Isle of Swords (4 page)

The dark-skinned giant lightly lowered two barrels from his shoulders and lumbered over. Jules stood a foot taller than the captain. He went about shirtless. With broad, well-muscled shoulders and hands the size of cannonballs, Jules was a fearsome sight.

“Anne seems to have spotted some plantains in the palms over there,” Ross said. “Bring as many back as you can carry, and we may yet avoid having to eat Nubby's iguana stew.”

“I like iguana stew.” But seeing the look on his captain's face, Jules nodded and turned to Anne. “Let's go.”

Jules took one step for every three of Anne's. Neither the sand nor the incline slowed him down. Anne could barely keep up.

“Red!” he said, a voice like thunder.

Anne grumbled and stomped up the dune after him. “I've told you a thousand times, don't call me Red!” She caught up to him and poked him in the arm with her finger. It hurt—Anne, not Jules.

“What should I call a wench with hair the color of flame?”

“I'm not a wench!” Anne poked him in the arm again. It hurt again—Anne, not Jules. “I certainly won't be fetching you a mug of grog anymore.” She poked him one more time to make sure he got the point.

“Why do you keep doing that?” Jules asked. “It must hurt.”

His face was stern, and he made Anne feel like a great tree trunk was about to fall on her. But then his moustache quivered, and he broke into a broad grin. They laughed the rest of the way to the tree line.

“I was right,” Anne whispered. “Look at them.”

In the tops of the palms, nestled beneath wide, shady leaves, were huge barrel-shaped bunches of plantains. They looked like green bananas but tasted more like potatoes until sweetening a little and turning black at their ripest point. Anne snapped a plantain from a squat stalk. Her dagger was out in a flash, and she expertly carved away the green skin on all sides. She took a big bite of the white fruit.

“This ought to give us enough food until our next port,” said Anne.

Grinning mischievously she added, “Or our next ‘fat' galleon.”

“I still want iguana stew,” Jules muttered.

“You can have your green lizard stew,” said Anne. “And my portion as well.” She drew her cutlass and waded into the forest, jumping, hacking, and chopping. Bunches of plantains fell, and Jules came behind her and hoisted them up on his shoulders.

“You are very handy with that sword, Red,” said Jules, taking great pains to stay out of her swing radius.

Anne glared at him and brandished the cutlass. “I told you not to call me that!”

“If you want to be a pirate, a pirate captain even, you need a fearful name.”

“And you think
Red
will scare anyone?”

Jules hoisted up another bunch of plantains. “I was thinking
Anne the Red
. Sounds like blood.”

“Sounds like some beheaded queen to me.” They laughed, but Anne stopped first, becoming thoughtful. Most of the crew knew of her desire to be a pirate, but only Jules knew that her real ambition was to captain a ship herself. Only then could she have the freedom she desired. Freedom to go where she wanted, whenever she wanted. Away from the mainland and the shackles that had fettered her mother and eventually caused her death. Away from the society that looked on her as good for little else than a serving wench or a chambermaid. Away from her father, who loved the sea and admired his crew, but smothered—or worse, ignored—these same traits in his daughter. But Jules was right. If she ever wanted to be a pirate, she needed a name.

Anne went at the plantains with renewed vigor, chopping at all she could reach and venturing deeper into the palms. Jules already carried more than any one man should be able to carry but made no complaint. Still, the weight of the mounds of fruit on his shoulders slowed him down, and Anne found herself well ahead of her chaperone . . . her protector. She winced. She looked over her shoulder.

He was pretty far back there.

Then Anne had a thought. It wasn't the first time she'd had this thought, but it was the first time in recent memory she'd had the opportunity.
All I'd have to do is turn a corner and disappear into the trees. By the time Jules realized, I'd be long gone.
Anne thought for sure the island was large enough to hide her. The palms were dense enough, and there might be some caves.

But what would she do next?

Anne hadn't really thought that far. She'd be stranded on one of a thousand cays in the Spanish Main. But . . . hadn't Stede said something about these cays being in Thorne's territory?
Maybe
, she thought,
maybe I could cut my hair . . . stow away on one of Thorne's ships and learn how to be the kind of pirate that people feared
. She leaped and hacked down a huge cluster of plantains.

Or maybe, I'll just get myself killed.
She looked back at Jules. He was struggling a little, farther back than before. He wasn't even looking at her. If there was ever going to be a time, it was now.

5
THE BUTCHER

A
nne turned a corner around a fat palm and sprinted away. Ducking and swerving recklessly, she smacked through coarse underbrush, tangling vines, and leaves bigger than an elephant's ear. She tripped over a small gnarly divi-divi tree, fell, and lay still.

“ANNE!!” Jules's voice thundered in the forest behind her. Anne leaped to her feet, not knowing which way to run. She ducked under a bough and raced in a new direction. She drove herself on, feeling like her dream of freedom was slipping through her grasp. Two more frantic steps and she burst out of the palm forest and landed facedown in white sand.

She feared she had run in a circle and doubled back to the shore where they had run the ship aground. But as she stood and wheeled around, she realized that it was not so. The island was just larger than she had imagined, and she had raced from one side through the trees and on to another side of the island.

Anne brushed herself off and wondered what to do. There was something there, on the sand . . . near the water's edge. She glanced back at the trees. Jules could be getting closer. He could appear at any moment. Still, she looked at the shape. Something was there, a dark smudge sprawled across the bright sand.

Squinting and blinking, she took a few cautious steps. As she neared, the shape became more distinct. It was a person. In spite of the relentless heat of the Caribbean sun, goose flesh rippled on her arms. At last she came upon a piteous, crumpled form.
A man. A dead man.

Anne wondered where he had come from and what had happened to him. He was covered in blood: some red, bright, and wet; some caked and purplish; some dried in maroon splotches. His boots were scuffed and partially underwater. His breeches were torn and gouged. And his once-white shirt was a mess of bloody tatters.

When she saw the deep, scourging wounds on his back, Anne knew what had happened to this man. He had been whipped with a vicious cat-o'-nine-tails. A heavy baton whip with nine cords, each ending with a jagged piece of metal, glass, or wood—only such a weapon could do that kind of damage to a man. That was a penalty doled out only to the worst of criminals or mutineers, but seeing the damage the cat had done made Anne feel pangs of sorrow. She bent down and sadly stroked his matted mop of blond hair.
What did you do,
she wondered,
to deserve thi—
His head jerked up. Anne fell backward, her heart racing. She rose to one knee and watched with horror as the man lifted his head. His face was a swollen mass of bruised and cut flesh. A brief glint of blue eyes, pleading and desperate, gleamed out from the mass of hair. His whole body racked with long, wheezing coughs, and his head fell pitifully onto the sand.

Anne got up and saw that the way his head had fallen had made it virtually impossible for him to breathe. One part of her warning that she should get away, Anne gently but firmly gripped the man's shoulders and pulled. He groaned as Anne flopped him over onto his back. “What am I doing?” she said out loud.

He was breathing, but the breaths were shallow and sounded wet. He was clearly too big for Anne to carry. She looked back toward the forest of palms, and she knew what she needed to do . . . in spite of the consequences. She brushed some hair out of his face. “I'll come right back. I promise.”

Anne backed away, careful not to kick up sand. She turned and ran toward the trees. No more than fifty yards into the palms, she smacked into Jules's bare chest. “Thought better of it, eh?” Jules clutched both of Anne's arms below the shoulders and squeezed just enough to let her know that he was not happy about her little stunt.

“Jules, you've got to come!” she screamed. “There's a man . . . on the beach. I think he's dying.”

Jules's eyes narrowed. “What is this nonsense? Another one of your adventures?”

Anne grunted and tried to wriggle free. “Let me go, you big oaf !

I'm telling you, someone needs help!”

“Show me!” he said, his voice full of warning. Anne sped back the way she had come. Out of the palms and across the sand, they came to the scene of the stricken sailor. Even Jules winced when he saw the condition of the man. Anne saw he lay motionless.

“Oh no!” she cried out and knelt near him. “He's still breathing!

Jules, we've got to get him back to the
Wallace
. Nubby will know what to do.”

The mountainous pirate did not answer. “Jules?”

Anne looked up and saw Jules staring out into the sea. She turned and gasped. Out past the whitecaps, a menacing ship appeared. It flew black sails on its twin masts and sat low in the water. In spite of the lack of wind, the craft moved with ghostly speed.

“I've never seen a ship like that before,” Anne whispered.

“It's a corvette. Two masts, and much faster than the
Wallace
.”

He grabbed her by the arm and began to drag her up to her feet.

“We have to warn the captain!”

“What, why—is it Thorne?”

As they watched the corvette move inevitably from right to left, a blood-red flag rose on the rear mast. “No, not Thorne,” Jules said.

“Chevillard.”

“Chevillard . . .” Anne blinked. She knew all about Thorne's lieutenant. Perhaps not as diabolically clever as Thorne, but easily as ruthless. It was said that a tide of blood followed Chevillard's ship.

Thierry Chevillard was known as the
Butcher
.

“If he comes upon the
Wallace
while it's aground . . . ,” Jules said.

“I'm faster,” Anne said, turning to run. “Jules, carry him, and be careful.”