“God send she has the sense to keep well clear of these.”
“She’s done it so far, sir,” said John. Morgan looked at him thoughtfully.
“I may get my death tomorrow,” he said.
“Never say it, sir! You got the Devil’s own luck,” said John.
“Oh, yes, no question of that; but luck plays a man false, now and again. I think
your
luck will hold, John James. These poor sots and cutthroats will rush into the cannon’s mouth heedless, but you will think twice about wasting your life. Should I fall, find my girl. Take her away with you, to Jamaica or even to England, and treat her well.”
“Sir, I swear it!” said John. “But I ain’t got your luck, all the same.”
Morgan sighed.
“Then I will give you half my luck,” he said, and reaching out with the heel of his hand struck John between the eyes, a sharp blow that made him see stars. “There. Do you feel fortunate now?”
“I think so, sir,” said John, blinking and wanting to laugh, except it hurt.
“Christ Jesus, what I wouldn’t give for a glass of rum,” said Morgan, looking out at the fires.
John made himself a sort of tent that night, draping his coat over a green bush and stretching out underneath. He lay there a while, thinking on the morrow. He remembered that there’d been an alehouse in London called the Green Bush, and he thought how funny it was that here he lay now, in a green bush, only he wished it was the other one.
Whereupon he heard his mother’s voice in his ear again, pleading-like, telling him how he might open a nice little tavern of his own someday. It was a fine living, for a sober man; why, he could set up at a crossroads, with a painted sign to hang out front, and a clean little brew-house out back, and three snug rooms upstairs with clean linen, so as to attract gentle guests. He would wash the windows often, so as to let in a lot of light, which would shine on the copper pans… and in his own chamber there’d be a grand big bed, just the place for a neat, little wife… a sea-coal fire all cheery in the grate…
But the sea-coal sent up green flames, and the hanging sign was a hanging man. John heard Morgan’s voice then, smoothly arguing down his mother.
A tavern at a crossroads! Aye, and there he’d dream of jungles, and battles, and blood and gold. The gentle guests would shout for him, and order him to take away the chamber-pots and make the beds. His hand would grope for a cutlass to change their tune, but he’d not find one, never again. Gray England would send her winters over him, not the stink and glare and salt sea-haze of Port Royal. And every seventh day, he’d sit in a pew and drone hymns, and mutter
Amen
, like to die of boredom. What kind of life was that, demanded Morgan.
Well, but there’d be the neat, little wife. She’d be a pink-faced country girl, pious, in yards of white cambric to be groped through before he could get proper hold of her a’nights, and that only when there wasn’t babies coming, which there would be most of the time… lying mouth to mouth with her he’d be dreaming all the while anyway of a girl with flaming eyes, slender and terrible, white as mist, with long, wet hair and the smell of the sea on her…
She began to do things, lying on him, and he was panicked lest his mother see or, worse yet, Morgan, but he couldn’t stop the girl. He didn’t want to stop her.
John woke, gasping, to find that she had her white arms around his neck and was smiling down at him, not an inch away from his face in the darkness. They wrestled close, for five or six minutes, and it was like going to Heaven.
When John could draw breath to speak at last, all he could tell her was how he loved her. She stroked back his hair from his face, still smiling.
“And I love thee,” she said. “You’re my own man, John. I will be your right bride all the days and nights of your life, and never leave you. Wherever you may sail, I’ll be at your side. Let the world quake for fear of us!”
John said something half-witted back in reply, about all the things he’d do for her, like pile the riches of the world at her feet. Then, enough of his conscience woke for him to croak something about how Morgan was worried for her, and only wanted what was best for her.
“Oh, he’d keep me close,” said the girl, laughing. “I know him. But there’s none like Morgan for burning, and plundering, and living free; and am I not his daughter? I must be free too, John.”
Now this news terrified John, as he recollected all that had happened and all Morgan had said, and finally understood the truth. He felt a dull ox not to have guessed it before now; but he loved her all the more, and told her so.
Three times more before the night was out, they struggled together again, in bliss and joy. John drifted off at last, asleep in her arms, so happy. He dreamed of a fair ship, sweet-steering and swift, laden to the decks with loot.
But when he started awake, in an hour when the stars had dropped far down into the west, the girl had slipped away from him once more.
Morning came chill and pale, with cocks crowing indeed. The Brethren woke beside the ashes of their fires, under a pall of blowing smoke, and formed up, and marched off to do battle. Before they had gone two miles, they saw it was even as Morgan had told them: the Spanish forces had fled in the night, leaving their empty tents and gear. There was only a fat, old man riding sadly away, with his priests running after him. It was the viceroy himself, deserted, riding back to pray for his city.
And the Brethren looked at Morgan with wide eyes, remembering that he had prophesied it would happen so, and some among them crossed themselves. John didn’t, but he reached up and touched the place Morgan had struck him, and smiled sheepishly to think of the luck he’d have from now on.
He looked about him for the girl as he marched, bearing Morgan’s standard; but if she followed the army, she was keeping herself well hid. That pleased him. Safer, he thought, for her to stay unseen, and shoot from afar off. Jacques was already in tears, his little, red eyes like rubies, because Jago was in the vanguard with him, and it was no use to march in front and try to shield him with his body. Jago towered over him by a head.
Forward they went, through the bright day, under a clear, hot sun, and clearer and sharper grew the towers of Panama. By noon they could make out the defending army, drawn up under the walls, on a wide open plain.
Now, John marched with Morgan’s troops, that formed the right wing of the main body of men; that was about three hundred, with three hundred more on the left wing under Captain Collier, or Colonel Collier as he was now, because Morgan had assigned ranks so all would be done army-fashion.
Three hundred more were in the vanguard, the
boucanier
sharpshooters mostly. The rest followed in the rearguard. Blackstone was in Morgan’s column, by John; it had been agreed to keep the prince to the rear of the column, with the ladies. The Reverend needed no goading now, not since the cathedral tower had come into plain view. He was marching along with his eyes fixed on it, muttering to himself about catamites, and the sale of indulgences, and graven images. Every so often he shook as though he had the palsy, and flecks of foam began to appear at the corner of his mouth.
Pretty soon the guns on the walls started up again,
thud-thud-thud
, and men remembered the bombardment of the night before, and a few laughed for scorn. That fell off as they came within range at last, and the first balls went shrieking through the air and ploughed up earth and bushes to one side and the other. The vanguard kept their heads up now, as they marched, watching for the shots coming in.
Now the Spanish troops could be seen clearly. John glanced over at Morgan and saw him pulling on his beard as he studied the field; for the Spanish outnumbered them, being maybe fifteen hundred men to their thousand-odd, and there was beside a great herd of lowing cattle being kept in place by Indians with goads. The Spanish right flank was drawn up behind a little hill, with a ravine before them. The wind was out of the west, and blowing the cannon-smoke across the Spanish lines.
Morgan called a halt to the march, and sent for Collier, who presently came sidling through the ranks.
“Now, Ned, what say you?” Morgan jerked his thumb at the enemy positions. Collier looked pale, but he grinned.
“They have the sun in their eyes,” he said hopefully.
“And smoke too,” said Morgan. “Still…”
“What do you reckon they’ve kept all those cows for?”
“Why, to fright us with,” said Morgan, and now he grinned too, and raised his voice. “Bless my heart, lads, what sport is here! They’ll drive their beefsteaks at us, to make us run away!”
Which brought a roar of laughter from the Brethren, and heartened them no end, to think anyone could be so stupid as to attack starving men with meat on the hoof. Someone started up the old song again,
They shall eat the feathered goose, but we shall eat the roast, oh!
Morgan turned back to Collier and pointed at the little hill.
“Look you, how safe their right flank sits back there. I am thinking, though, that they will have the Devil’s own time getting reinforcements to the center, going down into that ravine and up out of it again. It would be easy to turn their flank, see, if we could gain that hill.”
“By God,” said Collier, in admiration.
“Do you think you might take your lads up it, Ned?”
“None readier!”
“And so we shall have the advantage,” said Morgan, with a kind of a purr in his voice.
Collier hurried back, and when Morgan gave the order to advance again, the left flank went wheeling away to storm the hill.
A squadron of Spanish cavalry galloped forward now to attack the vanguard. Glinting eyes, beating hooves, manes flying and the men bending low above, grinning to charge on so many poor bastards without pikes to fend them off. Morgan craned his head to see what the commander of the vanguard would do, and nodded when he saw him forming the French sharpshooters up into a square, where they dropped each to one knee and raised muskets, and blew the slow-matches bright, waiting for the range—
And Morgan glanced over at the left wing, that was storming the hill now, and John followed his gaze—
And they both, in the same moment, saw the girl running with Collier’s wing.
Morgan turned to John, staring, but said nothing. John couldn’t have heard him if he had, with the roar of the battle commencing. John blurted something—he never afterward remembered what—and thrust Morgan’s standard into someone else’s hands, and took off through the lines after the girl.
He’d never run so in all his life, dodging and ducking through charging men, for the attack had begun in earnest. The Reverend went howling past him, clawing slower men out of the way to get at the enemy. But John ran after the force that was surging up the hill now, unstoppable as a wave, and up he went too and he could see the girl again, and the noise of the charge shook the ground under his boots.
He came up alongside—oh, who wouldn’t have noticed she was a woman now, with her shirt torn open and her white breasts bared, and her hair streaming out?
But hadn’t she cut her hair?…
Yet the men around them never seemed to see, they were so fixed on taking the hill.
A kind of growl seemed to rise out of the earth, as they gained the top, and it mixed with the volley of shots below, for only now had the cavalry charge reached the vanguard. John heard the screams of men and horses caught by musket-fire. He reached out his hand to the girl. She turned her face to him, and there were no eyes in her face but only flames.
She lifted her arms and jumped, or seemed to, for up she rose before him like a kite, and her spread arms and wild hair flowed out like wings or a cloak.
Up she went like the smoke of a fire, and seemed to cover half the sky. Her face was Death itself, and in her left hand she bore a flaming brand, and her right bore blue steel with lightnings playing about the blade. She laughed fit to crack the sky open.
Out she flew as Collier’s men fired down on the Spanish right flank, slaughtering them like they were chickens in a pen. But she soared on to the walls of Panama itself, and it seemed to John the cathedral tower trembled, and where she came fire sprang up and climbed like roses.
John fell to his knees there on the hill, clutching his heart. When he lifted his eyes again there was no sign of her, but only clouds of smoke shot through with curious colors, writhing and descending on the city.
He turned and looked down on the plain, that was now a flailing slaughterhouse of cattle and horses and men. There was Morgan’s standard, and there hard by stood Morgan himself, staring up at John.
He had seen her too. John knew it by the look on his face.
The Spaniards fled, or died. Morgan led his forces on, pursuing close, into the very streets of Panama, but it was already in flames. The people of the city ran to and fro, confusedly, and some tried to put out the fires. Some few attempted to stand against the Brethren that came racing across the little bridge, and so into the city, but in the end most fled.
John crawled down from the hill, weak and sick as though he’d had a fever, and staggered after the army. Looking up, he could just see the backs of Lady Phyllida and Mrs. Hackbrace, scrambling over the dead as they followed the privateers in. They had left the prince far behind. He walked on in his slow way, deaf to the moans of the wounded and dying on both sides.
Someone was screaming to John’s left; he turned and saw Jago on his knees, holding Jacques close and rocking to and fro with him. Jacques’ red eyes were still open, and staring. He’d been cut in the sinews of his neck, likely some cavalryman’s blade going straight down to the heart.
Jago was crying so, John didn’t know what to say to him. He only stood and stared, and wondered at the things that make a man leave Paradise once he’s found it.
John walked on. He caught up with the prince, who’d have marched straight into the sea if John hadn’t caught him by the arm.
“This way, Your Royal Highness,” he said, giving him a shove toward the main road. They trudged along, side by side, toward the city. Flames swept up from most of it now, smelling sweet as incense, for its houses had been made of cedarwood; or maybe that was the churches burning. Women were screaming. There were desperate shouts in English, orders to leave the wine and put the fires out, as Morgan’s officers tried to restore order; but the Brethren were ignoring them, laughing, doing just as they liked.