The Dagger X (The Dagger Chronicles) (31 page)

“Your uncle and I will come fetch you, just as soon as we can.”

“How long?”

“Soon.”

Duck accepted the answer with a scowl. At least he had action to look forward to. After having spent weeks in the hold of a ship—much of it cowering in a barrel, never knowing when Julius might screech out his frustrations and land both of them in shackles—the idea of a long hike into unknown mountains sounded appealing.

And he wouldn’t be alone. Julius was always good company, and maybe Duck could teach Dumaka how to speak the King’s English.

“Take my hand, now,” Bethany said. “It is this way.” Bethany led them to the far corner of the cellar where some old boards leaned against the dirt wall. Bethany handed the candleholder to Duck and motioned for Dumaka to lend a hand. Together they lifted away the boards one by one from where they leaned. There were several layers of wide planks, but after they had removed a few, Duck lifted high the light.

“ ’Tis a door back there!” he said.

“Yes. A secret door, too.” Bethany slid the iron bolt aside, then pulled hard on the handle. The hinges groaned as the heavy wooden door swung open. Duck held out the candle and peered into the black passage beyond.

“W
here’s it go?” Duck said, a tremor of fear in his voice. He squinted suspiciously into the dark passage.

“Not far at all,” said Bethany. “The shaft passes just below the lane out front and comes out in the midst of a stone hedge at the far side.”

“Do we have to go in there?” Duck said. He had spent enough time in dark places for them to populate a lifetime of nightmares. “Can’t we just go out the back door of the kitchen?”

“If you were seen, my dear,” Bethany said, “you and Dumaka would be the last two ever to be helped along to freedom from my house. That hardly seems fair to me. Does it to you?”

Duck made a face. “Oh, fine,” he said. “And what we do once we pop out the hedge?”

“Travel along it, keeping the hedge between you and the lane. Keep your monkey quiet.”

“He don’t always listen to me.”

“Keep the hedge on your right side. You do know which one is your right, don’t you?”

“Sure. This one.” Duck lifted up his left, then grinned.

“Do not be cheeky,” Bethany said. Duck raised his other hand. “Yes, that one. Do not forget, or you shall end up back at the wharf.”

“I know which way
that
is, don’t worry.” Bethany put her palm atop Duck’s head and wagged it side to side.

“Little scamp you are,” she said. “Now listen. Go along the hedge until you reach an intersection. Wait there out of sight. The man in the wagon will arrive. If it is the right man, he will stop his wagon to tend to his horses. When he does that, the two of you get in the back and cover yourselves.”

Duck looked up at Dame Bethany with doleful eyes. “You quite sure I can’t just stay with you here? I’d stay right here in this basement!”

“I promise I’ll send for you, boy, or arrive myself when the time is right. Until then Nanny will care for you.”

Duck patted the pouch Bethany had put round his neck. “And if my mum or Kitto should come looking for me?” he said.

“Then I will deliver them to you just this same way.”

With a few more reassurances and a hurried embrace, Bethany shooed them into the dark passage. Dumaka went first, taking the candleholder and waving it in front of him to part the thick cobwebs.

It was a low-slung passage they entered, so Dumaka had to bend at the waist to walk. Duck clung to the back of his trousers and shrank from the eerily wavering
cobweb strands. The spider silk crackled in the candle’s flame. Julius rode atop Duck’s shoulder until he became entangled in filaments of web. He swatted them away frantically, then dropped to the ground behind Duck with a screech.

“Julius, shut it!” Duck said. The monkey leaped up and dug his claws into Duck’s pants, clinging to his backside so as to avoid both the darkness of the floor and the disconcerting stickiness of the cobwebs.

“I don’t like the dark, Dumaka,” Duck said. “What about you?” Dumaka said nothing but grunted at the effort of walking in such an awkward position.

The earthen walls of the shaft were punctuated by wooden posts that connected to a network of crisscrossing joists at the dirt ceiling. The path was clear excepting the cobwebs, and the two moved quickly. It was not long before Duck bumped into Dumaka, who had come to an abrupt stop.

“Here,” the man said, and it was the first word that Duck had heard him say. Dumaka moved aside so that Duck could see an iron ladder against a wall, leading up into blackness.

“Let me go first,” Duck said, not interested in being left alone in the shaft. He pushed his way past Dumaka and scrambled up the rungs, Julius still clinging to his trousers, swinging this way and that as Duck climbed. Together they entered into a narrow vertical tunnel of dirt and rock.

Quickly Duck noted a dull brightness above him. A
few more steps up and he saw stars overhead, somewhat obscured by overgrowth. The rough tunnel opened up into the neatly stacked stones of the hedge. He pushed his way past the vines and climbed out and over the stones. On the far side he could make out the strip of pavement that was the lane. Julius propped himself onto a stone and looked down into the blackness for Dumaka.

The man arrived moments later without the candle, one hand clutching the bundle of food Bethany had given them. He too clambered out over the rocks and onto the carpet of overgrown grasses beyond the hedge. This side of the stone wall bordered a cleared field that held no crop and looked as if it had been left to lie fallow.

Duck turned to look either way up and down the stone wall, determining which was the correct direction. Dumaka seemed to know. He took Duck’s hand and led them so that the hedge and lane were on the their right side. Julius scampered along behind them.

“Is this the right way?” Duck hissed. Dumaka turned around and tapped his fingers against his own mouth, a gesture Duck had never seen before but knew its meaning nonetheless. They walked on, the silence of the night heavy and the lane thoroughly deserted.

After just a few minutes of walking along the dew-moistened grasses, they reached another stone hedge, meeting their own at a right angle.

“This is it,” Duck said as softly as he could. Dumaka nodded to him, and they sat on the ground. Dumaka leaned back and rested his head on a rock. Duck spread
himself out on the grass and closed his eyes, and Julius nestled into a warm spot atop the boy’s chest.

Duck awoke sometime later to the feel of Dumaka’s rough fingers pressed against his lips. Duck sat up. In the distance he could hear the clomp of horse hooves and the jangle of harness and leads. The two of them huddled up against the wall and waited.

By the time the wagon drew alongside their hedge the sounds of the horses and the creaks of the wagon seemed impossibly loud to Duck. But then a voice called to the horses and the wagon stopped just at the intersection.

“Well, Athena and Apollo,” a low voice said, “seems only fair to give you some oats for carrying me at such an odd hour.” Duck heard the driver’s boot heels scrape the gravel as he hopped down to the lane.

Duck pulled himself up and peered at the wagon in the lane standing in dappled starlight. One of the horses neighed contentedly and tossed his head.

Duck found Dumaka’s hand.

“Come on!” he said. “Now is when Gran said we go.” Duck scooped Julius up into his arms, and the monkey did not resist. Dumaka watched the boy scamper over the stone hedge and climb into the open wagon. The driver remained rigidly facing forward even though Duck’s complaints about Julius’s sharp claws would have been audible to any passerby.

Dumaka gathered his courage and vaulted over the hedge.

E
xquemelin was the first to be called in for questioning. Hours earlier a barred wagon had transported the alleged English pirates from the Spanish galley at Havana Harbor to the prison not far from the wharf. The ride in the wagon through the tidy lanes of the town had not been a long one, but a gathering of curious townspeople trailed the vehicle as it made its way through the lanes. It had been Van who had pointed out the gibbet to Kitto and Akin at the wharf. It was a large pole standing in the water, and hanging from a hook at its top was a metal frame encasing the skeletal remains of some poor victim of the Spanish justice system. Kitto did not need to ask what it was. When the marines unloaded them in shackles and led them through the stone archway and into the prison, Kitto knew that the gawkers were eagerly anticipating the entertainment that was soon to come to them.

Hangings always drew a crowd.

Two marines had led Exquemelin away, leaving the rest of the gloomy company to ponder its dire predicament. They were kept in a single cell. The ceiling was quite high—twelve feet at least—and up at the top of one wall a barred window admitted the glow of daylight.

The massive stones surrounding them threw echoes of their hushed voices.

“What you think they be doing to him?”

“You know it already.”

“They sure to hang us, you think?”

“Of course they will! It’s what they do to English.”

“They don’t know nothing about us.”

“They got a witness, ain’t they? That is more than they need.”

Kitto and Sarah and Ontoquas sat at one corner of the cell. Bucket, having just eaten a bowlful of corn mush that Sarah had goaded from the jailer, slept peacefully in the woman’s arms. Kitto leaned his head back against the stones.

He hardly dared admitting aloud what he knew was true.

“I signed the articles,” he said in a whisper. Sarah shook her head.

“You are a boy! You could not have known the import of what you were doing. They surely do not hang boys!” The men, overhearing them, threw long looks in Kitto’s direction. They knew otherwise.

“I would not change what I did, Mum,” Kitto said. It was true.
How can it be true?
he wondered. But it was.
Signing the articles had been their only chance, but it seemed they had no chance after all.

Perhaps only a handful of days I have bought all of us,
he thought.
But still I would change nothing. If I have saved the lives of sixteen men for these several days, have I not done something?

“We cannot give up hope,” Sarah said. Kitto lowered his head and stared down at the sewn pant leg that covered his stump.

I, who was destined to do nothing . . .

Ontoquas reached to her chest and felt for the small amulet hanging there. When she was sure no one watched her, she slipped the necklace over her head and gathered it into the palm of one hand. She nudged Kitto with an elbow, and he turned to see her extending a clenched fist out to him beneath their folded legs.

Their hands met, and Ontoquas dropped the chain and cross into Kitto’s upturned palm.

Why?
he wanted to ask, but could only manage a questioning look.

“To protect,” Ontoquas said. Whether she meant to protect Kitto or to protect the necklace, Kitto did not know. In fact, she meant both. Ontoquas had not been granted a vote ten days earlier when Exquemelin and his sworn pirates had decided whether or not to fight the Spanish out at sea. She would have voted to fight.

Ontoquas’s name may not have appeared on the paper, true, but she knew in the pit of her stomach what would happen. With her skin, her hair, her age? The
Spanish would see her as all the
wompey
did—a menace to be dealt with. They would make her a slave again, a fate she swore she would never revisit. Death would be better.

And Bucket? Would they even let him live? Ontoquas let her long hair fall over her eyes so that Kitto could not see the tears that had begun to gather. She had failed Bucket. She had not saved him.

Kitto slipped the necklace over his own head and tucked the cross beneath his shirt. Next to him Sarah had closed her eyes, and her lips were mouthing a silent prayer. Kitto tried to do the same, but fear knotted his stomach and he found it hard to shape the words.