After three days, I decided we would go up to the cave. It would at least tell me whether he had ever gotten the musket and so forth I had left there for him, and after that we would go back to the ship.
That was where I found him, and Francine, too. Dead. They were not just bones, like all the Native Americans who had been killed in there, but their bodies were pretty dry. They had been shot once, both of them, him through the head. The musket I had gotten for him was there, empty, and he may have killed Francine and himself. It could be. I do not know. It could also be that somebody found them there and shot them both. Two men might have done it, or one man with a musket and a pistol.
I left them where they had fallen, and we closed the mouth of the cave with stones, a lot of them. I do not know whether it has ever been found. I hope not.
Tomorrow I move to Holy Family. Fr. Wahl will come for me. I am all packed, except for this. New people and new duties, and farms and farm animals, which I know I will like. Yet tonight I find I cannot think about much of anything except Valentin and Francine, and the time I spent with them on Hispaniola.
Valentin and Francine, dead in the cave.
When we got back to the ship, Bouton had signed up three buccaneers and was proud of himself. I congratulated him like you have to do. Then I went into my cabin and sat looking out the window without seeing anything. When Novia tried to talk to me, I told her to go away, and by and by we put out without any orders from me.
I sat there drinking rum for most of the night, I think. Not chugging it, just sipping it now and then. The long nine at my elbow was all the company I had, and all I wanted. When I had drunk half the bottle, I threw the rest into the sea and went to bed. I will not do anything like that tonight, although a lot of priests are hard drinkers, and Fr. Houdek hits the bottle now and then.
But I feel like it.
Is Holy Family any closer? I hope so. I have my plan worked out. Every detail. Soon-within a year, I think-the government will change.
22
The Vincente
It was not time for us to meet up with Capt. Burt yet, so I told Rombeau we would split up and meet at Ile a Vache. (It means Cow Island.) I had heard it was a good place to careen a ship, and I wanted to have a look at the bottom of the Castillo Blanco, because there was one time when we scraped the bottom a little running from the Santa Lucia. A merchant at Tortuga had told me it would be a good place to sign up new men, too. There were quite a few buccaneers there, and the cattle had been shot over so much nobody could make much hunting them anymore.
Rombeau and I flipped to see who would get the wind, and he won. He would head west and go around the Spanish end of Hispaniola, looking for prizes. I would head east and check out the western end of Cuba before going to Ile a Vache. To tell the truth I was glad I had lost, because I wanted to see Cuba again. I would have liked to go back to Habana if I could, but that was too far.
That was a pleasant cruise in some ways, although it was not a lucky one. We stopped fishermen a few times. It was mostly to ask for information, but I always bought from them when they had anything, just to break the ice and show we were not out to rob them. That got us some nice fish and crabs, and especially turtles. There is no eating like a green turtle, in my experience. English sailors like Red Jack will not eat fish, but our Frenchmen had more sense, and we were mostly French. I had made Mahu our cook, and he and Ned pitched in like they had been born to it. Mahu said hippo was the best meat in the world, but I got him to admit that green turtle was almost as good.
I have gone off writing about food tonight for two reasons. The first is that I am pastor of Holy Family now, and everybody around here grows food or raises it or both, so everybody is always talking about it-pigs, hams, home-cured bacon, chicken, tomatoes, preserves, and everything else. People bring pies and cookies to the rectory. It is nice of them, but there is too much. Fr. Wahl and I wish there was some way we could share it with poor families.
The other is that it was right after a great dinner that somebody found the second body. I am just about sure it was the day we bought rock lobsters from a fisherman. Mahu had boiled them alive the way you have to, and we had cracked them for ourselves and doused them with salt butter and lime juice.
We were just finishing up, when a guy who had gone down to get more butter came running back. The dead man was French, and that is all I remember about him now. He must have been one of the men we signed in Port Royal. I am almost certain that is right.
It was after sundown, so there was no use carrying him up on deck, but I got more lanterns and had Pete come down and look at him. Novia came, too. Pete said the dead man had been strangled like the other.
'Neck's broke, too, Cap'n. Neat job, that is. I hope the man that does for me does it equal good.'
Novia said, 'How did he do that, Pete?'
'Twisted it is all. No different than you'd wring the neck of a chicken. Wanted to make sure he was dead.'
I said, 'He must be strong.'
'He is, sir. I could do it, but there's not a lot could.'
While I was still trying to think of a good way to ask the question I wanted to ask, Novia said, 'How do you know you could, Pete?'
''Cause I've done it, ma'am. Hangin' don't always break the neck. If the drop's not enough, or he don't weigh enough, it won't. So what I did sometimes is break it myself, after. I ain't a man that likes to see folks suffer unless I'm goin' to get some good out it. Animals the same. I'll kill ' em an' eat 'em, you know I will. But I don't never kill 'em for fun, 'cept rats.'
Novia glanced at me and shook her head. I nodded, just a little bit. If Pete had killed them, he was the best actor in the world and we would never get him.
I talked to everybody and got nowhere. There is no point in my writing much about that. Just about everybody had been up on deck eating. And everybody eating had been with a bunch of friends, all ready to swear he had never gone below. If this were one of those crime shows, it would be Novia or me, or maybe Bouton or Pete. It was not, this was real, and it was not any of us.
When I had finished my first lobster, I had taken the wheel so that the man who had been steering could get a bite to eat. Novia had come with me, and she could not have done it anyway. She was not strong enough.
Bouton had taken the wheel from me, and had been eating with me until I took it. The group he and I had been eating in, with him and a couple of others, was just in front of our toy quarterdeck. Okay, maybe somebody could have sneaked off-it was getting dark toward the end-but I was ready to swear nobody had. Novia did not think so either.
What it came down to was that nobody-nobody in our crew, that is- had been below except Mahu and Ned down in the galley. The dead man had left the group he was eating with and gone below to fetch a bottle. He had not come back, but he had not been gone long enough for anybody to get worried about him.
That night I thought a lot about it, and it seemed to me there was only one way it could have happened. There was A meeting of all the clergy last night. Fr. Wahl and I drove into town for it. Priests molesting 'children' was the big topic. Bishop Scully tried not to show how he felt about it, but it leaked through.
'It has happened,' he told us, 'and happened right here in our diocese. More than one priest has sinned in this way. What is worse, priests who have confessed and been forgiven have sinned again. Every one of you must unite with me in opposing this sin, and report it to me whenever it occurs. Believe me, you are doing your brother no favor by concealing his sin.'
After that, he detailed four cases without revealing the identity of the priests involved. When he asked for questions, those he got were pretty obvious. 'How could we know a brother priest's sin unless the sanctity of the confessional were violated?' 'Shouldn't a report be made to the police?' 'How much was needed to settle these cases?' 'Shouldn't a guilty priest be punished as well as counseled?' 'Might not some priest be falsely accused?'
