Skull and Bones

“Yes. For you’ve had it, and I’m protected.”

“And will I be freed, now, for what you told that Parson?”

“I think so. The learned doctor believed me.”

“And then what’ll I do?”

Flint told him: in detail. Billy Bones pondered, asked a few more questions to be sure, and then the two sat quiet as the massive wooden hull began to move.

“Cap’n,” said Billy Bones, finally.

“What?”

“The goods, Cap’n. The gold…”

“Well?”

“They took all your papers and such, didn’t they?”

Flint smiled. “Did they?”

“So how’ll we…how’ll you…find the goods again, without charts and notes?”

“Billy, my Billy! Billy-my-little-chicken! You really must leave all such matters to me. Do you understand?”

Billy Bones gulped. The tone of Flint’s voice had barely changed but Billy Bones knew that this subject must not be raised again. He was immune to smallpox, but not to fear of Flint.

“You just do as you’ve been bid, Mr Bones. When the time comes.”

“Aye-aye, Cap’n,” said Billy Bones, for Livvy Rose had measured him with the precision of her father’s mathematical instruments, recognising that the faithful Billy was born to follow. And now he would follow Flint – even stripped of rank and bound in chains – and keep on following him to the ends of the earth. For Flint was Billy Bones’s chosen master.

Chapter 3 (#ulink_f6717d64-f2cf-506e-9f39-38e5173ccd41)

Dinner time, 12th March 1753

Aboard Walrus

The Atlantic

All aboard who weren’t on watch gobbled down their dinners with knives, fingers and spoons, lounging among the guns on the maindeck in the sunshine, while Walrus bowled along under all plain sail. They cheered and raised their mugs, spluttering grog and food in all directions as they bawled out their song, to the tune of a fiddler and a piper.

Here’s to Bonnie Prince Charlie,

That does our king remain,

And save him from his exile,

To bring him home again!

Two men looked on in silence. They were not gobbling their dinners because they were on watch, and they weren’t singing because they weren’t Jacobites. They were Long John Silver, elected captain of the ship, and his master gunner, Israel Hands. Both wore the long coats and tricorne hats that proclaimed their rank, and they stood by the helmsman at the ten-foot tiller on the quarterdeck, braced against the ship’s canted deck with practised ease, even Long John with his timber limb.

Israel Hands smiled to see Long John recovering at last, after wounds that had struck him down in the fight with the navy over Flint’s Island, which Walrus barely escaped, leaving Flint in the navy’s hands, and his Treasure still hidden ashore.

Now Tom Allardyce the bosun was on his feet and giving the second verse. He was a tall, yellow-haired Scot who’d fought at Culloden seven years earlier, when the English army’s modern musketry butchered a medieval mob of Highland swordsmen: the Protestant House of Hanover defeating the Catholic House of Stuart.

Here’s to the devil to take fat George,

And fetch him down to Hell,

To trim his Hanoverian ears,

And roast his arse full well!

Allardyce was a Jacobite to the soul and hated King George with a passion. As he sang, he went among the crew slapping shoulders while they cheered him on. Some cheered because they supported his cause, while others had no loyalty to a king who was chasing them with a noose.

“Merry buggers, ain’t they?” said Israel Hands, looking at the crew. Then he glanced anxiously up at Long John’s big, square face.

“Will they do, John? And have you chosen your course?”

Silver reached up to pet the big green parrot that sat with its claws clamped into the material of his coat.

“What do you think, Cap’n Flint?” he said, tickling the bird’s chest. She squawked and shifted her feet and nuzzled his ear.

“Merry Buggers!” she said, for she had a perfect gift of mimicry, and used words to purpose, and with meaning.

Long John sighed, for he had much on his mind.

“Well, the ship won’t do,” he said, looking Walrus over. She was a New England schooner: two hundred tons burden, a hundred feet from bow to stern, sharp-hulled and with a broad spread of canvas on two raked masts. She mounted fourteen six-pounder guns and had once been a swift, handy ship, but she’d suffered a battering in recent actions, and hadn’t been careened for months, which meant – in these tropical waters – that the underwater hull must be a seething tangle of weeds and growth.

“A Thames barge would out-sail her as she is!” said Silver.

“Does that mean we’ll be chasing one?” said Israel Hands.

“We’ve just thirty-two hands,” said Silver, ignoring the remark.

“Gentlemen o’ fortune every one!” said Israel Hands.

“Mostly…but them two ain’t! Useless bloody lubbers!”

Silver nodded at a pair of men who were sitting miserably apart from the crew. They wore long coats and were the ship’s navigating officers – such as they were – for neither Silver nor anyone else aboard had that skill. The pair of them had been taken out of the merchant service under Silver’s promise to be freed at Upper Barbados – Walrus’s destination – for they were honest men. Honest, but found wanting. They might be able to feel their way up a coastline, but they were at a loss on the deep waters, and growing more nervous each day.

“Them swabs has only got this far by dead reckoning and fair weather!” said Silver. “One good blow, and we’ll be off their charts. Then God help us all!”

“Never mind them,” said Israel Hands. “We’ll hire afresh and take on others, too.” He looked sideways at Long John and decided to broach the great question: “What worries me, John, is that thirty-three hands is plenty for a merchantman, but not for such business as ours.”

Silver, however, wouldn’t be drawn. He shook his head and fell deep into his own thoughts. He’d never wanted to be a pirate – a “gentleman o’ fortune” – but had become one because it was that or certain death. And thus by easy stages to robbery and murder, and putting a pistol ball into a child – which, of all the things he’d done, came back most often to flog him with guilt, though he’d done it of necessity, to stop the spread of island smallpox. Even now he could feel the jump of his pistol firing and see the open-mouthed disbelief on the face of Ratty Richards, ship’s boy, as he dropped down dead; slaughtered by the captain he worshipped.

And now he had a wife whom he loved fiercely, and who’d made clear that she’d not live with him unless he became an honest man. Or so she said…But did she mean it? She loved him; he knew that much. Or so he thought.