God,” he said. “Dear God, we shall all be murdered by that pirate.”
“Not all,” his wife said, pointing a pistol at him. Her husband kept a brace of loaded pistols by the bed, and she now held them aimed at him, one in each hand.
“Emily,” Hacklett said, “don’t be a fool. This is no time for your silliness, the man is a vicious killer.”
“Come no closer,” she said.
He hesitated. “You jest.”
“I do not.”
Hacklett looked at his wife, and the pistols she held. He was not himself skilled with weapons, but he knew from limited experience that a pistol was extremely difficult to fire with accuracy. He did not feel fear so much as irritation.
“Emily, you are being a damnable fool.”
“Stay,” she commanded.
“Emily, you are a bitch and a whore but you are not, I’ll wager, a murderer and I will have-”
She fired one gun. The room filled with smoke. Hacklett cried aloud in terror, and several moments passed before both husband and wife realized that he had not been hit.
Hacklett laughed, mostly in relief.
“As you see,” he said, “it is no simple matter. Now give me the pistol, Emily.”
He came quite close before she fired again, hitting him in the groin. The impact was not powerful. Hacklett remained standing. He took another step, coming so near her that he could almost touch her.
“I have always hated you,” he said, in a conversational tone. “From the first day that I met you. Do you remember? I said to you, ‘Good day, madam,’ and you said to me-”
He broke off into a coughing fit, and collapsed on the ground, doubled over in pain.
Blood was now seeping from his waist.
“You said to me,” he said. “You said… Oh damn your black eyes, woman… it hurts… you said to me…”
He rocked on the ground, his hands pressed to his groin, his face twisted in pain, eyes shut tightly. He moaned in time to his rocking: “Aaah… aaah… aaah…”
She sat up in the bed and dropped the pistol. It touched the sheet, so hot that it burned the imprint of the barrel into the fabric. She quickly picked it up and flung it on the floor, then looked back at her husband. He continued to rock as before, still moaning, and then he stopped, and looked over at her, and spoke through clenched teeth.
“Finish it,” he whispered.
She shook her head. The chambers were empty; she did not know how to load them again, even if there were spare shot and powder.
“Finish it,” he said again.
A dozen conflicting emotions pressed in her mind. Realizing that he was not soon to die, she went to the side table, and poured a glass of claret, and brought it to him. She lifted his head, and helped him to drink. He drank a little, and then a fury overcame him, and with one bloody hand he pushed her away. His strength was surprising. She fell back, with a red imprint of a flat hand on her nightdress.
“Damn you for a king’s bitch,” he whispered, and took up his rocking again. He was now absorbed in his pain, and seemed to have lost any sense that she was there. She got to her feet, poured a glass of wine for herself, sipped it, and watched.
She was still standing there when Hunter entered the room half an hour later. Hacklett was alive, but wholly ashen, his actions feeble except for an occasional spastic twitch. He lay in an enormous pool of blood.
Hunter took out his pistol and moved toward Hacklett.
“No,” she said.
He hesitated, then stepped away.
“Thank you for your kindness,” Mrs. Hacklett said.
Chapter 37
ON OCTOBER 23, 1665, the conviction of Charles Hunter and his crew on a charge of piracy and robbery was summarily overturned by Lewisham, Judge of the Admiralty, meeting in closed session with Sir James Almont, newly restored Governor of the Jamaica Colony.
In the same session, Commander Edwin Scott, Chief Officer of the Garrison of Fort Charles, was convicted of high treason and sentenced to be hanged the following day. A confession in his own handwriting was obtained on the promise of commutation of sentence. Once the letter was written, an unknown officer shot Scott to death in his cell in Fort Charles. The officer was never apprehended.
For Captain Hunter, now the toast of the town, one final problem remained: Andre Sanson. The Frenchman was nowhere to be found, and it was reported that he had fled into the inland hills. Hunter put out the word that he would pay well for any news of Sanson, and by mid-afternoon he had a surprising report.
Hunter had stationed himself publicly in the Black Boar, and soon enough an old bawdy woman came to see him. Hunter knew her; she ran a whoring house, her name was Simmons. She approached him nervously.
“Speak up, woman,” he said, and he called for a glass of kill-devil to ease her fears.
“Well, sir,” she said, drinking the liquor, “a week past, a man of the name of Carter comes to Port Royal, desperate ill.”
“Is this John Carter, a seaman?”
“The same.”
“Speak on,” Hunter said.
“He says he has been picked up by an English packet boat from St. Kitts. They had spotted a fire on a small uninhabited cay, and, pausing to investigate, had found this Carter marooned, and brought him thence.”
“Where is he now?”
“Oh, he has fled, he has. He’s terrified of meeting with Sanson, the Frenchy villain. He’s in the hills now, but he told me his story, right enough.”
Hunter said, “And that is?”
The bawdy woman told the story quickly. Carter was aboard the sloop Cassandra, carrying part of the galleon treasure, under Sanson’s command. There had been a fierce hurricane, in which the ship was wrecked on the inner reef of an island, and most of the crew killed. Sanson had gathered the others together, and had salvaged the treasure, which he directed them to bury on the island. Then they had all built a longboat with the flotsam of the wrecked sloop.
And then, Carter had reported, Sanson had killed them all - twelve men - and set sail alone. Carter had been badly wounded, but somehow survived and lived to return home and tell his story. And he said further that he did not know the name of the island, nor the exact location of the treasure, but that Sanson had scratched a map on a coin, which he then hung around his neck.
Hunter listened to the story in silence, thanked the woman, and gave her a coin for her trouble. More than ever, now, he wanted to find Sanson. He sat in the Black Boar and patiently listened to every person with a rumor of the Frenchman’s whereabouts. There were at least a dozen stories. Sanson had gone to Port Morant. Sanson had fled to Inagua. Sanson had gone into hiding in the hills.
When finally the truth came, it was stunning. Enders burst into the tavern:
“Captain, he’s on board the galleon!”
“What?”
“Aye, sir. There were six of us set as guard; he killed two, and sent the rest in the boat to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“Either you arrange his pardon, and discard openly your feud with him, or he’ll sink the ship, Captain. Sink her at anchor. He must have your word by nightfall, Captain.”
Hunter swore. He went to the window of the tavern and looked out at the harbor. El Trinidad rode lightly at anchor, but she was moored well offshore, in deep water - too deep to salvage any treasure if she were sunk.
“He’s damnably clever,” Enders said.
