Pieces of Eight

PIECES OF EIGHT

JOHN DRAKE

For my son my pride and inspiration, my critic and my friend.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Afterword

Acknowledgements

By the same author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

11 a.m., 15th November 1732 The Chapel, Salvation House St Pancras Court, Opposite the Smallpox Hospital London

The corpse lay in a lake of blood that drenched its pious black coat, its lank white hair, and the clerical bands that descended from its comprehensively slit throat where bone gleamed from the bottom of a tremendous slash. The mutilating fury of repeated knife strokes had rendered the face unrecognisable, such that the victim’s identity was given only by his clothes and the wide-gaping mouth full of long brown teeth that were one reason–though not the only one–that he’d so seldom smiled in life.

“Good God!” said Captain Peter Garland. “Cover him up, and get the women out of here!” He looked to Mr Bains, the house steward, and then to the two menservants, and finally to the herd of maids and cooks peering in horror through the chapel door. But none of them moved.

“Pah!” said the captain, and set about doing the job himself. A sea-service officer in his thirties, Garland had faced shot and shell, and this wasn’t the first time he’d dealt with dead men and the pieces of them. He stepped up to the altar, laid aside the wooden cross, ripped the white altar cloth from its moorings and draped it across the body of his late brother-in-law, taking care that, whatever else showed, the face was covered.

“So!” said Captain Garland, looking away from the corpse to the bloodstains on the whitewashed walls. “What happened?”

Mr Bains was trying his best, but he was an elderly man, long in the reverend’s service, who–along with the rest of the congregation–had thought him the font of all wisdom. And now here was the reverend dead and murdered in his own chapel! Bains stood weeping and wringing his hands with his entire world overturned, the women wailing at the sight of him and the two male servants snivelling besides.

“Brace up, man!” cried Captain Garland. “Brace up all of you, dammit.”

“Yes, sir,” said Bains. “Sorry, sir. We didn’t know if you would come.”

“What?” said Garland, “D’you think that man–” he pointed at the corpse “–could keep me from my sister? My Rebecca–her that was a mother to me when our own ma died?”

“God bless you, sir,” said Bains.

“God bless you,” said the rest.

“So! Where is she? And m’nephew?”

“Upstairs, sir. In the parlour.”

They were halfway up the stairs when three blows sounded on the front door knocker, and everyone jumped. Again nobody moved so Garland went down and opened the door himself. Outside was a carriage and pair that he’d not even heard arrive, what with his mind so full of other things. A coachman stood in the doorway in his caped cloak and livery hat, wrapped in scarf and mittens against the cold.

“Ah!” said Garland, peering out into the miserable grey November where the coach body swayed as a fat gentleman in boots and greatcoat was helped down by one of his footmen. “Sir Charles!” he said, and ran forward to shake his friend’s hand.

“Captain Garland!” said the other. “Came as soon as I got your note.” He was a middle-aged, heavily overweight man, who moved slowly and breathed with difficulty, except when standing still or sitting down. “T’aint my jurisdiction, this,” he cautioned, “and the proper authorities will need to be informed.” he peered at Garland, “You do know that, don’t you?”

“Yes-yes-yes!” But you must have experience of such cases.”

“What cases?”

“Damned if I know, Sir Charles. It was only chance that I happened to be in London and Bains knew where to find me. I sent for you the moment I heard…” He looked around. “I’ve not set foot in this house in years!”

“Have you not?” said the other, and Garland saw that all eyes were on him.

“Now then!” he cried, clasping his hands behind his back. “Silence and pay heed! This gentleman is Sir Charles Wainwright, Police Magistrate at Bow Street, who is here to take this matter in hand.” He looked at his friend. “Sir Charles…?” he said.

Sir Charles took charge. Getting the basic facts from Captain Garland, he directed a number of sharp questions at the reverend’s servants, then stumped into the chapel–respectfully doffing his hat as he did so–and poked the cloth off the corpse with his walking stick.

“Bless my soul!” he said. “Not the sweetest sight, is he?”

“No,” agreed Garland.

Sir Charles looked round the chapel, noting its severe simplicity, disdain of decoration, and rows of plain wooden chairs.

“What denomination worships here?” he asked. “Quaker? Moravian?”

“Presbyterian,” said Garland. “A branch, at any rate: ‘Church of the Revelationary Evangelists’. Or at least that’s what they were calling themselves when last I was here.”

“Aye,” said Wainwright, nodding, “these dissenters are morbidly fissiparous.”

“They’re what?”

“Dividing: always dividing. That’s what you get for denying the authority of the bishops!”

“Hmm,” said Garland. “Well, he was very strong in his beliefs, my brother-in-law. It’s why I was turned out of his house–for I used to be one of them, d’you see,” he shrugged. “But I was in love with the service, and wanted to be like my shipmates and say chaplain’s prayers.”

Sir Charles turned from the hideous corpse, looked the chapel up and down, and sniffed.

“Place stinks of soap and polish. Never seen anywhere so clean in all my life, I do declare!”

“Huh!” said Garland. “That’s the reverend! Detested dirt of all kinds. Every stick and pot scrubbed, and the servants made to bathe daily in a wash-house out the back.”

“What?” said Sir Charles, incredulous. “Every day? It’s a wonder they didn’t leave him.”

“Not they! Not once he’d got his hooks into ’em. Terrified, they were.”

“Of him?”

“Him and his good friend the Devil!”

“What about the family? How did he treat them?”

For a moment Captain Garland seemed lost for words. He was a plain man bred up to a hard service where a loud voice satisfied all needs of communication…but that wouldn’t do now.

“There’s only his wife–m’sister Rebecca–and her son,” he said. “And Rebecca…well, she was a woman, and to him all women were damned as pedlars of lust, while children were damned as fruits of lust…” He bowed his head in memory, “He used to say to them…he used to say to m’poor sister and her boy–and I heard this m’self, mind–he used to say…” Captain Garland stood silent as he tried to bring himself to repeat the words. Finally he shook his head, and rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes.

He looked at Sir Charles. “He weren’t very nice to them. Can we leave it at that?”

“Bless my soul!” said Sir Charles, for Garland had shed tears. “Come along, Captain. Enough of this–let’s see the widow.”

The stairs to the first floor were a fearful obstacle to Sir Charles, and it was a long, slow climb, but finally–led by the miserable Bains–he and Garland entered the front parlour: another fiercely scrubbed room, almost bare of furnishings, where they found the reverend’s wife and son, sitting waiting in a pair of Windsor armchairs.

“Good day, ma’am,” said Sir Charles, advancing towards her, then stopping short as he saw the blood spattered over her clothes. The woman sat unmoved. She was a tired creature: wrinkled and prematurely old, with wispy hair and sad eyes.

“Ma’am?” repeated Sir Charles. But she never even blinked.

“Rebecca?” said Garland in a hushed voice, shocked at the sight of her. “It’s me, m’dear. Little Peter that sat on your knee…” Odd as the words were from a grown man, they stirred the woman and she looked up at them.

“I did it,” she said. “And it may not be denied, for ‘Every man’s work shall be made manifest’–First Corinthians, chapter three, verse thirteen! And I am not ashamed: ‘I have fought a good fight. I have finished my course. I have kept the faith’–Second Timothy, four: seven! And if I have sinned, then, ‘Charity shall cover the multitude of sins’–First Peter, four: eight!”

“Sir Charles,” whispered Garland, “she’s raving! She’s come adrift and cast loose her moorings.” But he whispered too loud.

“No!” said Rebecca sharply. “It is my husband who was mad! Thus I killed him because he had gone too far. ‘Behold! Now is the accepted time’–Second Corinthians, six: eight!”

Sir Charles sighed and turned to the boy sitting alongside her.

“Now then, my lad–”

“He must have seen it, sir,” said Bains, who was hovering at the door. “He was in the chapel with her, sir. They went in together.”

“Yes, yes!” said Sir Charles, waving the servant away. He turned back to the boy. “My lad, I am a magistrate and I must ask you what has gone on here?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Then why your mother covered in blood?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

Sir Charles asked more questions, but learned nothing. Finally he took Garland aside.

“He’s a good boy. Credit to his mother, poor soul. He’ll not betray her, while she, poor soul, has lost her mind. I’ve seen the like before: husband a bully, wife stands it twenty years, then one day takes a knife and stabs him fifty times!”

“Aye,” said Garland, nodding, “that’d be the way of it–and the swine deserved it, too! ’Tis only a pity she did it in front of the lad.”

“Indeed,” said Sir Charles, “But I know a doctor who’ll say what’s needed to keep her from the hangman and safe in a private madhouse.” Sir Charles glanced at the boy. “What about him, though? Shall you take him?”

“That I shall!” said Garland. “I’ve no other family, aside from the sea-service, so I shall enter him as a gentleman volunteer, first-class, and it shall be my pleasure to help him up the ladder!” He turned to his nephew and, managed a smile: “Now then, young Joseph,” he said, “come along o’ your uncle Peter and you shall be a king’s officer one day, and maybe even a captain. How’d you like the sound of Captain Flint?”

Chapter 2

Early morning, 30th September 1752 The southern anchorage The island

“Remember,” said Long John, “a round turn and two half-hitches! Keep it simple. Don’t go trying to work a Turk’s head, nor a cable-splice!”

Ratty Richards, ship’s boy, grinned. “Aye-aye, Cap’n!” he said. Skinny, tired, and dripping wet, he was the only one of the seventy-one men and three boys on the island who could dive in six fathoms of water and still do a few seconds’ work at the bottom.

“You sure, lad?” said Long John. “You’ve already had a good whack. You don’t have to go again if you don’t want to…”

“I’m ready, Cap’n!”

“Ah, you’re a smart lad, you are. I knew it the moment I set eyes on you. So here’s your sinker and in you go.”

Splash! Ratty Richards rolled over the gunwale of the skiff into the cool water, one hand pinching his nose and the other clasping the heavy boulder that would take him down. As he sank, the safety line round his waist and the heavy rope looped through it paid out from their coils while Long John, Israel Hands, Sarney Sawyer and George Merry leaned over the side to see him go down.

“Bugger me!” said Israel Hands. “Is this goin’ to work, John? I’ve lost count how many times he’s been down.” He sighed heavily. “Don’t want to drown the lad.”

“Oh?” said Long John. “Weren’t it yourself as pleaded for the Spanish nine?” He jerked a thumb at the sea bed. “For myself, I’d not’ve tried to raise a twenty-six-hundredweight gun with this–” He looked at the two boats, joined by a pair of spars, floating with barely a yard between them. Long John and Sawyer were in the skiff, with Hands and Merry in the jolly-boat; Ratty Richards’s rope fed into a heavy block suspended from the spars and then to an iron windlass that had been firmly bolted to the midships thwart of the jolly-boat. The block-and-tackles were sound, but the boats were too small. Unfortunately, they were the only boats on the island.

“He’s down, Cap’n!” cried Sarney Sawyer, looking below. “And he’s workin’ on her. Go on Ratty, my son!”

“Go on, Ratty!” they all cried, peering through the clear water pierced to the bottom by the hot morning sun, showing every movement the boy made.

Down in the booming depths, the weight of water crushed Ratty’s chest as if a horse were rolling on him, and he strained to remember his orders. Water bubbled from his mouth as he grabbed one of the gun’s dolphins. The Spanish founders had followed obsolete style in adding these elegant decorations, but they were ideal for work such as this. The plunging sea-beasts, cast integral with the barrel, formed loops of iron perfect for lifting the gun. Ratty tugged the rope from the line round his waist then slid it through one dolphin and into the next.

So far, each attempt had failed. Now, lungs pounding, he struggled to secure the rope. In a ship, he could tie a knot without thinking; it was bred into him, instinctive. But not down here.

He threaded the rope through the second dolphin…a round turn… Ratty passed the rope around itself…and two half hitches… he tied the first hitch…torture and suffocation…he fumbled for the second hitch. He lost the rope. He fumbled again and again…blindness and agony…fear of death…Ratty kicked his bent legs almightily against the gun, launching himself like a soaring lark…up, up, up, frothing and bursting and spouting breath and blood and stretching for the blessings of light and air.

“Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” he thrashed and splashed and breathed water and choked and broke surface.

“Gotcher me lad!” cried Long John, hauling him into the skiff and dumping him between the thwarts.

“Urgh! Uch! Yuch!” Ratty’s guts vomited seawater and his eyes stared wide, not quite believing he wasn’t dead.

“Did you do it lad?” said Long John, looming over him. “Did you make fast and secure?”

“Dunno,” said Ratty.

“Bugger!” said Israel Hands.

“Clap a hitch there, Mr Gunner!” said Long John, and laid a hand on Ratty’s shoulder. “This man’s done his best, and no man can’t do no more!” He stabbed a finger. “Or p’raps you’d like to heave off your britches and take a dive yourself?”

“Not I,” said Israel Hands. “Ah, you’re right, John! Bloody gun’s too big. What we needs is a proper longboat, and a good big ’un.”

“The which we ain’t got,” said Long John.

“Aye, but the gun did have dolphins,” said Israel Hands wistfully. “And Flint left us this, or we’d never have tried.” He patted the powerful iron windlass that sat beside him, “I wonder what he wanted with it?”

“Nothing good,” said Long John. “And I’ll have less jaw and more work, if you please, Mr Hands, else we’ll never recover your blasted nine-pounder!”

Silver sighed. They were marooned on the island, with Flint’s treasure buried who-knows-where, and Flint liable to return at any moment with a shipload of men hell-bent on skinning, gutting and roasting every one of them. Since they couldn’t build a vessel to carry all hands before Flint returned, and none could be left to face him, their aim was to defend the island. But how? Long John worried worse than anyone, being in command, for he’d been duly elected captain by all hands…excepting only Mr Billy Bones, who was still loyal to Flint, and who couldn’t now be harmed because he was the only man capable of navigation and would be indispensable if ever they did get off the island.

And so the old guilt came pressing down upon Long John for his total inability to master the art of navigation…

Israel Hands saw the look on his face.

“Easy John,” he said. “We follow where you lead. We all…”

“Cap’n!” cried Sarney Sawyer, hauling on the rope. “He done it! The little bugger done it!”

“What’s that, Mr Bosun?” Silver was so deep in thoughts of Flint that he’d forgotten the Spanish gun.

“He made fast the line, Cap’n!” Sawyer grinned. “Double grog for Mr Richards, and no mistake!”

“Did I do it?” said Ratty, “I thought I didn’t.”

“Well, you did, lad,” said Silver, “and well done indeed, for it was you alone as was down there! So it’s all hands to the windlass!”

In fact, there being only two cranking handles and little room for manoeuvre, it fell to George Merry and Israel Hands to man the windlass. As the two of them groaned under the strain and the pauls of the windlass clattered merrily, Long John, Sawyer and Ratty Richards peered intently at the black shape of the gun, half-buried in sand, still in the wreckage of its carriage.

With Merry and Hands heaving on the rope like a pair of tooth-pullers on a molar, the windlass began to slow, the rattling giving way to a groaning of the rope, until suddenly the gun gave a mighty tremble. Then:

“Whoa!” they all cried as the nine-pounder lurched almost free of its carriage, hanging on by one half-shattered capsquare. Having cleared the swirling, sand-clouded bottom, it now hung, swaying to and fro on the rope, rocking the boats alarmingly.

“’Vast hauling!” roared Long John. “All hands stand fast!”

Nobody moved. They hung on, white-faced, until the gun finished its turning and the boats stopped plunging. It was fearfully easy to overturn boats and, swimming was rare among seamen; of those aboard, Ratty was the only one who could swim. If the boats sank it would be death for all but him.

“Right then, lads,” said Long John, when the boats had steadied, “handsomely now, and up she comes. Give way!”

Hands and Merry cranked the handles round, but much more slowly now. The rope grew taut as an iron bar as the gun rose from the sea bed. Straining and groaning, the two men laboured and the gun moved inch by painful inch…and then stuck.

“Stap me, John!” gasped Israel Hands. “Can’t do it.” He and Merry were soaked with sweat and their arms trembled with the effort.

“Lay a hand there, Mr Bosun!” said Long John, and he and Sawyer clambered awkwardly from skiff to jolly-boat, cramming themselves alongside Hands and Merry. With the strength of four men behind it, the windlass began to turn again. Until:

“Ahhhh!” The gun broke suddenly free and spun viciously on the rope. Both vessels wallowed violently; Silver and Sawyer were sent tumbling as the jolly-boat rolled gunwale under and began to sink, while the joining spars lifted the skiff out of the water entirely.

“We’re goin’!” screamed George Merry.

“Cut the line!” yelled Silver, struggling to dislodge Sawyer, who had landed across his one leg, stunned senseless by the fall. Hands and Merry, cramped against the windlass, pulled their knives, but Merry’s was knocked from his hand as the boat lurched, while Hands was held fast by the iron handle jammed into his chest and could only hack feebly with his left hand, barely able to reach the rope.

“God save us!” screamed Israel Hands. “She’s lost!”

“Gimme a cutlass!” yelled Silver, for he’d left his own weapon in the skiff. Ratty scrambled to pick it up and made to throw it–scabbard, baldric and all–across to his captain.

“No!” cried Silver. “Draw the bugger!”

“Here, Cap’n!” said Ratty, passing the blade, hilt-first.

“Ah! said Silver and sat up, grabbing the gunwale to steady himself. With the boats going over, over, over…he swung with all his might…and thump! The rope snapped like a gunshot, the jolly-boat rolled, the skiff hit the water, spray flew in all directions and Silver, Israel Hands and George Merry wallowed in the saved but half-sunk boat as flotsam, jetsam and the bailing bucket washed around their knees.

“Ohhh!” said Sarney Sawyer, roused by the wetting.

For a while four men and a boy sat gasping and glad to be alive.

“That’s enough!” said Silver, finally. “We’ve got the four-pounders out of Lion and we’ll have to make do with them. Let’s get ship-shape and pull for the shore. And that bugger–” he jabbed a thumb at the lost nine-pounder–“stays where it is!”

Soon they were pulling past the burned-out wreck of Lion herself, beached in the shallows of the southern anchorage. Once she’d been a beautiful ship, but all that was left of her now was the bow and fo’c’sle, clean and bright and untouched by the fire that had destroyed her. Aft of the mainmast, she was black, hideous and chopped-off short.

“Huh,” thought Silver, “’tain’t only me what has a stump!”

He stared miserably at the wreck where it lay canted over: masts and shrouds at a mad angle, and yards dug into the shallow, sandy bottom. It felt indecent, gazing upon the insides of the ship with everything on view instead of planked over. These days she was more of a shipyard than a ship; her decks rang to the thump and buzz of tools as a swarm of men, led by Black Dog, the carpenter, carried out Long John’s orders to salvage everything useful: guns, rigging, timbers and stores.