The Noble Pirates (29 page)

I was contemplating approaching him later that afternoon when two ships, apparently sailing together, were spotted in the offing, in full sail. This jolted the pirates into action. They did not know what the ships were, but it hardly mattered. The quarters were quickly cleared, the big guns were brought out, and the black flag was hoisted to the masthead. The pirates armed themselves and crowded onto the deck of the
King James
, waiting for the ships to draw nearer.

As I was scrambling to put on my baldric, Howel took a moment to pull me aside and say firmly, “If you are intent on fighting, then I insist that you remain dressed as a boy. Who knows what kind of men be aboard these ships? ‘Tis better that they not know your sex.” I complied as Howel instructed his crew to keep my identity a secret. While there were no guarantees that they would, Howel was held in high enough esteem by his men that it was possible they’d keep their mouths shut – for a little while, at least.

The ships were close now, and one of them fired at us. The waves before the
King James
burst as the cannon ball landed, just shy of the bow. Howel peered through his spyglass as one of his men in the shrouds cried, “They’ve raised the Jolly Roger! They’re both rovers, Cap’n!”

Howel signaled to his gunners and one cried, “Fire in the hole!” The approaching ships must have then recognized that we were also pirates, and they did not fire again. They came alongside the
King James
and hailed us.

“Ho! Whence came you?”

Howel shouted, “From the sea!”

“Are you o’ the Brotherhood?”

“Aye, and we welcome you as brothers!”

Thus began the precarious alliance between Howel Davis, Oliver “La Buse” Levasseur, and Thomas Cocklyn.

And I hated every moment of it.

Levasseur and Cocklyn were real thugs, men who delighted in the violence of piracy, who created violence where there need be none. Levasseur was a well-educated Frenchman who had been a privateer for France before turning pirate. He was of medium build, with a large nose, thick lips, and a long, jagged scar that ran across one eye. The eyelid of the injured eye was permanently narrowed to a slit, obscuring his sight. He wore gold rings in his ears (supposedly to improve his vision), and had a sleazy demeanor about him that made me shudder. His nickname was “La Buse,” which means “the buzzard” in French. Levasseur’s contemporaries had meant this as a compliment, since “buzzard” meant “hawk” in those days. I, however, thought the modern definition – “vulture” – to be far more appropriate. The man looked like a vulture. Cocklyn, while being just as violent and sleazy, was simply an ignorant brute, who on dry land would have been a pickpocket and petty thief. Cocklyn was short and stocky, and just all-around ugly. Both pirates had been active in the Bahamas and had been chased away by Woodes Rogers, just like Howel Davis and Edward England.

The two pirates were thoroughly impressed with Howel’s cleverness in capturing Gambia Castle, and asked him to cruise down the African coast with them. Howel did not know at this point what sort of men Levasseur and Cocklyn were, although he must have had his suspicions. When Walter Kennedy and the crew thought this a good idea, Howel decided to go along with them, and this confederacy among the three pirate captains was formed, with Howel as commodore.

My time with him had been limited before, and now that I was a cabin boy again – and one that was too “pretty” to risk catching the eye of either Levasseur or Cocklyn – I saw him only as often as the rest of the crew, when he was commanding. I watched him do so with ease, but something in his demeanor revealed an undercurrent of… doubt. During the meetings with the crew, Walter Kennedy, as spokesman for the men of the
King James
, was clearly happy to be joined with two other powerful pirate companies. Howel was fairly terse during these meetings, which was very unlike him; he did not jest and make the men laugh as he normally did, but sat quietly, biting the inside of his lip, his face dark with apprehension.

Howel was not like these other pirates. He knew it, I knew it. And he could not meet my eyes on account of it.

We sailed to Sierra Leone, where the three captains intended to capture the Royal African Company fort there, on Bunce Island, just at the mouth of the Sierra Leone River. This time, there was no patience for Howel’s game of deceit. The pirates had strength in their numbers, and brute force would get them what they wanted. They attacked the fort in Levasseur’s brigantine, exchanging musket and cannon fire. I stayed on the
King James
, anxiously listening to the explosions in the distance, my eyes never leaving the pirate ship.

The exchange went on for hours, and while the fort sustained major damage by the pirates, the brigantine’s rigging was also badly mangled. The two confederate pirate ships – Howel’s and Cocklyn’s – swept in at the last moment to aid in the attack. The pirates stood on the deck, pounding their weapons against the gunwales, crazed by their desire to kill. I joined in too, screaming at the top of my lungs, slamming the wood planks with my cutlass. When the company soldiers saw the number of pirates they were up against, they abandoned the fort, leaving it to the rovers.

So the ships anchored and their men swarmed the fort, and for the first time since arriving in the eighteenth century, I saw pirates behave the way I had always imagined they would – like animals. Levasseur and Cocklyn’s crews were not like Howel’s, and the wanton destruction they caused took me by surprise. Furniture was smashed and burned, paintings shredded by blades, crystal and ceramic shattered as they were flung against walls. If any soldiers remained to defend the fort, there was no doubt in my mind that they would meet a gruesome, prolonged death at the hands of these rovers.

I suddenly realized how so very lucky I was to have ended up with pirates like Edward England and Howel Davis. They really were the exceptions to the rule.

I watched as two pirates doused each other in wine they’d found and smashed the bottles against a table. I instinctively crouched against a wall of the fort, suddenly terrified of these men who were supposed to be my comrades, when a hand seized me and lifted me to my feet. Howel stood before me, drenched in sweat, his face darkened by a film of gunpowder. Beads of perspiration trickled down his face, leaving trails of clear skin in the black soot. He held his cutlass in his hand, and he was breathing hard.

“Sabrina!” he yelled, enraged. “Get you back to the ship this very instant!” When I didn’t respond immediately, he lifted me and tossed me over his shoulder, marching out of the fort with purpose. I did not resist, for once.

He dropped me in a boat on the shore, and commanded two of Levasseur’s men to take me back to the
King James
. Without looking at me again, he rushed back to the fort, walking briskly in the sand. I watched him go as one of the men pulled the dinghy into the waves, waist-high in the surf.

As Howel disappeared into the smoke that rose from the gates of the fort, I turned and looked at the pirates on the dinghy with me. They had their backs turned to me, and they spoke to each other in a strange language. Both were African. I had noticed that Levasseur’s crew was nearly half African, while the other half was mostly French. That was a hell of a lot of African pirates, and I was too afraid of them to try and figure out if one of them was
the
black pirate. My black pirate. My key back to 2011. Now, as I sat in the dinghy, I was afraid, and I felt for my pistol beneath my jacket. Who were these two men that Howel trusted enough to send me back with?

That was when one of the men, the larger one of the two, turned to look at me, a wide smile on his black face. One side of his face was lined with uniform scars from his hairline to his cheek, and he bore clear marks about his neck from an iron collar that had dug into his flesh repeatedly.

“Allo,
nwanyi
,” he said in his deep, sing-song voice.

I gasped. “Sam! Holy shit! Sam!” I tried to stand, but the rocking of the boat knocked me back onto my rear.

Sam laughed. “Stay seated, silly woman,” he said. “Lest you end up as a meal for the sharks.”

Sam.
My last image of him was on Barbados as he was led, naked and shackled, by his new master off the wharf and into an open cart with the other slaves, bound for some sugar cane plantation. Despite his injuries at the hands of the slavers, he’d been straight-backed and fearless, bringing tears to my eyes as I’d prayed for him silently. Now he stood before me, a free man, or as free as an African could be in the white man’s world, dressed in a calico shirt, petticoat breeches, a kerchief about his neck, and a brace of pistols slung across his chest. I felt myself choke up.

He was my black pirate. He had to be.

I couldn’t wait for the dinghy to reach the ship, so that I could find out for sure. I nearly tackled Sam once we were finally on board. I flung my arms around his waist, pressing my cheek to his big chest. “Sam! Thank God you’re okay! What are you doing here? How did you get here?”

Sam laughed again, uneasily, taken slightly aback by the emotion in my actions, in my voice. “Easy,
nwanyi
. I will answer all of your questions.” We sat on the deck and shared a bottle of looted rum as Sam began to explain. “I escaped the plantation in Barbados. There were fifteen of us. We knew our only chance was to find a pirate ship – it was the only place where we would be free. And I had to be free, or die. There was no other option for me.” He swallowed some rum. “We stole a sloop, sailed to Nassau. That was when we found Levasseur and his crew, and they took us on without question.”

I stared at him in wonder, my mouth open. “You make it sound so easy. You escaped the plantation and found a pirate ship, just like that.”

Sam chuckled. “It was not easy. I was shot, we had to hide and steal… No, it was not easy. But even a horrible death was preferable to slavery.”

“And now?” I asked. “You are back in Africa. Why don’t you go back to your people?”

He grinned. “Africa is a big place,
nwanyi
. And I am not yet at my home. But even so, I would not leave this life.”

I was startled. “Why not?”

He shrugged. “It is hard to explain. I have taken to this life. And there is a certain freedom here, a certain… kinship that I feel with these pirates. We have a common enemy.”

I was silent for a moment, then said, “Levasseur’s men are brutal.”

Sam nodded. “Yes. But life is brutal, is it not? I have no sympathy for my fellow men, least of all the white men. They can kill each other all they want.” He rolled the bottle between his enormous hands, thinking for a moment. “I would like to join Howel Davis. He was good to me on the slave ship, and now we are brothers-at-arms. I would like to fight alongside him.”

I became breathless. “Sam, you… Are you like me? Do you come from the same place?”

Sam tilted his head, looking at me inquisitively. “I do not understand.”

I practically whispered it. “Are you from a different time? From the future? From a time that has not happened yet?”

Sam digested this question for a moment, and I wondered suddenly if his native language had such a concept. Finally, he asked, “You are from a time that has not yet happened?”

I nodded. “Yes. I am from the future. I was in a storm, and I found myself here, in the past.” I leaned forward, excitedly. “I was told by a… sorceress, a witch, that I would be able to get back with the help of a black pirate, who was also from the future. She said this black pirate would come to me.”

Sam studied my face. “I felt you were different, from the beginning.” He rubbed his chin. “And you think I am the black pirate she spoke of, eh?” He sighed. “I am sorry to disappoint you,
nwanyi
, but I am not.”

I stared. It was impossible. He had to be the one. Who else would it be? “Are you certain?” I asked.

He grinned. “Yes, I am certain that I am not from the future.” His grin slowly disappeared as he saw the despair in my face. “You want to go back to your home, and I am sorry that I cannot help you. But if the witch said he would come to you, then you have only to wait.”

I paused before saying, “You seem… to believe me, Sam.”

“Why would I not believe you?”

I let out a laugh. “Well, because I’m telling you something pretty unbelievable. And I haven’t given you any proof. You should think I’m crazy.”

Sam shook his head. “The white men think you are crazy because they do not believe in the things they cannot explain.”

“Can you explain it?” I asked.

“No, ‘tis beyond the understanding of man,” he replied. “But I can tell you that
Chukwu
is testing you.”

I sighed heavily. “Fabulous.” I had no idea who
Chukwu
was, but I was too exhausted to even ask. Besides, if the test was anything beyond survival, I didn’t want to know. Once again, I felt immersed in the realm of the supernatural, in the realm of magic.

We sat on the deck quietly together then, the sun setting behind us as we watched the pirates set fire to the fort. It began to crumble amidst the flames and smoke that consumed it. It was a stark contrast, this gorgeous pink and purple sky as a backdrop to the devastation of the fort.