Skull and Bones by John Drake Read Free Book Online

such as yourself, sir!"
        "What gentlemen?" said Silver.
        "Gentlemen o' fortune, sir."
        "Oh?" Silver's eyebrows raised.
        Fitch nodded knowingly. "Aye, sir! For isn't Upper Barbados the only port where you may safely call?"
        Silver frowned. The old days were gone when there were a dozen safe havens for pirates on the Spanish Main. There was still Savannah, of course, and maybe one or two others, but none that boasted a dockyard like those of Williamstown, Upper Barbados, where gold talked all languages and the law looked the other way. Fitch read Silver's face.
        "So," he said, "spurn Sir Wyndham's Protection, and he'll turn the guns of his fort on you."
        "Where is it? This 'Protection'?"
        "Below, in my cabin. I'll show you…"
        "Back your topsail," said Long John. "Time for that later." And he looked around.
        For the moment, all was well. The weather was fine, the prize taken, the prisoners under guard. And that included five passengers - now trembling in each other's arms on the main- deck, wealth written all over them - who had cabins for the passage to England. These were Fitch's "supercargo". Two were women: one middle-aged but handsome, and clearly a lady of fashion, wearing a Leghorn straw hat to save her complexion from the sun and a fine linen gown, cut practical for the ocean journey but underpinned with a full rig of hooped panniers. The other was her elderly maid. No blushing virgin, either of 'em, but they'd need watching for fear the hands - bless their hearts - forgot what they'd signed under articles, concerning the punishment for rape.
        But greater matters presented themselves…
        "Long John! Long John!" cried Allardyce, coming up from the maindeck hatchway and leading a tall man with chains dangling from his wrists and ankles. "Look!" said Allardyce, with reverence. "It's Himself! It's the McLonarch! Him that led the charge of Clan McLonarch, between Clan Chester and Clan Atholl, and me behind him - my mother being a McLonarch - right to the British bayonets where he killed five with his own hand!"
        "What's this, Tom Allardyce?" said Silver, stepping forward. He looked at the creature Allardyce was referring to and detected the authentic look of a holy lunatic. The man was as tall as Silver, round-eyed, gaunt and woolly-haired, with a straggling beard, a great beak of a nose and high, slender cheekbones. His clothes were unkempt but clean, for though he was in chains, he'd not been ill-treated and there was no stink of the dungeon about him. He had decent shoes and stockings besides, and silver buckles, so he'd not been pillaged neither.
        "Who are you, my lad?" said Silver.
        "My lord!" corrected Allardyce. "He is the McLonarch of McLonarch!"
        "Very likely," said Silver. "But I'll hear it from him, not you!"
        The tall man stirred, fastened his eyes on Silver, drew himself upright and spoke with the soft, Irish-sounding accent of the Scottish Highlands.
        "I am Andrew Charles Louis Laurent McLonarch-Flaubert - ninth Earl of McLonarch, and First Minister of His Most Catholic Majesty King Charles III, who is known to men as Bonnie Prince Charlie ." He was bedraggled and in chains, and spouting utter nonsense. But nobody laughed. Nobody laughed at the McLonarch.
        "Are you now?" said Silver. "And what does King George say to that?"
        "George of Hanover is a pretender and a heretic," said McLonarch calmly. "He faces the block in this world and damnation in the next."
        "I see," said Silver. "So what're you doing in chains? What with you being prime minister, an' all?"
        McLonarch looked around until he spotted the group huddled against the lee rail, menaced by pistols. He pointed at Norton.
        "Ask him," said McLonarch, and nodded grimly. "He is one whom I have marked for future attention, for he is deep in the service of the