The Dagger X (The Dagger Chronicles) (33 page)

Kitto let his mind drift off with her, and it was not
until he heard Fowler speaking at the end of the column that he realized the men were being given the chance to speak final words before the nooses were fitted to their necks and their heads covered in white sacks.

“I ain’t got a thing to say to you swine,” were Fowler’s words. Pickle crowed an apology to his mother. Little John said he wished he had married that sweet lass who loved him back in Devon.

Kitto turned back to the little girl. She seemed so important somehow. He remembered running on a beach when he was very young. It must have been Jamaica. The surf curled around his feet. He, too, clutched a little lovey doll, tight so that the water could not take it away from him. And there, just down the beach, was his mother—his first mother—smiling and opening her arms to him. For the first time in years Kitto could see her face, as clear and as memorable as anything he knew in this world.

She was beautiful. She loved him.

Why have I not seen you before?
he wondered.
Maybe I will see you again. Yes. And soon.

Next to Kitto, Pelota barked something in a native tongue that no one understood, and then it was Exquemelin’s turn.

“Coffee beans and the love of a good woman! I shall miss them and little else!” he shouted out, and the crowd booed him. The guard reached forward to cover his head, but X wrenched to one side. He stuck his tongue out at the crowd and blew a spit-filled raspberry before
the soldiers could slide the sack over his head and adjust the knot at his neck.

It was Kitto’s turn.

“Your final words, sir,” one of the officials behind him said.

My final words. My final words.

“I have a gift,” Kitto said. “Not words.” He turned around to face the man who had spoken to him, but the soldier behind him jabbed him with his musket and pushed Kitto’s cheek to face forward.

“Do not deny a condemned man!” Kitto said. “About my neck there is a chain. That sweet girl in the back there, tossing her little doll. I would like her to have it.” Murmurs arose behind him as the officials considered.

Apparently they agreed, because rough hands dug beneath his shirt and withdrew the chain. It was drawn over his head, and in a moment the thick noose had replaced it.

Kitto felt the scratchy fibers of the rope against his Adam’s apple.

The little girl. Keep your eyes on her.

Down below him Kitto saw dozens of heads turn as the spectators tried to catch a glimpse of the girl who would be the recipient of the pirate’s gift.

A gift. That is a way to end a life with dignity,
Kitto told himself. The sack went over his head. The girl was gone.

“Viva las piratas!”
X shouted, and laughed a loud and lusty laugh.

The crowd shouted back at X. Kitto’s eyes were open
but all he could see was the glowing white of the sack. He could just hear above the din of the crowd the sound of the surf, the waves crashing against a seawall. It made him think of home.

Home.

“Mother and Father,” he whispered. “Be there for me. Be there to greet me.”

A Spanish voice called out an order. Kitto heard some sort of a thumping sound, and felt a vibration beneath his feet.

The trap door gave way.

K
itto felt his shackled feet kick out. He felt the rope rip tight against his neck. He would have gasped, but he could draw no air.

And then there was the beach. Again. He was running on the beach, running to his mother’s open arms. Closer he ran to her. Closer. He held out his arms toward her, the lovey in one hand. She would gather him up in her arms.

He was running.
Look at me run, Mum! Look at me!

Caught in the noose, Kitto was dying.

The world reeled and went black, but then there was movement again, confusion, a jostling.

Kitto opened his eyes and blinked against the bright sun. The cloth sack was gone, the noose too. He was lying on his side on the wooden platform of the gallows. The crowd booed in bitter frustration.

A man behind him was screaming something at him. Kitto blinked and strained to suck in air. A sharp hand slapped him once across the face. Twice. Kitto’s eyes spun but then took focus.

Inches before his nose was the small golden cross with the weeping figure at its base.

“That is for the girl!” he tried to say, but all that came out was a croak. Now a voice came clear.

“Where did you get this? Where did you get this, boy! Tell me now and perhaps you will not be hanged!” The voice came from the official who had told him to recite his last words.

“What?” Kitto groaned, his mind thick and muddled.

“Tell me!” the man screamed again, and struck Kitto harder.

“Cut them down,” Kitto said. He felt his eyes drifting off of their own accord and knew that he could not fight off unconsciousness.

“Cut them all down!” Kitto said. “Only then will I ever tell you.”

Blackness filled his vision, and Kitto let it carry him away.

When he came to, Kitto found himself lying on an upholstered sofa of some kind, covered in plush crimson fabric. He blinked a few times to get his eyes to focus. He heard voices speaking urgently in Spanish very nearby. The room was bright, painfully so, sunlight filtering through a breathtaking panel of stained glass. Bookshelves teeming with leather-bound volumes spread on either side of the window.

“You nearly caused a riot in Corona Square, Christopher Quick,” said a mild voice in English. “The people came to witness a hanging and you spoiled it for them.”

“Not for long,” grumbled the other voice.

“That is not for you to decide, señor.”

Kitto pushed himself to a seated position on the sofa. His head rang with a splitting ache, and his tongue felt two sizes too large for his mouth. The men sat across from him in high-backed chairs with claw-footed wooden arms and feet. The man on the left he recognized as the one who had read from the parchment at the gallows. His wig had slipped and dark hair peeked out beneath. The second man wore a deep purple robe, some sort of a flat red cap atop his head, and a large wooden crucifix hung down his chest along a beaded chain.

“I am not dead,” Kitto said in a whisper.

“You are not dead,” the robed man repeated.

“Yet,” muttered the other.

“And my companions?” Kitto said.

“The other pirates are alive and well and have been returned to their cell. All but one.”

Kitto felt his heart flip. “One?”

“A very large man, quite a giant. His neck broke when his body was dropped. He died instantly.” The man in the robe made the sign of the cross along his body.

Little John.
Kitto felt a terrible sadness hit him. His eyes filled with tears.

“He was a good man,” Kitto said, his voice rough.

“He was a pirate!” said the official. The robed man held up a hand for silence, and Kitto knew instantly who was in charge.

“The Lord has his soul now,” the man said. “Only he can judge.” He turned to the official. “Please leave us, señor.”

“But, Your Excellency . . .”

“That will be all, Señor Delgado.” The wigged man glared at Kitto as he rose quickly from his chair and strode out of the room, letting the heavy wooden door slam behind him.

The robed man took a deep breath. He looked over at Kitto and smiled.

“Who are you?” Kitto said.

“You may call me Padre Alberto,” he said. The man gestured toward a low table between them. Kitto looked down to see that it held a tray of silver serving bowls full of cut fruit and a pitcher of drink.

“Might you take a refreshment, Christopher?” the man said, pouring a bright yellow liquid into two ornate goblets. He held one out to Kitto. Kitto eyed it doubtfully. The padre set the vessel on the table and took a sip of his own.

“Without Señor Delgado here, we may speak more freely,” Padre Alberto said. Kitto leaned over and picked up the goblet. He sipped the juice, and his eyes closed reflexively as the bright taste exploded on his tongue. He had not had fresh juice in what seemed like months. When he swallowed, though, the harsh pain in his throat made him gag. He sputtered several drops of pineapple nectar onto the sofa.

“The gallows have left their mark on you,” Padre Alberto said, gesturing about his own neck but looking at Kitto’s. “But time shall heal the wound.”

Kitto reached for his neck. The skin felt chafed and tender.

“Why am I here?” he said when the burning sensation had passed.

The man eyed him quietly for a moment, then withdrew something from a pocket of his robe.

“Tell me about this artifact, Christopher,” Padre Alberto said. Dangling from his hand was the gold chain and its cross. It rocked back and forth in the air.

Kitto felt his breath quicken. He knew where it came from, even knew where more like it lay at that very moment.

Think like your uncle William,
he told himself.
Cunning.

Kitto reached for the chain, and the padre did not protest when Kitto took it into his hands. He lay the cross along his palm to study it.

“Of course you have no reason to trust me,” Alberto said. “Except for the fact that you are still alive, and that is somewhat due to my intervention.”

“I am alive because I possessed this?” Kitto said, knowing the answer without having to wait for it.

Alberto nodded. He ran his palm across his thick jowls.

“It will be difficult to overcome the Honorable Delgado’s ruling,” Alberto said. “But it is within my power, as head of the Catholic Church in this part of the world.” Alberto sipped at the goblet and set it on the table.

Kitto lifted the necklace so that the cross and the kneeling woman at its base rocked gently, washed in the green and gold light from the window. He looked up at the padre.

“It is beautiful,” Kitto said. “But not so beautiful—is it?—to save the lives of seventeen pirates?”

The padre smiled slightly and shrugged. “To me it is a thing most moving. You are not aware of its history, then, or its name, ‘The Weeping Madonna’?” he asked, eyeing Kitto shrewdly for signs of deception.

“All I know is that William Quick had it. He is my uncle.”

Padre Alberto froze. “William Quick is your uncle? Truly?”

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

“Did you know that he was a prisoner here, in Cuba, for many years?”

Kitto nodded. “He told me.”

Padre Alberto leaned forward in his seat. “And did he confess to you that he murdered fourteen priests and nuns and peaceful citizens to obtain that piece of art in your hands?” The man’s voice had gone cold.

“I . . . with all respect, sir, I believe you are mistaken. William Quick would not have done that. He was—he is—an imperfect man, perhaps not always a good man even, but he is not a murderer.”

“Yet those men and women died.”

“Who were they?” Kitto said.

The padre considered the question as he fingered the crucifix around his neck. “Panama, 1671. The great city, the crown jewel in Spain’s New World Empire . . . attacked and destroyed by English pirates.”