The Dagger X (The Dagger Chronicles) (35 page)

“Oh, good,” Kitto said. “I would hate for this to be too easy.” X threw him a grin of teeth speckled with coffee bean shards.

They made shore without incident in light surf, Exquemelin gallantly offering his hand to Sarah, who held Bucket in her arms. Van and Exquemelin and Akin dragged the rowboat up the beach and then into the undergrowth at the edge of the wood so that it could not be seen should any ships happen by.

Kitto stood on the beach and surveyed the shoreline anew. All that could be seen was dense and uninterrupted forest. From the ship they could see that mountains rose in the distance, but here at the shore they were not able to make them out over the tree line.

After a brief meal of biscuit and a jug of cider passed between them, the party set forth. Van traveled at the front, swinging a cutlass to clear the way, while
Exquemelin followed closely on his heels, instructing him in infuriating detail which way they should go.

“A bit more to the east,” he would say. “
Ja, ja, ja.
Ah! No! Too much!”

“Yes, Your Worship.”

“Boy-man,” X said. “Have I told you about the time I was with Henry Morgan and we attacked Maracaibo?” Without waiting for an answer the pirate launched into a long story that flowed straight into another. Van hacked at the greenery and let the words wash over him.

Kitto insisted on taking up the rear. He did not want Sarah to see how he struggled to keep up. The wooden leg that Quid had made him fit better than the first, but Kitto still found it hard to maintain his balance on the uneven ground. Every several steps would throw him to one side or the other, and were it not for the hacked ends of branches Van left behind to grab in desperation, he would have spent as much time on the ground as on his feet.

After several hours of effort Exquemelin came to an abrupt halt.

“Enough!” X straightened his back and put his hands on his hips, unbothered by the fact that he had been in the middle of telling a rambling tale. “That stand of trees, Van.
Oui, oui, oui.
Perfect for the hammocks.”

Perhaps a half dozen miles they had covered and each one hard earned. Kitto had barely the energy to string his own hammock between two likely enough trees with Akin’s help, then toss himself into it. Sarah
deposited Bucket into his arms, and the two of them swung gently. Sarah worked with Van to clear a spot for a fire pit.

X held his nose aloft like a bloodhound and sniffed.

“West.
Ja, ja.
Tomorrow we head west; we will find the trail.”

The meal of salt pork and biscuit left much to be desired, but the last of the cider washed it down and left their bellies full if not satisfied. By the time the sun had disappeared below the horizon, all were soundly asleep.

Kitto awoke in the middle of the night alone in his hammock. His stump throbbed, and he swung his legs off the hammock so that he could massage it and ease the pain. The unmistakable glow of a candle shone through the woods perhaps twenty yards away from where he slept. Kitto’s heart leaped to his throat until he made out the slumped profile of Exquemelin amid the glow.

Kitto fumbled about along the dark forest floor for his false leg, and finding it, he attached himself to it with the belt mechanism Quid had devised, cinching it around his thigh. The throbbing increased, but not unbearably so, and Kitto stalked off toward the glow.

The crunch of leaves and sticks beneath him seemed obnoxiously loud, but none of the sleepers stirred in their hammocks. Kitto drew closer to the wide tree where X sat, his head tilted back at an impossible angle, the tricorne hat having fallen to the forest floor. X gave out a gentle snoring sound with an added snort at the end of each breath.

The single candle stood mounted on a rock. Spread out before X and along his lap were the very papers Kitto had seen him working with weeks ago on Morris’s stolen ship. Either the Spanish had considered them worthless to confiscate, or they had been returned to X when he was freed. Kitto did not know which. A quill was still clutched in the captain’s hand, and the vial of ink leaned dangerously on one of the tree’s exposed roots. Kitto leaned over to right the vial and hunt for its cork.

There, partly under Exquemelin’s right knee, was the leather folio. Kitto remembered the man’s secretiveness when he had asked about its contents aboard the
Port Royal
.

Shall I look?
he wondered. The notion went against his principles, but then Kitto told himself that he owed it to Sarah and Duck to know everything and anything that could be of help to them. He bent, careful not to lose his balance on his wooden leg, and slowly withdrew the leather folio from beneath the captain’s knee. Ever so tentatively he stepped around X’s outstretched legs to the far side of the candle and lowered himself to the forest floor.

Kitto opened the folio to find three sheets of parchment tucked behind a flap of leather. He drew them out and leaned toward the candle’s glow.

The first two sheets were part of the same document, and they looked rather old. The black ink had faded to a dull brown over the years. The document was dated 8 January 1650. In large letters at the top were scratched the words
AGREEMENT OF INDENTURE
.

Some sort of a contract,
Kitto thought. And then his eye snapped upon a name written halfway down the page: Henry Morgan. Kitto read on.

This document in the presence of witnesses notarized below does name one Henry Morgan of Abergavenny, Labourer, to be Bound to one Timothy Tounsend of Bristol, Cutler, for three years, to serve in Barbados on the like Conditions. Said Morgan shall complete said period in the service of said Tounsend and comply therewith according to the rules of land and the Tounsend household as said holder of indenture sees fit.

Kitto understood.
This is the proof of Morgan’s humble beginnings.
Kitto remembered the page about Morgan’s life that X had read to him. He smiled. Somehow the wily pirate had obtained his proof. Morgan wanted to be a man of society now, wanted to buy his way into the gentry. No indentured servant could possibly do so. No doubt Morgan would kill to see this paper disappear. Kitto figured that it was likely the only such copy in existence. He wondered how Exquemelin had come by it.

The indenture contract ran onto the second page, mostly legal writing that seemed of little added import. Kitto tucked the two pages behind the third. Ornate cursive letters drew his eye.

License of Marriage, granted by powers of the Governor of Jamaica as vested by King Charles II , Monarch of England, year 1665.

Kitto read on, letting his eye skim past the portions in Latin. And then he froze. His hands began to shake.

T
hey would not be called boys, but the lanky frames of the two youths indicated that they were not yet full grown. The first had skin the color of dark sand and straight black hair, a sure sign of his Arawak heritage. The other was much darker, his hair a kink of tight curls: the son of escaped slaves who had never himself known bondage. Each sat with a musket across the lap.

An exceedingly narrow gorge dropped away just inches beyond their reclined toes and fell a distance of sixty feet. So narrow was the gap to the other side of the gorge that some days on a dare, the two would each get a running start and leap across the opening, landing lightly among the greenery. But today was too hot for such tomfoolery. Like brothers, though, they each kept a sharp eye out for some way in which to compete with the other.

“Come lookee lookee.”

“Don’t want to.”

“Scared is what.”

“Who do you call scared? I make you scared!”

The darker boy pointed. “That leaf down there, you see it?” The other boy leaned forward toward the precipice, scowling. Far down the path at the bottom of the gorge a dark green plant clung to the rocky soil, its broad leaves spread wide in the gorge’s shadows.

“I see it.”

“Bet I can shoot it first.”

“Nanny said not to be wasting the powder.”

“Nanny, Nanny! You scared of a whipping?”

“And you ain’t?”

“I am not scared. And she will not hear this little musket all the way out here.”

“Then you shoot, big man. Go on.”

Nelson—for that was the challenger’s name—rolled over onto his belly and lay on the rocky dirt, his elbows propped at the very edge of the cliff face. He settled the butt of the musket into his shoulder and lowered his cheek to the stock. A bead of sweat ran down his forehead and hung from the tip of his nose. He blew at it, and the droplet flew off into the abyss.

“Anybody shoot that lying down,” Chock-ti said, wishing now that he had taken up the challenge.

“You come and do it, then.”

Chock-ti chose silence instead. He scooted forward off the tree on which he had been leaning so that his feet dangled out over the edge and he could look down the line of Nelson’s musket. “Too high,” he said.

“I push you off, you see how high you are,” Nelson said. His finger eased back toward the trigger.

For three days Duck and Dumaka had been hiking. Or was it four? Duck had lost track. At least the worst part was over, the exhausting climb up into the mountains. They still gained altitude, but through various stretches the creek trickled along shady flat plateaus where birds of assorted colors flitted among the trees, chirping contentedly. Having seen no trace of humans for days, the worry that slave catchers might pursue them had lessened, and so had the blistering pace that Dumaka had set.

For lunch the three nibbled the last of the biscuits and drank from the cool stream. After a short rest they headed on. Dumaka scanned from side to side the thick forest. It was not pursuers that worried him now, but a dwindling supply of food. Soon the forest would have to provide them their meals. After a few miles of walking Duck complained of a pain in his leg and asked if he could ride on Dumaka’s shoulders. The young man squatted down so that Duck could climb up, and on they went. Julius scampered off into a nearby tree and kept up with their pace easily by leaping from branch to branch. Duck cheered him along.

Soon the banks of the tiny creek rose up higher and higher, the sides growing steeper and composed more of rock than the black dirt at lower altitudes. This development Dumaka did not like. A rocky gorge would offer up little in the way of berries or coconut-bearing trees. Julius scrambled down the embankment and leaped straight up into Duck’s arms.

“Let me walk now, Dumaka,” Duck said. “I can make it a ways.” Dumaka reached up and lifted Duck up and over his head. Julius growled faintly in Duck’s arms until they were set upon the ground. Dumaka patted the little boy on the head.

“Strong Duck,” he said. “Strong legs you have.”

“Not so strong as yours. Do you think we’ll be there soon?”

“Soon,” Dumaka said, but in truth he wondered if they had taken the wrong fork in the creek two days earlier. He did not worry for himself; Dumaka would gladly die a free man in the mountains than exchange it for a life of work and whips. But the little boy? He could not let the boy be forced into such a choice.

The sides of the creek grew higher and higher still, and within a half mile they were walking in a steep gorge, the cliff walls curling up in bulges of brown rock. The creek had dwindled to a narrow dribble just a foot wide and a scant inch deep. The path the creek carved in the rock meandered lazily, sometimes heading straight forward, other times curling about like the groove a snake carved in the sand.

“Look at that bush!” Duck said, pointing ahead to where the creek bent off to the right. On the side of the cliff a plant had found an unlikely place to sink its roots, somehow clinging to the narrow crags of the cliff face. “If that bush can survive in this canyon, so can we!” Duck darted around Dumaka and ran ahead toward the greenery, Julius clinging to his shoulder.