Pirates! (12 page)

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Chapter 17

The men went into a huddle to discuss our sudden arrival, but decided to do nothing until Hero returned. We were kept in open view in the clearing in the centre of the village and told that we must wait.

Whatever doubts might have been harboured about us were dispelled as soon as Hero arrived. He was an imposing man, over six foot tall and well built, with coal-black skin. His wide cheeks were scarified with tribal markings and he wore a bright red parrot feather stuck in the band that bound his thick curling hair. He had a broad smile and uptilted eyes that flashed with fire. He was dressed only in a tattered pair of canvas trousers secured with a broad leather belt, but he bore himself like a king. As soon as he saw Thomas he gave a shout, and when he saw Phillis, he let out a rich laugh of delight and welcome.

‘Welcome, sister!’ He took both her hands in his. ‘What took you so long?’

He was captain here, and deferred to as such, but all decisions were made in common. He could not go against the council.

The men disappeared to discuss our fate and we were left alone in the clearing. All was quiet for a little while, then the children came out, too curious to be contained, only to be scolded and shooed back again by the women who came sidling from their huts for a better view of us.

Two of them recognised Phillis and greeted her in the language of their own land, their old land, speaking words I did not understand. Phillis spoke urgently, making frequent nods towards Minerva and me. The women’s faces became serious, their tongues clucking with sympathy. They went to their neighbours and they all stood in a little huddle, then they hurried off to tell others. They came back carrying gourds of fresh water and calabashes full of a kind of porridge made with meat and vegetables, corn and beans. They invited us to sit and eat. Phillis asked if they would join us, then she winked at me.

‘Don’t matter what the men think. It’s already been decided.’

Phillis smiled as she looked around the village. Her eyes lost their hollow haunted look, the tension and strain disappearing from her face. The houses were simple structures, thatched with palm leaves, but each with its own little yard and garden, surrounded by fruit trees: breadfruit, banana, oranges, lemons, pineapple, mango and papaya.

‘It feels like I’ve come home,’ she said.

The men followed the women’s acceptance of us and we were allowed to stay.

The whole village worked to build us a hut. The women helped us to make it homelike, while the men cleared a patch of forest for our garden. Minerva and I helped Phillis with the tilling and planting with yam, sweet potato, corn and manioc. Until our first harvest, the other villagers promised a share of their produce in return for work on their plots. Not that we were a burden. There was food in abundance. Fruit and vegetables grew in great profusion. Pigs rooted, chickens scuttled and clucked through the common spaces of the villages, goats wandered, shooed from the gardens by the children.

The life here suited Phillis. Her skin lost its grey, dusty pallor, and her body gained weight, its angular thinness disappearing as the ever-present fear and gnawing bitterness that had made up her life for so many years began to retreat. She could laugh now, and smile. She showed every symptom of being contented, and was soon spending more time in Hero’s hut than in ours.

Thomas soon found a mate, a tall, quiet young woman, originally from Senegal, and went to live with her. He seemed settled and contented, like Phillis.

Minerva and I slept side by side in the hut. I lay awake, listening to her breathing. I did not want anything to happen to threaten this newly discovered happiness, but I feared that it could not last. As time went on, I felt dangers crowding nearer, and found it hard to rest for worrying and thinking. I often did not sleep until the early hours of the morning, just as the cocks began crowing, heralding the first light of dawn.

We had been at the maroon’s camp for several weeks and this feeling of dread had been growing. One night, I woke in a sweat and lay staring at the woven roof above my head, not daring to close my eyes again. I’d had the most terrible dream.

The dream was to haunt me for many months, but that first time, I remembered almost nothing but the whispered warning that roused me:

He’s coming after you ...

The voice was not loud, but it sounded so real that I started awake, heart thumping, expecting to find someone leaning over me, breathing into my ear.

‘What is the matter?’ Minerva’s voice came to me out of the darkness. I must have cried out and woken her.

‘I had a dream.’ The terror was still upon me. Telling her calmed me, made my breath come less ragged. ‘They are coming after me. I know it. My brother and the Brazilian. They are hunting for me even now. My very presence brings danger to you all. I cannot bear that. I must go away.’

Minerva was silent for a long time. Like her mother, she put a great deal of faith in dreams.

‘Perhaps it will not come to that,’ she said at last. ‘Perhaps they will not find us.’

‘They have dogs. Duke told me. And spies they can bribe.’

‘Even so, the camp is well hidden,’ she answered from the darkness. ‘They have not found it before.’

‘They did not have such a strong reason to look for it,’ I replied. ‘The maroons were merely an irritant, not worth the trouble of finding. Their camp did not harbour one such as me. An English heiress, promised in marriage. They will not let me go easily, not when money and land are involved.’ I knew them well enough to know that.

‘Even if they come, the camp is well defended,’ Minerva countered. ‘The people can escape into the caves.’

‘But why should they have to? If they came, they would destroy everything. The huts and gardens that the people have worked so hard to build and cultivate. I could not stand to see it all laid to waste.’ I rose on my elbow, trying to see her face. ‘It grieves my heart to leave you and Phillis, but I fear I have to go.’

‘When?’ asked Minerva.

‘I don’t know, but it must be soon. Each day I’m here brings danger nearer.’

Sleep was denied to both of us. Minerva got up as the first thin grey light filtered into the hut, and started a fire. The early morning could be cold before the sun rose to warm the high mountain valleys. I drew my blanket round my shoulders and joined her, glad of the warm tea she had brewed.

‘If you go,’ she did not look at me as we sipped the bitter liquid, ‘I go with you.’

‘You can’t!’ I was genuinely shocked. ‘What about Phillis? You are free here, and safe, or will be once I’m gone. Your place is here, with your people, not with me!’

Part of me leaped for joy at the thought of Minerva coming with me, for I was full of fear, having no idea where I would go, and equally deep in misery at the idea of being parted from those whom I’d grown to love. But I quickly condemned my own selfishness and thought of ever more reasons why she should stay. She listened, but her face was set, enigmatic.

‘I hear what you say,’ she said at last. ‘But it makes no difference. When you go? I go, too.’

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Chapter 18

The next day confirmed my foreboding. Tam McGregor brought news from the outside world. He went often to Port Royal, or Kingston, posing as a smallholder with goods to sell. In this way he collected information and gossip, as well as the currency to purchase needs such as cloth, gunpowder and shot, which we could not supply ourselves. He had come back from his last trip with a grave face. I was hunted, he said. A reward had been offered for information about my whereabouts and that of the slaves who had abducted me.

Abducted. That was how it would appear. I had not thought ...

‘Any caught can expect worse than hanging.’ Tam grimaced. ‘That Brazilian bastard’s got himsel’ involved and there’s no stopping him. He’s putting up a big reward for any or all who are captured. It’s a mighty amount. Enough to tempt any man.’

He scratched his beard and looked about. The people here were among the poorest on the island, the poorest anywhere. The sum offered would test any man, no matter how honest and loyal. Even if we were not betrayed, it was only a matter of time before the village was discovered. The Brazilian had blood-hounds and was going to use them.

The news was bad enough to bring deep concern to the faces of Tam and Hero. They set extra guards and watches, but the village was suddenly full of fear and apprehension. People could see their whole way of life heading for destruction. All because of me.

‘We must go to Phillis,’ Minerva said. ‘She’ll know what to do.’

We went to her hut to find her, to ask her to use her gift for divination. Since we had come to the maroon village, she was consulted frequently and treated as a respected oracle. I told of my dream. She rose without a word and fetched her things. She spread a cloth on the hut’s beaten dirt floor and sprinkled palm wine. Then she took out four bright vermilion parrot feathers and placed them carefully at the points of the compass. In the space between them, she cast shells and seeds from a polished gourd, passing her hands over them and scanning the scatter, her eyes darting across the random pattern as if it spelt out the future in letters that could only be read by her.

At length, she looked up at me.

‘You already know the answer,’ she said. ‘You must leave. Your dream is true, he is coming. There is no escaping him. If he finds you here, he will kill every living thing.’

‘If she goes, I go with her,’ Minerva said. I began to protest, but she put up her hand to silence me. ‘I have decided. So we need to know, Mamma. Where should we go? What should we do?’

Phillis rocked back on her heels, hugging her knees.

‘I see this, too.’ She turned to her daughter, and to me. ‘You two are bound together. Do you know that?’

We both nodded. Although we had seldom spoken about Duke and that night in his stinking room, we did not pretend that it had not happened. It was always there, and always would be. We had witnessed things, each about the other, that we found hard to look at even in ourselves. She’d seen me kill a man, seen his blood spatter over my face, seen me smear it away with the back of my hand. I’d seen her threatened with violation. How could we speak of these things? But they brought us close together, as close as sisters, closer.

‘It will break my heart to lose you.’ Phillis touched Minerva’s cheeks and cupped her chin, as if memorising the curves and contours of her face. ‘But I know this village is not the place for you. I know you feel that, too. When they come, they’ll come for both of you.’ Phillis rose to her feet. ‘We wait for a sign.’

We turned to go, but Phillis called me back.

‘Have you still got that thing he gave you?’

She meant the necklace. I shook my head, embarrassed to admit that I had disobeyed her.

‘Don’t lie to me now,’ Phillis said, her dark eyes searching mine.

‘I’m not!’ I began to protest.

‘Even if you are,’ she said, and I could see by her eyes that she knew that I was, ‘I’m telling you again. You must get rid of it, or it will draw him to you like a lodestone.’

I did what she told me, or at least, I left the hut full of that intention. There was a place near the camp where deep holes opened up in the ground and plunged hundreds of feet down. I took the rubies from my belt, fully intending to cast them into one of these pits. But when I looked at them, I found I could not do such a thing. I failed the test that Phillis had set me. I was still under the spell of their worth and their beauty.

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Chapter 19

‘Pirates coming! Pirates!’ A little boy ran pell-mell into the village, yelling, followed by another. They were quite out of breath, having run all the way from the beach, but the pirates moved fast and were not far behind them.

They were a fearsome-looking bunch, bearded and sunburnt, wearing a bizarre collection of clothes and festooned with weapons. Some were in regular sailors’ rig: trowsers and shirt, with a scarf about the head or a woollen monmouth cap; others were sporting fine hats with feathers in them and were tricked out as gentlemen in silks and satins. They were all armed with knives, cutlasses and pistols, and hung about with swinging bandoleers weighted with shot and cartridge boxes. The pirates formed up into a wedge, their captain at the head, as they marched into the village.

They had come straight up from the sea, scaling the sheer cliffs that led up from Cutlass Bay. That shore was guarded by treacherous coral reefs. The villagers would not anticipate an attack from the sea. I expected the men to dash for their weapons, for the women and children to make for the caves as they knew to do if the village came under attack, but no one moved. Everyone waited until the pirates were in the central clearing of the village, then Hero and Tam stepped out to meet them. They stood unarmed and showed no signs of fear. I was thinking how brave they were, when Hero stepped forward, arms outstretched, to welcome the strangers into the village.

The coming of the pirates was a cause for celebration, not conflict. Phillis saw my reaction and laughed.

‘
You
see pirates, and you think one thing,’ Phillis observed to me. ‘You got to learn to see differently. Only regular folk be afraid of them, and you ain’t one any more. You living outside the law. Outlaw folks stick together. They come to trade. Can’t sail into Port Royal with the Navy tied up to the docks, so they come to us.’

The pirates traded for fresh fruit and vegetables, smoked pork and goat meat. In return they offered sacks of rice, lengths of cloth, a chest containing items of clothing, boxes of thimbles and buttons, balls of thread, tools and implements, including scissors, and a quantity of knives and hatchets.

By late afternoon the bargaining was over, the goods exchanged. Both parties seemed well satisfied. Hero emerged from the council hut, declaring that there would be a feast, a boucan. Beside him stood another man. The captain of the pirates.

I had failed to recognise him under his broad-brimmed hat with its dancing feather cockade. When I’d last seen him, he had been fastidiously clean-shaven and altogether the most mild-mannered of men. Now, a newly-grown beard and moustache served to disguise him further and add to a fiercesome appearance that had me thoroughly fooled. His plain broadcloth had been replaced by apricot brocade and he wore dark crimson velvet pantaloons tucked into the folded tops of a fine pair of shining black boots. I’d never seen him armed, other than with his officer’s sword; now he was wrapped around at the waist with a wide cummerbund stuffed with weapons. Pistols hung at his side, slung from his shoulders on red and pink silk ribbons.

‘Do you know him?’ Phillis whispered.

‘He was the mate on the ship that brought me here.’

‘That is your sign,’ she said.

Before I could ask her more, Captain Broom was standing in front of me. My skin was brown, my hair dishevelled, and I was wearing a shapeless shift all stained from gardening. I thought it doubtful that he would recognise me, but he swept off his hat and bowed low to the ground.

‘Why, Miss Kington! What an unexpected pleasure!’ We could have been meeting in the Bath Assembly Rooms. He took my hand and kissed it with a flourish. ‘I hardly thought to find you here under these ... ’ he cleared his throat, ‘ ... unusual circumstances.’

‘I could say the same for you.’

‘Our ship was taken by a Captain Johnson, just after we set out for home. We were given a choice: to be turned off the ship, or go on the account. As you see, most chose the latter course.’

‘What about Surgeon Graham? And the captain?’

‘Oh, Graham is with us. The captain refused, but Johnson is a humane man. We put him off on New Providence, within walking distance of Nassau. I’m sure he arrived safely, if a little footsore.’

‘I didn’t know pirates were so merciful.’

Broom gave me a look as though there was much I didn’t know.

‘What made you join them?’ I asked. ‘You and Graham?’

‘Money,’ he said simply. ‘I could make a lifetime’s wages from just one prize. Don’t always happen, of course.’ He pursed his lips. ‘Can’t pick and choose; you have to take what’s on offer, so to speak. Hence the thimbles and buttons and such. If it don’t work out, we can always set up as haberdashers.’ He laughed. ‘We’re free to sail as we please and there’s always the chance of treasure. And look at me!’ He flourished his hand and gave a mock bow. ‘I’m captain now and it’s taken months, not years. Or,’ he laughed again, ‘maybe I just didn’t fancy the tramp to Nassau. Now, may I introduce you to my companions. Mr Vincent Crosby, and Mr Ignatius Pelling.’

Vincent Crosby, the mate of the ship, was a handsome young mulatto of about five and twenty with skin the colour of dark honey, a high forehead and wide cheekbones. His nose was straight, flaring a little at the nostrils, and his black eyes had an upward tilt as if he found much to amuse him. He was medium height for a man, not much taller than Minerva, but well built with broad shoulders and a narrow waist. His breeches were as white as milk and he wore a splendid coat of midnight blue with deep bars of scarlet on the facings and cuffs. The ribbon tying back his long curling hair was of the same shade of red. He was quite as much of a dandy as Broom, although he showed rather more taste and discernment.

In contrast, the quartermaster, Ignatius Pelling, was barefoot, in striped shirt and canvas trowsers. He barely came up to Vincent’s shoulder; a wiry little man with muscles like knotted string, and skin so quilted and creased it looked as if he’d been pickled in brine.

Broom bowed to me, introductions completed.

‘I’m pleased to make your acquaintance again, Miss Kington, and there is much for us to discuss, not least how you came to be among this crew, but I think it’s a tale for after dinner. All I can attend to now is the growling of my belly.’

Fires had been started, animals butchered, fish skewered. Pirates had come up from the ship rolling barrels of rum before them. Meat was now roasting above beds of glowing embers. Bark and twigs stripped from spice trees gave off aromatic smoke and added a sweet pungency to the smell of cooking drifting across from the fires.

‘The man is right,’ Phillis said to me. ‘Eat first, then we talk. Men don’t think too well on an empty belly. When you finish,’ she turned to Broom and his two men, ‘you come to Nancy and Minerva’s hut. Try some of my palm wine.’ She kissed her bunched fingers. ‘It is sweet and good. Not like that rot-gut rum you brought with you.’

The sun went down, replaced by the velvet blackness of the warm forest night. Frogs took over from the chirring insects, and bats flickered in and out of sight, swooping on the white-winged moths blundering towards the fires.

The deep belling hoot of a conch announced when the meat was ready, and the night was given over to feasting. The men from the ship stuffed themselves, gorging on the roasted flesh until the fat ran down their chins. The food was washed down with drafts of rum until the whole company was merry.

The pirates had a couple of fiddlers with them, and there were musicians among the maroons who had fashioned instruments from the materials that they found around them, transforming wood, gourds, animal skins and gut into drums, reed pipes, flutes, lutes and harps. The instruments were perfectly pitched and sweetly resonant; the sound coming from them could be softly melodic, or powerfully strident.

Once the feasting was over, a space was cleared for dancing. The players came together, striking tunes off each other, until the music flew up, swirling into the air like sparks and motes from the fire, travelling through the air, drowning out the cries and calls of the forest creatures and echoing back from the hills.

Phillis said I’d had my sign. Now a plan was forming. I took Minerva aside. A smile lit her face as I explained what I had in mind and her eyes grew wide at the audacity of it. We watched and waited. At last, Broom slipped away and came to our hut, bringing his quartermaster and mate with him. Phillis brought palm wine, sprinkling some of it to bless and purify, and poured little cups for them to drink. Minerva set out bowls of fruit for them to eat and I lit small oil wick lamps. We sat on mats woven from palm fronds and I put my proposal to Broom. I told him of the Brazilian and what had happened at Fountainhead; how danger followed me and how I needed to get away, my very presence putting the maroon camp in jeopardy. I told him that Minerva wanted to come with me and pleaded our case the best I could, begging him to take us on board.

Broom listened to all I had to say, and then sat for a while, deep in thought.

‘I’d like to help you, Nancy. I’d like to say “yes”, truly I would. But it’s not for me to decide. I’ll have to put it to the men. I’ll call a ship’s council in the morning.’

‘Can’t you just tell them? You are the captain.’

Outside, the uproar was increasing by the minute. Several fights had broken out. Through the open door, I could see bodies reeling about, accompanied by a great deal of crashing and shouting. Judging from that racket, the ship’s company would not be in a state to decide anything in the morning.

‘We’re not on one of your father’s ships now,’ Broom grinned. ‘Everything’s decided in common. We have all sorts on board. All colours and nations. But as yet – ’

‘As yet no women.’

‘No.’ He rubbed his newly-grown beard. ‘Not as such. No women at all. There’s some think women unlucky. That aside, they can cause trouble for reasons that are obvious, pirates not exactly being gentlemen.’

‘Calico Jack had women on board,’ his quartermaster spoke up. ‘Dressed as tars, served their watch and carried out their duties, same as the men.’

‘We could do that!’ I seized my chance. ‘Dress as men, I mean. We’ll use clothes from the chest you brought up from the ship. We can serve our turn. We can work. We’re both strong and I’ve been around ships all my life. What we don’t know, we can learn. If you’ll give us the chance.’

‘We’d have to be straight with them.’ Broom frowned. ‘Got to be clear who you are, right from the start. That said – ’

Broom and the quartermaster looked at each other. The quartermaster shrugged.

‘Very well.’ Broom’s brow cleared. ‘I’ll put it to the company.’ He leaned over, shaking first my hand, then Minerva’s. ‘Here’s my word upon it.’

They left us, and we settled down on our mats. The noise from outside had died down to the occasional yell and yelping laugh. The pirates had drunk themselves into a state where they sounded like calling monkeys. The night stretched towards dawn, but I could not sleep. Neither could Minerva. I could hear from her breathing that she was wide awake.

‘Are you sure that this is what you want to do?’ I whispered, reaching for her hand. ‘You can still change your mind and stay here with Phillis. You don’t have to do this.’

‘But I do. I want to go with you. The more I think, the more I’m sure about it. Phillis likes it here; she says it reminds her of home, but I have no home.’ She did not count the plantation.

‘Broom says his home is the sea.’

Minerva thought for a moment. ‘There are people of all nations sailing there. That suits me. I want to see the world. Find my place in it. Not stay here, bound in by forest walls, living all the time in fear, wondering if this will be the day that they find me and take me back to slavery.’

I propped myself up to look at her. She sounded sure and determined, but there was a roughness in her voice and in the dim light her face gleamed wet with tears.

‘Are you certain?’ I asked again. ‘It is easier for me. I have no one. Nothing to keep me.’

‘A girl has to leave her mother sometime.’ Phillis spoke from the darkness. ‘That’s the way in life. Can’t stay together for always. You go with Nancy. I will be fine here. Hero’s a good man. He look after me. I look after him. One day, maybe, you will come back to me ... ’ Her voice wavered and broke, as if the uncertainty had sucked the air from her throat and made her choke.

‘I will,’ Minerva whispered. ‘I vow it.’

The vow would likely prove impossible to fulfil, but it was bravely made. It carried us through the moment and we clung to the empty promise, whispering of what surprises we would bring to that unlikely homecoming.

In the morning, we would tie back our hair and bind our breasts. We would pull on our shirts and button up our trousers. But we were not bold pirates yet. We both clung to Phillis and wept. Mother for daughter, daughter for mother. It was as if they already knew that they would never see each other again. I thought of the mother that I had never known and cried for her as well.