They were led by the flagship Delicia, which despatched row-boats to negotiate the graveyard of ships and land on our beach. As we arrived there, along with every other jack-tar in Nassau, its occupants were just landing, led by none other than my old friend Woodes Rogers. He was helped out of his row-boat looking as tanned and well-kept as ever, though more worn. You remember his promise to be governor of Havana? He’d delivered on that. Remember him telling me how he planned to rout the pirates from Nassau? It looked as though he planned on delivering on that one too.

Never had I longed for Blackbeard more. One thing I knew was that my old friend Edward Thatch would have known which way to turn. A mix of instinct and cunning would have powered him like the wind.

“Well I’ll be hanged,” Calico Jack said by my side (tempting fate there, Jack). “King George has grown tired of our devilry. Who’s the grim fellow?”

“That’s Captain Woodes Rogers,” I replied, and as I was in no hurry to reacquaint myself with him, I shrank into the crowd, but still close enough to hear as Rogers was handed a roll of parchment that he consulted, before saying, “We desire a parley with the men who call themselves governors of this island. Charles Vane, Ben Hornigold and Edward Thatch. Come forth, if you please?”

Benjamin stepped forward.

“Lily-livered punk,” cursed Jack and never were truer words spoken. For if there was a moment that Nassau came to an end and our hopes for the republic were dashed, then that was it.

FORTY-FOUR

NOVEMBER 1718

It wasn’t until I found him that I really realized how much I had missed him.

Little did I know I was soon to lose him for good.

It was on a North Carolina beach, Ocracoke Bay, just before dawn and he was having a party—of course—and had been up all night—of course.

There were campfires dotted all over the beach, men dancing a jig to the sound of a fiddle further along, other men passing a black-jack of rum between them and guffawing loudly. Wild boar cooked on a spit and the delicious scent of it made my stomach do hungry flips. Perhaps here, on Ocracoke Beach, Blackbeard had established his own pirate republic. Perhaps he had no interest whatsoever in returning to Nassau and making things right.

Charles Vane was already there, and as I approached, trudging up the sand towards them and already anticipating the liquor on my lips and the wild boar in my belly, he was standing, his conversation with Blackbeard evidently just ending.

“A great disappointment you are, Thatch!” he bellowed nastily, then on seeing me, said, “His mind is made up to stay here, he says. So sod him and hang all you that follow this sorry bastard into obscurity.”

Anybody else but Blackbeard, and Vane would have slit his throat for being a traitor to the cause. But he didn’t because it was Blackbeard.

Anybody else but Vane, and Blackbeard would have had him put in leg-irons for his insolence. But he didn’t. Why? Maybe out of guilt because Blackbeard had turned his back on piracy. Maybe because no matter what you thought of Charles, you had to admire his guts, his devotion to the cause. None had fought harder against the Pardon than Charles. None had been a bigger thorn in Rogers’s side than he. He’d launched a fire-ship against their blockade and escaped, then continued to orchestrate raids on New Providence, doing anything he could to disrupt Rogers’s governorship while he waited for reinforcements to arrive. The particular reinforcements he hoped for wore black in battle and went by the name Blackbeard. But as I arrived on the beach that balmy morning, it looked as though the last of Charles Vane’s hopes had been dashed.

He left, his feet kicking up clouds of sand as he stomped back along the beach, away from the flickering warmth of the campfires, shaking with rage.

We watched him go. I looked down at Blackbeard. His belts were unbuckled, his coat unbuttoned and his newly acquired belly thrust at the buttons of his shirt. He said nothing, simply ushered me to take a seat on the sand beside him, handed me a bottle of wine and waited for me to take a drink.

“That man is a prick,” he said, slightly drunkenly, waving a hand in the direction of where Charles Vane had been.

Ah, I thought, but the irony is your old mucker Edward Kenway wants the same thing as the prick.

Vane might have been devoted to the cause, but he didn’t have the faith of the brethren. Always a cruel man, he’d lately become even more ruthless and savage. I’d been told that his new trick was to torture captives by tying them to the bowsprit, inserting matches beneath their eyelids—and then lighting them. Even the men who followed him had begun to question him. Perhaps Vane knew it as well as I did—that Nassau needed a leader who could inspire the men. Nassau needed Blackbeard.

He stood now, Blackbeard, Charles Vane a distant dot on the horizon, and beckoned me to follow.

“I know you’ve come to call me home, Kenway.” He looked touched. “Your faith in me is kind. But with Nassau done in, I feel I’m finished.”

I was telling the truth when I said, “I’m not of the same mind, mate. But I won’t begrudge you the state of yours.”

He nodded. “Jaysus, Edward. Living like this is like living with a large hole in your gut, and every time your innards spill over the ground, you’re obliged to scoop ’em up and shove ’em back in. When Ben and me first set down in Nassau, I undervalued the needs for folks of character to shape and guide the place to its full purpose. But I was not wrong about the corruption that comes with that course.”

For a moment or so as we walked we listened to the tide on the sand, the soft rushing, receding noise of the sea. Perhaps he, like me, when he thought of corruption, thought of Benjamin.

“Once a man gets a taste of leadership, it’s hard for him not to wonder why he ain’t in charge of the whole world.”

He gestured behind. “I know these men think me a fine captain, but I bloody hate the taste of it. I’m arrogant. I lack the balance needed to lead from behind the crowd.”

I thought I knew what he meant. I thought I understood. But I didn’t like it—I didn’t like the fact that Blackbeard was drifting away from us.

We walked.

“You still looking for that Sage fellow?” he asked me. I told him I was, but said nothing of how the search for The Sage had consisted mainly of sitting in The Old Avery drinking and thinking of Caroline.

“Ah, well, taking a prize a month back I heard that a man named Roberts was working a slave ship called the Princess. Might want to see about it?”