Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Page 8

  There were fewer and fewer Spanish ships at sea, however. At port, we’d begun to hear rumours that the war might be coming to an end; that a treaty might soon be signed.

  Captain Dolzell, though, well, you’d have to give him credit for being able to look ahead of times and see which way the wind was blowing, and what with us being left out of spoils, he decided to take us on a course of action that went outside the remit of our letters of marque.

  Trafford, the mate, stood next to Captain Dolzell, who removed his tricorn and wiped sweat from his brow before replacing it and addressing us all.

  “This raid will make us rich, lads, your pockets will split. But I’ve got to warn ye, and I would be failing my duty as your captain if I did not, that it is indeed a risky venture.”

  Risky. Yes. The risk of capture, punishment and death by the drop of the hangman’s scaffold.

  A hanged man’s bowels open, I’d been told. A pirate’s breeches would be tied at the ankles to stop the shit escaping. It was the indignity of that which scared me more than anything. It wasn’t how I wanted Caroline to remember me, dangling from a rope, reeking of shit.

  I had not left Bristol in order to become a fugitive from the law, a pirate. If I stayed with the ship and we went through with the captain’s plan, then that is what I would be. We would have the combined forces of the East India Company’s own Marines plus Her Majesty’s Navy after us.

  No, I hadn’t joined up as a privateer in order to become a pirate, but all the same if I was ever going home, I couldn’t do it penniless. I had this idea that if I returned with riches I could pay the price on my head; that my enemies might be appeased.

  But no, I hadn’t joined up to be a pirate. The money I earned would be earned legally.

  Please cease your sniggering. I know how quaint I sound now, but back then, I still had fervour in my belly and dreams in my head. So when the captain made his offer, saying he knew not all on board would want a part of any badness, and that anybody not wanting a part should say now, or forever hold their peace, so that he could organize passage off the ship, I went to step forward.

  Friday stopped me with a surreptitious hand. Not looking at me. Just stopping me from moving forward and staring straight ahead. From the side of his mouth he said, “Wait,” and I didn’t have to wait long to find out why. Five of the crew had shuffled up the deck, good men who wanted no part of any piracy. At a word from the captain the first mate had these five good men thrown overboard.

  I decided there and then to keep my trap shut and instead determined that I would follow the captain, but only up to a point. I’d follow him, reap my share of the money we made, then jump ship. After I’d jumped ship, I’d join up with other privateers—after all, I was by then an experienced jack-tar—and deny all knowledge of ever having been on the Emperor when this terrible crime was committed.

  As plans go, it wasn’t especially sophisticated. It had its flaws, I had to admit, but yet again I found myself stuck between a rock and a hard place with neither of my options being particularly appealing.

  As the appeals of the men thrown overboard receded behind us, the captain went on to outline his plans for piracy. He didn’t go so far as suggesting we attack the Royal Navy, that would have been suicide; instead he knew of a target to be found in the West Indies. So there, in January 1713, was where the Emperor headed.

  SEVENTEEN

  JANUARY 1713

  As we sailed among the islands, we would drop anchor in a sheltered bay or river estuary and men would be sent ashore to find supplies: wood, water, beer, wine, rum. We could be there for days and we’d pass the time catching turtles to eat or taking shots at birds or hunting cattle, goats or pigs if we could.

  Once we had to careen the Emperor, which involved beaching her, then using block and tackle to turn her over. We used lit torches to burn off seaweed and barnacles, caulk her and replace any rotten planks, all under the direction of the ship’s carpenter, who used to look forward to such occasions. Hardly surprising, really, because we also took the opportunity to make repairs to the masts and spas, so he had the pleasure of ordering around the quartermaster as well as the first and second mates, who had no choice but to keep their mouths shut and carry on with the task.

  They were happy days, fishing, hunting, enjoying the discomfort of our superiors. It was almost a disappointment having to set sail again. But set sail we did.

  The ship we were after was a merchant ship run by the East India Company. There’d been many rumblings below decks regarding the wisdom of the enterprise. We knew that by attacking such a prestigious vessel we were making ourselves wanted men. But the captain had said there were only three naval warships and two naval sloops patrolling the entire Caribbean Sea, and that the East India Company’s ship, the Amazon Galley, was said to be carrying treasure, and that providing we brought the Galley to a halt in open water out of sight of land, we should be able to plunder the ship at our leisure, escape and be out of it.

  Wouldn’t the crew of the Galley be able to identify us, though? I wondered aloud. Wouldn’t they tell the navy they’d been attacked by the Emperor? Friday had just looked at me. I didn’t care for that look.

  We found it on the third day of hunting.

  “Sail ho!” came the cry from above. We’d been used to hearing it, so we didn’t get our hopes raised. Just watched as the captain and quartermaster conferred. Moments later they’d confirmed it was the Galley and we set off across the water towards it.

  As we approached we raised a red ensign, the British flag, and sure enough the Galley remained where she was, thinking us an English privateer on her side.

  Which we were. In theory.

  Men primed their pistols and checked the action of their swords. Boarding hooks were taken up and the guns manned. As we came up alongside and the Galley crew realized we were primed for battle, we were close enough to see their faces fall and panic gallop through the ship like a startled mare.

  We forced her to heave to. Our men raced to the gunwales where they stood ready for action, aiming pistols, manning the swivel guns or with cutlasses drawn and teeth bared. I had no pistol and my sword was a rusty old thing the quartermaster had found at the bottom of a chest, but even so. Squeezed in between men twice my age but ten times as fierce, I did my utmost to scowl with as much ferocity as they did. To look just as fierce and savage.

  The guns below were trained on the Galley opposite. One word and they’d open fire with a volley of shot, enough to break their vessel in half, send them all to the bottom of the sea. On the faces of their crew was the same sick, terrified expression. The look of men caught out, men who had to face the terrible consequences.

  “Let your captain identify himself,” our first mate called across the gap between our two vessels. He produced a timer and banged it down on the gunwale rail. “Send out your captain before the sands run out, or we shall open fire.”

  It took them until their time was almost up, but he appeared on deck at last, dressed in all his finery and fixing us with what he hoped was an expression of defiance—which couldn’t disguise the trepidation in his eyes.

  He did as he was told and ordered a boat to be launched, then clambered aboard and was rowed across to our ship. Secretly I couldn’t help but feel sympathy for him. He put himself at our mercy in order to protect his crew, which was admirable, and his head was held high when, as he ascended the Jacob’s ladder from his boat, he was jeered at by the men manning the mounted guns on the deck below, then grabbed roughly by the shoulders and dragged over the rail of the gunwale to the quarter-deck.

  When he was hauled to his feet he pulled away from the men’s clutching hands, threw his shoulders back and, after adjusting his jacket and cuffs, demanded to see our captain.

  “Aye, I’m here,” called Dolzell, who came down from the sterncastle with Trafford, the first mate, at his heels. The captain wore his tricorn with a bandana tied beneath it, and his cutlass was drawn.

  “Wh
at’s your name, Captain?” he said.

  “My name is Captain Benjamin Pritchard,” replied the merchant captain sourly, “and I demand to know the meaning of this.”

  He drew himself up to full height but was no match for the stature of Dolzell. Few men were.

  “The meaning of this,” repeated Dolzell. The captain wore a thin smile, possibly the first time I had ever seen him smile. He cast an arch look around his men gathered on the deck, and a cruel titter ran through our crew.

  “Yes,” said Captain Pritchard primly. He spoke with an upper-class accent. Oddly, I was reminded of Caroline. “I mean exactly that. You are aware, are you not, that my ship is owned and operated by the British East India Company and that we enjoy the full protection of Her Majesty’s Navy.”

  “As do we,” replied Dolzell. At the same time he indicated the red ensign that fluttered from the topsail.

  “I rather think you forfeited that privilege the moment you commanded us to stop at gunpoint. Unless, of course, you have an excellent reason for doing so?”

  “I do.”

  I glanced across to where the crew of the Galley were pinned down by our guns but just as enthralled by the events on deck as we were. You could have heard a pin drop. The only sound was the slapping of the sea on the hulls of our ships and the whisper of the breeze in our masts and rigging.

  Captain Pritchard was surprised. “You do have a good reason?”

  “I do.”

  “I see. Then perhaps we should hear it.”

  “Yes, Captain Pritchard. I have forced your vessel to heave to in order that my men might plunder it of all its valuables. You see, pickings on the seas have been awfully slim of late. My men are getting awfully restless. They are wondering how they will be paid on this trip.”

  “You are a privateer, sir,” retorted Captain Pritchard. “If you continue along this course of action, you will be a pirate, a wanted man.” He addressed the entire crew. “You all will be wanted men. Her Majesty’s Navy will hunt you down and arrest you. You’ll be hung at Execution Dock, then your bodies displayed in chains at Wapping. Is that really what you want?”

  Pissing yourself as you died. Stinking of shit, I thought.

  “Way I hear it, Her Majesty is on the verge of signing treaties with the Spanish and the Portuguese. My services as a privateer will no longer be required. What do you think my course of action will be then?”

  Captain Pritchard swallowed, for there was no real answer to that. And, for the first time ever, I saw Captain Dolzell really smile, enough to reveal a mouth full of broken and blackened teeth, like a plundered graveyard. “Now, sir, how about we retire to discuss the whereabouts of whatever treasure you might happen to have on board?”

  Captain Pritchard was about to complain, but Trafford was already moving forward to grab him and he was propelled up the steps and into the Navigation Room. Men, meanwhile, turned their attention to the crew of the ship opposite us and an uneasy, threatening silence reigned.

  Then we began to hear the screams.

  I jumped, my eyes going to the door of the cabin from where they had come. Darting a look at Friday, I saw that he too was staring at the door of the Navigation Room, an unreadable look on his face.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Hush. Keep your voice down. What do you think is going on?”

  “They’re torturing him?”

  He rolled his eyes. “What did you expect, rum and pickles?”

  The screams continued. Over on the other ship the men’s expressions had changed. A moment ago they stared at us resentfully, balefully, as though biding their time before they might launch a cunning counter-attack. Like we were scoundrels and knaves and would soon be whipped like the scurvy dogs we were. In their eyes then was sheer terror that they might be next.

  It was strange. I felt both ashamed and emboldened by what was happening. I’ve caused my fair share of pain and left terrible sorrow in my wake, but I’ve never been able to abide cruelty for its own sake. Dolzell would have said, “Not for its own sake, boy, to find out where the treasure was hid,” but he would have been telling a half-truth. For the fact was, as soon as our men swarmed their vessel they’d quickly locate whatever booty was aboard. No, the real purpose of torturing the captain was the changing faces of the men who stood opposite. It was to strike terror in their crew.

  Then, after I don’t know how long, perhaps a quarter of an hour or so, when the screams had reached a peak, when the heartless sniggering of the deck-hands had been exhausted, and even the most pitiless man had begun to wonder if, perhaps, enough pain had been inflicted for one day, the door to the Navigation Room was thrown open and Dolzell and Trafford appeared.

  Wearing a look of grim satisfaction the captain surveyed the men of our own ship, then the apprehensive faces of the other crew, before pointing and saying, “You, boy.”

  He was pointing at me.

  “Y-yes, sir,” I stammered.

  “Into the cabin, boy, guard the captain, while we find out what his information is worth. You too.” He was pointing at somebody else. I didn’t see who, as I hurried to the front of the quarter-deck, barging against the tide of a surge towards the gunwales as men readied themselves to board the other ship.

  I had the first of two shocks as I entered the Navigation Room and saw Captain Pritchard.

  The cabin had a large dining-table, which had been set to one side. So too was the quartermaster’s table, on which were laid his navigation instruments, maps and chart.

  In the middle of the cabin Captain Pritchard sat tied to a chair, his hands bound behind him. Lingering in the cabin was a brackish smell I couldn’t place.

  Captain Pritchard’s head hung, chin on his chest. At the sound of the door he lifted it and focused bleary, pain-wracked eyes on me.

  “My hands,” he croaked. “What have they done to my hands?” Before I could find out I had my second surprise, when my fellow jailer entered the room and it was none other than Blaney.

  Oh shit. He pulled the door shut behind him. His eyes slid from me to the wounded Captain Pritchard and back to me again.

  From outside came the cries of our crew as they prepared to board the other ship but it felt as though we were cut off from it, as though it were happening far away and involved people not known to us. I held Blaney’s gaze as I walked around to the back of the captain, where his hands were tied behind his back. I realized what the smell had been. It was the smell of burnt flesh.

  EIGHTEEN

  Dolzell and Trafford had pushed lit fuses between Captain Pritchard’s fingers in order to make him talk. There was a scattering of them on the boards as well as a jug of something that, when I put it to my nose, I thought was brine they’d used to pour on his wounds, to make them more painful.

  His hands were blistered, charred black in some places, raw and bleeding in others, like tenderized meat.

  I looked for a flask of water, still cautious of Blaney, wondering why he hadn’t moved. Why he hadn’t spoken.

  He put me out of my misery.

  “Well, well, well,” he rasped, “we find ourselves together.”

  “Yes,” I replied drily. “Aren’t we lucky, mate?”

  I saw a jug of water on the long table.

  He ignored my sarcasm. “What would you be up to, exactly?”

  “I’m fetching water to put on this man’s wounds.”

  “Captain didn’t say nothing about tending to the prisoner’s wounds.”

  “He’s in pain, man, can’t you see?”

  “Don’t you talk to me like that, you little whelp,” snapped Blaney with a ferocity that chilled my blood. Still, I wasn’t going to show it. Full of bravado. Always tough on the outside.

  “You sound like you’re fixing up for a fight, Blaney.”

  I hoped I came across more confident than I felt.

  “I maybe am at that.”

  He had a brace of pistols in his belt and a cutlass at his waist, but the silve
r that seemed to appear in his hand, almost from nowhere, was a curved dagger.

  I swallowed.

  “What do you plan on doing, Blaney, with the ship about to mount a raid, and us in charge of guarding the captain here? Now, I don’t know what it is you have against me, what measure of grudge it is you’re nursing, but it’ll have to be settled another time, I’m afraid, unless you’ve got a better idea.”

  When Blaney grinned a gold tooth flashed. “Oh, I’ve got other ideas, boy. An idea that maybe the captain here tried to escape and ran you through in the process. Or how about another idea altogether? An idea that it was you who helped the captain. That you untied the prisoner’s hands and tried to make good your escape, and it was me who stopped you, running you both through in the process. I think I like that idea even better. How’s about that?”

  He was serious, I could tell. Blaney had been biding his time. No doubt he wanted to avoid the flogging he would have received for giving me a beating but suddenly he had me where he wanted me.

  Then something happened that focused me. I’d knelt to see to the captain and something caught my eye. The thick signet ring he was wearing bore a symbol I recognized.

  The day I’d woken up on the Emperor I’d found a looking-glass below decks and inspected my wounds. I had cuts, bruises and scrapes. I looked like what I was: a man who’d been beaten up. One of the marks was from where I’d been punched by the man in the hood. His ring had left its imprint on my skin. A symbol of a cross.

  I saw that very same symbol there, on Captain Pritchard’s ring.

  Despite the poor man’s discomfort I couldn’t help myself. “What’s this?”

  My voice, a little too sharp and a little too loud, was enough to arouse the suspicions of Blaney, and he pushed himself off the closed cabin door and moved further into the room to see.

  “What is what?” Pritchard was saying, but by now Blaney had reached us. He too had seen the ring, only his interest in it was less to do with its meaning, more to do with its value. Without hesitation, and heedless of Pritchard’s pain, he reached and yanked it off, flaying the finger of burnt and charred skin at the same time.