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ON STRANGER TIDES 19 page

"You must have smelt it. The magic smell, you know? Like a pan left on a hot fire. Wide-awake iron.

And fresh blood smells that way too, and magic needs fresh blood, so obviously there's iron in it.

Ever hear the story that the gods came here out of the sky as splashes of red-hot iron? No? Why, the very oldest writers claimed that the souls of stars were in the stuff, because it was the last thing a star exhaled before it started to die."

Shandy was afraid the old man had lost his lucidity again, for obviously there was no iron in blood or stars, but he decided to invest one more question in this tangent. "So how does it diminish magicians?"

"Hm?" Sawney blew across the mouth of the bottle, producing a low hooting. "Oh, it doesn't."

Shandy thumped his fist into the sand. "Damn it, governor, I need to know—"

"It's cold iron that messes 'em up— solid iron. It's finished, you see, you can't do magic around it because all the magic is finished too, before you even start. You ever make wine?"

Shandy rolled his eyes. "No, but I know about vinegar and lice, thanks. I—"

"You know vino de Jerez? Sherry, the English call it. Or port?"

"Sure, governor," said Shandy tiredly, wondering if the old man was going to ask him to fetch him a bottle.

"Well, you know how they're made? You know why some of 'em are so sweet?"

"Uh … they're fortified. They mix brandy into the wine and it stops the fermentation, so some sugar can remain in it and not all turn to alcohol."

"Good boy. Yes, the brandy stops the fermentation. And so you still have sugar, yes, but for it to change to alcohol now is not possible. And what is this stuff, this brandy, that stops everything so?"

"Well," said Shandy, mystified, "it's distilled wine."

"Verdad. A product of fermentation makes more fermentation impossible; do you see?"

Shandy's heart was beating faster, for he thought he almost did see. "Cold iron, solid iron, works on magic the way brandy works on fermentation," he said unsteadily. "Is that what you mean?"

"Seguro! A cold iron knife is very good for getting rid of a ghost. Those stories you have heard, I'm sure. With a lot of iron around, solid iron and cold, you still have blood, like the sugar in the sherry, but it cannot be used for magic. Bocors carry no iron, and they do magic, and they are very lacking in blood. You've seen their gums? And around the houses of the most powerful ones is a fine rusty red dust of," he leaned closer and whispered, "iron." Shandy felt goosebumps starting up along his arms.

"And in the Old World," he said softly, "magic stopped being an important factor of life at around the same time iron came into general use for tools and weapons."

Sawney nodded and smiled wryly through his wild white beard. "Not a … coincidence." He blew across the neck of his bottle again: hoot. "And any magically resurrected consciousness is damaged by proximity to cold iron. (Hoot.) A little at a time. (Hoot.) By the time I learned that, it was too late for me. It turns out that ever since I came out of that damned hole in Florida I should have been staying clear of iron—not wear it, not hold it, not even eat something that was cooked in an iron pot!



(Hoot.) High kings used to have to live that way in the Old World, before magic was quite all gone there. Hell. Salads and raw legumes and such you have to eat if you pursue it."

"No meat?" asked Shandy, who'd thought of something.

"Oh, aye, lots of meat, for magic power but also for plain strength, because sorcerors tend to get so pale and dizzy and weak. But of course it's got to be meat that wasn't killed or cleaned or cooked with anything iron. (Hoot.) But you know, I'm not sorry. I've had two hundred extra years of living like a normal man, doing what I please. I'd really be crazy if I'd lived the whole time like some damned bocor, worrying about every bite I ate and terrified to pound a nail into a board."

"So do you know any way, governor, that I could use cold iron to break a sorceror who's so fresh from the Fountain that he's still got the dust of Erebus in the creases of his boots?"

Sawney stared at him for a long moment and then put the bottle down. "Maybe. Who?"

Shandy decided to be honest with him. "Benjamin Hurwood. Or Ulysse Segundo, as he's apparently calling himself now. He's the—"

"Yo conozco, the one with the missing arm. The one who's grooming his daughter's body for his wife's ghost. Poor child—you notice she's fed only greens, and biscuits kept in wood casks? They want her to be conductive magically, but they don't want any strength of will in her, so no meat at all."

Shandy nodded, having realized the significance of Beth Hurwood's odd diet a few moments ago.

"Sure, I'll tell you how to break him. Stab him with a sword."

"Governor," said Shandy in an agony of impatience, "I need something more than that. He—"

"You think I'm simple? Haven't you been listening? Link your blood to the cold iron of the sword.

Make the atoms of blood and iron line up the way a compass needle lines up to face north. Or vice versa. It's all relative. A working magical force will add energy to it, to its own undoing. Or else the force is undone because the lined up iron system is so energetic, you see? If you don't like the idea of a penny falling to the ground, look at it as the ground rushing up to hit the motionless penny, right?

(Hoot.)"

"Great, so how do I do it?"

"(Hoot-hoot.)"

"Governor, how do I get the atoms to line up? How do I link blood and iron?"

Sawney drained the bottle and then put it down and began to sing,

 

Bendita sea el alma,

Y el Senor que nos la manda; Bendita sea el did

Y el Senor que nos lo envid.

 

Again Shandy translated mentally: Blessed be the soul, and the Lord that keeps it in order; blessed be the day, and the Lord that drives away.

He tried for at least another minute to get a coherent answer to his question, but the rum had extinguished the brief spark of alertness in the old man's eyes, and eventually he gave up and got to his feet.

"So long, governor."

"Keep well, lad. No chickens."

"Right." Shandy started away, then paused and turned back. "Say … what's your name, governor?"

"Juan."

Shandy had heard several versions of the name the governor claimed, but it had always been something like Sawney or Ponsea or Gawnsey—he hadn't heard Juan before. "What's your full name, governor?"

The old man cackled and grubbed in the sand for a bit, then looked up at Shandy and said softly but distinctly, "Juan Ponce de Leon."

Shandy simply stood there for several seconds, feeling chilled in spite of the tropical sun that was raising wavering heat mirages over the white sand. At last he nodded, turned, and plodded away, hearing the hooting start up again behind him.

Only after he had crested the rise, and was winding his way through the tangle of tents and huts, did it occur to him that the derelict he'd left hooting into an empty rum bottle really was, or had been, at least, governor of this island—as well as of every other island between here and Florida.

He was striding along between the tents, mentally calculating how much of Davies' money he still had after three months of spending it lavishly on rum, and wondering how long a voyage he could afford—of course it wouldn't have to be very long, Christmas was less than two weeks away, and Hurwood had said that he'd consummate the eviction of Beth from her body "come Yule"—when a figure stepped in front of him. He looked up, and recognized Ann Bonny. He remembered that she had started up a romance with another pardoned pirate, Calico Jack Rackam, very shortly after Shandy had sailed for Haiti, and that the two of them had tried, unsuccessfully, to get Ann a divorce-by-sale.

"Hello, Ann," he said, pausing, for he felt he owed her the opportunity to revile him a little.

"Well, well," said Ann, "if it ain't the cook! Crawled out o' the rum cask for once, eh?"

She looked both leaner and older—not surprisingly, for Governor Rogers had chosen to view the time-honored English common law custom of divorce-by-sale as the height of lewdness, and had promised to have her publicly stripped and flogged if she ever raised the subject again, and a couple of monstrously vulgar songs about that imagined punishment had sprung up and become very popular

—but she still had the hot aura of sexuality in the way she stood and canted her head.

Shandy smiled cautiously. "That's right."

"And how long do you think it'll be before you crawl right back in?"

"I'm sure it'll be at least two weeks."

"I'm not. I give you … half an hour. You're going to die here, Shandy, after a few years of being Governor Sawney's apprentice. Well I'm not going to—Jack and I are getting out of here, damned soon. I finally found a man who's not scared of women."

"I'm glad. I've got to admit they often scare me. I hope you and Rackam are happy."

Ann seemed disconcerted, and stepped back. "Huh. So where are you going?"

"Somewhere north of Jamaica. A ship's been seen there that I think is the old Vociferous Carmichael."

She grinned and seemed to relax, though at the same time she was shaking her head sadly. "My God, it's that girl, still, isn't it? Hurley?"

"Hurwood." He shrugged. "Yeah, it is."

"So will this trip be violating your pardon?"

"I don't know. Will Rackam's involve violating his?"

She smirked. "Just between you and me, Shandy—of course it will. But my Jack's got a girl that don't mind living with an outlaw. Do you?"

"I don't know that either."

She hesitated, then leaned forward and kissed him—very lightly.

"What was that for?" he asked, startled.

Her eyes were very bright. "For? For luck, man."

She turned and walked away, and he strode on toward the shore. Some children were playing with a couple of puppets he'd made once, and as they scrambled out of his way he noticed that they were using strings now to move the little jointed figures. Learn a trade, youngsters, he thought. I don't think your generation will have Mate Care-For to take care of them.

Someone was walking ponderously behind him. He stopped and turned, and then flinched a little to see Woefully Fat staring incuriously down at him. For once remembering that the man was deaf, Shandy just nodded.

"They'll get along without him," the giant bocor rumbled. "Every land go through the time when magic work. We heahabouts is nearin' the end o' dat time. Ah'm sailin' with you."

"Oh?" Shandy was surprised, for he'd tried, with no success, to get Davies' bocor to come along on the trip to Haiti. "Well great, sure, it certainly seems like a trip we could use a good bocor on, and I'm just wasting my time talking, aren't I?" He made do with nodding emphatically.

"You a-goin' to Jamaica."

"Well, no, actually—I mean, we might, we're going near there—"

"Ah was bo'n in Jamaica, though they ship me to Virginia when Ah was fahv. And now I'm goin' back

—to die."

"Uhhh … " Shandy was still trying to think of a response to this, and how to express it in gestures, when the bocor lumbered past him toward the shore, and Shandy had to sprint to catch up. There was a gang of arguing men clustered around the boat Shandy had been wrenching at, and when Shandy approached, two of them strode over to him, waving their arms and shouting. One was Skank, and the other was Venner, his face so red at the moment that his freckles were invisible. "One at a time," said Shandy.

With a furious chop of his hand Venner silenced Skank. "The Jenny isn't going anywhere until Vane gets here," he stated.

"She's sailing for Jamaica this afternoon," said Shandy. Though he kept a mild grin on his face, he was peripherally measuring yards and inches and wondering how quickly he could get to Skank's cutlass.

"You're not captain of her anymore," Venner went on raspingly, his face even darker.

"I'm still her captain," Shandy said.

The men standing around shifted and muttered, obviously not sure whose side they wanted to be on.

Shandy caught part of a sentence: " … damned drunk for a captain … "

Then Woefully Fat stepped forward. "Jenny goin' t' Jamaica," he said in Old Testament prophet tones.

"Leavin' now."

The men were startled, for not even Shank had realized that Davies' bocor was Shandy's ally in this; and though Shandy never took his eyes off Venner's face he could feel their confidence shift toward himself.

Venner and Shandy stared at each other for several seconds, then Skank drew his cutlass and tossed it to Shandy, who caught it by the grip without looking away from Venner. At last Venner looked down at the blade in Shandy's hand, and Shandy knew Venner had decided he wasn't quite drunk enough to take. Then Venner looked around at the other men, and his mouth became a straight, bitter line as, clearly, he realized that the emotional tide had turned against him when Woefully Fat had spoken.

"Well," growled Venner, "I wish you'd … keep us better informed of these things, captain—I—" He paused, then started again, choking out the words as if it hurt his teeth to pass each one. "I certainly … didn't mean to crowd you."

Shandy grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. "No problem!"

He turned and surveyed his crew—and carefully didn't let show in his face the disappointment and apprehension that he felt. This crew, he thought, is a testimonial to the effectiveness of Woodes Rogers' tactics—the only ones who'll sign onto a pirating voyage now are the ones who are too stupid, bloodthirsty or lazy to possibly get along in a law-abiding situation. And a pirating voyage it may well have to be, if we can't find the Carmichael—these thugs and clods will demand plunder.

Here goes my pardon, likelier than not, he thought. But maybe it's better to be an outlaw with purpose than a citizen without.

"Skank," he said, deciding that that young man was the most reliable of them, "you're quartermaster."

He noted, but didn't acknowledge, Venner's quick frown. "Get 'em all aboard and let's be gone before these Navy lads figure out what we intend."

"Aye aye, cap'n."

And twenty minutes later the Jenny, with no fanfare, but with some uncertain glances from the officers aboard the H.M.S. Delicia, sailed out of the New Providence harbor for the last time.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Patterns of morning sunlight dappled the south-facing balcony of one of the grandest houses on the hill above Spanish Town, and when the breeze-shifted pepper tree branches overhead let the sun shine directly on the elegantly bearded man sitting at the breakfast table, he instinctively shaded his face, for it was important to him to keep himself as unlined and youthful-looking as possible. For one thing, investors seemed to feel that a younger man would know more about current markets and the most recent developments in prices and currency values; and for another, the whole point of attaining wealth was lost if one was obviously an old man when one got it.

Another groan from upstairs made his hand shake so that a splash of tea landed in the saucer instead of in the china cup. Damn, thought the man who called himself Joshua Hicks as he pettishly clanked the teapot down. Can't a man have a peaceful breakfast on his own balcony without all these … lamentations? Six more days, he reminded himself, and then I'll have fulfilled my bargain with that damned pirate, and he'll do his tricks and take her away from here and leave me alone.

But even as the thought passed through his mind he recognized it as a vain wish. He'll never leave me alone, he realized, as long as I'm still even a remotely useful tool.

Maybe I should terminate my usefulness, as poor Stede Bonnett had the courage to do when he was in this sort of a situation, with Blackbeard—turn myself in, confess … hell, I met Bonnett a couple of times when the vagaries of the sugar market brought him on business trips to Port-au-Prince, and he was no hero, no saint …

No, he thought, looking past the polished balcony rail, and past the palm fronds waving in the cool mountain breeze, at the descending terraces of white houses that were the residential area of Spanish Town, and, distantly, just visible along the edge of the blue sea, at the red of the roof-tiles of the surviving, landward end of Port Royal. He reached to the side, lifted the stopper out of a crystal decanter and poured amber cognac, glowing gold in the morning sun, into his tea. No, whatever else he was, Bonnett was a braver man than I am. I could never do what he did—and Ulysse knows it, too, damn him. If I've got to live in a cage, I prefer a luxurious one, with bars which, though stronger than iron, can't be seen or touched.

He drained the fortified tea and got to his feet, making sure he had a calm smile on his face before he turned around to face the sitting room … and face the stuffed dog head mounted on the wall like some paltry hunting trophy.

He crossed through the wide sitting room to the hall, but he maintained his smile, for there was a dog head mounted here too. He remembered, with a shudder that made his smile falter, the day in September, shortly after his arrival here, when he'd hung a cloth over every dog head in the house; it had given him a welcome sense of privacy, but within the hour the fearsome black nurse had come in, without knocking of course, and padded all over the house and taken all the cloths off. She hadn't even glanced at him, and of course she couldn't speak with her jaw bound up that way, but the visitation had so upset him that he'd never again tried to blind Ulysse's monitors.

Braced by the brandy, and by the knowledge that the nurse didn't usually arrive until midmorning, Hicks clumped up the stairs and listened outside the door of his guest's room. There was no more moaning, so he pulled back the brass bolt, turned the wooden doorknob and opened the door.

The young woman was asleep, but she woke with a cry when, tiptoeing into the dim room, he accidentally kicked the untouched dinner she'd left on the floor—the wooden bowl turned over in midair and thumped against the wall, scattering the greens all over the carpet. She sat up in bed and squinted at him. "My God … John … ?"

"No, damn it," said Hicks, "it's me. I heard you moaning, and just wanted to make sure all was well.

Who's this John? You've mistaken me for him before."

"Oh." Beth Hurwood slumped back, the hope fading from her eyes. "Yes, all's well."

There were three dog heads in this room, so Hicks drew himself up to his full height and gestured sternly at the scattered leaves and herbs. "Trying to avoid your medicaments again?" he asked. "I won't have that, you know. Ulysse wants you to have them, and what he wants, I enforce!" He just stopped himself from nodding virtuously at the head that was nailed up over the bed.

"My father's a monster," she whispered. "Some day you'll enforce your own immolation."

Hicks forgot the heads and frowned uneasily. In the early days of her captivity he had laughed at Beth's claims that Ulysse Segundo was her father, for she always claimed too that her father had only one arm, while Ulysse very obviously had two; but on the pirate's next visit Hicks had glanced at the man's right hand—it was unarguably living flesh, but it was pink and smooth as a child's, and had no tiniest scar.

"Well," he said now, gruffly, "less than a week from today it will be Christmas. At least then I'll be rid of you."

The young woman flung the bedclothes aside, swung her legs out and tried to stand, but she couldn't lock her knees, and fell back across the bed, panting. "Damn you and my father," she gasped. "Why can't I have food?"

"What do you call this stuff you leave around for people to trip over?" Hicks demanded, stooping to pick up a leaf and then waving it furiously in her face.

"Let me see you eat it," she said.

Hicks stared dubiously at the bit of vegetation, then flung it away with a snort, as if to indicate that he didn't have time for childish dares.

"Let's see you lick your fingers," Beth pressed.

"I … don't have to prove anything to you," he said.

"What is to happen Saturday? You said something once about some 'procedure.' "

Hicks was glad the curtains were drawn across the windows, for he could feel his face getting red.

"You're supposed to be taking your damned medicaments!" he snapped. "You're supposed to be—"

Sleepy, he finished mentally; somnambulistic. Not wide awake and asking awkward questions.

"Besides, your fa—Captain Segundo, I mean, will almost certainly be here by then, so I won't have to do the—what I mean is, you can take it up with him!"

He nodded resolutely and turned on his heel to leave, but he spoiled his dignified exit by emitting a shrill squeak and skipping backward, for the black nurse had silently entered the room and was standing right behind him.

Beth Hurwood was laughing and the nurse was just staring in her usual blank, unnerving way, and Hicks fled—wondering, as he edged hastily around the nurse, why the woman's dress was always sewn shut rather than just buttoned, and why, if she was so crazy about sewing things, she didn't repair her ripped-out pockets, and why she always went barefoot.

Also, he thought as he relaxed on the stairs and fished a handkerchief out of his sleeve to mop his forehead with, I wonder why other blacks fear the woman so. Why, the black cook that used to work here took one look at her and jumped through a second-floor window! And so after I discovered that any black would rather be flogged all day than set foot in this house for one second, I had to hire servants, white people. And even a lot of them have quit.

He went back to his chair on the balcony, but the morning's tranquility was shattered, and he flung the lukewarm tea out of his cup and refilled it with neat cognac. Damn Ulysse and his "help," he thought. I should never have left Haiti and changed my name.

He sipped his brandy and scowled, remembering how convincing Ulysse Segundo had been at first.

The man had arrived in Port-au-Prince in the first week of August, and had immediately begun negotiating letters of credit from the most respected European banks. He had made a good impression, socially: he spoke French beautifully, he was cultured, well-dressed, the owner of a fine ship—which, though, he kept at a remote mooring, ostensibly because of a woman aboard who was recovering from a brain fever.

Hicks had been impressed with the man's evident wealth and independence when he was introduced to him, and, a few days later, when Segundo had dinner with him and quietly offered to let him participate in a couple of less than ethical but lucrative-sounding investments, was impressed too with his intimate knowledge of the international web that was New World economics. Evidently no deed or grant or purchase or fraud was too ancient or obscure for Segundo to know of it and make merciless use of it. Hicks had thought one would have to be able to read minds, or talk to the dead, to know some of these things.

And then, very late one mid-August evening, Segundo had come to Hicks' house with bad news. "I'm afraid," he had said as Hicks blinked sleepily at him and sent an awakened servant for some brandy,

"that you're in danger, my friend."

The man who now called himself Hicks had only been awake for a minute or so, just since Segundo's midnight pounding on the door, and at first he thought Segundo meant that robbers or escaped slaves were approaching his house. "Danger?" he said, rubbing his eyes. "I have ten trustworthy servants and a dozen loaded guns—what—"

"I don't mean danger of injury tonight," Segundo had interrupted, smiling. "I mean danger of legal prosecution soon."

That had awakened him. He took a glass of brandy from his servant, sipped it, and then stared cautiously at Segundo. "On what charge?"

"Well," said Segundo with a laugh as he sat down in one of the dining room chairs, "that's difficult to say. You and I have a … business associate in common, and I'm afraid he's been captured, and is trying to ingratiate himself with the authorities by implicating everybody he has ever had extra-legal dealings with … smuggling and fencing, mostly, I believe, but he's been known to do other sorts of favors for certain Caribbean businessmen, the odd kidnapping or murder or arson. Thank you," he added as the servant brought him a glass.

Hicks sat down across the table from Segundo. "Who?"

Segundo glanced toward the yawning servant, then leaned forward. "Shall we call him … Ed Thatch?"

Hicks drained his glass, started to ask for a refill, then told the servant to leave the decanter and get out. "What," he said when the man had gone, "extra-legal dealings has he told them about?" God knew Blackbeard had assisted him in a number of such, starting with the drowning of a too-knowledgeable maiden aunt when he had begun forging evidence to support his story that his brother was dead.

"Well now, there's the rub, you see. I don't know. As much as he can remember, we must assume."

Hicks groaned and lowered his face into his hands, and Segundo reached across and refilled his glass.

"Don't despair," he told him. "Come on, now, look at me—I'm implicated too, at least as direly as you are, and am I downcast? There's a way out of every disaster except your last one."

Hicks had looked up then. "What can we do?"

"That's easy. Leave Haiti. You can take passage on my ship."

"But," Hicks had protested unhappily, "how could I bring along enough money to live comfortably?

And they'd be sure to come after me."

Ulysse Segundo had winked. "Not if you were still here. What if a body were found in your bedchamber, in your night-clothes … a body of your height and build and color … with its face destroyed by a load of shot from a blunderbuss … and a suicide note beside it, in your handwriting?"

" … But … who … "

"Don't you have some indentured white men working for you? Would one be missed?"

"Well … I suppose … "

"And as for money, I'll buy you out right now—your house, lands and everything. Foreseeing this eventuality, I have had my solicitor draw up a series of quitclaims, promissory notes and bills of sale, back-dated throughout these last two years, which will seem to indicate that you've lost everything, piece by piece, to a group of creditors—it would take an international army of accountants years to discover that each of the creditors, tracked back through all the silent partnerships and anonymous holdings companies, is me." He smiled brightly. "And that way there will be a motive for your suicide, you see? Financial ruin! For I suppose you do owe various people money, and when they try to collect from your estate, our manufactured story will come out."

And so they had done it. Hicks had signed all the papers; then, after Segundo left, he went to the indentured servants' quarters, woke up a man of the right age and build, and curtly told him to come to the main house. Without explanation he led the man up to his bedchamber and gave him drugged wine, and when the man's mystified eyes had finally closed in unconsciousness, Hicks stripped him and threw his clothes into the fireplace, then dressed the slack body in his own nightshirt. He loaded a blunderbuss pistol with a good double-handful of rings and coins and gold chains, and packed all the rest of his gold and jewelry into three chests. Segundo returned with several ill-looking but powerful sailors before dawn, and the last thing Sebastian Chandagnac did, before abandoning his ancestral home and adopting the name Joshua Hicks, was to fire the gun into the face of the unconscious servant. The recoil sprained his wrist, and he was appalled by the noise and the instant destruction—


Date: 2015-02-03; view: 627


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