Pirate Latitudes

by Michael Crichton

  “How many guards at the gates?” he asked Anne Sharpe.

  “I saw four,” she said, “and another dozen on the ramparts.”

  This presented a problem for Hunter. The guards were English, and he had no stomach for killing them.

  “We must have a ruse,” he said. “Call the captain to you.”

  She nodded, and stepped out into the courtyard. Hunter remained behind, in the shadows.

  Hunter did not marvel at the composure of this woman, who had just watched a man brutally slain. He was not accustomed to the faintheartedness of women, so fashionable in the French and Spanish courts. English women were tough-minded, in some ways tougher than any male, and it was equally true of low- and high-born women.

  The captain of the Marshallsea Guard came over to Anne Sharpe, and at the last moment saw the barrel of Hunter’s pistol protruding from the shadows. Hunter beckoned him over.

  “Now hear me,” Hunter said. “You may call your men down, and have them throw their muskets to the ground, and no lives shall be lost. Or you can stand and fight, and all surely die.”

  The captain of the guard said, “I’ve been awaiting your escape, sir, and I hope you will remember me in the days to come.”

  “We shall see,” Hunter said, promising nothing.

  In a formal voice, the captain said, “Commander Scott shall have his own action upon the morrow.”

  “Commander Scott,” Hunter said, “shall not live to see the morrow. Now take your stand.”

  “I hope you will remember me—”

  “I may,” Hunter said, “remember not to slit your throat.”

  The captain of the guard called his men down, and Hunter supervised their locking up in the Marshallsea jail.

  . . .

  MRS. HACKLETT, HAVING given her instructions to Richards, returned to her husband’s side. He was in the library, drinking after dinner with Commander Scott. Both men had in recent days become enamored of the governor’s wine cellar, and were engaged in consuming it before the governor recovered.

  They were, at this moment, deep in their cups.

  “My dear,” her husband said, as she entered the room, “you come at a most opportune moment.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Indeed,” Robert Hacklett said. “Why, just this very moment I was explaining to Commander Scott the manner of your getting with child by the pirate Hunter. You understand, of course, that he will soon swing in the breeze until the flesh rots off his bones. In this beastly climate, I am told that happens quickly. But I am sure you know of haste, eh? Why, speaking of your seduction, Commander Scott was not previously acquainted with the details of the event. I have been informing him.”

  Mrs. Hacklett flushed deeply.

  “So demure,” Hacklett said, his voice taking a nasty edge. “One would never think her a common bawd. And yet that is what she is. What would her favors fetch, do you think?”

  Commander Scott sniffed at a perfumed handkerchief. “Shall I be frank?”

  “By all means, be frank. Be frank.”

  “She is too lean for the usual taste.”

  “His Majesty liked her well enough—”

  “Perhaps, perhaps, but that is not the usual taste, eh? Our king has a preference for hot-blooded foreign women—”

  “So be it,” Hacklett said irritably. “What would she fetch?”

  “I should think, she would fetch not above — well, considering she has tasted the royal lancet, perhaps more — but in no case above a hundred reales.”

  Mrs. Hacklett, very red, turned to leave. “I shall attend no more of this.”

  “On the contrary,” her husband said, leaping from his chair and barring her way. “You shall attend a good deal more. Commander Scott, you are a gentleman of worldly experience. Would you pay a hundred reales?”

  Scott gulped his drink and coughed. “Not I, sir,” he said.

  Hacklett gripped his wife’s arm. “What price would you make?”

  “Fifty reales.”

  “Done!” Hacklett said.

  “Robert!” his wife protested. “Good gracious God, Robert—”

  Robert Hacklett struck his wife in the face, a blow sending her across the room. She collapsed into a chair.

  “Now then, Commander,” Hacklett said. “You are a man of your word. I shall accept your credit in this matter.”

  Scott looked over the brim of his cup. “Eh?”

  “I said, I shall accept your credit in this matter. Have your money’s worth.”

  “Eh? You mean, ah . . .” he gestured in the direction of Mrs. Hacklett, whose eyes were now wide with horror.

  “Indeed I do, and quickly, too.”

  “Here? Now?”

  “Precisely, Commander.” Hacklett, very drunk, staggered across the room and clapped his hand on the soldier’s shoulder. “And I shall observe, for my own amusement.”

  “No!” shrieked Mrs. Hacklett.

  Her voice was piercingly loud, but neither man appeared to have heard her. They stared drunkenly at each other.

  “Faith,” Scott said, “I’m not sure ’tis wise.”

  “Nonsense,” Hacklett said. “You are a gentleman of reputation and you must uphold that reputation. After all, this is a consort worthy of a king — well, at least once worthy of a king. Go to it, man.”

  “Damn me,” Commander Scott said, getting unsteadily to his feet. “Damn me, I shall do, sir. What’s good enough for a king is good enough for me. I shall do.” And he began to unbuckle his breeches.

  Commander Scott was exceedingly drunk, and his buckles proved difficult. Mrs. Hacklett began to scream and her husband crossed the library and struck her in the face, cutting her lip. A trickle of blood ran down her chin.

  “A pirate’s whore — or a king’s — can have no airs. Commander Scott, take your pleasure.”

  And Scott advanced upon the woman.

  . . .

  “MOVE ME,” WHISPERED Governor Almont to his niece.

  “But Uncle, how?”

  “Kill the guard,” he said, and handed her a pistol.

  Lady Sarah Almont took the pistol in her hands, feeling the unfamiliar shape of the weapon.

  “You cock it thus,” said Almont, showing her. “Now careful! Go to the door, ask to go out, and fire—”

  “Fire how?”

  “Directly into his face. Make no mistake here, my dear.”

  “But Uncle . . .”

  He glared at her. “I am a sick man,” he said. “Now help me.”

  She stepped a few paces toward the door.

  “Right down his throat,” Almont said, with a certain satisfaction. “He’s earned it, the traitorous dog.”

  She knocked on the door.

  “What is it, miss?” said the guard.

  “Open up,” she said. “I wish to leave.”

  There was a scraping, and a metallic click, as the lock was turned. The door opened. She had a glimpse of the guard, a young man of nineteen, fresh-faced and innocent, his expression bemused. “Whatever Your Ladyship desires . . .”

  She fired at his lips. The explosion rocked her arm, and blew him backward. He twisted and slid to the ground, then rolled onto his back. She saw, with horror, that he had no face left, just a bloody pulp mounted on his shoulders. The body writhed on the ground for a few moments. Urine leaked down the leg of his trousers, and she smelled defecation. Then the body was still.

  “Help me move,” croaked her uncle, the Governor of Jamaica, sitting up painfully in his bed.

  . . .

  HUNTER ASSEMBLED HIS men at the north end of Port Royal, near the mainland. His immediate problem was wholly political, to reverse a judgment against him. As a practical matter, once he escaped, the
townspeople would rally around him, and he would not again be jailed.

  But equally practical was the question of his response to unjust treatment, for Hunter’s reputation within the town was at stake.

  He reviewed the eight names in his mind:

  Hacklett

  Scott

  Lewisham, the judge of the Admiralty

  Foster and Poorman, the merchants

  Lieutenant Dodson

  James Phips, merchant captain

  And last, but not least, Sanson

  Each of these men had acted with full knowledge of the injustice. Each stood to profit from the confiscation of his prize.

  The laws of the privateers were solid enough; such chicanery inevitably meant death and confiscation of the share. But at the same time, he would be obliged to kill several highly placed members of the town. That would be easy enough, but he might have a bad time of it later, if Sir James did not survive unscathed.

  If Sir James were worth his salt, he would have long since escaped to safety. Hunter would have to trust to that, he decided. And in the meantime, he would have to kill those who had crossed him.

  Shortly before dawn, he ordered all his men into the Blue Hills north of Jamaica, telling them to remain there for two days.

  Then, alone, he returned to the town.

  Chapter 36

  FOSTER, A PROSPEROUS silk merchant, owned a large house on Pembroke Street, northeast of the dockyards. Hunter slipped in through the back, passing the separate kitchen block. He made his way upstairs to the master bedroom on the second floor.

  He found Foster asleep in bed with his wife. Hunter awoke him by pressing a pistol lightly against his nostrils.

  Foster, a fattish man of fifty, snorted and sniffed and rolled away. Hunter jammed the pistol barrel up one nostril.

  Foster blinked and opened his eyes. He sat up in bed, not saying a word.

  “Be still,” his wife muttered sleepily. “You toss so.” Yet she did not wake up. Hunter and Foster stared at each other. Foster looked from the pistol to Hunter, and back again.

  Finally, Foster raised a finger in the air, and gently eased out of bed. His wife still slept. In his nightgown, Foster padded across the room to a chest.

  “I shall pay you well,” he whispered. “See here, look.” He opened a false compartment and withdrew a sack of gold, very heavy. “There is more, Hunter. I shall pay you whatever you want.”

  Hunter said nothing. Foster, in his nightshirt, extended his arm with the sack of gold. His arm trembled.

  “Please,” he whispered. “Please, please . . .”

  He got down on his knees.

  “Please, Hunter, I pray you, please . . .”

  Hunter shot him in the face. The body was knocked back, the legs thrown up in the air, the bare feet kicking space. In the bed nearby, the wife never awoke, but turned sleepily and groaned.

  Hunter picked up the sack of gold and left as silently as he had come.

  . . .

  POORMAN, BELYING HIS name, was a rich trader in silver and pewter. His house was on High Street. Hunter found him asleep at a table in the kitchen, a half-empty bottle of wine before him.

  Hunter took a kitchen knife and slashed both Poorman’s wrists. Poorman awoke groggily, saw Hunter, and then saw the blood pouring over the table. He raised his bleeding hands, but could not move them; the tendons had all been cut, and the hands flopped lifelessly, rag-doll fingers, already turning grayish-white.

  He let his arms drop again to the table. He watched the blood pool on the wood and drip through the cracks to the floor. He looked back at Hunter. His face was curious, his expression confused.

  “I would have paid,” he said hoarsely. “I would have done what you . . . what you . . .”

  He stood up from the table, weaving dizzily, holding his injured arms bent at the elbows. In the silence of the room, the blood spattered with an odd loudness on the ground.

  “I would have . . .” Poorman began, and then rocked back and fell flat on the floor.

  “Ye, ye, ye, ye,” he said, fainter and fainter. Hunter turned away, not waiting for the man to die. He went back into the night air and slipped silently through the dark streets of Port Royal.

  . . .

  HE ENCOUNTERED Lieutenant Dodson by accident. The soldier was singing a song, stumbling drunk through the streets with two whores at his side. Hunter saw him at the end of the High Street and turned back, slipping down Queen Street, turning east on Howell Alley, just in time to meet Dodson at the corner.

  “Who goes there?” Dodson demanded, speaking loudly. “Know you that there is a curfew? Be gone else I shall clap you in the Marshallsea.”

  In shadow, Hunter said, “I have just come from there.”

  “Eh?” Dodson said, tilting his head toward the voice. “What means your churlish speech? I shall have you know—”

  “Hunter!” shrieked the whores, and they both fled. Deprived of their support, Dodson fell drunkenly down into the mud.

  “Damn you for uncertain quim,” he grunted, and struggled to get up. “Look at my uniform now, damn you all.” He was covered in mud and manure.

  He had already gotten to his knees when the words of the women suddenly reached his alcohol-fogged brain. “Hunter?” he asked softly. “You are Hunter?”

  Hunter nodded in the shadows.

  “Then I shall arrest you for the scoundrel and pirate that you are,” Dodson said. But before he could get back to his feet, Hunter kicked him in the stomach and sent him sprawling.

  “Ow!” Dodson said. “You hurt me, damn you.”

  They were the last words he spoke. Hunter gripped the soldier by the neck and pressed his face into the mud and dung of the street, holding the squirming body, which struggled with increasing force and, finally, toward the end, with violent wrenchings and twistings until at last it did not move.

  Hunter stepped back, gasping for breath with the exertion.

  He looked around the dark, deserted town. A marching patrol of ten militiamen went by; he stepped back into the shadows until they had passed.

  Two whores came by. “Are you Hunter?” one asked, with no sign of fear.

  He nodded.

  “Bless you,” she said. “You come see me, and you’ll have your way without a farthing spent.” She laughed.

  Giggling, the two women disappeared into the night.

  . . .

  HE STOOD INSIDE the Black Boar tavern. There were fifty people there, but he saw only James Phips, dapper and handsome, drinking with several other merchantmen. Phips’s companions immediately slipped away, showing aspects of terror on their faces. But Phips himself, after an initial shock, took on a hearty manner.

  “Hunter!” he said, grinning broadly. “Damn my eyes, but you have done what we all knew you would. A round for everyone, I say, to celebrate your new freedom.”

  There was utter silence in the Black Boar. No one spoke. No one moved.

  “Come now,” Phips said loudly. “I call for a round in honor of Captain Hunter! A round!”

  Hunter moved forward, toward Phips’s table. His soft footsteps on the dirt floor of the tavern were the only sound in the room.

  Phips eyed Hunter uneasily. “Charles,” he said. “Charles, this stern countenance does not become you. It is time to be merry.”

  “Is it?”

  “Charles, my friend,” Phips said, “you surely understand I bear you no ill will. I was forced to appear on the tribunal. It was all the work of Hacklett and Scott; I swear it. I had no choice. I’ve a ship to sail in a week’s time, Charles, and they would not give me embarkation papers, so they said. And I knew you would make good your escape. Only an hour ago, I was telling Timothy Flint that very expectation. Timothy: answer true, was I not telling you th
at Hunter would be free? Timothy?”

  Hunter took out his pistol and aimed it at Phips.

  “Now Charles,” Phips said. “I beg you to be reasonable. A man must be practical. Do you think I would have condemned you if ever I believed sentence would be carried out? Do you think so? Do you?”

  Hunter said nothing. He cocked the pistol, a single metallic click in the silence of the room.

  “Charles,” Phips said, “it does my heart good to see you again. Come, have a drink with me, and let us forget—”

  Hunter shot him, full in the chest. Everyone ducked away as fragments of bone and a geyser of blood blew outward from his heart in a hissing rush. Phips dropped a cup that had been raised in one hand; the cup struck the table and rolled to the floor.

  Phips’s eyes followed it. He reached for it with his hand and said hoarsely, “A drink, Charles . . .” And then he collapsed on the table. Blood seeped over the rude wood.

  Hunter turned and left.

  As he came out on the street again, he heard the tolling of the church bells of St. Anne’s. They rang incessantly, the signal for an attack on Port Royal, or some other emergency.

  Hunter knew it could have only one meaning — his escape from the jail of Marshallsea had been discovered.

  He did not mind at all.

  . . .

  LEWISHAM, JUDGE OF the Admiralty, had his quarters behind the courthouse. He awoke to the church bells in alarm, and sent a servant out to see what was the matter. The man returned a few minutes after.

  “What is it?” Lewisham said. “Speak, man.”

  The man looked up. It was Hunter.

  “How is it possible?” Lewisham asked.

  Hunter cocked the gun. “Easily,” he said.

  “Tell me what you wish.”

  “I shall,” Hunter said. And he told him.

  . . .

  COMMANDER SCOTT, DROWSY with drink, lay sprawled on a couch in the library of the Governor’s Mansion. Mr. Hacklett and his mistress had long since retired. He awoke to the church bells and instantly knew what had happened; he felt a terror unlike any he had ever known. Moments later, one of his guard burst into the room with the news: Hunter had escaped, all the pirates were vanished, and Poorman, Foster, Phips, and Dodson were all dead.