The Dagger X (The Dagger Chronicles)

by Brian Eames

  Hangings always drew a crowd.

  Two marines had led Exquemelin away, leaving the rest of the gloomy company to ponder its dire predicament. They were kept in a single cell. The ceiling was quite high—twelve feet at least—and up at the top of one wall a barred window admitted the glow of daylight.

  The massive stones surrounding them threw echoes of their hushed voices.

  “What you think they be doing to him?”

  “You know it already.”

  “They sure to hang us, you think?”

  “Of course they will! It’s what they do to English.”

  “They don’t know nothing about us.”

  “They got a witness, ain’t they? That is more than they need.”

  Kitto and Sarah and Ontoquas sat at one corner of the cell. Bucket, having just eaten a bowlful of corn mush that Sarah had goaded from the jailer, slept peacefully in the woman’s arms. Kitto leaned his head back against the stones.

  He hardly dared admitting aloud what he knew was true.

  “I signed the articles,” he said in a whisper. Sarah shook her head.

  “You are a boy! You could not have known the import of what you were doing. They surely do not hang boys!” The men, overhearing them, threw long looks in Kitto’s direction. They knew otherwise.

  “I would not change what I did, Mum,” Kitto said. It was true. How can it be true? he wondered. But it was. Signing the articles had been their only chance, but it seemed they had no chance after all.

  Perhaps only a handful of days I have bought all of us, he thought. But still I would change nothing. If I have saved the lives of sixteen men for these several days, have I not done something?

  “We cannot give up hope,” Sarah said. Kitto lowered his head and stared down at the sewn pant leg that covered his stump.

  I, who was destined to do nothing . . .

  Ontoquas reached to her chest and felt for the small amulet hanging there. When she was sure no one watched her, she slipped the necklace over her head and gathered it into the palm of one hand. She nudged Kitto with an elbow, and he turned to see her extending a clenched fist out to him beneath their folded legs.

  Their hands met, and Ontoquas dropped the chain and cross into Kitto’s upturned palm.

  Why? he wanted to ask, but could only manage a questioning look.

  “To protect,” Ontoquas said. Whether she meant to protect Kitto or to protect the necklace, Kitto did not know. In fact, she meant both. Ontoquas had not been granted a vote ten days earlier when Exquemelin and his sworn pirates had decided whether or not to fight the Spanish out at sea. She would have voted to fight.

  Ontoquas’s name may not have appeared on the paper, true, but she knew in the pit of her stomach what would happen. With her skin, her hair, her age? The Spanish would see her as all the wompey did—a menace to be dealt with. They would make her a slave again, a fate she swore she would never revisit. Death would be better.

  And Bucket? Would they even let him live? Ontoquas let her long hair fall over her eyes so that Kitto could not see the tears that had begun to gather. She had failed Bucket. She had not saved him.

  Kitto slipped the necklace over his own head and tucked the cross beneath his shirt. Next to him Sarah had closed her eyes, and her lips were mouthing a silent prayer. Kitto tried to do the same, but fear knotted his stomach and he found it hard to shape the words.

  At that moment from beyond their cell came the sound of voices. A door clanged shut and footfalls approached, along with the sound of something being dragged along the stone floor.

  Little John stood and peered as best he could through the bars set into the massive oak door of the cell.

  “It’s him! It’s X,” he said. “They be carrying him.” Little John withdrew when the guard reached the door and barked something at him in Spanish.

  A key grated in the lock, and the door opened. One guard stood at the entrance, and two others behind held X between them by his arms. X’s bare head hung low and swayed as the men struggled forward.

  “Lo pongan ahí, el cerdo,” the guard at the door said. He stepped aside so that the two men could enter. They heaved X inward, hurling him without a care into the cell. He would have struck the stone floor but for Quid, who leaped forward and snatched X from the air.

  “Spanish pigs!” said Little John, struggling to stand.

  The pirates rose to their feet in anger and surged toward the open door, but the first guard produced a pistol. He pressed it against Little John’s cheek, puckering the skin.

  At the rear of the cell Sarah thrust Bucket over to Ontoquas and pushed past Akin.

  “Gentleman, please!” she said. “Let us not worsen our situation. Step back and allow me to attend to the captain’s wounds.”

  The sound of a woman’s voice subdued their anger. The guard with the pistol sneered.

  “Cobardes,” he said as Little John backed away from the muzzle of his pistol. “Piratas, cobardes, cerdos!” His eyes swept over the assorted gathering with undisguised hatred.

  For a moment Kitto thought he might fire the pistol regardless, but then an agitated voice sounded from behind him.

  “Perdón! A un lado!” the voice said, and the guards stepped aside. A thin man dressed in black stepped into the doorway, the wide corners of his hat brushing against the iron doorframe. He had a pointed nose and long fingers with manicured nails that looked strikingly unfit in such a filthy room. He withdrew a scap of paper from a pocket.

  “Which of you is known as ‘Sarah, Van, Ontok . . . Ontoquas, Akin, Bucket’?” he read in clear, but accented English. Sarah raised her hand and indicated the others.

  “We are they,” she said. “What news do you have for us?”

  The man eyed her coldly before continuing. “The following words do not pertain to you,” he said. He tossed the scrap aside and withdrew from a different pocket a folded piece of parchment that he opened before him. Kitto recognized it as the articles he had signed, and he felt a tight knot in his throat.

  The man’s eyes swept over the pirates. He coughed neatly to clear his voice. “ ‘The Honorable Ernesto Delgado has ordered that by the evidence gathered against the following men’ ”—the man stopped himself—“meaning, the rest of you—‘that they shall be hanged by the neck until death at precisely nine o’clock tomorrow morning for the crime of piracy.’ ”

  Kitto had stood when X had been brought in, but now his knees buckled and he sagged against the wall behind him.

  “No! No, this cannot be! What evidence?” Sarah protested, stepping forward. But the man did not regard her.

  “Alexandre Exquemelin, John Phillip, Simon Xavier . . .” The man’s voice droned on through all the names of the doomed men in the cell.

  Kitto’s thoughts swam circles. How? How could this be? Is this to be my punishment? Am I to die?

  The man read the final name, snapping Kitto from his tortured thoughts.

  “Christopher Quick!”

  * * *

  CHAPTER 31:

  * * *

  Hanging

  After the man had spoken the sentence and left, a pall fell over the pirates that lasted into the evening. X sat with his head in his hands, the dangling beads of his beard utterly still. Even Sarah seemed lost, staring unblinking and pale at the stony floor, giving no notice when Ontoquas tried to pass Bucket into her arms to draw her from the black depths of her despair.

  Only Van and Akin seemed to have any life left in them. They each moved to be closer to Kitto. Van draped an arm around his shoulders.

  “It ain’t over yet,” Van said. “Perhaps that God you love is not yet done with you.” Outside the prison the sun had set, and the cell was draped in a cloak of dusk.

  “I want to be brave,” Kitto said.

  “You are very brave,” Akin said.

  “At the moment, I mean. When the rope . . . I want to die as a man should die.”

  “None of that matters,” Van said.

&nbs
p; “It does matter. It matters to me,” Kitto said. He wondered if he had that kind of strength. “How you leave the world matters.” Van and Akin had no answer for Kitto, and for a long time the three sat quietly. From a distant corner of the cell they heard a faint sniffling.

  Van leaned closer so that he could whisper in Kitto’s ear.

  “I want you to know,” Van said, and he had to stop to swallow hard. “You are not done with me, Kitto Quick, not even if you quit that body. I will take care of your mum. Akin and I both. And I will find Duck and bring them together. I swear it. On my worthless soul, I swear it, Kitto.”

  Kitto lifted his head and looked over at Van. Their hands came together in something of a shake.

  “Yes,” Kitto said. “But that is not the last you owe me, Van. One more thing.”

  “Say it.”

  “Once you have done those things, seen to the safety of Duck and my mum, I want you to go back to the island, Van.”

  “To the devil with that island!”

  “Promise me. You will go back there and fetch the nutmeg. You will need to share it with the men you bring, and with Sarah, too, for my share. But then make off with a fine haul, Van. Go find your sister!”

  Tears filled Van’s eyes. He started to speak, but a sob broke through and it was some minutes before he could do so.

  “How can you think of that now?” Van said.

  “My dreams are shattering. I want you to see yours fulfilled,” Kitto told him. “And one more thing. When you go back to the island. Get inside the cave with someone small, perhaps Duck if you have found him. There is another treasure inside, Van. Fit for a king.”

  In the morning a detachment of Spanish soldiers dressed in dark blue uniforms entered the prison. The sharp cadence of their polished boot heels tore Exquemelin and his band from their last sleep, if such fitful nightmares could be called such.

  At some point in the night Sarah had risen from her despair. She had nudged Akin aside and took Kitto into her arms as she sometimes did when he was a young boy. Kitto buried his head in the shelter of her soft neck. Together they had wept themselves into unconsciousness, but the sound of the approaching soldiers brought both to an instant and panicked attention.

  Sarah tried. At the first glimpse of the brushed wool uniform and polished musket barrel, she rushed to the barred door.

  “There has been a mistake. My son . . . he is just a boy! Please do not do this evil deed!” Sarah pleaded. None of the Spaniards would meet her gaze but attended instead to their duty of binding each of the men in shackles about the ankles and wrists, and leading them one by one down the stone hall and into the same wagon cage that had transported them from the ship the day before.

  When it was Kitto’s turn to go and the cell stood empty but for Sarah, Akin, Van, Ontoquas, and Bucket, Sarah’s pleas turned frantic.

  “This is wrong! He is a boy! You must not do this thing!”

  “Mum!” Kitto seized Sarah by the shoulders and turned her from the soldiers. “Let me go like a man,” he said. “You must live. For Duck. He is your son!”

  Sarah brought Kitto into her arms for a final crushing hug.

  “You are my son,” she said. She whispered in his ear, her voice catching. “It was you, Kitto. You have shown me how deep love goes. It was loving you that made me!”

  The guards pulled Kitto away.

  It was not a long ride in the wagon, but the driver kept the two horses in check so that the contingent of what must have been fifty soldiers in high uniform could flank the wagon on all sides as it rolled through the dusty lanes.

  As they moved through the heart of the town and toward the wharf, people of all ages poured from the buildings and walked along with the procession. Some of them hurled insults, and a few even tossed rotten vegetables, which bounced harmlessly against the cage that held them and dropped into the lane.

  Kitto watched a young girl who could not have been more than six bound out of a rickety doorway and skip along with the crowd. She wore a cheery red dress that billowed behind her as she skipped. She clutched some sort of stuffed doll in her arms which she tossed into the air and caught again. The dark curls of her hair bounced along with her as she ran, and Kitto allowed himself to be swept up for a moment in her joy. She did not seem to notice the wagon, only the excitement of the throng.

  Look how happy she is! he marveled. She is so very alive. . . .

  Finally the wagon rolled into an open cobblestone courtyard. The brilliant blue water of the harbor spread out to the north, dotted with dozens of anchored ships. At one end of the square stood the gallows, a massive construction erected of thick beams, wide enough to accommodate the entire party of seventeen at one time.

  Kitto had kept his eye on the little girl as they traveled, but when the soldiers opened up the cage to lead them down in shackles to the stairs at the base of the gallows, the courtyard swelled with onlookers and he lost sight of her. Kitto was the last to leave the wagon. He had thought that perhaps X or Fowler or another of the men would try to fight or to run, but none of them did. They each stepped their way up the steep wooden stair to the elevated gallows platform and allowed themselves to be led by a soldier to one of the dangling nooses awaiting.

  Kitto told himself he would do the same. He would die with dignity at least, if nothing else.

  The chain between his ankles rattled as he stepped up the stairs. As he was last to reach the platform and the other men had been directed to either end first, Kitto found himself in the direct center of the long line of nooses, between Exquemelin and Quid. He looked down to his feet to see that he stood atop some sort of trap door. He knew that once the noose was placed around his neck, the doors would be released and there would be nothing but rope to hold him.

  “I am sorry, lads!” X called out loud enough for all the men down the line to hear. One of the soldiers jabbed a musket into Exquemelin’s spine and the crowd hooted.

  “We knew what we was doing, old man!” called Fowler near the end.

  “I don’t want to die!” whimpered Coop.

  “Shut your mouth and be a man for once,” Fowler said, and received a sharp blow to the back of the head with a musket barrel for his continued outburst.

  Three officials climbed the gallows stairs, all dressed in fine powdered wigs. One of them stepped near to Kitto and unrolled a parchment from which he began to read aloud in droning Spanish. Far to the back of the crowd Kitto spotted the little girl again, and he focused all his mind on her as the man continued to speak. Now and again cheers rose up from the masses as the man read, but the little girl seemed hardly to pay attention at all. She tossed her little doll into the air. Higher and higher she threw it, seeing how high she could throw it and still snatch it before it hit the cobblestones.

  Kitto let his mind drift off with her, and it was not until he heard Fowler speaking at the end of the column that he realized the men were being given the chance to speak final words before the nooses were fitted to their necks and their heads covered in white sacks.

  “I ain’t got a thing to say to you swine,” were Fowler’s words. Pickle crowed an apology to his mother. Little John said he wished he had married that sweet lass who loved him back in Devon.

  Kitto turned back to the little girl. She seemed so important somehow. He remembered running on a beach when he was very young. It must have been Jamaica. The surf curled around his feet. He, too, clutched a little lovey doll, tight so that the water could not take it away from him. And there, just down the beach, was his mother—his first mother—smiling and opening her arms to him. For the first time in years Kitto could see her face, as clear and as memorable as anything he knew in this world.

  She was beautiful. She loved him.

  Why have I not seen you before? he wondered. Maybe I will see you again. Yes. And soon.

  Next to Kitto, Pelota barked something in a native tongue that no one understood, and then it was Exquemelin’s turn.

  “Coffee beans and the l
ove of a good woman! I shall miss them and little else!” he shouted out, and the crowd booed him. The guard reached forward to cover his head, but X wrenched to one side. He stuck his tongue out at the crowd and blew a spit-filled raspberry before the soldiers could slide the sack over his head and adjust the knot at his neck.

  It was Kitto’s turn.

  “Your final words, sir,” one of the officials behind him said.

  My final words. My final words.

  “I have a gift,” Kitto said. “Not words.” He turned around to face the man who had spoken to him, but the soldier behind him jabbed him with his musket and pushed Kitto’s cheek to face forward.

  “Do not deny a condemned man!” Kitto said. “About my neck there is a chain. That sweet girl in the back there, tossing her little doll. I would like her to have it.” Murmurs arose behind him as the officials considered.

  Apparently they agreed, because rough hands dug beneath his shirt and withdrew the chain. It was drawn over his head, and in a moment the thick noose had replaced it.

  Kitto felt the scratchy fibers of the rope against his Adam’s apple.

  The little girl. Keep your eyes on her.

  Down below him Kitto saw dozens of heads turn as the spectators tried to catch a glimpse of the girl who would be the recipient of the pirate’s gift.

  A gift. That is a way to end a life with dignity, Kitto told himself. The sack went over his head. The girl was gone.

  “Viva las piratas!” X shouted, and laughed a loud and lusty laugh.

  The crowd shouted back at X. Kitto’s eyes were open but all he could see was the glowing white of the sack. He could just hear above the din of the crowd the sound of the surf, the waves crashing against a seawall. It made him think of home.