HF - 03 - The Devil's Own

by Christopher Nicole

Jean was no different. Only when together in the cool of the dusk did they revert to human beings, did they ever remember the good times in Tortuga, the laughter of Albert DuCasse or Susan Hilton; did they ever still vow revenge on every Spaniard they could catch, as if they had ever caught any; and did they ever still dream of escaping this living hell, and becoming once again men, with a change of clothes and an upright walk.

  And only then did they dream of other things, too. Of the girls on Tortuga? Of Marguerite Warner? He did not know of whom he dreamed. She was woman, with face and hair and legs. And she did not wear silk. When he dreamed it was of two naked bodies twined in a sweating, angry embrace, and when the woman spoke it was to scream. Jean also had dreams like that, and on those occasions they even reached for one another.

  No, indeed, he reflected as he crawled through the grass; they were no different from the creatures he had slaughtered for being just such animals.

  Jean wriggled level with him. 'Company.'

  Kit watched the grass and the trees. There was something moving to his left, also downwind of the herd of cattle, also stealthily. 'Twenty cows will attract everyone within ten miles We'll not give them time.' He was within range, just, he calculated. He aimed his musket, drew back the hammer, and released the lever.

  Almost before the explosion had sounded, the herd was away, lolloping towards the distant fringe of trees. But now there were only twenty-two; one of them lay in the grass, half hidden.

  'Bastards,' Jean growled, starting to his feet. For at least ten men had now appeared, in pairs, from different hideaways in the scrub.

  Kit knelt, hastily reprimed the musket, ramming home another ball.

  'Halloa there,' Jean bellowed, running forward. ' 'Tis our kill.'

  The men checked, a dangerous semicircle, close to the bleeding, writhing animal.

  'I fired also,' said one of the bearded malelots.

  Jean turned to look. There was but a single puff of black smoke, rising above the grass which concealed Kit.

  'Bah,' said another. 'It matters not. There is enough for all.'

  'No.' Jean drew his cutlass.

  'One against ten?' demanded the first spokesman.

  'The boy is right,' said another man, small, dark and heavy-set. 'If he killed the beast, then it is his.'

  'He is your matelot?'

  'He made the kill,' said the small man.

  'Bah,' said the challenger again. But his companion was already sidling away.

  'I thank you, friend,' Jean said.

  'You are alone?' asked the small man.

  Jean smiled. 'Not so, monsieur.'

  Kit stood up, the primed musket set against his shoulder. The small man also smiled; he had very bright teeth. 'You are the two young ones. We have heard of you. We have travelled north to speak with you. I am Bartholomew Le Grand.'

  'Portuguese Bart,' Jean said. 'We have heard of you also, monsieur. Jean DuCasse, at your service.'

  'Armand Duchesne,' said the man beside Bart.

  'And Kit Hilton,' Kit said, approaching. 'I understand your intention, monsieur.'

  Bart continued to smile. 'So why fight about it, Monsieur Hilton? This cow will divide into four, where it will never divide into ten. And we have much to speak of.'

  Kit glanced at Jean, who shrugged. 'That is true, monsieur.' He knelt, passed his knife across the throat of the dying animal; blood gushed, and the kicking ceased. 'Let us make haste.'

  They laid down their weapons and got to work. The other boucaniers had retreated some distance, and watched them, muttering. But they would risk nothing.

  'Because we are feared.' Bart's hands were red with blood as he sliced through sinew and muscle to remove the cow's legs. 'There is not a boucanier does not know of Portuguese Bart. And there is not a boucanier does not know of the two young men. We four, monsieurs, could rule this plain.'

  'With you as leader,' Jean murmured.

  'I am the oldest. I am most experienced. Now let us build a fire. Armand?'

  His matelot nodded, went to the trees to begin collecting wood.

  'Here?' Kit asked.

  'I have a glass.' Bart took the eyepiece of a telescope from his pocket. 'This is good, eh? And the sun, pouff. We will soon have a huge blaze.'

  'What else do you have, monsieur?' Jean asked.

  Bart grinned at them. 'I have a cache, monsieur. Pistols, and powder. We took them from a Spanish hunting party. Oh, they are there, too. We buried them alive, after we had played with them a little. I do not like the Spaniards, monsieur.'

  'Neither do we,' Jean said.

  Kit stood up. watched the other boucaniers running towards the wood. He turned, looked at the cloud of dust on the far side of the plain. 'And they do not like us.'

  Bart scrambled to his feet, frowned into the haze. 'A squadron of lancers. Bastards. We must hurry. Bring what you can.'

  He seized an armful of still quivering red flesh, and ran for the trees. Jean and Kit did likewise. Armand watched them come, his arms full of firewood.

  'Make haste,' Bart shouted.

  Armand dropped the wood, hesitated, staring at the dust; now the horsemen's cries could be heard, and now, too, the separate figures could be seen; they wore gay costumes and flowing red and yellow capes, and broad-brimmed black hats to protect themselves from the sun. They rode splendid horses, and they carried long steel-tipped lances.

  Kit raced towards the shelter, while his blood pounded in his ears. Blood oozed against his chest and down into his breeches. Blood and sweat. He was afraid, and hated himself for that. They had vowed vengeance against the Dons. But the appearance of a single Spaniard, in all the arrogance of fine clothes and new weapons and good horses, had them running. As for a squadron ... but Bart had killed Spaniards. There was a man, if he was telling the truth. They had seen hunting parties, and carefully hidden until the danger was past; Bart had attacked, with his matelot, and scored a victory.

  He reached the woods, and stopped, panting. Because Jean and Bart had also stopped. They were looking back, at Armand, who was bending over the carcass, slicing away huge chunks of meat.

  'Hurry,' Bart shouted. For the horsemen were close now, spreading out like a slowly opening fan, hallooing and cheering.

  'Oh, Christ,' Jean said. And he meant it as a prayer.

  Armand started to run, and the horses came up on either side. The Spaniards called out to the running man, laughing and jeering. Armand's head turned from side to side, and he staggered as he ran. But still he ran, without any longer knowing, or caring, where he was going, with the bleeding meat still clutched in his arms, staggering into eternity.

  A lance was thrust down, between his feet, and he fell, rolling over and over, for a moment lost to sight in the dust. Another lance went down, and they heard a scream, high and thin and wailing in the faint breeze. But it was not the scream of a dying man; the lancers were too clever for that. It was a scream of agony, and it was a scream of knowledge, too, that even more agony was on the way.

  Kit leaned against a tree, and levelled his musket, bracing his arm. Bart reached across and slapped the barrel down. Kit gazed at him in surprise. 'He is your matelot.'

  'And he is dead. If you kill one of those soldiers you must kill them all, or they will hang us all.'

  Armand screamed again and again. Bart turned into the trees. 'Come,' he said. "We must get away. Away and away and away. Listen. I have a plan, which needs only men. And you are men, young ones.'

  Kit lay on his belly, on the sand, close by the water's edge. Close to where they had first come ashore. From here he could look at Tortuga, across the sea. From here he could even see the flag fluttering above the fort the Dons had built on the hilltop where Grandpapa had first built his house. Yellow and red, dominating the sky. Tortuga was now a Spanish watchpost, guarding the north shore of the larger island.

  And he lay here, waiting to die. Because there was nothing else to do. Life was a kaleidoscope of agony and hatred, with only death at t
he end of it. He no longer believed that the happy days of his childhood had ever existed. It had been one of the good dreams. As for Marguerite ... he suddenly realized that he could no longer truly remember her face. It was a patchwork of expressions, hating, fearing, dying perhaps. It was not a face he would ever sec again.

  Footsteps, on the sand behind him. He did not get up. Jean had said he would return on the fourth day, and this was the fourth day. So, if it was Jean, then it did not matter. If it was not Jean, then presumably he was about to die. He did not think he would care very much.

  'It is foolish to lie here on the sand,' Jean said.

  'It is foolish to do anything,' Kit said. 'It was foolish to swim across from Tortuga. It is not foolish to prolong misery?'

  Jean squatted beside him. 'So let us leave this place.'

  'Let us flap our wings, and fly away. Where shall we fly, Jean? Antigua? It is not far. Scarce two hundred miles, as we should fly. Perhaps we could swim that distance. It would not take us longer than a week.'

  'You are a melancholy fellow,' Jean said. 'I went for news of Bart. And I have come back with news of Bart. I would have thought such news would make you smile again.'

  'He is hanged?'

  'Not Bart,' Jean said. 'We wait for him, now.'

  'We?' Kit rolled over, and sat up in the same instant, gazed at the three men who stood by the trees. Boucaniers, certainly; they might have been Jean himself.

  But Bart was not amongst them.

  'Where is he, then?'

  'Out there,' Jean said.

  Kit looked at the dark blue of the sea, and watched the pirogue come creeping along the shore, propelled by twelve paddles. Fashioned from untrimmed timber, it was hardly more than a large canoe, with a pointed stem and a pointed stern and a rounded bilge lacking a keel but very strong, careless of outcrops of rock or sand.

  'We stole it,' Jean said. 'And have been coasting every night. Looking for men who would rather die with swords in their hands than lances up their asses. Are you such a man, Kit?'

  Kit gazed at the boat. Their dream, come true. Had they the courage to seize it. How attached was he suddenly to become to this bloodstained sand. Because he knew too little of the sea. Always had he looked at it from the security of a beach. And that was an open boat.

  'Where will we go?' he asked. And asked again, as they waded out to the pirogue, where Bart grinned at them with his magnificent teeth peering through the blackness of his beard. They were five, and there were a dozen men already in the boat, together with a few smoke-cured sides of beef. Enough for two days, perhaps. But no water. 'Where will we go?'

  'Away,' Bart said. 'We leave this place, eh? Down there, to the east, beyond Puerto Rico, there are islands, sandbanks, creeks, those the Spaniards call the Virgins. We will go there.'

  Kit sat in the stern and watched the water draining out of his skin breeches. 'Windward,' he said. 'You'd go to Windward?'

  Into the unchanging wind, the ceaseless current? Were they even more ignorant of the sea than he?

  'Only fifty miles,' Bart said. 'We will row all night, and tomorrow morning we will be at Puerto Rico. We will rest there the day, and leave again at night. The day after tomorrow we will be amongst the Virgins. So we will only have beaches to comb. It will be better than this pesthole.'

  They took turns at the paddles. They fought their way into an increasing sea, which pushed the prow of the pirogue into the air and set it shuddering down into the trough on the far side, each such dip being accompanied by a rattle of spray which soaked them and had them shivering. Soon the seasickness began, and spread. Undigested lumps of raw meat spewed on to the bilges with evil-smelling bile; men lay on their paddles and panted. Salt caked their lips and had them gasping for water. But there was only salt water. So instead they prayed for dawn, and a sight of the Rich Island.

  It grew light, and Bart braced himself on the steering oar as he stood up. The wind had dropped to a flat calm, but the swell continued, making the pirogue rise and fall, tower above the waves and then disappear completely into the next trough. Bart shaded his eyes and stared to windward. 'Now that is strange,' he muttered.

  Kit wanted to laugh, because he wanted to weep so very much. He pointed the other way. 'Look there.'

  They had paddled all night, and Hispaniola lay perhaps ten miles astern of them, massive green-clad cliffs rising from the unending sea.

  'By Christ.' Bart licked his lips, and gazed at his men. Not his men, yet. Not ever, now. They had followed him to escape hell. And he had led them into a waterless horror.

  'We can be back ashore in an hour,' Kit said. 'The same wind, the same current, which has held us here all night, will sweep us back.'

  'Back to Hispaniola?' someone muttered.

  'What will you do?' Kit shouted. 'Sit here and die of thirst?'

  'Oh, Christ,' Jean said. 'Oh, Christ.' Because he was in the stern, and still peering at the coast. They crowded aft, in such haste that the narrow craft rolled dangerously. They stared at the ship, not two miles away, drifting. Drifting because the wind had dropped. All her sails were set, but the canvas drooped against the yards. As did her flags and pennants. Those at the masthead were unrecognizable. But the great

  ensign on the jackstaff was familiar to them all. Yellow and gold, hanging limp.

  'A ‘garda costa' someone whispered. "We will hang this day.'

  'She is no ship of war,' Bart growled. 'A coaster, from Isabel for San Domingo.'

  "Is there a difference?' Kit was angry. With Bart, for leading them into this predicament; with himself, for agreeing to come at all. On Hispaniola he had at least existed. And then he had wanted to die. Now he was going to die, how badly did he want to live. 'She carries guns, and men with better weapons than ours. She will blow us out of the water.'

  'She will not waste the powder,' Jean said. 'Why should she, when she knows that we are helpless?'

  They sagged, with the pirogue, into the following trough. Bart alone remained standing, staring at the ship, his eyes narrow slits beneath the wrinkled frown of his brow. 'As you say, Monsieur DuCasse,' he said. 'They will not waste the time. She is not equipped for fighting. She will merely report what she has seen when she reaches San Domingo.'

  'And then the garda costa will come,' Kit said. 'We must put back now. We have no choice.'

  Bart did not move, but his tongue came out and circled his lips.

  'Kit is right,' Jean said. 'This was a hopeless venture from the start. Even big sailing ships must work their way to windward, slowly. They say it takes a week from Barbados to Port Royal, and three weeks to get back. We shall not do it in this piece of bark.'

  'A week,' Bart muttered. 'From Barbados. Two days, from here. To Port Royal. There is a place. Morgan is there. I have heard that he recruits, for another venture against the Main.'

  Kit sighed. Morgan was nothing but a name. A dream, perhaps. A man who had already made L'Olonnais and Mansveldt and Hilton no more than memories. 'And we are here,' he said. 'So it is downwind. It is still far too long for us.'

  'In this,' Bart said.

  Their heads rose, and they stared at the drifting coaster. 'You are mad,' someone whispered.

  'She will carry fifteen, twenty men,' Jean said. 'And passengers, no doubt.'

  'And are we not seventeen?' Bart at last descended into the bilges where they crouched. 'Listen to me. We are forty. Sixty. Because what have we got to lose? You wish to go back to Hispaniola? To that stinking plain and those stinking cattle? To be treated as vermin? Hunted down whenever some capitano in San Domingo wishes to exercise his men? What do we there, but exist, and then die? So if we are going to die, why not let us die now? But die with the prospect of something better ahead of us. That ship may carry soldiers. But she may not. And if we take her, why, we'll be in Port Royal the day after tomorrow, and the whole world will be at our feet.'

  They stared at him, their faces mixing incredulity with fear, with greed, with ambition. And with hope.
r />   'By God,' Kit said. 'You are right.'

  'Your name is Hilton. You've pirating in your blood. And you, Monsieur DuCasse?'

  Jean chewed his lower lip, glanced from face to face. 'It would be better than putting back.'

  Heads began to nod. 'But will they not see us approaching?' someone asked.

  Bart grinned at them. 'Not even the Dons can see in the dark. Now lie down. Scatter yourself about the boat, that we may appear even more helpless than we are. And wait.'

  Slowly, how slowly, the sun sank towards the horizon. There were no mountains out here to interrupt its imperious gaze. But yet the evening reminded Kit of the night Grandmama had died. Then too they had waited for the sun and the sun had moved too slowly for them.