The Devil's Own

by Christopher Nicole

'So you've a score to settle,' Modyford said.

  Kit stared at him. The thought of Marguerite remembering him had quite driven every other concept, even his reason for being here, from his mind. But how could he remember her, without also remembering everything else. 'Aye, sir,' he said. 'I've a score.'

  'You all have, Mr Hilton,' Modyford said. 'As you were boucaniers. First thing, you'll hoist the English flag.'

  'I am a Frenchman, sir,' Bart said. 'And so are all my crew, saving only Kit.'

  'If you sail with me,' Morgan said. 'It is as Englishmen.'

  'And do we sail with you, Admiral?' Jean asked.

  'These ships are not here to rest,' Morgan said. 'I've accumulated them all the year. This ship of yours will carry a hundred men.'

  'She'll sail, and fight, better with forty,' Kit said.

  'Spoken like a seaman, Kit. But I need men. Men are even more important than ships. The ships must carry them without sinking. Nothing more.'

  'Carry them where, Admiral?' Bart asked.

  Morgan smiled at him. 'Where Henry Morgan sails is known to Henry Morgan alone,' he said. 'Saving my good friend Governor Modyford here. But I'll promise you all the riches in the world, Captain Le Grand. Ask those who were with me at Porto Bello, or Maracaibo.'

  Bart glanced at the two boys. ' 'Tis what we came for.'

  'Aye,' Kit said. 'We'll sail with you to hell itself, Admiral Morgan.'

  Still Morgan smiled. 'It may well come to that, Mr Hilton. And you will, indeed, sail with me.' He caught the expression on Kit's face. 'And your friend, Monsieur DuCasse. We'll find you another sailing master, Captain Le Grand. These two young men are my special charge. Why, the very name of Hilton will inspire the fleet.'

  Because it was, after all, a fleet. There were more than a score of ships, led by the two galleons, but dwindling down to little ten-man cockleshells, wallowing in the long Caribbean swell. A fleet, carrying him to fame and wealth? Morgan promised him no less. And what would he do then? How the mention of her had indeed brought memory flooding back, every gesture, every movement, every change in her tone. Married to a man four times her age. And a mother? He did not know. But thinking of an episode from her past. Suppose, then, he did reappear, famous and wealthy?

  Supposing it were possible. He stood on the poopdeck of the Monarch, the larger of the two galleons, and watched the rest through his glass. They had been at sea for over a week, making ever south-west across an empty ocean, and throughout that time they had been favoured with a light beam wind. Yet on nearly all the ships the pumps had clacked ceaselessly, and streams of dirty brown water poured over the sides; leave vessels as rotten as these for twenty-four hours and they took six feet of water in the hold. How they were ever manoeuvred or fought, what would happen were the slightest wind to spring up ...

  'It does not bear thinking about.' Morgan stood beside him.

  Now that they were at sea he had discarded the coat and the rings and the rapier, and wore only an open-necked shirt and breeches, with a cutlass hanging from the belt at his waist. Yet his hair was as carefully dressed as ever; he had his surgeon attend to it every morning.

  'You're a mind-reader, sir,' Kit said.

  'Faith, 'tis not difficult to read your mind, Kit. You spend more time on the helm, more time staring at the charts and studying the set of the sails, more time watching those other ships, than you do sleeping. The sea is in your blood.'

  'And is it not in yours, sir?'

  'By God, the very sight of it turns my stomach. My people were farmers. Good farmers, lad. You've a knowledge of Wales?'

  'I've a knowledge of no land save Tortuga and Hispaniola, sir.'

  Morgan nodded. 'What will you do, where will you go, when you've pockets full of gold?'

  'You speak as if this is to be your last venture, sir.'

  'Every venture is my last, boyo. Until I am sure I'm alive at the end of it. But this one ... I pursue a dream. 'Tis a thought I have had for years. Where do you think we are headed? Look through your glass. Forward for a change.'

  Kit peered at the dark line of trees, fringed with surf, which suddenly filled the horizon. ' 'Tis a large island, to be sure.'

  ' 'Tis the Main, boy.'

  Kit brought up the glass again. The very thought made his heart pound. 'Then it is Porto Bello we seek, Admiral? I would have thought, after the attention paid it by Drake, and yourself, and God knows how many in between, that it was scarce worth sacking.'

  'Porto Bello is not worth sacking,' Morgan said. 'And there is fever. Oh, 'tis an unwholesome coast. I seek more. That bay opening to port is the mouth of the River Chagres. We will anchor there. I know the place well; I reconnoitred it three years ago, which is when this plan first came to me. I have arranged with the Indians who inhabit this coast to supply us with canoes, and we shall make our way up the river. It is quite practical at this season. When the rains come, then it is a violent torrent. But now it will be calm and quiet.'

  'You mean to go inland?'

  'There is a lake from whence this river rises. That is our first destination. You'll command a canoe, Kit. But mark me well. This venture, like all such ventures, will be a perilous business. Keep your wits about you, and even more, stay close to my pennant. Bear that in mind, boy. Now, and afterwards. Now see to your gear. Take your friend with you.'

  For the land was opening fast, and a few hours later the Monarch was slowly entering the bay, sail shortened to mere scraps of canvas, leadsman hanging in the bows to call the depths, while the deep blue shaded to a deep green, and then to pale green, so clear that they could pick out every rock and every patch of seaweed below the surface, before suddenly changing to an opaque brown as they entered the discharge from the river.

  Kit stared at the shore through his glass; the beach seemed to stretch interminably in either direction, broken only by the gush of slow-moving brown water. But there were also people on the beach, just visible against the crowding trees. He had never seen an Indian, although Grandmama had told him sufficient tales of the Caribs who infested the islands south of Antigua, and against whom the Warners had waged an unceasing war of survival, despite the love shared by old Sir Thomas and the Princess Yarico. Or was the enmity because of that love, and its result, the legendary Indian Tom Warner?

  But these would not be Caribs, on the mainland. Indeed, they did not look very warlike, being small, squat, brown-skinned men, wearing only breech-clouts, carrying wooden spears and bows and arrows, surrounded by dogs, and by naked children. There were women, too, gathered behind them, some entirely naked, others wearing little aprons; they would be the married ones. But if he had hoped to be excited or even interested by them, he was again disappointed. Shorter than their menfolk, with protruding bellies and sagging breasts, with flat, ugly features and dank black hair lying below their shoulders, he thought them repulsive. Or would he find any woman so, at this moment?

  'The Admiral wishes us to disembark,' Jean said, and at that moment the order was given and the huge rusting anchor plunged through the suddenly dirty water to disappear into the mud of the bottom. Jean's eyes gleamed, and he was clearly excited. Like Kit, he had stripped to the waist, and wore only a pair of breeches, and the belt from which hung his pistols and his cutlass and his powderhorn, while he carried a musket across his shoulder. He was prepared for war.

  Kit went to the gunwale where the twelve men who were to form his section waited. As villainous a group of cut-throats as he had ever seen, scarred and vicious. Without exception they reminded him of Bale, the villain who had dogged Grandmama with pathetic adoration, and who had no doubt long since found himself at the end of a Spanish pike. Yet all were prepared to accept a boy as their commander, because the Admiral had said they must, and because the boy's name was Hilton. He had never anticipated this kind of fame, in all his dreams of power.

  But the fame of a Morgan, now, there was something to be dreamed of. A farmer, from the hills of Llanrhymny, who could snap his fingers and have every vill
ain in the New World dancing to his tune. Because he carried the aura of success. He let no obstacles stop him. At Porto Bello he had driven priests and nuns in front of his men to receive the fire of the Spanish soldiery, and won. At Maracaibo he had taken the town without difficulty, only to find himself bottled up by a Spanish fleet and by a fort which had so fortuitously seemed abandoned when the buccaneers had entered the lagoon. He had scattered the enemy vessels with fireships and avoided the guns of the fort by a splendid piece of subterfuge, and extracted his men and himself with all their gold and hardly a casualty. And when, soon afterwards, the magazine of his ship had exploded while he was entertaining his captains to dinner, and sent them all to perdition, he had been the sole survivor, merely blown overboard. So these cutthroats would indeed follow him to hell, confident that he would lead them back again.

  Or did it merely mean that to be one of Morgan's captains was a highly dangerous business? Because clearly he had been marked for such a distinction, Kit thought.

  Now the rest of the fleet was bringing up; anchors rattled through their hawse pipes as sails were furled, and the ships swung to the gentle breeze while boats were lowered. The Admiral's barge was already at the beach, and Morgan was haranguing the Indians who clustered forward to receive the handfuls of beads and the few rusty muskets which they valued more than all the gold in America. Meanwhile a coxswain had planted the huge staff from which flew the Cross of St George, as a rallying point for the boat commanders, and these, as soon as the various pinnaces had disgorged the landing parties, were gathered beneath the flapping cloth. Kit and Jean hurried to join them, to stand in the company of all the weather-beaten hell-hounds who had sent more Spaniards to their deaths than he had even seen in his life. He felt suitably humbled, but more exhilarated. Gone were his doubts. Why, there must be nearly two thousand men on this beach. Two thousand of the toughest scoundrels on the face of the earth. And they waited only for the word from their Admiral.

  Morgan came towards them, his boots crunching on the sand. The chieftain walked at his side, peering down the muzzle of the musket he had been given.

  Morgan stopped before the three score men he had selected to lead his cohorts. He grinned at them, while the sweat stained the shoulders and armpits of his shirt.

  'The chief has found us one hundred and forty canoes,' he said. 'And to do that he has scoured the entire country. Each canoe will take ten men. That means we march with fourteen hundred. I'd have liked more, but beggars can't be choosers. And it means we leave a sizeable force to guard the ships and this bay. For we must come back the way we go.'

  'Up that river?' someone demanded.

  Morgan drew his cutlass, began to make marks upon the sand. 'Fifteen miles to the lake. There'll be no problem up to there. Then the lake itself stretches for some ten. But after that it's walking. Through that.' He pointed with his cutlass at the wall of green jungle, matted and intertwined, which lay only a few feet away. 'I'd have no man be under any misapprehension as to what he's at.'

  'Begging your pardon, Admiral Morgan,' Captain Jackman said. 'But are we not being over-elaborate? You may be sure that by now the Dons know there is a buccaneer fleet on this coast, and they will also know, by simple arithmetic, that we can mean one of only three places. Porto Bello and Nombre de Dios are plucked bones. As we must head for Nicaragua, why not let us do it direct? To ascend the Chagres can only add several days to our journey, and as it will mislead nobody, it seems to me to be no more than a waste of time and energy.'

  Morgan stared at him, his mouth still forming the smile. 'So we are marching on Nicaragua City,' he said. 'That is what the Dons will think, in your opinion.'

  'There is nowhere else worthy of such an expedition.'

  'Nowhere?' Morgan threw back his head and laughed. 'And is not Nicaragua City also a plucked bone? Did not John Davis ascend there but two years gone, and storm the walls? Is there anything there worth having, from a woman's hole to a single pot of gold, now? Think you I would lead fourteen hundred men to such a limited feast?' He dug his sword once again into the sand. 'From the lake we descend. There is a trail, but in any event this good fellow has promised to lead us. He asks only a Spanish sword in payment, and by God he shall have mine when he delivers us upon the shores of the Pacific'

  There was a moment's stunned silence.

  'The Pacific?' Bartholomew Le Grand whispered.

  'In the steps of Drake and Oxenham, by God,' said Captain Sharp. 'What will we do, Admiral? Seize ships and prey upon the Spanish trade with Peru?'

  'Faith, that were a slow business,' said Captain Tew. 'It would make more sense to sail our own ships around the Horn.'

  'Excepting that they would sink before you breasted Brazil,' Kit said.

  Morgan laughed again. 'Ships?' he shouted. 'Piracy? Ships are for transport. And piracy is for those who fear to prosper. No, no, my friends. My matelots. I will open for you the gates of the most wealthy city in the world. For where does the gold of Peru, and the riches of the East Indies come ashore, my friends? Where is the entrepot for the entire trade of Spanish America? Babylon had nothing to offer when compared with Panama City.'

  This time the silence was longer.

  'You'd assault Panama City?' Jackman asked at last.

  ' 'Tis defended by an army,' Tew whispered.

  'For that purpose,' Morgan said, 'I have brought an army to this beach. I tell you this: be the walls the highest and the thickest in the world, and they are that; be it defended by an army of Spanish soldiers, and it is that; and be it also a place of gold, and silver, and plate, and fine clothes, and women, my friends, the most beautiful women in the world, and it is that; and be it the safest place in the world, as it is claimed, we shall take it, or you shall bury Henry Morgan in this mud.'

  3

  The Scum of the Earth

  A shot rang out, and then another; a ripple of fire rolled along the bank of the river, and in one of the leading canoes a man screamed with pain, and slumped over his paddle. For the rest, the bullets merely splattered the unending brown of the water.

  'You and you and you,' Morgan bellowed from his boat, which led the van. 'Flush out those bastards.'

  Kit cursed, but swung his canoe out of the column. On his left Jean did the same, and on his right Bart's men followed their example. This was the seventh time in two days they had been ordered to clear the banks.

  'Give way,' he shouted. 'Give way.' The buccaneers obeyed, faces mouthing oaths, arms shedding sweat; they were stripped to the waist, had shaved their heads and bound them up in bright coloured kerchiefs; their feet were bare and their breeches were stained with mud and sweat. But their cutlasses were bright; Morgan's orders had made them polish the blades every evening.

  Cutlasses were essential, for cutting back the ever present jungle. Surely not for cutting down Spaniards. For while the jungle never ceased its presence, the Spaniards came and went, filtering along the banks of this interminable river, delivering their volleys and disappearing again. Morgan's boast that every Indian in the isthmus would fight against the Dons had been proved false; no soldiers could move through these forests without Indian guides.

  The prow of the canoe drove into the bushes which drooped over the brown water. The leading buccaneer seized the branches to push them aside, and shrank back in horror as a snake slid down the tree and wriggled into the undergrowth. For a moment the entire company hesitated, and then Kit himself went forward.

  'What are you?' he demanded. 'Men or girls?' He grasped the bushes and swung himself ashore. But even as his feet left the boat he shuddered; no one knew for sure what hell might be lying immediately beneath him. There was that man the day before yesterday who had stumbled into a teeming ants' nest and lost most of his flesh before he could be dragged clear. There was that canoe which had overturned, and amongst whose crew leather-backed brown monsters called caiman by the Indians had swarmed with savage destruction before anyone could attempt their rescue. And there were the four me
n who had already been bitten by snakes, and had died in seconds. Beside all of those horrors, which clung to the brown water and the green banks with unceasing determination, what were a handful of Spanish soldiers?

  His feet stamped through the soft earth, found the hard. He drew his cutlass, waved his arm. He could hear the shouts of Jean's men and Bart's, a little farther up the river. And he could see, too, the shattered branches and the imprints on the earth where the Spaniards had rested their muskets. But the men were gone. They were pursuing a war of attrition, knowing they could not concentrate a sufficient force in the jungle to meet the buccaneers head on.

  And they were pursuing it successfully.

  Bart shouldered his way through the trees. 'Christ,' he said. 'What would I give for a stretch of open ground. I'd even settle for Hispaniola again.'

  'So long as we would be doing the hunting there as well,' Jean said. 'Let us regain our canoes. The Admiral has said that we shall certainly meet with resistance at Cruces, and it cannot be more than a day away now.'

  'And that will be long enough,' Bart grumbled. 'My men are down to their last mouthfuls of meat.'

  Kit re-embarked his crew, took his place in the stern. They had wasted half an hour in that futile action, but as yet even the centre of the long column of canoes had not passed their landing. And now, by this natural leap-frogging process, their places in the van had been taken by another three canoes, and they could allow themselves to relax. Until Cruces. For Morgan had indeed told them about this town, an important resting place on the gold road from Panama to Nombre de Dios, situated on the shore of the lake. The Spaniards would certainly fight for Cruces, and the town was fortified. There would the mettle of these men be tested. As if it had not been tested many times before. Perhaps it was his own mettle he questioned. But had he not led the assault on the Spanish brig? He had known no fear then. Only an anxious anger. So now was a strange time to start doubting himself.