The Dagger X (The Dagger Chronicles) (15 page)

“What was it, in the bottle?” Kitto whispered.

“Poison. He told me the home, behind the shop of a young cooper.” X tugged at the beads again. “I was to pour it into the stew pot. Simple as that.”

A small silence followed. Kitto finally broke it.

“And did you?”

X grabbed furiously at the pouch at his belt and took a moment to extract a small handful of coffee beans. He held them in his palm a moment. Kitto could see that his hand shook. Disgusted, X squeezed the beans in his fist and hurled them into the fire.

“I made it to the alley behind the home, and I saw the stew pot through a shuttered window.” Kitto held his breath. X continued. “I saw a woman tending it. A
woman
! She had a spoon she dipped into the stew to test it. A woman . . . Never had I . . . only men before, you understand.

“I began to walk away, up the alley, but then I turned back around. To disobey, to refuse . . . I knew what it would mean for me. Maybe the woman deserved it, I told myself. So I went back and resolved to be done with the task quickly.”

“Did you kill her?” Kitto whispered. X looked at him, letting his eyes travel down Kitto’s body to the stump propped up on the rock.

“I intended, yes. I looked in again, through the shutter. This time I see the woman again. She dips the spoon
into the stew and holds it out to a young boy, perhaps five years. The boy sips at the spoon, but the stew is hot and he hops about waving his hand in front of his face.”

Kitto turned away, embarrassed at the tears filling his eyes. “And the little boy, he had a clubfoot?”

“
Ja, ja.
He did.” X cleared his throat. “And that little boy was you. I have never felt shame like that, standing there in an alleyway, thinking of murdering a woman and a little cripple. I, who had lost my own
moeder
when still I was a boy.”

“So what did you do?”

“I rapped on the shutter, and after a time, I convinced the woman to open the window and speak with me. I told her my name. I told her what I had been charged with doing and who had instructed me. I showed her the vial I carried.”

Kitto took a deep breath, willing down the tears. “And what did she say?”

“She gathered the little boy—you—into her arms and brought you to me. ‘This is my Kitto,’ she told me. ‘He is the world to me. Nothing less.’ ”

This time when the tears came, Kitto did not try to hide them. They rolled down his cheeks. Exquemelin pretended not to notice.

“And then she showed me something. She left for a moment and came back holding this dagger.” X turned the knife in his hand. “She showed me the name inside it. Henry Morgan had given it to her, with a promise: If she were to make it so that blade met with my heart,
then he would allow her to leave Jamaica and he would see her no more.”

X stood abruptly, swept off his tricorne hat, and scratched at his graying hair with the tine of his hook. He stared up at the sky bleeding red toward the west. He did not wish to tell the boy too much. Not yet.

“And why did Morgan want you dead? Why then?” X dared not turn around when he answered.

“He had his reasons. That is all.”

Kitto took the opportunity to sweep away his tears.

“So, essentially, you and my mother agreed not to murder each other?”

X giggled, turning around. His goofy grin reminded Kitto for a moment of Duck. “Does not sound like a difficult agreement to come to, eh? But,
oui
, that is what we agreed. And we each paid for this agreement.”

Kitto sat up and swung his stump to the ground gently.

“I know how she paid. With her life. What did you pay?”

X raised his right arm into the air. “Spider and Morris came for me, with two other men. They dragged me off to the woods. Spider took my hand from me with an ax while Morris looked on, telling me I could not even be buried with the tattoo still a part of my body. I had dishonored my brethren.”

“So they were to kill you, then?”

“
Oui, oui.
Of course! They took the hand, but not all the fight in me. I took a pistol from one of them
and shot Morris. Good enough to grant me escape, not good enough to send Morris to the hell he deserves. I ran to the beautiful mountains of Jamaica, and they did not catch me.”

“How did you survive?”

Exquemelin smiled. “My life was saved . . . perhaps my soul as well.”

“A priest rescued you?” Kitto said. To this X let out a falsetto squeal of laughter that went on for several seconds. Finally he composed himself and poked Kitto in the shoulder.

“No, thank Jesus. I was saved by slaves, runaways. They took me with them deep into the mountains, where I met the most intriguing and beautiful woman the world has ever known.” X closed his eyes and smiled sweetly up at the paling sky.

“You fell in love, then?”

“Oh,
ja
. And I made a whole new life. As a pirate.”

E
xquemelin gave out a long whistle. Seawater dripped from the strings of beads at his chin, making them sparkle in the cave’s glow. He stood atop the rise of sand beyond the main pool, turtles moving around his boots. Kitto struggled up the rise behind him with his crutch, and Ontoquas, Quid, and Pickle stood silently in the pool.

“Ongelooflijk!”
he muttered. “Not to be believed. Sometimes the silly stories the buccaneers tell are true after all.”

“You had heard about the nutmeg, then?” Kitto said.

“I heard about stolen treasure. Every one of the raiders of Panama did. We all spoke of it, bitterly, when we recrossed that jungle back to our ships with hardly enough silver in our pockets to even notice its weight.” He stepped forward to caress the first neat staves.

Kitto hobbled over to the barrel that Ontoquas had broken through a few months before. He scooped up a handful of the nutmeg pods and offered his hand out to Exquemelin. The captain plucked one and held it toward the light.

“Men are stupid,” X said. “I take this turd to Europe and turn it into gold. But here, it is just a turd.” He placed it back into Kitto’s hand. “Do not drop them.” Kitto smiled.

“I think there are enough to spare.”

“One or two, perhaps. How many barrels?”

“Sixty including this one, which we shall have to transfer out by bucket to keep them from getting wet.”

“The other ones, they can take to the water?” X asked.

Kitto gave a firm grasp to the lip of a barrel nearest him. “We should check each before lowering it into the water, make sure it’s sound, but yes, I believe they will hold up fine.”

X nodded, but he did not look pleased.

“Should we start moving these bloody turtles out the way, captain?” Pickle asked, scratching at the tangle of matted hair atop his head.

X scowled. “Think, think. We must think this through!”

“We cannot leave the nutmeg here,” Kitto said. “Morris will know about this cave. William will have told him to save the lives of his men.”

X stepped away from the barrels toward the pool. He turned and sat on a large turtle as if it were a stump. The turtle withdrew his head in alarm and did not attempt to move.

“Where do we put the barrels, ah?” He flicked his fingers at his beard beads, making them dance. “Morris
arrives, drops anchor somewhere. He and twenty men, perhaps, come ashore. It is then we must take the ship. He has how many you say, ah?”

Kitto shrugged. “At least thirty, I would say.”

“We have twenty, counting the woman and the girl, neither of whom is useless.”

“But we have surprise on our side,” Kitto said, hopeful the captain would not back out of their arrangement.

“The jolly boats will ride low enough with our nineteen. No room for barrels.”

Kitto saw the problem.

“Can we make more trips, perhaps? We take the ship first and then go back for the nutmeg?”

X stood up from the turtle—which immediately began to crawl away—and approached the barrels again. He tugged at one of them.

“Two boats rowing out in the night to the ship, that smells like danger to me. What if the watchman on Morris’s ship gives a warning shot? The men on shore, they hear it. We cannot go back for barrels then. They will guard them from the rocks above. No.”

“So we cannot leave the barrels behind in the cave, since Morris would then have them, but we have no way to bring them either.”

“
Exactement.
Exactly.”

Kitto felt a growing frustration at their predicament. No ideas were coming to him that would end up with both the barrels and them on Morris’s ship unharmed. His mind a stew, Kitto leaned on his crutch
and hobbled over to the smaller pool of freshwater.

Toward the back a steady trickle flowed off a bulge of rock, and Kitto lowered his mouth to it. The water was cool and refreshing. It made him think of Pippin. X had told him that crocodiles do not take to saltwater; they can swim in it but prefer freshwater for lounging about in. Kitto sloshed his crutch through the pool’s water.

“What about Pippin?” he said aloud before considering.

“Eh?”

Kitto felt his heart skip a beat. “Pippin!” Kitto spun and hurried back over toward Exquemelin. “Could not Pippin stand guard here in the cave?”

“Stand guard over the barrels?”

“No, stand guard over nothing!” He explained his idea to the sea captain while X savagely tugged at his beaded beard.

“We remove the barrels and hide them somewhere.”

“Where?”

“It does not matter. The far side of the island perhaps, where they will not be found. Why would Morris look for them if he knew they were located in this cave?”

X nodded, his blue eyes growing wider. “
Ja, ja,
keep going!”

“Morris arrives and puts himself and most of his men ashore. They try to get into the cave right away, but they can’t because there is this terrifying lizard in the cave that attacks them!”

“Pippin is a crocodile. Not a lizard.”

Kitto ignored him. “So they lose time trying to solve their dilemma, at least one night, and during that night we take the ship.”

“What if there is more than one ship?” X said. “William’s ship. What if they pursue us in her?”

Kitto waved a hand at the possibility. “Never. Even if the
Blessed William
is still afloat after the battle, William himself admitted the
Port Royal
was a faster ship.”

“And what of Pippin? Will she be hurt? I do not want her hurt.” Kitto thought it through, staring from the cave passage to the pool where he imagined Pippin would happily lurk when she was not making a feast of turtles.

“How would they hurt her?” he said. “My mum shot her, and that did little.”

“She has nasty scratches,” X said, shaking his head.

“Even so, getting weapons into this cave? It would be next to impossible to do without wetting the powder or the pistols . . . And even then, it would not be enough to kill Pippin.”

X paced, nodding. “
Ja, ja.
I know Morris. He would be patient. He would wait until Pippin left the cave, or he would lure her out.”

“All we need is one night!” Kitto said. “Morris would find out in a day or two that the cave held nothing, but by then we would be far to sea and they would not know how to follow us.”

“And William? We must take him with us.”

Kitto agreed. “And the other crew, at least the loyal
ones. And my brother Duck.” X threw Kitto a look. He had been told about the boy but had kept to himself his estimation of how long it would be before Morris pitched him overboard.

X chased away the grim thought by slapping Kitto on the back hard enough for it to sting. Kitto grinned.

“
Briljant!
If I did not know better, I would say you must be of William Quick’s blood!”

Kitto laughed, shaking his head at the pirate’s error. “But I am! I told you he is my uncle.” X stopped laughing abruptly. A moment of confusion clouded his features for a moment. Then he rapped himself on the forehead and smiled.

“Of course! I am a fool.” X turned to snap in the direction of Quid and Pickle. “Why is it we stand here!
Venez, les petites filles!
” he shouted, beckoning with the sweep of his arm. “Move the bloody turtles, we have work to do and not so many moments!”