Dark Mondays (26 page)

“Ah, no you ain’t,” said John. “It’d take God Almighty himself to get us in there this side of a six-month. I reckon it’ll come to starving them out.”

“I doubt our Admiral has the time to spare for a siege,” said Blackstone. He turned and squinted back at their own forces, dispersed behind hillocks and clumps of trees, under a lowering sky of black cloud. “Where
is
our Admiral?”

“He gone back on board the
Satisfaction
,” Jago informed them, scrambling down into their shelter. “Captain Bradley giving orders out there. We to wait.”

“That’s Bradley, by God,” John muttered. “Wait and see.”

“What’s he gone back aboard for?” demanded Blackstone. Jago shrugged, and Blackstone grinned. “Oh ho. Interrogating the fair prisoner, I dare say.”

“Our Admiral is a married and a God-fearing man,” said Bob Plum. “I’m quite sure he would never do anything improper.”

A cannon ball smacked into the rock behind their redoubt. It sounded like a hammer hitting an anvil under a thundercrack, sending up a smoke of dust and shards of rock. They cursed and fell flat, waiting for the rain of splinters to end. But the pattering did not cease, and John felt the splash on his outstretched hand.

“
Il pleut
,” said Jago, and spat.

Jacques began to sing mournfully, “
Un flambeau, Jeanette, Isabella…
”

They lay out there in the rain getting soaked until nightfall, before Bradley called them back. Under cover of darkness they retreated, swearing and hating Bradley, and some found shelter in a few ruined stables. No rations were served out; Bradley sent his apologies, and assurances they’d be along any time now. None arrived that night. Jacques shot an old spavined horse, which they butchered and cut into gobbets, and attempted to cook over a smoking little tongue of blue flame. Hungry men appeared out of the darkness and snatched for raw shares, and fights broke out.

By the time the dawn came, it was a mutinous crew that slogged back through the wet grass, and the usual sea-lawyers from every ship stood around Bradley haranguing him about their rights. The French amongst them weren’t for fighting at all, but for going back to the ships and celebrating Christmas in dry clothes. This seemed like a good idea to the English and to the blacks and Indians too, mince-pies or no. Bradley was upon point of giving in when Morgan returned.

He gave a fine speech then, eloquent enough to make the night just past seem like a little inconvenience. Men were sent back to the ships posthaste for provisions, and great fires were built in the deserted village (a right scrubby place), and rum served round. The slow-match coils were hung out to dry like garlands. The
boucaniers
scared up a few flights of pigeons and dropped them with quick shot, so there was Christmas squab and jerked beef, cheer for one and all.

Though a fight did break out when Jacques fancied one of the English was eyeing Jago’s charms, and there was screams and slaps and a knife-fight, but it was broken up before anybody got killed to spoil the holiday.

The Spanish were still firing off a few rounds, just to let it be known they weren’t sleeping. Morgan went out to see their defenses, and came back looking haggard. John put himself in Morgan’s way with another sharp salute.

“We done our best, sir, but they ain’t budging,” he said. Morgan turned and looked at John blankly. John wanted to ask how the girl was, but he couldn’t think of a way, and all Morgan said to him was:

“Rig a coracle. I’ll not waste a boat on this.”

“A coracle, sir,” said John stupidly, but there was an Irish
boucanier
who knew how to make one of the little basket-boats, and he stepped up and said so. In a half-day he had framed a coracle of green wood, and covered it in pitched canvas. All the while, Morgan had retired to one of the deserted shacks to compose a letter, and then rendered a translation into Spanish. He had the Irishman given a clean white shirt, and a white flag made to fly from the coracle, and gave the Irishman his letter to deliver too.

The man hoisted his little boat and carried it down under the battlements, bold as brass, while the Spanish watched like hawks. He paddled about, with the wind whipping the white flag to and fro, until they made up their minds and sent a black down, carrying another white flag, to see what was wanted. The Irishman handed off Morgan’s letter and the black carried it up.

What the letter said, was that if the Spanish governor there did not surrender pretty quick, Morgan swore to him and his that he’d put them all to the sword, no quarter given. A fine threat, with Morgan sitting there in the drizzle with his muskets and pikes and near-mutiny, and the Spanish garrison bristling with big guns.

But Morgan’s luck held.

Two hours afterward the Spanish sent over a canoe of their own, with two emissaries bearing a letter from the governor. John was standing by Morgan when he read it. The funny off-color that had been in Morgan’s face since he’d seen the girl, fled clean away; Morgan laughed heartily. He strode out grinning white as a new moon, and called in his chief captains, Bradley and Morris and Collier.

Bradley came out grinning too.

“What’s toward, Captain sir?” said John.

“Christmas mummery,” said Bradley. He gave orders, and they were followed smart, with sniggers and blank-loaded muskets.

The Spanish governor had sent word that he’d like to surrender cruel bad, but there was the little matter of him getting sent back to Spain in irons and garrotted for cowardice if he did so. To get round this painful chance, he proposed that a mock battle be staged: Morgan’s men would storm the islet and the governor’s men would defend it as fiercely as they might, with everyone shooting blanks. The governor would leave the main fort and rush “to the defense” of a lesser one; Morgan’s men could “capture” him then.

And so it fell out. The sham battle began at nightfall, with a great deal of noise, as men on both sides pretended to take fatal wounds and died most theatrical, and lay giggling amongst their comrades. By midnight the whole thing was over, and not a drop of blood spilt.

Next day all was mutual congratulation, and no few surprises. It turned out the Spanish had been armed to the teeth up there—more than thirteen ton of gunpowder, over a thousand muskets, forty-nine cannon, pistols and slow-match in barrels. They might have kept it up for weeks, if they’d been so minded. But, as the Spanish governor explained to Morgan, they weren’t so fond of the place as to die for it; most of them had been sent there as punishment anyhow. Besides, the island was haunted, and they would be happy to see the last of it.

There were upwards of four hundred people came filing out of the fortresses, with their livestock: soldiers, married settlers and their children, slaves and their children too. Morgan watched them come out, his mood something shadowed and his dark face somber. He had given orders that the men were to be set to work and the women and children sent to the village’s church, when out of the line of slaves one old beldame tottered, calling out to him in Welsh.

Morgan turned on his heel and stared. The old lady fell on her knees, begging him for succor; John heard later she was from some Welsh town, come out to the West Indies as a nurse for somebody’s daughter, but the ship had wrecked. She’d survived but fallen into the hands of the Spanish, who had used her hard twenty years or more.

Morgan took her into the house he was using, and questioned her close. John didn’t know about what, for it was all in Welsh, and anyhow he was trying not to listen too openly, where he stood on duty outside the open door, with another big fellow. But the old lady wept, and carried on no end, and sang sometimes; and John could hear Morgan beginning to sound impatient, and his fingers drumming at last on the tabletop. At last he said something short and sharp, and came outside.

“You; John, your name is?”

“Aye, sir!” said John, ever so pleased his name was sticking in Morgan’s memory.

“Row the woman out to the
Satisfaction
. She’s been a nurse. Likely she can be some help to Pettibone, looking after the girl.”

“Aye aye!” said John, wondering if he’d get to see the girl, and feeling that spear-point in his heart again. Morgan stepped back inside and led the old creature out. Seeing her close to was no treat; for she was bent and whitehaired, with a nutcracker face and rolling eyes, and she curtsied and simpered for Morgan most unseemly. John thought she was more likely to need a nurse than to be one, but he kept his mouth shut and did his duty.

He had to walk the length of the island with her to get back to the boats, with her singing the whole way, poor old drab, seen by everybody, and that must have been how the story got started that Morgan had brought a Welsh witch with him. All talk. Morgan never needed anyone to conjure trouble for his enemies. He was close enough to the Devil to do it for himself, and in any case there were plenty of conjure-wives in the Caribbean if he’d wanted one.

Pettibone opened at John’s knock, and pursed his little cupid’s bow mouth in disapproval.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded. Seen close to with his jacket off, it was evident he had breasts like a woman, the way fat men will. John shuddered.

“Captain’s orders; here’s a goodwife, to be serving-woman for the girl,” he said, and led the old lady into the great cabin. The girl was sitting quiet, in a dressing-gown of purple silk that must have been Morgan’s own. She’d been having her hair tended, to judge from the brush and combs on the table. She looked up at John with that clear-as-water gaze, and John smiled foolishly.

Pettibone took the old lady in charge and clucked over her. John made so bold as to sit at the table across from the girl, and stretch out a hand.

“You remember me, sweeting?” he said, scarce able to get his breath for the words. “Happy to be rescued, are you?”

The girl smiled at him. He smiled back, a grin so wide he must have looked like a Halloween face carved on a turnip, and there might have been a candle burning in his empty head too, so bright he felt.

“None of that,” said Pettibone. “You take your great boots out of here, and leave the poor child alone.”

“Aye aye, ma’am,” said John, feeling like the cock of the walk. He got up to leave, but smiled again at the girl before he went, and whistled as he rowed himself back to shore.

John reported back to Morgan personal and smart, where the Admiral was busy with his captains; Morgan gave order for a party to be got together to move all that powder and shot down to the beach, so it might be parceled out amongst the fleet. John had been without sleep a day and a night, but he was young then, and fearful ambitious of Morgan’s good notice, so he said, “Aye aye,
sir
!” and went off straightaway.

By this time the Brethren were disporting themselves with rum, or roasting slaughtered livestock, or sprawling out for a good sleep; so the first few times John bawled for volunteers, he was told (and roundly too) what he might do with himself. Thinking his own messmates might be more agreeable, John walked about looking for any of the
Mayflower’s
crew.

He crossed one of the rubbishy little fields, and there was one of the Spanish prisoners who’d been sent out to forage, with a basket of maize in his arms, and there was Tom Blackstone, as if he were escorting the prisoner under guard. But they were standing still, heads bent, talking serious together. As John drew close he heard Blackstone speaking Spanish, as easy as kiss your hand.

Now John remembered the slip of paper that had been hidden in his boot, and once again the flash of understanding lit up the inside of his thick head, and he reckoned he’d had it all wrong before. Maybe Blackstone was no intriguer ladies’ man, said John to himself; maybe Blackstone was a
spy
!

But he kept his face bland, resolving to play a deep game and watch Blackstone. He was mild as a May morn greeting him, and gave no sign he’d the least suspicion of anything amiss. Blackstone went readily with him, and on the way they collected the Reverend and Bob Plum, and all that afternoon until dark hauled powderkegs down from the fortress to the camp.

And John did his best not to drop off asleep by the fire, where he’d cannily positioned himself near Blackstone as night fell. All the same, he opened his eyes with a start to find the stars had sunk far west, and the fire gone down to red embers without his knowing anything about it. All around him, men lay snoring something prodigious.

John sat up, grimacing to feel how the cold dew had soaked through his clothes, and in his ear his mother told him he’d catch his death of cold. He looked over at where Tom Blackstone had lain; but the man was gone. So John turned his head this way and that, peering through the night. It seemed to him he heard a murmuring, away out in the dark. It wasn’t the surf, and it wasn’t the ape-bellowing of wakeful drunks. It sounded like someone talking quiet on purpose.

It was coming from the direction of the village church. That was where most of the prisoners had been shut up. John could see the light of a fire still kept blazing before its door, for sober men stood guard there. Round by the back, though, a figure crouched at a little window. Its back was to John.

John got to his feet and walked close, soft-footed as he was able, drawing his pistol as he went. He got to within ten paces and heard for certain the soft hiss of Spanish being spoken, and knew for certain the speaker there in the dark was Tom Blackstone.

He could move quiet when he was young, could John, and so he did now, and came up behind Blackstone and set his pistol to the back of Blackstone’s neck and cocked it. Blackstone fell silent a moment; then he said something in Spanish cool as you please, maybe, “Pardon me, sir, I must be going,” and he stood up slow.

“If you blow my brains out, you’ll never know what I was doing,” he said. “I believe our Admiral might be rather vexed with you on that account. Whereas, if you’ll allow me to make a full confession, you can take it to the Admiral. Glory for John, eh?”