The Black Devil’s Prey

Blood on the Boards

The Red Tortuga owed its name neither to the color of its walls nor to that of its sign. The first had long since vanished under pipe smoke, lamp grease and rum; the second creaked above the door, eaten by salt, until all that remained was a woman with her legs spread, a saber in each hand.

People claimed the red came from the blood that had to be washed from between the floorboards every morning.

That was a lie, of course.

Nobody ever washed the floor.

That night the tavern stank of sour rum, sweat, chewed tobacco and fried fish. Sailors of six nations packed themselves under the blackened beams, mixed with smugglers, dockside women and merchants come to buy cheap cargo they would rather not know the origin of. Coins changed hands under the tables. Bargains were struck in the alcoves. Men drank, gambled and lied.

Outside, Tortuga went about its business with a semblance of order. Lanterns lit the quays. Warehouse clerks kept their ledgers. Harbor guards took their cut of the goods before looking the other way. But past the door of the Red Tortuga, civilization survived only as the price chalked behind the bar.

Two men were already slamming their heads against a table, betting on which of them would stay conscious longest. Near the stairs a woman sat astride a sailor and searched his pockets while he searched for her mouth. A one-eyed accordionist was murdering a Spanish song whose words nobody remembered, which did not stop the whole room from roaring the chorus.

In the middle of that din, an old sea wolf was trying to make himself heard.

He had a beard the color of dirty foam, a nose mapped with small red veins and the tanned hide of men who had spent too many years defying the sun. A scar had nearly closed his left eye. In front of him stood three empty tankards and a fourth he sloshed by half every time he struck the table.

— A woman, I tell you!

A few laughs answered him.

The old man straightened, offended that anyone should doubt him when he had so plainly spent the evening making his story more credible.

— A real woman! Not one of those fish-tailed creatures men claim to have seen after six months without touching land. This one walks on two legs. She eats. She drinks. She even pays for her rooms, which already makes her more respectable than half of you.

— And more solvent than you! someone shouted.

The room broke into laughter.

The old man raised a knotted finger.

— Laugh. But when you hear that someone else has found the treasure, you will remember that old Merek warned you.

The word did its work.

The dice kept rolling, the tankards clashing, the accordion groaning, but several faces turned toward him. In Tortuga a man could joke about the gallows, the fevers and the diseases brought back from the brothels. He never quite joked about a treasure.

— What treasure? asked a man with a shaved skull.

Merek pulled his tankard against him, as if he feared someone might steal what was left at the bottom.

— Abraham’s.

This time there was less laughter.

A sailor crossed himself. His neighbor elbowed him, but still lowered his voice when he asked:

— The Uncrowned King?

— He was never king of anything, growled the shaved skull. Abraham was a pirate, like the rest.

— Like the rest? Merek gave a snicker that ended in a fit of coughing. He had five ships when the governors of these islands could barely arm two. He made the Spanish pay to cross their own waters. He knew routes no chart shows and ports where a man could vanish with his crew and leave behind not even the shadow of his sails.

— And yet he is dead.

Merek wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

— So they say.

A brief silence formed around the table, fragile as a candle flame. Even the accordion seemed to recede.

— Abraham vanished with his flagship, the old man went on. His gold, his stones, the tribute he tore from merchants and everything he amassed in thirty years of plunder… not a single coin was ever found. Those who went looking for him never came back. So men stopped speaking of the Uncrowned King. They called him the Dead King.

— A pretty story, said the shaved skull. But where does your woman come into it?

Merek leaned over the table. The nearest men leaned in despite themselves.

— She carries the route.

A burst of laughter leapt from the back of the circle.

— In her pocket?

— On her.

— She swallowed the chart?

Merek slammed his palm on the wood.

— Tattooed into her back!

This time the laughter took the whole room. A man spat his rum. The woman by the stairs used the distraction to pull a purse from the sailor’s trousers and slipped away before he noticed.

Merek waited for the noise to fall. He was not laughing.

— Not an anchor, he went on. Not a heart pierced by an arrow. A whole chart. Islands. Reefs. A compass rose. And a route that leads to Abraham’s last anchorage.

— You saw it?

The question came from a neighboring table.

Merek turned his head, but the man who had asked it stayed hidden behind two card players.

— Not I, he admitted. A man from Port Royal. A man who had never lied in his life.

— Did he die before or after he told you?

Fresh laughter.

The old man ignored it.

— The chart does not show itself to just anyone. Most of the time her skin looks bare. It has to be woken.

— How?

Merek hesitated.

For the first time since he had begun his tale, uncertainty troubled his assurance. His good eye slid over the faces gathered in front of him, as if he regretted having taken the story this far.

— Fear, he murmured. Pain, perhaps. Some speak of desire. Others say you have to mix all three.

The jokes died of their own accord.

— Then the lines rise under her skin, Merek went on. They light one by one, as if an invisible hand were drawing them from inside her body. And when the whole chart appears…

He did not finish.

A man had just stood up at the back of the room.

He had been sitting there long enough for a nearly empty bottle to rest in front of him, but nobody remembered seeing him drink. The lamplight slid over the shoulders of his black coat without softening his outline. He was tall, broad without heaviness, and he moved with the quiet economy of a man who had never needed to hurry to get what he wanted.

An irregular scar cut the left side of his jaw. It should have ruined his face. It only held the eye a little longer.

As he passed, conversations thinned. A sailor drew his legs under the bench. Another set his tankard down slowly, as if the slightest sound might suddenly be held against him. Near the bar the innkeeper stopped wiping his glass.

Rafe Blackthorn crossed the room.

He stepped around the two men still fighting on the floor. One of them looked up, recognized the black boots stopped near his face and at once released his opponent’s throat.

The Black Devil did not grant them a glance.

He stopped in front of Merek and set a gold coin on the table.

The old man stared at the money, then at the hand left beside it. A broad hand, marked with pale scars. When he lifted his eyes at last, his drunkenness seemed to have fallen back by several glasses.

Rafe spoke in a low voice, almost courteous.

— Begin again.

Merek swallowed.

— From the start?

Rafe’s gaze did not leave his.

— From the woman.

Merek looked around him, as if he hoped to find among the gathered men someone brave enough to draw the Black Devil’s attention away.

He found only faces suddenly absorbed by the bottoms of their tankards.

— She is young, he began. Twenty, perhaps a little more. Light brown hair. Eyes…

Rafe slid the coin under his forefinger.

— The facts.

The old man shut his mouth.

— She travels alone. She changes names often and never sleeps more than two nights in the same place. She pays in foreign coin, always counted in advance. She avoids the large inns and the streets where the watch asks questions.

— Where has she been seen?

— Port Royal, three weeks ago.

— By whom?

Merek hesitated again.

— A merchant.

Rafe did not react. Nothing changed in his expression. Yet the silence around the table grew heavier.

— Which merchant?

— A merchant. He was buying sugar for a Kingston shipowner. He crossed her in a lodging house near the docks.

— And he saw her back?

— No.

— Then how did he know about the chart?

A drop of sweat ran down the old man’s temple.

— He… he had shared his room with a sailor who said he had seen her.

Rafe slowly took his finger off the coin.

Merek understood he stood to lose a good deal more than his pay.

— Wait. That merchant was not the first to speak of her. The same rumors were already running in Havana. And before that, in Cartagena. Always the same description. A young woman alone, coin from elsewhere, and men asking questions after she left.

— What men?

— I don’t know.

— You do.

The old man lowered his voice.

— Well-dressed men. Not sailors. They never asked for the woman directly. They were looking for a tattooer. An African priest. A sorcerer, perhaps. Someone who would have worked on a child years before.

A few glances crossed around the table.

Rafe still looked only at Merek.

— Who pays them?

— I don’t know.

This time the old man was telling the truth. The nature of his fear had changed: it was no longer that of a liar caught out, but of a man who understood he had already said too much.

Rafe took the coin back and rolled it between his fingers.

— Where is he?

Merek stared at the gold that had just escaped him.

— Dead.

— How long?

— Two weeks. They found him behind a warehouse in Port Royal. Throat cut, but his purse still on him.

Rafe said nothing.

Someone was looking for the woman. Someone rich enough to send men from port to port and careful enough to silence those who might lead back to him.

The rumor was not growing less fragile. It was growing dangerous.

And dangerous rumors were often the ones that paid best.

— The last trace, he said.

— A sloop from the north docked yesterday morning. Her mate claims he carried her to Tortuga some ten days ago.

A murmur ran around the table.

Rafe set the coin down again.

— She came here?

— One night only. Perhaps two. She is said to have lodged with Mara Voss, near the old rope market. Then she took passage on a coaster.

— Bound for where?

Merek laid his hand on the gold at last. His fingers were shaking.

— Mist Island.

This time nobody laughed.

A man eased his stool back a little. The shaved skull looked away and emptied his tankard.

Mist Island was not a place men spoke of willingly at full voice. Honest ships put in there only to ride out a storm, and the others kept their cargo only if they paid the right people. It was said a man could buy a weapon, a passage or a corpse there with equal ease. The only difference was the price.

— Which port? Rafe asked.

— Brumelame. On the south coast.

Merek closed his fist on the coin.

— But if she has any sense, she is already gone. Down there everything is for sale. Even the name of a woman who does not wish to be found.

— Especially her name, Rafe corrected.

He straightened.

The circle around the table opened in front of him. The men drew aside with a haste they tried to hide. Rafe took two steps, then stopped.

— Merek.

The old man lifted his head.

— If the story is false, I will come back for my coin.

An uneasy smile showed his ruined teeth.

— And if it is true?

Rafe turned his face slightly. The light caught his scar.

— You may keep the hand that holds it.

He walked on.

The room stayed silent until the door closed behind him. Only then did conversation start again, first low, then louder and louder, as if noise could erase what had just happened.

Outside, the night air was warm and heavy with salt.

Tortuga was nothing like the sink the preachers of the mainland described in their sermons. A few streets from the Red Tortuga the façades were whitewashed, the balconies guarded by ironwork and the merchants’ signs carefully painted. Lanterns hung at regular intervals lit the paved streets leading to the harbor. One still met drunken sailors, but also clerks carrying ledgers, servants bringing baskets and men in coats leaving houses where more gold changed hands in a night than a sailor would earn in a lifetime.

The town did not refuse crime. It only required that crime pay its tax.

Rafe went down toward the quays.

A patrol appeared at the end of the street. The four guards recognized the man in black and slowed. Their officer inclined his head.

— Captain Blackthorn.

Rafe passed without answering.

Behind him none of the men protested. The laws of Tortuga were flexible enough to recognize the powers they could not constrain.

As he drew nearer the sea, the houses gave way to warehouses. The scent of night flowers vanished under tar, fish and low tide. Masts rose above the roofs like a forest without leaves.

Rafe stopped in front of a small house wedged between a sail loft and a rope shop. A lamp still burned behind the shutters.

He knocked three times.

A woman opened almost at once. She was past fifty, wore a dark dress and held a cocked pistol along her thigh.

— I close before midnight.

Then she recognized her visitor.

— For the others, she added.

Mara Voss stepped aside.

The main room was clean, poorly furnished and quiet. Three keys hung behind a counter. Rafe came no farther in.

— A young woman. Light brown hair. Alone.

Mara asked no questions.

— She called herself Anne.

— That was not her name.

— No.

— Do you know the real one?

The landlady barely hesitated.

— She never gave it to me.

Rafe studied her face. This time he found no concealment.

— When did she leave?

— Eight days ago. Before dawn.

— For Mist Island.

Mara pressed her lips together.

— You already know the answer.

— I am checking.

— Then yes. The Saint Jude. An old coaster that carries more contraband than passengers. She was to put in at Brumelame three days later.

— Who was she running from?

The woman gave a short laugh.

— Every man, from what I gathered.

— Was she afraid?

— She slept with a knife under her pillow, pushed a wardrobe against her door and changed sides of the street when a man walked behind her too long. You decide.

For the first time Rafe showed a flicker of interest.

— Her room.

Mara took down a key.

The room was upstairs. A narrow bed, a table, a chipped basin. Nothing had been left there except a paler mark on the floor where the wardrobe had been moved each night.

Rafe opened the shutters.

From there one saw the harbor and the tangle of ships. The room had two ways out: the door and the window. Below, an awning made it easy to reach the alley.

She had chosen the room in order to run.

On the inner frame of the window three thin cuts marked the wood. Rafe brushed them with his thumb. They were recent and nearly parallel, like the traces left by a blade opened and closed while waiting for danger.

Mara stayed by the door.

— If you find her, do not tell her I spoke to you.

Rafe turned.

— Why protect her?

— I rented her a room. That is not the same thing.

— Then why speak to me?

Mara’s gaze dropped to the sabers at his belt, then returned to his face.

— Because that is not the same thing either.

Rafe passed her.

At the foot of the stairs he stopped one last time.

— Has the Saint Jude put to sea again?

— She came back yesterday. Her captain is drinking at the Grey Gull.

— Keep him sober until I get there.

— And if he refuses?

Rafe opened the door.

— Tell him I am only looking for a woman.

Mara considered his black silhouette cut out against the lantern light.

— Should that reassure him?

He looked at her.

— No.

Then he went out.

At the end of the street the Revenant waited at anchor, blacker even than the sea.

Before dawn he would take the road to Mist Island.

The captain of the Saint Jude had confirmed the essentials before Rafe had even set his second glass in front of him.

The young woman had called herself Anne. She had paid twice the price of an ordinary crossing so that no one would ask her origin or her destination after Brumelame. For the three days of the voyage she had slept on deck rather than in the cabin she was offered, her back against a barrel and a hand slipped under her shirt. No man had managed to come near her without waking her.

The captain did not know what she was hiding.

He remembered only that on the morning of their arrival a sailor had tried to help her down. The young woman had drawn her knife so fast that nobody saw her pull it.

Rafe did not ask whether she had wounded the man.

He asked which hand she used.

The right.

When he left the Grey Gull the sky was already paling above the roofs of Tortuga.

The Revenant waited at the end of the main quay.

Even among the brigs, frigates and merchantmen crowded in the harbor, he seemed to occupy a space the other ships yielded to him. His hull had been dressed with a mix of pitch and matte paint that swallowed the last light of night. His furled sails hung from the yards like shrouds. At the prow a hooded specter held out toward the sea a face whose features the salt had almost entirely worn away.

Two ships could have moored in the space left empty around him.

No captain had done so.

Rafe set his foot on the gangway. The man on watch straightened at once.

— Captain.

— Garrick.

The sailor passed the order without argument.

On deck the watch was changing. Men coiled ropes, checked blocks and bailed the water gathered in the hold. They worked with the precision of those who knew a mistake could cost more than a cut of their share.

A laugh burst near the mainmast.

Rafe turned his head.

The laugh died.

He went on to the quarterdeck.

Garrick joined him a moment later. His left leg stiffened after a damp night, but he never leaned on the rail when Rafe could see him. He had pulled on his coat in haste and still held his belt in one hand.

— We sail?

— On the tide.

Garrick finished buckling his belt.

He did not ask how Rafe spent his nights ashore. He waited for the rest.

— Mist Island. Brumelame.

The first mate’s gaze went to the harbor mouth, where the sea was beginning to take on a color of metal.

— We were to drop south toward Curaçao.

— Not anymore.

— The Spanish prize will not sit at anchor until we return.

— Then someone else will take her.

That answer finally drew Garrick’s eyes.

For two weeks the Revenant had been following the trail of a galleon loaded with cacao, silver and arms. Three informants had been paid. Two ports had been watched. Rafe never gave up a prize once he had nearly closed his hands on it.

— What is there in Brumelame?

— A woman.

Garrick did not smile. His caution was one of the reasons he was still breathing after so many years at the Black Devil’s side.

— She is carrying something?

— A chart.

— In her baggage?

— On her skin.

Garrick’s silence lasted just long enough to show that he weighed the worth of each answer before risking the next.

— Have you seen her?

— No.

— Has anyone reliable seen her?

— No.

This time the first mate frowned.

— We abandon a Spanish galleon for a story nobody has checked?

Rafe set his hands on the rail.

— Men have followed this story from Cartagena to Havana, then to Port Royal. A merchant talked. They opened his throat without taking his purse. The woman crossed Tortuga under a false name, slept behind a wardrobe and paid a captain for his silence. She hides before she even knows who is hunting her.

— That does not prove she carries a chart.

— It proves she carries something.

Garrick studied his profile. The scar along his jaw always paled slightly when his teeth clenched.

— And if it is not the treasure?

— We take up the hunt for the galleon again.

— She will be gone.

Rafe turned his eyes to him at last.

— Not far enough.

Garrick inclined his head slowly. The discussion was over, but his unease was not.

— How many men will you need ashore?

— All those who know how to obey.

— That narrows the choice.

A brief silence passed between them.

From another man the remark might have cost a few teeth. Garrick was the only one aboard who could allow himself it, perhaps because he never spoke it in front of the crew.

The shadow of a smile brushed Rafe’s mouth without managing to settle there.

— Take Tom.

Garrick looked toward the lower deck.

— The boy?

— He sees what the others miss. And nobody mistrusts him yet.

— He has never set foot in Brumelame.

— He will learn why he should have been glad of it.

Garrick signed to a sailor.

Tom arrived at a run, nearly slipped on a wet plank and caught himself at the last instant on a rope. He straightened at once, his cheeks red. He had not yet learned to hide his embarrassment under anger, as the older men did.

— You sent for me, Captain?

— We sail for Mist Island.

The young man’s face first betrayed surprise, then an unease he tried to mask.

— Yes, Captain.

— You will go ashore with Garrick and me.

This time Tom could not hold back his look.

— Me?

Garrick gave him a sharp cuff behind the head.

— When the captain gives you an order, boy, you answer. You do not ask him whether he is sure he has the right man.

— Yes. Sorry. Yes, Captain.

— You will look for a woman, Rafe went on. Young. Light brown hair. Right-handed. She travels alone and may use a false name. She never stays long in the same place.

Tom nodded with care.

— How will I know her?

— She will watch the ways out before she looks at faces. She will avoid groups. If a man walks behind her, she will change direction. If you come at her too fast, she will draw a knife.

Tom hesitated.

— And if I find her?

— You do not touch her. You do not frighten her. You come and find me.

— And if she tries to leave again?

Rafe looked at him.

— She will not leave.

The young man lowered his eyes.

Garrick put a hand on his shoulder and turned him toward the deck.

— Wake the sleepers. Have the water casks filled and the stores checked. And if you tell anyone we are looking for a woman, I will hang you from the mainmast by the ankles myself.

Tom went off at a run.

— Will he talk? Rafe asked.

— No.

— You are certain?

Garrick watched the young ship’s boy miss another step, swear under his breath, then recover himself in front of two sailors.

— No. But he will be so afraid I will hang him that he should hold until Brumelame.

Rafe left the rail.

— Have the ship made ready.

He went down toward his cabin while Garrick threw the first orders. The calm of the deck broke at once. Men poured from the hatches. Hawsers were cast off, the last crates hauled up and the sails loosed so they would take the wind the moment they cleared the harbor.

Nobody noticed Silas behind the capstan.

He had stopped greasing the gear when Garrick spoke the name of Mist Island. His narrow face stayed bent over his work, but his hands no longer moved.

A woman.

A chart on her skin.

A Spanish hunt abandoned for her.

Silas did not believe in legends. He believed in men capable of giving up a certain fortune to chase a greater one.

And he knew Rafe Blackthorn never gave up anything without good reason.

He slowly took up his work again when a sailor passed near him.

For now he had no one to warn. Once at sea, no message would leave the Revenant. But the information would not lose its value. It might even gain with every mile run.

Silas knew how to wait.

The sun appeared behind the heights of Tortuga as the last lines were cast off. The whitewashed town took on a gold tint. On the quays merchants opened their warehouses and harbor guards resumed their round, indifferent to the black brig sliding toward the pass.

Rafe stood at the prow.

Before him the sea stretched to the horizon, bright and calm. Somewhere beyond lay an island drowned in mist, and on that island a woman who might still be sleeping with a knife under her pillow, believing she belonged to no one.

He set a hand on the guard of his saber.

He did not know her name.

It did not matter.

He was going to find her.