Dark Mondays Page 21

  But he kept his face bland, resolving to play a deep game and watch Blackstone. He was mild as a May morn greeting him, and gave no sign he’d the least suspicion of anything amiss. Blackstone went readily with him, and on the way they collected the Reverend and Bob Plum, and all that afternoon until dark hauled powderkegs down from the fortress to the camp.

  And John did his best not to drop off asleep by the fire, where he’d cannily positioned himself near Blackstone as night fell. All the same, he opened his eyes with a start to find the stars had sunk far west, and the fire gone down to red embers without his knowing anything about it. All around him, men lay snoring something prodigious.

  John sat up, grimacing to feel how the cold dew had soaked through his clothes, and in his ear his mother told him he’d catch his death of cold. He looked over at where Tom Blackstone had lain; but the man was gone. So John turned his head this way and that, peering through the night. It seemed to him he heard a murmuring, away out in the dark. It wasn’t the surf, and it wasn’t the ape-bellowing of wakeful drunks. It sounded like someone talking quiet on purpose.

  It was coming from the direction of the village church. That was where most of the prisoners had been shut up. John could see the light of a fire still kept blazing before its door, for sober men stood guard there. Round by the back, though, a figure crouched at a little window. Its back was to John.

  John got to his feet and walked close, soft-footed as he was able, drawing his pistol as he went. He got to within ten paces and heard for certain the soft hiss of Spanish being spoken, and knew for certain the speaker there in the dark was Tom Blackstone.

  He could move quiet when he was young, could John, and so he did now, and came up behind Blackstone and set his pistol to the back of Blackstone’s neck and cocked it. Blackstone fell silent a moment; then he said something in Spanish cool as you please, maybe, “Pardon me, sir, I must be going,” and he stood up slow.

  “If you blow my brains out, you’ll never know what I was doing,” he said. “I believe our Admiral might be rather vexed with you on that account. Whereas, if you’ll allow me to make a full confession, you can take it to the Admiral. Glory for John, eh?”

  Which shows that he was a shrewd judge of character. John felt his face grow hot for shame, to be so easily read. He grabbed Tom’s shoulder and marched him away a few yards, never lifting the pistol.

  “Where are we bound?” said Blackstone, as easy as though they were chatting over two pints.

  The truth of it was, having caught Tom Blackstone, John couldn’t think what to do with him next, short of marching him all the way to Morgan’s tent and waking up the Admiral.

  “Just you shut your damned mouth,” he said.

  “I thought you wanted to hear my confession,” said Blackstone. “See here, my back is like to break after all that crouching by the window. Would you make any objection to my sitting down whilst we have our chat?”

  “Sit, then,” said John, and as Blackstone sat John sidled around quick to face him, keeping the pistol-muzzle close the whole while. Cautious, he hunkered himself down. There they sat, in the middle of someone’s weedy vegetable patch, under the winking stars.

  “I am in the employ of a certain gentleman,” said Blackstone composedly, “and you should know that he is a loyal subject of King Charles Stuart, God save him, and of no mean birth himself besides. Some years ago, this good gentleman lost his beloved brother at sea.

  “A twelvemonth since, my gentleman received a message from persons unknown, bearing the news that his dear brother was alive, but a captive here in the West Indies. Certain tokens were enclosed with the letter, as proof thereof.

  “The sum of his ransom was named. The unknown correspondent stated further that circumstances called for the greatest secrecy in effecting the release. Should he wish to pursue the matter further, therefore, my gentleman was informed that he must send an emissary of a certain shoe size to Port Royal. This person must bring with him four thousand pounds in gold.

  “Once in Port Royal, he must look for a man wearing boots of a particular curious design, with red noughts and crosses worked into the leather.”

  “Oh, bugger,” said John, as the truth began to glimmer through.

  “Bugger indeed. Had the emissary been able to find the man in question, he was to have approached him and given a certain password, on the pronouncement of which the other party would collect the ransom money and exchange boots with him. The boots were purported to contain information as to the whereabouts of His Royal Highness’ brother.”

  “Oh.”

  “I am that emissary, sir,” said Blackstone. “I arrived in Port Royal, only to see the very boots I sought on the legs of some ruffian lounging at the rail of the departing Mayflower. By the time I had arranged passage to follow the Mayflower to Blewfield’s, she had departed for Tortuga. I coursed thence and so tracked you down.”

  “Well, but,” stammered John, “I told you what happened. And you got the bit of paper, didn’t you?”

  “For all the good it did me,” said Blackstone. “The paper instructs me to proceed to Chagres with another payment of four thousand pounds. I begin to suspect His Royal Highness is being played for a fool.”

  “His Royal Highness?”

  “No less. I suppose you’ve never heard of Prince Rupert, Duke of Cumberland; he hardly frequents the same bawdy-houses you would.”

  “ ’Course I’ve heard of him, hasn’t everybody?” said John. “The king’s own kinsman who turned pirate. And he lost his brother in a storm, didn’t he? Is that the one you’re after?”

  “Prince Maurice,” said Blackstone. He turned his head to look at the east, which was glimmering pale. “Learning that this island has been used as a sort of oubliette by the Spanish, I thought it prudent to enquire amongst its inhabitants as to whether there had ever been a prince in residence.”

  “Was that what you were doing?” John lowered the pistol. “There ain’t no princes here, that’s certain.”

  “But there were, apparently,” said Blackstone. Against the dying night, his profile looked sharp and grim. “I am informed there was an English prisoner of high rank but lately here, held in great secrecy; a year since he was removed, to Chagres as they believe, but do not know.”

  “By hell, that’s bad luck,” said John. “And here’s me crossing your hawse time and again. What’ll you do now?”

  “Proceed to Chagres, what d’you think?” said Blackstone.

  * * *

  Had John been an older and wiser man, he’d never have believed such a tale, or trusted a man like Blackstone; so it was just as well all this happened when he was young. He scrambled to his feet, and helped Blackstone up with a hearty apology, and went off to build up a fire and see what might be had for breakfast.

  * * *

  Morgan kept his men busy, now, as he sat in council with the captains. There were the island’s stores to be raided, and the fortifications to be pulled down, the big guns spiked and thrown into the sea. Most of this was done by the prisoners, working under armed guard, but they didn’t seem to mind it much. Most of them were overjoyed at the thought of getting off Old Providence and back to the mainland, and a few even went over to Morgan’s side and joined as fighters. Morgan left standing only the fort, which he garrisoned, and the church; hedging his bets, maybe.

  The decision was to go for Chagres next; small wonder too. Given the choice between hacking their way overland across mountains to Panama, or going by boat on the river Chagres, all parties present agreed that the river route was the thing. There was only the matter of a bloody big castle guarding the river’s mouth on the Caribbean side, that would have to be got past before the Brethren could proceed any further. And there was no sneaking past this one under cover of night; it would have to be taken, or Morgan would have the enemy at his back all the way up the river, and a gauntlet to run again on his return.

  So John and his messmates got ready.

  After a
few days Pettibone returned from the Satisfaction, with the news that the girl seemed to be mute, but that the old lady had recovered her wits enough to make a passable serving-woman. John longed to row out and see her, but Pettibone told him the Admiral kept her under lock and key.

  “And no wonder, in a fleet of brigands and cutthroats,” he said.

  “Of which you’re one, ain’t you?” said John.

  Pettibone looked indignant. “Only in the service of his king,” said Bob Plum.

  “She’s an admiral’s plaything, you great oaf,” said Blackstone to John, as he set an edge on his cutlass, running the stone carefully along the blade. “How should the likes of you compass such a dainty?”

  “And you’re mistaken too,” said Pettibone. “I’ll have you know our Admiral has treated her as any true gentleman would treat a lady in distress!”

  “Praise God,” said the Reverend.

  “Bollocks,” said Tom Blackstone. The Reverend drew on him and he blocked, whereat both Bob Plum and Pettibone screamed, and it took three choruses of “The Little White Lamb” to get the Reverend to calm down, and both Jago and Jacques to get his blade out of his hand.

  “I merely meant,” said Blackstone, when things were calmer, “that our Admiral locks up the rum, and being a wise man, locks up the women too.”

  “And he no fool,” said Jago. “There is no camaraderie with the ladies present. Scheming like Eve, like Delilah, leading the boys to cut each other throats.”

  “Be that as it may,” said Pettibone, “he is sending her back to Jamaica, dispatching a cutter and a trustworthy crew. She is to be put into the care of his own dear wife; so a fig for your lewd thoughts.”

  “That is a patient wife!” said Blackstone.

  John thought his messmates all a sour and unromantic lot, and he didn’t much like the way Blackstone could read what he was thinking in his face. He resolved to keep his own counsel on the girl henceforth.

  * * *

  Morgan sent three ships to go clear the way at Chagres. There were some quiet groans when it was announced that Bradley would command. There was no arguing, though; away they went, and Bradley’s luck was with them almost from the first, as they ran into southeasterly gales. For a week the Mayflower and her consorts fought their way toward the Main. Her timbers worked so in the crossing seas that she leaked no end, and the pumps were manned watch and watch.

  So one evening Captain Bradley sent John down to the powder magazine, to feel if all was dry there. Feel, because he couldn’t see; Morgan had given strictest orders (as you might imagine) about what would happen to any fool caught groping around near powderkegs with a light.

  It was all John could do to find the lock, clinging to the cage-door in the dark. He got it open at last and stepped through, groping forward. There—waist height, there were stacked kegs. He turned his head in the darkness. He could smell rats, and bilge, and mold, and all manner of filth; he could hear the groaning of the ship’s timbers, and the muffled shrieking and knocking that was rats fighting somewhere. But did he hear water trickling? He couldn’t tell.

  He crouched down and felt around his feet. It seemed dry enough. He stood, and reached out until he encountered something: more stacked kegs. How far back? Three rows? Four? What about the bulkhead beyond them, was that dry?

  That was when John put his hand down on another hand. He sucked in breath for a great yell; with the breath came a scent he knew. The hand twisted and took hold of his own, and it was a little hand, and soft. John steadied himself. A voice spoke out of the darkness.

  “John,” it said. He hadn’t heard but one other word spoken in that voice, yet John recognized it. It was his girl from the beach.

  “Lass!” he cried. “What—”

  She sidled close to him, squeezing his hand tight. “Please,” she said, “you must help me.”

  John’s heart was jumping like a big, happy dog, yet his head kept some rule. “I’d walk over coals for you, dearie,” he said. “Only, you didn’t ought to be here! This ain’t no place for a little maid. Wasn’t our Admiral himself sending you safe back home? How’d you—”

  “I plied the old woman with rum,” said the voice in the darkness, sounding just a little sullen. “When she slept, and it was dark, I went over the side and swam to this ship. The watch were drunk too; they never noticed me come up the cable, or slip down here. I won’t go back to Jamaica. Not until I’ve had my revenge.”

  “What revenge would that be?” asked John, fancying he could almost make out her white flesh glimmering like the Pleiades.

  “On Spain,” she said. “You’re bound for Panama; I know your Admiral’s intent, I listened to his councils. I’ll go too, and cut Spanish throats if I can…”

  “Ain’t you the brave girl!” said John. “But it’s no work for a lady, sweeting. It’ll be hard marching, and worse fighting, cruel bad.”

  “You don’t know what’s cruel,” said the girl. “I know; I saw what happened when we were betrayed. I escaped. I lived, stealing to feed myself, creeping out by night. The Spanish came to be afraid of me. Do you think I can’t kill? Do you think I haven’t dreamed of killing, every night these five years?”

  “Whyn’t you talk before? I thought you was a mute.”

  “Trust comes hard,” said the girl, “but I’ll trust you.”

  She pressed closer still to John, and lunging up quick she kissed him full on the mouth. Her cold, slender arms slid inside his shirt. What happened then, why, you may guess at, and it may not surprise you; but it surprised John, though he’d been imagining it for some days. They loved, awkward, and constrained crouching there in the pitch dark, and half-painful but white hot all the same.

  When they were done he was murmuring that he’d give her anything, anything, he’d storm all the cities in the West Indies and present her with the loot borne on the backs of a thousand chained Spaniards, so she’d only be his girl forever. He didn’t hear his mother’s voice once.

  But the girl said, sharp and clear out of the darkness:

  “Just you fetch me a lad’s clothes to wear, and a sword and pistol of my own.”

  “Sweetheart, I will,” said John, and staggered away to Felham’s slops chest. There he got her loose breeches of canvas and a great coarse-woven shirt, and thoughtfully a roll of bandage to conceal her breasts; for he was all taken with the romance of it, that his little dear should wish to fight beside him. He got her a cutlass and a pistol too, tied with bright ribbon. He got her a red silk scarf to bind up her hair. It fairly broke his heart, then, when he led her up into the starlight, to see that she’d hacked off her long locks somehow.

  But John fell in love again, in a twisty kind of way, with the brave, pretty boy who had such fierce eyes. For her sake John gave up his little snug berth forward of the captain’s own cabin, and slept as best he could on deck. For her sake John went hungry, and took her his share of dry beef and biscuit. Much he cared for food or sleep, when he crept away to her hiding place and she took him in her arms. She about ravished his soul away to Paradise.

  THE CASTLE

  It was a week’s worth of hard fighting the wind before the Mayflower and her consorts came in sight of Chagres Castle on its rock, with the fortress of San Lorenzo firing at them from the biggest guns John had ever seen in his life.

  Bradley bid them stand off a safe distance out at sea, while he thought what he might do.

  Getting into the Chagres River was treacherous as picking a man’s pocket, and the pocket full of broken glass. Bad enough that the castle with its fortress stuck out on a headland into the bay, from which it could hammer anyone passing by; there was a reef placed right at the harbor entrance too, most inconvenient.

  “Can we storm them, Captain?” asked John, peering out at Chagres Castle. The ball came long before he heard the cannon’s boom, and fell short with a fountain of white water. Bradley folded up his spyglass.

  “There’s no climbing that rock,” he said. “And they’ve th
e range on us with their guns, damn them. We’ll have to go ashore and come at them that way.” He took a squint along the coastline. “Pass the word; we’ll sail north and look for an anchorage.”

  Graceful as swans the three ships tacked and glided away, white sails under a mild, blue twilight. John went scrambling down into the stinking darkness, and edged into the tiny cupboard room where he kept his love. The girl was naked, sitting still as an image, with her blade across her knees.

  “We’re at Chagres,” she said.

  “Aye,” said John. “And I thought up a stratagem, see. If you was to hide in a barrel, we could get you ashore—”

  “No,” said the girl. “You go ashore. I’ll slip over the side when there’s none to see, and I’ll find you there.”

  She sounded so cool and certain John never once thought to wonder how in hell she’d manage such a thing. He kissed her, until she laid the blade aside and opened her arms to him. There they kept company together, until the late watch.

  Then John parted from her, taking his guns and powder horn, and a cutlass with a keen edge on it. He went above with a heart full of little pink angels, in that black dawn, and no thought to the bloody strife to come.

  His messmates were already on deck, watching along the rail as the jungle breathed out its night sounds at them, and the night paled. The Mayflower and her consorts had dropped anchor only a league away, in view of San Lorenzo’s lookout.

  The stars were fading when Bradley gave order for the loading of the boats. Men were rowed ashore. They milled about on the beach, waiting as supplies were brought, shivering to walk on the soft, cold sand, unwilling to go in among the dark trees. Within an hour of sunrise they were sweating, bored with the long wait, as the boats kept going back and forth. Higher the sun rose, glittering on the bright water so it hurt the eyes, and still the boats came and went, and there was a deal of grumbling from the ones who waited in the narrowing strip of shade.