Dark Mondays (34 page)

“Bloody hell,” he said, rubbing his throat. Light was dawning at last. Looking at Dick, he said: “And—you’re a woman too! Ain’t you?”

“Les femmes!”
said Jacques, horrified. Blackstone began to laugh.

Morgan himself came striding through the brush. “What is this? I’ll have no damned fighting here!”

“Dick ain’t a eunuch after all,” said John.

“What?” said Morgan.

“We have two of the fair sex here, disguised,” said Blackstone, smirking. Morgan looked at them, aghast; for of course now it seemed too obvious. Dick folded his arms and glared at them all.

“You can’t send us back now,” she said. “Have we not been fit companions? Was not Mr. Hackbrace the first to the wall at Chagres Castle? We have fought bravely and well. Do we not deserve our shares?”

“We must apologize, ladies, for our dull senses,” said Blackstone. “Else we’d have penetrated your disguises sooner.”

“Spare us such feigned gallantries, sir,” said Dick.

“You had better explain this,” said Morgan to the Reverend, who was crouched beside Bob, vainly trying to tuck the cut bandage back into place. He merely raised a bewildered face. Dick said:

“We were attempting to repair our fortune, sir. We had lived humbly but honestly, until poor Elias yielded to the sin of Wrath and smote that man dead in Winksley, and we were obliged to flee England. We thought to make his temper, that had been the instrument of our undoing, also the means by which we gained a comfortable sufficiency. Yet Elias could not be trusted to go adventuring alone; only Clementine and I are able to soothe his rages.

“Wherefore, Admiral, we hit upon the stratagem of disguising ourselves and traveling as comrades. But for this sad mischance, none had ever been the wiser.”

“Some at least ought to have guessed,” said Morgan, giving John a look that made him squirm. He in his turn looked accusingly at Bob.

“So you’re Clementine, then?”

“
Mrs.
Clementine Hackbrace,” said she, pale but defiant.

“And I am Lady Phyllida de Bellehache,” said she who had been Dick, and Blackstone left off leering for surprise.

“But—but you were a great society beauty!” he said. “I’ve heard of you! There was a scandal—”

Reverend Hackbrace was on his feet in an instant.

“ ‘Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise,’ ” he said in a warning tone, flexing his hands.

“Even so,” said Lady Phyllida, putting her hand on her hip. “Time changes us all, does it not? And now, Admiral, you will comprehend our desire for blest privacy to tend to poor Clementine’s hurts.”

“That you may have,” said Morgan. “But understand me, ladies: you would be soldiers, and now you must soldier on. I have no men to spare to convey you safe home.”

“We ask none,” said Lady Phyllida, with a toss of her head.

“Where’s the prince?” said Blackstone, looking around suddenly. John pointed out through the brush, at the distant figure marching along and still drawing an occasional hail of arrows. Blackstone swore and charged after him.

Some Indians had broken cover to come and stare at the prince. One fell dead in his tracks with Blackstone’s musket-ball between his eyes. The Brethren, seeing them, rallied and sent out a volley of shot, which killed two more; and though they retreated, Jago and several others rushed them, reloading on the run. Blackstone caught the prince and turned him round, and half-dragged him back to the cover on their side of the woods.

“Get ’em!” said John, drawing and running from cover; for just then a pitched battle seemed a more congenial place to be. He ran, and others ran with him, as Morgan yelled, “Take prisoners! Twenty pieces of eight for the first man to take a prisoner!”

Yet the prize went unclaimed. There was bloody battle in that pass before the tunnel, with nearly a score of Morgan’s men killed or wounded, and more of the Indians slain, since all they had to fight with close to were spears. They broke and ran at last, swift as deer through the tunnel, and by the time enough of the Brethren came pouring after them they were beyond range.

Strangely enough, the mood in camp that night was more cheerful than otherwise. This though it poured rain half the night, and with no shelter but a few shepherds’ huts. Maybe it was the fact that battle had finally been joined, which likely meant that Panama was near; maybe it was the news that two ladies had been discovered within the party. Morgan had a field shelter rigged with branches, and set John to guard it, along with the Reverend, and there Mrs. Hackbrace and Lady Phyllida sat and conversed pleasantly. Mrs. Hackbrace, once her wounds were tended at last, was found to be not much hurt.

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.

“And what do you suppose they’re seeing? Filthy beasts, in their hundreds, dancing around great fires. What do you suppose they’re hearing? Howls of laughter and song. These are no soldiers; they’re madmen. They want gold, and for the love of it they followed me up that stinking river. They want it, and tomorrow they’ll follow me to get it, over the bodies of the slain. Musket-balls won’t stop them. Toledo steel won’t stop them. Would
you
stand in their way?”

“I reckon I wouldn’t, sir,” said John.

“I dare say that army won’t, either. Not after a few hours’ sober reflection,” said Morgan. He grinned. The firelight gleamed on his eyes, and his teeth.

There was a clatter of hooves, and a trumpet-call, clear and long and loud, from out in the dark; but the voice that followed was shaking badly.

“Dogs! English Dogs! We will meet you!”

And the Brethren catcalled back, and fired into the night, and danced obscenely by the fires; sure invitation, John would have thought, for Spanish snipers, but none fired upon them. Instead, the sound of hoofbeats retreated away into the dark, and not long afterward came the thunder of cannon from the city walls. The which was so stupid (the enemy being so far out of range) that the privateers were cheered even more.

Near to where John stood with Morgan, three or four men got up a morris-dance, and sang:

That was the only time a shadow fell across Morgan’s face. He looked out on the prancing demons he’d charmed so far through desolation, and said: