What I’m saying is, the place was a pit: our grand Nassau Fort crumbled, great cracks along its walls; our shanty houses were falling down; our stocks and stores were badly kept and in disarray, and as for our privies—well, I know I’ve not exactly spared you the gory details of my life so far, but that’s where I draw the line.
By far the worst of it was the smell. No, not from the privies, though that was bad enough, let me tell you, but the smell that hung over the whole place, emanating from the stacks of rotting animal hides pirates had left on the shore. When the wind was blowing the right way—oh my days.
So you can hardly blame Charles Vane when he looked around himself, and though it was rich coming from someone who stank like a man who’d spent the last month at sea, he said, “So this is the new Libertalia? Stinks the same as every squat I’ve robbed in the past year.”
It’s one thing being rude about your own hovel, it’s a different kettle of fish when someone else does it. You suddenly feel defensive of the old place. Even so, I let it ride.
“We was led to believe Nassau was a place where men did as they please,” snorted Calico Jack. But before I could answer, salvation arrived in the form of Edward Thatch, who, with a bellow that might have been a greeting but could just as well have been a war-cry, appeared at the top of the steps and burst onto the terrace, as though The Old Avery were a prize and he was about to pillage it.
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.”