“If this is true,” he said, “it merely proves your madness.”
Again Baxter shook his head.
“Mine is no lunatic idea,” he said. “There are stirrings in North America that cannot be quieted by all the rivers of grog the colonists pour down their throats. In Charlestown, where your barrels were to be smuggled past harbor agents to avoid the threepence duties, the Tea Act puts new heat to tempers certain to boil over into rebellion. Whether this comes in months, a year, or two years, I cannot predict. But come it will. And whatever befalls afterward, I have no doubt that George the Third’s import taxes will be crammed up his royal arse, rendering extinct those who now profit from running contraband.” Baxter paused, showed a hint of a smile. “It would be wise of you to make the most of the present, m’lord… and wiser still to prepare for changes that are bound to occur in the future.”
Morpaign continued standing there in silence. He had been tempted to give vent to his fury, reject Baxter outright no matter the consequences — but something made him hesitate.
“Let us allow your remarks for a moment,” he said. “What have I to gain from linking myself to a bandit’s fortunes?”
Baxter returned his stare, his smile growing in size.
“It is through this bandit that you can expand your trade beyond measure,” he said. “I have picked my way along smuggling routes known only to a shrewd and adventurous handful, and made contacts who will be become indispensable when the black marketeer’s day is done in the Caribbean. The quantity of spiced rum you sell the northern colonists is but a fraction of what I can move. Double your production, triple it, you’ll gain buyers from Rhode Island to Georgia. And it needn’t end there. Give me raw cane by the cropload, hogsheads of molasses to fill a ship’s hold from top to bottom. I can guarantee their ready distribution.”
“And your share of the take?”
“An equal cut… no more, no less.” Baxter’s eyes gleamed. “You see, lord, I am ready to check my natural greed for our common purpose.”
Morpaign had fallen still again, hands clenched into tight balls at his sides, beads of perspiration gathering in the furrow above his upper lip. His hatred of having to stand at another man’s mercy was almost choking in its intensity, matching only his disdain for the brigand’s swagger. And yet…
And yet despite all that, he could not have pretended to ignore the sharp bite of curiosity, and the tantalizing sense that it might be pursued to some unforeseen and illimitable gain. No, not even at point of gun, with the dead still pouring their blood into the ground under his feet.
“You fail to account for British maritime patrols,” he’d said in a deliberately hedging tone. “The cargo once aboard that merchantman is in your hands. Should you have found undeclared goods aboard, they would have been limited to inconspicuous quantities, stowed where they might have slipped past inspection. But a pirate vessel loaded with contraband… how could it elude the admiralty?”
Baxter laughed. It was a cold, somehow arrogant outburst that would echo in Morpaign’s thoughts very often in times to come, always inseparable from his recollection of molten red fireglow that had risen high into the black roof of the night.
“Now there’s the tickler,” he said. “I have become the admirality’s arm, lord. No longer pirate but privateer in its service. With the King’s colors flying from my masthead, and a letter of marque in my breast pocket, I am warranted to board vessels hostile to the empire and seize any illicit freight for a prize.” He grinned broadly, nodded in the direction of the torched vessel below. “Nothing could be safer from interdiction than a shipment carried under my banner.”
Morpaign looked at him for a long moment, opened his mouth to speak… and then shut it, his attention drawn by a sudden movement over to his right.
Didier, he realized. The impulsive, loose-lipped fool had turned from the bodies of the slaves, his face contorted with anger.
“That what cleared him to blow the brains out o’ our two best and strongest, seigneur?” he blurted, pointing at Baxter. “Or was his trigger finger actin’ on its own?”
Baxter’s grin pulled in at the edges but remained on his lips. He straightened, whirled on his heel, and swung his pistol toward the gesticulating overseer.
“Noise for noise,” he said.
His gun crashed and spouted flame. The horses tethered to the wagons reared up with fear, their tails flicking, front hooves kicking at the air. Morpaign heard Didier scream, saw him fall to the ground clutching his kneecap with both hands.
Baxter spared a moment to glance down at his whimpering victim, gave out an audible cluck of his tongue. Then he lowered the gun’s smoking barrel and turned back to Morpaign, his expression that of someone who had tolerated a fleeting, barely consequential interruption.
“Patch the sorry creature and he will survive — lame but better behaved,” he said. “Now I’d hear your response to my offer.”
Still struck with astonishment, Morpaign raised his eyes from where the overseer lay bleeding and crumpled near the murdered slaves.
“And if I decline?” he said, gathering himself together.
“I’d consider it a business decision and bear no grudge,” Baxter said. He nodded back toward the wagon, the flintlock resting against his hip. “That shipment of rum would adequately curb my disappointment as we part ways.”
The two men did not speak for a tense minute, the silence about them penetrated only by Didier’s sobs, the stamping and snorting of the horses, and the whispered exchanges of the stunned, frightened laborers inside the cave. They were peering out its mouth at the latest victim to fall before the gun, and Morpaign again found himself doing the same. Writhing in agony, his knee gushing, the overseer was a bad sight. If his wound was not tended soon, he would suffer the worst for his impulsive mouthings.
There was, however, a decision that needed to be reached first. His mind working, Morpaign gazed past Baxter at his ragtag band of sea rovers. Gathered around the wagon and its agitated team of horses, they returned his scrutiny with hard stares, the light of the flames over the water glinting off their blades.
Through me you can expand your trade beyond measure, Baxter had said. It was a bold declaration, yes. But could anything have made it easier to believe than the brazen ruthlessness of his actions?
Finally Morpaign returned his attention to Baxter, his bunched fists loosening at his sides.
Through wreck and violence, through blood and fire, his path had become clear. And more than that, or so it felt.
In the unreality of the moment, it all might have been a consecration of his destiny.
“Doing business with you,” he said with intent slowness, “shall be my pleasure.”
Redbone Baxter smiled. Then he holstered his flintlock, slipped another from his bandolier, and held it out by the long gold-plated barrel. Its elaborate scrollwork was similar to what Morpaign had seen on the first pistol, but here he also noticed a gleaming silver butt cap cast as a demonic face with narrow eyes, grotesquely distorted features… and, Morpaign thought, a grin of cold, insolent delight eerily similar to the one on Baxter’s face.
Or so it appeared to him, at least, in the tricky light and shadows hurled by the soaring, distant flames.
“Take the pistol as a gift, and consider it a symbol of our newborn alliance,” Baxter said. “May it endure for many long and profitable years.”
Morpaign nodded and accepted the gun.
“Long years, indeed,” he said, wrapping his fingers around its demon-headed stock.
ONE