The Dagger X (The Dagger Chronicles)

by Brian Eames

  “Don’t look down!” Duck shouted to Julius just before he jumped. An indistinct blur that was the alley below passed beneath him, but Duck easily cleared the gap and landed, running along the tiles of the fishmonger’s shop. He dodged a chimney and ran on, risking a look back to see that three of the men had emerged now and were giving chase.

  On they ran. Thankfully the roof levels were on a rough par with one another, requiring no great drops or climbs to go from one to the next. But it was not long before Duck—Julius on his heels—had reached the last rooftop. Duck peered over the tiled edge. His foot struck a loose piece of slate and sent it spinning out into space to smash against the cobblestones below. A few passersby looked up and pointed. Duck retreated from the edge and took refuge behind a large chimney that protruded from the last roof high enough to conceal him.

  The men were nearly upon him now, three of them, with two more in the distance. The three had stopped running, seeing that Duck had nowhere to go. The cudgel-man whispered something to the other two, and they spread out along the width of the roof to create a human net.

  “You best stop right there!” Duck said, his voice trembling. “I ain’t done nothing to you!”

  “You stowed away is what you did,” the cudgel-man said. “And you done injured me.”

  “That’s ’cuz you chased me. I didn’t mean to.”

  “Nowhere to go, lad, but down,” another man said, dark-haired but with a friendly enough face. “You come take your medicine. It’s not nearly so bad as falling to the lane from this height.” The men drew another step closer.

  Duck clung to the corners of the chimney. And then he looked up, inspiration striking again. The chimney was a fairly large construction, boxy, built simply, and open to the elements at the top with a square aperture roughly ten inches on a side. Duck leaped up to perch on the chimney’s lip. He lowered one foot down into the blackness.

  “You’ll never fit, lad,” the friendly man said. “You’ll get stuck and die in there.” Duck inserted the other foot.

  And then the cudgel-man charged for him.

  “Run, Julius!” Duck called. He pushed his hips off the lip of the chimney, thrust off his arms and let himself go, taking a deep breath as he went as if diving underwater.

  The air in his lungs came out with a scream, though. The cudgel-man had thrust a hand into the chimney just in time to grab Duck by a handful of his hair, holding him in midair. Duck cried out and twisted his head about, unable to bring up his arms to fend the man off. The pain brought tears to his eyes. Duck thrashed and thrashed, felt something give, thrashed some more, and suddenly he was weightless.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 25:

  * * *

  Excrement

  He was falling. Above him the man with the cudgel withdrew a fistful of hair from the chimney opening.

  Fortunately for Duck the rains had not yet arrived in Port Royal, and the owner of the Royal Coffee House had not yet resumed his habit of starting an early fire to drive off the morning chill for his customers. Nor had he employed the use of a chimney sweep in at least three seasons. When Duck tumbled out onto the large brick hearth, sputtering and momentarily blinded, a cloud of black dust billowed out into the parlor with him.

  It was Sunday, a day for religious observation in many parts of the world, but in Port Royal it was a high time for trade. The coffeehouse was packed full of men and a few women, exchanging news and haggling over the finer points of their trades. It was a loud place that afternoon, each group raising its voices to be heard above the din.

  When the blackened boy appeared so dramatically at the hearth—haloed in a blooming cloud of soot dust—and got to his feet, not a single silver spoon stirred in a porcelain cup. Duck stared out at the adults with their open mouths and arched eyebrows, expecting at any moment for someone to grab at him. The crowded room offered no escape.

  “It’s the boy on the run!” yelled a man over at the bar. He lifted his teacup toward Duck. “Give ’em hell, lad!” he said, flashing an uneven assortment of teeth.

  “Huzzah!” called another. And to Duck’s astonishment the crowd was smiling and cheering him. Duck’s teeth shone bright against his sooted features. He took a step forward and the crowd parted, revealing a path to the door.

  Duck ran. “Thank you and God bless!” he shouted as he ran, and the crowd erupted into cheers, spilling out into the lane just behind him to watch the chase.

  Out in the lane again Duck turned to his right in the direction he had come. He locked eyes with the redcoated marine from the pier who pointed and snapped orders to the men behind him. In the distance beyond, Duck caught a glimpse of the sailors who had pursued him on the rooftop, having found another way down.

  Duck stepped farther into the lane, forcing a wagon-cart driver to pull back on his leads and slow his horse.

  “Julius! Julius, where are you?” Duck shouted up at the roof edge high above him. Two scores of onlookers had spilled out of the coffeehouse, and they too looked up to see what it was this fleeing boy hailed.

  Sure enough, the monkey appeared at the edge of the roof, just where Duck had left him. Duck held out his arms.

  “Come on, boy!” He made a kissing noise with his lips. “Come on, Julius!”

  “Naw,” said a man in a fine suit, elbowing his mate.

  “Bet you two pounds,” his friend said.

  “Done.”

  “Julius! Come on now!” Duck dared another sidelong glance at the approaching sailors, the marine at their lead. They had nearly reached the crowd milling outside the coffeehouse.

  “Jump, you bloody monkey!” called the man who had placed the wager. And sure enough, Julius did. He gave a terrific shriek and leaped out into open space, all four limbs outstretched, his tail curving up behind him, his mouth wide with terror.

  Duck caught him neatly and held him fast to his chest. The crowd erupted, hot coffee spilling from cups and staining the cobbles.

  “There it was! That’s a fine lad, there!”

  “Out of the way, please! Disperse at once!” barked the marine.

  Poor Julius, ever confused and enraged by the mob of people all looking at him, did something Duck had never seen him do. Julius reached toward his backside, defecated, and with a whip of his bony hand, he hurled his excrement at the grinning crowd.

  The effect was instantaneous and horrifying. Stricken men and women recoiled in disgust. Cheers turned into howls. Jackets, dresses, and several cups of coffee were ruined.

  Duck turned and ran. He reached the corner of the coffeehouse and veered down the lane.

  “What did you do that for?” he said, but Julius just growled ominously in his arms.

  Run!

  Duck had a lead of just thirty yards when the marine officer and sailors rounded onto the lane in time to see the boy’s heels disappear around the next corner. The chase was on.

  Duck, of course, had no idea which way to turn. But he was no stranger to a sprint, and what he lacked in speed he made up for in quickness, darting down the lanes without losing a single step. Once he doubled back on his path by traveling the entire perimeter of one building, thinking it might throw off his pursuers, but a stolen glance over his shoulder told him that he had neither gained nor lost ground.

  Duck knew now it was only a matter of time. They would catch him. What would they do to him? Tears filled Duck’s eyes anew, and he careened around another corner and into a wide lane. Toward him walked a woman, an older woman judging by her wrinkles and the wisps of gray that peeked out beneath her bonnet. She wore an elaborate white and gray dress that billowed out wide at the bottom, and she held up a white parasol to ward off the sun.

  She turned surprised eyes upon Duck.

  “What’s the hurry, little man?” she said. Duck ran straight for her.

  “Oh, please, Gran,” he said. “Please don’t let ’em take me away to that awful Henry Morgan!” he said, and with that, Duck reached down to the woman’s feet and g
rabbed a handful of the hem of her dress. Before the woman had even the time to respond, Duck had tossed the many layers up and over his and Julius’s heads and hunkered down behind her legs.

  “Now hush, Julius!” the woman heard the boy say. Then she felt a strange, tiny set of hands clutching at the soft flesh behind her knees.

  “Oh, my,” she said, bemused. She looked up to see the handful of men round the corner, led by the officer.

  “Ma’am!” the man said to her. “A boy, running this way,” he panted. “Which way did he go, if you please?”

  “A little boy, you say?” the woman said, a slight smile on her lips. “With some sort of creature in his hands, perhaps?”

  “Which way, madam!”

  The woman turned behind her, careful not to move her feet. She shifted the parasol to her right hand so as to point with her left.

  “Down that lane, I believe, although the habits of young children are hardly my concern. Good day, officer.” These last words were thrown to the backs of the men now sprinting past her. They rounded the corner and the woman now stood alone, so to speak.

  “A nefarious brigand you must be, young man, to attract such powerful enemies,” she said. Beneath her she heard a sniffle. The woman bent at the waist and pulled up her dress high enough to have a peek. Fresh tears carved clean lines down the boy’s soot-covered cheeks.

  “Now, now, lad, all is well. You are in safe hands. Or something like that.”

  A movement ahead caught the woman’s eye, and she let go her dress. She stood still, pretending to admire the flowers of a mahoe tree that towered nearby. Two men, well dressed, walked the lane in the opposite direction.

  “Dame Bethany,” one of the men said as they passed. Each tipped his hat.

  When they had moved beyond earshot the woman said, “Can you scoot yourself along with me, then?”

  “Yes, Gran. I’ll just stay hidden right here.”

  “Very well. We have not far to go. Keep your little friend from tearing my stockings.”

  Duck found the going rather difficult, trying to walk and squat at the same time while keeping Julius tucked in one arm and pulling down at the folds of fabric concealing him with the other. Any keen observer would not have failed to notice the bulge at the back of Dame Bethany’s dress, but the lane was empty, and soon they had turned from it to one even less traveled.

  Duck kept his eyes trained on the black boots in front of him. When they climbed a set of wooden stairs, he climbed with them. Now they stood on what appeared to be a porch of some sort. A door opened.

  “Richard, is the upstairs parlor occupied, perchance?” the woman said.

  “No, ma’am, all occupants are out and about at the moment,” said a man.

  “Very well.” The woman swept back her dress to reveal the boy clutching her leg.

  “Ma’am?” said Richard.

  “Stand up, young man,” Dame Bethany said. Duck stood. Julius climbed up to his shoulder. The man standing before Duck had the very dark skin denoting African descent, and watery black eyes.

  “This is Richard,” the woman said. “He takes care of things for me. Tell him your name.”

  Duck pointed up. “Well, Richard, this one here is Julius, and he’s usually very well behaved, but he did just throw his business at some decent people, and I am sorry for that. My name is Elias, but everyone calls me Duck.”

  “Have you no surname, Duck?” asked Dame Bethany.

  “I do, ma’am, or I think maybe I have two. I am not so sure.” This was a point Duck had not fully sorted out from Kitto’s explanation back on the Blessed William. “It was Wheale—and maybe it still is, but I know it is also Quick. That’s what my brother Kitto told me anyways, but I will believe it for sure when my mum—”

  “What did you say? That name?” Dame Bethany had gone rigid. Duck looked up at her. There was some sort of fearful look in the old woman’s pale blue eyes.

  Duck began again. “Well, my name was always Wheale, but then—”

  “No.” The woman cut him off again. “Your brother. ‘Kitto,’ you said.”

  “Yes, ma’am. It stands for—”

  “Christopher. ‘Christopher Quick’ is his name?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Duck turned to Richard, but the aging man gave no sign of recognition. The woman clutched Duck by the wrist.

  “We must go up. At once!”

  * * *

  CHAPTER 26:

  * * *

  The Grand Dame

  Duck lay back on the sofa in the parlor, his mouth and cheeks smeared with powdered sugar and the juices of unfamiliar fruits. Dame Bethany had blanketed her chair with an old tablecloth in the hopes of protecting it from the ashes that clung to Duck’s clothing. His every movement left smudges on the worn fabric. He had been offered a wet rag as well to make himself more presentable, so his face was clean enough of soot, but for two dark marks at his nostrils and the corners of his eyes. Richard had brought up a tray loaded with pastries and cut melons, and with no mother there to tell him he had eaten enough, Duck ate until he felt his stomach would surely burst. Julius hunched in a corner of the room, nibbling at a white chunk of coconut.

  “Your appetite has not suffered from your journey, I see,” Bethany observed. She sat on a chair opposite the low-slung table that held the diminished tray of sweets.

  “But, Duck, you have kept me in suspense too long. I said after your treats you would have to tell me your story and spare no details. Please, lad.”

  Duck looked over at her through drooping eyes. “I think I could nap,” he said.

  Bethany poured him a cup of tea. “Sit up.” Duck did as told. The woman tilted the cup to his lips and he took a sip.

  “I don’t like tea,” he said.

  “Now don’t be rude. Did not your mother teach you better?”

  It was the wrong thing to say. She could tell it by the hangdog look that overtook the boy’s face.

  “I don’t know where Mum is, or if ever I’ll see her again.”

  Dame Bethany moved from her seat and came around the table to sit next to the boy. She put her arm around his shoulders and did not protest when Julius hopped up onto the sofa and curled into Duck’s lap.

  “Have it out, son.”

  And Duck did. He told it all, or at least so much as he understood, and not necessarily in the order that it happened. Duck told her about the uncle named William who had arrived in Falmouth, how bad men named Morris and Spider were following him. He told Bethany about the dagger, and his ship journey, and how he was nearly sold off into slavery. He told her about his father’s fate, or at least what Kitto had told him. He told her about Kitto saving him and about the battle during which he cowered in the barrel as Kitto and Van had told him to.

  At one point Richard knocked softly on the door and peeped his head in. Bethany went to him, and the old man whispered in her ear for a few minutes, then closed the door again. Duck resumed his tale.

  The little boy was not one for excessive speeches, and this one might well have been his longest. As he neared the end of it he reached out for a jam-filled pastry to give him the support he needed to finish.

  “Your father was a cooper?”

  “Yes, Gran. Did I say that part?”

  “And your brother. His foot?”

  “I didn’t tell you that! Do you know him?” Duck brightened. “Yes, it’s all crooked like, but he’s the best brother. You haven’t seen him here, have you?”

  Dame Bethany stood. She nearly pinched herself. Can it even be possible? That dear boy . . . I lost Mercy, but is it possible that Kitto I have not lost? Bethany walked to the window overlooking the lane. She lifted a hand to pull back the curtain and noted that it shook.

  “I did know your brother, some years ago, when he was about your age and he lived in Jamaica.”

  Dame Bethany watched a horse-drawn carriage roll past on the paved road. It did not seem so many years ago to her now. The depth of her loss felt raw, and more tha
n that, the ache of her own guilt gnawing away at her as it had these last seven years felt as fresh as it ever had.

  Her beloved Mercy. Like a daughter to her, the daughter that she had never had, the daughter who wanted to leave her and take away little Kitto, too.

  Dame Bethany had suffered before. She was married once as a young woman and lost her husband to war. She had carried a child, but that child had not survived. She had endured long nights alone in the strange and sometimes ugly city that was Port Royal. But there was never any pain that stung like the rejection of when Mercy had told her she would leave Jamaica forever, following the cooper and taking young Kitto with her.

  I should have let them go. I should never have informed Morgan, she told herself for the thousandth time. Bethany turned around to look at the little boy who was trying to lick the end of his nose with his tongue. Her heart quickened for a moment.

  Could it be that into her lap had fallen the opportunity to redeem herself for her crimes? Her sins?

  “Morris knows you to see you, Duck? He would recognize you?”

  Duck nodded. “I’d recognize him first. And Spider, too, and the whole crew.”

  Bethany sat down next to the boy. She removed the remainder of the pastry from his hands and set it back on the tray. She took Duck’s hands in hers. The feel of such small fingers startled her memory. How long had it been . . . ?

  “Look at me, lad.” Duck lifted his chin. “I was a dear friend to Kitto’s mother. She was . . . I thought of her as my daughter. But I did her a great wrong, and your being here might just allow me to right that wrong.”

  “Yes, Gran. Can I call you that?” Duck said. “If it don’t bother you, I mean. I don’t mean as if you was really old.”

  Bethany grinned. “Of course you can. But hear me, Duck. Port Royal is not safe for you, not if all that you tell me is true.”

  “I swear it is true.”