The Dagger X (The Dagger Chronicles) (25 page)

“N
ow keep quiet again, Julius!” Duck said, clutching at the hungry monkey in his lap. They were both hungry, and both uncomfortably cooped up inside a barrel. It had been more than a full day since Akin had come running into the hold to announce his depature. Akin was to be transferred to the
Port Royal
, and a naval frigate they had come upon was to escort the
Blessed William
the rest of the way to Jamaica.

“I hear somebody,” Duck whispered. Julius let out a low growl. “Hush now, Julie.” Whoever was poking around through the barrels, he was making quite a row of it, whistling a tune Duck had heard many times before. The barrel in which they hid was not tightly sealed, and the hazy golden light of a lantern glowed about the edges of the lid just above them.

“That can’t be Kitto,” Duck told himself. The
whistling was so loud it seemed almost the effort of someone who was trying to chase off the dark. Duck listened as the notes grew increasingly louder and more distinct. Suddenly unseen hands shifted his barrel with a jerk. Duck shot out a hand to brace himself against the inside staves, but when the barrel was tilted forward, he was thrown off balance. He knocked his head on the staves of the barrel’s side.

“Oww!” he cried.

A long moment of silence followed, and then the barrel was lowered back to the deck.

“Now, Ethan,” a man’s voice said, muffled, “I loved you, lad, but you cannot keep doing this to me.” The man made a sniffling sound. Inside the barrel Duck’s brow furrowed.

“What?” Duck hissed to Julius. “Is that fellow crying?” The voice continued.

“Nearly a year gone you are, my boy. And I won’t say I don’t wish you weren’t still with us. I do. Every day. But you’ve got to leave this world for the next, son.”

Duck lifted his head up, his eyes wide, his lips curling into a grin. Fearing the dark as he did, Duck was quick to make sense of the man’s words. “He thinks I am a ghost!” Duck whispered, and the notion struck him as terribly funny. He broke into a snicker that reverberated loudly in the barrel. Julius squirmed in his grip.

There was a long moment of silence before the man spoke again.

“Ain’t funny for the living, Ethan, seeing your spirit,”
the voice said. “Now, hear me, and mind me like you did so well when you was living. I am opening up this here barrel, and your little soul needs to float off to heaven, boy. Please. Please.” The man sniffled some more, and then Duck heard a scraping noise at the lid above his head.

The lantern light blazed through the barrel the moment the lid lifted. Duck cowered and covered his eyes.

“Ethan?” The man leaned over the barrel top. Before he could determine as to whether the barrel held the ghostly remains of his dead son—a spirit that had plagued him at sea since the day the boy died—Julius, recoiling from the light, broke from Duck’s grip, let out a scream, and leaped straight out at the source of the light. The man let out a startled howl and stumbled backward. The lantern fell from his hands, smashing against the deck in a spray of glass and oil.

“Dear God!” the man cried, scrambling to his feet. Spirit or no, he must put out the fire. He leaped about the barrels, stomping at the burning splatters of oil on the deck. Thankfully the lantern had been nearly exhausted of its fuel, and the man was able to extinguish the patchwork of flames before they could spread.

Utter darkness descended, and silence too, but for the man’s heaving breath.

“Ethan? That ain’t you, is it?”

Duck, still hunched in the barrel, did not know what to say. He knew with the strange intuition that
children sometimes possess that the man was asking after his son. He could sense the man’s longing. Duck knew that pain. It had been just a matter of weeks since he had lost his own father, and now too, the absence of his mother and brother left a hole in him that he dared not dwell on long else tears came.

“Da?” Duck said, and reached for the barrel lip to pull himself to his feet. Scuffled footsteps drew closer, and then Duck felt strong hands grasp his shoulders. Before he knew what to do, Duck reached out for the man and they fell into a fierce embrace. Duck squeezed his eyes shut, but the tears leaked out nonetheless.

It is Da. It is Da. Come back from the dead to be here with me.

The little boy knew the fancy was not true, but if wishing could possibly bring back the dead, then Frederick Quick would have been the man holding him.

After a full minute the man cleared his throat. “You’re not my Ethan, are you lad?” He had a gentle voice, scratchy like boot heels on unswept floorboards.

“And you’re not my da,” Duck said. “But I wish you was.” Duck sniffled and wiped his cheeks against the man’s shirt. It smelled of pipe smoke and old sweat.

“I can’t say I wish you was Ethan,” the man said. “His spirit been hauntin’ me fierce.”

“I wish my da’s ghost would come to me.”

“Don’t you wish it, lad. Ain’t what you think it would be like.” The man pulled back from the embrace as if he could look down and see the boy he held, but
the darkness was deep. “How are you called?”

“I’m Duck,” he said. “Well, not really. Mum says to tell people my real name is Elias, but I would rather be called Horse Poop.”

“ ‘Elias’ ain’t a bad name. You should listen to your mum.”

Duck let his hands fall back to the barrel lip. “She ain’t here neither.” He sighed deeply. “And besides, I like ‘Duck’ better. I’m from Cornwall, and there people say I’m ‘happy as a duck.’ That’s how I got me nickname.”

“Happy is good to be. How you can be that down here in the dark I’ll never know. And what was that devil spirit that attacked me?”

Duck broke into a grin. “That’s Julius. He’s my friend. He’s a monkey.”

The man stepped back from Duck and grew silent a moment before speaking.

“What you doing down here, son? Have you stowed away?”

Duck explained as best he could, which was not very well. Tom—as the man was called—gathered enough to know that the boy had been hiding from the captain of the other ship that had now sailed back to the east. When Duck was through, Tom stepped forward and lifted Duck by his armpits out of the barrel to stand next to him.

“I need to take you to Fitch,” Tom said, and the way he said the name filled Duck with foreboding.

“Who is Fitch?”

“First mate of the HMS
Portsmouth
, and now head
officer of this ship until we reach Jamaica.”

Duck pulled away from the man. “Please don’t, Tom! Captains and officers are nothing but trouble!” He pressed his palms together in a prayerful gesture. “I won’t trouble a soul. Promise! Cross me heart even.”

Tom muttered his misgivings. “But what if you get caught?” he said at last.

“I won’t tell them I saw you!” Duck said. “And they’ll never catch me. I’m too quiet. And I can be special quiet if now and then you find your way down here with a fistful of bacon?” Tom chuckled and ran thick fingers through Duck’s hair. He sighed again.

“My Ethan was about your age when he got sick.”

“I been down here awhile, and I ain’t never seen your Ethan,” Duck said, glad that it was true. His mother had told him that all spirits travel off to heaven, but the idea that one might be down in the hold with him was not comforting.

“Sometimes in dark places I see him,” Tom said. “He never does say nothing to me, and I don’t know if he really is there or if it’s all in me mind.”

“You won’t tell old Fitch on me, will you?” Duck reached out and took Tom’s thick index finger. He squeezed it tight. “I promise me and Julius will keep hidden.”

Tom groaned. “Well, I ain’t no officer, am I?”

“So you won’t tell?”

“Neh.” Tom patted Duck’s cheek. “Now you must be a-hungry. I’ll see to that bacon, young Duck.”

And so it was that with Tom’s help, Duck survived the passage across seven hundred nautical miles to Port Royal, Jamaica. Tom was no cooper, but he knew his way about a hold. Most of the errands requiring a visit there were conducted by him alone. He even set up a hidden niche toward one end of the hold, stacking barrels in an arch against the curving hull and stringing an unused hammock between them so that Duck and Julius had a more comfortable place to sleep. The bacon did not arrive as regularly as Duck would have liked, but Tom brought enough biscuit and beans to keep Duck quiet.

Over three weeks passed in this manner. He and Tom shared bits and pieces of their lives together. Duck spoke mostly of his brother Kitto, how brave he was, how Duck wanted to grow up to be just like him, and Tom spoke of Ethan and the mischief the boy got into even as a wee lad. By the time the harbor master at Port Royal first spotted the topgallant sails of the
Blessed William
as she sailed for the bay in the wake of the mighty frigate
Portsmouth,
Duck and Tom had formed a friendship that each would miss when it was gone.

That morning Duck awoke with a start at the sound of cannon fire. He had been sleeping in the hammock with Julius, though it was late in the morning. Down in the hold no sunlight ever penetrated, and Duck and Julius sometimes kept odd hours playing games of hide and seek. Julius seemed to comprehend the game so
thoroughly that it would have astonished anyone but his six-year-old companion.

Duck shot to his feet, upending the hammock and Julius, who squealed as he tumbled to the deck. Duck’s mouth went dry and his heart hammered in his little chest. Another shot sounded—was it from the
Blessed William
? The little boy panted, a full panic coming on.

A lantern appeared at the top of the stairs, lighting the silhouette of a ragged set of boots.

“Tom! Tom, are they firing on us?” Duck said.

The lantern swung in Duck’s direction. Tom waited until he was close enough to speak softly and still be heard.

“ ’Tis why I came. Thought it might put the fear of God in you. Come here, lad.” Duck vaulted himself over the barrel stack and into Tom’s arms. Tom held the little boy tight, feeling a great pang of sadness.

“When a great ship like the
Portsmouth
comes in, all the lesser ships around give a salute,” he said. “That’s all it is.”

“That’s what the cannon fire is?” Tom nodded. Duck released his embrace and pulled away from Tom to look him in the face. “So we’ve reached Jamaica?”

Tom felt a tightness in his throat. He sighed. “Aye. Your sea journey has nearly come to an end.” Duck looked up into the thick lines of Tom’s face, and the sailor put on a smile he did not feel.

“I can’t wait to get dirty again,” Duck said. “Not ship messy, but dirt dirty. I miss dirt.” Tom rolled back his head
and laughed, showing the gaps between his uneven teeth.

“I miss you, lad. Already. You been a sight for sore eyes these last weeks. But listen, your sea adventure might just be over, but your land adventure just be about to begin.” Another round of cannon fire sounded off in the distance. Tom looked back to confirm that no one else approached the stairs.

“The unloading. I will try to be the one to lift your barrel and bring it topside, but after that you’ll have to keep yourself and that monkey quiet as cockroaches. They’ll lower the barrels down into several boats, and row these over to Custom Quay. You don’t want to be found out until after you reach land.”

“I can wait,” Duck said. “Julius, too. But . . .” Duck’s brow puckered. Duck’s temperament and age did not yield itself to much in the way of contemplation of the future, but at that moment the depth of his predicament began to occur to him. Tom saw worry written on the boy’s features for the first time.

“Now, now.” He tousled Duck’s hair. Julius, who had climbed his way atop the barrel next to Duck, stepped off to balance on the boy’s head. Duck smiled again. “You made it this far; you got spirit.”

“Where do you think I should head? I don’t want to run into that Henry Morgan bloke.”

“Port Royal is a big town, lad. Little chance of that. What you do is head for Saint Peter’s Church. Some good people there will help you. I know it.”

“And where is that?”

“Head straight away from the water on any street. Most of the roads head in the right direction. And then keep your eyes out for the steeple.”

“Or I could just ask somebody,” Duck said.

Tom’s brow furrowed. “Not just anybody you ask,” he said. “Trust your wits, Duck. There are some people best avoided in Port Royal.” Duck understood. His mother had cautioned both him and Kitto in similar fashion when she knew they would be down at the wharf where the newly docked ships spilled batches of sailors from all the world’s corners.

“God be with you, son,” Tom said. He rose and cleared his throat.

“Your Ethan was lucky,” Duck said.

Tom looked down at the boy, running his hand through straggles of sun-bleached hair. “Now why would say that, he being dead at six years?”

Duck smiled. “Well, he had you. As a da, I mean. I think that makes him lucky.”

Tom turned away and stepped toward the stairs, bewildered with emotion. “You know, Duck. Since I known you now, these last weeks, Ethan ain’t been back to haunt me,” he said. It was true, though Tom could not explain why it was so. “God speed you on your way, Elias Quick. And know wherever you land you’ve got yourself a friend in Tom Peet.”