Pirate Blood

CHAPTER TWO-1

CHAPTER TWO THE EXECUTION

Late in the afternoon, Johnny started on his way back.

Remembering what had happened in the morning, he decided to take the longest way. He could avoid going through the Spanish area in doing so. His mother was certainly at work, plunging as usual in the suffocating smell of spices which impregnated the Passàro do Mar’s kitchen. She wouldn’t notice him, if he came home late.

He moved on along the east end of the harbour, getting over docks and road-steads. He sometimes cast a glance at the moored ships. Most of the crews had landed. He had often felt the impulse to sign on and leave Port Royal. But how? He wouldn’t bear the sea, not even for a week.

He heard Anne’s voice echoing in his mind at that moment, as powerful as only she could have, accusing him of being just like his father. He thought again over the story he had invented with Avery’s connivance.

I had to hand him some pincers, he revised it mentally, trying to look convincing even to himself. He told me to hurry up, so I turned. I didn’t notice a lower beam and I hit against it.

She might believe him, even if he could foresee her worried look, her goggle eyes and he wide-open mouth.

She was going to overwhelm him by her usual wave of scolding, about how dangerous the world was and everything else. Obviously, he expected her to ask the old man for an explanation. He would prove everything was right that same evening, when he was going to have a drink at the tavern.

I hope he won’t get drunk, he thought.

Farther on, the ground made some terracing, following a flight of steps which had been built against the walls of the harbour. Johnny walked up there without even stopping to think about it. He knew the area like the back of his hand. When he got to the top, he stopped there to look at the bay.

He had seen that sight lots of times, but he felt a different emotion that day, which he had never felt before. The dying sunset light was enveloping everything in violet brushstrokes. He felt sure for a moment that the air was even full of electricity, almost bringing some change forward.

“The wind is changing.”

Johnny winced. A man had come close to him while he hadn’t even noticed him, and he was staring at the inlet just like him. He was wearing a blue jacket and a shirt opening on his chest, tied by a green sash on his waist. He had knee-high boots on his feet. His face was pockmarked, as if he had been stung by hundreds of voracious insects and it was framed by a pair of long and thick dark sideburns, making it look as long as a beech-marten’s one.

“Something is going to happen, isn’t it?”, the boy asked him, not even knowing why he was addressing that man.

The other one nodded.

“Go back home, guy”, he told him. He put his hands on his hips and pushed his clothes aside in doing so. A sword hilt came into view. “A storm is going to break out soon. You don’t want to be around here, when that happens, do you?”

Johnny didn’t answer. He realized that he didn’t like that man. Especially when he smiled: he had his upper incisors set in gold.

He is a pirate, he thought and, while walking away, he could hear him sneer. It was a gloomy, unpleasant laughter. He turned, fearing the man was going to follow him. On the contrary, the pirate wasn’t caring at all about him.

The frantic life of the colony was dying away meanwhile. The streets were getting empty. The people who didn’t have a house to go back to, were showering inside the inns. The lamp men had started on their tour, lighting lamps and filling them with new oil. Oddly, there didn’t seem to be any dead man lying in the mud. But the night was going to be still long, to be sure about that.

Johnny walked all along the street separating him from the Pàssaro do Mar in a strange state of excitement, which he couldn’t understand. It was the fault of his meeting with the mysterious man. And he was still thinking about him, when he met one of the several guard spots scattered along the street, where a boy, about twelve years old, was hanging a warning. Some soldiers were surrounding him, looking curious.

“At last!”, one of them exclaimed

“I feared the governor had got soft”, another man added.

“Shut up”, a third one warned him. “You don’t want to be hanged too, do you?”

They went on discussing without really caring about it. It was different for Johnny. As soon as the boy had finished, he decided to move closer, attracted by the words heading on the sign.

ACCORDING TO HIS MAJESTY KING GEORGE OF ENGLAND’S WILL,

THE GOVERNOR OF PORT ROYAL SIR HENRY MORGAN

ORDERS THE EXECUTION OF THE PIRATE EMANUEL WYNNE

AT THE FIRST LIGHTS OF DAWN

He kept staring at it for a long time. After those words, there was a list of crimes Wynne had made. When he finished reading it, he started walking again.

He recollected the day when his father had taken him to watch an execution for the first time. He had put him on his shoulders, so he could see beyond the crowd. Johnny had kept laughing amused, till something had changed. His child excitement for that show had turned into horror, as soon as the rope had been passed around the prisoner’s neck. He couldn’t understand why he hadn’t expected to see him hanging there dead after a few seconds. Tears had suddenly started streaking his face.

“Why are you crying?”, his father had asked him.

“That man over there…”, he had just answered, pointing at the swaying dead body.

“He was a wicked man.” Stephen Underwood had tried to calm him down. “He had to pay for his crimes.”

Johnny had nodded, but he hadn’t perfectly understood what he was talking about. His gesture had been an instinctive one, due mainly to his irrepressible urge to go away as soon as possible.

“Just remember that you are going to meet a lot of people in your life”, Stephen had gone on. “Each of them made some mistakes. Some of them have mended their ways and decided to leave their past behind them. Some others, on the contrary, wear them proudly on their face, like sorts of masks. I’m warning you, don’t trust the latter. They will go on making mistakes and justifying themselves by saying that it’s your fault. And the worst thing is, they really believe what they are saying. Just like the man who has been executed today.”

While he was revising those words, he found himself wondering about how much he missed his father.

***

Judging from the row coming from inside the Pàssaro do Mar, he guessed that the customers had opened the dances. Someone had even started playing, since the shrill notes of a violin had joined the racket.

Johnny stopped under the porch for a moment and looked through the single window, pressing his palms against the glass. A large room made up the central body of the inn, whose walls were covered with cracked boards, reminding a lot the sides of an ancient sail boat. There was a counter at the bottom and, right on its left, the sooty mouth of a chimneypiece. The kitchen door opened on one side.

Dozens of candles were placed along the tables and on the candlesticks. The most pleasant thing in that place was just that: the light. Unlike the other inns scattered around Port Royal, Bartolomeu was proud of having the brightest one.

The boy saw him bustling about among the tables, carrying dishes and jugs to and fro. He had expected to see his mother there too, but there was no sign of her. Anne was usually the one who bustled about serving the customers.

He went back in the street and lifted his eyes to the single window in the room upstairs. The blinders were shut.

Yet he remembered having left them open.

She might have come back and shut them”, he thought. A shrill voice suddenly pierced through his head. Something might have happened to her! That bad cough never lets her alone. It’s getting worse every day.

A painful burning sensation ran through his belly. It was as if a rat had got on fire and kept gnawing his stomach in spite of that.

He ran breathlessly down the lane stretching along the inn, he opened a back door and climbed the stairs.

The sounds downstairs got blurred, muffled. It was like going through a tunnel dug inside a mountain.

And at the bottom of the tunnel, the golden sparkle of the pirate’s teeth was shining.

“Mother?”, he called out, knocking at the flat door. He didn’t get any answer from the other side. “Mother, it’s me. I’m going to come in.”

The room was enveloped in absolute darkness. There was a sharp smell of sweat inside, mixed up to something like rusty iron.

He finally identified it.

Blood.

Panic-stricken, he looked for the oil lamp on a short night table next to the door. He found it at the second attempt. He inspected the surface of that piece of furniture once more. When his fingers brushed against the linchpin, he made it click. The lamp shone with a weak flame and the light trail started to stretch on the floor, till it got to the foot of the bed. He noticed something just then. A very slight movement. Someone was moving in the shadow.

He heard a rattle at that moment, followed by a coughing fit.

That was enough to turn his doubts into certainties.

Anne was lying on the bed, her untied, long dark hair spreading in a mess on the pillow. They reminded him of the carcass of a giant octopus brought to the shore by the streams. Johnny went closer to her and she raised her eyelids a bit. Her face was cerulean, beaded with sweat. The corners of her mouth were stained with red. A blood trickle was running down her cheek, falling on the pillow where it had made a lumpy stain.

“John, is it you?”, she asked, her voice just a bit louder than a whisper. Her breast was dancing at an intermittent rhythm.

“Yes, it’s me”, he answered.

“I can’t see. My eyes are blurred.”

The boy was shocked, he didn’t know exactly what he should say. He feared that anything coming out from his mouth, could sound unconvincing.

“You’ll see, it’s nothing”, he played it down, caressing her forehead. It was icy. “You’ll feel better tomorrow morning.”

“How are you?”

“Don’t worry about me.”

The woman tried to smile. She moaned a second time, so he caught her hand.

“You must rest”, he told her.

“I know”, Anne admitted.

“Is there anything I can do for you?”

“My throat is dry.”

Johnny went to the water basin and plunged a cup into it. He went back to his mother. He sat next to her softly, placing his hand on the back of her head to help her drink. The woman swallowed the liquid greedily.

“You’ve been working so much these days. You must sleep. Sleeping will help you.”

“I’m scared”, she rattled.

“There is nothing to be scared of.”

Am I trying to convince her…or myself?, he wondered.

“Just relax”, the boy went on, trying to hide his anxiety. “I’ll go downstairs and talk with Bartolomeu now. He must need some help in the kitchen.”

“Don’t go away.”

“I’ll be back soon.” Anne’s eyes turned bright. A tear fell down her face. “I’ve already lost your father. Don’t leave me alone.”

“All right. I’ll stay here with you.”

Johnny kept listening to the woman’s breathing, which was becoming regular again, till she fell asleep. He grasped her hand once more. Only then, he allowed himself to rest.

***

The governor’s carriage took Rogers to the harbour, following the track he had suggested to the coachman along the way. A strange paranoia had started peeping out inside him. The town was swarming with spies and the last thing he wished for was being tailed by one of Morgan’s lackeys. Of course, the postilion was going to get back and he could tell him everything… so he threw a bag full of money to him, when he got down the coach.