Maroon Rising by John H. Cunningham Read Free Book Online Page B

The man, who was muscular and not much older than thirty, had a sneer on his lips that exposed crooked teeth. Again he pointed at me.
    “And you got no business here! Stay out of our history. And you two”—this for the colonel and Nanny—“don’t you tell the likes of him nothing!”
    Other people peered up and down the dirt road at us. The colonel, to his credit, shook his head and spoke in a low tone, first in the dialect, then English.
    “You go ahead now, you don’t want no trouble. And you don’t tell me how to run our business.”
    The man looked into each of our faces, finishing with mine.
    “None of you got no right to the history.” His voice had lowered to a growl. He punctuated his statement with another hard glance at each of us, then turned and walked away, slowly.
    “Pay no attention to him.” But the colonel shuddered, which alarmed me.
    Whatever I had walked into here felt thick with danger. It was also far more intriguing—and promising—than the old letter that had directed us toward Port Royal.
    Hot damn.

T he sun set thirty minutes before we made it back to GoldenEye. Nanny turned down my offer to return her to her car at the Trident—she said she’d arranged a dinner for tonight at the resort, and a friend from Port Antonio would be coming to take her back afterwards.
    My questions about the man who had verbally attacked us were met with assurances that all was fine. She never mentioned the man’s name, but she did say he was from Accompong in the Cockpit Country, the western wilderness region of Jamaica.
    “He’s of the Leeward Maroons,” she said, “and there have been periodic … tensions between the Windward and Leeward factions.”
    “Weren’t all Maroons escaped slaves that fought and defeated Spanish and British colonists? What’s the issue?”
    “Jamaicans never forget, Buck. And Maroons never forgive.”
    “Forgive what?”
    She shifted in her seat. The darkness hid her expression, but I hadn’t been able to read her all day anyway. Hell, the only time I could ever read her was when she narrowed her eyes or smiled.
    “At the tail end of the Maroon independence wars, the Leewards had negotiated a peaceful ceasefire with the British before the Windwards had. They then began to work with the British to hunt down Spaniards and terrify them, often kill them. The British used them to scare and repel the Spanish, and it worked.”
    I waited, but she didn’t elaborate.
    “How did that create a divide with the Windwards?” I said.
    She looked straight at me, and while the darkness hid most of her features, I saw her eyes narrow.
    “Because they also helped the British to hunt down Windward Maroons. Only a few opportunists, really, bounty hunters, but it was Maroons selling out other Maroons.”
    I could easily imagine some, especially elders, who would still resent those betrayals, even though they happened three hundred years ago.
    “Are you really convinced Henry Morgan had a stash of treasure? Most historians have concluded that he was a straight-up privateer, operating on the orders of the British government. My research at e-Antiquity, however, was less conclusive. Aside, of course, from when he was recalled to London to face trial for his attack on Spanish Panama, which unwittingly coincided with a ceasefire between the countries.”
    “Yes, but he was pardoned, knighted, and returned to Jamaica as the lieutenant governor.”
    “Right, so when did he stash the treasure? You mentioned Panama, but could it have been after he sacked Portobello?” I said.
    “His most successful siege,” she said. “Silver pesos, gold coins, silver bars, and several chests of silver-plated goods. At the time it was worth 250,000 pesos—of course, that’s millions today.”
    “But all of the valuables were fully accounted for by officials who had accompanied them on the voyage. So then came his attack on Maracaibo.”
    Now I could see her smile. “That was perhaps the most