by Brian Eames
Home.
“Mother and Father,” he whispered. “Be there for me. Be there to greet me.”
A Spanish voice called out an order. Kitto heard some sort of a thumping sound, and felt a vibration beneath his feet.
The trap door gave way.
* * *
CHAPTER 32:
* * *
Weeping Madonna
Kitto felt his shackled feet kick out. He felt the rope rip tight against his neck. He would have gasped, but he could draw no air.
And then there was the beach. Again. He was running on the beach, running to his mother’s open arms. Closer he ran to her. Closer. He held out his arms toward her, the lovey in one hand. She would gather him up in her arms.
He was running. Look at me run, Mum! Look at me!
Caught in the noose, Kitto was dying.
The world reeled and went black, but then there was movement again, confusion, a jostling.
Kitto opened his eyes and blinked against the bright sun. The cloth sack was gone, the noose too. He was lying on his side on the wooden platform of the gallows. The crowd booed in bitter frustration.
A man behind him was screaming something at him. Kitto blinked and strained to suck in air. A sharp hand slapped him once across the face. Twice. Kitto’s eyes spun but then took focus.
Inches before his nose was the small golden cross with the weeping figure at its base.
“That is for the girl!” he tried to say, but all that came out was a croak. Now a voice came clear.
“Where did you get this? Where did you get this, boy! Tell me now and perhaps you will not be hanged!” The voice came from the official who had told him to recite his last words.
“What?” Kitto groaned, his mind thick and muddled.
“Tell me!” the man screamed again, and struck Kitto harder.
“Cut them down,” Kitto said. He felt his eyes drifting off of their own accord and knew that he could not fight off unconsciousness.
“Cut them all down!” Kitto said. “Only then will I ever tell you.”
Blackness filled his vision, and Kitto let it carry him away.
When he came to, Kitto found himself lying on an upholstered sofa of some kind, covered in plush crimson fabric. He blinked a few times to get his eyes to focus. He heard voices speaking urgently in Spanish very nearby. The room was bright, painfully so, sunlight filtering through a breathtaking panel of stained glass. Bookshelves teeming with leather-bound volumes spread on either side of the window.
“You nearly caused a riot in Corona Square, Christopher Quick,” said a mild voice in English. “The people came to witness a hanging and you spoiled it for them.”
“Not for long,” grumbled the other voice.
“That is not for you to decide, señor.”
Kitto pushed himself to a seated position on the sofa. His head rang with a splitting ache, and his tongue felt two sizes too large for his mouth. The men sat across from him in high-backed chairs with claw-footed wooden arms and feet. The man on the left he recognized as the one who had read from the parchment at the gallows. His wig had slipped and dark hair peeked out beneath. The second man wore a deep purple robe, some sort of a flat red cap atop his head, and a large wooden crucifix hung down his chest along a beaded chain.
“I am not dead,” Kitto said in a whisper.
“You are not dead,” the robed man repeated.
“Yet,” muttered the other.
“And my companions?” Kitto said.
“The other pirates are alive and well and have been returned to their cell. All but one.”
Kitto felt his heart flip. “One?”
“A very large man, quite a giant. His neck broke when his body was dropped. He died instantly.” The man in the robe made the sign of the cross along his body.
Little John. Kitto felt a terrible sadness hit him. His eyes filled with tears.
“He was a good man,” Kitto said, his voice rough.
“He was a pirate!” said the official. The robed man held up a hand for silence, and Kitto knew instantly who was in charge.
“The Lord has his soul now,” the man said. “Only he can judge.” He turned to the official. “Please leave us, señor.”
“But, Your Excellency . . .”
“That will be all, Señor Delgado.” The wigged man glared at Kitto as he rose quickly from his chair and strode out of the room, letting the heavy wooden door slam behind him.
The robed man took a deep breath. He looked over at Kitto and smiled.
“Who are you?” Kitto said.
“You may call me Padre Alberto,” he said. The man gestured toward a low table between them. Kitto looked down to see that it held a tray of silver serving bowls full of cut fruit and a pitcher of drink.
“Might you take a refreshment, Christopher?” the man said, pouring a bright yellow liquid into two ornate goblets. He held one out to Kitto. Kitto eyed it doubtfully. The padre set the vessel on the table and took a sip of his own.
“Without Señor Delgado here, we may speak more freely,” Padre Alberto said. Kitto leaned over and picked up the goblet. He sipped the juice, and his eyes closed reflexively as the bright taste exploded on his tongue. He had not had fresh juice in what seemed like months. When he swallowed, though, the harsh pain in his throat made him gag. He sputtered several drops of pineapple nectar onto the sofa.
“The gallows have left their mark on you,” Padre Alberto said, gesturing about his own neck but looking at Kitto’s. “But time shall heal the wound.”
Kitto reached for his neck. The skin felt chafed and tender.
“Why am I here?” he said when the burning sensation had passed.
The man eyed him quietly for a moment, then withdrew something from a pocket of his robe.
“Tell me about this artifact, Christopher,” Padre Alberto said. Dangling from his hand was the gold chain and its cross. It rocked back and forth in the air.
Kitto felt his breath quicken. He knew where it came from, even knew where more like it lay at that very moment.
Think like your uncle William, he told himself. Cunning.
Kitto reached for the chain, and the padre did not protest when Kitto took it into his hands. He lay the cross along his palm to study it.
“Of course you have no reason to trust me,” Alberto said. “Except for the fact that you are still alive, and that is somewhat due to my intervention.”
“I am alive because I possessed this?” Kitto said, knowing the answer without having to wait for it.
Alberto nodded. He ran his palm across his thick jowls.
“It will be difficult to overcome the Honorable Delgado’s ruling,” Alberto said. “But it is within my power, as head of the Catholic Church in this part of the world.” Alberto sipped at the goblet and set it on the table.
Kitto lifted the necklace so that the cross and the kneeling woman at its base rocked gently, washed in the green and gold light from the window. He looked up at the padre.
“It is beautiful,” Kitto said. “But not so beautiful—is it?—to save the lives of seventeen pirates?”
The padre smiled slightly and shrugged. “To me it is a thing most moving. You are not aware of its history, then, or its name, ‘The Weeping Madonna’?” he asked, eyeing Kitto shrewdly for signs of deception.
“All I know is that William Quick had it. He is my uncle.”
Padre Alberto froze. “William Quick is your uncle? Truly?”
“Yes, Your Excellency.”
“Did you know that he was a prisoner here, in Cuba, for many years?”
Kitto nodded. “He told me.”
Padre Alberto leaned forward in his seat. “And did he confess to you that he murdered fourteen priests and nuns and peaceful citizens to obtain that piece of art in your hands?” The man’s voice had gone cold.
“I . . . with all respect, sir, I believe you are mistaken. William Quick would not have done that. He was—he is—an imperfect man, perhaps not a
lways a good man even, but he is not a murderer.”
“Yet those men and women died.”
“Who were they?” Kitto said.
The padre considered the question as he fingered the crucifix around his neck. “Panama, 1671. The great city, the crown jewel in Spain’s New World Empire . . . attacked and destroyed by English pirates.”
This history Kitto did know. “Yes, sir! William Quick was there. He was one of Henry Morgan’s buccaneers.”
Alberto set the goblet on the table. “Those men burned the city to the ground and stole everything they could get their hands on. But the inhabitants of Panama had gotten word from friendly natives that the English were coming.”
It was Kitto’s turn to lean forward. “My father told me of this! And my uncle. The treasure the buccaneers expected to find in Panama was not there.”
“Correcto. It had been removed, mostly by ship, but not all. There was a great trove of very fine religious art in Panama as well, most of it kept in the church there in the heart of the colony. They were truly magnificent, these pieces, the work of an artist inspired by God. The artist’s name was Ignacio Asalto.”
“Were these works of art stolen during the raid, then?” Kitto said, looking down at the cross in his hands, realizing its presence already answered his question. The padre continued.
“The head priest of that church, a Cardinal Pérez, worried that a ship containing all of Asalto’s great works would be too vulnerable—pirates, shipwreck, etcetera. So he ordered that a mule train travel ten miles into the jungle, far from the path of the buccaneers, and remain hidden there until they received word that the infidels had fled.”
“And those were the men and women who . . .” Kitto began, then faltered.
“Who were found dead? Yes. I know this because I was one of the priests who was sent out to find them after the pirates had burned our fair city and left. I led the expedition.”
“Why?” Kitto shook his head. “Why would someone have killed priests and nuns?”
“They were unarmed,” Padre Alberto said. “A few of the men had machetes for moving through the jungle, but otherwise nothing. So you tell me, Christopher Quick, nephew of William Quick, why would your uncle have killed fourteen men and women when all he had to do was take the treasure from them without violence?”
Kitto wrapped one hand around the cross and closed his eyes, thinking back to what William had told him of Panama.
“He told me,” Kitto began slowly, “that he and his men had hiked off into the jungle, but it was not this treasure he was after. He was hunting down one of his fellow buccaneers, a John Morris, one of Henry Morgan’s closest friends and partners.”
Padre Alberto grimaced. “Yes. I know this name. He is a vile predator whose cruelty was once known widely among our people.”
“Yes,” Kitto said. “John Morris and Henry Morgan had stolen . . .” Kitto paused and chanced a glance at the padre. The man was watching him intently. Kitto decided that he must speak the truth, that the man would know otherwise. And the priest was likely all that kept him and his friends from the hangman’s rope.
“Morgan and Morris had stolen nutmeg. The spice. Many barrels of it. It had belonged to the Dutch, but somehow ended up in Panama at the time of the attack.”
Padre Alberto gave a slight smile of satisfaction, knowing honesty when he saw it. “Yes, I know of the nutmeg. You are correct about its origins. Continue.”
Kitto let out a quiet sigh of relief. “William said that he came upon Morris in the jungle. Morris only had a few men with him. They fought, and Morris escaped into the jungle, but not before my uncle had . . . cut off a piece of the man’s nose.”
The padre’s eyebrows arched. “That is where ‘The Beak’ received his wound? In Panama?”
Kitto nodded. “But this is the part that has always troubled me. When my uncle spoke to me of the nutmeg he took from Morris, he sometimes used the word ‘treasure,’ and then would correct himself. I believe there were two treasures, and that he was not ready to tell me of the second.”
Padre Alberto folded his hands before him in a position that resembled prayer. “You believe your uncle found Morris after Morris had stolen the Asalto collection?”
“I do, sir! Truly I do,” Kitto said. “Make no mistake, my uncle would have quite happily taken it from priests and nuns. But kill them? He is not that kind of man.”
Padre Alberto shrugged. “If not, then you are saying John Morris is capable of such butchery. Why is this any more believable?”
Kitto gritted his teeth, and he could feel the heat rise in his cheeks.
“It is far more believable, sir. John Morris murdered my father. Right before my eyes!” Kitto stared balefully at the padre and did not turn away when his eyes filled with tears.
Padre Alberto stood and walked to the window. He let his eyes trace the leadwork on the stained glass. The silence grew long between them before he spoke.
“If you speak the truth, then your life was forever altered by that man,” he said. He cleared his throat. “I will share with you another truth.
“Before I became a man of God, I had a wife and a son. When my wife died during childbirth, I turned to God to aid me in my grief, and he saw me through. I returned this generosity in the way I felt I should, abandoning my profession as a tradesman and taking the orders of holy office. My son was raised with the help of church members, nuns, and myself, of course. God ran deep in my boy, but he and I . . .” The padre ran a hand across his clean-shaved chin. “We struggled. He left me when still a young man, left Spain, and traveled to Panama. Some years later I received orders to minister in Panama, and I discovered that my son was making a name for himself there as an artisan—an artist even.”
Kitto understood. “And he worked in gold?” Kitto said. “Ignacio Asalto was your son?” The padre turned, and Kitto was surprised to see a single tear roll down the man’s cheek. Padre Alberto seemed not to notice it.
“We had just begun to mend our relationship when the barbarians attacked Panama. My son insisted on traveling with his art into the jungle, accompanying the church officials.”
Kitto’s jaw dropped. “Your son was one of those who was murdered?”
Alberto nodded. “If what you say is true, Christopher, then John Morris has undone both of our lives.”
Kitto looked down at the cross in his hands and felt a momentary loathing for it. He rose and hobbled over to the priest, holding the gold cross out in front of him.
“I . . . I should not even have this a moment, Padre,” he said. Kitto held out the necklace, but Padre Alberto did not turn. “Please take it, sir.”
Still the man did not move. “Wear it, Christopher. Many people have said that my Ignacio’s hand was blessed by God himself. You need all the protection our Father can possibly provide you.”
Kitto saw his moment. Now, when the man’s back is turned.
“William Quick knows where the rest of your son’s works are hidden,” Kitto said, speaking quickly, hoping that the detail he was leaving out—that he too knew the location of the treasured art—would not be written on his face somehow for the padre to read were he to look now. “He could lead you to them. But, Your Excellency, we have little time! William Quick has been captured by John Morris and has by now reached Jamaica. He is sure to be tried and hanged, sir!”
The padre turned, a look of alarm on his face.
“Your uncle could return my son’s works to me? To Spain?”
Kitto nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Then we must act with haste.”
* * *
CHAPTER 33:
* * *
Jamaica’s Secrets
Kitto stood at the starboard rail of the Spanish ship, looking out over the endless glister of blue that was the Caribbean Sea, lit with gold fire from the new sunrise. The Spanish crew had kept to themselves the last three days. Only Exquemelin, who seemed to know passable Spanish, could provoke them to speak at all. He
informed Kitto that they would likely sight land that day.
A deal had been struck back in Havana. Padre Alberto—using his sway as the most powerful church official in the New World—arranged for a ship to take Exquemelin and Kitto to a remote section of northeastern Jamaica, along with Van, Sarah, Ontoquas, Bucket, and Akin. None of the other pirates were allowed to accompany them. Although Padre Alberto had not put it in such terms, Kitto understood that the remaining fourteen men were collateral to the deal. If Kitto and Exquemelin returned to Cuba with the Asalto treasure, the men would go free. If not . . .
Unconsciously Kitto traced his fingers along his neck. The abraded skin from his near hanging had grown scaly, but it was not so tender as it had been.
“You are thinking of it again,” Sarah said. “That horror.” She came up behind Kitto and wrapped her arms around him. Nearby, Ontoquas held Bucket up in outstretched arms, then would lower him slowly to rub noses together. Akin looked on, grinning broadly. Bucket’s brown cheeks glowed, and his low chuckle was like music, but this time Kitto did not smile.
“I woke myself up dreaming of it last night, the moment when you were taken from the prison cell,” Sarah said.
“All I could think about at first was that I had failed Father,” Kitto said.
“How could you possibly have done that?”
“You. And Duck. I was going to die and not be around to see to you.”
“Kitto,” Sarah said, squeezing him tight. “It is not your role to care for me. It is no one’s role but my own. Do I seem so fragile to you?”
Kitto lowered his head, his cheeks flushed. “I suppose I could not care for you, anyway,” he said. “Without my foot I am even more useless than I used to be.”
“Not true,” Sarah said. “You are somewhat less able, yes. But the world will see you differently now, strange as that is.”