Mad Morgan (24 page)

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Authors: Kerry Newcomb

BOOK: Mad Morgan
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“You were to see I never made it to the
Castille
. I was supposed to die along with Don Alonso.”
Barba nodded glumly, accepting his fate. Morgan chuckled; he had suspected as much all along. But there was something in him that
wanted to be proved wrong, a desire to believe that Elena Maria might have cared for him, at the end of the day, that at the moment of her triumph over this marriage of necessity, she might have felt something. Love? Perhaps.
“So be it,” Morgan said. “You were to kill me?”
“Sí.”
Morgan slowly exhaled and straightened and lowered the saber. Then, with a sudden swipe that caught the major off guard, he severed the bonds and freed the major's wrists. “Get up.” He turned and started toward the gate.
Barba glanced at his freed wrists, hardly daring to believe he was still alive. The dead grenadiers littered about the entrance bore mute testimony to how close the major's own demise was. Morgan turned his back on the officer, cut the mare free from its harness and led the animal to the main gate. Barba watched the man go about his escape, unwilling to press the matter further. He did not want to die this night.
“It is easy to take a life, harder to give it,” Morgan said. And slowly, painfully, he eased himself astride the mare. “Carry my words to Don Alonso del Campo and to his new bride. And to all of Panama City. I charge you with this.”
“I will do as you ask,” Barba said. The major's blood turned cold. “What would you have me say?”
The buccaneer kept a tight grip on the reins. He held his mount in place, and raised the saber in his hand. Framed by the gateway, the sword resembled a scythe and the faintly discernible figure, an all-too-real resemblance of a Grim Reaper, terrible in his resolve.
“Tell them, Morgan is coming.”
W
e are Brethren of Blood,
we are sons of the sea.
We are children of havoc
and born to be free.
Sourge him and hang him and do what you will,
A man who won't break is a man you can't kill.
Screw your heart to your backbone, the Black Flag's anon,
Cry “Morgan is coming” and pity the Don.
“M
organ is coming.”
Don Alonso softly repeated the message to himself as he sat astride a black charger, perspiration glistening in his close-cropped beard, his graying head shielded from the broken rays of sunlight by a broad-brimmed hat made of straw. The governor had personally assumed the responsibility of hunting down the escaped prisoner. It was a matter of honor. But Don Alonso took comfort in the fact that he was protected by a detachment of Spanish dragoons, hard men with a reputation for ruthless efficiency and courage in battle. Behind them, the walls of Panama City were a beckoning sight in the distance. But these men were not the kind to look back.
Skirmishers rode ahead of the column, ranging to either side of the road, searching the underbrush, their short-barreled muskets loaded, primed and ready to shoot. The tracks they followed led for a time down the road to Portobello, a passage that eventually would have brought the escaped prisoner into a confrontation with one or more of the many patrols ranging the mountain road.
Don Alonso assumed Morgan must have realized his dilemma, for the tracks showed he had altered his course after a couple of miles from the front gate, and backtracked, heading east through the tall grass and marshy ground toward the distant jungle and the forbidding-looking barrier of the great Darien swamp.
An hour passed, then two, and the heat began to rise and the
excesses of the previous evening began to take their toll on the soldiers and the governor. The sun overhead seemed intent on purging the sins of the night before. The column of dragoons rode through the thick humid air, sweat seeping from their pores, heads throbbing; an errant step or a misunderstood remark exploded into quarrels and reckless threats.
Don Alonso slapped at his neck and crushed an annoying fly before it began to sting. Another buzzed his face, and he swatted the air with his gloved hand.
Curse Henry Morgan.
This was not the way the governor had planned to spend the morning after his wedding day. Curse the brigand. The miscreant should have been hanged back in Jamaica. Don Alonso rued the day he had ever listened to the counsel of a woman.
“Morgan is coming.”
Indeed, well, Henry Morgan was a fool, and hardly in any position to offer threats. He was a man alone. What could he do, where could he go? And how had the pirate managed to escape in the first place? It was said the brigand lived a charmed life. Well, the jungle was more than a match for Morgan's luck.
While the governor was pondering the unanswerable, one of the skirmishers lost among the trees and tall reeds fired a shot that alerted the column and sent Don Alonso and the rest of the dragoons riding at a gallop toward the sound of the gun. The brutal effects of heat and humidity were shunted aside as adrenaline energized the entire column. These men were mean-tempered and ready for a fight. Don Alonso simply wanted this nightmare to end, to free him from this escalating madness.
Maybe it will finish this way, before the day is out, and I can return to my marriage bed,
the governor thought as he drew his saber and held the weapon upright, the curved blade resting against his shoulder, brass hilt gleaming as he walked his mount along the edge of the swamp, taking care to avoid stumbling into the quagmire.
Don Alonso wanted to make a good impression. He was among veterans who had been honed by their war with the savage Kuna. These dragoons had fought pirates and thieves and jungle savages for the better part of three years. They deserved a leader they could respect and trust, whose courage was the equal of their own.
The column rounded the encroaching jungle and a thick stand of white-trunked trees that towered two hundred feet into the air, and caught sight of the skirmisher who had signaled them. The scout had ridden out across a shallow fork of the bayou and reached a knoll of
firm ground where he had discovered the mare Morgan had stolen and apparently left behind to graze upon the reeds and fringe grass.
“Is it Morgan? Have you found him?” Don Alonso called out, plodding through the sultry air. He watched as the skirmisher caught up the trailing reins, turned the mare and guided his own mount back into the murky shallows. The sluggish water rose to his mount's belly as he carefully attempted to retrace his path to the knoll. Kiskdees and parakeets chattered in the surrounding treetops. Monkeys chattered and hurled from vine to branch in the treetops, their domain the canopy of trees beckoning inland. Suddenly one of the dragoons with the column snapped up his musket and fired. A geyser exploded a few yards to the rear of the skirmisher. Don Alonso, startled by the sound, searched in the direction of the marksman and saw a curious trail of ripples in the water.
“Es un crocodilo,”
the dragoon called back. And several of his companions shouldered their weapons, prepared to defend their companion belly-deep in bog should any other crocodiles take an interest in him. But the skirmisher managed to reach firm ground with the mare in tow. He immediately approached the governor and saluted before reporting what he had found.
“Your Excellency,” the soldier began, “I saw marks in the mud that looked as if a
piraqua
has been shoved or dragged into the water. There was blood on some of the grass and more on the mare's flank. I think Señor Morgan is badly wounded. He may even be dead, adrift in the swamp. But wounded or dead, either way the crocodiles will have him, or the fer-de-lance, the jaguar, or maybe the Kuna will take his head for a prize. I saw signs they have passed this way.”
The skirmisher shuddered and wagged his head. “I would prefer the gallows,” he continued. “The rope is a clean death compared to what the Kuna will do. I have seen things …” His voice trailed off. From the expression on the man's face, it was clear the man had witnessed mutilations that continued to haunt his sleep.
Don Alonso dismounted and walked stiff-legged to the water's edge, till his boots began to sink into the marshy ground. He stood there, saber drawn, facing the vast swamp and the forbidding recesses of the Vierde Infierno, the Green Hell. He raised his saber and slashed at the water's edge then straightened, his eyes blazing as he searched the vine-draped trees, the dense undergrowth and the glassy surface of the bayou.
“Morgan!” he shouted.
The name reverberated through the emerald gloom, echoed like a
litany of the dead, a single name, hurled into the jungle and drifting back toward him out of the wilderness that had claimed the pirate as its own.
 
 
“My lady … your tea.” Consuelo set the tray down on a nearby table in the garden house. She pulled back the curtains and allowed the sunlight to flood into the garden house, illuminate the interior, lend a cheery brightness where there had been depression and doubt. The woman on the bed stirred and rolled over on her naked shoulder, one breast poking insolently from the covers. Elena Maria reached for her dressing gown. She pulled it on over her head and sat upright. Her eyes were puffy and dull-looking. An aura of defeat clung to her.
“Child …” Consuelo approached her, held out a hand. Elena Maria took and kissed it and clung to it and for one brief moment was like a small child to her mother, lost and frightened and seeking comfort. “Such a face and on one so newly married.”
Elena Maria scowled. “What would you have me do? Be grateful? For what, that I am married to a man who already has plans to restore his family's estate, using my birthright? He intends to sell the sugar plantation in Paraiso to pay off his father's debts to the court.” She brushed her black hair away from her face, tied it back with a ribbon, then rose from the bedcovers and began to pace the small room. She stood in the sunlight flooding in through the window and closed her eyes, allowing the molten gold warmth to seep into her. Her hands knotted into fists. Suddenly her body was wracked with sobs. Her shoulders sagged and she brought her hands to her face. She heard the rustle of Consuelo's skirt.
“No,” she said. And the nurse halted in her tracks, arms outstretched but unable to embrace her charge. Elena Maria almost gave in to the pain. But her resolve was stronger. She was her father's daughter. And a daughter of the house of Saucedo did not simper or weep or dissolve into tears just because her world had come crashing down and all her plans come to naught because of some wily pirate whose presence of mind she had underestimated.
How had he known? What had given her away? If his escape hadn't brought her to ruin she might have found joy in his freedom. After all, she had arranged it. And the passion they had shared was a strong memory, heady as a rare wine, powerful and profane. Another time or place and she might have … no … the awful present must be dealt with.
She could still feel Don Alonso climbing atop her, sweating and reeking of wine and rum, his lust overpowering any thought of tenderness or consideration for her own enjoyment. Why, the fool even thought he was the first, but then again, she had played the part well and convinced him of everything he wanted to believe. And all the while she had wondered why and how her plans had come crashing down. Where were Morgan and Gilberto?
Come morning she had learned the truth, when the major had disturbed the governor's rest and reported what had happened. The news had been like a knife plunged into her breast, cold steel into her heart. She was the governor's lady now, she had the name that ensured her prominence. But what use the name if her husband was bent on squandering all her father had built, dismantling an empire to feed his own vices and those of his dissolute family? Elena Maria resisted the urge to surrender to her tears. And slowly her backbone stiffened.
“My lady, what can I do for you?” the half-breed said.
“Draw me a bath back in the house. I would wash his stink off me.” Elena Maria glanced at the servant, her dark eyes the color of dead leaves. Fate and a clever bastard had dealt her a cruel blow. She was bowed but hardly broken. Elena Maria looked around as her servant started to leave.
“Consuelo, look beyond and tell me, will I see
mi boucanier
again?”
The nurse frowned; she looked troubled, plagued by her own inner demons perhaps. Her second sight was more a curse than a blessing. She would have traded it, gladly, for a life of peace and maybe, just maybe, another visit to Port Royal. But as pleasant as that memory was, the sweetness was overshadowed by a premonition of disaster. But the question had been asked and must be answered.
“I cannot tell for true,” Consuela replied. “But he will see you.”
“Another riddle, old woman. Is that all?”
“Such is life.”
 
 
Maybe Don Alonso wanted a war, but Henry Morgan was in no shape to give him one. His keen sense of self-preservation overruled the fury in his heart. He was weak from loss of blood. At least the wound in his side had finally quit bleeding, and the last thing it needed was another melee. He had two rounds in his pistol, and Gilberto's saber, hardly the kind of force one needed to take on the Dons. So he lay
on his belly on the bottom of the shallow dugout canoe he had found and paddled into a thicket of tall reeds a couple hundred feet from the knoll where he'd left the mare.
Peering through a covering of fronds with which he had covered the
piraqua
to further conceal it, Morgan watched Don Alonso flail away at the edge of the swamp, heard the governor call him by name, waited in silence until the governor grew weary of his display and led the column of dragoons away from the bayou and back onto the trail toward Panama City.
Morgan remained there in the heat until the thirst became unbearable. Then he fought free of the reeds and the fronds he had used to disguise himself and the boat. Groaning with the effort he forced himself to paddle to the closest dry ground he could find, a mound of thickly carpeted earth at the upper end of a winding creek, a sluggish tributary that grew narrower and narrower until it petered out.
The buccaneer climbed out of the dugout and dragged it up onto the creekbank. His exertions had started him bleeding again. He braced himself against the twisted trunk of a mangrove tree and removed the pistol from his belt, emptied the priming powder onto his wound, then, placing a branch between his jaws, struck the flint and ignited the charge. The powder flash cauterized the wound. Morgan bit clean through the stick, spat out the wood fragments, sank against his backrest, sighed and fainted dead away.
 
 
He is carrying several bolts of silk upon his shoulder as he cautiously makes his way along the pier. Morgan dutifully follows a line of Africans, all of them burdened by a wealth of goods they've spent the day unloading from the
Santa Clara,
a merchant ship that has recently arrived from the Far East. Morgan is careful with the laboriously dyed silks, they are highly prized by the ladies of Panama, not to mention the women who attend the court of King Carlos. The silks would be a worthy prize in Jamaica as well. The prisoners wind their way along the waterfront and up the Avenida Balboa for a couple of blocks until they reach the governor's warehouse, a large stone-and-wood structure protected by a redoubt and a contingent of grenadiers.

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