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Fiddler’s Green – The after-life for all weary sailors, where their cups of grogs always renew themselves, winds are always favourable, food is plentiful, and there is no more strife.

THOUGH THERE WERE candles in multiple windows, as seen from outside, inside the house it was mostly dark, for both the kitchen and the hallway beyond had no lanterns or candles lit. Tautly alert, Laurier moved inside, and found only one servant, a black woman, in her apron, walking down the hallway with an armful of laundry tucked in a basket. The poor woman came out from the door behind him, and Anne nearly cut her throat before Laurier clamped the servant’s mouth shut and whispered, just in her ear, “Shhh. This will all be over in a moment, madam, I assure you.”

Bonny’s blade bit into the woman’s neck. Laurier saw it by a flicker of lightning. He said to Bonny, “No. Hold her.”

Anne covered the woman’s mouth with her hand and pulled her away from Laurier, who continued on. Flickering light danced at the edges of a hallway up ahead, and he turned down it, and came into a common room where an African woman sat in a wicker chair before a warm, crackling the fire. Her back was to Laurier. The three children were huddled around the fireplace, looking up at her, facing Laurier when he stepped in, muddy and wet-faced. One of the girls gasped. The woman turned, and opened her mouth in a silent scream. Laurier shook his head and she got the message.

But one of the children, a boy, shouted, “Uncle Charles! Bandits! Uncle—”

Laurier heard a commotion to his right, down another hallway, presumably leading to the bedrooms. He heard someone rifling through a drawer. Doubtless, going for a weapon. Then he heard a door fling open. Laurier drew his pistol and cocked it and pointed at the opening of the hallway. Heard footsteps rushing. A grey-bearded man ran into the room wearing only his chemise, carrying a pistol. He had time to shout, “What the devil—” before Laurier pulled the trigger. The resounding boom made the children scream. One of them yelled, “Mattie!” and the black woman threw herself on top of the children to defend them. The man was knocked back against a wall, where he crashed into a table holding up two lit candles that spilled onto the floor.

More footsteps. Multiple men rushing down the hallway. John tossed his pistol and drew another, and fired into the face of the next man to appear, then rushed the other five. Raymond Smith’s grown sons and brothers. Including the one with a big red beard. Josephus, Otis had called him. Look out for him.

The living room became a brawler’s pit. Anne and the others rushed with him. When they collided, they knew to use their swords, daggers, or bare hands to smack the barrels of the pistols upwards, so that they fired uselessly at the ceiling. Kepler ran his dagger into one of Smith’s sons, twisted the blade awfully, and the blood splashed outwards and upwards, into John’s face, temporarily blinding him as he clashed with Josephus.

One of the men grabbed Anne’s sword hand, keeping her from using it, then punched her in the tit, knocking the wind out of her.

Jenkins shot a large man in the arm but it was a glancing blow, and the man roared and came forward like an ox, pushing both him and Tomlinson back.

One of the children (John didn’t see which) grabbed hold of LaCroix’s pant leg and tried to wrestle him down. Distracted, LaCroix allowed one of Smith’s sons to ram a dagger into his ribs.

The red-bearded bastard head-butted John in the face, cutting his lip. Sweat and rainwater dribbled down John’s face as he tried to wipe the blood out of his eyes. The whole house roared with deafening gunshots and screams and thunder. Josephus pushed him back against a wall, then grabbed John’s hair and flung him into his friends. The common room became a blood sport. People gripped one another’s wrist, preventing deadly thrusts. The Smith family were all barefoot, and John stomped as many toes as he could to gain advantage. He bit Josephus’s nose and ripped half of it off. Anne was knocked to the ground and Tomlinson tripped over her. Kepler smashed the butt of his pistol into his opponent’s face repeatedly, until the fellow staggered backwards.

Two more men entered the room, all carrying sabres.

Laurier hugged his right foot close to Josephus’s own right foot, then performed a shin-press, off-balancing him for a moment, allowing Laurier the opportunity to commit to a wislik, a slippery motion using the pommel of his cutlass to wriggle out of Josephus’s grip. Once free, he used his pommel to smash the bigger man’s nose. Repeatedly. Until there was a satisfying crack and blood ran in waterfalls down his shirt and teeth came flying out. He push-kicked him backward, reached out with his free hand, gripped Josephus’s shirt, and pulled him into his blade. The cutlass’s blade went diagonally through the man’s stomach, the best odds at hitting something vital, but he kept fighting—

Until Laurier shin-pressed him again, reaped his foot, and used the sword in his gut as a handle to tip him over, and into the two newcomers. Laurier twisted his sword to create a larger opening in Josephus’s gut, making it easier to withdraw, and then launched himself at the sabre men.

It was a furious flash of steel that sang its one-note song. Laurier had little room. He crashed into his own people, into Smith’s sons and brothers, once or twice tripping over a child that scrambled from the room. He parried and shuffle-stepped around one enemy, making it so that always one of them was between him and another. He push-stepped forward, then sideways, then performed a Fiori Dei Liberi sequence, sword keeping towards centerline while parrying his enemy’s blade away from center. Seeing he had cornered his opponent, he advanced with a shuffle-step, causing him to collide with the man behind him. Bunched up, neither could defend adequately. Laurier performed an inside-deflection riposte, then caught his enemy’s wrist on the next thrust, twisted it so that the blade was cleared, and rammed his own blade through the man’s throat.

Laurier withdrew, and let the man fall to his knees clutching his gushing neck, and instantly took advantage of the man behind him. Laurier easily parried, back-fisted the man in his face, stunning him for a moment while he snaked his blade around the man’s wrist, then with a flinging motion he sent his enemy’s sword sailing across the room and ran him through.

A loud explosion like thunder. Something skinned Laurier’s right arm. He spun, and saw a smoking gun aimed at him. Raymond Smith stood framed in a doorway at the end of the hall, his breeches half pulled on, a machete in his other hand. The old bastard charged. It was Bonny who met him first, and stabbed the old man in his gut with an already bloody dagger.

“Father!” one of the children shouted. A girl.

Raymond Smith shoved Bonny away, but then Kepler moved up behind him and slashed across the old man’s right knee, and LaCroix stabbed him in the back with a dagger. Smith screamed and fell to the floor. One of his sons, a blond boy who looked about twenty, was still alive, but was bleeding on the floor, and crawled over to his father. Jenkins stepped on the young man’s neck to stop him.

Laurier stood panting. The room was a macabre scene. Bodies lay everywhere, but thankfully none of them were his people. They had caught these men unprepared. If it had been any other way…

Laurier was still panting when he searched the rest of the house, and blood ran down his lips and his right arm. LaCroix had a look at his arm. Luckily the shot had only sliced his flesh. “It will need hot iron and stitches,” said the Frenchman.

Laurier shrugged him off and went back into the common room, where Smith and his last remaining adult son lay on the floor, bleeding. The children were still huddled at the fireplace, but Mattie, the nanny, had allowed the boy to run to his father and hug him. Laurier stood there a moment, studying them all. His people were watching him, waiting to see what he would do. Finally, he said, “Your name is Mattie?” The nanny nodded. “Take these children outside. Jenkins, Tomlinson, go with them. Anne, go and tell Akil we’ve secured our end.”

“Noooo!” one of the girls shouted. She seemed to know what all this meant, and wept and screamed as she held on to Raymond Smith’s neck for dear life.

“Mattie…take them,” Raymond croaked. Bloody spittle foamed at the corners of his mouth. John watched him. He’d always known Raymond to be a cold, heartless sort of man, an ideal business partner, with only the profit in mind. But somewhere in that instinctual space between early paternal pride and end-of-life pondering, it seemed, Raymond Smith had discovered love for something other than himself. It is almost commendable, John mused. “Just bloody take them, Mattie! Get them out of here, girl!”

“Mr. Smith, sir, I am so sorry,” Mattie wept as she pulled the children back.

But the children fought. They fought to stay with their father. The boy rushed at Kepler, who slapped the boy to the ground and held a blade to his throat.

“No!” Raymond shouted. “No, just…just let him go! Jonathan, be a good boy now! Be a good boy and look after your sisters! Go! Damn it, listen to your father and bloody go! Mattie—”

“Come on, children,” Mattie sobbed, and she cast a baleful eye on John Laurier as she ushered the children outside. Jenkins and Tomlinson went with her. Anne took off out the front door to find Akil and the others.

While Raymond Smith watched, John Laurier knelt beside one of his dead sons, and tore away a piece of the lad’s chemise. As an afterthought, he closed the boy’s eyes. Then Laurier paced a moment, listening to the storm raging outside, wrapping his arm in cloth to try and stop the bleeding. Laurier’s eyes fell on the last remaining adult son. He did not know the lad’s name. He looked about fifteen. This had been the plan. Kill everyone, but try to leave the children and one of the eldest son’s alive.

John stood over his old business partner. “Hello, Raymond.”

“Fffffuck you…Laurier…” Raymond Smith hissed.

“Let’s not have all that. Rather, let’s talk.”

____

Anne splashed through puddles, crossing in front of the manmade pond, passing the docks that led out to the shallowest shore of the Rio Grande. She almost became lost in the storm, seeing shapes flit all around her, animals and trees and panicking servants. On her way to the barn, lightning struck, and she came to a halt when she saw a shambling shape up ahead. Certain it was an escaped farmhand, she hunkered down and hid behind a plough. With bent knees, she hurried around to the front, then crept over to a haywain, currently missing its horses. Anne peeked around the side of the wagon. Rain was in her eyes, and so she could not be sure, but she thought she saw the shambling person…elongate. His arms, they sort of extended from his body, and his jaw opened in a silent scream and fell off.

Anne rubbed water from her eyes, certain she was seeing it wrong. Then the figure slipped in mud and fell down a hill, sliding inexorably into the Rio Grande.

Good riddance, she thought, and crept along. But she froze again when another figure appeared off to her right. And then another. Sabre in one hand, dagger in another, she turned to face them. They were coming her way. Directly at her. Two dark silhouettes, framed momentarily by the flash of blue lightning. Thunder might have tricked her, because she thought she heard gunfire from behind—

When she turned, she saw another distorted form coming up from the river. Right at her. And more shapes still! All was frenzied and shadowy, shapes moving and mingling, writhing and twisting, strange un-forms of men hewed starkly against a setting of wet swampiness and flashes of light.

Anne caught the feeling of an animal being surrounded, and turned to run back to the Smith house. And then she froze. Someone was walking towards her. Someone carrying a lantern. Someone familiar. He wore a blue scarf and matching toboggin. His mouth was spewing blood and he gazed at her, holding up his lantern to see her more clearly.

“Did you put me here?” he said. “Why did you put me here?”

Anne’s mouth opened in a silent scream. She knew it to be the first man Captain Laurier had killed upon entering the plantation. But the captain had killed him. Clearly he had. The man was vomiting blood and speaking through the heavy stream. The man moved uncertainly at first, but then with greater confidence, and soon was running.

And Anne turned and ran from him. Unable to scream, unable to think, she ran. Something grotesque had stepped from childhood nightmares and now it was made flesh. Suddenly Hell was a very real place to her and she feared God’s wrath and the Devil and Abner-fucking-Crane and everything about the darkness.

As she ran, lightning illumined other sets of eyes. White eyes. Purple eyes. Gazing down curiously from the barn loft. Gazing from inside the puddles she was stepping in. Anne finally screamed.

Then a hand reached out from the darkness and snatched her elbow. She would have killed Akil, had he not been quick enough and grabbed her wrist. “You see them, too?” he said in strained English.

Anne’s jaw worked up and down. No sound came out.

“Answer! You see them?”

She nodded. Looking behind him, Anne saw that Dobbs, Roche, and the other Africans were with him, all of them covered in blood and drenched in rain. Dobbs was saying the Lord’s Prayer. “Our Father, who art in Heaven…” The Africans were muttering something under their breaths. They were all instinctively forming a circle, going back-to-back and looking at their potential enemies. Roche was chuckling.

Anne looked around at the dark shapes. Hard to tell how many there were. Dozens? The number seemed to change every time lightning struck. And her eyes caught sight of something else. Something in the raging river. Something slithered there, as large as a humpback whale—which was impossible because everyone knew whale did not swim rivers, not even those as large as the Rio Grande—and as it swum, a dull red light began to emanate from somewhere in the depths, like a fire had been lit underwater.

The dark silhouettes were walking towards it. The man with the blue scarf and lantern was at the head, leading them all into the dark, running waters.

“Come,” Akil said, holding up a set of keys. “We free people in the barn. Then we go.”

____

John looked down at Raymond. The old man was tall, solid, came from good stock. He had once been the scion of another scion of someone distantly important, but John had long forgotten all those details. Likely Raymond had, too. Their long, sordid history together began as a handsome enterprise between professionals. Raymond had once dabbled in piracy, and made quite a few friends with the boys in Nassau. But the Republic soured on him a bit as he proved a clumsy tactician and an abrasive business partner, always wanting more than his agreed-upon share. It also hadn’t helped that he’d fucked the daughter of a prominent pirate captain, who was to be wed to another captain. Not quite disavowed, Raymond took the money and influence he still had and took over a failing sugarcane plantation on Jamaica and rejuvenated it with copious amounts of slaves and smuggling activity. He still served a purpose to the Republic—he could find buyers for their ill-gotten treasures.

Five years ago, John had been among the first to join that enterprise. Raymond Smith had been slowly going into retirement, allowing his slaves, sons, brothers, and hired farmhands to take a greater hand in controlling it all. Smith’s sons, it turned out, were quite savvy accountants, as were many of his slaves. Slaves that could do maths were very expensive, but worth it in the long run. John had to hand it to him, Raymond might have been a world-class cunt, but he had turned this plantation into something worth being proud of. He knew how to get others to do his work for him, while he fucked his slaves and fucked Port Royal’s whores and drank himself into a gout-ridden stupor. He’d even been so wealthy that he could afford to pay the militia to protect his property. Until recently, it seems.

“What…” Raymond broke off into a coughing fit, then spat out a gob of blood. “What…the bloody fucking hell…have you done?! We were friends, Laurier—”

“Let’s not go that far,” John said.

Raymond looked around at his brothers and sons, and wept. He wept long and hard. “You’ll roast for this! They’ll roast you alive for…for…”

John let him have this moment of grief. Then he turned his attention to the eldest surviving son. “What’s your name, lad?”

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Smith’s son glared daggers up at him. “T-Tobias…” With a bloody hand, he caressed the blond hair of one of his dead brothers lying next to him.

“Tobias. I’ve not had the pleasure of meeting you before. You father rarely spoke of his family when he and I were engaged in business.” John used the tip of his blade to lift up Tobias’s bloody shirt. “That’s not a grievous wound. You can survive it, if you see to it soon.” He looked over at the patriarch of the house. “And we can get you that help. If your father cooperates.”

“I’ll see you…in Hell…” Raymond wept. His eyes were closed, his jaw clenched tight. He spoke through gritted teeth and wept up at the ceiling. “I swear by Almighty God, I’ll see you in Hell!”

John tsked. “Raymond, you have one son left. Dear Tobias is still alive. You may yet have a legacy after today. Who knows, perhaps you’ll even live alongside him and fuck your slaves another twenty, maybe even thirty years. In that time, you may even get your revenge. But right now, both your futures are uncertain, because it all hinges on a single question.”

“Fuck you, Ladyman! I’ll see you hanged for—”

John plunged his sword into Tobias’s gut, trying to miss all the major organs, but Tobias didn’t need to know that. He screamed, and John grinned down at Raymond as he twisted the blade. “Do you doubt me, Raymond?! Do you doubt me that I’ll gut this vile puddle that dribbled out of your cock and into some port-whore’s cunt?!”

“Goddamn you, Laurier!” Raymond screamed, trying to reach for him, and fell over, his face smacking the wood, and a puddle of comingled blood. “I’ll throttle you with my own fucking hands! I’ll rip our your fucking heart—”

“You can’t do it if you’re dead, Raymond!”

“Father—” Tobias whimpered.

“Goddamn you, Laurier—”

“The passphrase!”

“What?! What bloody passphrase, you man-sucking piece of—”

“The passphrase Narváez gave you to give to the guards at Porto Bello.”

At this, the room went still. Except for Tobias’s gasps and the storm outside, there was no noise. Even John’s own people gave him a queer stare. They had not expected this part. Indeed, none of them had any notion what he was talking about, and that was by his design. But it was clear Raymond knew exactly what he was talking about. He shook his head, “Wh-what…what the fuck could you possibly…you came in here and slaughtered my sons and brothers for this?! I’ll eat your fucking heart!”

John twisted the blade again. And again Tobias gripped the blade and screamed and writhed in agony.

“When I’m done with Tobias, here, I will go outside. My people are still with your other children, Raymond. Look at me. You know me, Raymond. Remember what Arthur Vhingfrith told you! Remember what he said! ‘You don’t know the Ladyman’s full capacity for cruelty!’ Remember that? He said those words when I was hiding in the pantry! You didn’t know I was there, did you, Raymond?” John laughed in the dying man’s face. “You didn’t know I heard about what you two did in Porto Bello! You didn’t know that anyone else knew about Narváez, did you? Now, tell me the passphrase to clear the secret cove at Porto Bello, and no more sons or daughters need die tonight!”

Raymond rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, and sobbed uncontrollably. Rage bled away to a cocktail of grief, fear, and madness. “You are…as he said…my God in heaven…you are everything Arthur said you are. Your ambitions…are paramount. You have no equal. You have no…no fucking equal for cruelty. Does Arthur’s son know what you are?”

Laurier twisted the blade a smidge more. “The passphrase, Raymond. And speak it precisely. No tricks. Or so help me God, I will give word to the Brazilian. Oh, yes, he is outside! Roche will gladly come in here, if I so ask him, and kill everyone you love. He’ll butcher them like pigs, Raymond. You know he will. I can be half a world away, and Roche will still do it for me. If you lie to me, you and your family will never be safe again. Not ever.”

____

Akil counted eighty-two of them. Dobbs had the presence of mind to bring a candle and a torch from the servants’ quarters, and Bogoa lit them using a candle someone had left on a table inside the door. And now Akil moved among them, holding up the keys to their bondage. Some of them couldn’t wait to throw up their wrists and shout, “Free us! Free us!” Others huddled in the corner, afraid like little kittens. Still others stood stock still, not knowing what to do.

Akil said, “Bogoa.” He took the torch from Bogoa and gave him the keys. While Bogoa unlocked their chains, Akil paced around them. They all stunk. Buckets of their own filth were lined in every corner. He shouted in their native tongue, “I understand many of you are recent captures like me. None of you know me. But I am you. I am of the Hadza people. Some of you may not be from my territory, but ask those in this room who are. I am a war chieftain, a prince of my people, the son of Askia and grandson of Idris. We have boats for those of you that cannot swim down the river. The current will carry us easily to freedom.”

He looked around at their fearful faces. Eighty-two faces. Seventeen women. Five children.

“You do not have to follow me, nor do you have to follow the white man I came with, a pirate named John Laurier. But we do have a ship. We do have that.” Three men, once freed, turned and ran out of the barn, into the storm, never to be seen again. Others looked at the open barn doors, obviously considering doing the same. “Those men can go. So can all of you. But they will be captured. All of you. You will be placed back into the bonds I’ve just removed, and you and your children will never be free! I cannot tarry long. This is your only chance ever. When we leave, you can come with us. That is all. Each man and woman decides for their selves.”

Akil knew this was only partially true. He was not so foolish as to have believed everything John Laurier had said about the world of piracy being one of freedom. He knew Laurier had to say that—the man might even believe it sometimes, in his yearning to feel like he was as just as any priest or wise man—but Akil knew that what Captain Laurier really wanted, what he had intended by taking Akil and the others into Port Royal, was to let them all see that they had little choice. That was a clear distinction. The Ladyman needed to make Akil and the Africans not only allies, but eager partners in their own subjugation.

Better than any slave is one that believes he is accepted as equals by his masters.

And yet.

The Ladyman had to keep up certain lies to maintain beneficial relationships with other desperate men, and so had Akil, who led men into battle against the Konuri, and in scouting parties against ravenous lions, and in night raids against the English. Sometimes you told a convenient lie to keep men on steady footing, always to your own ends, but perhaps for their own good, too. As long as their own good did not interfere with your ends, of course. Leadership was difficult that way, and he understood the burden and the danger of trying to be both a good man and an effective leader, of trying to be fair while also making sure things did not swing so unfavourably away from you that you left yourself open to attack. Akil knew he and Captain Laurier would struggle with this, but perhaps not this day.

Presently, he handed the torch to one of the slaves, a young boy, and said, “We will be at the main house. You have five minutes.”

“I…don’t know how long that is,” said the boy.

“A hundred breaths.”

“I cannot count that high, either.”

Akil fumed momentarily. “Be at the house by the time of the third lightning strike. Understand?”

The boy nodded.

“Good. And hurry. Angry spirits are about tonight, and I do not think they will discern between white men and African. I have that feeling.” Akil looked to Bogoa, Roche, Anne, and the other Africans. “Come.”

They had just stepped out of the barn when they noticed they were suddenly running through shin-deep water. Sludgy mud raced up out of the Rio Grande, and a large dark shape arose from the darkness, aspiring towards the dark heavens, pieces of it ripping into the clouds in the sky. Akil stood in grim astonishment, thinking he was surely seeing the great power of Khonsu, a sort of night god he had heard the Egyptian priests talk about when they visited the tribe. A defender of the Moon, protector of the night itself and often heralded by storm.

“God in heaven,” Dobbs wept. “What is it? Anne, what is it?”

The man-woman stammered. “I—I—”

If not Khonsu, then a great demon, whose fury erupted from the river and now water and fish cascaded over them, mud fell from the skies like sick, and reeked of ammonia and sulfur. The muddy downpour covered them for several moments, dousing most of their torches, then abated, and they stood looking up at a dark, writhing shape that blotted out the sky. Rain still fell. Lightning arced overhead, wrapped around the creature like a lasso, and the creature absorbed the light and defused it.

Then, Akil spotted bodies. All around him, men were walking strangely, some of them in their bedclothes, stained by blood. And he felt his blood run cold. They were coming from the servants’ quarters. Men he had killed only moments ago, they were walking upright, bleeding from their throats and their guts. They moved through the rain, trudging through mud to reach the river.

Dobbs huddled close to Akil. “What—what is it, Akil?”

“Run, boy!” he said in English. Then in his tongue, “Run for your lives! All of you, run if you value your souls!”

____

Raymond finally tore his eyes away from the ceiling and looked at John. “Un sorbo…un sorbo de vino es todo lo que necesito para superar…est mal tiempo. That is all.”

“That’s all? You’re certain that is the passphrase?”

“That’s all!”

“You swear? Because if I find out otherwise, Roche will—”

“I swear it on the souls of my sons! And may God damn your soul for all eternity, Ladyman! Now, kindly remove your fucking blade from my son’s stomach, or so help—”

“One last thing. The alchemist. Where is he?”

“What?”

“Hubert Michaels. The alchemist that once worked with you and Arthur Vhingfrith, the one who made you a certain corrosive liquid. I know he lives in the Colonies, but where exactly?”

“God’s wrath! You don’t ask for much, do you?” Smith laughed, and spat up blood.

“His whereabouts, Smith. I’ll have that.”

Raymond Smith sneered, and John could only imagine the fantasies of revenge he was indulging in. “Massachusetts Bay—”

“Wrong. I lied when I said I had no knowledge of his whereabouts. I know which of the Thirteen he’s in, but I’m not telling you how much I know because I want to guarantee your honesty. Now, tell me where precisely where he is. Get the Colony wrong again and I’ll know you’re lying and that’ll be the end of both of you.”

Smith spat out another red gob. “New Hampshire. Place called Stratham.”

John nodded. The New Hampshire part was accurate to his knowledge. He assumed the Stratham part was, as well. “You had better hope I don’t have to come back.”

“I’ll see you gutted, you fucking poof!” Smith shouted. “Defenestrated and gutted—”

“Captain?” a voice said.

John turned. Anne stood behind him, ashen-faced and soaking wet. She stood looking somehow…vacant. Etiolated and drawn. John noticed, quite quickly, that she was no longer carrying any weapon, her hands were completely empty. “Anne?”

“I should’ve told you.”

“Told me what?”

“First night we were back Royal, I was standing on the deck of the Hazard. I saw that piss-yellow moon, saw it go right over my head and evaporate like smoke. But I also saw something else. I saw Abner, Captain. He was out there and I didn’t want to believe it. But I should have. And I should’ve told you. I told some of the others but I never told you.”

John stood up. He knew this already, the rumour of what Anne saw that night had spread faster than fire. But what was the meaning of this? She looked haunted. “What is it? What’s happened?”

Hurried footsteps came down the hall, from the direction of the kitchen. John prepared himself for more of Raymond’s sons, or perhaps some extra farmhands that slipped past, but instead he saw Akil and the others rushing into the common room, all of them completely drenched and eyes wide. Dobbs and Roche were with him, and Dobbs looked faint.

“Dobbs? What is it?”

“Have you looked out there?” the boy said.

“No, I haven’t. Speak plainly.” He looked at Akil, covered in blood, leaning against a doorframe and muttering inanely in another language. “Won’t someone tell me what the bloody fuck is going on?!”

“They’re out there, Captain,” said Anne. “All of them we killed on the way in. Maybe more, I don’t know. They’re all out there. They’re all out there. Fella with the blue scarf…thought he looked familiar when I saw him. Was him you killed on the porch, Captain. He’s alive and so are the rest of them.”

Akil nodded. “Captain must believe Anne Bonny. I see them. Men I killed just now. They out there, Captain. They out there and they walking into water.”

“Walking into water?” Laurier asked. “What is he talking about, Anne?”

“Come look, Captain. Best you see it yourself.”

____

This isn’t happening, Dobbs thought, walking back out into the storm. The clouds above were swirling, and pulsating with an inner yellow light—they hadn’t been doing that before, he was sure of it. Everything had turned cold. Not just cool, as one would expect from a hard rain. But cold. Amid spectral lights and winds of an infant winter, they all stood in the rain and watched shambling shapes appear all around the plantation. Dobbs huddled close to the captain.

They came from the barn. They came from the farmhands’ house and the servants’ quarters. They moved just fine, like they had not been murdered only moments ago. Some of them carried lanterns, and waved the others on. A farmhand Dobbs had gutted stood at the edge of the water and guided the dead men into the water. It was like watching a procession into Hell. It was a caravan headed to a party, people waiting in line, waiting their turn to set foot into the water. And the water accepted them, sloshing and swirling almost as tumultuously as the clouds, swallowing them.

Dobbs felt like he was being judged, here and now, by God Almighty. For this was Hell, wasn’t it? What else could this be?

“Captain?” he said. The Ladyman had stepped out onto the porch with him, sword in hand. “Captain. There.” Dobbs pointed to a fellow he had seen killed in the farmhands’ house. “I saw Akil gut him. Split him wide open, he did. That man is…he’s walking. They’re all walking.”

“Capitaine!” LaCroix shouted.

They all turned as one, and saw five huddled forms stepping out of the house behind them. Matty and the rest of the children. The children of Raymond Smith looked all right, if a little bloodied, and walked in silent procession. One of them tripped, and the others helped him stay upright.

“Capitaine! We have to leave soon. Maybe ransom the children to—” The Frenchman stopped talking when he saw shambling forms.

Matty and the children all screamed.

Dobbs looked away from them. These ghosts—or resurrected men, or whatever they were—they did not even seem to notice Dobbs and the others. Dobbs felt warmth spread down his legs. He let the piss flow. Why not?

Dobbs found himself looking around for his father. Is he here? Did we all wind up here? Is this Fiddler’s Green? God in heaven, this isn’t what was promised. This isn’t what Abner said was—

“This is it, then,” said Jenkins, lowering himself to one knee and shaking his head ruefully. “We made it. We made it to Fiddler’s Green. We’re all dead and this is where—”

“This isn’t fucking Fiddler’s Green, you fucking twat!” the Ladyman snarled. “Now get on your feet and do not let yourself be unmanned again! That’s an order, Jenkins! The rest of you, keep your courage! Something unnatural is happening, and I won’t let it be—” He froze when he saw a large group of dark men approaching. Dobbs tensed, too, and brought up his bayonet, but froze when he saw it was slaves. A large bunch of them, perhaps all of them, recently liberated and looking oddly around at all the people walking into the churning waters of the Rio Grande.

Dobbs thought, They only look perplexed. Not horrified. They don’t understand that moments ago all these men were dead. They didn’t see us kill them all.

The slaves stopped when they saw the children of Raymond Smith. But the slaves failed to do more than acknowledge the children, they simply walked over, as if in a dream, and stared at Akil and the Ladyman. Dobbs wondered why they were staring at the latter. Then it hit him, and he had to laugh. Of all the peculiar sights tonight, they were most stymied by a man in a black dress and with makeup streaking down his wet face.

“Captain?” said Anne Bonny. “What now? Sink me, what now?”

“To the boats. Every last one of you. To the fucking boats now.”

Dobbs was shocked. “You want to go in the water?”

“Get to the boats, Dobbs,” the Ladyman repeated. “Anne, Kepler, Akil, everyone. Get to the fucking boats!”

Dobbs took a gander at the captain, and realized he had never once seen such a ghostly pall come over him. Laurier’s painted lips were parted in an unuttered question, and his eyes stared unblinkingly through rain, the lightning turning those eyes briefly into black concaves, and Dobbs shivered, for he sensed the Hellmouth in those pits. He sensed it everywhere now. It suddenly occurred to him they may not have escaped the Hellmouth, after all, but instead brought it with them.

To the island.

To all islands. Or else the rumours were true and the Hellmouth was spreading all over the world. God had forsaken them all. Not just pirates, not just Protestants or the bloody Catholics, but the whole world.

When the sludgy mass first rose from the river, displacing so much water that it rushed inland, almost up to their shins, Dobbs heard the captain screaming at him to get to the boats. But Dobbs gaped in miserable, gut-twisting fear as some black, glistening mass continued to rise from the river, a thing without permanent shape and which seemed to have many mouths that opened in silent, agonizing screams. And clinging to that shape—or perhaps growing out of it—were many people. Many, many people. So many that the mass appeared to be made of the bodies themselves. The thing continued to rise, twenty or thirty feet in the air, at least. The bodies were naked, writhing things. And moaning. Not screaming.

A thousand moaning voices as one. And wherever on its body there weren’t bodies, there were festering, pus-ejecting sores, from which fell screaming creatures curled into bloody lumps, that went splashing into the water. Dobbs had once seen a baby cut out of a woman’s belly to save the mother’s life, and by each flash of lightning, these lumps of curled-up meat appeared no different to him than the malformed fetus the doctor had set into a pan.

The creature rose even higher, on two legs. No, three. Two man-like legs, with a pendulous mass swinging between those legs. But a third leg, deformed and reverse-jointed like a dog’s hind legs, extended from its back and plunged into the Rio Grande. The Behemoth took a slow, lumbering step. The Ladyman was screaming for Dobbs to get to the fucking boat. Anne Bonny had already run in that direction, along with Akil and many of the slaves.

Then, a fist grabbed hold of Dobbs’s collar and pulled him. “Come on, nipper! We have to get the fuck outta here!” It was Jenkins. His long stringy hair whipped around by the wind. “Look alive, Dobbs! Look alive now!”

Dobbs took one step, remembering himself, half thinking he was locked in some nightmare. The last thing he saw before he turned and ran was the gaping midsection of the monster, like a stomach opening wide, and all the men they had killed tonight were climbing inside, splashing around inside its belly. Four or five great tongues spilled out of its belly and helped them up, and welcomed them inside.

They splashed through water rising up to their knees, flooding the sugarcane fields. The sugarcane slapped Dobbs in his face and at times he became lost. Then Jenkins would reach out and grab his hand and pull him back on course. Two of the freed slaves bumped him as they ran, helter-skelter, going in all directions. Jenkins called to them, “You’re going the wrong bloody way!” But no one listened. How could they, when they all felt sanity leaking from them as though from a sieve.

“Are we…in Hell, Jenkins?” he panted.

“Jes keep your fuckin’ feet, Dobbs!” Jenkins ordered. “I’ve no explanations for it! Just keep your—”

Dobbs slipped, fell, lost his musket in the rising water, and was hauled back up by Jenkins. They ran on until they came out the other side of the sugarcane field and came to a halt. For Captain Laurier and the others stood in a clearing, utterly surrounded by twenty or more torches flickering in the rain, about thirty men on horseback, all of them wearing red coats. And, steeped in darkness all around, about forty or so men aimed their rifles at them.

“John Laurier!” a voice cried above thunder and rain. “By order of the Governor of Jamaica and the Admiralty Court, as passed down from the island tribunal, you are wanted for crimes of predation: piracy, theft, pillaging, and murder, and will meet God’s judgment! You have been declared hostis humani generis: enemies of all mankind! You have been witnessed on this night committing a crime most heinous! You are hereby ordered to toss aside all weapons and surrender! Surrender yourselves, or we shall open fire!”