The Dagger X (The Dagger Chronicles)

by Brian Eames

  Bethany had just reentered the parlor after unlocking it with the key that Richard had given her for the task. She rested her collapsed parasol against the leg of an upholstered chair and looked to where Duck indicated.

  “As tidy as a cat,” she said, impressed.

  “Even cleaner!” Duck said. “Cats lick themselves with their tongues all the time. Everybody knows that ain’t clean.”

  “Isn’t clean,” Bethany said, arching an eyebrow.

  “Aw, Gran!”

  Outside the sun had just set, and the shadows stretched long.

  “I need you and Julius to come with me. There is someone you must meet.”

  Duck gathered Julius up onto his shoulder and followed as Bethany led him to a door at the far side of the room. She opened it to reveal a back stair leading down to the kitchen.

  “Very quiet now,” she said. “Two of the boarders have returned. It is best that no one knows you are here.”

  Duck knew how to be quiet. He hoped that Julius remembered as well. They stepped gingerly down the painted planks and reached a kitchen in which a slim and very dark woman poked a wooden spoon at a boiling chicken on the stove. The woman turned to greet them but froze when she saw Duck. Duck smiled and waved at her. The woman pointed the spoon at the boy.

  “Miss B, is this one of them things I am not really seeing?” she asked in a low voice.

  “That is correct, Janie. Two of them, actually. You neither saw a boy nor a monkey in my home.”

  “Seems I would remember if I had seen such strange sights.”

  Duck looked down at himself, then up at Bethany. He leaned a cupped hand toward the old woman. “Is she blind?” he said. Bethany winked at him and pushed him toward a narrow door at the back of the kitchen. She undid the bolt at the top and turned the knob. Janie brought over to her a candle she lit from the fire in the oven.

  Behind the door was a set of rough steps leading down into darkness.

  “Go on, Duck,” she said, but the little boy hesitated.

  “Oh, not again!” Duck lamented. “Can’t whoever it is come up here instead?”

  Bethany held her hand out to him and Duck took it. “Fear not,” she said, and together they made their way down the creaky stairs. Behind them Janie closed the door and turned the deadbolt. Duck squeezed tight Bethany’s hand.

  “I think she just locked us in, Gran-B,” Duck said. Bethany tucked the boy’s arm under hers. “All is well, Duck. Trust me.” The stairwell was not long, and ran itself out against a hard-packed dirt floor. Duck looked around at the stacks of old vegetable crates and cobwebbed jars. The cellar was larger than a typical root cellar, occupying most of the rooming house’s footprint.

  “Dumaka!” Bethany said. The dirt walls and floor seemed to swallow up her voice. Duck looked up at her questioningly, but then recoiled in fear as he saw something move off in the recesses of shadow. The shadow approached them, and the first that Duck could make out of the darkness were the whites of two eyes. A young man stepped forward into the candle’s glow.

  “Dumaka,” Bethany said. She pointed at the young boy clutching her dress. “This is Duck. Duck,” she said again slowly, and Duck looked across the candlelit space suspiciously, thinking this other fellow must be a bit hard in the head to have to be spoken to so simply. He cast a wary look at the man. He seemed barely old enough to call himself a man, really, but he stood tall enough and had the darkest skin that Duck had ever seen. He wore no shirt, simply a pair of ragged trousers that ran to the knee.

  “And Julius,” Duck said, pointing at the monkey on his shoulder, who gave Dumaka a leery appraisal. Dumaka held an open hand out to Julius to show the animal he meant it no harm, and Duck was curious to see that the skin on the palm of Dumaka’s hand was much lighter than on the rest of his body.

  “Duck,” Bethany looked down at him. “This is Dumaka. He is a slave who has run away.”

  “Oh!” Duck had very little sense of what it meant to be a slave. Before his journey across the ocean he knew the term only from hearing it when little kids complained after being ordered around by the bigger ones down at the wharf in Falmouth. They would say things like, “It ain’t like I’m your slave!” Now he knew slavery mostly by smell, a visceral memory of the slave ship on which he had spent a single night some weeks before, an odor that etched an indelible mark in his memory.

  “I am a slave who ran away too!” he said to the young man. He held out his hand to shake as his mother had taught him. Dumaka looked at the boy’s hand, then back up at Bethany. She nodded at him, and slowly Dumaka extended his own. Duck lifted the man’s arm in two dramatic shakes, then released his hand. Dumaka’s lips lifted into a slight smile. “Who did you run away from?” Duck asked. The man looked up at Bethany expectantly.

  “Henry Morgan,” she said.

  “Same!” Duck said aloud, grinning broadly. “Well, sort of.” He grinned. Dumaka smiled broadly now, deep dimples puckering his cheeks. He reached out and patted Duck atop the head. Julius growled softly and shoved Dumaka’s hand away.

  “Julius, be nice! He ain’t hurting me or nothing.” Duck tilted his head.

  “Isn’t,” Bethany corrected.

  “Aw, Gran.”

  “Listen to me, Duck,” Bethany said. “This is important. Dumaka was very lucky. He happened to hide in a shed owned by a Quaker man opposed to slavery. That man knew to bring him to me.”

  “Why you, Gran-B?”

  “Because from time to time I help slaves to make it to the maroon colonies, something for which I could be severely punished by the law.”

  “What’s a manure colony?”

  “Maroon. It is a place on this island where runaway slaves live. It is far from here, deep in the mountains, hard enough to get to that no one ever tries to bring them back.”

  “Oh. Is that where he is going?”

  “Yes. And you are going with him.”

  Duck looked up at Bethany with wounded eyes. “But, Gran, I thought I would stay with you!”

  Bethany brushed her thumb against the boy’s cheek. “It is only for a time. Until I can get my affairs in order, and then I shall fetch you and we shall go far from here to live.”

  “Will my mum and Kitto be able to find me there?”

  “We can hold out hope, can we not?”

  “Right,” Duck said. “More of that hoping stuff.” He breathed a heavy sigh.

  “So when are Dumaka and me leaving for the manure?”

  Duck slept atop a fresh pile of straw, a bundled wool blanket tucked under his head for a pillow. Julius curled in his customary place—in the crook between Duck’s legs—while Dumaka made his bed farther along the dirt wall of the cellar. A rickety stack of crates on the floor provided a makeshift wall to hide them should one of the boarders happen to venture down, but the likelihood of that was small. Janie could be quite cross when her kitchen was invaded during the day, and her nights she spent on the sleeping porch adjacent to the kitchen.

  “Wake up, son. Wake up!”

  Duck stirred but did not open his eyes. He had not slept in safety for weeks, and for the first time in so long his dreams were untroubled and deep.

  “Rise up. It is time,” Bethany said. Her efforts were helped along by Julius, who scampered up Duck’s prostrate body and inserted a furry monkey finger into the boy’s left nostril, and then—when Julius received little reaction—a second finger into the other. Duck sat up sneezing and swatted at his pet.

  “That’s rude!” Duck said, scowling up at the lantern Bethany held. The boy’s eyes came into focus, and he saw that Dumaka had already risen and was standing behind Bethany, his eyes wide with fear.

  “Is it time?”

  “It is. Sit up now and be alert. I have important things to tell you. Dumaka will not understand it all, so you must be able to hear and to remember for the both of you. If you do not, then neither of you will survive.”

  “Oi!” Duck rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms, then gav
e his head a savage shake. Blades of straw slipped from his head onto his shoulders. Bethany brushed them away.

  “A man will come to take you on a wagon ride. Get in the back of the wagon and cover yourselves with straw.”

  “To stay hidden?”

  “Yes. He will ride you well out of town, to a creek. Follow the creek upstream and just keep going. It will take you several days before you get there.”

  “To where the other runaways live.”

  “Yes. They will see you before you see them. And they have guns.”

  “Do they know we are coming?” Duck said.

  Bethany shook her head. “Stay with Dumaka and they will understand that you are runaways. Find a woman named Nanny. She is the leader of the colonies. And tell her that I sent you.” Bethany produced a small leather pouch with a thong that she looped about Duck’s neck. She tucked the pouch beneath his shirt.

  “What’s that?” he asked, patting the pouch under his shirt.

  “It is some money for Nanny, and a note of explanation.”

  “When will you be coming, Gran-B?” Duck said. He hated the thought of having to leave the kindly woman. “You’re . . . well . . . you and my uncle, you’re like the only family I have got in Jamaica.” Bethany pulled Duck in for a hug. She held him long and tried to squeeze all her love into the little boy. How could he have found his way into her heart almost instantly? But she knew how. She knew that her heart had been waiting for just such a moment for the last seven years.

  “Your uncle and I will come fetch you, just as soon as we can.”

  “How long?”

  “Soon.”

  Duck accepted the answer with a scowl. At least he had action to look forward to. After having spent weeks in the hold of a ship—much of it cowering in a barrel, never knowing when Julius might screech out his frustrations and land both of them in shackles—the idea of a long hike into unknown mountains sounded appealing.

  And he wouldn’t be alone. Julius was always good company, and maybe Duck could teach Dumaka how to speak the King’s English.

  “Take my hand, now,” Bethany said. “It is this way.” Bethany led them to the far corner of the cellar where some old boards leaned against the dirt wall. Bethany handed the candleholder to Duck and motioned for Dumaka to lend a hand. Together they lifted away the boards one by one from where they leaned. There were several layers of wide planks, but after they had removed a few, Duck lifted high the light.

  “ ’Tis a door back there!” he said.

  “Yes. A secret door, too.” Bethany slid the iron bolt aside, then pulled hard on the handle. The hinges groaned as the heavy wooden door swung open. Duck held out the candle and peered into the black passage beyond.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 29:

  * * *

  Flight by Night

  “Where’s it go?” Duck said, a tremor of fear in his voice. He squinted suspiciously into the dark passage.

  “Not far at all,” said Bethany. “The shaft passes just below the lane out front and comes out in the midst of a stone hedge at the far side.”

  “Do we have to go in there?” Duck said. He had spent enough time in dark places for them to populate a lifetime of nightmares. “Can’t we just go out the back door of the kitchen?”

  “If you were seen, my dear,” Bethany said, “you and Dumaka would be the last two ever to be helped along to freedom from my house. That hardly seems fair to me. Does it to you?”

  Duck made a face. “Oh, fine,” he said. “And what we do once we pop out the hedge?”

  “Travel along it, keeping the hedge between you and the lane. Keep your monkey quiet.”

  “He don’t always listen to me.”

  “Keep the hedge on your right side. You do know which one is your right, don’t you?”

  “Sure. This one.” Duck lifted up his left, then grinned.

  “Do not be cheeky,” Bethany said. Duck raised his other hand. “Yes, that one. Do not forget, or you shall end up back at the wharf.”

  “I know which way that is, don’t worry.” Bethany put her palm atop Duck’s head and wagged it side to side.

  “Little scamp you are,” she said. “Now listen. Go along the hedge until you reach an intersection. Wait there out of sight. The man in the wagon will arrive. If it is the right man, he will stop his wagon to tend to his horses. When he does that, the two of you get in the back and cover yourselves.”

  Duck looked up at Dame Bethany with doleful eyes. “You quite sure I can’t just stay with you here? I’d stay right here in this basement!”

  “I promise I’ll send for you, boy, or arrive myself when the time is right. Until then Nanny will care for you.”

  Duck patted the pouch Bethany had put round his neck. “And if my mum or Kitto should come looking for me?” he said.

  “Then I will deliver them to you just this same way.”

  With a few more reassurances and a hurried embrace, Bethany shooed them into the dark passage. Dumaka went first, taking the candleholder and waving it in front of him to part the thick cobwebs.

  It was a low-slung passage they entered, so Dumaka had to bend at the waist to walk. Duck clung to the back of his trousers and shrank from the eerily wavering cobweb strands. The spider silk crackled in the candle’s flame. Julius rode atop Duck’s shoulder until he became entangled in filaments of web. He swatted them away frantically, then dropped to the ground behind Duck with a screech.

  “Julius, shut it!” Duck said. The monkey leaped up and dug his claws into Duck’s pants, clinging to his backside so as to avoid both the darkness of the floor and the disconcerting stickiness of the cobwebs.

  “I don’t like the dark, Dumaka,” Duck said. “What about you?” Dumaka said nothing but grunted at the effort of walking in such an awkward position.

  The earthen walls of the shaft were punctuated by wooden posts that connected to a network of crisscrossing joists at the dirt ceiling. The path was clear excepting the cobwebs, and the two moved quickly. It was not long before Duck bumped into Dumaka, who had come to an abrupt stop.

  “Here,” the man said, and it was the first word that Duck had heard him say. Dumaka moved aside so that Duck could see an iron ladder against a wall, leading up into blackness.

  “Let me go first,” Duck said, not interested in being left alone in the shaft. He pushed his way past Dumaka and scrambled up the rungs, Julius still clinging to his trousers, swinging this way and that as Duck climbed. Together they entered into a narrow vertical tunnel of dirt and rock.

  Quickly Duck noted a dull brightness above him. A few more steps up and he saw stars overhead, somewhat obscured by overgrowth. The rough tunnel opened up into the neatly stacked stones of the hedge. He pushed his way past the vines and climbed out and over the stones. On the far side he could make out the strip of pavement that was the lane. Julius propped himself onto a stone and looked down into the blackness for Dumaka.

  The man arrived moments later without the candle, one hand clutching the bundle of food Bethany had given them. He too clambered out over the rocks and onto the carpet of overgrown grasses beyond the hedge. This side of the stone wall bordered a cleared field that held no crop and looked as if it had been left to lie fallow.

  Duck turned to look either way up and down the stone wall, determining which was the correct direction. Dumaka seemed to know. He took Duck’s hand and led them so that the hedge and lane were on the their right side. Julius scampered along behind them.

  “Is this the right way?” Duck hissed. Dumaka turned around and tapped his fingers against his own mouth, a gesture Duck had never seen before but knew its meaning nonetheless. They walked on, the silence of the night heavy and the lane thoroughly deserted.

  After just a few minutes of walking along the dew-moistened grasses, they reached another stone hedge, meeting their own at a right angle.

  “This is it,” Duck said as softly as he could. Dumaka nodded to him, and they sat on the ground. Dumaka lean
ed back and rested his head on a rock. Duck spread himself out on the grass and closed his eyes, and Julius nestled into a warm spot atop the boy’s chest.

  Duck awoke sometime later to the feel of Dumaka’s rough fingers pressed against his lips. Duck sat up. In the distance he could hear the clomp of horse hooves and the jangle of harness and leads. The two of them huddled up against the wall and waited.

  By the time the wagon drew alongside their hedge the sounds of the horses and the creaks of the wagon seemed impossibly loud to Duck. But then a voice called to the horses and the wagon stopped just at the intersection.

  “Well, Athena and Apollo,” a low voice said, “seems only fair to give you some oats for carrying me at such an odd hour.” Duck heard the driver’s boot heels scrape the gravel as he hopped down to the lane.

  Duck pulled himself up and peered at the wagon in the lane standing in dappled starlight. One of the horses neighed contentedly and tossed his head.

  Duck found Dumaka’s hand.

  “Come on!” he said. “Now is when Gran said we go.” Duck scooped Julius up into his arms, and the monkey did not resist. Dumaka watched the boy scamper over the stone hedge and climb into the open wagon. The driver remained rigidly facing forward even though Duck’s complaints about Julius’s sharp claws would have been audible to any passerby.

  Dumaka gathered his courage and vaulted over the hedge.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 30:

  * * *

  Captives

  SEVERAL DAYS LATER, IN CUBA

  Exquemelin was the first to be called in for questioning. Hours earlier a barred wagon had transported the alleged English pirates from the Spanish galley at Havana Harbor to the prison not far from the wharf. The ride in the wagon through the tidy lanes of the town had not been a long one, but a gathering of curious townspeople trailed the vehicle as it made its way through the lanes. It had been Van who had pointed out the gibbet to Kitto and Akin at the wharf. It was a large pole standing in the water, and hanging from a hook at its top was a metal frame encasing the skeletal remains of some poor victim of the Spanish justice system. Kitto did not need to ask what it was. When the marines unloaded them in shackles and led them through the stone archway and into the prison, Kitto knew that the gawkers were eagerly anticipating the entertainment that was soon to come to them.