“Prison hulk,” stated Tan grimly.
“Prison what?”
“Decommissioned man-o’-war. The English use them as prison ships—until they conveniently sink.”
“Aye, missy. This here’s the HMS Justice. Welcome aboard,” said the man standing before them. His lips split apart into a black-toothed smile.
“And who is he?” She asked Tan but the man answered for him.
“You might say I’m the First Mate o’ this fair galley, and then,” he paused and shrugged, “you might not. But I wager you’ll call me anything at all a’fore me and the crew finish with ye.”
Tan stepped forward. “I believe I’d have words with the captain, before I box the ears of his first mate . . . mate.”
“Hear that boys? Green hand says he wants to see the captain!” The men around him erupted in laughter. “Nobody sees the captain, boy—unless I likes ’em. You ain’t been liked yet.”
Tan hit him under the chin hard enough to knock him over backward and leave him sprawled arms-out and motionless in the murky water at their feet. The rest of the crew boggled at the scene for a moment and then snarled curses and turned on Fin and Tan, their white eyes bulging.
“Here we go,” mumbled Tan.
Fin braced herself for a fight she couldn’t imagine herself winning, even with Tan’s help. There were too many of them, six at least, probably more. The close quarters didn’t make things easy. And worse, the floor was slick with mould and rot. Fin marked the nearest growling half-man and kicked him square in the groin. Beside her Tan was busy kicking off two attackers while he held another in a headlock.
“Enough!” boomed a thick French accent. The men around them scurried back into the shadows leaving Fin and Tan alone in the center of the room. Knut retreated farther into the corner, still whimpering to himself. Out of the shadow of the far side of the room came a wiry, grey-haired man with the leathery skin of an old sailor.
“Sorry, sir. We was just messing about—” said one of the half-naked dregs from the shadows.
“Shut up, dog.” The man walked slowly across the room and studied Fin with cold, wizened eyes. “Excuse my crew, cherie. Sometimes one must tolerate the depravity of such men to maintain proper control over them, oui?” He looked briefly toward the shadows, and Fin and Tan’s attackers shrunk deeper into the blackness to escape his eyes.
“You the one they call captain?” asked Tan, as he wiped the sweat from his brow.
“I am known by many names,” he said with a slight upturn of his lips. “But yes, these”—he motioned to the shadows, his hand was bereft of its thumb and last two fingers—“these call me captain.”
Though the old man had called off his dogs, Fin had the impression they were not out of danger. The man’s eyes hinted at calculation and sleeping villainy. She preferred a threat she could see clearly to subtleties of deception.
“Suppose we ought to thank you,” said Tan.
“I doubt that. You may yet find that a quick death to the dogs is preferable to the slow rot of darkness and time.” Fin glanced at Tan. He looked as nervous as she did. He too was leery of this captain’s “hospitality.”
“Where are we?” demanded Fin.
The captain smiled slightly and answered, “Your friend spoke correctly. You are a prisoner of the king.” He spat at the floor. “I am anxious, however, to hear why.” He narrowed his eyes to study Fin closer. She shivered. “This,” he motioned around at the room, “is a place reserved for only the most reviled of prisoners. I consider it a place of honor.” Again, he smiled. Fin felt the hairs on her neck stand up. “Murderers, treachers, assassins,” he rolled the words off his tongue, enjoying the taste of each one, “and worse.” From the shadows came soft laughter. The captain twitched his head in response, and the laughter quieted. “You, however, do not appear to belong here, no?” he raised an eyebrow at them. “So, as I said, I am curious. Come, tell me, why are you here?”
“We are arrested for mutiny and piracy,” answered Tan.
“Mutiny and piracy! Respectable virtues indeed, but not, I’m afraid, ones that would condemn you to this place. Therefore, either you lie or you have made powerful enemies. If you are lying, then I may kill you. If you have the right enemies, then perhaps I will not. So, come cherie, tell me, which is to be the truth.” He ignored Tan and looked coldly at Fin, awaiting her answer.
“I’m no liar,” protested Tan. The captain’s eyes flashed at the tone of Tan’s voice and he opened his mouth to speak. Fin interrupted him.
“Tan speaks the truth. We’ve mutinied and are arrested as pirates. And the English have set a bounty on my head.”
The alleged captain’s eyes cooled. “And did you wrest your ship free of a tyrant captain and set him adrift? Have you haunted the coast and quickened English hearts with your threats and preyed upon the Union Jack and run the sea red with the blood of king’s men?” Fin was baffled. “And tell me, cherie, did you kill six soldiers as they sat to dine?”
“How do you—”
“I have many ears—though not my own.” He pulled back the hair on the left side of his head. His ear was missing, only a nub of scar tissue remained. He smiled. “So the War Woman of Georgia and the flame-haired captain of the Rattlesnake are one and the same, no?”
“I’m no captain.”
“Captain or no, the tales name you so. The Flame of the West, they call you across the sea. Terror of the British trade, they say, no? I see that I was wrong. You belong here indeed!” Fin felt sickened by the inclusion. “And tell me, cherie, what was the name of the captain you so boldly relieved of his ship?” His eyes were eager now.
“Tiberius Creache.”
His mouth opened in a silent expression of pleasure. He closed his eyes and rolled his head back and croaked a breathy laugh. When he looked at her again, his eyes were bright and full of twisted joy. “My name is Armand Defain. I am at your service.”
“How can you know—” Fin tried to ask.
“My secrets are mine to keep. It is enough for you to know that I will help you if I can. Go now. Tend to your friends. I will keep the dogs at bay. Rest.”
Armand Defain slunk back into the shadows. Tan exchanged a look of hope and concern with Fin. She turned to check Topper.
“Topper found them pawing at you, and they knocked him good for putting himself in the way,” Tan explained. Hurt because of her. Fin ground her teeth and moved to check on Knut. He seemed no calmer, but he didn’t seem to be hurt. Fin tried to talk to him, to ask if he was all right, but he wouldn’t answer.
“What happened, Tan?” Fin asked as she slid to the floor and leaned back against the bulkhead. She tried not to contemplate the stench that choked the air or the content of the murky water she sat in.
“Don’t remember much myself. Seems I had a mite too much to drink. I recall they chained us and dragged us onto that ship alongside the ’Snake. Then, I reckon it was a couple hours before they off-loaded us here.”
“Can’t be far from Wilmington then,” Fin mused.
“Aye. Southport I figure, at Fort Johnston.”
“Where’s the rest of the crew?”
“They stuck most of them in cells amidships. Don’t know why we get the fancy quarters.” He chuckled.
“What about Jack?” she asked.
“Not seen him, nor the crew that was with him. If I know Jack, he smelt the trap a’fore he sprung it.” Tan raised his eyes to look at her. “Let’s hope.”
Even if Jack avoided the trap, Fin didn’t see how he could know where they were, but scant hope was better hope than none at all.
Armand Defain had disappeared back into his shadowy corner and did not attempt to speak to them again. Fin was glad he was distant. Offer of help or not, she remained wary of him. Defain said he would keep the other prisoners at bay, and certainly they feared him. Nevertheless, she trusted Defain no more than the dogs he kept.
From across the room came intermittent snickers and murmur
s from men that long captivity had made beasts of. Their eyes peered out at her from the shadows like animals in the night. She feared to turn her back or close her eyes.
When at last the clanking of chains and bolts on the other side of the door announced dinner, she breathed easier. It shifted the focus away from her, away from her friends. A guard entered and dropped a bucket and a few bowls into the water on the floor. As soon as the guard exited and closed the door, the dogs rushed from the shadows and huddled around the bucket. Defain shouted at them to move away, and they cowered back in obeisance. Then he motioned for Fin to come, and she filled bowls for herself and her companions. The bucket contained a stew of dubious brown liquid that smelled only marginally better than the room. As soon as she moved away, the half-human dogs in the shadows leapt to the bucket and began to feed. No one attempted to feed the men chained to the walls; they stared at the food bucket with hollow eyes. She tried not to think about it.
After dinner, the locks on the door rumbled again and all eyes turned toward it. The prisoners shrunk into the shadows. A tall man entered, dressed in British red and white. He studied the room, his form silhouetted against the light from the door, his face lost in shadow. Only his eyes glinted out of the blackness cloaking his face. They drifted around, picked out each prisoner in turn until they found Fin and stopped. He stepped forward into the lantern light. He had a deep scar running across his face from temple to temple, cutting through his eyes; one was blind and milky white, the other lidless and terrible. She flushed cold as ice. She’d thought this man dead, hoped this man dead. Yet here he stood like a ghost out of nightmare, his mouth twisting to a grin. When he spoke, his sharp dangerous voice brought the past rushing back to her. She heard his words as if from a great distance.
“Here we are again, lass,” he said, almost a whisper. He squinted up his cheek to blink his lidless eye. “The knife nearly killed me.” The memory flashed in her mind: the kitchen, his hands on her, the knife sliding into his chest, his body slipping to the floor. “Put a hole in my lung, they said. But I ain’t dead. Not dead at all. The Governor himself appointed me to your capture—and execution.” She deserved it. She killed those soldiers. She was a murderer. But as sure as she was of her guilt, she had no wish to submit to that end. He was grinning wildly now. He affected his unnatural blink again. Fin spat at him. He didn’t move.
“Still lively as ever. I’ll enjoy watching you kick from the end of the hangman’s rope. Not to worry, you’ve plenty of time to appreciate your new home before that. We’ll be towing the Justice down to Savannah where you’ll be put on trial before the hanging. We’ve an example to make.” He turned and slammed the door shut behind him. As the locks rumbled closed again, Tan stepped up to her.
“You want to explain that?” he asked.
She turned to answer and noticed Armand Defain lurking near the door in the shadows, looking on with narrowed eyes.
“Bartimaeus gave him that scar a long time ago.”
“Bartimaeus?”
Tan’s question made her realize how much she’d been hiding. Ever since she came aboard the Rattlesnake, she’d been hiding—hiding her gender, hiding her past, hiding her fears and worries. She started at the beginning, with her assignment to the kitchen as Bartimaeus’s helper, and told Tan everything. She told him about Peter, about the sisters, about Bartimaeus and the soldiers. She recounted his capture and her murderous flight from Ebenezer. Then finally, she told him about Creache and Bartimaeus, even about the map. When she finished, she didn’t wait for a reaction, she didn’t want approval or comfort or sympathy. She simply sat down, leaned her head back against the wall, and closed her eyes.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” said Tan.
Fin didn’t answer. She saw no way out and was too tired to consider the future.
“If we get out, we can get the ’Snake back,” said Tan.
“How? Creache could be anywhere by now. Why bother?” groaned Fin.
“Because we know where he’s going.”
“We do?” Fin looked up and raised an eyebrow at Tan.
“He’ll be headed for Ebenezer. For the gold.” Tan was right. Creache would head straight for Ebenezer, for the orphanage. He’d tear the place apart until he found what he wanted, and he wouldn’t care who got in his way. Fin stood up and walked across the room to where two eyes had been peering out at them since the soldier left.
“Armand,” she called. His face appeared in the half-light. His mouth was turned up in the slightest smile.
“We have to get out of here,” Fin stated coldly.
“So it would seem, cherie,” his eyes twinkled. “Opportunity will present itself. We must be ready. Rest.” He retreated into the shadows.
Fin opened her mouth to demand something more immediate, but before she could utter a word, his voice floated back out at her from the darkness.
“Rest.”
In the gloom of the Justice’s brig, the passage of time was marked by meals. Twice a day the locks on the door rumbled and clattered. The guard entered and left behind him a bucket of stew if they were lucky, maggoty bread if less so. Topper was positively miserable and moaned constantly about the lack of proper food. In his sleep, he smacked his lips as he feasted on the ethereal bounty of his dreams. For all Topper’s complaint though, Fin didn’t worry much for him. He had enough spare blubber around the middle to keep him running a while yet. It was Knut that she worried about. The darkness had a terrible effect on him. He was skinnier than ever, and the dark drew out deep lines and hollows in his face that made him look skeletal. His mood was dark as well; he hadn’t smiled or spoken since they were in the tavern on the night of their capture. She tried to talk to him, to cheer him, but her efforts produced no fruit. He simply shivered in the dark and stared into the shadow of the room.
“Why would they put Knut down here?” Fin said. “What’s he ever done?”
Tan didn’t have an answer.
The four of them were specifically chosen for this section of the prison ship. Tan claimed to have no idea why, but Fin suspected it was because they were her friends. She hoped their friendship wouldn’t be the death of them. If the British threw them in with the vilest of criminals simply because they were her friends, might they not also hang them with her? The soldier—she didn’t even know his name—said she was to be made an example of. She told herself they wouldn’t include her friends in that example, but something in the back of her mind assured her they would.
Water rolled across the room in waves of filth and decay, a rotting metronome marking time in the dark. No ray of sun reached their murk, and the slow wash of salt water patiently eroded away all sense of time and space. Time stretched out, became fluid, lost its form and structure. Fin could no longer discern minutes from hours, hours from days. When the meals came, they afforded a harsh point of reference that forced what felt like days into a reality that insisted only hours had passed. Here and there, now and then, as if stroked by the icy finger of insanity, a muted chuckle, groan, or cry escaped some unseen mouth in the darkness, and Fin shrank away from it into her corner. Madness grew here. It lurked behind the walls, beneath the waves, within the shadows, and in time, inevitably, within the mind.
While other prisoners still stirred and peered at her in the dark, she tried to stay awake, but the absence of light taunted her toward sleep. Her eyes closed and she snapped them open, chased the sleep away, only to find her eyes falling shut again moments later. Out of the shadows crept a man, grinning and naked, stealing closer with each fall of her sleep-heavy lids. Her weary mind ignored the creeping figure. She had only strength enough to fight away sleep, and that for little longer. The man stole closer, slow and intent, a grin of broken teeth and rotting gums spreading wide. Sleep was nearly upon her. The man stretched out a black hand, and the cold fingers closing on her throat snatched her from the descending threat of slumber. Then a thin blade opened the man’s throat. His eyes bulged with pain and surprise then
closed, and he fell lifeless into the filth of the bilge. Fin’s mind came alive and before her stood Armand Defain cleaning his knife.
“I told you I would keep my dogs away, no?” he said.
She shivered at the thought of what might have happened if Defain hadn’t kept his watch. She didn’t care to take the chance again; sleep was leagues away now.
Defain shrugged as his knife vanished into the folds of his ragged shirt.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
He squatted down in front of her. “Like you, I was put here.”
“What did you do?”
He laughed. “Many things, cherie. I endeavor to break all laws of both God and man. And in that endeavor I have met success. My sins,” he paused and his smile faltered, “are legion. I am sent here, however, for something I did not do. God, it seems, is a clever accountant.” He frowned and waved his hand in the air. “It is no matter, cherie. In the end we all get what we deserve.”
“I don’t deserve this.” She knew it was a lie.
Defain raised an eyebrow and let his judgment linger. He held up his hand in front of her and stared at the malformed flesh of his missing fingers. No trace of the thumb remained, only a waxen notch of scarred tissue. Of the ring and smallest fingers of his hand, two short nubs stood out from the knuckle like candles burned down to nothing. “My flesh was taken from me. The man that took it will have what he has earned.” He put his hand down and looked at her. His grin and laughter were gone.
“Sleep, cherie. You need fear nothing here while my vengeance burns. It has chased away madness and death for many years. It will serve you well.” He grabbed the dead man lying on the floor and dragged him away, into the shadows. His reassurance didn’t comfort Fin, but soon sleep stole upon her and she let herself be taken.
CHAPTER XXI
Five meals after they arrived on the Justice, some two and a half days, the door rumbled and the room scurried to life at the promise of food to come. The door swung in and a sloppily dressed soldier stepped into the room.
The Fiddler's Gun Page 24
