by Tim Lebbon
The bustle lasted for half an hour, during which time the captain and quartermaster appeared on the forecastle, leaning on the railing and looking out to sea.
“Those pistols primed, stranger?” the captain asked through the inevitable smile.
“Only for one man,” Gabriel said.
“Well if this is a Spanish ship, or something else worth taking, there’ll be fighting before sundown.”
“But not my fighting.”
The captain bared his teeth, hand moving to his cutlass. “If there’s fighting on this ship, it belongs to everyone, passenger or crew alike.”
“I can look after myself,” Gabriel said. “Is that good enough?”
The quartermaster nudged Parker and pointed ahead, and the captain turned away from Gabriel. If there’s a fight, I’ll be in danger from him more than anyone else, Gabriel thought. Parker’s eyes had kept shifting to his passenger’s coat, as if trying to peer inside at those fancy pistols. Perhaps it had indeed been a mistake displaying them.
Gabriel leaned against the gunwale, trying to keep out of the way. He edged slightly closer to the captain and quartermaster, just in time to hear one of them mutter, “Damn me.” They passed a spyglass back and forth, gasping more oaths as the brigantine made its way closer to the foreign sail.
Sparks had come up onto the main deck. He hissed at Gabriel, trying to gain his attention. “What is it?”
Gabriel glanced down at the clergyman, then away at the rest of the crew. They all seemed busy with their various allotted tasks—gunners, musket-men, and others arming themselves with knives, axes and pikes. Several men nursed blunderbusses, strange weapons that looked like deadly animals waiting to be woken. They were all starting to drink, and the smell of rum punch wafted across the deck. The ship’s musician was singing, sitting atop the quarterdeck and waving a bottle of rum at any man who came close. A few of the men took up the song then let it drop, only for it to be taken on by others, giving the impression that the song was a living thing, moving around the ship as it observed their preparations for battle.
“Hoi, up there! What’s up?”
Gabriel leaned over the forecastle railing. “If you value your skin, get back below,” he said.
“But what’s all the excitement?”
“You told me this was a pirate ship, yes?”
“I said there were pirates on here, I never thought . . . I mean, it’s a trader. Isn’t it?”
“They trade in death,” Gabriel said. He found himself unreasonably pleased at the grave look on Sparks’s face. “Clergyman . . . I think you’re wanted.”
Several men approached Sparks, one of them with his cloth cap in hand, another nursing his musket on the stump of his left arm. Sparks backed up against the forecastle and Gabriel grinned down at the top of his head. “Time to find your calling,” he said.
“Can you bless us, chaplain?” one of the men said.
“Give us a prayer?” another asked, grinning to show his two remaining teeth.
“Please do, chaplain,” a third man begged, dropping to one knee and setting his musket aside. “Jus’ for the fight to come, and the sufferin’ after.”
Gabriel understood then that these men were serious. At first he had assumed that they were mocking Sparks, spending a few minutes before a fight having some fun with one of their captain’s unfortunate passengers. But when several more sailors joined them, Gabriel realised that God was present even aboard a pirate ship.
Sparks began reciting a prayer, and Gabriel walked away. He had no time for this foolery. He had a firm belief in God, and an even firmer conviction that He was as evil as anything Gabriel had ever encountered. As evil, perhaps, as Temple. Not only had God permitted the murder of his wife and two children, He had also guided Gabriel back to the village to see their corpses, and then allowed him to find his own curse in the forest clearing. That man, with the snake in his eye. The sigils on those ancient trees, so old and yet still so potent. Those three words: Feed your hate.
No, Gabriel had no time for God.
“Amen,” said Sparks, and “Amen,” said the pirates.
“What are you seeing?” Gabriel asked Captain Parker. He and the quartermaster spun around to face him, but Gabriel could already see past them to the ship in the distance. There was something wrong about the way it rode the ocean’s swells.
“It’s dead in the water,” said the captain.
“Maybe they’ve seen this ship for what it is.”
The captain handed Gabriel the spyglass. “You bloody dog, look for yourself!”
Gabriel looked. When the captain had said “dead in the water,” that’s just what he meant. The ship was rolling and dipping with the swell because its sails had been blasted to shreds. The masts and yardarms still stood, and they were adorned with what must have been the bulk of the crew. From this distance it was difficult to make out exactly how they had been tied up, but Gabriel could see for sure that at least some of them were still moving. Not hanged from the neck, then. The wrists maybe, or the legs, or beneath the armpits. Strung out like meat to cure, ready to catch the breeze and the sun, scorching to death or suffocating as the ropes tightened with their struggles.
Gabriel handed the spyglass back to the captain.
“Like what you see, stranger?”
“I’ve done worse,” Gabriel said, and he turned away.
“There’s a dead boat ahead!” the captain shouted at his back, and the crew stopped what they were doing to listen. Gabriel hurried down to the main deck.
“What is it?” Sparks whispered.
Gabriel shook his head. “I told you to go below.”
“We’ll board her,” Captain Parker continued, “though it looks like someone’s already had at her. At least there’ll be no trouble from the crew, and there may still be plunder. Volunteers to board first?”
“Aye!” a big man shouted, hefting a pike in each hand.
“Good man, Perry!” The captain laughed. He drew his cutlass and stuck it in the forecastle railing. “Now then, where’s that damned rum punch!”
The crew cheered and carried on drinking. The singing grew in volume and coarseness, a scuffle broke out as the alcohol fused their minds, the quartermaster broke the fight and gave each man a cut for their troubles. Gabriel grabbed Sparks by the arm and led him back belowdecks.
“I want to wait up there to see!” Sparks said.
“It’s a dead ship we’re sailing toward,” Gabriel said. “Now, Sparks, I don’t much care for your faith, and I care less for you. But if those men see a chaplain slaughtered by whoever may be on that ship, it could affect their fight. And more than anything I need to reach Port Royal in one piece.”
“You’re a vicious bastard, for sure,” Sparks said. “How has God offended—?”
“Don’t talk to me of God!” They were back in their cramped cabin now, listening to the laughter and shouting from above them. Gabriel turned away from the preacher, drew his pistols and went about loading them—priming, powder, wadding, shot. He rammed each barrel hard, cursing as he did so. “Damn! Damn!”
“You don’t look afraid,” Sparks said.
Gabriel glared at the clergyman. He was tall, thin, proud-looking, and his grim demeanour did little to hide the creases of frequent smiles. On the surface he appeared frightened, but in his eyes there was a look of rebellion, and confidence. Whatever he was running away from—if what the captain said was even true—had done little to quell this man’s personality. “I’m not afraid,” Gabriel said. “And if you had even the smallest idea about me, you’d know why.” He loaded his second pistol, made sure he carried a full cartridge pouch, then clicked back the dogheads on both weapons. He slipped them carefully into the holsters across his chest and stood to check the knives on his belt.
“You don’t like me very much, do you?” Sparks said.
“I don’t like anyone.”
“Man of few words. You haven’t even told me your name.”
/> Gabriel smiled. “You’d never believe me.”
Sparks smiled back at him, perhaps nervous, or perhaps recognising a similar wandering soul. “I’m still going up on deck, whatever you say.”
“Well, I’d have to shoot you to stop you, and I won’t do that,” Gabriel said. “But it’s not going to be pretty.”
“Had you the smallest idea about me,” Sparks said, “you’d realise why that doesn’t bother me.”
Gabriel led the way back up on deck.
It took another hour for the brigantine to come within range of the other ship. It seemed to be a merchantman, a wide, tall crumster with three masts and what appeared to be decoy gun slots carved into its hull. It exuded danger, and even though the pirate crew were drunk and raring to go, there was still a growing sense of unease among them. It was hardly surprising. This close in, they could hear the moans of dying men.
Gabriel and Sparks remained on the quarterdeck, leaving the main deck free for the pirates. From their slightly elevated position they had a perfect view of the ship, and the dreadful display hanging from its yards. There must have been almost forty men suspended by ropes from the timber bracings. Some were obviously dead—throats slit, stomachs hacked open, guts hanging out—while others squirmed and moaned. All of those hanging upside down were dead, their swollen faces black. Every one of them was covered with blood, not always their own; those above dripped blood and piss onto their comrades hanging below.
There were maybe ten men still alive.
“When you board, cut them down!” the captain yelled. “If any of them can talk, we’ll learn whether they’re still carrying anything worthwhile.”
Behind his bravado, even Captain Parker sounded afraid. Gabriel heard this, and saw the look of fear buried beneath the crews’ brash exterior. They were shouting and yelling, waving their cutlasses and pikes, and yet their eyes spoke volumes.
They’ve never seen anything like this, Gabriel thought. Nothing so cruel. I’ve seen plenty . . . and every time, Temple was to blame. Temple, or me.
“Give them one across the bows,” the captain yelled. One of the deck guns loosed a volley, skidding back and gouging the oaken boards as ropes slipped their moorings. The shot splashed way beyond the crumster. There was no response; no return of fire, no shouts, no hands held up in surrender.
“Hoist the flag!” A huge black flag unfurled on the brigantine’s mainmast, bearing the outline of a skeleton holding a cutlass. “Now we’ll see,” the captain said. His crew hollered in response, and Perry readied the first boarding rope.
Ten minutes later they drew alongside the crumster. Perry threw his rope and scampered over, standing low on the deck and drawing his cutlass in his right hand, pistol in his left. He moved across the deck, edging around splashes of blood and other fluids, and disappeared into the quarterdeck.
He was gone for several minutes. The pirate crew remained quiet, the gunners ready at the cannon, muskets aimed and cocked, swivel guns loaded with shot and ready to cut down anyone that appeared before them. Apart from the constant creaking of ship timbers and the rattle of rigging, the only sounds were the cries and moans of the hanging men.
“Demon!” a voice shouted. “Demon!”
Was that Perry? Gabriel fell to his knees and drew his pistols, his heart racing, body tensing with the possible confrontation to come. His wounds were not aching any more than they had been the day before, but that did not mean that Temple was not here, now, on this ship of the dead and dying. The rules of his pursuit of Temple—a chase that had taken him across the globe and back again many times—were anything but firm.
The shout came again, and a red shape waved high in the crumster’s rigging. It was one of the hanging men. His arms had been raised at right angles to his body by the rope beneath his armpits, and his bare chest was bloodied from where it had burrowed into his pinched flesh. “A demon . . . a monster . . . !”
A murmur rose in the pirate crew and they shuffled their feet, eager to do something other than stand and wait.
Perry emerged from the quarterdeck and raised his arms. “There’s nothing,” he said, “only more blood and guts.” Even beneath his deep tan he looked pale.
“Watch for him!” the hanging man shouted.
“Shut it, yer dog!” a pirate yelled.
“Please, don’t bring me down, not if he’s still here, not if that demon is still—”
“Somebody quieten him,” the captain said. Several muskets barked at once, silencing the man’s screams. Fresh blood pattered down on Perry as he walked to the crumster’s gunwale, but he seemed unconcerned.
“Really,” he said, “there’s nothing. No weapons, no food, nothing worth taking at all. No one alive, back there at least. Just . . . them.” He nodded up at the hanging men.
“Let’s have six more of you to help search the rest of the ship,” the quartermaster said. “And remember, choice of first plunder goes to Perry.”
“If there was anything left . . .” Perry muttered, turning and walking toward the forecastle of the big boat. The pirates threw more ropes and pulled the vessels together, and six more of them went across and began searching for anything worth taking. Three of them climbed the masts with ropes over their shoulders, eased their way along the yardarms and readied the surviving crew to be lowered. One of the pirates tied a bad knot, and the man he was trying to save plummeted thirty feet to the deck.
“Careful with them!” the quartermaster roared. “They may have information! Lose another one, and you lose your share!” The three pirates were more cautious with the other survivors, noosing them around the waist before cutting their bindings and lowering them. There were six men let down. The rest were dead, or so close to death that they would have been no use.
Gabriel moved down to the main deck of the pirate ship, glanced over at the captain, made for the gunwale. He shouldered past two fearsomely armed pirates, and one of them growled rum breath at him.
“Let him over,” Captain Parker said. “He seeks information, not booty.”
Gabriel leaped the space between the two ships, grasped hold of the crumster’s railing and hauled himself aboard.
The deck was awash with blood and shit, guts and piss. Flies rose and fell in dark waves, and brazen rats darted among the pirates’ feet to get at the recently fallen man. Gabriel kicked out at them but they were too fast.
“They’ve had their fill,” Perry said as he passed by. “There’s plenty more dead in the forecastle.”
Gabriel glanced that way—the dark door, the stench he could almost see drifting from that confined space—and wished he’d brought more guns.
Surely he can’t still be here? Gabriel thought. But what if this had actually been Temple’s boat? It was obviously not a Navy ship, but what if the rumours had been slightly wrong? Temple could have been a passenger aboard this crumster, and maybe the crew had discovered him for what he was. After that, murder would have been his first defence. And after the slaughter he would have hidden himself away, waiting . . . waiting for the next boat to arrive.
Gabriel knelt by one of the dying men, put his hand beneath his head and lifted. He opened his water flask with his teeth and poured a little of the precious liquid onto the man’s cracked lips.
The sailor gasped, coughed, spat water and blood. His throat was swollen with thirst, his tongue fat like a bloated dead fish. The skin of his face had sloughed off from the sunburn, and his eyes were milky white.
“Can you talk?” Gabriel whispered. “Can you hear me?”
The man coughed again, but his head moved slightly.
“Is he still on board? The one that did this?”
A shake of the head? Or perhaps only a shiver?
“Is the demon still here?”
“What demon?” Perry roared. He stood above Gabriel and the wounded man, blocking out the sun and hefting a pike.
“I’m just asking about what that one said,” Gabriel said, nodding up at the man the pirates
had recently shot.
“Tem . . . Temple . . .” the man muttered.
Gabriel froze. He knew the demon’s name!
Perry knelt, his knees popping, swords gathered on his belt scraping the deck. “I’ll hear nothing of demons,” he said, and he pressed the pike down into the dying man’s eye.
Gabriel fell back onto his rump, closing his eyes against the spurt of blood.
“What’s up over there?” Captain Parker called. “Perry? Did he tell you anything?”
“Nothing worth a spit,” Perry said, glaring at Gabriel. He stood at the crumster’s gunwale. “Captain, there’s nothing here but death, and the whole damned boat’s giving me the shivers. We should leave and burn her into the sea.”
“Just ask the others,” the quartermaster said.
Gabriel watched Perry go to the other few survivors, whisper briefly to them and then slit their throats. Rats gathered in shadows, awaiting their fill.
The pirates and Gabriel went back aboard the brigantine. Perry burst a barrel of gunpowder across the dead ship’s deck before leaving, and then the crew reeled in the boarding ropes and hoisted sail. They pushed away from the crumster, and when they were at a safe distance lit torches and lobbed them at the doomed ship. Several landed on deck before the gunpowder caught with a whoosh.
Gabriel stood on the quarterdeck and watched the ship catch fire as they sailed away. The flames crawled up the masts and along the yards, feasting on rope and wood and tattered canvas alike. The smoke turned from billowing white to greasy black as flesh began to cook, and he saw dozens of tiny splashes as rats leaped overboard. It took only a few minutes for the fire to find its way belowdecks, and a hidden gunpowder barrel ignited. The explosion tore a hole in the side of the ship, and the rush of air fed the fire even more. Such destruction and death, thought Gabriel. Such sadism. At least I know for sure that Temple came this way.
“So do you know any more about your man now?” the captain asked. It seemed he had a habit of creeping up on people.
“No,” Gabriel said.
“Perry’s talking of a demon.”
