style="font-size:15px;"> Remembering what had happened in the morning, he decided to take the longest way. He could avoid going through the Spanish area in doing so. His mother was certainly at work, plunging as usual in the suffocating smell of spices which impregnated the Passàro do Mar’s kitchen. She wouldn’t notice him, if he came home late.
He moved on along the east end of the harbour, getting over docks and road-steads. He sometimes cast a glance at the moored ships. Most of the crews had landed. He had often felt the impulse to sign on and leave Port Royal. But how? He wouldn’t bear the sea, not even for a week.
He heard Anne’s voice echoing in his mind at that moment, as powerful as only she could have, accusing him of being just like his father. He thought again over the story he had invented with Avery’s connivance.
I had to hand him some pincers, he revised it mentally, trying to look convincing even to himself. He told me to hurry up, so I turned. I didn’t notice a lower beam and I hit against it.
She might believe him, even if he could foresee her worried look, her goggle eyes and he wide-open mouth.
She was going to overwhelm him by her usual wave of scolding, about how dangerous the world was and everything else. Obviously, he expected her to ask the old man for an explanation. He would prove everything was right that same evening, when he was going to have a drink at the tavern.
I hope he won’t get drunk, he thought.
Farther on, the ground made some terracing, following a flight of steps which had been built against the walls of the harbour. Johnny walked up there without even stopping to think about it. He knew the area like the back of his hand. When he got to the top, he stopped there to look at the bay.
He had seen that sight lots of times, but he felt a different emotion that day, which he had never felt before. The dying sunset light was enveloping everything in violet brushstrokes. He felt sure for a moment that the air was even full of electricity, almost bringing some change forward.
“The wind is changing.”
Johnny winced. A man had come close to him while he hadn’t even noticed him, and he was staring at the inlet just like him. He was wearing a blue jacket and a shirt opening on his chest, tied by a green sash on his waist. He had knee-high boots on his feet. His face was pockmarked, as if he had been stung by hundreds of voracious insects and it was framed by a pair of long and thick dark sideburns, making it look as long as a beech-marten’s one.
“Something is going to happen, isn’t it?”, the boy asked him, not even knowing why he was addressing that man.
The other one nodded.
“Go back home, guy”, he told him. He put his hands on his hips and pushed his clothes aside in doing so. A sword hilt came into view. “A storm is going to break out soon. You don’t want to be around here, when that happens, do you?”
Johnny didn’t answer. He realized that he didn’t like that man. Especially when he smiled: he had his upper incisors set in gold.
He is a pirate, he thought and, while walking away, he could hear him sneer. It was a gloomy, unpleasant laughter. He turned, fearing the man was going to follow him. On the contrary, the pirate wasn’t caring at all about him.
The frantic life of the colony was dying away meanwhile. The streets were getting empty. The people who didn’t have a house to go back to, were showering inside the inns. The lamp men had started on their tour, lighting lamps and filling them with new oil. Oddly, there didn’t seem to be any dead man lying in the mud. But the night was going to be still long, to be sure about that.
Johnny walked all along the street separating him from the Pàssaro do Mar in a strange state of excitement, which he couldn’t understand. It was the fault of his meeting with the mysterious man. And he was still thinking about him, when he met one of the several guard spots scattered along the street, where a boy, about twelve years old, was hanging a warning. Some soldiers were surrounding him, looking curious.
“At last!”, one of them exclaimed
“I feared the governor had got soft”, another man added.
“Shut up”, a third one warned him. “You don’t want to be hanged too, do you?”
They went on discussing without really caring about it. It was different for Johnny. As soon as the boy had finished, he decided to move closer, attracted by the words heading on the sign.
ACCORDING TO HIS MAJESTY KING GEORGE OF ENGLAND’S WILL,
THE GOVERNOR OF PORT ROYAL SIR HENRY MORGAN
ORDERS THE EXECUTION OF THE PIRATE EMANUEL WYNNE
AT THE FIRST LIGHTS OF DAWN
He kept staring at it for a long time. After those words, there was a list of crimes Wynne had made. When he finished reading it, he started walking again.
He recollected the day when his father had taken him to watch an execution for the first time. He had put him on his shoulders, so he could see beyond the crowd. Johnny had kept laughing amused, till something had changed. His child excitement for that show had turned into horror, as soon as the rope had been passed around the prisoner’s neck. He couldn’t understand why he hadn’t expected to see him hanging there dead after a few seconds. Tears had suddenly started streaking his face.
“Why are you crying?”, his father had asked him.
“That man over there…”, he had just answered, pointing at the swaying dead body.
“He was a wicked man.” Stephen Underwood had tried to calm him down. “He had to pay for his crimes.”
Johnny had nodded, but he hadn’t perfectly understood what he was talking about. His gesture had been an instinctive one, due mainly to his irrepressible urge to go away as soon as possible.
“Just remember that you are going to meet a lot of people in your life”, Stephen had gone on. “Each of them made some mistakes. Some of them have mended their ways and decided to leave their past behind them. Some others, on the contrary, wear them proudly on their face, like sorts of masks. I’m warning you, don’t trust the latter. They will go on making mistakes and justifying themselves by saying that it’s your fault. And the worst thing is, they really believe what they are saying. Just like the man who has been executed today.”
While he was revising those words, he found himself wondering about how much he missed his father.
***
Judging from the row coming from inside the Pàssaro do Mar, he guessed that the customers had opened the dances. Someone had even started playing, since the shrill notes of a violin had joined the racket.
Johnny stopped under the porch for a moment and looked through the single window, pressing his palms against the glass. A large room made up the central body of the inn, whose walls were covered with cracked boards, reminding a lot the sides of an ancient sail boat. There was a counter at the bottom and, right on its left, the sooty mouth of a chimneypiece. The kitchen door opened on one side.
Dozens of candles were placed along the tables and on
