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rafiki – Swahili word for “friend”.

HAZARD WAS ALL ARRANGED to dock neatly under the derricks at the Turtle Crawles. All the work was being done at night, sneakily, with few torches, so that the militia would not see, and it was being paid for with the raw treasure taken from the Nuestra Señora de la Purificación.

Meanwhile, two different nightly activities took place in secret. Benjamin Vhingfrith spoke with Munt in a dark room at the back of The Golden Goose, going over the details needed to begin their venture together: the search for Olivier Levasseur’s three hundred million pounds’ worth of treasure. Munt had agreed he would reveal the identity of his female codebreaker, but only once they were out at sea. Vhingfrith’s payment had cleared from the Admiralty Board, his share of his own profits could easily pay for the food and supplies to get this venture started. Looking at his charts, Munt pointed to a small island where his codebreaker felt their search for Levasseur’s treasure ought to begin. The island was called Jasper Island, it was uninhabited, mostly consisting of rock, Munt had it on good authority that several French ships had been dodging English patrols in that area, as if looking for something.

In terms of planning, they were all but set to leave. But they kept coming back to the same problem—they needed a bloody crew. Despite having real English coin and being friends with Woodes Rogers, no one wanted to sail with the Devil’s Son.

“You could ask the Ladyman,” said Munt. “I understand you two are close.”

“Captain Laurier has his own ambitions,” Vhingfrith said.

“But, oh, wouldn’t he push those ambitions aside for a bounty as big as this?” Munt countered.

Vhingfrith admitted the Ladyman might, but did he, Vhingfrith, want John along for this? It was going to be obscenely dangerous, no matter how it went. He would need to think on it.

The other secret activity happening around Port Royal was the transfer of Peter Williamson III’s ill-gotten twelve-pounder sakers onto the Hazard. To get it done, Captain Laurier used only seven trusted crewmen, Akil, and the other five Africans.

____

Akil kaKhayi could count to high numbers. This had made him unpopular to the other boys in his tribe, and some of the girls thought him strange, enigmatic, and ultimately irresistible. Another reason for the boys to dislike him. But counting was a habit of his, one that almost ruined him, for he counted his steps, he counted the birds in the sky, he counted how many times his mother blinked, he counted everything for fear that if he did not, something terrible might happen. When he was a boy, Akil’s mother had thought this adorable. As he grew older, though, she feared others were right about him: he was tainted by some evil spirit. Because Akil became obsessed with numbers, counting how many times he walked through doorways, and would walk backwards out of them, only to enter them again, because to him three was a blessed number and he must walk through a door three times for luck. People looked at him queerly whenever he entered, exited, and entered again.

But the counting led to him being able to lump groups together, to count, at a glance, dozens of men in an enemy scouting party. He could tell how many pigeons were in a group just by a quick look. It became automatic, just lumping the six lizards and eight frogs he saw on his way to his wife’s hut, or counting the number of breaths he took as he climbed the stairs (the stairs, which he also counted). To Akil, it was like multiple tallies were always running in his mind, lines scratched onto an imaginary board, or ticks on one of the abacuses the English explorers had brought over. Counting served no purpose to him, until he entered the ibutho lempi, the fighting units of his tribe, where counting enemy forces and their resources on scouting missions became invaluable.

Akil was good at estimating distance, because he had always known his own stride, and counted how many strides it took to walk towards and away from something. It was a habitual thing, obsessively done. Akil had not learned to speak until he was almost six. He had not killed anyone until he was twenty, despite being in his father’s war council for ten years. All these things made him stranger in the eyes of others.

When he did speak, he spoke mostly to women. He spoke to them as though they were the wind, or one of the imaginary friends he had kept around, until his mother demanded he banish all those pretend creatures when he was fifteen. Songiya, his wife, had encouraged Akil to invite them all back, all his pretend friends who gave him counsel. But they were all gone now. Along with Songiya. Gone with the ship that took her east, while the ship that took Akil headed west. There had been nine ships in the sea that day. Akil counted them all, as well as all the letters in their names—ninety-seven. He also counted their masts and sails—four and six on each, for a total of twenty-eight and forty-two, respectively. It happened on the lunar month of uNtulikazi, on the second day. He had counted every day after that.

Nine hundred and eighty-eight.

Presently, Akil stood on the Hazard’s rail, wondering if any of these ships could ever take him back home. He wondered if what Captain Laurier and his underling Okoa had said was true. Was there truly no place left in the—what word had he used? Universe? Was there truly no place left in all the world and all the cosmos for Akil and his friends? He pondered that while he fought for balance along the rail.

“Careful with it, lads!” Laurier shouted, as he directed Akil and the rest of the Africans to the front of the ship, which he had learned was called the “bow” in English. Akil walked barefoot across a wet deck. It had rained the night before and the deck was slippery. None of the Africans were yet permitted shoes. “Akil! There now! Tell the other Negroes to guide it down!”

Akil’s skin was leaking gallons of water, his tunic plastered to his back, arms chafed by canvas and hands callused by rope burns. He raised his hands to touch the twelve-pounder cannon, which was floating over them, dangling by ropes looped around its “pommelion” and “muzzle”—he had been counting the letters of every English word he learned to read and speak. The cannon continued to float over until it landed on its new mount, which had been built by a man called LaCroix, a carpenter of some repute on the ship.

Hazard, Akil thought. They call the ship Hazard. With six letters. A word that means danger. He had read those letters on the back of the ship—the stern.

“Okoa! Tell those men not to touch those stays to save their lives! Handsomely now, lads! Handsomely!”

“Captain says do not touch those,” Akil interpreted. And he saw Okoa squint in surprise. The one-legged African had been promoted, it seemed, to the same position that the man Akil had thrown overboard had occupied. Okoa seemed bewildered that Akil had understood the captain’s order without needing translation. Akil only grimaced, and went quiet. Let him wonder how much else I know. Like how the captain plans to sell us to some man named Smith. Akil had already warned the others, and while they were scared, none of them were as outraged as he was. They were sheep. Akil was a war chieftain.

The captain promised us freedom on Hazard. Now he’s going back on his word. Only an animal does that. Where he was from, one could not be called a man if he did not keep his word.

Akil tried to hide his seething as he helped the rest of the crew to lower the cannon into its housing. The wood planks groaned, and the whole ship seemed to sink into the water a few inches upon receiving this new gift. Akil marveled, How much must it weigh? LaCroix, who was from someplace called France and was treated like some sort of wizard or genius, moved quickly to slide a large metal pin into place to secure the cannon, then began fussing around it, securing the rest of its housing.

“Excellent, LaCroix!” Laurier shouted, smiling as he stood on a rail and looked down on the work. “Excellent! Now, lads, that’s that one done. Let’s get ready to receive the other cannon at stern.”

The same process happened at the rear of the ship with a second identical cannon, and again, Hazard felt like it sank a bit deeper into the water, the weight of the cannon was just that great. She. They call their ships she. Like the ships themselves have feminine souls. Akil moved lithely with the other five Africans, and he interpreted the captain’s orders as they secured the second cannon.

Later that night, when it was all done, Akil leaned on the starboard railing, sweating, drinking water from a brass mug. He was approached by Bogoa, the shortest of the slaves he had been shackled with on the Nuestra. They had both come from different English colonies, one on of the islands way, way out there. He did not know the island’s name, hoped never to return.

They were both on the main deck. Neither of them were in chains, which surprised Akil, because if the Ladyman knew Akil spoke some English, then he must know Akil understood the plan to sell them all to some white plantation owner. The captain is very strange, he thought. And very devious. Is he waiting for us all to leave, so he can shoot us? Does he want us to run? For what purpose? What good are we to this Smith man if we are dead?

From belowdecks, there came laughter, and the sound of a fiddle. Captain Laurier and his few remaining loyal men, celebrating their two new cannons. What they meant to do with them, Akil could only guess. But he did not plan on staying to find out. He meant to die tonight.

“Akil?” said Bogoa softly.

“What do you want?”

“You’re not eating. The captain is feeding us same as the crew.”

“But we are not crew,” Akil snapped. He turned his back on Bogoa and stared out at the rippling, star-spackled sea. “You can eat his food if you want to. I won’t stop you.”

“But he’s told us we are crew,” said Bogoa. “Do you doubt him?”

“I doubt everyone.”

“Even me?”

Akil said nothing.

“It’s okay, Akil, you can say it. It’s because you fought back. You went on hunger strike with the Spaniards. The rest of us—we could not last. You are stronger than the rest of us. You want to fight. We want to live.”

“What good is a life lived in slavery, Bogoa?”

“You heard the captain. There is nowhere for us. Nowhere but here.”

“And you believed him?”

Bogoa sighed, and bowed his head. “The rest of us…we’ve been gone longer than you, rafiki. We’ve been traded and sold many times. But you only came to this sea three years ago, so you still remember home. We cannot. Half our words are Spanish and English words, muddled together. We’ve forgotten much of our own language. You have someplace to go to if you escape this place. We do not even remember which villages we are from.”

“I killed a man for the captain,” he said. “I did it so that I might earn his respect, and become one of the crew, like he said. But now he talks about giving us to this Smith person.” Akil shook his head ruefully. “I killed for nothing, Bogoa. And that cursed night—that long night when we all went without sun. It was the land of the dead, Bogoa, and we were meant to stay there.”

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Bogoa winced like he was in pain for his friend. “You cannot know that, rafiki.”

“I know it was not this Hell the English speak of. A place of eternal torment? Who ever heard such a ridiculous thing?” He snorted. “It was the land of spirits, Bogoa. Even that man-woman, Anne Bonny, says she saw the spirit of the man I killed—Abner. He stood on this very deck, she said.”

“Maybe she was mistaken.”

Akil put one foot on the railing and gripped a piece of netting. “I’m going to jump into the water, Bogoa. Tonight.”

Bogoa went silent for a time. Then he said, “Can you swim?”

Akil laughed good-heartedly. “No, you fool, I mean to go back there.”

After a moment, a hand touched his shoulder. “I hope you find her there. Her name…you said it was Songiya, yes?”

“Yes.”

“And didn’t you say you saw her jump from the back of the ship that took her?”

“As the ship sailed away, I saw three people jump into the sea. One of them looked like her. I’m sure it was.”

Bogoa squeezed his shoulder. “I pray you find her, rafiki. I will tell the others. We will all pray for your journey to her tonight.” The hand came away, and Akil heard Bogoa’s footsteps retreating.

Akil thought about the ship that took Songiya away. He could not recall the ship’s name, for he hadn’t known English very well back then, but he knew the number of letters she had: seven. He closed his eyes and thought of her jumping into the water. He put his other foot on the rail, and stood up, using the rope for balance. He envisioned her there, smiling at him. He was sure it was not only her memory, but her spirit. Then he opened his eyes and looked down into the black water—

Only it wasn’t black, and for a moment Akil’s heart was gripped by the fist of fear. A red light passed underneath the ship. Faint. But not so faint that he did not see the strange shapes dancing below the tiny waves. One of them was a dark human silhouette, he was sure, but with strange, undulating fans starting at its waist. It swam fast, yet created no disturbance of the surface water.

Five. Five large fanning appendages…

And then the red light faded and he could no longer see the dark shape. Now there was only black water, occasionally catching a glint of silver moonlight. Akil’s heart provided only one possible answer—an orisha. They were sent by Olodumare to assist humanity and show them the path to their ancestors. Or had it been—

“Captain wants to see you,” said Okoa. Akil had heard him approach, had counted the number of his steps, as well as the number of thumps his crutch made against the deck. It was strange, because both Okoa’s African and English were broken, and his words were a hodgepodge of accents.

Is that what we will all become? Akil wondered as he searched the water for the spirit, hoping it had in fact been an orisha, telling him that jumping into the water was the right answer. Will all our people forget our language, and become their servants? I am Akil kaKhayi, prince of the Hadza tribe, and with Olodumare as my witness, my children will not serve the white men.

“The captain says to come.”

“Tell him no,” said Akil.

“No?”

“Yes.”

“Why no?”

“Because there is no freedom here. The captain’s words are lies. That is the only freedom now,” Akil said, pointing to the water.

And then the night erupted with great, booming laughter. Akil turned in anger, and saw Okoa nearly falling over. He grabbed his belly with one hand, he was laughing so hard, and then had to reach out to the rail for balance. Through his laughter, Okoa said, “You think that is freedom?! Ha-ha-ha! You simple fool! That is cowardice! That is where fools go who have given up, and given in! Let me guess, you think me weak because I serve the captain?! Ha-ha-ha-haaaa! Do you know what freedom is out here for us? Have you not heard of Black Caesar? He has his own island, his own wives, his own servants! A black man! A man who once sailed with Blackbeard! Have you not heard? Are you not aware of what greatness awaits our people here? Ha-ha-haaaaaaaaa!”

A moment ago, Akil had been ready to kill himself no matter what anyone else said. But he suddenly felt the need to silence Okoa, and so launched himself at the cripple and squeezed his neck. Instead, he grabbed the cripple’s collar, hauled him over to the railing, and held him over the water. “You should be ashamed! You helped bring us here!”

Okoa smiled up at him, speaking through gasps. “I liberated you! The Ladyman was right, there is nowhere left for us! Not unless you fight back, you idiot! I thought you were a war chieftain to your people! Well, if you want to fight…here is the battleground! Here is where it begins! Just ask Caesar! Ask Caesar! Ask Captain Vhingfrith!” Okoa glared madly at him, still smiling, still gasping, as defiant as a demon. “If you want freedom—true, unambiguous freedom—then you start by stalking the enemy from within!”

“Is that what you’re doing? Just acting as some spy?”

“Not a spy. An occupant. A man staking a claim. One day,” Okoa swore, “all this will be ours, too! Don’t you see, you fool? One day, the world will also belong to us! But if we run from this, if we all just jump into the water with you and your sorrows…then who will be left to fight for our children? Our families?” Slowly, Okoa reached up to grip Akil’s hand, and with uncommon strength, he peeled it away. “Everyone wars, Akil. Our own people, do they not war with each other? They must, or else you could not be a war chieftain! In all the war stories your father ever told you, how many of them were won quickly?”

Akil said nothing.

Okoa nodded gravely. “Exactly. Now it begins to sink in to that thick skull.” He pushed himself away from Akil, hopped over to recover his crutch, and started back down below. “The captain wants to see you. Come, brother, and listen to what part you may play in this war. Or don’t. Jump into the water and let your bloodline die with you.” The cripple limped belowdecks.

Akil stood there, the vision he had seen in the water nearly forgotten. Okoa’s words played tricks on his mind and heart. He felt tugged both ways, into the water and away from it. He looked over the rail, down at the rippling black water. Suddenly he mistrusted it. He mistrusted everything and everyone. He even mistrusted his own thoughts.

“Freedom.” Akil made the word sound like a jewel there was no obtaining. He tasted the word, both in his tongue and in the tongue of the English.

Then he went below (twenty-seven strides) and was led into a part of the ship called the “ward-room,” and there, huddled around a small table, their faces lit by three candles, was John Laurier, resplendent in a fiery red-and-yellow dress, his helmsman Kepler, Okoa, LaCroix the Frenchman lounging in a hammock, the boy Dobbs peering over charts, that weird man-woman Anne Bonny sharpening a knife, Roche the bloodthirsty Brazilian, and three others he did not yet know the names of.

“Ah, Akil, so good of you to make it,” said the Ladyman, brightening at his entrance. “Come on in, my friend, and grab a pistol.”

Akil blinked. That’s when he realized there were exactly twelve pistols on the table and seven muskets. Next to them were nine cutlasses, and a few small, mysterious black pouches. “Captain?”

“We’re going to the Smith plantation. We’re going to kill Raymond Smith and everyone else than runs the sugarcane fields, and take all his slaves for crew. In order to convince the slaves to come with us, we will need more than just Okoa. Some of them are recent captures, just like you. I’ll need you to be my advocate to them, and tell them that this ship is a haven for them. Once we’ve killed all the masters and taken the slaves aboard Hazard, we will set sail for Porto Bello, some one thousand six hundred miles from here, and there we will lay siege to a secret Spanish fort and take the largest treasure in all the Caribbean.”

Akil searched for the trap, but none came.

“Now, Mr. Okoa has explained to me this may interest you. And, as you are an experienced war chieftain, I should very much like your expertise in planning the shore party for the night-time invasion. I have maps here to show you, if it will help you decide upon a method of approach. Are you ready to begin? Have you eaten yet? If not, I can wait until your belly is full. Better to think on a full stomach.”

Akil stared at him, astonished. Then at Okoa. Okoa was not quite suppressing a smile.

“But if you and your men are not interested in joining us,” the Ladyman continued, “your share of the Neustra’s treasure is waiting for you on the docks, as promised, for all your help during that fourteen-day darkness we all endured. If you wish to leave, you may have it, and be on your way. But I wish you would consider my offer. At least give it a turn of the glass. What do you say?”

The ship rocked easily in the water. LaCroix swayed in the hammock—the captain’s hammock, most likely—and he lifted a quizzical brow at Akil. Akil stepped up to the table and looked at the captain. “Captain…is not selling us?” he asked in strained English.

“No. I am not selling you. The way I understand it, you were first slaves to the English, then the Spanish, but as we took you from the Spanish, you belong to no one in Port Royal. Not even me.”

“Other captain…he give slaves to prison.”

At this, Laurier looked uncomfortable. “Captain Vhingfrith has…obligations to the Admiralty Court. Eh, Okoa, can you translate? You see, Akil, Vhingfrith is something called a privateer, a different kind of captain than me. He has legal responsibilities. That is, he receives something called a letter of marque for specific Spanish ships to harass, sink, or take a prize. English Law gives him this sanctioned right. But there are more people in Port Royal and in the Caribbean than there are letters of marque, and so, many captains just go attack the Spanish outright, and take what we want. Privateers, therefore, owe some of their prizes back to England. But those of us in this room…we are not privateers. Are we, lads?”

Laughter from everyone in the room. “Yo-ho, Cap’n,” Bonny called out. “Yo-ho,” said Dobbs. They all chimed in.

“We are pirates. We take down Spanish ships, true, but we do so without legal authority. Typically this means England overlooks our hooliganry because, well, as long as the Spaniards are hurt, England doesn’t care. Usually. But sometimes England gets upset with us because we do not give them a cut of our treasure. So they both love us, need us, and hate us. Understand so far?”

Akil listened to Okoa’s translation, and nodded. “Understand, Captain. Other captain had to pay slaves back to England.”

“That’s right exactly, Akil.”

“Then…why did you not say plan before?”

“Because I wanted to see what sort of man you are. If you would run or try to kill me. The other Africans are going along with us because that is all they know. They serve whomever they end up with. Plus, they’ve seen how they would be treated in Port Royal otherwise. I’m sure you’ve seen that, as well.”

Akil nodded. “Yes. I see.”

Captain Laurier walked around the table, and spoke in low tones. Okoa kept translating. “Okoa told me you were on the deck just now, gazing into the water. He says you were thinking of taking a dip. My friend, you can do that if you want, and no man in here could fault you. We’ve all considered it. I myself considered it once, though I tried it with a pistol. The first time I was intimate with someone I love, I was afraid. Because I knew there was nowhere on Earth for someone like me. The priests good as told me. So I figured ‘If I’m going to Hell anyway…’”

Laurier shrugged.

“Yo-ho, Akil.”

Akil was still uncertain. He looked at all their grinning faces and wondered, Are these evil spirits, sent to test me, or are these messengers of Eshu? His mother had told him that Eshu, the god of fate, sometimes sent weird strangers to guide one along the path towards destiny.

“Understand, Akil, that you are in a room full of men—and one woman—who are also malcontents and deviants. People without safe harbour. Kepler over there left England to flee the press-gangs—eh, officially they are called impress agents, and they force you to sign up for naval service. Against your will. These press-gangs, they roam around England, and no seventeen-year-old boy is safe, for the press-gangs can force them onto ships of five or six hundred other unlucky boys, where they are badly fed and sometimes twenty will die in a day, just waiting to hear which ship they’ll be on. Some jump ship and try to swim away from their Guard-ships. Their bodies sometimes float in the rivers. Boys. I’ve seen it myself. I was one of those boys the press-gangs preyed upon. England is no angel. Do you understand, Akil?”

Akil looked over at Kepler, who looked grimly back. “I understand, Captain.”

“Anne over there, she killed a man who slipped a finger where he should not have. Dobbs is meant to pay for the crime of his father, if you can believe that nonsense. And Roche—Roche is a killer, tell true, but his mind is a child’s, and the cruelty of his position put paid to any future he could have had as a common citizen. Do you understand what room you’re in now, Akil? We all find ourselves flotsam in a chaotic stream, betrayed by men who insist that there be outsiders like us who are bound by the law but not protected by it, while they are protected by the law but not bound by it. Do you understand what room you’re in now?”

Akil looked around at the assembly of hard, determined faces. “I understand what room I am in, Captain.”

“And will you leave with your treasure, come with us, or take a dive into the water?”

Akil looked back at Okoa, who was now giving him a plaintive look. “I come with Captain Ladyman.”

Laurier clapped Akil’s shoulder. “Welcome to the life of a pirate. No greater danger, no greater freedom. Yo-ho.”

____

The Hazard slid smoothly from the Turtle Crawles. It did so with four groups of men in long boats, ropes tied to the gunnels, and the men put their oars to work. They rowed hard, silently removing the Hazard from the sleepy little port under cover of night. Surely some saw it going, but none of them were militia. Militiamen rarely came this far into the Turtle Crawles, all the treasure was to be had on the Northern Docks. In the Crawles, there were only pirates, and they outnumbered all law enforcement.

The ship dipped easily away, perhaps listing a bit strongly to port, but the Ladyman thought they could adjust for that later by moving some of the cargo around below.

Out at sea, say about two miles out, something dipped its head out of the water. And it watched them round the island.