Skull and Bones

Chapter 41

Spaniards!" said Israel Hands.

"Bugger!" said Silver, and signalled for all hands to take cover and lie low. They were hiding in the old cattle pens: lines of wooden hurdles where Charley Neal had kept his beef, which had lain empty since his departure, for Jimmy Chester bought from the butcher.

"Bugger!" said Silver again, but under his breath. They were so close! One long side of Jimmy Chester's grog shop was right across the street, a big whitewashed wall with a line of windows, now tight-shuttered. And now here came a company of Spanish infantry stumbling along in the night, boots crunching, equipment clattering but only dimly seen. They were following the line of the wall, muskets aimed in all directions, nervous, staggering, struggling to keep their dressing in the dark, and a trail of wounded hobbling along in the rear. They twitched every time a musket fired somewhere in the unquiet night.

"Cap'n?" whispered Mr Joe.

"What?" said Silver.

"They're frit, Cap'n! Mortal feared!" "Aye! Look at 'em!"

"They'd run if we give 'em a volley…"

"No! T'ain't our fight. Let 'em go by!"

Then a voice bawled out an order in Spanish, and the soldiers halted and stood gasping and panting. Then two more Spanish voices, different voices, arguing and protesting.

"What do they say, Cap'n?" whispered Mr Joe.

"One's saying they should go inside," said Silver, "for to take cover, 'cos it's a fine big house with thick walls. The other one says they'd be trapped in it…"

"If they go in there, we'll never find Flint," said Mr Joe. "What we gonna do?"

Silver groaned. Mr Joe was right. Chester's house was at the back end of the grog shop, built on to it…

Flint untied the lashings and pulled Selena to her feet, the sack now cast aside. Billy Bones looked on in dread as he saw the blood on the skin of her wrists.

"Bastard!" said Flint, thrusting the slim arms at Billy's face. "You tied that! I said to be gentler And he swung his hand, lightning fast, too fast even for the pugilist Billy Bones to duck, and caught him a full-blooded slap across the cheek. Billy staggered back, stinging and gulping. He'd taken oceans of abuse from his master over the years, but never… ever… before had Flint physically struck him, and Billy Bones was shocked to the marrow: more shocked by the act itself than by the pain.

And it wasn't only Billy Bones that gulped. So did Black Dog and the six Savannian half-breeds standing in Jimmy Chester's parlour with candles lit and Flint glaring at Billy Bones like a medusa, and an exceedingly beautiful woman hanging exhausted in Flint's arms, her mouth still bound with a gag, and herself half out of her taffeta gown. The half-breeds shivered at that. But they avoided Flint's eye, for none dared to be within it.

"I only did me best, Cap'n," said Billy Bones. "She was struggling!"

"Bah!" said Flint, and untied the gag. "Selena!" he said and forcibly, irresistibly kissed her full on the lips, a kiss of absolute, entire and abandoned passion, while she resisted to the limit of her strength, clawing and kicking and pulling away as he pawed at her, and slobbered and drooled.

Billy Bones shuddered and so did Black Dog, so — even — did the half-breeds. For this wasn't right. It was embarrassing. It was unmanly. It wasn't a thing that other men wanted to see. It was a man making the most complete fool of himself, because as well as forcing himself upon her, Flint was pleading, and groaning and sobbing with love, and begging her to love him in return.

"My love, my lovely, my darling, my own…"

"No," she cried, and spat full in his face.

"Cap'n," said Billy Bones, ashamed to the depths of his heart, "don't!"

But Flint didn't even hear. And neither did Billy Bones hear what was marching past the grog shop and the house. But the half-breeds did. They snuffed the lights, ran to a shuttered window and peeped through the cracks.

"Mr Bones!" said one of them. "Spaniards!"

"Oh!" said Billy Bones, finally registering the heavy tramp of feet.

"Come and see!" said one of the half-breeds.

Billy Bones stumbled forward in the dark, and peered out. The street was full of grey coats and twinkling bayonets, and behind him — when every sane man would have kept silent — Flint and Selena were pouring words into each other's faces.

"Oh Christ!" said Billy Bones, and fumbled his way back across the room.

Then a bit of moonlight shone out from the sky and into the dark room… and there was Flint, on his knees, hanging on to Selena's half-naked body, and him begging and pleading, now completely deranged.

"Cap'n!" said Billy Bones. "Clap a hitch!"

And then two tempers snapped entirely. She tore his hair and clawed at his eyes in desperate strength, and he sprang up, and caught her and threw her into Billy Bones's arms with final, abandoned and utter contempt. Confronted, in hideous, actual reality, with the hellish rejection he'd dreamed of while swinging on the rope, Flint was more wounded than he could bear.

"So!" he snarled. "So! It's come to this! Shall I tell you what I'm going to do to you? Shall I? SHALL I?" He glared at Billy Bones. "You hold her there, you useless piece of shit, you hold her there while I fetch some tools from Jimmy's kitchen, for I'm going to — "

And Billy Bones groaned at the horrors Flint's mind poured out. Such horrors of mutilation and debasement that shrivelled his spirit. Billy Bones felt the warmth of the girl, and remembered another girl, long ago, who'd felt like this, and an enormous rage arose inside of him, and he put her safe behind himself, and looked Flint full in the eye… And Billy Bones found his conscience and stood up straight, and turned on his beloved master.

"No!" he said firmly. "I shan't, and I won't!"

"What?" said Flint, blinking and trembling in his own rage. "Give her here!" he demanded.

"No!" cried Billy Bones, and raised his massive fists and leapt forward with all his strength, with all his might, and with all his will. He went for Flint with animal ferocity, to beat out his life and tear him apart.

And Selena screamed and screamed and screamed.

"What's that?" said Capitán Herrera, and broke off arguing with his Teniente.

"A woman screaming — in the house!" said Lopez-Ortega.

"Huh!" said Herrera, and waved aside whatever that might mean. He had more pressing worries. He looked at the trail of disordered men who followed him and now stood uneasily, fearing yet another shot out of the dark. "We shall go inside and take protection," he said. "That is my final word. Order the door to be broken in!"

"What's that?" said Silver, crouched in the cattle pen.

"Selena!" said Mr Joe, and jumped up.

"Get down!" cried Silver, hauling him back behind the hurdle.

"But it's her! She's screaming! In the big house! What's she doing there?"

"Flint!" said Silver. "It's him! He's got her! The swab's gone behind our backs!" He stood up, got his crutch under his arm, and cocked and levelled. "Come on, shipmates," he cried. "With me!" And he let rip with a flash and a roar into the white-clad mass feeling its way along the wall of the grog house.

"Walrus!" the crew cried, and fired off a thundering, rolling volley, for each man bore two pairs of pistols, and a blunderbuss too, for the ship's entire store of these latter and formidable weapons was present, and what with each one being loaded with a handful of balls, and the pistols firing besides, there was more flying lead in the air than an entire infantry company could have delivered, at less than thirty- foot range, splitting the night with fire, filling the street with smoke and falling upon the wretched Spaniards like the wrath of God — instantly followed by the wrath of the Devil, as Silver cleared the hurdle, and hopped forward.

"Come on, lads!" he cried, and he led his dozen men whooping, leaping, howling and bellowing, and laying on with sharp steel, such that the whole Spanish mass broke and sundered, convinced that a regiment at least had fallen upon them in the dark. And so they ran, knocking down and trampling over Capitán Herrera, Teniente Lopez-Ortega and all others who tried to stop them.

"With me!" cried Silver, scrambling over the dead, and hurrying round to the front of the grog shop. "Here's the door!" he cried. "Axes, boys!" And he stood back as Tom Morgan and Darby McGraw, who'd been given this task for their muscles, ran up and smashed at the barred door, with the two biggest axes from Walrus's carpenter's tool chest.

Crunch! Smash! In went the door and Silver was first into the black of the grog shop, with its lines of tables, and sanded floor.

"Dark lantern!" cried Silver, and the hot, smouldering tin- cylinder was handed forward for Silver to open the shutter and throw out a thin, yellow light. "All hands re-charge firelocks, and then follow me!" he cried, and there was a great biting of cartridges and plying of rammers, then a Huzzah! as they followed John Silver blundering through the room towards the door at the back that led to the main house, and all hands falling over chairs in the dark and getting up again and bellowing and yelling and doors hacked down and corridors run, and the wrong way taken, and then made right, and charging into a pretty little moonlit courtyard with sweet flowers and soft scent, between the grog shop and the house proper, and another door smashed in… and into Jimmy Chester's parlour with the moonlight now strong through an opened window -

"Flint!" cried Silver.

"John!" cried Selena, and rushed towards him, to be swiftly embraced then pushed out of harm's way into his wake.

"Silver!" said Flint, standing over the bloodstained form of Billy Bones, who lay on his back with feebly moving hands and staring eyes… waiting for Flint to smash out his brains with a heavy candlestick.

"Avast!" cried Silver. "Don't move an eyelash, you poxy sod, or I'll shoot you dead!"

"Kill him!" said Flint, turning to the half-breeds, who raised their guns and fired. Darby McGraw fell, and then Flint's half-breeds went down under a tremendous hail of shot from

Silver's men, while Black Dog — who remembered who'd offered him a pistol instead of rest, and who'd heard what Flint planned to do with Selena — ran forward and knelt at Silver's feet and clutched the tail of his coat.

"I'm with you, Cap'n Silver!" he cried. "Don't shoot poor Black Dog!"

"Traitor!" gasped Flint, and stood with his chest heaving: sweat-soaked and exhausted from the fight against Billy Bones. But he recognised the still-twitching body that lay beside Black Dog. "And is that Mr McGraw there beside you, John? The celebrated drunkard?" He sneered and mocked. "Bring aft the rum, Darby McGraw!"

"Shut your trap," said Silver, glaring in venomous hatred, his pistol levelled square at Flint.

"Are you safe, lass?" he said over his shoulder.

"Yes!" she said, as Silver hopped close to Flint with the pistol outstretched.

"But did he touch you? Did he lay hands on you?"

"No." She stepped forward and pointed at Billy Bones. "He saved me — Mr Bones saved me."

"Did he, though?" said Silver, amazed. "More o' that later, my lass." And he fumbled in a pocket and reached out a small package tied up in oilskin. "Here's my half, Joe Flint," he said, and threw it on to a table. "So where's yours?" Flint blinked and gaped, and breathed deep.

"Well?" said Silver.

"Here," said Flint at last, and he took the silver porte-crayon from his pocket, and laid it beside Silver's little package.

Then Flint and Silver looked at one another… they who'd been the dearest of friends, then the foulest of enemies, and then friends for a while… and now this, and each looked at the woman that each, in such different ways, loved more than life or wealth, or the world entire.

"There's only one of us can walk away from this," said Silver.

"Yes," said Flint. "It's time the matter was settled."

"Aye," said Silver. For nothing stood between them now. Whatever it was that had always stopped them coming to blows… it was washed away, and swept away, and gone forever.

"Then shall you shoot me down, John? You that believes himself to be a gentleman o' fortune?"

The pistol quivered… and then came down. Silver put it and its partners on the table beside the package and the porte- crayon.

"No," said Silver. "We'll settle this, man to man!"

"No!" cried Selena.

"No!" cried Mr Joe.

"No…" said even Billy Bones in a slurred voice, battered and bloodied as he was. "Shoot him down, Cap'n Silver, shoot him like a dog!"

"Avast!" yelled Silver, and glared at them all. "Listen here, and listen good!" He looked at Flint. "He's mine, the evil sod! He's all mine, and don't none of you lift a finger to him!" There was uproar in the room, but Silver ignored it, as did Flint.

"Huh!" said Flint, and blinked, and wiped the sweat from his eyes. And then he stood tall, and bowed like a courtier and smiled Flint's smile. For he'd got a bit of his breath back, and saw only a one-legged man in front of him. "Shall it be swords or pistols then?"

"I'll see the liver of you, you bastard!" said Silver.

"Does that mean swords?"

"It does, God damn you," said Silver. "One o' you swabs give him a blade!" and he threw off his hat and baldrick and coat, and rolled up his sleeves, and drew his cutlass from its sheath and tried the blade on empty air, balancing neatly on his one leg and crutch. He was a fine, big man who towered over all present, and there were few that would choose to fight him. But still… he hopped on one leg while Flint danced nimbly on two, and all who cared for John Silver begged and implored him not to fight, and Selena hung on his arm shouting loudest of all.

But Flint, oblivious, breathed deep, calmed his thundering heart, and stood up in shirtsleeves, with Tom Morgan's cutlass in his hand, and bowed to Silver like a French fencing master, and saluted with the heavy blade.

"Bollocks to that, Joe Flint," said Silver, and "Argh!" he cried, and swung a blow at Flint that would have split him to the breastbone had it landed, which it didn't because Flint was elsewhere and slashing at Silver's one leg, which blow Silver blocked with a grinding of steel and a shower of sparks in the moonlit room, and Flint leapt back, surprised at his own slowness, for he was still tired from fighting Billy Bones.

Then clash-scrape-clang, the blades met in the air, to left and to right, and Silver laid on with incredible speed for a crippled man, and Flint slid back in the face of his attack, but tired as he was, still he met Silver's blade at every stroke. Then:

"Ah!" cried the room, as Silver swung the oaken length of his crutch and caught Flint a cracking blow on the knee that sent him hopping out of range with Silver following but slipping from going too fast. He nearly measured his length but, clang-bang, saved his throat from Flint's slash with a swift recovery in the uttermost split second before the death-stroke fell.

And then it was hammer and tongs, thunder and lightning, blood and sweat and a fight that leapt, barged and rolled around the room, more nearly equal than any man could have dreamed between two such opponents, except that Silver was losing the flush of his strength, while Flint, by hanging back just a little, and relying on the uncanny reactions that God — on a very bad day — had given him, was recovering. And the more John Silver faded, the more Flint rejoiced.

Because Flint knew that he must win.

And John Silver knew it too.

And so did every creature in the room.