The Dagger X (The Dagger Chronicles) (23 page)

“Let me show you,” he said, and dug through the papers with manic intensity for several seconds. “Ah!
Ja,
ja, ja,
this is it.” He pulled out a single sheet and held it to Kitto.

“Read this.” Kitto took the browned paper and bent over the table to make use of the lantern light. He scanned down the page.

“This is not English,” Kitto said.

“Ah,
ja,
I forget.” He pointed to a paragraph halfway down the page. “What you cannot read, here is what it says. I like this part.”

“ ‘But Captain Morgan . . . who always communicated vigor with his words, infused such spirits into his men as to put them all in agreement with his designs; they were all persuaded that executing his orders would be a certain means of obtaining great riches.’ ” X wagged his eyebrows. “Good, ah?”

Kitto felt a rush of blood in his cheeks at the name of the famous buccaneer. “Henry Morgan? Why are you writing about Henry Morgan?”

“Who knows him better than one who has fought side by side with him, ah?” X said. Kitto shrugged.

“No one, I suppose. But why should anyone care?”

X plucked at his beaded beard. “Hmm. You do not think people want to read of buccaneers?” Kitto shrugged again. “I spoke with a merchant once in Barbados. He is Dutch, and there are not so many of us in these parts today. We began to talk of home. I told him how I had spent much of my time. He told me I should write a book, being a learned man. Such a book, he said, would be wildly popular in Europe. All those fat geese who sit
at home and live out their boring little lives, they love to read about pirates and battles and adventures in the far corners of the world.”

“So why Morgan?”

“He is but one part of the book, but I know that part the best myself. Some pieces I have gathered from others, too. But you see, with Morgan, not only do I get a good tale to tell, I get my revenge.” X’s eyebrows jounced.

“How so?” said Kitto.

“Morgan is now the lieutenant governor of Jamaica. He is one of the largest landholders on the island.” X caressed the page lovingly. “He wants the world to forget his humble beginnings, his violent beginnings. And there is nothing that will stick in his craw more than to have a book come out in Europe that reminds the whole world that he is not nearly so respectable as he would make himself out to be today.”

Kitto nodded. “And this is to get your revenge on Morgan? For your hand?”

X smiled and nodded. “
Très belle,
no? And not just for the hand, but for Panama, too, and all of us who fought there for him.” X giggled and poked a finger at Kitto’s ribs, his eyes a swirl of dancing lantern light. “But I think
that
revenge we will be collecting tomorrow, no?”

Kitto smiled. “If the wind will blow again.” He reached out for the fine leather folio at the bottom of the stack. “And what is inside this one? It looks special.” Kitto drew it out a few inches, but X slapped a hand
down on it and pulled it to him, with a look devoid of his former glee.

“What made you do that?” X said. “Why you reach for this?”

Kitto raised his hands in the air. “I am sorry. I did not mean to . . .”

X stared at the boy solemnly for a moment, as if trying to read Kitto’s deepest intentions. Finally he tucked the leather folder back beneath the pile.

“That is my
tour de force
. My rabbit in the hat. The straw that will break Morgan’s back.”

“And what is it?” Kitto found himself very curious to know what could possibly be contained in that slim folder that had the power to do so much.

X glared at him again. “You are not ready to know what it is yet.”

“
I
am not ready?”

X’s eyes darted down to the pile. He cleared his throat. “What I mean is,
I
am not ready to share that with anyone. Now if you do not mind, I have work to finish.” X turned away to show Kitto his shoulder and dipped his quill into the ink.

Kitto felt the sting of rebuke. There was much to this strange man, and Kitto could not help feeling that more notions spun in the pirate’s swirling brain than he would ever tell.

“S
ail ho!”

The call brought Van and Kitto springing from their hammocks. Sarah sat up in her own next to Kitto.

“What is wrong?”

“Someone has spotted a sail. Could be nothing.” Kitto thumped off to catch up to Van. When they reached the main deck, X was calling up to Pickle from the quarterdeck.

“Do not just call ‘sail ho’ and then just sit there mute like a giraffe,
idiot
! You were shot in the leg, not in your head!” Flecks of coffee beans sprayed from Exquemelin’s mouth. Kitto could see the table loaded with papers behind him, and judging from the redness of the captain’s eyes, he had not slept. “Tell me ‘square rigger,’ or ‘lateen,’ or ‘frigate,’ or ‘big purple sea monster.’ Tell me, Pickle!”

“Galley, captain!”

X stiffened. “You are certain?”

“The oars are in the water, sir. They be turning our way.”

“Quid! Quid! Where is the wind, man?” Quid stood at the tiller arm, shaking his head.

“What is a galley?” Kitto whispered to Van.

“A ship with oars as well as sails. Huge ones, able to move an entire ship. In a calm like this they can still maneuver, while we are stuck to this spot until the wind picks up.”

“Is it the navy that uses galley ships? English?” Kitto said.

“Not that I have ever heard. The only ones I have heard of in use are by the Spanish.”

Kitto issued a sigh, a disturbing mixture of relief and disappointment: relief at not having to fear another ship of Morgan’s, disappointment that the ship could not be the one holding Duck.

Van shook his head. “No breathing easy yet.”

“We’re not at war with the Spanish, are we?”

“No, but we are in a pirated ship. The Spanish are happy to hang pirates too.”

X madly gathered up his papers, clutching them and the leather satchel to his chest. “Everyone get below! Everyone! Let the sails go slack! Quid, leave the tiller to flap about. We have no time to lose! And someone get below and find the signal flags.”

They all gathered below in the fo’c’sle, not a soul out on the upper decks where they might be seen by spyglass.

“Did you find them?” X said. Pelota and Black Dog had burst into the room, knocking Pickle aside to lay a small chest on the deck.

“Aye, Captain. Signal flags.” Black Dog snapped the latches at the front of the wooden chest and swung back
its lid. X leaped upon the neatly folded contents, lifting one toward the lamp that Quid held, then tossing it behind his shoulder when it did not please him.

“No. Not this one. No.” Flag after flag was tossed to the floor behind him, a jumble of bright color. “Ah!” X ripped a flag from the chest and held it up. “The quarantine flag!” he said. It was a yellow and black square flag, two small yellow squares at opposite corners, and two black squares at the other corners.

“Quarantine?” Fowler said. “You mean to act like we are carrying disease?”

X giggled. “Brilliant, no?”

“Me, I’d rather fight if I am to die.”

X threw Fowler a withering look. “I am trying to save your neck, idiot! We cannot fight a ship like that. At least a hundred men aboard.” He looked about the room, standing tall, taking the time to meet them all eye to eye. “You are all sick. We all are. Believe that or you will die by the rope.”

“Shall I put the flag up?” Fowler said, pointing the way to the deck.

X scowled at him. “Do you look sick? You are too fat to be sick. Fat people do not look sick.” X inspected the crew, his eyes coming to rest on Akin and Kitto.

“The two of you, ah? A strong wind could knock
you
down,” he said, pointing to Akin. “And with that stump, it looks like the strong wind already had its way with you,” he said to Kitto, who glared back at him. “Take the flag and put it up.”

Kitto stepped forward and snatched it from X’s
hands. He and Akin had just stepped from the fo’c’sle when X shouted out again.

“Wait! Come back here!” Akin and Kitto shared a look, then walked back into the fo’c’sle where the men still huddled about X. The captain had produced another flag from the chest, a large red
X
in a field of white.

Fowler made a face at X. “That one means we need help. What we want to hang that for?”

X smiled. He turned to Fowler. “If you are dying of sickness, you want help,
oui
?” Fowler nodded. “If you need help and are sick, would you ever hang the quarantine flag? No! If you did, you might risk that no one would help you.”

Little John piped up. “But suppose we hang the help flag and they come to help?”

X stood up and walked to Kitto. He yanked the yellow and black flag from his hands and thrust the white and red one at him.

“A ship like that is coming either way. But! If they believe we are truly ill—terribly ill—they might well leave us alone.” Kitto spun on his stump. Akin followed him.

“Remember! You must look
très
sick!”

While the rest of the crew skulked about below, Kitto and Akin and X lingered on the upper deck watching as the galley made slow but steady progress toward them. The red and white flag they had hung drooped slack from a line at the foremast. Whether it had communicated anything to the approaching ship Kitto could
not tell. The sea separating the two ships lay nearly as unrippled as glass, eerily still, as Kitto had never seen it before.

X had demonstrated his theatrical flair by running below to fetch a few handfuls of flour that he rubbed through his hair and beard. Kitto thought the effect more ghostlike than sickly, but he chose not to criticize. The pirate complemented his appearance by hobbling about using Kitto’s crutch—impossibly small for a man of his height—but it did make him look, if not diseased in body, then in mind.

Kitto and X stood side by side, looking over the port rail. X held the spyglass. He lifted a beaded strand of his beard to his mouth and nibbled on the bead, then spit it out vigorously, rattling the remaining beads and sending a dusty cascade of flour onto the breast of his coat.

“I hate people from Spain,” he said. “They are so . . .
Spanish
!” Kitto threw him a quizzical look. Exquemelin raised a hand and waved it slowly at the oncoming ship, a gesture that might possibly have been visible to someone looking through a glass. The beads on his beard clattered.

The galley was now no more than a mile off. The swing and rhythm of the huge oars were impressive indeed. Kitto wondered how many men it took to operate a single oar.

What will happen to us?
he wondered. He found it hard to fear the Spanish any more than he feared meeting up with an English naval ship, but the reaction of X’s
crew seemed nearly the opposite. The looks and murmurs below were somber.

There was little to do while they waited. X nibbled coffee beans until the galley was only a half mile off, at which point he tucked the sack away out of concern that snacking roasted beans might not be something a sick person would do.

“Leave the talking to me,” X said unnecessarily.