Mad Morgan (25 page)

Read Mad Morgan Online

Authors: Kerry Newcomb

BOOK: Mad Morgan
3.97Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Henry Morgan works without complaint, for he is constantly studying the layout of the treasure district with its warehouses and defenses. Under the watchful glare of armed guards, Morgan carries his load into a storage hall, past ingots of gold, the pagan treasures of an empire, jeweled cups and statues of elder gods. He longs to run his hands
through a chest of gems, catch the light with emeralds and rubies. Drink rum from topaz-encrusted goblets. Dance on a pile of doubloons by firelight. He sweats and groans like any slave but in his mind's eye the fortune belongs to
el Tigre del Caribe
. The Spanish are merely guarding it for him.
He pauses in the dim light and a guard immediately reproaches him for wasting time. Morgan nods subserviently and goes about his business, unloads the silk and retraces his steps. The guard returns to his place by a great mahogany desk where one of the officers remains seated, attempting to make note of what goods are brought into the warehouse and dispatching loads of timber, barrels of salt and sweet figs and bales of tea from the Orient on to other warehouses along the waterfront.
“Get along now, back into the street,” the guard bellows. “The day is young yet.”
And Morgan complies, seemingly immune to the insults of his captors. In his thoughts, he strides the burning streets of the conquered city, lays waste his enemies, and gathers in the wealth of kings. He can see it clearly. It will come to pass, if he lives.
An image of a man, a familiar face, only inexplicably saddened.
“Father?”
“I shall wait here among the ashes.”
“Come away from the heat. I cannot bear it.”
“That's because of the wound. Infection is setting in. You won't last long.”
The apparition fades. “Just as well, Papa, if you are going to speak nonsense.” But he knows his father has spoken the truth. He wouldn't lie about something so important. But it wasn't all that hard, just the act of letting go. Forget revenge, forget the fabled treasures, the glory and greed. None of it seemed as important as just letting go. What is there to cling to?
Doña Elena, now there is a woman for you, she'll put the fire in your belly.
He almost reaches out to her, then changes his mind.
No, thank you.
He will resist that temptation. And besides, she will not save him. He needs someone strong, someone who will stand with him in fair times or foul, a soul born free like his.
Darkness surrounds him. He is sinking, clawing for the light and the light reaches down and the light is a face.
Nell Jolly comes to him then, with her eyes like blue sapphires, a pert nose and unruly auburn hair and sweet sad smile and she is good and she is true and she has always been at his side and carried him in her heart
.
“Toto,” he whispers.
“I am here.”
“Do not leave me.”
“Never.”
And her love is stronger. than death.
 
 
Water touches his lips, a cool compress of moist leaves, a poultice of jungle herbs and moss draws the poison from his wound. Morgan opens his eyes and finds himself staring at the thatched roof overhead. He stares at the interwoven branches, marveling at the skill necessary to make the roof tight enough to keep the rain off. He can hear the patter on the roof, the raindrops spilling from the rounded entrance.
A dark-skinned woman knelt at his side and removed the compress from his forehead. She cradled his head upon her lap and placed a gourd to his lips and gave him to drink of a particularly noxious brew. The bitter liquid was a hard go at first, but she seemed determined to make him swallow and chuckled at his distress, pinched his nose and refused to allow him to spit it out.
“Enough, good mistress,” Morgan sputtered. The woman allowed him to recline and went about changing the poultice on his wound. “How did I get here?”
She ignored him.
“I found you. I brought you here, to Patria,” said a voice from the entrance. Kintana ducked and entered the jacal. The muscular warrior squatted alongside the man on the pallet. “She told me your fever is broken. I think you will live now.”
Morgan looked up into the Kuna native's implacable countenance. He had stolen away from the city without incident. Kintana brought out a small clay pipe, took a glowing coal from a nearby brazier, lit the tobacco and began to smoke.
Morgan asked, “How long have I been here?”
“Many days.” The warrior had been presented with a curious dilemma. “My companions said I should kill you.”
“They are fools. I did not drive you from your lands and sell your people into slavery and force them to work in the mines. Spain has done this. The soldiers behind their walls are your enemies.” Morgan closed his eyes. The effort to speak taxed his strength.
“The Kuna are too few in number now.” Kintana spoke softly to Patria and the woman nodded and crawled out of the jacal. “The
walls are strong, the Spaniards have many guns, many soldiers. And all we have is …” Kintana exhaled a cloud of smoke and chuckled.
“Me,” Morgan finished. The buccaneer closed his eyes and allowed himself to drift into sleep.
“Sí.”
Kintana nodded ruefully and his eyes narrowed. “And what can you do, Anglais?” There followed a moment of silence. Kintana even began to suspect that the pirate had lost consciousness again, then Morgan spoke and the conviction in his voice could not be denied.
“I can take Panama City.”
H
enry Morgan had been brought to Portobello in chains. Pity the Tiger, blinded by the sunlight, led down the pier in shackles, blinded by sunlight, led down the pier in shackles, unkempt and haggard and brought down by jackals, destined to be brought across the isthmus to Panama City, doomed to play a gallow's game and suffer an ignominious end as a slave.
Three weeks to the day, it was a far different man who emerged from a grove of windswept palms and walked out across the Caribbean strand to make his benediction to the star-flecked surf while the moon rose like a silver chariot to chase a lonely cloud across a jeweled sky.
“I am Henry Morgan,” he called out. And he cupped water to his naked torso, washed his chest and the puckered white scar on his side. He was lean and hard as men must be who walk with the jaguar. His long hair hung to his shoulders, his black beard aged him, but his gray eyes that caught the moonlight, beheld the constellations, sparkled like the sea. He was alive and he had an adventure to live, vengeance to slake, a furious heart that only rivers of blood and chests of gold could appease. “I am Mad Morgan!” he roared.
Behind him, Kintana and two other warriors stood well back from the water, as if suspicious of the great expanse over which the Spanish conquerors had come. Kintana's companions were similiar in attire,
they all wore cotton breeches, their muscular bare chests crisscrossed with straps for a powder flask and shot pouch. War axes with obsidian blades encased in crocodile skin hung between their shoulder blades.
“Morgan … come,” Kintana called out.
And the buccaneer turned as if surprised to find his savage benefactors still with him. He turned his back on a shooting star and walked out of the ocean's embrace and followed the three Kuna Indians as they led him in the opposite direction of Portobello, which lay a two days' ride west.
The four men continued on in silence, Morgan lost in his thoughts; Kintana and the other two warriors, Chaua and Felipe, maintained their guard. Spanish troops had been known to patrol the coast, although not without provocation. An hour later Morgan caught sight of a wooded cove and correctly assumed this was to be their destination. However, Kintana had more in mind then a mere campsite for the night.
Night birds swept the sky, tree frogs chittered a merry chorus in the dark. Rodents scurried from underneath the safety of fronds whose leaves were large as elephant's ears, bobbing and flapping in the sea breeze. Morgan noted they had passed a couple of likely campsites, when Kintana halted in his tracks, spoke in his native tongue. Chaua and Felipe immediately tramped off into the tidal shallows and fell to work uncovering something large and long. Morgan could not make the object out in the darkness. But Kintana, on the shore, set about making a fire, using dry sea moss for kindling and a piece of flint scraped against the brass butt plate on his stolen musket. The sea moss burst into flames and was quickly nurtured into a warming blaze by the Kuna chieftain. He handed a burning brand to Morgan, who glanced around at the other two Indians and in the firelight discovered what they were hurrying to uncover.
The buccaneer's eyes widened and his heart leaped in his breast as Felipe brushed away the last of the woven reeds and Chaua, who was the youngest of the three natives, grinned broadly and stood off to the side to allow Morgan to see the fishing boat in its entirety. It was a twenty-foot craft, with a gaff-rigged sail on a single mast. Near the stern, by the rudder, someone had erected a small thatch screen to provide some shade and relief on a hot day. Morgan gingerly approached the craft as if fearful it might bolt from his grasp and make for open water like a frightened fish. He placed his hand on the side of the craft, stroked the wooded flank and iron oarlock. At the
bottom of the boat, Morgan was overjoyed to discover a backstaff, used by the boat's former owner to measure latitude and navigate while at sea. With this instrument, and a couple of weeks' provisions and water, a man could sail this boat from Panama right into Port Royal, with a bit of luck and a madman's sense of pluck.
“Where did this come from?”
“Same place as the guns,” Kintana said, slapping the musket's butt plate as he drew abreast of the buccaneer.
“And the owner of the boat?”
Kintana lifted a burning brand, climbed out of the water and began to kick around in the underbrush. “His head is around here somewhere.”
“Never mind,” Morgan said. “But I shall need supplies, food and drink for at least ten days. Fourteen days would be even better, in case I lose the wind.”
“There is fruit. And we can kill a peccary and dry the meat. Smoke fish, too.”
Morgan nodded. “Then so be it. I will leave.”
Chaua broke into a chant, the bulk of which was unintelligible to Morgan although he had picked up a smattering of the native tongue during his stay with the Kuna and thought he recognized words for
journey and spirit
and
good fortune.
“He knows you will make this journey,” Kintana explained. “He asks the Spirit of the Great Water to bring you to your people. I, too, shall sing it when you have gone. It is a good song.”
“I haven't had much acquaintance with prayer lately,” said Morgan, his hand still caressing the boat. “I say it's good to hear one now and then, even if it isn't a proper Christian tongue. I am grateful.”
“Sí.”
Kintana nodded sagely, and then, with just a hint of a grin, added, “It is also a chant for the dying.”
 
 
It took almost another week for Morgan to ready the fishing boat that he christened
Little Nell
for good luck. From dawn to dusk he repaired the mast, patched the sail, trimmed away any decay, and restored the hull. Chaua was sent back toward Portobello to watch for any sign of approaching dragoons, while Kintana and Felipe gathered provisions. The forest provided a rich bounty of mangoes and bananas, wild goats and peccary; turtle meat was a prized delicacy.
At last, with November a few days away, Morgan poled
Little Nell
out of the estuary and into the sea. The craft took to the rolling tides
as if eager for what lay ahead. Morgan tacked across the wind, crisscrossed the inlet, spent the afternoon getting a feel for the craft, how it might handle in a storm. She proved sound and willing to accept him. Only then did Morgan return to shore, to spend his last night among his savage companions. They gathered by the campfire and feasted in silence on turtle meat and plantain. Later, at Morgan's insistence, they built a pyre of decayed wood. Kintana seemed particularly preoccupied though he worked tirelessly alongside the buccaneer. The Kunas' ability to conceal their emotions made it difficult to read his silence. With the pyre about chest-high, the three men quit for the evening and returned to their campfire and stretched out on their blankets. The Kuna had a knack for drifting off to sleep in a matter of minutes. Morgan envied them. His was a restless night.
The morning dawned gray and misty, a sobering omen but one Morgan took in stride. He'd be sailing north by northeast, charting his course by the sun and the stars, following the trade winds and trusting, when all else failed, in Morgan's luck. Kintana and Felipe rose with him and, with the new day barely an hour old, followed Morgan down to the water's edge.
“See you keep watch for my return,” Morgan said.
“I will keep runners in the hills. They will watch for smoke from the fire and bring word,” Kintana told him. He betrayed no emotion. The man had a center of calm that Morgan envied.
“What will you do until I return?”
Kintana shrugged. “Fight.”
“Then fare you well.” He held out a length of rawhide in which he had tied seventy knots, one for each day. He figured it would take him about two months to reach Jamaica, gather a force, repair, and ready enough ships.
“Un nudo para cada dia.
I will return before you get to this.” Morgan indicated the last knot in the string. He held out his hand. “I will bring men to fight at your side. There will come a day when we walk the streets of Panama City together. It may not be the end for the Dons but it will be the beginning of the end.”
Kintana stared down at the gesture of friendship. He had been fighting for so long, suffered too many losses to completely trust. “Until that day,” he said and, turning, headed toward the palm trees. But at the edge of the undergrowth he looked back and raised his hand. “Mad Morgan!” he shouted.
“Good enough,” Morgan muttered to himself, and waved farewell. He trotted down to the fishing boat and walked the craft out of the shallows with the tide's help. Gaining deeper water, he crawled
aboard and lowered the sails. The canvas rippled and then caught the wind.
Little Nell
plunged forward as Morgan tacked into the mist.
Watching from the shore, Felipe glanced in Kintana's direction. “Do you think the Anglais will return?”
Kintana shook his head. “I think he will die.”
“Then what should we do?” Felipe asked.
“Keep watch.”
 
 
With the shore falling fast behind him, the sea ahead, gray like his eyes, like the color of gunmetal, Morgan felt his resolve waver. The waves were getting choppy. Perhaps he ought to turn back. He might be sailing into a storm. Jamaica was a far piece for a man alone. All alone …
“Damn, what's this, Henry Morgan, have you lost your backbone?” the buccaneer said aloud. He stood and drew his knife and reaching behind his head cut off a lock of his hair and threw it into the wind. “Have at me. See, I shall dare the devil. Do your worst, I charge you.” Here in this mist, he faced his fear and, in a moment of weakness, discovered again his brave, proud heart. He was
el Tigre del Caribe
.
Morgan hurled the lock of hair upon the black waters before the coast of Panama was lost to his eyes. He had dared the devil and taken a solemn oath. “I will come again. Or ne'er will I rest in death, this is my pledge.”
Now the pact was sealed.
 
 
Five days out, the devil did his worst and stole the wind. Left becalmed, Morgan dragged out the oars and began to row. All around him the sea was one great vast undulating plane. He felt small indeed, a mere speck upon the wide ocean, alone, but enduring.
He was thankful for the canvas screen he had erected to protect him from the sun's brutal glare. Morgan used his spyglass to study the surface of the waters, in hopes of catching a disturbance on the surface where a gust of wind might ruffle the glassy sea. After a few hours he lost his stomach for rowing and pulled in the oars and stretched out beneath his canvas tarp, propped his head on a bag of possibles and went to sleep. There was nothing to do but wait. And drift.
The gaff-rigged sail hung loose and lifeless, the boat's motion imperceptible, the stillness like being adrift in the mind of God. With
nary a cloud to block the view, he watched the sun dip below the horizon, painting a path of gold across the sea. He could appreciate the sight now, but give him another week of calm, and the sight would lose its appeal when his tongue was stuck to the roof of his parched mouth.
Night, and still becalmed, and Morgan wrestled with the same fears any seaman has faced when the wind dies. But it was hard to despair in the face of so much beauty. The stars in the heavens, bright and gleaming swaths of diadems, stretched from horizon to horizon and reflected off the ocean so that it seemed as if the galaxies were above and below, and Morgan transfixed in the center of eternity. Perhaps that's how it was with all mankind, all of us hung between unpredictable nature and the whims of the gods.
Past and present merged. Images paraded through his mind, years of plunder, wild days and libertine nights, he had lived and fought and conquered, victories like tribute laid before his feet: Morgan the conqueror, Morgan the Tiger, Mad Morgan will harry you and not forget a slight. But guile could not help him. There was no tricking the tides and the trade winds. He watched himself, stood apart, marveled at the changes ten years had wrought; better yet, two months in Panama as Don Alonso's unwilling guest had given him a clearer look at himself. What a fool he had been to allow Elena Maria's poison beauty to dull his instincts.
Then Nell came to him once more, a voice heard in the silence of his heart in the spinning stars and she was calling him home. What could a man do in the face of such defining love but persevere?
How could he have been such a fool to overlook Nell, whose friendship meant more to him than any other man or woman? Now he saw her in a new light, starlight, and he knew she would be waiting.
Morning came and Morgan rationed out a cup of water and hungrily devoured a mango, scanned the surface of the water, and was about to retire to his canvas screen when he glimpsed a disturbance on the main. He hurried to fit the oars in the locks and began to pull toward the trace of breeze. More than an hour later he was about to admit his delusion and abandon his efforts when the canvas sail ruffled and snapped as the wind found it. The fishing boat sprang to life, the wooden hull trembled and cut through the sun-dappled sea. He was on his way again.

Other books

Pretty Poison by LAVENE, JOYCE AND JIM
Pleasure for Him by Jan Springer
Trust by Terry Towers
Motion Sickness by Lynne Tillman
Succubus, Interrupted by Jill Myles
Red Ink by Julie Mayhew