ON STRANGER TIDES 23 page

Bang.

The pistol was fired and bloody spray and bits of cloth sprang away from a new hole in the back of Woefully Fat's toga, but the shot didn't even jar the bocor. He pushed the French doors open and stepped out onto the sidewalk. Shandy was right behind him.

The officer had dropped his spent pistol and now ran up and grabbed the giant black man, apparently intending to pull him back inside; but he only managed to pull the sailcloth toga free of the huge shoulders.

Several people, including the officer, screamed when they saw the stump of the gaff-spar jutting bloodily from the broad back, but Woefully Fat took another step forward, and one bare foot, and then the other, dented Jamaican soil.

Shandy was following him, and when the bocor suddenly toppled backward he instinctively raised his bound hands to break the man's fall.

The jagged iron gaff-saddle ripped the rope around his wrists as the limp body collapsed, and then Woefully Fat lay dead on the sidewalk, his feet still on the grass, a broad smile on his skyward-turned face … and Shandy strained at the damaged rope until it broke, and his hands were free.

He skipped out into the enclosed yard. The gunshot had brought people to every surrounding doorway, and quite a number of them were holding swords and pistols. Shandy realized that he was recaptured … and then he thought of something.

At a fast walk, hoping to avoid drawing attention, he made his way to the flagpole; then, yawning as if to imply that this was a daily routine, he began climbing the wooden pole, several times gripping the paired flag-hoisting lines with one hand for extra traction. He was halfway to the top before the Navy officer lurched out into the yard and saw him.

"Come down from there!" the man yelled.

"Come up and get me," Shandy called back. He had reached the top now, and was hunched over the brass sphere at the top of the pole, his legs crossed just under it and the British flag draped over his head like a hood.

"Fetch an axe!" yelled the officer, but Shandy had heaved himself backward, hauling on the top of the pole; it swayed back several yards, then stopped, came back up and went past the upright point and bent over the other way; Shandy hung on, and when it swung back in the original direction again he pulled on the pole-top sphere even harder … and at the farthest, most straining moment of the bend, the flexed pole snapped. The top six feet, with Shandy at the end, spun rapidly end over end and crashed down onto the tile roof as the rest of the pole whipped its splintered top back over the yard.

Half stunned by the sudden spin and impact, Shandy slid down the roof headforemost, toward the gutter, but he managed to spread his arms and legs and drag to an abrading halt; the flagpole-top and several broken loose tiles rolled past him into the abyss.

Whimpering with vertigo, he began doing a sort of spasmodic reverse backstroke on the slanting tiles, and by the time the bricks and flagpole section clattered and smashed on the sidewalk below, he had got his knees over the roof peak. He slithered around to one side until he could sit up, and then he got to his feet, ran bent-kneed across the cracking tiles to the roof-brushing branches of a tall olive tree, and, with an ease born of many hours scrambling around in the rigging of sailing craft, swung and slapped his way down to the ground. A vegetable wagon was rolling past through the alley he found himself in, and he hopped over its sideboard and lay flat among a bumpy, bristly load of coconuts as the wagon rattled on inland, away from the waterfront.

He clambered out of the wagon when it stopped outside a thatch-roofed market in a main street in Kingston. People stared, but he just gave them a benevolent smile and strode away toward the shops.

Hurwood's clothes were torn now, and covered with red brick-dust and strands of coconut bristle, so as he walked he unobtrusively fumbled at the inner lining of his baldric, tore open the loose stitching he'd done that morning, and then worked out a couple of the gold scudos he'd sewn into the lining. He glanced at the coins in his gloved palm. That, he thought, should be plenty for a new set of clothes and a good sword.

He halted as a thought struck him, then smirked at himself and walked on, but after a few more steps he stopped again. Oh well, he told himself, why not—it can't hurt, and you can certainly afford it.

Yes, you may as well buy a compass, too.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Somehow the fact of its being Christmas night only emphasized the land's strangeness: the warm odors of punch and roasted turkey and plum pudding just made the dinner guests more aware of the wild spice smells from the inland jungles; the yellow lamplight and stately violin music spilling out from the open windows couldn't stray far from the house before being absorbed by the darkness and the creaking of the tall palm trees in the tropical night breeze; and the guests themselves seemed faintly ill at ease in their European finery. There was a quality of defensiveness in their laughter, and their repartee seemed to strain forlornly for sophistication.

The party was well attended, though. Word had got out that Edmund Morcilla was to be there, and many of Jamaica's moneyed citizens, curious about the wealthy newcomer, had chosen to accept the hospitality of Joshua Hicks, who on his own had little beyond his street address to recommend him.

And their host was clearly overjoyed by the success the evening had been so far. He bustled from one end of the wide ballroom to the other, kissing ladies' hands, making sure cups were filled, and tittering softly at witticisms; and, when he wasn't talking to anyone, glancing around anxiously and smoothing his clothes and well-groomed beard with manicured hands.

By eight o'clock the arriving horses and carriages were actually waiting in line in front of the house, and Sebastian Chandagnac found himself unable to greet each guest personally—though he made it a point to hurry up to the towering figure of Edmund Morcilla and shake his hand—and it happened that one man slipped in unnoticed and crossed unaccosted to the table where the crystal punchbowl stood.

His appearance drew no particular notice, for none of the invited guests could have known that his wig and sword and velvet coat had been purchased only that afternoon with pirates' gold; there was, perhaps, more of a sailor's roll in his walk than would be expected in one so elegantly dressed, and less formality than usual in the way his gloved hand occasionally brushed the hilt of his rapier, but this was after all the New World, and people far from home were often forced to acquire discreditable skills. The servant tending the punchbowl filled a cup and handed it to him without giving him a second glance.

Shandy took the cup of punch and sipped it while he let his gaze traverse the room. He wasn't sure how to proceed, and his only plan so far was to figure out which of these people was Joshua Hicks, get the man alone for a little while and induce him to say where Beth Hurwood was being kept, and then free her, hastily tell her a thing or two, and try to make good his escape from this island.

The hot punch, tart with lemon and cinnamon, reminded Shandy of Christmases in his youth, hurrying with his father through the snowy streets of some European city to the warmth of the inevitable rented room, where his father would prepare at least a token Christmas dinner and drink over the fire that raised sparkling reflections in the glass eyes of the dozens of hanging marionettes.

None of these memories—his father, snowy winters, or marionettes—were pleasant subjects for his thoughts, and he forced himself to concentrate on his present surroundings.

Money had certainly been spent on this place—as a sort of informal import and export agent himself, Shandy knew how expensive and difficult it must have been to ship from Europe all these huge, gilt-framed paintings, these crystal chandeliers, this furniture. Nothing in the room was of local manufacture; and, to judge by the smells from the kitchen, even the food was to be as genuinely English as possible. It wasn't terribly enticing to Shandy, who'd grown fond of green turtle, manioc root and salmagundi salad.

One of Hicks's servants now entered the room and, raising his voice to be heard over the waves of conversation, announced, "If you will all please step this way—dinner will be served shortly."

The guests began bolting the last sips of punch and shuffling across the hardwood floor toward the doors that led into the dining room; Shandy kept smiling and let himself be drawn along, but he was worried—if he followed everyone in, it would quickly become apparent that there was no place set for him, and that he hadn't been invited. Where the hell was Hicks? What Shandy needed was a diversion, and he glanced around, hoping to see some especially fat person that he could surreptitiously trip.

Just when he had spotted a likely candidate—a portly old fellow, entirely encased in lace-edged red velvet, who could probably be propelled right into the punchbowl—a diversion took place without his help.

On the far side of the ballroom four men came in through the front door at once, crowding considerably to do it. The first one was neatly bearded and had his back to Shandy most of the time—

he seemed to be the host, for he was waving his arms and protesting about something; next to him was a burly giant of a man, watching with evident amusement and puffing on a thin black cigar—he was elegantly dressed but wore no wig, a peculiar omission since his head was completely bald; and behind them, obviously insisting on entering, came two British Naval officers.

"It's for your own safety, and that of your guests," one of the officers said loudly, and the man who Shandy guessed was Hicks finally shrugged and waved the two Navy men inside. Shandy inconspicuously stepped back so as to be behind the fat fellow in red velvet—and, just in case, closer to the window.

The bald giant moved aside to let the two officers get past, and his grin behind the little cigar was so sly and knowing that Shandy stared at him curiously. Abruptly it seemed to Shandy that he'd seen this man before, been in awe of him … though the broad, unlined face was certainly not familiar.

He didn't get time to ponder it, though, for the nearest Navy man at once began speaking to the company. "My name is Lieutenant MacKinlay," he said loudly. "We won't prolong our interruption of your dinner longer than to warn you all that the pirate Jack Shandy was briefly apprehended in Kingston today; he escaped, though, and is at large in the island."

There was a stir of interest at this, and even in his sudden fright Shandy noticed that the bald giant raised his bushy eyebrows and took the cigar from his mouth in order to closely scrutinize the diners.

The amusement was gone from his face, replaced by a look of watchful caution.

"The reason we feel you should be apprised of this," MacKinlay went on, "is that, after purchasing new clothes, he made several inquiries as to the location of this house. He is described as being well dressed, but wearing white kid leather gloves that show bloodstains at the seams."

The portly old man in front of Shandy hitched ponderously around and pointed at Shandy's gloved hands. He was spitting excitedly and trying to produce words.

Lieutenant MacKinlay hadn't yet noticed the old man's consternation—though people near Shandy were craning their necks curiously—and he continued his speech. "It seems clear to us that Shandy has heard about this dinner, and intends to come here for the purpose of committing some robbery or kidnap. A group of armed Navy men is even now being mustered to come here and apprehend him, and in the meantime my companion and I—"

Hicks had noticed the commotion at the back of the crowd, and he peered alertly in that direction—

and then the spitting old man fell to his knees, and Shandy found himself staring straight across the room at Hicks, meeting his gaze.

Both Shandy and Hicks flinched from what seemed the sight of a ghost.

After the first moment of shock, Shandy knew it wasn't his father—the face was too pudgy, and the mouth too pursed—but the eyes, the nose, the cheekbones, the forehead, were all his father's, and just for a moment he marveled that chance could have produced such a resemblance in a stranger; but in the next moment he realized who it must be, and what must have been the real story of the "suicide"

of Sebastian Chandagnac.

"My God!" exclaimed a woman near Shandy. "That's him there!"

Several men among the guests frowned and slapped the hilts of their dress swords, but somehow getting room to draw their blades involved moving quickly away from the pirate.

Suddenly and jarringly, the bald man laughed, a deep, booming mirth like storm surf crashing on rocks, and Shandy recognized him.

Then the two Navy officers had drawn pistols and were shouting for the guests to move aside, and a number of men were reluctantly moving in on Shandy, waving the sort of swords one orders from a tailor, and Sebastian Chandagnac was loudly demanding that the officers shoot the pirate instantly.

Women screamed, men tripped over chairs, and Shandy leaped up onto the table, drawing his saber in midair, and he kicked the punchbowl onto the floor as he sprinted down the table toward the front door; MacKinlay's pistol banged deafeningly, but the ball splintered the wall paneling above Shandy's head, and then he had leaped off the end of the table. MacKinlay's companion was pointing a pistol of his own directly at Shandy's chest, and Shandy, helpless to do anything else, lunged at him, caught the long pistol barrel with his saber blade and got a fast corkscrewing bind on it that sent it flying out of the officer's hand before he could fire.

Men were slipping and cursing on the wet floor behind him, and a couple of swords were noisily dropped, and Shandy leaped to the side, whipped his blade around, and put his point against MacKinlay's chest. Everyone froze. The pistol finished clattering across the floor and clanked against the wall.

"I believe I'll surrender," Shandy said into the sudden silence, "but before I do, I want to tell you who Joshua Hicks is. He's—"

Sebastian Chandagnac had dived for the dropped pistol and now came up with it; sitting, he fired it at Shandy.

The ball exploded the head of Lieutenant MacKinlay—and as the body cartwheeled away and the screaming and crashing resumed, louder, Shandy's uncle scrambled up, drew his own dress sword and ran at him. Shandy parried the blade easily, though his white gloves were gleaming red along the seams, and he rushed in and, one-handed, grabbed his uncle by the throat.

"Beth Hurwood, the girl you're holding," he snarled. "Where is she?"

The bald man Morcilla had stepped forward as if to interfere, but at this he paused.

"Upstairs," wept Sebastian Chandagnac, his eyes closed, "locked room."

Women were sobbing and several men stood nearby with drawn swords, glancing at one another uncertainly. The second Navy officer had drawn his sword but seemed reluctant to approach while Shandy was apparently holding a hostage.

Shandy's left thumb was on his uncle's larynx, and he knew he could crush it as easily as he could break an egg; but he was sick of deaths, and didn't think he'd derive any sense of fulfillment from watching this scared little man flop around on the floor choking to death on his own throat bones. He switched his grip to the man's collar.

"Who … are you?" Sebastian Chandagnac croaked, his eyes wide with horror.

Suddenly Shandy realized that, clean-shaven and with all the new lines of age and weariness in his face, he must look very much like his father had when Sebastian would have seen him last … and of course this man didn't know that his nephew John Chandagnac had come to the Caribbean.

Having decided not to kill him, Shandy found that he could not refrain from stirring up the man's guilt. "Look me in the eye," he whispered chokingly.

The old man did, though with much trembling and moaning.

"I'm your brother, Sebastian," Shandy said through clenched teeth. "I'm Francois."

The old man's face was nearly purple. "I heard you had … died. Really died, I mean."

Shandy grinned ferociously. "I did—but haven't you ever heard of vodun? —I've only come back from Hell tonight to fetch you, dear brother."

Apparently Sebastian had heard of vodun, and found Shandy's claim all too plausible; his eyes rolled back in his head and, with as sharp an exhalation as if he'd been punched in the belly, he went limp.

Surprised but not really dismayed, Shandy let the body tumble to the floor.

Then, almost side by side, Shandy and the bald man sprang for the stairs; presumably Edmund Morcilla was pursuing the pirate, but it was hard to be sure they weren't both racing toward some common goal. A few men with swords leaped quickly into their path, and then even more quickly out of it, and a moment later Shandy was bounding up the stairs three at a time, panting and praying that he wouldn't pass out quite yet.

At the top of the stairs was a corridor, and he paused there, his chest heaving, and turned to face the man who called himself Morcilla, who had stopped two steps short of the landing. His eyes were level with Shandy's.

"What … do you want?" Shandy gasped.

The giant's smile looked cherubic on his smooth face. "The young woman."

There was more shouting and crashing below, and Shandy shook his head impatiently. "No. Forget it.

Go back downstairs."

"I've earned her—I've been monitoring this house all day, ready to step in and interfere at the first indication of soul-eviction magic—"

"Which didn't take place because I undid Hurwood's plan," said Shandy. "Get out of here."

The bald man raised his sword. "I'd rather not kill you, Jack, but I promise I will if I have to in order to get her."

Shandy let his shoulders slump defeatedly and let his face relax into lines of exhaustion and despair—

and then he flung himself forward, slamming the giant's sword against the wall with his left forearm while his right hand punched his saber into the man's chest. Only the fact that the bald man stood his ground stopped Shandy from pitching head first down the stairs. Shandy caught his balance, raised his right foot and planted it on the man's broad breast next to where the blade transfixed it, and then kicked, bringing himself back upright on the landing and propelling the bald man in a backward tumble down the stairs. Exclamations of horror and surprise erupted above the general clamor below.

Shandy turned and looked down the corridor. One of the doorknobs was wooden, and he reeled to it.

It was locked, so he wearily braced himself against the wall it faced, lifted his foot, and with a repetition of the move that had freed his blade from Morcilla's chest, drove his foot at the door. The wooden lock splintered and the door flew inward and Shandy dropped his saber as he fell forward into the room.

He looked up from his hands and knees. There was a lamp lit in the room, but the scene it showed him was far from reassuring: nasty-smelling leaves were all over the floor, someone had hung several severed dog heads on the walls, an obviously long-dead black woman was tumbled carelessly in the corner, and Beth Hurwood was crouched by the window apparently trying to eat the woodwork.

But Beth looked around in alarm, and her eyes were clear and alert. "John!" she said hoarsely when she saw who it was. "My God, I'd almost given up praying for you! Bring that sword over here and chop this wooden bolt in half—my teeth aren't making any progress at all."

He got up and hurried over to her, slipping only once on the leaves, and he squinted blearily at the bolt. He raised his sword carefully. "I'm surprised you recognize me," he remarked inanely.

"Of course I do, though you do look thrashed. When did you sleep last?"

" … I don't remember." He brought the sword down. It cut the bolt, barely. Beth fumbled the pieces out of the brackets and pushed the window open, and the cool night air sluiced away the room's stale smells and brought in the cries of tropical birds out in the jungle.

"There's a roof out here," she said. "At the north end of the house the hill catches up with it enough for us to jump safely. Now listen, John, I—"

"Us?" Shandy interrupted. "No, you're safe now. My uncle—Joshua Hicks—is dead. You're—"

"Don't be silly, of course I'm coming with you. But listen, please! That creature in the corner pitched over dead—dead again, I should say—last night, and so I haven't had to eat any more of those damned plants since then, but I'm terribly weak and I have spells of … I don't know, disorientation. I sort of fall asleep with my eyes open. I don't know how long it lasts, but it's tapering off—so if I do it, if I go blank-eyed on you, don't worry, just keep me moving. I'll come out of it."

"Uh … very well." Shandy stepped through the window, out onto the roof. "You're sure you want to come with me?"

"Yes." She followed him out, swayed and grabbed his shoulder, then took a deep breath and nodded.

"Yes. Let's go."

"Right."

Through the open window behind them he could hear people hesitantly but noisily advancing up the stairs, so he took her elbow and led her as quickly as he dared toward the north end of the roof.

Epilogue

It faded on the crowing of the cock.

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes

Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,

The bird of dawning singeth all night long;

And then, they say, no spirit can walk abroad;

The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,

No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,

So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.

—William Shakespeare

They walked for hours, avoiding the wider, better-maintained roads because of the bands of mounted, torch-carrying soldiers who were riding back and forth, it seemed, through all of Spanish Town; Shandy led Beth over low stone walls and along narrow footpaths and between rows of sugarcane.

Twice dogs barked at them, but both times Shandy was able to silence the alarm by crimping the breeze with a gesture and whistling a certain tune. He wasn't able to deal as easily with the mosquitoes, though, and had to make do with smearing mud on his face and Beth's. He could judge directions and even make a fair guess at the hour by studying the sky whenever their way wasn't roofed with vegetation … but he didn't throw away the compass he had bought that afternoon, even though it was an awkward, bulky weight in his coat pocket.

Several times Beth did seem to be sleepwalking, and would walk straight into trees if he didn't lead her carefully by the hand, and for a while she just slept, and he had to carry her, enviously, in his arms; but she was awake and lucid during most of the walk, and she and Shandy occupied the long miles by conversing in whispers. She told him about her years in the Scottish convent, and he described traveling with his father and the marionettes. She asked him about Ann Bonny in a tone so carefully casual that he could feel his heart thudding in his chest. Drunk with exhaustion and happiness, he let himself answer the question with a long, disjointed monologue that he didn't even bother to listen to—vaguely he knew that it dealt with love and loss and maturity and death and birth and the rest of their lives. Whatever he had said, she didn't seem displeased by it; and even though she wasn't sleepwalking he took her hand.

They kept moving south, and when he judged that it was about three in the morning they came to the sandy end of one of the jungle footpaths they'd been following, stepped out from under an awning of palm fronds, and saw that they were on the beach. Between them and the blackness that was the sea were the faintly starlit blobs of buildings; Shandy thought he recognized the Maritime Law and Records Office, but he couldn't be sure. They walked forward to the beach, and then continued moving south, staying in the shadows of buildings as much as possible and getting across streets and open squares as quickly and quietly as they could. A few lamps glowed in buildings they passed, and a couple of times they could hear drunken voices not too far distant, but nobody hailed them.

They passed several docks and clusters of beached boats … but each time Shandy crept closer to look for a stealable boat, there was a stray lantern-gleam or whispering voice nearby; and twice on the night breeze Shandy heard the unmistakable metallic click-and-slide of a sword being loosened in its scabbard, and once he heard a dockside voice whisper a sentence in which the name "Shandy"

figured emphatically. Having failed to keep him from entering, the British authorities obviously did not mean to let him get out.

More cautiously than ever, Shandy and Beth walked on southward, passing the last of the stone buildings, then tiptoeing through an area of bamboo shacks and sailcloth tents, and finally, as the stars were fading, they reached a stretch of broad marshes along which the occasional turtle pen or fisherman's shack was the high point of the landscape. The mosquitoes were much worse here, making it necessary for the two fugitives to tie bands of cloth across the lower halves of their faces to avoid inhaling the insects, but Shandy appreciated the loneliness of this stretch of beach, and, no longer having to be perfectly silent, he began taking longer strides.

Just at dawn they found a decrepit pier with a sailboat moored at the end of it, and Shandy stared for several minutes at the half-dozen ragged men huddling around a small brazier—he could see pinpoints of red light in it when the erratic breeze fanned the coals—and then he relaxed and sat back down behind the bush that concealed him and Beth from the shore below.

"Just fishermen," he whispered, mostly to himself, for Beth had drifted off into another of her somnambulistic trances. He had draped his compass-weighted velvet coat around her shoulders hours ago, and he shivered in the dawn sea breeze when he stood up and then laboriously hauled her up to stand swaying and blank-eyed beside him. "Come on," he said, leading her forward and touching his baldric to make sure the weight of all the gold scudos was still there. "We're going to buy us a boat."

He knew the two of them would be a strange spectacle with which to confront these fishermen on a chilly winter dawn—an evidently sleep-walking woman in a nightdress and velvet coat escorted from the jungle by a mud-splashed, blood-stained man in formal dress, both their faces smeared with mud

—but he was confident that half a dozen of the gold coins would allay all misgivings.

By the time they had slid down the slope and begun shambling through the sand toward the pier, most of the hunched figures had turned to stare at them, though one man, wearing a weathered straw hat and wrapped in a blanket, continued to sit on the end of the pier and face the newly sun-tipped gray waves.

Shandy smiled and held six scudos forward in the palm of his gloved hand as he led Beth Hurwood out onto the echoing boards of the pier …

Then his smile faltered and disappeared, for he had noticed the flat, filmed eyes in the gray faces, and the bound-up jaws, and the sewn-shut shirts and the bare feet.

"Oh, damn it," he whispered hopelessly, realizing that neither of them had the strength to run—it was all he could do to continue standing. With no surprise he watched the figure at the end of the pier get to its feet, shed the blanket and toss away the hat so that the dawn sun gleamed on the bald scalp. The man took the cigar out of his mouth and smiled at Shandy.

"Thank you, Jack," he rumbled. "Come, my dear." He beckoned to Beth and she stumbled forward as if pushed from behind. The velvet coat slipped off her shoulders and fell onto the weathered planks of the pier.

Almost at the same moment, Shandy's knees unlocked and he found himself abruptly sitting on the planks. "You're dead," he muttered. "I killed you … on the stairs."

Beth took two more quick, balance-catching steps.

The bald man shook his head sadly, as if Shandy was proving to be a disappointing pupil. He puffed on the cigar and waved its glowing head at Shandy. "Come on, Jack, don't you remember the slow matches I used to braid into my hair and beard? Low-smoldering fire, that's the drogue that holds Baron Samedi's protective attention. A lit cigar works just as well. Your blade stuck me, sure enough, but the Baron, the good old Lord of the Cemeteries, repaired the damage before I had time to expire."

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 727