Pieces of Eight. John Drake

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СКАЧАТЬ were damned as pedlars of lust, while children were damned as fruits of lust…” He bowed his head in memory, “He used to say to them…he used to say to m’poor sister and her boy–and I heard this m’self, mind–he used to say…” Captain Garland stood silent as he tried to bring himself to repeat the words. Finally he shook his head, and rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes.

      He looked at Sir Charles. “He weren’t very nice to them. Can we leave it at that?”

      “Bless my soul!” said Sir Charles, for Garland had shed tears. “Come along, Captain. Enough of this–let’s see the widow.”

      The stairs to the first floor were a fearful obstacle to Sir Charles, and it was a long, slow climb, but finally–led by the miserable Bains–he and Garland entered the front parlour: another fiercely scrubbed room, almost bare of furnishings, where they found the reverend’s wife and son, sitting waiting in a pair of Windsor armchairs.

      “Good day, ma’am,” said Sir Charles, advancing towards her, then stopping short as he saw the blood spattered over her clothes. The woman sat unmoved. She was a tired creature: wrinkled and prematurely old, with wispy hair and sad eyes.

      “Ma’am?” repeated Sir Charles. But she never even blinked.

      “Rebecca?” said Garland in a hushed voice, shocked at the sight of her. “It’s me, m’dear. Little Peter that sat on your knee…” Odd as the words were from a grown man, they stirred the woman and she looked up at them.

      “I did it,” she said. “And it may not be denied, for ‘Every man’s work shall be made manifest’–First Corinthians, chapter three, verse thirteen! And I am not ashamed: ‘I have fought a good fight. I have finished my course. I have kept the faith’–Second Timothy, four: seven! And if I have sinned, then, ‘Charity shall cover the multitude of sins’–First Peter, four: eight!”

      “Sir Charles,” whispered Garland, “she’s raving! She’s come adrift and cast loose her moorings.” But he whispered too loud.

      “No!” said Rebecca sharply. “It is my husband who was mad! Thus I killed him because he had gone too far. ‘Behold! Now is the accepted time’–Second Corinthians, six: eight!”

      Sir Charles sighed and turned to the boy sitting alongside her.

      “Now then, my lad–”

      “He must have seen it, sir,” said Bains, who was hovering at the door. “He was in the chapel with her, sir. They went in together.”

      “Yes, yes!” said Sir Charles, waving the servant away. He turned back to the boy. “My lad, I am a magistrate and I must ask you what has gone on here?”

      “I don’t know, sir.”

      “Then why your mother covered in blood?”

      “I don’t know, sir.”

      Sir Charles asked more questions, but learned nothing. Finally he took Garland aside.

      “He’s a good boy. Credit to his mother, poor soul. He’ll not betray her, while she, poor soul, has lost her mind. I’ve seen the like before: husband a bully, wife stands it twenty years, then one day takes a knife and stabs him fifty times!”

      “Aye,” said Garland, nodding, “that’d be the way of it–and the swine deserved it, too! ’Tis only a pity she did it in front of the lad.”

      “Indeed,” said Sir Charles, “But I know a doctor who’ll say what’s needed to keep her from the hangman and safe in a private madhouse.” Sir Charles glanced at the boy. “What about him, though? Shall you take him?”

      “That I shall!” said Garland. “I’ve no other family, aside from the sea-service, so I shall enter him as a gentleman volunteer, first-class, and it shall be my pleasure to help him up the ladder!” He turned to his nephew and, managed a smile: “Now then, young Joseph,” he said, “come along o’ your uncle Peter and you shall be a king’s officer one day, and maybe even a captain. How’d you like the sound of Captain Flint?”

       Chapter 2

       Early morning, 30th September 1752 The southern anchorage The island

      “Remember,” said Long John, “a round turn and two half-hitches! Keep it simple. Don’t go trying to work a Turk’s head, nor a cable-splice!”

      Ratty Richards, ship’s boy, grinned. “Aye-aye, Cap’n!” he said. Skinny, tired, and dripping wet, he was the only one of the seventy-one men and three boys on the island who could dive in six fathoms of water and still do a few seconds’ work at the bottom.

      “You sure, lad?” said Long John. “You’ve already had a good whack. You don’t have to go again if you don’t want to…”

      “I’m ready, Cap’n!”

      “Ah, you’re a smart lad, you are. I knew it the moment I set eyes on you. So here’s your sinker and in you go.”

      Splash! Ratty Richards rolled over the gunwale of the skiff into the cool water, one hand pinching his nose and the other clasping the heavy boulder that would take him down. As he sank, the safety line round his waist and the heavy rope looped through it paid out from their coils while Long John, Israel Hands, Sarney Sawyer and George Merry leaned over the side to see him go down.

      “Bugger me!” said Israel Hands. “Is this goin’ to work, John? I’ve lost count how many times he’s been down.” He sighed heavily. “Don’t want to drown the lad.”

      “Oh?” said Long John. “Weren’t it yourself as pleaded for the Spanish nine?” He jerked a thumb at the sea bed. “For myself, I’d not’ve tried to raise a twenty-six-hundredweight gun with this–” He looked at the two boats, joined by a pair of spars, floating with barely a yard between them. Long John and Sawyer were in the skiff, with Hands and Merry in the jolly-boat; Ratty Richards’s rope fed into a heavy block suspended from the spars and then to an iron windlass that had been firmly bolted to the midships thwart of the jolly-boat. The block-and-tackles were sound, but the boats were too small. Unfortunately, they were the only boats on the island.

      “He’s down, Cap’n!” cried Sarney Sawyer, looking below. “And he’s workin’ on her. Go on Ratty, my son!”

      “Go on, Ratty!” they all cried, peering through the clear water pierced to the bottom by the hot morning sun, showing every movement the boy made.

      Down in the booming depths, the weight of water crushed Ratty’s chest as if a horse were rolling on him, and he strained to remember his orders. Water bubbled from his mouth as he grabbed one of the gun’s dolphins. The Spanish founders had followed obsolete style in adding these elegant decorations, but they were ideal for work such as this. The plunging sea-beasts, cast integral with the barrel, formed loops of iron perfect for lifting the gun. Ratty tugged the rope from the line round his waist then slid it through one dolphin and into the next.

      So far, each attempt had failed. Now, lungs pounding, he struggled СКАЧАТЬ