Bring It Close

by Helen Hollick

  Slipping off his coat, Jesamiah walked easily across the swaying deck and placed the garment around Alicia’s shoulders.

  She tried a wan smile. “So you do care about me?”

  “Nope. But I do care about the effect you are having on my crew. I’ll thank you to cover those apple dumplings more discreetly when coming on deck, if you please, Ma’am. Show your wares ashore as much as you like, but don’t display them aboard my ship. Not unless you want to join the women below.”

  Affronted, she drew the coat closer. Her bosoms were her main asset. What was it the Bible said? Do not hide your light under a bushel?

  “You’ve never objected before,” she grumbled. “Not in bed, anyway.”

  About to answer that bed was somewhat different to his quarterdeck, Jesamiah’s words were halted by a shout from the masthead.

  “On deck. Sail ho!”

  He tipped his head back, cupped his hands around his mouth, “Where away?”

  “Three points, larb’d bow!”

  Hurrying to the larboard rail, Jesamiah squinted over. Could see nothing except a blue sky with patchy clouds, a sea as blue, and the bright sun.

  “I think it’s ‘er, Cap’n,” Joseph Meadows’ ethereal voice called again from aloft. “Sure looks like ‘er set o’ sail.”

  “How far? I can’t see a bloody thing from down here.”

  Standing beside Jesamiah, Alicia was bemused. “Who? Who does he think she is?” Craning her neck she squinted up the hundred and fifty feet or so at the figure silhouetted against the sky.

  Placing his hands on Alicia’s shoulders, Jesamiah moved her firmly aside and strode to the binnacle box beside the wheel. He glanced at the compass bearing as he took up the telescope – the bring it close – and opening it to full length, returned to the rail. Cursing under his breath he scanned the ocean ahead; where was she? Ah! There! He had her!

  “Aye, it’s her,” he announced. “Crammin’ enough sail on, ain’t they? Why’re they in such a hurry?”

  “Who? Tell me. What are you talking about?”

  Staring steadfast through the glass, Jesamiah was studying the vessel miles ahead. Did not even hear Alicia. Frowned as he saw the ship’s sails haul round. “She’s veering towards the coast. Whatever for? We’re well past Charleston.”

  “Who?” Alicia persisted, impatience riddling her tone. “What ship?”

  Witheringly Jesamiah stared at her. “What d’you bloody think? The Fortune of Virginia of course. I’m tryin’ t’catch up with my woman.”

  Alicia’s face fell. She had not bargained on this. “But we are heading direct for Virginia, are we not? The Chesapeake?”

  “Not yet we ain’t. We catch up with the Fortune first, see my Tiola safely delivered to Bath Town, and then we go to Virginia.” He chuckled, “Delivered for a delivery.” He nudged her ribs, “Get it?”

  Her answering smile was none too sweet; it took a great effort not to stamp her foot in obdurate frustration.

  “On deck! There’s another sail! Coming out that patch of mist!”

  Jesamiah raised the telescope again, could see nothing.

  “Wait…aye Cap’n, thought so. There’s two of ‘em runnin’ in consort.”

  Not liking the sound of that, Jesamiah slammed the glass shut, thrust it through his belt and jumping down the ladder into the waist, grabbed hold of the mainmast shrouds and began to climb, aware his crew were watching him critically. The jests about the easy life of a captain had not escaped his attention; here was a chance to prove he was as fit and agile as any one of the swabs.

  Refraining from taking the easy route through the lubbers’ hole, he made the more difficult outward climb up the futtock shrouds, even though he was breathing hard. There were bound to be several wagers being laid on how far he would get without stopping. The men thought nothing of clambering from the lowest depth of the hold to the height of the main truck without pause.

  Panting heavily he reached the masthead and settled himself to point the telescope at the blue sweep of the ocean.

  “Not one word, Skylark,” he growled when he had caught his breath. “I’m as fit as any of you.”

  Joseph Meadows had moved aside to allow his captain room, was sitting five feet away astride the yard. They called him ‘Skylark’ on account of his fine singing voice, his liking of spending hours alone on lookout, and his surname.

  “M’lips are sealed, Cap’n.”

  “See you keep them that way.”

  The motion of the mast was swinging them in a corkscrew circle, forward, sideways and down; it took a while for Jesamiah to focus the glass, to find what he was looking for.

  There was the Fortune of Virginia, and there about four miles to windward of her, well clear of the mist now, a sloop running with a smaller companion giving Chase. Jesamiah swore colourfully. He had been a pirate for ten years, had been in enough Chases to recognise the early stages of an attack. And the larger sloop was instantly recognisable. As distinctive as the oak leaf and acorn tattoo Jesamiah sported on the left side of his chest.

  “The bugger!” he said with feeling, “The fokken bloody bugger!”

  Hand over hand he slid quickly down the backstay, before his boots touched the deck was bellowing orders. “All hands! All hands on deck! Clear for action!”

  Marching past Alicia, Jesamiah took control of the helm. “Sandy, stop your ditherin’ with the running gear and escort the lady below. Give ‘er to Finch and tell ‘im to stow ‘er somewhere safe.”

  Furious, Alicia shook the boy away as he took her arm. “I am not a keg of cargo to be manhandled. I am going nowhere unless you tell me what is going on here!”

  “We’re clearing for action, Ma’am.” Polite, Sandy Banks gestured towards the ladder steps. “You’ll be safer tucked down in the hold with the Cap’n’s belongings when we start firing.”

  “Firing?” Alicia squeaked, turning back towards Jesamiah. “We are to fight?”

  “Not if I can ‘elp it,” Jesamiah answered. “But I can’t guarantee what that bugger Edward Teach, old Blackbeard ‘imself, will do once ‘e spots us.”

  She squeaked again, a sound nearer a scream, “But we could be killed!”

  Jesamiah sniffed, wiped his nose with the cuff of his coat. Repeated, “Again, not if I can help it.” He paused, added bluntly, “You’d best fetch her a pistol, Sandy. See it’s loaded and primed.”

  “I will need no such thing. If you think I will be aiding you to fight in an act of piracy, think again Jesamiah Acorne!”

  Jesamiah barely glanced at her, dispassionate. “It ain’t for our benefit, Madam. If Teach gets the better of us you’ll be wanting a quick death. As you said yourself, he ain’t known for his nice treatment of the ladies. See the whores have weapons for the same purpose, Sandy. Even they don’t deserve Blackbeard’s brutality.”

  Banks nodded, proffered his arm again. “Ma’am? If you would care to accompany me?”

  Men were spilling onto the deck from below, more than a few buttoning breeches or the loose-legged, knee length striped trousers most sailors preferred. Every man had his place: at the masts ready to haul the great sails or beside the guns, loosening the securing tackle on the wooden trucks; fetching shot, loading. Making ready. Sea Witch carried twenty-four cannon – Jesamiah had taken the opportunity these few idle weeks to increase her firepower, using as an excuse the fact that he had recently had a severe disagreement with the Spanish, with whom England had been embroiled in a short tit-for-tat war. Being half Spanish Jesamiah had briefly considered fighting on their side – as had several pirates, the English not being relied upon to keep a given word regarding amnesties and governor-granted pardons. In the end he had decided that the Spanish were even less reliable, and anyway, the disagreement had lasted for only the blink of an eye.

  Eight guns a side on the lower gun deck, six on the open waist, three each to larb’d and starb’d; two seated in Jesamiah’s cabin as stern chasers. And to complete the armoury, several
swivel guns were placed fore and aft, the weaponry complemented by pistols, muskets and a quantity of grenados. The four boys, lads of between eleven and thirteen, were scurrying with buckets of sand to spread around the wheels of the gun trucks. There would be blood, there always was. Sand gave a foothold when the decks became slippery.

  Sand, too, spread in a cramped area of the forward hold, safe below the water line where Mr Janson was setting out his surgical implements beside the table. He had served as loblolly boy for more years than he remembered, the title a traditional one for the surgeon’s mate, even though he was mature in years. And even though they had no surgeon aboard. Not that it had made a difference when there had been. Jackson had always been too drunk to wield anything more than a bottle. Jansy had taken over as surgeon the day Jackson had been about to amputate the wrong leg from some poor wretch. A pity Miss Tiola was not here; her healing skills and dextrous hands would have been appreciated if the worst came to the worst. Still, Jansy did not quite hold with her insistence on cleanliness. What was the point of scrubbing instruments when they were going to get all bloody again? Though he had to admit she lost fewer wounded, but then, she had a woman’s touch so that could be expected.

  Throughout the ship echoed a general bustle of expectant but orderly noise, the thudding of running feet, energetic hammering accompanied by mild cursing. Jesamiah’s great cabin had been altered in a matter of minutes; the bulkhead screens unbolted and removed, the stern windows folded up overhead, the glass panels of the skylight removed, to be stored in the hold along with the furniture, china plate and silverware.

  Sea Witch, transformed from the elegant and immaculate mistress of the seas to a professional fighting ship. Deadly and accurate. The lark become the hawk.

  On deck, awaiting orders, the hands at their stations beside masts and guns looked towards the quarterdeck, to Jesamiah. This was always the worst part, the catching up. And the waiting.

  Nine

  Port Royal – 1683

  Watching his son and waiting for the Witch Woman to come again; to come and help him put right that which he had done wrong, Charles St Croix remembered…

  He closed his telescope with a sharp ‘clack’ and leant on the starboard rail staring at the several ships resting at anchor in Port Royal Harbour. He had expected a warm welcome, had received a notable rebuttal. ‘Come ashore and you will be arrested and hanged.’ A fine welcome indeed!

  The place was so different now to what it had been ten years past. The fortress rebuilt, the town doubled in size. The narrow streets appeared to be as filthy and stinking as ever, but they were busy with trade. Much of it legal, for all that most were inclined towards the vices of gambling, drink and women. The harbour was full – but not one of the ships that Charles St Croix had studied through his telescope, the bring it close, was a pirate vessel.

  The various wars and sparring matches with Spain and France and Holland had ended. There was no more privateering, and no more piracy, at least not here in Jamaica under Captain Henry Morgan’s administration.

  St Croix spat disdainfully over the rail into the ebb tide gurgling past the hull of the ship. “Henry Morgan – beg pardon, Sir Henry Morgan, I forgot the King had knighted the rum-sodden old sot – was ever one to feather his own nest. He sits over there lording it as Lieutenant Governor, his fat rump planted on a gilded chair, while his drunken brain forgets the days when he sailed these waters as a pirate with his comrades.”

  “Do not permit him to hear you say that, my friend. Morgan insists he was a legal privateer. He sailed with the King’s permission and did naught without it.” The speaker, Carlos Mereno, also spat over the side. He was shorter in stature than his good friend St Croix, broader around the waist and across the shoulders, but where Mereno was dark-eyed and dark-haired, St Croix had inherited his mother’s colouring. A tall, gaunt woman, long-nosed and olive-skinned, but her hair, the rich tone of spun honey and her eyes amber, like a cat’s, had for all her plainness drawn men to her.

  “Despite my breeding,” Carlos Mereno smiled, “I have no love for Spain, yet the atrocities that man committed against my countrymen and women are beyond contempt.”

  St Croix shook his head. “Privateer? Pah! He is a pirate to the core, always has been.” He had served with Morgan; had committed some of those atrocities. But then, the Spanish, or the French, or the Dutch, had been the cause of just as many.

  Shrugging his shoulders Mereno sighed, a sound of resignation and regret. “Yet any man who steps ashore and makes mention of how he came about the gold in his pocket, or boasts of triumphs at sea, is named pirate and hanged.”

  “Aye, even when he learned all he knew from Morgan’s own orders. It is a sad day when a great man, even if he be a fat-bellied, fart-arsed drunkard, forgets those of us who served with him for England’s sake.”

  Mereno disagreed. “No, mi amigo, Morgan cared naught for England; he fought to gain for himself a fortune and to assure his name is remembered when he is nothing but worm fodder. He had not the same honour as do you and I.”

  Footsteps on the planking of the deck. Slow and measured, for the man making them, though still a youth, was heavy in build. The kudos of becoming Second Lieutenant had added weight to his bearing. Lieutenant Teach was now an officer and a man of importance, and he ensured all knew it.

  “Be we t’go ashore?” he asked gruffly, the burr of his accent making him seem slow and ponderous, though St Croix knew him to have a sharp, quick intelligence. “Cap’n Morgan be a man of m’own heart an’ thinkin’, or so I b’lieve tell.”

  Charles St Croix did not look round. He regretted giving Teach the extra authority, for he was using it with malice and cruelty. The hope that perhaps a position of command would tame the fellow had been misplaced. He revelled in inflicting fear and pain on those who could not fight back.

  “Aye, you are much like Morgan,” Charles observed. “You care not who stumbles into your path. If someone – male, female, adult or child – stands in your way you crush them beneath your boot with no thought or compassion. Morgan would break a man’s back to ensure a fast passage, and break a ship too, if it suited him. As will you.”

  Teach folded his arms, squinted into the evening sun, its blood-red reflection blazing upon the water. “There be always more crew, always another ship; bain’t often a chance at treasure. Tha’ way worked fer Morgan, it’d work fer me an’ all.”

  Not looking at his second officer, St Croix remained staring across the harbour at Port Royal, said, “Morgan took what he wanted with pistol and blade. He thought nothing of starving a man to death or slicing open the belly of a woman, though she be great with child. ‘Spanish turds,’ he would say, ‘they deserve to die.’” He looked at the darkening hills of Jamaica, the lights beginning to glimmer along the shore, in the town and from the ships. “I was a boy when first I sailed with Morgan. I once thought him a fine man.”

  “He still be a gurt man,” Teach protested, “Looken where he be now! Knighted by tha King. No un’ll forget his name I’d wager; ‘til Trumpets sound he’ll be ‘membered. As’ll I if’n it please God or tha Devil. As’ll I.”

  The sun sank into the sea and the sky darkened.

  “Who’ll ‘member thee, Cap’n St Croix?” Teach asked quietly into the night. “Who’ll be carin’ t’ r‘member thee?”

  Aye, Morgan had been remembered. He had died with his body diseased with dropsy and his great belly bulging so far that his coat would not fasten around it. The rum he insisted on continuing to drink had drowned his innards and his sense. So desperate had he been for his name to pass forward, his will had made clear that his sole male kin, his nephew on his wife’s side, could inherit only if he took the name of Morgan.

  And where was he now, the legendary Captain Henry Morgan? He was beneath the sea, his grave gone, lost, and forgotten. There had come a great quake in Port Royal, the earth had split and crumbled, and the sea had swallowed much of the town whole. The destruction so comple
te they had rebuilt as Kingston, Jamaica, on the far side of the bay. Port Royal had become nothing more than a naval base. The sea goddess, Tethys, had claimed her own and Morgan was nothing more than a name from the past.

  Charles St Croix sat alone beside the River, remembering.

  What of Teach? Ah, even then, Teach had spoken as one who had traded his soul with the Devil.

  Ten

  Jesamiah’s plan was to give chase, get in as close as he could, then send the two pirate ships scurrying for their lives. Simple. Except nothing concerning Edward Teach was ever simple.

  Every pirate traded on a formidable conduct. To be feared was to be successful, it made sense to cultivate a strong reputation. Why fight if you could convince your victim to surrender with a minimum of resistance? Teach had adopted a fearsome identity, even down to his terrifying appearance and usage of the name Blackbeard. Despite his far from young age, in a fight he remained an awesome sight; tall, with a physique of limitless strength and endurance. He had no fear of death and thought himself invincible. There were few who doubted he had made a pact with the Devil.

  Sea Witch had to tack twice, but she was a fast ship and whenever the variable wind shifted in her favour she ate up the sea miles as if she were a dolphin leaping through the white-capped surf.

  “We’ll tack again, Rue,” Jesamiah said, “then one more should bring us in on a suitable course to intercept them.”

  Rue nodded, peering at the expanse of sail. He was not particularly happy with this venture. Blackbeard’s reputation was feared by every man who sailed the Caribbean and American coast. A few minutes later, when the yards had been trundled round, the braces hauled and Sea Witch had settled comfortably on her new tack, he said, “You once told me you ‘ad fought alongside Blackbeard. I did not know whether to believe you.”

  “Am I so poor to convince then?” Jesamiah chuckled, watching Nathan Crocker’s final round of gun inspection; frowned as his first mate reprimanded the number four gun captain for not having his slow match made ready. There was a brief exchange of harsh words, Jesamiah waited, would intervene if necessary, but Nat had been a lieutenant aboard a Navy frigate. He knew his job, and was good at it. The gunner backed down, ambling away to fetch a match from the below deck store. It would be a while yet before the fight, but once engaged on a Chase Jesamiah never took chances.