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Authors: C. Robert Cargill

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BOOK: Queen of the Dark Things
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“All the things that bring us ecstasy are banned, held captive by the new Pharisees. They put their pope on a throne of gold and silver and let him rework both history and the word that was passed down to us through their lips. And the lips of those before them. And of those before
them
. And the longer the word of God stays on earth, the longer it is corrupted to justify the illusion. Make no mistake. They hold hostage everything we hold dear to maintain their own control of it. Even the pope has his whores.” He turned to look at his burly shipmate, shuffling close behind him in the sand. “Have you ever fucked a whore proper, son?” he asked him.

“What?” asked the man, looking up from the ground.

“A whore, son. A whore. Have you ever dropped a few guilders in the cup of one after dropping a few in her box?”

The man grunted, nodding, as if it was a stupid question. He was a sailor. Of course he'd been with his fair share of whores.

“When she shined your knob, who did it hurt? No one. That's the Lord's work. Pleasure for one, rent and food for another. Why would He condemn us to Hell for that? The Pharisees tell us that a roll with a lady is all it takes to burn forever in a lake of fire. But if the Lord has a plan for us, really has a plan for us all, why would He plan for us to go to Hell? To burn. To suffer. What God would do that? Not one who loves us. One who loves us has created an afterlife, a place where we are free from pain, free from suffering, and only know the orgiastic joy of blissful wholeness.”

“So you're saying there ain't no Hell?” asked another sailor, following a little farther back.

“I'm saying that not only is there no Hell, but no Devil. He's a ghost story meant to keep the finer things in life under lock and key in our captain's, our captor's, bedchamber. God wants only for us to do what makes us happy. He sorts out the rest.”

The second sailor spoke up again, this time leaning closer. “You're saying it's okay to kill?”

“Why wouldn't it be? Killing someone only sends them to the great reward, right? And taking from someone only encourages them to take for themselves. Have you ever looked closely at the Ten Commandments?”

A third sailor spoke up. “There are no Ten Commandments south of the equator. Every sailor knows that.” He laughed, though no one laughed with him.

“But do you
know
them?” asked Jeronimus of the third sailor, unfazed.

“I know them,” said the sailor, soberly. “By heart.”

“We all do. But have you ever thought about them? The man in charge goes up a mountain and comes back down with ten rules that keep him and his rich friends rich and in charge. Do not steal, do not murder, obey your elders, do not covet their wives—of which they had many—do not speak ill of the Lord who passed down these laws nor dare to question or speak for Him, worship no other god who might make other laws. These aren't rules to keep us free, they are rules telling you to know your place and take only what the rich deign to give to you. These are not the laws of God, they are the laws of man designed only to rule over other men. God wants us to be happy. God wants us to take what we want. God wants us to rule for ourselves. The only way to truly be free is to free yourself of your own conscience.”

“That's easy to say now,” said the soldier farthest in back. “But let's see what you say in a few moments' time.”

Jeronimus smiled wide, his teeth speckled with bird guts, several chipped or missing from a few too many beatings. “Aye,” he said. “More to the point, in a few moments' time, we'll see just how right I am after all.”

The seven looked out together over the island—a flat, mile-wide coral sand wasteland, no more than three feet above sea level, devoid of bush or tree, surrounded by the Indian Ocean, its only markers three shoddy wooden gallows, constructed from the skeleton of the
Batavia
, which itself was wrecked and battered to pieces by the tide a scant half mile away. Beside the closest gallows was a barrel, and beside that a box on which sat Wiebbe Hayes, captain of the guard, his chin held high, a sly, proud smile on his lips, hammer and chisel in his hands. Behind him stood Fleet Commander Francisco Palsaert—a boorish, sweaty gnome of a Dutch East India Trading Company man who rubbed his fat little fingers together, grinning like a child molester.

“Cornelisz,” he said. “You're up.”

Jeronimus knelt before the barrel, placing his left hand atop it, eyes cold and expressionless. “I'll be back for these later,” he said to Hayes.

Hayes nodded, placing the chisel squarely on Jeronimus's wrist. “Jeronimus Cornelisz, you have been tried and convicted of mutiny, complicit in the deaths of one hundred and twenty souls. Your guilt is not in doubt. Have you anything to say before your sentence is carried out?”

“Yes. Had fortune favored me just a little more, it would be your hand up on this barrel, Hayes. Not mine.”

Hayes nodded knowingly. “Though I doubt you would have granted me the courtesy of the barrel.”

Jeronimus flashed the hint of a smile, concealing it as quickly as it came. “You're probably right.”

Hayes brought the hammer down.

Jeronimus neither winced nor cried out as the chisel severed his hand from his arm; he didn't even blink. He simply stared into the soldier's eyes as he removed his gushing stump from the barrel, placing his right hand directly atop the dismembered left.

“Remove the hand,” ordered Palsaert.

“No,” said Jeronimus flatly. “They're a set. They stay together.”

The hammer came down again, separating the second hand, Jeronimus once again making nary a sound.

A soldier grabbed him by his armpits, hoisting him back to his feet, and then led him to the gallows where a crudely assembled ladder awaited him. Jeronimus climbed up, step by step, the ladder creaking beneath him, bowing his head for the executioner to slip the noose around his neck. Palsaert stepped forward, boisterously offering a morsel of civility. “May God have mercy on your soul.”

Jeronimus looked up, smiling, blood spurting from two dismembered stumps. “He already has.”

The executioner kicked the ladder out from under him. The mutineer dropped less than a yard; not quite far enough to kill him, just far enough to tighten the rope. There he spun, slowly choking, head swelling up like a cherry tomato, his toes stretching, scraping barely, cruelly, at the sand inches beneath his heel.

Then, one by one, Hayes took the right hand of each of the remaining sailors before he was led to his own noose, to spin and choke slowly in the sun. Each spat a curse at Jeronimus before his own ladder was kicked out from under him, and while no one would ever speak or write of it in their accounts, many thought to themselves that day that they saw Jeronimus smile each time they did, even as the life was slowly choking out of him.

And once the last man had been hung and the life finally drained from his body, Palsaert, Hayes, and the remaining soldiers each made their way to the boats one by one, leaving the conspirators behind to rot where they died.

On the shore, sitting in a boat of their own, Wouter Looes and Jan Pelgrom de Bye waited in chains, their hands cuffed to their feet. Looes was a grizzled sea dog covered in scars, a willing mutineer and right-hand man to Jeronimus; Pelgrom was a thin, blond, eighteen-year-old cabin boy who had only committed one murder—and that under duress. While each of the other mutineers had lied about their involvement or intent in the mutiny, these two fell upon their knees before the seaside court and begged its mercy. Palsaert granted it, though the extent of his mercy was questionable.

“You see the fate you escaped?” asked Palsaert of his captives.

Both men nodded silently.

“Let those images fester, gentlemen. For while your fate is in your hands, know that no manner of death could be as awful as that.” He turned to Hayes. “Unshackle them.” As Hayes did, Palsaert raised a stiff arm to the horizon and continued to speak. “Eighty-odd kilometers from here is a land filled with monsters and savages. No civilized man has settled it. Maybe you'll make it; maybe you won't. Your lives are your own now. The only thing I promise you is that if I ever see your faces again, I will have you hanged before the sun sets on that day. Good-bye, gentlemen. May God have mercy on your souls.”

He motioned to Hayes who gave the boat a good, swift kick into the water. Looes and Pelgrom immediately set to rowing, knowing that what little food and water Palsaert's meager mercy had granted them would be gone before they saw anything resembling land. It would take only minutes for their small craft to vanish into the horizon and their names into legend.

And once they were gone, Palsaert gave the order and the last remnants of the crew of the
Batavia
set back out for Java, never to set eyes on these islands again.

T
HE HANDLESS SHADOWS
hung long in the noonday sun, lifeless as their bodies, slightly twitching, swaying in the breeze. Slowly, as the boats sailed away, the shadows' twitches became more pronounced. And then they became movements. And the movements became dancing. And finally the shadows wrestled away from their bodies, loosed from the moorings of their mortal shells, free to roam and stand up on their own, no longer bound to the flat of the ground. They stood up, square faced, boxy, and malformed, racing for the nearest pools of shadow before the sun could strike them down.

They hid in the dark of the barrel and of the rocks and of the shadows of the posts that held up the gallows. There they waited, watching as their old bodies swayed, shadowless, birds swarming to pick them apart, tearing out their innards, pecking out their eyes. And once the day had run its course and the sun had sunk slowly behind the sea, and the boats had all sailed far, far away, the shadows crept out into the night looking for their hands. But they were nowhere to be found, having been carried off hours before by the birds.

Disappointed, with the moon rising on the water, the shadows turned into crows—their feathers formed from darkness, their eyes a shiny black—flapping off beneath the stars toward an island thousands of miles away. Java.

A
RIAEN
J
ACOBSZ WAS
strong. He'd endured torture, threats, and all manner of inquiry. And as a captain and skipper of the
Batavia,
it would take more than the accusations of known mutineers, murderers, and thieves to have him executed. The company needed him to confess. It was the last privilege his station would afford him. Jacobsz would never give them the satisfaction. No matter how guilty he truly was.

His cell was small and windowless, stuffy with the sweat of tropical air and body odor. No torches were lit this low beneath the castle, the dungeon always as black as night could get, even when the sun was highest in the sky. It was a miserable hole deep in the earth, but it was a damn sight better than hanging handless in the sands of an island with no name.

“Jaaaaacobszzzz,” said a whisper outside his cell, waking him from a shallow sleep.

“Keep it quiet out there,” he called out to his fellow cell mates farther down the hall. “I'm trying to sleep.”

“Jaaaaacobszzzz.”

“What is it?”

“We had a deal,” said a voice from behind him.

Jacobsz turned around, looking for its source. “What?” Then he heard shuffling from all sides. He wasn't alone, but as dark as it was, he couldn't make out anyone, or anything. “Who is it?”

“Yourrrrrrr crewwwwwwww.”

Hands grabbed him from the darkness, clawing his flesh, dragging him backward, choking him. Then, in unison, they heaved him, and he felt the dry, chafing burn of a rope coiling tightly around his neck.

“No! Not like this!” he cried. “Not like this!”

“Exactly like this,” said Jeronimus, now a misshapen shadow of what he was. “Take his hand, boys! And spare him the courtesy of a barrel.”

The next morning his jailers would find him hanged from the ceiling, his right hand severed and missing. The cell was locked when they found it, and the guards swore that no one came or left in the night. No report was made and, since Jacobsz had no kin anyway, no one was ever notified about the mysterious death. And with so many of the conspirators spread out, already serving on new ships or condemned to different prisons in the region, no one took notice of just how many times this manner of death would repeat itself for an untold number of the mutineers of the
Batavia
.

C
HAPTER
2

T
HE
M
ISSING
M
AN
M
ARCH

A
N
EXCERPT
FROM
THE
A
USTIN
C
HRONICLE
BY
M
ARTIN
M
ACK

T
he air was thick, muggy, and dank with downtown sweat. If you were paying attention, you could feel something in the air. But like a sudden summer storm, few saw it coming until it was pouring down around them. That night, in a cramped, seedy little bar on Sixth Street, a rock god came out and greeted the audience with the deafening strum of his guitar. And now, six months later, a hundred thousand hipsters all claim to have stood among a couple of hundred.

It was an odd crowd, a smorgasbord of the Austin music and critical elite mingling among friends, family, and fans of the other bands. Scenesters and tastemakers tripped over one another at the bar. I even saw Cassidy Crane nodding along in back.

I'll admit, I wasn't expecting much. I'd seen Limestone Kingdom several times before and they were terrible. Thoroughly mediocre twaddle starving on the outskirts of a rock apocalypse. But they had an in with the manager, opening often for far better bands. So when Ewan Bradford stepped out onstage, I rolled my eyes and ordered another beer. It was going to be a long night.

BOOK: Queen of the Dark Things
7.16Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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