“Do you feel up to telling everyone about that long-ago summer now?”
She nodded, looking suddenly embarrassed. “I was just a little girl, not more than ten years old if I remember correctly. My family has a house on Ocracoke, an island on a skinny strand of land off the coast of North Carolina that’s called the Outer Banks or the barrier islands since it protects the mainland coast from Atlantic storms. It’s a beautiful place in the summer, quite sunny, with long wide beaches, the water still cool but you can swim if you’re brave. There are wild horses roaming all up and down the Outer Banks that many people believe swam to shore from a sinking Spanish galleon sometime in the sixteenth century. People who live there have tamed some of them.
“In the summer of 1812, I was always spending my days at the beach, digging around for clams, swimming until my skin was puckered and my mother threatened to tie me to my bed. There was this man who was living in this shack right on the beach. Everyone called him Old Tom. I called him Mr. Tom. I don’t know now if he was really all that old, but since I was very young he looked ancient enough to be practically dead.”
“That’s all very well, Jessie”—Anthony’s voice came from behind the pianoforte in the corner of the drawing room—“but what about Blackbeard?”
“Anthony,” his mother said in her calm, serene voice, “you will go to your father and he will gently place his hand over your mouth. You won’t interrupt Jessie again, all right?”
“Papa’s hand is very big, Mama.”
“He’ll be careful not to cover your nose as well so you won’t suffocate. You will be careful, won’t you, Marcus?”
“I didn’t drown him, did I, and there was much more provocation.”
Anthony went to stand beside his father and stared toward Jessie expectantly.
“Well, Anthony, it turned out that Old Tom was Blackbeard’s great-grandson. Blackbeard was an evil man, Old Tom told me over and over again, for he was very proud of Blackbeard. Aye, Old Tom would say, he was the most infamous, cruel, and ruthless of all the pirates. He robbed and murdered and terrorized everyone in the Caribbean and all the towns and cities unfortunate enough to have been founded on rivers or on the ocean.”
“I wonder if this is true, Jessie,” Spears said. “We offered the blighter a pardon?”
“Yes, apparently so; way back in 1718, Blackbeard signed a paper renouncing pirate-hood and moved to Ocracoke. There used to be a ruined castle there in the village called Blackbeard’s Castle, so it’s said. Now, though, there are just some rocks lying around. So, was there really a castle? I don’t know. There’s also Teach’s Hole, a channel that lies very close to the village. For years, this was where Blackbeard brought his ships to careen.”
“Jessie, what does ‘careen’ mean?”
Maggie said, “Master Anthony, when you careen a ship, you pull it up on shore and lay it on its side so you can make repairs and clean it off and whatever else it needs.”
Sampson gave his wife a surprised look. “However did you know that, my dear?”
&nbs
p; Her eyes twinkled as she said in a voice as demure as a nun’s, “There was this sailor I met just before I saved Mr. Badger’s life in Plymouth. He, uh, told me ever so many things about ships and such.”
“I suspected as much,” Sampson said. “My wife,” he announced to the group, “has unplumbed depths.”
“Yuck,” Anthony said, watching Sampson lean down and kiss Maggie’s hand. “Tell us more interesting things, Jessie.”
“All right. After he signed the paper, he lived in his castle for a while, drank up all his rum, tormented his men, but soon even that got to be old hat. He got so bored that he slipped back into his evil ways. There were very few people living on Ocracoke at that time, only a few pilots, and he tormented them as well.
“Finally, the British went after him and a Lt. Maynard caught up with him. It’s said that he fought madly for over three hours. He was stabbed twenty times, one slash nearly cutting his throat. He was shot five times and still he fought, until he simply had no more blood in him. Pardon me, Anthony. They cut off his head and hung it from the bowsprit.”
Spears cleared his throat. “Mr. Daniel Defoe wrote that his body was thrown overboard and that ‘the Headless Corpse swam around the sloop Three Times in Defiance before it sank into the sea.”’
“Did he eat people, Jessie?”
“I don’t think so, Anthony, but he did cut quite a few gullets. There’s one story you’ll like. It seems that their ship, Queen Anne’s Revenge, was becalmed, everyone was bored, there were no ships in sight to plunder and destroy, and Blackbeard, drunk on rum, shouted, ‘Come, let us make a Hell of our own, and try how long we can bear it!’ They sat on the stones used to ballast the ship. Pots of brimstone—sulfur—were brought down and then the hatches were closed. Blackbeard outlasted the other men. One of his men shouted to him that he looked as if he were coming right from the gallows, to which Blackbeard is said to have roared that the next time they would play at gallows and see who could swing longest on the string without being throttled.”
“How do you know these stories?” Badger asked.
She blinked, staring off at something none of them could see. “They were in Blackbeard’s diary. I read the stories over and over to Old Tom. I just now remembered them.”
“Tell us more stories, Jessie,” Anthony said, having slipped away from his father and sidled over to her, leaning against her shoulder. “I’ll tell you more stories later, Anthony. The most important story is about Blackbeard’s treasure. Old Tom believed there was a treasure. He believed the clues to the treasure were in Blackbeard’s diaries. Old Tom let me read only parts of the two Blackbeard diaries he had, the parts with the stories, nothing else. He also showed me the two diaries that his own father, Samuel Teach, had written, but he didn’t trust me enough to let me read any of them. There was one other diary, very old it was, the paper so yellowed I was afraid to touch it. He said it was written by Blackbeard’s great-grandma, and being it was written by a woman and long before Blackbeard was born and buried his treasure, it wasn’t important. I managed to read about half of that one before that day when things happened. It was fascinating. But it doesn’t have anything to do with the treasure, though it does involve another mystery. I’ll tell you about it later. Then, well, the other happened.” She raised her chin and said clearly, “He tried to rape me. I managed to get away from him. When he brought me down from behind, I had a rock clutched in my hand. He jerked me upright, and I hit him as hard as I could on the head. It killed him. I was terrified. I got all the diaries together, wrapped them in an oilskin cloth, and buried them. As far as I know, they’re still there. I remember dreaming about him the first several years after it happened. Then the dreams just stopped until James and I married and we—”
James said, “It appears that our marital intimacy brought the dreams back to her. I don’t like it. Pleasure to be followed by that god-awful memory.”
“A treasure, Jessie?” Anthony breathed, his beautiful Wyndham blue eyes dark with excitement. “Truly, a treasure?”
“Yes, a treasure.” Jessie was aware that everyone in the room was staring at her, all but Anthony, who really hadn’t paid any attention to anything else she’d said. She just nodded slowly. “There was a third diary Blackbeard wrote that a man named Red Eye Crimson had gotten hold of. Old Tom met him in Montego Bay, in Jamaica. Red Eye had been looking for him. He told him that he had a third Blackbeard diary and if they put all three together, then they’d know where Blackbeard had buried his treasure.