The Pirate Kings

by Alex Scarrow

  Liam’s eyes adjusted to the dark, windowless space; shafts of sunlight speared down between slats of wood and the loose-woven reeds of the lean-to roof. ‘I let ’em in here seeing as how they just weren’t going to leave until they got to meet your friend. So, you talk to them then get ’em out of here!’ The taverner turned and left the room.

  There were a dozen or more slaves sitting patiently on the dirt floor, dark skin glistening with sweat in the humid and rank shack. They wore dirt-stained, sun-faded rags, frayed and threadbare, and wooden clogs – only one of them seemed to own a pair of shoes. It was he, their spokesman, who stood up.

  ‘You not the Dark Beard man. Where he?’

  Liam sighed. ‘Oh right, I suppose you want to meet Captain Anwar.’

  The man’s eyes lit up. He smiled and nodded eagerly. ‘An-wah! Great Ship Captain An-wah!’

  Liam moved aside, out of the doorway, to allow Rashim to step in.

  Rashim nodded politely. ‘Morning.’

  The slaves, as one, leaped to their feet, a collective gasp rippling among them as they pressed forward. Their spokesman turned round and angrily snapped in a glottal language. Holding out his hands to stop them crowding in on Rashim, he hushed them down then finally turned back to Rashim and Liam.

  ‘We hears you take slave as ship man. He now is free man. Work for you?’

  ‘Kwami,’ said Liam, ‘he’s talking about Kwami.’

  ‘Many knows this. You good man, Ship Captain An-wah. Good man.’

  Rashim stroked the bristles on his chin. ‘Uh … well, I don’t know about that, but uh, yes, we do have a black gentleman who’s been enlisted on the payroll as it happens.’

  The spokesman narrowed his eyes, working his way through that sentence.

  ‘Negro,’ muttered Liam. ‘Blacks is what the plantation owners call them.’

  ‘What?’ Rashim looked at him. ‘Negro is the polite term?’ he whispered.

  ‘Aye. In this time.’

  ‘We good work, Mr Ship Captain. Work very hard for you. You take us on ship too?’

  Rashim bit his lip thoughtfully for a moment then finally pressed his lips together. ‘Well now, to be honest, we’re after sailors really. Ship men? You understand? Men who actually know how to work on a ship? So –’

  The man nodded vigorously and smiled widely. ‘Work! Yes! Ship!’

  Liam wondered how much understanding was actually going on.

  ‘So, really, I’m sorry … do you understand? I can’t take you on our –’

  ‘We work. Work men. Ship men!’ The spokesman reached out, grasped Rashim’s hand and placed it on his upper arm, then flexed a bicep. ‘See?’ He encouraged Rashim to squeeze the muscle like a baker checking a freshly baked loaf.

  He did so reluctantly, smiling at the man. ‘Yes, jolly good. Very nice muscles, but … ’

  The spokesman grinned. ‘Good worker. All us. Hard worker.’

  ‘They’re Maroons, sir,’ said Old Tom. ‘Runaway slaves. Nothing but bloody trouble for you, sir, an’ that’s the honest truth.’

  ‘Hmmm … ’ Rashim nodded thoughtfully. ‘Trouble we could probably do without.’

  ‘Rashim?’ said Liam. ‘A word in private?’

  They stepped out of the back of the tavern into a yard of hard dirt, gnarled tree roots emerging like unearthed bones, brittle brown fallen palm fronds and a graveyard of discarded broken clay jugs. The hubbub of Queen Street was muted by the tavern. Above them, on the low branches of a breadfruit tree, a parakeet squawked noisily.

  ‘Tom’s right, they are runaway slaves,’ said Rashim. ‘Someone’s property and someone will be wanting them back.’

  ‘Rashim, people are going to talk. People must have seen them come here. Anyone can see they’re slaves, so how long before word gets back to whichever plantation they came from?’

  ‘I don’t know. Not long?’

  ‘Not long. That’s right. And they’ll be hauled off and God knows what will happen to those poor sods.’

  ‘Well, that’s … ’ Rashim sighed. ‘Well, that is just how it is, Liam. I know it is not right, but you know this even better than me – the past is full of ignorance and injustice. We don’t have to be a part of it, but that doesn’t mean it is down to us to put it all right.’

  ‘You know they’ll probably hang? All of those men in there? Whoever owns them will want to make an example of them.’

  Rashim kicked at the dirt with a boot.

  ‘And we just turf them out, do we? We hand them over when they come? So, where does that put us?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean … does that make us innocent bystanders? Or does that make us just as bad as the slave owners?’

  ‘It does not make us as bad. You and I did not enslave them.’ He looked at Liam. ‘And do not try to make this simpler than it is. Those slaves … do you want to know who first enslaved them? More than likely a rival African tribe. Then they were probably sold on to white traders or corsairs for a few beads. So who, I wonder, Liam, wins the bad-guy contest? The tribal chief who can happily enslave his own people and sell them on, or me, for not taking some moral stand right here?’

  Liam squatted down and sat on the sun-bleached wood of a discarded cask. ‘I’m not a do-gooder, Rashim. I’m not anyone’s hero. I’m not even sure what I am any more. But … ’ He stopped, searching for a way to finish the thought. ‘But I feel I kind of understand what it is to be a product. OK, not a slave … but, yes, a product.’

  ‘You’re not a product, Liam. You’re a person, a human. You’re my friend.’

  ‘A human? Because me, Maddy and Sal – I don’t know – somehow broke our programming, became more than the tools we were originally designed to be?’

  Rashim nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘We ran, Rashim. We ran from our slave master. And that’s how we became free.’

  ‘Oh, so that is your angle, is it? That’s how you want to get to me? Liken those slaves to you and the girls? That this is a similar situation?’ He shook his head. ‘Pfft, that is moral blackmail.’

  Liam looked down at the dirt between his boots. ‘Kwami is a good hire. Those other slaves will be just as good, work just as hard. What’s more, freed slaves frighten the Spaniards. You saw that. They’ll make a good crew.’

  ‘They may, they may not … the point is they’re not free to hire!’

  ‘They would be if we bought them.’

  Rashim frowned. ‘So, now all the money we make, we throw away on charitable causes?’

  ‘All right, then, not giving it away. What if they owed us? Paid us back from their share of the plunder? With our last trip, Kwami would have almost, maybe even already, managed to pay for himself.’

  Rashim laughed. ‘You’re saying our pirate ship becomes some sort of a floating bank? A banking corporation for slaves to come knocking on to apply for a mortgage to buy their freedom?’

  Liam hadn’t taken the thought that far, but that seemed to more or less sum it up. ‘Aye. The Pandora Banking Corporation for Slaves.’ He shrugged. ‘Now that’s something that might catch Maddy’s attention.’

  ‘You’re an idiot.’

  Chapter 49

  1889, London

  Maddy slowly closed the diary and looked up. Bob and Becks were staring at her expectantly.

  ‘Sal’s gone and left us … as well,’ she said finally.

  ‘Saleena is now no longer part of the team?’ asked Becks.

  ‘That’s right.’ Maddy tossed the diary back on to her bed. ‘Matter of fact, there isn’t really much of a team left anyway.’

  ‘Where has Sal gone to?’ asked Bob.

  ‘She didn’t exactly say, but I can probably make an educated guess.’ She crossed the floor and sat down in front of the computer monitor. ‘Computer-Bob?’

  > Yes, Maddy.

  ‘You just sent Sal back to Mumbai, didn’t you?’

  > Negative. The time-stamp she gave me was for New York, 2025.


  ‘Uh?’ She wasn’t expecting that. Sal’s written goodbye – and it had been a heartfelt goodbye that Maddy suspected she’d been thinking about writing for quite some time – had said she wanted to go back to her life, to see her parents again. Not something Maddy could blame her for wanting to do. After all, she’d done just that herself in Boston. But surely she knew that was only going to end in tears. Maddy’s ‘home’ had turned out to be someone else’s.

  No sign of her parents. Parents which she now suspected had never actually ever existed, or if they did, the fading recollection she had of them – Jane and Robin Carter, middle managers at a software company, sensible, nice, middle-class, college-educated suburban parents – was of someone else’s parents. A borrowed fading recollection.

  ‘New York?’

  > Yes, Maddy. The time-stamp she gave me was for Times Square, New York, 11:30 a.m., 7 April 2025.

  ‘Why there and then?’

  > I do not have that information, Maddy.

  Then she remembered. Sal had told her once, while they were enjoying the sunshine and hotdogs in Central Park, that her father had taken her here. Maddy recalled the year … 2025, because it seemed so bizarre that New York could sound so different, so quickly. She’d talked of the ‘scrap metal mountain’ in the park, the giant walls being built round the island of Manhattan to hold back the rising Atlantic Sea. The streets with no cars on them any more.

  ‘New York without cars? Ya got to be kidding me,’ she remembered saying.

  The year she’d said was 2025.

  ‘I get it,’ said Maddy. ‘She’s gone to New York to find her father. To find herself.’

  ‘That is not logical,’ said Becks.

  ‘No … I guess it’s not. But I can see why she might think it’s worth a shot.’ She turned to face the support units, standing behind her like bookends. ‘For a while I was thinking the same, that maybe all the things I remember about my past life were taken from someone else. A complete person’s memories?’

  There was something comforting in the idea of that. All right, they may be borrowed memories, but if they told a complete, cohesive story of a life lived, perhaps even one that had been tragically cut short by an accident or an illness, then that was at least something to hang on to, right?

  But Maddy was almost certain now that all the things she could remember were bits and pieces pulled together by someone in a hurry. A work memory: a photograph of some cluttered office space occupied by any games developer. A childhood memory or two. No problem … some home-made videos of a water-pistol fight on a front lawn on a hot summer’s day. Or some kid blowing candles out on a birthday cake. Jesus, you could get that kind of footage off YouTube, or any other number of video archive sites.

  Maddy was almost certain there had never been a ‘real’ Maddy Carter. Her memory was a mishmash of bits and pieces, like forensic evidence gathered from a murder scene, bagged and tagged and filed in her head. Enough bits and pieces there for her to subconsciously join the dots and create the narrative of the life she’d once lived. Just enough fleeting memories to allow her to convince herself she’d once had a life.

  ‘She’s got to do this … I can see that,’ said Maddy. ‘But I’m pretty sure it’s gonna end in tears.’

  ‘Explain, please,’ said Becks.

  ‘She won’t find her father in New York. She won’t find herself.’ Maddy shrugged. ‘The best she might find is some tourist filming footage that one day will end up in her head. Footage she thinks she saw.’

  This is going to break her.

  Maddy had half a mind to use the same time-stamp and go after her and try to talk her out of doing this. But she realized that, having gone this far, Sal wouldn’t come back willingly. She’d have to drag her back kicking and screaming. And then what? Sal would just try it again next time Maddy’s back was turned.

  She has to find out for herself.

  And then …?

  Maddy wasn’t sure. Looking at the log screen, it appeared that computer-Bob had set up return windows for Sal. But whether that was something she’d actually asked for or was Bob just following the usual displacement window protocol of setting up a return, there really was no knowing. If she returned, she returned.

  If not?

  Then, Maddy guessed, she was choosing to ‘do a Liam’. Although why the hell she was choosing then of all times. Then – 2025. Within ten years the post-oil recession would bite hard. The conflicts that would eventually lead to the oil wars in the Middle East were already stirring. And, if all of that wasn’t enough, a whole bunch of environment-related hurt was coming their way: the seas rising in earnest, the toxic blooms, food shortages … it was going to get worse for everyone, year on year.

  Backwards … that’s the direction to go, surely? Backwards, girl. Not forwards.

  Chapter 50

  1667, Port Royal, Jamaica

  ‘Which ship is these victuals for, sir?’ asked the labourer.

  Liam craned his neck to get a look at the load piled in his handcart. Sacks of coarse-milled oat grain. The Pandora was already fully loaded with her stockpile of non-perishables.

  ‘That one over there.’ He nodded at the low-decked and sleek brigantine berthed right next door.

  The man squinted as he picked out the name of the boat, freshly painted in white on her side. ‘The Maddy Carter?’ He wrinkled his nose at that. ‘Odd name for a ship, that.’

  ‘Perfectly fine name,’ replied Liam distractedly as he scanned his shopping list of supplies and ticked this particular item off. He watched the labourer as he, his boy and the mule pulling the cart rattled another dozen yards along the dockside towards the loading ramp. It rocked and wobbled across a couple of yards of water, up towards the sloop’s low waist. A few moments later Old Tom had roused half a dozen of her new crew to form a human chain, and they energetically began to toss the sacks of oats one at a time to each other, up the wooden ramp and over the rail on to the deck at the top.

  Liam listened to the song – little more than a melodic chant – that the black men sang, something from their distant, almost forgotten home. Tom was shaking his head and muttered derisively as he began to lend a hand.

  Just then the sound of approaching cartwheels and hoofs caught Liam’s attention. He turned to see a carriage emerge from the top of Queen Street, turn left and rattle along the rutted dockside towards him. The horses were finally brought to a halt by the driver in front of where the Pandora was tied up. A door swung open before the driver could get a hand to it and Sir Thomas emerged blinking into the daylight, cursing the wretched man for being too old and slow.

  He studied the activity going on all around him: the Pandora was now taking on casks of drinking water, each being carefully rolled up her ramp and lifted aboard by waiting hands at the top. He finally spotted Liam and made his way over.

  ‘Splendid! Splendid! Good to see you fellows are busy.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s my good friend? Where’s the man who’s going to earn me a fortune on my investment?’

  ‘Rashim’s aboard the Pandor–’ Liam caught sight of him, sliding down the ladder on to the main deck, then weaving his way round the rolling casks down the ramp and on to the wharf.

  ‘Sir Thomas!’ he called out as he made his way over. ‘A pleasant surprise! We were not expecting you.’

  No, we weren’t, thought Liam. If they had, they would have made sure the slaves were down below decks and well out of sight.

  ‘I see you renamed the sloop I gave you,’ said Modyford. ‘What was wrong with the Charlotte? Lovely name,’ he said, sounding a little hurt.

  ‘Oh … well … ’ Rashim looked at Liam.

  ‘It’s a superstition thing, Sir Thomas. The second ship of a fleet should always have a name with the initials M.C.’

  The governor looked perplexed. ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Liam with a nod. ‘An old maritime custom, so it is.’ He tossed the ball back to Rashim. ‘Isn’t that so?’

&
nbsp; ‘What? Oh yes … lots of ships with that, uh … that … those initials. Um … the Marie Celeste, uh … the Marie Curie … the Miley Cyrus … ’

  ‘Can’t say that I’ve heard of any of those,’ grunted Modyford. ‘What odd superstitions you sailor fellows have!’ He looked around again at the buzz of activity surrounding their two ships. ‘Ready to set sail again?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning, Sir Thomas.’

  ‘Marvellous! No point delaying. The Spaniards will be hungry for their next convoy of silver from Puerto Bello. More ships on the way already, I imagine.’ His beady eyes finally rested on the chain of men tossing the sacks of oat grain to each other up the ramp.

  ‘Whose are those Negroes?’ He shaded his eyes. ‘Some of them look vaguely familiar.’

  ‘Ours,’ said Liam quickly. ‘They’re ours, Sir Thomas.’

  Modyford’s gaze rose up to the Maddy Carter’s rigging where he spotted another couple painting the shrouds with pitch.

  ‘Slaves working aboard a ship?’ He looked at Liam. ‘They’re only good on land, I’ve been told. The water spooks them like it does horses. Where did you buy them?’

  ‘They were uh … part of our last haul, Sir Thomas,’ said Rashim. ‘Spanish slaves … I suppose they must have trained them up to be at ease on water.’

  Modyford nodded thoughtfully. ‘A group of slaves escaped from Sir Hunnyford’s plantation a few weeks ago.’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘That’s why I ask; some local scoundrel might have rounded them up and, instead of returning them to their rightful owner, sold them on to you.’

  Liam shook his head. ‘No, Sir Thomas, they’re certainly not local ones.’

  ‘Good. Because if they were Hunnyford’s Maroons, I’d have them taken over to his plantation, whipped, beaten, then hanged in front of the other slaves.’ He nodded firmly. ‘Have to make a prompt example of runaways. Be quite ruthless, I’m afraid. Even if killing them means losing all the money you paid for them. Otherwise the idea of escaping into the jungle spreads like wildfire among them. Makes them all quite unmanageable. Then, of course, you’d have to do away with the lot of them and start over with a new batch. Hugely expensive. Hugely disruptive.’