On Stranger Tides

by Powers, Tim

  “Serious vodun attacks are generally directed at, and take place in, the memories of the defensive combatant,” the black man said in a lilting French dialect, “the memories being the accumulated sum of a person. If I meant you harm, you’d find this remembered scene, the remembered people in it, changing in lethal and frightening ways ...very like the delirium experienced during a high fever ...and it would get worse and worse until you either counterattacked or perished.” He smiled and held out his hand. “My name is Maitre Carrefour.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Shandy shook the man’s hand.

  “Luckily for myself,” the black man went on, “I am a loa whose domain is populated islands. I have many dealings with men, and can anticipate their actions, unlike the natural loa you encountered in the Florida rain forest. Your thrown bit of dirt would not kill me—it has lost much of its potency in the week and a half since you brought it out—but it will nevertheless injure me if I stay and refrain from counterattacking. Therefore I am even now withdrawing from the conflict between yourself and Mr. Bonny.”

  Ashamed, Shandy looked away from him, back the way they had come. Among the pedestrians on the bridge he could see several women; despite the bright lantern light, only their faces were in particular focus, and it occurred to him that that must have been the way women had looked to him at the age of nine. Not anything like the way Ann Bonny had looked to him a minute ago. Which view, he wondered bitterly now, was the narrower?

  “Uh…thank you,” Shandy mumbled. “Why…why are you doing this, letting me off? Bonny said you were protecting him.”

  “Seeing that he comes to no harm. Do you mean him any harm?”

  “No—not now, not any more.”

  “Then I am not remiss.” Something changed silently in the sky. Shandy glanced up and saw that the stars had become less distinct, as if a pane of faintly frosted glass now hung between them and him; Maitre Carrefour was apparently letting the illusion dissipate. The old black man chuckled. “You are fortunate, Mr. Chandagnac, that I am one of the rada loas and not one of the younger Petro ones. I have the option of not taking offense.”

  “I, uh, am glad of that.” The taste of strawberries was gone.

  “I hope so. You got that tactic, that mud-ball trick, from Philip Davies—and you have wasted it. He gave you something else as well; it would not please me to see you waste that too.”

  SOFT SAND was under Shandy’s left side and the starry night sky above his right, and he realized he was back on the New Providence beach; and when he heard the thup of the upflung bit of mud hitting the sand, he knew that his talk with Maitre Carrefour had not taken place in local time.

  He was now able to deflect Bonny’s magical attacks with a gesture and a whistle; he did so, and struggled tiredly to his feet.

  Bonny was still flinging them, and Shandy kept knocking them aside.

  “Give it a rest, Jim,” he sighed. “You’re just buying yourself a month of needing help even to lift a fork. Get a lot of liver and raisins and blood sausage inside you and maybe it won’t hit too hard.”

  Bonny blinked at him in surprise, then clenched his fists and, dark-faced with effort, barked out half a dozen syllables.

  Shandy deflected it toward the sea, and a fish leaped out of the water and exploded with a blue flash and a wet pop. Shandy shook his head at Bonny. “Keep it up and your hair’s gonna turn white too, as well as your gums.”

  Bonny swayed, took a step toward Shandy and then collapsed limply, face down. Shandy walked around Ann to him and crouched to roll him over so that he wouldn’t smother in the sand.

  Ann had sat up. “Get over here,” she said.

  He walked over to her but didn’t sit down. “I’ve got to go, Ann. That…wouldn’t have been good, what we were about to do. I’m only staying on New Providence Island long enough to get the Jenny repaired and provisioned,” he said, having decided it only as he was saying it, “and then go take care of some business.”

  Ann was on her feet in an instant. “Is it him?” she demanded, kicking her unconscious husband. “The tale-bearing dog who keeps Governor rogers’ boots damp with licking’ ’em ? I’ve been saving up for a divorce-by-sale, and you could buy one for me right now.”

  “No, Ann, it ain’t him—or only partly. I just—”

  “You bastard,” she shrilled, “you’re going after that damned Hurwood bitch again!”

  “I’m going to Haiti,” he said patiently. “I’ve got an uncle there who is going to set me up with a proper ocean-going three-masted ship…before he hangs.”

  “Liar!” she yelled. “Goddamn liar!”

  He walked back up toward the fires, one hand twitching a parry against any malefic spells she might be inserting among the catalog of obscenities she was shouting after him.

  I wasn’t lying, Ann, he thought. I really am going to go to Haiti and ruin my uncle if I possibly can, and use his stolen money to buy a ship. But at the same time you were right. As soon as I get a ship that can take the open seas, I’m going to find, and rescue, and—if there’s still any worth in me—marry the only woman in whom I can see both a body and a face, and with whom I need not resign one or the other of my own.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  AND SO for the next three days he had plied his weary crew with the most lavish dinners he could assemble and the best liquor he could get hold of, in exchange for which he made them slave at the overhauling of the Jenny; but even Venner, who complained most often, couldn’t claim that their new captain was making them do an unfair amount of work, for Shandy was always the first awake in the morning, the one who made himself lift heavier loads than anyone else was willing to, the one who didn’t take rest breaks…and then, when evening darkness made further work impossible, Shandy was the one who cooked the bountiful dinner, making works of art out of whatever marinades and slow-simmering stocks he’d left developing when he went to the boat at dawn.

  On the morning of Wednesday, the seventeenth of August, the Jenny sailed out the southern end of the New Providence harbor. She had taken on powder and shot as well as food and drink, and she carried at least twice as many men as she needed, but the deadline for taking the pardon was still nearly three weeks away, and Shandy was bringing no bocor along—he had managed to convey to Woefully Fat a plea to sail with them to Haiti, but the giant sorceror, who had somehow reappeared on the island days before the Jenny had arrived, refused—and so Woodes rogers decided not to imperil his own still-shaky position by attempting to prevent the sloop’s departure.

  Shandy’s crew was nervous about hurricanes, for this was the dangerous month of August, and in every previous year the Caribbean pirates would be well up the American coast by now, but Shandy argued that the southeast trip to Port-au-Prince was actually a little shorter, and far more direct, than the trip to the Florida west coast had been, and that on the way down they could hug the Exumas and the ragged Islands and the Inaguas, and thus never be more than an hour’s close haul from some sheltering shore. And twice during the three-day voyage they did see the ominous iron-gray helmets of distant storm clouds on the southern horizon, but both times the storms moved west to ravage Cuba before the Jenny got anywhere near them.

  On Saturday morning the Jenny tacked in to the Haitian harbor called the Bight of Leograne, in past the fortifications on the jungle slopes at St. Marc and on through the St. Marc Channel to the colonial French village of L’Arcahaye. Shandy rowed the sloop’s little boat to shore, and then he used some of Philip Davies’ accumulated gold to get his hair cut and buy a coat and a neckerchief to cover his ragged shirt. Looking at least halfway respectable now, he gave a black farmer a couple of coins in exchange for letting him ride along with a wagonload of cassavas and mangoes to the town of Port-au-Prince, eighteen miles farther down the coast.

  It was late afternoon by the time they reached town, and the native fishermen were already rowing ashore, dragging their crude longboats up onto the sand beneath the shadowed palms, and
hauling away heavy woven-straw baskets and bamboo cages with crabs and rock lobsters moving around like big spiders inside them.

  The town of Port-au-Prince proved to be a latticework of narrow streets laid out around a central plaza. The plaza and most of the streets were paved in white stone, though around the shops and warehouses by the waterfront the pavement was nearly hidden beneath hundreds—no, it must have been thousands—of brown, flat-trodden husks. Before stepping out into the crowded square, Shandy picked up one of the husks and smelled it; it was sugarcane, and he realized that this was the source of the gaggingly sweet, half-fermented smell that blended in the afternoon air with the usual rotten fish and smoky cooking odors shared by seaports everywhere. He tossed the thing away, wondering for a moment if it had come from the Chandagnac plantations.

  Most of the people bustling through the plaza were black, and several times as Shandy made his way toward the official-looking buildings on the far side, he was courteously greeted with, “Bon jou’, blanc.” Good day, white. He nodded politely each time, and once, when a young black man muttered to a companion a quick joke in half-Dahomey patois about Shandy’s discreditable shirt cuffs, he was able to quote back, in the same patois, a marron proverb to the effect that any sort of cuffs, or none at all, were preferable to iron ones. The young man laughed, but stared curiously after Shandy, and he realized he would have to watch himself here. This was civilization, not New Providence Island.

  Wary of any kind of law enforcement officers—for it was possible that the English authorities had told the French about the John Chandagnac who had assisted in the total destruction of a royal Navy man-of-war less than a month ago—Shandy asked a merchant where he should go to settle questions about deeds and titles to local property, and he was directed to one of the government offices right on the plaza.

  Yes, he thought as he strode across to the place, first I’ll find out where the old homestead is, and go pay Uncle Sebastian a visit. No need to let him know right away who I am, though I will definitely want to do that pretty soon.

  The interior of the building looked like any European office—several white men working at high writing stands, leather-bound ledgers along one wall—but the tropical breeze swaying the lace curtains in the tall windows undid the illusion, and the clink of pen-nib in inkwell, and then the scratch of the nib on paper, seemed as incongruous here as would the cry of a parrot in Threadneedle Street.

  One of the clerks looked up when Shandy entered. “Yes?”

  “Good day,” said Shandy, trying for the first time in two months to speak pure French. “I have a question about the, uh, Chandagnac estate—”

  “Are you another of the employees? There is nothing we here can do to help you get your back wages.”

  “No, I’m not an employee.” Shandy summoned up his best Parisian accent. “I have a question about—the title to the house and land.”

  “Ah, I see, you are another creditor. Well, as I understand it, everything was sold; but of course you will want to talk to the executor of the estate.”

  “Executor?” Shandy’s stomach went cold. “Is he—is Sebastian Chandagnac dead?”

  “You did not know? I am sorry. Yes, he committed suicide some time Wednesday night. His—”

  “This last Wednesday?” Shandy interrupted, fighting to keep from shouting. “Three days ago?”

  “Yes. His body was found on Thursday morning by the housekeeper.” The clerk shrugged. “Business reversals, it seems. They say he had to sell everything, and still left behind many debts.”

  Shandy’s face felt numb, as if he’d had too much to drink. “I…heard that he was a…speculator.”

  “Exactly, m’sieu.”

  “This executor. Where would I find him?”

  “At this hour he will probably be having brandy on the terrace below Vigneron’s. He is a small man, somewhat buck-toothed. His name is Lapin, Georges Lapin.”

  Shandy found Mr. Lapin at a table overlooking the crowded harbor, and from the number of saucers in front of him he guessed he’d been there quite awhile.

  The smaller man started violently when he saw him, then apologized and accepted Shandy’s offer to buy him another brandy.

  “You are the executor, I understand, of the Chandagnac estate,” began Shandy when he’d pulled out a chair for himself and sat down. “Uh, two brandies, please,” he added to the steward who had half-suspiciously followed him to Lapin’s table.

  “You are of Sebastian’s family,” said Lapin with certainty.

  “…Yes,” Shandy admitted.

  “There is resemblance—for one instant I thought you were him.” He sighed. “Executor, yes, that is me. Though as it happens there is nothing to execute—eh?—and all I am doing is pointing various creditors at one another so that they may fight. Unknown to any of us his friends, Sebastian had destituted himself.” He picked up his brandy as soon as the steward set it down, and he drained it at a gulp as if in illustration of Sebastian Chandagnac’s profligacy.

  “One more for Mr. Lapin, please,” Shandy told the steward. Turning back to Lapin he asked, “And he’s dead? Certainly?”

  “I saw the body myself, M’sieur Chandagnac. How odd it is to call someone else that! He had no other surviving family here, you know. Yes, he primed a blunderbuss pistol and then loaded it with all his remaining gold and jewelry.” Lapin held out his two hands cupped together. “Not much as a fortune, but as a load of shot it was kingly. And then he raised the gun so that the bell muzzle was a foot away from his face, took one last look, we may suppose, at what remained of his fortune, and then sent that fortune into his brain! Ah, it was poetical, in a way. Though messy in a pragmatic sense, of course—virtually the entirety of his head wound up in the garden below his bedchamber window. Poor Sebastian. I am certain the local gendarmerie made off with most of the…ammunition.”

  Then Shandy remembered where he’d heard the name Lapin—Skank had said that the big dealers with pirates on Haiti were “Lapin and Shander-knack.” And you’re right, Skank, Shandy thought now—he does look like a rabbit.

  “I suppose I can see why they made it look like suicide,” Shandy said ruminatively.

  “I beg your pardon,” said Lapin—”Look like? There was no question—”

  “No, no,” said Shandy hastily, “keep thinking precisely that, I certainly don’t mean to tell you anything you don’t need to know. You’re in no danger. I’m sure you never had any dealings with,” he leaned forward and spoke quietly over the brandies, “pirates.”

  Lapin’s plump face actually turned pale in the evening light. “Pirates?”

  Shandy nodded. “An English governor has been sent out to New Providence Island, which is the pirates’ home base. Now the pirates are killing off all the respectable merchants they once had dealings with—so as to leave no one to,” Shandy winked, “testify.” Shandy almost started laughing at the idea of the New Providence pirates being methodical about anything, but he forced himself to maintain a mournful expression.

  Lapin swallowed. “Kill the merchants?”

  “That’s right. The pirates are just waiting for each merchant to establish contact. As soon as one of their old customers gets in touch with them, or consents to see them if they approach him,” Shandy shrugged, “that man is as dead as Sebastian.”

  “Mon Dieu!” Lapin got hastily to his feet, spilling his brandy.

  He cast a fearful look at the harbor, as if expecting brigands to rush ashore even now. “It is—later than I had thought. It has been pleasant talking to you, M’sieur Chandagnac, but I am afraid I must bid adieu.”

  Shandy didn’t get up, but raised his glass. “To your very good and continuing health, Monsieur Lapin.”

  But after Lapin bumbled away, Shandy’s momentarily raised spirits fell. His uncle was dead and penniless. There would be no revenge and no ship. He rented a room for the night and then in the morning hitched a ride back out to L’Arcahaye and the waiting Jenny.

  For
the next two weeks he led the Jenny on a frantic roundabout tour of the Caribbean, but though he checked at every port registry, even the English ones where he was a wanted man, there was no record of any Vociferous Carmichael or even Charlotte Bailey having been seen anywhere since the first of August, when, after having magically picked up Shandy and dropped him over the side, Benjamin Hurwood had got his corpse-crew in motion and sailed away.

  At the end of the two weeks of fruitless search his crew was on the verge of mutiny and the deadline for taking the King’s Pardon was only two days away, so Shandy ordered his men to turn the old sloop toward New Providence Island.

  They arrived in the midafternoon of Tuesday, the fifth of September, and when Shandy stepped off the Jenny he didn’t look back; Venner could captain her from now on, and take her to Hell or the Heavenly Kingdom for all he cared. Once ashore, Shandy had time to go to the fort, officially take the pardon from Governor rogers, and still be back on the beach in time to cook up a vast dinner. And, in what was to become a tradition through the next three months, he ate nearly none of it himself, contenting himself instead with huge quantities of drink.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  YES, SKANK, Shandy thought again now as he watched someone out in the harbor keep on trying to yank the Jenny’s gaff-spar higher, yes, I was more jumpy in those days. I had things to do then; now there’s only one task left, and that’s… forget. He stretched out more comfortably in the sand and swirled the sun-warmed rum in his cup affectionately.

  A young Navy ensign hesitantly approached Shandy. “Excuse me…you’re Jack Shandy?”

  Shandy was finishing the cup, and stared owlishly at the young man over the rim. “right,” he said, lowering it finally.

  “You’re the one—excuse me—that sank the Whitney, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t think so. What was the Whitney?”

  “A man-o’-war that blew up and sank, this last June. They’d captured Philip Davies, and—”