Then Hendrik Smeeks started up mutinous talk again, the sense of which was, that Morgan had taken the lion’s share of the plunder for himself. So Morgan had every last coin portioned out publicly, and then had each man searched to be sure he kept nothing back. He let himself be searched too, before them all.
Having settled that, the company was disbanded. All parties took ship at Chagres Castle, and sailed home. Some went to Port Royal, and the French among them went to Tortuga; others sailed south, to try to better their luck with piracy.
Morgan got home in the Mayflower. Five hundred of the English Brethren came with him, spending their money so free it was soon gone.
Then Fortune’s Wheel began to turn in earnest, for word came that England had signed to the Treaty of Madrid. A new governor was sent out to Jamaica to arrest Modyford, and Morgan in his turn was arrested and shipped off to London.
But Morgan’s luck stood by him again. Let the Spanish ambassador rave away how he might, Harry Morgan was cheered wherever he went in London. Folk called him Drake come again. The canny king listened, and in the end sent Morgan back with a knighthood and the lieutenant-governorship of Jamaica to boot.
And yet…
Hendrik Smeeks, home in the Low Country, declared himself a reformed man. He took pen in hand to write a book purporting to tell the true history of the privateers (whom he was careful to call pirates). He made the Spaniards the heroes, brave and dutiful to a man, and slandered Morgan no end, beginning by saying he had been brought out to the West Indies as a bond-slave. He went on to invent all manner of abominations committed by Morgan. However, it was that claim of his having been a slave that provoked the lieutenant-governor’s wrath. He sued Smeeks’ publisher, and won damages, and forced a retraction.
And yet…
That was the end of Morgan’s adventuring on the Spanish Main. He never sailed forth with his captains anymore, but stayed home and drank rum punch, playing at politics in Port Royal. The Brethren of the Coast never went out in such numbers again, and when they did sail, it was as outright pirates. A man might have his fill of blood and gold, fire and glory, but when he looked at himself in the shaving-glass of a morning he saw a thief and a murderer, and no hero.
For most of them, it didn’t matter much.
Prince Rupert never found his lost brother, though there were rumors Prince Maurice was still being seen in unlikely places for years afterward. Rupert continued to advertise for news of him, as he advertised for his lost dogs. Some of the dogs, at least, found their way home again.
John made his way in time to the Bluebell, where he asked whether there was a Mistress Clarissa Waverly there. After some wait he was shown up to see a fine lady, and told her a tale. She might have wept, and he might have comforted her. She might have dried her tears and considered his youth, and his size, and his willingness to be of use. And there may have been certain talk of four thousand pounds in gold, in sealed bags; and there might not have been.
Whatever other adventures John had, he did become a bricklayer for a while, and laid many a herringbone floor in old Port Royal. But his mother never spoke in his ear again. Now it was Morgan’s voice he heard there, in warning or counsel; the more so after Morgan died, long years later.
But one night the girl came to John in his sleep, bidding him follow her. He woke, and thirsted for rum, and ached for the smell of smoke and the sight of gold glinting, of white sails filling with a fair wind. He wondered whether he might find her again, a slender wraith wandering some lonely beach.
He ran to Lynch’s wharf and signed on with the captain of a rakish craft, who asked him few questions and answered none. They sailed by night; come morning the colors were run up, a black ensign bearing a skull and crossed bones.
In The Garden of Iden
Sky Coyote
Mendoza In Hollywood
The Graveyard Game
The Company Dossiers: Black Projects, White Knights
Mother Aegypt and Other Stories
The Life of the World to Come
The Children of the Company
The Machine’s Child (forthcoming)