by Sally Watson
Jade ground her teeth, infuriated. People were so—so mercenary! Being right was never enough reason for doing a thing; it had to be safe and practical and profitable as well!
“That’s what’s wrong with the world,” she muttered, and dug her fingers into Morgan’s side so hard that he fled, outraged, to Anne. Rory, entering at that moment with Tom and Mazer, slanted his eyebrows with cynical amusement that didn’t reach his eyes. He had given up any real hope of changing human nature. Tom sat down beside Mark, who first smiled and then looked away with an expression of flinty aloofness that at once caused Jade to forget the world’s iniquities.
It wasn’t the first time she had noticed Mark behaving rather oddly toward Tom. Jade had thought at first they were rivals for the attentions of Anne, but that didn’t make much sense. Nothing could have been less romantic than their behavior toward Anne—or Anne’s toward them. Anne and Mark and Pierre in particular were like brothers and sisters, laughing and thinking up mischief, and protective of one another. But as for Mark and Tom, they behaved like two people who couldn’t for the life of them decide whether to be friends or enemies.
Jade shrugged and began to coax the yellow-and-green parrot away from Joshua, who was stroking its head. People began to seem a great deal more complicated than they had. Hypocrite and victim, brave and weak, were inadequate categories after all.
The parrot pigeon-toed his way along the settee to Jade’s black velvet knee and began to climb it. Anne’s voice penetrated her consciousness, “—have to tell Vane next time we see him.”
Jade looked up, startled. “Do you mean Charles Vane? But I’d have thought you’d be enemies.”
Anne looked surprised. “Whatever gave you that idea?” In her rich ivory brocade gown, with a bit of dainty sewing on her lap, she looked so unlike a pirate queen that Jade was thrown doubly off her stride, and just sat blinking until Rory came to her rescue.
“Och, I can’t think,” he drawled, “unless it was the story about his being kicked out of his captaincy and set adrift in a smallboat.”
“Oh, that!” Anne laughed. “You don’t understand. There was nothing personal in it. We’re all still good friends, those of us who are still alive.”
Rory and Jade looked at each other, shrugging in astonishment. What extraordinary people pirates were! They, now, would take such a gesture very personally indeed.
“Anyway,” added Mark, “we can’t afford not to be friends, especially since Governor Rogers closed New Providence to pirates the summer before last. There’s few enough of us left.”
“Where do you go now for provisions and water and turtles and to sell the loot?” asked Jade curiously. “Do we have another Pirate Republic somewhere?” The parrot was now sidling up her arm, digging in its claws to keep from falling off.
“No,” said Anne. “But there are ports here and there who find pirates very profitable indeed, and open their doors to us. We’re heading for Trinidado now, on the south coast of Cuba. But there’s St. Catherine’s Island, or Bermuda, or places in French Hispaniola—”
“But—” Jade sat up straight. The parrot, having reached her shoulder, was now chewing amiably on her short, sun-bleached hair with sharp grating noises right in her ear. “But—Cuba’s Spanish, isn’t it? And aren’t they on bad terms with England? Unofficially, I mean?”
Mark chuckled. “So are we, my pet. And officially, too.”
Jade giggled, and the parrot at once began nibbling her ear. “Yes, but I mean, we’re English pirates, and we’ve got some Spanish loot from the ship you took before the Pearl. Well, aren’t the Spanish at Trinidado going to notice that and resent it?”
“Poor child,” said Anne kindly. “You still don’t really accept human nature, do you? That’s why you and Rory are such cynics, you know: you’re frustrated idealists who go on letting yourselves be disillusioned. Why should the Cubans resent it when those nice Spanish doubloons are going straight into their pockets instead of back to Spain?”
“Oh,” said Jade, and curled her lip.
Half a dozen pirate craft lay at anchor in the bay, and Trinidado prospered. The pirates were having a jolly reunion, overflowing the larger tavern, to the great wonder of Jade and Domino who sat curled up against each other in an alcove drinking lemonade and giggling at the idiocy of the male species.
“Like much little boys,” commented Domino as several of them capered past singing a naughty song with sideways glances to see how the girls would take it.
“Much sillier,” countered Jade, remembering Matthew with a pang. But she looked thoughtfully at the nearest table, where Anne and Jack and Vane and the other captains laughed and joked together. They had that other childish quality, it seemed, of forgetting grievances as if they had never been. It was a nice quality. Jade, watching them wistfully, wished she had it.
“More rum here, Juan,” Vane shouted happily. “Rum for the girls there, too. This is a party, blister it!”
“Girls drink lemonade,” Juan reminded him, disapproval for this shocking habit all over his long mustachioed face. “My lemons,” he remembered, cheering up a bit. “I bring you good news to toast, señor. Soon now some day you visit New Providence again. But only to see,” he pleaded. “You come back here to drink, si?”
Everyone seemed perfectly happy to toast anything at all. Only Anne turned an alert head. “Why?” she demanded.
“I have good tavern, good rum,” Juan informed her with simple dignity.
Jade giggled and Domino snorted. Anne glanced at them with brief mirth. “I mean, what news?” she explained. “How can we go back? Governor Rogers forbids it.”
“Pah! Cold-blooded English also very soon kicked out now,” Juan beamed. “Our great Spanish Armada, she is sailing now presently, perhaps yesterday or mañana, from Havana, and New Providence will be Spanish as God wishes.” Nodding happily, he waddled away, leaving a speculative silence behind him.
Jade broke it. “But the Spanish Armada was about a hundred and fifty years ago! And in the English Channel.”
“A hundred and thirty,” Anne corrected her absently. “This is another one. They’ve been building it in Havana for over a year. Rogers knows about it; Jack and I warned him, months ago when we were on good terms for a while. Even then, there were four or five warships and more than a dozen sloops and brigantines and some two thousand men.”
“Everyone knows Rogers has been begging London for help,” put in Vane, fingering his brown beard. “They haven’t sent so much as a longboat. He hasn’t got a chance.”
“The Bahamas will soon be Spanish,” Jack sighed, looking as if he regretted it but wasn’t at all sure why.
Another silence. Then Rory’s harsh young voice and Rory’s hatchet-carved young face blazed between Tom and Mark. “Well? Are we going to let them get away with it?”
Jade lifted her head sharply, and their eyes met. This was the sort of thing they wanted to do!
Vane was on his feet, staring at Rory. “No, by heaven! I’m blistered if I want to see that! I may be an outlaw, but blast it, I’m an English outlaw! And I hate Spain far worse than I do Rogers!”
“Hear hear!” shouted the pirates.
Anne tossed her red head, laughed recklessly. “Right! If we all feel the same way, let’s go stop them!”
Jade could restrain herself no longer. “Right this minute!” she yelped, leaping to her feet excitedly. She waved her mug of lemonade as if it were a torch. “Hurry up!” Then Domino was beside her, loosing an African variety of war whoop that would have scared any listening Indians into day before yesterday. It caused Juan to go diving under the nearest table, and brought the entire party of pirates to its feet, cheering. And within the hour, the pirate Counter-Armada had set sail for New Providence . . . one schooner, one ship, and four swift little sloops.
Both Spanish and British histories show great reticence in describing that battle for the Bahamas in February, 1720.
“Our watch prevented the invasion,”
say the New Providence Council minutes with true English understatement—or just possibly a touch of mendacious embarrassment.
“Not worth taking,” says the report sent from Havana to Madrid laconically and with an almost visible shrug. “Changed our minds.”
No official reports mention the swarm of pirate ships that descended upon New Providence Island after the invasion had actually started. Only a number of unofficial eyewitnesses tell of the four little sloops that appeared from nowhere to cut neatly between ships and the Spanish troops already on the beach, and catch them both at once in a deadly double broadside; and of the Queen Royal and Vane’s schooner who swooped around the point while the Spanish were staggering from this most un-Christian behavior—and did the same thing between the huge ships of war, causing the Spanish flagship to explode and sink on the spot.
At this, the Spanish lost heart at once, and Governor Rogers launched his tiny fleet of gadflies to join the pirate hornets. Together, buzzing, they harassed the large clumsy Spanish ships until their commanders decided that this was a dreadful place, and they didn’t want it anyhow.
Then Rogers’ craft—rather battered—put back to shore, while the pirates gleefully harried the would-be invaders halfway back to Havana, chuckling with the fun of doing such a very mortifying favor for the man who had chucked them out of the very island they had just saved for him.
“Now this,” said Jade with satisfaction, “is what I meant!”
It was, said Anne, a perfectly typical descent from high drama to farce, that their next action should be the capture of a cargo of horses. It ended, of course, with bareback races around the heaving waist of the Queen Royal, half a dozen riders fished out of the sea, and only Anne and Joshua mounted at the end of it.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Mark
This time there was only one other pirate ship anchored at Trinidado, which, in the oppressive heat of spring, looked like a parched rubbish heap on the edge of the jungle. The Queen Royal tugged gently at her anchor on the turning tide, the town had its afternoon siesta, and the crew dozed or talked, or worked on scrimshaw, or played panpipes or guitar or flute or fife, in the shadow of stripped masts or in the salon. No point going ashore until the heat of the day was over.
Jade, standing at the wide salon windows running across the stern of the ship, contemplated Trinidado with an expression that caused Mark to grin mischievously.
“You think this is bad, you should have seen New Providence when it was our stronghold! Harbor cluttered with all sorts of pirate craft and the hulks of prizes, shore covered with huts and tents, and the most brawling, bawdy, riotous swarm of people you ever saw. Vultures of all sorts, come to prey on the pirates.”
“Weren’t they all pirates there?” demanded Jade, not pleased with the picture.
Mark shook his fair head. “Harpies! Parasites! They out-numbered us about five to one, the sneak-thieves, hawkers, escaped convicts, smugglers, fishwives, harlots, drunks—Sat in their garbage pit of a town waiting for us to go out and get the loot and bring it back—and then they tricked and plucked it out of us. Like jackals around a pride of lions. It’s a good thing the punishment for piracy is hanging!”
Jade contemplated this last remark in silence for a minute, trying to tie it in with the rest of the speech. Failing, she peered sideways at Mark’s handsome face, doubtful and questioning. “What’s that got to do with it?”
Mark twinkled at her. “Simple. If it were a lesser penalty, the whole swarm of jackals would come out, too. The seas would be as overcrowded with rogues as the land, and then what would an honest pirate do for a living?”
Anne raised her head from a book and laughed. “There’s sense in that, Mark. If you don’t mind hanging, that is.”
Mark shrugged. “Everybody dies. And hanging’s less unpleasant, I dare say, than most ways. Illness, for instance. . . .”
Several heads nodded casually. No one worried about such things. Time enough when the day came.
“Like Black Death,” suggested little Sam meaningfully. “Who’d be an honest man in Marseilles these days?” For Juan had told them that this dread plague was raging there. Brought about, he had added firmly, by the long pointed shoes which had recently come into fashion, and which, said many of the bishops, had proved so offensive to God that He had instantly sent the plague to indicate His disapproval.
“Whatever caused it,” said Dickson firmly, “I’m for hanging or drowning or getting skewered in a good fight.” It was at this philosophical moment that Rory stuck his black head inside the door. “Jade?”
Jade turned at once. She preferred Rory’s company to anyone’s, growls and all. Besides, he must have something interesting to say, or he wouldn’t have come for her.
“Barton’s finally picked his fight,” Rory added grimly just as Jade reached the door. “With that rattlepate Tom.”
“No!” Mark turned sharply. “Not Tom Deane! He can’t fight a duel with Barton; he’s no more experienced than—than Jezebel! And Barton’s a killer!” His face looked sharply pale in the half-light of the big cabin, and Anne threw him a hard warning glance that caused him to bite his lip and turn back to the window abruptly. The door closed, with Jade and Rory on the outside exchanging a long and puzzled stare.
“I don’t understand Mark,” complained Jade. “Why does he either snub Tom, or act like—like his big brother or something!”
“Aye, and why did Anne stab him with that dour look?” wondered Rory.
They both stood for a moment in the Caribbean sun that beat down on deck like golden hammers. Jade’s sun-bleached hair glowed, Rory’s blue eyes slitted against it, and they both thought of Tom.
“Race you to the masthead,” said Rory, and they shot in unison across the deck and up the shrouds. Rory won by a small margin, and they both heaved themselves to the small platform where mast and top-mast joined. There was just room for the two of them to sit in the skimpy shade of the bare mast and stare downward, through a network of ropes, across the whole length of the Queen Royal.
Just forward of the mainmast Barton stood amid a group of the rougher pirates, bragging about what he had done to victims of his previous duels, all in a voice clearly intended to be overheard by Tom on the fo’c’sle. Tom, calm but undeniably pale, was talking to Joshua and Dickson and Mazer, who looked both grave and grim despite their loud cheerful words. Nobody was fooling anybody.
“He’ll kill him,” said Rory, anger in his voice.
Jade glowered, jutting her chin out like the prow of a Spanish warship. “It’s ridiculous! It shouldn’t be allowed. We can’t just sit here and let it happen!”
“What d’you think we could do about it?” he demanded harshly.
“Prevent it, of course!”
“How?” jeered Rory. “You can defy law, but not custom. The men wouldn’t let anything stop a challenge accepted.”
“Well, it’s a vicious, stupid custom!” Jade snapped, knowing he was right, and all the angrier for it.
Rory turned on her, so that his ringed eyes were close to hers and his sharp chin nearly butted her tipped nose. “You think you’re right and everyone else is wrong, hmm?”
“Yes,” said Jade, unintimidated. “And so do you.”
He laughed suddenly, a short mirthless bark. “Aye, I do. And so we set our judgment against the world—and—”
“And so the world will squash us for it,” Jade finished, baring her teeth. “I know; Monsieur Maupin said the same thing. I don’t care! We are right, and the world is wrong, and we’ve got to save Tom.”
Rory laughed again, genuinely this time. “You’re just like Gran! Water-witch! Kelpie! Don’t you wish you could put the Evil Eye on Barton?”
Whatever the Evil Eye might be, it sounded satisfyingly dire.
Jade nodded with enthusiasm. “Or ju-ju.”
Rory looked intrigued. “What’s that?”
“African black magic. They call it voodoo here in the West Indies. Domino told m
e about it. You can use it to make people get sick and die, and I’d like to use one that would make Barton get killed instead of Tom.” She stared with bitter hatred at the swaggering bulk of the bully below, and then poked Rory excitedly. “Look! I think Domino is putting it on him!” For the magnificent figure of the African girl suddenly swung into the mainsail shrouds almost above Barton, and stood easily poised with one foot and one hand on the ratlines, glaring down at him with concentrated venom and making strange movements with her free hand.
Barton seemed to find it unnerving. He glanced up, scowled bellicosely, strutted to the port rail with an indifference that was distinctly overdone. Domino, encouraged, drew even more menacing figures with her hand, and Rory—brought up with Highland belief in such charms—watched with deep interest.
But Jade had no such background, and she was a girl of action. With a sudden annoyed exclamation she swung herself off the platform and slid down the backstays. Mark, looking distraught, was just coming out of the big cabin, and Jade confronted him with fists planted on her sailcloth-clad hips. “Look here,” she said directly. “Aren’t we going to do something?”
“Yes—” said Mark, determined but baffled by the unwritten laws of the brotherhood of pirates. “We can’t prevent the duel, though.”
Jade snorted. “I’ll bet I could! . . . Oh, all right, I know. But we could do something . . . like getting Barton to challenge me, and I could choose rapiers and fight him before Tom can.”
Mark’s face had lit with interest even while he shook his blond head decidedly. “Not you. For one thing, he’d never challenge you and give you choice of weapons now he’s seen you with the rapier. And you haven’t enough experience with cutlass or pistol.”
“And he’d be making a fool of himself to challenge a chit of sixteen, anyway,” said Rory’s gravel voice from behind Jade.