"So the town of Port Royal jumped into the sea, Jack."
"Oh." Shandy looked out at the black ocean. "This … this sixteen-year-old boy—"
"—Was named Ed Thatch. He's been trying to perfect the resurrection trick ever since. And that's what brought him to this coast two years ago. You asked, remember?"
"Yes." Shandy wasn't feeling at all reassured. "Very well, so what is this focus or fountain we're going into the jungle to find?"
Davies blinked at him. "Why, I thought you knew that, Jack. It's a hole in the wall between life and death, and anyone standing around is liable to catch the spray from one side or the other. Don't you know any history? It's what Juan Ponce de Leon was looking for—he called it the Fountain of Youth."
Chapter Eleven
When it was fully dark, and Blackbeard, Davies and the rest of them had drunk off the last fortifying cups of rum and begun plodding north along the beach toward the river and the waiting boats, Benjamin Hurwood forced himself to stand up and follow them.
The daydreams that had become increasingly vivid and insistent during the last couple of years had now reached the point where they could almost be called hallucinations, but Hurwood kept his mouth clamped shut and didn't allow his eyes to follow any of the figures and objects he knew were imaginary.
It's 1718, he told himself firmly, and I'm on the shore of the I west coast of Florida, with the pirate Edward Thatch and … my daughter … what in hell is her name? Not Margaret … Elizabeth! That's it. Despite what I'm seeing half the time, I'm not at the church in Chelsea … I am not forty-three years old, the year isn't 1694 … and that is not my bride that I see there, my dear Margaret, my life, or at least my sanity … that's our daughter, the … the vehicle …
Hurwood squinted against the bright sunlight streaming in through the vestibule window as he handed the flask back to his groomsman. "Thanks, Peter," he grinned. He peeked through the crack between the two doors that were the church's side entrance, but people were still moving uncertainly down the aisles and sidling into the pews, and the minister hadn't appeared yet … though there was one frightened-looking altar boy at one of the far kneelers on the altar. "A little time yet," he told his best man. "I'll just take one more peek into the glass."
Peter smiled at the groom's nervousness as Hurwood crossed once again to the mirror he'd propped up on a nearby shelf. "The sin of vanity," Peter muttered.
"Today I believed a touch of vanity can be excused," Hurwood replied, patting his long brown locks into place. Hurwood was a studious, retiring man, but he did take pride in his hair, and, despite the fashion, never wore a wig—he always appeared in society "in his own hair," and despite his years there was no gray in it at all.
"I don't see Margaret yet," Peter remarked, pulling one of the doors open a bit and squinting toward the back of the church. "No doubt she's reconsidered."
Even the suggestion made Hurwood's stomach go cold. "God's blood, Peter, don't even speak such a thought! I'd … go mad. I—"
"A joke, merely!" Peter assured him, a hint of concern detectable behind his jovial tone. "Do relax, Ben, of course she'll come. Here, have another pull at the brandy—you're the palest bridegroom I've ever seen."
Hurwood took the proffered flask and drank deeply. "Thanks—but no more. It wouldn't do to be drunk on the altar."
"Shall I put her in the boat?" asked Peter, somehow pulling a curtain across the window so that they stood in darkness except for the light of a lamp Hurwood hadn't noticed. The air was suddenly fresher, but smelled of the sea, and marshes; fleetingly it occurred to Hurwood that they should air out these rooms more frequently—a century of incense smoke and moth-riddled draperies and dry prayer-book bindings produced some unlikely smells.
"I think you're the one that's had too much to drink," snapped Hurwood testily. He could no longer see his hair in the mirror. Pull back that damned curtain."
"This is no time for visions, Mr. Hurwood," said someone, presumably Peter. "It's time to get into the boats."
Hurwood saw to his alarm that the lamp had somehow started a fire in the side vestibule—no, three fires! "Peter!" he cried. "The church is burning!" He turned to his best man, but instead of the lean, elegant figure of Peter he saw a monstrously fat young man in grotesque clothes. "Who are you?" Hurwood asked, very frightened, for he was now certain that something had happened to his fianceé.
"Is Margaret all right?"
"She's dead, Mr. Hurwood," said the fat youth impatiently. "That's why you're here, remember?"
"Dead!" Then he must be in church for a funeral, not a wedding—but why was the casket so small, a square wooden box no more than a foot and a half long on any side? And why did it smell so earthy and bad?
Then he snapped out of it, and the memories of this last quarter of a century fell onto him like a landslide, leaving him weak and white-haired.
"Yes, dead," Leo Friend repeated. "And you're going to behave sanely for the next couple of hours even if I've got to control you myself," the fat man added desperately.
"Calm yourself, Leo," said Hurwood, managing to force a bit of detached amusement into his voice.
"Yes, by all means get … Elizabeth into the boat."
Hurwood strode confidently down the slope toward the river, where the boats were drawn up and the wooden chest from Blackbeard's boat was being pried open—though he lurched a little, because every few seconds he seemed to be walking at a ceremoniously slow pace down the church's center aisle, through alternating patches of shadow and slanting colored light as he passed the high stainedglass windows one by one. The springy, spidery-looking mangrove roots had been cutlassed away from a hundred-foot section of the river shore, and men were standing knee-deep in the black, torchlight-glittering water and catching oilskin-wrapped bundles tossed from shore and laying them in the boats. There was a flaming torch mounted in the bow of each of the three boats, and Hurwood saw that Davies and the cook were already in one of the boats, Davies holding it steady by gripping a mangrove stump that projected a foot out of the water.
" … to have and to hold, from this day forward, until death do you part?" the minister asked, smiling kindly at the earnest couple kneeling before him. Out of the corner of his eye Hurwood saw the altar boy he'd noticed earlier, still at the far kneeler and still looking scared … no, more lost than scared. "I do," said Hurwood.
"How's that again, boss?" asked the pirate who had just taken the last bundle out of the wooden chest and tossed the oilskin-wrapped packet to the men in the water.
"He says he does," snickered the man next to him.
The first pirate winked at his companion. "I thought he looked like the type that did, but I wasn't sure."
"Haw haw."
Hurwood blinked around, then smiled at them. "Most amusing. I'll be sure and bring a couple of mementos back from the Fountain for you gentlemen."
The grins fell off the men's faces. "Meant no disrespect, sir," one of them said sulkily.
"Still, I won't forget." Looking over his shoulder Hurwood saw Leo Friend making his ponderous way down the slope. "We'll go in that one," Hurwood told the cowed pirates, pointing at one of the boats. "Please bring it close, and hold it very steady, for my companion is massive." The men silently did as they were told, and out of fear of Hurwood they dragged the boat in so close to shore that he was able to step into it without getting his boots wet.