Kage Baker - Dark Mondays

The Spanish began to fire again, but it was scattered now, and as the Frenchmen rushed over the edge the other privateers followed after them.

Captain Bradley came up and was cut down almost at once by a bullet that broke his shin, so he rolled screaming on the bloody ground. John staggered to him and gripped his leg tight; Dick Pettibone appeared out of the haze and helped him bind and set the leg, and splint it as best they could. So they missed the end of the fight, when the last of the Spanish holed up in the inner castle and their officers died to a man. John and Pettibone dragged Bradley behind a broken wall, into a patch of shade.

John sat beside him, meaning only to wait until the shooting had stopped. When he opened his eyes, the shade had gone clean away. He was all alone. The noonday sun was broiling straight down, and flies were buzzing to celebrate the taking of Chagres Castle.

John went limping like a ghost among the dead and wounded, hoping to find a bottle of rum somewhere that might ease his pains. The slash on his arm had bled through its bandage; he had taken a couple of arrow-points in the fat of his leg, sometime in the long night, and a musket-ball had creased his scalp, and he’d hit his head on something hard enough to raise a lump like a goose egg.

He didn’t know where the girl had gone. He had a sick fear of finding her dead, but could not stop himself searching, wandering to the heap of piled corpses to look into every staring face. He was crying as he tottered along, in an absent-minded way, like a child will do. Ned Cooper was lying there amongst the slain, his old shipmate from the Clapham , but nobody else he knew.

None of the living paid him any mind. Privateers were ordering gangs of slaves and prisoners about; the wreckage of battle was being cleared away and the defenses already being repaired. The Spanish dead were being pitched down the cliff into the sea by their weeping fellows.

Tom Blackstone came blinking out of one of the doorways, shielding his eyes from the sunlight. His head was bandaged, his arm in a sling; he was pale and filthy and looked to be in a savage temper.

“Looking for your little friend?” he said to John. “I shouldn’t fear for— him. He preserved his life through the fray. Pettibone tried to get him to tend the wounded, but the, ah, boy went off with a gang to round up slaves.”

“Oh, bugger off,” said John, ever so grateful.

“I ask myself: ‘Has this pirate swain any wits at all? For surely a certain vicious little fury will do for him when she’s weary of his embrace, or else our dear Admiral will have him hanged for debauching a maiden fair’.”

“It wasn’t like that,” said John.

“Oh, no, of course not.” Blackstone stared down at the heap of dead men. He picked at the dried blood in his beard. “I’ll keep your secret for you; none of my concern, after all. What will you do for me in return?”

“I don’t know,” said John.

“Well, I’ll tell you. Should I get my death-wound on this wretched venture, perhaps you might get word of it back to a certain lady in Port Royal.” Blackstone squinted at John, then leaned down and took hold of the arrow-stump protruding from John’s thigh. One quick jerk and he had it out, taking a flap of skin with it. John stared down dumbly at the little gush of blood, too surprised to curse. Blackstone held the arrowhead up, examining it. “Look at that edge! A man could shave with that.”

“Did you find your prince?” John groped, pulled away his neckerchief and held it to the wound.

“Haven’t had time to look, yet. I hope he wasn’t being kept in the inner redoubt; they were all slaughtered, in there.”

“Or you been diddled again, I reckon, and he wasn’t never here in the first place,” said John, spiteful.

“Entirely likely, damn your eyes,” said Blackstone, tossing the arrowhead away. He glanced over at the prisoners who were at work on the seaward battlements. “But let’s you and I take a walk over yonder, messmate. One never knows who might have had the sense to beg for quarter.”

They went shambling to the parapet together, looking like a couple of beggars, and saw Jacques lounging in a shady corner, with his musket trained on the prisoners. The Spaniards were praying at each body before they cast it over the edge, and every time they made the sign of the cross Jacques would too, solemn and respectful, before pointing his musket at them again.

Blackstone led John promenading up and down once or twice before John realized what he was about; that was when one of the Spaniards noticed John’s boots, and nearly dropped his end of a dead capitano. His mates swore at him, or at least that was what it sounded like to John, and he seemingly apologized and hauled the body up again. All the while he was praying at the edge, though, he kept his red-rimmed eyes on John’s boots. Blackstone grinned.

“Je v’lui parler,” he said to Jacques, jerking his thumb at the Spaniard. Jacques nodded, crossed himself and took aim at the hapless man. Blackstone pulled him aside.

“You like the boots?” he said. The Spaniard, who was small and thin and wretched-looking, said something in Spanish, not surprisingly. Blackstone talked back to him in the same tongue. The gist of what they said was, as John found out after:

Prisoner: Please, sir, you are too late.

Blackstone: I hope you’re not going to disappoint my friend with the fine boots. See what a big man he is? He could flatten you with his fist.

Prisoner: Please, please, señor, I am not to blame. We kept the Englishman here as long as we dared.

Blackstone: Oh, dear, my friend won’t be happy to hear that. I might be able to prevent him from hurting you, but you must tell me everything.

Prisoner: If you had come sooner, all had been well. It was the safest place we could think of to keep him. How were we to know your Enrique Morgan would be so mad as to come here? Now the Englishman has been taken to a new hiding-place.

Blackstone: Gone again, is he? Why, damn your soul.

Prisoner: Did you bring the money, señor? I could serve as your guide thence.

Blackstone: Did I bring the money? You impudent little ape, I’ll find my own way, with fire and sword. When I tell my friend here what you just said, he’ll throw you down the cliff alive.

Prisoner: Oh, in God’s name, señor, have mercy! I am only a clerk!

Blackstone: Then tell me this much: Why all this mummery? Unless you have been lying, and the Englishman was never here.

Prisoner: No! No! Look, señor, here’s proof!

He drew a leather bag from out of the depths of his shirt, digging in it. He held up something that glinted in the sunlight. Blackstone snatched it from him, and studied it closely. John leaned down and had a look at the thing; it was a seal-ring with a curious device on the shield, such as great folks have painted on the doors of their carriages.

Prisoner: I was bid to give you this, and tell you to come to the river-post called Torna Caballos. That is all I know. Please, señor, I am not to blame, I am a poor creature.

Blackstone turned away in disgust, taking John by the arm.

“Another damned feint,” he said. “Let’s go see if we can find some wine.”

You may have heard tales of all the merry times to be had when a city is sacked on the Spanish Main: all the drinking, and looting, and whoring, and happy freebooters lying unconscious in piles of plunder. There was none of that at Chagres Castle, at all.

Captain Bradley lay sweating in a fever, but his shattered leg was cold. If a man were at all inclined to be fanciful, he might almost see the black-robed figure with the scythe waiting patiently in a corner, just passing the time in a game of primero with War and Pestilence. Captain Norman stalked about hollow-eyed and sleepless, seeing to the repair of the defenses; for John hadn’t been the only one to notice the canoes escaping up the Chagres, and everyone reckoned it was a race to see who arrived first, Morgan with the rest of the fleet (please God) or Spanish troops come to the relief of their comrades.