to the Far Blue Mountains (1976)

by L'amour, Louis - Sackett's 02

  "It may be the last time, Henry. I am for Raleigh's land, across the sea."

  Henry turned and looked. "Well. I shall be sorry to see the last of you, Pim, but you're a good man, too good to be strung up at Tyburn, and that's where you'll end if you stay on here."

  Henry went to the kitchen and emerged with a large meat pie which he served with a quick stroke of his cleaver. "It is cold," he said, "but good. There's some lentils, too, and a bit of pudding. You have the look of travel behind you, and you'd best eat whilst you can."

  He put his hands on his hips. "I'd be about it quick, too, if I were you, for there's two or three of the locals who come in, and they're curious."

  He turned away. "I've ale or beer, but if you want it there's milk and buttermilk. We be country folk here, and there's milk in plenty."

  "Milk," I said, "by all means. There's always beer."

  He looked at Pim. "Get your man in here. I'd like you to be off before the locals come."

  When Pim disappeared through the door to the stable, the innkeeper walked back and planted his big fists on the table, one of them still clutching the cleaver.

  "He's a good man, Pim," he told me. "I've known him twenty year. Strong ... a fierce fighter at the fairs and such like, always in trouble but nothing bad.

  There's not an evil bone in him. He's my wife's brother, and I love him like he was my own, but I fear for him. Is it you he'd be going with to America?"

  "Likely," I said. "I've a ship coming."

  He looked at me again, for after a few rough nights of travel in rain and wind I looked like no man who would have a ship.

  "As you see," I said quietly, "all has not gone well. Pim is not the only one with troubles, but the ship awaits and I've been over the sea before."

  "You're not from about here. Your voice has a twang to it."

  "I'd say the same of yours."

  He did not speak his doubt but I could see it plain enough. It mattered little.

  He was not anxious to know, nor I to tell.

  We ate then, and we ate well. When scarcely an hour had passed, we were gone.

  We rode on, avoiding traveled roads, avoiding inns. At last we rode into a lovely village in a hollow of the downs, a place called Rockboume.

  There we took rooms for the night. We brushed and cleaned our clothes.

  Pim sat on the floor near the window, watching me. "Something worries you, Barnabas."

  "Aye."

  "Do you know a place called Durdle Door?"

  "Aye."

  "At daylight then."

  We had come far, but not fast, for we had skirted around villages and towns instead of riding through.

  Where would our ship be? Had it been seized by Her Majesty? That well might be.

  I walked to the window and looked down onto the cobbled street.

  "Tom?" I said.

  Something in my tone drew him, and he stepped near, looking onto the street where I looked.

  A man in cloak and boots stood across the street. A stocky man, well set-up. And as I looked down, he looked up, and we saw each other plain. He lifted a hand to me, and started across the cobbled street toward the door.

  I had seen him before!

  Chapter 5

  It needed no guessing to know this was indeed the man. The air of assurance, the stride in his walk-all carried an air of purpose.

  "What will we do?" Tom asked.

  "If he wishes to talk, then talk I will."

  "Be careful," Tom advised.

  "We shall want a small boat," I said to Pim, "a boat with a sail and with some speed."

  Pim looked up at me, his feet against the wall. "To go where?"

  "To sea, perhaps," I said. "If we must, we will buy it. If you find what we need, return here, but keep a sharp eye out, for there may be trouble brewing."

  I went downstairs.

  The man waited in the common room with two flagons of ale, one left standing on the table for me. My flagon, if I sat where it was, left my back to the door.

  Taking up the flagon I moved it to where I could sit and see the door.

  He smiled, with genuine appreciation. "Good! I like a cautious man." He leaned forward. "Now Barnabas Sackett, let us talk."

  "Talk, then. I shall enjoy the ale, the quiet of this room, and the view of the river yonder."

  "You are in a delicate position, Barnabas."

  He proceeded to present the Queen's case against me. I listened patiently, hearing him out. I was wondering what he wanted. When he had finished, I told him of the leather bag, and the contents therein.

  The man smiled. "And the other coins?"

  "What others?"

  He smiled, but he was not amused. "Do not take me for a fool! I took you for a shrewd young man, but yours is the story of a fool."

  "Nevertheless, a true one."

  "No more of this!" He slapped a hand upon the table. "You have found the treasure. The Queen wants it. England owns it." He paused. "Others want it, too.

  If you are caught, the Queen will have it from you, have no doubt of that. You will get Newgate or Tyburn for your trouble."

  "And-?"

  "There are others. Such a treasure could give a man wealth, and such wealth is power. If you deal with those others, you could get something ... enough to make you rich. Also, you could be given a chance in some other country."

  "Who are you?" I asked suddenly.

  He passed only a moment, then looked up at me, for his eyes had been on the backs of his hands. "I am Robert Malmayne."

  I knew the name.

  For a moment all was cold within me, for he was a man known, yet unknown, a man of secret power, a man who moved in the shadows of men close to the Queen, yet it was whispered that he was a Jesuit. It was also whispered he was a secret agent of the Queen herself, that he was the right hand of the Pope. Such stories were common, a fabric of gossip and lies and rumor. Yet one fact remained. He had power.

  "You will deliver the treasure to me," he said, his voice as cold as ice. "And you will have a share. Otherwise, I shall destroy you-like that!" He snapped his fingers. "You think you have a ship, but my men are aboard her, and in command.

  We know you were to join her in Falmouth, so undoubtedly the treasure is there, waiting."

  Falmouth? I had said nothing of Falmouth, nor had it entered my plans. My intent was to join her across the bay from where we now were, off Portland Bill.

  Somebody aboard, Tempany, perhaps, or Jeremy Ring-possibly even Abigail-had let Malmayne's men believe Falmouth was the place, and an obvious one it was, too.

  Abigail, perhaps, but why? She believed I could do anything, never reckoning with impossibilities or the limits of strength.

  But what could we do against Malmayne's men? I knew neither how many there were, nor how armed or how cunning.

  "One thing you can be sure of, Malmayne. The treasure is not in Falmouth now."

  Well, that was honest enough. So far as I knew, it was still at the bottom of the Wash, no doubt beyond the reach of men. Certainly, I did not lie.

  "Why should I believe you?" Malmayne persisted.

  Let Malmayne believe what he wished. What I needed was a chance to escape.

  I stood up. "Malmayne," I said, "let it be Falmouth then. You say you have my ship. You say I have the treasure. A little of something is better than nothing at all, so let it be Falmouth."

  "Where is the treasure?"

  I smiled contemptuously, and hoped I did it well. "Do you think I will tell you that? And then be dropped off a cliff with my throat slit? Falmouth it is, or nowhere, and you or your men come about me and all will be thrown to the winds."

  He did not like it. Or me.

  He stared at me, drumming his fingers on the table. "Betray me," he said at last, "and you will die ... when I choose to let you die."

  I took up my flagon, finished my ale, and went back upstairs.

  He was looking after me, smiling.

  Closing the door of my
room behind me, I called for Black Tom and Pim. They had disappeared.

  I thought swiftly.

  What must be done must be done quickly. I looked out the window, searching for some sight of Tom or Pim. There were many people about, fishermen, sailors, tradesmen, but I saw nothing of Tom and Pim.

  I was turning from the window when suldenly my attention was caught by a girl tugging a two-wheeled cart, piled with bags which looked like laundry. She had stopped around the comer from the street and close under my window, and she was punching the bags into some kind of shape. As I looked down, she suddenly looked up. "Jump," she said, just loud enough for me to hear. Clutching my scabbard, I stepped to the sill, glanced left and right, then jumped. I landed easily, rolled over, and was immediately covered by a bag of laundry.

  "Lie quiet now, or you'll cost me a crown."

  Taking up the shafts of the cart, she began to tug it along the street, walking easily along, then turning.

  I smelled the river.

  She lifted one sack and looked down at me. "Ah, but you're a handsome lad! Glad it is I've saved you, although I wish you could stay about a bit. There's a boat casting loose. It has one brown sail and is called The Scamp. You'd best get aboard and go below. No need to thank me, your friend Pim did that. What a lad he is, to be sure! And a crown with it. Well, a girl can't have every day like this or she'd get no washing done at all!"

  She lifted the sack. I swiftly rolled over the edge of the cart and to my feet.

  The boat was there. In a few quick strides I was aboard.

  I saw Pim forward, and saw him cast off, heard the complaint of a block as a sail was hoisted.

  Below my eyes grew accustomed to darkness and I saw Black Tom. All three of us were safe-at least for the moment.

  Black Tom Watkins looked at me, then mopped his brow. "Cold, I was! Cold, with the fear of death in me. Thank God, you came. Was it the lass?"

  "Aye." I told them of Robert Malmayne. "It is nip and tuck for all concerned now, since Robert Malmayne thinks I have the royal treasure."

  "You mean there's trouble still?"

  "It's only begun, Tom. Malmayne and his men will try to follow. But we've a ship to take, an ocean to sail, and a new land to make our own!"

  "You've an appetite," he said grimly. "I hope your teeth are big enough!"

  "They'll be," I said, and felt the bow dip and the spray splatter my face, run down my cheeks. I touched my tongue to my lips. We were at sea again.

  Chapter 6

  The waters of Lulworth Cove were quiet. Only a few fishing boats were about.

  Looking back toward the shore, I saw no unusual activity, no evidence that what had happened aboard had attracted attention.

  Pim saw me looking at the hills and gestured at one. "There's a stone forest yon. Trees, or something very like them, buried long ago and turned to stone."

  We slid easily through the opening and into the longer swells of the sea. This was a wide bay, and yon lay the Bill of Portland.

  The Durdle Door was out of sight now, and only the high cliffs were visible. The sea was picking up. I glanced at the sky.

  Tom Watkins nodded grimly. "Aye, she's coming on to blow, Barnabas, and a bad thing it will be for us. An ill wind, to be sure."

  I took the tiller from him and he went forward with Pim.

  The salt taste on my lips was good, and I liked the wind on my face. The place toward which we went would be no easy place to find, and a dangerous one with cliffs and rocks close aboard. Yet it had to be.

  How long our wait would be I could not know, but we must wait, and watch, and hope that the ship would not pass us by in the night and storm. Chesil Beach lay off to the west of us, a curving, shelving beach of gravel and sand, of pebbles rolled up by the sea; and no more dangerous stretch lay along the coasts of England than that innocent-seeming shore.

  Good ships had been lost there, and not a few of them either. Good ships, and good men aboard them, their bodies washed up and left by the sea. After every storm a man could find old coins, old timbers, all manner of odds and ends back to the time before the Romans. Who knew what lay under that water? What yet undiscovered treasure?

  Again I looked toward the shore, misted over now with the thickening air. That was England, the land of my birth, my home. Even now I was a wanted man there, but that was circumstance and no fault of the land nor the people. I was sailing away, but I would love her always, and wherever I went a bit of her would be with me.

  To disbelieve is easy; to scoff is simple; to have faith is harder. Yet I had faith in the intentions of my countrymen, no matter how far they might at times stray from those intentions.

  At last we moved in toward the Bill, rounded in, and among scattered rocks we found our way, and then a dark opening, darker now. Carefully, I eased the tiller, and the boat slid through the portals into a vast cavern, literally a cathedral of stone. From far above came a faint glimmer of light. There were holes, I had heard, from sheep pastures atop Portland Island that looked into the cavern, and the holes had been ringed with rocks to prevent unwary sheep from falling through.

  Pim Burke looked around, awe-struck. "How did you know of this place?" Staring around, he asked, "Is there another way out?"

  "Nobody knows," I told him. "Two passages lead off from here. One winds back for a ways, to a gravel beach at the end. My father was there once, and found a Roman sword laying. He left it lay."

  Outside, rain began to fall. Our boat rocked quietly upon the water, feeling only the gentle swell, an afterthought of the waves outside. Even the sea sounds were muted here in this vast, domed cavern, and we heard only the lap of water, the murmur of our own voices. Yet we could see from the cavern mouth, and could watch for ships.

  Would she come? Had they received my message? Were they free to come, or had they been taken and imprisoned, too?

  A slow hour passed, and I knew it was but the beginning, for we might wait many hours, even days.

  Slowly the hours drew by. We took turns sleeping, yet kept a watch from the cavern mouth where we could not be seen. Visibility was poor, and we would not have much time.

  Waves broke against the rocks, snarled and sucked their teeth against the black rocks. While the others slept I watched and held my sword and thought of what lay before me.

  I dozed, awakened, dozed again, yet was awake again at last to watch the sea darken. Dipping both oars into the water I rowed the boat through the wide entrance into open water. Waves broke furiously over sharp-toothed rocks nearby.

  One huge pinnacle, already worn and ravaged by the sea, stood a grim and silent sentinel against the wind.

  Black Tom sat up, then moved to shake out the sail. He glanced at me and grinned. "God ha' pity on the poor sailors on such a night as this!"

  Pim Burke sat up. "They'll see us from the cliffs yon," he warned.

  "Aye, if they're out and standing in the rain, they'll see us, but he would be a fool indeed who had a warm fire on his hearth to be standing on the black cliffs looking upon the sea. A fool or a poet, I'm thinking!"

  "Or a wife with a husband still out," Pim Burke added. "My ma has watched from such a cliff, and many a time, for sons and husband ... and watched in vain, more times than not."

  "England's given enough of her blood to the sea," Tom Watkins said, "time and again. Since men first walked her shores, they have gone down to the sea and left their hearts there, and their bones on the bottom."

  Talking had become hard with the wind upon us, and blown spray and spume in the air, so we desisted from speech and I clung to the tiller, meeting the heavy seas as well I could. She was a good craft that and, bad as the seas now were, no doubt the boat had known worse. Yet as our bows were splattered with foam, I could not think of the dead men's skulls below, and wonder if we three might add ours to the lot.

  All the night long we fought the sea, and there was no sail against the sky, not even a bare pole. So with dawn we put about and ran in for the cove, and it was a b
itter thing we did to make that cavern mouth at all, but make it we did, riding the crest of a big one that took us safely over the last rocks and left us there, just inside the mouth.

  No longer was the water calm within the cavern, for the storm outside brought great, rolling seas within, swells black and shining that rose until we feared our mast would shatter against the roof. But of course it was not so high at all, just in our fears.

  It was no good place to be, even so. Yet such is man that soon we became used to our lot. I broke out some biscuit and passed it about, and as we lay there upon the rise and fall of the swells and the booming of the sea within, we chewed our biscuit and wished for an end to the storm.

  At last the wind changed, the swells became less, and once more we could see out across the stormy sea. The wind howled like all the banshees in Ireland, but no ship showed herself upon the sea. The long day through we watched, and when the night came weariness lay heavy upon us, and occasionally through the broken clouds the moon shone down.

  Next day, again we fought the sea and schooled our boat to take the waves, and a gallant craft she was. And then, with the dawn breaking clear, we saw her bare poles black against the rising sun, rolled and tossed and smashed about, and I knew her for what she was, the ship we were waiting for.

  "There'll be a line overside," I said.

  They watched as we drew nearer and nearer, our two courses becoming one. She was down to just enough canvas to hold her nose into the wind, and I glimpsed at least two men on the deck as we closed in.

  "It's her or Newgate," I said. "And if we miss, at least we'll lie clean upon the sea's bottom."

  "Aye!" Pim balanced to the roll and rubbed his palms down his shirt to dry them for a clean grip. "Take us to her, man."

  The ship came alongside as our courses became one, and a line was tossed to us.

  We took it sharply and bent it quickly to make fast; and then a ladder was over and I glimpsed the face of Sakim-my friend the Moor.

  We made fast the painter that would tow the boat after we were aboard, and Pim took the ladder by its side and went up like a monkey and over the rail.

  "Tom?" I knew he could not hear in the wind and the creaking and groaning, but my gesture spoke.