Kage Baker: Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key

Then there was blood all over the deck, all over the treads of the companionway, and John was looking down at dead men. He peered around, confused. Something was on fire, smoke tendrils were drifting up now from the hole at his feet. He saw Sejanus, grinning white through a mask of blood as he fought, and behind him another black man, one John did not recognize. The man was a near-giant, whaling away with a big squared blade; his strokes mirrored those of Sejanus, with eerie precision. It looked almost like a martial dance.

Then a grimacing enemy rose into John’s field of vision, pointing a pistol full into his face. John shouted and ducked, cutting the Spaniard’s legs out from under him. He rose and to his astonishment saw Mr. Tudeley, holding his cutlass out as though it was a poker, attempting to fend off an opponent. The other lunged forward and sliced away Mr. Tudeley’s left ear, and cut the string that held his spectacles on his face to boot. Yet he overreached.

His stroke carried him against the rail, in which time Mr. Tudeley had time to realize what had happened. He caught his spectacles and clapped a hand to the side of his head, disbelieving; then burst into tears. He ran full tilt at his enemy and impaled him on his blade. The man fell, yanking the hilt from Mr. Tudeley’s grasp as he dropped. Mr. Tudeley stood there weeping, streaming blood down his neck. He fumbled for his handkerchief and clapped it to where his ear had been, murmuring “You bastard, oh, you bastard. How shall I wear my spectacles now?”

“Victoire!” someone was shouting. John turned to stare and saw Captain Reynald swinging a bloody cutlass on high. All the Spaniards were down, dead or dying. The Santa Ysabel had been taken.

When they ventured below they saw they might have taken the Santa Ysabel , but they weren’t likely to keep her. A fire had been started somewhere down in the hold, and thick white smoke was billowing up. Some of the men went down with buckets of water to try to put it out, but they couldn’t find where it was before the smoke drove them out again, blinded with tears, choking.

So in the end it became a frantic game, running down with wet cloths bound over their mouths to grab what bales and boxes they could and drag them up on deck, to be swung over to the Harmony . John and Anslow hung off the stern on ropes and kicked in the windows of the great cabin. They got a lot of the Spanish captain’s candlesticks and plate that way, as well as some armor and navigation gear.

But all the while the smoke was getting thicker, and the fire could be heard now, crackling away somewhere deep. The Fraternity ungrappled and cast off, sailing free just as the first red flame appeared. Little bright tongues danced up through a blackened patch of deck. “Abandon ship!” someone shouted, and John joined the general rush to scramble back on board the Harmony . They cast off and moved away from the Santa Ysabel with bare moments to spare: indeed the Harmony ’s paint was bubbled and discolored from the heat, where she’d lain too close. The same breeze that pushed them away fanned the blaze, and looking back John could see the little flames running up the Santa Ysabel ’s shrouds and lines like sailors.

They did not stay to watch it burn, but beat away north. Still it was visible a long while behind them, as night fell, an inferno pitching up and down on the black water.

IT OCCURRED TO JOHN to wonder where Mrs. Waverly had been during the battle. He assumed she had sensibly remained in her cabin, but thought he ought to go down and ask her how she did. So, as the wounded were being laid out groaning, John took a horn lamp and went below.

“Ma’am?” he said, knocking on the door. There was no answer. He wondered if she had fainted, and opened the door and shone the lantern in. There was no sign of her.

“What are you doing, Mr. James?” Her voice came from behind him. He swung around to see her approaching him from the direction of the foc’sle.

“What’re you doing?” he demanded, in his surprise. She looked pained.

“Seeing to private matters,” she said primly.

“Oh.”

“I trust the engagement is over, and Captain Reynald won?”

“Aye, he did, ma’am”

“And were many poor fellows wounded, on our side?”

“We’re fair cut up, ma’am, but the other side’s are all dead.”

“I must do my best to tend to our boys, then,” said Mrs. Waverly. She shoved past him into the cabin. He heard her rummaging in her trunk. She emerged with one of her shifts, tearing it into strips, and went up on deck. John followed her.

There was a sort of Guy Fawkes’ Night air on deck, with the smell of gunpowder strong and the loot from the Santa Ysabel piled up all untidy in the lanternlight. The wounded sat or lay here and there, while the others were eagerly opening barrels and crates to see what they’d got. Mrs. Waverly knelt at once to play the ministering angel to the hurt. John shrugged and walked forward to the plunder.

“What’d we take?”

“Commodities,” said a Frenchman named Belanger, and spat. “Maize flour. Salt. Le tissu coton, what d’you call her, calico?”

“Hell,” said John. “Well, the candlesticks and plate ought to be worth something, eh?”

“We will get a good price for all,” Captain Reynald told them. “Turn it all into gold at la belle Tortue! Madame, truly you are a saint.” He crouched beside Mrs. Waverly, who was binding up the stump of Mr. Tudeley’s ear.

“It is a lady’s duty, sir,” she said, smiling at him. Mr. Tudeley paused in his lament long enough to watch sourly as Captain Reynald kissed Mrs. Waverly’s hand, and then resumed:

“—Maimed, maimed like a common criminal, I might as well have been branded for a thief! How shall I show my face in public again?”

“Your scar shall be a badge of honor, my friend,” Captain Reynald told him, gazing into Mrs. Waverly’s eyes.

“Oh, gammon and spinach,” snapped Mr. Tudeley. “And what am I to do about my spectacles?”

“Tie them around the back of your head,” advised Sejanus, who had come through the entire fight without a scratch. He found a bit of string and bound Mr. Tudeley’s spectacles on for him, though he had to fasten them around the outside of the bandage Mrs. Waverly had bound on, the ends of which stuck up on Mr. Tudeley’s head like rabbit ears. “There! Now you can see.”

“Though I shan’t wish to look in my shaving-glass,” moaned Mr. Tudeley. “What indignity.”

“Have some rum,” said John absently, for he was rummaging in one of the boxes he’d salvaged from the Spanish captain’s cabin. It looked to have nothing much of value in it. He pulled out a comb and a bundle of letters bound with ribbon, a block of sealing wax, a sort of jointed ivory tool containing a toothpick and other personal grooming devices. There was a smaller box inside, too. John opened it and whistled. He saw a pair of earrings, gold set with dangling emeralds, and a twist of paper that when opened contained four loose pearls of varying sizes.

“Here’s something, anyway,” said John, holding out the box. Captain Reynald rose and peered into it, then dipped out the earrings.

“Adornment for a beautiful woman! Let this share go to Madame, our selfless nurse!”

“Sir!” Mrs. Waverly’s eyes gleamed as she beheld the gold and emeralds. “I couldn’t possibly accept such a generous gift!” But her hand went out for them pretty fast anyway, and closed tight on them. John, seeing that Captain Reynald hadn’t noticed the pearls, closed them up again in their paper twist and pocketed them.