The Dagger X (The Dagger Chronicles)

by Brian Eames

  X wagged his head. “Some of us.”

  “You?”

  “No. Only the Irish in these parts. But I was, how you say, ‘indentured.’ Not so very different.”

  Kitto looked back to the document. Each statement except for the last ended with the following: He who is found in violation of said rule shall be subjected to Moses’s Law on the bare back and marooned.

  “What is Moses’s Law?” he said.

  “Forty stripes on zee back with zee company whip,” X said, pointing toward Fowler, who lay on his back in slumber, a coiled whip tied to his belt. “So you see, I do not zink you would like to be with us, eh?”

  “I did not say I would,” Kitto said, startled that the pirate captain had anticipated the suggestion he was considering despite Van’s warning.

  “We do not sign boys, and I would never tolerate a girl or a woman aboard my ship,” X said, “no matter how well she shoots.” He pointed off to the beach where Sarah and Ontoquas played with Bucket.

  “You don’t even have a ship,” Van said. Nearby, the pirate named Pickle, overhearing, chuckled loudly. X stuck his tongue out at him.

  “I will admit this has put a damper on our prospects,” X said.

  Kitto cleared his throat and spoke loud enough for all the men nearby to hear.

  “But what if I could get you a ship, and more than that, make you all rich men? Would you agree to sign us on then?” Several pirates nearby turned to look over at them.

  “Blast it, Kitto!” Van said underneath his breath.

  In moments, it seemed, nearly all the sailors had come to sense that something important was taking place. Several sat up and a few others inched closer to where Kitto sat. X giggled.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “You are actually a merman, ja?” He pointed to Kitto’s stump. “That is not a missing foot you have, but a magical fin that transforms when you are in the water! And you can swim into the sea there, and guide a ship right to us, ah?”

  “If I could do it, what would you say?”

  “And what was that about making us rich?” Fowler was sleeping no longer. He stood a few feet behind Kitto and dug at his dirty fingernails with a dagger tip. “What is it you ain’t saying?”

  “First your answer,” Kitto said, turning back to X.

  The captain snickered again. This was all quite entertaining.

  “Men!” he called out, sweeping an arm wide. “Can we agree, zis boy gets us a ship, we allow him to sign our articles?” Grunts of approval sounded around the glade.

  “Anyone to speak against?” Silence.

  “Well, merman,” X said, “you have our attention. Be quick. Fowler breaks wind when stories run too long.”

  “Kitto . . . ,” Van said again.

  “Let him speak, Van,” Sarah said, having returned soundlessly from the beach, Bucket asleep on her shoulder.

  Kitto composed his thoughts a moment, and in so doing he let his eyes run down the articles to the squiggled signatures at the bottom of the parchment. Most of the names were a scrawl of ink, but one was neat and plain. He froze.

  Alexandre Exquemelin

  Exquemelin!

  That name, that last name, Kitto knew where he had seen it before. It was the name written on the rolled slip of parchment that Duck had discovered hidden inside the dagger his father had given him. That dagger lay obscured by the leaves not thirty feet from where he sat. Could it be?

  “Which one of you is Alexandre Exquemelin?” Kitto said.

  “The stupid one,” Fowler answered, pointing his dagger in X’s direction. Kitto turned to X.

  “It is you?”

  “ ‘Exquemelin’ is too long of a word for men like Fowler to say. They call me X, but yes, my name is Exquemelin. Why? Do I owe your father money?” He readied himself to toss a coffee bean into the air.

  “My father is dead,” Kitto said. Kitto felt his heartbeat quicken. “Did you know a man named . . . William Quick?” Now all the men sat up and leaned forward. The coffee bean X had thrown caromed off his nose and fell to the ground. He did not bother to retrieve it. Instead he glared at Kitto, all trace of impishness vanishing.

  “The Pirate Quick. It is to ask me if I know my own brother!” he growled. “Why do you ask me zis?”

  “Because he is my uncle. And without your help he is sure to die.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER 12:

  * * *

  Dagger Tales

  The sun had dipped behind the forest of palm trees. Ontoquas blew on the smoking pile of dried leaves and sticks, starting the fire that would cook them a meal of barbecued turtle.

  With the exception of Exquemelin, the band of seamen had made camp in the glade near the beach. Although they had had to abandon their stolen ship before it sank, they at least had time to load the jolly boats with such provisions as they saw fit to carry: various tools, tarps, sailcloth, a few barrels of salted fish and jugs of cider and rum, not to mention powder and shot and slow match for the flintlocks. Some busied themselves with setting up the tarps as tents, while Fowler and Quid and a man named Ox rowed the jolly boats out in the direction Ontoquas had pointed out for hunting sea turtles.

  Sarah sat with Bucket at the firepit in front of the lean-to. She teased Bucket by dragging the tip of a stick in the dirt before him, which Bucket would try to grab, smiling broadly. Van had left to search for more firewood.

  Exquemelin and Kitto sat together on two adjacent rocks near the fire. X turned Kitto’s dagger in his hands. He had insisted on seeing it when Kitto mentioned it in his explanation of all that had happened over the last month, and together they had retrieved it from the woods at the edge of the beach. Exquemelin whistled a high descending note.

  “My past. Never do I seem to escape it,” he said.

  Kitto sat beside him, his stump propped up on a large rock near the fire.

  “You recognize it, then?”

  Exquemelin traced his finger along the grain lines of the Damascus steel blade.

  “You say this was your mother’s. But not this woman?” X gestured with the tip toward Sarah.

  “I call her my mother, but by birth, there was another woman.” X nodded and began to fiddle with the dagger’s pommel. In a few moments he had wiggled it in the way Duck had for the first time back in their home in Falmouth. The metal pommel popped as it withdrew from the handle, revealing the hidden chamber inside.

  “How did you know about that?” Kitto asked, but X did not answer. Instead he tapped the hollow handle on his palm. Out tumbled the rolled scrap of parchment, dry and undamaged. X unrolled it. He read, giggled, then rolled it back up and returned it.

  “This is how you knew my name,” he said. Kitto nodded.

  “And later I asked my uncle about you.”

  “Did William curse me?” X grinned.

  “Not at all. He described you as a good friend.”

  X grunted in approval. “Zis surprises me. I would have thought he blamed all his old comrades, us little fingers of ‘The Hand.’ ” X lifted his right arm up, rotating the brass hook attached to his wrist before him with a lost look.

  “The tattoo . . . of a skeleton hand. Did you have one as well?” Kitto said. X did not answer, but instead fixed Kitto with a stern stare.

  “Your foot, jonge man. Before it was gone like it is now, from a shark . . . was it bent?” Kitto felt his face flush.

  “How did you know that?”

  “So, it is true, then,” X said. He grinned and shook his head in disbelief. “The world is so very small! Is it not?”

  “I do not understand, sir.”

  “Yes, I had the tattoo you ask about. You know what it meant?”

  “That you were Morgan’s man.”

  “Ja, ja. I was Morgan’s man. Your uncle, too.” X scratched the flesh of his thumb across the blade of the dagger. He eyed Kitto again from the corner of his eye, hesitating to go on.

  “You can tell me. I do not think you could say anything that wou
ld shock me,” Kitto said. So many surprises and disappointments he had survived in just a short time.

  “I think you are wrong. But we shall see.” X handed the knife back to Kitto.

  “Sometimes we did things to people, we members of ‘The Hand.’ Things that leave me with no pride. We did these things always to protect our interests and our silver.” X tugged at his beaded beard. The beads rattled. “A customs man would need to be convinced he would lose his ears if he did not listen better, or a merchant underselling us on broadcloth might dangle from a second-story balcony by his ankles.”

  Overhearing, Sarah aimed a worried glance at Kitto. He looked back at her steadily, nodding. She turned her attention back to Bucket, who slapped at her hand.

  “You tortured people,” Kitto said. X shrugged.

  “I say I am not proud. I am ashamed even. But there was worse,” he added, pausing yet again before continuing. “Like with your mother.”

  Kitto felt his throat constrict. He forced himself to take a breath, demanding that he be steady before attempting to speak.

  “You murdered my mother?” His voice had cracked. Kitto and the pirate stared at each other for a few long seconds that drew out like an eternity. Kitto wondered what he would do if this man were to admit to committing the crime that forever changed his life.

  X pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. “Morris summoned me, through that vile creature of his, Spider, who was barely out of boyhood at the time, but vicious like a beaten dog. In the darkness of an alleyway Morris handed me a small bottle. Some sort of dark liquid it contained. From Henry Morgan, Morris told me.”

  “What was it, in the bottle?” Kitto whispered.

  “Poison. He told me the home, behind the shop of a young cooper.” X tugged at the beads again. “I was to pour it into the stew pot. Simple as that.”

  A small silence followed. Kitto finally broke it.

  “And did you?”

  X grabbed furiously at the pouch at his belt and took a moment to extract a small handful of coffee beans. He held them in his palm a moment. Kitto could see that his hand shook. Disgusted, X squeezed the beans in his fist and hurled them into the fire.

  “I made it to the alley behind the home, and I saw the stew pot through a shuttered window.” Kitto held his breath. X continued. “I saw a woman tending it. A woman! She had a spoon she dipped into the stew to test it. A woman . . . Never had I . . . only men before, you understand.

  “I began to walk away, up the alley, but then I turned back around. To disobey, to refuse . . . I knew what it would mean for me. Maybe the woman deserved it, I told myself. So I went back and resolved to be done with the task quickly.”

  “Did you kill her?” Kitto whispered. X looked at him, letting his eyes travel down Kitto’s body to the stump propped up on the rock.

  “I intended, yes. I looked in again, through the shutter. This time I see the woman again. She dips the spoon into the stew and holds it out to a young boy, perhaps five years. The boy sips at the spoon, but the stew is hot and he hops about waving his hand in front of his face.”

  Kitto turned away, embarrassed at the tears filling his eyes. “And the little boy, he had a clubfoot?”

  “Ja, ja. He did.” X cleared his throat. “And that little boy was you. I have never felt shame like that, standing there in an alleyway, thinking of murdering a woman and a little cripple. I, who had lost my own moeder when still I was a boy.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I rapped on the shutter, and after a time, I convinced the woman to open the window and speak with me. I told her my name. I told her what I had been charged with doing and who had instructed me. I showed her the vial I carried.”

  Kitto took a deep breath, willing down the tears. “And what did she say?”

  “She gathered the little boy—you—into her arms and brought you to me. ‘This is my Kitto,’ she told me. ‘He is the world to me. Nothing less.’ ”

  This time when the tears came, Kitto did not try to hide them. They rolled down his cheeks. Exquemelin pretended not to notice.

  “And then she showed me something. She left for a moment and came back holding this dagger.” X turned the knife in his hand. “She showed me the name inside it. Henry Morgan had given it to her, with a promise: If she were to make it so that blade met with my heart, then he would allow her to leave Jamaica and he would see her no more.”

  X stood abruptly, swept off his tricorne hat, and scratched at his graying hair with the tine of his hook. He stared up at the sky bleeding red toward the west. He did not wish to tell the boy too much. Not yet.

  “And why did Morgan want you dead? Why then?” X dared not turn around when he answered.

  “He had his reasons. That is all.”

  Kitto took the opportunity to sweep away his tears.

  “So, essentially, you and my mother agreed not to murder each other?”

  X giggled, turning around. His goofy grin reminded Kitto for a moment of Duck. “Does not sound like a difficult agreement to come to, eh? But, oui, that is what we agreed. And we each paid for this agreement.”

  Kitto sat up and swung his stump to the ground gently.

  “I know how she paid. With her life. What did you pay?”

  X raised his right arm into the air. “Spider and Morris came for me, with two other men. They dragged me off to the woods. Spider took my hand from me with an ax while Morris looked on, telling me I could not even be buried with the tattoo still a part of my body. I had dishonored my brethren.”

  “So they were to kill you, then?”

  “Oui, oui. Of course! They took the hand, but not all the fight in me. I took a pistol from one of them and shot Morris. Good enough to grant me escape, not good enough to send Morris to the hell he deserves. I ran to the beautiful mountains of Jamaica, and they did not catch me.”

  “How did you survive?”

  Exquemelin smiled. “My life was saved . . . perhaps my soul as well.”

  “A priest rescued you?” Kitto said. To this X let out a falsetto squeal of laughter that went on for several seconds. Finally he composed himself and poked Kitto in the shoulder.

  “No, thank Jesus. I was saved by slaves, runaways. They took me with them deep into the mountains, where I met the most intriguing and beautiful woman the world has ever known.” X closed his eyes and smiled sweetly up at the paling sky.

  “You fell in love, then?”

  “Oh, ja. And I made a whole new life. As a pirate.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER 13:

  * * *

  Barrels

  Exquemelin gave out a long whistle. Seawater dripped from the strings of beads at his chin, making them sparkle in the cave’s glow. He stood atop the rise of sand beyond the main pool, turtles moving around his boots. Kitto struggled up the rise behind him with his crutch, and Ontoquas, Quid, and Pickle stood silently in the pool.

  “Ongelooflijk!” he muttered. “Not to be believed. Sometimes the silly stories the buccaneers tell are true after all.”

  “You had heard about the nutmeg, then?” Kitto said.

  “I heard about stolen treasure. Every one of the raiders of Panama did. We all spoke of it, bitterly, when we recrossed that jungle back to our ships with hardly enough silver in our pockets to even notice its weight.” He stepped forward to caress the first neat staves.

  Kitto hobbled over to the barrel that Ontoquas had broken through a few months before. He scooped up a handful of the nutmeg pods and offered his hand out to Exquemelin. The captain plucked one and held it toward the light.

  “Men are stupid,” X said. “I take this turd to Europe and turn it into gold. But here, it is just a turd.” He placed it back into Kitto’s hand. “Do not drop them.” Kitto smiled.

  “I think there are enough to spare.”

  “One or two, perhaps. How many barrels?”

  “Sixty including this one, which we shall have to transfer out by bucket to keep them from
getting wet.”

  “The other ones, they can take to the water?” X asked.

  Kitto gave a firm grasp to the lip of a barrel nearest him. “We should check each before lowering it into the water, make sure it’s sound, but yes, I believe they will hold up fine.”

  X nodded, but he did not look pleased.

  “Should we start moving these bloody turtles out the way, captain?” Pickle asked, scratching at the tangle of matted hair atop his head.

  X scowled. “Think, think. We must think this through!”

  “We cannot leave the nutmeg here,” Kitto said. “Morris will know about this cave. William will have told him to save the lives of his men.”

  X stepped away from the barrels toward the pool. He turned and sat on a large turtle as if it were a stump. The turtle withdrew his head in alarm and did not attempt to move.

  “Where do we put the barrels, ah?” He flicked his fingers at his beard beads, making them dance. “Morris arrives, drops anchor somewhere. He and twenty men, perhaps, come ashore. It is then we must take the ship. He has how many you say, ah?”

  Kitto shrugged. “At least thirty, I would say.”

  “We have twenty, counting the woman and the girl, neither of whom is useless.”

  “But we have surprise on our side,” Kitto said, hopeful the captain would not back out of their arrangement.

  “The jolly boats will ride low enough with our nineteen. No room for barrels.”

  Kitto saw the problem.

  “Can we make more trips, perhaps? We take the ship first and then go back for the nutmeg?”

  X stood up from the turtle—which immediately began to crawl away—and approached the barrels again. He tugged at one of them.

  “Two boats rowing out in the night to the ship, that smells like danger to me. What if the watchman on Morris’s ship gives a warning shot? The men on shore, they hear it. We cannot go back for barrels then. They will guard them from the rocks above. No.”

  “So we cannot leave the barrels behind in the cave, since Morris would then have them, but we have no way to bring them either.”