Voyage of Plunder (18 page)

After a while, I heard Josiah get out of his hammock and
fumble in the darkness. A flame flared as he lit the overhead lantern. Weak light now filtered through the cabin, casting deep shadows. Josiah shut the lantern casing and looked at me, his face shadowed. “There's something I must tell you.” So saying, he poured two goblets of wine and set them on the table, hands trembling. I was astonished. I'd never seen his hands tremble before.

Crawling out of bed, I sat on the chair and drank deeply of the wine.

After fiddling again with the lantern, after topping off my goblet with more wine, after tying back his hair, which had become tousled in the night, and lighting his long pipe, Josiah sat across from me. I could see his eyes now, liquid black in the dim light. They were troubled … afraid, even.

Afraid? Captain Josiah Black—the most sought-after cutthroat in the world—afraid?
An unsettling feeling crept over me, that long-ago feeling that my life was about to change. My breathing quickened. I was uncertain if I wanted to hear what he had to say, yet I knew I had to.

He ran his tongue across his lips and cleared his throat. “Daniel…”

Aye. I'm listening.”

“There's something you need to know. Something I should have told you long ago.”

Josiah seemed to struggle with the words. He took a drink of wine, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

“When I was a younger man, I was—I was in love.”

I stayed silent. My hand throbbed and my stomach growled. I was hungry again.

“She—she was beautiful. Young like me. We were fools, she and I. Fools in love. We thought the world would part before us, like Moses parting the Red Sea. We thought nothing could stop
two people so deeply in love.” He snorted, a laugh of derision. “But the world does not suffer fools gladly.” Josiah gazed at me, as if begging me to understand. “I was a privateer at that time, living in Boston—you do know what a privateer is, don't you?”

I nodded. A privateer was issued a letter of marque from the government that authorized him to raid and plunder the ships of enemy nations. It was like being a pirate, except it was a legal and acceptable method of war.

“I was commissioned as a privateer by one of the colonial governors. Given the finest ship in the fleet.” Here Josiah hesitated, then looked away. “But, unknown to the governor, the woman whom I loved was his daughter—his only daughter.”

“So what happened?” I asked, leaning forward.

Smoke from the long pipe swirled about Josiah, rising in slow curls. “I went away on a privateering voyage. A very successful one, I might add. In the interim, unknown to me, several things happened.”

“What things?”

“First, she discovered she was with child. My child. Second, her father learned of our clandestine relationship and forbade her ever to see me again, calling me a bloody scoundrel, a Judas, a philanderer, and things much worse than that.”

“And?”

“In outrage and in a desperate attempt to salvage his daughter's honor, he quickly arranged a marriage with one of the town's leading citizens. A merchant.”

I swallowed hard. Part of me wanted him to continue. Part of me wanted him to stop, to not say another word. Not now. Not ever. “Go on,” I said, my voice a whisper.

“So, within a month of my leaving on my privateering voyage, while I was still dreaming of the day we could be together forever as husband and wife, they were married. Her merchant
husband was never the wiser, raising the child as his own, always believing the child was his.”

Josiah stopped and looked full at me.

I could no longer meet his gaze. Tears filled my eyes. The goblet shimmered in the lantern light. When I took a drink, it was my hand that now shook.

“When I returned from my voyage, the governor declared me an outlaw. A pirate. Denied that he'd ever signed a letter of marque on my behalf. And for the life of me, I could not find the letter. Likely he had one of his cronies steal it.” His fingers whitened as he squeezed the goblet. I saw rage in his eyes—a long ago, hurt-filled rage. “He confiscated all the goods I had obtained and threw me into prison to await trial. But I escaped.”

“What then?”

“I was furious, of course. I commandeered my former privateering vessel, renamed her the
Tempest Galley,
and proclaimed myself a pirate. My first order of business was to plunder and burn every ship the governor owned. I ruined him, Daniel. Ruined him utterly. He died not long after. And there's been a price on my head ever since.”

For a while I was silent, scarce able to comprehend what I was hearing. “And what of—what of the child?”

Josiah regarded me, saying nothing.

“Then at least tell me her name.” Again, silence. “Pray tell me. What was her name? The one that you loved?”

Instead of answering, Josiah pushed back his chair and crossed the room. He rifled through a drawer at the captain's desk, finally withdrawing a folded letter. For a while he stood fingering the letter, as if deliberating whether or not to give it to me. Finally he sat down again and handed me the letter. The parchment was thin, yellowed, dry, the edges ragged and grayed
as if it had been handled a hundred times, a thousand times. Yet the green wax seal was still intact.

Written on the outside of the letter was a single name:
Daniel.

Josiah spoke. “Her name was Abigail Ball Markham.”

The letter slipped to my lap. Smudges of ink. Swirls of black.

I buried my head in my arms, all the anguish I'd ever felt gushing out in a torrent.

Mother. My mother. How I have longed to hear your voice again.

I fumbled for the locket and clutched it in my hand, wishing I could feel her touch just once more, wishing she had never died, wishing everything could be the way it used to be, wishing I did not know what I knew now.

Father, you will always be my father. Nothing can take away what we had together. Nothing.

After a while a hand pressed my shoulder—not the ethereal hand of an angelic being, but a hand of flesh and bone. I raised my head. Josiah gave me a handkerchief. I wiped my eyes and blew my nose.

I couldn't look him in the eye. Now I knew why he had always protected me, why he had always shown me kindness.

“All this time you have known,” I whispered.

“Aye.”

I heard the creak of his chair as he seated himself across from me once again.

Thoughts rushed in and out, caught in a hurricane, leaving me tossed, ripped open, laid bare. Questions jumbled over one another until they spilled out like blood pouring from a wound. “When did you start to have business dealings with my father?”

“Soon after your mother died.”

“Why not earlier?”

“She did not approve. She knew what I had become, and she was angry because of what I'd done to your grandfather.”

“But after she died you approached my father.”

“Aye. To be near you.”

“And my father never knew?”

“Never.”

“And then you betrayed him.”

Josiah paused. “He betrayed me, Daniel. He betrayed all of us, the same way your grandfather betrayed me.”

Tears welled in my eyes. “But you killed the one man who acted as a father to me for all my life, who
was
a father to me.”

He said nothing.

“Who else knows about this? About you being my—being my—” I could not say the word.

“Only Basil Higgins. He's been with me from the beginning.”

I thought back, remembering. “Would you—would you really have left me upon that deserted island with nothing but a barrel of biscuit and a pistol?”

“Yes, but I never would have left you alone. I would have stayed with you. You must trust me, Daniel—I have never wanted to see you hurt. I would rather give up all the fortune in the world than to lose you a second time. What happened once will not happen again.”

“Why haven't you told me any of this before now?”

“You would not have listened.”

Now I stared at him, my lips quivering, seeing him through a haze of tears as if for the first time. An awkwardness stood between us. I still held my mother's locket. “So what happens now?”

“I do not know, Daniel, my boy.”

Come the first light of dawn, I moved out of Josiah's cabin.

“Lovers’ quarrel?” someone asked, giggling like a girl, his teeth glinting gold in the sunrise.

Before I could stop myself, I punched him as hard as I could in the gut and walked away, finding no pleasure in hearing him grunt and gasp for breath. I half expected him to come after me, to challenge me to a duel. But he didn't, my reputation for killing Fist likely staying his hand.

I settled beside the fo'c'sle rail, squeezing between two snoring pirates, welcoming the breeze, watching the sun rise.

Once again my world had been shattered. A thousand million thoughts and feelings ate away at me, like woodworm eating the ship's timbers. It was too much, too much.

I pressed my hands against the sides of my head as if trying to contain my thoughts, to control them, to piece back together the fragments of my shattered life.

What am I to do now? What about my father? What about Josiah? Has my whole life been a lie? Has everyone I have ever loved deceived me?

Just get the treasure,
I firmly told myself.
Get the treasure. Beyond that, I cannot think.

“You're back,” said Josiah. He stood in the doorway of his cabin, sunlight streaming from behind him.

I returned to my task of searching under his bed. “Just came to fetch my other stockings. The ones I'm wearing are full of holes. Rats chewed on them last night, I think.” I fumbled through the dust, the discarded clothes, crumpled papers, a forgotten goblet, aware he was watching me, wondering what he was thinking, wishing he would say something … anything.

Then I heard him moving behind me, a drawer opening. “Here, take these.” He held out several pairs of his stockings.