image [https://i.imgur.com/15eGPa6.jpg]image [https://i.imgur.com/DqimdvY.jpg]
the doldrums – A term referring to the belt around the Earth near the equator, where ships sometimes get stuck in windless waters.
THESE STARS LOOKED familiar to him. Laurier stood on the roof of a cobbler’s shop on a corner of Queen Street, facing east towards York Street, studying the red splash of hazy light that encompassed the stars, thinking they looked like a painter’s careless strokes across a black canvas. Three moons—one crescent, one gibbous, one full—appeared to stand still. The full one he studied through spyglass, and, by straining his eyes, he caught a shape every so often that looked rather dark and mysterious, almost serpentine in form, moving as though it was on the moon’s surface. But that could have merely been something in his eye, couldn’t it?
“The world is no longer as it was, is it, Akil,” he said.
From the other edge of the roof, a shadow spoke. “No, Captain.”
“No. And I think it’s now time we admit it isn’t going to return to normal. That this is normal. A mystery written across our skies each night, which robs us of sunlight and affects tides, crops, birds, geography, even time itself.” He sighed. “Is this what Blackbeard saw?”
“Blackbeard, Captain?”
John opened his timepiece and observed that it was meant to be eight o’clock in the morning. But what did that mean, anymore? Why tell time at all when not even the rooster could tell the farmer when to start the day?
“Do your people have a story for the end of the world?” he asked.
Akil spoke, but his shadowy silhouette never moved. “We believe first man was born from a bamboo stem, and the rest of the world grew up around man. First the plants, then the animals that ate the plants, and then all the, eh…animal-eaters.”
“Predators.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t say?” John pointed his spyglass back down to earth, to the long lane that led to the Produce Market. “And what about death? Where do you go when you die?”
“It is complicated. A long time ago come the chameleon, who was sent by the gods to say, ‘All men will never die.’ But on his way to give message, he stopped to eat. While he ate, a lizard was sent to say, ‘All men shall die.’ Him being much quicker than chameleon, lizard’s message was delivered first, and the law of death was made.”
John smiled. “So all men die because the chameleon was late? Fascinating. I don’t know that the Bible ever gives a reason for why men are supposed to die, only what happens after we do. But you didn’t answer my first question. What happens at the end of the world?”
“There be no end, Captain. Everything is eternal, nothing vanishes forever.”
John lowered the spyglass and swung his gaze out to sea. “I hope you are right, brother.”
They waited a few more minutes. Elsewhere, the Hazard would be coming around to the southeastern side of the island with all lights doused. Hazard could no more anchor at Port Royal’s harbour than John could walk openly in public—he and the entire crew risked arrest and seizure of the ship, so from afar she signaled by lantern-flash to the Africans sent ashore in boats, who in turn signaled from atop the hills to more Africans waiting at the peak of Blue Top Mountain, who then signaled down to yet more Africans waiting in the valley, who finally sent the last signal flare to the men who swam to shore in cold waters.
The message was relayed across the island, all the way to wherever the Hazard was now.
Because Port Royal was so lit up at night, there was no way for Laurier to receive a light signal from the shore and pick it out. So, he waited for the trio of gunshots to ring out from somewhere near the docks in quick succession. There were usually shots ringing out in Port Royal at all hours of the day. No one would notice anything peculiar.
When the shots came, he said, “There it is. Hazard is in position. We have twenty minutes. After that, Okoa has orders to leave and sail for the other side of the island. If any of us survive and make it that far, we rendezvous with Hazard at Hope Bay. Do you understand, Akil?”
“I understand, Captain.”
“Good. Then you and your men have my leave.”
Akil nodded wordlessly and he, Bogoa, and three other African warriors swung their legs over the roof, hung from the eaves by their fingers, and dropped silently into the alley and vanished.
“Dobbs,” he said, turning to the young man who had been waiting quietly behind him, one of three rifles aimed down the street towards Marshallsea Prison.
“Sir?” The young man was lying on his belly, his one eye trained down the length of the barrel. “You know what to do.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Like God’s judgment.”
“Aye, sir.”
“If we make it out of this, I’ll want you to consider sailing up to the Colonies, as I’ve told you before. I want you to marry a sweet girl and have children and forget this life. You’ve done enough, and earned your share of treasure, enough to live an easy life. You’re not notorious yet, your name isn’t on the account, and no lawmen are looking for you. You should have a clean life. And if we don’t make it out of this, well then, I’ll meet you on Fiddler’s Green. Those are my orders.”
“Aye, sir. My father is waiting there. He’ll have a mighty fine haggis waiting for us, and a porridge like his gran used to make. You’ll love it.”
“Fiddler’s Green it is, then.” Laurier pulled his pistol from its brace. Made sure it was primed.
Laurier dropped off the opposite side of the roof than the Africans had done, climbing down the stack of crates they’d used to climb atop it, and walked quickly. He moved in men’s clothing, long coat over a stained white shirt, with fur-insulated gloves and his collar pulled up because of the cold. Even John’s hair had been cut short, so as to alter his appearance, and his neck was also suffering from the cold. The longer the sun stayed away, the colder it got, and often there was a keening wind that came up from the water and trespassed down each alley.
The harbour town had grown to a full bustling city in the decade since he’d first come here. Perhaps someday Nassau would be the same, then Kingston, then the villages on St. Kitts and Dog Island and all the others. Perhaps the Republic of Pirates would truly grow and expand exactly as the Pirate Kings planned. Or perhaps the firmament would kill the world before the Republic ever had a chance to grow.
The end of the world did not deter throngs of people from moving through the streets of Port Royal. Lamplighters had their work cut out for them, constantly refilling the oil in every lantern multiple times a day. People lit torches outside their tents because, as John had heard it, thievery had begun to accelerate. Devious men worked better in the dark, and now they had darkness in abundance and it gave them every opportunity. John could certainly relate, for without the Long Night he doubted very much their ability to do what he and his crew were about to do.
As he approached the Produce Market, John passed by Anne and Jenkins, who stood up from the bench near the café and walked towards the graveyard. They signaled him that they were ready. John also saw Isaacson leaned up against a post, and tipped his tricorne to signal Isaacson to move towards the church.
John walked up the cobblestone steps of what had once been the attempts to make cobbled streets, but had partially sunk due to the last temblor and tidal wave. The market was open, for it was supposed to be morning and by God the people of Port Royal were determined to try and stay on a theoretical schedule.
John slid into the seat of an outdoor tavern and ordered arrack and drank while casting glances down High Street.
“—been asked to move all o’ that dung down to those pits they’re digging down by the Governor’s Mansion,” a man was saying in the stool next to him. It was an old fellow, talking to the barkeep. “Shovelin’ shit now, that’s me. And fer what? So’s they can grow mushrooms? What kinda sense duzzat make? We’re all done fer, anyways.”
“You’re not the only one,” said the barkeep, refilling the old fellow’s rum. “You know Davidson? Farmer up in Kingston with all the cattle brought over from the Netherlands? Well, they got a King’s Order or some such on him, demanding all his pigs. All his pigs.”
“What the bloody hell?”
“That’s what I said. But I know a fella with the militia group that went to seize them pigs. He was here yesterday—er…last night, this morning, whatever—but anyways he said the pigs are for sniffing out truffles.”
The old fellow blanched. “Truffles?”
John was only half listening. He saw lots of movement on High Street, the normal crowds going about their business, some drunken louts firing pistols into the air before the militia showed up to disperse them. Then a carriage came rolling down, moving west to east. A carriage with bars on the back door and windows. Meant for carrying prisoners.
“—aye, and what if that’s all we’ve got to eat soon? Fuckin’ mushrooms! Christ, izzat our fate if the sun don’t come back?” the old fellow was asking.
The barkeep shrugged, and picked up a mug to clean. “That’s what my mate in the militia said. Said, ‘If’n the sun don’t come back, Charlie, and stay put, everything will just keep dying off.’ He said, the only thing that grows in darkness is mushrooms. Fungus and such. There’s that mushroom farm on St. Lucia, you know? And they’re talking about building others just like it. Saying the islands in the West Indies are nice and damp for oyster mushrooms and such.” He snorted. “Imagine, all them fields of sugarcane and wheat becoming useless, and the Caribbean instead becomes a leading exporter o’ mushrooms to the world.” The barkeep had a laugh at that. “Imagine all them fields full of slaves suddenly having nothing to—”
“Excuse me,” John said, suddenly interested. “But what are you saying? A Royal Order has been issued…for pigs? And mushroom farms?
The barkeep snorted. “Aye, haven’t you heard?”
“This is happening right now? Right now as a we speak?”
“Aye,” the old fellow belched, and pushed himself away from the bar and tossed a reale to the barkeep. “All the wealthy bastards’re preparin’ fer it. Digging trenches all ’round their estates, filling them full o’ manure, sendin’ people out to St. Lucia to learn how those folk make the mushroom farms work. Apparently, the Caribbean may have a new gold mine.” The old fellow hiccupped and thumped his chest with his fist. “It’s all changin’, my brothers. All of it. We be in the doldrums now, just waitin’ to see which way the winds’ll take us next.”
John watched the old fellow walk away. Then he looked back at the barkeep. “Is any of that true?”
“Far as I know, friend. It’s all changing. Not enough days of sun, and with the cool streaks the plants can’t figure out what time o’ year it is. Haven’t you noticed the trees in the forest dying?”
John shook his head. “I’ve been out to sea for a while.”
“Yes, well, if there’s not enough green, cattle can’t eat. Cattle can’t eat, cattle can’t live. There’s been fewer meats around. Fish was doing fine until a month ago, then the fishermen said they found bunches of ’em just floating. Dead and rotting. Dead whales, too. And dolphins beaching themselves—confused about which way is land, maybe? Like the birds? I dunno.”
“But people can’t live off mushrooms alone.”
“They can’t,” said the barkeep. “But pigs and rodents can eat almost anything. So, the plan is, people eat what truffles they can, and start feeding their livestock the same. Then, they can eat their livestock. Governor Hamilton is having a special pig farm built right here in Royal. The thinking is, folks’ll have to pay the government for meat—pay with mushrooms. Or else build their own such livestock racket.”
“Pay for meat with mushrooms? But what about coin? What about—”
“What about the value of gold and silver and such, yes, that is the question. You want another?” He pointed at John’s mug.
“No, thank you, friend.” John laid down his reales. He saw the carriage pull to a halt in front of Marshallsea Prison. “I think I’ve had enough for one day.”
“Sure you don’t want one more? Looks like it’s going to be another Long Night.”
John watched men file out of the carriage and into the prison. He looked across the street to the Old Church. Saw all his people in position. Akil and Bogoa leaned against a post, pretending to talk. Roche sat on a bench with two men arguing. Those two men were Jenkins and one of Hazard’s carpenters named Starr. Noala was crossing the street, her child strapped to her back, sleeping. LaCroix was at a fruit stand haggling over melons that had gone bad. Anne wasn’t anywhere to be seen, but that usually meant she was in position. John looked at the cobbler’s shop up the street, where Dobbs was ensconced in shadow. Four of the Africans stood talking to a constable—their job for the moment was to keep any militia or law officials distracted.
When he looked back at Marshallsea Prison’s front gate, he saw the front door open. A dark man came shuffling out, hobbled in chains.
John’s heart beat faster, and then was squeezed.
“Did you hear what I said?” the barkeep called after him. “Said it’s going to be another Long Night.”
John started across the street. “They all are. Now.”
____
It was cold. Benjamin thought it had never been so cold in all his years in the Caribbean. God be good, where is the sun? The horror of this new reality they had all recently accepted struck him anew. What is happening to the World? What has the Messenger and his Master wrought? Does he have a Master? Or Masters? Where is the sun? What hole did we fall into? And look at how we all just accept it. God, those three moons, and this air…The dampness that was always so omnipresent, and which usually made the air humid, now lent a frigidity to the world. And those stars…White spackles he no longer recognized, set against a red Milky Way-like structure that spanned the Long Night sky. Three moons of varying phases dominated the sky, their combined light making the lanterns along High Street redundant.
“Move,” a guard said.
A carriage awaited him. Two horses would take him to Fort Carlisle, if what Munt said in his letter was true, and there he would be tried in secret and executed. Two horses to draw him to his doom. His father had warned him. Told him his African heritage would someday overtake his White heritage in the eyes of England and the World. Two horses to carry him towards his destiny.
Benjamin looked at his shackled wrists. His hands weren’t shaking anymore. In fact, his mind was still turning with the wonders of the firmament, and the eternal mystery of what had gone wrong with God’s machinations that sundered reality so. Cold detachment. It removed him from the truth.
The man stepping down from the carriage’s bench held a torch, and he sifted through a large keyring to find the right key to unlock the door on the carriage’s side, and opened it for Benjamin. Inside was a dark maw, and once he stepped through the rest of his story would be written as simply a date, the time of his execution, nothing else of significance to record. Benjamin Vhingfrith would exit history as quietly as he had entered it, his brief time on this Earth and on the plantation and learning to read by his father’s side and learning his mother’s African recipes and songs—none of it had amounted to anything. Not the love he had shared with John, not the battle to be seen as an equal with all other white businessmen, none of it. None of it would matter.
I will simply vanish.
Benjamin experienced what all men must, that while he had not been so vain as to suppose God would choose him above all men to live forever, having his life abrogated and tied off so unceremoniously was stark and horrifying—
Look to the graveyard.
If not there, the Produce Market.
And if not there, the Old Church.
Benjamin had not allowed hope to steal his courage. The sight of the augmented Milky Way and the reminder of the Messenger’s last words and the look of the carriage’s dark inner maw was enough to have distracted him temporarily. He was glad of the distraction, because he did not want to hold out hope without good reason. But now, feeling himself pushed towards the carriage by the hands of his countrymen, he permitted himself to look around High Street.
The messenger is not important.
His senses were never more heightened than now. A horse passed in front of him, shitting as it went. The wind let him smell it. A pair of small girls held onto their mother’s dress as she crossed the street with a basket of fruit in her hand. A group of drunken sailors held their bottles of rum high and sang “Goodbye, Fare Thee Well” while one of them danced in a circle. Oh God, how many times have I heard the crew sing that song when the waters were choppy and the ship was wind-rode—
A form caught his eye. A man walking in a grey long coat. The swagger was unmistakable, though he wasn’t accustomed to seeing it in man’s clothing. The form moved at the intersection around the graveyard and the Old Church. A cluster of slaves being led by their masters blocked his view. Benjamin’s eyes raked High Street to find the form again, and then caught sight of five or six men standing at the statue of the Virgin Mary. He thought he recognized one or two of them—
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
I brought help, Munt’s message had read.
“Go on, get in,” said one of the guards. A pair of militiamen walked up with muskets drawn, bayonets aimed at him. Benjamin started forward, the chains around his wrists and ankles chattering like imps drawing him into Hell.
I brought help.
Benjamin was pushed towards the black maw. His right foot touched the step. His eyes stayed fixed on the statue, then moved across the group of slaves…all of whom he now noticed were not in chains, and the white man leading them…he appeared awfully familiar.
I brought help, Munt’s message had read.
Benjamin’s mind turned, and rapidly caught on. He looked again for the dark form in the long coat. Couldn’t find him.
Oh, God. No. No, no, no. He’s going to get himself—No! Not for me. No, God, please—
And yet hope filled his heart. For the briefest moment he felt as if anything might happen.
But it will get John killed. There will be no surviving the full wrath of the King’s Militia.
“Lads,” he said, and pushed back slightly against their urgent hands. Benjamin could not believe he was doing this, but he suddenly felt himself fastened by duty. And love. “Lads, I have to tell you…put me back in the dungeon. I’ll sit there peacefully and await the Court’s ruling there. If it be my day, then execute me down there. Down there in my cell—”
“I said get in!”
A hand was on the back of his head, pushing him forward. But Benjamin had to stop them. Death of Englishmen on his account was unacceptable, as was the death of John Laurier. But he could not tell the guards John was here, no more than he could tell John to call this off. “No, wait! Listen! Just leave me be! Leave me be down in the bloody—”
It felt like a sledgehammer hit him in his gut. He didn’t know which guard hit him, but Benjamin collapsed to his knees, his lungs and guts feeling constricted by a great fist. Many fists hauled him to his feet roughly and shoved him up the ladder and into the carriage. They were laughing at him.
Then unfamiliar rage overtook him, and he thought, Kill them, John. Kill them all.
____
“Cold,” said Bogoa, shivering.
“Mm.” Akil glanced west up High Street and saw that the others had adequately delayed a constable and a pair of militiamen. Mosi and Omari were in the guise of buccaneers, recently left ashore and looking for work. They feigned not understanding any English—not very hard for them—and pawed at the constable and militiamen, beseeching them for work. The two militiamen were becoming visibly annoyed.
Fifty-seven. Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine.
“Do you think—the sun shines—back home, rafiki?” Bogoa wheezed, leaning against a post. The machete in his left hand was hidden behind his back. “Do you think perhaps—these Long Nights—are only a curse set upon the white men?”
Akil kept counting. Sixty. Sixty-one. Sixty-two.
“I don’t know.” Akil’s eyes ranged across the street, to where Laurier had been standing. Where did he go?
Sixty-three. Sixty-four. Sixty-five.
“If we—pool our shares—of the treasure, we have—enough to buy—our own boat,” Bogoa went on, slurring most of his words.
“Who told you that?”
“I worked it out—on my own.”
“You can’t count above ten.”
“And I counted—many tens—of coins—in our share.”
Akil looked back at him. Korbu and Yaman stood behind Bogoa, ensconced in the alley’s deep shadow. “Do any of you know how to navigate? How to pilot?” he asked. Seventy-one. Seventy-two. Seventh-three. “I thought so. And none of us knows how to navigate during the Long Night when even the whites don’t yet have a system for it. So tell me, how do we reach Africa from here? Do any of you know? Which way is it? Point and show me.”
They all remained silent, until Bogoa wheezed, “With spare coins—we can buy navigators—and pilots to take us there.”
“Let’s discuss this later.” Seventy-eight. Seventy-nine. Eighty. Eighty-one.
“We should discuss it—now. Before we—throw our lives away for—”
“Eighty-two.”
“What?”
Akil had counted the people in the street. Not only that, but he’d mentally grouped them together, clocked their apparent trajectories and intended destinations—the fruit stands, the Court House, the brothel down the street—he could guess where each person or group was heading the same way he’d gotten to sense the change in winds at sea before it actually happened. “Eighty-two people.” Akil pointed to the carriage, in which Vhingfrith had just been abused and tossed. The driver flicked the reins and it started forward. “As it comes, they will part like the sea before the cut-water,” he said.
“What?”
“The people. They will part around the wagon. We should be on either side of the crowd.” The plan just sprang to mind, but he instantly believed in it and knew the Ladyman would approve and follow his lead. They were not close friends, he and Laurier, but there was some kind of rigid respect that formed during the planning stages of the attack on Raymond Smith’s plantation, the many arguments and refinements on the plan to attack Bateria de la Lanza, and trust had formed in the battle to escape. “Yaman, Korbu, go to the left of the carriage. Yaman, lean on Korbu like you’re injured or drunk. Bogoa, join me on the right. Let’s go.”
They obeyed wordlessly. As the carriage approached the Produce Market, the four Africans merged with the crowd on the street. Akil blended in, looking over at Bogoa and speaking nonsense in their own language while laughing like they shared a joke. When the crowd parted for the carriage, they went right, pretending not to care.
Akil then gave a loud bird call. The green pigeon of his homeland, one of the first bird calls his father ever taught him, and a distinct sound Noala knew to listen for. It meant Akil’s team had found a suitable position.
They were ready.
Two prison guards lounging on top of the carriage with their rifles in their laps heard the strange bird call, and now looked around for a moment in puzzlement. Three militiamen riding behind on horses came around the front to see what was the commotion. Akil, Bogoa, Yaman, and Korbu came in behind them.
Then, from the graveyard, Noala went running, clutching her baby as Jenkins and Isaacson came chasing after her, laughing and picking up horse dung from the street and flinging it at her. Noala cursed them, Isaacson pulled out his prick to wiggle it at her, and Jenkins blocked her path as she tried to run. A few people along the street laughed. A woman gasped and covered her son’s eyes as she ushered him away.
The carriage slowed down and the driver shouted at them to move. Somewhere on High Street someone fired a pistol into the air. Perfectly normal for Port Royal. The driver shouted at Isaacson and Jenkins to leave the Negro woman alone or else take their game someplace else. Akil saw one of the guards sitting atop the carriage slump, then slide off. Distantly, there came the report of a rifle. No one noticed the dead man fall, because someone else fired elsewhere along High Street, to help mask Dobbs’s shot, and people were still laughing at Isaacson’s and Jenkins’s play.
Noala’s baby started to cry, and she played it up, dropping to her knees and weeping until the constable Omari and Mosi had been distracting came running over to drag Noala out of the street. The constable chastised Isaacson and Jenkins.
It all happened so fast, and by the time the second guard on the carriage roof realized his partner was in trouble, Dobbs’s second shot ripped through his throat. Both guards fell into the mud. One of the militiaman saw the movement in the dark, spun his horse around, and pulled out a sword. “Hey!” he cried. And then Korbu grabbed him off his horse and dragged him down into the mud, where Yaman put his hatchet in the white man’s skull.
The militiamen shouted in alarm. One drew his pistol. But he didn’t know he was surrounded. Akil was already behind him, machete drawn, and he hacked at the horse’s hind legs and it fell over, the militiaman’s shot going wild. Bogoa leapt on him with machete and ripped the white man’s throat open.
Screams all over High Street.
“Murder!” someone cried. “Murderous Negroes!”
The other Africans who had been walking in chains, pretending to be slaves following Jaime, now pulled knives and leapt into the fray.
Akil ran for the carriage, but the driver snapped the reins and the horses wasted no time. Someone fired a shot through the crowd and Akil heard it go past his ear and he threw himself behind a stack of boxes outside the brothel. Peeking around the side, he saw the constable standing in the street, tossing his spent pistol to the ground and drawing a club.
The final militiaman turned his horse round and round in circles, unsure of the treachery, aiming his pistol at a panicking throng of people. Bogoa, Korbu, and the other Africans all grabbed the final militiaman off his horse and wrestled him to the ground and hacked him to pieces. Akil watched the carriage tear away down the street. He thought about grabbing the first militiaman’s horse but he didn’t know how to ride. Then, in a blur of motion, a dark shape ran out from the Old Church and leapt atop the horse. It was the Brazilian, and he was in pursuit.
____
Roche Brasiliano kicked his heels into the horse’s side. He heard the beast’s confused, panicked breathing, obeying a new master that had leapt into its saddle. He grunted in time along with it, coming alongside the carriage’s driver. As he raced past the carriage door he saw a pair of black hands grab hold of the bars. Captain Vhingfrith looked out at Roche, cat’s-eye glittering in the triple moonlight. Roche laughed as he stood up in the saddle, pressing his feet into the stirrups. All around him people screamed, unclear about the purpose of the all the violence. A one-legged sailor didn’t get out of the way of the carriage in time and was trampled beneath the horses’ hooves and the wheels smashed into the dead man and the carriage jumped, just as Roche leapt over.
And as soon as his hands grabbed hold of the carriage’s roof, that’s when the sky decided to let loose a volley. The rain began suddenly, clouds congealing fast and swirling around the moons with impossible speed. Roche clung to the carriage’s side, putting a foot in between the bars of the door, and looking up into the unnatural storm and laughing.
Someone shot him. A bullet entered his back and exited his side. He climbed up to the roof, still laughing, and weeping, and yelling. A storm of emotions moved through Roche at almost all times, sadness and happiness were the same thing, as were joy and rage. Kneeling, he reached behind and pulled one of the axes from his belt loop. The rain and the moonlights drew an ominous figure standing up from the driver’s seat. Another guard, a rifle in his hands. Roche lunged and batted it away, the bullet went somewhere in the night. He collided with the guard, still laughing, still crying.
The guard tried using his rifle as a shield against the Brazilian but he was too slender, too slight to deal with Roche’s strength, and they fought awkwardly in the seat beside the driver until Roche hauled off with his axe and struck low. The first chop smashed the guard’s knee, but Roche respected him because he did not buckle. The second chop embedded the blade in his thigh, and this time the guard fell off the carriage and grabbed hold of Roche’s collar on the way down and dragged them both off the carriage and into the mud.
As the carriage raced on without him, Roche laughed, and cried, as he stood over the guard and chopped his neck until the head came off. Then he held the head up high just as lightning struck, and when he spotted the Behemoth rising up from the docks, up from the sea, shedding parts of his robe made of human flesh, Roche fell to his knees, clutching his side and laughing.
And crying.
____
Dobbs took another shot at the driver. The bullet appeared to rip his shoulder but the driver, goddamn him, never let go of the reins and the carriage went roaring past the cobbler’s shop where Dobbs still sat on the roof. He tossed his spent rifle next to the others and left them there, jerking out his pistol and running to the edge of the roof and leaping to the neighbouring one. The rain made it slippery, difficult to see, difficult to hear. He stumbled when he landed and ran over a thatched roof, then leapt onto the scaffolding surrounding a livery before jumping down onto the wooden roof of a scribe’s office and darting across a row of more uneven rooftops.
A whistle had gone up. And now an alarm bell.
“Up there!” someone shouted. “There! The shooter is there!”
Dobbs didn’t have to look for the source. He finally came to a gap too wide to jump, bit down on the rope hanging from his pistol’s handle, and used both hands to lower himself over the ledge and dropped into a puddle beside a sailor fucking his whore. He went through the zigzagging alleyways, climbed over a wooden fence, then a stone wall, got caught in a clothesline like a fly in a spider’s web and fought to get free. A pair of Africans he didn’t recognize were up ahead, dancing in the rain with a naked paike. When one of them saw him rushing them, they mistook him for an ambusher and drew their pistols and fired just as he ducked for cover behind a seamstress’s shop. Then a militiaman appeared and mistook them for assassins, and fired upon them.
Bent lightning lit up the night, revealing to him Abner Crane standing at the mouth of the alley, coated in seaweed. Dobbs gasped, froze, and aimed his pistol. The thunder was deafening and Abner’s words were lost in the cacophony of bells and whistles and shouting. In the blink of an eye, the lightning was gone, and so was Abner.
Dobbs stood a moment, panting. Then he ran forward, inspected the area where he’d seen the old quartermaster, and found footprints in the mud, precisely where Abner had been standing.
“Almighty God,” he whispered. “Where’ve you gone?”
“You there!” said a black-coated man emerging from the alley behind him.
Dobbs turned. Saw the man’s face. His hat. His manicured beard. The club in his hand. His instincts told him to do it, and so he fired into the constable’s face. The constable dropped dead there in the mud. The smoke filled Dobbs’s nostrils and he staggered backward. It was the first time he had never killed a man of the Law.
“Oh, son,” said Abner. Dobbs looked around but couldn’t see him. “What have you done? There’s no going back now. No. No going back.”
“God in heaven…” Dobbs whispered it again and again as he backed away from the corpse he’d made, and dropped the pistol and pulled out another one and ran in a direction. He didn’t know to where. Eventually he emerged onto Queen Street and was nearly knocked over when a panicking mob ran screaming into him. An old fellow bounced off him and fell spiraling to the rutted street and looked towards the docks like God had forsaken him.
And when Dobbs looked to the docks, he understood the man’s terror. The Behemoth was here, upon the shore, looking just as it had half a year ago, three colossal and malformed legs, reverse-jointed like a dog’s, each one coated in the writing bodies of humans that had been skinned alive.
And the people, they ran for their lives. Some of them, God bless them, they scooped up lost children or old women that had been knocked over. But most of them stepped over the fallen and never looked back. The Behemoth towered above them, its head reaching the gibbous moon as it swayed like doom, each thundering footstep causing tremors that Dobbs felt in his chest. Horses ran like headless chickens, every which way without regard for other life. A hot breath—and he knew it was breath, and not just wind—blew through the streets and stank of decay and ammonia and old moss.
“Dobbs!” someone shouted. He turned and pointed his pistol into the crowd. He saw Isaacson coming towards him. Limping. Smiling. So happy to see a friendly face. Laurier’s words suddenly returned to him: You have my permission to kill him. The time and place may be of your choosing. “Dobbs, my boy! Come on, we have to get to the ship—”
The memory assailed him. Isaacson huddled over him in darkness in the forecastle, one hand clamped over his mouth, the other reaching into his pants and groping.
“Come on, lad!” Isaacson grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him up the street. “Come on, the others’ll be waiting for us there!”
“Yes,” Dobbs said, joining him. “Yes. We have to…get back to the ship.”
____
The carriage roared down the street but it had to slow down to make the turn away from Queen Street. Anne Bonny ran parallel to it from the alleys, never losing sight of it for long. The Behemoth rose above everything, every building and hill, but it was moving slowly and she had a job she had sworn to do. She never let the carriage get too far. She was now close enough to see the driver slumped on his bench, clutching where Dobbs had nicked him.
She knew Port Royal well enough. If the driver wanted certain help, then he would carry on to his intended destination. To get to Fort Carlisle, you had to go all the way around the Produce Market. No other way to reach it.
Long ago, Anne had sworn to her man Jack Rackham that she would never come ashore without him. It was a dream of his, that if she ever did, she wouldn’t ever leave. But Captain Laurier said this needed doing and the others had voted on it and agreed to come. And let’s be honest, Anne, she told herself, you were starting to believe all that stuff was horseshit. It had been easy to dismiss it all. Until she saw the Behemoth rising higher.
Now all dreams and nightmares seemed possible.
But the carriage was within reach, and she had given her word. So when the carriage rounded the north end of the Produce Market and she saw her chance, Anne tore out from the alley and ran up behind the carriage and jumped. Her fingertips just barely touched the back handles and her legs dragged in the street until she could pull herself up onto the back step. She climbed up onto the roof, the rain blinding her with great gobs, and she half slid and half crawled over the roof. She reached for the pistol at her side. Realized it had come out of its holster somewhere. Reached for the one tucked in her waistline and jerked it out and pressed it to the back of the driver’s head and fired.
The head snapped forward and the body sagged and fell against the horses and was trampled.
Anne climbed into the seat, clambered around in the darkness and the wind and the wet for the reins. A bolt of lightning showed Fort Carlisle ahead. People who hadn’t yet seen the Behemoth were holding jackets over their heads and running home, running towards their apartments and hovels on Lime Street. They thought the worst thing right now was the sudden storm.
Anne heard Abner Crane’s voice in her ears, “You’re about to witness all I have, Anne Bonny. And it ain’t pretty. Sweet Jesus, girl, it ain’t pretty at all.”
She straightened herself in the bench. Finally found the reins. Ignored Abner’s voice. Pulled the carriage to a stop. Panting, shivering in the freezing rain, she looked up and down the street and saw all the ghosts.
“God Almighty, Jack. Good God in bloody fuckin’ heaven.”
They filled the streets like mourners, come to give a fare-thee-well to a dead king. Sixty or more. They looked at her, and at each other, as though something had woken them all in the night. They wore shabby clothes and were untouched by the rain. Their faces were pale and glowed faintly in the moonlights. Anne somehow knew it was the moonlights that did that. But the glow faded the farther down from their heads it went, until their feet were nearly transparent. They were half corporeal, half incorporeal, sort of floating over the ground yet also trudging their feet through the mud.
Anne’s guts were twisted. To her, it did not look like any of them understood how they’d gotten here. They appeared lost, confused. When the first one, a small girl, started walking into the street, the others watched Anne. As if learning from her, they started walking towards the carriage.
“Who’s there?” someone said. It was Vhingfrith, hollering from the back of the carriage.
Anne backed away from the crowd of spectres, pointing her spent pistol at them. “I’m your driver now, Captain Vhingfrith.”
“Anne? You see them, too?”
“Aye,” she croaked. “I see them.”
“What do you think we should do?”
“Seeing as how you’re the one’s locked up, only thing that matters right now is what I do.”
“Fair point. What are you going to do?”
The spectres kept shambling towards the carriage. Their eyes shimmered green, and Anne thought she had never seen such a shade of green. She felt something moving through her. Heard voices all around, almost conversational, none of them quite human. The horses stirred and whinnied and tried to back up—
“If you’re looking for suggestions, I think we turn around and run. Now.”
“You hear that?” she called back.
“I do.”
“What are they doing?”
“I don’t know—”
“You’re the one knows all about the bloody firmament!”
“I’m no expert, but if they’re anything like the Messenger I encountered, you don’t want to be hearing their voices. Not up close.”
“Messenger?”
“Anne, get us out of here!”
The voices pressed on her heart, her chest, her loins and guts and joints, and she thought she might’ve wet herself. Hard to tell in all this damn rain. The rain…it still doesn’t touch them. “Do…do you think they know where Jack is? What happened to him?”
“What?”
“Bloody Jack Rackham! Is he in here somewhere—”
“Anne, if you’re feeling what I’m feeling, you must resist it. I don’t know what force this is, but it wants us fixated on it! Anne, on your life, do not let us just sit here—”
A cold hand touched her. She looked to her left and gasped. She hadn’t seen the woman’s ghost approaching from there. A fat woman, with a kind smile and plaintive eyes. She made Anne feel loved. Nothing could have horrified her more, and she snapped the reins and the horses were only too glad to surge forth and tear through the ghosts, which, to Anne’s shock, dissipated like chalk dust blown to the wind, swirling and gathering around her. She breathed some of it in and coughed because it tasted like copper and rancid water. She heard Vhingfrith coughing, too.
Anne directed the horses into an alley that led through the middle of the Produce Market and away from Fort Carlisle. Now she was pointed south, towards the tall rooftops, towards the rising black shape of the Behemoth. She stared at it, and wondered, Is this what you saw, Jack? It is, isn’t it? I’m not leaving here alive.
“You did well, Anne! You did very well!”
Ahead in the rain, a man stepped out from the cover of a shop stall. He aimed his rifle and fired, hitting one of the horses and the beast went down and the other horse jerked sideways when it tripped over the first. The carriage slewed sideways, its rear end smashing through stalls that had been abandoned in the tumult and one of its wheels got lodged on something and brought the carriage to an almost complete halt, flinging Anne from the driver’s seat. When she hit the cobblestones, she did so headfirst, feeling her brain crash against her inner skull. She rolled past the feet of a spectre, a little boy who saw her take her spill and covered his mouth with his hands to try and stifle his laughter.
The world spun. She blacked out a moment, then woke up.
The downpour had intensified. She was lying in a deep puddle.
Anne tried to stand. But a rifle stock hit her in the chin and knocked out a tooth. She went down tasting her own blood and the ghost-dust. Lying on her back, in the stinking offal, she gazed up at the moons, around which the storm clouds circled like giant whirlpools. Something was flying down from them, eel-like but with many sets of wings. They flew towards the Behemoth and Anne never saw them again.
The world went blurry. She felt like sleeping. When she closed her eyes, the spectral boy was still tittering to himself.