John Drake - Skull and Bones

"Oh!" she said.

"Oh, indeed!" Sir Matthew sniffed and looked round. "Most of 'em know me, here." And he caught the eye of the conductor of the orchestra, and raised his hat and gave a nod, whereupon the conductor bowed in acknowledgement… tap-tapped his baton… stopped the orchestra in full flood…

"One, two!" he said, and the orchestra broke into "The Pollywhacket Song", to general delight and applause towards Selena, while she – now very much the artiste – made her curtsey to all points of the compass. Having sung the wretched song hundreds of times, she now detested it, but the public didn't, and Sir Matthew didn't, and he was seeking to please, for he was kind and thoughtful and generous.

"Well," said Sir Matthew, when she turned to him with a smile that sent shivers down his backbone, "it's better than Captain Flint's hanging, which is where most of London is gone this day, and where I'd have gone myself if not for you…" But he saw her reaction and knew he'd said something wrong.

"God love you, my little dear," he said, and put an arm around her. "What is it?" But she groaned for painful memories, and he groaned to see it. "Tell me, my lovely. Tell old Matty," he soothed, for he was a decent man and couldn't bear to see her unhappy.

"Could we sit down?" said Selena.

"Of course," he said, and led her to one of the private boxes and sat her down at a table, and took a seat beside her and ordered tea and hot drop-scones from one of the waiters, while – keeping their distance – Katty Cooper, Mr Abbey and the rest, looked on… Katty Cooper grinding her teeth in jealousy.

"So what's the matter, my sweetheart?" Sir Matthew's rough, lumpish face was transported into concern, and he clasped his bear-paws round her small hands.

"I know Flint," she said. "Or rather, I knew him…"

"What? How could that be? He's a pirate!"

"But I know him." Selena looked at Sir Matthew, whom she liked and trusted, and she started to explain. She spoke of things that had been confined to the back of her mind for many months. And the more she spoke, the easier it got, until it all tumbled out: head over heels, disordered, stumbling and repetitive… but all of it. Right from the start: from the Delacroix Plantation to Charley Neal's grog shop to the Walrus, Flint's Island, his treasure, Danny Bentham and beyond. She told him every last thing. Even about the two men she'd shot dead in Charlestown. Even about Joe Flint, who was mad and who'd said he loved her, and even about John Silver, who certainly did.

And Sir Matthew listened, and said nothing, and held her hand, and the tea and drop-scones arrived and grew cold, and still she spoke and he listened.

Finally she sighed and stopped and looked at him, and he was pierced to the soul at the beauty of her lovely, vulnerable face appealing to him for judgement. In that instant he'd have stood between her and the world. He'd have jumped off a cliff for her, if it would have helped! And he'd have gone down joyful and content. But there was one point to discuss: a point such as couldn't be missed by so practical a man as Matt Blackstone.

"You're married, then? You're Mrs Silver?" he said.

"Yes," she said.

"But you left him?"

"Yes."

He stayed silent a long time. He gathered courage. He looked at her again.

"And would you go back to him now, if you could?"

There was an even longer silence.

"Wait!" he said, and shook his head. "Don't answer that, 'cos here's the way of it my girl: first of all, I don't care what you've done. After all, what choice did you have? And what care I if you did? Second, here's myself married, and yourself married, and church and state between us." He spread his hands and smiled sadly. "If I'd met you as a lad, I'd have said no to my pa and never married the old trout, and asked you instead!" He laughed. "But that were twenty year before you was born!"

She laughed too, and his heart leaped with joy to see it.

"Matt," she said, "you're a good man…"

"Aye, but an ugly, old one."

"No!"

"Yes! But here's what I'm offering: there can't be no marriage, and I ain't such a fool as to think you'd have me for love…"

"Matt!" she said, leaning forward to touch his rough cheek. He sighed and kissed her hand with utmost gentleness, but he shook his head.

"No. None o' that," he said, "for I'm a philosophical man. So! You're making good money on the stage right now, ain't you?" She nodded. "Then beware, my princess, for of all trades, that's the least certain and the least secure!"

"Is it?" she said, for she was in full flush of triumphant success.

"Oh yes!" he said. "You'll learn! The stage can turn you out tomorrow, whereas I offer this… I offer to settle regular monthly payments upon you, and a cash sum on my death, as'll make you a rich woman, secure in your own right with house and carriage and servants an' all." He wagged a finger. "And all signed and sealed by the lawyers. But -" he said, and looked her in the eye with the sharpness that had made him so formidable a man of business "- here's the bargain: there shall be no other man than me… and that too shall be written into the settlement." He nodded slowly. "For I may be old, and I do love you my little darling… but I'll not be made a fool of… and if I am… the money stops!"

"Matt," she said, "I'd never deceive so kind a man as you."

He laughed.

"Not you, my sweetness, not right now. But three years on, when you're bored and some pretty young fellow winks his eye at you…"

"No!" she said.

Sir Matthew smiled.

"Aye," he said, "whatever you say. But I'm serious in what I've said. Every word of it… Now! I'm off into Berkshire tomorrow, the which'll give you a few days to think. But when I come back, I'll want an answer." She leaned across the table and kissed him. And Katty Cooper sizzled in hatred.

Noon, Monday, 26th November 1753 Tyburn To the west of London

The javelin-men hit the Brownlough boys in a beating of iron hooves, a kicking of sharp-spurred boots, a snorting of yellow horse-teeth, and the massive impact of twenty-nine horses and men – twelve-hundred pounds weight per mount and rider – moving at thirty miles per hour and arriving knee- to-knee in a wall of muscle and bone.

And all the while Joe Flint kicked and twisted in his death agony.

It didn't matter that they weren't trained cavalry. It didn't matter that their spears were for show and not sharpened. It didn't matter that they had no military swords, only short- bladed hangers. They hit the mob as a sledgehammer hits a melon. The Brownlough boys didn't even have time to turn and run – though the sharpest of them tried, and were duly hit from behind.

Flint struggled and trembled. He throttled and fought for breath.

Men were thrown down with skulls smashed under horseshoes and limbs broken and spines shattered and faces smashed into the ground and the dead and the dying piling up, and men smothering underneath, and others screaming, groaning and bleeding as the charge punched deep into the heaving, struggling, three-hundred-strong, gin-fired mass, with its cudgels and cobbles and knives… until the force of the charge was soaked up by sheer bulk of human flesh, and the horses began to trample and buck and kick, and the javelin- men bellowed and roared and stabbed with their blunt spears, and slashed with their short swords.

And Flint began to weaken.

Then one of the javelin-men got pulled from his saddle and was beaten with pitiless fury as the tide of the battle turned, for now not only the Brownlough boys fought back, but the mob itself was roused and it growled in the depth of its rage, instinctively taking the part of its fellows against the forces of law, and falling upon the javelin-men in thousands and tens of thousands, with clawing hands, swinging cudgels, a tremendous volley of stones, and limitless strength which pulled over not only the riders, but their shrieking mounts as well.