by Paul Butler
Then when he is confident he would be able to find the way and lead Jemma with the baby safely, he returns once again to the mouth of the cave and sits down close to them. Together they gaze out toward the cove. Easton’s sails are now tied fast to the mast, as are those of the other ships which surround the Happy Adventure like patient bridesmaids awaiting a great event. The sky has cleared. Patches of infinite blue show beyond puffy white clouds and the breeze is very warm, almost stinging George’s skin with hot dust.
They hardly need to speak anymore. Fear is their bond and they can judge its ebb and flow in each other from the merest gesture. The baby is asleep, bundled up tight beside Jemma on a flat surface. He dribbles slightly and makes tiny gasping noises. His eyes are closed tight and his arms curled toward his head, fists opening and closing as though in total trust of the world into which he has been born.
Jemma suspends one of her fingers over the baby’s fist. The tiny fingers open and close upon her finger. Jemma looks up at George and smiles. Her eyes shine with a kind of joy touched with sadness. George finds himself leaning into her, capturing her warmth. She reciprocates, allowing her weight to rest upon his shoulder. His arm encircles her and he feels a pulse and vibration within him, warming him from his toes, to his temples, to the hairs on his forearm. For the second time since arriving in the tropics, he knows himself to be at a point of no return. Time is suspended. In this present oasis of peace, with the warm dusty wind blowing into the cave and the baby sleeping soundly, his worries seem to cease. He feels he must submerge in whatever experience is opening up to him. Something like fear sweeps across Jemma’s face as her palm cradles his cheek then falls to his neck. He can feel her tremble slightly.
“What about your lady?” she whispers.
He realizes she means Rosalind and merely shakes his head. He takes her hand and kisses her upturned wrist.
“I’m not...she’s not...no,” he says, not really understanding what those broken words are intended to convey, except that Rosalind belongs to another world entirely, that he knew her a hundred lifetimes ago and that the memory has long since crumbled into dust.
When daylight finally ebbs from the valley, a cathedral-like serenity descends. Crimson hues scatter the marshes and touch the boulders below, licking the mast top of the Happy Adventure and the painted hull of another of Easton’s vessels. The ocean beyond ripples with phosphorescence. Jemma and George are now silent, reluctant to move or to move apart. The baby, who had been crying, is now mainly silent. Jemma fed him a while ago. As soon as she finished, George went back into the inner darkness and climbed up to their hiding place, where he placed the skins of milk and water and the bread.
“We need to find a nursing mother for the baby,” Jemma mumbles gently.
George is silent, wondering how he can answer. She must know such a plan is impossible. And in any case it’s unlikely any of them will survive the night.
“How?” he eventually mutters, not moving his head in case he might awake her from whatever strange dream has overcome her.
“There are slaves on this island. There are other people here too. People who came before the slaves and before the Spanish. Some will be nursing.”
But why would some savage woman nurse a stranger’s baby, he feels like saying. But holds back. What harm can it do to hope, as long as they are able?
“Oh,” he says quietly.
“I’m sorry,” she says suddenly, sitting upright.
George, surprised, turns to her and looks down at the valley in case she has seen something. But there is just stillness and shadows like before.
“Why are you sorry?”
“For taking you. You might have stayed with Easton. He could have taken you back to where you came from.”
“No, no, no,” the words roll quickly from him. “I couldn’t stay with Easton. The admiral, my admiral, wants to be on his side. He’s a politician. He thinks I’m a rash young man. And he’s right, I am.”
“But your lady and your life in England.”
“It’s over. With...Miss Grantham. I’ve seen too much to return to that world.”
“You’d feel differently if you did return.”
George sighs, wondering whether to try to continue persuading her. He stops himself because her words sound like wisdom. Is she right, after all? Would all this pass like a strange dream if he were once again lying face toward the sky in the lush meadows of Devonshire? Would piracy, cannibalism and his feelings for Jemma merely fade into the distance of a mythic past—intriguing, terrifying and beautiful, but utterly impractical for his real life.
He falls silent. Jemma squeezes his shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” she whispers.
But suddenly she stiffens.
“What?” he asks.
“They’re coming,” she says.
George stares down into the darkness and sees movement—dark crawling figures, like ants, emerging onto the plateau above the beach, dozens of men in a semi-circle, radiating out toward the marshes and wooded area. They carry no torches, no warning of their presence, but move with wiry determination over the headland.
George bounds to his feet.
“We should go to the place I found and hide,” he says.
Jemma leans over and very carefully eases her hands under the baby. George bends and holds her near the elbow as she stands. She gives him a sorrowful, frightened look.
“We’ll take it very slowly,” he gasps. He half turns and walks sideways into the cave, his hand reaching and touching Jemma’s elbow all the way. They move step by step in the complete darkness. George feels for the bumps and hollows and whispers careful instructions to Jemma along the way. Soon they reach the wall they must climb. George takes the baby, who is miraculously still sleeping.
“You go first,” he says to Jemma.
“Yes,” she whispers. Then, without explaining, she begins tying the baby’s clothes around George’s neck. Her hands work quickly, making three or four knots to ensure the snug hammock will keep the baby’s weight supported. Then, when she is satisfied, George whispers into her ear the course by which she must climb. She sets off. He hears her soft gasps as she rises rapidly. Only a tiny scattering of scree falls down the rock face. And then there is silence.
“I’m up,” she whispers.
George follows very slowly, measuring his footing against memory. Halfway up a flap from the baby’s hammock snags the edge of something. He stops and frees the cloth from a little ridge of stone. The hitch was only slight and he is soon able to take the next step. But it was enough; the baby stirs. George can feel movements from within the bundle. Then a cracked little noise comes from within. George reaches the shelf, gasping slightly but being careful not to sway the hammock; the child lets out a long wail which sends an echo through the whole cave.
Jemma unties the hammock and lowers the child into her lap, hushing him gently. The crying does not stop, however, but turns into persistent, rhythmic wails punctuated by dry little coughing sounds. It is inconceivable to George that the searchers cannot hear this, even if they are on the marshes. He knows that his fear is magnifying the sound, especially in the darkness. He tells himself it is quieter than he thinks.
He cranes his neck in the direction from which they have come. Nothing is visible at all, except perhaps a hint of milky greyness, which must have filtered around the various corners of the cave. But even that could be his imagination; George thinks this may indeed be the most perfect darkness he has ever known.
George can sense Jemma rocking the baby. He can hear her fingers reaching among their things for one of the skins of milk. Gradually the baby seems to calm a little. The wails turn into short cries and snuffles. In a few more moments they die down completely. George tunes his ears to the silence, listening for any scrape or footstep that might suggest the pirates are approaching the cave. But all he hears is his own and Jemma’s breathing, and tiny soft gasps from the baby.
George shifts, trying
to get more comfortable. But there is little room in which to manoeuvre and the ceiling is so low he must bend his head to move at all. Suddenly, the absurdness of it all descends on him; the fact that he is crouched upon a rugged shelf in a damp, pitch-black cave on an island in the tropics and that he is awaiting the approach of a band of pirates, whose leader wishes not only to kill them but to eat the baby they protect. The blood pulsing through his head seems to dull his senses like too much wine. Fear begins to drown in the unreality of it all.
Suddenly Jemma’s hand shoots out and grabs his ankle. George freezes and listens. There is a faint, echoing sound—a scattering of rocks and a footstep, then silence.
George feels sick. They have entered the cave already, it’s certain. What chance do they have now?
“Keep silent,” whispers Jemma.
George squeezes her hand which still rests on his ankle. But the comfort, he knows, is entirely in vain. Cold sweat creeps down his own temples. His breathing becomes shallow and rapid.
“Captain Dawson!” calls a voice, cheerful and crisp—unmistakably Easton’s. It bounces off several walls so George hears fragments of his name echo from different directions. He reaches for his sword handle. Jemma grips his ankle tighter as though begging him not to answer. No light has entered the cave and George judges from the distance of the voice that Easton is only just within the opening, looking in.
“I know you’re in here, Captain Dawson,” Easton calls in the same tone, the words echoing again. “We have enough gunpowder to blow up the cave and everybody in it. If you don’t come out we will not hesitate to use it.”
George’s face now runs with sweat. He puts his hand on Jemma’s and slowly removes it from his ankle. “I have to go,” he breathes. He checks the pistol in his belt, kisses Jemma’s hand and very slowly begins to crawl downwards. He touches the ground as silently as he can so as not to give Jemma’s hiding place away, then begins to negotiate his way around the hollows and over the ridges. Around the final bend, the cave’s opening comes into view.
Easton’s silhouette is etched against the dying sunset like a well-dressed scarecrow. George draws the gun from his belt with his left hand and unsheathes his sword with his right. He stops, still under cover of the darkness. He waits for Easton to make the first move.
A noise like a horn comes from somewhere far below in the cove. But the dark shape, hardly more than a shadow, doesn’t move.
“Here I am,” says George, surprised by the edge of defiance in his voice.
“Why didn’t you stay in hiding?” Easton asks calmly.
Easton’s dark shape remains perfectly motionless except for some hair, which lifts in the breeze like the ruffled feathers of a crow.
“I’d rather face my executioner,” George says, his voice still more indignant than afraid.
“Oh that,” Easton says, utterly relaxed and casual. “I was lying about the gunpowder. Much too heavy to lug up from the beach, and I have to leave quite soon.”
“A gentleman to the last,” says George, his hand sweating upon the sword handle.
“Ha!” Easton whispers. “Brave words! So you have noticed at last that I am indeed hardly a gentleman. Why don’t you run back into the cave?”
Easton remains uncannily still, only the hair lifting again. The sunset dims a little behind him.
“Because I won’t be played with anymore.”
“Good, then I’ll tell you plainly. Give me the child and woman. Or I’ll kill you and take them anyway.”
“Likewise, plainly; no. You’ll have to kill me first.”
George raises his pistol and aims. Despite his defiance, his hand trembles.
The strange horn sounds again from the cove below.
“My men have gone back to the ship,” Easton says calmly. Can he see the pistol in the darkness? George wonders. “We have spotted a Spanish fleet to the east. Spanish ships mean gold. Why don’t you come with me, my friend, and we’ll forget all about this?”
George’s wrist starts to ache with the weight of the pistol.
“No.”
Easton sighs, and now his dark shape does alter, his shoulders becoming hunched and asymmetrical.
“I wonder if you’ve really thought this through, my young friend,” he says in an almost comforting tone. “If you evade me this time you are merely buying yourself days, perhaps, if you’re very lucky, a few months or years of life as a vagrant and outcast. If you ever make it back to your country, you will be vilified like no man in history. Former mutinous captain with his black whore and bastard child. The gibbet will seem like a blessed relief for you—”
The sound of the horn again interrupts him. This time it blows twice. George sees the shadow turn to look toward the cove, then resume its previous position.
“On second thought,” Easton continues, “I don’t think I will kill you yet. It will be far better sport to watch what becomes of you.” He pauses again. George’s hand still grips the trigger. “Good luck, Captain Dawson. Enjoy your cave.”
The shadow turns and disappears from the opening. George hears his footsteps retreating down the hillside.
He stands motionless for some considerable time. Both arms ache under the weight of their respective weapons. When he at last does lower the gun, he still suspects a trick. But the ship’s sails are flapping hard, and there is a deathly silence upon the hillside, save for the chirruping of crickets and the odd squawk of a bird. Suddenly there is no doubt that he and Jemma are free.
George walks slowly to the entrance. He watches small rowboats race from the beach to Easton’s ships, their oars catching the moonlight like silver knives. The sails crack harder in the wind and the Happy Adventure begins to turn to starboard.
With his still trembling hand, George sheathes his sword. He puts the pistol back in his belt and watches Easton race up the rope ladder tied to the side of the Happy Adventure. He sees the crew pull him on board, their swift actions full of excitement and energy. Then he turns and slowly makes his way back into the pitch darkness of the cave.
Chapter Fourteen
Wood smoke hangs thick like sulphur as Richard makes his way into the alley. Shop signs creak above his head, and the smell of rum, brandy and urine rises from the cobbles. Footsteps echo behind him. He is aware, not for the first time in the last few days, of a feeling of being followed.
Something smashes in the darkness behind him and a scream follows. The sound reassures him somehow. Such tangible violence seems to rule out the softer, more cunning presence of a spy. High above on the third floor, narrow windows show a yellow candle glare. Richard puts his handkerchief to his nose as a particularly evil odour wafts past him. But then he stops. Directly over his head swings the sign he has been looking for—The Blind Beggar.
He turns into the doorway and enters.
The lighting is dim and the ceiling low. There is sawdust on the floor, some of it turned into a kind of paste of spittle and stale beer. Grey, ragged figures hunch on benches with clay jars and bottles propped up in front of them. A man and woman copulate in a dark corner, making creaking, jerking movements. Everyone seems to ignore them. A candle rolls beside them, flickering out slowly as the woman’s leg flails to the side.
A bearded man with a set of keys woven into his coarse tunic approaches him with a flagon.
“How can I serve you, sir?” he says.
“Are you the owner?”
“I am,” answers the barman. He stiffens, perhaps expecting trouble.
“I seek Sir Wilfred Killigrew,” Richard mutters. He searches his purse for a shilling.
“He’s waiting, sir,” the man replies. “I’ll show you the way.”
The man leads Richard toward a staircase in the corner. Richard has to step carefully over the copulating couple.
“A fine establishment you keep here,” he says to the barman, his impatience showing as he is led up a set of rickety dark stairs by the faint light of the barman’s single candle.
“Not so low that we can’t rent out our private rooms to fine gentlemen like Sir Killigrew. Not so low that we don’t receive visits from the likes of yourself.”
“Indeed,” Richard answers, too tired to argue.
They reach a landing. The barman indicates a bare timber door which stands a couple of inches open, throwing a sword of orange light into the hallway. The barman leaves, taking the candle.
Richard gives three sharp knocks.
“Come!” is the answer from within.
Richard enters.
Killigrew sits at a mahogany table. The panelled room is lit by a dozen candles burning from wrought iron holders lodged into the walls. The floor is scrubbed and partially carpeted with a soft Persian rug. The contrast with below is a pleasant surprise. Yet the style is so much like Easton’s cabin, Richard even fancies he feels the room sway like a ship at sea. Killigrew is a fox-like man of thirty-five with a fashionable, well-kept beard and moustache. He wears an embroidered tunic and a silk ruff. His hat, hanging from a polished stand in the corner, has a long black feather. He smiles. There are two pewter mugs and a bottle before him.
“You were expecting my lodging here to be as unpromising as the downstairs, Admiral Whitbourne?”
“Well,” says Richard, removing his hat and approaching.
“Discretion is my byword. I take important meetings in this place because I know I will see no one from my circle here.”
“Very wise.”
Richard sits and Killigrew pours wine into the second mug, which he hands to the admiral.
His eyes glitter in the candlelight.
“I believe we may drink to the imminent rehabilitation of our mutual friend.”
“Indeed? Have you secured me an audience with His Majesty?”
“Tomorrow morning,” replies Killigrew, tipping his head slightly to the side and raising his mug. “I shall be in attendance also.”
He sips and something in the nature of a challenge comes into his demeanor.
“You need not fear me, sir,” says Whitbourne quickly. “I have given my word to Easton and I shall carry his petition without reserve. He is controlling shipping and supplies along the active part of the New-found-land’s coasts with my full support and authority.”