Kage Baker - Dark Mondays

He gave a fine speech then, eloquent enough to make the night just past seem like a little inconvenience. Men were sent back to the ships posthaste for provisions, and great fires were built in the deserted village (a right scrubby place), and rum served round. The slow-match coils were hung out to dry like garlands. The boucaniers scared up a few flights of pigeons and dropped them with quick shot, so there was Christmas squab and jerked beef, cheer for one and all.

Though a fight did break out when Jacques fancied one of the English was eyeing Jago’s charms, and there was screams and slaps and a knife-fight, but it was broken up before anybody got killed to spoil the holiday.

The Spanish were still firing off a few rounds, just to let it be known they weren’t sleeping. Morgan went out to see their defenses, and came back looking haggard. John put himself in Morgan’s way with another sharp salute.

“We done our best, sir, but they ain’t budging,” he said. Morgan turned and looked at John blankly. John wanted to ask how the girl was, but he couldn’t think of a way, and all Morgan said to him was:

“Rig a coracle. I’ll not waste a boat on this.”

“A coracle, sir,” said John stupidly, but there was an Irish boucanier who knew how to make one of the little basket-boats, and he stepped up and said so. In a half-day he had framed a coracle of green wood, and covered it in pitched canvas. All the while, Morgan had retired to one of the deserted shacks to compose a letter, and then rendered a translation into Spanish. He had the Irishman given a clean white shirt, and a white flag made to fly from the coracle, and gave the Irishman his letter to deliver too.

The man hoisted his little boat and carried it down under the battlements, bold as brass, while the Spanish watched like hawks. He paddled about, with the wind whipping the white flag to and fro, until they made up their minds and sent a black down, carrying another white flag, to see what was wanted. The Irishman handed off Morgan’s letter and the black carried it up.

What the letter said, was that if the Spanish governor there did not surrender pretty quick, Morgan swore to him and his that he’d put them all to the sword, no quarter given. A fine threat, with Morgan sitting there in the drizzle with his muskets and pikes and near-mutiny, and the Spanish garrison bristling with big guns.

But Morgan’s luck held.

Two hours afterward the Spanish sent over a canoe of their own, with two emissaries bearing a letter from the governor. John was standing by Morgan when he read it. The funny off-color that had been in Morgan’s face since he’d seen the girl, fled clean away; Morgan laughed heartily. He strode out grinning white as a new moon, and called in his chief captains, Bradley and Morris and Collier.

Bradley came out grinning too.

“What’s toward, Captain sir?” said John.

“Christmas mummery,” said Bradley. He gave orders, and they were followed smart, with sniggers and blank-loaded muskets.

The Spanish governor had sent word that he’d like to surrender cruel bad, but there was the little matter of him getting sent back to Spain in irons and garrotted for cowardice if he did so. To get round this painful chance, he proposed that a mock battle be staged: Morgan’s men would storm the islet and the governor’s men would defend it as fiercely as they might, with everyone shooting blanks. The governor would leave the main fort and rush “to the defense” of a lesser one; Morgan’s men could “capture” him then.

And so it fell out. The sham battle began at nightfall, with a great deal of noise, as men on both sides pretended to take fatal wounds and died most theatrical, and lay giggling amongst their comrades. By midnight the whole thing was over, and not a drop of blood spilt.

Next day all was mutual congratulation, and no few surprises. It turned out the Spanish had been armed to the teeth up there—more than thirteen ton of gunpowder, over a thousand muskets, forty-nine cannon, pistols and slow-match in barrels. They might have kept it up for weeks, if they’d been so minded. But, as the Spanish governor explained to Morgan, they weren’t so fond of the place as to die for it; most of them had been sent there as punishment anyhow. Besides, the island was haunted, and they would be happy to see the last of it.

There were upwards of four hundred people came filing out of the fortresses, with their livestock: soldiers, married settlers and their children, slaves and their children too. Morgan watched them come out, his mood something shadowed and his dark face somber. He had given orders that the men were to be set to work and the women and children sent to the village’s church, when out of the line of slaves one old beldame tottered, calling out to him in Welsh.

Morgan turned on his heel and stared. The old lady fell on her knees, begging him for succor; John heard later she was from some Welsh town, come out to the West Indies as a nurse for somebody’s daughter, but the ship had wrecked. She’d survived but fallen into the hands of the Spanish, who had used her hard twenty years or more.

Morgan took her into the house he was using, and questioned her close. John didn’t know about what, for it was all in Welsh, and anyhow he was trying not to listen too openly, where he stood on duty outside the open door, with another big fellow. But the old lady wept, and carried on no end, and sang sometimes; and John could hear Morgan beginning to sound impatient, and his fingers drumming at last on the tabletop. At last he said something short and sharp, and came outside.

“You; John, your name is?”

“Aye, sir!” said John, ever so pleased his name was sticking in Morgan’s memory.

“Row the woman out to the Satisfaction . She’s been a nurse. Likely she can be some help to Pettibone, looking after the girl.”

“Aye aye!” said John, wondering if he’d get to see the girl, and feeling that spear-point in his heart again. Morgan stepped back inside and led the old creature out. Seeing her close to was no treat; for she was bent and whitehaired, with a nutcracker face and rolling eyes, and she curtsied and simpered for Morgan most unseemly. John thought she was more likely to need a nurse than to be one, but he kept his mouth shut and did his duty.

He had to walk the length of the island with her to get back to the boats, with her singing the whole way, poor old drab, seen by everybody, and that must have been how the story got started that Morgan had brought a Welsh witch with him. All talk. Morgan never needed anyone to conjure trouble for his enemies. He was close enough to the Devil to do it for himself, and in any case there were plenty of conjure-wives in the Caribbean if he’d wanted one.

Pettibone opened at John’s knock, and pursed his little cupid’s bow mouth in disapproval.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded. Seen close to with his jacket off, it was evident he had breasts like a woman, the way fat men will. John shuddered.

“Captain’s orders; here’s a goodwife, to be serving-woman for the girl,” he said, and led the old lady into the great cabin. The girl was sitting quiet, in a dressing-gown of purple silk that must have been Morgan’s own. She’d been having her hair tended, to judge from the brush and combs on the table. She looked up at John with that clear-as-water gaze, and John smiled foolishly.

Pettibone took the old lady in charge and clucked over her. John made so bold as to sit at the table across from the girl, and stretch out a hand.

“You remember me, sweeting?” he said, scarce able to get his breath for the words. “Happy to be rescued, are you?”

The girl smiled at him. He smiled back, a grin so wide he must have looked like a Halloween face carved on a turnip, and there might have been a candle burning in his empty head too, so bright he felt.