by Steve Goble
“Jesus,” Hob said. “Yes!”
“I’ll bet that was full of bloody clothing,” Spider said. “Wright probably took clean stuff from the cap’n’s things, after getting drenched with blood. . . . Sorry, Miss Brentwood.”
Fox turned his gaze on Wright. “But you . . . you profess to love her.”
“I ordered the target made, yes,” Wright said, smiling, his teeth bright in a face quickly flushing crimson. He spoke softly, the way he did with the crew when things were going well. “Sam wanted it, and I obliged. He was a paying passenger. Someone else must have done the deed in the captain’s cabin, though! Not I!” He turned his face toward Abigail. “Not I, Abby. You must believe me.”
“Don’t believe him,” Spider said. “I thought you were trying to honor her father, Wright, when you slipped off from the convoy in the night. I thought you were trying to please Miss Brentwood, win her favor. But your every decision since the cap’n’s death was aimed at putting this ship into Ned Low’s hands. Wasn’t it?”
Wright’s eyebrows arched. “No. No. Sam Smoke must have had an ally aboard, someone who plotted with him. I would not . . .”
“The bloody pirates knew we were coming,” Spider said. “And they knew we would not put up a fight. Sam Smoke was aboard to make sure you did not back out of your goddamned bargain. I have seen pirate attacks. They come at you growling, howling like a mad mob, anything to put fear into you. Anything to make you piss your britches and decide not to fight, because they would rather just take your goods and be on their way as fast as may be. And they come at you in numbers to overwhelm resistance from the start. These lads did none of that. They took their time setting up their blockade, fired some shots—salutes, I reckon, or signals to their spy on the hill, or their agent on Redemption, by thunder! That was Smoke’s job, right? Make sure you did not stray from your course? But they did not fire anything, did not do any menacing, anything that would cause fear. They sent just a handful of men over to our ship. That is not the pirate way. It sure as bloody goddamned hell ain’t Ned Low’s way. Overwhelming force is what pirates rely upon. Why send only a few men? Because they knew there would be no fight. They knew it. We did not stray into a trap. We were making a goddamned rendezvous.”
Wright, red-faced now, bellowed, “Because they knew Sam Smoke was aboard! They knew he would secure the ship for them! It was him! It had to have been him!”
“No,” Spider said. “Sam never left the poop deck when the killing must have happened. And Sam Smoke did not order us away from our escort in the night, did he? Sam Smoke did not hold a gun to our heads and command us to sail to this island, did he? And Sam Smoke did not make a move to secure Redemption for Ned Low, not until he thought you might lose your nerve and make a run for it.”
“Nicholas?” It was a whisper, a pleading, and Abigail’s eyes welled with tears.
“How could you have endangered her so?” Spider asked. “You had to know what would happen to her in the clutches of those men.”
“I would have protected you!” Wright’s hands covered his eyes. “God, God, God!”
“How much money did you owe Ned Low? Lose a few bets, did you?” Spider brandished his knife. “This ship was intended to pay off a debt. You couldn’t resist a wager. We all joked about it, but our games were for low stakes. But they play for higher stakes in Port Royal, don’t they? I am thinking you got into a game with Ned Low, or Wicked Pete, or someone else of their crew. You lost a lot. You made a deal to turn over Redemption. Smoke was aboard to make sure you turned over the vessel, is that right?”
“It was supposed to be my command,” Wright said, his hands still hiding his face. “The captain and Abby, neither of them was supposed to be aboard. Neither of them was going to make this trip! The plan was laid long before the captain decided to make the journey, before he decided to bring Abby along, and I was just going to slip away from the convoy and meet Ned Low here. Abby was not supposed to be here! The captain was not supposed to be here!” He spoke through giant sobs. “I was supposed to command, hand over the ship, pay off Ned. And when that changed, when your father decided to command and . . . oh, God . . . to bring you, Abby, I . . .”
“You killed him during the shooting contest,” Spider said. “When you went up to the poop the next morning, the day of the Bible reading, you had a bag of powder and a fuse tucked away.”
Wright, unnerved now, nodded furiously.
“Lit it with your pipe.”
More nodding.
“Dropped it to the stern gallery.”
Wright uncovered his face. “Yes! I admit it.”
“Cowardly bastard,” Spider said.
Wright ignored him and turned pleading eyes toward Abigail. “I told Smoke we needed to change the plan. Find another way. He told me he would kill you, Abby, if I went back on my word.”
“Your word . . .” Abigail’s eyes blazed.
“I would have protected you, Abby. No one was going to hurt you so long as I had blood in my body!”
“They’d have shot you dead without hesitation, Wright.” Spider shook his head. “Ned Low does not make deals he intends to honor.”
Abigail spoke through clenched jaws, barely audible. “My father hired you, taught you . . .”
“Your father denied me your hand!” Wright clenched his teeth tightly, too, as if he were baring fangs. “Your father took this command from me! He thought me inferior . . .”
“He saw potential in you.” She reached behind her back, freed the gun Spider had given her, and aimed it at Wright’s forehead.
Wright held his breath.
Abigail’s arm tensed.
Wright made no move to stop her, or to escape.
Everyone else stood frozen, not breathing.
“I love you, Abby.”
Abigail shivered. The gun in her hand shook, and Spider began to fear she would pull the trigger by accident, and the ball might pierce anyone at random. He stepped forward to take the gun, but Anne Bonny got there first.
The redhead grasped the gun gently. “Abby, dear. Give it to me. Give it to me.”
Abigail relinquished the weapon. Wright sighed.
“I showed you how to use this,” Anne said. “This is how.”
She shot Wright between the eyes.
Spider and Odin looked at each other. Everyone else did the same. No one said a word for a long, long time as Abigail stood over the dead body of Nicholas Wright. Her gaze remained locked on him.
Anne draped an arm around Abigail. “You had every right to kill the bastard. I am happy to have done it for you.”
Fox looked as though the world had vanished beneath his feet. The Reverend Down stared wide-eyed, prayed quietly, and shook. The rest of the gathered men nodded.
“No one will say a word,” Lazare said.
“I didn’t see anything happen,” Odin growled. “Nor did anyone else. And I will kill any man who says otherwise.”
Abigail stared at Wright. Wright stared up and through the canopy of trees and into the Caribbean sun—but did not see it.
Spider found a hogshead and sat. He brushed sweat and grass from his face. The mystery of the captain’s death, which had nagged him like a gnat swirling about his head, was resolved, and the cowardly murder was avenged. He sucked on the pipe and wished to God he had whiskey. He glanced toward a hogshead of rum, but Fox was sitting on it.
Spider closed his eyes. He had been on edge for days, and here, for now, there was no immediate mystery, no present enemy to fight.
For now, Spider could sleep. He drifted off, and soon Emma’s smile and crinkled nose greeted him on a Nantucket pier. She was teasing him because he wanted to show Johnny and Hob how to drill a proper hole, and the boys wanted to rush off on a lobster boat.
30
Spider stood on the beach, watching Anne Bonny’s fleet disperse. Her boat had been used by Hob and others to take her back to her flagship, and now they were rowing it back toward shore. In the morning,
Spider would see that the two boats in their possession were seaworthy, and they would discuss who among them might be able to navigate. A couple of fellows among those who had not joined Anne’s crew had been naval midshipmen once upon a time and figured they could reach Nassau, or the Turks, easily enough.
From there, Spider would find another ship and sail to Em’s arms. He stared to the north, and the pendant’s reassuring weight against his chest calmed him.
He took a fat swig of rum, tossed aside the empty flask, and resumed smoking his pipe. “Good to not be sailing on the devil’s wind, don’t you think, Odin?”
The one-eyed gentleman merely grunted and stretched out on the sand, being nearly drunk enough to piss himself. Spider was surprised Odin had not joined Anne’s crew. “I’ll stay with you, Spider,” the old man had said by way of explanation while he was still a little sober. “Otherwise, you are fucked. Ha!”
Spider was not at all surprised to hear Little Bob and his friends had decided to go pirating with Anne. It was the only choice for them, really, for no one remaining on the island would have them around. Anne had taken them on with some reluctance, but pirates nearly always could use more hands.
To the west, Madeleine Robin’s silhouette pierced the setting sun. She would carry Anne to Nassau and to her next victim. The remainder of the lady’s small fleet veered toward the Bahamas to seek prey and plunder. No part of Spider longed to be with them. He had seen all the bloodshed he ever wanted to see.
Behind him, men sang and drank around a huge bonfire. Abigail walked farther up the beach, Rufus Fox by her side.
Odin sat up. “Drink alla rum?”
“Yes, Odin, I drank all the rum.”
“Thought you tryin’ a quit.”
“That was yesterday.” Spider blew a long stream of smoke into the wind. “This is now. Here comes the boat.”
The rowers jumped out in the shallows and brought the craft up on the beach. Spider jogged toward it and called out. “Well then, Hob, does she ride nice and steady? We’ll give her a look in the morning.”
He got no answer.
“Hob?”
Spider ran. “Hob?”
Once he got close enough to make out faces, Spider’s jaws clenched and the pipe stem snapped in his mouth. “Where the bloody hell is Hob?”
“He stayed with the red-haired woman,” one of the boat crewmen said.
Spider stared into the sun’s burnt orange disk. Madeleine Robin, now a mere smudge, crossed it.
“Goddamned fool, I was,” Spider said. “Goddamned fool. I should have seen it. I should have put the stupid fucker in chains.”
He was still staring west long after Madeleine Robin vanished from sight.
Author’s Note
All of the characters who figure in this story are fictional, save two.
Anne Bonny, indeed, raised bloody hell in Caribbean waters with Calico Jack Rackham and was reputed to have fought as well as any man. She was captured along with Jack’s crew and sentenced to death, but pregnancy delayed her execution. She was the daughter of an Irish attorney who owned property in the Carolinas, and his connections may have helped her, too. There is no record of her execution.
I have no real reason to believe that Anne Bonny returned to the Caribbean and hunted down men who wronged her, and she may well have settled down somewhere in the colonies or the Bahamas with a new name and identity, but her whereabouts during the period of my story were vague enough to give me some leeway. I could not quite resist the opportunity to include her in this novel. If scholars one day prove she was somewhere else at this time, please remember I am a storyteller, not a historian.
Edward “Ned” Low, sometimes spelled Lowe or Loe, also was real, and by all accounts he was as sadistic and horrible as he is portrayed in my story. His bloody deeds were compared to those of the Spanish Inquisition. The unfortunate fate of Ed Pigeon described in my novel is entirely fictional, but Ned Low was, indeed, reputed to be a sick and violent man. It is said that on occasion he cut off men’s lips, boiled them, and forced the poor souls to eat them. His whereabouts at the time of this story are unknown, but his reputation was such that anyone sailing these waters in 1723 certainly would have feared running into him. If later research places him elsewhere during this period, well, please forgive me.
Acknowledgments
There are so many people to thank: Everyone at Seventh Street Books, my agent Evan Marshall, my friends and inspirations Tom Williams and Tyrone Johnston, and, of course, my wife and child, Gere and Rowan. Mom and Dad, too, bless them. Subtract any one of them from the equation and this book would never have come to be.
The other authors at Seventh Street Books have been very welcoming. Our publisher offers a wide array of crime fiction, from funny to gruesome to thought-provoking. I am proud to have conned my way into such a fine crowd of writers.
I also want to thank Robert Louis Stevenson, whose Treasure Island will forever stand as the yardstick by which all other pirate novels are measured. I read that book again every few years, and it never disappoints.
Other writers whose works fueled my desire to write, in no particular order, are Arthur Conan Doyle, John D. MacDonald, Mark Twain, Ellery Queen, Rex Stout, Patrick O’Brian, C. S. Forester, Fritz Leiber, Ursula K. Le Guin, Alexandre Dumas, Rafael Sabatini, J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, and Daphne du Maurier. I do not write like any of them, nor am I able to do so, but all of them shaped me.
I also want to mention Phoenix Brewing Company in Mansfield, Ohio, where portions of the first two Spider John novels were written. Mighty fine brews can be found there.
Lastly, I want to thank you. Not enough people read these days. I am exceedingly happy that you do.
About the Author
Steve Goble is the author of The Bloody Black Flag, the first Spider John mystery novel. A former journalist, Goble now works in communications for a cybersecurity firm. Previously, he wrote a weekly craft-beer column called Brewologist, which appeared on USA Today Network–Ohio websites.
Author photo by Jason J. Molyet