A very different-looking Edward Thatch it was too, because to his already impressive head of hair he had added a huge black beard.
Ever the showman, he stood before us with his hands spread. Behold. Then tipped me a wink and moved into the centre of the terrace, taking command without even trying. (Which is funny, when you think on it, because for all our talk of being a republic, a place of ultimate freedom, we did still conform to our own forms of hierarchy, and with Blackbeard around there was never any doubt who was in charge.)
Vane grinned. Away with his scowl went the tension on the terrace. “Captain Thatch, as I live and breathe. And what is this magnificent muzzle you’ve cultivated?”
He rubbed a hand over his own growth as Blackbeard preened.
“Why fly a black flag when a black beard will do?” laughed Thatch.
That was the moment, in fact, that his legend was born. The moment he took the name Blackbeard. He’d go on to plait his face fuzz. When he boarded ships he inserted lit fuses into it, striking terror in all who saw him. It helped make him the most infamous pirate, not just in the Bahamas but in the whole wide world.
He was never a cruel man, Thatch, though he had a fearsome reputation. But like Assassins, with their robes and vicious blades springing from secret places; like Templars and their sinister symbols and their constant insinuations about powerful forces, Edward Thatch, Blackbeard as he came to be known, knew full well the value of making your enemies shit their breeches.
It turned out that the ale, the sanctuary and the good company wasn’t the only reason we’d been graced with the presence of Charles Vane and Calico Jack.
“The word is, the Cuban governor himself is fixing to receive a mess of gold from a nearby fort,” said Vane when we’d availed ourselves of tankards and lit our pipes. “Until then, it’s just sitting there, itching to be took.”
And that was how we found ourselves laying siege to Porto Guarico . . .
• • •
Well, the fight had been bloody, but short. With every man tooled up and our black flags flying, we brought four galleons to the bay and hammered the fortress with shot, just to say we’d arrived.
Then we dropped anchor, launched yawls, then waded through the shallows, snarling, shouting war cries, our teeth bared. I got my first look at Blackbeard in full flight, and he was indeed a fearsome sight. For battle he dressed entirely in black, and the fuses in his beard coughed and spluttered so that he seemed to be alive with snakes and wreathed in a terrifying fog.
There are not many soldiers who won’t turn tail and run at the sight of that charging up the beach towards them, which is what a lot of them did. Those brave souls who remained behind to fight or die, they did the latter.
I took my fair share of lives, my blade on my right hand, as much a part of me as my fingers and thumbs, my pistol blasting in my left. When my pistols were empty I drew my cutlass. There were some of our men who had never seen me in action before, and you’ll forgive me for admitting there was an element of showmanship in my combat as I span from man to man, cutting down guards with one hand, blasting with the other, felling two, sometimes three, at a time; driven, not by ferocity or blood-lust—I was no animal, there was little savagery or cruelty to what I did—but by skill, grace and dexterity. There was a kind of artistry to my killing.
When the fort was ours I entered the room where Laureano Torres sat smoking his pipe, overseeing the money count, two soldiers as his bodyguards.
It was the work of a moment for his two soldiers to become two dead soldiers. He gave me a look of scorn and distaste as I stood in my Assassin’s robes—slightly tatty by now but still a sight to see—and my blade clicked back into place beneath my fist while the blood of his guards leaked through the sleeve.
“Well hello, Your Excellency,” I said. “I had word you might be here.”
He chuckled. “I know your face, pirate. But your name was borrowed the last time we spoke.”
Duncan Walpole. I missed him.
By now Adewalé had joined us in the treasure room, and as his gaze went from the corpses of the soldiers to Torres, his eyes hardened, perhaps as he remembered being shackled in one of the governor’s vessels.
“So,” I continued, “what’s a Templar Grand Master doing so far from his castillo?”
Torres assumed a haughty look. “I’d rather not say.”
“And I’d rather not cut yer lips off and feed ’em to ya,” I said cheerily.
It did the trick. He rolled his eyes but some of his smugness had evaporated. “After his escape from Havana we offered a reward for The Sage’s recapture. Today someone claims to have found him. This gold is his ransom.”
“Who found him?” I asked.
Torres hesitated. Adewalé put his hand to the hilt of his sword and his eyes burned hatefully at the Templar.
“A slaver by the name of Laurens Prins.” Torres sighed. “He lives in Kingston.”
I nodded. “We like this story, Torres, and we want to help you finish it. But we’re going to do it our way using you and your gold.”
He had no choice, and he knew it. Our next stop was Kingston.
THIRTY-NINE
So it was that some days later Adewalé and I found ourselves roasting in the heat of Kingston as we shadowed the governor as he made his way to his meeting with Prins.
Prins, it was said, had a sugar plantation in Kingston. The Sage had been working for him but Prins had got wind of the bounty and thought he could make the sale.
Storm the plantation, then? No. Too many guards. Too high a risk of alerting The Sage. Besides, we didn’t even know for certain he was there.
Instead we wanted to use Torres to buy the man: Torres would meet Prins, give him half the gold and offer the other half in return for the deliverance of The Sage; Adewalé and I would swoop in, take The Sage, whisk him off, then prise out of him the location of The Observatory. Then we would be rich.
Simple, eh? What could go wrong with such a well-wrought plan?
The answer, when it came, came in the shape of my old friend James Kidd.
At the port, Torres was greeted by Prins, who was old and overweight and sweating in the sun, and the two of them walked together, talking, with two bodyguards slightly in front of them, two behind.
Would Torres raise the alarm? Perhaps. And if he did, then Prins surely had enough men at his command to overpower us easily. But if that happened, Torres knew that my first sword slash would be across his throat and if that happened, none of us would see The Sage again.
The funny thing is, I didn’t see him. Not at first. Instead it was as though I sensed him or that I became aware of him. I found myself looking around, the way you do if you smell burning when you shouldn’t. What’s that smell? Where’s that coming from?
Only then did I see him. A figure who loitered in a crowd at the other end of the pier, part of the background but visible to me. When he turned his face, I saw who it was. James Kidd. Not here to take the air and see the sights by the look of him. Here on Assassin business. Here to kill . . . who? Prins? Torres?
Jaysus. We kept close to the harbour wall as I led Adewalé over, grabbed Kidd and dragged him into a narrow alleyway between two fishing huts.
“Edward, what the hell are you doing here?” He writhed in my grip but I held him easily. (I’d think back to that later—how easily I was able to pin him to the hut wall.)
“I’m tailing these men to The Sage,” I told him. “Can you hold off until he appears?”