The Dagger X (The Dagger Chronicles) (16 page)

T
he work of moving the barrels took all day. Only a handful of the pirates could actually swim—a fact that still astonished Kitto about most seamen—so working in pairs the swimmers would start out in the cave, wrestle a barrel out into the pool, then shove it along out the tunnel and into the open surf. The barrels were buoyant, though barely: Only three or four inches of oak showed above the waterline when they were rolled into the pool. Once through the narrow passage the way was difficult, as the rolling waves pushed the barrels back toward the cliff face. The task required both swimmers to push and prod the barrel ahead of them, round the rocky head, and make for the beach about fifty yards beyond, where the rest of the band waited to fetch the barrels and haul them to a new hiding place Quid had picked out on the opposite end of the island.

Kitto and Ontoquas teamed up to assist with the swimming crew. Kitto knew he would be useless at the overland tasks, and he could not bear the thought of watching while everyone else maneuvered the nutmeg
barrels that had had such a profound effect on the course of his life. Over the next several hours he and Ontoquas had transported a dozen barrels from the cave pool to the party of sweating men waiting at the beach, Van among them. Sarah worked back at the camp, cooking up strips of turtle meat over an open pit fire and keeping Bucket at a safe distance. Periodically she came down to the beach with Bucket in one arm and a bundle of browned meat in the other to distribute among the grateful men.

X and Fowler spent the morning out in the jolly boats, surveying the island to get a better sense of where Morris—or any approaching ship, for that matter—would likely drop anchor. When they returned after several hours of rowing, the answer seemed clear to them. The island was difficult to access; on all sides but one it was ringed by a series of reefs ranging from a quarter to about a half mile out. Only a stretch along the southeast end was clear. Certainly an approaching ship would drop anchor there, quite near to the entrance to the cave, in fact, and send in boats to the wide beach nearby.

The barrels now huddled in a dense stand of palm trees and various greenery at the northwest end of the island, draped in layers of cut brush they had secured with stones and rope. If all went according to plan, the company would steal a ship and sail off, returning in the middle of the night to the other end of the island, where they would make quick work of retrieving the nutmeg.

Kitto stood with his crutch at the edge of the beach when X and several of the pirates—including Little John—returned in the jolly boat after depositing Pippin at the mouth of the cave entrance.

“Did Pippin not go inside?” Kitto called to them. X splashed down into shin deep water from the bow, his expression pinched.

“Eh? Oh,
ja, ja.
My sweet Pippin was very brave.”

Pulling up the boat nearby, Fowler rolled his eyes. “Aye, very brave. Took one look at a juicy turtle heading inside and took off after him like she went after Little John the other day.”

“I worry about her. She has not been in the wild for a long time.” X chewed on a knuckle and looked out to sea. “I wish my nanny was here. She says the right thing to stop this mad brain from spinning.”

“Pippin will live like a queen in that cave,” Kitto said. “Maybe you are worried that she will like it better than when she was under your care.”

X made a sour face but then nodded. “Perhaps you are right. And she is one of us, after all. She must do her part, ah?” X slapped Kitto on the back. “Do you think this will work?”

If there was one quality of X’s madness that Kitto truly appreciated, it was that he held no regard for status of any kind. X would comically insult any member of his crew should he feel they had stepped out of bounds. No one was untouchable, not even Sarah, who he teased now and again for her steadfast optimism. Likewise, X
would seek advice of those he respected regardless of age—including Kitto—something Kitto’s father had never done, nor even his uncle William.

Kitto rubbed his chin. “I think we will get our chance if Morris arrives. Our night, I mean. The part that worries me more is getting aboard the
Port Royal
without being seen.”

X smiled. “That!” He shook his head. “That is child’s play. You wait and see.”

After three days on the island X had munched his way through the rest of his coffee beans. His mood declined precipitously, and he spent much of his day with his hat clenched in one hand and a fistful of his madly tangled locks in the other, as if considering whether or not to tear out his hair. Even Fowler, who seemed always ready to challenge X on any point of discussion, steered clear.

A watch rotation had been set up: one on the island’s high point at the southeast, another on the northwest beach. Between those two points Exquemelin was certain they could see any approaching ship in plenty of time to make ready.

The days passed with painful slowness, and with each one Sarah’s brow seemed to furrow deeper. Kitto would often join her down at the beach, holding her hand and looking out to sea. Sometimes they would speak of Duck, of the silly exploits he often got himself into, and over and over they would tell themselves that
the little boy was a survivor—like Bucket, he would find a way into hands that would help him.

On the sixth day since Exquemelin and his band had arrived on the island, Ontoquas and Kitto were serving watch at the island’s northwest end just before noon. Kitto had insisted that he, too, serve on the watch, but since his difficulty in hobbling around on the crutch meant that he could not spread an alarm quickly, X relented only when Ontoquas volunteered to serve with Kitto. The two of them, then, spent a few hours together each day. They filled the time by sharing stories about their lives as young children as they strolled the beach at the island’s far tip. Kitto helped Ontoquas with her English and did his best to master a few words in Massachusett.

“Does it still hurt?” Ontoquas said. She and Kitto sat on a shelf formed by the edge of the forest and a small drop-off down to the sandy beach. Kitto had kicked up both his legs and was inspecting them against the brilliant white of the sand below.

“Sometimes. Mostly I just cannot quite believe that it is gone.”

“Are you happy for this? You told me that the boys
tunketappin
beat you.”

“Yes. And that was not the worst part.” Kitto remembered the stolen glances from the adults. “Looks of pity were worse.”

“Pity?”

“People on the street, they would look at me and
show sadness in their faces. They all thought my foot meant I was somehow tainted—bad or evil, in some way I could not help.”

Ontoquas nodded.

“But you are not happy the foot is gone?”

Kitto shrugged. “Sometimes I am. Even if I am clumsier than I used to be, people won’t look at me like they once did. They’ll just see someone who got in an accident.”

“Not someone who is evil.”

“Yes. And I do not know why, but that just burns me.” Kitto knew he was less able now than he had been with his clubfoot, yet he would be seen from here on in a better light by the world. He always knew how wrong those looks were, those beatings. . . . But once they were gone? Their absence would be a constant reminder of how bent the world was.

Can I stop myself from growing bitter? Perhaps my father’s bitterness took its root from the same place.
Kitto turned to Ontoquas.

“Is it like that with your people? Do those with bodies that are . . . not well made . . . are they scorned?”

Ontoquas looked at Kitto through her black bangs. She considered how to tell him that the ways of the
wompey
were strange, unnatural even. She knew a boy who was born with six fingers on one hand. People said that he had been blessed.

“No. It is not that way.” She sat up and stared out at the crashing surf. “Was not,” she said, her improved
English helping her to understand the implication in the verb tense.

For several minutes the two of them stared out to the blank horizon.

“If this all works, if we get away from this island,” Kitto said, “where will you go? Will you try to go home?”

Ontoquas shook her head. “Home is gone. No home is left.” She dragged a finger through the sand. “In Barbados I heard slaves talk about people like me in a place called Florida. Do you know it?”

Kitto shrugged. “Sounds Spanish.”

“Yes. In Florida there are those who look like me, other People of the Sun, but different. Maybe I go there.”

Kitto hoped not to offend his new friend, but he wanted to offer.

“If you would like, you could stay with us. With Sarah, Duck, and me. For as long as you like. If we live through all this, I mean.”

Ontoquas turned to look at him.
Did she blush?
Kitto wondered. There was something soft in her look before she turned away.

“The other
wompey,
they will not like it,” she said. It was true, of course. Kitto could not deny it. He laughed.

“I stopped caring what they thought a long time ago.”

Ontoquas tried to imagine it, living as a Wampanoag among
wompey
. She had lived for years now among
wompey
who treated her like an animal. Could other
wompey
be as different as this boy here with her now? It was a decision for another day.

“What about the gold?” she said, avoiding a direct answer. “The gold and the silver and jewels we found. Deep in the cave. You do not want to tell this X about it?”

Kitto narrowed his eyes. “That part is odd. It is such riches, but Exquemelin does not seem to know about it at all. I am not sure that I should tell him, at least just yet. William never planned on all of this. If we can meet up with him again . . .” Kitto did not bother to finish his thought.

“Morris cannot get the gold?” Ontoquas said.

Kitto shook his head. “You and I could barely pass through that opening. Van could not even fit. And there was no boy on Morris’s ship, just men. Even if they make it into the larger cave, they shall be none the wiser.

Kitto ran his hands through the sand. There was one part of this whole plan that still irked him.

“If we should succeed,” he said, “—unlikely, but possible—have we not just succeeded in stealing? The gold, after all, was stolen from the Spanish.”

Ontoquas shook her head. “No. The gold was stolen from the people of those lands. And they are dead.”

Ontoquas’s eyes froze toward a spot on the horizon out to sea. She stood suddenly and pointed.

“Ship!” she said. She reached a hand to Kitto and helped pull him to his feet. Kitto extended the spyglass that Fowler had handed to him when they relieved him of his earlier watch. He balanced one
forearm on Ontoquas’s shoulder so that he could peer through the instrument without falling over. The ship approached from the northwest, its masts aligned in almost a straight line, the bow pointing almost directly at the island. He could clearly make out the sails of the foremast and the great sail billowing behind it on the mainmast.

“Square rigger,” he said. “And just one. I see no sign of a second ship.”

“Is it this man, Morris?”

“I believe it is, yes.”