Natty shrugged. “We decided—you heard the captain. We will help your friends first. The silver can wait. It has waited long enough already.”
“That’s true. But it will not wait forever. You will see.”
“What do you mean?”
“It will find you.”
Natty felt puzzled by this, as well she might have been, and did not especially like the feeling that Scotland was teasing. She therefore changed the subject and made herself more practical. “The attack cannot be tomorrow,” she said. “We need time to prepare. Not tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow. Then you must listen for us and be ready.” She had no authority to speak for the captain in this way, but knew that whatever she affirmed now would be difficult for him to change later.
“Bright and early with the lark,” replied Scotland—which I have always thought was a strange phrase for him to use, since it conjured a feeling of England, where he had never been. It was evidently intended to reassure Natty, and at the same time make himself seem the master of the occasion.
Natty tells me she then laid her hand on Scotland’s shoulder, and looked at his face for what she thought would be the last time this side of his liberation. He smiled, and when she glanced beyond him she saw a burst of kindly moonlight showing a way back through the pine trunks toward our ship.
Then she turned toward him again. Scotland had moved away from the boulder and was still facing Natty; the wind poured across the open shale and buffeted him so much, he was forced to keep moving his weight from one foot to the other. A yard behind him, a darker shadow than any produced by the clouds seemed to rise from the bare rock. A shadow with a cocked hat pulled back to show a wolfish face, and a jacket buttoned to the throat.
Natty recognized him at once. It was Smirke’s man—Stone. A bare sword flickered in his right hand, and the forefinger of his left was pressed against his lips in a horrible gesture of conspiracy. Natty shook her head, refusing him, but Stone’s pale face remained absolutely blank as he rested the point of his sword in Scotland’s bare skin between the shoulder blades.
Scotland’s own face crumpled—but he said nothing: he knew. Natty also said nothing. They only stared at one another, with their unhappiness passing between them.
“I know this one,” said Stone, looking into Natty’s eyes as if he were staring straight through her head; his voice was surprisingly high, almost squeaky, as she had heard it before in the stockade. “But who might you be?”
As Natty returned his stare, she felt herself beginning to tremble. The man’s hair was as white as his skin, and blew in revolting thin hanks across his sunken cheeks. He might as well have been a ghost, yet the hunger in his eyes spoke of distinctly human appetites.
“Who indeed might you be?” he said again. “I shall enjoy finding the answer to that question.”
20
Taken Prisoner
HERE ARE NATTY’S own words, unmediated for once. “Scared me to death,” she said. “Really, scared the life out of me when I saw that old pirate, with the wind blowing dust in my face and Spyglass Hill all black in the distance. Every drop of blood in me sank to my feet. Although a strange thing. I felt on fire, like a tiger.” Does this mean she made a run for it? No; even though Stone was a man in his sixties, he was very lean and wiry and she thought he would have caught her. Did she panic? No; she kept her eyes wide open. She even remembers Stone’s large metal belt buckle, shaped like an eye, which she saw when the moonlight poured across him in a sudden flash; it winked at her from below the buttons of his jacket, which he had done up very properly.
As for Scotland—he stood still as a rock. Natty reckoned this was sensible, but she saw a terrible change in him as well. All the confidence he had found in the last few hours was suddenly worth nothing. His shoulders sank; his face was closed. She remembered the sound of his fear in the trap, which had led us to find him in the first place, and knew he was imagining how he would be punished.
Natty’s instinct was to put her arms around his shoulders and comfort him—but of course Stone would have none of this. As soon as she began to lift her hands, he withdrew the tip of his sword from Scotland’s back and pointed it directly at her throat. “As I was saying …” he began, then paused to lick his thin lips. “As I was saying, who might you be?”
Natty has told me it was only when she heard these words that she fully understood how much danger her night walk had made for others besides herself. In the first shock of Stone’s appearance—his seeming to rise from the rock like a spirit—her only thought had been how to survive. Now there was room in her mind for larger ideas to appear. Ideas of how she must not betray her friends. And of how she must keep her identity a secret, or face a worse fate than already seemed likely.
“Dropped from a cloud, did you?” Stone went on, leaning the point of his blade briefly against her neck. “Got carried across the sea by an albatross? If you lie to me I shall know—I have an eye for liars, don’t I?” Here he glared at Scotland before lashing out with his boot, and landing a kick on the ankle that made his prisoner groan. This, despite the boot in question being as much like the specter of such a thing as he was like the specter of a man. The sole had long since parted company from the upper, and was bound to it by what seemed to be a length of string, but was probably a vine of some kind.
“I came here on a ship,” Natty said—and when she saw Stone jerk his head, knew that even so vague a statement was intensely interesting to him. In her mind’s eye, she saw him rallying Smirke and the others, then the Nightingale under siege, then the crew overwhelmed, then the pirates sailing toward the horizon while she stayed marooned on the shore.
“Ah-ha!” said Stone, taking a step backward as he relished the sound of her voice, and looking her up and down. It occurred to her as he did so that this scrutiny was fed by what must have felt like an eternity of longing for new sights, new sounds, and new company. His eyes hungered across her eyes and mouth and neck, devouring her as greedily as the moonlight allowed. “A young English gentleman, if I’m not mistaken,” he said at last. “Now that’s something I haven’t seen for many a year.” An expression of such bitter sorrow passed over his face as he said this, Natty almost began to pity him. But when the sorrow burned away, and was replaced by disdain once more, Natty remembered it would be very dangerous for her to feel anything for her captor except fear.
“A young English gentleman,” Stone continued, “who has arrived here on a ship. A ship with others aboard. Well, well. Now that’s an interesting set of facts to discover in the middle of a stormy night.” He gave a whinnying laugh, which had no mirth in it whatsoever, then unbuttoned the collar of his coat and wiped the long fingers of one hand across the scar around his throat. When he withdrew them, he suddenly began rubbing his sword-arm very vigorously. Natty realized he was cold, but had the idea it was the sort of cold no earthly warmth could remove.
“You’ll forgive me,” he went on with a sneer, “if I don’t ask after the health of His Majesty. We live beyond his reach here, and make our own laws.”
Stone meant King George, who had recently ascended the throne when the Hispaniola first brought him to the island, and Natty understood that because so much time had passed since then, he must be ignorant of many recent changes. Had the guards from the Achilles told him, for instance, about the war with America? Or the bloody revolution in France and the liberation of the people? Did he know anything of the developments in science and agriculture? With one part of herself, Natty wanted to distract Stone with such things. Another and larger part reckoned it would not be wise to say anything, since the smallest utterance might be taken as provocation. Indeed, the longer she reflected on this, the less inclined she felt for conversation of any kind—only for thoughts about how she might save her life.
Scotland came to her rescue. “I saw the wreck,” he said suddenly, without raising his head—at which Stone landed another kick on him. “No one asked you to speak, you skulk,” he muttered. “
Speak when you’re spoken to, if you want to keep your head on your shoulders.”
“It’s true,” Natty said quickly, to deflect Stone from this line of thinking. “We were traveling to one of the other islands, and were blown off course.” She did not want to add more, about who and how many had survived, thinking that every lie she told would soon require a hundred others to support it. Besides, she could see that Stone was already tired of standing in the open; a thin rain had begun to fall, and his eyes kept glancing away, in the direction of the stockade. This made her think that he must soon report to his captain—or seem mutinous.
“Blown off course?” Stone said. Repeating things was apparently a habit of his, to win control of everything by smothering it in sarcasm. He pushed Scotland roughly aside and lurched toward Natty. “Not thinking of blowing off course again, are we, young man? Because if we are thinking of blowing off course, I’ll have to prevent that happening, won’t I? I’ll have to hobble my pony and make my life easier that way.” As he said these last few words, he tapped the blade of his sword against Natty’s leg, so that she felt its hardness through her trousers.
Natty opened her mouth to insist that no such thought had been in her mind, but Stone would not allow her to speak. He had fed some of his hunger for novelty by admiring her from an arm’s length; now he crouched forward until his mouth was an inch from her own, and might be about to lick her skin; there was a horrible smell of meat on his breath. “My, my,” he went on, peering especially closely at her lips. “But aren’t we a handsome lad. A very pretty lad. Very pretty indeed. My captain will be pleased to make your acquaintance and no mistake.” He continued to stare at her, panting like a dog, until Natty wanted to strike out. To suggest that she was in control of her feelings, but really to distract herself from these same feelings, she kept her attention fixed on his face. Even in so dim a light, it was possible for her to see that age had carved dozens of small deep lines around his mouth, which made it seem sucked inward in a continual expression of disgust. Although his cheeks were covered in silver stubble, he had no eyelashes.
The longer Stone returned her gaze, the more Natty felt her powers of concentration fading. As they went, the rest of the world seemed to fall away from her as well. The strengthening rain, the wind, the glittering black rock, the pine trees, the surf making its melancholy boom on the rocks below: all these were nothing. Stone had drained her. He was a ghost whose ambition was to make her a ghost—and he would succeed, unless she could stay alert and wakeful.
“Heigh-ho,” Stone sighed eventually, but without any of the feelings a sigh might be able to convey; this was just an expulsion of foul air. “I see we are getting nowhere, like ships in a mist. But no matter. There will be enough time for questions—more than enough time. So you had better start licking your answers into shape, you whelp, and considering how to serve them.”
He hesitated for a moment, as if expecting Natty to agree, and when she said nothing, began speaking more briskly. “And as for this we you mention—I don’t suppose your friends, if you have any friends brave enough, will come looking for you in this weather, at this time of night. Do you? No, I very much doubt that. And if I am wrong—well, they will certainly regret their trouble.”
With this, and in the same efficient manner that had suddenly seized him, he placed his free hand on Natty’s shoulder and spun her around so that she was side by side with Scotland. “You!” he barked, baring his teeth at the man’s neck as if he were about to bite it. “I had almost forgotten you. I suppose I should wonder what you might be doing here as well?”
Natty thought this might be the prelude to more of his rambling and rhetorical questions. But it was a nonexistent sort of curiosity; Scotland was so insignificant to Stone, he did not want to waste any breath speculating about him. Instead, he ordered the two prisoners to put their hands behind their backs, then tied them together with a greasy piece of rope he pulled from his pocket.
This was done with a casual kind of ferocity, as if she and Scotland mattered as much to Stone as rabbits he had taken from a snare. When his sword began to prod them in their legs and shoulders, making them walk on, she thought the quick death of a trapped creature would certainly be preferable to whatever fate now awaited her.
I have often asked Natty whether she took the opportunity of their journey back to the stockade, which lasted a mile or two, to devise some sort of strategy for their survival—and perhaps also for their escape. Her only answer has been that she decided to show nothing but courage, whatever she might actually feel, on the premise that people tend to believe what they see.
It occurred to her that Scotland must have had a similar plan. She did not dare look at him directly, but saw in the corner of her eye that he had withdrawn himself from events as far as possible. He trudged with his head sunk down, his shoulders hunched, and his eyes fixed on the ground before him. This was a sign of how defeated he felt, but might also—she thought—be a sort of protection. He was becoming docile so that he could remain himself.
Their path was not a clear track but rather a line of least resistance, winding around the base of the Spyglass then slanting downhill between nutmeg trees and clumps of azalea. In daylight and fine weather, as I knew myself, it was fairly easy going. With the rain now falling heavily, and wind pummeling the foliage, it was difficult to make rapid progress. The two prisoners slipped and floundered, often losing their balance and sometimes falling down entirely—whereupon Stone would again lash out with his boot, or slap them with the side of his blade.
After half an hour of this, Natty felt it was not despair but anger that kept her moving forward. Anger with herself for her impetuosity, and anger with Stone for his cruelty. Also anger with the whole island, which she decided had made her sick with the poison of its story. For every insult she received from Stone, she wanted to inflict another on the earth itself—stamping the surface as if she might have been able to give pain that way, and kicking at stones.
When she heard Stone’s humorless snigger, and realized she must be making a spectacle of herself, she stopped—not wanting to give him even this kind of pleasure. Their pace therefore quickened, and although this—combined with the deeper darkness, now that rain had driven the moon entirely into hiding—meant she had little opportunity to notice much that lay round about, she determined to stay watchful. She has told me, for instance, how little rain puddles filled every blossom, and how the hollow whoops of night birds sounded like children at play. She has also explained how her sense of the beauty in these things made her feel insignificant as a grain of sand, and yet determined not to die.
At which point, as if he were now the engineer of her mind, and controlled its movements as completely as he governed her actions, Stone broke in on her reflections. “Whoa there, whoa there,” he called, twitching the rope that tied her hands together. “Look where I have brought you. See what we have made.”
It was impossible to know whether Stone had planned to arrive at the stockade exactly as dawn broke—but this is what he achieved; it seemed to Natty to demonstrate his complete control of the island. At first she was sure of nothing except that she was standing on a high bluff overlooking the open sea; the horizon was marked by a bar of rust. But soon this bar split apart, and as the red eye of the sun began to open, so the rain also began to ease. Silhouettes that had previously been misty squares and oblongs in the clearing below her were changed into the two log houses, the shell shape of the Fo’c’sle Court, and the whole jagged wall of the camp. A cockerel crowed once, then decided it was another day not worth greeting, and fell to picking at the ground in front of the court. The earth here was still stained with blood, although the body of the accused had disappeared.
“Move on now,” said Stone, when he reckoned she had enjoyed the view for long enough, and clicked his tongue like a carter. “We have people to meet. We have a busy day ahead.”
21
Questions and No Answers
THERE WA
S NEVER a doorway or entrance of any kind in the old stockade my father and Mr. Silver had known. The whole construction was a solid square of pine trunks six feet high, sharpened into spikes at the top, and anyone wishing to enter had to clamber over them at some risk to their person. When Natty approached the place now, she found a gate lolling open, which she supposed the maroons had made; as Stone prodded her through, she noticed the workmanship of its latch and hinges was very poor; the nails had been driven in crooked for half their length, then walloped sideways.
It was a suitable introduction, since almost everything inside the compound was either ramshackle or entirely spoiled. The original log house was still pretty stout, fit to hold two score of people in a pinch, and loopholed for musketry on every side; the more recent building, the prisoners’ log house, was a sorry affair made of planks salvaged from the Achilles, and others rough-cut from the forest; the Fo’c’sle Court, though ingenious, creaked continually in the wind. The ground itself looked similarly exhausted. Tufts of greasy weed sprawled over the central area, which was otherwise pitted with black puddles that marked the places where trees had been grubbed up; half a flowerbed, dug alongside the gate, was nothing but a mound of snapped-off stalks. Rags of moldy clothing were rotting there.
Even more disgusting was the sickly sweet smell that crawled over everything, and seemed to drift from the shack which leaned against the maroons’ cabin. Natty saw through its open door an apparatus of bamboo pipes that climbed up and down and eventually pointed into a large barrel: it was a primitive sort of distillery. She thought this contraption must explain the generally repellent look of the compound, and the invisibility of the maroons themselves. They were still sleeping off the effects of the night before.
As the gate slammed shut and its echo died across the yard, Natty expected it to act as a signal for the morning to begin. But nothing happened—except that Stone continued to drive his prisoners forward, whistling between his teeth and occasionally sticking the tip of his sword into Scotland’s shoulder blades. The cockerel strutted up to make an inspection, then went back to his pebbles. The doo-dahs crowded toward the nearest wall of their pen and gabbled to one another, mingling their voices with the goats, pigs and other creatures that shared their confinement. Natty found these doo-dahs a very curious sight, with large heavy bodies the size of a Staffordshire terrier but covered in soft gray feathers, remarkably small wings, and curved red beaks they clacked together with a dry hollow sound when hungry—as now.
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