Jack Iron (16 page)

Callaghan, once convinced the African captives from Natividad would bring a much better price on the slave docks, had agreed to enter into a partnership with Navarre. However, the slave trader from Carolina was skittish by nature. If he suspected trouble from the locals, Artemus Callaghan as well as other slavers could be counted on to bolt for safer ports.

For some time now, Navarre had suspected Father Bernal of working to undermine the slaver’s control of the island. However, the Carib half-breed was reluctant to execute the troublesome padre outright. Bernal still had too many followers among the citizens of Morgan Town, although the number had decreased after the arrival of the first two slave ships, whose crews had been anxious to spend their meager wages in the taverns, crib houses, and produce markets Morgan Town had to offer. Profits had won the Cayman many converts. Navarre was convinced that if he simply exercised patience, the inhabitants of Morgan Town would revert to their old callings and be his. Then the priest’s “unfortunate” demise might well go unnoticed.

“Where is Callaghan?” asked Navarre. “Is he aware of the trouble?”

“He spent his night in a room above Bragg’s tavern. I think he bedded two of Bragg’s mulattos. As for Callaghan’s crew, they are scattered throughout the town. They know nothing but the sleep of jack iron. And when they wake, the cannons will fire broadsides within their skulls.” The African’s robust laugh seemed to resonate from deep in his chest.

Orturo Navarre finished dressing and tucked his bone-handled flintlock pistols in his belt along with the cutlass. “I can handle the priest. Maybe we should send him to the other side of the island to save the souls of last week’s guests.” The Cayman grinned, revealing his pointed teeth. He walked to the edge of the bluff overlooking the governor’s palace and, further below, the horseshoe-shaped bay with its aquamarine waters where two ships rode at a quiet anchor about seventy yards offshore: Callaghan’s
Homeward,
a seaworthy brig and Navarre’s the
Scourge.
Work parties clambered over a third craft, a sleek, swift-looking schooner that was being washed down and painted and made ready to ply the high seas once more. The schooner had preceded the slave trader’s arrival by more than a week.

“Your spyglass,” Navarre said, holding out his hand. NKenai snatched a spyglass from his belt and passed it to the pirate, who raised it to his eye and studied the laborious efforts of the Scourge’s master shipwright, Rico Amidei, and his work detail, some of whom were scrambling up the rigging while those men skilled with hammer and saw went about repairing a patch of fire damage at the stern of the vessel. Rico Amidei, a feisty Italian-born craftsman who had gone to sea with nothing but the clothes on his back and a streak of good-natured larceny in his soul, dangled from a sling draped from the bow of the craft. He was seated on a length of one-by-twelve above the deep draft waters of the bay. As Orturo Navarre adjusted the focus on the lens, a man at the bow materialized in the eyepiece. Amidei was preparing to rechristen the ship by first chiseling off the vessel’s previous name.

“It’s about time,” muttered Navarre. He silently mouthed the letters as they were reduced to splinters and fell into the sea.

W… I… N… D… T… H… R…

T
HE CHURCH HAD NO
name. The citizens of Morgan Town, be they field hand, overseer, or proprietor, simply called it church. There was none other. On this the fourth Sunday in Lent, Father Albert Bernal looked down from the simple oaken pulpit he had built with his own two hands at the congregation of farmers and shopkeepers who had come for Sunday service. With Easter only two weeks away, the remaining members of Morgan Town’s citizens who so far had resisted the temptation to revert to their former piratical lifestyles had gathered to hear the priest’s message of hope and redemption. However, Father Bernal did not fail to notice that the church was only about two-thirds full. The members of the Cabilde, the governing committee of the town, had ceased to associate with the priest. Those who had formerly served under Josiah Morgan and had held a modicum of power were the most reluctant to antagonize Captain Navarre. The Cayman’s cannibalistic excesses had made cowards of them all. At least a third of the priest’s flock had followed the Cabilde’s example and fallen away from the church, which left the padre deeply troubled.

So Father Bernal began the liturgy, asking the Lord’s blessing on the faithful members of his congregation. In Latin he led them in the rites of contrition and then read to his flock from the Gospels, concentrating his remarks on the raising of Lazarus from the dead. As an afterthought he likened the current situation on Natividad to the death of Lazarus and extolled his flock to pray for rebirth. About halfway through his homily, the rear door of the church opened and Orturo Navarre entered and stood at the back. He came alone, leaving NKenai and a dozen men stationed outside in full view of the congregation. The windows were unshuttered to permit a cross breeze through the church. Father Bernal could sense he was losing his people’s attention as the pirates strolled up one side and down the other, slowly ringing the church.

The priest abandoned his discourse and thumbed through his worn leather-bound Bible until he came to an appropriate psalm, the pages creased from a great deal of use lately.

“The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth.

He will fulfil the desire of them that fear him: he also will hear their cry, and will save them.

The Lord preserveth all them that love him: but all the wicked he will destroy.—”

A gunshot cut the priest short and startled the congregation, causing the men to jump in their seats, the women to scream and gasp, and the few children to cry and cling to their parents. Father Bernal dropped the Bible and ducked down behind the pulpit. Then, with his ears still ringing from the flintlock’s report, the priest eased up to peer over the oak pulpit. Navarre’s laughter filled the silence that followed as he calmly reloaded his pistol and returned the weapon to his belt.

“I do not think your God hears you, Priest,” Navarre said. “But I hear. And I see all who have come to listen to your words and it displeases me. Perhaps they have heard enough.” He sauntered down the center aisle between the unnerved townsfolk in their rows of hand-carved pews. Many of the benches still showed a trace of bark. The pirate captain approached the crucifix, which Hank Pariser, a former pirate turned farmer, had donated to the church. The relic was a thing of beauty, made of silver and bearing a fine-line drawing of Christ upon the cross. The crucifix was attached to a heavily weighted silver base and had been set atop the altar, a table made of stone slabs brought from back in the hills.

With casual disregard for the deity depicted in torment upon the cross, Navarre lifted the crucifix in hand and poked a finger through the bullet hole he had just shot through the chest of the crucified God. He wiggled the finger at the townspeople and grinned, showing his pointed teeth. Then his expression changed, and his eyes grew narrow, and a growl beginning somewhere deep in his chest erupted from his throat as he rose to his full height and hurled the crucifix out into the center aisle where the relic glanced off a pew and bounced and crashed along the floor.

Spittle formed at the corner of Navarre’s mouth as he gnashed his hideously pointed teeth and advanced on a family of farmers seated in the first row. The father, a lanky son of the sea who had traded in his jackboots for a mule and plow, a good wife, and a family of five boys, stumbled out of the pew and led his offspring from the church. He was the first of many. Indeed, the entire congregation, still rattled from the gunshot, rose up and headed for the rear of the church, ignoring the protests of the priest, who entreated them to stay and trust in the Lord. When the last of the townspeople had fled the church, Navarre ceased his performance and wiped the froth from his lips. The wild light in his eyes faded and reason and civility returned.

“You are a mad animal,” said Father Bernal, his voice weary and spirit near broken. How did one deal with a man who growled and foamed at the mouth and ate his enemies and shot his friends. “Dear God, where art thou? Have you abandoned me?”

Navarre reached in his coat pocket and brought out a brown glass flask of rum. “Lost your God, eh, Priest? Look for him here.” He tossed the bottle to Father Bernal, who caught the flask with practiced ease. “From the looks of you, I’d say you found him before. Call him Jesus Christ. Call him Jack Iron. I think, for you, they are one and the same.”

Navarre stiffened as a bell began to peal from a rocky point overlooking the mouth of the harbor. He had stationed some of his men to act as lookouts and sound the alarm whenever a ship appeared on the horizon marking a course for the island. Natividad was proving to be an unexpectedly busy port. Suddenly, NKenai loomed large in the open doorway.

“I hear it,” Navarre said before the African could speak.

“You want the cannoneers sent to the shore batteries?” NKenai asked.

“Until we learn the identity of the ship and its crew,” Navarre said, trotting down the aisle. He paused at the church’s entrance and glanced back at the crestfallen priest. “I am told you speak against me. It must stop.” He leaned down and picked up the battered crucifix. NKenai’s eyes lit up from where he stood, watching. The silver relic was obviously of value and could be melted into coins. But to the African’s surprise Navarre placed the crucifix on the nearest pew.

“We could use that,” Navarre’s black-skinned lieutenant suggested.

“No. Leave the Christian God within these walls where it cannot do us any harm,” said Navarre. The pirate watched with grim satisfaction as Father Bernal slowly turned his back on the empty interior of the church he had striven to fill for the glory of God. The crestfallen man of the cloth uncorked the bottle of rum and tilted it to his lips.

NKenai, standing in the sunlight, was unable to glimpse much past the crucifix but he glimpsed movement by the altar. “Now what is he doing, my captain?”

Navarre saw the bottle of grog tilt upward yet again. “Why, he’s praying,” said the Cayman.

From the point of land called the Shark’s Tooth, the warning bell continued to sound. A Congreve rocket shot upward, fired from behind the walls of the governor’s hacienda. The rocket exploded overhead, signaling to the men at the point that their signal had been received and was being acted upon.

“Come, my friend,” said Navarre. “We must prepare to greet our guests.”

“Shall we welcome them with solid shot and chain?” NKenai asked.

“It all depends on who they are,” said Navarre, “and if they have anything I want.”

The master of Natividad hurried out into Market Square in time to see dozens of his men emerge from the Sea Spray Inn across from the church. Others followed from a variety of houses, shops, and campsites; they flooded into the square and hurried toward the shell-paved road that wound down the hillside to the waterfront where an assortment of smoothbore twelve-pounders were concealed beneath tarpaulins and made to resemble stacks of crates and barrels waiting to be loaded aboard one of the ships in the bay.

Navarre noticed that several of the farmers in the town square had begun to close up shop. “Belay that, you plow pushers!” The Cayman had standing orders that business was to proceed as usual on the island both out in the countryside and in port. Morgan Town must appear that nothing was out of the ordinary, especially with the arrival of a new ship in the harbor. Navarre did not want to alarm any friends or alert any possible enemy by showing a deserted settlement to seaward. The farmers grudgingly returned to their makeshift booths, determined if shooting started to grab their trays of mangos, guavas, cassava melons, sweet potatoes and maize, and racks of salted pork and freshly caught fish, and bolt for the hills.

Navarre and his African first mate started down to the shore. Above Morgan Town, Navarre’s select crew manned the walls of the hacienda and the big twenty-four-pounder cannons in the redoubts at the base of the battlements. Before long, the commotion had ended and every man, drunk or sober, had taken his place.

A stillness settled over Natividad broken only by the eternal tides and the crying gulls and the whispering wind… a quiet not unlike the calm before a storm.

N
ATIVIDAD SEEMED TO RISE
and fall in the distance as Laffite’s ship,
Malice
, with all sails unfurled, rode the blue-green sea. The island itself was about twelve miles long and nine miles wide of palm-ringed shoreline and limestone ridges and narrow valleys carpeted with a lush growth of ferns and wild grasses and layered with fertile volcanic soil. The hilly interior was a patchwork of barren, cactus-dotted cliffs on the south side of the island giving way to forested slopes thick with oak and pine, cotton tree, breadfruit, and mahogany. Gulls circled one another above the entrance to the bay of Morgan Town on the west side of the island. Further inland, turkey buzzards kept a sharp lookout for the day’s next meal, hovering above Natividad’s interior, which teemed with a variety of animal life including wild pigs, rats, bats, birds of every conceivable plumage, and reptiles the likes of which appeared to have existed unchanged for aeons.

Kit McQueen had yet to make these discoveries as he stood near the bow of the schooner, taking in the cobalt blue sky, the rolling waves, and scudding clouds like airborne frigates plying the currents of heaven. The ship carried a complement of a hundred and two now. Laffite had stopped at his encampment on the Louisiana coast and taken aboard the remainder of his crew. Kit and Iron Hand O’Keefe, Harry Tregoning, and the Choctaws were mere passengers who helped when they could but for the most part tried to remain out of the way. Nate Russell had surprised everyone and taken a liking to sea travel. But a week into the journey and the Choctaw was prowling the decks with all the assuredness of a veteran tar. Strikes With Club had fared much worse. The seventeen-hundred-mile Caribbean crossing to the Lesser Antilles had been a nightmarish experience. The young warrior had kept precious little food on his stomach, what with the constant pitch and roll of the schooner. Eventually O’Keefe suggested the hapless brave remain behind at one of the islands. However, Strikes With Club adamantly resisted such an arrangement and O’Keefe did not press the matter.