Jack Iron (24 page)

An hour earlier, the last of the shore guns had been spiked and several prisoners taken without much ado. By the time the rebellious islanders arrived at the church, Hank Pariser, a farmer, was waiting with the welcome news that Navarre’s lookouts on the point had been captured without a struggle. There would be no warning rocket lighting the night to announce Laffite’s return. The liberation of the island was under way. What a shame to bring it to a halt in its infancy, thought Kit, by alerting half the brigands in the fort. Kit glared at O’Keefe, who sniffed defensively and nudged the sword blade with the toe of his boot.

“Cursed thing leaped out at me,” he muttered.

“I damn near peed in my bloody pants,” Tregoning said. The British marine shook his head and eased his curled finger off the trigger of his musket. He had almost fired off a shot by accident.

“Quiet!” Obregon hissed from the steps.

Kit motioned for Strikes With Club to ease past his companions and approach the explosives. Kit handed him a tinderbox and striker. “Stay here in the magazine and watch the hacienda. If we get in trouble, fire the charge and escape through the passageway.”

The warrior nodded in understanding. Sweat streaked his brown features. It was obvious he did not relish the idea of staying underground. But he was the likeliest choice, for his hair was long and unbound, his buckskin garb was that of his people, while the others, even O’Keefe and Nate Russell, were dressed for the most part as freebooters with little to give them away at a glance.

“I will remain,” he said. Kit nodded, and started toward the steps. “Lieutenant…” Strikes With Club added. McQueen faced him again. “I think you speak straight. I think your heart is with my people, even more than you may know.” The warrior was finished and stepped back to allow the others to pass.

Kit thought a moment and then replied, “I hear your words and know they are true.” He clapped the warrior on the shoulder and started up the steps. Obregon was waiting for him. The Castilian had managed to work the latch free.

“Put out the candle and we’ll see how things look,” he said. Kit turned and gave the signal and Strikes With Club extinguished the candle, plunging the interior of the chamber into total darkness. Kit was reminded of the narrow opening in the hillside and the close confines of the passage that formed the secret entrance into the governor’s palace. Josiah Morgan’s escape route had not saved the life of that hapless governor, but it might end the reign of terror that had plagued Natividad since the arrival of Orturo Navarre.

Kit and Obregon eased the door open and peered out into the night-shrouded courtyard. Kit immediately noted that Tom Bragg had managed to leave his wagon in front of the hacienda. So far so good, he thought.

“Like in the bullfight, when matador and bull face one another across the cape for the last time, this, my friend, is the moment of truth,” said Obregon.

“I’m not your friend,” Kit retorted. “I just want to know one thing. Are you in this to the finish or do you plan to run out again like at New Orleans?”

“I have killed men for less,” the Castilian said, bristling. He ran a hand across his blond mustache and twisted the tips as he stared at Kit.

“Maybe you lads can worry about this later,” O’Keefe suggested. He eased his great bulk up the steps to the door. “How’d you figure we could get to the hacienda?”

“We walk across, single file, like we have nothing to hide,” said Kit.

“Just like we own the place, eh, mate?” Tregoning’s voice rose up from the bottom of the steps.

“We do,” Kit replied. He stood and opened the door and stepped out into the courtyard and found he had to struggle to suppress the feeling of being a target for every rifled musket lining the ramparts. He lowered his head and motioned for Obregon and the others to fall into step behind him. The Spaniard emerged, followed by Nate Russell, Harry Tregoning, and, last but certainly not least, Iron Hand O’Keefe. The Irishman had divested himself of his musket and instead cradled a pair of Congreve rockets in his brawny embrace. It took a moment for him to maneuver them through the entrance. In the magazine he’d cracked off the ends and shortened the rockets by about a couple of feet. He wasn’t worried about how well they’d fly. Distance wasn’t an issue.

“Iron Hand?” Kit whispered.

“Never can tell, they might come in handy,” he protested in a hushed tone. “Anyway, I dodged so many of these in New Orleans I’d kind of like to have a couple for my own.”

Kit shook his head in despair and quietly closed the door after the irascible graybeard. He glanced up at the north wall and could make out the dimly seen silhouettes of Navarre’s sentries. Behind the powder magazine, a row of slumbering men lifted a guttural chorus of snores to the overcast sky. He couldn’t see any guards by the gate, but Kit knew they must be there. And across the compound the main force of Navarre’s disgruntled crewmen settled into restless sleep.

The hairs rose on the back of Kit’s neck and he turned around to find a night-shrouded sentry watching him from the north wall. He couldn’t make out the pirate’s features, a fact that worked to Kit’s advantage as well. Kit stepped aside and waved a hand in the observer’s direction. The man on the wall seemed to hesitate, then returned the greeting and sat back on the barrel he’d been using for the better part of the night. Kit took his place alongside Obregon. The darkness hid the fleeting look of appreciation that flashed in his eyes. The column of men started across the compound to the hacienda where a couple of Navarre’s men sat dozing in chairs outside the front door to the governor’s house. Nate Russell slid a knife from his belt. Obregon still clutched his razor-sharp dagger. For the men by the door, it was time to die.

From his vantage point on the wall, NKenai had noticed the men emerging from the powder magazine and had considered challenging them; after all, he was Navarre’s second-in-command. But the African dismissed such a notion. No doubt Navarre had issued more of those strange orders whose intent the entire crew had ceased trying to second-guess. Curiosity and a smidgeon of wounded pride wasn’t worth the effort. So NKenai returned his attention to the bay he could not see and with weary eyes probed the obsidian night for a threat the African believed no longer existed. He never heard the muffled slap of the waves against the wooden hull of the schooner nor glimpsed a patch of sail against the moonless fathoms of night as the
Malice
, guided by the unerring seamanship of Jean Laffite, rounded the point and headed into the bay.

T
HERE WERE OTHER WOMEN
in the governor’s palace. Navarre could have had his choice of any one of the five African slaves at the rear of the house. But he was drawn to Raven’s bedchamber, urged on by the turmoil that plagued him night and day. He knew she would be there; she had no choice. The door to the room could be bolted from the outside, an addition Navarre’s shipwright had personally installed. The wrought-iron grating that covered the windows had been the former governor’s idea. The woman within the room was Navarre’s prisoner, yet through her witchery, Raven had also imprisoned the Cayman, trapping him in a device of his own creation, the half-breed’s own deep-seated superstitions and primal fears.

Raven was seated by the window overlooking the courtyard when she heard the door bolt slide back. Navarre entered the room and closed the door after him. He remained with his back to the oaken panels and watched her in silence. The pirate captain wore a nut brown woolen coat and tight trousers and boots of Spanish leather that were muddy at the toes. He unbuttoned his coat and untied his shirt lacings, then ran a thumb down his sternum.

“Conjure woman, take back your curse,” he said.

Raven breathed a sigh of relief.
I still have him.
She silently uttered a prayer of thanks to her mother, the Choctaw medicine woman, who had taught her daughter the sacred rituals and insisted the young girl learn them by heart whether Raven believed in their power or not.
One day the mystery will reveal itself to you, my little one. Trust me. Trust the songs.
Raven had never really put much faith in them; still, she had foretold of a British defeat in New Orleans. And now, when confronted by her cruel captor, Orturo Navarre, the rituals and songs had become her only weapons. She had discovered a way to make him pay for what he had done to her. Nothing was going to deter her vengeance.

“It will end when the snake strikes,” Raven answered. She was determined to conceal her own misgivings. She wanted to appear confident, a woman in control of her own fate despite the bars on the window and the bolted door.

“And if I said I would set you free?”

“I would call you a liar.”

Navarre pursed his lips and scratched at the side of his shaved skull. It appeared solitude had not dulled the keen edge of her anger. He swaggered across the room and slumped into a high-back chair by the fireplace. The hearth was the former governor’s concession to the memories of his past. Josiah Morgan had come from Danbury, Connecticut, where a winter’s chill demanded a cheerful blaze in every room. No doubt he had missed the merry crackling of a fire, and despite the rarity of a truly cool night in the Caribbean, the deceased Mr. Morgan had built the hacienda to suit himself, hence the fireplace.

Minutes seemed to crawl past. Raven did not move; rather, she kept her vigil in the seat by the window. Navarre crooked a leg over the arm of the chair. His was a crafty mind. He hadn’t told Raven this was to be her last night in Natividad. Tomorrow she would be ferried out to Callaghan’s boat and then good riddance. He’d see how effective her curse was from hundreds of miles at sea.

“Bring me something to drink,” he ordered.

“I am not your slave,” she replied. Raven reached down by her side and produced a small stoneware bowl in which there remained ashes and dried blood, a mixture she had reconstituted with rainwater. She leaned to the right and dabbed the outline of a snake upon the white clay wall beside her. She repeated the gesture on the wall to her left.

Suddenly Navarre stood and knocked the chair over as he stretched to his full height and pulled one of the pistols from his belt and advanced on her. Raven braced herself for the shot to come.

“I’ll show you death, conjure woman. Your own!”

“Do not seek to threaten me,” she calmly replied. “Before the echo of your gunshot fades, the snake will devour you. The beast of the hollow mountain will clean your bones.” Raven gathered all her resolve and laughed in his face, knowing full well she was tempting fate to do so. But the only thing he respected was strength and she had to prove to him she was unafraid to die. The wind gusted through the window and made a moaning sigh and caught her unbound hair and set it rippling as if her long black tresses had become endowed with serpentine life. The pirate halted in his tracks and then retreated toward the door. He felt a stabbing pain in his belly. The snake had awakened. Only Navarre’s pride kept him from fleeing the room. He regretted ever entering and began to wonder whether or not the Choctaw breed had lured him in the first place.

“Enough of your chatter, conjure woman,” said Navarre, reaching for the door behind him. He lowered his pistol and returned it to his belt. “Soon I will be done with you. I will break your power. And you will regret the day you ever chose to anger me.” He opened the door and drew himself upright, swelling with pride and bluster. “I am Orturo Navarre whom men call the Cayman, I am the master of Natividad. Who is there who can stand against me?”

“Will I do?” a voice said from the doorway. Navarre spun about and caught a face full of Kit McQueen’s iron-hard fist. The blow lifted Navarre completely off the floor and sent him sprawling into the center of the bedroom where he landed, bleeding, unconscious, and, for the moment, as much of a threat as a rag doll.

Kit held out his arms. Raven ran to fill them. They held one another, without uttering a sound, just holding one another, feeling their hearts beat as one. Their kiss was fire. The only interruption occurred when Navarre moaned and stirred and attempted to rise. Raven freed herself from Kit’s hungry embrace to crack the Cayman across the skull with one of his own guns. The pirate went limp. Then she returned to the arms of the man she loved, the man she knew would never stop looking for her as long as the winds blew and stars sparkled and the sun shone.

“I love you,” Raven whispered in his ear. The words returned in an instant, for man and woman had been speaking at the same time.

“I love you,” said Kit McQueen.

N
AVARRE SAT ON THE
stairway, shoulders hunched forward, his hands bound at the wrists. His head felt as if it were about to split wide open. As he lifted a hand and gingerly probed his broken nose, then checked his mouth and found a couple of his pointed teeth were loose, he began to see the reality of his situation in a clearer light. True, he was at the mercy of these intruders, but they in turn were trapped within the palace compound. It made for a precarious situation all the way around.

The hours after midnight seemed interminable to all but the two guards who had been stationed outside the front door and now lay dead in the hall between the front of the hacienda and the kitchen at the rear. The guards never knew what hit them, their outcries muffled as knives were plunged home. Within moments the two had been dragged inside to expire within the governor’s house.

The front of the palace was a long high-ceilinged room divided by the wide stairway. The front rooms, both sitting room and conservatory, were spacious and heavily windowed. The sitting room to the right of Navarre was appointed with several ornately carved chairs, a settee, end tables, and an armoire. An arched entrance opened into a conservatory to the Cayman’s left.

The palace, such as it was, had been a comfortable place and Josiah Morgan, the former governor before Navarre had made a meal of the poor man, had frequently entertained, enjoying the conversation and fellowship of his friends from town and the outlying farms. Under Navarre, the palace had become tomblike, a place the island’s inhabitants feared to visit.