by Powers, Tim
For several seconds the pirates gaped at this prodigy, and then one of them crossed himself, drew his cutlass and chopped through the taut lengths of twine sewn through Hurwood’s spine, scalp, limbs and left hand. The suddenly slack twine sprang upward, lashing Shandy across the cheek, and Hurwood’s head fell loosely back and the body rattled and thumped onto the deck. With a buzz of twine running over the yardarm, the marionette cross came down and whacked the deck a moment later. The body lay sprawled loose as a broken doll, for rigor mortis had set in, and Shandy had had to do some work with a saw before he’d got busy with his needle and twine.
Roused by the sting of the whipping twine, Shandy blinked around and began trying to stand up and get his weight off the rope that was looped under his arms.
“Fling that overboard,” said Skank on the deck below, pointing at Hurwood’s abused corpse.
“No!” screamed Shandy, almost losing consciousness again from the effort of it.
The pirates stared up at him.
“Not…his body,” Shandy grated, still trying to get his feet onto the yardarm, “nor one drop…damn these ropes!…of his blood…are to wind up in the sea.” His feet under him at last, he straightened up, took several deep breaths, and then looked down. “You understand me? He’s to be cremated when you put me ashore.”
“Ashore,” echoed one old pirate wearily. “You’re goin’ ashore.”
“Of course I am,” growled Shandy. He fumbled ineffectually at the knots in the ropes that moored him, hampered by dimming vision and bleeding hands. “Somebody climb up here and help me down. I’ve got—” He felt unconsciousness crowd him again, but he pushed it back. “I’ve got a dinner party to go to.”
IT TOOK the Carmichael several hours to get to the southern end of Kingston Harbor, for the ship was unable to tack its bow across the wind, and so had to loop back on its path and jibe all the way around in order to switch the wind from one side of the bow to the other; and since the wind was blowing at them straight southwest from Kingston, they had to do a painstaking series of mile-wide figure-eights to move upwind, and the trip was sixty miles of constant work rather than the nearly straight twenty-five-mile run it would have been for an undamaged vessel. Shandy had plenty of time to clip and shave off his gray-shot, salt-stiff beard, dress in some of Hurwood’s clothes, and pull a pair of kid leather gloves on over his bandaged hands.
The sun was high when finally he was able to stare across the harbor’s forest of masts to the red roofs of the city and, beyond and above them, the purple and green mountains. It occurred to him that he was finally seeing Kingston, and from the deck of the Carmichael…albeit six months late. He remembered how he and Beth Hurwood had prematurely celebrated the imminent end of the voyage by tossing maggoty biscuits to a hovering sea gull, and how he’d planned to dine ashore that night with Captain Chaworth.
He waved to the helmsman not to go in any closer, and then he turned to Skank. “Have ’em wrap up Hurwood and put him in the boat before you lower it. And then lower it carefully. Now I’ll need somebody to row me ashore—then you take the Carmichael south around Wreck reef and wait for us there… and if we’re not back to the ship by midmorning tomorrow, take off—we’ll probably have been captured, and with all these Navy craft about, this ship’s peril will get worse with every passing hour. You’ll be captain, Skank. run far away, split up the loot, and go live like kings somewhere. I don’t know whether this has been a violation of your pardons or not, so go somewhere they never heard of any of us. Get fat and lie in the sun and get drunk every day, because you’ll be drinking for me too.”
Skank probably wasn’t capable of tears, but his narrow eyes were bright as he shook Shandy’s hand. “Christ, Jack, you’ll make it back. You’ve been in worse places.”
Shandy grinned, lining his face deeply. “I have been, haven’t I? Well, have the lads get Hurwood—”
“Leave the body aboard for now,” interrupted a rumbling voice from the belowdecks ladder. Both Shandy and Skank recognized the voice, and watched in horrified astonishment as Woefully Fat climbed ponderously up the ladder. The giant black man had draped himself toga-fashion in a section of sail that covered the jagged spar-end protruding from his chest, and he moved more slowly than usual, but otherwise he looked the same as he always had—strong, stern and impassive. “Burn Hurwood’s body later on. Ah’ll row you ashore now. Ah’m gonna die on Jamaican soil.”
Shandy exchanged a lost look with Skank, but then shrugged and nodded. “I, uh, guess I won’t need a rower after all. Well—”
“Sure you will, Jack,” Skank said. “It seems like Davies’ bocor is stayin’ ashore, an’ you can’t row back with your hands all cut up.”
“That’ll be tomorrow. I’ll manage.” He turned nervously to the bocor. remembering for once that the man was deaf, Shandy made an “after you” gesture toward the rail and the boat that swung from the davit cranes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THE CARMICHAEL jibed around after lowering the boat, and the wind filled her sails and she had disappeared around the southern point before Woefully Fat had taken fifty strokes at the oars. Shandy sat back on the stern thwart and, keeping his eyes off the bocor’s weirdly placid face, allowed himself to enjoy the sun and the view and the spicy smells on the breeze. Now that the incriminating ship had retreated, they were just two men in a rowboat—though a look inside Woefully Fat’s toga would no doubt surprise even the most worldly harbor-master—and Shandy thought it likely that they would be able to land without arousing any particular interest.
Even when a royal Navy sloop came angling toward them, her brightwork gleaming and her tall jib-sail intimidatingly white in the noon sun, he thought she might well be leaving the harbor on some errand that had nothing to do with him; it wasn’t until the sloop cut in across the rowboat’s bow and then loosed all sails and came rocking to a halt in front of it that Shandy began to worry. He caught Woefully Fat’s eye and managed to convey to the bocor that there was an obstacle ahead.
Woefully Fat looked over his shoulder, nodded, and lifted the oars out of the water. A few seconds later the rowboat collided gently with the Navy vessel.
Flanked by half a dozen sailors with pistols, a young officer stepped to the sloop’s rail and stared down at the two men in the rowboat. “Are you John Chandagnac, also known as Jack Shandy, and the witch doctor known as Grievously Fat?” he asked nervously.
“We goin’ to Jamaica,” interrupted the bocor in the middle of the officer’s question.
“It’s no use talking to him—” Shandy began.
“Well? Are you?” the officer demanded.
“No, dammit,” yelled Shandy desperately, “I’m Thomas Hobbes and this is my man Leviathan. We were just—”
“Woe to thee, Babylon warrior,” intoned Woefully Fat in his deepest voice, pointing at the officer and opening his alarming eyes wide. “Lion of Judah be troddin’ down yo’ fig tree and grapevine pickneys!”
“You’re under arrest!” shrilled the officer, drawing a pistol of his own. To one of his men he added, “Get down there, make sure they’re unarmed, and then bring them aboard as prisoners!”
The sailor stared at the officer. “Aye aye, sir. Why, exactly?”
“Why? Did you hear what he threatened to do to my kidneys?”
“That’s pickneys, it’s a slang word for children—” began Shandy, but he stopped when the officer pointed the pistol directly into his face; instead he raised his open hands and smiled broadly. “Good job, man,” he whispered to the deaf bocor.
The Navy sailors lowered a rope ladder, and Shandy and Woefully Fat climbed up onto the deck of the Navy sloop while a couple of sailors secured a painter to the rowboat to tow it behind. And when the wrists of his captives had been bound with stout twine in front of them, the officer had the two prisoners brought to him in the neat but narrow below-decks cabin. Woefully Fat had to bend almost double to fit into the chamber. Shandy was uncomfortably reminded of
his brief visit aboard the Navy man-of-war that had captured the Jenny.
“Prisoners,” the officer began, “you were seen to disembark from the pirate vessel the Ascending Orpheus. We have received intelligence from the New Providence colony to the effect that John Chandagnac and Grievously Fat left that island on the thirteenth of December, sailing for Jamaica with the intention of making a rendezvous with the pirate Ulysse Segundo. Will you deny that you are these two men?”
“Yes, we deny it,” blustered Shandy. “I told you who we are. Where are you taking us?”
“To the Kingston Jail to await arraignment.” As if to emphasize his words, the sloop surged forward as the sails were raised again, and a moment later there was a tug aft as the rowboat’s painter came taut. “The charges against you are severe,” added the officer reprovingly. “I shall be astonished if you do not both hang.”
Woefully Fat leaned forward, his massive head seeming to fill the cabin. “Wheah you takin’ us,” he said intensely, “is the Maritime Law and records Office.”
For a moment Shandy smelled red-hot iron, and smoke rose from behind the giant bocor.
As if he hadn’t spoken before or heard Woefully Fat’s comment, the officer said, “We’re taking you to the Maritime Law and records Office.” He added, a little defensively, “That’s where the charges originate, after all.”
Woefully Fat sat back, evidently satisfied. Shandy could smell the back of the bocor’s chair burning where the gaff-saddle pressed against it, and he hoped that the dying sorceror had something good in mind. Shandy knew that the Law and records Office was a bookkeeper’s den, not a place to which criminals were ever physically brought.
Shandy and Woefully Fat were locked into the cabin when the officer left, but even through the deck above him and the bulkheads to either side Shandy could hear incredulous protests from the sailors.
The Maritime Law and records Office proved to be the southernmost of half a dozen government buildings on the west side of the harbor, and it had a dock of its own, to which the Navy sloop made its way. Like most of the waterfront structures, the building was of whitewashed stone, roofed with overlapping red-brick tiles that looked to Shandy as if they’d been moulded over the bases of palm branches. As the officer and several armed sailors led him and Woefully Fat up the walk toward the building, Shandy could see a couple of clerks already peering curiously out through one of the tall, open windows at this incongruous procession. His hands were still bound in front of him, and his eyes were darting around for anything that might be used to cut himself free.
One of the sailors sprinted ahead and held the door open. The officer, who was beginning to look a little unsure of himself, stepped inside first, but it was the sight of Woefully Fat in his sailcloth toga that made the clerks drop their pens and ledger books and leap to their feet with dismayed cries. Taller than any of them and as broad as three, the bocor rolled his eyes disapprovingly around the room. Shandy guessed he was looking for a patch of Jamaican soil, as opposed to floorboards.
One of the clerks, prodded forward by his white-haired superior, approached the group. “Wh-what are you doing here?” he quavered. He stared in horror up at Woefully Fat. “What d-do you want?”
The Navy officer started to speak, but Woefully Fat’s earthquake-rumble voice easily overrode him. “Ah’m deaf, Ah cain’t hear,” the bocor announced.
The clerk paled and turned to his superior. “Oh, my God, sir, he says he’s going to defecate here!”
Chaos erupted on all sides as clerks and bookkeepers knocked over tables and inkstands in their frenzy to get to the doors—several simply leaped out of the windows—but Woefully Fat had seen, through a pair of French doors ahead, a small, enclosed yard with sidewalks, a flagpole, a fountain…and grass. He started purposefully toward the doors.
“Uh, stop!” called the Navy officer. Woefully Fat strode on, and the officer drew his pistol. realizing that nobody was paying any particular attention to him, Shandy shuffled along parallel to the bocor but a few feet to the left.
Bang.
The pistol was fired and bloody spray and bits of cloth sprang away from a new hole in the back of Woefully Fat’s toga, but the shot didn’t even jar the bocor. He pushed the French doors open and stepped out onto the sidewalk. Shandy was right behind him.
The officer had dropped his spent pistol and now ran up and grabbed the giant black man, apparently intending to pull him back inside; but he only managed to pull the sailcloth toga free of the huge shoulders.
Several people, including the officer, screamed when they saw the stump of the gaff-spar jutting bloodily from the broad back, but Woefully Fat took another step forward, and one bare foot, and then the other, dented Jamaican soil.
Shandy was following him, and when the bocor suddenly toppled backward he instinctively raised his bound hands to break the man’s fall.
The jagged iron gaff-saddle snagged and frayed the twine around his wrists as the limp body collapsed, and then Woefully Fat lay dead on the sidewalk, his feet still on the grass, a broad smile on his skyward-turned face…and Shandy strained with all his strength at the damaged twine until it broke, and his hands were free.
He skipped out into the enclosed yard. The gunshot had brought people to every surrounding doorway, and quite a number of them were holding swords and pistols. They hadn’t focused their attention on him yet, but Shandy realized that he was recaptured…and then he thought of something.
At a fast walk, hoping to avoid drawing attention, he made his way to the flagpole; then, yawning as if to imply that this was a daily routine, he began climbing the wooden pole, several times gripping the paired flag-hoisting lines with one hand for extra traction. He was halfway to the top before the Navy officer lurched out into the yard and saw him.
“Come down from there!” the man yelled.
“Come up and get me,” Shandy called back. He had reached the top now, and was hunched over the brass sphere at the top of the pole, his legs crossed just under it and the British flag draped over his head like a hood.
“Fetch an axe!” yelled the officer, but Shandy had heaved himself backward, hauling on the top of the pole; it swayed back several yards, then stopped, came back up and went past the upright point and bent over the other way; Shandy hung on, and when it swung back in the original direction again he pulled on the pole-top sphere even harder…and at the farthest, most straining moment of the bend, the flexed pole snapped. The top six feet, with Shandy at the end, spun rapidly end over end and crashed down onto the tile roof as the rest of the pole whipped its splintered top back over the yard.
Half stunned by the sudden spin and impact, Shandy slid down the roof headforemost, toward the gutter, but he managed to spread his arms and legs and drag to an abrading halt; the flagpole-top and several broken loose tiles rolled past him into the abyss.
Whimpering with vertigo, he began doing a sort of spasmodic reverse backstroke on the slanting tiles, and by the time the bricks and flagpole section clattered and smashed on the sidewalk below, he had got his knees over the roof peak. He slithered around to one side until he could sit up, and then he got to his feet, ran bentkneed across the cracking tiles to the roof-brushing branches of a tall olive tree, and, with an ease born of many hours scrambling around in the rigging of sailing craft, swung and slapped his way down to the ground. A vegetable wagon was rolling past through the alley he found himself in, and he hopped over its sideboard and lay flat among a bumpy, bristly load of coconuts as the wagon rattled on inland, away from the waterfront.
He clambered out of the wagon when it stopped outside a thatch-roofed market in a main street in Kingston. People stared, but he just gave them a benevolent smile and strode away toward the shops. Hurwood’s clothes were torn now, and covered with red brick-dust and strands of coconut bristle, so as he walked he unobtrusively fumbled at the inner lining of his baldric, tore open the loose stitching he’d done that morning, and then worked out a couple of the gold sc
udos he’d sewn into the lining. He glanced at the coins in his gloved palm. That, he thought, should be plenty for a new set of clothes and a good sword.
He halted as a thought struck him, then smirked at himself and walked on, but after a few more steps he stopped again. Oh, well, he told himself, why not—it can’t hurt, and you can certainly afford it. Yes, you may as well buy a compass, too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
SOMEHOW THE fact of its being Christmas night only emphasized the land’s strangeness: the warm odors of punch and roasted turkey and plum pudding just made the dinner guests more aware of the wild spice smells from the inland jungles; the yellow lamplight and stately violin music spilling out from the open windows couldn’t stray far from the house before being absorbed by the darkness and the creaking of the tall palm trees in the tropical night breeze; and the guests themselves seemed faintly ill at ease in their European finery. There was a quality of defensiveness in their laughter, and their repartee seemed to strain forlornly for sophistication.
The party was well attended, though. Word had got out that Edmund Morcilla was to be there, and many of Jamaica’s moneyed citizens, curious about the wealthy newcomer, had chosen to accept the hospitality of Joshua Hicks, who on his own had little beyond his street address to recommend him.
And their host was clearly overjoyed by the success the evening had been so far. He bustled from one end of the wide ballroom to the other, kissing ladies’ hands, making sure cups were filled, and tittering softly at witticisms; and, when he wasn’t talking to anyone, glancing around anxiously and smoothing his clothes and well-groomed beard with manicured hands.
By eight o’clock the arriving horses and carriages were actually waiting in line in front of the house, and Sebastian Chandagnac found himself unable to greet each guest person-ally—though he made it a point to hurry up to the towering figure of Edmund Morcilla and shake his hand—and it happened that one man slipped in unnoticed and crossed unaccosted to the table where the crystal punchbowl stood.