“Have you ever heard of a place called The Observatory?” I asked them.
I’d been thinking about it a lot. At its mention there was a flicker in James Kidd’s eyes. I shot him a glance. He was young—about nineteen or twenty years old, I’d say, so a bit younger than I was, and, just like me, a bit of a hothead. So as Thatch and Hornigold shook their heads, it was he who spoke up.
“Aye,” he said. “I’ve heard of The Observatory. An old legend, like Eldorado or The Fountain of Youth.”
I ushered them to the table where, with a look left and right to see if any of the king’s spies were in residence, I smoothed out the picture purloined from Torres’s mansion and placed it on the table. A bit dog-eared but still—there in front of us was an image of The Observatory and all three men looked at it, some with more interest than others and some who pretended they were less interested than they really were.
“What have you heard?” I asked James.
“It is meant to be a temple or a tomb. Hiding a treasure of some kind.”
“Ah, rocks,” bellowed Edward. “It’s fairy stories you prefer to gold, is it?”
Thatch—he’d have no part in trying to find The Observatory. I knew that from the start. Hell, I’d known that before I even opened my mouth. He wanted treasure he could weigh, on scales; chests filled with pieces of eight, rusted with the blood of their previous owners.
“It’s worth more than gold, Thatch. Ten thousand times above what we could pull off any Spanish ship.”
Ben was looking doubtful too—as a matter of fact, the only ear I seemed to have belonged to James Kidd.
“Robbing the king to pay his paupers is how we earn our keep here, lad,” said Ben with an admonishing tone. He jabbed a grimy, weather-beaten finger at my stolen picture. “That ain’t a fortune, it’s a fantasy.”
“But this is a prize that could set us up for life.”
My two old ship-mates, they were salt of the earth, the two very best men I’d ever sailed with, but I cursed their lack of vision. They spoke of two or three scores to set us up for months, but I had in mind a prize that would set us up for life! Not to mention making me a gentleman, a man of property and promise.
“Are you still dreaming on that strumpet back in Bristol?” jeered Ben when I mentioned Caroline. “Jaysus, let go, lad. Nassau is the place to be, not England.”
For a while I tried to convince myself that it was true, and they were right, and that I should set my sights on more tangible treasures. During days spent drinking, planning raids, then carrying out those raids, drinking to their success and planning more raids, I had plenty of time to reflect on the irony of it all, how standing around the table with my Templar “friends” I’d thought them deluded and silly and yearned for my pirate mates with their straight talking and free-thinking. Yet there on Nassau, I found men who had closed their minds, despite appearances to the contrary, despite what they said, and even the symbolism of the black flag, with which I was presented one afternoon when the sun beat down upon us.
“We fly no colours out here but praise the lack of them,” said Edward Thatch as we looked out towards the Jackdaw, where Adewalé stood by the flagpole. “So let the Black Flag signal nothing but your allegiance to man’s natural freedoms. This one is yours. Fly it proud.”
The flag flapped gently in the wind and I was proud—I was proud. I was proud of what it represented and of my part in it. I had helped build something worthwhile, struck a blow for freedom—true freedom. And yet, there was still a hole deep in my heart, where I thought of Caroline and of the wrong that had been done to me. You see, my sweet, I had returned to Nassau a different man. Those passions buried deep? I was waiting for the day to act upon them.
• • •
In the meantime there were other things to think about, specifically the threat to our way of life. One night found us sitting around a campfire on the beach, our ships moored off shore, the Benjamin and the Jackdaw.
“Here’s to a pirate republic, lads,” said Thatch. “We are prosperous and free, and out of the reach of king’s clergy and debt collectors.”
“Near seven hundred men now pledge their allegiance to the brethren of the coast in Nassau. Not a bad number,” said James Kidd. He cast me a brief sideways glance I pretended not to notice.
“True,” burped Thatch, “yet we lack sturdy defences. If the king were to attack the town, he’d trample us.”
I grasped the bottle of rum he handed to me, held it up to the moonlight to examine it for bits of floating sediment, then, satisfied, took a swig.
“Then let us find The Observatory,” I offered. “If it does what these Templars claim, we’ll be unbeatable.”
Thatch sighed and reached for the bottle. They’d heard this from me a lot. “Not that twaddle again, Kenway. That’s a story for schoolboys. I mean proper defences. Steal a galleon, shift all the guns to one side. It would make a nice ornament for one of our harbours.”
Now Adewalé spoke up. “It will not be easy to steal a full Spanish galleon.” His voice was slow, clear, thoughtful. “Have you one in mind?”
“I do, sir,” retorted Thatch drunkenly. “I’ll show you. She’s a fussock, she is. Fat and slow.”
Which was how we came to be launching an attack on the Spanish galleon. Not that I knew it then, of course, but I was about to run into my old friends the Templars again.
THIRTY-FOUR
MARCH 1716
We set course south-east or thereabouts. Edward said he’d seen this particular galleon lurking around the lower reaches of the Bahamas. We took the Jackdaw, and as we sailed we found ourselves talking to James Kidd and quizzing him on his parentage.
“The bastard son of the late William Kidd, eh?” Ed Thatch was most amused to relate. “Is that a true yarn you like spinning?”
The three of us stood on the poop-deck and shared a spyglass like it was a black-jack of rum, trading it in order to peer through a wall of early-evening fog so thick it was like trying to stare through milk.
“So my mother told me,” replied Kidd primly. I’m the result of a night of passion just before William left London . . .”
It was difficult to tell from his voice if he was vexed by the question. He was different like that. Edward Thatch, for example, wore his heart on his sleeve. He’d be angry one second, hearty the next. Didn’t matter whether he was throwing punches or doling out drunken, rib-crushing bear-hugs, you knew what you were getting with Edward.
Kidd was different. Whatever cards he was holding, he kept them close to his chest. I remembered a conversation we’d had a while back. “Did you steal that costume from a dandy in Havana?” he’d asked me.
“No, sir,” I replied. “Found this on a corpse . . . one that was walking about and talking shite to my face only moments before.”
“Ah . . .” he’d said, and a look had crossed his face, impossible to decipher . . .
Still, there was no hiding his enthusiasm when we finally saw the galleon we were looking for.
“That ship’s a monster, look at the size of her,” said Kidd as Edward preened himself as though to say, I told you so.
“Aye,” he warned, “and we cannot last long face-to-face with her. You hear that, Kenway? Keep your distance, and we’ll strike when fortune favours us.”
“Under cover of darkness, most likely,” I said with my eye to the spyglass. Thatch was right. She was a beauty. A fine ornament for our harbour indeed, and an imposing line of defence in its own right.
We let the galleon draw away towards a disruption of horizon in the distance that I took to be an island. Inagua Island, if my memory of the charts was correct, where a cove provided the perfect place for our vessels to moor, and the abundant plant and animal life made it ideal for re-stocking supplies.
Thatch confirmed it. “I know the place. A natural stronghold used by a French captain named DuCasse.”
“Julien DuCasse?” I said, unable to keep the surprise out of my voice. “The T
emplar?”
“Name’s right,” replied Edward, distracted. “I didn’t know he had a title.”
Grimly I said, “I know the man and if he sees my ship, he’ll know it from his time in Havana. Meaning he may wonder who’s sailing her now. I can’t risk that.”
“I don’t want to lose that galleon,” said Edward. “Let’s think on it and maybe wait till it’s darker before hopping aboard.”
• • •
Later, I took the opportunity to address the men, climbing the rigging and gazing down upon them gathered on the main deck, Edward Thatch and James Kidd among them. I wondered, as I hung there for a moment, waiting for silence to fall, whether Thatch looked at and felt proud of his young protégé, a man he had mentored in the ways of piracy. I hoped so.
“Gentlemen! As is custom among our kind, we do not plunge headlong into folly on the orders of a single madman, but act according to our own collective madness!”
They roared with laughter.
“The object of our attention is a square-rigged galleon, and we want her for the advantage she’ll bring Nassau. So I’ll put it to the vote . . . All those in favour of storming this cove and taking the ship, stomp and shout Aye!”
The men roared their approval, not a single voice of dissent among them and it gladdened the heart to hear it.
“And those who oppose, whimper Nay!”
There was not a nay to be heard.
“Never was the King’s Council this unified!” I roared and men cheered. I looked down at James Kidd, and especially at Edward Thatch, and they beamed their approval.
Shortly after, as we sailed into the cove, I had a thought: I needed to be sure that Julien DuCasse was taken care of. If he saw the Jackdaw, and more to the point, if he saw me and escaped, he could tell his Templar confederates where I was, and I didn’t want that. Not if I still held out hope of locating The Observatory, which, despite what my pals were saying, I still did. I gave the matter some thought, mulling over the various possibilities, and in the end decided to do what had to be done: I jumped overboard.
Well, not straight away, I didn’t. First I told Thatch and James of my plans and then, when my friends had been told that I planned to go on ahead and surprise DuCasse before the main attack started, I jumped overboard.
I swam to shore, where I moved like a wraith in the night, thinking of Duncan Walpole as I did it, mind going back to the evening I’d broken into Torres’s mansion and dearly hoping that tonight didn’t turn out the same way.
I passed clusters of DuCasse’s guards, my limited Spanish picking up snippets of conversation as they moaned about having to hunt down supplies for the boat. Night was falling by the time I came to an encampment and crouched in the undergrowth, where I listened to conversation from within the canvas of a lean-to. One voice in particular I recognized: Julien DuCasse.
I already knew that DuCasse kept a manor house on the island, where he no doubt liked to relax after returning from his expeditions out to control the world. The fact that he wasn’t returning there at that time meant that this was but a fleeting visit to collect supplies.
Now, just one problem. Inside the lean-to my former Templar associate was surrounded by guards. They were truculent guards, who were hacked off at having to collect stocks for the ship, not to mention feeling the sharp edge of Julien DuCasse’s tongue. But they were guards all the same. I looked around at the encampment. On the opposite side was a fire, which had burned down almost to the embers. Close to me were crates and barrels, and looking from them to the fire I could see that they had been placed there deliberately. Sure enough, when I crabbed over and had a better look, what I saw were kegs of gunpowder. I reached behind my neck, where I’d stowed my pistol to keep it dry. My powder was wet, of course, but then access to powder was no longer a problem.
In the middle of the encampment stood three soldiers. On guard, supposedly, but in actual fact mumbling something I couldn’t hear. Cursing DuCasse, probably. Other troops were coming and going and adding to the pile of supplies: firewood, mainly, kindling, as well as water casks that slopped with water drawn from a spring nearby. Not exactly the feast of wild boar DuCasse was hoping for, I’d wager.
Staying in the shadows, and with one eye on the movement of the troops, I crept close to the kegs and gouged a hole in the bottom one, big enough to fill my hands and create a little trail of gunpowder that I began to leave as I crept around the edge of the compound until I was as close to the fire as I dared. My line of gunpowder led in a half circle from where I crouched back to the kegs of gunpowder. At the other side of that circle was the lean-to where Julien DuCasse sat, drinking and dreaming of grand Templar plans to take over the world—and shouting abuse at his recalcitrant men.
Right. I had fire. I had a trail of gunpowder leading from the fire through the undergrowth and to the kegs. I had men waiting to be blown up and I had Julien DuCasse awaiting our moment of reckoning. Now all I needed to do was time things so that none of the boorish troops would see my makeshift fuse before it could detonate the powder.
Crouching, I moved to the fire, then flicked a glowing ember onto the tail of the gunpowder fuse. I steeled myself at the sound it made—it seemed so loud in the night—and thanked God the soldiers were making so much noise. As the fuse fizzed away from me, I hoped I hadn’t inadvertently broken the line of the fuse; hoped I hadn’t accidentally trickled the gunpowder into anything wet; hoped none of the soldiers would arrive back just at the very instant that . . .
Then, one did. He carried a bowlful of something. Fruit, perhaps. But either the smell or the noise alerted him and he stopped at the edge of the clearing and looked down at his boots just as the sizzle-burn of the gunpowder trail ran past his feet.
He looked up and his mouth formed an O to shout for help as I snatched a dagger out of my belt, pulled my arm back and threw it. Thank God for those wasted afternoons defacing trees back home at Bristol. Thank God, as the knife hit him somewhere just above the collar-bone—not an especially accurate shot, but it did the job—so that instead of shouting the alarm he made a muted, strangulated sound and slumped forward to his knees with his hands scrabbling at his neck.
The men in the clearing heard the noise of his body falling, his bowl tumbling, the fruit rolling, and turned to see its source. All of a sudden they were alert but it didn’t matter because even as they pulled their muskets from their shoulders, and a shout went up, they had no idea what hit them.
I’d turned my back, put my hands over my ears and curled up into a ball as the explosion tore across the clearing. Something hit my back. Something soft and wet, that I didn’t particularly want to think about. From further away I heard shouts and knew there would be more men arriving at any moment, so I turned and ran into the clearing, past blown-up bodies of soldiers in various states of mutilation and dismemberment, most of them dead, one of them pleading for death, and through thick black smoke that filled the clearing, embers floating in the air.
DuCasse emerged from the tent, swearing in French, shouting for someone, anyone, to put out the fire. Coughing, spluttering, he waved his hand in front of his face to clear smoke and choking particles of flaming soot and peered into the fog.
And he saw me standing in front of him.
I know that he recognized me because “you” was the only word he said before I drove my blade into him.
My blade hadn’t made a sound.
“You remember the gift you gave me?” The blade made a slight sucking noise as I pulled it from his chest. “Well it answers just fine.”
“You son of a whore,” he coughed, and blood speckled his face. Around us rained the flaming soot like satanic snow.
“As bold as a musket ball, and still half as sharp,” he managed as the life drained from him.
“I’m sorry about this, mate. But I can’t risk your telling your Templar friends about me still kicking around.”
“I pity you, buccaneer. After all you have seen, after all we showed
you of our Order, still you embrace the life of an ignorant and aimless rogue.”
Around his neck I saw something I hadn’t seen before. A key on a chain. I yanked it and it came away easily in my fingers.
“Is petty larceny the extent of your ambition,” he mocked. “Have you no mind to comprehend the scope of ours? All the empires on earth, abolished! A free and opened world, without parasites like you.”
He closed his eyes, dying. His last words were, “May the hell you find be of your own making.”
Behind me I heard men come into the clearing and knew it was time to leave. In the distance I could hear more shouts and the sounds of battle and knew that my ship-mates had arrived and that the cove and galleon would soon be ours and the night’s work over. As I disappeared into the undergrowth I thought about DuCasse’s final words: May the hell you find be of your own making.
We would see about that, I thought. We would see.
PART III
THIRTY-FIVE
MAY 1716
It was two months later, and I was in Tulum off the eastern coast of the Yucatán Peninsula. My reason for being there? The ever-mysterious James Kidd and what he had showed me on Inagua Island.
He had been waiting, I now realize. Waiting for his moment to get me alone. After the death of DuCasse, the theft of his galleon and the . . . well, let’s just say “removal” of the rest of the Frenchman’s men, an operation that boiled down to either “join us and become a pirate,” or “enjoy your swim,” Thatch had sailed for Nassau with the Spanish galleon, taking most of the men with him.
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