Chapter 292: Darien, or Me Own Hat

A damp ring marked the chart where the Spry Eel’s tankard had stood, and James had his palms flat on the paper, one on either side of it. The ring lay squarely over the Gulf of Darien, beyond which the chart was blank.

The candles leaned in the draught from the double doors, and mud spread from there to the round table, where Joss stood with his arms folded, brown to the knees and darkened by the sun.

Cudjoe stood by the hearth, notebook ready. Sam sat with his hair tied back, while Williams beside him sized up the chart, his gold tooth reflecting the candlelight.

With a click of his tongue, James started. "Right then, you’ve the floor, Joss, and the quill’s sittin’ by the ink. Don’t spare us the mud, mate, what did you find out there?"

Joss picked up the quill and began to draw as he spoke, choosing his words carefully, as though each one came out of his pocket.

"Found yer river, sir, aye, her and no mistake."

The nib dragged a wide entrance into the river, then a sandbar across it, then a square on the west bank. "Brown water, she be, wide as a harbor and brown with timber jetty still weepin’ sap like it’s been cried over. There’s a creek a league east, all mangrove and mud-stink, I laid the Eel up in it and put a man up the tallest tree with the spyglass."

Williams leaned in over Joss’s shoulder and tapped the chart with a thick forefinger. "And then that fellow spotted their fleet? Reckon that’s the case, so what’s the biggest of the lot, Joss?"

Joss lifted a flat hand over the chart. "Sixty guns, and no lie, a damned man o’ war, the ports shut tight the whole bloody time we watched her."

Sam, who’d been tilting his chair back on two legs, brought all four down with a crack and swung round. "Go on lad, what else? Don’t leave an old sea-dog danglin’ from the yard of his own curiosity."

Joss told them on his fingers, a hull to each knuckle. "Two frigates, sir, thirty-odd guns apiece, sleek as sharks. Four transports, fat as hogs, and empty, and three sloops standin’ off the bar, lazy on picket, ridin’ sleepy."

From the hearth, Cudjoe wrote down a line and exhaled.

"Aye, grand odds, that, I’ve seen kirk collections with better prospects."

The grin left James’s face and his finger came down on the inked outline of the big ship.

"The pennant, Joss, was there one? Tell me true what she flew."

Joss hesitated, then nodded. "Broad pennant, sir. Swallow-tailed, flew from the big gun’s main deck for two days, then it came ashore on a pole, stuck up by the tents like he meant to stay."

The realization brought a laugh out of Sam. "Darien, Darien, or the inside of me own hat. D’ye hear it, Calloway? Write it in the log, lads, Black Sam called it."

"I’d have laid even money on the hat, Captain. Stands to reason."

James laughed, and the candle flames shivered.

The nib moved away from the jetty and crept inland, marking a dotted line through the jungle, past the inked edge of the chart and into the blank margin, so James slipped a loose sheet underneath it while Joss continued to draw.

Cudjoe raised his eyes from his notebook. "How many redcoats, Joss? Give me a number lad, not a feelin’, guesswork’s nae use tae a man wi’ a book."

Joss lifted the nib from the paper. "Near a thousand landed, sir, redcoats and marines with pioneers on top. Come the fourth dawn’, a formation went up the forest, axes out front hackin’ a road and behind ’em the bearers, casks slung on poles sweatin’ like pit ponies. Six hundred, near enough, in two ranks, an’ the jungle swallowin’ ’em as they went."

Williams’s eyes narrowed, and he leaned close enough that his shadow fell across the chart.

"But what else was them bearers humpin’ up that track? Come on, lad, out with it."

"Boxes, sir. Iron-bound, big as sea chests, and swingin’ light on them poles."

He let the silence sit a moment.

"Empty, sir, every last one o’ ’em."

Cudjoe’s pencil froze mid-word, a half-made letter hanging on the page. "Nae man humphs empty chests intae a jungle for the sport of it. They know what’s up that river, and they mean tae carry it home."

James let the silence stand, then asked it calmly. "And who walks at the head of that wee parade, Joss? Whose boots are in the mud at the front?"

The description came curtly. "Tall man, sir, grey and a dark coat buttoned to the throat. Walked his graves every dawn afore the drill, and went up that track with the rest on his own two feet. Second night, a sentry hailed his boat, and me lyin’ in the reeds not ten fathom off."

His voice sank.

"Commodore Falcombe."

Sam’s grin faltered, just for a heartbeat.

"And the graves, how many’s the reaper claimed already?"

Joss swallowed, and for once he didn’t look at the chart. "A dozen the first dawn’, sir, near thirty the last. Fever tents full to the pegs with flux, and the black vomit."

By then, Cudjoe’s pencil moved with sharp strokes.

"How long can they bide in there?"

"Camp’s got a month of supplies ashore, but they took casks for a fortnight, and no more."

The old quartermaster tapped the page with his pencil. "They went in with a fortnight of casks, and ye’ve spent seven days gettin’ home. That leaves them a week, and us a week of sea."

James lay a finger on the blank margin, the key against his ribs beating half a beat behind his heart.

The Gulf of Darien was a drowned jungle of mangrove and brown mud, its rivers carrying half the hills down to the sea while, behind them, silk-cotton trees stood as wide as ships’ hulls, tangled in creepers thick as cables.

The rains were due.

The Guna natives held the coast and hated Spain, and most of the conquistadores sent up those rivers in search of a golden temple were still up there in the mud.

A few days down the coast, in the last years of the old century, the Company of Scotland had planted New Caledonia and spent a good part of Edinburgh’s savings trying to keep it alive, but fever, hunger, and Spanish guns finished the settlement in two years.

The Scots lost their purses, then sold their parliament to pay the bill.

James, an Edinburgh man in two lives, took that personally.

Darien had killed the Spaniards first, the Scots second, and now it was working on the English, as if the place played no favorites.

Then his thoughts were interrupted by Cudjoe, who snapped his notebook shut, crossed from the hearth, and set it on the margin where Joss’s dotted line ended, the candle between himself and James.

The quartermaster cared not for pleasantries. "Well Captain, what now? I know the answer already, mind, only askin’ so it’s in the book, an’ no one can say after that we didnae think it through."

James spread his hand over the chart, and continued with a confident tone.

"We sail at first light."

The finger tapped once. "There’s a King’s commodore diggin’ up a jungle for a stone I mean to take afore he does, and he’s the same bastard who’d see every neck in this room stretched. I’ll meet him there, well away from Concordia."

Against his ribs the key knocked once, then lay still.

"The fleet is watchin’ the jetty, but what we want went up the track. That’s our plan"

Cudjoe let out a single slow nod, asked for no more, and stowed the notebook in his coat.

"Fever kills faster than guns, Captain, and with less ceremony."

His boots snapped on the boards as he made for the doors.

"I’ll rouse Hobbs and see tae the supplies."

Sam’s chair scraped back, and he stood, laying a flat hand over the chart. "I’m comin’, Calloway, and no man here shall say me nay! They call me the Robin Hood of the Seas, and if there’s gold in that jungle, it’ll feed the hungry in Nassau and the free folk of this bay, fall on ’em like rain on a dry field, so it will! The King’s chest can rot empty for all I care."

He thumped the chart. "The Whydah sails with the Rose if she’s off the cradle by dawn, and if she’s not, then I’m aboard yer lass, and ye’ll take me for ballast. I’m heavy wi’ righteousness!"

Williams tapped each of dots in turn, one, two, three. "Which people, Captain? The hungry in Nassau, the free folk in the bay, the lads on the Whydah who’ll want their cut, or whoever built the damned place? That’s a lot of hands reaching for one chest."

Sam flung out one arm. "Every poor devil the Crown ever robbed, Williams! Every last one, from here to Jamaica! There’s no end to the list, mate, no end! And that, me lad, that’s the beauty of it!"

"I’ll write that down as a sermon, Captain. Lovely stuff. Lovely, shame sermons don’t pay."

The coast had no owner, the Crown wanted its gold, and the crews wanted their shares, so in the end, chances were that no one was likely to leave empty-handed, or alive.

"Joss, you’ll lead us in."

"Aye, sir. Darien."

"First light, then, not a breath after."