‘Mr Wallace had me more in mind as a deckhand, I think.’
Officer material was what he’d actually said, but I wasn’t about to tell this lot. I was young and nervous. Not stupid.
‘Well, can you sew, lad?’ came the reply.
They were mocking me, surely. ‘What does sewing have to do with privateering, then?’ I asked, feeling a little impudent despite the circumstances.
‘The deckhand needs to be able to sew, boy,’ said one of the other men. Like all the others he had a tarred pigtail and tattoos that crept from the sleeves and neck of his shirt. ‘Needs to be good with knots, too. Are you good with knots, boy?’
‘These are things I can learn,’ I replied.
I stared at the ship with its furled sails, rigging hanging in tidy loops from the masts and the hull studded with brass barrels peeking from its gun deck. I saw myself like the men who sat on the casks before me, their faces leathery and tanned from their time at sea, eyes that gleamed with menace and adventure. Custodians of the ship.
‘You have to get used to a lot else as well besides,’ said one man, ‘scraping barnacles off the hull, caulking the boat with tar.’
‘You got your sea legs, son?’ asked another. They were laughing at me now. ‘Can you keep your stomach when she’s lashed with waves and hurricane winds?’
‘I reckon I can,’ I replied, adding with a surge of impetuous anger, ‘either way, that’s not why Mr Wallace thought I might make a good crewmate.’
A look passed between them. The atmosphere changed a little.
‘Oh yes?’ said one of them, swinging his legs round. He wore dirty canvas trousers. ‘And why is it that the recruiting officer thought you might make a good crewmate, then?’
‘Having seen me in action, he thought I might be useful in a battle.’
He stood. ‘A fighter, eh?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, you have ample opportunity to prove your abilities in that area, boy, starting tomorrow. Perhaps I’ll put myself down for a bout, shall I?’
‘What do you mean, “tomorrow”?’ I asked.
He had sat down, returning his attention to the game. ‘Tomorrow, when we sail.’
‘I was told we sailed tonight.’
‘Sail tomorrow, lad. Captain isn’t even here yet. We sail first thing.’
I left them, knowing I might well have made my first enemies on ship; still, I had some time – time to put things right. I retrieved my horse. And headed for home.
13
I galloped towards Hatherton, towards home. Why was I going back? Perhaps to tell them I was sorry. Perhaps to explain what was going through my mind. After all, I was their son. Maybe Father would recognize in me some vestige of himself. And maybe if he did, he would forgive me.
Because as I travelled back along the highway, what I realized more than anything was that I wanted him to forgive me. Both of them.
Is it any wonder that I was distracted, that my guard was down?
I was near to home, where the trees formed a narrow avenue, when I sensed a movement in the hedgerow. I drew to a halt and listened. When you live in the countryside you sense the changes, and something was different now. From above came a sharp whistle that could only have been a warning and at the same time I saw more movement ahead of me, except this was in the yard of our farmhouse.
My heart hammered as I spurred my horse and galloped towards the yard. At the same time I saw the unmistakable flare of a torch. Not a lamp, but a torch. The kind of torch you might use if you were intending to set something ablaze. At the same time I saw running figures and in the glare of torchlight saw that they wore hoods.
‘Hey,’ I shouted, as much to try to wake Mother and Father as to frighten off our attackers.
‘Hey,’ I yelled again.
A torch arced through the air, twirling end over end, leaving an orange trail in the night sky before landing in a shower of sparks on the thatch of our home. It was dry – tinder dry. We tried to keep it doused in the summer because the risk of fire was so great, but there was always something more important to do and, at a guess, it hadn’t been done for a week because it went up like, Whoompf.
I saw more figures. Three, perhaps four. And then just as I came into the yard and pulled up, a shape flew at me from the side, hands grabbed my tunic and I was dragged from the back of my horse.
The breath was driven from me as I thumped hard to the ground. Nearby were rocks for a stone wall. Weapons. Then above me loomed a figure that blocked out the moon, hooded, like the others. Before I could react he stooped and I caught a brief impression of the hood fabric pulsing at his mouth as he breathed hard, and then his fist smashed into my face. I twisted and his second blow landed on my neck. Beside him appeared another figure, and I saw a glint of steel and knew I was powerless to do anything and prepared to die. But the first man stopped the new arrival with a simple barked, ‘No,’ and I was saved from the blade at least, but not from the beating, and a boot in my midriff doubled me up.
That boot – I recognized that boot.
Again it came, again and again, until at last it stopped and my attacker ran off. My hands went to my wounded belly and I rolled on to my front and coughed, the blackness threatening to engulf me. Maybe I’d let it. The idea of sinking into oblivion seemed tempting. Let unconsciousness take the pain. Deliver me into the future.
The sound of running feet as my attackers escaped. Some indistinct shouting. The cries of the disturbed ewes.
But no. I was still alive, wasn’t I? About to kiss steel I’d been given a second chance and that was too good a chance to pass up. I had my parents to save. And even then I knew that I was going to make these people pay. The owner of those boots would regret not killing me when he had the chance. Of that I was sure.
I pulled myself up. Smoke drifted across the yard like a bank of incoming fog. One of the barns was already alight. The house, too. I needed to wake them, needed to wake my mother and father.
The dirt around me was bathed in the orange glow of the fire. As I stood I was aware of horse’s hooves and swung about to see several riders retreating – riding away from the farmhouse, their job done, the place well alight now. I snatched up a rock and considered hurling it at one of the riders, but there were more important matters to worry about, and instead with a grunt that was part effort and part pain, I launched it at the top window of the farmhouse.
My aim was true and I prayed it would be enough to rouse my parents. The smoke thick in the yard now, the roar of the flames like an escaped hell. Ewes were screaming in the barns as they burned alive.
At the door they appeared: Father battling his way out of the flames with Mother in his arms. His face was set, his eyes blank. All he could think about was making sure she was safe. After he’d taken Mother out of the reach of the flames, and laid her carefully down in the yard near where I stood, he straightened and like me gaped helplessly at the burning building. We hurried over to the barn where the screams of the ewes had died down – our livestock, father’s livelihood, gone. And then, his face hot and glowing in the light of the flames, my father did something I’d never seen. He began to cry.
‘Father …’ I reached for him, and he pulled his shoulder away with an angry shrug, and when he turned to me, his face blackened with smoke and streaked by tears, he shook with restrained violence, as though it was taking every ounce of his self-control to stop himself from lashing out. From lashing out at me.
‘Poison. That’s what you are,’ he said through clenched teeth, ‘poison. The ruin of our lives.’
‘Father …’
‘Get out of here,’ he spat. ‘Get out of here. I never want to see you again.’
Mother stirred as though she was about to protest, and rather than face more upset – rather than be the cause of more upset – I mounted my horse and left.
It would be the last time I saw either of them.
14
I flew through the night with
heartbreak and fury my companions, riding the highway into town and stopping at the Auld Shillelagh, where all this had begun. I staggered inside, one arm still clutching my hurt chest, face throbbing from the beating.
Conversation in the tavern died down. I had their attention.
‘I’m looking for Tom Cobleigh and his weasel son,’ I managed, breathing hard, glaring at them from beneath my brow. ‘Have they been in here?’
Backs were turned to me. Shoulders hunched.
‘We’ll not have any trouble in here,’ said Jack the landlord from behind the bar. ‘We’ve had enough trouble from you to last us a lifetime, thank you very much, Edward Kenway.’ He pronounced ‘thank you very much’ as though it was all one word. Thankyouverymuch.
‘You know the full meaning of trouble if you’re sheltering the Cobleighs,’ I warned, and I strode to the bar where he reached for something I knew to be there, a sword that hung on a nail out of sight. I got there first, and stretched with a movement that set the pain in my stomach off, but grabbed it and snatched it from its scabbard in one swift movement.
It all happened too quickly for Jack to react. One second he’d been considering reaching for the sword, the next instant that very same sword was being held to his throat, thankyouverymuch.
The light in the inn was low. A fire bimbled in the grate, dark shadows pranced on the walls, and drinkers regarded me with narrowed, watchful eyes.
‘Now tell me,’ I said, angling the sword at Jack’s throat, making him wince, ‘have the Cobleighs been in here tonight?’
‘Weren’t you supposed to be leaving on the Emperor tonight?’
It wasn’t Jack; it was somebody else who spoke. Someone I couldn’t see in the gloom. Didn’t recognize the voice.
‘Aye, well my plans changed and it’s lucky they did, otherwise my mother and father would have burned in their beds.’ My voice rose. ‘Is that what you wanted all of you? Because that’s what would have happened. Did you know about this?’
You could have heard a pin drop in that tavern. From the darkness they regarded me: the eyes of men I’d drunk and fought with, women I’d taken to bed. They kept their secrets. They would continue to keep them.
From outside came the rattle and clank of a cart arriving. Everybody else heard it, too. The tension in the tavern seemed to increase. It could be the Cobleighs. Here to establish their alibi, perhaps. Still with the sword to his throat, I dragged Jack from behind the bar and to the door of the inn.
‘Nobody say a word,’ I warned. ‘Nobody say a bloody word and Jack’s throat stays closed. The only person who needs to be hurt here tonight is whoever took a torch to my father’s farm.’
Voices from outside now. I heard Tom Cobleigh. I positioned myself behind the door just as it opened, with Jack held as a shield, the point of the sword digging into his neck. The silence was deathly, and instantly noticeable to the three men who were a fraction too slow to realize something was wrong.
What I heard as they came in was Cobleigh’s throaty chuckle dying on his lips, and what I saw was a pair of boots I recognized, boots that belonged to Julian. So I stepped out from behind the door and ran him through with the sword.
You should have killed me when you had the chance. I’ll have it on my gravestone.
Arrested in the door frame Julian simply stood and gawped, his eyes wide as he stared, first down at the sword embedded in his chest, then into my eyes. His final sight was of his killer. His final insult to cough gobbets of blood into my face as he died. Not the last man I ever killed. Not by any means. But the first.
‘Tom! It’s Kenway!’ came a shout from within the tavern, but it was hardly necessary, even for someone as stupid as Tom Cobleigh.
Julian’s eyes went glassy and the light went out of them as he slid off my sword and slumped in the door frame like a bloodied drunk. Behind him stood Tom Cobleigh and his son Seth, mouths agape like men seeing a ghost. Then all thoughts of a refreshing tankard and a satisfying boast about the night’s entertainment were forgotten as they turned tail and ran.
Julian’s body was in the way and they gained precious seconds as I clambered over him, emerging into the dark on the highway. Seth had tripped and was just picking himself up from the dirt, while Tom, not waiting, not stopping to help his son, had hared across the highway heading for the farmhouse opposite. In a moment I was upon Seth, the blood-streaked sword still in my hand, and it crossed my mind to make him the second man I killed. My blood was up and, after all, they say the first is the hardest. And wouldn’t I be doing the world a favour, ridding it of Seth Cobleigh?
But no. There was mercy. And as well as mercy there was doubt. The chance – slim, but still a chance – that Seth hadn’t been there.
Instead as I passed I brought the hilt of the sword down hard on the back of his head and was rewarded with an outraged, pained scream and the sound of him sprawling, hopefully unconscious, back to the dirt, as I dashed past him, arms and legs pumping as I crossed the road in pursuit of Tom.
I know what you’re thinking. I had no proof Tom had been there either. But I just knew. I just knew.
Across the roadway, he risked a quick glance over his shoulder before placing both hands on the top of the stone wall and heaving himself over. Seeing me, he let out a small, frightened whimper and I had time to think that though he was sprightly for a man of his years – his speed aided by his fear, no doubt – I was catching up with him, and tossed the sword from one hand to the other in order to vault the wall, land on two feet on the other side and sprint off in pursuit.
I was close enough to smell his stink, but he’d reached an outhouse and disappeared from view. I heard the scrape of boot on stone nearby, as though a third person was in the yard, and dimly wondered if it was Seth. Or perhaps the farm owner. Perhaps one of the drinkers from the Auld Shillelagh. Focused on finding Tom Cobleigh, I gave it no mind.
By the wall of the outhouse I crouched, listening hard. Wherever Cobleigh was, he’d stopped moving. I glanced to my left and right, and saw only farm buildings, black blocks against the grey night, and heard only the occasional bleating of a goat and the sound of insects. On the other side of the highway lights burned at the window but otherwise the tavern was quiet.
Then, in the almost oppressive quiet I heard a crunch of gravel from the other side of the building. He was there waiting for me.
I thought about our positions. He’d be expecting me to come running recklessly from round the side of the outhouse. So, very slowly, and as quietly as I could, I crept towards the opposite corner. I winced as my boots disturbed the stones and hoped the noise wouldn’t carry. Then I began to edge quietly along the side of the building and at the end stopped and listened. If I was right Tom Cobleigh would be lying in wait at the other side. If I was wrong I could expect a knife in my belly.
I held my breath then risked a peek round the side of the outhouse.
I’d judged right. There was Cobleigh at the far corner. His back was to me and in his fist was a raised knife. Waiting for me to appear, he was a sitting duck. I could have reached him in three quick strides and slipped my blade into his spine before he had a chance to fart.
But no. I wanted him alive. I wanted to know who his companions had been. Who the tall ring-wearing man able to stop Julian from killing me had been.
So instead I disarmed him. Literally. I darted forward and I cut his arm off.
Or, that was the intention, at least. But my inexperience as a swordsman was all too obvious, or was it simply because the sword was too blunt? Either way as I brought it down two-handed on Tom Cobleigh’s forearm, it cut his sleeve and burrowed into the flesh, but didn’t sever the arm. At least he dropped the knife.
Cobleigh screamed and pulled away. He grabbed at his wounded arm that jetted blood across the wall of the outhouse and on to the dirt. At the same time I saw a movement in the darkness and remembered the noise I had heard, that possible other presence. Too late. The shadows delivered a figure into the m
oonlight, and I saw blank eyes behind the hood, and workclothes and boots that were somehow too clean.
Poor Tom Cobleigh. He never saw it coming and virtually backed on to the stranger’s sword, pinned as the new arrival thrust his blade into his back and through the front of his ribcage so that it emerged dripping blood. He looked down at it, a grunt his final worldly utterance before the stranger flicked his sword to one side and the corpse span from the blade and thumped heavily to the dirt.
There is a saying, isn’t there? My enemy’s enemy is my friend. Something like that. But there’s always an exception that proves the rule and in my case he was a man in a hood with a bloodstained sword. My neck was still stinging from the mark of his ring. My face still throbbed from his fists. Why he’d killed Tom Cobleigh, I had no idea and didn’t care; instead with a warrior roar I lunged forward and the shafts of our swords rang like bells in the quiet night.
He parried easily. One. Two. From going forward I was already being driven back, forced to defend messily and sloppily. Inexperienced swordsman? I wasn’t a swordsman at all. I might as well have been wielding a club or a cosh for all the skill I had with the blade. With a swish of his sword point he opened a gash in my arm and I felt warm blood wash down my bicep and soak my sleeve, before the strength seemed to leak out of my sword arm. We weren’t fighting. Not any more. He was playing with me. Playing with me before he killed me.
‘Show me your face,’ I gasped, but he made no reply. The only sign he’d even heard was a slight smiling of the eyes. Then the arc of his sword fooled me and I was too slow – not just a little too slow, but far too slow – to stop him opening a second gash in my arm.
Again he struck. Again. I’ve since realized he cut me with the precision of a medical man, enough to hurt but not permanently injure me. Certainly enough to disarm me. And in the end I didn’t feel the sword drop from my fingertips. I just heard it hit the dirt and looked down to see it on the ground with the blood from my wounded arm dripping on to the blade.
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