“If ’n ‘e ain’t one o’ us,” Gibbens snarled from behind Teach, “then what’s ‘e doin’ ’ere?”
Mary lay on her back, rigid with fear, naked, spreadeagled across the table. Blood smeared her thighs, her face was bruised; her lip was cut. Marks of bites and scratches were on her throat and breasts. Her eyes were open, blank like a corpse, staring and staring at the overhead beams, seeing nothing while the scream went on and on in her head.
Teach prodded Jesamiah in the back with the pistol. “Get on with it.”
Slowly Jesamiah crawled on top of her. She whimpered as his weight pressed down. What to do? What to do! She was just turned sixteen; a child for fok sake! He nuzzled her neck, kissed her; nibbled her ear. His hand fumbled between her legs then went as if to unbutton his breeches.
“Mary. Bite me,” he whispered urgently. “As hard as you can. Do it girl! It is the only way I can save you!”
Terror had frozen her senses but she recognised this man as the one with nice eyes – such nice dark eyes.
“Bite me,” he urged.
Instinct made her obey. She turned her head and sank her teeth into his ear. In genuine pain he roared his outrage.
“You bitch! You bloody whore!” He slapped her, making the blow look harder than it was, hauled her from the table and hoisted her over his shoulder. “Bite me, would you? I’ll fokken learn you how to behave, Madam! So help me I will!”
The black mood had lifted, the men were laughing, following along behind as Jesamiah stamped up the ladder to the open deck, joining in his torrent of abusive language. Suggesting a few crude things he could do to her as punishment, all of which he paid no heed to.
He hefted her on to the rail, sat her there – she was screaming again, terrified of the drop behind her, clinging to his hair, his shirt, her poor battered face flooded with tears.
“Listen to me,” he hissed, “the bank’s only a few yards away. Get yourself ashore. Find Tiola.” He shook her to get her attention, made it look as if he was shaking her out of anger. “If you can’t swim, kick your legs, splash your arms. Get to shore and find the midwife at the Governor’s. Go to her. Go to Tiola!”
He heard Teach coming up behind him, knew he had to get Mary away from here. It was her only chance of survival, Teach and his men would use her until she was dead beneath them. Aye, and even after then.
“You little cow!” Jesamiah shouted. “I’ll fokken learn you your manners!” He tipped her over the side, swivelling her body in the direction of the shore. She gasped but did not scream. The fall was quick, there was a splash.
He stood at the rail waiting for sounds of her swimming or splashing about. Prayed she was all right. It was too dark to see, there was no sound beyond the normal night noises. Should he dive in? Help her? No, apart from distracting Teach to give her time to get away, he had done all he could. She was on her own now.
“That be my wumman thee’ve tossed o’er board.”
His hands spread apologetically Jesamiah turned cautiously. “The bitch bit me. Done you a favour I reckon, what would you be wanting to keep a harridan like that for?”
Teach peered over the side and sniffed noisily; unbuttoned his breeches and pissed where he stood on the deck.
“Thee nay be so clever as thee make out, Acorne. Thee be stupid nay to ‘ave drubbed ‘er first.”
Jesamiah peered over the side again, thumped his fist on the rail. “Shit, I never bloody thought of that.”
Teach chortled, slapped his shoulder. “Nay mind lad, thee’ll learn tha way o’ things after a couple o’ months aboard me vessel. M’lads an’ me’ll show thee ‘ow t’use yer cock proper.” He wobbled, almost fell, guffawed again.
“I think you’re ready for your bed, eh?” Jesamiah said, settling Teach’s arm around his shoulder and steering him below. Surely he was drunk enough to sleep now? Surely, poor Mary would have struggled to the bank?
Encouraging Teach to lie down, making crooning noises, Jesamiah covered him with a blanket and thanked every god he could think of when he was rewarded with a stentorian snore. Stood there, considering whether to kill him here and now. A pillow over his face would do it. Or one quick slash with a dagger across the throat.
“There’s always one among us who thinks of murderin’ the Captain,” a voice grated from behind. “But then, there’s always another to persuade a change of mind.”
Jesamiah stiffened. He hated people coming up behind him. Looked around. Gibbens. “I could always kill you too.”
“Oh aye?” Gibbens stubbed the barrel of his pistol against Jesamiah’s spine. “Give me an excuse t’pull this trigger, Acorne.”
Slowly, Jesamiah turned around, raising his hands, a lazy smile on his face. “Sorry Gibbens, I hate to disappoint you. I can leave you in charge of sleeping beauty then, can I?” He walked away, headed for the open deck.
As much as he wanted to kill Teach, he did not want the infamy of doing so. The bugger was disliked, but he was also admired by those who saw themselves as his equals. Charles Vane, Stede Bonnet, Howell Davies, Black Bart Roberts. It went against the Pirate Code to kill another of the brethren in cold blood, especially a captain. That’s why marooning was favoured; when a man starved, died of thirst or shot himself, no individual could be held responsible. Not that Teach respected the Code, but there were plenty who did. Men who would use any excuse to hunt down a pirate who broke with honour – Jesamiah was not afraid for himself, but such feuds escalated. Tiola, Alicia, la Sorenta, his crew, his ship, everyone and everything he cared for could be destroyed. Aside, murder was not part of Spotswood’s hard-driven bargain.
‘I need an excuse, Acorne, I cannot touch Edward Teach while he languishes in North Carolina, but were he to threaten Virginia – ah, that would be a different matter.’ That is what he had said, along with, ‘I need an informant. Someone reliable to tell me where Teach is and what he intends to do. The moment we are alerted that he is a threat to us, the Navy will do the rest.’ That was fine by Jesamiah. Let the bloody Navy do the dirty work.
The others were asleep, draped like poppet dolls abandoned at the end of a children’s game. He went up on deck; stumbled on a ladder rung, his footsteps dragging with weariness. He peered again over the side. Was it worth getting the jolly boat out? Should he search for her?
“Mary? Mary lass?” He dared only call softly. “Mary!”
“She is dead.”
“She may not be. She had a good chance of getting ashore.”
Stepping from the shadows, Charles Mereno spoke with compassion. “Son, she is dead. Believe me, I know.”
Laying his forehead against the rail, Jesamiah shut his eyes tight. A few hours ago he had been so deliriously happy to have made Tiola his wife – and now all he had was this! He had not meant Mary to drown. He had been trying to help her!
“Do you think she would have wanted to live after that, lad?”
Jesamiah did not answer his father. He did not speak to ghosts.
“The same happened to Phillipe’s mother – Teach was among those who raped her.” Charles hesitated. Did he tell his son everything? Should he be honest? “I have reason to believe that Teach was Phillipe’s father, Jesamiah. Not the Spaniard.”
Looking out into the darkness, at the trees black against a star-studded sky Jesamiah choked back a sob. “That explains a lot,” he said miserably. “The pair of them, as mad as each other. As mad as I appear to be.”
“Why are you denying my existence? All I want to do is explain. To talk to you.”
Jesamiah spun around, would not accept what his eyes saw – his father. Father was dead and ghosts did not exist. Or if they did, Jesamiah did not want to believe in them. He did not want to hear, speak to or see the man who had been his father. He’d had a belly full of the past, and the immediate future was not that promising either. Anger, at himself, at Teach – at not being able to be with Tiola – directed itself to the one man he really wanted to hurt. His father.
; Stamping across the few feet between them, Jesamiah poked Charles Mereno in the chest. Was surprised to discover that he felt solid, real. It was an illusion. It had to be. “There were a lot of things I wanted to say to you not long ago, Father. A lot of things I wanted you to say to me. About my so-called brother, about why you abandoned me to his tortures. Why he got my home and I did not. But do you know something?” Jesamiah prodded his father harder. “All of a sudden I don’t give a toss. For you, for Phillipe, for Teach, for none of it. It is done. Over. Finished. I’ve weighed anchor and left that wretched harbour behind. I have a wife, a ship and a chance to gain an unequivocal pardon for what I was – and with it, as soon as I take what information I can back to Spotswood, I get my freedom. On top of all that, I ‘ave no intention of conversing with a bloody phantom that don’t exist outside of my raving mind! So go away and let me live my life in peace.”
Charles was at a loss of what more to say. How could he tell his son that no, it was not done, was not finished? That all he also wanted was the bliss of peace? That the only way for it to be granted was to pay the demanded price.
“You could not have killed Teach, Jesamiah. Those stories, the ones that say he has traded souls with the Devil? They are true.”
Jesamiah laughed, swung back to the rail, peered over again hoping against hope to see Mary struggling ashore. “That’s bloody nonsense. Tiola told me; there is no such being as the Devil.”
“But there is the Dark. The Dark can possess and protect a man, and only a Witch Woman can defeat the Dark.”
It was true, Jesamiah knew it was true. That was why Tiola had to protect herself now. The Dark would destroy her if it could. As, indirectly, it had destroyed an innocent young life here tonight.
Jesamiah took the chain with its gold charm from around his neck, dangled the acorn above his palm. The sailor’s belief: he must have something to pay the ferryman to take him across the Eternal River to the Other Side. Did Mary have anything to pay her passage?
Riddled with guilt, her death had been his fault, he held the chain out, dropped it into the water. “Take this, darlin’, I freely give it you, and wish you the chance to find peace.” He rubbed his hand across his face, sighed. Was this reality or was he indeed mad?
“I don’t want to know, Father. About you, about Phillipe, or bloody Teach. All I want to do is forget the past, get off this fokken miserable ship, report back to Spotswood, collect my woman and then sail away in my ship.” He said a few more things, lashing out, his anger hurting, twisting like a knife inside him. Then he strode away, went aft to find himself somewhere to sleep. Tiola would speak to him in their special way as soon as she could and meanwhile he had a black-bearded devil to deal with.
And nothing, nothing at all, was going to make him believe that he had just told his father’s ghost to fuck off.
Sixteen
Friday 1st November
As dawn approached, Tiola found herself busy. Not all spirits knew their way, they were often disorientated, some lost. As a midwife it was her duty to care for those coming into the world and those leaving it. With love she cleaned and swaddled the newborn child, and with as much kindness washed and laid out the dead. The circle of life, beginning to end, completed.
Soon, the sun would rise; the ice on the River melt, and the boundary between the plains of existence close for all but the new souls.
~ Jesamiah? ~ She had tried calling him several times, but had been aware, even through all the babbling confusion of the many excited voices of the dead that he had been close to Teach and so she had backed away. Something else had happened though. Something terrible.
~ Jesamiah? ~
~ Sweetheart. ~
He sounded beaten and defeated as if he had no more strength to carry on. Tiola caught her breath – it could happen! The seeping of energy between the plains sometimes drained a living form’s life force so it became snared by the returning souls, unable to fight free! The ill, the old, the young were those who usually succumbed, Jesamiah was vulnerable, he was tired, and sounded so sad, so lonely.
~ Let me come to you, ~ she said. ~ We can meet beneath the trees. ~
His answer was sharp, frightened. ~ No! Stay away! ~
She heard him exhale, steady himself. Was aware that he was on the edge of losing control, was sweeping tears from his eyes.
~ We shared something so beautiful this night, Tiola, and now it has been tainted by vile ugliness. When I make love to you as my wife I want nothing to come between us. Nothing to spoil it. ~
~ Jesamiah? Can you not tell me? What has happened? ~
He merely responded with, ~ Bad things. ~ Then added, to change the subject, ~ I keep seeing my father. ~
~ He wants to make amends, needs to cleanse himself of his guilt. Oh! ~ Tiola broke off, cried out in distress. ~ Mary? Mary Ormond? Why are you here? Jesamiah, what has happened? Mary, you poor, poor child! ~
He heard nothing more, but felt the pain of Tiola’s grief. Shared every emotion with her, for he was drowning in the same sorrow.
All else forgotten, Tiola ran to the sad form that was the keening spirit of sixteen-year-old Mary. Tears glistened in the girl’s dull eyes and shone against the marks of bruising and dried blood. Tiola wanted to ask how she had come to be in this state, but it was not her place to do so. Others on the far side would do that, and in the asking and the telling would comfort and heal. All she could do was walk beside Mary and guide her to the River, talking and reassuring, easing with tender love and respect the pains that wrecked the earth-bound spirit.
Mary hesitated on the riverbank, confused that it was ice not water; knowledge, hidden to the living but released to the dead, was telling her there should be a boat to take her safe across.
“Where is the ferryman?” she said, “I must pay him.” She pulled a wedding band from her finger, stared at it then threw it away in horror and disgust. Her hands went to cover her breasts, her nakedness. “I am ashamed, I am unclothed.”
“Birth-clad you came into the world, Mary, there is no shame in the naked body.” All the same, Tiola removed her cloak and placed it around the girl’s shoulders.
Mary gathered it close, grateful; she was cold, shivering.
Tiola put her arms around her, held her and whispered that all was well, that the horrors and the fears were over. And noticed a chain around the girl’s neck. She touched it.
“Mary, from where did you get this?”
Mary lifted it, peered at the acorn dangling there, bewildered. “I – I do not know. I found it in the water, I think.”
Worry was soaking through Tiola. Why did Mary Ormond have Jesamiah’s acorn? What had happened?
“He said I could have it to pay my way.”
“Then you must use it so. Throw it onto the ice as you pass over.”
Mary regarded Tiola with wide, solemn eyes that spoke more of her ordeal than could any words. In return, Tiola kissed her forehead and guided her to the frozen water where the Gentle Ones were waiting to take the girl into their compassionate protection.
Hesitating, Mary touched her hand, “He is a good man. Cherish him.”
“I will. I do,” Tiola answered.
Seventeen
Sitting on the bank of the river that wandered behind Archbell Point, through a haze of tears, Tiola watched the sun rise. She now understood Jesamiah’s despair and so wanted to be with him, to cleanse them both from the stench of brutality, but until the evil that was in Teach was defeated, she would not be able to communicate with the one she loved beyond her own life.
“I am not proud of what happened this night,” Charles said suddenly appearing, seated beside her. “That girl was treated ill. She should not have died as she did.”
Tiola jumped to her feet, fists clenched at her sides, anger blazing in her eyes. “Jesamiah was trying to save her, how dare you condemn him!”
Charles frowned up at her; “You misunderstand me. Teach should not have abused her. I am proud of Jesamia
h, but he should not have taken the risk of doing what he did. He baffles me. I do not understand him.”
It was not sufficient to cool Tiola’s outrage. “Had you been a father to him then perhaps you would. Had you loved him, then perhaps you would not be baffled. He is a kind, generous man.”
Charles exhaled slowly, a mimicked reflex of when he had been alive, for he had no living breath. “He is a pirate. He kills, he steals.”
About to shout again, Tiola backed down. Charles was right. “Yes, he was a pirate. And he does kill and he does steal, but he is not possessed by evil. He is capable of being a good man.”
Charles sat a while watching the sun’s rays stabbing into the paling blueness and the last stars disappear. “We do not know,” he said, “when we plant our seed and watch a woman’s belly swell, what angel or demon will be born.” The sun rose higher, warming the world with its smile. “Please. Sit, Witch Woman. I long to talk to you but it is difficult for me to say what is in my mind when you are so fired with wrath.”
Tiola sat, although not close. Something was worrying her about Charles Mereno, but she did not know what. Not for the first time she wished she had been granted the gift of reading minds or seeing the future. She could communicate with Jesamiah by thought – he was the only living human this had ever occurred with – and it was often easy to guess intentions by the subtle movements of body language, the way an eye flickered or a muscle twitched. Mereno displayed none of these telltale signs. Like Jesamiah he had taught himself to give nothing away, to not make those indicative changes.
As the daylight strengthened, Charles Mereno spilled out his guilt to Tiola: told her what he had done in the past, how he had drunkenly abandoned Carlos and his bride when they needed him most. “Jesamiah has put me to shame; he did not become sodden with rum and consider only himself. He tried to save an innocent this night. That he failed is not his fault.”
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