Kage Baker - Dark Mondays

“I wonder what you’d take for those boots,” said Blackstone, as they rowed.

“Eh?” said John, startled from his dream.

“I’ve conceived a desire for boots of Spanish make, with curious stitchery,” said Blackstone. “Such as those red noughts and crosses on your own boots. Unusual, those. Distinctive. Never seen such a pair, God’s my life.”

“I’d have thought you’d owned plenty of fancy boots in your time, a rich boy like you,” said John, giving him a hard stare.

“Oh, once upon a time, I might have done. My father was a prudent, old devil; bent the knee to Cromwell, and kept his fortune and his lands. He was obliging enough to die untimely and leave me with the lot. Off to court I went, when the king returned, to try my hand at being a courtier. Do you know, it can ruin a man? I’d no notion of the cost of silks, and carriages, and fine sherries. Not to mention the gambling one is required to do!” Blackstone shivered, as though in disgust. “I wasted my substance in a year, who’d credit it?”

“Imagine that,” said John, watching him close.

“The only advantage to ruining oneself so speedily,” said Blackstone, “is that the news doesn’t travel apace, and one can, if one is prompt, find a creditor or two who’ll still advance enough money for a passage to the West Indies. And out here, as you’ve doubtless learned, a man may vastly improve his lot with but an hour’s dirty work.”

“I reckon so,” said John.

“Indeed. I may, therefore, indulge my whims once again, not to my former extent, of course, but handsomely nevertheless. To return, then, to the issue at hand: How much for the boots, my man?”

“I ain’t selling,” said John. “Besides, they ain’t your size.”

“They are,” said Blackstone, setting his foot beside John’s. John, glancing down, saw it was true. “Remarkable, isn’t it? So hard to find ready-mades in my size, as a rule. Why, we might be brothers. And brothers to the man you killed to get them.”

“I didn’t kill nobody,” said John, wondering whether he could club Blackstone with an oar and have it look like an accident. “The bastard dropped dead in the public street, on my life and honor. Look here, the cobbler don’t look likely to set up his stall on this Goddamned ghost island any time soon, thank you very much. What would I do for shoon, if I sold them? What are you after, anyhow? Was it your brother, as died?”

Blackstone looked at him at long moment, as though he was taking his measure.

“No,” he said. “Merely a man with whom I was to exchange boots.”

John stared, dumb as a codfish. Blackstone sighed.

“Oars inboard a moment. Your knife, if you please.”

They shipped oars and John drew his knife, ready to cut Blackstone’s gullet and shove him over the side, if he had to. But Blackstone only reached out with his finger and tapped the fancy-work at the top of John’s boot.

“Oblige me by opening that seam, will you? You have my word of honor I’ll repair it with my own lily-white hands.”

John was a fool in those days, but not so dull as all that. He thought he understood, in a flash as it were, what the man had been driving at. He felt out the seam and cut along it. Neat as a wallet, it opened, and he caught a glimpse of oiled paper that had been tucked flat in there behind the cutwork, before Blackstone reached down, quick as a snake striking, and extracted the paper between finger and thumb.

“Thank you,” said Blackstone.

“Love letter, is it?” said John, grinning.

“Something of the sort,” said Blackstone, opening the paper and reading with difficulty, for the writing was much blurred.

“Well, now, that’s as good as a play!” said John. “You been looking for that poor dead son of a whore, ain’t you? And you was arranged to know him by his boots!”

“As you say.”

“That ain’t half-clever!”

“Mm-hm.”

“And here was me wearing them quite by chance!”

“Astonishing.”

“What’s it say, eh?”

“I’ve no intention of telling you.”

“Oh. Right. Lady’s honor concerned, aye?” John lay his finger beside his nose.

Blackstone stuck the paper inside his coat. He looked at John once more, with that same measuring gaze.

“A man’s life is in the balance,” he said. “One of your own Brethren of the Coast, you might say. And that will have to suffice you.”

The tide ran them up on the beach, then, so no more was said.

The island was secured before two in the afternoon, empty as it was, and it would have been quicker if there hadn’t been so damn many mountains. Morgan found out where the Spaniards were: all holed up in the fortifications atop the little sister islet that lay at Old Providence’s north end, across a stretch of seawater serving as a moat. But the drawbridge had been hauled in, and the first parties who came in sight of the guns met with concerted fire.

“No ghosts in there,” said John, panting as he ducked behind a rock.

“The cowards,” said Bob Plum, glaring as he bandaged the Reverend’s ear, which had stopped a splinter of shattered rock sent flying by a four-pound ball. That had been on their third attempt to wade across the moat, and even the Reverend’s ferocity had begun to flag a little. A tear trickled down his gaunt cheek.

“I have failed the Almighty,” he said.

“Ah, no you ain’t,” said John. “It’d take God Almighty himself to get us in there this side of a six-month. I reckon it’ll come to starving them out.”

“I doubt our Admiral has the time to spare for a siege,” said Blackstone. He turned and squinted back at their own forces, dispersed behind hillocks and clumps of trees, under a lowering sky of black cloud. “Where is our Admiral?”

“He gone back on board the Satisfaction ,” Jago informed them, scrambling down into their shelter. “Captain Bradley giving orders out there. We to wait.”

“That’s Bradley, by God,” John muttered. “Wait and see.”

“What’s he gone back aboard for?” demanded Blackstone. Jago shrugged, and Blackstone grinned. “Oh ho. Interrogating the fair prisoner, I dare say.”

“Our Admiral is a married and a God-fearing man,” said Bob Plum. “I’m quite sure he would never do anything improper.”

A cannon ball smacked into the rock behind their redoubt. It sounded like a hammer hitting an anvil under a thundercrack, sending up a smoke of dust and shards of rock. They cursed and fell flat, waiting for the rain of splinters to end. But the pattering did not cease, and John felt the splash on his outstretched hand.

“ Il pleut ,” said Jago, and spat.

Jacques began to sing mournfully, “ Un flambeau, Jeanette, Isabella… ”

They lay out there in the rain getting soaked until nightfall, before Bradley called them back. Under cover of darkness they retreated, swearing and hating Bradley, and some found shelter in a few ruined stables. No rations were served out; Bradley sent his apologies, and assurances they’d be along any time now. None arrived that night. Jacques shot an old spavined horse, which they butchered and cut into gobbets, and attempted to cook over a smoking little tongue of blue flame. Hungry men appeared out of the darkness and snatched for raw shares, and fights broke out.

By the time the dawn came, it was a mutinous crew that slogged back through the wet grass, and the usual sea-lawyers from every ship stood around Bradley haranguing him about their rights. The French amongst them weren’t for fighting at all, but for going back to the ships and celebrating Christmas in dry clothes. This seemed like a good idea to the English and to the blacks and Indians too, mince-pies or no. Bradley was upon point of giving in when Morgan returned.