by Kage Baker
So John, ever a thoughtful lad, put in his oar. “Please you, sir, Pettibone here’s a eunuch.”
Pettibone shot him an evil look, but stepped forward and bowed.
“In Jesus’ name, you may rely on me. I will minister to the poor child, sir.”
“You were best,” said Morgan harshly. “Go, now.”
So John led the girl into the boat, and Pettibone stepped in after them and Blackstone followed quick to get in too, which John didn’t much care for. The others pushed the boat off, and John and Blackstone rowed back to the Admiral’s flagship. Pettibone hauled his fat, little bum aboard, and the girl ascended easy as though she’d done it a hundred times, with John giving her a lift up. He didn’t peep up her rags, but he couldn’t help seeing her fair white ankles and her naked feet as she went over the side. Then Blackstone headed the boat around, and they were rowing back to shore.
John looked out at the Satisfaction and watched Pettibone, like a mother hen, guiding the girl to the great cabin, and heard Pettibone snapping out short words to the deck hands. He fancied the girl looked for him, as he rowed away.
“I wonder what you’d take for those boots,” said Blackstone, as they rowed.
“Eh?” said John, startled from his dream.
“I’ve conceived a desire for boots of Spanish make, with curious stitchery,” said Blackstone. “Such as those red noughts and crosses on your own boots. Unusual, those. Distinctive. Never seen such a pair, God’s my life.”
“I’d have thought you’d owned plenty of fancy boots in your time, a rich boy like you,” said John, giving him a hard stare.
“Oh, once upon a time, I might have done. My father was a prudent, old devil; bent the knee to Cromwell, and kept his fortune and his lands. He was obliging enough to die untimely and leave me with the lot. Off to court I went, when the king returned, to try my hand at being a courtier. Do you know, it can ruin a man? I’d no notion of the cost of silks, and carriages, and fine sherries. Not to mention the gambling one is required to do!” Blackstone shivered, as though in disgust. “I wasted my substance in a year, who’d credit it?”
“Imagine that,” said John, watching him close.
“The only advantage to ruining oneself so speedily,” said Blackstone, “is that the news doesn’t travel apace, and one can, if one is prompt, find a creditor or two who’ll still advance enough money for a passage to the West Indies. And out here, as you’ve doubtless learned, a man may vastly improve his lot with but an hour’s dirty work.”
“I reckon so,” said John.
“Indeed. I may, therefore, indulge my whims once again, not to my former extent, of course, but handsomely nevertheless. To return, then, to the issue at hand: How much for the boots, my man?”
“I ain’t selling,” said John. “Besides, they ain’t your size.”
“They are,” said Blackstone, setting his foot beside John’s. John, glancing down, saw it was true. “Remarkable, isn’t it? So hard to find ready-mades in my size, as a rule. Why, we might be brothers. And brothers to the man you killed to get them.”
“I didn’t kill nobody,” said John, wondering whether he could club Blackstone with an oar and have it look like an accident. “The bastard dropped dead in the public street, on my life and honor. Look here, the cobbler don’t look likely to set up his stall on this Goddamned ghost island any time soon, thank you very much. What would I do for shoon, if I sold them? What are you after, anyhow? Was it your brother, as died?”
Blackstone looked at him at long moment, as though he was taking his measure.
“No,” he said. “Merely a man with whom I was to exchange boots.”
John stared, dumb as a codfish. Blackstone sighed.
“Oars inboard a moment. Your knife, if you please.”
They shipped oars and John drew his knife, ready to cut Blackstone’s gullet and shove him over the side, if he had to. But Blackstone only reached out with his finger and tapped the fancy-work at the top of John’s boot.
“Oblige me by opening that seam, will you? You have my word of honor I’ll repair it with my own lily-white hands.”
John was a fool in those days, but not so dull as all that. He thought he understood, in a flash as it were, what the man had been driving at. He felt out the seam and cut along it. Neat as a wallet, it opened, and he caught a glimpse of oiled paper that had been tucked flat in there behind the cutwork, before Blackstone reached down, quick as a snake striking, and extracted the paper between finger and thumb.
“Thank you,” said Blackstone.
“Love letter, is it?” said John, grinning.
“Something of the sort,” said Blackstone, opening the paper and reading with difficulty, for the writing was much blurred.
“Well, now, that’s as good as a play!” said John. “You been looking for that poor dead son of a whore, ain’t you? And you was arranged to know him by his boots!”
“As you say.”
“That ain’t half-clever!”
“Mm-hm.”
“And here was me wearing them quite by chance!”
“Astonishing.”
“What’s it say, eh?”
“I’ve no intention of telling you.”
“Oh. Right. Lady’s honor concerned, aye?” John lay his finger beside his nose.
Blackstone stuck the paper inside his coat. He looked at John once more, with that same measuring gaze.
“A man’s life is in the balance,” he said. “One of your own Brethren of the Coast, you might say. And that will have to suffice you.”
The tide ran them up on the beach, then, so no more was said.
* * *
The island was secured before two in the afternoon, empty as it was, and it would have been quicker if there hadn’t been so damn many mountains. Morgan found out where the Spaniards were: all holed up in the fortifications atop the little sister islet that lay at Old Providence’s north end, across a stretch of seawater serving as a moat. But the drawbridge had been hauled in, and the first parties who came in sight of the guns met with concerted fire.
“No ghosts in there,” said John, panting as he ducked behind a rock.
“The cowards,” said Bob Plum, glaring as he bandaged the Reverend’s ear, which had stopped a splinter of shattered rock sent flying by a four-pound ball. That had been on their third attempt to wade across the moat, and even the Reverend’s ferocity had begun to flag a little. A tear trickled down his gaunt cheek.
“I have failed the Almighty,” he said.
“Ah, no you ain’t,” said John. “It’d take God Almighty himself to get us in there this side of a six-month. I reckon it’ll come to starving them out.”
“I doubt our Admiral has the time to spare for a siege,” said Blackstone. He turned and squinted back at their own forces, dispersed behind hillocks and clumps of trees, under a lowering sky of black cloud. “Where is our Admiral?”
“He gone back on board the Satisfaction,” Jago informed them, scrambling down into their shelter. “Captain Bradley giving orders out there. We to wait.”
“That’s Bradley, by God,” John muttered. “Wait and see.”
“What’s he gone back aboard for?” demanded Blackstone. Jago shrugged, and Blackstone grinned. “Oh ho. Interrogating the fair prisoner, I dare say.”
“Our Admiral is a married and a God-fearing man,” said Bob Plum. “I’m quite sure he would never do anything improper.”
A cannon ball smacked into the rock behind their redoubt. It sounded like a hammer hitting an anvil under a thundercrack, sending up a smoke of dust and shards of rock. They cursed and fell flat, waiting for the rain of splinters to end. But the pattering did not cease, and John felt the splash on his outstretched hand.
“Il pleut,” said Jago, and spat.
Jacques began to sing mournfully, “Un flambeau, Jeanette, Isabella…”
* * *
They lay out there in the rain getting soaked until nightfall, before Bradley called the
m back. Under cover of darkness they retreated, swearing and hating Bradley, and some found shelter in a few ruined stables. No rations were served out; Bradley sent his apologies, and assurances they’d be along any time now. None arrived that night. Jacques shot an old spavined horse, which they butchered and cut into gobbets, and attempted to cook over a smoking little tongue of blue flame. Hungry men appeared out of the darkness and snatched for raw shares, and fights broke out.
By the time the dawn came, it was a mutinous crew that slogged back through the wet grass, and the usual sea-lawyers from every ship stood around Bradley haranguing him about their rights. The French amongst them weren’t for fighting at all, but for going back to the ships and celebrating Christmas in dry clothes. This seemed like a good idea to the English and to the blacks and Indians too, mince-pies or no. Bradley was upon point of giving in when Morgan returned.
He gave a fine speech then, eloquent enough to make the night just past seem like a little inconvenience. Men were sent back to the ships posthaste for provisions, and great fires were built in the deserted village (a right scrubby place), and rum served round. The slow-match coils were hung out to dry like garlands. The boucaniers scared up a few flights of pigeons and dropped them with quick shot, so there was Christmas squab and jerked beef, cheer for one and all.
Though a fight did break out when Jacques fancied one of the English was eyeing Jago’s charms, and there was screams and slaps and a knife-fight, but it was broken up before anybody got killed to spoil the holiday.
The Spanish were still firing off a few rounds, just to let it be known they weren’t sleeping. Morgan went out to see their defenses, and came back looking haggard. John put himself in Morgan’s way with another sharp salute.
“We done our best, sir, but they ain’t budging,” he said. Morgan turned and looked at John blankly. John wanted to ask how the girl was, but he couldn’t think of a way, and all Morgan said to him was:
“Rig a coracle. I’ll not waste a boat on this.”
“A coracle, sir,” said John stupidly, but there was an Irish boucanier who knew how to make one of the little basket-boats, and he stepped up and said so. In a half-day he had framed a coracle of green wood, and covered it in pitched canvas. All the while, Morgan had retired to one of the deserted shacks to compose a letter, and then rendered a translation into Spanish. He had the Irishman given a clean white shirt, and a white flag made to fly from the coracle, and gave the Irishman his letter to deliver too.
The man hoisted his little boat and carried it down under the battlements, bold as brass, while the Spanish watched like hawks. He paddled about, with the wind whipping the white flag to and fro, until they made up their minds and sent a black down, carrying another white flag, to see what was wanted. The Irishman handed off Morgan’s letter and the black carried it up.
What the letter said, was that if the Spanish governor there did not surrender pretty quick, Morgan swore to him and his that he’d put them all to the sword, no quarter given. A fine threat, with Morgan sitting there in the drizzle with his muskets and pikes and near-mutiny, and the Spanish garrison bristling with big guns.
But Morgan’s luck held.
Two hours afterward the Spanish sent over a canoe of their own, with two emissaries bearing a letter from the governor. John was standing by Morgan when he read it. The funny off-color that had been in Morgan’s face since he’d seen the girl, fled clean away; Morgan laughed heartily. He strode out grinning white as a new moon, and called in his chief captains, Bradley and Morris and Collier.
Bradley came out grinning too.
“What’s toward, Captain sir?” said John.
“Christmas mummery,” said Bradley. He gave orders, and they were followed smart, with sniggers and blank-loaded muskets.
The Spanish governor had sent word that he’d like to surrender cruel bad, but there was the little matter of him getting sent back to Spain in irons and garrotted for cowardice if he did so. To get round this painful chance, he proposed that a mock battle be staged: Morgan’s men would storm the islet and the governor’s men would defend it as fiercely as they might, with everyone shooting blanks. The governor would leave the main fort and rush “to the defense” of a lesser one; Morgan’s men could “capture” him then.
And so it fell out. The sham battle began at nightfall, with a great deal of noise, as men on both sides pretended to take fatal wounds and died most theatrical, and lay giggling amongst their comrades. By midnight the whole thing was over, and not a drop of blood spilt.
Next day all was mutual congratulation, and no few surprises. It turned out the Spanish had been armed to the teeth up there—more than thirteen ton of gunpowder, over a thousand muskets, forty-nine cannon, pistols and slow-match in barrels. They might have kept it up for weeks, if they’d been so minded. But, as the Spanish governor explained to Morgan, they weren’t so fond of the place as to die for it; most of them had been sent there as punishment anyhow. Besides, the island was haunted, and they would be happy to see the last of it.
There were upwards of four hundred people came filing out of the fortresses, with their livestock: soldiers, married settlers and their children, slaves and their children too. Morgan watched them come out, his mood something shadowed and his dark face somber. He had given orders that the men were to be set to work and the women and children sent to the village’s church, when out of the line of slaves one old beldame tottered, calling out to him in Welsh.
Morgan turned on his heel and stared. The old lady fell on her knees, begging him for succor; John heard later she was from some Welsh town, come out to the West Indies as a nurse for somebody’s daughter, but the ship had wrecked. She’d survived but fallen into the hands of the Spanish, who had used her hard twenty years or more.
Morgan took her into the house he was using, and questioned her close. John didn’t know about what, for it was all in Welsh, and anyhow he was trying not to listen too openly, where he stood on duty outside the open door, with another big fellow. But the old lady wept, and carried on no end, and sang sometimes; and John could hear Morgan beginning to sound impatient, and his fingers drumming at last on the tabletop. At last he said something short and sharp, and came outside.
“You; John, your name is?”
“Aye, sir!” said John, ever so pleased his name was sticking in Morgan’s memory.
“Row the woman out to the Satisfaction. She’s been a nurse. Likely she can be some help to Pettibone, looking after the girl.”
“Aye aye!” said John, wondering if he’d get to see the girl, and feeling that spear-point in his heart again. Morgan stepped back inside and led the old creature out. Seeing her close to was no treat; for she was bent and whitehaired, with a nutcracker face and rolling eyes, and she curtsied and simpered for Morgan most unseemly. John thought she was more likely to need a nurse than to be one, but he kept his mouth shut and did his duty.
He had to walk the length of the island with her to get back to the boats, with her singing the whole way, poor old drab, seen by everybody, and that must have been how the story got started that Morgan had brought a Welsh witch with him. All talk. Morgan never needed anyone to conjure trouble for his enemies. He was close enough to the Devil to do it for himself, and in any case there were plenty of conjure-wives in the Caribbean if he’d wanted one.
* * *
Pettibone opened at John’s knock, and pursed his little cupid’s bow mouth in disapproval.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded. Seen close to with his jacket off, it was evident he had breasts like a woman, the way fat men will. John shuddered.
“Captain’s orders; here’s a goodwife, to be serving-woman for the girl,” he said, and led the old lady into the great cabin. The girl was sitting quiet, in a dressing-gown of purple silk that must have been Morgan’s own. She’d been having her hair tended, to judge from the brush and combs on the table. She looked up at John with that clear-as-water gaze, and John smiled foolishly.
“You remember me, sweeting?” he said, scarce able to get his breath for the words. “Happy to be rescued, are you?”
The girl smiled at him. He smiled back, a grin so wide he must have looked like a Halloween face carved on a turnip, and there might have been a candle burning in his empty head too, so bright he felt.
“None of that,” said Pettibone. “You take your great boots out of here, and leave the poor child alone.”
“Aye aye, ma’am,” said John, feeling like the cock of the walk. He got up to leave, but smiled again at the girl before he went, and whistled as he rowed himself back to shore.
* * *
John reported back to Morgan personal and smart, where the Admiral was busy with his captains; Morgan gave order for a party to be got together to move all that powder and shot down to the beach, so it might be parceled out amongst the fleet. John had been without sleep a day and a night, but he was young then, and fearful ambitious of Morgan’s good notice, so he said, “Aye aye, sir!” and went off straightaway.
By this time the Brethren were disporting themselves with rum, or roasting slaughtered livestock, or sprawling out for a good sleep; so the first few times John bawled for volunteers, he was told (and roundly too) what he might do with himself. Thinking his own messmates might be more agreeable, John walked about looking for any of the Mayflower’s crew.
He crossed one of the rubbishy little fields, and there was one of the Spanish prisoners who’d been sent out to forage, with a basket of maize in his arms, and there was Tom Blackstone, as if he were escorting the prisoner under guard. But they were standing still, heads bent, talking serious together. As John drew close he heard Blackstone speaking Spanish, as easy as kiss your hand.
Now John remembered the slip of paper that had been hidden in his boot, and once again the flash of understanding lit up the inside of his thick head, and he reckoned he’d had it all wrong before. Maybe Blackstone was no intriguer ladies’ man, said John to himself; maybe Blackstone was a spy!
