The Dagger X (The Dagger Chronicles) (14 page)

“What is it like,” Kitto said, “being a pirate?” X coughed, turned, and spat out a fleck of bean. He pushed himself up onto an elbow and looked at Kitto with a crooked eyebrow.

“I associate with fat men, stupid men, smelly men,” he said. “It is quite blissful.”

“Do you trust them?” Kitto said, and his eyes darted to Van for an instant, who glared at him with jaw set.

X took a moment to look out over the assortment of men splayed out in the shade. All looked to be asleep but for Black Dog, who stood some distance off, watching them.

“With my life,” X said. “Many times over.”

“But why?” Kitto pressed. “Why, if they are pirates—as are you—would you not just steal from each other when it suited you?” X giggled at this and fished in the bag for another bean.

“You have a very low opinion of people in my line of work,” X said. “We are not animals! We work together to help each other, to protect each other, to
make ourselves wealthy. And we have a contract.”

“A what?”

“A contract. An agreement. A promise to one another.”

“Written down, do you mean?” Kitto said.

X sat upright, his hat tumbling to the floor of palm leaves. “Would you like for me to show it to you?”

“Well, yes! Very much, thank you.”

X reached inside his grimy frock coat and produced a small oilskin pouch. He tossed it to Kitto.

Kitto scooted back to lean against a nearby palm tree and unfolded the oilskin and the parchment it contained. He cast a quick look to Van and mouthed the words,
Come here
.

“It is our Articles of Doghood,” said X, looking up as Van approached. “Without it we would perhaps, as you suggest, simply steal from each other and kill each other.”

Kitto held the unfolded document up before him and Van. The hand that had written it was skilled. The document consisted of a list of statements, numbered in roman numerals. A series of scrawled signatures littered the bottom section, most barely legible.

“What’s it say?” Van whispered. Kitto turned to him in surprise.

“Can you not read?”

Van flushed, shaking his head. “The orphanage was not so particular about schooling,” he said. “Most of what my parents taught me I have lost.” Kitto did not
know why the admission surprised him. If anything, it was rare for a boy Kitto’s age to know his letters as well as he did.

Kitto read over the articles silently and then summed them up for Van’s benefit. They outlined a set of rules for deportment: that none would steal from the others, that none would show cowardice in battle, that none would strike another of the company, that all men would share equally in prizes but for the captain who would receive one share plus a half, that all taken goods be given over within a day at the end of a successful raid, and that the assignation of captain was to be settled by vote but never during an engagement. One rule stood out to Kitto.

“What is this about slaves?” he said. “It says here that ‘no man shall take a slave as a captive, and any slaves encountered on any captured ship shall be liberated or welcomed into the crew.’ ” Kitto lowered the document to look at X. “I would think slaves had a great value to men like you, to be traded for gold.”

X made a wry face, then thumbed toward the men about the beach.

“Take a look,
jongen
, at our skin. You will have your answer.” Kitto did look, and what he saw was a great variety in appearance, as he had noted before. Some of the men were quite dark in complexion, nearly black, a few tanned but fair like Englishmen, and then there seemed to be every shade in between.

“Do you mean . . . your men were slaves?”

X wagged his head. “Some of us.”

“You?”

“No. Only the Irish in these parts. But I was, how you say, ‘indentured.’ Not so very different.”

Kitto looked back to the document. Each statement except for the last ended with the following:
He who is found in violation of said rule shall be subjected to Moses’s Law on the bare back and marooned.

“What is Moses’s Law?” he said.

“Forty stripes on zee back with zee company whip,” X said, pointing toward Fowler, who lay on his back in slumber, a coiled whip tied to his belt. “So you see, I do not zink you would like to be with us, eh?”

“I did not say I would,” Kitto said, startled that the pirate captain had anticipated the suggestion he was considering despite Van’s warning.

“We do not sign boys, and I would never tolerate a girl or a woman aboard my ship,” X said, “no matter how well she shoots.” He pointed off to the beach where Sarah and Ontoquas played with Bucket.

“You don’t even have a ship,” Van said. Nearby, the pirate named Pickle, overhearing, chuckled loudly. X stuck his tongue out at him.

“I will admit this has put a damper on our prospects,” X said.

Kitto cleared his throat and spoke loud enough for all the men nearby to hear.

“But what if I could get you a ship, and more than that, make you all rich men? Would you agree to sign
us on then?” Several pirates nearby turned to look over at them.

“Blast it, Kitto!” Van said underneath his breath.

In moments, it seemed, nearly all the sailors had come to sense that something important was taking place. Several sat up and a few others inched closer to where Kitto sat. X giggled.

“Let me guess,” he said. “You are actually a merman,
ja
?” He pointed to Kitto’s stump. “That is not a missing foot you have, but a magical fin that transforms when you are in the water! And you can swim into the sea there, and guide a ship right to us, ah?”

“If I could do it, what would you say?”

“And what was that about making us rich?” Fowler was sleeping no longer. He stood a few feet behind Kitto and dug at his dirty fingernails with a dagger tip. “What is it you ain’t saying?”

“First your answer,” Kitto said, turning back to X.

The captain snickered again. This was all quite entertaining.

“Men!” he called out, sweeping an arm wide. “Can we agree, zis boy gets us a ship, we allow him to sign our articles?” Grunts of approval sounded around the glade.

“Anyone to speak against?” Silence.

“Well, merman,” X said, “you have our attention. Be quick. Fowler breaks wind when stories run too long.”

“Kitto . . . ,” Van said again.

“Let him speak, Van,” Sarah said, having returned
soundlessly from the beach, Bucket asleep on her shoulder.

Kitto composed his thoughts a moment, and in so doing he let his eyes run down the articles to the squiggled signatures at the bottom of the parchment. Most of the names were a scrawl of ink, but one was neat and plain. He froze.

Alexandre Exquemelin

Exquemelin!

That name, that last name, Kitto knew where he had seen it before. It was the name written on the rolled slip of parchment that Duck had discovered hidden inside the dagger his father had given him. That dagger lay obscured by the leaves not thirty feet from where he sat.
Could it be?

“Which one of you is Alexandre Exquemelin?” Kitto said.

“The stupid one,” Fowler answered, pointing his dagger in X’s direction. Kitto turned to X.

“It
is
you?”

“ ‘Exquemelin’ is too long of a word for men like Fowler to say. They call me X, but yes, my name is Exquemelin. Why? Do I owe your father money?” He readied himself to toss a coffee bean into the air.

“My father is dead,” Kitto said. Kitto felt his heartbeat quicken. “Did you know a man named . . . William Quick?” Now all the men sat up and leaned forward.
The coffee bean X had thrown caromed off his nose and fell to the ground. He did not bother to retrieve it. Instead he glared at Kitto, all trace of impishness vanishing.

“The Pirate Quick. It is to ask me if I know my own brother!” he growled. “Why do you ask me zis?”

“Because he is my uncle. And without your help he is sure to die.”

T
he sun had dipped behind the forest of palm trees. Ontoquas blew on the smoking pile of dried leaves and sticks, starting the fire that would cook them a meal of barbecued turtle.

With the exception of Exquemelin, the band of seamen had made camp in the glade near the beach. Although they had had to abandon their stolen ship before it sank, they at least had time to load the jolly boats with such provisions as they saw fit to carry: various tools, tarps, sailcloth, a few barrels of salted fish and jugs of cider and rum, not to mention powder and shot and slow match for the flintlocks. Some busied themselves with setting up the tarps as tents, while Fowler and Quid and a man named Ox rowed the jolly boats out in the direction Ontoquas had pointed out for hunting sea turtles.

Sarah sat with Bucket at the firepit in front of the lean-to. She teased Bucket by dragging the tip of a stick in the dirt before him, which Bucket would try to grab, smiling broadly. Van had left to search for more firewood.

Exquemelin and Kitto sat together on two adjacent rocks near the fire. X turned Kitto’s dagger in his hands. He had insisted on seeing it when Kitto mentioned it in his explanation of all that had happened over the last month, and together they had retrieved it from the woods at the edge of the beach. Exquemelin whistled a high descending note.

“My past. Never do I seem to escape it,” he said.

Kitto sat beside him, his stump propped up on a large rock near the fire.

“You recognize it, then?”

Exquemelin traced his finger along the grain lines of the Damascus steel blade.

“You say this was your mother’s. But not this woman?” X gestured with the tip toward Sarah.

“I call her my mother, but by birth, there was another woman.” X nodded and began to fiddle with the dagger’s pommel. In a few moments he had wiggled it in the way Duck had for the first time back in their home in Falmouth. The metal pommel popped as it withdrew from the handle, revealing the hidden chamber inside.

“How did you know about that?” Kitto asked, but X did not answer. Instead he tapped the hollow handle on his palm. Out tumbled the rolled scrap of parchment, dry and undamaged. X unrolled it. He read, giggled, then rolled it back up and returned it.

“This is how you knew my name,” he said. Kitto nodded.

“And later I asked my uncle about you.”

“Did William curse me?” X grinned.

“Not at all. He described you as a good friend.”

X grunted in approval. “Zis surprises me. I would have thought he blamed all his old comrades, us little fingers of ‘The Hand.’ ” X lifted his right arm up, rotating the brass hook attached to his wrist before him with a lost look.

“The tattoo . . . of a skeleton hand. Did you have one as well?” Kitto said. X did not answer, but instead fixed Kitto with a stern stare.

“Your foot,
jonge
man. Before it was gone like it is now, from a shark . . . was it bent?” Kitto felt his face flush.

“How did you know that?”

“So, it is true, then,” X said. He grinned and shook his head in disbelief. “The world is so very small! Is it not?”

“I do not understand, sir.”

“Yes, I had the tattoo you ask about. You know what it meant?”

“That you were Morgan’s man.”

“
Ja, ja.
I was Morgan’s man. Your uncle, too.” X scratched the flesh of his thumb across the blade of the dagger. He eyed Kitto again from the corner of his eye, hesitating to go on.

“You can tell me. I do not think you could say anything that would shock me,” Kitto said. So many surprises and disappointments he had survived in just a short time.

“I think you are wrong. But we shall see.” X handed the knife back to Kitto.

“Sometimes we did things to people, we members of ‘The Hand.’ Things that leave me with no pride. We did these things always to protect our interests and our silver.” X tugged at his beaded beard. The beads rattled. “A customs man would need to be convinced he would lose his ears if he did not listen better, or a merchant underselling us on broadcloth might dangle from a second-story balcony by his ankles.”

Overhearing, Sarah aimed a worried glance at Kitto. He looked back at her steadily, nodding. She turned her attention back to Bucket, who slapped at her hand.

“You tortured people,” Kitto said. X shrugged.

“I say I am not proud. I am ashamed even. But there was worse,” he added, pausing yet again before continuing. “Like with your mother.”

Kitto felt his throat constrict. He forced himself to take a breath, demanding that he be steady before attempting to speak.

“You murdered my mother?” His voice had cracked. Kitto and the pirate stared at each other for a few long seconds that drew out like an eternity. Kitto wondered what he would do if this man were to admit to committing the crime that forever changed his life.

X pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. “Morris summoned me, through that vile creature of his, Spider, who was barely out of boyhood at the time, but vicious like a beaten dog. In the darkness of an alleyway
Morris handed me a small bottle. Some sort of dark liquid it contained. From Henry Morgan, Morris told me.”