A Bottle of Rum Read online

  He and Odin had survived a trap sprung by pirates, and been marooned on a Caribbean isle. They had dodged many questions aboard the Brighton-bound schooner that had rescued them. They had artfully navigated the uncertain moments when some of Redemptions survivors had told their rescuers a bit too much regarding how Spider and Odin and their young friend Hob—may God save that foolish young wayward bugger—had cleverly outwitted and fought off Ned Low’s piratical brigands.

  “Why, one might think John and his friends had spent considerable time among pirates,” the dour Reverend Down had said, perhaps intending to stir up trouble, perhaps not. Either way, Spider had felt constant gazes on his back from that moment on and had noticed a distinct chill thereafter from the captain and crew.

  Odin had confessed to the same concerns as they huddled in the cargo hold, wondering what the hell to do.

  So once they knew Fiddler’s Dram, their salvation ship, was bearing down on the Isle of Wight, Spider and Odin had stolen a boat and gone over the gunwale under cover of darkness the moment they judged land was close enough for an escape. They had had no time for farewells to the other Redemption castaways, and they certainly had no intention of waiting around to answer questions from the Royal Navy’s fine fellows, by thunder. Fate had given them a chance to run, and they would not waste it.

  It had been a longer row into the Solent than they had expected, with Wight’s bulky shadow looming south of them and the ominous Hurst Castle and its array of big guns poised to the north, and a trickier coastline than either had expected, but eventually they found a small, suitable cove and tucked the boat away. Then, choosing to go east only because they saw the lights of a town, they had found their way by night along muddy roads to Lymington, a town neither of them knew.

  Now, they sat in the Crosskeys, where half-drunk men sought some sort of courage in one another’s faces while a woman sobbed upstairs. She forced the word out again. “Murder!”

  The anguish in Mrs. Bonnymeade’s voice clawed at Spider’s heart.

  “Goddamn it, fuck and bugger all,” Spider muttered, his besieged black king forgotten. “Will no one help her?”

  “Do not do it,” Odin warned, quietly. “We are wanted, you and me, and this is none of our worry. Once these nice fellows remember they have balls, they’ll go up . . . and we can slip away in the night and finds some other place to hide, some place without murders. Someone will be summoned here, no doubt, to settle this murder business, and you and I should be getting drunk somewhere else far away then, unless you do something stupid.”

  Odin pointed to Spider’s cup, as if to remind him how much he liked a good quaff. “Worrying over other people’s problems is for preachers and judges, not for pirates.”

  “Do not utter that word, Odin, but aye,” Spider said. He got up and started up the stairs anyway, ignoring the excellent rum.

  “Damned fool,” Odin growled, before snatching up Spider’s cup and chugging its contents. Then he yelled. “You are doing this to stop me winning a bottle of rum!”

  Take care, Odin, Spider thought. Bellowing might draw notice to your ugly face. He did not turn to answer the man, though, for that might draw unwanted attention as well. He did, however, make a fist of his left hand to hide the fact of his missing finger, just in case anyone was on the lookout for a short, long-haired seaman maimed in such a way.

  Spider rushed upward and soon heard his friend clambering up the steps behind him, stairs Spider had repaired just two days ago at Mrs. Bonnymeade’s request.

  Spider gained the second story, listened in the stairwell, then shot up another flight. Once there, he determined the wild sobs were coming from the end of the hall. He dashed that way.

  Spider reached the room Mrs. Bonnymeade shared with her useless husband. He peered in through the open doorway and instantly knew Thomas Bonnymeade was not going to do any work, ever.

  The man was lying on the floor, on his back, with a wood-handled knife jutting up from his neck. His horrified wife knelt in a growing pool of blood, sobbing wildly.

  Odin glanced over Spider’s shoulder. “Lazy sot, he was. I do not blame her a goddamned bit,” he whispered.

  “She didn’t kill him,” Spider snarled, rushing forward to put an arm around the terrified woman. “What happened, ma’am?” Behind him, he could hear the other men coming up the stairs, their footsteps pounding like drums in the narrow stairwell.

  Mrs. Bonnymeade waved her hands over her dead husband, trying to talk but issuing only incoherent gasps. Spider, no stranger to violence, looked at the dead man with a dispassionate eye. The man was on his back, staring at the ceiling, and had only the one wound as far as Spider could discern. Someone had stabbed him in the neck, probably in an arc from below. Blood welled up around the knife’s walnut handle and flowed freely from the wound.

  “Fuck and bugger,” Spider whispered, staring again at the knife. It was designed for throwing, not carving or working, and it had letters scratched into the handle. Jesus, Spider thought. I know this knife.

  Spider pulled the weapon from the fat man’s neck, shook blood from it and turned to the Widow Bonnymeade. “Did you see the killer?”

  Mrs. Bonnymeade shook her head, then nodded, then shook it again and continued to make sounds only God could possibly understand. Spider examined the room and saw drops of blood on the floor between the corpse and the window, a few red smears among them. The splotches were the prints of a small boot, left by the killer after stepping in blood.

  Good God, Spider thought. Did a child kill this man?

  The gory trail led to the open window, where Spider noticed a wicked gash on the sill. He leapt toward it and gave it a closer look, after tearing himself away from Mrs. Bonnymeade’s clutching hands.

  That’s a new scrape or I’m no carpenter.

  Spider had seen many a fresh wound left by a grappling hook on a gunwale, and he’d seen bad wood give way under a hook as well. That is what appeared to have happened here. The killer had come in by the window, and likely escaped the same way. Whether the sill had given way before the killer reached the street or when the hook had been pulled away, there was no telling. Spider could see no one below the window.

  “Bonnymeade went up from the common room not long ago, Spider, remember? Not a quarter of an hour past.”

  “Aye, Odin,” Spider answered. “The murderer can’t have gone far.”

  A quick glance out the window and to the right, toward the night-shrouded river that led down to the Solent, told him nothing, but when he looked to the left a lucky bit of light from a mounted torch showed him a running man vanishing between two darkened buildings. The fellow seemed hobbled, as though limping. Spider figured the hook had torn away the wood as the man descended, resulting in a hurt leg.

  And I am about to try this without a goddamned rope.

  Spider turned to Odin, who gawked at the bloody knife in Spider’s hand. The gents from the common room appeared in the doorway at that very moment and stood there with mouths wide open.

  “The killer went this way,” Spider said to Odin. “I am going after him.”

  “What? Why the bloody fuck would you be doing that?” Odin’s lone eye widened as far as the crusty scabbed skin would allow, and his expression was practically a shout to tell Spider how goddamned stupid that plan was.

  “I’ll answer later,” Spider said, wiping the knife quickly on his breeches before tucking it into his belt. He sat on the sill and measured the distance to the outstretched post holding the Crosskeys’ sign. It was to his right and below, jutting out like a bowsprit over the dirt road and the horse hitches.

  It would not be an easy leap, but if he could gain that he could lower himself almost to the ground with a firm grasp on the swinging sign itself. He figured the post to be sturdy enough, and he was not a big man anyway. He steeled himself for the maneuver, cursing himself for taking so long to muster the courage. The killer was getting away, and Spider had some serious questions.

&n
bsp; As a ship’s carpenter by trade, Spider had spent years climbing ratlines, walking across yardarms and clambering among the rigging high above a moving deck. This won’t be so hard, damn you, and you’ve got to do it. And if you fall, it won’t kill you. Probably.

  He crouched on the sill, held his breath, and pushed off. He made it to the post easily enough, landing upon it in a crouch, but his hat flew from his head and he nearly lost his balance and toppled. His attempt to regain control left him straddled on the goddamned thing as though he was riding a horse, and it was only good fortune that let his arse take the brunt of that instead of his sack. But he did not fall.

  He swung a leg over the beam and took a firm grasp on the edges of the sign—painted with two large keys crossed like dueling swords— and scrambled down, scraping his nose slightly on the rough wood. He ignored the splinter that stabbed into his calloused right hand and dropped the last few feet, quickly catching his balance after stepping on the killer’s abandoned grapple and rope. Then he snatched up his hat and took off in pursuit of the man he’d seen.

  Behind him, he heard cries of alarm, the ringing of bells, and a salvo of curses from Odin.

  Spider dashed headlong after his prey, frantic. He did not have time to explain to Odin what spurred him onward. He did not give a damn for that fat lobcock Mr. Bonnymeade, who berated his kind wife nightly and drank almost as much rum as the Crosskeys sold. But Spider had to find out how this knife—this particular knife—had come to be in the bastard’s neck.

  For Spider had made this knife. He’d made it for Hob.

  2

  Running by the light of posted torches on a cloudy English night is no easy task, and Spider stumbled more than once— and leapt over a horse trough he’d almost missed seeing in the dark— before reaching the alley where he’d seen a man disappear. He crowded against the wall and winced as acrid chemical scents mingled with the more prominent odors of horses and manure and the sea. He was unable to read the sign above the heavy oak door, but he recognized the mortar-and-pestle symbol of an apothecary’s shop.

  Spider listened at the mouth of the alley. He had no flintlock, and no cutlass, but he had a knife that had already killed once this night along with his own precious throwing knife, the one he’d used as a model for Hob’s knife. He also had experience. He’d never wanted to be a pirate, but that life had been forced upon him years ago and he’d learned to do the bloody work required to survive. So he held his breath, listened—and heard what sounded like someone working clumsily at a lock.

  He peeked around the corner. A shadowy figure hunched over a door, probably a back entrance to the apothecary’s shop. Metallic tinks and clinks echoed off the walls, punctuated by softly muttered curses. The voice did not sound like Hob’s, to Spider’s relief. The young fool was impetuous enough to have sailed off to go pirating with Anne Bonny, and liked the thrill of action, but surely he had not become a cold-blooded killer of fat taverners since Spider had seen him last. But if this cutthroat in the alley could lead Spider to Hob . . .

  A glance back toward the Crosskeys told Spider a crowd had gathered in the road. Torches flickered in the street, and shouts rang out in the night. They were gathering to find the tavern keeper’s killer, and no doubt some had mentioned they’d seen Spider John escape through the man’s window, bloody blade in his hand.

  Fuck.

  The torches began moving toward him, and Spider calculated. Run away now, and he might not have to answer pesky questions— but he might also never learn how the knife he’d made for his young wayward friend had been used to commit a cowardly murder. And that meant he might never find Hob and drag the fool away from his dreams of pirate glory.

  Spider decided.

  He entered the alley, treading as softly as he could, until he figured he was close enough to his prey to reach him before the distracted fellow could draw a dirk or pistol. The man, uncommonly short, looked up and growled. “Damn and blast!”

  The man reached into his coat, and Spider threw a knife—his own, not Hob’s. The knife sailed over the short man’s head as he aimed his pistol. But Spider got to his target before the man could fire, and he drove the cutthroat’s head into the wall and tripped him backward onto his arse. The flintlock thunked on the cobblestones below. Spider stooped to scoop it up. He assumed it was already loaded and primed for action, so he pulled back the hammer and aimed at the man’s shadowed face.

  “You and I are going to talk,” Spider said quietly. His left hand felt for the lock on the door, and found a skeleton key still inserted there. It took him only a moment to open the door even though he fixed his attention on the man on the ground.

  “Rise,” he told his captive, “and get inside. I might not hand you over to the authorities, but those people fast approaching most certainly will. If you answer my questions, you may go free.”

  “John?” The man rose, groggily, holding his head. “John Coombs? Damn and blast!”

  “Fuck and bugger,” Spider said, recognizing another false name he’d used in the past, as well as the voice of a detested former shipmate. “Little Bob Higgins, you black-hearted, buffle-headed son of an ugly whore!”

  Spider grabbed the man by the collar and flung him through the door as the gleam of torches brightened the alley entrance.

  3

  Inside, Spider closed the door and shoved Little Bob backward in the darkness until something blocked the way. It was a shelf, apparently, and it nearly toppled. A beaker or flask plunged and shattered on Little Bob’s head, spraying Spider’s face and chest with sticky fluid and bits of glass.

  “Damn and blast!”

  Spider aimed the barrel of the flintlock at Little Bob’s curse and poked it like a spear. It had been an act of guesswork, as they struggled with one another in the darkness and Little Bob stood less than four feet tall. But Spider’s aim had been true, and Little Bob stopped cursing, his mouth full of gun barrel.

  “I don’t suppose I’ll miss from this range, do you?” Spider blinked fluid from his eyes. “Now you hush, and I’ll hush, and we’ll let the nice mob go look elsewhere for the murderer. Then you and I will have a talk.”

  Little Bob said nothing, but the motion of his nodding head confirmed for Spider that the gun was still in his captive’s mouth.

  Minutes passed as the shouts outside diminished and the ruckus they’d made in breaking into the shop drew no attention from deeper within. Spider wished he had a light, but one hand was busy holding the considerably smaller Little Bob Higgins against the shelf, while the other gripped the pistol.

  So they conversed in darkness.

  “Where is Hob?”

  Little Bob made incomprehensible sounds, and Spider withdrew the weapon with a hard yank that scraped teeth and elicited an oath from Little Bob. “My fucking tongue, John, Jesus!”

  “You’ve no right to call on the Lord,” Spider said. “Nor have I.” He repeated his question once the gun was jabbing Bob’s neck beneath his bearded chin. “Where is Hob?”

  “I know not,” Little Bob answered. “I swear.”

  “You had his knife.”

  “What knife?”

  “Do not play games, you shit-sucking worm,” Spider growled. “You are useless to me unless you can answer my questions, and I never liked you anyway. So talk, or die here. Your choice.”

  Little Bob slumped against the shelf. “I have no notion of what you mean, John, none at all.”

  “You murdered Tom Bonnymeade, and you did it with the knife I gave Hob. I know he sailed off with that damned Bonny woman, and last I knew you were chained up in the orlop of Redemption, which she stole from us, so you sailed off with her, too. Now here you are murdering a lazy fat man with Hob’s knife. Explain, or I shall gladly pull the trigger and rid the world of you.”

  “If I talk, will you set me free? Shipmates, we were, though not friends. Worth something, aye?”

  Spider’s knee caught Bob’s stomach, hard. “Just answer me.”

 
; Once Bob stopped heaving, he talked.

  “Well, then, John, Cap’n Bonny divided her small fleet and sent some of us off to do some smuggling ashore. Tobacco and rum and molasses, you see, pilfered from enterprises here and there. We was to sell it, make future arrangements, perhaps recruit some hands if we could find some stout lads.”

  “You brought smuggled goods ashore here, and Hob came with you?”

  “Aye,” Bob answered. “He didn’t want to leave her, Cap’n Bonny, I dare say, but I think she tired of the whelp and she sent him along. Like a puppy, he was. We put in not far from here, small cove, sweet quiet spot. Cap’n had sent a pair of gentlemen ahead to make arrangements, and we was to meet up. Some fellow she’d worked with before, we heard.”

  Spider did not care about a smuggling operation. “Is Hob nearby?”

  “John, I did not murder anyone.”

  Spider did not care about that, either. He tightened his grasp on Little Bob’s shirt. Though not a large man, Spider was quite strong, and he nearly lifted his adversary off his feet. “Your crimes are of no concern to me. Where is Hob?”

  “We were double-crossed, John. Set upon. Damn and blast, a horror it was! Smoke and flashes, not gun flashes, more like little bombs they chucked at us. It was like long nines judging by the light and the booms. Like a cannon going off against your ears. Those not killed were blind from light and smoke, and coughing. Then we were rushed, outmanned. Swords and guns, then, it was, but us choking on smoke and still blind. We had no chance.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “They killed some of us, aye, most of us, but rounded some men up and took them. Three or four. I was small enough to hide, you see, and so escaped their notice.”

  “Cowardly enough to hide, you mean. They took Hob?”

  “Aye, and others. But Hob was one of the men taken. I am sure of that. I saw him lifted into a wagon.”

  “Dead?”

  “No, he was kicking but they had the better of him and was tying him up.”