Skull and Bones (4 page)

    "The
goods,
Cap'n. The gold…"

    "Well?"

    "They took all your papers and such, didn't they?"

    Flint smiled. "Did they?"

    "So how'll we… how'll
you
… find the goods again, without charts and notes?"

    "Billy, my Billy! Billy-my-little-chicken! You really must leave all such matters to me. Do you understand?"

    Billy Bones gulped. The tone of Flint's voice had barely changed but Billy Bones knew that this subject must not be raised again. He was immune to smallpox, but not to fear of Flint.

    "You just do as you've been bid, Mr Bones. When the time comes."

    "Aye-aye, Cap'n," said Billy Bones, for Livvy Rose had measured him with the precision of her father's mathematical instruments, recognising that the faithful Billy was born to follow. And now he would follow Flint - even stripped of rank and bound in chains - and keep on following him to the ends of the earth. For Flint was Billy Bones's chosen master.

Chapter 3

Dinner time, 12th March 1753

Aboard Walrus

The Atlantic

    All aboard who weren't on watch gobbled down their dinners with knives, fingers and spoons, lounging among the guns on the maindeck in the sunshine, while
Walrus
bowled along under all plain sail. They cheered and raised their mugs, spluttering grog and food in all directions as they bawled out their song, to the tune of a fiddler and a piper.

    Here's to Bonnie Prince Charlie, That does our king remain,

    And save him from his exile,

    To bring him home again!

    Two men looked on in silence. They were not gobbling their dinners because they were on watch, and they weren't singing because they weren't Jacobites. They were Long John Silver, elected captain of the ship, and his master gunner, Israel Hands. Both wore the long coats and tricorne hats that proclaimed their rank, and they stood by the helmsman at the ten-foot tiller on the quarterdeck, braced against the ship's canted deck with practised ease, even Long John with his timber limb.

    Israel Hands smiled to see Long John recovering at last, after wounds that had struck him down in the fight with the navy over Flint's Island, which
Walrus
barely escaped, leaving Flint in the navy's hands, and his Treasure still hidden ashore.

    Now Tom Allardyce the bosun was on his feet and giving the second verse. He was a tall, yellow-haired Scot who'd fought at Culloden seven years earlier, when the English army's modern musketry butchered a medieval mob of Highland swordsmen: the Protestant House of Hanover defeating the Catholic House of Stuart.

    Here's to the devil to take fat George,

    And fetch him down to Hell,

    To trim his Hanoverian ears,

    And roast his arse full well!

    Allardyce was a Jacobite to the soul and hated King George with a passion. As he sang, he went among the crew slapping shoulders while they cheered him on. Some cheered because they supported his cause, while others had no loyalty to a king who was chasing them with a noose.

    "Merry buggers, ain't they?" said Israel Hands, looking at the crew. Then he glanced anxiously up at Long John's big, square face.

    "Will they do, John? And have you chosen your course?"

    Silver reached up to pet the big green parrot that sat with its claws clamped into the material of his coat.

    "What do
you
think, Cap'n Flint?" he said, tickling the bird's chest. She squawked and shifted her feet and nuzzled his ear.

"Merry Buggers!
" she said, for she had a perfect gift of mimicry, and used words to purpose, and with meaning.

    Long John sighed, for he had much on his mind.

    "Well, the
ship
won't do," he said, looking
Walrus
over. She was a New England schooner: two hundred tons burden, a hundred feet from bow to stern, sharp-hulled and with a broad spread of canvas on two raked masts. She mounted fourteen six-pounder guns and had once been a swift, handy ship, but she'd suffered a battering in recent actions, and hadn't been careened for months, which meant - in these tropical waters - that the underwater hull must be a seething tangle of weeds and growth.

    "A Thames barge would out-sail her as she is!" said Silver.

    "Does that mean we'll be chasing one?" said Israel Hands.

    "We've just thirty-two hands," said Silver, ignoring the remark.

    "Gentlemen o' fortune every one!" said Israel Hands.

    "Mostly… but
them two
ain't! Useless bloody lubbers!"

    Silver nodded at a pair of men who were sitting miserably apart from the crew. They wore long coats and were the ship's navigating officers - such as they were - for neither Silver nor anyone else aboard had that skill. The pair of them had been taken out of the merchant service under Silver's promise to be freed at Upper Barbados -
Walrus's
destination - for they were honest men.
Honest,
but found wanting. They might be able to feel their way up a coastline, but they were at a loss on the deep waters, and growing more nervous each day.

    "Them swabs has only got this far by dead reckoning and fair weather!" said Silver. "One good blow, and we'll be off their charts. Then God help us all!"

    "Never mind them," said Israel Hands. "We'll hire afresh and take on others, too." He looked sideways at Long John and decided to broach the great question: "What worries me, John, is that thirty-three hands is plenty for a merchantman, but not for such business as ours."

    Silver, however, wouldn't be drawn. He shook his head and fell deep into his own thoughts. He'd never wanted to be a pirate - a "gentleman o' fortune" - but had become one because it was that or certain death. And thus by easy stages to robbery and murder, and putting a pistol ball into a child - which, of all the things he'd done, came back most often to flog him with guilt, though he'd done it of necessity, to stop the spread of island smallpox. Even now he could feel the jump of his pistol firing and see the open-mouthed disbelief on the face of Ratty Richards, ship's boy, as he dropped down dead; slaughtered by the captain he worshipped.

    And now he had a wife whom he loved fiercely, and who'd made clear that she'd not live with him unless he became an honest man. Or so she said… But did she mean it? She loved him; he knew that much. Or so he thought.

    So… there was what the
crew
wanted, which was prizes, gold, tarts and rum. There was what
she
wanted, which was an honest life for Mr and Mrs Silver. And then there was what
he
wanted… which he didn't know, and couldn't decide because he couldn't live
without
her and maybe couldn't live
with
her. The bitter internal conflict was turning him sour and angry.

    "John," said Israel Hands and nudged him, "it's
her…"

    Silver turned. She'd come up from below decks without him even seeing. Now she stood with her hands on her hips facing him. She was a small, slim, black girl, not yet eighteen years old, extremely lovely in face and figure, with a dainty elegance of movement, and of speech and manners too. She stood in a cotton gown and a straw hat, looking up at Silver and defying him.

    "Well?" she said, but he avoided her eyes and said nothing.
"Huh!"
she said, investing the simple sound with eloquence.

    All hands were watching. They shifted and muttered and a few got up for a better look. These arguments had gone on for days, and now Silver roused himself and tried to speak gentle. He tried to explain. So did she, for a while, but soon they were shouting and screeching, with fists clenched and words spat viciously, as tempers burst and fury rose in the passionate rage of a man and woman for whom no one else in the whole wide world mattered quite so much as the other.

    As for the spectators, they shrugged their shoulders and scratched their armpits and turned away, no longer entertained by a piece of theatre that had been played out flat. They thought Silver should put the rod across her plump little arse till she saw reason. But that was his business and they'd chosen him as their leader, so there weren't no more to be said in the matter. Selena was his wife and that was that.

    But later, the ship's surgeon, Mr Cowdray, was forced to join the quarrel. The only gentleman in the ship, he'd practised in London till learned rivals drove him out for his ludicrous insistence on boiling his instruments before surgery, which
he
said prevented sepsis, and which
they
couldn't abide because it did. Selena liked Cowdray and valued his opinion, and thus she'd asked him to meet her on the forecastle after dark.

    "What do you want, girl? Bringing me here?" he looked back down the dark length of the ship, past masts and bulging sails, and hung on to the rail against the ship's motion, flinching as spray came over the plunging bow.

    "It's wide open here," she said, "so nobody can say you're meeting me in secret."

    "And why should I do that?" he said.

    She shrugged. She'd seen how he looked at her. He might be a surgeon, but he was a man, even if he was middle-aged.

    "You can always say you were going to use the heads," she said.

    "Huh!" said Cowdray, looking at the "seats of ease" on either side of the bowsprit: a pair of squat boxes with holes cut in them for seamen to relieve themselves. "So what is it?" he said.

    "Why won't he give up being a pirate?"

    "He's not a pirate, he's a gentleman of fortune."

    "It's the same thing."

    "No! We sign the Book of Articles and every man votes. It is the
democracy
of the Greeks."

"Articles!
He talks about them all the time, and he -"

    "Selena, listen to me."

    "But he does."

    "Please, please, listen. I can't be
him.
I can't speak for him."

    "So who do you speak for?"

    "For the crew! It's a good life for them. Equal shares and light work. Merchant owners save money with small crews that must rupture themselves to work the ship, while we have many hands to ease the load. And we sail in soft waters: the Caribbean, the Gold Coast, the Indian Ocean… You should try the whale fisheries, my girl, up beyond Newfoundland! The ice hangs from the rigging and the lookouts are found frozen dead when the watch changes. And with us, there's no flogging the last man up the mast nor the last to trice his hammock as the navy does, and there's music and drink when you want it, and the chance to get rich -"

    "By thieving and killing!"

    "In which regard we're no worse than the king's ships, that kill men and take prizes!"

    "But that's war."

"Dulce bellum inexpertis
: war is sweet to those who don't know it!"

    "Bah!" she said, striding off and leaving him in the dark. Him and his annoying habit of spouting Latin.

    So the matter was not resolved, and Silver and Selena lived apart in the ship and couldn't meet without a quarrel. And Silver became bad tempered, and not the man he had been. And that was bad… but worse was to come.

Chapter 4

Half an hour before sunset

12th March 1753

Aboard Oraclaesus's longboat

The southern anchorage

Flint's Island

    Boom! A signal gun blew white powder smoke from
Oraclaesus's
quarterdeck, and echoed across the still waters. It was the signal for boats to give up for the day and return to their ships.

    "Thank God!" said Mr Midshipman Povey to himself, and
"Hold water!"
he bellowed at the boat's crew. At least he tried to bellow, but his throat was sore and his head ached, and he hadn't the strength.

    Twenty sweat-soaked men collapsed over their oars, shafts stabbing raggedly in all directions, crossing and clattering in a disgraceful fashion that should have earned a blistering rebuke from the coxswain. But he was preoccupied with scratching the blotches on his face and barely hanging on to the tiller, he was so dizzy.