The Observatory.
How had it not been seen? I wondered. How had it remained invisible?
“This is it, then?”
“Aye, an almost sacred place. All it needs is a drop of my blood . . .”
In his hand appeared a small dagger and he never took his eyes from mine as he used it to make his thumb bleed, then placed the red-beaded finger into a tiny recess by the side of the door. It began to open.
All six of us looked at one another. Only Bart Roberts seemed to be enjoying himself.
“And the door opens,” he said with the voice of a showman, “after almost eighty thousand years.”
He stepped to one side and ushered his men through. The nervous crew members looked at one another, then did as their captain ordered and began to move towards the door . . .
Then, for some reason known only to himself, Roberts killed them, all four of them. With one hand he buried his dagger in the eye of the leading man and pushed his body aside at the same time he drew his pistol and fired into the face of the second man. The last two crew members had no time to react as Black Bart drew his second pistol and fired point-blank into the chest of a third man, pulled his sword and ran the final man through.
It was the same man who had brought the chest on deck, who’d looked to Roberts for some words of praise. He made an odd, choking sound and Roberts held him there a second, then slid the cutlass home to the hilt and twisted it. The body on his blade went taut and the deck-hand looked at his captain with imploring, uncomprehending eyes until his body relaxed, slid off the steel and thumped to the ground, chest rising once, twice, then staying still.
So much death. So much death.
“Jesus, Roberts, have you gone mad?”
He shook blood from his cutlass then fussily cleaned it with a handkerchief.
“Quite the contrary, Edward. These wags would have gone mad at seeing what lies beyond this gate. But you, I suspect, are made of sterner stuff. Now, pick up that chest and carry it hither.”
I did as he asked, knowing that to follow Roberts was a bad idea. A terrible, bloody idea. But I was unable to prevent myself from doing it. I’d come too far to back out.
Inside it was like an ancient temple. “Dirty and decrepit,” said Roberts, “not quite as I remember. But it has been over eighty millennia.”
I shot him a glare. More mumbo jumbo. “Oh rot, that’s impossible.”
His look in return was unknowable. “Step as if on thin ice, Captain.”
On stone steps we descended through the centre of The Observatory, moving into a large bridge chamber. All my senses were alive as I looked around and took in the vast openness of the space.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said Roberts in a hushed voice.
“Aye,” I replied and found I was whispering, “like something out of a fairy-tale, one of them old poems.”
“There were many stories about this place once. Tales that turned into rumours, and again into legend. The inevitable process of facts becoming fictions, before fading away entirely.”
We entered a new room altogether, what could only be described as an archive, a huge space lined with low shelves on which were stacked hundreds of small vials of blood, just like the ones in the coffer—just like the one I had seen Torres use on Bartholomew Roberts.
“More blood vials.”
“Yes. These cubes contain the blood of an old and ancient people. A wonderful race, in their time.”
“The more you talk, man, the less I understand,” I said irritably.
“Only remember this; the blood in these vials is not worth a single reale to anyone anymore. It may be again, one day. But not in this epoch.”
We were deep within the bowels of the Earth by then, and walked through the archives into what was the main theatre of The Observatory. Again it was astounding and we stood for a second, craning our necks to gaze from one side of the vast domed chamber to the other.
At one side of the chamber was what looked like a pit, with just a sloshing sound from far below to indicate water somewhere, while in the middle of the chamber was a raised dais with what looked like a complicated pattern carved into the stone. As Roberts bade me put the chest down a low noise began. A low, humming sound that was intriguing at first but began to build . . .
“What’s that?” I felt as though I was having to shout to make myself heard although I wasn’t.
“Ah yes,” said Roberts, “a security measure. Just a moment.”
Around us the walls had begun to glow, letting off a pulsing white light that was as beautiful as it was unsettling. The Sage walked across the floor to the raised platform in the middle and put his hand to a carved indent in the centre. Straight away the sound receded and the room around us was silent again though the walls still glowed.
“So what is this place?” I said to Roberts.
“Think of it as like a large spyglass. A device capable of seeing great distances.”
The glow. The blood. This “device.” My head was beginning to spin, and all I could do was stand and watch open-mouthed as Roberts reached into the coffer with practised fingers, as though it was something he’d done dozens of times before, then pulled out a vial and held it up to the light, just as he had on the day we took possession of the chest.
Satisfied, he bent to the raised dais in front of him and placed the crystal inside. Something happened then—something I still can’t quite believe—the glow on the walls seemed to ripple like mist, coalescing, not into fog but into images, a series of opaque pictures, as though I were looking through a window at something, at . . .
FIFTY-SIX
Calico Jack Rackham, as I live and breathe.
But I wasn’t looking at him. No. It was as though I was him. As though I were looking through his eyes. In fact, the only reason I knew it was Calico Jack was the Indian fabric of his coat sleeve.
He was walking up the steps towards The Old Avery. My heart leapt to see the old place, even more careworn and dilapidated than ever before . . .
Which meant that this wasn’t an image from the past. It wasn’t an image I had ever experienced myself because I’d never seen The Old Avery in its current state of disrepair. I hadn’t visited Nassau since the true rot set in.
And yet . . . And yet . . . I was seeing it.
“This is bloody witchcraft,” I spluttered.
“No. This is Calico Jack Rackham . . . Somewhere in the world at this moment.”
“Nassau,” I said, as much to him as to myself. “This is happening right now? We’re seeing through his eyes?”
“Aye,” said Roberts
It wasn’t as though I returned my attention to the image. It was simply there in front of me. As if I were part of it, inside it. Which in a way I was, because when Calico Jack turned his head the image moved with him. I watched as he looked towards a table where Anne Bonny sat with James Kidd.
A long, lingering glance over Anne Bonny. Over certain parts of Anne Bonny. The dirty bastard. But then, oh my God, she looked over from the table where she sat with James Kidd and returned his look. And I mean a real proper, lascivious look. That roving eye I told you about? She was giving old Calico Jack the full benefit.
Bloody hell. They’re having an affair.
Despite everything—despite the wonders of The Observatory—I found myself suppressing a chuckle to think of James Bonny, that treacherous turncoat, wearing the horns. Calico Jack? Well, the poxy git had marooned me, hadn’t he? So there was no love lost there. But he did give us our weapons, ammunition and grub and, well, he did have Anne warming his bed, so you had to hand it to him.
Now, Calico Jack was listening to Anne and James chatting.
“I don’t know, Jim,” Anne was saying, “I haven’t the faintest idea how to pilot a ship. That ain’t work a woman does.”
What on earth were they cooking up?
“Tosh. I’ve seen a score of ladies who can reef a sail and spin a capstan.”
“Would you tea
ch me to fight? With a cutlass, like? And how maybe to handle a pistol?”
“All that and more. But you have to want it and work for it. There’s no stumbling into true success.”
Now Calico Jack confirmed what I thought. His disembodied voice seemed to echo off the stone. “Oi, lad, that’s my lass yer making love to. Lay off or I’ll cut ya.”
“Up your arse, Rackham. ‘Lad’ is the last thing you should be calling me . . .”
Oh yes? I thought. Was James Kidd about to reveal her disguise?
James was reaching beneath his/her shirt. Calico Jack was blustering, “Oh, is that right . . . Lad?”
Roberts removed the cube from the Observatory controls and the image evaporated.
I bit my lip and thought of the Jackdaw. Ade didn’t like our current situation. He was dying to make sail.
But he wouldn’t do it without me.
Would he?
Now the glow that hung in the chamber before us became something else again, and all thoughts of the Jackdaw’s intentions were forgotten, as Roberts said, “Let’s try another. Governor Woodes Rogers,” and placed another crystal cube into the console and new images formed.
We were seeing through the eyes of Woodes Rogers. Standing with him was Torres and not far away was El Tiburón. Suddenly the vision was filled with the image of a blood vial being held up for examination by Rogers.
He was speaking. “You have a bold idea. But I must think it through carefully.”
The Observatory chamber room filled with the sound of Torres’s reply.
“A simple pledge of loyalty is all you need suggest to the House of Commons. An oath, a gesture, and a simple ceremonial dram of blood taken from the finger. That’s all.”
Christ. Whatever Anne and Mary had been cooking up, it was nothing compared to this lot. Still trying to control the bleeding world—bleeding being the operative word. And doing it how? The English Parliament.
Now Rogers was speaking. “The ministers may give me trouble, but it should be easy enough to convince the House of Lords. They do adore an excess of pomp and circumstance.”
“Exactly. Tell them it’s a show of fealty to the king . . . Against those revolting Jacobites.”
“Yes, indeed,” replied Rogers.
“The crucial detail is the blood. You must get a sample from each man. We want to be ready when we find The Observatory.”
“Agreed.”
Roberts removed the cube from the console and looked at me, triumph in his eyes. Now we knew what the Templars were plotting. Not only that, but we were one step ahead of them.
The images had gone, the strange glow had returned to the walls and I was left wondering if I’d imagined the whole thing. Meantime, Roberts pulled something from the console and held it aloft. A skull. The skull in which he’d placed the vials of blood.
“A precious tool, you see?”
“Sorcery, that’s what it is,” I said.
“Not so. Every mechanism that gives this device its light is a true and physical thing. Ancient, yes, but nothing supernatural or strange.”
I looked doubtfully at him, thinking, You’re kidding yourself, mate. But decided not to pursue it.
“We’ll be masters of the ocean with that,” I said. Wanting to hold the skull, reaching out to take it from him, overcome with the desire to feel the weight of it in my palm. I felt a tremble as he came forward with it, his hand outstretched. And then, instead of giving it to me, he whipped it around and struck me in the face with it, knocking me across the floor of The Observatory, then over the precipice of the pit.
I fell, slamming into the stone on the way down, whipped by the vegetation that clung to the rock face but unable to get a grip on it and stop my fall. I felt a searing pain in my side, then smacked into the water below, thanking God I had the presence of mind to turn my fall into the semblance of a dive. From that height, that instinct might have saved my life.
Even so, my entrance into the water was a messy one. I crashed into it and floundered, swallowing water, trying not to let the pain in my side drag me under. As I broke the surface and gasped for breath I looked up, only to see Roberts gazing down upon me.
“There’s nothing in my code about loyalty, young man.” He taunted me, his voice echoing in the distance between us. “You played your role, but our partnership is done.”
“You’re a dead man, Roberts,” I roared back, only I couldn’t quite manage a roar. My voice was weak and, anyway, he’d left, and I was too busy trying to tend to the flaming pain in my side and pull myself to safety.
When I pulled myself to the side what I found was a branch sticking from my side, the wound colouring my robes red. I yanked it out with a scream, tossed the stick away and clenched my teeth as I held the wound, feeling blood seep through my fingers. Roberts, you bastard. You bastard.
With the wound still held closed, I climbed back to The Observatory, then limped out and back down to the beach, pain-sweat pouring off me. But as I stumbled out of the long grass and onto the beach what I saw filled me with anguish. The Jackdaw, my beloved Jackdaw, had left. There was just the Rover anchored off shore.
There, where the beach met the sea, was moored a yawl, the coxswain and rowers silent sentinels with the sea at their backs as they awaited their captain—Captain Bartholomew Roberts, who stood before me at the entrance to the beach.
He crouched. His eyes flashed and he smiled that peculiar joyless smile of his. “Oh . . . your Jackdaw has flown, Edward, eh? That’s the beauty of a democracy . . . The many outvote the one. Aye, you could sail with me, but with a temper as hot as yours I fear you’d burn us all to cinders. Luckily I know the King’s bounty on your head is a large one and I intend to collect.”
The pain was too much. I could hold it together no more and felt myself passing out. The last thing I heard as the darkness claimed me was Bartholomew Roberts, softly taunting me.
“Have you ever seen the inside of a Jamaican prison, boy? Have you?”
PART IV
FIFTY-SEVEN
A lot can happen in six months. But in the six months to November 1720, it happened to other people. Me, I was mouldering in jail in Kingston. While Bartholomew Roberts became the most feared pirate of the Caribbean, commanding a squadron of four vessels, his flagship The Royal Fortune at its head, I was trying and failing to sleep on a roll on the floor of a cell so cramped I couldn’t lie straight. I was picking maggots from my food and holding my nose to get it down. I was drinking dirty water and praying it wouldn’t kill me. I was watching the striped grey light from the bars of the door and listening to the clamour of the jail: the curses; night-time screams; a constant clanging that never ceased, as though someone, somewhere, spent all day and night rattling a cup along the bars; and, sometimes, I was listening to my own voice, just to remind myself that I was still alive, when I would curse my luck, curse Roberts, curse Templars, curse my crew . . .
I had been betrayed—by Roberts, of course, though that was no surprise—but also by the Jackdaw. My time in jail gave me the distance I needed to see how my obsession with The Observatory had blinded me to the needs of my men, and I stopped blaming them for leaving me at Long Bay. I’d decided if I was lucky enough to see them again I’d greet them like brothers and tell them I bore no grudge and offer apologies of my own. Even so. The image of the Jackdaw’s sailing away without me burned like a brand on my brain.
Not for much longer though. No doubt my trial approached—though I had yet to hear, of course. And after my trial would come my hanging.
Yesterday they had one. A pirate hanging, I mean. The trial was held in Spanish Town, and five of the men tried went to the gallows the day after at Gallows Point. They hanged the other six the next day in Kingston.
One of those they hung yesterday was “Captain John Rackham,” the man we all knew as Calico Jack.
Poor old Jack. Not a good man but not an especially bad one, either. And who can say fairer than that? I hoped he’d managed to get e
nough liquor down him before they sent him to the gallows. Keep him warm for the journey to the other side.
Thing was, Calico Jack had a couple of lieutenants, and their trial was to start this very day. I was due to be brought up into the courtroom, in fact, where they said I might be needed as a witness although they hadn’t said whether for the defence or the prosecution.
The two lieutenants, you see, were Anne Bonny and Mary Read.
And therein lies a tale. I’d witnessed the story’s beginning with what I saw at The Observatory: Calico Jack and Anne Bonny were lovers. Jack had worked his charm, tempted her away from James (that scurvy toad) and taken her to sea.
On board she dressed as a man and she wasn’t the only one. Mary Read was aboard ship too, dressed as James Kidd, and the three of them—Calico Jack, Anne and Mary—were all in on it. The two women wore men’s jackets, long trousers and scarves around their necks. They carried pistols and cutlasses and were as fearsome as any man—and more dangerous, what with having more to prove.
For a while they sailed the neighbourhood terrorizing merchant ships, until earlier in the year, when they stopped off at New Providence. There on August 22, the year of our Lord 1720, Rackham and a load of his crew, including Anne and Mary, stole a sloop called the William from Nassau harbour.
Of course Rogers knew exactly who was responsible. He issued a proclamation and despatched a sloop crammed with his own men to catch Calico Jack and his crew.
But old Calico Jack was on a roll, and in between splicing the main brace, which is to say carousing, he attacked fishing boats and merchant ships and a schooner.
Rogers didn’t like that. He sent a second vessel after him.
But old Calico Jack didn’t care, and he continued his piracy westward until the western tip of Jamaica, where he encountered a privateer by the name of Captain Barnet, who saw the opportunity to make a bit of money in return for Jack’s hide.
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