Cinnamon and Gunpowder (48 page)

“Very well, consider yourself rescued,” he said. His brass buttons glittered in the candlelight against the black cotton. His uniform was unnaturally clean and still bore the faint symmetrical lines of a clothes brush; he had dressed for this moment. “Take her aboard
La Colette
.” His thug obeyed as Laroche muttered, “
Il m’a fallu deux semaines pour tuer les scorpions
.” Just outside the door, though, in the bright light of his unnatural flares, he stopped his man, wanting to gloat over his prize. “Let me see her face.”

The pale giant yanked back the sheet he had lifted her body in, and Laroche leaned down to have a closer look.

The blast made all of us jump. Laroche stumbled back, a great arc of blood leaping from the hole in his heart.

Mabbot, weakly holding the gun she had slipped from his belt, whispered, “You and I will have to agree to disagree, Laroche.”

She dropped the gun and went limp before the giant, like a frightened child, flung her body into the sea. He immediately drew his chambered pistol and fired six rounds into the churning darkness where she had disappeared.

With a wail, I scrambled over the railing to leap after her, only to be caught at the last moment by the behemoth, who lifted me and flung me to the deck. I hurled myself against the man and loosed my hurt upon him, slamming my forehead into his nose and flaying my knuckles against his face until he fell back, ghastly and still.

Though I leaned far over the railing, I could see no trace of Mabbot—only foam and a stray barrel that the waves crushed against the hull.

Nearby, Laroche lay grey-skinned and gasping. He had torn the locket from his neck and held it out to me. It opened to reveal the silhouette of a young maiden.

“
Dites leur
,” he groaned. “You must tell them how close I came. I have given all.”

I watched the locket drop from his shaking hand and said nothing. A dreadful stillness came over me as he breathed his last.

I readied myself for death, expecting to be shot by Laroche’s soldiers, but when I looked up from the sea, I was surprised to see them firing upon
La Colette
instead.

The ships were side by side now, with both decks lit by the fires. Mr. Apples and the others, having picked their locks, had taken Laroche’s ship from the inside and overwhelmed the guards. They had few weapons, though, and were pinned in their position behind the mainmast. In the torchlight, I perceived that the reloading rifle was mounted upon the bow of
La Colette
and had been turned against Mr. Apples’s uprising. They hid behind the masts and crouched in the lee of the mizzen deck but could not move because of the crossfire they were receiving from the soldiers who had boarded the
Rose
.

Navigating the deck, which was black with blood, I made my way to the quarterdeck gun, the largest loose cannon on the
Rose
.

Leaning all of my weight into its locks, I freed it and watched as it rumbled across the deck, accelerating like a charging bull. I ran after it as it crushed Laroche’s men. One leaped to safety, only to be knocked senseless by a jab from my peg. I became aware that I was bellowing. Another marine, to avoid being crushed, flung himself into the ocean.

I thus cleared the deck of enemies. Rather than burst through the railing as I expected, though, the cannon slowed as the sea shifted and reversed its direction. It chased me for fifteen feet before falling through a damaged hatch to the lower deck.

Seeing this from their shelter on
La Colette
, my comrades sent up a cheer. They were still pinned, however, by the reloading rifle, which operated by crank and was fed by a seemingly endless belt of bullets.

Joshua was with the rest and, reading Mr. Apples’s lips, signed the message to me. The ship was pitching, and in the unnatural light I had to peer hard to see his fingers tracing the wisp of a fuse and the swift arc of his fist: “Fire the forecastle cannon.”

I had to go below to get to that gun and, my mind blunted by catastrophe, did not plan my course well. I leaped with speed down the starboard companionway before I remembered the loose cannon pacing there on the shifting deck. The phosphorus above had burned to a sputter and filled the air with a spectral smoke. I was inching carefully toward the door when I heard the cannon charging through the haze.

Only by diving headlong behind the windlass did I avoid being smeared onto the deck. The main anchor having been severed, the chains on the windlass were loose, and I swung several loops around the foot of the cannon before it could begin rolling again. I rushed then to the port forecastle gun. There, trying to remember all of the steps in order, I loaded the charge, then the ball, packed it home, pricked the charge and filled the vent with powder, and readied the flint. This may have taken two minutes, but with shaking hands and my heart in my throat, it felt like hours.

I opened the shutters easily, but pushing the cannon out took all my might. Finally, when the deck shifted with the sea, the gun rolled into place and I locked it home. I erred low, as I had been taught; for close range, it was better to hit the water than the air, for a ball would still skip into the target. Only a dozen yards separated the ships and I could clearly see the young, frightened soldier who operated the repeating gun on the bow of
La Colette
. The soldier quivered visibly, yet had not perceived my advantage. I wondered if he was perhaps the same soldier who had shattered my leg.

It was my moment—but with power enough to erase this young man, I hesitated. The blood rage that had fueled my murderous rampage across the ship had ebbed just enough for me to begin to feel the deep abyss of grief below it. Conrad, the invisible lords in the Barbarian House, the
Patience
, Feng and Asher, hundreds of men broken into kindling in a few short months. And now Mabbot: Could it be true—Mabbot too? Why not fire? Who was this thin whelp to me? Why not add one more body to the pile?

Perhaps I am not a pirate after all; I did not fire. Instead I rapped on the muzzle of my cannon with a marlin spike, ringing it like a bell to let him know I was there. He wheeled upon me and we faced off across the gap. With the cannon in place, he could see but a few inches of me. He was fully exposed to a twenty-pound cannonball while I was hidden by hull and steel. Seemingly relieved to be thus outmaneuvered, he released his gun and lifted his hands into the air. He was quickly stormed by my comrades and taken to join his colleagues in chains. As Mabbot had guessed, Laroche’s men were weak with scurvy and lack of sleep; a good many of them were eager to surrender.

It was a gruesome night with blood on my hands and many on both sides feeding the sharks. The sun was high in the sky before the fires were fully extinguished.

Worse, though, far worse, Mabbot was gone. Not ill, not asleep, not hidden in her cabin waiting to mock me with her knowing smile, but gone.

Despite the desperate dives by the swimmers, her body could not be found. Though they seemed willing to swim until they too drowned, Mr. Apples finally called them back to the ship, and at that, our crew broke into a feral howl. I lent my voice to that ghastly chorus, screaming until my voice broke.

My servitude is over, my mistress defeated. I am free to leave the ship, free to find my way to any port in the world, free to take up a life of my choosing. Yet I have barely the will to scratch these letters onto the page.

Tuesday, December 7

After much debate and emergency repairs, the crew has split in twain, and thus one pirate vessel has become two. Many chose to man
La Colette
, a bizarre craft with many deadly devices aboard. A terrible weapon it will be in their hands.

The smoke balloon was discovered folded tightly into a hold, and, last I saw, the men were teaching themselves to inflate it, tinkering with the wicker rudders. They have taken with them the prisoners whose fate is yet to be decided. Some argued for leaving them on Rat-belly Island with what is left of Conrad, who may yet provide one more unappetizing meal. Others called for immediate execution, while I added my voice to those calling for delivery to the nearest harbor. After all, Laroche was dead, and his crew were guilty of little but obedience.

Before going their separate ways, all of the men were awarded their share of the
Trinity
haul. I myself, had I been a proper pirate on contract, would have been awarded a share and a half due to my lost limb. As it was, I received a share, and that due only to the fairness of Mr. Apples.

Old Pete, the navigator, is gone without a trace. Lost, no doubt, in the battle. “It’s fitting, I guess,” Mr. Apples said. “Naught but Mabbot could understand him.”

Mr. Apples, myself, and a skeleton crew have chosen to stay on the
Flying Rose
. He has assumed the rank of captain with an iron fist, and while he tolerates the men to show their grief with drink and song after the watch, he has excused none from their duties. His own sorrow is barely visible under the mask of discipline that serves to keep the crew and ship from falling into chaos, but the clues are there: No one has seen him eat or sleep in days. When the men erected a shrine upon Mabbot’s stuffed chair, piling it with notes and gilded shells and tokens of their love, Mr. Apples broke his knitting needles in twain and laid them atop the heap.

After a day sitting still upon the water (I think Mr. Apples was secretly hoping, as I was, that Mabbot would crawl from the sea, crowned in glistening seaweed), we maintained course for the Americas, where it would be safe enough to set to port and recruit a full and proper crew. We’ve knocked the wasp’s nest to the ground, and all agree that the New World is a decent distance from which to watch China and England duel for control of the trade.

Mr. Apples has agreed to go two weeks out of his way to deliver Joshua and myself ashore in Martha’s Vineyard, Joshua’s home.

EPILOGUE

Tuesday, July 15, 1823

I wear, about my neck, Kerfuffle’s foot, and when not covered in flour, my hands inevitably find their way to worry its silken fur.

My share amounted to seven bolts of silk, nineteen ingots of silver, three hundred and fifty pounds of tea, and several cases of varied spices. With this wealth, Joshua and I have established our inn, the Rose, near the busy wharf on Martha’s Vineyard, setting the tables with our own stolen china.

This community’s hands are in the water, but its heart is nested on land. Following the sun, the fishermen return to their wives and sleep on beds that do not sway beneath them. Of a Sabbath, families picnic in the orchards, and the children feed the geese with bread fresh enough to make a pirate weep. A modest town, it has none of London’s bustle, the endless clopping of hooves on cobblestone, or the hawkers selling their baubles beside the filthy gutters—here there is nothing louder than the distant jangle of the gulls at the docks. There are no towering buildings and the market is humble, yet I have everything I need. What goods I cannot get here, like the indispensable miso, the whalers or rumrunners bring me from distant shores, and I haven’t set foot on a ship since my return.

Joshua is as excellent a host as he is a cook, leaving me at peace to invent new dishes and tinker endlessly upon an enormous custom-made fourteen-square-foot stove of steel bound magnificently with brass. Our menu last night: grilled miso-glazed cod with fava beans; goose liver and sumac quiche; haunch of lamb with poached pears and fennel root; and roasted pecan ice cream.

Of an evening, Joshua regales the guests with stories of his adventures upon the sea. His dramatic flourishes draw a crowd, but the best seat is always reserved for his mother, who without fail wraps herself in the shimmering green silk shawl he placed around her shoulders the night he returned. So painterly is he, evoking the rocking of the ships and slowing a cannonball for every eye to see as it passes, that even visitors to the island who don’t know the hand language are entertained by Joshua’s tales. If there are many of them, I sometimes volunteer to translate. We draw a spate of tourists from the mainland who stay in our beds above the tavern’s great room, where a fire always burns in the hearth to dry a sodden traveler. It has become a sign of high fashion to say one has eaten something unique at the Rose, such as Pilfered Blue cheese soup with fried plantains or anise-rum sorbet. We ship our Black Rabbit Ginger Ale to New York by the boatload.

Joshua spent his own share as only the young can, though at sixteen he considers himself a man. He has built his mother a two-story house and sails his handsome yawl to and from the mainland. Soon enough his culinary skill will surpass mine.

He has married a lovely young woman. Their first child, to their delight, is also quite deaf. The beauty babbles with her hands. Joshua calls me her grandfather. I will do everything I can to live up to the honor.

Almost daily we read stories of trouble brewing on the Pearl River. Our little commotion was enough, it seems, to give particularly conservative officials in Canton control of trade there. China has not allowed Pendleton to reestablish the Barbarian House on its shores and, further, has placed ever more strict embargoes and taxes on tea, silk, and spices to discourage opium smuggling. I know that I cannot fully trust the papers, but if it is true that England is planning to blockade Canton, then war is inevitable. Mabbot would have been thrilled. Of course, Mr. Apples, if he is still on this side of the waves, will do his best to make things hard on Pendleton. (I admit I miss the brute. One of the old salts who eats breakfast here is the Michelangelo of scrimshaw, and I have commissioned a pair of whalebone knitting needles that wait on the hearth in case Mr. Apples ducks through our door someday.)