streets were crowded with seamen from the ships, some of them obviously piratical craft, others merchantmen of one variety or another. Looking about, it became apparent that good business could be done here had one the mind for it, for many goods, looted undoubtedly from merchant ships, were going for less than the market price. If a man could buy here, then get away with his cargo without losing it again, he might quickly become a wealthy man.

  We found the Bristol, and I entered and spoke for a room, using the name of Captain Tilly; once in the room, I had hot water brought to me and bathed there. Scarcely was I finished when there was a knock at the door. Knife in hand and pants hastily drawn on, I opened the door.

  A short, fat florid man with a balding head stood there; behind him was a black slave. "Master Sackett? May I enter?"

  Without awaiting my reply, he walked in, followed by the slave. "Measure him," he said grandly, choosing the best chair in the room. "Measure him carefully!"