Kage Baker - Dark Mondays

When they were done he was murmuring that he’d give her anything, anything, he’d storm all the cities in the West Indies and present her with the loot borne on the backs of a thousand chained Spaniards, so she’d only be his girl forever. He didn’t hear his mother’s voice once.

But the girl said, sharp and clear out of the darkness:

“Just you fetch me a lad’s clothes to wear, and a sword and pistol of my own.”

“Sweetheart, I will,” said John, and staggered away to Felham’s slops chest. There he got her loose breeches of canvas and a great coarse-woven shirt, and thoughtfully a roll of bandage to conceal her breasts; for he was all taken with the romance of it, that his little dear should wish to fight beside him. He got her a cutlass and a pistol too, tied with bright ribbon. He got her a red silk scarf to bind up her hair. It fairly broke his heart, then, when he led her up into the starlight, to see that she’d hacked off her long locks somehow.

But John fell in love again, in a twisty kind of way, with the brave, pretty boy who had such fierce eyes. For her sake John gave up his little snug berth forward of the captain’s own cabin, and slept as best he could on deck. For her sake John went hungry, and took her his share of dry beef and biscuit. Much he cared for food or sleep, when he crept away to her hiding place and she took him in her arms. She about ravished his soul away to Paradise.

It was a week’s worth of hard fighting the wind before the Mayflower and her consorts came in sight of Chagres Castle on its rock, with the fortress of San Lorenzo firing at them from the biggest guns John had ever seen in his life.

Bradley bid them stand off a safe distance out at sea, while he thought what he might do.

Getting into the Chagres River was treacherous as picking a man’s pocket, and the pocket full of broken glass. Bad enough that the castle with its fortress stuck out on a headland into the bay, from which it could hammer anyone passing by; there was a reef placed right at the harbor entrance too, most inconvenient.

“Can we storm them, Captain?” asked John, peering out at Chagres Castle. The ball came long before he heard the cannon’s boom , and fell short with a fountain of white water. Bradley folded up his spyglass.

“There’s no climbing that rock,” he said. “And they’ve the range on us with their guns, damn them. We’ll have to go ashore and come at them that way.” He took a squint along the coastline. “Pass the word; we’ll sail north and look for an anchorage.”

Graceful as swans the three ships tacked and glided away, white sails under a mild, blue twilight. John went scrambling down into the stinking darkness, and edged into the tiny cupboard room where he kept his love. The girl was naked, sitting still as an image, with her blade across her knees.

“We’re at Chagres,” she said.

“Aye,” said John. “And I thought up a stratagem, see. If you was to hide in a barrel, we could get you ashore—”

“No,” said the girl. “You go ashore. I’ll slip over the side when there’s none to see, and I’ll find you there.”

She sounded so cool and certain John never once thought to wonder how in hell she’d manage such a thing. He kissed her, until she laid the blade aside and opened her arms to him. There they kept company together, until the late watch.

Then John parted from her, taking his guns and powder horn, and a cutlass with a keen edge on it. He went above with a heart full of little pink angels, in that black dawn, and no thought to the bloody strife to come.

His messmates were already on deck, watching along the rail as the jungle breathed out its night sounds at them, and the night paled. The Mayflower and her consorts had dropped anchor only a league away, in view of San Lorenzo’s lookout.

The stars were fading when Bradley gave order for the loading of the boats. Men were rowed ashore. They milled about on the beach, waiting as supplies were brought, shivering to walk on the soft, cold sand, unwilling to go in among the dark trees. Within an hour of sunrise they were sweating, bored with the long wait, as the boats kept going back and forth. Higher the sun rose, glittering on the bright water so it hurt the eyes, and still the boats came and went, and there was a deal of grumbling from the ones who waited in the narrowing strip of shade.

John kept with his messmates, looking out anxious to see if he could spot a little figure dropping from the Mayflower . By him, Blackstone and the two boucaniers sat, quiet and calm, passing a whetstone back and forth as they put fresh killing edges on their blades. Bob Plum and Pettibone sat either side of the Reverend, on a fallen palm trunk, mopping their faces and complaining of the heat and the flies. The Reverend showed no sign of minding the heat, though he wore his black coat buttoned up high, and a black neck-stock tied tight. He only nodded his head over his big, scarred hands, clasping them together in prayer.

“There’s our lieutenant-colonel coming ashore,” remarked Blackstone, pointing with his cutlass. John looked out and saw Bradley arriving at last, gazing at the jungle as he stepped from the boat. Someone shouted:

“Columns come to order!” and sand was kicked up in flurries as four hundred men scrambled to their feet and formed ranks, grumbling and muttering.

“How like the army,” said Blackstone. “Hardly what one expects of sea-robbers bold and free, eh?”

“Oh, shut your face,” said John, looking around for the pennant he had been assigned. He raised it up; it hung fluttering limply in the glare of the tropical sun. He looked down, blinking his dazzled eyes, and when his vision cleared he saw the girl had slipped in beside him, silent, and stood now at his elbow. She had dressed herself, with her bubbies bound down flat, and tied the red silk scarf about her cropped hair, and smudged her fair countenance with soot.

John heard another gasp. He half turned and saw Dick Pettibone regarding the girl in horror.

“ You —what are you—” began Pettibone. The girl reached out, swift, and seized Pettibone’s arm tight, and muttered something into his ear. Pettibone stepped back, looking appalled, but he said nothing more.

At the head of the column, Bradley was consulting with a villainous-looking fellow, a thief they’d pulled from the Spanish dungeon, who’d volunteered to guide them for sheer spite’s sake. Bradley’s second-in-command, Captain Norman, walked up and joined them, gesturing. They seemed to agree on something; Bradley squinted at the sun, just then dead overhead, and swept his arm up in the signal to march.

Two hours they plodded along, keeping to the beach where they could, fighting uphill and inland through the jungle where the headlands stuck out into deep water. The first column tried to hack their way through with cutlasses, though the boucaniers among them frowned and shook their heads; that was no way to do it, they said, it only blunted blades and made a lot of noise. In the end Bradley agreed with them and gave orders to lay off. The boucaniers fell out and went ahead, slipping through the branches without noise, and the rest followed. The girl marched by John’s side, steadfast, without complaint.

Over the last hill, and there were the bastions of San Lorenzo, peeping between the trees. The column of men fanned out now, moving in a thin line through the jungle, and came to a wide cliff’s edge where the land had slid, leaving the trees with their roots hanging out over the air. John parted the leaves with his standard and peered down.

“No more than six or seven feet,” he announced. “We can jump it easy.”