Kage Baker: Dark Mondays

Notwithstanding what he’d said, Morgan was minded to send them back down to Chagres Castle in a canoe, with Jago and Jacques, who could be trusted not to commit outrages on their persons. But in the end he relented. For one thing, the ladies had held their own so far, and nobody else could sing the Reverend out of his rages. For another, they had been the only ones willing to see to the washing of the prince, and he soiled himself pretty regularly.

So when the army moved on next morning, Lady Phyllida and Mrs. Hackbrace marched with them.

John marched by Morgan. The land was all cleared now, the road wide; there were the prints of booted feet that had gone before, so they knew it was not just Indians now but the Spanish too, who retreated from them. Morgan watched the forest with a scowl, and let it be known again that he’d pay for a prisoner to question. The boucaniers slipped ahead and ferreted through the brush, but the Indians were too swift and silent, the Spaniards too long gone.

And then, as they struggled up the switchback road that scaled a green mountain, there was a shout from ahead. Jago came sprinting back, glad-faced, waving; Morgan broke into a run, and John ran beside him, and the whole army mustered its strength and sprinted, until at last they broke like a wave over the mountaintop—

And there was the sea.

Men sighed, and not a few dropped to their knees. John stared at the placid blue expanse, where a ship and half a dozen boats were gliding. That was the first time in his life he beheld the great South Sea. A salt wind came out of it, rolling up the face of the mountain toward them, and blew their hair back out of their faces. Morgan’s cloak rustled with the breeze, and all their banners snapped.

“We’ve done it!” said Morgan, turning to them all. How his eyes burned! “Here we stand, my boys, in despite of hunger and thirst and all that they dared to send against us. And we’re the first. Not Drake nor Hawkins nor Baskerville ever got so far. That great ocean there is henceforth ours .”

Well, that got the Brethren cheering, and John with the rest; though it did seem to him that if boats were putting out from Panama, they might well be carrying the city’s wealth on them, to get it out of danger. He dropped his gaze from the sweet line of horizon to where the mountainside fell away below them into hills and broad meadows. He saw a white flash among the green. He peered harder, and saw the little figure running, holding her musket well away from her body.

“Sir!” He caught Morgan’s arm, and pointed. Morgan turned swiftly and saw her.

“By God, she’s beaten us,” he said under his breath. “There’s a girl for you, eh? Let God preserve us both, I’ll no nurses for her, nor corset-stays and tight shoes. She shall ride horses if she choose, and shoot, and climb trees. Who’d lock up a brave heart?”

The Brethren came down the mountain in good order, at least until they found a meadow where cows and horses grazed together. Then no starving man could think of anything but butchery, and Morgan let them do as they liked. The boucaniers among them dropped the animals with a few neat shots, and waded in with cutlasses drawn. Others scrambled for firewood. In short order they were stuffing themselves with grilled beef, and roasted horsemeat and asses’ flesh too, and nothing in the world had ever tasted so good to John. Morgan himself laid hold of a great gobbet of meat and wolfed it down nearly raw.

The Reverend cut three or four steaks and carried them back on a plantain leaf to Lady Phyllida and Mrs. Hackbrace, who fell to in a most unladylike way, tearing at the meat with their bare hands.

Blackstone, something loath, sliced up a sirloin into little gobbets and fed them on knife-tip to the prince. John came to watch; for there was a sort of grim fascination in seeing the royal jaws champ, mindless as a millstone grinding, and not seeming to mind what he ate nor his arrow-wounds nor the flies that buzzed about him.

“What’ll you do with him, do you reckon?” said John.

“There’s a question to revolve in one’s mind, by God,” said Blackstone. “I can’t think His Royal Highness will be greeted with glad cries of welcome from his brother, can you? Not in his present condition.”

“Perhaps he could be made to look a little better,” said John. “We could get him a wig, eh?”

“We might dress him up,” agreed Blackstone. “Christ knows there’s many a courtier with no more sensibility; no, nor so well-mannered. This poor block will never be prating about his dogs, or his horses, or his debts, and so might pass for a wise man. Even so… it’s a dangerous thing to trust to the gratitude of princes.”

“You’d know, I reckon,” said John. “Ain’t there a little matter of four thousand pounds you was supposed to pay in ransom? Or did you lose it gambling?”

“Not I,” said Blackstone, and for a moment looked as though he were going to draw on John. “Bastard. No, that’s safe in sealed bags, and you needn’t inquire where. But you do have a point, sir.”

He fed the prince another scrap of meat. “Yes, Your Highness, we shall have to fetch you home after all. You’re a right royal embarrassment; but your family’s known worse, I think.”

In grease, blood and great contentment the Brethren marched on, bearing with them whole legs and sides of beef. Morgan, with John, looked keenly to see the girl, but it seemed she kept ahead out of sight.

So did the Spaniards, though Morgan sent out an advance party of fifty men to seek out prisoners. Some of these encountered mounted men, who shouted insults but did not stay to give satisfaction; no, they spurred away as though they fled the Devil himself. Which indeed some of them may have thought was the case. If they’d caught a glimpse of Morgan marching along, with his black beard glistening with horse’s blood and the light of happy Hell in his eyes, they surely mistook him for Old Nick.

By the time the sun was beginning to dip low in the west, Morgan had still not laid hands on a living soul; and then the towers of Panama were sighted, with one tall cathedral-tower above the rest. The Brethren cheered and danced, and lifted Morgan on their shoulders as though he had already waded with them into the counting-houses of Panama, spurning heaps of doubloons as he came.

Standing above them so, Morgan took a sight through his spyglass, and lowered it with a sober face; but then he grinned down at them all.

“Well, my lads, there is an army camped not three miles off. It may be they are those same fearful fellows who have run ahead of us this whole way. You mark me! By cockcrow we’ll see they’ve run again, and left their empty tents fluttering, eh?

“Let’s rest here, my lads, and eat good beef, and build great fires to warm ourselves. Blood and gold come morning!”

They cheered him like madmen, did the Brethren, though John had his own thoughts: that it mightn’t be so wise to make holiday with the Spaniards sitting within easy march. And so he followed uneasily as Morgan walked through the camp they made, from bonfire to bonfire where men sat roasting meat. Some took out the campaign trumpets and drums, and made brave music, singing loud. Some men danced, giddy as though their bellies were full of good rum. John looked out into the dark as it fell, expecting every moment to see Spanish horsemen riding forth on them.

“Jesus bless us, boy, anyone would think you were at a funeral,” said Morgan. “Afraid, are you?”

“I am, Admiral sir,” said John.

“Why then, you have excellent good sense,” said Morgan, clapping him on the shoulder. “And, look you: that army over yonder has good sense too. Sober little clerks defending their investments, see, and officers who like to serve their time behind a desk, and patient blacks and Indians who’d rather serve the devil they know than be so imprudent as to rise against him. They are watching and listening, make no mistake.