The Last Signal

Nassau, 1718.

The bell of Christ Church strikes once.

Eleven fifty-five.

They will hang him at noon.

The harbour lies bright and deceptively orderly beneath the Bahamian sun. Since Governor Woodes Rogers arrived with the King’s Act of Grace and a fleet at his back, Nassau has been performing obedience. The pirate flags are gone. The taverns close earlier. The gallows remain.

Eliza Vale stands three rows back from the scaffold erected beside the wharf. The air smells of tar, salt, and drying seaweed. British marines line the platform in crisp red, muskets polished, boots planted with imperial certainty.

Captain Rowan Hale mounts the steps without assistance.

No coat. No hat. Wrists bound in fresh rope. His shirt open at the throat, sun-dark skin marked by old weather and older violence.

The crowd murmurs. Some recognise him. Some pretend not to.

The magistrate clears his throat and begins to read.

Piracy against the Crown. Seizure of merchant brigs between Hispaniola and Charleston. Refusal of His Majesty’s pardon.

The words attempt to flatten him into law.

Eliza keeps her posture composed. She has practised this expression in mirrors—measured concern without familiarity.

Inside her bodice rests the folded parchment bearing her true name and the royal seal. The Act of Grace had offered pardon to men who surrendered before September of the previous year. Rowan had refused.

She had not.

Four minutes.

The rope is tested. It creaks softly in the wind blowing in from Hog Island.

Rowan lifts his head.

He does not search the crowd in desperation. He measures it.

His gaze sweeps the harbour—the newly arrived British frigate at anchor, the smaller local sloops pressed into service, the merchant brigs clustered near the fish market.

Then his eyes find her.

They do not widen.

They rest.

Three minutes.

“Any final words?” the magistrate asks.

Rowan turns slightly.

His chin dips toward the eastern dock.

His bound hands flex once against his thigh.

Two beats.

Pause.

One.

Eliza’s pulse tightens.

Two. Hold. One.

Delay.

They had devised the signal off the coast of Cuba when a Spanish patrol ship emerged from fog too thick for cannon sight. Wait. Let the moment ripen.

Do nothing yet.

The executioner steps forward and lowers the hood over Rowan’s head.

Two minutes.

A brig rides at anchor beyond the reef line, sails furled though the wind is clean. It flies the King’s colours, new and bright.

Too bright.

Beside it sits a merchant vessel that Eliza does not recognise. Its hull rides low.

Her mind resumes its old arithmetic without permission.

Wind: southeast.

Fort cannons: angled toward open water.

Crowd density: thickest near the gallows, thinnest near the eastern pier.

The magistrate consults his pocket watch.

One minute.

Eliza’s gloved fingers curl inward.

She could step forward now.

Produce the pardon.

Name the agreement she made in a shuttered office behind the Governor’s residence. The route she provided. The coordinates that brought the Royal Navy down upon Rowan’s sloop six weeks ago.

She had told herself it was survival.

The trapdoor mechanism clicks into place.

Rowan’s shoulders settle beneath the rope.

Calm.

The brig’s flag shifts.

The red cross and union blur in the wind—

—and drop.

Black rises in its place.

The first cannon fires before the magistrate lowers his hand.

Sound fractures the harbour.

A blast tears into the pier twenty yards from the scaffold. Wood splinters. A marine falls backwards, blood bright against red coat.

For half a breath, the crowd remains stunned.

Then the second shot lands.

Screams erupt.

Smoke pours from the brig’s gunports. The merchant vessel’s painted slats fall away, revealing cannon mouths concealed behind trade goods.

False hull.

False allegiance.

The executioner stumbles backwards.

The trapdoor has not been released.

Rowan remains standing.

From within the crowd, men shed labourers’ coats and draw pistols. One vaults the rear of the scaffold with a knife, already cutting.

The rope snaps where it has been scored thin.

Rowan drops forward as the platform jolts from the impact, landing hard against the boards rather than through the noose.

The hood is torn free.

His eyes are clear.

Not surprised.

Eliza feels it then—a sharp, unwelcome flare of admiration.

He had refused the pardon.

He had refused surrender.

Because he had never intended to be finished here.

Rowan rises, seizes a fallen pistol, and fires once with clean precision. A path opens toward the eastern dock.

His crew—what remains of them—close around him with disciplined speed.

He moves without haste.

He reaches the edge of the scaffold and pauses.

Through smoke and chaos, he looks at her.

And she understands.

The route she gave the Navy had not been the true one.

He had fed her just enough truth to make her bargain credible.

He had allowed himself to be captured.

He had needed Woodes Rogers to be confident enough to stage a public hanging.

He had needed Nassau gathered and watching.

He had needed her pardon to authenticate the trap.

She had not betrayed him.

She had been used to measure the harbour’s defences.

A longboat waits at the eastern pier.

Eliza’s hand slips inside her bodice.

The parchment presses warm against her ribs.

She could still shout.

Warn the marines that the brig’s cannons are targeting masts, not hulls—crippling response rather than destroying ships. That more vessels may lie beyond the reef.

Her mouth opens.

Closes.

Rowan descends into the longboat.

Before stepping fully down, he lifts his chin once more.

Not the signal for delay.

Another.

Used only after a successful boarding.

Completion.

The oars strike water.

The brig continues its measured assault, removing Nassau’s ability to pursue while avoiding full destruction. Smoke thickens over the harbour, turning the sun into a blurred coin.

Rowan climbs the rope ladder and vanishes over the rail.

The brig turns with the wind.

The British frigate struggles to manoeuvre amid shattered rigging and panic.

Eliza steps forward once-only once—before stilling herself.

Not to follow.

Not to flee.

Simply because something inside her had nearly chosen without calculation.

She withdraws the pardon.

The royal seal glints in the fractured light.

It had felt like safety when placed in her hand.

Now it feels like evidence.

She tears the parchment once. Then again.

The pieces drift downward into Nassau Harbour.

Ink blooms into saltwater and disappears.

The brig clears the reef.

For a moment, at the stern, Rowan stands visible against the sky.

Not beckoning.

Not forgiving.

Ensuring.

That she understood the signal.

Behind her, the rope still hangs from the gallows.

Empty.

It sways in the noon wind.

Around it, Nassau burns not destroyed, but marked.

Eliza watches until the rope grows still.

Then she turns toward the smoke-filled town that believes it has just survived an escape

and knows it has witnessed something far more deliberate.