The Dagger X (The Dagger Chronicles) (32 page)

At that moment from beyond their cell came the sound of voices. A door clanged shut and footfalls approached, along with the sound of something being dragged along the stone floor.

Little John stood and peered as best he could through the bars set into the massive oak door of the cell.

“It’s him! It’s X,” he said. “They be carrying him.” Little John withdrew when the guard reached the door and barked something at him in Spanish.

A key grated in the lock, and the door opened. One guard stood at the entrance, and two others behind held X between them by his arms. X’s bare head hung low and swayed as the men struggled forward.

“Lo pongan ahí, el cerdo,”
the guard at the door said. He stepped aside so that the two men could enter. They
heaved X inward, hurling him without a care into the cell. He would have struck the stone floor but for Quid, who leaped forward and snatched X from the air.

“Spanish pigs!” said Little John, struggling to stand.

The pirates rose to their feet in anger and surged toward the open door, but the first guard produced a pistol. He pressed it against Little John’s cheek, puckering the skin.

At the rear of the cell Sarah thrust Bucket over to Ontoquas and pushed past Akin.

“Gentleman, please!” she said. “Let us not worsen our situation. Step back and allow me to attend to the captain’s wounds.”

The sound of a woman’s voice subdued their anger. The guard with the pistol sneered.

“Cobardes,”
he said as Little John backed away from the muzzle of his pistol.
“Piratas, cobardes, cerdos!”
His eyes swept over the assorted gathering with undisguised hatred.

For a moment Kitto thought he might fire the pistol regardless, but then an agitated voice sounded from behind him.

“Perdón! A un lado!”
the voice said, and the guards stepped aside. A thin man dressed in black stepped into the doorway, the wide corners of his hat brushing against the iron doorframe. He had a pointed nose and long fingers with manicured nails that looked strikingly unfit in such a filthy room. He withdrew a scap of paper from a pocket.

“Which of you is known as ‘Sarah, Van, Ontok . . .
Ontoquas, Akin, Bucket’?” he read in clear, but accented English. Sarah raised her hand and indicated the others.

“We are they,” she said. “What news do you have for us?”

The man eyed her coldly before continuing. “The following words do not pertain to you,” he said. He tossed the scrap aside and withdrew from a different pocket a folded piece of parchment that he opened before him. Kitto recognized it as the articles he had signed, and he felt a tight knot in his throat.

The man’s eyes swept over the pirates. He coughed neatly to clear his voice. “ ‘The Honorable Ernesto Delgado has ordered that by the evidence gathered against the following men’ ”—the man stopped himself—“meaning, the rest of you—‘that they shall be hanged by the neck until death at precisely nine o’clock tomorrow morning for the crime of piracy.’ ”

Kitto had stood when X had been brought in, but now his knees buckled and he sagged against the wall behind him.

“No! No, this cannot be! What evidence?” Sarah protested, stepping forward. But the man did not regard her.

“Alexandre Exquemelin, John Phillip, Simon Xavier . . .” The man’s voice droned on through all the names of the doomed men in the cell.

Kitto’s thoughts swam circles.
How? How could this be? Is this to be my punishment? Am I to die?

The man read the final name, snapping Kitto from his tortured thoughts.

“Christopher Quick!”

A
fter the man had spoken the sentence and left, a pall fell over the pirates that lasted into the evening. X sat with his head in his hands, the dangling beads of his beard utterly still. Even Sarah seemed lost, staring unblinking and pale at the stony floor, giving no notice when Ontoquas tried to pass Bucket into her arms to draw her from the black depths of her despair.

Only Van and Akin seemed to have any life left in them. They each moved to be closer to Kitto. Van draped an arm around his shoulders.

“It ain’t over yet,” Van said. “Perhaps that God you love is not yet done with you.” Outside the prison the sun had set, and the cell was draped in a cloak of dusk.

“I want to be brave,” Kitto said.

“You are very brave,” Akin said.

“At the moment, I mean. When the rope . . . I want to die as a man should die.”

“None of that matters,” Van said.

“It does matter. It matters to me,” Kitto said. He wondered if he had that kind of strength. “How you
leave the world matters.” Van and Akin had no answer for Kitto, and for a long time the three sat quietly. From a distant corner of the cell they heard a faint sniffling.

Van leaned closer so that he could whisper in Kitto’s ear.

“I want you to know,” Van said, and he had to stop to swallow hard. “You are not done with me, Kitto Quick, not even if you quit that body. I will take care of your mum. Akin and I both. And I will find Duck and bring them together. I swear it. On my worthless soul, I swear it, Kitto.”

Kitto lifted his head and looked over at Van. Their hands came together in something of a shake.

“Yes,” Kitto said. “But that is not the last you owe me, Van. One more thing.”

“Say it.”

“Once you have done those things, seen to the safety of Duck and my mum, I want you to go back to the island, Van.”

“To the devil with that island!”

“Promise me. You will go back there and fetch the nutmeg. You will need to share it with the men you bring, and with Sarah, too, for my share. But then make off with a fine haul, Van. Go find your sister!”

Tears filled Van’s eyes. He started to speak, but a sob broke through and it was some minutes before he could do so.

“How can you think of that now?” Van said.

“My dreams are shattering. I want you to see yours
fulfilled,” Kitto told him. “And one more thing. When you go back to the island. Get inside the cave with someone small, perhaps Duck if you have found him. There is another treasure inside, Van. Fit for a king.”

In the morning a detachment of Spanish soldiers dressed in dark blue uniforms entered the prison. The sharp cadence of their polished boot heels tore Exquemelin and his band from their last sleep, if such fitful nightmares could be called such.

At some point in the night Sarah had risen from her despair. She had nudged Akin aside and took Kitto into her arms as she sometimes did when he was a young boy. Kitto buried his head in the shelter of her soft neck. Together they had wept themselves into unconsciousness, but the sound of the approaching soldiers brought both to an instant and panicked attention.

Sarah tried. At the first glimpse of the brushed wool uniform and polished musket barrel, she rushed to the barred door.

“There has been a mistake. My son . . . he is just a boy! Please do not do this evil deed!” Sarah pleaded. None of the Spaniards would meet her gaze but attended instead to their duty of binding each of the men in shackles about the ankles and wrists, and leading them one by one down the stone hall and into the same wagon cage that had transported them from the ship the day before.

When it was Kitto’s turn to go and the cell stood
empty but for Sarah, Akin, Van, Ontoquas, and Bucket, Sarah’s pleas turned frantic.

“This is wrong! He is a boy! You must not do this thing!”

“Mum!” Kitto seized Sarah by the shoulders and turned her from the soldiers. “Let me go like a man,” he said. “
You
must live. For Duck. He is your son!”

Sarah brought Kitto into her arms for a final crushing hug.

“You are my son,” she said. She whispered in his ear, her voice catching. “It was you, Kitto. You have shown me how deep love goes. It was loving you that made me!”

The guards pulled Kitto away.

It was not a long ride in the wagon, but the driver kept the two horses in check so that the contingent of what must have been fifty soldiers in high uniform could flank the wagon on all sides as it rolled through the dusty lanes.

As they moved through the heart of the town and toward the wharf, people of all ages poured from the buildings and walked along with the procession. Some of them hurled insults, and a few even tossed rotten vegetables, which bounced harmlessly against the cage that held them and dropped into the lane.

Kitto watched a young girl who could not have been more than six bound out of a rickety doorway and skip along with the crowd. She wore a cheery red dress that
billowed behind her as she skipped. She clutched some sort of stuffed doll in her arms which she tossed into the air and caught again. The dark curls of her hair bounced along with her as she ran, and Kitto allowed himself to be swept up for a moment in her joy. She did not seem to notice the wagon, only the excitement of the throng.

Look how happy she is!
he marveled.
She is so very alive. . . .

Finally the wagon rolled into an open cobblestone courtyard. The brilliant blue water of the harbor spread out to the north, dotted with dozens of anchored ships. At one end of the square stood the gallows, a massive construction erected of thick beams, wide enough to accommodate the entire party of seventeen at one time.

Kitto had kept his eye on the little girl as they traveled, but when the soldiers opened up the cage to lead them down in shackles to the stairs at the base of the gallows, the courtyard swelled with onlookers and he lost sight of her. Kitto was the last to leave the wagon. He had thought that perhaps X or Fowler or another of the men would try to fight or to run, but none of them did. They each stepped their way up the steep wooden stair to the elevated gallows platform and allowed themselves to be led by a soldier to one of the dangling nooses awaiting.

Kitto told himself he would do the same. He would die with dignity at least, if nothing else.

The chain between his ankles rattled as he stepped up the stairs. As he was last to reach the platform and
the other men had been directed to either end first, Kitto found himself in the direct center of the long line of nooses, between Exquemelin and Quid. He looked down to his feet to see that he stood atop some sort of trap door. He knew that once the noose was placed around his neck, the doors would be released and there would be nothing but rope to hold him.

“I am sorry, lads!” X called out loud enough for all the men down the line to hear. One of the soldiers jabbed a musket into Exquemelin’s spine and the crowd hooted.

“We knew what we was doing, old man!” called Fowler near the end.

“I don’t want to die!” whimpered Coop.

“Shut your mouth and be a man for once,” Fowler said, and received a sharp blow to the back of the head with a musket barrel for his continued outburst.

Three officials climbed the gallows stairs, all dressed in fine powdered wigs. One of them stepped near to Kitto and unrolled a parchment from which he began to read aloud in droning Spanish. Far to the back of the crowd Kitto spotted the little girl again, and he focused all his mind on her as the man continued to speak. Now and again cheers rose up from the masses as the man read, but the little girl seemed hardly to pay attention at all. She tossed her little doll into the air. Higher and higher she threw it, seeing how high she could throw it and still snatch it before it hit the cobblestones.