Crossed Bones

by Jane Johnson

  Some of the listeners laughed at Cat’s discomfiture, but her uncle was furious. ‘Get away with you, you foul beldame, and stop talking such blather. Shoo! Shoo, now!’

  For a moment the old woman held Cat’s eye, then she threw her shawl up over her head and was gone.

  Jane Tregenna clicked her tongue. ‘It really is time Penzance had a madhouse like Bodmin wherein we can sweep up all such leavings.’

  ‘That’s not very Christian of you, Mother,’ Cat said crossly. What could the old besom mean? Did she know Rob; indeed, had he put her up to it? With these thoughts in her head, she followed her uncle into the chapel of Our Lady and took her seat on the outside of the family pew.

  ‘I will show you the eight particular properties of a man without Christ!’ the preacher roared suddenly, and a hush fell throughout the congregation.

  This was what they had come to witness, this was what they wanted: a proper bible-thumper, all hellfire and damnation.

  ‘First, every man without Jesus Christ is a base man. Though you are born of the blood of nobles, and though you are of the offspring of princes, yet if you have not the royal blood of Jesus Christ running in your veins, you are a base man.’

  And he transfixed them all with his bright blue eyes.

  ‘Second, a man without Christ is a bond man. This it says in John 8:36: if the Son shall make you free, then are you free indeed, for if you do not have an interest in Christ to free you from the slavery of sin and Satan, you are slaves: slaves to sin, to the Devil and to the law!’

  A woman in the middle row began to rock and moan, a raw, ragged sound that went on and on. It was Nell Chigwine. Cat sighed. The Reverend Veale never subjected his congregation to such fierce words; he adjured them to treat one another with Christian charity and took them gently through the parables and the psalms. She wished she was sitting with the Kenegie household in her usual place in Gulval Church, where she could peruse her little book…

  The preacher’s balled fist hammered on the pulpit and Cat came to herself with a start.

  ‘Fifth, he is a deformed man. A man without Christ is like a body full of sores and blotches. He is like a dark house without light and a body without a head, and such a man must be a deformed man.’

  The preacher’s voice lowered, and he gazed out at them sorrowfully, as if they were all already lost to hope. ‘Sixth, he is a most disconsolate man. Without an interest in Christ, all your comforts are but crosses, and all your mercies are but miseries.

  ‘Seventh, he is a dead man! Take away Christ from a man and you take away his life, and take away life from a man and he is a dead lump of flesh!’

  The echo of his words rang around the rafters, and one of the small children in the front row burst into noisy tears and had to be shushed by its mother. Into the small pause caused by this disturbance came a roar and a crash. The heavy wooden door at the back of the chapel rebounded off the stone wall.

  Preacher Truran glared at the latecomer. His chest swelled as if he was about to deliver a bellow of outrage at such rudeness. Then his eyes bulged in disbelief and his jaw dropped.

  One by one, the congregation turned to see who had reduced their fire and brimstone preacher to such unlikely silence. Cat craned her neck, and at that moment a gang of men burst into the church, howling like banshees. They wore long, dark robes, their heads were shaved, and they brandished curved, wicked-looking swords. Swords just like the one she had glimpsed on the table in Kenegie’s parlour; like the one discovered in the wood of the abandoned fishing boat Constance. Their skin was as dark as the gypsy woman’s, the whites of their eyes brilliant by contrast. A dozen ran down the nave, crying, ‘Allah akbar!’

  Pirates, thought Cat, barely able to breathe. Her heart hammered against her breastbone like a trapped bird’s. Turkish pirates.

  Alderman Polglaze lurched to his feet. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded of the first man down the aisle. The man laughed, showing an array of white teeth; with his greying beard and his long face, he looked like a wolf. The Alderman was used to being listened to and obeyed. He was also rather short-sighted. ‘How dare you interrupt our worship? If you want alms, you must wait outside until the service is over. Get out of here at once!’ He put out a hand as if to draw a meeting to order. The raider felled him with a casually brutal blow. A woman screamed. Mistress Polglaze was on her knees at her husband’s side, shielding him from the scything sword that would surely follow. But the raider merely reversed his blade and struck her with the hilt so that she collapsed on top of the Alderman. They lay there in a vast mound of fabric and flesh, unmoving. Their children began to scream, setting off all the other children around them. In the front row a toddler wailed hysterically, its face purpling.

  One of the raiders flourished his blade in front of it, lips drawn back from his teeth like a snarling dog. ‘Skaut!’ The child’s noise subsided abruptly to a terrified snuffle.

  More men were arriving all the time, shouting in a strange, guttural language, brandishing swords. Jim Carew, the Constable, feeling some doomed sense of duty, caught hold of a raider’s arm and tried to pry his weapon away from him. The man drew a curved dagger from the belt at his side and buried it in Carew’s neck. Blood spouted in a graceful arc, covering all those within a four-foot radius.

  As if they had been in doubt as to the nature of the intrusion until the moment death’s shadow fell over Constable Carew, there was pandemonium as the congregation panicked. ‘Lord save us!’ ‘Save our souls!’

  At the back of the church, Jack Kellynch vaulted over the pew, dragging Matty with him, and headed for the vestry door, only to be cut off by a knot of robed men. ‘Get back, infidel dog!’ one of them grunted. Jack stopped, looking from one to another as if reckoning the odds, but Matty hauled on his arm. ‘No, Jack,’ she urged. ‘Do what he says.’ When it looked as if Jack would keep coming, the first raider said something unintelligible to his fellows, then pushed Jack roughly away with a kick to the midriff so that he cannoned backwards into Matty, who in turn took down three people behind her.

  Ever more pirates were pouring through the door – twenty, forty, fifty – until it was impossible to count them. Suddenly the little church was crammed with din and the heat of bodies. Fear was tangible in the thick air. Into the midst of the chaos came a tall figure, who pushed through the knot of men at the door and made his way down the nave, kicking out his dark-blue robe with every stride, and the pirates fell back and made way for him. His skin was the colour of polished walnut, and a length of burgundy cotton had been wound around his head, the fabric falling in folds to his shoulders. He wore a silver belt and heavy silver bracelets on his dark forearms, and his scimitar was richly damascened. The man looked about him, taking in the bodies on the floor, the wailing children, the terrified women, the white-faced men. With his long straight nose and his keen black eyes he looked like a bird of prey: capable, controlled and ruthless, Cat thought, and felt a chill run through her. Her instincts were soon borne out, for the turbaned raider shouted something in his language to the pirates, and they ran to obey him, fanning out to ring the congregation. He, meanwhile, came to a halt in front of Preacher Truran. They stood eye to eye, and then the pirate laughed and in a fluid dancer’s movement leaped behind the minister, who suddenly found the damascened blade at his throat.

  ‘Keep your seats and still your tongues or I kill your imam!’ he cried in heavily accented English.

  A terrified hush fell and everyone sat down, immediately subdued like children caught at play by a fearsome tutor. The pirate chief looked them over with no small satisfaction.

  ‘You come with us,’ he enunciated clearly. ‘There will be no resistance, no fight. You come with us to our ships, and we not hurt you. You try to run or fight, we kill you. You understand? Is very simple.’

  Someone started to pray, very fast, very quietly, ‘From lightning and tempest, from plague, pestilence and famine, from battle and murder, and from sudden death, good Lord, deliver us.
’

  ‘Save us, Lord save us.’

  ‘Oh God, oh God, oh God.’

  ‘Jesus, save us.’

  ‘Is good that you pray to God,’ the pirate chief said consideringly. ‘For the soul is fragile thing and must be reinforced by prayer. But no more of this man Jesus Christ, for he is mere prophet, flesh and blood like you and me, and no use in saving souls. Now on your feet and make no struggle. Come now, quiet and good.’

  One of the pirates picked up Alderman Polglaze as if he were no more than a sack of turnips and slung him over his shoulder. Another urged a groggy Mistress Polglaze to her feet and pushed her ahead of him up the aisle.

  No one struggled; no one dared. Out into bright sunlight and the deserted streets of Penzance they stumbled, to be met by a clear view of three ships moored in the bay: a fine caravel, its furled sails brilliant against a turquoise sea, and two smaller, lighter-built vessels with strange, triangular sails. Cat blinked and stared: details leaped out at her, perverse and super-real: a seagull sideslipping through the blue sky overhead, as if the world went on as usual; Nan Tippet’s heeled red slippers clacking on the cobbles like a donkey’s hooves; Henrietta Kellynch sucking her thumb and gazing at the pirate, who pushed her brother Jordie along at swordpoint as if they were part of some elaborate charade, as if the ’obbyoss might at any moment break out of a side street with a pipe band and a colourful crowd of mummers dancing behind it and everyone would laugh. A tortoiseshell cat on the wall of the quay, which watched them incuriously and continued to wash its face with its paw, its eyes pale gold and inimical. Old Thom Ellys rubbing his mouth with a ringed hand over and over, his wife hanging on his arm asking what was happening, dear, where are they taking us, where are we going?

  Where indeed? Cat wondered. Someone pushed her hard in the back, and when she turned it was to find one of the foreign brigands glaring at her and saying something in his harsh, unintelligible tongue. She shook her head, flustered, and he pushed her again and laughed at her incomprehension, showing a wide black gap in his mouth where several teeth were missing. Somehow this was more terrifying than all the rest.

  Approaching the quay now and having espied the ships, Mayor Maddern suddenly addressed himself to the leader of the pirate band. ‘I have money, good sir. Look, I have five angels here, and half a dozen crowns, all fine gold!’ He drew a pouch from his belt and rattled it. ‘Take the money and let us go.’

  Someone whistled. It was a lot of money to be carrying. Someone else muttered about embezzling county funds, while behind him another called, ‘Is that for all of us, John Maddern; or is it just for you and your fat wife?’

  The Mayor reddened – from shame or fury – and flung himself around to confront the caller. The pirate chief barked out a laugh. He snatched the pouch from Mayor Maddern’s hand and upended it into his palm. Then he turned to his men and said something loud and fast, and they all started to laugh uproariously.

  The turbaned pirate swept the Mayor a mock-bow. ‘Thank you for your contribution, fat man: I take as first instalment.’

  ‘First instalment?’

  ‘Of your redemption, of course.’

  ‘Redemption?’

  The raider grinned. ‘There are birds at the Sultan’s palace who have just such trick. I am told they are intelligent, but I think they repeat only sound without comprehending sense.’ He paused to enjoy the Mayor’s evident discomposure, then continued smoothly, ‘The redemption of your person: your ransom. For your wife’ – he considered the large woman grasping her husband’s arm, her eyes as round as saucers – ‘she seems a well-built woman, which many men like. She should fetch good price. I suggest maybe four hundred pounds for pair of you.’

  Curiously, it seemed it was the sum that outraged Maddern rather than the concept of ransom. ‘Four hundred pounds?’ He could not help himself. ‘You must be mad. That’s a fortune!’

  ‘Less first payment of’ – the pirate scanned the coins in his hand, calculating – ‘two pounds and sixteen shillings. That will be three hundred and ninety-seven pounds and four shillings in the money of your country. Though I am happy to take Spanish reals and doubloons too.’ He paused cruelly. ‘Start thinking who pay and how, or you soon find the fat of your flesh wasting away on a galley slave’s bench!’

  Mistress Maddern began to sob; and it looked as if her husband might do the same.

  They were at the water’s edge now and still no one had appeared. If they had seen the raiders, they had shuttered up their windows and sat quiet as mice within, hardly daring to breathe. Or perhaps they were at prayer in the chapel of Raphael, or at All Saints’ at Market-Jew, oblivious to the disaster that was being played out so close at hand. They would be singing the closing psalm at Gulval now, Cat thought, Sir Arthur and his family, Rob and the rest of the household, unaware that in the bay below them lay three pirate vessels at anchor which had stolen into the haven of their wide harbour under the cover of a sea-fret and now waited to make off with sixty of their countryfolk.

  Down at the harbour wall a host of small boats bobbed cheerfully up and down on the quiet sea, blue-painted wooden skiffs that looked little different to those used by the local fishermen; and now the raiders moved among the crowd, with harsh voices dividing them into bands which each boat might bear away to the distant ships. Maybe it was now that the grim reality of the situation struck home – the idea of this being their last touch of Cornish soil – and suddenly there was a great hubbub, and Jack Kellynch and a couple of the lads were swinging away with their fists. One of the pirates cartwheeled into the harbour with a splash, his curved sword arcing through the air with the light breaking off it so bright it hurt the eyes to watch it fall. The raiders laid about them mercilessly, and this small insurrection was soon and savagely settled, leaving Thom Samuels lying groaning on the ground, his blood running crimson between the cobbles, the fingers of his severed right hand slowly unfolding from the fist he had made like a flower unfurling in the sun.

  In no time they were in the skiffs and away, too cowed by this sudden burst of violence to offer any further resistance.

  Cat allowed herself to be bundled aboard a little boat like the piece of rude merchandise she had now become. She crouched in the bow, crushed up against two crying women whose names she did not know. None of her family were in the same boat, and she found she could not bring herself to look at the two men who rowed them away from the quay. Instead she stared out past them to the place she had so long and so fervently prayed to leave. She had never seen Penzance from the sea before; had never once set foot in a boat, for all that she was Cornish born and surrounded by this gleaming, sleek ocean. It moved under the little boat like a live thing, disorienting her further. She shielded her eyes from the sun and gazed and gazed at the receding shore. Surely someone would come? Someone must at least see the great ships and wonder what they were doing here. They would have passed right by St Michael’s Mount, right past its battery and its guards, and no one had so much as raised an alarum. Of course, they had slipped by in the fog; but now the ships lay in full daylight, bold and massive and arrogant, pennants flying, men on their decks. Were the garrison also at prayer, or were they more likely sleeping off a heavy headful of ale with the Governor away for the week’s end? If its lookouts and gunners were senseless and snoring, it mattered little how many guns Sir Arthur petitioned from the Crown, Cat thought, remembering that day barely a month ago when Cornwall’s great men had gathered at Kenegie.

  Then the shadow of the tallest ship fell cold across her, and when she looked up it was to see two great flags flying high from its masts. The first was a graceful pennant bearing three crescent moons. The second was a huge dark-green banner on which an arm wielded one of the long curved swords, and beside it a skull resting on a pair of crossed bones grinned down at her.

  12

  In less than an hour they had been loaded up and stowed in the hold. Their hands were manacled in cold iron, and they were then locked, in groups o
f eight, to a succession of long bars running across the width of the hold. There was barely room to sit, let alone to lie, and it stank to highest heaven.

  The congregation of St Mary’s Chapel of Penzance were not the first captives to be taken by the pirate gang, for another fifty or more poor souls watched them herded in to share their already foul conditions: men whose eyes glowed fever-bright in the gloom, whose faces were gaunt and sunken. They watched in silence as the newcomers were shoved into their places and locked down, as blows and imprecations rained down, for they had long since learned it was wiser not to aggravate their captors.

  Once the doors to the hold banged shut above them and darkness descended, the questions started.

  ‘Which vessel have they taken you from?’ This in a thick accent not that of Penwith. ‘Must a been a big one, with all these women and children.’

  ‘Vessel? Nay, it was no vessel we was taken from. ’Twas ashore in Penzance,’ supplied a man’s voice: Cat thought it might be Jack Kellynch.

  ‘Ashore?’

  ‘Aye, they stormed the church and took us while we were at prayer.’

  There was much shock at this. ‘I never heard of such a thing. Never in my life.’

  ‘It was an easy mark on a Sunday morning.’

  The ship’s timbers groaned as the vessel got under way, and by the pitch and roll of it they could tell they were away into the sea. Then some began to weep, the shock of their situation being made worse by the realization that many others shared their fate – strong, able-bodied men from far and wide in the West Country, who had been able to do nothing to escape their captors – and that no one had attempted rescue.

  Some time later a number of their captors entered the hold. For the most part, they were small, wiry men with gleaming black eyes and heads shaved to leave only black top-knots. They spoke quickly to each other in the harsh, noisy language of their country. They wore their robes tucked up at the back between their legs and fastened at the front through their belts, and they picked their way as fastidiously as cats through the filth, distributing pans of water, dry rusks of dark bread and a handful each of small black fruits among the prisoners. No one said anything to them; they took the food and water, and waited till the men had gone again.