A false hope, as it would turn out.
All was quiet, just Maynard’s increasingly hysterical shrieking as we crouched hidden behind the gunwale. How many men were still left alive on the sloop, we had no real way of telling, but one of us was confident at least.
“We’ve knocked them on their heads except three or four,” shouted Blackbeard. He was wearing his black hat, I noticed, and he’d lit the fuses in his beard and was shrouded in smoke, his hang-over cast off; he glowed like a devil. “Let’s jump aboard and cut them to pieces.”
Only three or four? There had to be more of them left alive than that, surely?
But by then our two hulls had bumped, and with a shout, Blackbeard led us over the side of the Adventure and onto the British sloop, roaring a brutal warrior yell as the men flooded towards Maynard and the first mate at the tiller.
But Maynard, he was as good a performer as my friend Mary Read. For as soon as our dozen pirates boarded his ship, that wild hysterical look left his face. He shouted, “Now, men, now!” and a hatch in the quarter-deck opened and the trap was sprung.
They’d been hiding from us, playing possum, pretending to be dead, luring us on board. Now out they came, like rats escaping bilge-water, two dozen of them to meet our plucky twelve, and straight away the clashing of steel, the popping of gunshot and the screams filled the air.
A man was upon me. I punched him in the face and engaged my blade at the same time, dodging to the side to avoid a fountain of blood and snot that erupted from his nose. In my other hand was my pistol, but I heard Blackbeard calling me, “Kenway.”
He was down, with a leg bleeding badly, defending himself with his sword and calling for a gun. I tossed him mine and he caught it, using it to fell a man coming at him with raised cutlass.
He was dead, though. We both knew it. We all knew it.
“In a world without gold, we could have been heroes!” he shouted as they teemed over him.
Maynard led a renewed attack upon him and Blackbeard, seeing his nemesis up close, bared his teeth and swung his sword. Maynard screeched, his hand gushing crimson as he pulled away and his sword fell, its guard broken. From his belt he snatched a pistol, fired it, catching Edward on the shoulder and sending him back to his knees, where he grunted and swung his sword as the enemy moved in on him remorselessly.
Around us I could see more of our men falling. I drew my second pistol, fired, and gave one of their men a third eye, but now they were upon me, swarming over me. I cut men down. I cut them ruthlessly. The knowledge that my next attacker would die the same way kept a few of them at bay, giving me the chance to glance over and see Edward dying by a thousand cuts, on his knees but fighting still, surrounded by vultures who hacked and chopped at him with their blades.
With a shout of frustration and anger I stood and whirled with outstretched hands, my blades forming a perimeter of death that sent men flailing backwards. I snatched the initiative, shooting forward and kicking the man in front of me so that I could leap off his chest and face and I broke through the barrier of men surrounding me. In the air my blades flashed and two men fell away with open veins, blood hitting the deck with an audible slap. I landed, then sprang across the deck to help my friend.
But I never made it. From my left came a sailor who stopped my progress, a huge brute of a man who thumped into me, the two of us moving at such speed that neither of us could stop the momentum that took us over the side of the gunwale and into the water below.
I saw one thing before I fell. I saw my friend’s throat open and blood sheet down his front, his eyes rolling to the top of his head as Blackbeard fell for a final time.
FORTY-SIX
DECEMBER 1718
You’ve not heard a man scream until you’ve heard a man who’s just had his knee-cap blown off screaming in pain.
That was the punishment dealt by Charles Vane to the captain of the British slave ship we’d boarded. That same British slave ship had virtually scuttled Vane’s own vessel, so we’d had to sail the Jackdaw nearby and allow his men on board. Vane had been furious about that, but even so, that was no excuse to lose his temper. After all, this whole expedition had been his idea.
He’d hatched his plan soon after Thatch’s death.
“So Thatch has been topped?” Vane said, as we sat in the captain’s quarters of the Jackdaw, with Calico Jack drunk and asleep nearby, lying straight-legged in the chair in a way that seemed to defy gravity. He was another who had refused to take The King’s Pardon, so we were stuck with him.
“He was outnumbered,” I said of Blackbeard. The image was an unwelcome new arrival in my mind. “I couldn’t reach him.”
I remembered falling, seeing him die, blood pouring from his throat, hacked down like a rabid dog. I took another long swig of rum to banish the image.
They’d hung his head from the bowsprit as a trophy, so I’d heard.
And they called us scum.
“Devil damn the man, he was fierce, but his heart was divided,” said Charles. He’d been worrying at my tabletop with the point of his knife. Any other guest I’d have told to stop but not Charles Vane. A Charles Vane defeated by Woodes Rogers. A Charles Vane mourning the death of Blackbeard. Most of all, a Charles Vane with a knife in his hand.
He was right, though, with what he said. Even if Blackbeard had lived, there was little doubt he intended to leave the life behind. To stand at our head and lead us out of the wilderness was not something that had appealed to Edward Thatch.
We lapsed into silence. Perhaps we were both thinking of Nassau and how it belonged in the past. Or perhaps we were both wondering what to do in the future, because after some moments, Vane took a deep breath, seemed to pull himself together and slapped his fists to his thighs.
“Right, Kenway,” he announced, “I’ve been musing on this plan of yours . . . This . . . Observatory you were going on about. How do we know it exists?”
I shot him a sideways look to see if he was joking. After all, he wouldn’t have been the first. I’d been much mocked for my tales of The Observatory and wasn’t in the mood for any more, not then, anyway. But he wasn’t, he was deadly serious, leaning forward in his chair, awaiting my answer. Calico Jack slumbered on.
“We find a slave ship called the Princess. Aboard should be a man called Roberts. He can lead us to it.”
Charles seemed to think. “All them slavers work for the Royal African Company. Let’s find any one of their ships and start asking some questions.”
But unfortunately for us all, the first Royal African Company ship we encountered blew holes in Vane’s ship, the Ranger, meaning he needed to be rescued. At last we boarded the slave ship, where our men had already quietened down the slaver’s crew. There we found the captain.