The Pirate Kings

by Alex Scarrow

  He suspected Henry had come to the very same conclusion; this was his perfect moment. Back down now and he was going to lose face among the supporters he’d managed to gather over the last few weeks.

  ‘Ain’t gonna do that, lad!’ he announced loudly. Softly now: ‘Liam … don’t make me do this. You know I like you.’

  ‘And I don’t want to do this either, Henry, but … you know I can’t just stand by and let you … ’ He glanced at the sobbing girl, perhaps a year older than Sal. Her small frame, black hair and dark skin … it could almost be her.

  ‘We’re here to steal Spanish booty, to make ourselves rich men. That’s what we’re going to do. And no one who isn’t standing in the way needs to get hurt in the process. Jay-zus, Henry … ’ He sighed. ‘I’ve seen there’s enough needless cruelty in this world without us adding to it.’

  Henry Bartlett pursed his lips thoughtfully and looked down at the deck, giving that notion some consideration.

  Silence, except for the gentle creak of the carrack as it swayed on the subdued sea, her slackened sails fluttering and rustling. The sobbing had subsided and now both girls stared with frightened, wide brown eyes at the stand-off that would decide their fate.

  ‘Aye,’ said Henry presently, with a sad and weary nod of acknowledgement, ‘’tis a cruel enough world.’ With a sharp tug, he pulled the flintlock out of his belt.

  The crack-hiss-boom filled the silence and long, still seconds passed as the blue-grey cloud of gunpowder smoke swirled, twisted and finally cleared.

  Liam watched Henry Bartlett staring back at him as a thick dark rivulet of blood trickled down his chest. His mouth hung open and snapped shut like a turtle’s beak several times. Then finally he rocked back on his heels and collapsed on to the deck.

  Liam realized his mind was empty. A void. No horror, no shock, no self-loathing. Nothing. He hoped that would come later. Because if it didn’t … what did it mean? That he’d finally become some sort of killing machine? Finally become a support unit?

  I want to regret this later. God help me … I want to regret this.

  Chapter 33

  1889, London

  ‘He wouldn’t do that!’ said Sal. ‘He wouldn’t just leave us without even saying goodbye.’

  ‘Don’t you see? That’s exactly what he’s done.’

  Sal shook her head. ‘No. I don’t believe that. I don’t know how someone else has ended up with the transponder thing, but it’s not that … not Liam trying to shake us off.’

  ‘Think about it, Sal. He’s been gone several months, not just twelve hours. That’s enough time to think about things, to wonder what you really want out of your life.’ Maddy realized that since they’d escaped from 2001 and settled here in London their time had been pretty much fully occupied with fixing themselves up to be functional, or at least semi-functional, again. Several months stranded on the deck of some boat? Perhaps that had given Liam some perspective: time to really think what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.

  ‘He’s been gone into the past for six months before. He came back to us, so why would he suddenly not now?’

  ‘Because this time, Sal, he knows exactly what he is.’ Maddy laughed bitterly. ‘This time he knows there’s no O’Connor family back home to protect from the timeline going bad. There’s no Mom and Dad to worry about. No loved ones. No hometown to pine for … and want to preserve and protect. He has nothing and no one to worry about.’ She shrugged. ‘He’s realized he’s free.’

  She sat down in the rocking-chair. ‘And you know what? I can’t say I blame him.’

  Sal slumped down in the armchair opposite her. ‘You … you’re sure?’

  ‘No, I’m not sure. I’m never sure of anything! That’s what’s so frikkin’ tiring: second-guessing everything. Never knowing anything for certain and having to give things my best goddamn guess.’ She sighed. ‘But we know he gave that man his transponder, Sal. Handed it to him as a gift, for Christ’s sake! Here y’are, fella, all yours, so it is,’ she said with a half-decent attempt at Liam’s accent. ‘What the hell do you think that means? Huh?’

  Sal bit her lip silently. She shook her head.

  ‘Now I don’t know if that’s Rashim’s influence,’ Maddy continued. ‘I don’t know if Liam has always secretly wanted to be a pirate. For all we know maybe he’s taken a blow to the head, lost his memory and doesn’t even know who he is or what his little gift was. But it seems to me the one thing we can infer from this is that he’s deliberately given away the one way … the only way … there is for us to find him and bring him home.’

  ‘I just … ’ Sal shook her head again. ‘I just don’t believe he’d do that without finding some way to let us know.’

  Maddy spread her hands. ‘Maybe he tried. Maybe he wrote a note. Maybe he’s deposited some carefully coded message somewhere and something went wrong and it’s sitting on the bottom of the ocean in a little green bottle, yet to be found.’

  Or perhaps it had been found and was a curious little cryptic exhibit in some maritime museum somewhere. Without the Internet, they were blind here to such minute changes in the timeline.

  ‘So, you say we should just give up on them?’

  ‘I don’t know, Sal. I don’t have any ideas right now. I suppose there’s no harm in letting computer-Bob scan away to his heart’s content. Who knows, he might pick something up.’

  ‘Meanwhile?’

  ‘Meanwhile …?’ Maddy looked across at her, exasperated. Angry. Wanting to snap at Sal and tell her that she didn’t have anything left to offer. That maybe it was Sal’s turn for once to come up with a bright idea. But that burned away quickly.

  They sat in silence for a while. A clock ticked noisily in the corner of the dungeon. Bob and Becks sat still like shop mannequins, silently conversing or file-sorting between themselves. SpongeBubba shuffled from one pad-foot to another in the far corner, his bulging eyes blinking anxiously above his frozen plastic toothy grin.

  Finally Maddy spoke again. ‘Meanwhile … ’ she began, ‘maybe you and I should think what we want to do now.’

  Sal looked up at her. ‘You mean … leave? Like Liam?’

  ‘I suppose that’s what I’m suggesting. Yes.’ She smiled hopefully. ‘Unless, you know, unless you like it here? I mean … I quite like it. The clothes … the sights, the things going on in the world now. It’s a pretty exciting time, if you think about it.’

  ‘What about watching out for more contaminations?’ Sal cocked her head. ‘Or at least watching out for the bad ones and putting them right?’

  Maddy wondered if Sal was hanging on to that, a need for a purpose. A reason to exist. The mission to save mankind from itself – whether it deserved saving, or even still needed saving – that’s what had held them together so far, wasn’t it? Without ‘the mission’, they were nothing. Perhaps there was a way they could go on. ‘Recruit’ or, more accurately, grow a new Liam. Maybe, if she dug deep through computer-Bob’s database, there was information on how they could go about doing that. Not for the first time she wondered if there might be spare versions of them lying in storage somewhere: little foetuses frozen in tubes. Perhaps in that safe deposit box in San Francisco, right at the back, there might be another casket containing Liams, Sals and Maddys. Hadn’t Foster mentioned to them that there had been a team before theirs? A team that had come to a rather unfortunate end. She shuddered as she recalled Foster’s words … they’d been ‘torn to pieces’, he’d said. Ripped apart by that ghostly, ephemeral mist that Foster had called a ‘seeker’.

  A version of me, a version of Sal … torn to pieces. She recalled the faint outline of that apparition, drifting towards them in the darkness of the archway. She’d sensed, somehow, that it seemed to be drawn to them, seemed to know them. And that, for some reason, made it even more terrifying. Quietly, unspoken, Maddy had begun to have her own suspicions as to what that thing was. That it was once a human. A person who’d travelled time once too often and become
lost in chaos space. Perhaps even … one of them. A previous incarnation of one of them. Maybe that was what ghosts were. A real phenomenon, people from all times, from other timelines, other possible dimensions who had become trapped in that ghastly place and were trying to escape it, drawn like moths to the light by portals opened every now and then.

  ‘Maddy? What are we going to do? What about … our mission?’

  ‘The mission,’ she repeated, fiddling with her glasses unnecessarily. The lenses didn’t need cleaning but her hands needed something to fuss with.

  ‘With just us two and Mr and Mrs Meatbot?’

  Maddy wondered now if they’d already pushed their luck further than was wise. Here they were safe from Waldstein. Here they were where no one from the future was ever likely to come looking for them. Both of them alive and with enough resources to live well. With future knowledge, they could make themselves fabulously rich if they wanted to. And, sheesh … couldn’t a couple of young ladies with suitcases full of money have a pretty fabulous time in 1889?

  She breathed a cloud on to each lens, then rubbed it off and put the spectacles back on the bridge of her nose and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

  ‘Oh, Sal, I think that idea’s pretty much finished with now.’

  Chapter 34

  1667, Port Royal, Jamaica

  Rashim felt all eyes on them as they dropped anchor a little way out from the north docks overlooked by the low wooden palisade of Fort James. Fifty yards away, the carrack did likewise, both ships gently swaying in unison as the mild current pulled them taut against their anchor lines. From the afterdeck Rashim could see the business of Port Royal: teams of dockmen working along the shorefront loading and unloading the merchant ships tied up along the wooden docks; water pens containing what appeared to be enormous turtles, and men wading shin-deep in the warm water among them.

  He could see men shading their eyes to look up at these two new vessels cautiously anchoring out in the bay.

  ‘We’re taking a risk,’ muttered Liam.

  They’d had that discussion the night before, both coming to the conclusion that this was their best option, and yet now, with so many curious pairs of eyes in the distance settling on them, it was beginning to feel a somewhat foolhardy choice of action. At this moment, with this captured Spanish merchant ship anchored beside them as conspicuous evidence, they were pirates. Criminals. And, as soon as they set foot ashore, there was the possibility they’d be arrested and clapped in irons.

  Rashim stared across the water at their weather-battered prize. ‘We have an offering.’

  Liam nodded. ‘Aye, it’s amazing what a big fat bribe can do for you.’ He grinned at Rashim. ‘Just make sure you don’t call it a bribe.’

  Half an hour later their two pinnaces were tied up on the north docks and they made their way down Queen Street towards the governor’s mansion: Liam, Rashim and Tom, the Spanish captain and the two young women passengers. And behind them a handcart draped with a tarpaulin and pulled by two of their crew, young William entrusted with walking behind the cart and watching that no curious hands reached out from the onlookers either side and probed beneath it.

  Outside the grand stone building of the governor’s mansion, the captain of the guard scowled disapprovingly at them for a long while as he weighed up Rashim’s request for an audience with the governor. ‘He doesn’t normally choose to breakfast with common criminals,’ the young officer muttered coolly.

  ‘Then tell him he’ll be richly rewarded for his valuable time,’ said Liam, gesturing at the covered cart. The officer turned his ice-cold gaze on Liam for his impertinent interjection.

  ‘Yes,’ said Rashim. ‘Quite right … richly rewarded … for his time.’

  The officer sighed, rolled his eyes. ‘Very well.’ He turned on his heels and disappeared into the cool shadows of a cloister, a receding clack of echoing boot heels on stone paving.

  As they waited in the baking sun, Rashim fussed with the garments he was wearing. The carrack had been carrying some of the personal effects of Captain Juan Marcos. A rather fine wardrobe of clothes among them. He was now wearing a long frock coat with an elaborate ruff of lace around his neck and his cuffs. Hardly practical for the tropics. Beneath his tricorn hat, crowned with a plume of ostrich feathers, his scalp itched from prickly heat, and beads of sweat were already dotting his forehead.

  Liam had chosen to dress less flamboyantly. After all, he was merely the first officer. The lesser man. Still, he’d dispensed with his Victorian dress shirt and waistcoat, and like Rashim wore a double-breasted frock coat, but unbuttoned to make something of the light breeze stirring the palm trees overhead. No stifling, scratchy layers of fancy lace and no fancy floppy hat on his head.

  ‘You look hot,’ he goaded. ‘And uncomfortable.’

  Rashim tugged irritably at the stiff collar round his neck. ‘Very.’

  The captain returned a few minutes later, looking annoyed. He adjusted his powdered wig. ‘Apparently he will see you … that is, if the conversation is genuinely to be a rewarding one.’ The officer was obviously quoting the governor’s response word for word. But the disapproving tone was all his own. He nodded to Rashim, to Captain Marcos and to the two women. ‘You will come with me, please.’

  ‘Hey, hang on. I’m coming along too,’ said Liam.

  The officer’s eyebrows rose sceptically, irritably.

  ‘Yes. He is my partner,’ said Rashim quickly. ‘My … uh, my co-captain, if you will.’

  ‘Co-captain? And what the devil is one of those?’

  Rashim shook his head; the term was ill-chosen. ‘He is my second-in-command. I need him to … I would like him … to come with me.’

  ‘As you wish.’ The officer looked past Captain Marcos and the young ladies at the cart and the two men who’d been pulling it and William. ‘But not those scruffy herberts over there. They’ll surely put Sir Thomas off his mangoes.’

  Rashim nodded. ‘Fine.’

  The officer led them through the cool shaded gloom of the cloisters, into an entrance hall, up broad marble stairs into a hallway and a high-ceilinged stately receiving room, then out on to an awning-covered balcony overlooking the cloisters and a courtyard garden full of fruit trees, and lively with the chittering of parrots and parakeets.

  At a large round oak table bedecked with silverware and a platter of brightly coloured tropical fruit sat Sir Thomas Modyford, recently appointed governor of the recently acquired colonial territory of Jamaica. Fat to the point of being almost round, he sported a tidily clipped beard and the combed-out flare of a King Charles II styled moustache. A luscious mane of curly nut-brown hair tumbled down on to his ample shoulders. Hair that Liam mistook for real until he scratched at his scalp beneath and the whole extravagant wig shifted.

  He dabbed at his mouth with a napkin and sat back in his chair. ‘So, to whom do I owe the pleasure of this far-too-early-in-the-day intrusion on my time?’ He addressed his question to Rashim.

  ‘Well, Your … uh … Your Honour, I would like to introdu–’

  ‘The appropriate honorific, sir, is … Your Excellency.’

  ‘Sorry, Your Excellency. I am Rashim Anwar, I’m the … well, I am the captain of the ship that has just anchored out there in your harbour.’ Rashim nodded across the enclosed garden, across the ramshackle rooftops of Port Royal towards the low walls of Fort James and the turquoise waters beyond.

  Sir Thomas Modyford twisted in his seat and squinted out at the blinding daylight. ‘Ah, indeed, I spotted you fumbling your way in a little earlier. Is that carrack with you as well?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Sorry … Your Excellency.’

  Modyford narrowed his eyes as he studied both the ships in the distance then turned to examine his visitors. He looked at Rashim and Liam, then past them at the Spanish captain and the two women with him. ‘Let me hazard a guess … ’ He sighed. ‘You are yet another boatful of common criminal scoundrels looking to make your fortunes from s
tealing and looting, and you wish me to legitimize your enterprise, hmmmm?’

  ‘We … uh … we are rather hoping to seek a letter of marque, Your Excellency.’

  Modyford chuckled sarcastically and his ample form wobbled beneath a silk robe. ‘You and every other ne’er-do-well. It seems I have acquired something of a reputation as a genial host for common, gutter-dwelling criminals.’ He removed his wig with a casual swipe and tossed it to the servant standing behind his shoulder. His head was tufted with a thin fuzz of grey hair, lank and damp with sweat. His scalp was blotched with scabs and sores. ‘Damned thing makes me itch like a pox-infested harlot,’ he grumbled.

  Liam stifled an urge to snigger.

  ‘Well, here’s the thing, gentlemen –’ gentlemen being said with a hint of distaste – ‘I do not hand out a licence to every Tom, Dick and Henry who comes asking. I have to exercise a certain degree of restraint. With our new King’s recent restoration, I must be cautious. He seeks a peace with the King of Spain. They are, after all, both jolly good Catholics.’ He ran a hand over his damp scalp.

  ‘I may not have seen eye to eye with that godless oaf Cromwell, but at least he had a better understanding of our predicament out here. This island of Jamaica, we hold for the moment … but I suspect King Philip of Spain would very much like to have it back. Since our King Charles is attempting to extend the hand of friendship to Spain, he has had to rather publicly denounce the practice of licensed piracy against Spanish merchant ships. So … I am forced, to some degree, to follow his lead.’

  ‘But if you granted us –’

  Modyford raised his hand to hush Rashim. ‘However, this colony needs defending and King Charles sends me nothing, no ships, no soldiers. We are very much on our own out here. All I have, to retain this outpost of His Majesty’s, is a handful of soldiers and several undermanned forts in rather poor condition. However, what I do have at my disposal is a motley collection of buccaneers and privateers who think of Port Royal as their home. For want of a better term, they are my “militia”. I would not trust any one of those vagabonds with my purse, but I can count on them not wanting the Spanish to take back this island.’