by Steve Goble
Just let them try to stop us!
Platters of hot bread and cold chicken awaited him and the other hands on the large oak table, along with some onion slices. To drink, there was watered-down rum.
“That’s the last of the liquor until the lads return,” Mrs. Fitch said. “Still some tobacco left on the shelf there. Do not fight over it.”
Spider stuffed his tobacco pouch, elbowing a couple of fellows away in the process, then tucked some fowl and onion into a hunk of bread. Odin selected a chicken leg and pointed to a hunk of cheese Spider had somehow missed seeing. Food in hand, they headed outside.
Fawkes was standing with Ruth near the ship’s bell. “How is the leg, Odin?”
“Better,” the old man said.
“Good. Gate duty again for you. We are expecting three men back from town with some casks of ale and rum and whisky, along with some other stuff the crew don’t care so much about. They should have been back before this, and they had better arrive tonight. If they do, be sure they know the byword. And make sure no one is hiding in the wagon. Those lads are not the brightest.”
“Aye.” Odin headed toward his station, and almost trotted. Spider figured the old man was simply trying to demonstrate the fitness of his leg after Fawkes’ question. He also noted that Odin seemed to limp a bit after a few steps.
Fawkes turned to Spider.
“Spider John, I had thought to assign you to the north wall so you could get to know another part of the grounds, but I hear you have been a-wander today.” He grinned, as did Ruth.
“I like to know the territory I might have to fight on, Jim.” Spider took a bite of cheese.
“Aye, I suppose that is wise. South wall again for you, though. Perhaps you will find your knife.”
Ruth kissed Fawkes on the ear, setting the gold skull earring there to swaying, then sauntered into the house.
“Aye, sir. South wall.” Spider headed in that direction without looking back, but he felt Half-Jim’s gaze boring into his back. He tore into the bread and chicken, imagining it to be the bastard’s neck.
Clouds soon cloaked the moon. Spider stayed at his station until it was good and dark, then headed north toward the gate. He moved slowly and quietly from oak to oak, careful not to trip on a root in the darkness. After an hour or so of slow progress, he found Odin behind a tree himself, just a few steps from the gate.
“Odin, it’s me,” Spider whispered.
“Did you bring me the rum you owe me?”
“I owe you no rum, we never finished the game.”
“You were beaten, you lobcock.”
“I will steal you a bottle when I can.”
“That reminds me, I stole you a flask yesterday. You owe me two bottles of rum.”
“You berated me for drinking too much after we all ended up marooned. Now you steal me bottles.”
“It’s just a habit,” Odin said. “And you are too dour when sober.”
Spider eyed the road beyond the low wall. “Have our wayward hands returned?”
“No,” Odin said. “I am so bored I might just hike back to the house and kill Half-Jim.”
“Well, if Hob is among our returning mates, as we hope, we might well be fighting our way out of here tonight. I doubt that will be dull duty.”
“Aye. Ha! Did you talk to your girl Ruth?”
“I tried, but if she has seen Hob she is not prepared to discuss it. She keeps her secrets locked away like a cap’n’s liquor. Did you find anything in the barn?”
“A pair of wagons, a couple of smelly horses, two ugly cows, and a bunch of hay. I think I’d rather smell a man three days dead in the bilge of a foul ship than ever smell horse shit again, Spider John.”
“Just keep an eye for Hob,” Spider said. “And be careful we do not shoot Hob, if he is with them. He does not know we are here and might take aim at us if it comes to a fight.”
“Aye.”
They sat in silence another fifteen minutes or so, until Spider heard a noise on the road leading down from the house and to the main gate. Spider placed a cautionary hand on Odin’s shoulder, and they both listened. They both pulled guns from their belts, too.
The sounds grew louder, and Spider soon discerned a certain cadence. A sound like a shovel plunging into dirt, then a barely audible grunt, followed by the heavy fall of a booted foot.
“It’s Half-Jim,” Odin whispered.
“Aye. Do not call him that. Go talk to him.”
“Why?”
“Because he is expecting you to be nearby, but he is not expecting me. At least, I hope he isn’t. Anyway, it would look perilous strange if he was able to hobble right up to the bloody goddamned gate without a peep from the man he left guarding it, aye?”
“Aye,” Odin grumbled. “You make a mean cap’n, Spider John.”
The old man stepped out of cover and walked toward the road while Spider made sure he himself was hidden.
“Halt!” Odin brandished his pistol.
“Wolves, lambs, all of God’s creatures,” Fawkes said, slurring a bit.
Odin lowered his pistol. “Ahoy, master.”
“No sign of our wayward gents? They ought to have come home by now.” Spider had heard Fawkes slur this way before and knew the man to be more vicious when drunk. Spider prepared Hob’s knife in his right hand, and a flintlock in his left.
Odin spat. “I’ve not seen a bloody thing until you came along, cap’n.”
Fawkes proceeded on toward the gate. “Might as well come along with me,” he growled. “I aim to raise a bit of hell, and I might need you to help me raise it. If those bastards are not back soon, I may form a party to go find them and string them up. Would you want to come along and carry the rope?”
“I would not mind a bit of a journey and action, sir,” Odin said.
“Indeed,” Fawkes answered. “Is that leg up to it? You still limp.”
“My leg is fine, goddamn it.”
“We can always cut it off and give you a chunk of wood like mine if it is not.” Fawkes laughed. “Your friend Spider John made me a leg once. Didn’t crack and weather like this one.”
Odin growled. “No one cuts off my leg.”
Spider watched the two men proceed to the gate. The idea of Odin left unsupervised with Half-Jim Fawkes made Spider nervous, and he started trying to devise a pretense for joining them. Nothing plausible came to mind, however, because Spider was supposed to be elsewhere on the grounds. So he waited, and listened, and hoped Odin did not start a fight. He crept closer, as quietly as he could and staying in the shadows.
He estimated half an hour had passed, during which Odin and Half-Jim did not come to blows, when he heard a chantey from the north. The sound, consisting mostly of bad harmony, seemed to emanate from the road to Battramsley.
Spider watched as Half-Jim opened the gate and stepped into the road, followed by Odin. The light from a lantern glowed in the distance, and soon Spider heard horses and the creaking of wheels. Drunken, singing voices rose above it all:
“Then he took her to the parson,
And, of course, home again.
There they met her father
And seven armed men.
Let us fly, said the lady,
I fear we shall be slain!
Take my hand, said the soldier,
And never fear again.
Fa, la la la, fa, la la la
Fa, la la la, fa, la la la!”
Fawkes bellowed. “Belay that noise!” The approaching wagon halted, and three men stepped down from it. Spider exhaled sharply. Hob did not seem to be among them. These fellows were all too skinny. But it was difficult to be sure in the darkness, and he had not seen Hob in a long while.
The men stood before Fawkes, between the lantern light from their wagon and Spider’s hidden perch.
“You were away longer than expected.” Fawkes barked it at them, and leaned on his crutch, wedging the handle in the pit of his mangled arm. That freed his hand to snatch up a pi
stol, Spider noted.
“Our business took longer than expected,” one ofthe men answered.
Spider crouched low to the ground and crept toward them, trying to remain as concealed as possible along the way. He did not wish to reveal himself, but he would not leave Odin to fight alone if things went badly.
“You are to take as long as I say you can take,” Fawkes said.
The three men approached Fawkes, and Spider was now certain none of them was Hob. One of them, the spokesman, drew within just a few feet of Fawkes. Odin remained three steps behind Fawkes and a bit to his left, leaving himself a clear shot if he had to take one. His hand rested on the butt of a pistol in his bandolier.
“Well, Fawkes, we are here with the supplies, as ordered, and no harm done,” the spokesman said.
“Plenty harm done, Oliver.” Fawkes raised his chin. “Discipline is harmed. My word is harmed, for I told the master you’d be back before this. My patience is sore harmed, that is for certain.”
“Well, we don’t see as we had any unreasonable delays, Half-Jim.”
Spider winced.
Fawkes lunged forward on his one good leg and the cracked peg, heedless of balance, and wielded the crutch like a sword. He wedged the end of it between the legs of the fool who’d used the hated nickname. A twist of the crutch sent both Fawkes and his adversary tumbling to the ground.
Odin drew his pistol and moved to the left, away from Fawkes.
Spider dashed to the wall, making far more noise than he wished.
Fawkes abandoned the crutch and snatched the dirk from his hatband. He jammed that into his adversary’s neck and rolled away from the resulting red fountain. Then, lying on his back, he drew a flintlock pistol.
The two remaining men from the wagon raised their hands.
“Jim, Oliver held us up! Delayed us, he did! We’ve got no quarrel with you!”
Fawkes shot one of them anyway, putting a dark hole in his forehead. The other man turned to run. The horses reared in loud protest, and the wagon rolled backward.
Fawkes dropped his spent pistol, turned his face toward Odin and roared. “Kill him!”
Odin aimed his flintlock and fired just as the man tried to duck behind the wagon. The man screamed and tumbled in a heap on the dirt road. He clutched his leg.
“Calm those horses, Odin.” Fawkes crawled to his crutch, rose in a swift maneuver he obviously had practiced many times, and spat on the dying man he’d stabbed. “I’ll require my knife back when you are done bleeding,” he said, as the man on the ground coughed and spasmed.
The other man rolled wildly, tried to rise, and fell. The wagon nearly rolled over him as Odin tried to calm the frightened horses.
The animals paid little attention to him. Odin cooed at them softly and snatched at the harnesses. The horses stomped and bit at the air, but they did not bolt.
Fawkes, meanwhile, hobbled on his crutch toward the man Odin had shot. That man implored for mercy. “I beg you, Jim, don’t kill me. I begged Oliver to come back, I tried. And I was not going to fight you. I swear.”
Fawkes came to a halt a few feet away from the man and tucked the handle of his crutch into the pit of his partially severed left arm. Then he drew the pistol from the holster attached to the crutch. “This man that shot you, he’s new. His name is Odin. Came with another fellow, gentleman named Spider John. Good seafaring men, they are, and I now know Odin won’t flinch and is a fair hand with a pistol. So, I do not believe I will be needing you in my crew now, Jack.”
“No, Jim, wait . . .”
Fawkes did not wait.
“I am not going to waste a shot on you, though.” He holstered the gun, then braced himself on the crutch. He leapt on the good leg, and planted the wooden peg of his maimed leg squarely on Jack’s face. Jack began twitching.
Fawkes repeated the maneuver twice, balancing on the crutch, even though the first sickening crunch had likely been fatal.
Spider sheathed his weapons and hoped he’d forget the hammer-blow thunks he’d just heard. He clutched at his shirt and felt Em’s pendant beneath the fabric. Lord, I am trying to leave all this in my wake!
The horses still protested, and it took both Odin and Fawkes to calm them.
“I am taking the wagon up to the house, Odin. Gather up my pistols, will you? I’ll send some fellows down to take these poor dead bastards up to the house. We’ll dig some more holes.” He clambered up onto the wagon and took up the reins. Then he grinned and laughed harshly.
“I suppose these men are too dead to be of any use to the master.”
Spider blinked. What the bloody hell does that mean?
Fawkes guided the wagon slowly up the hill, with the light from the lantern swinging near his face lending him a demonic aspect. He took up the song the three dead men would never finish:
“Then he took out sword and pistol
And caused them to rattle.
The lady held the horse
While the soldier fought in battle.
Hold your hand, said the old man,
Do not be so bold!
You shall have my daughter
And a thousand pounds of gold!
Fa, la la la, fa, la la la,
Fa, la la la, fa, la la la!
Fawkes was still laughing wildly when the wagon disappeared in the darkness on its way to the house.
Spider met Odin at the wall. “I owe you a bottle of rum, Spider.”
“Why?”
“I am not certain Hob could take that crippled bastard. He is mighty quick. Like a goddamned snake.”
“Aye.”
“You owe me a bottle, and I owe you a bottle, or maybe two bottles, so I guess we’ll have to steal three bottles somewhere. Or four.”
Spider appreciated Odin’s levity, but there were three dead men in the road. “Did you have to shoot that fellow? We are trying to become honest men, you’ll remember.”
“I reckoned I’d miss, to be truthful, in the dark and far away and him on the run,” Odin snarled. “Also, since I am, as you say, an honest man, I didn’t know the son of a whore nor care much whether I hit him or not. What I cared about was Half-Jim not shooting me.”
“Aye,” Spider said. “Understood. And you have it right, I reckon. Half-Jim would have shot you if you’d not followed his command. And if you’d shot Half-Jim, well, that would leave us with many things to explain and little chance of staying on here and finding Hob.”
Odin spat. “Do you think Hob fought that bastard?”
“Lord, I hope not.” His gaze aimed involuntarily up the hill, toward the graves beyond the oaks and the shadows.
24
Spider had not remained behind to watch Fawkes’ man gather the slain. Instead, he’d gone to the pond, trying to make sense of what was happening here.
He returned to the house when the morning bell rang. The crewmen who had collected the corpses from the road were now piling earth back into a fresh grave—one pit for all three of them, which forced Spider to consider the number of previously buried bodies might be higher than he’d reckoned. Bitter and tired, he went to the kitchen.
Mrs. Fitch stayed as far from the table as she could and moved platters and kettles about for no reason Spider could divine. “Too much,” she muttered. “It’s all too much.”
Odin had arrived in the kitchen before Spider and was buttering a hunk of bread. He put down the knife, tore some fowl away from the platter with his fingers, and stuffed the poultry into his mouth. He started to approach Spider, but the latter waved him off. He wanted a chance to talk with Mrs. Fitch, and thought he might have more success without Odin’s presence. She was already rattled, and Odin was never soothing by nature.
Odin gave Spider a quick nod and left the kitchen.
The men broke their fast with chicken, cheese, and bread, with some boiled eggs as well. Spider noted that Mrs. Fitch was boiling more eggs even as the last crewmen were finishing their meal. She might well know a great deal about what go
es on in this house, he thought, so he dawdled over his meal. Once he and Mrs. Fitch were alone, he struck up a conversation.
“We appreciate the meals, Missus Fitch, we truly do.”
“Thank you, John.” She had paused awkwardly in the middle of her sentence, as if pondering whether to add the word “Spider.” She went back to her work, as though to end the talk.
“You have many mouths to feed, do you not? Crew, plus patients upstairs. How many up there?”
“What?” She looked over her shoulder as she hovered near the boiling kettle. Rising steam moistened a loose strand of hair, and it was losing its curl. “I’m sorry. This business in the night, men dying. It’s horrible. Five, at present. Patients, I mean. Five patients. Not so many as a month or two ago.”
“Oh? Did some find cures, and leave?”
“No,” she said quietly. “Some found death and were buried, God rest their souls.”
“I see,” Spider said. “The graves.”
“Aye, the graves, for the bodies. But their souls are in a better place now, in the Lord’s mercy.” She lowered her head and closed her eyes a moment. Her lips moved but Spider could hear no words emanating from them. Then she glanced at him. “And three more dead today, I am told, although these by violence and not sickness.”
“I’ve heard how the men died last night,” Spider said. “Bloody awful business, that. But the patients, did they die of violence, too?”
“No,” she said. “They died on their own, though the master tried to save them.”
“Some sort of accident?”
“Why, no,” she said, looking away. “They departed this world one at a time, they did. Poor wretched souls.”