Chapter 309: Liberty or the Gallows

Whitlock finished the stroke he’d begun before the silence fell. In the whole hall, it was the only thing that seemed to know what it was doing.

"Battle, then. Very good. I shall require an assembly and a muster, gentlemen."

Naturally, in a free town, war was voted on, and grave matters required two votes in three.

A chair creaked.

Fenwick’s boots struck the floor.

Twenty years earlier, a landlord’s bailiff had thrown him off his land, and since then he’d heard all the old stories about wars, along with noticing who wound up in the graves when the stories were finished.

"Battle!"

He spat the word as a plum gone rotten. "Aye, there’s the lords’ favorite word, that, they give it a grand name and we dig the ditches after. And them lads aboard them transports are plough lads, every man jack, same as me! Fetched off some farm with a shillin’ in their fist and a pack of lies in their lug."

There was a melancholic tone to his words. "So I’m to bury ’em, or they’re to bury me, and there’s nowt in it for either on us but muck and a hole."

Adrienne’s hand had crept up to her throat, and for a breath she was not in Concordia at all but standing in the smoke of a village that no longer had a name.

Her voice was soft and unsteady, and furious underneath. "’Battle.’ Pfff. You say like like it is Tuesday, monsieur. Like it is the fish, the bread, the market day! I have smelled what comes after that word, the people, it burns, it burns so sweet, and the... Alors."

She shook her head hard, once.

"Non. Non, non, non. I will not say."

Wat’s wheeze filled the silence she left behind.

By their side, Don Rodrigo had let his chin fall to his chest, while the parrot on his shoulder sat as still as a stuffed bird. Vallon stood at the window, where he usually had complaints to say about every plumb line and tide in Concordia, but this time he had no words.

Mateo laughed once, a short dry sound with no joy in it. "My crown sold my people with the sugar, and now a foreign one comes to burn what is left. Ay, what a busy year for crowns."

He looked across the table, as if he expected the man to suddenly appear there. "They tell me this is a free town, but then, it still needs her captain at home to keep her free. Where is he today, our Capitán?"

There was no reply. A long way south, the Capitán was busy with troubles of his own.

Isaiah laid his laced hands flat on the table.

He had come to Concordia in chains, or close enough to make little difference, and had spoken in this room perhaps a dozen times. He chose every word carefully.

"Mister Fenwick, your lords, I leave them to you."

There was dry resolve in this tone. "Freedom is the one thing this town has given to me, and I will not give it back. These men on the transports, they come for no battle, but only to put chains into our wrists once more."

Despite the somber atmosphere, Roberts started with fearless confidence. "I have been considering, gentlemen, since the word transports fell on this table, and the sum is a good deal sweeter than it ought to be."

His voice grew stronger by each word. "Concordia’s armada has its galleon, the size of a cathedral, lifted from under Havana’s guns, its frigate that changed her allegiance this spring and hasn’t yet learned to be ashamed of it, mind, and its sloops, the smaller yet hardest workers."

A nod, decisively. "Small enough beside a King’s fleet, I grant you. But I wouldn’t swap it for all his sail, no, not for the lot of it, see."

Bonnet, meanwhile, had been busy writing himself a tale.

"Gentlemen! Gentlemen, at last I have the shape of it!"

He rose half out of his chair, hand pressed to his waistcoat. "A loyal gentleman of Bridgetown, mark you, loyal, good God, he knelt! Knelt to his King! And how does His Majesty repay him? An entire fleet, my dear fellows, sent to burn his friends! Well? What is such a man to do?"

He lifted his chin high, as if he raised a banner.

"He rises, gentlemen. I knelt once. I shall not kneel twice."

Fenwick’s palm came down on the table hard enough to make every cup jump.

"Freedom, is it? Ye can’t feed a town on freedom, Isaiah! It’ll not fill a belly, nor..."

"And you cannot feed it on its knees neither, Mister Fenwick! Nor on surrender! I promise you..."

Adrienne’s chair went over backward as she stood, and her voice cut through theirs. "Mon Dieu! The children, the schoolhouse, it is right here, and you, you two, bark like dogs over a bone while..."

"Now, now! Gentlemen, please, I beg you! If we might all simply..."

"Always the same, always, the captain goes away, and the rest of us, we..."

"Look you, a little order, if you please! A little order, I beg of you!"

On Don Rodrigo’s shoulder the bird shook itself into a ruff of feathers and drew breath. It had no voice of its own worth mention, so it borrowed one, a drill sergeant, dead these many years and still shouting.

"?SILENCIO! ?SILENCIO, CARAJO! ?ORDEN! ?ORDEN EN LA CUBIERTA!"

Every head in the hall snapped round.

Then, in that same iron voice, the bird began to call the roll.

"?ALVAREZ!"

The name cracked down the hall like a whip. Fenwick’s mouth stayed open around what he’d been about to say, and the word stayed where it was.

"?MENDOZA!"

It rang in the rafters. No one answered. No one in that hall would have dared, any more than anyone had answered it for a very long time.

"?SALCEDO!"

Down the table, a gnarled hand closed slowly around the rim, and the tide of the room turned without anyone needing to haul on a rope.

No one expected Don Rodrigo to rise.

The argument stopped abruptly, and the afternoon seemed to grow cold across the table.

The conquistador leaned over the chart, hands flat upon it.

An old man was gone.

In his place stood a soldier who had fought God, the jungle, and the crown. Death had visited him so often that it remembered his name, and he regretted none of the fighting.

He spoke low, lower than all the noise that had come before.

"Hijos."

The word fell like a stone down a well. "You ask me what is to be done, as if the answer was lying here on the table between the cups. Ay, no, there is no choice. The King’s answer is already upon the water, bound to send us to see our maker."

Fenwick’s lips were open to argue, yet he found no words to put in it. The old man’s eyes passed over him, and went on, to some far shore.

There, he continued. "I have fought for land, and for gold, and for a king who could not spell my name. Soldiers die for land and a title, hijos, and when the battle is finished, the land is still there, still there, and not even grateful."

His voice dropped lower still. "But this war, this war is for a town where no soul may be bought, no soul may be sold, no man is above his neighbor. And a King who cannot bear that such a place should exist. That, hijos, is a cause, an ideal."

Isaiah, who had known chains, looked at the old man with vindication.

He cared nor for recognition, and continued. "The Crown wants you burned, so every harbor from here to Havana may learn the smell. For you, it will accept no submission. I have opened gates to soldiers who swore on their mothers’ graves, and I have watched what happens to them. Surrender, hijos, is only a rope with a longer road."

Adrienne’s hand left her throat and came down on the table, trembling a little.

The Don let his words settle over the room.

"In the old countries, a man is offered death or dishonor, the choice between two graves."

He remained standing with hands on the chart.

"Here, here the choice is liberty or the gallows. ?Libertad o la horca!"

Not a soul dared to interrupt him.

"Choose, hijos. The sea is full of men who waited too long to choose."

"Then liberty it is."

Isaiah’s voice came low and steady.

Adrienne’s hand slid across the table and lay idly.

Mateo nodded once.

Fenwick dragged a palm down his face.

He drew a long, shaking breath. "Bloody hell. Once, a lord’s man set me on the road with me whole life in a sack. Once, d’ye hear? I’ll not be pitched off twice. Not by lord, nor king, nor all their bleedin’ frigates!"

Mary finally took her hand off her pistol and placed it on the chart.

Whitlock wrote one word on his slate and underlined it twice.

Sawyer put his palm flat on the table he had spent a season joining.

Tom took his hands off the back of his chair and stood upright.

Gil lifted his eyes from his boots, and Nat nodded hard, as though he had heard every word.

Roberts let the silence ripen. When he spoke again, the music had gone out of his voice and only the hard reality was left.

"Don Rodrigo. You have watched more towns burn than we have watched sunrises."

He stared at the fragile, yet absurdly resilient old man.

"So I ask, plain, sir, and no sugar. Tell me now, truly, do you see a way that we can win this?"