HF - 03 - The Devil's Own (7 page)

'Make haste,' Bart shouted.

Armand dropped the wood, hesitated, staring at the dust; now the horsemen's cries could be heard, and now, too, the separate figures could be seen; they wore gay costumes and flowing red and yellow capes, and broad-brimmed black hats to protect themselves from the sun. They rode splendid horses, and they carried long steel-tipped lances.

Kit raced towards the shelter, while his blood pounded in his ears. Blood oozed against his chest and down into his breeches. Blood and sweat. He was afraid, and hated himself for that. They had vowed vengeance against the Dons. But the appearance of a single Spaniard, in all the arrogance of fine clothes and new weapons and good horses, had them running. As for a squadron ... but Bart had killed Spaniards. There was a man, if he was telling the truth. They had seen hunting parties, and carefully hidden until the danger was past; Bart had attacked, with his
matelot,
and scored a victory.

He reached the woods, and stopped, panting. Because Jean and Bart had also stopped. They were looking back, at Armand, who was bending over the carcass, slicing away huge chunks of meat.

'Hurry,' Bart shouted. For the horsemen were close now, spreading out like a slowly opening fan, hallooing and cheering.

'Oh, Christ,' Jean said. And he meant it as a prayer.

Armand started to run, and the horses came up on either side. The Spaniards called out to the running man, laughing and jeering. Armand's head turned from side to side, and he staggered as he ran. But still he ran, without any longer knowing, or caring, where he was going, with the bleeding meat still clutched in his arms, staggering into eternity.

A lance was thrust down, between his feet, and he fell, rolling over and over, for a moment lost to sight in the dust. Another lance went down, and they heard a scream, high and thin and wailing in the faint breeze. But it was not the scream of a dying man; the lancers were too clever
for that. It was a scream of
agony, and it was a scream of knowledge, too, that even more agony was on the way.

Kit leaned against a tree, and levelled his musket, bracing his arm. Bart reached across and slapped the barrel down. Kit gazed at him in surprise. 'He is your
matelot.'

'And he is dead. If you kill one of those soldiers you must kill them all, or they will hang us all.'

Armand
screamed again and again. Bart turned into the trees. 'Come,' he said. "We must get away. Away and away and away. Listen. I have a plan, which needs only
men.
And you are men, young ones.'

Kit lay on his belly, on the sand, close by the water's edge. Close to where they had first come ashore. From here he could look at Tortuga, across the sea. From here he could even see the flag fluttering above the fort the Dons had built on the hilltop where Grandpapa had first built his house. Yellow and red, dominating the sky. Tortuga was now a Spanish watchpost, guarding the north shore of the larger island.

And he lay here, waiting to die. Because there was nothing else to do. Life was a kaleidoscope of agony and hatred, with only death at the end of it. He no longer believed that the happy days of his childhood had ever existed. It had been one of the good dreams. As for Marguerite ... he suddenly realized that he could no longer truly remember her face. It was a patchwork of expressions, hating, fearing, dying perhaps. It was not a face he would ever sec again.

Footsteps, on the sand behind him. He did not get up. Jean had said he would return on the fourth day, and this was the fourth day. So, if it was Jean, then it did not matter. If it was not Jean, then presumably he was about to die. He did not think he would care very much.

'It is foolish to lie here on the sand,' Jean said.

'It is foolish to do anything,' Kit said. 'It was foolish to swim across from Tortuga. It is not foolish to prolong misery?'

Jean squatted beside him. 'So let us leave this place.'

'Let us flap our wings, and fly away. Where shall we fly, Jean? Antigua? It is not far. Scarce two hundred miles, as we should fly. Perhaps we could swim that distance. It would not take us longer than a week.'

'You are a melancholy fellow,' Jean said. 'I went for news of Bart. And I have come back with news of Bart. I would have thought such news would make you smile again.'

'He is hanged?'

'Not Bart,' Jean said. 'We wait for him, now.'

But Bart was not amongst them.

'Where is he, then?'

'Out there,' Jean said.

Kit looked at the dark blue of the sea, and watched the pirogue come creeping along the shore, propelled by twelve paddles. Fashioned from untrimmed timber, it was hardly more than a large canoe, with a pointed stem and a pointed stern and a rounded bilge lacking a keel but very strong, careless of outcrops of rock or sand.

'We stole it,' Jean said. 'And have been coasting every night. Looking for men who would rather die with swords in their hands than lances up their asses. Are you such a man, Kit?'

Kit gazed at the boat. Their dream, come true. Had they the courage to seize it. How attached was he suddenly to become to this bloodstained sand. Because he knew too little of the sea. Always had he looked at it from the security of a beach. And that was an open boat.

'Where will we go?' he asked. And asked again, as they waded out to the pirogue, where Bart grinned at them with his magnificent teeth peering through the blackness of his beard. They were five, and there were a dozen men already in the boat, together with a few smoke-cured sides of beef. Enough for two days, perhaps. But no water. 'Where will we go?'

'Away,' Bart said. 'We leave this place, eh? Down there, to the east, beyond Puerto Rico, there are islands, sandbanks, creeks, those the Spaniards call the Virgins. We will go there.'

Kit sat in the stern and watched the water draining out of his skin breeches. 'Windward,' he said. 'You'd go to Windward?'

Into the unchanging wind, the ceaseless current? Were they even more ignorant of the sea than he?

'Only fifty miles,' Bart said. 'We will row all night, and tomorrow morning we will be
at Puerto Rico. We will rest
there the day, and leave again at night. The day after tomorrow we will be amongst the Virgins. So we will only have beaches to comb. It will be better than this pesthole.'

They took turns at the paddles. They fought their way into an increasing sea, which pushed the prow of the pirogue into the air and set it shuddering down into the trough on the far side, each such dip being accompanied by a rattle of spray which soaked them and had them shivering. Soon the seasickness began, and spread. Undigested lumps of raw meat spewed on to the bilges with evil-smelling bile; men lay on their paddles and panted. Salt caked their lips and had them gasping for water. But there was only salt water. So instead they prayed for dawn, and a sight of the Rich Island.

It grew light, and Bart braced himself on the steering oar as he stood up. The wind had dropped to a flat calm, but the swell continued, making the pirogue rise and fall, tower above the waves and then disappear completely into the next trough. Bart shaded his eyes and stared to windward. 'Now that is strange,' he muttered.

Kit wanted to laugh, because he wanted to weep so very much. He pointed the other way. 'Look there.'

They had paddled all night, and Hispaniola lay perhaps ten miles astern of them, massive green-clad cliffs rising from the unending sea.

'By Christ.' Bart licked his lips, and gazed at his men. Not his men, yet. Not ever, now. They had followed him to escape hell. And he had led them into a waterless horror.

'We can be back ashore in an hour,' Kit said. 'The same wind, the same current, which has held us here all night, will sweep us back.'

'Back to Hispaniola?' someone muttered.

'What will you do?' Kit shouted. 'Sit here and die of thirst?'

'Oh, Christ,' Jean said. 'Oh, Christ.' Because he was in the stern, and still peering at the coast. They crowded aft, in such haste that the narrow craft rolled dangerously. They stared at the ship, not two miles away, drifting. Drifting because the wind had dropped. All her sails were set, but the canvas drooped against the yards. As did her flags and pennants. Those at the masthead were unrecognizable. But the great

ensign on the jackstaff was familiar to them all. Yellow and gold, hanging limp.

'A
‘
garda cost
a'
someone whispered. "We will hang this day.'

'She is no ship of war,' Bart growled. 'A coaster, from Isabel for San Domingo.'

"Is there a difference?' Kit was angry. With Bart, for leading them into this predicament; with himself, for agreeing to come at all. On Hispaniola he had at least existed. And then he had wanted to die. Now he was going to die, how badly did he want to live. 'She carries guns, and men with better weapons than ours. She will blow us out of the water.'

'She will not waste the powder,' Jean said. 'Why should she, when she knows that we are helpless?'

They sagged, with the pirogue, into the following trough. Bart alone remained standing, staring at the ship, his eyes narrow slits beneath the wrinkled frown of his brow. 'As you say, Monsieur DuCasse,' he said. 'They will not waste the time. She is not equipped for fighting. She will merely report what she has seen when she reaches San Domingo.'

'And
then
the
garda costa
will come,' Kit said. 'We must put back now. We have no choice.'

Bart did not move, but his tongue came out and circled his lips.

'Kit is right,' Jean said. 'This was a hopeless venture from the start. Even big sailing ships must work their way to windward, slowly. They say it takes a week from Barbados to Port Royal, and three weeks to get back. We shall not do it in this piece of bark.'

'A week,' Bart muttered. 'From Barbados. Two days, from here. To Port Royal. There is a place. Morgan is there. I have heard that he recruits, for another venture against the Main.'

Kit sighed. Morgan was nothing but a name. A dream, perhaps. A man who had a
lready made L'Olonnais and Mans
veldt and Hilton no more than memories. 'And we are here,' he said. 'So it is downwind. It is still far too long for us.'

'In
this,'
Bart said.

Their heads rose, and they stared a
t the drifting coaster. 'You are
mad,' someone whispered.

'She will carry fifteen, twenty men,' Jean said.
'And passengers, no doubt.'

'And are we not seventeen?' Bart at last descended into the bilges where they crouched. 'Listen to me. We are forty. Sixty. Because what have we got to lose? You wish to go back to Hispaniola? To that stinking plain and those stinking cattle? To be treated as vermin? Hunted down whenever some
capitano
in San Domingo wishes to exercise his men? What do we there, but exist, and then die? So if we are going to die, why not let us die now? But die with the prospect of something better ahead of us. That ship may carry soldiers. But she may not. And if we take her, why, we'll be in Port Royal the day after tomorrow, and the whole world will be at our feet.'

They stared at him, their faces mixing incredulity with fear, with greed, with ambition. And with hope.

'By God,' Kit said. 'You are right.'

'Your name is Hilton. You've pirating in your blood. And you, Monsieur DuCasse?'

Jean chewed his lower lip, glanced from face to face. 'It would be better than putting back.'

Heads began to nod. 'But will they not see us approaching?' someone asked.

Bart grinned at them. 'Not even the Dons can see in the dark. Now lie down. Scatter yourself about the boat, that we may appear even more helpless than we are. And wait.'

Slowly, how slowly, the sun sank towards the horizon. There were no mountains out here to interrupt its imperious gaze. But yet the evening reminded Kit of the night Grandmama had died. Then
too they had waited for the sun
and the sun had moved too slowly for them.

This time? The ship was about a mile away, still becalmed, still drifting. All afternoon they had watched the heavens, anxiously, fearing the slight puff of wind that might carry their prize beyond their grasp. But the day had stayed motionless.