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Ann's arms were around him and her mouth was open, and against his bare chest he could feel her nipples right through the fabric of her blouse; like most people on the island she smelled of sweat and liquor, but in her case it was with such a female tang that Shandy forgot his resolutions about her and forgot Beth and his father and his uncle, and just brought his arms up and pulled her closer. The girl, together with the hot sun on his back and the warm water around his ankles, seemed for a moment to moor him to the island like some tree, animated only by biological promptings and reflexes and not even minimally self-aware.
Then he recollected himself and lowered his arms; she stepped back, grinning at him.
"What," Shandy began to croak, "what," he went on more strongly, "was that for?"
She laughed. "For? For luck, man."
"Heads up, Jack," said Skank quietly.
Jim Bonny was floundering down the slope, his round face red under a dark cloth, and his boots kicking up plumes of white sand. "Shandy you son of a bitch!" he was squalling. "You goddamn sneaking son of a bitch!"
Though apprehensive, Shandy faced him. "What do you want, Jim?" he called evenly.
Bonny halted in front of his wife with his boots just short of the water, and for a moment he seemed about to hit her. Then he hesitated, and his gaze fell away from hers, and he scowled across at Shandy. He fumbled a clasp knife out of his pocket - Shandy stepped back, snatching at his own - but when Bonny had unfolded his blade he pressed the point into the tip of his own left forefinger and flicked the blade outward, throwing a couple of drops of blood toward Shandy, and at the same time he began chanting a nonsensical multi-language rhyme.
Shandy noticed that the sun was suddenly hotter - shockingly hotter - and then Skank had leaped onto Jim Bonny's back from behind and knocked him forward onto his knees in the water, and then hopped off and planted a bare foot between the shoulders of Bonny's coat and shoved him onto his face in the shallows.
Bonny was floundering and splashing and cursing, but the sudden sweat was cooling on Shandy's face and shoulders, and Skank waded in and kicked Bonny in the arm. "You ain't forgettin' any of the rules now, are you, Jim?" Skank asked. "No vodun offenses among us unless it's a declared duel, isn't that the way?" Bonny had been struggling to push himself up out of the water, but Skank kicked him again, harder, and he collapsed with a sputtering cry of protest.
Shandy glanced at Ann, and was a little surprised to see that she seemed concerned. Mr. Bird was watching with evident disapproval.
"You're no bocor" Skank went on, "and there's pickney infants on the island that could set your head blazing like a torch and laugh at any lame drogue you could make to stop 'em with, but Shandy's new and don't know nothin' about all that. You think Davies'll be pleased if I tell him about this?"
Bonny had scuttled away, and now floundered to his feet. "But - but he was kissin' my - "
Skank threateningly took a step forward. "Think he will?"
Bonny retreated, splashing. "Don't tell him," he muttered.
"Get out of here," Skank told him. "Ann - you too."
Without meeting Shandy's eye, Ann followed her sopping husband back up the slope.
Shandy turned to Skank. "Thanks ... for whatever."
"Ah, you'll learn." Skank looked toward the rowboat. "It's sitting low," he said. "One more block ought to make this load."
Shandy walked up to the rough wooden sled the marble blocks sat on - and then noticed Venner, who had not even stood up during the entire altercation. The man was smiling as amiably as ever, but all at once Shandy decided not to confide the escape plan to him.
Chapter Four
Because the Carmichael was to leave next morning, the talk around the fires that night was a fantastic fabric of speculations, warnings and impossible stories. Jack Shandy, insulated from the anxiety felt by the rest of Davies' crew, nevertheless listened with great interest to stories of ships crewed by zombies and glimpsed only at midnight by doomed men, of various magical precautions that would be necessary in Florida, so far from the protection of Mate Care-For and the rest of the vodun loas, of the Spaniards they might encounter in the Gulf of Mexico, and what tactics to use against them; old legends were retold, and Shandy heard the story of the pirate Pierre le Grand, who with a tiny boat and a handful of men took a galleon of the Spanish plate fleet fifty years earlier, and he heard a spirited version of the four-hour sea battle between the English Charlotte Bailey and the Spanish Nuestra Senora de Lagrimas, which ended with the sinking of both ships, and then for a while the pirates tried to outdo each other with stories about the suck-you-byes, female demons that weirdly and erotically occupied the last hours of men marooned on barren islands.
And the Carmichael was supposed to rendezvous with Blackbeard's Queen Ann's Revenge in Florida, and so there was lots of gossip about that most colorful pirate chief, and speculations about why he was returning to that uncivilized shore where, a year or two ago, he had gone far inland in search of some sort of sorcerous power-focus and had come limping out days later, unsuccessful, sick, and infested with the ghosts that now plagued him as fleas would a dog.
Shandy had cooked up his best dinner yet, and, full and slightly drunk, was very much enjoying the evening ... until he noticed the other members of the crew, the ones that weren't bravely drinking and laughing around the fire. Several had shuffled off to the sailcloth tents, and once when the wind slacked Shandy thought he heard quiet sobbing from that direction, and he saw Skank sitting in the dimness under a palm tree, carefully sharpening a dagger, an expression of intent concentration - almost of sadness - on his young face.
Shandy stood up and walked down to the shore. Just visible across the harbor's half mile of dark water was the silhouette of Hog Island against the stars, and nearer at hand he could see bare masts swaying gently to the breeze and the low swells. He heard the chuff of boots approaching from behind him, and when he turned back toward the fires he saw the lean figure of Philip Davies striding toward him, a bottle of wine in each hand. Behind him the settlement musicians had begun tuning up their random instruments.
"Here y'are," said Davies drunkenly. "Who deserves the best of the wine, if not the cook?" He held out one of the bottles, which for lack of a corkscrew had simply been broken off at the neck.
"Thank you, captain," said Shandy, taking the bottle and eyeing the jagged neck mistrustfully.
"Chateau Latour, 1702," Davies said, tilting up his own bottle for a swig.
Shandy sniffed his and then raised it and poured some into his mouth. It was the driest, smoothest Bordeaux he'd ever tasted - and his father and he had had some fine ones at times - but he kept any pleasure from showing in his face. "Huh," he said carelessly. "Wish I'd found some of this when I was scouting up ingredients for the stew."
"For the stew." Half of Davies' face was lit by the firelight, and Shandy saw it crinkle in a sour grin. "I was a youngster in Bristol, and one Christmas evening when I was just leaving the woodworking shop where I was 'prenticed, some street boys broke our window to snatch some stuff. What they didn't take they knocked over, and there was this ... " He paused for a sip of the wine.
