“Aye, and the place is still as big a pesthole as I remember it being,” Anne replied. “I’ve never figured out why you stay here, Titus.”
“This land is my home,” he said, “and some days I can ease the misery in this place, so that makes enduring it worthwhile.”
It was no secret Titus paid a handsome bounty to any pirates who attacked slaving ships and returned their cargo to Africa. Many of the powerful merchant companies that were behind the majority of the slave trade had made several attempts to bribe, then to kill Titus, but he was still here and still in business, lending even more credence to the legend that he was in league with supernatural powers.
“I’m undertaking a little expedition into the interior,” Anne said.
“Whereabouts?” Titus asked.
“Not sure yet,” Anne said. “Hopefully I’ll know before I leave.”
“Now that sounds like my Annie,” Titus said. “You’ll need provisions and bearers.”
“Aye, and I think I may need a couple of strong sword-arms to watch my backside,” Anne added. “You know anyone I can trust?”
Titus nodded. “I have a notion. He should be here tonight, once he sobers up enough to drink again. I’ll introduce you two.”
“Thanks,” Anne said. “In the meantime—” She snagged up the bottle of port and dropped some Spanish silver on the bar—“I intend to have a bath and try to puzzle something out.”
* * *
The afternoon sun fell in through the window to Anne’s quarters on the second floor of the Broken Shackle. It filtered through the mosquito netting canopy that covered her bed and fluttered feebly in the tepid breeze. The room was small, but after a month at sea, the space and solitude was luxury. She had availed herself of the bath down the hall and paid extra for hot water. She had also paid Titus’s boy to go out and collect a few things for her, including a pipe and some tobacco. Now clean, and in fresh, dry clothing, she smoked her pipe and opened the strange marked box once again. Inside, she found the large bone and the small, perfect ruby within, again buried in bone dust. Searching the rest of the box revealed they were the only two items that remained within. She sat at the small table and once again removed the end of the large bone scroll case. The cloth within slid out. Anne paused for a moment, waiting for ominous thunder or some other sting of cosmic displeasure at her actions. Her pistols, oiled and loaded, sat on the table next to her machete, just in case. There was only the hum of the busy town’s traffic below and the chittering of life teeming within the jungle.
Anne carefully unfolded the cloth and laid it on the table. It was a map, hand-drawn on very old but well-preserved cloth. She recognized the coastline on the drawing as the western coast of Africa. The only landmark drawn on the cloth map was a crudely drawn circle of bones with a skull above it. It looked to be in the center of the map, the center of the mysterious continent. There were no directions, no distances, no indication of scale. Along the edges of the map were strange symbols, like those on the box. In the upper portion of the map there was a circle with a cross intersecting. It appeared to be a compass rose.
“Well, this is no sodding help at all,” Anne muttered, setting the ruby back on the table and taking another drink from the nearly empty port bottle. “The place I’m looking for is somewhere in the middle of Africa. Grand.”
She examined the interior of the bone tube case to see if something else was hidden. There was nothing. “Damn it to hell,” she said, tossing the bone harshly onto the table. The bone skidded to a stop but knocked the ruby across the cloth. The ruby slid across the cloth, zigzagged of its own volition, and centered itself in the middle of the compass rose’s circle. It then slowly moved to the northwest section of the circle and stopped.
Anne reached over to the stone. She picked up the ruby, and then dropped it on the opposite side of the cloth map. The ruby slowly slid across the cloth continent and once again centered itself in the middle of the compass circle. After a moment, it slid to the northwest section of the circle and stopped.
“I’ll be damned,” Anne said. She lifted up the cloth and held it perpendicular to the table. The ruby remained exactly where it was, as if pinned to the cloth map. She turned and walked toward the window. The ruby slid to the appropriate corner of the compass to compensate for the change in directions. “Witchcraft, then,” Anne said. “That never ends very well, my girl, you know that.”
She plucked the ruby from the hanging cloth, and it came free effortlessly. She gently placed it on the lower half of the cloth and the stone reattached and climbed the map to make its way to the compass rose once again. Anne celebrated with another drink of the rapidly diminishing port. “We have a map and a destination!” she said, laying the map back on the table. “Now all we need is provisions and a few good swords, and we can be on our way. Witchcraft be damned. I’m the craftiest witch that ever will be!” She finished off the port and collapsed onto her bed. It felt like a cloud in the heavens. She was snoring before the empty bottle thudded to the floor.
* * *
It was late into the hot night when Anne descended the stairs to the common room. The tavern was packed and somewhere a fiddler was playing and singing “A Messe of Good Fellows,” and the common room was singing along to the best of its drunken ability. Titus and his maids were busy serving up food and drink as quick as they could. The giant owner of the tavern waved to Anne and pointed in the direction of a back table where a single white man sat, his flagon swaying in time to the song. Anne made her way through the crowd and sat on the bench across the table from the man.
The stranger looked to be in his late twenties. He had beautiful and well-groomed, rust-colored hair that fell to his shoulders and a goatee that was trimmed immaculately. His blue eyes were bleary from too much drink. He wore a filthy, torn and tattered blue-and-black tabard over a padded doublet and breeches. A dirk and a slender foil, both sheathed, on a narrow leather belt lay on the table. A wide-brimmed blue cavalier hat with an ostrich plume that had seen much better days lay on top of the sword belt. The man looked up with rheumy eyes at Anne and gave her a dismissive gesture. “Non, non,” the man mumbled in slurred French, “je ne veux pas une pute, surtout si elle est laide. Verre de plus, s’il vous plait.” He spoke with the accent of a native Frenchman.
“I’m no whore, and I’m no bar wench. You want more drink, then get it your peggin’ self,” Anne said, sitting down. “I hear you’re good with a blade and willing to use it for coin?”
“My apologies,” the man said in even more slurred English. He belched loudly and covered his mouth after the fact. “You are correct, Madame laide. You have the pleasure of making the acquaintance of le Humingbird.”
Anne arched her eyebrows as she grinned. “Hummingbird, eh? Looks more like a drowned goose to me.”
She drew for one of her pistols, brought it up to aim at the Frenchman’s chest. There was a crash, a blur and the Frenchman’s blade was at her throat. He was still sitting. How he had reached the blade and drawn so fast was a wonder. “Now look what you made me do,” the Hummingbird said. “I spilt my drink … and I believe I may have shit myself.”
“You’re fast enough,” Anne said and slid the pistol back into her belt. The blade was sheathed, and the Hummingbird gestured for one of the bar maids.
“More drink, my lovely … and clean pants if you have them.”
“Two reals a day, paid in full at the end of our little adventure,” Anne said, “and if we come across any booty, you’ll get a company share. I’ll give you a week’s pay up front before we leave Badagry, so you can settle any accounts. We have a deal?”
“Oui,” the Hummingbird said.
“Meet me here tomorrow afternoon to discuss particulars. Be sober and have clean pants,” she said.
“Is it dangerous, this ‘adventure’?” the Hummingbird asked.
“Very,” Anne said.
The Frenchman laughed and clapped. “Good, good!” he said. “Je cherchais quel
que chose d’amusant de me tuer.”
Anne tossed the Hummingbird a small bag of coins. She walked past Titus on her way out of the tavern.
“I like him,” Anne said. “He’s a crazy bastard, and he’s French, the very best kind of crazy.”
“They say he was in the King’s Musketeers,” Titus said. “Something bad happened.”
“It usually does,” Anne said.
* * *
The street outside the Broken Shackle was empty and quiet. The town was quiet except for the night sounds of the wilderness, the ocean and a few dogs barking. From this part of town, you couldn’t hear the groans of human misery from the storey buildings and slave warehouses, worse than any prison. The air was thick and hot. Insects buzzed past her face. Anne sat on a wooden bench outside the tavern door and fished out her pipe and her tobacco pouch. She stuffed the pipe, lit it and leaned back against the stone wall of the building.
The stars fluttered in the void like guttering candles, legion across the sable sky, stretching to the edges of comprehension. The sight made Anne ask the question again. How could you have such a sight in the same universe, in the same city, where human beings were chattel, where men bartered in despair and suffering? She knew the answer, had known it since she was a child. It was explained to her clearly in a London alleyway. Some children were even fortunate enough to not see the true face of this world until they’d had a couple of years of peace and innocence, but only a few. She saw the little boy from the marketplace, standing there, naked, terrified, in a tiny iron collar.
By now, her son should be with his grandfather, Anne’s father, in America, and he’d be cared for. Anne’s father, William Cormac, was possessed of a very short list of laudable traits, but among them was a dogged and cold loyalty to his family. He’d keep the lad safe. He had always wanted a son anyway.
Anne remembered being six, her father’s face close to her own, shouting. She was crying as her father cut her hair. William was red-faced as the locks tumbled to the floor. “Boys don’t cry, damn you!” he bellowed. “Annie, if you cry, we’ll be found out again! We’ll have to move again. The fucking solicitor at the firm has kin in Cork! My fucking wife, that vindictive bitch! She has family everywhere, even here in London! They heard about me, about my bastard daughter. I had to borrow the devil’s tongue to convince him that I wasn’t who he thought I was. Told him of my little boy. You don’t want us to have to run again, do you girl? Have your family live like bloody sea dogs, moving from place to place? You don’t want to do that to your mother, do you? And to me?”
Anne had grown up on the run, hiding, lying. It was quite the scandal in County Cork when William McCormac had left his good lady wife for a housemaid with his bastard in her belly. Bastard, that was Anne. They’d had to leave the county to avoid the fuss made. But William’s wife’s family had a long reach and big mouths. The family eventually fled to England where they tried to hide, to live under the name Cormac and pretend that little Annie was little Andy.
Anne, age twenty, looked back and saw her child-self, saw the innocence drain from her eyes with the tears. They were the same eyes as the boy in the marketplace. “We are not McCormacs anymore,” her father said, shaking the girl. “We’re the Cormacs now, and you, you are our son, Andy. You must bury all those feelings, girl. They’ll find us out and they’ll hurt you and us, if you’re weak. Your name is ‘Andy’ now, do you understand, ‘Andy,’ and you are strong and you do not cry.…”
And she never did again. Simple.
The truth was the stars were indifferent to the suffering, to the beauty, to people. If there was a god behind the celestial curtain, He didn’t care either. In a just universe, all children would be spared the slaver’s whip, the greed of men, the rage of sires. The only justice in this life was what you carved out yourself with mind, will and steel.
Anne shouldn’t even be thinking about her whelp, shouldn’t even think of her father. She had learned the lessons well that day. Well enough to endure the pain of her mother’s death when Anne was twelve silently, stoically. Well enough to set fire to the Cormac plantation in South Carolina when Father disowned her for marrying Jim Bonny at fourteen.
Ah, fair Jimmy. She could still see him, skinny as a fickle promise, that crazy grin. He was the most alive person Anne had ever met, and she fell in love with him with every laugh, every dare he challenged her to and every dare he met. Jim Bonny showed her that there was joy in living, in savoring every single moment like it was wine—sometimes sweet, sometimes sour. His love had been a lie, but his lust was the most real thing Anne had ever known in her brief life.
There was no place in her now for tears, or regret, or especially for a child. She was about to undertake the greatest plunder of her career; she needed to focus on that, on the score, or she’d wind up dead.
“You’re preoccupied,” a voice said, close to her ear. She reacted, springing to her feet, her pipe falling, the brace of pistols out and sweeping the shadows.
“Show yourself,” Anne said. A man stepped from the shadows to her right. He was black, a little over six feet tall. His hair was in the style of curled locks and he was clean-shaven. His brown eyes were calm and powerful in their serenity. He wore European clothing—a white linen tunic, dark blue vest, dark breeches and boots. At his belt was a sheathed Ida, an elongated, leaf-shaped sword, favored by the Yoruba. A leather bandolier, with three cross-holstered flintlock pistols of differing sizes, was draped across his broad chest. A pair of muskets were slung over the man’s shoulder, along with a knapsack and several cured waterskins.
“You won’t need the pistols,” the man said in perfect English. “I’m here to help you.” He paused and regarded her for a moment. “How old are you?”
“Well, aren’t you a rude one. I’m old enough. I’m twenty-three,” Anne said, lying. “Why?”
“You look closer to nineteen,” the stranger said. “I understand from Titus you are setting off shortly for the interior. You need a guide, and no one knows this land better than I do, I assure you. I was born here. I speak all the local dialects fluently.”
Anne stowed the pistols. “You don’t talk like a local,” she said, recovering her pipe from the ground. “You work with the slavers?” The man shook his head as he knelt to pick up her tobacco pouch. He handed it back to her.
“No,” he said. “I’ve been a slave before, several times, actually. No, I picked up your language during my time in your part of the world. I enjoy traveling. Until a few days ago I was serving on the Hopewell.”
“She’s a good ship,” Anne said. “Why are you coming ashore now?”
“We arrived two days ago,” the man said. “This may sound a bit strange, but I heard about what you did in the marketplace today. Very brave. Very stupid, but very brave. A person who would do such a thing, she may be worth following to see what brave, stupid thing she does next.”
“Titus will vouch for you?” Anne asked.
“Yes,” the man said. Nothing else seemed to be very forthcoming. Anne took the man’s measure for a long time, then thrust out a hand. He shook it.
“Then welcome to the expedition,” she said. “Anne Bonny. What do you go by?”
“Around here they know me as Adu Ogyinae.”
“We’ll need bearers, Adu,” Anne said, tossing him two bags of coins. “There’s coin here to hire them as well as some funds for yourself. You say you know the region well; can you find us good folk to undertake the job for us?”
“Oh, yes,” Adu said. “I know several people. Very trustworthy and loyal. Planning on carting off a bit of African gold, aren’t you?”
“I am indeed,” Anne said. “You have a problem with that?”
“Oh, no,” Adu Ogyinae said. “It seems to be something you Europeans are very good at. I will tell you, however, you’re going to need more than a quick draw and cockiness to make it through the interior.”
Anne said nothing. She re-lit her pipe and took a deep inhalation of t
he Cavendish; a hint of the bourbon that flavored the tobacco leaves permeated the sweet smoke. “This is my last run,” she said. “I’ve cheated the hangman’s noose, I’ve raged, and roared, and adventured, and I intend to retire a very wealthy woman, a lady, even. Enough money will wash off the stink of being piss poor, hell, it even washes off blood.”
“You cannot wash off who you truly are,” Adu said as he turned and disappeared into the darkness of the street. His voice lingered a moment longer. “This land will help you discover that. All preparations shall be ready in two days’ time, Anne Bonny. I bid you good night.”
Anne took another puff on her pipe. This one was trouble. She had no idea why she had invited him along. She went back to admiring the stars, still frozen, still beautiful and pure. There was a crash off to her left, and a drunk tumbled out the door, landing in a disheveled heap a few feet from her. The man groaned, and he blinked a few times, his eyes finally focusing on her. “Well, well, the night’s not a complete loss, is it, luv?” the drunk mumbled. “Aren’t you a bit of a bushel bubby, then. Let’s get you around back and have a go at the goat’s jig, darlin’.” The drunk was getting up; he drew a chivey, a thin, sharp dirk, from under his coat as he did. His eyes were unfocused, but what Anne saw there was clear enough.
Anne’s hand dropped to the hilt of her machete. “Aye, darling,” she said, “let’s have a go.”
So much for the stars.
9
The Five of Swords
Charleston, South Carolina
April 10, 1871
Martin Anderton waited by the carriage outside his Charleston townhouse for his granddaughter. They were going to be late. It was a warm night in Charleston and Owen and Amy Anderson were throwing an engagement party to announce the upcoming nuptials of Mr. Jestin Jeffries to Miss Faye Newsham at the Charleston Opera House. The cream of Charleston society was going to be there and it was an excellent opportunity to introduce Constance, formally. Now if only Constance would come along.
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