How To Please a Pirate (34 page)

“Do you think your old crew would still be
loyal to Gabriel?” Jacquelyn asked.

“Only every man-jack of them,” Meri
affirmed.

“And do you think they could be enticed into
a little ‘dishonest’ work with the proper inducement?” A plan began
to form in Jacquelyn’s mind. It was dicey and by no means
fool-proof, but she had to try.

“What bee have ye buzzing in yer brain,
missy?” Meriwether slanted an assessing look at her.

“I promised Gabriel I wouldn’t see him hang,”
she said, hope sputtering to life for the first time since he’d
been taken. “Before God, I mean to keep my word.”

Her skin was satin and fire at once, smooth
to his touch and flame to his senses. He took her rosy nipple in
his mouth and tasted a bit of heaven. Oh, that little sound she
made as he pleasured her. He’d give anything to hear it again.

A bell tolled in the distance.

She arched into him and he gathered her
close. She spread herself to receive him, making those helpless
little noises of urgency that threatened to shred his control.

Someone was still ringing that damn
bell.

He dove into her, home at last. He—

Opened his eyes. The bell was real. Slow and
measured, it tongued a relentless message.

“They always ring the bell on hanging days.
Gives folks cause to reflect and repent if they’ve considered
taking up evil ways,” Pinckney had told him. “And time enough to
nip down to Execution Dock. The good spots go fast.”

Gabriel sighed and rose from his bed. He’d
slept remarkably well for someone who knew it was his last night on
earth. And his dreams, well, Lyn had been with him all night,
alternately passionate and tender. His cock still throbbed. It was
a pity he hadn’t been able to finish the last dream.

He scraped the dark stubble from his chin and
dressed carefully in the new suit of clothing Isabella Wren had
thoughtfully ordered for him. A condemned man was expected to
appear in his finery and thanks to Jacquelyn’s mother, Gabriel
would be turned out well enough to appear before King George
himself. He ignored the full-bottomed wig she’d sent over, clubbing
his own hair back into a neat queue. He never liked wearing a wig
in life. He doubted death would improve the experience.

Gabriel waved off Pinckney’s offer of
breakfast. Not only was the gruel unpalatable, Gabriel didn’t want
to burden his belly with something it would only purge later. To
this end, he’d shunned food since Lyn left him for the last time.
If he was bound to die, he’d make it a good death. The thought of
his own shite streaming down his kicking legs was almost worse than
hanging itself.

As he was led out into the autumn sunshine,
he experienced a strange sense of well-being, a lightness of spirit
that he surprised him. He stepped up into the ox cart that would
bear him to Execution Dock, feeling oddly thankful that it wasn’t
raining. If a man had to die, why not die on one of those rare
bright days when the world was fresh and bright and full of
promise?

The cart rattled away from Newgate, squeezing
through the twisting lanes and past the Tower. It must have rained
in the night. Puddles collected in some of the sunken cobbles
shimmering on the old streets like pools of liquid silver. Why had
he never noticed how astonishingly beautiful everything was?

Crowds were beginning to follow him. A few
jeered. One or two bowed their heads in prayer for his mortal soul.
A little boy hurled a rotten cabbage at him. It struck him squarely
on the chest, leaving a patch of muck on Gabe’s brocade waistcoat.
Gabriel smiled at the lad.

“Well thrown,” he called.

“Thanks, mate,” the urchin replied, hefting a
second cabbage and then deciding against it.

Gabriel had faced death before, in countless
skirmishes and battles and hadn’t flinched. But when the pirates
fished him from the deep and gave him a choice, he’d been afraid to
choose death. Now that the choice was made for him, he felt only
calm resignation.

And more than a little curiosity. If, as
Shakespeare said, death was the “undiscovered country,” he would
look upon this day as the start of a new adventure. Despite what
he’d told Lyn, he did talk with the priest and was assured that his
sins, though they were many, were forgiven. Gabriel wondered if his
father would be there to greet him when he stepped through death’s
portal.

The oxcart turned a sharp corner and the
gallows of Execution Dock came into view.

Please, God,
he prayed for the first
time in years
, let me not arrive in that strange new land with
shite on my breeches.

There were hundreds of people jostling on the
wharf. He could hear dozens of conversations going on around him,
all sharp and distinct. He grasped the rough wood of the oxcart’s
rails and felt each splintered indentation in the grain. All his
senses were on high alert as he looked out over the crowd who’d
come to see him hang. He almost expected to smell the color of the
harlot’s red dress as she shoved her way to the front for a better
view or the muddy brown smock and apron of the tanner’s apprentice
who’d enterprisingly climbed a flag pole.

The gallows at Wapping’s Execution Dock were
built low on the bank of the Thames, so that once a prisoner was
hung at low tide, his body might be covered over by the prescribed
three tides as a warning to others. Gabriel descended the stairs to
the dock and mounted the scaffold without assistance. To please the
crowd, Gabriel turned to the hangman and made a leg to him, as
elegantly as possible for one whose hands were bound. The
executioner nodded a silent acknowledgement behind his bizarre
leather mask. The gathering cheered Gabriel’s bravado.

He gave the same obeisance to the
stoop-shouldered official who regarded him through a raised
lorgnette. When Gabriel passed the hooded priest, he was surprised
to hear the man whisper, “Courage,” instead of intoning a
blessing.

The official wheezed through a lengthy
recitation of Gabriel’s crimes. Flashes of his life scrolled past
his vision, the blue-green water of the Caribbean as vivid and
fresh as if he were actually there again. The official droned on
and the crowd began shifting restlessly, emitting a low growl of
warning not to try its patience indefinitely.

Wind whipped up a whiff of the Thames, a
brackish stink of dying shellfish laced with tar. Gabriel shut out
the vision of that sludgy water washing over his corpse. Instead,
he conjured Lyn.

He had no regrets, save her. He should have
married her in Cornwall, taken her against her will if necessary
and Devil take the rest. But he’d never have made her happy that
way and with a start, he realized that making her happy was more
important to him than anything. Even his life. So he couldn’t have
done anything differently and the thought gave him a certain amount
of peace.

Suddenly, the official and the crowd fell
silent and he realized he was expected to speak.

“Of the crimes listed, I am guilty,” Gabriel
said, his voice ringing against the row of buildings that hugged
the waterfront. Onlookers even leaned from the second storey
windows. “And of sins unlisted, I am also guilty. So I go to a just
punishment without resentment. Of my life, I will say only that I
was blessed to have loved once and loved well. My one regret is
that I was unable to love long.”

The crowd chuckled at his attempt at gallows
humor. He noticed one wag scribbling furiously on a portable
writing desk. Gabriel’s death speech would find its way into one of
London’s ubiquitous tabloids.

He didn’t have time to wonder if the speech
would be judged good or not, for his attention was riveted to the
hangman. The noose was slipped around Gabe’s neck and the knot by
his left ear cinched tight. Gabriel took a deep breath.

Any moment now.

“Gold,” someone shouted. “Gorblimey! It’s
rainin’ gold!”

The crowd turned as one and over their heads,
Gabe saw a shower of glittering coins tumble from the upstairs
windows of one of the houses by the wharf. He caught a glimpse of
someone who looked like Lyn leaning out the window, a bright smile
pasted on her lips as she shoveled more gold onto the crowd. And
was that Hyacinth and Daisy beside her? Mrs. Beadle, the twins and
Lily were dumping treasure from the other window as quickly as they
could.

I’m seeing things
, Gabriel thought as
the trap door opened beneath his feet and the noose cut off his
wind. The rope bit his neck. No one was even looking his way now as
he frog-kicked the air beneath his feet, hoping in vain for
something to push up on. As he twisted, he saw that the guards
who’d accompanied him in the oxcart from Newgate had deserted their
posts. Even the hangman and the official were edging away, eager to
join the crowd scooping up doubloons. He was going to die utterly
alone.

Except for the priest. The holy man threw
back his hood and as Gabe’s vision tunneled, he looked into the
eyes of his favorite uncle. Eustace whipped out a dirk and sliced
the rope. Gabriel dropped a mere two feet and landed in the squishy
muck of low tide.

“Come on, man,” Eustace said, reaching a hand
down to haul Gabriel back up onto the scaffold. “Before they run
out of coin.”

Even though his hands were still bound before
him, Gabriel ripped the noose from his neck and dragged in a
lungful of air. The stink of London never smelled so sweet. Eustace
grabbed him and together, they splashed into the brackish water of
the Thames.

“You save me from hanging to drown me,
uncle?” Gabe said when they reached deeper water. Then a punt
pulled alongside with Meriwether at the oars.

“I give ye leave to come aboard, Cap’n.”

Gabe and Eustace hauled themselves over the
side of the shallow drafting craft just as the crowd ashore
realized they’d missed something. Hurrying back to the edge of
Execution Dock, the mob roared like a feral animal robbed of its
prey.

“Better let me row,” Gabe said, holding out
his hands so Eustace could free them.

“Naw, even you ain’t fast enough,” Meri said,
pointing to the small flotilla of boats being launched and headed
their way.

Gabriel fingered the rope burns on his neck.
Now that he’d had a taste of Madam Gallows’ embrace, he was not
eager to return willingly. “What now?”

“Hold fast,” Meri warned as Gabe saw the
Revenge
nose its way around a bend in the river. A long
cable, submerged in the brown muck of the Thames, now rose dripping
from the water suspended between the prow of Meri’s punt and
running up to the
Revenge’s
windlass. The punt jerked
forward, stopped, then nearly lifted from the water, shooting over
the surface as the
Revenge
reeled in the small craft like a
harpooned whale. They left the officials’ vessels bobbing in their
wake.

Once they were near enough, Gabe, Meri and
Eustace climbed up the lowered rope ladder and stepped gratefully
onto the deck of Gabe’s old pirate ship.

“Permission to come aboard?” Gabriel asked
belatedly of the new captain, Helmsby.

“Granted,” his old shipmate said. “And I
surrender the vessel to ye as well, Cap’n. Welcome ‘ome.”

The crew cheered him roundly, but he pressed
himself to the rail, watching Execution Dock grow smaller as the
Revenge
prepared to come about to sail out to sea.

“What of Jacquelyn and the children?” he
asked Meri.

“Oh, the womenfolk will make their way back
to Cornwall and we’ll pick ‘em up there. Though I don’t reckon
it’ll be a pleasant trip. Them nieces o’ yers aren’t ones to suffer
in silence,” Meriwether said. “We figure to load up the rest o’ the
treasure then. Mistress Jacquelyn promised it to the crew for their
help in yer rescue, ye see.”

The only thing Gabriel could see was a long
phalanx of Beefeaters marching along the riverside from the Tower
toward Wapping.

Toward Lyn.

Then he saw two women and a gaggle of
children being prodded into the oxcart that had drawn him from
Newgate. The guards held back the crowd, but the mob surged around
the cart. With their blood-lust cheated, they’d be in an ugly
mood.

“Make sail!” Helmsby bellowed.

“Belay that,” Gabriel said. “Lower the boat.
I have to go back.”

For the first time in Gabriel’s command, his
crew mutinied. Instead of lowering the jollyboat as ordered, they
sailed the
Revenge
further up the Thames, risking running
aground until the tide rushed back into the waterway. They hoisted
both the Jolly Roger and a red flag, signaling that they would give
no quarter. Only once they had their guns trained on the Beefeaters
swarming Execution Dock, did they consent to lower the boat for
Gabriel to return to land under a flag of truce.

“If the worst should happen, run before the
wind and get the ship out of here,” Gabriel told Helmsby before he
went over the side.

“If the worst should ‘appen, rest assured
we’ll be in the thick of it, Cap’n,” Helmsby said. “We ain’t
enjoyin’ bein’ respectable all that much in any case. Remember the
Code. Die all, die merrily.”

Gabriel and Meriwether rowed back to the dock
and stopped a few feet from the pilings. Lyn and Mrs. B. held his
nieces close in the back of the oxcart, trying to shield them but
unequal to the task. Cecil Oddbody, flanked by the stiff-ruffed
Beefeaters, stood before the cart that held all the treasure
Gabriel valued in this world. Once the Revenge’s guns rolled out of
the gun ports, the crowd had fallen back, but they still hovered in
the fringes intent on the drama being played out before them. This
was undoubtedly the best hanging of the season even if no one had
their neck stretched yet.