On Stranger Tides

by Powers, Tim

  She hurried across the sand to him even as he broke into an unsteady run toward her, and when they met it seemed to her only natural to throw her arms around his neck.

  “Everybody told me you were all killed—in that last broadside” she gasped.

  “A lot of us were,” he said. “Listen, I’ve been talking to Davies a lot during these last five days, and—”

  “No, you listen. Stede Bonnett and I are going to steal a boat and escape tonight, and I’m sure there’ll be room for you too. The Jenny’s arrival will postpone it a little, I imagine, but it should at the same time provide a fine diversion. Now here’s what you do—linger by the shore for a while until Bonnett can choose a boat, and then watch for me. I’ll—”

  “Shandy!” came a yell from the fireside crowd. “Jack! Where in hell are you?”

  “Damn,” said Shandy. “I’ll be back.” He strode away from her toward the crowd.

  “Here he is!” shouted Davies. “May I present, gentlemen, my new quartermaster!” The applause that followed this announcement was sporadic, but Davies went on. “I know—you all think it’s cookery and puppets he does best, and so did I, but it develops his real values are brassier; courage and deceit and a quick, steady hand with a pistol. You want to know how we got away from that man-o’-war?”

  The pirates loudly indicated that they wanted to know. On the outskirts of the crowd, Beth Hurwood took several slow steps backward, her face expressionless. Shandy looked back at her over his shoulder, clearly wanting to return and say something to her, but a dozen hands, and even an encouraging boot or two, were propelling him toward Davies and the flattened clearing between the fires. The lean old pirate chief grinned at him; though Davies had cursed the absence of a bocor during the past five days, he had, himself, taken the dead bocor’s kit and managed to “slap Mate Care-For awake” and to some extent keep that personage’s attention on the sloop, and now the wounded men were recovering unfevered and Davies’ shoulder seemed to be restored.

  “After I was shot off the Carmichael,” said Davies loudly, “a circumstance I’ll take up with certain parties presently, I was picked out of the water by the Navy boys and taken aboard their ship. I found the Jenny crippled and captured, and all her surviving lads under armed guard—except for our boy Shandy, who’d told the captain, ‘Oh dear me, sir, I’m not one of these dirty pirates, I was forced to join them, and I’ll be delighted to testify at their trials.’ ”

  Several of the Jenny’s crew had attained the shore and joined the crowd, and now they hollered their delighted agreement. “That’s just what he said, Phil!” “Innocent as a bloody sheep, that captain thought Jacky was!”

  “But,” Davies went on, “he tipped me a wink when no one was looking, so I waited to see what he was up to. And what Jack did was convince the captain that I should be questioned privately, down in the great cabin, and no sooner had the three of us and a couple of officers got in there and shut the door than Jack snatched a pistol and shot the captain’s head clean off his body!”

  The applause this time was tumultuous, and Shandy was forcibly picked up and marched around the fires on the shoulders of a number of pirates. Beth took another backward step and then turned and ran toward the dark shoreline, as Davies, behind her, went on with relish to describe the way Shandy had engineered the utter destruction of the British man-of-war.

  She found Bonnett standing just to the dry side of the high-water line, staring out at the darkening sea, his hands locked behind his back and the tilt of his three-cornered hat indicating that he was staring into the sky.

  “Let’s go, quickly,” Beth panted. “I’m afraid I’ve confided our intentions to one who’ll betray us, but perhaps if we leave instantly that won’t matter. And the arrival of the Jenny can surely be used to our profit—you can pretend that the supplies you take from your ship are to replenish those of the ravaged Jenny, can’t you? So for God’s sake, let’s go, every second—”

  She halted then, for Bonnett had turned around to look at her, and his face bore an uncharacteristically sardonic smile. “Ah!” he said gently. “Escape, is it? Furtive flight? That explains his extreme tension and anxiety... very conspicuous states of mind, if one has learned to smell such things.” He shrugged, and gave her a smile not devoid of sympathy. “I’m sorry. Neither of the two pieces you propose removing from the board is dispensable right now.”

  Beth gasped, then whirled and ran back in despair toward the fires, her most basic assumptions about the world shaken for the first time; for she knew beyond hope of rationalization that, though the voice had been Bonnett’s and had come out of his mouth, it had been someone else speaking to her through them.

  SHANDY SWORE under his breath, for he’d lost sight of Beth, and he’d hoped to be able to give her his account of Davies’ rescue before she heard the flamboyant version the Jenny’s crew had come to agree on.

  He was about to demand that the pirates put him down when he caught a whiff of the by now not unfamiliar smell of over-heated metal. He tensed, trying to remember some of the things Davies had taught him during the past five days. He exhaled totally and hummed one of the simpler parrying-tunes, and he shifted around on his unsteady perch, trying to face all corners of the compass.

  He found that his nose burned most uncomfortably when he was facing the farthest fire, and after a moment’s peering he noticed the stocky, red-haired figure of Venner standing there. Shandy braced himself, then raised his left hand, curling the fingers into the uncomfortable position Davies had shown him, but as soon as Venner realized Shandy had noticed him he looked away, and the smell was gone instantly.

  Shandy whistlingly sucked air into his heaving lungs. Well now, he thought as the pirates wearied of their sport and let him hop down to the packed sand, that’s worth knowing. I guess Venner doesn’t agree that I’m the best man for the quartermaster job.

  The cheering and howling had abated in the clumps of the crowd nearest to the shore, and after a few seconds the stillness spread to the rest of the crowd; an inattentive pirate or two shouted, and one drunken old man worked his way to the end of a long fit of laughter, and Mr. Bird reminded everyone one more time that he was not a dog, but after that the silence on shore was absolute.

  And from the dark sea came the kalunk... clunk... kalunk... clunk of oars knocking in oarlocks.

  Shandy blinked around in uneasy puzzlement. “What’s up?” he whispered to a man near him. “A boat’s coming in—what’s so terrible?”

  The man’s right hand darted to his forehead, but he hesitated and then just scratched his scalp. Shandy guessed his first impulse had been to make the sign of the cross. “It’s Thatch,” the man said quietly.

  “... Oh.” Shandy stared out at the boat that was now halfway between the shore and the lightless bulk of the Queen Anne’s Revenge. There were two figures in the boat, one of whom, the bigger one, seemed at this distance to be wearing a tiara of fireflies.

  More profoundly than ever, Shandy wished that Captain Wilson had not tried to kill Davies. He recalled all the stories he’d heard about this man in the approaching boat, and it occurred to him that Thatch—Blackbeard—the dreaded hunsi kanzo—was the most successful of the buccaneers who had tried to adapt to this new, western world. Blackbeard seemed as much and as inseparably a part of this world as the Gulf Stream.

  Shandy glanced at Davies, who was squinting more than the fire glare called for, and though the set of his jaw made his cheeks even more lined and hollow than usual, Shandy caught a hint of how Davies must have looked as a young man—willful, and determined to conceal any misgivings once a course had been considered and decided on.

  Boots grated on the sand nearby, and looking around Shandy saw old one-armed Benjamin Hurwood standing near him and staring out at the boat. Shandy thought Hurwood too was concealing what he felt, but, unlike Davies, Beth’s father seemed to be tense with eagerness and impatience. remembering some things Davies had told him about Hurwood, Shandy wa
s pretty sure he knew why—and though he knew Hurwood was a murderer, he knew too that if he himself were ever to be in Hurwood’s situation, and refrain from taking the course Hurwood was taking, it would be because of fear rather than virtue.

  The boat crested an incoming breaker, and as the wave crashed to churning foam the boat rushed in until its keel jarred against the sand in the swirling shallows, and Blackbeard vaulted over the gunwale and splashed ponderously up to shore. His boatman—who, Shandy noticed with a shudder, had his jaw bound up—just sat in the boat, neither attempting to beach the thing nor to get out to deeper water before the next wave broke.

  Blackbeard strode up the sand slope toward the fires, and paused for a moment where it leveled out, a big, jagged silhouette against the purple sky; his three-cornered hat seemed too tapering and long at the corners, and with the points of red light bobbing around his head he looked to Shandy like some three-horned demon newly climbed up from Hell.

  Then he approached the fires, and the luminous red dots around his head were revealed to be the lit ends of match-cords woven into his shaggy mane and beard. He was a tall man, taller than Davies, and as solidly massive as a wind-etched rock out-crop.

  “And here we are one year later, Mr. Hurwood,” Blackbeard said. “You’ve brought us a fine ship, as you promised, and I’ve brought the herb you say we need—and here we are on Lammas Eve, in spite of your fears I’d be late.” He spoke English with a slight accent, and Shandy couldn’t decide whether it indicated a non-English origin or just a lack of interest and aptitude in speaking. “May we both get what we’re seeking.”

  Behind the huge pirate Shandy saw Leo Friend, still panting from having hurried to the fires, grin furtively; and for the first time Shandy wondered if the fat young physician might have ambitions of his own in all this.

  Blackbeard clumped in to the center of the cleared space, and Shandy noticed that his craggy face gleamed with sweat—perhaps because of his heavy black coat, the voluminous folds of which hung all the way down to his shins. “Phil?” said Blackbeard.

  “Here, sir,” said Davies, stepping forward.

  “Feel recovered enough to come along?”

  “Try me.”

  “Oh, aye, I’ll do that. These are trying times.” Blackbeard grinned, a rictus that exposed most of his teeth. “You were disobeying the orders.”

  Davies grinned back. “Unlike what you’d have done, of course.”

  “Hah.” The giant looked around at the crowd, which was more or less separated into three groups—the three ships’ crews. “Who else is—” He paused abruptly and stared at his own wide-cuffed sleeve, all expression leaving his dark face. The men nearby drew back, muttering cantrips, though Hurwood and Friend leaned forward and stared.

  Shandy stared too, though not eagerly, and thought for a moment he saw the cuff twitch, and a faint puff of smoke curl out; then, very clearly, he saw a line of blood run down Blackbeard’s two middle fingers and begin to drip off and fall to the sand. The pirate’s long coat seemed to shiver, as though rats were running around underneath.

  “Rum,” the giant said in a voice both tense and quiet.

  One of the men from the Carmichael’s crew hurried forward with a jug, but Davies caught his collar and yanked him back. “Not just raw rum,” Davies snapped. He took the jug, called for a cup, and after filling the cup he hurriedly uncorked his powder flask and shook a couple of handfuls of gunpowder into the drink. “Jack,” he said. “A light, quick.”

  Shandy sprinted to the nearest fire and snatched up a stick with a flaming end, then hurried back to Davies, who was now holding the cup out away from himself, and he touched the blazing end of the stick to the cup’s rim.

  Instantly it was flaming and bubbling, and Davies took it to Blackbeard. Shandy thought he saw something like a little featherless bird clinging to Blackbeard’s hand, but he was distracted by the sight of the huge pirate tilting his head all the way back and then simply inverting the fiery cup over his open mouth.

  For a moment it seemed that his entire head had caught fire; then as quick as it had appeared the blaze was out, leaving just the dim corona of lit match-cords, and a puff of churning, redly luminous smoke hung over his head—and as soon as Shandy noticed its resemblance to a rage-contorted face, it was gone.

  “Who’s going with us?” Blackbeard asked harshly.

  “Me and my quartermaster here, Jack Shandy,” said Davies briskly, “and Bonnett and Hurwood, of course, and probably Hurwood’s apprentice, Leo Friend, he’s that fat boy there... and Hurwood’s daughter.”

  People were looking at Shandy, though Blackbeard wasn’t yet, so Shandy didn’t let his astonishment show—but he was angry that Davies hadn’t told him Beth would be coining along into the swamp, for Davies had described to him the journey they were going to make tonight through the perilous marshes, and, evidently even more perilous, the “magical balancing point” they sought, way back in the nearly impenetrable fastnesses of primeval ooze and loathesomely adapted creatures, and he couldn’t imagine bringing Beth Hurwood along.

  “Your quartermaster,” Blackbeard rumbled, absently crushing the cup. “What became of Hodge?”

  “He was killed when we escaped from the Navy man-of-war,” Davies said. “Shandy accomplished that escape.”

  “Caught some news of that,” Blackbeard said thoughtfully. “Shandy—step forward.” Shandy did, and the huge pirate-king turned his gaze on him, and Shandy felt buffeted by the sheer impact of the man’s undivided attention. For a moment Blackbeard just stared down into his eyes, and Shandy felt his face heating up, for he could almost feel the closets and cupboards of his mind being opened and their contents being appraised.

  “I see there was more aboard the Vociferous Carmichael than we knew,” the giant said quietly, almost with suspicion. Then, more loudly, he said, “Welcome to the world, Shandy—I can see that Davies picked the right man.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Shandy found himself saying. “Though don’t... I mean, it wasn’t all quite... ”

  “It never is. Prove yourself tonight when we reach the Fountain... and though we travel with Baron Samedi and Maitre Carrefour, stand on your own feet.” He turned away then, and Shandy, feeling as if he’d just stepped out of glaring sunlight into shade, heaved a sigh and let his constricted psyche spring back out to its normal extent.

  Incoming waves had first half filled Blackbeard’s boat but then nudged it up into the shallows, and several sailors had begun to unload a large box from the craft, awkwardly because of their reluctance to get near the stiffly motionless boatman. The pirate-king spat in disgust and strode away to oversee the work.

  Shandy turned around and almost bumped into the imposing belly of Davies’ bocor, Woefully Fat. A night for giants, Shandy thought as he tried to peer around the bulky sorceror. “Excuse me,” he said before remembering that the bocor was supposed to be deaf, “have you seen Phil? Uh, Captain Davies? Oh hell, that’s right, you can’t hear, can you? So why am I... ” The intensity of the bocor’s stare made him stop jabbering. Why can’t these people give these looks to somebody else, Shandy thought with a shiver, or each other?

  Unlike Blackbeard, who had seemed vaguely suspicious of Shandy, Woefully Fat stared down at him with evident doubt—almost with disappointment, as though Shandy were a bottle of expensive wine that someone might have left out too long in direct sunlight.

  Shandy gave the sorceror a nervously polite smile, then backed away and hurried around him. Davies, he saw now, was standing on the edge of the sand slope a few yards away, and Shandy plodded over there.

  Davies saw him, grinned, and then nodded down toward Blackbeard. “A powerful man, eh?”

  “God knows,” Shandy agreed, not smiling. “Listen, Phil,” he went on quietly, “you never told me Beth Hurwood was coming along into the swamps with us.”

  Davies raised his eyebrows. “Didn’t I? Perhaps not—probably because it’s none of your concern.”

  S
handy thought the older man was speaking a little defensively, and that alarmed him even more. “What do they mean to do with her?”

  Davies sighed and shook his head. “Frankly, Jack, I’m not certain—though I do know they’re anxious to keep her from all harm. Some higher magic, I gather.”

  “Having to do with Hurwood’s dead wife.”

  “Oh, certainly that,” Davies agreed. “As I told you on the Jenny, the hope of getting her back is all that keeps the old boy moving.”

  Shandy shook his head worriedly. “But if the Caribee loas are weak here, as you told me, how on earth do they expect to keep her safe out in that swamp? And who is this Maitre Carrefour?”

  “Hm? Oh, that’s our old friend Mate Care-For. Thatch just pronounces it right. It means master of the crossroads. Master of different possibilities, in other words—of chance. But yes, he and Samedi and the rest of the spirit boys have grown weaker for us as we ye moved so far north of the places they’re anchored to. No doubt there are loas here too, but they’ll be Indian ones—less than no help to us. Aye, we’re pretty much on our own here. Like Thatch said, we’ve got to stand on our own feet. But of course after we get to this magical focus, or fountain, or whatever it is, if Hurwood can come through on his promise to show us how to use it—and not get infested, as Thatch did when he found the place—why then we’ll probably be able to just fly out.”

  Shandy frowned angrily. “Damn it—I can’t see why Blackbeard even came here in the first place. I guess he knew somehow that there was some big magic deep in this jungle, but what made him go to so much trouble to get at it? Especially since he doesn’t even seem to have been handy enough at magic to keep himself out of trouble.”

  Davies started to speak, then chuckled and shook his head. “You’ve been in the western hemisphere how long now, Jack?”