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What was I to do? Carry it around and keep trying? Hope I’d eventually chance upon its secret? Somehow I thought not. I had the feeling there was arcane knowledge attached to this blade. Found upon me, it could betray me.
With a heavy heart I cast it away, then addressed the grave-side I had prepared for my victim.
“Mr. Walpole . . .” I said, “let’s collect your reward.”
TWENTY-FOUR
I came upon them at Cape Buena Vista beach the next morning: a schooner anchored in the harbour, boats brought ashore and crates off-loaded and dragged onto the beach where they’d been stacked, either by the dejected-looking men who sat on the sand with their hands bound, or perhaps by the bored English soldiers who stood guard over them. As I arrived, a third boat was docking, more soldiers disembarking and casting their eyes over the prisoners.
Why the men were tied up, I wasn’t sure. They certainly didn’t appear to be pirates. Merchants by the looks of them. Either way, as another rowing-boat approached I was about to find out.
“The commodore’s gone ahead to Kingston,” called one of the soldiers. In common with the others he wore a tricorn and waistcoat and carried a musket. “We are to commandeer this lubber’s ship and follow.”
So that was it. The English wanted their ship. They were as bad as pirates themselves.
Merchants like to eat almost as much as they like to drink. Thus they tend towards the stout side. One of the captives, however, was even more florid-faced and plump than his companions. This was the “lubber” the English were talking about, the man I came to know as Stede Bo
“No, no,” he was saying, “our destination is Havana. I’m just a merchant . . .”
“Quiet, you bloody pirate!” An irate soldier responded by toeing sand into the wretched man’s face.
“Sir”—he cringed—“my crew and I have merely anchored to water and resupply.”
Then, for some reason known only to them, Stede Bo
Shot began zinging into the trees around me and I saw one of the merchants fall in a spray of blood and brain matter. Another went down heavily with a scream. Meanwhile, one of the soldiers had placed the muzzle of his rifle at Bo
“Give me one reason I shouldn’t vent your skull,” he snarled.
Poor old Bo
“Um . . . um . . .”
I drew my cutlass and emerged from the tree line with the sun behind me. The soldier gaped. What I must have looked like as I stepped out of the glare of the sunshine with my robes flowing and cutlass swinging I don’t know, but it was enough to give the rifleman pause a second. A second that cost him his life.
I slashed upwards, opening his waistcoat and spilling his guts to the sand, spi
The soldiers had all loosed their shot at the escaping merchants, and though they weren’t slow to reload, were still no match for a swordsman. That’s the thing with soldiers of the Crown. They rely too much on their muskets, great for frightening native women, not so effective at close quarters with a scrapper who learnt his trade in the taverns of Bristol.
The next man was still bringing his musket to bear when I dispatched him with two decisive strokes. The last of the soldiers was the first to get a second shot off. I heard it part the air by my nose and reacted with shock, hacking at his arm wildly until his musket dropped and he fell to his knees, pleading for his life with a raised hand until I silenced him with the point of my cutlass into his throat. He dropped with a gurgle, his blood flooded the sand around him, and I stood over his body with my shoulders heaving as I caught my breath, hot in my robes but knowing I had handled myself well. When Bo
• • •
Stede Bo
As I steered I asked him about himself. What I found was a rich but fretful man, evidently attracted to more, shall we say, questionable ways of making even more money. For one thing, he constantly asked about pirates.
“Most hunt the Windward Passage between Cuba and Hispaniola,” I told him, suppressing a smile as I steered his schooner.
He added, “I shouldn’t worry about being waylaid by pirates, truth be told. My ship is small and I have nothing of immense value. Sugar-cane and its yields. Molasses, rum, that sort of thing.”
I laughed, thinking of my own crew. “There’s not a pirate living who’d turn his back on a keg of rum.”
Havana was a low port surrounded by green forest and tall palm trees, their fronds a lush green that wafted gently in the breeze, waving us in as our schooner sailed into port. In the busy town, white-stone buildings with red-slate roofs looked dilapidated and weather-beaten, bleached by the sun and blasted by the wind.
We moored and Bo
He seemed to know the city, so rather than strike out alone I waited for his diplomacy mission to end, then agreed to accompany him to an i
But I had no urge to drink—and I mulled that over as we made our way through Havana, weaving through townsfolk who hurried along the sun-drenched streets, and watched by suspicious old folk who squinted at us from doorways. All I’d done was assume a different name and clothes, but it was as though I had been given a second chance at becoming . . . well . . . a man. As if Edward Kenway was a rehearsal from which I could learn my mistakes. Duncan Walpole would be the man I always wanted to be.
We reached the i