Sea Witch (6 page)

“If we could predict the future my dear, what a sorry life we would lead. There would be no expectation, no hope. No looking at the horizon for what may be sailing over it in the next hour, week or month. No excitement for the eager anticipation of a new dawn. If we were to know what is planned for us on our path, what pleasure would there be in making the journey?”

He was right, of course.

“You will not be telling Captain Rogers, will you Mr Dampier? I do not think he has much tolerance of pirates.”

“Nay, he has not.” Dampier agreed as he held his arm out to Tiola. Companions, they strolled back to the
Golden Hind
, and the prospect of breakfast, through streets coming alive with the business of the new day. Some fortunate fellow was going to find himself with a lucky catch for a wife one day in the not so distant future, Dampier mused. A fellow, he sincerely hoped, with more to offer than the rugged charm of a sea-scoundrel.

“Captain Rogers,” he continued saying as they walked, “is the sort of man who, if he were to see a wolf, would shoot it. He would never notice its beauty.”

“Where do you suspect they are sailing to?” Tiola asked, taking one last glance over her shoulder down the hill towards the harbour.

“Oh, they could be bound anywhere. Pirates are free to make their own decision. Apart from their agreed Ship’s Articles, their rules, which many of them make up as they go along, and the avoidance of any Ship of the Line, they go where they wish; India, the China Seas perhaps? Or back to the wolf pack and their familiar hunting grounds among the islands of the Caribbean.”

Dampier too, looked over his shoulder. First though, he guessed, they would sell their plunder at the pirate trade post in Madagascar, careen the hull and only then go home.

He envied them; envied the rogue his youth and his freedom. Envied the attraction he had for a young lass’s fancy.

Seven

Mid May – 1716

Weed quivered and fishes, disturbed, flashed and darted in exotic, woven patterns their colours illuminated by the distorted shafts of filtered sunlight. A crab scuttled sideways and buried itself rapidly in the soft, yielding sand. But the sand itself was moving, tipping and sliding, funnelling downward faster and faster – and then the depths below, the very crust of the earth, gave a heave and the underwater world that was the bottom of the turquoise, sparkling sea collapsed in upon itself, yawning into a great chasm ripping across the ocean floor. Pulling it apart as easily as a ship ploughs through a wave.

And where the jagged tear of the earthquake gaped, sand and weed, shell and fish plunged into its open jaws and the very sea itself gushed downward into the abyss. Chaos for a few, passing seconds that were as nothing to the millennia of eternal time. Then everything settled and the moment of violence and confusion was past. Forgotten. There was no one to see or feel, or remember its brief excitement.

Except for Tethys, who was aware of all that happened within her realm.

Their business completed in Madagascar, the decision of where to sail next had been put to the vote in democratic pirate tradition. The crew had opted for going “home” to the Caribbean. Jesamiah had not been so certain. As he had predicted to Woodes Rogers, England had negotiated a treaty of peace with France and Spain. It would have been too costly for Parliament not to, like dropping gold coin down a bottomless well.

As he had also predicted privately to Malachias, that same government had no more honesty than the worst liar in London’s Newgate Gaol. With the end of war, pardons had been promised to the sea-roving privateers who had aided the English struggle against the Spanish Dons and the Frenchies. Except, the men who sought these pardons soon discovered they were as rare as two-headed donkeys to procure. Free given, aye, if you had the gold to buy one, and if you could prove you had not committed any debased act of piracy against any vessel not French or Spanish. If you had the gold? You must be a pirate.

Jamaica
: aligned east to west, the largest island in the Caribbean; one hundred and forty-six miles long by fifty or so wide. Jesamiah knew the facts and could not give a damn about them. Bringing the
Mermaid
here to the Royal Naval harbour of Port Royal in search of one of these pardons was a bad idea. He had said so for the whole of the return voyage across the Atlantic. Now, locked in a dank, rat and cockroach infested prison cell these past four weeks, he wished he had said it louder.

The boredom was the worst of it. There was nothing to do except sleep or walk up and down the few yards to the far end of the cell and back again. Entertaining if you took into account the crunch of the insects beneath your boots and the necessity to step over or around the other fourteen people also incarcerated in the same cell, while avoiding the accumulation of spewed vomit, piddled urine and excreted shit.

There was one small, grilled window at eye level about two feet long by one high. Its view was mostly of the protruding rear wall of Fort Charles’ extensive armoury, but Jesamiah had discovered if he stood to the side and screwed his head around he could glimpse a portion of the harbour. Or if he looked upward, the sky.

Watching a single cloud amble across a small patch of blue, he concluded, was as exhilarating as watching a new coat of paint dry on a ship’s hull. The harbour view had not been agreeable either. Not since the day he had seen some thief sail the
Mermaid
away. She had been claimed and sold as a Prize by the Royal Navy – and they did not consider that an act of piracy? Commandeering someone else’s ship and selling her for profit without a by your leave?

The fact Malachias had stolen her from someone else originally was beside the point.

Jesamiah scratched at the growth of his beard, he hated having so much clinging to his chin; found a louse, crushed it between his thumb and finger. Wearily he sank down from the window to sit on the musty straw scantily covering the damp, disgusting floor. Today was the eighteenth. He knew that because yesterday, the seventeenth, they had hanged Malachias Taylor and Daniel Wickersley down on the shore below the high-tide line. Their bodies would dangle there until three tides had washed over them and then they would be cut down. Daniel’s corpse would be sent for medical dissection at the naval hospital. Malachias, coated in tar, put in tight-fitting iron bars and displayed for all to see until the flesh and bones rotted to nothing. The twentieth would be Jesamiah’s own hanging. Not the most enthralling prospect to look forward to.

He sighed, tried to get comfortable and spent ten minutes fidgeting before giving up and getting to his feet again. God’s tears the place stank! He frowned down at a drainage hole; s’trewth, even the rats were leaving! He watched as two in succession whisked out, frowned as a third followed. Puzzled, he scanned the cell. The place was normally riddled with vermin. He counted only four – then he felt it, slight, indistinct, unmistakable. The ground was trembling. Tentatively, he put his hands up to the iron bars of the grill. Faint, almost undetectable, but it was there. Movement.

Another man, a Frenchman with a tumble of brown hair and a bush of overgrown beard was on his feet, his expression curious. “What is it do you think?” He spoke in heavily accented English, putting out his hand to touch the wall.

Jesamiah shook his head, tried to remember – 1692 was it? Yes of course, the year before he was born. An earthquake had carelessly tossed half of Port Royal into the sea. The governor had rebuilt Fort Charles as a military and naval base, the rich moving their mansions across the bay to establish the present town of Kingston, leaving the poor to salvage what they could from the rubble. Stepping back from the wall he stared, fascinated, as a crack appeared above the rat hole and spread upward, zigzagging through the lines of mortar.

“If it’s what I think it is,” he answered slowly, “we might not have to worry too much about being hanged.”

Men were getting to their feet, some bewildered, others starting to shout their panic. Then Jesamiah was pulling the Frenchman violently aside, yelling a warning as the entire wall began to topple inward, the floor shaking and quivering, heaving itself upward as if the earth was shrugging her shoulders to rid herself of these annoying fleas that dared to walk upon her. The sound was of several broadsides being fired at once, a huge cloud of dust adding to the spread of panic and confusion.

It lasted no more than half a minute, although with the walls and roof falling in, the cries of trapped men and Hell apparently opening up beneath their feet, it seemed a lifetime.

Jesamiah stood and stared. There was no longer a wall, only a pile of dust-smoking rubble. Nor was there a north-side outer wall to Fort Charles, part of it was nothing more than a gaping hole. Coughing and spluttering he peered out through the swirling fug, dust choking in his throat and nose, coating his face and hands. A great crack had torn across the paving of the courtyard; red-coated militiamen were sprawled dead or injured, others were standing dazed and disorientated.

“
Allez, Monsieur! Vite! Vite!
Do not stand there – run!” The Frenchman urged as he ducked out into the open air of freedom. “Or do you wish to stay ‘ere and ‘ang at the governor’s pleasure, after all?”

Hesitating, Jesamiah glanced behind into what had been their prison cell. He could see three dead men; good men, good crew, good pirates – were those other two alive? He winced, wrestling with his conscience. If he stayed to help them what could he do? He was no surgeon; one looked as though he had lost a leg, the other was half buried.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered as he chose survival and freedom, and hoped the poor beggars, if alive, would die quickly.

In Port Royal’s main street people were running in aimless directions like frightened rabbits, others stood or sat, silent and dazed some cradling broken bones and bleeding wounds. More than a few lay dead, crushed beneath collapsed buildings. A small child, shrieking hysterically for her mother, wandered on to the cracked cobbles of the road straight into the path of a bolting horse, its iron shoes sending up a shower of sparks as it galloped, terrified. Without thinking of his own safety Jesamiah plunged forward, grabbed up the child and rolled with her as he hit the ground. Slammed his eyes shut as a hoof came down a hair’s breadth from where his head had been a short second ago.

He sat up, the child screeching her indignation in his arms, he stroked her hair, jigged her up and down, did what he could to comfort her while he tried to think what to do. Think man! Think! The officers inside the fort were beginning to get themselves and their men organised. Any moment now they would realise the jail was empty of living men and erupt in search of their prisoners.

“I cannot take you with me, sweetness, I’m sorry lass. Your ma will soon find you.” He set the girl down, dragging her clinging fingers from his grimed shirt and ran towards the harbour, forcing himself not to look back at her or he would be sure to regret it.

A two-masted sloop anchored in the harbour had wrenched free of her cable; she would be holed on a reef before long if no one went aboard to set a sail and steer her. Several small boats had also broken their warping lines and were drifting. Jesamiah knew next to nothing of earthquakes; this one had seemed enormous, but as most of the fort and the ramshackle town was still standing he assumed it had not been anywhere near as massive as the ‘quake of ‘92. Did he not remember his father saying something about aftershocks and tidal waves? He looked out to sea. Aye, the waves were crashing over the reefs, running at twice the height he would have expected – as if a storm were rumbling beneath the surface.

Looking round, he recognised others from his cell: the Frenchman and a black African among them. He shouted to them, waving his arm. “If there’s enough of us, we can get to sea – it’ll be rough sailing but that sloop’s begging for a crew!”

He jumped for the deck of one of the rowboats bumping loose against the jetty, which was leaning drunkenly aslant, one of its supporting pillars given way. Barrels, wicker baskets, crates, were bobbing in the water; a hissing cat clinging wildly to one, squawking chickens cackling in another. He grabbed a line, secured it around a bollard, holding the craft firm.

“Hurry,” he called, “the fort will soon be on to us!”

The two men needed no further urging. Five more followed. It took only a matter of moments to row across, scramble up the side of the sloop and board.

“Hoist sail!” Jesamiah yelled, darting towards the wildly swinging tiller; realised as he shouted that five of the men had no idea what to do.

Only the Frenchman and the African were of use. “
Je suis Claude de la Rue
,” the first said, introducing himself without formality as he and his companion grabbed at halyards. “
Mes amis m’appellent Rue
– my friends call me Rue. This is Isiah Roberts. We’ve roamed the sea together several years.
Merci bien
for saving my life twice over,
Monsieur
. When that wall collapsed and now again.”

“We’re not out of this yet, my friend,” Jesamiah grunted. “Can none of you others sail?” Solemnly, they shook their heads. He cursed. Useless landlubbers!

“Hold this tiller,” Jesamiah instructed a man with a red beard, Nathaniel, he thought his name was. They had all been strangers thrown together in a small cell these weeks, exchanging names had never seemed a priority. No point finding out, not when the hangman was all too keen to put an end to new-formed friendships. “Do you feel the wind on your left cheek?” he asked.

Nathaniel frowned, raised his head slightly. “Aye.”

“Then keep it there. Do not let it come around to the other cheek, or to the full of your ugly face.”

“If I do?”

“I’ll kick your fokken arse and toss you overboard!”

The craft was broad of beam and had a slow leak somewhere for an inch of water was sloshing around his feet. No matter, deal with that later, there would be a bucket for bailing. First thing was to set these fore-and-aft sails and steer a safe course through the reefs. Thank God at least for Rue and Roberts.

At the far tip of the spit of land known as Gallows Point, the crossbar and top half of a gallows showed through the surging high tide. From it, dangled two men their dead and bloated bodies swaying in a grotesque dance, caught in the forward and backward movement of the sea. Jesamiah paused with hauling the sail, stood, his throat choking, brought suddenly to tears.

The Frenchman was a large, well-built man but the touch of his hand upon Jesamiah’s shoulder was light. “I did not know ‘im, but I ‘ave ‘eard of Malachias Taylor,” he said, his accent unmistakable. “’E was a good man
n’est-ce pas
?”

Jesamiah opened his mouth to answer and found the words would not come. Instead, he nodded. Rue, fully understanding, patted his shoulder.

Respectfully, Jesamiah brought his right hand to his forehead, saluted his friends.
You are free now
, he thought.
None can touch either of you where you have gone. God guard your souls
.

Wiping a hand across his face he took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, carried on hauling, concentrating on what he was doing. Time enough to grieve later. There again, if God was not on the side of pirates he may well be meeting Malachias Taylor and Daniel Wickersley sooner than expected. It was a long way to the nearest safe harbour where he could acquire something more suitable to his needs, and as he soon discovered, the wooden tub leaked more than he had realised, had several holes in her sails and was mostly crewed by men who could not tell the bow from the stern.

Malachias had always said Jesamiah had the luck of the Devil. Out of habit he touched the acorn earring between his finger and thumb. Aye, well, if he did not have it before, he sorely needed it now.