The War of Knives

by Broos Campbell

  A little way out into the bay I boated the oars and helped Cahoon get the Englishman aboard. I thought the spirit had left him, until he said, “Do you not tread on my leg, Mr. Graves. It’s all I can do not to scream.”

  Cahoon shot out of the water so suddenly I thought he would upset us. “Forgi’e us, Mr. Graves,” he croaked, “but ’tis himself the leviathan below. I saw his shadow about me feet, and himself rubbin’ against me.”

  Its dorsal fin broke water as he spoke. It was a leviathan in truth. I watched it as it rolled alongside, working its maw. I stuck it in the eye with my sword, and it shot away in a flurry of foam.

  “You’re a braver man than I am, Sergeant.” I took up the oars and began pulling for the lights out on the bay. “I don’t guess I could’ve held back, was I in the water with that.”

  I shouldn’t have said it—he being an enlisted man, and a soldier to boot—but it was worth it to see the grin on his face.

  “An’ troth be told,” said he, his eyes as big as eggs, “had I known the beast to be so huge as that, I’d a shrieked like a babbie.”

  Fifteen

  “Sorry about the deck, sir.”

  “No harm done, Mr. Graves.” Command had made Peter Wickett complacent about dirty decks. That was my department now, not his. “Holystones and water will make it pure as a maiden in white flannel. Your clothes, however, were a lost cause.”

  He’d made us shuck our duds in the boat. Even in the rain, the Rattle-Snakes had smelled us coming, just about. After reluctantly allowing us aboard they had subjected Cahoon and me to jets from the pump and made us scrub down with hard yellow soap and rough towels, while the bosun’s crew had snaked Treadwell aboard on a carrying board. Surgeon Quilty packed him off to the sick berth, clucking all the way.

  Now that I was decked out in a soft white shirt and nankeen trousers and carrying a pound of fried salt pork (quite against Quilty’s orders), a mess of greens, and a couple of pints of hot sweet Navy coffee in my belly, liberally laced with rye whiskey from my father’s own distillery, I felt as good as I could ever remember. I drew on the cigar Peter had given me and kicked off my slippers under the table.

  “I guess Captain Block will be glad to have his sergeant of Marines back,” I said. “How is he, anyway?”

  Peter cocked an eye. “Block? To serve with, you mean? He is as lax with me as he is with his midshipmen. No order there: the midshipmen’s berth is a veritable monkey’s den, if monkeys can be said to live in dens. But that he is amiable and not afraid of a fight, I doubt not. I have heard him called the ‘fighting Quaker’ when he is out of earshot. He has taken several prizes, so his people like him. And I almost persuaded him to let me send a party ashore when I saw your signal.”

  “So you saw it, then! Much good it did, though, and Mr. Treadwell’s shoes still dangling at the end of it.”

  He smiled, but there was little joy in it. The skin was stretched taut over the sharp bones of his face. “It did me good to see it, Matty. When Mr. Connor came back aboard, he told us you had been captured. I feared the worst.”

  I almost bit through my cigar. “Connor’s aboard?”

  “Nay, not he. He has ensconced himself in the Croatoan. Much more suitable for a gentleman, I believe he said. More room. More servants.”

  “But he’s not ashore.”

  “I just told you he is not. We plucked him off Cap Maréchaux a week ago.”

  “He’s a bad ’un, Peter. He aims to raise a slave rebellion back home.”

  He had been lounging with his feet on his desk, but he sat up at that. “Have you proof of this?”

  “No, sir, I ain’t. All I know is what Franklin told me. And him I can’t figure out. He’s all the time lying, and then he turns around and points out his own lies.” I rubbed my head. My thoughts were all muddled up. “Connor or Franklin is a traitor, only I can’t tell which yet.” I told him what Franklin had said and how Connor had gone through my things at the farmhouse.

  “But you only have Franklin’s word that it was Connor,” Peter said. “Assuming anyone else was there at all.”

  I thought back. “Now you mention it, Franklin didn’t say it was Connor. He let me think it, but all’s he said was the man’s face was covered. And you’d think he’d recognize him anyway, mask or no mask. Assuming someone else was there at all, as you say. I never saw anyone going through my things but him.”

  “But why should he choose that afternoon to do it? Surely he could have chosen a time when he could be reasonably sure he wouldn’t be caught.”

  “Maybe something forced his hand—like that Connor was getting set to go to the citadel, and maybe he wouldn’t have another chance. Maybe it just hadn’t occurred to him before, I dunno. But here’s the strange thing: Franklin and MacGuffin had the run of the place at Jacmel. They had furniture, and MacGuffin even had his sword.”

  “MacGuffin?”

  “A weird white man, dresses all in black. I figure him for a Knight of the White Hand, only he don’t entirely act like it. Him and Franklin have some sort of partnership, apparently—an alliance of convenience, MacGuffin called it. Strictly jury-rigged, but it seemed to be holding up for the moment.”

  “Perhaps Pétion allowed this MacGuffin to keep his sword. It happens from time to time.”

  “For what, gentlemanly acknowledgement of a gallant action? He ain’t a soldier nor a sea officer. And Toussaint and Pétion wouldn’t neither one of ’em acknowledge gallantry if it kicked ’em in the ass. They got too much at stake. No, MacGuffin and Franklin got something going with someone. My guess is, it’s Pétion.”

  “Pétion has no idea when he’ll be able to leave Jacmel, so he can’t be much help to them,” said Peter. “Perhaps they’ve merely combined forces until they can escape. If this MacGuffin is one of these Knights of the White Hand, why else should he abide Franklin? I have nothing against Negroes, yet I cannot stand him.”

  I tried to remember their conversation at the hole in the wall. “Connor stranded them there. Whether he meant to shuck ’em or just hoofed it in a hurry, I don’t know. But MacGuffin was pretty put out about it.” I thought some more. “I hate to think well of Franklin, but Juge thinks he’s sound.”

  “Who?”

  “A black officer I was mates with. He was captured with me. He’s in good with Toussaint and is a prime fellow. He covered our retreat. And Pétion does have an idea when he’ll be leaving Jacmel. He aims to break out on the eleventh. If Captain Block was to give the citadel a good pasting from the sea . . .”

  He ran his hands across his face.

  “You look a mite peaked, Peter, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  “Peaked? I am weary as I have never been. It is that young MacElroy. His death rests heavy on me.”

  “Who?”

  He blinked. “Young Mr. MacElroy, who got his head shot off.”

  “I’d forgotten about him.” I had a sudden vision of wiping his brains off my face with my sleeve. I didn’t want to remember him. “Softness ain’t a good quality in a fighting man, Peter.”

  Some of the old coldness came back to him. “Neither is indifference to death, Mr. Graves. For shame, to forget a dead shipmate so quickly.”

  “If you’d seen what I seen in the past two weeks, Captain Wickett, you wouldn’t care about one frightened little boy. I have seen so much slaughter and viciousness that I don’t care if I never fight again.” The bitterness of my tone surprised me.

  “That does not sound like you, Matty. I have never known you not to care about a shipmate, nor to shy from a fight.”

  “Never say I’m shy, Peter,” I said in a low voice. If there was an implied threat in my tone, I didn’t care. “There was a man in the boat we took. I slit his throat without a thought. I must’ve tossed him overboard after, because he wasn’t in the boat when we got here, but I don’t remember it at all. No, I ain’t shy of a fight, Peter. It’s what I’m good at, and I’ll keep on doing it as long as I’m able.”
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br />   The silence hung heavy between us. He reached for the sherry on the sideboard. “We could both of us use a dram.” His hands shook as he poured.

  The sherry was weak stuff. I wanted more whiskey. I wanted to get drunk. I thought of Billy with a hole in his chest and decided I’d better not get drunk. I pushed the glass away, but not so far away that I couldn’t get at it again. “What is it about MacElroy that bothers you so much, anyway?” says I. “You seen boys and middies killed before. A cannon ball don’t care who it hits.”

  “I have yet to write his parents.”

  “You know the drill.” I drank off the rest of my wine. It was perhaps a mistake on top of the greasy food and the whiskey, but after a moment I felt the warmth spreading through my veins and guessed it would stay down. “‘A gallant young man who fell defending free goods and sailors’ rights. Promising officer, behaved in exemplary fashion, didn’t flinch when Johnny Crappo peppered us with grape shot.’ That kind of thing.”

  “I find your flippancy offensive, sir,” he said.

  “So do I, sir. My apologies.”

  “Very well, then.”

  “Honest, Peter, I’m sorry. I liked MacElroy. What’s happened to me that I could talk about him so?”

  “This isn’t about you. And what you said is true, and it’s what I shall do. Consider yourself forgiven, if it makes you feel any better.”

  “I’m also sorry to say I lost your epaulet.”

  He dismissed it with a wave. “A gift not given freely is not a gift. It was no longer mine, and an epaulet can be replaced, in any case. It is only cloth and metal.”

  “And my watch.”

  “What?” He laughed at that. It wasn’t much of a laugh, but it took some of the grayness out of his face. “Lost your watch again? Villon was hanged for stealing that watch. You really must be more careful.”

  “It’s too dang gaudy to stay hidden for long. It’ll turn up, I guess.”

  We discussed the merits of different watchmakers for a while, and where the best shops were in Port Républicain and Le Cap for getting new uniforms and epaulets, before turning our heads to business.

  “Now,” said Peter, “Although I could not persuade Captain Block to send a party ashore to look for you, I have almost got him to do something about Toussaint’s dearth of artillery. I think a good smashing from an unexpected quarter, was it coordinated with an assault by Toussaint’s forces, might be enough to drive Pétion out from cover.”

  “I’m right there with you. And, like I said before, I have good reason to believe that Pétion intends to attempt a breakout late in the evening of the eleventh.” I told him about Dr. Pepin and showed him his cryptic note. It was plenty waterlogged but still readable.

  “Ah, the eleventh,” said Peter. “The full moon.”

  “Near as I know, he figures on shoving off when it’s at its fullest and highest. He don’t want his men blundering around in the woods, bonking their heads on tree trunks. He aims to get as many of ’em as he can to Petite Goâve and join up with the rest of Rigaud’s army.”

  “Then Toussaint will have the same problem as here, without the chance of our guns to help him out.”

  “Depends on how many survive the breakout, sir, if I may. The blacks know every road and trail thereabouts by now, and I bet it’ll be more of a turkey shoot than a running fight. But as for our end of it, Pétion has no guns facing the bay.” I reached for a pencil. “Here, I’ll draw you a map. Bear in mind I got no idea of the ground under the bay, except that everyone I asked said it was deep right up to the shore. Which I can say that it ain’t, at least right hard by the prison. But that’s not where you want to hit, anyway. And it’s dead calm under the cliffs, so we’ll want our sweeps handy—if I may offer the advice,” I added hurriedly as the birthmark on his forehead darkened. “And Block may have to kedge off before the night is through.”

  “I am far ahead of you, Matty. I sent Mr. Rogers out in the longboat to sound the anchorage, it being a perfect night to do it unobserved. I expect him back shortly.”

  “Then will you excuse me to go check on Mr. Treadwell in the meanwhile? He’s a sort of shipmate, I guess, and he’s in a bad way.”

  But I didn’t go down to the sick berth. Treadwell would be either tearfully contrite or obstinately ungrateful, and I couldn’t have stood either. I sat in my bunk with Billy’s old longhair cat, Greybar, on my lap instead, staring at the deck and thinking about something Peter had said. Connor had told him that I’d been captured. But since he’d gone to see Pétion right before the assault, I didn’t see how he could’ve known that. Unless Pétion had told him—in which case, why hadn’t he vouched for me and taken us with him when he made his rendezvous?

  After a while I got tired of staring at the deck. So I took out MacGuffin’s steel-hilted sword and looked at it instead. Now that I had it under a lamp I could see exactly what I thought I would see. It bore the same death’s-head pommel and bizarre Latin engravings as the one we had taken from Connor’s would-be assassin in Port Républicain. I didn’t know who MacGuffin was, but I knew what he was.

  “A little island in a sea of uncertainty,” I said to Greybar. He sniffed at the sword and touched it with his paw, but when he tried to lick the blade I put it away.

  “Mr. Connor, thee says?” said Block, the fighting Quaker, shaking my hand the next morning in the great cabin of the Croatoan. He was a handsome if plumpish cove, about forty, with grizzled hair that was thin aloft and tied at the nape with the usual black bow. Unlike most Quakers he was clean-shaven, and he addressed us by title instead of “friend.” He introduced me to Williamson, his first lieutenant, who looked up from the bottle of Madeira he was opening and said, “Good on you for escaping, Mr. Graves.” Block waved Peter and me into chairs and continued, “No, Connor went ashore again. Invaluable man for keeping in touch with the Negroes. Toussaint dotes on him, to hear him tell it. Hey, pipe down out there!”

  This last was directed through the door leading onto the maindeck, where a crowd of mids jousted on piggyback with mops for lances and buckets for helmets. They just laughed until the bosun chased them into the rigging, where they scampered around like monkeys and jibbered among themselves.

  “With your permission, sir,” I said, near about dragging the words out of my mouth, “I ought to go ashore again. Dessalines had a spy in the citadel who slipped me a note. They found him out, and I feel sort of obliged to see it delivered.” Matty Graves, messenger boy, that was me. I showed him Pepin’s note. “It tells when Pétion intends to break out.”

  “Assuming he does, and assuming it happens when thee says it will.” He looked at the note upside-down and right side up, and turned it over, and looked at the front of it again. “Why’d he draw it? Why didn’t he just write it?”

  “Dessalines can’t read.”

  He shook his head. “An illiterate with thousands of souls in his hands. Yet thus it was with kings of old.” He gave me back the note. “But I think thee will have to explain it to him, even so, if Captain Wickett can spare thee.”

  “I’ve grown accustomed to his absence, sir,” said Peter. “Also, it might be well to land a pair of your twelve-pounders on the west side of the river to provide enfilading fire, if I may say so.” He went to Block’s chart table and spread out the map I had sketched. Block and Williamson looked over his shoulder while I tried to peep between their elbows. “On this hill here, sir. It has a gentle slope, but I have measured its height—trigonometry is a wonderful thing, is it not?— and I am persuaded a heavy battery there will make things hot for the mulattoes at little danger to the guns or their crews. Toussaint usually keeps a regiment of hussars at the foot of it as a screen for his forces on that side of the river, which itself provides a hindrance that even cavalry would be loath to essay under fire. If the hussars fight as well as I have heard, we should fear no sorties from the citadel.”

  “Draw up plans for moving the guns and select the crews, Bill, if thee will,” said Bl
ock to Williamson, who excused himself and departed. Block rubbed his hands together. “Oh, what a caper this will be. No chance of a prize, but I took plenty of powder out of our last one, and it’s burning a hole in my pocket.” He grinned. “So to speak. Thee shall have thy twelve-pounders, Captain Wickett, and Mr. Williamson will see to their landing. And thee, Mr. Graves, being already ashore as thee will be, may send up a pair of lights when the breakout commences. Now then, was there anything else?”

  “Yes, sir. I believe your third lieutenant is a friend of mine. Mr. Towson.”

  “Towson!” He shook his head. “He’ll never rise any higher without he don’t knuckle down and learn his navigation, but he’s a regular terror as a gunnery officer. I think Captain Wickett and I can spare thee a few minutes for an old shipmate.” He glanced at the watch bill tacked to the bulkhead. “Thee’ll find him in his cabin. See does he have his nose in a book, hey?”

  Dick Towson did have his nose in a book, strictly speaking, but he couldn’t be said to be studying of it. What he was doing was lolling in his cot with his legs dangling over the sides, keeping tempo with one fist in the air as he sang verses of “Ben Dover was a bully mate, and the captain’s favorite, he.” He sang it kind of muffled on account of the unblemished copy of The Practical Navigator that lay across his face.

  “Here, you,” I growled, snatching the book away. “Ye’d give your Auntie Griselda the quivering fantods was she to hear you singing such things.”

  He bolted upright. “Oh! Ha ha, you gave me a start! I’ll say you did. I thought you was Mr. Williamson here to lambaste me for a buffoon again.” He put his bare feet on the deck and yawned. “I’m to carry the Navigator with me wherever I go till I have learned it stem to stern. Then I’m to carry a sextant night and day till I get the hang of that as well.”

  He didn’t look near as glum as he might have. I said, “Leading you a dog’s life, is he?”