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The marrons were escaped slaves who, having originally lived in Senegal, and Dahomey, and the nations of the Congo coast, had no difficulty adapting to life in the mountain jungles of Jamaica, and the white colonists were so unnerved by this dangerous and unforgiving population that they paid the blacks a seasonal tribute in exchange for sparing the outlying farms and settlements; but even the marrons refused to venture within half a mile of Jean Petro's house, and the boy walked alone down the long path that led to the garden and the livestock pens and, finally, the house on stilts.
A stream ran behind the house, and that's where the old man was - Thatch could see his bare legs, knobby and dark as blackthorn walking sticks, below the raised floor. Thatch was of course barefoot, and he made a "Be silent" gesture at the chickens poking around under the house and then padded across the dusty front yard as noiselessly as the shifting speckles of sunlight. When he had moved around the corner of the house, he could see that old Petro was walking along the stream bank, pausing here and there to lift one squat bottle after another out of the water, peer into the clouded glass, rattle his long fingernails against it, hold the dripping bottle to his ear, and then shake his head and crouch to put it back and fish up another.
Thatch watched while he kept it up, and finally the old bocor's face curdled in a smile when he listened to one bottle, and he rattled his nails on it again; and then he just stood there and took turns tapping the bottle and listening, like a dungeon-confined prisoner whose measured wall-clinking has at long last elicited, however remotely, a response.
"It's our boy, sure enough," he said in a scratchy old-man's voice. "Gede, the loa who's the ... chief foreman, sort of, of the one who wants you."
Thatch realized the old man was aware of him and was talking to him. He stayed where he was, but he called, " 'Wants me'? I chose him."
The old man chuckled. "Well, anyway, that one ain't in the creek here, and we need Gede to call him. Of course even Gede's only here tokenly. This is only a part of him, in this jar, his belly button, you might say - -just enough to compel him." Petro turned around and hobbled back to the yard where Thatch stood. "The dead become more powerful as time goes by, you see, boy. What was just an unquiet ghost to your grandfather could be a full-fledged loa to your grandchildren. And I've learned to bend 'em, train 'em in certain directions like you would a vine. Farmer plant a seed in the ground and one day have a tree - I put a ghost in a bottle under running water and one day I have a loa." He grinned, revealing a few teeth in white gums, and waved the bottle back toward the stream. "I've grown near a dozen to maturity. They ain't quite the quality of the Rada loas, the ones that came with us across the ocean from Guinee, but I can grow 'em to fit what I need."
The chickens in the shade under the house were recovering from Thatch's gesture, and began clucking and fluttering. Petro winked, and they shut up again. "Of course," Petro went on, "the one that wants you - or that you want, if you prefer - old Baron Samedi, he's a different sort of beast." He shook his head and his eyes narrowed in what might have been awe. "Every now and then, no more than twice or three times in my whole life, I think I've accidentally made one that was too much like ... some thing or other that already existed, was already out there, and the resemblance was too close for 'em to keep on being separate. So suddenly I had a thing in a bottle that was too big to fit ... even just tokenly. My damn house was nearly knocked over when Baron Samedi got too big - bottle went off like a bomb, tossed trees every which way, and the creek didn't refill for an hour. There's still a wide, deep pool there. Nothing'll grow on the bank and every Spring I've got to net dead pollywogs out of it."
Young Thatch stared indignantly at the bottle. "So what you got in your beer bottle there is just some servant of Baron Samedi's?"
"More or less. But Gede's a top-ranking loa - he's number-two man here just because the Baron is so much more. And like any other loa Gede must be invited, and then entreated, using the rites he demands, to do what we ask. Now, I've got the sheets from the bed a bad man died in, and a black robe for you, and today is Saturday, Gede's sacred day. We'll roast a chicken and a goat for him, and I've got a whole keg of clairin - rum - because Gede is lavish in his consumption of it. Today we'll - "
"I didn't come down from the mountains to deal with Baron Samedi's bungo houseboy."
Jean Petro smiled broadly. "Ohhh!" He held the bottle out toward the boy. "Well, why don't you tell him that? Just hold the bottle up to the sunlight and peek in through the side until you see him ... then you can explain your social standards to him.">Shandy stepped back, away from the bridge, and sat down. He had meant to avoid meeting anyone's eyes, but as he looked around tor Hurwood's lantern, he glanced up and found Davies looking straight at him.
The lean old pirate was grinning at him, evidently pleased.
Shandy grinned back in relief, glad Davies understood ... and then he realized that Davies thought he had sat down in order to take off his boots.
And suddenly he knew, unhappily, that he couldn't just sit it out. This was stupid, as stupid as his father pulling a woodworking knife on a gang of Nantes alley toughs, or Captain Chaworth rushing with an unfamiliar sword at a pistol-armed pirate chief; but somehow, perhaps like them, he had been robbed of every way out of it. He took off his boots and stood up again.
By the time Friend tore his gaze away from the ludicrously bobbing figure of Benjamin Hurwood, Shandy's boots and knife lay abandoned in the sand and Shandy was standing in front of him.
"What's the matter?" Shandy asked the fat physician. His voice quavered only slightly. "Can't get familiar with a girl unless she's asleep?"
Friend's face got even redder. "D-d-d-don't b-be ab-ab-ab - d-don't - "
"I think he's trying to say, 'Don't be absurd,' Jack," said Davies helpfully.
"Do you?" asked Shandy, his voice still a little wild. "I thought it was, 'Yeah, because that was the only time even my mother didn't gag at the sight of me.'"
Friend began squawking and stuttering in, weirdly, a little-boy voice; then blood burst from his nose and bright red drops tumbled to his silk shirt-front and soaked into the weave in blurrily cross-shaped stains. His knees started to give, and for a moment Shandy thought the physician himself was about to faint, or even die.
Then Friend straightened, took a deep breath, and, without looking at Shandy, shifted his hold on Beth and stepped up onto the bridge.
Hurwood finally rolled over and smiled at the sky for a few moments, then he twitched, glanced around, winced and got to his feet. He walked to the bridge. "Friend and I will lead," was all he said.
Shandy and Davies followed him onto the bridge's paving stones, and then Bonnett and the boatman stepped from the sand onto the bridge surface.
The boatman instantly collapsed in a pile of loose clothing' Shandy looked more closely and saw that clothing was all that lay on the stones - there was no body.
Hurwood noticed the phenomenon and raised an eyebrow. "Your servant was a dead man?"
"Well ... yes," said Blackbeard.
"Ah." Hurwood shrugged. "To be expected - dust to dust, you know." He turned his back on them and started forward.
Chapter Thirteen
For quite a while they walked without speaking - footsteps were the only sounds, and they were just echoless thuds. As much to distract himself as to satisfy curiosity, Shandy began mentally counting paces; and he had counted more than two thousand when the light began to dim again. He found he had no idea how long the dawn period had lasted.
They seemed now to be passing through alternating patches of light and shade, and for a moment Shandy thought he smelled incense. Hurwood began walking more slowly, and Shandy glanced at him.
