‘You lost your chance, Kenway,’ called Kidd over his shoulder as we both raced through the sun-bleached streets.
‘Kidd, no. Come on, man, we can work this together.’
‘You had your chance.’
By now Prins had worked out what had gone wrong: his four men, his best bodyguards, lay dead in a graveyard – how apt – and he was alone, pursued through the streets of Kingston by an Assassin.
Little did he know it, but his only chance of survival was me. You had to feel sorry for him. Nobody in their right mind wants Edward Kenway as their only hope.
And then I caught Kidd, grabbed him by the waist and pulled him to the ground.
(And I swear to God – and I’m not just saying this because of what would happen later – but I thought to myself how light he was, how slender was the waist that I grabbed.)
‘I can’t let you kill him, Kidd,’ I gasped, ‘not until I’ve found the Sage.’
‘I’ve been stalking that pig for a week now, charting his moves,’ said Kidd angrily, ‘and here I find not one but two of my targets – and you rob me of both.’
Our faces were so close together I could feel the heat of his rage.
‘Patience,’ I said, ‘and you’ll have your kills.’
Furious now he pulled away. ‘All right, then,’ he agreed, ‘but when we locate the Sage, you’re going to help me take Prins. Got that?’
We spat and shook. The volcano had erupted but now seemed to settle, and we made our way to Prins’s plantation. So we would have to break in after all. How’s about that for being made to eat your words?
On a low hill overlooking the sugar plantation we found a platform and sat awhile. I watched the work below. The male slaves sang sadly as they hacked at cane, the constant rustle of which seemed to float on the breeze, and women stumbled past bent double beneath heavy baskets of sugar harvest.
Adewalé had told me about life on a plantation, how when the cane was cut and harvested it was run between two metal rollers, and how it was common for a man’s arm to be dragged into the rollers. And when that happened, the only way ‘to separate the man from his plight’ was to hack off the arm. And how after collecting the sugar juice it was time to boil away the waters from the sugar and how the boiling sugar would stick like birdlime and burn on, leaving a terrible scar. ‘I had friends lose eyes,’ he said, ‘and fingers, and arms. And as slaves believe that we never heard a word of praise, nor an apology of any kind.’
I thought of something he’d told me. ‘With this skin and with this voice, where can I go in the world and feel at ease?’
Men like Prins, I realized, were the architects of misery for his people, their ideology the opposite of everything I believed in and everything we stood for at Nassau. We believed in life and liberty. Not this … subjugation. This torture. This slow death.
My fists clenched.
Kidd took a pipe from his pocket and smoked a little as we observed the comings and goings below us.
‘There’s guards patrolling that property from end to end,’ he said. ‘Looks to me like they use the bells to signal trouble. See? There.’
‘We’ll want to disable those before pushing too far,’ I said thoughtfully.
From the corner of my eye I saw something odd: Kidd licking his thumb then pressing it into the bowl of his pipe to put it out. Well, that wasn’t odd, but what he did next was. He began dabbing his thumb in the bowl and rubbing ash on his eyelids.
‘With so many men about we can’t rely on stealth alone,’ he said, ‘so I’ll do what I can to distract and draw their attention, giving you a chance to cut them down.’
I watched, wondering what the hell he was playing at, as he cut his finger with a tiny pocket knife, and then squeezed out a drop of blood which he put to his lips. Next he removed his tricorne. He pulled the tie from his hair, pulled at his hair and ruffled it, so that it fell across his face. He licked the back of one thumb then, like a cat, used it to clean his face. And then he pushed his fingers into his gums, removed bits of wet wadding that had fattened his cheeks and dropped them to the ground.
Next he pulled up his shirt and began unlacing a corset that he pulled out from beneath his shirt and tossed to the ground, revealing, as he then opened the top buttons of his shirt and pulled the collar wider what were, unmistakably, his tits.
My head span. His tits? No. Her tits. Because when I eventually tore my eyes off the tits and to his face – no, her face – I could see that this man was not a man at all.
‘Your name is not James, is it?’ I said, slightly unnecessarily.
She smiled. ‘Not most days. Come on.’
And when she stood, her posture had changed so that where before she’d seemed to walk and move like a man, now there was no doubt. It was as plain as the tits on her chest. She was a woman.
Already beginning to clamber down the hill towards the plantation fence, I skidded to catch up with her.
‘Damn it, man. How is it you’re a woman?’
‘Christ, Edward, is it something that needs explaining? Now, I’m here to do a job. I’ll let you be amused later.’
In the end, though, I wasn’t really amused. To tell the truth it made perfect sense that she should resort to dressing like a man. Sailors hated having a woman on board ship. They were superstitious about it. If the mystery woman wanted to live the life of a seaman, then that’s what she had to be – a seaman.
And when I thought about it I goggled at the sheer bloody guts of it. The courage it must have taken for her to do what she did. And I tell you, my sweet, I’ve met a lot of extraordinary people. Some bad. Some good. Most a mix of good and bad, because that’s the way most people are. Of all of them the example I’d most like you to follow is hers. Her name was Mary Read. I know you won’t forget it. Bravest woman I ever met, bar none.
40
As I waited for Mary by the gates I overheard guards chatting. So Torres had managed to slip away. Interesting. And Prins was holed up in his plantation in fear of his life. Good. I hope the fear gripped icy hands at his stomach. I hope the terror kept him awake at nights. I’d look forward to seeing it in his eyes when I killed him.
First, though, to gain entry. And for that I needed …
Here she is now. And you had to hand it to her, she was a superb actor. For God knows how long she’d convinced all of us that she was a man, and now here she was in a new role, not changing sex this time but convincing the guards she was ill. And, yes, doing a bloody good job of it.
‘Stand your ground!’ ordered a soldier at the gate.
‘Please, I’ve been shot,’ she rasped, ‘I need aid.’
‘Christ, Phillips, look at her. She’s hurt.’
The more sympathetic of the two soldiers stepped forward and the gate to the plantation opened in front of her.
‘Sir,’ she said weakly, ‘I’m poorly and faint.’
Sympathetic Soldier offered her his arm to help her inside.
‘Bless you, lads,’ she said and limped through the gate that closed behind them. I didn’t see it from my vantage point, of course, but I heard it: the swish of a blade, the muffled punching sound it made as she drove it into them, the low moan as the last of life escaped them and then the thump of their bodies on the dirt.
And now we were both inside and darting across the compound towards his manor. Probably we were seen by slaves, but we had to hope they wouldn’t raise the alarm. Our prayers were answered because moments after that we were creeping into the manor, using hand signals to move stealthily around the rooms – until we came across him standing in a gazebo in a rear yard off the house. Crouched on either side of an archway we peeked round and saw him there, standing with his back to us, his hands across his stomach, looking out over his grounds, pleased with his lot in life – a fat slaver, his fortune built on the suffering of others. You remember me saying I’d met some who were all bad? Laurens Prins was top of that list.
We looked at one another. The kill be
longed to her and yet, for some reason (because they were trying to recruit me?), she waved me onwards, then left on a scout of the rest of the mansion. I got to my feet, went through to the yard, crept beneath the gazebo and stood behind Laurens Prins.
And engaged my blade.
Oh, I kept it well greased; the one thing you can be sure of when it comes to pirates is that while we may not be a particularly domesticated breed, not at all house-proud, with the general state of Nassau a testament to that, we kept our weapons in good nick. Same philosophy as keeping a galleon shipshape. A question of need. A question of survival.
So it was with my blade. When it got wet I cleaned it thoroughly, and I kept it greased to within an inch of its life, and so these days it barely made a noise when I ejected it. It was so quiet, in fact, that Prins didn’t hear it.
I cursed, and at last he turned in surprise, perhaps expecting to see one of his guards there, about to shout at the man for his impudence, for creeping up on him like that. Instead I thrust the blade into him and his eyes opened wide and were frozen like that as I let him down to the floor, keeping the blade in him, holding him there as blood filled his lungs and the life began to leave him.
‘Why hang over me like a leering crow?’ he coughed. ‘To see an old man suffer.’
‘You’ve caused no small portion of suffering yourself, Mr Prins,’ I told him dispassionately. ‘This is retribution, I suppose.’
‘You absurd cutthroats and your precious philosophy,’ he jeered, the final pathetic contempt of a dying man. ‘You live in the world, but you cannot make it move.’
I smiled down at him. ‘You mistake my motive, old man. I’m only after a bit of coin.’
‘As was I, lad,’ he said. ‘As was I …’
He died.
I was stepping out of the gazebo, leaving his body behind, when I heard a noise from above. Looking up I saw the Sage Roberts, just as I remembered him, on a balcony. He held Mary hostage, with a flintlock pistol aimed at the side of her head and – clever lad – he held her wrist to stop her engaging her blade.
‘I found your man,’ she called down, seemingly unconcerned about the pistol at her head. He’d use it, too. The heat in his eyes said so. They blazed. Remember me, do you, mate? I thought. The man who stood by while they took your blood?
He did. ‘The Templar from Havana,’ he said, nodding.
‘I’m no Templar, mate,’ I called back. ‘That was just a ruse. We’ve come here to save your arse.’
(By which of course I meant, ‘Torture you until you tell us where the Observatory is.’)
‘Save me? I work for Mr Prins.’
‘Well then, he’s a poor man to call master. He meant to sell you out to the Templars.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘You can’t trust anyone, it seems.’
Perhaps he relaxed, for she chose that moment to make her move. She dragged the heel of her boot down his shin and he cried out in pain as she twisted to one side and from underneath his grasp. She flailed for his gun arm but he whipped it away, aimed the gun and fired but missed. Now she was off balance and he saw his chance, pivoting on the rail of the balcony and kicking her with both feet. With a yell she flipped over the rail and I was already starting forward to try to catch her when she caught herself and swung into the balcony below.
Meanwhile, the Sage had drawn another pistol, but guards were arriving, alerted by the gunfire.
‘Roberts,’ I shouted, but instead of shooting at the guards he aimed his second shot at the bell.
Clang.
He couldn’t miss, and it had the desired effect: as Mary dropped lithely down from the second balcony to join me, engaging her blade at the same time, guards came pouring from the archways into the courtyard. Back to back we stood, but there was no time to appraise our enemy at leisure. Muskets and pistols were being produced, so into action we sprang.
Six each, I think, was the tally. Twelve men who died with varying degrees of bravery and skill, and at least one case of dubious suitability for any kind of combat. It was the way he screwed up his eyes and whimpered as he came running into battle.
We heard the running feet of more men arriving and knew that was our cue to escape, dashing from the courtyard then across the compound, urging the slaves to run, run, free themselves, as we went. And if there had not been scores of soldiers on our tails, then we would have stopped and forced them to escape. As it is, I don’t know whether they pressed home the advantage we’d given them.
Later we stopped and when I was done cursing my luck at losing Roberts, I asked her real name.
‘Mary Read to my mum,’ she answered, and at the same time I felt something press into my crotch and when I looked down, saw that it was the point of Mary’s hidden blade.
She was smiling, thank God.
‘But not a word of it to anyone,’ she said, ‘or I’ll unman you as well.’
And I never did tell anyone. After all, this was a woman who knew how to piss standing up. I wasn’t about to underestimate her.
41
January, 1718
Dear Edward,
I write with sad news of your father, who passed away one month ago, taken by pleurisy. His passing was not painful, and he died in my arms I am pleased to say. So at least we were together until the very end.
We were poor at the time of his passing and so I have taken a job at a local tavern where you may reach me if you wish to correspond. News of your exploits has found my ears. They say you are a pirate of some infamy. I wish that you could write to me and allay my fears on this matter. I regret to say I have not seen Caroline since you left, and so I am unable to pass you any details regarding her health.
Mother
I looked at the return address. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.
42
Well, I know I was in Nassau during that early part of 1718 – where else would I be, it was my home – but to be honest I remember only fragments. Why? That’s a question you need to direct to him in there. Him, that little voice inside who tells you you need one more drink when you know you’ve had enough. That was the little voice who started hooting and wouldn’t let me pass the Old Avery without a trip inside to while away the day, then wake up the next, rough as arseholes, knowing there was only one thing that would make me feel better, and it was served by Anne Bonny, barmaid at the Old Avery. And then, what do you know? The whole circle – a vicious bloody circle – would begin again.
And yes I’ve since worked out I drank to drown my discontent, but that’s the thing with drinking, you often don’t know why at the time. You don’t realize that the drinking is a symptom, not a cure. So I sat and watched as Nassau fell to rack and ruin. And being so drunk I forgot to feel disgusted about it. Instead I spent day after day at the same table of the Old Avery, either staring at my filched picture of the Observatory or attempting to etch out a letter to Mother or to Caroline. Thinking of Father. Wondering if the fire at the farmhouse had hastened his death. Wondering if I was to blame for that, too, and knowing the answer was the reason why my letters to Mother ended up crumpled bits of paper on the floor of the terrace.
Mind you, I wasn’t so wrapped up in my problems that I forgot to eye up the delicious behind of Anne Bonny, even if she was off-limits (officially, that was. But Anne, let’s just say she liked the company of pirates, if you know what I mean).
Anne had arrived in Nassau with her husband, James, a buccaneer and lucky bleeder for being married to her. Having said that, she had a way about her did Anne, like she wasn’t afraid to give a fellow the glad eye, which did make you wonder if old James Bonny had his hands full with that one. I’d wager that serving ales at the Old Avery wasn’t his idea.
‘There’s precious little in this town but piss and insects,’ she used to complain, blowing strands of hair off her face. She was right, but still she stayed, fending off the advances of most, accepting the advances of a lucky few.
It was around that time, as I wallowed in my own
misery, days spent chasing away hangovers and working on new ones, that we first heard about the king’s pardon.
‘It’s a bag of shite!’
Charles Vane had said that. His words penetrating that mid-morning booze buzz I’d been working on.
What was?
‘It’s a ruse,’ he thundered to keep us soft before they attack Nassau! You’ll see. Mark me.’
What was a ruse?
‘It’s no ruse, Vane,’ said Blackbeard, his voice betraying an unusual seriousness. ‘I heard it straight from the mouth of the greasy Bermudan captain. There’s a pardon on offer for any pirate that wants it.’
A pardon. I let the words sink in.
Hornigold was there, too. ‘Ruse or not, I think it’s plain the British may return to Nassau,’ he said. ‘With arms no doubt. In the absence of any clear ideas, I say we lay low. No piracy and no violence. Do nothing to ruffle the king’s feathers for now.’
‘Preserving the king’s plumage is no concern of mine, Ben,’ Blackbeard rebuked him.
Benjamin turned on him. ‘It will be when he sends his soldiers to scrub this island clean of our residue. Look around you man, is this cesspool worth dying for?’
He was right, of course. It stank, and more so every day: a vomitous mixture of shit and bilge water and rotting carcasses. But even so, difficult though it might be for you to believe, it was our vomitous mixture of shit and bilge water and rotting carcasses, and we were prepared to fight for it. Besides, it didn’t smell so bad when you were drunk.
‘Aye, it’s our republic. Our idea,’ insisted Blackbeard. ‘A free land for free men, remember? So maybe it’s filthy to look at. But ain’t it still an idea worth fighting for?’
Benjamin averted his eyes. Had he already decided? Had he made his choice?
‘I can’t be sure,’ he said. ‘For when I look on fruits of our years of labour, all I see is sickness … idleness … idiocy.’
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