There was one other suggestion Morgan made, one to which all the captains agreed readily enough. Why not take themselves a base on the Main first, a place near to the business at hand, some island where they could refit and revictual at need? Old Providence ought to do nicely, he said. Recapture it, and get a little revenge into the bargain.
The fleet raised anchor and sailed, with a fair wind behind them all the way. Six days it took. On Christmas Eve—as the Papists amongst them reckoned it by the new calendar, which was ten days out from the right one—there were the three mountain peaks of Old Providence, red in the sunrise. By midmorning the Brethren sailed up to the anchorage and saw the battery guarding the harbor, and the black mouths of four silent guns. Morgan had a good look at the place with his glass.
No little figures moved along the parapets; no Spanish banners waved. Nobody moving inland, either; no sight of a living soul.
Morgan closed his glass and, cool as ice, bid his captains enter the anchorage. The
Satisfaction
first; he stood tall on her quarterdeck as they slipped in, right in range of the guns, but never a shot was fired. Had the Spanish deserted the place, after breaking so many hearts to take it? Morgan landed a thousand armed men, and went ashore to find out.
John led the little party of his messmates that Captain Bradley sent: Reverend Hackbrace with his cousin Pettibone and Bob Plum, who seemed some sort of relation too, and the two
boucaniers
; at the last moment Tom Blackstone jumped down into the boat too, much to John’s discomfort. He made no trouble, though; he merely bent to the oar like a common hand and kept his mouth shut, though once John noticed him studying John’s boots again.
They splashed ashore and drew the boats up, and John had a long look around. Eerie silence. Inland he could just glimpse a few roofs, bare beams gaping and thatching rotted away. There were wide weedy places that had been fields, maybe. Only, a flock of wood-pigeons rose suddenly in flight, wheeled and circled once, and vanished.
“Do you see, Elias?” Bob Plum pointed to the desolation. “This is the work of the Pope.”
“Here, now, don’t you go setting him off yet,” said John in alarm.
“If you please, I require the proper frame of mind,” said the Reverend. He raised his hands and began to pray; Plum and Pettibone knelt in the sand beside him and joined in. Blackstone watched them with a smirk. The
boucaniers
were composedly loading their muskets, puffing away at their lit pipes. John shuddered and looked around.
A few yards down the beach, Morgan’s own boat was coming ashore. John thought he’d draw a bit of notice for himself, so he splashed out and helped them pull the boat up. He did his best to catch Morgan’s eye, but the Admiral was staring inland at the ruins, looking grim. So John stood to his full height and saluted smartly, and with him being so big Morgan couldn’t help but see.
“Please you, sir, this plantation ain’t been worked in years,” said John. “Not a sign of a living soul here.”
Morgan looked at him, and John thought he saw a flash of recognition in Morgan’s black eyes.
“Perhaps not,” he said. “Look you, take six men and reconnoiter down the coast.” He pointed, and John set off smart; as he hurried away he heard Morgan ordering other parties out to have a look round.
Well, John led his little party down the beach and saw never a footprint, not so much as a goat’s track; Jago and Jacques cast inshore a ways as they went, and though they walked silent as cats they found nothing either. They met all together at the end of the beach, under the rock cliff, and John splashed out with them to look around into the next little bay.
“Fresh water,” said Jago, pointing. There were some dark wet rocks, with a runnel of clear water flowing down over gravel and shells from the trees to the beach, and white mist blowing along it.
“That’s something, anyway, water,” said John. He blundered forward through the surf and walked up on the glass-smooth sand. He looked again at the mist, and caught his breath.
There was a girl standing there by the water, pale as the mist, still and slender as an egret. She lifted her head and looked at him. John felt a stab of something go right through his heart and lodge there, like the barbed head of a spear. He had never seen anything so beautiful in his life, nor would he ever again: nothing like that girl by the water, with her long, wet hair and her gray eyes gazing so quiet.
Jago and Jacques and the rest came up the beach after him and John put out his hand, trying to make them be quiet. He was sure she’d vanish like a ghost; he was half sure she
was
a ghost. But she didn’t vanish, and then Pettibone had seen her and cried, “There’s a spirit!”
John was sure she’d turn and run, then, but she didn’t. She stood there, watching them; slow and cautious they walked toward her.
Close to, and she was real enough. She looked young, only a maid of fourteen or so, clad in rags faded and stained. Her hair was a tangled mat, pale as ashes.
John was talking low all the time he came near her, like he was talking to a skittish horse, telling her what a pretty little thing she was and how she needn’t be afraid. He never took his eyes from the girl, but Jago and Jacques were watching the scrub pretty sharp. Nothing moved. She was alone.
Ever so careful, John reached out and took her hand. It felt like ice.
“What’s your name, dearie?” he said.
She never drew back from him, but looked at her hand in a sort of wonder, it seemed, and said, “Anguish.”
“She means English!” exclaimed Bob Plum. “Merciful God! She’s one of the Righteous. She must have escaped the Spanish, and been hiding here all this while.”
“It is a miracle,” said Pettibone. “Oh, the poor child!”
Jacques said something, and Jago translated: “Ask her, where have the Spanish gone?”
But she didn’t seem to know. She just looked at them, mute, though she didn’t resist when John pulled at her hand.
“You come with us, sweeting,” he said, and felt her hand warm a little in his grasp.
“Listen to me, girl,” said Blackstone. “Are there others here? Other English, like you? Any men?”
“She’s mad,” said Jago, shaking his head. Pettibone shrugged out of his coat, that was big enough to go round the girl three times, and wrapped it around her shoulders.
They led her away and around the cliff, back to the boats. Morgan was gazing through his glass at the interior, and so did not see them until they were just at his elbow, so to speak.
“Here’s a thing, sir,” said Blackstone. “A young lady.”
Morgan lowered his glass and turned. He saw the girl, and his dark face went clay-color in shock.
“Oh Christ,” he said. He just stood there staring at her, so John, trying to be helpful, said:
“She’s said she’s English, sir.”
Morgan spoke as though his mouth was dry. “What’s your name, child?”
She said nothing. He reached out a hand and brushed back her hair, looked into her eyes.
“Are you alone?” he asked. “Is your mother here? Your father?”
Not a word from her, though tears formed in her gray eyes. Morgan was breathing hard, like a man that’s run upstairs.
“You’re safe now,” he told her. “Safe, and going home. She can’t stay here,” he added, looking around as though he’d only just noticed John and the rest standing there. “Some of you, row her out to the
Satisfaction
. To my cabin. She’s not to be touched, do you understand? I’ll kill the man who touches her. She needs tending—she must be clothed and fed—” His voice trailed off in a helpless kind of way, as he looked around him and realized he hadn’t exactly the most trustworthy lads to minister to a virgin pure, like.
So John, ever a thoughtful lad, put in his oar. “Please you, sir, Pettibone here’s a eunuch.”
Pettibone shot him an evil look, but stepped forward and bowed.
“In Jesus’ name, you may rely on me. I will minister to the poor child, sir.”
“You were best,” said Morgan harshly. “Go, now.”
So John led the girl into the boat, and Pettibone stepped in after them and Blackstone followed quick to get in too, which John didn’t much care for. The others pushed the boat off, and John and Blackstone rowed back to the Admiral’s flagship. Pettibone hauled his fat, little bum aboard, and the girl ascended easy as though she’d done it a hundred times, with John giving her a lift up. He didn’t peep up her rags, but he couldn’t help seeing her fair white ankles and her naked feet as she went over the side. Then Blackstone headed the boat around, and they were rowing back to shore.
John looked out at the
Satisfaction
and watched Pettibone, like a mother hen, guiding the girl to the great cabin, and heard Pettibone snapping out short words to the deck hands. He fancied the girl looked for him, as he rowed away.
“I wonder what you’d take for those boots,” said Blackstone, as they rowed.
“Eh?” said John, startled from his dream.
“I’ve conceived a desire for boots of Spanish make, with curious stitchery,” said Blackstone. “Such as those red noughts and crosses on your own boots. Unusual, those. Distinctive. Never seen such a pair, God’s my life.”
“I’d have thought you’d owned plenty of fancy boots in your time, a rich boy like you,” said John, giving him a hard stare.
“Oh, once upon a time, I might have done. My father was a prudent, old devil; bent the knee to Cromwell, and kept his fortune and his lands. He was obliging enough to die untimely and leave me with the lot. Off to court I went, when the king returned, to try my hand at being a courtier. Do you know, it can ruin a man? I’d no notion of the cost of silks, and carriages, and fine sherries. Not to mention the gambling one is required to do!” Blackstone shivered, as though in disgust. “I wasted my substance in a year, who’d credit it?”
“Imagine that,” said John, watching him close.
“The only advantage to ruining oneself so speedily,” said Blackstone, “is that the news doesn’t travel apace, and one can, if one is prompt, find a creditor or two who’ll still advance enough money for a passage to the West Indies. And out here, as you’ve doubtless learned, a man may vastly improve his lot with but an hour’s dirty work.”
“I reckon so,” said John.
“Indeed. I may, therefore, indulge my whims once again, not to my former extent, of course, but handsomely nevertheless. To return, then, to the issue at hand: How much for the boots, my man?”
“I ain’t selling,” said John. “Besides, they ain’t your size.”
“They are,” said Blackstone, setting his foot beside John’s. John, glancing down, saw it was true. “Remarkable, isn’t it? So hard to find ready-mades in my size, as a rule. Why, we might be brothers. And brothers to the man you killed to get them.”
“I didn’t kill nobody,” said John, wondering whether he could club Blackstone with an oar and have it look like an accident. “The bastard dropped dead in the public street, on my life and honor. Look here, the cobbler don’t look likely to set up his stall on this Goddamned ghost island any time soon, thank you very much. What would I do for shoon, if I sold them? What are you after, anyhow?
Was
it your brother, as died?”
Blackstone looked at him at long moment, as though he was taking his measure.
“No,” he said. “Merely a man with whom I was to exchange boots.”
John stared, dumb as a codfish. Blackstone sighed.
“Oars inboard a moment. Your knife, if you please.”
They shipped oars and John drew his knife, ready to cut Blackstone’s gullet and shove him over the side, if he had to. But Blackstone only reached out with his finger and tapped the fancy-work at the top of John’s boot.
“Oblige me by opening that seam, will you? You have my word of honor I’ll repair it with my own lily-white hands.”
John was a fool in those days, but not so dull as all that. He thought he understood, in a flash as it were, what the man had been driving at. He felt out the seam and cut along it. Neat as a wallet, it opened, and he caught a glimpse of oiled paper that had been tucked flat in there behind the cutwork, before Blackstone reached down, quick as a snake striking, and extracted the paper between finger and thumb.
“Thank you,” said Blackstone.
“Love letter, is it?” said John, grinning.
“Something of the sort,” said Blackstone, opening the paper and reading with difficulty, for the writing was much blurred.
“Well, now, that’s as good as a play!” said John. “You been looking for that poor dead son of a whore, ain’t you? And you was arranged to know him by his boots!”
“As you say.”
“That ain’t half-clever!”
“Mm-hm.”
“And here was me wearing them quite by chance!”
“Astonishing.”
“What’s it say, eh?”
“I’ve no intention of telling you.”
“Oh. Right. Lady’s honor concerned, aye?” John lay his finger beside his nose.
Blackstone stuck the paper inside his coat. He looked at John once more, with that same measuring gaze.
“A man’s life is in the balance,” he said. “One of your own Brethren of the Coast, you might say. And that will have to suffice you.”
The tide ran them up on the beach, then, so no more was said.
The island was secured before two in the afternoon, empty as it was, and it would have been quicker if there hadn’t been so damn many mountains. Morgan found out where the Spaniards were: all holed up in the fortifications atop the little sister islet that lay at Old Providence’s north end, across a stretch of seawater serving as a moat. But the drawbridge had been hauled in, and the first parties who came in sight of the guns met with concerted fire.
“No ghosts in there,” said John, panting as he ducked behind a rock.
“The cowards,” said Bob Plum, glaring as he bandaged the Reverend’s ear, which had stopped a splinter of shattered rock sent flying by a four-pound ball. That had been on their third attempt to wade across the moat, and even the Reverend’s ferocity had begun to flag a little. A tear trickled down his gaunt cheek.
“I have failed the Almighty,” he said.