by Brian Eames
“Can we sit down?” he said, one hand holding Ontoquas’s shoulder for balance. The muscles in Kitto’s left leg throbbed. Ontoquas lowered herself and Kitto to the ground, then held out her hand before them. The necklace draped across her palm. The chain was gold, untouched by its dubious storage, as shiny and perfect as the day it was forged.
“Beautiful,” she said. The chain was quite thin, with delicate gold links, elegant enough for a fine lady. But the crucifix was truly remarkable.
“May I?” Kitto said. He reached over and plucked the chain from her palm.
“You want me to put it back?” Ontoquas said for the second time, but Kitto shook his head. His brow thickened as he inspected the piece.
Back in Falmouth, Kitto attended church each week with either Sarah or his father. At Sarah’s meeting house there were no crosses whatsoever, but at his father’s church there were both crosses and crucifixes adorning the chapel. Kitto expected to see a similar image here, with Jesus impaled on the cross with a crown of thorns on his head.
“I have never seen one like this,” he said. There was a cross, plain enough, but at the base of the cross was a figure, a kneeling figure. A woman, her head covered in some sort of veil, but her face revealed.
“Who is she?” Ontoquas said. Kitto rubbed at the image with his thumb as if that could reveal an answer to her question.
“I assume . . . well, it must be the Virgin Mary.”
“Who is this?”
“The mother of Jesus Christ.”
Ontoquas shook her head in confusion. “He is God, and he has a woman mother?” Kitto shrugged. Christianity might well sound strange to someone who did not know it. The girl reached over and pointed carefully at a detail of the kneeling figure.
“She cries.”
Kitto peered closer, then ran his thumb over the piece again. The kneeling woman was portrayed in profile, her palms pressed together in front of her as if in prayer. Sure enough, a tiny teardrop of gold descended from her eye.
“Why does she cry?”
“Because the Romans, they just killed her son.”
“He is God, and he is killed?”
Kitto smiled at her and wagged his head. “It is a bit hard to explain.”
Ontoquas accepted this answer. Much about the wompey made little sense.
She took the necklace back from Kitto and held it out with both hands so that the dangling cross and figure glinted in the light.
“I would like to wear it,” she said. She was not sure why she felt such a compulsion. Maybe it was because of the mother, weeping over her child. It made her think of her own mother who must be somewhere very far away feeling sad for Ontoquas. She knew she would never see her mother again. The white soldiers had made sure of that. They burned the village, stole the horses, and sold them all off to different slave traders, splitting mothers and grandmothers from their children, sisters from brothers—unless the brothers were old enough; those were taken away and never heard from again.
“Yes, wear it.” Kitto said. “It is yours.” Ontoquas handed the necklace to Kitto and bowed her head low. It took him a moment to realize that she meant for him to put it around her neck. He did so, feeling all thumbs. She raised her head and placed her palm at her chest over the cross.
“Remember,” Kitto said. “ ’Tis a secret. Keep it hidden.”
“The barrels, too? They are secret?”
“No. That we can tell them about. We should tell them now.”
* * *
CHAPTER 8:
* * *
Pirates
THREE WEEKS ON THE ISLAND
“Your mother can barely keep from crying when she looks out to sea,” Van said. He and Kitto leaned back against the trunk of a palm tree, taking a break from the hot sun. Kitto whittled at a stick with his dagger, appreciating how easily the patterned Damascus steel stripped the bark away. The last hour he and Van had devoted to shooting practice on the beach, as they had done every day since Kitto had been able to limp to the beach with his new crutch.
“I know it,” Kitto said. “She worries for Duck.” They were quiet a moment, each considering the chances that the squirrely six-year-old would have been able to keep himself hidden on a ship overtaken by killers. Neither spoke his thoughts. Kitto flicked a few nicks of wood from the stick onto the matted leaves beneath them.
Van shrugged. “She is a strong one, that mother of yours. We’ll break before she does.” Van had never met a woman like Sarah, never knew that a person could be both gentle and loving and yet strong as steel.
A cooling breeze stirred the leaves of the little glade. Kitto stabbed at one and speared it with the dagger. He lifted the leaf up to inspect it absently.
“I wish my father would have told me,” Kitto said.
“Told you what?”
“About my past. His past. My uncle. My mother. Any of it if not all.”
“He never did?” Van said. Kitto shook his head.
“Hardly. I knew I lived in Jamaica when I was very young. And I knew my mother died, though not the real reason why. He let me go on not even knowing my real name.”
“Maybe he was just trying to protect you.” Van tossed a stick out onto the sand.
“I am sure that’s what he told himself,” Kitto said. “But look at what my life was.” Kitto pointed the dagger tip toward the wrapped stump of his leg, tracing the point in the air as if outlining the clubfoot that was no longer there. “A cripple, an eyesore everywhere I went. A shame. Would have been something to know I had a mum who loved me but was murdered, or that I had somehow been involved in ripping off the great Henry Morgan.” His lips curled into an ironic smile. He tore the leaf from the dagger’s blade and flipped it aside. “And I wonder who this Henry Morgan is?” He shook his head in wonder. “Everyone seems so afraid of him. My uncle told me he almost drowned me when I was very young.”
Van’s eyes darted to Kitto for a moment, then looked away. Kitto did not notice. There was something Van had overheard about Henry Morgan—and about Kitto—back in Falmouth, from William Quick’s lips. But he must have heard it wrong. It could not be possible.
“He’s a very powerful man,” Van said.
“Powerful . . . and evil,” Kitto said. “And before all is said and done I believe I will come face to face with him.”
Again Van fought the urge to tell him what he had heard. Should I? he thought. No. Of course not. He decided to change the subject.
“Too bad your mum never taught you how to shoot,” Van said with a smile.
“No,” Kitto said. “She had good enough reason to keep it secret. Likely my father did not know she could shoot either. I am not angry with her.” Kitto paused in thought. “Mad, I suppose, but I think I have never stopped being angry with my father. It feels terrible to say that aloud, now that he is dead, murdered right before my eyes. All he wanted in his last moments was to get me to safety.” Kitto drew a deep breath. “But it is true. I’ve been angry at him a long time.”
“Since when?”
Kitto shrugged. “Probably since the time I really understood that I could never spend my life at sea, and that instead I would be chained to the dull life of a cooper.”
“I’ve spent my life at sea, mostly,” Van said. “I think I would have traded places with you.” Van held no romantic notions of the bitter and often vicious life of a common sailor.
“Maybe when you know you can’t have something, it becomes the thing you want most of all.”
Van plucked a blade of grass and stuck it between his teeth.
“I hope that don’t mean that the thing you want most of all is the thing you can’t really have,” he said.
Van’s syllogism left them quiet. Kitto thought about what he most wanted as he scraped the flesh of his thumb across the razor-sharp blade of the dagger: Duck and Sarah safe—and William, too, he realized, if still his uncle lived—making a life somewhere together with the fear of Morris and Spider and Henry Morgan far beh
ind them.
Van pondered the thing he desired most of all, to find his sister Mercy—wherever she was—and be able to offer her a life far from whatever drudgery had become hers after she had been taken from the orphanage so many years ago.
To consider that such futures might be impossible was a depressing notion to each of them. They were due another round of shooting, but instead they remained in the shade of the broad palm leaves and let the cool breeze wash over them.
Kitto closed his eyes and found his thoughts drifting back to life in Cornwall. How hard it had seemed then. . . . Bullies like Simon Sneed tormenting him in the alleyways because of his clubfoot, people crossing cobbled streets so as not to pass him by, and all the while the mind-numbing future of being a cooper looming over him. Somehow the struggles that had defined him for so long seemed petty and selfish to him now.
So childish I have been, haven’t I? How little time has passed, but I feel . . . changed, somehow. What I most desire now is not for my own benefit, but for those I love. Is that what it means to be a man?
It was a puzzling question, and after muddling it for some time, Kitto’s tired brain gave up the struggle. He had drifted into a dreamless sleep.
Kitto awoke to the painful sensation of something pointed and hard thrust into his left nostril. He startled and whipped his arm up as he opened his eyes, but a hand caught him at the wrist and held him in an iron grip. Before him stood a man, a grinning man with a single gold tooth that glinted smartly, and pale blue eyes so wide—and with such tiny pupils—that Kitto thought a madman had emerged from the jungle.
“Where . . . what?” Kitto said, terrified, the words tangling in his throat. Am I dreaming this? No, the pain in his nose was too real for fantasy. His free hand swept about the mat of leaves on which he lay.
Where did I drop the dagger?
He could not find it.
The figure leered above him. The man wore a weathered black frock coat and a tricorne hat, and a thick black beard strung with colorful beads dangled from his chin. Kitto craned his eyes downward and saw that the man had no right hand, and that the thing inserted into his nose was the hook end of the appendage that stood in its place. The man jerked his arm up, wrenching the hook end of the instrument deeper into Kitto’s nostril. Kitto gasped and started to reach up with his other hand, but the man kicked out with a boot and pinned Kitto’s arm to the tree against which he lay.
Oh, God, please don’t let him kill me!
“I am not a learned man, I admit,” the man said in a thick accent. “I speak the English, along with the French and the Dutch, but they tangle themselves to knots in my mouth.” He winked and leaned in closer to Kitto. “But this brain I have! Many questions occur to me, and my mind—it is so very inquisitive! I must know the answers. I must! It is like an itch from a mosquito that never goes away.” Kitto craned toward Van to see that a burly man pressed the barrel of a pistol to Van’s eye socket. Van gritted his teeth in anger and fear. Now other figures were stepping into the glade behind them.
“Please! Please don’t hurt us!” Kitto’s heart pounded, his breath catching. “We can tell you what you want to know,” he gasped.
“Oui, oui, oui. Of course you will,” the man said, his voice rising in pitch. “You like this nose that God gave you, ah? I do not blame you! I was admiring it myself while you slept!
“Ja, you will tell me everyzing. Like how you and your friend found yourselves on zis lonely island?” He looked down at Kitto’s stump. “I can see there must be little food here, ah?” The man jerked his head toward Van. “Did that one over there get hungry and eat your foot?” He wagged his finger at the older boy. “Not very gentlemanly of you!” The man’s grin vanished. He turned back to Kitto.
“How many more of you are there?” The man peered out toward the beach. Kitto swallowed heavily and his Adam’s apple bobbed. He said nothing, his mind spinning.
Should I tell them? What might they do to Sarah and Ontoquas? And Bucket?
The man’s smile grew wider, wilder. He giggled. It was a high-pitched twitter, almost like a little girl’s, and it made Kitto quiver with fear.
“You are not quick to answer my questions, are you? That leaves me with more questions! But do you know what my favorite question is, right at zis moment?”
“No, sir,” Kitto said, his voice weak.
“I will tell you. My questions is zis: If I lift you up with my hook, here, all zee way in zee air, will zee hook tear through your flesh, or is zee nose strong enough to hold your weight? An interesting question, do you not think?”
“Please, sir! Don’t hurt me!” Kitto said again.
The man shrugged. “The flesh of the nose . . . who knows the nose? I tell you, zis question burns me. And like all important questions in life, it can probably be answered with a little experimentation. Let us try that now, ah!” He jerked the hook higher. Kitto’s nostril stretched out unnaturally and he let out a whimper.
“Please!”
The ugly bear of a man jamming the pistol in Van’s eye had turned to watch the comedy.
Van bared his teeth and shot up with his left arm, ramming it against the pistol. The weapon fired and the ball sent a splintered chunk spraying out from the tree. Van kicked savagely with his right leg, knocking the man’s feet out from under him. In an instant he scrambled up and lunged for the man accosting Kitto, but before he ever got there a blur of speed intercepted him. Van was thrown backward, falling into the brush unconscious. The man who had struck him stepped over him to assess the damage. He was naked from the waist up, tan skinned, and though short in height, his body was wide and muscled. His head was shaved bald, and it, along with much of his shoulders and torso, was covered in tattoos, mostly a series of squares connected at the corners like a chessboard grid. He turned back toward Kitto, his face flat with a wide nose and narrow eyes.
“Quid! I hope you did not kill him!” the man said, and for a moment Kitto thought he was genuinely concerned. Then he turned back to Kitto. “Let me guess . . . zat one is the fighter, but you are the smart one, ah?”
Kitto’s panic mingled now with anger at seeing Van so abused. “I have done nothing to you! Now get your bloody metal finger out of my nose.” This brought chuckles from the men looking on from the edge of the glade, pistols and cutlasses leaning on their shoulders.
“Ja, ja, you are right. After all, I need to eat with zis thing!” The man withdrew the hook end and lowered the boot that held Kitto’s arm. “May I?” he said, but before Kitto understood what he intended, the man had bent to grab the tail of Kitto’s shirt. He let go of Kitto’s other arm so that he could polish his hook. Kitto used the moment to wipe at his nose. His knuckles came away bloody.
“Out to the beach with these fine lads,” the man said, waving his hook. “Zee other jolly boat should be along soon.” He reached down and picked up Kitto’s crutch. “After you, monsieur!” He spread out his left hand in the direction of the beach in a dramatic sweep, his gold-toothed smile returning. Kitto struggled to his feet with the help of the tree behind him, and as he did so, he caught sight of the dagger on the ground by his foot, half hidden in leaves.
I must hide it!
Kitto gave the knife a surreptitious kick as he reached for the crutch. The knife skittered underneath the cover of fallen leaves.
Someone has reached the island! But it is neither William nor Morris! Have we escaped one danger just to find ourselves in the midst of another?
* * *
CHAPTER 9:
* * *
Motley Crew
The beach on which Van and Kitto had been practicing stretched wide and flat in the low tide. The pistols and ammunition they had used for practice lay in a tidy pile covered in oilskin. Kitto hobbled toward it. Two other men beat him to it. Both were clearly of African descent, very dark, one hardly any older than Van. Their clothes were ragged and their hats looked so salt worn that a stiff breeze might tear them apart. One of them picked up a pistol
and sighted down the barrel.
Oh, please don’t kill us! And please, oh, please, stay hidden, Mum!
The men gathered themselves in a loose circle around Kitto and Van, who the tattooed man had deposited gently onto the sand at Kitto’s feet. Van stirred, his eyes blinking.
The gold-toothed man was obviously the leader of the rabble. He stepped forward. Kitto allowed his eyes to travel along the curious figure before him. The man’s beard was a wild collection of colorful beaded braids that jangled slightly when he moved, an adornment Kitto had never before seen. The shirt beneath his frock coat was cut with the traditional ruffles, but the material had an intricate pattern of flowery blooms that looked—well—feminine! A rich woman in Falmouth could have worn something like it, and likely paid a fortune to do so. The man’s eyes were as pale blue as the Caribbean seawater and they seemed to protrude slightly from his head, adding to Kitto’s impression that he might be mad.
The man fetched a brown satchel from his belt, and poured from it a small pile of brown beans that Kitto did not recognize. The man pinched one with his fingers and popped it into his mouth. He crunched on it and closed his eyes with pleasure.
“Ah!” He hefted the bag in his hand. “My supply. It grows light!” he said. He eyed Kitto for a moment, then extended his palm out to Kitto. “Have a few! I feel badly about your nose.” Kitto wiped it again, but the blood seemed mostly to have stopped.
“What are they?” he said, looking dubiously at the odd collection of beans.
The man looked down on them, then back at Kitto, eyebrows raised.