Текст книги "Assassin's creed : Black flag "

Автор книги: Oliver Bowden

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

FORTY-FIVE

The British were coming after Blackbeard, of course. I later found out it was a force led by Lieutenant Maynard of HMS Pearl. A reward had been put on Blackbeard’s head by the governor of Virginia after merchants made a noise about Blackbeard’s habit of sailing from Ocracoke Bay and taking the odd prize here and there; the governor worried that Ocracoke inlet would soon become another Nassau. The governor didn’t like having the world’s most infamous pirate in his back-yard. So he put a bounty on his head and so they came, the British did.

 • • •

The first we heard of it was a whispered alarm. “The English are coming. The English are coming,” and looking through the gun hatches of Blackbeard’s sloop the Adventure, we saw that they’d launched a small boat and were trying to sneak up on us. We would have completely destroyed them, of course, but for one crucial thing. You know that party I was talking about? The wine and the wild boar? It had gone on. And on.

We were very, very catastrophically hung-over.

The best response we could manage was warning the row-boat off with some shot.

There were very few of us aboard Blackbeard’s ship that morning, perhaps twenty at the most. But I was one of them, little knowing I was about to have a part in the ultimate fate of the world’s most famous pirate.

And give him his due, he might have been hung-over—just as we all were—but Blackbeard knew the water-ways around Ocracoke Bay and so off we went, weighing anchor and making haste for the sand-banks.

Behind us came Maynard’s men. They flew the Red Ensign and left us in no doubt as to what they intended. I saw it in Blackbeard’s eyes. My old friend Edward Thatch. All of us aboard the Adventure that day knew the English were after him and him alone. The governor of Virginia’s declaration had named only one pirate, and that pirate was Edward Thatch. I think we all knew we weren’t the real targets of these dogged English; it was Blackbeard. Nevertheless, not one man gave himself up or threw himself overboard. There was not a man among us who was not willing to die for him—that was the devotion and loyalty he inspired. If only he could have used those qualities in service of Nassau.

The day was calm, there was no wind in our sails and we had to use our sweepers to make progress. We could see the whites of our pursuers’ eyes, and they could see ours. Blackbeard ran to our stern, where he leaned over the gunwale and shouted across the still channel at Maynard.

“Damn you, villains, who are you? Where did you come from?”

Those on the ship behind gave no answer, just stared at us blank-eyed. Probably they wanted to unsettle us.

“You may see by our colours we are no pirates,” bellowed Blackbeard, waving around himself, his voice echoing strangely from the steep sand-banks on both sides of the narrow channel. “Launch a boat to board us. You’ll see we are no pirates.”

“I cannot spare a boat to launch,” called Maynard back. There was a pause. “I’ll board you with my sloop soon enough.”

Blackbeard cursed and raised a glass of rum to toast him. “I drink damnation to you and your men who are cowardly, dog! I shall give nor take any quarter.”

“And in return I expect no quarter from you, Edward Thatch, and nor will I give any in return.”

The two sloops under Maynard’s command came on, and for the first time ever, I saw my friend Edward Thatch at a loss for what to do. For the first time ever, I thought I saw fear in those eyes.

“Edward . . .” I tried to say, wanting to take him to one side, wanting us to sit together, as we had so many times at The Old Avery, to plot and plan and scheme, but not for the taking of a prize this time, no. To escape the English. To get to safety. Around us the crew worked in a kind of booze-soaked daze. Blackbeard himself was swigging rum, his voice rising along with his inebriation. And, of course, the more drunk he became, the less open to reason, the more reckless and rash his actions, such as when he ordered the guns be primed, and because we had no shot, filled with nails and pieces of old iron.

“Edward, no . . .”

I tried to stop him, knowing there had to be a better, more tactful way to escape the English. Knowing that to fire upon them would be to sign our own death warrants. We were outnumbered, out-gunned. Their men were not drunk or hung-over and they had the burning light of zealotry in their eyes. They wanted one thing and that thing was Blackbeard—drunk, angry, raging and probably, secretly, terrified Blackbeard.

Boom.

The spread of the guns’ shot was wide, but we saw nothing beyond a shroud of smoke and sand which obscured our vision. For long moments we waited with bated breath to see what damage our broadside had inflicted, and all we heard were screams and the sound of splintering wood. Whatever damage we’d done, it sounded grievous, and as the fog cleared we saw that one of the pursuing ships had veered off to the side and beached, while the other seemed to have been hit as well, with no sign of any crew aboard and parts of its hull shredded and splintered. From the mouths of the crew came a weak if heartfelt cheer and we began to wonder if all was not lost after all.

Blackbeard looked at me, next to him at the gunwale, and winked.

“The other one’s still coming though, Edward,” I warned. “They’ll return fire.”

Return fire they did. They used chain-shot, which destroyed our jib, and in the next moment victorious cheers had turned to shouts as our ship was no longer seaworthy, lurching to the side of the channel and listing, its splintered masts grazing the steep-sided banks. Meantime, as we bobbed uselessly in the swell, the chasing sloop nosed up on our starboard side, giving us a good opportunity to see what strength they had remaining. Precious little, it looked like. We could see a man at the tiller, with Maynard by his side gesturing as he cried, “Pull alongside, pull alongside . . .”

Which is when Thatch decided attack was the best form of defence. He gave word for the men to arm themselves and prepare to board, and we waited with our pistols primed and cutlasses drawn, a final stand in a deserted back channel off the coast of an American colony.

Powder-smoke shrouded us, thick layers of it hanging like hammocks in the air. It stung our eyes and gave the scene an eerie feel, as though the English sloop was a ghost ship, appearing from within the folds of a spirit-mist. To add to the effect, its decks remained empty. Just Maynard and the mate at the helm, Maynard shouting, “Pull alongside, pull alongside . . .” his eyes wild and rolling like a madman. The look of him, not to mention the state of his ship, gave us hope—it gave us hope that maybe they were in even worse shape than we’d at first thought, that this wasn’t the final stand after all, that maybe we’d live to fight another day.

A false hope, as it would turn out.

All was quiet, just Maynard’s increasingly hysterical shrieking as we crouched hidden behind the gunwale. How many men were still left alive on the sloop, we had no real way of telling, but one of us was confident at least.

“We’ve knocked them on their heads except three or four,” shouted Blackbeard. He was wearing his black hat, I noticed, and he’d lit the fuses in his beard and was shrouded in smoke, his hang-over cast off; he glowed like a devil. “Let’s jump aboard and cut them to pieces.”

Only three or four? There had to be more of them left alive than that, surely?

But by then our two hulls had bumped, and with a shout, Blackbeard led us over the side of the Adventure and onto the British sloop, roaring a brutal warrior yell as the men flooded towards Maynard and the first mate at the tiller.

But Maynard, he was as good a performer as my friend Mary Read. For as soon as our dozen pirates boarded his ship, that wild hysterical look left his face. He shouted, “Now, men, now!” and a hatch in the quarter-deck opened and the trap was sprung.

They’d been hiding from us, playing possum, pretending to be dead, luring us on board. Now out they came, like rats escaping bilge-water, two dozen of them to meet our plucky twelve, and straight away the clashing of steel, the popping of gunshot and the screams filled the air.

A man was upon me. I punched him in the face and engaged my blade at the same time, dodging to the side to avoid a fountain of blood and snot that erupted from his nose. In my other hand was my pistol, but I heard Blackbeard calling me, “Kenway.”

He was down, with a leg bleeding badly, defending himself with his sword and calling for a gun. I tossed him mine and he caught it, using it to fell a man coming at him with raised cutlass.

He was dead, though. We both knew it. We all knew it.

“In a world without gold, we could have been heroes!” he shouted as they teemed over him.

Maynard led a renewed attack upon him and Blackbeard, seeing his nemesis up close, bared his teeth and swung his sword. Maynard screeched, his hand gushing crimson as he pulled away and his sword fell, its guard broken. From his belt he snatched a pistol, fired it, catching Edward on the shoulder and sending him back to his knees, where he grunted and swung his sword as the enemy moved in on him remorselessly.

Around us I could see more of our men falling. I drew my second pistol, fired, and gave one of their men a third eye, but now they were upon me, swarming over me. I cut men down. I cut them ruthlessly. The knowledge that my next attacker would die the same way kept a few of them at bay, giving me the chance to glance over and see Edward dying by a thousand cuts, on his knees but fighting still, surrounded by vultures who hacked and chopped at him with their blades.

With a shout of frustration and anger I stood and whirled with outstretched hands, my blades forming a perimeter of death that sent men flailing backwards. I snatched the initiative, shooting forward and kicking the man in front of me so that I could leap off his chest and face and I broke through the barrier of men surrounding me. In the air my blades flashed and two men fell away with open veins, blood hitting the deck with an audible slap. I landed, then sprang across the deck to help my friend.

But I never made it. From my left came a sailor who stopped my progress, a huge brute of a man who thumped into me, the two of us moving at such speed that neither of us could stop the momentum that took us over the side of the gunwale and into the water below.

I saw one thing before I fell. I saw my friend’s throat open and blood sheet down his front, his eyes rolling to the top of his head as Blackbeard fell for a final time.

FORTY-SIX

DECEMBER 1718

You’ve not heard a man scream until you’ve heard a man who’s just had his knee-cap blown off screaming in pain.

That was the punishment dealt by Charles Vane to the captain of the British slave ship we’d boarded. That same British slave ship had virtually scuttled Vane’s own vessel, so we’d had to sail the Jackdaw nearby and allow his men on board. Vane had been furious about that, but even so, that was no excuse to lose his temper. After all, this whole expedition had been his idea.

He’d hatched his plan soon after Thatch’s death.

“So Thatch has been topped?” Vane said, as we sat in the captain’s quarters of the Jackdaw, with Calico Jack drunk and asleep nearby, lying straight-legged in the chair in a way that seemed to defy gravity. He was another who had refused to take The King’s Pardon, so we were stuck with him.

“He was outnumbered,” I said of Blackbeard. The image was an unwelcome new arrival in my mind. “I couldn’t reach him.”

I remembered falling, seeing him die, blood pouring from his throat, hacked down like a rabid dog. I took another long swig of rum to banish the image.

They’d hung his head from the bowsprit as a trophy, so I’d heard.

And they called us scum.

“Devil damn the man, he was fierce, but his heart was divided,” said Charles. He’d been worrying at my tabletop with the point of his knife. Any other guest I’d have told to stop but not Charles Vane. A Charles Vane defeated by Woodes Rogers. A Charles Vane mourning the death of Blackbeard. Most of all, a Charles Vane with a knife in his hand.

He was right, though, with what he said. Even if Blackbeard had lived, there was little doubt he intended to leave the life behind. To stand at our head and lead us out of the wilderness was not something that had appealed to Edward Thatch.

We lapsed into silence. Perhaps we were both thinking of Nassau and how it belonged in the past. Or perhaps we were both wondering what to do in the future, because after some moments, Vane took a deep breath, seemed to pull himself together and slapped his fists to his thighs.

“Right, Kenway,” he announced, “I’ve been musing on this plan of yours . . . This . . . Observatory you were going on about. How do we know it exists?”

I shot him a sideways look to see if he was joking. After all, he wouldn’t have been the first. I’d been much mocked for my tales of The Observatory and wasn’t in the mood for any more, not then, anyway. But he wasn’t, he was deadly serious, leaning forward in his chair, awaiting my answer. Calico Jack slumbered on.

“We find a slave ship called the Princess. Aboard should be a man called Roberts. He can lead us to it.”

Charles seemed to think. “All them slavers work for the Royal African Company. Let’s find any one of their ships and start asking some questions.”

But unfortunately for us all, the first Royal African Company ship we encountered blew holes in Vane’s ship, the Ranger, meaning he needed to be rescued. At last we boarded the slave ship, where our men had already quietened down the slaver’s crew. There we found the captain.

“This captain claims the Princess sails out of Kingston every few months,” I told Vane.

“All right. We’ll set a course,” said Vane, and the decision was made: we were heading for Kingston, and no doubt the slave captain would have been okay and left unharmed, had he not called out angrily, “You made a hash of my cells and rigging, you jackanapes. You owe me a share.”

Every man there who knew Charles Vane could have told you what would happen next: terrible violence with no remorse. So it was at that moment, when he swung around, drew his gun and strode over to the captain in one quick and furious movement. Then he put the muzzle of the gun to the captain’s knee, his other hand held to stop himself being splashed with blood. And pulled the trigger.

It happened quickly, matter-of-factly. In the aftermath Charles Vane walked away, about to move past me when I shouted, “Damn it, Vane!”

“Oh, Charles, what a surly devil you are,” said Calico Jack, and it was a rare moment of sobriety from Calico Jack, a fact that was almost as shocking as the captain’s piercing screams, but then the old drunkard was seemingly in the mood to challenge Charles Vane.

Vane turned on his quartermaster. “Don’t fuck with me, Jack.”

“It is my mandate to fuck with you, Charles,” snapped Calico Jack, normally laid out drunk, but today in a mood to challenge Vane’s authority, it seemed. “Lads,” he commanded, and as if on cue—as though they had been awaiting their chance—several men loyal to Calico Jack stepped forward with drawn weapons. We were outnumbered, but that didn’t stop Adewalé, who was about to draw his cutlass, only to feel the full weight of a guard across his face, which sent him crumpling to the deck.

I found myself with a face full of pistol barrels when I moved forward to help.

“See . . . The boys and I had a bit of a council while you were wasting time with this lot,” said Calico Jack, indicating the captured slaver. “They figured I’d be a fitter captain than you reckless dogs.”

He gestured towards Adewalé, and my blood rose as he said, “This one I figure I may sell for a tenner in Kingston. But with you two, I can’t take any chances.”

Surrounded, me, Charles and our men were helpless to do anything. My mind reeled, wondering where it had all gone so wrong. Had we needed Blackbeard that much? Did we rely on him so heavily that things could go so terribly awry in his absence? It seems so. It seems so.

“You’ll regret this day, Rackham,” I hissed.

“I regret most of them already.” The mutineer Calico Jack sighed. His colourful Indian shirt was the last thing I saw as another man came forward clutching a black bag that he pulled over my head.

FORTY-SEVEN

That was how we found ourselves marooned on Providencia. After a month adrift on the damaged Ranger, that was.

Jack had left us food and weapons but we had no means of steering or sailing the ship, so it was a month at sea in which we tried and failed to repair the broken rigging and masts and spent most of the day manning the pumps in order to stay afloat; a month in which I’d had to listen to Vane ranting and raving all hours of the day and night. Shaking his fist at thin air, he was. “I’ll get ya, Jack Rackham! I’ll open y’up. I’ll tear out your organs and string a bloody lute with them.”

We spent Christmas 1718 on the Ranger, bobbing around like a discarded liquor bottle on the waves, praying for mercy from the weather. Just me and him. Of course, we had no calendars or such, so it was impossible to say when Christmas fell or on which day 1718 became 1719, but I’m prepared to wager I spent them listening to Charles Vane rage at the sea, at the sky, at me, and especially at his old mucker, Calico Jack Rackham.

“I’ll get ya! You see if I don’t, y’scurvy bastid!”

When I tried to remonstrate with him, hinting that perhaps his constant shouting was doing more harm to our morale than good, he turned on me.

“Well, well, the fearsome Edward Kenway speaks!” he’d bawl. “Pray tell us, Cap’n, how to quit this predicament and tell us what genius you have for sailing a boat with no sails and no rudder.”

How we didn’t kill each other during that time, I’ll never know, but, by God, we were glad to see land. We hooted with pleasure, clasped each other, jumped up and down. We launched a yawl from the stricken Ranger, and as night fell we rowed ashore, then collapsed on the beach, exhausted but ecstatic that after a month drifting at sea we’d finally found land.

The next morning we awoke to find the Ranger wrecked against the beach and cursed one another for failing to drop anchor.

And then cursed our luck as we realized just how small it was, the island on which we were now marooned.

Providencia, it was called, a small island with its fair share of history. A bloody history, at that. English colonists, pirates and the Spanish had done nothing but fight over it for the best part of a century. Squabbling over it. Forty years ago, the great pirate Captain Henry Morgan had set his cap at it, recaptured it from the Spanish and used it as his base for a while.

By the time Vane and I set down upon the island, it was home to a few colonists, escaped slaves and convicts and the remnants of the Mosquito Indians, who were native to it. You could explore the abandoned fort, but there was nothing much left. Nothing you could eat or drink anyway. You could swim across to Santa Catalina, but then, that was even smaller, so mainly we spent the days fishing and finding frond oysters in small pools, and occasionally having a kind of snarling confrontation with groups of passing natives, ragged, wandering colonists or turtle fishermen. The colonists, in particular, always wore a wild, frightened look, as though they weren’t sure whether to attack or run away, and could just as well do either. Their eyes seemed to swivel in their sockets in different directions at once and they made odd, twitchy movements with dry, sun-parched lips.

I turned to Charles Vane after one particular encounter, about to comment, and saw that he too was wearing a wild look, and his eyes seemed to swivel in their sockets, and he made odd, twitchy movements with his dry, sun-parched lips.

Until whatever fragile cord holding Charles Vane together snapped one day, and off he went to start a new Providencia tribe. A tribe of one. I should have tried to talk him out of it. “Charles, we must stick together.” But I was sick to the back teeth of Charles Vane, and anyway, it wasn’t like I’d seen the last of him. He took to stealing my oysters for a start, scuttling out of the jungle, hairy and unshaven, his clothes ragged and with the look of a madman in his eyes. He’d scoop up my just-caught frond oysters, curse me for a bastard then scuttle back into the undergrowth from which he would curse me some more. My days were spent on the beach, swimming, fishing or scanning the horizon for vessels, all the time knowing full well he was tracking me from within the undergrowth.

On one occasion I tried to remonstrate with him. “Will you talk with me, Vane? Are you fixed on this madness?”

“Madness?” he responded. “Ain’t nothing mad about a man fighting to survive, is there?”

“I mean you no harm, you corker. Let’s work this out like gentlemen.”

“Ah. God I’ve a bloody headache on account of our jabbering. Now stay back and let me live in peace!”

“I would if you’d stop filching the food I gather, and the water I find.”

“I’ll stop nothing till you’ve paid me back in blood. You was the reason we were out looking for slavers. You was the reason Jack Rackham took my ship!”

You see what I had to contend with? He was losing his mind. He blamed me for things that were plainly his own fault. It was he who had suggested we go after The Observatory. It was he who’d caused our current predicament by killing the slaver captain. I had as much reason to hate him as he had to despise me. The difference between us was that I hadn’t lost my mind. At least not yet, anyway. He was doing his best to remedy that, it seemed. He got crazier and crazier.

“You and your fairy tales got us into this mess, Kenway!”

He stayed in the bushes, like a rodent in the darkened undergrowth, curled up in roots, crouched with his arms around the trunks of trees, crouched in his own stink and watching me with craven eyes. It began to occur to me that Vane might try to kill me. I kept my blades clean and though I didn’t wear them—I’d become accustomed to wearing very little—I kept them close at hand.

Before I knew it he graduated from being a madman ranting at me from within the undergrowth to leaving traps for me.

Until one day I decided I’d enough. I had to kill Charles Vane.

 • • •

The morning that I set out to do it was with a heavy heart. I wondered whether it was better to have a madman as a companion than no companion at all. But he was a madman who hated me, and who probably wanted to kill me. It was either me or him.

I found him in a water hole, sitting crouched with his hands between his legs trying to make a fire and singing to himself, some nonsense song.

His back was offered to me, an easy kill, and I tried to tell myself I was being humane by putting him out of his misery as I approached stealthily and activated my blades.

But I couldn’t help myself. I hesitated, and in that moment he sprung his trap, flinging out one arm and tossing hot ashes into my face. As I reeled back he jumped to his feet, cutlass in hand, and the battle was on.

Attack. Parry. Attack. I used my blades as a sword, meeting his steel and replying with my own.

I wondered: did he think of me as betraying him? Probably. His hatred gave him strength and for some moment he was no longer the pathetic troglodyte. But weeks spent crouching in the undergrowth and feeding off what he could steal had weakened him and I disarmed him easily. Instead of killing him then I sheathed my blades, unstrapped them and tossed them away, tearing off my shirt at the same time, and we fought with fists, stripped to the waist.

When I had him down I pummelled him, then I caught myself and stopped. I stood, breathing heavily, with blood dripping from my fists. Below me on the ground, Charles Vane. This unkempt, hermit-looking man—and, of course, I stank myself, but I wasn’t as bad as him. I could smell the shit I saw dried on his thighs as he half-rolled on the ground and spat out a tooth on a thin string of saliva, chuckling to himself. Chuckling to himself like a madman.

“You Nancy boy,” he said, “you’ve only done half the job.”

I shook my head. “Is this my reward for believing the best about men? For thinking a bilge rat like you could muster up some sense once in a while? Maybe Hornigold was right. Maybe the world does need men of ambition, to stop the likes of you from messing it all up.”

Charles laughed. “Or maybe you just don’t have the stones to live with no regrets.”

I spat. “Don’t save me a spot in hell, shanker. I ain’t coming soon.”

I left him there and later, when I was able to help myself to a fisherman’s boat, I wondered whether to go and fetch him, but decided against.

God forgive me, but I’d had just about all I could take of Charles bloody Vane.