“Ah!” Jago was laughing as he took aim.
Bang
, and the arrow flew like a bird and lighted in the palm-thatch sun shade, lighted indeed, for the leaves curled back and the bright fire spread and licked along. The girl was laughing, they were all laughing to hear the shrieks from above as the Spanish tried to put the blaze out, but it seemed all their sand was gone.
By the firelight John could see plenty of arrows scattered along the bottom of the ditch, as could all the other grenadiers. He grabbed up one and tore off a piece of his shirt for kindling; all along the ditch others were doing the same; up went the flight of little phoenixes, and some stuck in the thatch and some in the wooden palisades. The inshore wind, gusting down the ravine, fanned the flames like Hell.
From behind them came a roar as Bradley gave the order for the marksmen to advance, and John heard them dropping from the trees now, charging the field, coming on toward the ravine. They kept up a steady fire the whole time, reloading on the run. John scrambled to and fro, finding dropped grenades, relighting them and pitching them as fast and as far as he could go; for he had a strong right arm then. The girl flitted here and there, bringing him grenades too, and they laughed together to hear the Spanish scream so, when the whole of the burning thatch collapsed on the walls.
Just as the marksmen came to the ditch, something behind the wall exploded, with a crash to tear open the sky and a blaze of light like day come early; John heard later it was the biggest of the Spanish guns. Red-hot bronze shrapnel came out of the air and fell like hail, wounding all men alike. Someone yelled beside him and he turned to see Blackstone on the ground, clutching his head. Someone else yelled above him. John looked up and saw the palisade beginning to collapse, eaten through as it was with flame, and a great wave of earth and stones burst from behind it and came down the slope into the ditch.
When John knew anything again he was clear down the far end of the ditch, toward one of the other bastions, and he and the girl were dragging Blackstone between them. Blackstone was slick all down one side with blood, and he was saying over and over, “My ear, my ear, they’ve blown off my fucking ear,” and there were more explosions sounding.
The palisades had collapsed nearly all the way across, and the earth they had had packed behind them all gone down into the ditch, filling it in in some places, so Captain Bradley’s marksmen had a nice open window through which to shoot at the Spanish who ran to and fro, exposed as though they were on a theater stage. Some were trying to put out the fires; some were fighting hand-to-hand with privateers who’d crawled up over the fallen palisade. John caught a glimpse of one unlucky bastard fending off Reverend Hackbrace, who was on him like God’s own werewolf.
But the defenders weren’t done for yet; some among their officers were rallying to drag over guns from the other batteries, aiming them out at the gap to slay all comers that way and any of the marksmen out there in the night. They loaded the cannon with musket-balls and fired point-blank into the waves of men coming up the hill, and washed them back down in blood. Others of the defenders had run and fetched their own grenades, or even chamber pots, flinging down anything they had to repel the privateers.
John was all for finding a cool place in the dark and waiting for the bullets to do their work up above, once they’d bound up poor dear Blackstone’s bloody head; but the girl went sprinting over the fallen earth with her cutlass drawn, screaming like an Irish witch. To John’s amazement he found himself scrambling after her, and so was Blackstone, dodging grenades and shite. They all three gained the top at about the same moment, and looked straight into the faces of the Spanish defenders, and then it got nasty for a long while.
Now and again John had a moment to notice things, over the red hours; that he was wet to the elbows like a butcher, and that Dick Pettibone had somehow gotten his fat bulk up the slope and was cutting the throats of the wounded, and that the girl seemed to be everywhere at once, lithe as the flames that spread, and spread, and that the Reverend was roaring out a hymn that wasn’t about any little lambs, and that at last the gray dawn was showing up eerie and cold beyond the walls.
The Spanish weren’t firing anymore now, whether from a wish to save powder for the last assault or because they’d used it all, John couldn’t guess. He slumped down behind a mass of smoldering timbers, trying to get his breath, watching dully as the girl bound up a cut that had laid his upper left arm open. He wondered when that had happened. He could see down the causeway the fallen earth had made, where Captain Bradley was in conference with a group of
boucaniers
, Jago and Jacques amongst them. They were passing their muskets to a couple of Bradley’s aides, who collected them like bundles of firewood. Then they drew pistols and cutlasses.
“It’ll be close work, now,” said the girl, laughing. John looked at her in wonderment. Then he understood: they were readying for the last push, and Bradley must intend for the
boucaniers
to be the spearhead. It seemed like a dream, or a story someone was telling him. If he turned his head he could see down to the green trees and the Chagres River winding gray away between them, and one and then two and three canoes moving up its placid water.
Deserters,
he thought.
Don’t blame them.
The sun came up, red as a wound in all the smoke and stink; the Spanish had retreated to the inner buildings, seemingly, for there was no sign of them but the dead ones on the bastions. There came a shout from below. John looked down and saw the
boucaniers
formed up for the charge. Over they came, yelling,
Victoire! Victoire!
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.
The first night’s watch fell to John and his messmates, by the open palisade. They’d only a low basket of coals to warm themselves, as a cheery fire would have blazed out through the fallen wall good as an invitation for any snipers who cared to pick them off.