The Dagger X (The Dagger Chronicles)

by Brian Eames

  When he reached the girl, he said nothing, but held up two fingers. Ontoquas nodded. Two men at the watch.

  Pelota left Ontoquas and moved to the rail she had come over. The coils of rope and hooks lay in a pile on the deck. Pelota worked at unwrapping the first rope while Ontoquas made her stance. She shot best kneeling, so she bent onto her right knee and set her left foot firmly. She stared down the dark ship.

  Yes, she could hear it now: two men talking in low voices. A faint yellow light shone toward the stern and then was gone. Lighting a pipe.

  Pelota had set the first hook and tossed its line over the rail when they both heard the sound of approaching footsteps. Pelota scrambled for the shadows, and Ontoquas slipped behind the black pillar of the foremast.

  The fo’c’sle deck of the ship was reached by a set of stairs leading from the main deck. The heavy scrape of boots on the stairs told them all they needed to know. Pelota crouched low, the dagger in his hands. He reached out and grabbed Ontoquas by the arm to pull her back. She was closer to the approaching figure than was Pelota, but Ontoquas shrugged him off.

  The man wore a black tricorne hat. It was the first detail of him she saw as it came into view with each step he made up the stairs. Two more steps and she could see he was slight of build, probably tall, and that he wore a white shirt. She could see nothing of his shadowed face.

  Ontoquas pulled back farther on the string and sent a prayer up to the ancestors looking down on her. She could feel the brush of her thumb knuckle against her cheek, and her mind flashed to the first deer she had taken. Hunting with her father.

  Three steps before the fo’c’sle deck the man stopped. He bent forward slightly. He had seen something, but Ontoquas was nearly certain that he had not picked her out of the shadows. A grunting sounded behind her, and she knew without turning that the first of the pirates had scaled the line, and had come up over the rail at the worst possible moment.

  The man took one step closer, still uncertain of what he was seeing, but now Quid was throwing a leg over the rail, his tattooed scalp clear in the moonlight. The man gave out a startled cry, then turned and bolted down the stairs before Ontoquas could release her arrow.

  She ran forward and reached the top of the stairs just as the man was stepping off them, running madly toward the stern. Ontoquas raised her bow and released her grip on the string. The arrow whiffled through the dim glow of moonlight.

  There was a muffled thump as the arrow struck, and then the man collapsed into dark shadow. Before Ontoquas even had time to consider what she had done, Pelota darted past her, bounding down the stairs in two strides. The steel of Pelota’s dagger glimmered in the moonlight, and Ontoquas turned away, not wanting to see what he did with it.

  So turning, she found that she was looking directly toward shore a few hundred yards away. Clearly outlined in the moonlight she could see the shape of three boats leaving the beach, just having cleared the breaking waves at shore.

  Van and Kitto were the last two left in the jolly boat. All the others had either scaled the ropes that Pelota had dangled, or came up the rope ladder that Quid had tossed over the starboard rail once Pelota had subdued the second sentry. Sarah had strapped Bucket to her torso with a long cloth she wrapped about her, and she huddled now with Ontoquas and the baby in the stern. Exquemelin paced about the deck barking orders. Silence was no longer necessary. The element of surprise had been lost, and they must make sail.

  Kitto jabbed the tarred hull of Port Royal with the oar blade to keep the boat clear.

  “How close are they?” Van asked. With Kitto’s dagger he had cut through the first strand of hemp, but there were at least 5 others, coiled together in a clump.

  “Still a ways off as far as I can—” Kitto never finished his sentence, as the loud report of a musket reached them. The ball walloped into the hull just beyond them.

  “They’ll be shooting for us, Kitto,” Van said, feverishly cutting away with the dagger. “If we cannot drop the anchor we cannot sail off.”

  “Yes.” Kitto had seen enough ships make ready to sail from Falmouth to know that raising an anchor the proper way required grueling effort by at least a dozen men and more time than they had. The cable must be cut for the ship to sail.

  X leaned over the fo’c’sle deck rail and hailed down to them. “Do I need to mention that we are in a hurry, lads?” he shouted. “Allons-y!” Another shot rang out, and X ducked for cover. Behind them, climbing the shrouds of the foremast, Coop cried out when the shot parted the line on which he clung. He fell a dozen feet to the deck, landing in a heap, cursing.

  “They cannot shoot like that!” X screamed, and raised the glass to his eye.

  Yes, three boats. He had seen that already. The sharpshooter was in the first boat. Two other men were madly loading rifles and muskets for him to fire. The shooter was the young man known as Flop.

  “Morte!” X spat. “That man must die!”

  X charged to the stern, hailing to the men climbing the ratlines.

  “On my order, the foresail and spirit sail!” he called. “Where is the woman?” He scanned about and saw Sarah and Ontoquas huddled at the stern.

  “Woman! Woman!” X rushed forward and seized Sarah by the wrist.

  “What is it? Is it Kitto?” Sarah said, standing. Bucket was still swaddled to her chest, his shining black eyes staring at the play of moonlight in the folds of Sarah’s dress.

  “Ja, ja. About to be shot. Now come with me!” Sarah began to unbundle Bucket, but X reeled off a spout of Dutch and jerked her toward the bow.

  “Little John! Ja, ja.” Amidships they met the gargantuan man. Little John handed a rifle to X, who in turn thrust it into Sarah’s arms.

  “I do not understand . . .” Sarah protested, but X cut her off with a raised hand.

  “They have a marksman. On the first boat. The man is a devil.” He pushed the rifle at her so that she had to step back. “Go now and kill him. Go!” X said, pointing to the fo’c’sle deck.

  Sarah stared at X. Their eyes locked. Yes, she knew it might come to this, but now that the moment was upon her, she felt herself quaver.

  “Another man. Get one of your men to do it!” She pushed the rifle back at X.

  “They shoot like women. I saw you at the beach. You shoot like Artemis. Do it!” He nearly screamed the last line, shoving the rifle at her so that she stumbled backward.

  Another shot rang out, and a cry came from the starboard bow. X rushed to the rail and looked down. Van was writhing on his back in the jolly boat, holding his arm. The ball had grazed him, and he had dropped Kitto’s dagger into the boat. Kitto picked it up and set to the work that Van had nearly finished.

  “Cut the rope or we are dead men!” X shouted down to them. Sarah was at his elbow. She watched Kitto beginning to cut with the dagger on the frayed cable.

  Rifle in hand, Sarah ran headlong to the fo’c’sle deck. Quid stepped aside to let her pass, pointing in the direction of the oncoming boats. A small gun was mounted at the very prow of the ship, enough to splinter a jolly boat to pieces, but Fowler and Pelota had yet little luck in finding the keys to the gunpowder stores from the two dead watchmen. They could break their way in, but there was no time.

  Sarah set her sidelong stance and lifted the rifle. Bucket cooed beneath her. He reached out a hand and batted lightly at the rifle stock. Sarah pushed his hand away, tucking it hurriedly in the folds of the sash. She dragged her palm against her face to clear away the tears.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart,” Sarah said. But it was not okay. She would have to murder a man.

  Sarah’s eyes pierced through the gloom. She could see the boat in front, and the man in the bow. Others behind him handed him a weapon. The sharpshooter lifted it to his shoulder.

  Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

  Sarah fired. The rifle bucked in her arms and lit the air around them. Bucket broke into a startled wail, and Sarah waved off the smoke to look again. The
man named Flop had fallen back into the boat.

  “Ja, ja, ja!” hailed X behind her, withdrawing his spyglass. He gave Sarah’s shoulder a squeeze. “Now we will live! That boy of yours down there, too.” He looked up at a dark figure high up on the foremast.

  “Xavier! Drop a hint of sail, you little rabbit.” He leaned over the bows to Kitto and Van.

  “Wait to cut the last strand until the slack comes, or the cable will take your head off. Then up you come. Allons-y!”

  Within minutes Kitto and Van were aboard the Port Royal, abandoning the jolly boat the moment Kitto finished the final cut on the cable. The ship made way on light sail, easily outpacing the pursuing rowers who fired not a single shot further. X manned the tiller arm, and when the ship had finally come about and the stern aimed in the direction of the island, he broke into his girlish giggle again.

  “Adieu, John Morris, you pig!” X waved toward the dark boats, their oars now easy in the water. He saw a bright flash from one boat, but already they were out of range.

  “Perhaps another time, we sit down for tea!” he said, cackling now. Kitto wrapped a bandage about Van’s arm and looked in Exquemelin’s direction.

  “He is a madman, you know,” Kitto said.

  “Crazy like a fox.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER 20:

  * * *

  Secret Manuscript

  ABOARD THE PORT ROYAL

  Exquemelin and his assorted crew sailed their new ship away from the island to windward until the wind died in the late afternoon. The plan had been to return to the island in the wee hours of the next night, but unless the wind picked up in the next few hours, they would not be able to cover the half dozen or so miles to the southeast they had covered earlier in the day.

  X, however, was not particularly concerned about the wind. For starters he had a ship again, a bit worse for wear, perhaps, and in need of a good careening, but a ship nonetheless. And on top of it all he had set Akin hunting in the mess, and Akin had produced a large tin of roasted coffee beans. X perched happily atop the capstan and watched little Bucket, whom Ontoquas had laid out on the fo’c’sle deck on a blanket to wriggle about. Bucket kicked his feet energetically and emitted a comical chortle with every roll of the ship.

  “It is good to be king, ah?” X said to Kitto, who leaned against the rail nearby and stared out to the open sea. Somewhere out there was a ship that carried his brother and his uncle. He did not answer.

  Thinking of Duck brought Kitto’s mind to Sarah. He had not seen his mum for a few hours. He nodded at X and set off to find her.

  After searching several places Kitto ended up in the main berth below where the hammocks were stretched between beams. Near the back he saw that one of the hammocks was occupied. Kitto approached quietly, thinking Sarah must be taking a nap.

  Then he heard the sniffling sounds of someone crying quietly.

  “Mum.” Silence. “Mum.”

  A throat cleared. “I am here, Kitto. Just resting a bit.”

  “I heard you, Mum. Crying.”

  “Yes. Come here, Kitto.” Sarah sat up and let her legs dangle from the canvas cocoon. Kitto pulled himself up into the hammock next to her. Sarah reached a hand out to him. They held hands for several seconds. Kitto gave hers an extra squeeze before letting go.

  “It had to be done, Mum,” he said finally. Sarah nodded.

  “You could have . . . you could have been shot,” she said, and the way she said it, Kitto could tell that she was trying vainly to convince herself.

  “That man had already shot Van. And they were getting closer. If you hadn’t, then . . .” His sentence trailed off.

  Sarah nodded. She looked down at her hands, and turned the palms up to herself as if inspecting them.

  “I am worried, Kitto.”

  “Yes, I know. About Duck. But . . .”

  “Yes, about Duck. But more than that. I am worried about God, Kitto.” Kitto took a deep breath. This he did not expect.

  “About God?”

  Sarah nodded. “That man. I shot him. I meant to shoot him. I sighted down that rifle, and I . . . And as you say, I needed to do it. I needed to murder him.”

  “ ’Tis not murder, Mum.”

  Sarah raised a hand up to silence him, a gesture of impatience Kitto had never seen from her. “However it shall be called,” she said. “Certainly some will call it murder.” She wiped away a tear. “What kind of God is it, Kitto, who would make such a world in which killing another human being is the right thing to do? The justified thing? How is that God one we can look to for comfort?” Sarah let out a frustrated sigh, and a long silence spread between them.

  Kitto had long wrestled with a notion of God. What kind of God would give him a bent foot if—as Sarah had always counseled him—it was not a reflection of God’s plan for Kitto? He remembered the tearful conversations he and Mum had had on this very subject. He felt both awful and awed that now she needed the very counsel that she had given him for so many years.

  “You once told me, Mum, in one of our talks . . . God is not so much a puppeteer, but the bearer of a lantern. He does not control all actions, either good or bad, but he shines a light, and if we learn to see and follow the light, it leads to the surest path.”

  Sarah looked at Kitto a long time. She smiled, but then the smile faltered.

  “I cannot see the path. I once saw it so clearly.” Sarah pulled herself up and wiped her cheeks. “Come here, son,” she said, and Kitto moved into her embrace.

  “I am so very proud of you, Kitto. I could never have done all that you have done, to keep yourself and your brother—and your new friends—safe. You are becoming just the man I always knew you could become.”

  Kitto awoke late that night. He could tell by the lack of motion in the ship that the wind had not yet risen. He slipped from his hammock to drop quietly to the deck, careful not to let his stump resound against the deck planks. Van snored nearby, and as far as he could tell, Ontoquas and Bucket, as well as Akin and Sarah, all slept soundly.

  Stepping delicately, Kitto made his way up to the main deck. A few men were about, Fowler smoking a pipe at the bow and glaring out to sea. A lantern was lit on the stern quarterdeck, and Kitto made for it, recognizing X’s rumpled tricorne.

  Kitto thumped his way up the stairs, surprised at how well he could walk without his crutch. He approached X, who hunched over a small table he must have had brought up from below, the lantern balanced on one corner. He sat in a chair with his back toward Kitto. An untidy stack of papers was piled on a corner of the table, secured by X’s newly filled satchel of coffee beans. Kitto stepped closer.

  X was writing, furiously scribbling away with quill and ink as if his very life depended upon it. His pen flew so fast that tiny spatters of ink flew off and scattered across his page like a sprinkling of black dust. Kitto stepped closer still and peered over the captain’s shoulder. Instantly the quill came to a halt. X twisted about and fixed a beady eye up at Kitto.

  “You cannot read the Dutch, can you?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” He motioned with the quill. “None of these sea dogs can either, or any language for that matter.”

  “You are writing something you want no one to read?”

  X motioned for Kitto to come closer. He blew hurriedly on the paper he had been working on—further smearing the fresh ink—and laid it aside. He drew the sheaf of papers closer, and Kitto could see that at the bottom of the stack was a fine leather folder, the kind that might hold official papers of some kind. X set the bag of beans aside.

  “Let me show you,” he said, and dug through the papers with manic intensity for several seconds. “Ah! Ja, ja, ja, this is it.” He pulled out a single sheet and held it to Kitto.

  “Read this.” Kitto took the browned paper and bent over the table to make use of the lantern light. He scanned down the page.

  “This is not English,” Kitto said.

  “Ah, ja, I forget.” He po
inted to a paragraph halfway down the page. “What you cannot read, here is what it says. I like this part.”

  “ ‘But Captain Morgan . . . who always communicated vigor with his words, infused such spirits into his men as to put them all in agreement with his designs; they were all persuaded that executing his orders would be a certain means of obtaining great riches.’ ” X wagged his eyebrows. “Good, ah?”

  Kitto felt a rush of blood in his cheeks at the name of the famous buccaneer. “Henry Morgan? Why are you writing about Henry Morgan?”

  “Who knows him better than one who has fought side by side with him, ah?” X said. Kitto shrugged.

  “No one, I suppose. But why should anyone care?”

  X plucked at his beaded beard. “Hmm. You do not think people want to read of buccaneers?” Kitto shrugged again. “I spoke with a merchant once in Barbados. He is Dutch, and there are not so many of us in these parts today. We began to talk of home. I told him how I had spent much of my time. He told me I should write a book, being a learned man. Such a book, he said, would be wildly popular in Europe. All those fat geese who sit at home and live out their boring little lives, they love to read about pirates and battles and adventures in the far corners of the world.”

  “So why Morgan?”

  “He is but one part of the book, but I know that part the best myself. Some pieces I have gathered from others, too. But you see, with Morgan, not only do I get a good tale to tell, I get my revenge.” X’s eyebrows jounced.

  “How so?” said Kitto.

  “Morgan is now the lieutenant governor of Jamaica. He is one of the largest landholders on the island.” X caressed the page lovingly. “He wants the world to forget his humble beginnings, his violent beginnings. And there is nothing that will stick in his craw more than to have a book come out in Europe that reminds the whole world that he is not nearly so respectable as he would make himself out to be today.”