"Hah!" he exclaimed joyfully, slapping Davies on his good shoulder. "Look at that!" Davies peered around, then turned back with a grin. "And look back there," he said, nodding astern. Shandy shifted around to look back, and saw, back in the fog, the weak glows of two torches. "The others made it as well," he observed, not very pleased.
Beth was looking back too. "Is … my father in one of those boats?"
"Yes," Shandy told her, "but I won't let him hurt you." For several minutes none of them spoke, and the boat began gradually slanting in toward shore as Davies let his burned hand do less work. The pirates on the shore finally noticed the approaching boats and began shouting and blowing horns.
"Did he try to hurt me?" Beth asked.
Shandy looked back at her. "Don't you remember? He … " Belatedly, it occurred to him that there might be a better time to awaken her recent grisly memories. "Uh … he made Friend cut your hand," he finished lamely.
She glanced at her hand, then didn't speak until they had drawn in near the fires, and men were wading out to help them ashore. "I remember you holding a knife to my throat," she said distantly. Shandy bared his teeth in anguished impatience. "It was the dull side, and I never even touched you with it! That was to test him, to see if he still needed you to accomplish this magic, if some of your blood wasn't all he needed! Damn it, I'm trying to protect you! From him!" Several men had splashed up to their boat, and hands gripped the gunwales and began dragging it in toward shore.
"Magic," said Beth.
Shandy had to lean forward to hear her over the excited questions of the pirates. "Like it or not," he said to her loudly, "it's what we're involved in here."
She swung a leg over the side and jumped into the shallow water and looked back at him. The rocking bow-torch had almost expired, but it was bright enough to show the lines of strain in her face.
"What you've chosen to become involved in," she said, then turned and began wading up toward the fires.
"You know," Shandy remarked to Davies, "I'm going to get her out of this … just for the pleasure of showing her one more thing she's all wrong about."
"Are we glad to see you boys!" one of the jostling pirates exclaimed. They had dragged the boat all the way up onto the sand of the mangrove-shorn notch, and Shandy and Davies got out and stood up, stretching. The shouting began to die down.
"Glad to be out of there," Davies said.
"You must be hungry as hell," another man put in. "Or did you find something to eat in there?"
"Didn't have the leisure." Davies turned to watch the progress of the other two boats. "What time is it? Maybe Jack'd throw together some kind of pre-breakfast for us."
"I don't know, Phil, but it ain't late—no more'n an hour or two after sunset." Shandy and Davies both turned to stare at him. "But we left about an hour after sunset," Shandy said.
"And we've been gone at least several hours … "
The pirate was looking at Shandy blankly, and Davies asked, "How long were we gone upriver?"
"Why … two days," the man replied in some bewilderment. "Just about precise—dusk to dusk."
"Ah," said Davies, nodding thoughtfully.
"And ashes to ashes," put in Shandy, too tired to bother with making sense. He looked again toward the approaching boats. Idly, for in spite of his deductions all he wanted right now was an authoritative drink and a hammock and twelve hours of sleep, he wondered how he would prevent Hurwood from forcing Beth's soul out of her body so that the ghost of her mother, his wife, could move in.
Chapter Sixteen
In the morning the fog had overflowed its river boundaries and formed a damp, only dimly translucent veil over the land and sea, so chilly that the pirates huddled around the sizzling, popping fires, and it was almost midmorning, when the fog began to break up, before anyone noticed that the Vociferous Carmichael was gone; and another half hour of rowing up and down the shore in boats, and shouting and ringing bells, was wasted in confirming the ship's disappearance. Most of her crew was ashore, and the first supposition was that she had somehow come unmoored and drifted away—then Hurwood came running down the slope from the hut yelling the news that his daughter was gone and he couldn't find Leo Friend.
Shandy was standing on the beach near one of the boats when Hurwood's news was relayed. Davies and Blackbeard stood a hundred feet away, talking in low, urgent tones, but they looked up when this fresh lot of shouting began.
"Not a coincidence," pronounced Blackbeard flatly.
"The fat boy?" protested Davies. "But why?"
"Your quartermaster knows why," Blackbeard said, nodding past Davies at Shandy. "Don't you, Shandy?"
Shandy walked up to them, feeling hollow and colder than the tog. "Yes, sir," he said hoarsely. "I've seen the way he'd look at her sometimes."
"But why take my ship?" snarled Davies, whirling angrily to face the still-veiled sea.
"He had to take Beth away," said Shandy. "Her father had plans for her that were … incompatible … with the plans Friend had for her." He spoke quietly, but he was as tense as a flexed length of steel.
Blackboard, also staring out to sea, shook his massive head. "I knew he was more than just Hurwood's apprentice—that there was something he was after, all on his own. At the Fountain he finally got what he needed. I should have killed him last night, after we all got back. I think I could have." The giant pirate reached out a hand and squeezed it into a fist, and then drove it into the palm of his other hand.
The sound of the slap was lost in the sudden, jarring crack of a close thunderclap, and the flash of the sky-spanning lightning bolt sent Shandy and Davies reeling back, dazzled.
"I think I could have," Blackbeard repeated thoughtfully.
As the echoes tumbled away along the shoreline and Blackbeard lowered his hands, Shandy half wished he'd thought of dropping some of his own blood on the mud by the Fountain. The thought reminded him of the way Davies had vanquished—perhaps killed—the loa-like thing in the jungle. Surreptitiously he lifted his foot and dragged a fingernail down the groove between the sole and the side, and he rolled the resulting bit of muck into a ball and tucked it into his pocket. He didn't know whether it contained any mud actually from the marge of the Fountain, or what sort of enemy he might want to use it against even if it did, but it was clear that anyone with only guns and swords at his disposal was ludicrously ill-equipped for the kind of combat they were engaged in now.
"I've got to get my ship back," said Davies, and Shandy realized that when Davies had lost the ship he'd lost his rank, too—without the Vociferous Carmichael he was just the skipper of a notably battered but otherwise unimpressive little sloop. Davies looked desperately at Blackbeard. "Will you come along and help? He's more now than he was, and he knew some good tricks even before."
"No," said Blackbeard, his dark face impassive. "By now Woodes Rogers may have arrived in New Providence with the pardon calculated to rob me of my nation." The breeze was from the sea, and it blew back the pirate-king's lion-mane of black hair and beard, and Shandy noticed streaks of gray at the temples and chin. "I meant the Carmichael—with you as her captain—to be the flagship of my fleet … and I hope you do get her back. But it seems the age of free-for-all piracy is ending … just as the merry buccaneer days are passed … this is the age of empire." He grinned sidelong at Davies.