Skull and Bones (31 page)

    At the back of the commotion Flash Jack watched and grinned. There were others like him who hung back from the action: sharp, slippery persons who trailed after the mob, grinning and winking, ever seeking safe opportunities for gain, but keeping well clear of the dangerous work of smashing gates and cracking heads.

    Flash Jack smiled and looked around, and told himself how clever he was to go forth in the shabby clothes that he affected when he chose to. For he'd been a poor man once, and had had no choice, but when he
did
get money and put on fine raiment and became Flash Jack… why, he'd found that no man knew him if he took them off again, and put on his rags. They were, of course, very
clean
rags, but so long as he went discreetly and met no eyes… it was as if he were invisible.

    This fascinating discovery had, for years, enabled Flash Jack to pass unknown through the streets of London, and was the reason why he'd gone with Silver and King Jimmy to rescue Joe Flint without the least fear of being recognised.

    "And so!" he said to himself, and he let the mob and its followers leave him behind, and stood alone for a while before walking off through the deserted streets towards Covent Garden and Jackson's Coffee House. He had to walk, because it wasn't safe to be out with a carriage - not with the mob on the streets - and he entered Jackson's by a private back door with a private key, and so to his own room and hot water and soap, and his beautiful clothes and his splendid wigs and all else that made him Flash Jack once more: to be bowed to and grovelled to by his staff. So, straightening his back and fixing a smile, he opened the door to the big main room and went into the light and bright, and was pleased to see that, even today - with the mob not come to Covent Garden - there was good business and a body of patrons who saluted him, and nodded and smiled.

    He smiled back. They'd let him out, had Flint and Silver, only because they wouldn't go themselves: or rather Flint
couldn't go
out: not yet, and Silver wouldn't be parted from him. Not now each had half the papers.

    So Flash Jack was sent out to tell Silver's men their captain's location. But he was taking his time. He had things to consider: things like his present attitude towards Joe Flint, who was so obviously going to sail away in John Silver's ship and never look back! And there was plenty of time to think. Flash Jack shrugged. They wouldn't starve in his little quiet place. It was well stocked with food and drink. Pausing to bow to favoured clients, he beamed in their approval of himself, and passed on down the room, cane in hand, placing one elegant foot before the other.

    He was so pleased to be his elegant self again that some of the pain of Flint's
personal
rejection was fading, for rejection it was. Flint had barely looked at him. Flash Jack sighed. It was ever thus! He was clever enough to recognise what a fool he was in matters of the loins, yet still foolish enough to make a fool of himself the next time… and the next… and the next. It was the same with the rough young men he entertained in his quiet place. None of
them
really cared for him either.

    So Flash Jack's slippery mind turned to other matters. He needed to calculate where the balance of power lay between himself and these two fearfully dangerous men with their island and their papers and their eight hundred thousand pounds - of which he still hoped against hope for a share…

    And then he stopped, surprised.

    "Katty Cooper!" he said. "As I live and breathe!"

    Three persons of consequence had just entered. They were theatricals like many of his best clients: theatricals at the very top of their profession: Mr Alan Croxley, manager of Croxley's Odeon Theatre, together with a small man Flash Jack didn't know, but who was intimate with Croxley. And - wonder of wonders, after all these years - there was dear little Katty Cooper: somewhat older, but pretty as ever, whom Flash Jack had known as an actress and later as a member of that profession celebrated by
Jackson's List.

    "Jack!" said Katty Cooper, and smiled wonderfully. She was
une chienne du premier ordre,
and he was a slimy sycophant, but they'd been friends once, or as close to that as was possible between such as them.

    "Katty!"

    "Jack!"

    They stepped forward to embrace, and to kiss hands, and to stand back admiring one another at arm's length while the entire room looked on, and Mr Croxley and Mr Abbey smiled.

    So great was the pleasure of this re-union that, after a brief exchange of pleasantries, all costs were waived to Mr Croxley's party, and Mr Croxley and Mr Abbey were left to order whatsoever they wished, while Mr Jackson led Mrs Cooper to a private corner where a congenial exchange was made of memories, histories and hopes, such that every topic imaginable was explored, until at last, the pretty smiles vanished as the beautiful Joe Flint and the beautiful Selena Henderson came under discussion by Jack and Katty, such that…

    They perceived how much they'd been deceived.

    They discovered artful plots against their precious selves.

    They turned to spiteful revenge: sly, cunning and vicious.

Sunset, 1st December 1753

23 King Street

Off St James's Square

London

    Selena laid her pistols on the dressing table, and sat in her chair looking at them. They were a pair by Ketland of Birmingham, box-locks for compact convenience with blued barrels and silver mounts. They weren't much longer than her own hands, but took balls weighing thirty to the pound, which were over half an inch in diameter… and knocked men down stone dead. She knew. She'd seen it. She'd done it.

    She sighed as she looked at these constant companions which had come with her from
Walrus
and into
Venture's Fortune
and so to Polmouth, then to other cities, and now to London. Before that they'd been in Charlestown, South Carolina, where they'd done their killing.

    She stared at them as they lay on the beautiful table, with its mirrors and furnishings, and the brushes and pots, and the cosmetics carefully chosen to suit her colour, so thorough were the arrangements of this expensive, beautiful house. She reached out and pushed the pistols away, and the maid standing behind her goggled and wondered. She'd never known a mistress who drew pistols from her pocket hoops.

    "Are they yours, ma'am?" she said. She couldn't help it.

    "Yes," said Selena, and smiled at the face in the mirror looking over her shoulder. It was a new thing, having servants. She'd had dressers for her performances, but they weren't servants: they were artistes like herself. Servants were different. They were astonishingly, unbelievably different for a black girl raised as a slave.

    "A man gave them to me," said Selena finally.

    "Oh," said the maid. "Shall I do your hair, ma'am?"

    The maid knew the rules, even if the mistress didn't, for the maid had been as well chosen as everything else. The rules said,
Don't be nosy.
Not straight away. Mistresses didn't like that.

    So there was no more conversation. Not proper conversation. Just the technical exchanges that enabled a maid to get her mistress out of her stays, hoops, petticoats and shift, and into nakedness in a silk dressing gown, and her hair undone and brushed out and laid over her shoulders.

    "Will that be all, ma'am?" said the maid when the job was done.

    "Yes, thank you," said Selena, and the maid curtseyed and made off with Selena's elaborate gown and its complex underpinnings, and took them to wherever it was that they'd be stored. Selena didn't know where that was. Not yet. She was new to this wonderful house, and its staff… all of which would soon be hers.

    The maid went out. Selena got up. She looked at herself in the big, full-length mirror that stood beside the dressing table. She nodded, businesslike and assured. She knew that she was very lovely. She looked around the dressing room, taking in its elaborate fittings and elegant decoration, then shrugged and opened the door that led into the bedroom.

    This was much bigger. It had long windows, now closed with shutters. It had hand-painted wallpaper of brilliant colours, displaying exotic tropical birds. It had upholstered furniture, a sideboard with wine and food of all kinds, it had a roaring fire in a red-and-green-veined marble fireplace… and it had a most elegant and enormous bed.

    She looked at all this and thought of the Master's "special house" on the Delacroix Plantation, South Carolina. That, too, had been elaborately fitted out, though now she realised that it had been vulgar. It had been the coarse attempt of a provincial lecher to imitate his betters: his clumsy reaching for the elegant house she was now standing in… which nonetheless served precisely the same purpose.

    Selena thought over the violent, ferocious events of her short life and the violent ferocious men she'd lived with. She thought of Flint. She thought of Silver… especially him, who she'd never see again in this life. She was sure of that now. He could never come to England. He was better as a pirate on the edges of the world, beyond law, beyond right, beyond civilisation. He could never change and she could never be with him… whatever she thought of him in her heart.

    She sighed again. She was beyond all that. That life was gone, so the pistols could stay on the table, or in a box, or buried in the garden, or
anywhere!
She wouldn't need them again: ever.

    And then, just as had occurred two and a half years ago when she'd been sent to the Master's
special house
where he ravished his slave girls, Selena found herself tired at the end of a long day and laid down on the bed to doze… and fell asleep. And just as had occurred two and a half years ago, she was awoken by a man, but this time not a drunken lout bent on rape but a gentle gentleman, who stroked her hand, and kissed her cheek and who looked down upon her with such an expression of limitless adoration as made his ugly face look homely and benign.

    "Hallo, my little sweetheart," he said.

    "Matthew," she said, and smiled.

    "Selena," he said, and shook his head in utmost sincerity, "Devil take me to Hell if ever I make you unhappy. I may not be young, but -"

    "No!" she said, and laid a hand on his lips. "You've said all that!" And she sat up and took his hand and led him to a sofa, and helped him off with his coat and boots and waistcoat, and sat him down and served him a glass of wine, which he drained, and he gazed and gazed at her in the inexpressible thrill of being alone with her and having her as his own, while Selena, for the first time in years, was at peace. Sir Matthew's offer would raise her high - soaring high - above anything she'd ever dreamed of. She would keep a salon; she would live in luxury; she would ride in a carriage… and she would be safe.

    So she smiled at Matty Blackstone, and stood in front of him, and untied the neck of her gown and let the silk slide over her shoulders and fall hissing to the floor. He gasped and his eyes shone and he shook his head.

    "God in Heaven," he said - he that loved beauty - for he was looking at luscious, sensual, glorious beauty: beauty such as sculptors forever attempt; as Blackstone well knew, being a patron of the renowned Gianlorenzo Bernini. But nothing achieved by that genius - nor even Michelangelo before him - could compare with Selena! For how can cold stone compare with satin skin, and the hot blood that races beneath it? Especially when the satin skin offers itself two feet in front of a man's nose, as he sits on a sofa at the end of a hard week's work, with a large glass of wine warming the inside of him!

    "Ah!" said Blackstone, and he reached out and put his thick hands gently on her hips, and she smiled and raised her arms gracefully over her head - for she had the skills of a performer now, and sought to please this kind and loving man. Matty sighed and rubbed his face into the smooth belly and the gorgeous breasts, and slid his hands around her, and took hold and stood up, easily lifting her in his arms, and she laughed and caressed him, and kissed the top of his head, and the two together looked towards the bed: he with joy and she with full contentment…

    … and a knocking sounded at the front door:
bang-bang- bang!

    "What the devil?" said Sir Matthew and frowned. He put Selena down, and growled in anger as scuffling and cries came from below, then rumbling feet charging up the stairs. He seized a heavy iron poker from the fireplace, pushed Selena towards the dressing room, and stood between her and danger. "Get in there, lass!" he cried. "Lock the door and…"

    But the bedroom door burst open and two men charged in: Joe Flint and Billy Bones. Selena screamed. Sir Matthew swung at Flint's head with the poker, and was struck down by a cudgel-stroke he never even saw.

    "Selena!" cried Flint. "Come! Quickly!" He was wide-eyed and staring, gaping at her nakedness while Billy Bones was dashing forward to seize her, but she was quicker and was into the dressing room for her pistols, and turning and cocking and aiming and firing… and Billy Bones flinching as the ball went through his hat, and herself aiming the second shot at Flint, and something flickering in the light, and an agonising pain exploding as Flint - facing death - instinctively hurled his cudgel end-over-end like a throwing knife to crack into Selena's brow, knocking her unconscious to the Turkish-carpeted floor.