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Shandy looked back at her. "Don't you remember? He ... " Belatedly, it occurred to him that there might be a better time to awaken her recent grisly memories. "Uh ... he made Friend cut your hand," he finished lamely.
She glanced at her hand, then didn't speak until they had drawn in near the fires, and men were wading out to help them ashore. "I remember you holding a knife to my throat," she said distantly.
Shandy bared his teeth in anguished impatience. "It was the dull side, and I never even touched you with it! That was to test him, to see if he still needed you to accomplish this magic, if some of your blood wasn't all he needed! Damn it, I'm trying to protect you! From him!" Several men had splashed up to their boat, and hands gripped the gunwales and began dragging it in toward shore.
"Magic," said Beth.
Shandy had to lean forward to hear her over the excited questions of the pirates. "Like it or not," he said to her loudly, "it's what we're involved in here."
She swung a leg over the side and jumped into the shallow water and looked back at him. The rocking bow-torch had almost expired, but it was bright enough to show the lines of strain in her face. "What you've chosen to become involved in," she said, then turned and began wading up toward the fires.
"You know," Shandy remarked to Davies, "I'm going to get her out of this ... just for the pleasure of showing her one more thing she's all wrong about."
"Are we glad to see you boys!" one of the jostling pirates exclaimed. They had dragged the boat all the way up onto the sand of the mangrove-shorn notch, and Shandy and Davies got out and stood up, stretching. The shouting began to die down.
"Glad to be out of there," Davies said.
"You must be hungry as hell," another man put in. "Or did you find something to eat in there?"
"Didn't have the leisure." Davies turned to watch the progress of the other two boats. "What time is it? Maybe Jack'd throw together some kind of pre-breakfast for us."
"I don't know, Phil, but it ain't late - no more'n an hour or two after sunset."
Shandy and Davies both turned to stare at him. "But we left about an hour after sunset," Shandy said. "And we've been gone at least several hours ... "
The pirate was looking at Shandy blankly, and Davies asked, "How long were we gone upriver?"
"Why ... two days," the man replied in some bewilderment. "Just about precise - dusk to dusk."
"Ah," said Davies, nodding thoughtfully.
"And ashes to ashes," put in Shandy, too tired to bother with making sense. He looked again toward the approaching boats. Idly, for in spite of his deductions all he wanted right now was an authoritative drink and a hammock and twelve hours of sleep, he wondered how he would prevent Hurwood from forcing Beth's soul out of her body so that the ghost of her mother, his wife, could move in.
Chapter Sixteen
In the morning the fog had overflowed its river boundaries and formed a damp, only dimly translucent veil over the land and sea, so chilly that the pirates huddled around the sizzling, popping fires, and it was almost midmorning, when the fog began to break up, before anyone noticed that the Vociferous Carmichael was gone; and another half hour of rowing up and down the shore in boats, and shouting and ringing bells, was wasted in confirming the ship's disappearance.
Most of her crew was ashore, and the first supposition was that she had somehow come unmoored and drifted away - then Hurwood came running down the slope from the hut yelling the news that his daughter was gone and he couldn't find Leo Friend.
Shandy was standing on the beach near one of the boats when Hurwood's news was relayed. Davies and Blackbeard stood a hundred feet away, talking in low, urgent tones, but they looked up when this fresh lot of shouting began.>Blackbeard raised a face that was a huge, unfolding orchid. The stalks of the stamen spasmed and a voice whistled, "Yes. Bonnett."
Davies' bouquet-head nodded.
Shandy felt cold water flowing between his toes and realized that his feet had become roots and had penetrated the boat's hull. He found, though, that he couldn't bring himself to nod. "No," he whispered through a throatful of twisting reeds. "Can't. Did I ... throw you ... to the Navy?"
Davies' shoulders slumped. "Damn you," he fluted, "Jack."
Shandy glanced again at the third boat. Leo Friend was a fat wet trunk with branches like spider legs projecting in all directions. A thing like a fungus-overgrown cypress stump seemed to be Stede Bonnett, and Hurwood, no longer able to speak, was now just a thick cluster of ferns that heaved furiously about as if in a high wind.
Davies labored on at the oars, but their boat was coming apart faster than the other two, and had already sunk almost to the gunwales. Shandy thought there was probably still time for Davies to stop rowing, let Hurwood's boat drift up alongside, uproot Bonnett and pitch him into the water. With such a tribute the thing might let the rest of them go ... but Shandy had apparently talked Davies out of that course.
Then Davies hitched himself up, and let go of the oars.
He's going to do it, thought Shandy. It's wrong, Phil, I don't like it, but for God's sake hurry.
Davies lifted one booted foot and dragged across its muddy sole the palm frond that had recently been his right hand. The left one joined it, and, while Shandy wondered what the hell the man was doing, the two floppy green hands rolled the mud into a ball.
Goddamn it, Phil, thought Shandy, what good is a mud ball?
