by Steve Goble
“Well then, let us see if the cat can persuade anyone on this ship to render unto me what is mine.”
Barlow whipped the lashes against Smith’s back. Every man aboard blinked at the lightning snaps of the cords against flesh. Red welts appeared and bled, but Smith clenched his jaws and said nothing.
“Tell me, Smith. Where is my precious booty?”
Smith made no sound, but his lips were drawn back from his yellow teeth. He closed his eyes tightly, and Spider knew the man was trying, and failing, to erect a mental wall against the pain.
Barlow cracked the cat against Smith’s shoulders, opening a row of new cuts. Smith cried out in pain as bright red blood ran down his dark back.
Before Smith’s first cry died out, Barlow landed his third and fourth blows. Blood streamed now.
Spider heard a soft rumble among the men. Barlow heard it, too. The captain tossed the cat into the air and yanked a pistol from his belt. “Think, lads. Think hard.”
If anyone had been thinking of mutiny at that moment, the prospect of a lead ball through the brain stayed his hand.
“Are ye so stupid, lads?” Barlow raged now, his bellowing voice drowning out Smith’s heavy gasps of pain. “Are ye not going to fetch up the goddamned thing that might make us all rich?”
Barlow swirled, his eyes blazing.
No one answered.
“Well, then,” Barlow said. “More needless death.”
Barlow leveled his pistol and fired. Spider watched in horror as Hob spun and fell, his left shoulder torn in a red ribbon.
“Goddamn!” Spider ran forward and drove his shoulder into the captain’s gut even as Barlow tugged free his second gun. The smell of gunpowder filled Spider’s head. Prudence be damned now, Spider thought. He drove Barlow back into the bulkhead and tugged his work knife from his belt. He ripped the dirk upward, intending to stab Barlow in the balls, but the captain whacked Spider’s skull with the handle of his cane and sent Spider reeling backward with a shove.
“Fairies! Ants! Shit lickers!” The captain’s eyes blazed madly. He got to his feet quickly, squared for battle.
Spider hit the deck and rolled hard. He heard the thunder of Barlow’s second gun, but no ball ripped through him. Instead, it burrowed into the deck in a rain of splinters. Spider rolled onto to his feet, ready to fend off a lunge if necessary, but there was no need.
Spider’s reaction had lit a very short fuse.
Other crewmen swarmed Barlow, who fended them off with demonic fury. The captain kicked Weatherall in the stomach and whipped his long sword free from its housing in the cane, cursing and laughing as though killing was the only joy he had ever known.
“I will kill every damned one! Every damned one!” He sliced at Weatherall, who parried with his bandaged left arm and earned himself a new red cut. Then Barlow stabbed a man through the stomach.
“Fucking fairies! Little fucking fairies!”
Barlow spun, opened a man’s throat with his blade, and produced a third pistol from behind him, from beneath his shirt. He shoved the barrel into a man’s crotch and fired, spitting on the bastard as he fell. “Come then, fairies! There’s just me! Just me!”
Spider could not comprehend how a man who had poured liquor down his throat all night could fight with such fury, or bellow so while those combatting him breathed in ragged gulps. Men tried to close in on Barlow, but he held them at bay with great sweeps of his razor-sharp sword. Spider wished to hell he had a gun.
Dowd. He had guns. Spider whirled about and spotted the big black man on the poop deck, commanding the high ground and holding a flintlock pistol in each hand. He held the weapons at the ready, but did not take aim and fire. Spider wondered whether Dowd was still trying to decide which side he would take, or was merely holding his pistols at the ready in case the crew’s violence turned his way. It didn’t really matter, Spider supposed, as there was no way he would be able to get to Dowd and grab his guns. The man was too alert and too far away.
Weatherall tried to tackle Barlow low and instead took a savage kick to the jaw. Peg used the opportunity to leap high and kick the captain in the face with his oak leg. It was a vicious, well-placed blow, and for a moment Spider thought the battle might be ended.
It wasn’t.
Barlow reeled backward, spitting teeth and blood, his torrent of cursing silenced for the moment. He whipped his sword back and readied a wicked swipe. Peg, who had landed in a crouch, did not see the blow coming. Spider knew Peg would never evade it.
Spider threw his dirk, and even as it spun toward Barlow’s throat, he could hear Ezra admonishing him: “Never throw away your blade, fool! Always, always, always keep it in your hand!”
It had long been Ezra’s contention that Spider relied too damn much on his ability to throw a knife. Spider had countered many a time by throwing his knife into one ridiculous target or another, and had collected many a handful of coins from his friend. No matter how many times Ezra lost that bet, he insisted it was foolish for Spider to launch the knife in a fight with his life on the line. “Someday, you’ll throw that knife away and suddenly wish you hadn’t,” Ezra would say.
Spider missed Ezra very much in that moment.
This time, the knife spun in a clean whirl and plunged into Barlow’s throat. The captain stared, wide eyes seeing eternity ready to engulf him, and Spider could swear the man was trying to curse.
Mingled spit and blood oozed from the corners of Barlow’s mouth, running into his beard and flowing with the rain down onto his shirt. The captain slumped, fell onto his ass, and died.
Peg grabbed his work knife and stabbed Barlow’s chest. Weatherall stepped back and sat, exhausted. Others crowded the captain, attacking and screaming, venting their long-pent fury at last. But they stood back when Spider approached and watched as he pulled his dirk out of the dead captain’s throat. Once Spider turned and walked away, they started cutting Barlow to pieces.
“Ha! He ain’t Ed Teach.” Odin pointed at the captain’s corpse, tossed his dirk into the air, and laughed when it thunked into the deck.
Spider slumped to his knees, thanked God he still lived, and pulled Em’s pendant to his lips. Then he looked toward the spot where Hob had fallen.
Doctor Boddings was there, waving his arms anxiously in an attempt to draw help. “The boy lives,” Boddings croaked, “and will live yet if you fools will stop killing a dead man!”
Spider crawled to Hob’s side, and Weatherall joined him. Others ignored the surgeon’s pleas and continued abusing and dismembering the captain’s corpse. Some had brought forth axes from tool chests. Others searched the dead men, presumably for the mystery item.
The physician, a small case open on the deck beside him, held a ragged shirt hard against Hob’s wounded shoulder, and Spider gasped at all the dark red blood seeping into it. “And cut that man down, for God’s sake,” Doctor Boddings said, pointing quickly at Smith. “He’ll need a look, too.”
“Jesus,” Spider said quietly. Smith was slumped, his legs limp, and would have been lying on the deck if not for the bonds holding his wrists to the shrouds. The man sobbed quietly as deckhands cut at the ropes binding him.
A pair of crewmen set Smith down on his stomach, next to Hob. Boddings eyed the crimson gashes. “He hurts, bad, but he will live. Get him to the surgery, lower him down gently, and wash down his back with fresh water—fresh and clean, mind you! And get him drunk, damn you.”
The men lugging Smith took him away, and Boddings went back to work on Hob.
“Jesus,” Spider muttered again at the sight of the crimson rows etching Smith’s back.
“Aye, we shall need his divine assistance,” Doctor Boddings said. “But trust in me, too, Spider John. I may be naught but a middling ship’s cook, but I am a fine surgeon for all that.”
Spider caught a heavy scent of rum from Boddings’s breath and silently prayed that a drunken surgeon was better than no surgeon at all. He knew there was nothing he could do himself
to keep Hob alive. The boy’s face looked like wet clay.
“We won’t be able to get him to the surgery,” Boddings said, referring to the common area between the officers’ bunks that served as a place for meals until Plymouth Dream went into action. “I need a tarp, or sail, or something to keep this damned rain off me while I work! Do it now!”
Tarps were rolled tight against the rail. Spider leapt to cut one loose, and noted Loon had come closer in the interim. He wondered if Addison would bring new mayhem to Dream when he surmised what had happened. He cast a glance toward the forecastle and suspected May would now become Addison’s prize.
Spider gave Dowd a sharp look. “Addison heard the gunshots, and he’s coming. Don’t know if that’s good or bad.”
“Back sails,” Dowd bellowed. “Let him come to us.” He seemed relieved to see men move to put his orders into action and lowered the guns he had been holding at chest height.
Spider took the tarp to the doctor, and Weatherall, Peg, and a couple of others helped him stretch it over Hob.
“Good lads,” Boddings said. “That is good; that is good.”
Spider held his portion of the tarp with shaking hands and looked down at the bleeding boy. “Hold on, lad, I beg you.”
Boddings noted Weatherall’s wounded arm, where the sliced bandage was soaked with a crimson ribbon. The torn bandage revealed a nasty gash through the top of a tattoo. “I dare say that will have to keep for a moment while I tend to the boy.”
“I will be fine,” Weatherall said. “I have suffered worse.”
“Perhaps,” Doctor Boddings answered. “Try to halt the bleeding on your own, if you can, and do it now. Fetch someone to spell you here, but for God’s sake come to me later. That is a poor job of wrapping you did the first time, and God knows what the new gash might have done to whatever you had under that bandage to begin with. You’ve a medical man aboard, for God’s sake! Avail yourself of my services.”
“Aye,” Weatherall said. He walked away, and another man took his post at the tarp.
A chorus of cheers went up into the cloudy sky, and Spider looked over his shoulder to see Barlow’s corpse being hoisted over the rail. It was his torso, at least. A head and an arm soon followed, streaming red drops behind them. More loud cheers went up.
“Good goddamned sight to see,” Spider muttered. “May he rot in hell.”
“No doubt he will,” Boddings said as he dug a ball out of Hob’s shoulder. The boy, unconscious, did not notice. “No doubt he will. And he shall eventually see many familiar faces there,” the doctor added, taking a quick glance about. “Many familiar faces, I dare say.”
Then the surgeon glanced at the spot where Barlow’s corpse had vanished over the rail. “And I will stew your bloody chickens this night, you son of a whore!”
19
By the time Addison had climbed the ladder to stand upon Plymouth Dream’s deck, the fever of violence and mutiny had cooled a bit. The men had seen many bloody deeds in their lives, but this was different. This time, they’d turned on one of their own. They had mutinied. A few of them wore ashen guilt on their faces, despite the depraved nature of Barlow’s command.
Spider felt no guilt. Barlow was entirely at fault. If Spider had not set a match to the powder, something else certainly would have before long. In trying to control his men through murder and fear, Captain Barlow had created the beast that consumed him.
Boddings had patched Hob’s wound and moved the boy to the surgery. They’d installed Hob in Barlow’s bunk, on the very sound logic that Barlow would never again need it. Smith had Dowd’s bunk, for now. Boddings seemed to think Smith would be back to duty in no time; fortunately, he’d taken only a few swipes from the horrid cat-o’-nine-tails. “Best he not sit below and dwell on it,” the doctor had said. “Many times, getting right back to work and showing the men that you are none the worse for the flogging is as good a medicine as any. His dignity needs as much attention as his skin, I dare say.”
From the hatch above, Spider had watched the surgeon work until Boddings, exasperated, had chased him away. Now Spider stood among the gathered men and wondered what the hell this cursed voyage would bring next. He remembered that Hob had tried to tell him something and wondered whether the boy would live long enough to divulge whatever he knew. Spider cursed himself for sending the boy away, even though he’d done it to protect Hob.
Hob had been shot anyway, and Spider wondered for a moment if God was mocking him.
Then he thought about the son he had in Nantucket and felt guilty because he was worrying about failing a boy he barely knew, instead of being with the boy he’d fathered. His eyes stung, and he blinked against tears.
Somewhere in the midst of all that, the rain stopped.
Addison spoke quietly with Dowd, then grinned greedily. Plymouth Dream’s men drew close around him, save for those up in the trees working the sails. Addison removed his wide-brimmed hat and stared upward where the clouds had finally begun to dissipate and make way for bright sun. He rubbed his bald pate, pointed at a rainbow, and said, “I suppose it would be too much presumption on my part to take that as a sign that the good Lord will never let such bloodshed foul our decks again, aye?” He laughed.
“As it stands, gents, you are now a lot of mutineers.” Addison clasped his hands behind his back. “I dare say, however, that the only soul who might be in favor of prosecuting said murderous crime is, alas, drifting below in the briny deep, feeding sharks, perhaps. Eh? Or nose-to-nose with the dread kraken, hey, Odin? You said you saw that damned beast once, didn’t you? Heh.”
“Saw it with Blackbeard. He killed it,” Odin said. “Ha!”
Addison ignored Odin. He lowered his eyes, mustered his thoughts, then spoke again.
“Gather, lads, and heed m’words,” he said. “I know what happened here, and I dare say I do not cast blame upon a soul of you. I do not. Barlow had his ways, and they was hard ways, and men can only endure such travails as that for a limited time. He was angry, and pushed you too hard, and you pushed back. So be it.”
Spider held his breath, waiting for someone to point out that he had opened the battle against Barlow, and that he had finished it with a knife in the man’s throat. The men, however, remained silent.
Addison continued, hat in hand, smiling all the while. “Ye all signed our articles, and ye all know that circumstances such as the present convey to me the mantle of command. Agreed? Is there any among you thinks we should have ourselves a little caucus and vote on the matter?”
No one spoke up.
“Is there anyone else aboard what knows how to navigate a ship? No? I thought not.”
A few murmurs moved through the hands on deck.
“Very well then, lads,” Captain Addison continued, taking them all in with his steady blue eyes. “I value your confidence in me, I truly do. So, let us examine our predicament—shall we?—and determine what course might be best so that our enterprises might turn to success.”
The man paced, and the sunlight glinted off his sweaty forehead. “Somewhere upon this vessel, there is hidden a device of great value to several of the political powers. It must be aboard, for surely anyone who knew its value enough to risk stealing it would be too bloody goddamned smart to heave it overboard, fear for his life though he may. No, the bold rascal who stole it from beneath our departed cap’n’s nose would not toss it away after a mere threat. So it is here, on this ship, and unless one of the newly deceased stole it and hid it away, one of you knows where it is. Tell me, lads, did you have the sense to search the carcasses of those who fell in battle before you heaved them into the sea?”
“Aye,” Weatherall said.
“Even the cap’n?”
“Aye,” Weatherall repeated. “There was some . . . urgency in getting rid of him, but, um, he took a sword up his backside, and there was no object there to, um, obstruct . . .”
“Enough,” Addison said. “I saw he went overboard in chunks.”
Some men laughed, others cursed.
“Aye, blast him,” Addison said, “and I do not believe Captain Barlow knew where the precious commodity was hidden, and surely he did not have it on him. No, no, no. So then, did any of the others have it shoved up their bums, or tucked into their girlie girdles?”
“No,” Weatherall said. “We searched thoroughly.”
“Of course you did.” Addison nodded. “Greedy bastards that you are, and an item of immense worth hidden somewhere aboard, I have no doubt you searched most thoroughly, indeed. Well then, not having found it, and doubting some fool tossed it overboard, we must conclude it is on this ship. Correct?”
A chorus of ayes went up. The men seemed uncertain of Addison, but they were obviously relieved that he had not come aboard in a rage. Still, they kept their eyes on the guns tucked into his belt.
“Well then, we find ourselves at an interesting juncture, do we not, lads? One or more of you know where the commodity is, but I alone know where the buyer is going to meet us and when he will be there. The Frenchman. You’ve all heard the whispered rumors, I know. I have eyes and ears. I alone know who he is, and where he is. Hell, lads, not even Barlow could have sold the bloody thing without me.”
Addison grinned wildly, letting his words sink in. “Do you understand? Do you, gents? You may have the precious cargo, but you cannot profit from it without me. I promise you that. You may kill me if you please, throw my bloody carcass to join Barlow’s, but you will not profit from it. That item is desired by people far more powerful than any of us. People who command fleets, and armies, and networks of spies. Show up anywhere in the world trying to sell it, and you will draw down upon yourselves a relentless and deadly attention. You’ll have your throats slit, your skulls bashed, your bellies filled with musket balls, and you won’t have a single shiny bit of remuneration for your troubles. You have not the slightest idea of how to walk among such people without getting yourself killed. You don’t.
“Whereas I have the weather gauge on this touchy situation, for I do not have to risk m’neck shopping this little jewel around. I already know a gentleman, whom I’ve done many an enterprise with in past adventures, and I know damned well he will pay handsomely for our prize. Trust me, I know my trade, lads. I am more than a pirate, more than a man to fetch whatever William Barlow wanted. I am the key, the connection. The Frenchman awaits us now with chests of pure, shiny gold in exchange for that tiny device, that damned valuable trinket.”
