“Aye, sir,” I said and, tucking the paper inside my shirt, I left them there.
What the two had said about our crew’s being watched had put me on edge. That trip was a jumpy one, for, sure, I imagined prying eyes everywhere and saw danger on all sides—in the annoyed glance of a mule driver passing by; the raised eyebrows of a woman gazing out of a window; the way people behind me spoke, it seemed to me, in whispers. I imagined that Monsieur Gille or even the governor of Tortuga had set spies everywhere, and that I was the center of their interest.
But that notion jostled clean out of my head in the market, where all was noise and bustle and haggling. Through the crowds I moved, darting like a minnow through seaweed, and staring about all the time for Michael. What I saw mostly was French waistcoats and shirts, and barrows of mangoes, of bread, of dried fish, of bright knives gleaming in the sun, of deadly little pistols. There were people selling living meat: pigeons in cages (for they came in great numbers to Tortuga in the wintertime, and they ate well, plump and tender), pigs miserable in the heat, even goats bleating their displeasure. Before long, it was plain even to me that no spy could keep track of one boy in all that throng, and then I breathed a little easier.
At last I caught sight of a familiar skinny figure and, dodging through the crowd, I came alongside him. “I have something for you,” I said in a whisper that probably was drowned out even from his ears in the rattle and roar of the marketplace.
Without a word, he ducked through the crowd and into a narrow side street, hardly more than an alley. For the moment, I did not know what to make of this at all. Was he afraid we’d be caught? Was perhaps he being watched? Despite the heat, I almost shivered, and I felt the hair rising on the back of my neck. But then I saw Michael twitch his shoulder in a way that said “follow me” as plain as words, and I sidled around, looking at a cart of swords. Glancing to the left and right, I tried to seem as though I were thinking of buying a blade, but really I was checking to see whether anyone was noticing me. No one was, so I trailed down the alley after him. He stood at the far end, and he jerked his head toward yet another narrow, dark passage. He came to light in a deep, arched doorway, and I slipped in beside him. “Someone watching?” I asked.
“Never know,” he growled in his strange, hoarse voice.
I reached into my shirt. “This is for the lieutenant. My captain says he’s willing to help.”
The folded paper passed from me to him, and then vanished somewhere inside his rags. He was wearing his outlandish great straw hat with a wide brim, and this hid most of his face from me. Indeed, since he seemed interested only in his toes and looked down at them the whole time, all I could see of him was the tip of his chin. He carried a straw basket, too, and this he raised as he said, “I’m to buy fruit.”
Thinking that if one boy would pass unnoticed, two could scarcely be more obvious, I tagged along back to the market. Michael had a few words of French—mainly “Non!” whenever a cart owner named a price—and they served well enough for him to collect so many papayas, melons, and mangoes that the basket drooped with the weight of them. He had a few silver pieces, and these diminished as the basket grew heavier. At last he said, “This is enough.” We left the market square behind, and he growled, “Where are you going?”
“I’ll help you carry it,” said I, “for it’s a heavy burden.”
Taking turns about lugging the basket, we walked through twisting, rutted streets until we came to the cleared ground around the Commodore’s. The two guards standing beside the door were not the same men I had seen earlier, but they looked no less bored and no less cruel.
One of them said something sour and angry in a rush of French. Michael shook his head. The other gave him a rough swat. In heavily accented English, the second guard snarled, “He says what does the English do with so much fruit, eh?”
“Eats it,” said Michael, staring sullenly at the ground.
The other man took the basket from me and went through it, making sure we were smuggling in no twenty-four-pound cannon, I suppose. He said something else.
The other guard translated: “Who is this boy?”
“The basket’s heavy. I asked him to help. My master will give him a penny.”
The first guard plucked a mango from the basket, smashed it against the wall, and bit into the flesh, juice trickling down over his chin. He thrust the basket back at me, and I took it. “Be quick,” the English-speaking guard snarled, helping Michael and me through the gate with a kick apiece.
Inside the gate, Michael rasped, “Did you have to come?”
“Sure, and I’d like the penny,” I replied, maybe a bit too smartly.
Approaching the Commodore’s, I thought how fortlike it looked, with its heavy walls and musket-slit windows. The front door was a tight squeeze, as if made for easy defense from within. Just inside the doorway was a narrow winding stair, and up this we went, emerging into the one big room that made up the entire top floor of the house.
It was as dark as could well be in the noontime, for the narrow windows let but little light in, but it was cooler than I had expected. The shadowy room looked shabby enough. In a corner was a homely China chamber pot, and together with a drunkenly leaning table, a narrow straight chair, and a broken-down sofa, this was the whole of the furniture. Two tattered and worn hammocks were slung in the corners opposite the door, but these were empty.
Lying stretched out on the sofa, dressed in black slippers, loose white trousers, and a loose gray shirt, lay a figure fanning himself with a palm frond. To my eye he looked oddly lazy. He raised himself on one elbow, staring at us. I had no doubt he could see the two of us better than we could him, because our eyes were still dazzled by the bright sunlight outside. “Who is this?” asked the stranger in a surprisingly soft English voice.
To my surprise, Michael dashed his straw hat to the floor, snatched up the chamber pot—fortunately empty—and hurled it straight at my head. I dodged, and it smashed against the wall behind me. “Who is it?” raged Michael in a voice I knew, all hoarseness and whispering gone. “Who is it? It’s a pirate, that’s who it is! It’s a renegade, a jailbreaker, a … a … a great mooncalf!”
Mooncalf?
Only one person had ever called me that.
Staring at the boy, I felt as if the scales had fallen from my eyes, like the blind man in the Bible. And then I knew, and I could not help crying aloud the true name of “Michael.”
“Saints in heaven! Jessie Cochran!” I said.
Lieutenant Fairfax stood up and ordered us to speak more quietly, and then the story tumbled out. “How come you to be here?” I asked in a whisper.
Jessie sank the floor, glaring at me. Now that I knew her, I wondered how she had ever fooled me, for there were her freckles, and her brown hair, and all that I remembered so well. “I come to be here,” she said bitterly, “because my mother thought Port Royal wasn’t safe enough for me!”
“Quietly,” warned the lieutenant.
Jessie pointed to the china fragments in the corner. “If they didn’t hear that, they won’t hear us talking.”
It was a good point, I thought. Jessie looked almost as if she was about to cry when she mentioned her mother. Moll Cochran was a widow and the owner of The King’s Mercy Inn in Port Royal. ’Twas there I had lived with my uncle during the previous summer, up until we joined Captain Hunter and sailed away pretending to be pirates. “I don’t understand,” I said.
Jessie shrugged. “People talked about us after you and your uncle left, for they knew he had lodged there. And it’s a rough town, crammed with sailors who drink too much and don’t mind their manners. So last fall we found it hot for us, what with the navy sailors angry with us for giving house room to a pirate. Trade fell off, and times were hard.”
“We meant no harm to you,” I said.
“And I’m glad you and your uncle got away,” she replied half-grudgingly. In truth, Jessie had actually helped me as much as she could when I had g
one to free my uncle from jail. “Then my mother learned that Lady Wellesley, whose husband, Sir Milo, had just died, was sailing back to England, for her own health was not good. Lady Wellesley was a highborn woman, but she was kind to my mother, and my mother asked her to take me in service as her maid, to get me passage back to England. There I was to live with my aunt and learn how to be”—she almost spat the words—“more genteel.”
Fairfax had sat back down on the sofa, leaning forward with his arms crossed on his chest. He took up the tale: “They shipped aboard the Venture, my packet. But Lady Wellesley suddenly died a week into the voyage. Then, south of Bermuda, we were taken by a pirate ship. On my instructions, Jessie disguised herself as a boy, and when they took all the officers prisoner, she came with me as my servant.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why not stay with the packet?”
Jessie snorted. “With all the officers gone, and the sailors left alone and in charge? I’d sooner take my chances here!”
Fairfax glanced toward the door. “We haven’t much time. The guards will come in if you don’t leave soon. What’s afoot?”
Remembering my errand, I said, “Mich—Jessie has a letter for you, sir. My captain will do all in his power to help you escape. You and Jessie together.”
Shaking his head, Fairfax said, “I’m not sure that can be done. The pirate who took our ship is not alone in this. He has a master, a man named Gille—what’s the matter?”
“I know the man,” I said. “And I know he is holding another English prisoner as well, a Captain Brixton.”
The name seemed to mean nothing to Fairfax, which struck me as a little odd, for the British Navy was not numerous here, and all of them knew the others. “Whatever the case, Gille has money and power. And men. If he wanted to man this place like a fort, it would take an army to break into it. The only reason the guard is so light is that I cannot climb through these windows, and if I got downstairs, I could not climb over the wall around the yard. A word from Gille, and this house would become a stronghold.”
“Listen,” I said, “Gille wants my captain to sail for him. That won’t happen—for reasons I can’t tell you. But the two of them are talking to each other. That may give us a chance. I’ll tell the captain your situation. Keep tight and quiet here until we get word back to you.” I turned to Jessie. “Can you find some excuse to go to the market every day?”
“Or to the fountain for water,” she said. She sniffed. “You didn’t even know me. You really are a mooncalf.”
“Then arrange it to go to the fountain at noon every day. When we have a plan, I’ll meet you there. Be ready to act!”
When I went back down, I clutched a bright penny. One of the guards relieved me of it and gave me a kick into the bargain, but I hardly minded. It just gave me that much more speed back to the ship and back to the captain.
The Rescue
CAPTAIN HUNTER AT once set about devising a plan. He said we had to free both Captain Brixton and Lieutenant Fairfax at the same time, and nothing less would do. In a way, it made sense, for once we had made an attempt to bring away one of them, Tortuga would be too hot for us to remain and try for the other.
Still, Uncle Patch had his own ideas on that subject. “You do realize that this is a foolish enterprise, don’t ye, William?”
“Foolish it may be,” said Hunter doggedly, pacing the wharf near the Aurora. The men had almost finished restowing all her cargo, and we had only to fill her casks with water to be ready to sail. That made the necessity for action all the keener, as Hunter saw things. “Still, Doctor, even a fool can hear the call of duty.”
“Well, well,” grumbled my uncle. “I can only ask you not to get us all killed, I suppose. Though Lord knows that’s the last worry a hothead like yourself would have!” Uncle Patch did persuade the captain that charging in with pistols firing and cutlasses flashing was probably not the best way to achieve success.
I stayed quiet and listened to them debate. Finally, the plan they came up with was better thought out but would call for careful timing, courage … “And the luck of the devil himself,” my uncle finished, “for ’tis a certainty that never a saint would concern himself with such a scheme as this.”
And so that Friday, the tenth of February, I found myself seated next to the captain in M. Gille’s fine carriage once again on our way to dine. Hunter was in full pirate dress: his rich emerald green coat with the red piping and frogs; the amazing canary yellow sash; and black boots that shone like mirrors. He had a new wig he had picked up in the marketplace. It was the sort called a court-wig, like the ones the king’s counselors wore: black and curled and falling to his shoulders. As my uncle had remarked, you could buy anything there. Still, I did wonder about the fate of the wig’s former owner—did he still even have a head to call his own? His hat with the ostrich plume the captain held in his lap, for with the wig and the low carriage roof, he couldn’t put it on his head.
“Are you sure this is going to work, sir?” I asked, running my finger inside my tight collar.
“We must trust to fortune, Davy. All we have to do is follow the plan and all will be well. At least that’s what your uncle Patch said.”
Aye, my uncle Patch. Having raged and roared at the idiocy of even attempting what Captain Hunter wanted to do, my dear uncle had thrown himself into logistics and strategies. Even now, no doubt with him grumbling all the way, he and two crewmen fluent in French were headed for the Commodore’s. The sailors bore two jugs of the finest brandy from the Aurora’s stores. Both had been spiked with tincture of opium, a sleeping agent that Uncle Patch swore by. Of course, Uncle Patch swore by and at everything.
My uncle was willing to wager that two cheerful French-speaking sailors, free with their drink, would be able to persuade the guards to take a dram. And that was all that would be needed, for if they worked it right, both guards would be blissfully asleep within minutes. The plan was for the sailors to take their places while Uncle Patch spirited Lieutenant Fairfax and Jessie out of that grim place and made them safe aboard the Aurora.
That would only leave the rescue of Captain Brixton. This would be up to that notorious pirate, Mad William Hunter, and myself. The captain was actually looking forward to it, for there was nothing he enjoyed more than this kind of deceit. Had he not gone to sea, I thought, he would have made a fine play-actor upon the stage. For myself, I thought such acting was close to lying.
And I feared I was getting too good at it.
Night was falling fast when we arrived at the plantation house. The white, square stone building was ablaze with candlelight. “Beeswax candles,” Hunter murmured, pointing out the golden gleam. “None of your cheap tallow dips for our grand Monsieur Gille!” Captain Hunter smiled with satisfaction. I couldn’t help thinking that the windows all looked like hot yellow eyes, silent predators waiting patiently for us to enter their den. But I squared my shoulders and followed him in like a good servant.
If anything, this meal was even more opulent than the last. The table was covered in heavy white silk and laid out with fine patterned china and silver worth a rich Spanish prize. The food was all French: fish and vegetables in colorful, fragrant glazes and sauces. The smell was tantalizing, and my mouth would have watered had it not been so dry with fear of the Frenchmen at the table.
M. Gille sat in his grand chair, dressed in rich purples and blood reds. His round, smooth face glistened in the candlelight, none of which seemed to reach his dark eyes. To his right sat not M. du Pont but Mr. Meade, his English manager. Slim, quiet, and still dressed in his subdued browns, he would have disappeared completely into shadows were it not for his long white wig. It was almost possible to forget he was there, so silent he remained.
Captain Hunter made small talk through the first part of the meal. At the first remove, a servant poured some pale wine for him, filling a fine Venetian crystal goblet. Captain Hunter lifted it and stared at the candlelight through the wine as he swirled the glass. “I have given
your kind offer of, ah, partnership, considerable thought, Monsieur Gille, as have my men.”
M. Gille dabbed at his lips with a napkin and gave Hunter a simpering smile. “Indeed, Captain Hunter. And have all of you come to a conclusion?”
Hunter sipped the wine and nodded appreciatively. “Very fine, sir. Come to a conclusion? Indeed, I believe we have, sir.”
You might have sliced the tension in the air with a carving knife. As I studied M. Gille’s face, I became aware that something had changed since our last meeting. What had the planter discovered about us? What had his spies reported? Sweat was trickling down my back, and I wanted to scratch more than anything.
M. Gille lifted his own wineglass and took a sip in obvious imitation of Captain Hunter. “Ah, yes, most delightful. And may one ask what your conclusion is, then?”
Hunter shrugged. “The only sensible one, as you have so kindly pointed out to me, Monsieur Gille. Shall we sign articles?”
There was a polite cough, and Mr. Meade dabbed his pale lips with his napkin. “Forgive Monsieur Gille if he does not speak personally. I hope your speaking of signing articles is meant metaphorically, sir. A written arrangement is out of the question. Your agreement must necessarily be informal. I am sure you understand.”
With a chuckle, Hunter said, “Then it’s the word of honor of gentlemen of fortune, is it? It will do for me if it will do for you.”
“That is rather the question,” Mr. Meade said delicately, the candlelight catching his eyes for just a second. I wished they hadn’t.
“I do not understand your meaning, sir,” Captain Hunter said, letting a hint of danger slip into his voice. Here we go, I thought, with the heart of me climbing into my throat. Uncle Patch had planned for this moment. I hoped he had planned well.
The Guns of Tortuga Page 6