The Noble Pirates (37 page)

I flashed Roberts a look. “Howel wanted it that way because you tricked him. He didn’t know what you are, that you –” I stopped suddenly. “Wait.
Bartholomew
Roberts? I thought your name was John?”

Roberts rubbed his chin. “As a pirate captain, I want to be known as Bartholomew Roberts. John Roberts is my former name.” He smiled slightly. “John Roberts is no more.”

I blinked rapidly, trying to clear my head. I was most definitely going to faint now. “Get those smelling salts ready, dude,” I said to Roberts, trying to breathe evenly.

Davis was ambushed at the island of Principe, where he “died like a game Cock,” shooting two Portuguese as he fell. He was succeeded by Bartholomew Roberts, the most successful Golden Age pirate.

I hated that book. Hated it. What good had it done me, knowing the future? It taunted me with its words, at my sad attempts at proving it wrong. I scanned Walter’s face frantically, searching for a crack, a hint of dishonesty in his face. He stared back, twisting his hat in his hands.

“He’s dead, Sabrina. I tell you he’s dead,” Walter said.

What followed is not worth telling, is not worth reliving. I could not keep my agony from spilling out before those hardened pirates, causing them significant discomfort. I was left alone in the cabin, and only Sam came in periodically to ensure I took the Cinchona bark decoction Roberts had brewed on account of the malaria that had sickened several of the
Royal Rover
’s men.

“He’s gone, Sam,” I sobbed to him during one of his brief visits, my face swollen from crying, my body skeletal from the malaria. “It’s all my fault. He knew he would die, but he came anyway. And now he’s gone.”

Sam nodded slowly, unable to hide the uneasiness from his expression. Not even Sam was immune to the frenzied mourning of a woman. “He is gone, but you must live,
nwanyi
,” he said.

“Why?” I moaned. “What’s the point?” I pushed the cup of steaming decoction away miserably.

“Because you must go back,” he said. “You must go back to your time, to your family. You have found your black pirate.”

I stopped sniffling and met Sam’s eyes. “What? How did you know that?”

Sam responded coolly, “Howel Davis told me who your black pirate is.”

I gaped, my puffy eyes barely able to blink. “Howel knew? When…? How…?”

Sam shrugged. “I do not know. How did
you
know?”

“I… I just figured it out,” I replied. “Certain things about him stood out to me.”

Sam smiled. “Then perhaps those same things stood out to Howel Davis. He was a very smart man.”

Was
. A fresh wave of devastation hit me, and I began to wail anew. Sam stood, taking this as his cue. “Survive,
nwanyi
. Howel Davis would have wanted you to survive.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

  When I had no more tears left to shed, I sat up, drank the concoction, and slowly made my way out of the cabin on weak legs. Sam was right. I could stay in the eighteenth century and die, or I could try to get back home. With Howel Davis dead, there was no way in hell I was staying in this shithole. Shaking and blinking in the sunlight, I watched unsteadily as the men went about their work, the deck alive with activity. I had once been a part of this, been proud of it even. Now, as I looked around, I realized that without Howel Davis, these men were merely
pirates
. They would never again have a leader like Howel. Who was this strange man who led them now?

  I spotted John – sorry,
Bartholomew
– Roberts pacing the deck, his hands behind his back. This man was Howel’s successor. This man was my black pirate. This man was… an ornery cuss, as far as I could tell. I didn’t like him. But I had to speak to him, to find out who he was. And most importantly, I had to find out if he could get me back to 2011.

He saw me hobbling out to him and met me halfway. “Not here,” he said softly, gesturing. “Abaft. To the poop deck.” I followed him to the stern, noting that we were close-hauled with the wind, therefore our voices would not be heard by the crew. He saw me stumble and reached for my hand, which I reluctantly gave him. As soon as I was able to lean against the railing, I pulled my hand away. He noticed how I retreated, as though I loathed to touch him, and he stiffened.

“Before he discovered you’d been captured by Jack Blaine,” Roberts began, his big palms on the railing, his eyes on the waves below, “Howel Davis told me he suspected I was from a different time, a different era. When I revealed nothing, he told me about you.” Roberts still didn’t look at me. “He asked that I help you get back to your time, that he knew I could help you. He offered his small fortune in return.”

My eyes were fixed on Roberts’ face, on the smooth, hairless jaw, the firm, wide mouth. I noticed, suddenly, that his accent had changed, that he sounded more American than Welsh. I could hardly wait for him to continue. “And?”

“I told him I would consider it, if he told no one of his suspicions about me. Then you were captured, and Davis became desperate. He approached me again, told me that his end was near, and that if he was unable to rescue you, he wanted me to do it. I told him that I would – on one condition.” Roberts finally met my gaze. “He had to make me captain.”

Roberts rubbed his chin thoughtfully before continuing. “Davis tried to trick the governor, not realizing he was secretly allied with Ned Taylor. None of them even realized Taylor was there. When he was killed, I was made captain, and true to my word, I returned to avenge Davis’ death, and to rescue you. We destroyed the fort, and while Blaine managed to escape, he was unable to take you with him.” Roberts smiled. “I got to you first.”

I furrowed my brow. “I don’t get it. If you’re from the future, why would you want to be an eighteenth-century pirate captain? Who are you?”

His eyes lacked emotion, lacked reaction. Like a shark’s eyes. “I’m John Roberts, commander of a multi-national naval task force.” He paused, giving me a moment to soak it in. “I am from 2022.”

Since learning about Howel’s death, things had failed to astonish me. I was numb. He could have told me he was an alien from outer space and I’m not sure I would have flinched. I had subconsciously prepared myself for a more fantastic explanation. “You’re an American,” I said. I shuddered out the remnants of the malaria, forced myself to shut out thoughts of Howel Davis. He was gone. I had to get out of here. Period. “You’re in the Navy. You came here on purpose.”

He almost smiled, hearing the incredulity in my voice. “I’m a Navy SEAL.” The cocky bastard wanted to be sure I understood he was a SEAL. I rolled my eyes as he continued, “I am part of a clandestine operation to explore time portals as a means of obtaining military advantage over our enemies. Active military research on the time continuum disruptions in that area, including P54, has been going on for some fifty years. Once we could determine that P54 appeared relatively stable and we were able to calculate its occurrence and aperture duration with some degree of certainty, I was sent. Or, as it were, I sent myself.”

My mouth was open. “Wait, rewind. P-what?”

Roberts inhaled impatiently.“P54 is the designation we assigned to the recurring disturbance in the area known as the Bermuda Triangle, the time portal I went through – and I believe you went through. The disturbances we have studied occur, in some cases, including in the case of P54, at regular intervals and durations, assuming weather conditions are typical.” He was speaking slowly, as if to a child. A very, very young child. But while he spoke slowly, the words he used swirled uselessly in my head: electromagnetic field… fabric of time… wormhole… paradox…

“Stop,” I said suddenly, scratching my head in frustration. “You’re not speaking English anymore. I don’t care about that physics crap. Just tell me what I need to know. So you entered the time portal not knowing where – or when – you’d end up?”

“That’s correct,” Roberts replied, sighing. “I was the first to intentionally go through.”

“And what about getting back?” I asked.

“When I left 2022, we knew with a high degree of certainty that 350 earth days lapse between P54 occurrences, assuming weather conditions are typical. If this principle holds true in 1718 to 1719, I expect P54 to occur in 51 days from today. The idea was that I would return through P54 at its first occurrence subsequent to my arrival at time Zero.”

“Time Zero?” I questioned in a small voice.

“Time Zero is the day and time I arrived at the destination,” Robert’s explained. “Time 350 is when P54 should next occur. Our best scientific theories indicate, although we have no way of knowing with certainty, that I could return through P54 and arrive at or about 2022.”

Damn my sluggish brain! I pressed against my temples with my fingertips. “So… 51 days before you go back?”

He smiled. “The time is approaching.”

But you won’t go back, I thought. Did he know who he was? That he would become “the most successful Golden Age pirate”? Probably not. Not unless he was a pirate enthusiast as well as a Navy SEAL. Not a likely combination. “Roberts,” I said, deciding to go with his last name since the alternative was calling him
Bart
– “Can I go back with you? I have to go back. I have a family –”

“Yes, I know,” Roberts replied, interrupting me. “Davis explained it all to me. He asked me to help you get back to your time. The problem is that I only know when the time portal opens to 2022, not 2011.”

2022. Sophie would be… seventeen. Dear God. Her entire childhood, gone. I wouldn’t know her, and she most certainly wouldn’t know me. But if the alternative was never seeing her again… I looked at Roberts’ stone face pleadingly. “Help me get back, Captain Bartholomew Roberts. Please.”

Roberts wasted no time in drawing up his own Articles: No gambling allowed. Lights out at eight, and if any man desired to drink after that hour, he could do it in the dark, on the open deck. As soon as I was “taken care of” (Roberts’ delicate way of saying “gotten rid of”), there was to be no boy or woman allowed among the crew, and if any man was found disguising a woman to take her to sea, he would suffer death. Roberts would take no chances that something like
me
would happen again.

True to his military calling, he ensured every man swore to obey his rules, stating that if any man broke his word, Captain Roberts himself would fight the disobeying dog with sword or pistol. Roberts cast an eerily pleasant look at his men as he said, “I neither fear nor value any of you.”

And there wasn’t a single person among us who didn’t believe it.

He didn’t drink, preferring tea to the alcohol. While he didn’t ban drinking altogether, he imposed as many rules as he could to curb drunkenness among his men. He dressed himself in the finest clothes aboard, in damask and ostrich feathers, gold and diamonds. If the men secretly thought Roberts a teetotaler or a dandy, they dared not say so – not to Roberts, nor to each other. Captain Bartholomew Roberts was an enigma, and his calm, disciplined demeanor no doubt concealed a certain madness.

He
must
have been mad. Only a madman would do what he did.

He was one of the SEAL’s top guys, commander of a SEAL Team and a number of operational SEAL platoons, a fearless, calculating soldier. A Naval Academy graduate, he was a veteran of several covert operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He was airborne qualified, a master diver, and an expert with explosives and small arms of all types. Most importantly, he was an educated navigator who’d spent his early life at sea, learning its secrets.

I knew next to nothing about his personal life, and he gave away nothing. His contempt for me made me wonder about his past experiences with women. Divorced, maybe? Secretly gay? I didn’t know. I did know, however, that he crossed the time portal alone, not knowing if he would survive, when or where he would end up, or if he could ever get back.

A man with nothing to lose.

He told no one that he planned to do it, did it against the better judgment of those who understood far more than him. He entered the “storm” in a raft, armed with his SEAL survival gear. He claims to have been conscious throughout the ordeal, although he was knocked from his raft and spent a great deal of time not knowing which way was up, assaulted by the angry sea. When the storm finally subsided, Roberts found himself bobbing at sea, as I had. Unlike me, however, Roberts was not rescued by Edward England.

A weaker, less prepared person would have perished. But Roberts was trained to survive, and he knew where he was going – he’d studied the area thoroughly before entering the portal. He detected land from the color of the sky and the pattern of the waves. He swam and then let the waves carry him onto a small island, which he later determined was Salt Cay, a small island northeast of Nassau. Once on Salt Cay, Roberts built a raft and, hiding his SEAL gear in a safe place, dressed in the plain white shirt and brown pants he had packed for the occasion and set off for Nassau.

He’d seen the ships pass, had been able to discern roughly what era he was in. In Nassau, he attracted little attention, and within a day, in the dankness of a seedy pub, he found himself employment aboard a slaver. He had no real plan, he said, except to survive until the time portal opened again. I imagine he was excited by the challenge of making it in the eighteenth century, of not just surviving, but
thriving
.