Chapter Six
JUSTIN BLADE TAKES THE QUEEN'S PARDON
IT WAS cool in the big room where tall shutters were pulled against the sun—cool and clean as Scarface had never dreamed a room might be, just as he now stretched his aching body upon a bed softer than any in his memory. There was even the sharp, sweet scent of herbs to the linen as if the housekeeper here must be a proud woman, well doing in all her ways. Not like Liza of Tortuga.
To think of Liza was to bring all these other questions to mind. What had become of Cheap and the crew of the Naughty Lass? And how did he, Scarface, come to lie on this fine bed, a cooling dressing on his lacerated back, and a small black boy crouched nid-nodding against the wall waiting only to do his bidding.
He'd tried asking questions of this slave, but the child only grinned and nodded and brought him fruit juice to drink or a fan, as if he could understand no other desires. And Scarface had been too much in awe of the harsh-voiced surgeon who visited him each morning to do more than answer the curt inquiries which that gentleman barked at him.
But he gathered that he now lay in the house of some well-to-do planter and certainly he was being tended as if he were a son of that house. Why he was not in jail with the rest of his fellows he could not guess.
At first he had just been content to lie there uncaring, but now as the fever left him and his back mended he grew restless and wanted to be on his feet again, moving out into the world beyond the room with the long shutters.
However, the quiet was to be broken, and that very hour, by the flinging open of his door and the rap of boot heels across the floor. Scarface braced himself up on his elbows and looked over his shoulder to see his visitors—for there were two of them, Major Cocklyn very well set up in a new red coat and a younger, long-faced man all in sober, but well-cut gray.
“How are you, my boy?” The Major snapped his fingers at the small slave who hurriedly dragged two chairs to the bedside.
“Well enough, if it please you, sir,” returned Scarface warily.
“It does, it does. And it will please Firken also, eh, man?” Cocklyn demanded, of his companion, who replied with a pinched, discreet sort of smile and then busied himself with the putting out of paper, ink, and sandbox and three newly sharpened quills on the near-by table.
“Dr. Hardwell would have it that you are now fit for our business and time passes all too swiftly, so we decided to be about it at once.” The Major sat sidewise on his chair, one arm along its back, as if settled for an idle chat.
“Our business?” Scarface sparred uneasily. He mistrusted the extreme friendliness of this advance.
“Aye. Business of Her Majesty. We have in jail some two and twenty rogues fit for hanging—as Sir Robert will speedily do when he returns—but before they are hung they must be tried. Therefore, Mr. Firken, who is His Excellency's secretary, would now have your evidence against these rogues—why, boy, surely you have no reason to shield them after the way you were used?”
The Major was staring somewhat incredulously at the frowning boy on the bed.
“Is your reluctance due to fear of endangering yourself?” Mr. Firken's dry, precise voice cut across the sudden silence. “I have here the Queen's Pardon which is offered to any who acknowledge their error and swear hereafter to live lawfully. Sir Robert himself once took such an oath—”
Scarface shook his head slowly. “I will take your pardon, if that is what you would have of me. But—”
“But—” prompted Cocklyn impatiently. “Do not try to tell me that you turn squeamish now for love of those sharks. If so—why did you save my life?”
The boy dug his fingers into the softness of the pillow between his two fists.
“I have lived with them,” he said in a low voice. “I've eaten with them. Only the dirtiest of swine would spit upon his fellows. If it were a fair fight now—why, I'd be your man willingly enough. But I'll speak no hanging words now to win favor for myself. And if it pleases you to put me with the rest in jail—well, then do so!”
Cocklyn beat a right heavy tattoo on the chair back with his fingers, glancing the while with an odd half-smile at Firken.
“He means that,” the Major said. “This is a marvelously stubborn rogue we have caught us. What is your advice?”
“He had better change his song before Sir Robert comes to hear it. His Excellency is anything but a patient man.”
“You hear that?” Cocklyn grinned at the boy. “And Firken knows of what he speaks, since he has served the governor well these ten years or more. Are you still of the same mind?”
Scarface nodded. “Aye, I'll take your oath. But I'll tell no hanging tales. Why don't you ask your questions of Cheap—he is apt to tell you all fast enough.”
“How we wish that we might!” sighed Cocklyn with some of his old mockery. “But Cheap got clean away, gone from our trap when the jaws clicked shut. And Sir Robert will not like that at all. Why do you show this tenderness toward a man who had you half flayed? Is he kin of yours?”
The boy's head jerked up and he winced involuntarily at the answering thrill of pain across his healing shoulders. There it was—that hateful suggestion which Pym had been the first to make.
“I am no kin to Captain Cheap!” He bit off each word resentfully.
“Then how came you with the Captain? Were you pressed from ship he took?” persisted Firken.
Here it was, the question he dreaded because he honestly knew no answer for it.
“I have always been with Cheap since I can remember, either on his ship or in his house in Tortuga. But how or why I came with him I do not know.”
“Hmmm.” The Major's eyebrows were twisted by a thoughtful frown. “And yet he did not treat you as one whom he had any fondness for—”
“He looked upon me as a weapon in some plan of vengeance he nursed—he told me so at the last.”
“Now that,” commented Cocklyn, “is what I might expect of the so-dear Captain. He had a use for you. But then why would he have thrown you away here in Barbados?”
“He told me that my death would be a fitting end to all he wished to do here—”
“Curious, very curious. A man of secrets, this captain of yours. I wish we might have put hand on him so that we could have conversed together. So you were a weapon of sorts whose purpose was fulfilled upon this visit to our island? There is an interesting mystery there, and mayhap some day we shall learn the truth of it. What name did he give you?”
Scarface felt the red tide of shame rising on throat and jaw. His eyes dropped from Cocklyn's face to the pillow beneath his elbow.
“What name suits a hacked face?” he demanded roughly. “I was Scarface to all the bullies of Tortuga!”
“Well-a-day, such names have—before this—become a goodly threat to the godfathers who granted them first. But had you never another?”
“Liza once called me ‘Justin.’” He told of that last strange interview with Cheap's housekeeper.
“ ‘Your lady mother’ and ‘Justin.’ Aye, she must have known something. And that name is not a common one. How say you, Firken?”
“No common one, no, Major. I have never met a man who bore it.”
“Justin. That is well enough, but we must have two names—we all do, rich fools that we are. What is your choice for a second, Justin?”
Scarface was crumpling the linen between his hands again. Cocklyn still sounded as if he were jesting but he really was not. The Major meant that he, Scarface of Tortuga, was to have a proper name at last.
“I will borrow no man's name,” he made answer slowly, “lest he have reason some day to make complaint against my bearing of it.”
And at that Firken nodded. “Quite proper. So let me suggest this. You have said that this Captain Cheap spoke of you as a weapon he would use in some act of revenge— very well, take you a name which will bear him out.”
“Firken!” Cocklyn was laughing again. “Faith, man, your sins have found you out at last! You are a poet at heart—or else a sorry playwriter.”
Mr. Firken dropped his gaze to the pile of papers before him and there was a pinch of pink in his sallow cheeks, as well as a tight line of annoyance about his prim mouth. Major Cocklyn's chance shot had struck very close to home.
“But idea of a poet or not, it is clever, damned clever, man. Now let us see—'Vengeance,’ ‘Revenge'— Gad, the lad's no ship to carry such a tag about with him, ‘Sword'— Aye, I have it! ‘Blade'—that's the name you want—Justin Blade! It has a good mouth-filling sound to it and not far removed from our Saxon heritage. Justin Blade you are.”
Scarface liked it—"Justin Blade.” As Cocklyn said, it had an honest ring. He grinned happily at his godfathers and the Major was quick to give him an answering smile of triumph.
“Might I suggest”—Mr. Firken had regained his composure and was all business once more—"that we keep this christening a matter secret to ourselves? Master Blade had better forget that he ever bore another name.”
“Right as usual, Firken. I can see clearly why Sir Robert has fared so well at your hands. As far as the world will know you were Justin Blade when you came kicking into this life, lad. To make it all legal Firken will put it down in one of these solemn papers of state. But we have wandered far from the matter which brought us hither. You will not speak against the pirates, Justin?”
“I can't.”
“Very well. Nor could I, in like circumstances.” Cocklyn swung around to the secretary. “Write out the oath, Firken, and administer it to him. If Sir Robert raises any quarrel with that, I'll answer for it.”
“As you wish.” Firken's pen moved across the paper in even lines. And soon after, Justin Blade took the oath to hold the Queen's peace and go no more adventuring in unlawful ways.
Seeing that there was no more to be gained from this stubborn ex-pirate, Firken spoke of the passing of time and that he had duties elsewhere. With a half-bow to the Major and a nod to Justin he marched off, his papers clasped to him.
“Now,” the boy urged when the door had closed firmly behind Master Firken, “tell me how you came to Bridgetown when we all thought you dead and under the sea.”
Cocklyn crossed his legs and settled himself more comfortably. “It was easy enough. The shot from that rogue's pistol would have parted my wig—had I worn the pestilent thing—and the breeze of it, as it were, fanned me into the sea. Then there was naught for a prudent man, like myself, to do but keep swimming. And, by God's own grace, I reached the island. Thereafter it was easy enough to knock up the nearest planter and borrow a horse to ride hither with my news. So did we then contrive an amusing play of our own to keep Cheap happy until he would walk into our trap. Having bottled up Creagh and his rogues inland, we stormed Bridgetown and fired an old warehouse to give color to the scene—so drawing Cheap ashore. Faith, Drury Lane's boards never saw a sprightlier comedy than the one we played that morning. So are we to the gain of one ship and divers foul fellows. And Sir Robert will be pleased at that.
“Nor shall I be backward in the telling of it to His Excellency, for of late our worthy governor has begun to believe that no one else can hunt pirates so well as he. So this success will be for the good of his soul—since he had no part in it. Ah, Kandy—tobacco, you rascal!”
The little slave scurried from the room obediently.
“Now we needs must turn to another problem, the future of one Justin Blade. As you have taken the Queen's pardon your old trade is closed to you.”
“I am no planter,” Justin broke in hurriedly, hoping to stave off such a fate had Cocklyn marked him for it. “I know not weed from cane. A ship's my only trade. Mayhap I can get me a berth with some island trader.”
“Which is no more or less than I have in mind. And I know the very master for you—Sir Robert! He has some five sloops and brigs at sea under his flag and good men who know the islands are fewer than you might think.”
“But with his hate for those from Tortuga—would he welcome me? You have all made so much of his harshness towards the Brethren that even the Queen's Pardon to flap before his eyes would seem small protection—”
“True, he hates all that smacks of the Black Flag right enough. But he has now among his men many of the Brethren, followers of his own in the days when he was ‘from the sea'—as I believe you rogues announce yourselves when you are hailed. So one more will make little difference. Then too you have that about you which will commend you to His Excellency—he has a liking for youngsters in misfortune—seeing as how he was just such a one. No, I think he will strive to find a berth for you. And until that day you shall stay here at your pleasure.”
Cocklyn stayed a while longer talking of Bridgetown and the life-within its white-walled, tiled-roof houses, but he was at last interrupted by the sound of wheels on the cobbles close by. And then a high-pitched voice, whose whine penetrated even the thick walls, brought a frown to the Major's good-humored face. He jumped up from his chair with a hastiness which might have sent it spinning against the bed had he not checked it with his hand in passing, for he was already striding for the door which he slammed with some force behind him. Justin was left to wonder just what sort of a whirlwind had struck the house.
For a whirlwind it was. He caught snatches of sound, the footsteps of people in a hurry, the clatter of horses’ hooves outside his window, the raucous scream of a bird, and once a queer noise which might have been someone laughing or weeping. It could only be, Justin decided, that Sir Robert was at last in port. But somehow this tempest did not fit with the character of that pirate hunter as he had pictured him. Even Kandy had apparently deserted his post and there was nothing to do but wait for the disturbance to disclose its nature itself. Which it did soon enough.
The hall door opened and Justin looked eagerly over his shoulder hoping to see the Major return. But at the apparition now advancing confidently into the room he could only stare in drop-jawed amazement.
At first he thought that it must be a dwarf such as Quittance said was to be seen in the East Indies. And then, for one horrified moment, he even wildly guessed that he was watching an ape dressed up as a man. It wasn't until the thing spoke that he realized it was a child.
“Strike me!” the shrill unbroken voice tittered. “Amos was right—there is a pirate here!”
From the elaborately curled blond wig to the red-heeled, paste-buckled shoes, he was a miniature fop and when he saw Justin's eyes on him he strutted. Why, there was even a black patch by the sullen childish mouth and the small hand flourished a laced handkerchief with an air which Justin suddenly discovered to be vastly irritating.
“A cut-faced cutthroat too. How came you by that scar, rogue?”
“Who are you?” Justin snapped. Surely this—this—this person could not be of Sir Robert's family.
“Sir Francis Hynde, at your service.” And the fop bowed with a sweep of arm and as pretty a leg as the finest gallant in Birdcage Walk might show. “Who are you, pirate?” The fine-gentleman shell cracked to allow natural, small-boy curiosity through.
“I am Justin Blade and no pirate.” But he was as goggled-eyed as any cay fish and his visitor seemed to find in that the admiration he wanted. He swaggered a little as he came closer to the bed.
“Amos said that you were a pirate whom it pleased my uncle to have here that he may question you concerning the evil you have done. And my mother asked why you were not put in the slave quarters where you rightfully belong and she wished to know by whose authority you lay in the best chamber. Then came my Uncle Humphrey and took her into the other room and he would not let me enter with them. So I came here to see you—though I have seen many pirates before, mark you, swinging by their necks. Are you not afraid of hanging?”
“It is not pleasant.” Justin's long buried sense of humor began to bubble within him. After all, his first wild guess had not been so far wrong—Sir Francis Hynde was a bit of a monkey. “No, it is not pleasant. But then, I wouldn't rightly know—I've never been hung.”
“But you will be—straightway when Sir Robert arrives. He hangs all pirates,” observed Sir Francis with the round satisfaction of one who sees good entertainment promised for the future.
“Only, I'm no pirate.”
“But you were taken in the fighting on that ship in harbor. And pirate or no you had better leave that bed before my mother comes to you. No one sleeps there but by her asking.”
“This is your house then?”
“No. Do you think that the Hyndes would live in such a place?” Sir Francis’ voice took on the sing-song rhythm of one repeating something learned by rote. “A Hynde was cupbearer to King Richard the Third and we have always lived in Kings’ houses. No, this is the house of my Uncle Humphrey, but, since his wife be dead, my mother, out of her charity, has come to keep it for him. Though I'd rather we'd not left England. I don't like this place.”
“Why not? Faith, you have the sea to swim and fish in and there must be hunting. And surely on this island there are other boys of your age—”
Sir Francis drew himself up to his full four-feet-three and made answer with the haughtiness of a French duke addressing his tailor.
“I am Sir Francis Hynde. I do not sport with colonials. They are not gentlemanly in their ways nor do they comport themselves as become men of birth.”
Justin bit his lips to control his grin—it might goad Sir Francis into a hot-tempered outburst. But at the same time he puzzled as to how this prodigy had ever come to live under the forthright Major's roof without being reduced to proper stature.
“Francis! Francis!” The call was thin, querulous. And it sounded from close outside the half-open door.
Sir Francis Hynde was smug. “That is my mother,” he said and remained calmly where he was, with a sort of anticipation about him which Justin found disturbing.
