by Alex Scarrow
Musket fire crackled from both of the low-decked ships as the corsairs chanced opportunistic shots up at them from either side.
‘Heads down, men!’ barked Teale, keen, it seemed, to be heard and seen reasserting his authority on the afterdeck.
Another crackle of gunfire and Liam felt a pulse of hot air on his left cheek as a musket shot whistled past him. ‘Jay-zus!’ He and the others ducked instinctively.
They’re targeting the helm! No sooner did Liam have time to think that than another shot buzzed through the air and embedded itself firmly in the chest of the man holding the wheel with a heavy thwack. The man flopped back from the wheel and on to the deck, quite dead as he hit the wood. The Clara Jane immediately swung to port, the wheel spinning with a clattering of spokes.
Liam leaped forward and grabbed it with both hands, straining to haul it back and correct the ship’s course. Another couple more shots whistled through the air comfortably high above his head as they finally pulled clear of the two ships. Liam was about to turn round and whoop defiantly at them when a final parting shot was fired from the transom of one of the dhows. A moment later Liam felt his temple had been smacked with a mallet. He vaguely sensed himself spinning, then a moment later he was staring at the blur of the deck right beside his face, watching a pool of his own blood spread out and soak into the rough wood and thinking, Please … not my head again …
Chapter 23
1667, Port Royal, Jamaica
Chaos space was mercifully quick this time. Travelling through it, Maddy had clenched her eyes shut and concentrated on the errand at hand. That horrible transition through non-space had seemed to last no more than a couple of heartbeats. Perhaps that was the trick. The more you focused on that awful milky whiteness, tried to make sense out of it, the longer your perception of the time you spent in there. Or maybe it wasn’t just perception: maybe you really were in there for longer, as if chaos space itself was in turn curiously studying this person who dared to trespass through it – holding on to them for longer than was necessary before finally becoming bored, and tossing them out into the real world.
Maddy’s laced boots impacted with a jolting thud on to hard dirt. She kept her eyes shut, savouring the immediate sensation of sun-warmth on her face, the pink glow of daylight percolating through the veil of her eyelids. Directly above her, she could hear the twittering of exotic-sounding birds. To her left, the gentle roll, draw and hiss of lazy waves nearby. And, not so far away, the sounds of settlement life: somebody chopping wood; the metallic tink-tink-tink of a blacksmith’s hammer; somebody playing a fiddle; the bark of a mongrel dog. The call of a foreman and the chorused harrumph of men hefting something heavy and their groan of relief a moment later. And, faintly, the snap and flutter of flags, pennants, sails caught by a fresh breeze; the tap and clank of ropes and blocks against wooden masts.
She inhaled deeply and realized how used to London’s overpowering odour of burning coal and coke she’d become. Here was an entirely new bouquet of smells. A hint of salt – yes, the sea, of course. Woodsmoke – always present, whenever they seemed to visit. But over the top of those two odours was the acrid tang of pine tar being cooked in pots somewhere.
‘Maddy?’
Bob’s deep voice broke the spell. She opened her eyes. They were standing in the small stone-walled graveyard of Port Royal’s ‘old’ church. Above them the fibrous fronds of a palm tree swayed and rustled impatiently.
‘Yes, yes … I’m good.’ She adjusted the tie-strings of her bonnet beneath her jaw; already they were irritating her. ‘Which way do we go?’
Bob pointed across the small graveyard – humps of sunbaked orange dirt marked with paupers’ wooden crosses and dotted with several other palm trees in which colourful birds hopped and chattered to each other. ‘Three hundred and sixty-three yards in that direction,’ he said.
‘So precise?’
He shrugged. ‘The signal is clear.’
‘After you, then, big boy.’
Bob strode across the graveyard towards a sun-bleached wooden gate that creaked as he pushed it open to reveal Port Royal’s main street.
‘Wow,’ Maddy uttered.
To their left was the squat stone structure of the church. Its front looked across a narrow strip of dirt and dried grass on to Port Royal’s high street. On either side of the wide and arrow-straight dirt thoroughfare, wooden buildings jostled with each other on tiptoes to lean over it. Almost as ramshackle as the Thames-side shanty town, the two-storey timber buildings slanted like a mouth full of uneven teeth. Not so much as a single right angle could be seen between them and all of them were top-heavy with upper floors that extended over the street like the bowsprits of Spanish galleons moored side by side. Small leaded windows were flanked by green-painted wooden storm shutters flung wide open. All of the windows were open too, to make the most of the fresh breeze. From them, drapes and linen curtains fluttered in and out like wagging tongues.
The street – though it hardly deserved to be called one – was unpaved. Several deep ruts ran down it like tram tracks, carved by wagon wheels on a day when rain must have rendered this street a quagmire, but was now baked as hard as concrete. Here and there tufts of dry grass sprouted from cracks in the dirt, and every few feet were wheel-flattened pancakes of horse manure. It was busy mostly with foot traffic and a few traders’ carts, most of them pulled by hand, some by oxen. One or two of the more wealthy-looking denizens were trotting up and down the street on horseback.
Bob nodded to their left. ‘The signal is coming from that direction.’
They headed north-west, up the high street. Maddy noted, with some relief, that there were a fair number of women to be seen, not perhaps as many as on any given London street, but at least some. Many of them wore threadbare dresses of colourful silks and velvets, their faces powdered white, cheeks rouged an unnatural doll-like pink.
There was no mistaking their profession.
To their right they passed the governor’s mansion. Like the old church, made of stone, it was coated with lime-coloured paint, almost eye-wateringly bright in the glare of the noon sun. The grand building was fronted by a tidy, well-kept garden tended by a handful of Negro slaves. A low stone wall topped by wrought iron with a gate midway ran along the front. Directly outside it, two soldiers wearing crimson tunics and dark, broad-brimmed felt hats wilted in the hot sun.
To their left they passed a meat market. Low wooden shacks with grass awnings on stilts out front, beneath which hung rows of wild boar carcasses, buzzed by a cloud of flies. Smoke billowed from the doorway of a shack where all manner of meat was being dried and smoked. The pervasive odour of boiling tar almost, but unfortunately not quite, covered the smell of offal festering in a bucket left in the sun.
Nice. Maddy resorted to mouth-breathing.
A little further up the high street, the bustling market-town ambience of Port Royal began to give way to something else. The calls of merchants and traders were replaced by the raucous hubbub of voices shouting over each other. They passed a tavern whose clientele had spilled out on to the dirt track of the high street. Roughly hewn log benches and tables, improvised from barrels and casks pulled out from inside and spread out along the side of the street, were occupied by men sprawled, bleary-eyed, in the sun. Every last one of them seemed to have a long-stemmed clay pipe sticking out of their bearded faces, puffing blue-grey threads of tobacco smoke before them.
And fewer women, Maddy noted unhappily.
Further along, the street narrowed and they found themselves with taverns on both sides of them. The spillage of clientele all but met in the middle of the dirt track, creating, in effect, an outdoor tavern that choked the flow of pedestrians both ways, causing people passing through to have to weave between the knots of drinkers and duck through lazy clouds of pipe smoke. With an unsettling jolt, the truth settled on Maddy like a brick dropped from above.
I’m surrounded by frikkin’ pirates. That’s what they almost
certainly all were. Only not the fun-loving, ahoy-me-hearties, salt-of-the-earth types that have a habit of cropping up in movies. No. These men looked like hardened criminals, like seventeenth-century versions of modern-day trouble-spot mercenaries. The kind of glassy-eyed psychopaths drawn to hotspots like Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan as much for the adrenalin rush of killing as for the money.
Real-live, nothing-like-the-movies pirates.
And right then Maddy made the big mistake of making momentary eye contact with one of them.
Chapter 24
1667, Port Royal, Jamaica
‘Hoy! You there!’
Maddy wanted to quicken their pace through this knotted chokepoint. Bob was just in front of her, a big wall of muscle going nowhere. Their way through the sprawl of drinkers was blocked by a man coming the other way, pulling a handcart laden with bales of cotton.
‘Hoy! You! Missy!’ The pirate had now got up off his perch and was weaving his way towards her. ‘Jus’ wanna talk to yer, me luvvy!’
Come on. Come on! Maddy ground her teeth and thumped the small of Bob’s back. ‘Bob! Let’s go!’ she hissed at him.
‘The way ahead is blocked,’ rumbled Bob in reply over his shoulder. ‘I am just letting this trader come through to clear the –’
‘Jesus! Screw being polite! Just go!’
‘Miss!’ She felt a heavy hand land on her shoulder. Not just land, the hand grabbed her shoulder roughly and twisted her round.
She felt a fetid blast of stale, rum-soaked breath in her face. ‘Lovely pretty rose, y’are!’ he grinned, all gums and one yellow tooth leaning like the last drunk at closing time. ‘Wha’ a luv-er-ly beauty!’ His tanned face creased with an even wider grin. ‘Buy yer a tankard of kill-devil, my dear?’
Maddy shook her head. ‘No, I’m quite all right, thank you.’
The man’s eyes rounded at her diction. ‘Proper-sounding lady, aintcha?’ His firm grasp moved from her shoulder to her arm and he tugged her towards him. ‘Come on, love. Come meet the lads!’
Maddy grabbed his hand and twisted one of his fingers sharply. ‘No thank you!’
He laughed at that and for a moment she thought her forceful and spirited rebuff would be met with a respectful nod and a pardon me. Instead, still laughing, he reached out and grasped the neckline of her dress and yanked at it roughly. Buttons popped off, exposing the top of her modest cleavage. Instinctively she covered her half-exposed chest with one hand and slapped his face with the other. And that just seemed to encourage him. He reached under her bonnet and snagged a fistful of her hair. ‘Come on, luv! Let’s meet the boys!’
‘BOB!’ cried Maddy as she staggered after the man.
The support unit spun round at the sound of her shrill cry. ‘STOP!’ he boomed.
The man turned to look over his shoulder at Bob. Eyes widening again this time as he took in the size of him. ‘Go an’ bugger off!’
Bob cocked his head – quickly filing the interesting term. ‘Release her immediately!’
The pirate, quick from practice or a lifetime’s habit, whipped out a long knife from his belt and pointed it towards Bob.
‘There will be extreme violence unless you release her,’ replied Bob, almost apologetically.
The man chuckled at that. ‘Extreme violence, is it?’
‘Correct.’
The hubbub of voices all around them began to quieten, curious eyes – passers-by and drinking pirates – settled on the momentary stand-off.
Maddy, doubled over, whimpered in pain. His fist clenched even tighter in her hair, tugging sharply at her scalp.
‘Oh, I’m goin’ to tap yer with a nasty scar, mate, ’less you turn around and leave us right now!’
‘Negative.’ Bob narrowed his eyes. ‘You have three seconds before the extreme violence begins.’
The pirate laughed, a little nervously this time, his hand flexing, adjusting the grip of his knife. Of course, now there was no place for him to go but onward. The matter of losing face was more to the point than the squirming girl at his side. But he decided he needed both hands so he pushed Maddy roughly at one of the tables. She fell across it, knocking jugs and tankards of rum on to the dirt road.
‘Come on, then. Let’s ’ave yer!’
Bob calmly took a step towards him. Within range for a thrust, the pirate lunged forward with the blade aimed at Bob’s midriff. Bob swiftly side-stepped, moving with an agility and speed that the pirate clearly hadn’t expected for someone so large and top-heavy. Bob grabbed the man’s extended arm in one ham-shank fist and gave it a sharp twist. The sound of a bone snapping filled the momentary silence in the street.
With his other hand, Bob grasped the man’s extended upper arm and, twisting, as if he was about to give him a Chinese burn, he pulled apart. The pirate dropped to his knees, screaming, clasping his bloody stump.
‘You were warned,’ rumbled Bob. He looked for Maddy. She was being held down on the table by several other men. Bob looked sternly at them. ‘I can continue with this.’
Heads around the table shook; they instantly released their hold of her and she struggled off the table and staggered back to rejoin Bob. She passed the whimpering pirate, rocking backwards and forwards in agony. On impulse she swung a booted foot at him, catching him firmly in the ribs. Not that he seemed to notice. The bloody stump of an arm was a more pressing matter to him.
‘C-come on, Bob,’ she said in a strangled voice, doing her best not to let the shock of the moment lead to tears. At least not here. Not now. Not in front of these animals.
Bob put a protective arm round her shoulders and they resumed their progress up the high street, this time not having to weave their way through: a respectful gap was now opening up before them. Fifty yards more and then Bob indicated a side alley on their left. ‘The signal is coming from this street.’ They turned into it, Maddy relieved to no longer have a street full of eyes burning into their backs. She took a few deep breaths to steady herself, relieved, pleased with herself that she wasn’t about to start crying. She clasped her hands across her exposed chest – no worse than the ample cleavage on show by the women who plied their trade in this town, but far more skin than she was comfortable revealing.
‘God!’ she gasped. ‘I … I thought I was about to be … ’
‘The threat has been neutralized.’ Bob looked down at her in an almost fatherly way. ‘You are quite safe now.’
She grasped one of his fists, her hand almost entirely lost in his. ‘Thank you, Bob.’ She squeezed one banana-sized finger. ‘We’d be nothing without you. Just a bunch of bumbling teenagers.’
Bob considered that for a moment. ‘You are praising me?’ From Liam, from Sal, he was used to that manner of heart-felt gratitude. But from Maddy it sounded odd. He was used to her acerbic comments, asides that he’d learned to categorize and file under [SARCASM].
‘Yes, you dummy. Thank you.’
He nodded. Pulled up an appropriate response. ‘You are welcome, Maddy.’
‘Now,’ she said, sucking in one more breath and composing herself, ‘it’s down this way, is it?’
‘Affirmative.’ He consulted something internally then appraised the narrow alleyway. Mostly single-storey wooden shacks that leaned towards each other, this narrow dirt rat run was almost completely in shadow.
‘I believe the signal is coming from that building,’ he said, pointing to one halfway along on the right.
Maddy held her breath as they picked their way forward, past steaming pools of human and animal effluence and puddles of stale urine, the decomposing body of some cat or dog buzzed by a cloud of flies. Ahead of them, somehow, she was convinced the news wasn’t going to be good. She was almost certain they weren’t going to find Liam and Rashim happily toasting each other for being so jolly clever and surviving near on six months in this godforsaken place.
But wouldn’t that be cool? To open a creaking doorway and find the pair of them waiting impatiently for their rescue. Both of them
tanned and weathered by months on the high seas, perhaps Liam’s pathetic tuft of chin-hairs grown into something more impressive. And stories to tell of their adventures.
‘And about bleedin’ time!’ Liam would probably say with that dumb-ass, half-cocked smile of his the moment he clapped eyes on her.
It would be cool, but she was pretty certain none of that was going to happen. One transponder signal, that’s all they were picking up, which, of course, could quite easily mean one of them had got lost, broken or malfunctioned. But Maddy had a growing sense of dread that it meant one of them had come to grief.
Bob finally stopped outside the shack he’d pointed out. ‘The signal is here,’ he said.
‘OK.’ She licked her lips anxiously. ‘I suppose we’d better see.’
Chapter 25
1667, Port Royal, Jamaica
Maddy rapped her knuckles on the wooden door. ‘Hello? Anyone in there?’
The door creaked inwards. Inside it was dark and a foul smell wafted out, accompanied by a cloud of buzzing flies. She pinched her nose against the smell, stooped and stepped cautiously into the low-ceilinged shack. ‘Hello-o-o?’
Inside, as her eyes adjusted to the pale light coming in through the open doorway, she could see a dirt floor that sprouted ankle-high tufts of grass and weeds. It was insufferably hot within: no breeze, no flow-through of air to take the edge off the oven-like heat. And the smell … She caught another overpowering waft of a heady brew, like a rotting meat pie. And stale sweat. Human faeces.
‘Ughhh,’ she gagged. ‘Smells like something’s dead in here.’ She winced at saying that. As if voicing that aloud was making it that much more likely.