By now the Jackdaw was not far from the Rover and I looked across the deck to see their captain, just as he looked over to see me.
‘Ahoy Roberts!’ I called. ‘We’ll cast anchor and meet ashore.’
‘You were followed, Captain Kenway. How long for? I wonder.’
I snatched the spyglass from Adewalé and scuttled up the ratlines, shouldering aside the lookout in the crow’s-nest and putting the spyglass to my eye.
‘What do you think that is, lad?’ I snarled at the lookout.
He was young – as young as I was when I first joined the crew of the Emperor. ‘It’s a ship, sir, but there are plenty of vessels in these waters, and I didn’t think it close enough to raise the alarm.’
I snapped the glass shut and glared at him. ‘You didn’t think at all, did you? That ship out there isn’t any other ship, son, it’s the Benjamin.’
The lad paled.
‘Aye, that’s right, the Benjamin. Captained by one Benjamin Hornigold. If they’ve not caught up with us, then it’s because they haven’t wanted to catch up with us.’
I began to make my way down the ratlines.
‘Call it then, lad,’ I shouted up to the lookout. ‘Sound the alarm, late as it is.’
‘Sail ho!
The Cuban coastline was to our starboard, the Benjamin behind us. But now I was at the tiller, and I hauled her over, the rudder complaining as she turned, the men reaching for a handhold as our masts swung, our port side dipped and we began to come around, until the manoeuvre was complete and the men were bitching and moaning as the oars were deployed, the sails reefed and we began a trudge aimed at meeting the Benjamin head on. You won’t be expecting that, will you, Benjamins?
‘Captain, think carefully about what you mean to do here,’ said Adewalé.
‘What are you grousing about, Adewalé? It’s Ben Hornigold come to kill us out there.’
‘Aye, and that traitor needs to die. But what then? Can you say with certainty that you deserve the Observatory more than he and his Templars?’
‘No, I can’t. And I don’t care to try. But if you’ve a better idea, by all means tell me.’
‘Forget working with Roberts,’ he said with a sudden surge of passion, something I’d rarely seen from him, such a cool head usually. ‘Tell the Assassins. Bring them here, and let them protect the Observatory.’
‘Aye, I’ll bring them here. If they’re willing to pay me a good sum for it, I will.’
He made a disgusted noise and walked away.
Ahead of us the Benjamin had turned – Hornigold with no stomach for a fight, it seemed – and we saw the men in her masts securing the sails. Oars appeared and were soon spanking the water, our two ships in a rowing race now. For long moments all I could hear was the shout of the coxswain, the creak of the ship, the splash of the sweepers in the water, as I stood at the bow of the Jackdaw and Hornigold stood at the stern of the Benjamin, and we stared at one another.
As we raced, the sun dipped below the horizon, flickering orange, the last of its light as night fell and brought with it a wind from the north west that dragged fog inland. The Benjamin anticipated the wind with more success than we did. The first we knew of it was seeing her sails unfurl, and she put distance between them and us.
Some fifteen minutes later, it was dark and fog billowed in towards that part of the Cuban coastline they call the Devil’s Backbone, crags that look like the spine of a giant behemoth, a moon giving the mist a ghostly glow.
‘We’ll have a hard fight if Hornigold draws us any deeper into this fog,’ warned Adewalé.
That was Hornigold’s plan, though, but he’d made a mistake, and a big mistake for such an experienced sailor. He found himself being hustled by the wind. It rushed in from the open sea, it charged at cross-purposes along the coast, turning the sandbanks of the Devil’s Backbone into a haze of impenetrable layers of fog and sand.
‘The winds are tossing them about like a toy,’ said Adewalé.
I pulled up the cowl of my robes against the chill wind which had just begun to assault us as we came within its range.
‘We can use that to get close.’
He looked at me. ‘If we are not dashed to pieces as well.’
Now the sails were rolled up again, but on the Benjamin they weren’t so quick. They were being buffeted by the wind. I saw men trying to reef the sails but finding it tough in the conditions. One fell, his scream carried to us by the gusts.
The Benjamin was in trouble. It bobbled on an increasingly choppy sea, buffeted by the wind that snatched at its sails, turning it first one way then another. It veered close towards the banks of the Backbone. Men scurried about the decks. Another was blown off board. They’d lost control. At the mercy of the elements now.
I stood on the forecastle deck, one hand braced and the other held out, feeling the wind on my palm. I felt the pressure of the hidden blade on my forearm and knew it would taste the blood of Hornigold before the night was old.
‘Can you do this, breddah? Is your heart up for it?’
Benjamin Hornigold, who had taught me so much about the ways of the sea. Benjamin Hornigold, the man who had established, who had mentored my greatest friend Edward Thatch, who in turn had mentored me. Actually, I didn’t know if I could.
‘Truth be told, I was hoping the sea would swallow him up, and see the job done for me,’ I told him. ‘But I’ll do what I must.’
My quartermaster. God bless my quartermaster. He knew the fate of the Benjamin before even the Fates knew of the fate of the Benjamin. And as it crashed sidelong into a high bankside, seemingly wrenched from the sea by a gust of wind and spirited into a cloud of sand and fog, he saw to it that we drew alongside.
We saw the shapes of crewmen tumbling from her top decks, figures indistinct in the murk. I stepped up to the gunwale of the forecastle deck braced with one hand on the bow strip then used the sense, just as James Kidd had shown me. And among those falling bodies of men who slipped from the deck of the ship on to the boggy sandbanks and into the water, I was able to make out the form of Benjamin Hornigold. Over my shoulder I said, ‘I’ll be coming back.’
And then I jumped.
53
The snap of muskets from the Jackdaw began behind me as a one-sided battle between my ship and the crew of the now-beached Benjamin. My senses had returned to normal, but Hornigold was doing me a favour, shouting encouragement and curses to his men.
‘Some mighty piss-poor sailing back there, lads. And if we live out this day, by God, I’m flaying every last bitch of you. Hold your ground and be ready for anything.’
And then I appeared from the mist on the bank nearby, and rather than heed his own words he took to his heels, scrambling along to the top of the incline and then across it.
My men had started to use mortars on the fleeing crew of the Benjamin, though, and I found myself placed in danger as they began raining on to the sand around me. Until one exploded near Benjamin and the next thing I knew he was disappearing out of sight over the other side of the sandbank in a spray of blood and sand.
I scrambled over the top made hasty by my desire to see his fate, and paid for it with a sword swipe across my arm, opening a cut that bled. In a single movement I span, engaged the blade and met his next attack, our steel sparking as it met. The force of his attack was enough to send me tumbling down the bank and he came after me, launching himself from the slope with his cutlass swinging. I caught him on my boots and kicked him away, his sword point parting the air before my nose. Rolling I pulled myself to my feet and scrambled after him, and again our blades met. For some moments we traded blows, and he was good, but he was hurt and I was the younger man, and I was lit by vengeful fire and so, I cut his arm, his elbow, his shoulder – until he could hardly stand or raise his sword and I finished him.
‘You could have been a man who stood for something true,’ he said as he died. His lips worked over the words carefully. His teeth were bloodstained. ‘But you’v
e a killer’s heart now.’
‘Well, it’s a damn sight better than what you have, Ben,’ I told him. ‘The heart of a traitor, who thinks himself better than his mates.’
‘Aye, and proven true. What have you done since Nassau fell? Nothing but murder and mayhem.’
I lost my temper, rounded on him. ‘You threw in with the very kind we once hated!’ I shouted.
‘No,’ he said. He reached to grab at me and make his point, but I angrily batted his hands away. ‘These Templars are different. I wish you could see that. But if you continue on your present course, you’ll find you’re the only one left walking it. With the gallows at the end.’
‘That may be,’ I said, ‘but now the world has one less snake in it. And that’s enough for me.’
But he didn’t hear me. He was already dead.
54
‘Is the pirate hunter dead?’ said Bartholomew Roberts.
I looked at him, Bartholomew Roberts, this unknowable character, a Sage, a carpenter who had turned to a life of piracy. Was this the first time he’d visited the Observatory? Why did he need me here? So many questions – questions to which I knew I would never be given answers.
We were at Long Bay, on the northern shores of Jamaica. He had been loading his pistols as I arrived. Then he asked his question to which I replied, ‘Aye, by my own hand.’
He nodded and went back to cleaning his pistols. I looked at him and found a sudden rage gripped me. ‘Why is it you alone can find what so many want?’
He chuckled. ‘I was born with memories of this place. Memories of another time entirely, I think. Like … Like another life I have already led.’
I shook my head, and wondered whether I would ever be free of this mumbo-jumbo.
‘Curse you for a lurch, man, and speak some sense.’
‘Not today.’
Nor any other day, I thought angrily, but before I could find a reply there came a noise from the jungle.
Natives? Perhaps they had been disturbed by the battle between the Jackdaw and the Benjamin. Remained of Hornigold’s crew was being herded aboard the Jackdaw and I had left my men to it. Deal with the prisoners and await my return shortly. I had embarked on this meeting with Bartholomew Roberts alone.
He gestured to me. ‘After you, captain. The path ahead is dangerous.’
With around a dozen of his men we began to move through the jungle, beating a path through the undergrowth as we began to head upwards. I wondered whether I should be able to see it by now, this Observatory? Weren’t they great constructs, built on high peaks? All around the hillsides greenery waved at us. Bushes and palm trees. Nothing as far as the eye can see, unless you counted our ships in the bay.
We had been going only a few hundred yards when we heard a sound from the undergrowth and something streaked from the bushes to one side of us and one of Roberts’s men fell with a glistening, gore-filled hole where the back of his head had been. I know a club strike when I see one. But it was gone as quickly as it had come.
A tremor of fear ran through the crew who drew their swords, pulled muskets from their backs and snatched pistols from their belts. Crouched. Ready.
‘The men native to this land will put up a fight, Edward,’ said Roberts quietly, eyes scanning the undergrowth, which was silent, keeping its secrets.
‘You willing to push back if necessary? To kill, if needed?’
I engaged my hidden blade.
‘You’ll hear from me soon.’
And then I crouched, rolled sideways into the jungle and became a part of it.
55
The natives, they knew their land well, but I was doing something they simply would not expect, I was taking the fight to them. And so, the first man I came across was surprised to see me, and that surprise was his undoing. He wore nothing but a breech cloth, his black hair tied up on his head, a club still gleaming with the blood of a buccaneer upon it, and eyes wide with shock. The natives were only protecting what was theirs. It gave me no pleasure to slide my blade between his ribs and I hoped his end was quick, but I did it anyway, and then moved on. The jungle began to resound to the noise of screams and gunshots, but I found more natives and dealt more death until at last the battle was over and I returned to the main party.
Eight had been killed in the battle. Most of the natives had fallen under my blade.
‘The guardians of the Observatory,’ Bartholomew Roberts told me.
‘How long have their kind being here?’ I asked him.
‘Oh … At least a thousand years or more. Very dedicated men. Very deadly.’
I looked around at what remained of his group, his terrified, traumatized men, who had watched their shipmates picked off one by one. Then we continued our journey, climbing still, going up and up until we came upon it, grey stone walls a dark contrast with the vibrant jungle colours, a monolithic building rising way, way above us.
The Observatory.
How had it not been seen? I wondered. How had it remained invisible?
‘This is it, then?’
‘Aye, an almost sacred place. All it needs is a drop of my blood …’
In his hand appeared a small dagger and he never took his eyes from mine as he used it to prick his thumb then placed the red-beaded finger into a tiny recess by the side of the door. It began to open.
All six of us looked at one another. Only Bart Roberts seemed to be enjoying himself.
‘And the door opens,’ he said with the voice of a showman, ‘after almost eighty thousand years.’
He stepped to one side and ushered his men through. The nervous crew members looked at one another then did as their captain ordered and began to move towards the door …
And then, for some reason known only to himself, Roberts killed them, all four of them. With one hand he buried his dagger into the eye socket of the leading man, pushing his body aside at the same time as he drew his pistol and fired into the face of the second man. The last two crew members had no time to react as Black Bart drew his second pistol and fired point-blank into the chest of a third man, pulled his sword and ran the final survivor through.
It was the same man who had brought the chest on deck, who’d looked to Roberts for some words of praise. He made an odd, choking sound and Roberts held him there a second then slid the cutlass home to the hilt and twisted it. The body on his blade went taut and the deckhand looked at his captain with imploring, uncomprehending eyes until his body relaxed, slid off the steel and thumped to the ground, chest rising once, twice, then staying still.
So much death. So much death.
‘Jesus, Roberts, have you gone mad?’
He shook blood from his cutlass then fussily cleaned it with a handkerchief.
‘Quite the contrary, Edward. These wags would have gone mad at seeing what lies beyond this gate. But you, I suspect, are made of sterner stuff. Now pick up that chest and carry it hither.’
I did as he asked. Knowing that to follow Roberts was a bad idea. A terrible bloody idea. But unable to prevent myself doing it. I’d come too far to back out now.
Inside it was like an ancient temple. ‘Dirty and decrepit,’ said Roberts, ‘not quite as I remember. But it has been over eighty millennia.’
I shot him a glare. More mumbo-jumbo. ‘Oh rot, that’s impossible.’
His look in return was unknowable. ‘Step as if on thin ice, captain.’
On stone steps we descended through the centre of the Observatory, moving into a large bridge chamber. All my senses were alive as I looked around and took in the vast openness of the space.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ said Roberts in a hushed voice.
‘Aye,’ I replied and found I was whispering, ‘like something out of a fairy tale, one of them old poems.’
‘There were many stories about this place once. Tales that turned into rumours, and again into legend. The inevitable process of facts becoming fictions, before fading away entirely.’
And now we entered a new room al
together, what could only be described as an archive, a huge space lined with low shelves on which were stacked hundreds of small vials of blood, just like the ones in the coffer – just like the one I had seen Torres use on Bartholomew Roberts.
‘More blood vials.’
‘Yes. These cubes contain the blood of an old and ancient people. A wonderful race, in their time.’
‘The more you talk, man, the less I understand,’ I said irritably.
‘Only remember this; the blood in these vials is not worth a single reale to anyone any more. It may be again, one day. But not in this epoch.’
We were deep within the bowels of the earth now, and walked through the archives into what was the main theatre of the Observatory. Again it was astounding and we stood for a second, craning our necks to gaze from one side of the vast domed chamber to the other.
At one side of the chamber was what looked like a pit, with just a sloshing sound from far below to indicate water somewhere, while in the middle was a raised dais with what looked a complicated pattern carved into the stone. As Roberts bid me place the chest down a low noise began. A low, humming sound that was intriguing at first but began to build …
‘What’s that?’ I felt as though I was having to shout to make myself heard, although I wasn’t.
‘Ah yes,’ said Roberts, ‘a security measure. Just a moment.’
Around us the walls had begun to glow, letting off a pulsing white light that was as beautiful as it was unsettling. The Sage walked across the floor to the raised platform in the middle and put his hand to a carved indent in the centre. Straight away the sound receded and the room around us was silent again, though the walls still glowed.
‘So what is this place?’ I said to Roberts.
‘Think of it as like a large spyglass. A device capable of seeing great distances.’
The glow. The blood. This ‘device’. My head was beginning to spin, and all I could do was stand and watch openmouthed as Roberts reached into the coffer with practised fingers, as though it what this was something he’d done dozens of times before, and then pulled out a vial and held it up to the light, just as he had on the day we took possession of the chest.
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