Chapter 188: Four Little Assemblies and One Big Headache

Adrienne hooked the bench around with the toe of her boot and sat across from him, then put her elbows on the table with comfortable ease.

Fenwick took his seat beside her a moment later, lowering himself with heavy care.

She folded her hands on the table and spoke first. "Call it a fair bargain. I’ll let you finish your plate, and you let me finish my words."

Fenwick cut through the pleasantries. "While you were out, there were four little ones. That’s what we’re calling them now, little assemblies. Ain’t the thing, ye see, not like the one that matters."

Adrienne snickered. "Small business, mostly. They got through it without much trouble, which continues to surprise me whenever it happens."

James lifted an eyebrow.

"That surprised, are you?"

She leaned forward a little "If only you were there to see it. Even then, most of what came was ordinary enough, be some quarrel over a debt, over a dog that would not stop to dig their neighbors plot, rows of fence moved a few inches."

Fenwick grunted. "Bloody silly reasons to call an assembly, if ye ask me. Them folks were just bored."

"The reason we came looking for you is bigger." Adrienne nodded.

James set the last of his plantain aside and gave her his full attention.

"Go on."

She opened one hand. "New arrivals, while you were gone. Two hundred souls give or take."

"One hundred and ninety-six." Fenwick corrected.

James clicked his tongue.

"Guess our little township is the most famous place in the Caribbean."

Adrienne shrugged. "Word travels faster than ships, Captain. Always has. Be for slaves that run from plantations with the whip marks still fresh, or sailors that jumped ship because they have had quite enough of the one they were on. Even whole families that lost everything to weather or war and hears there is a town willing to take them."

"Most are already workin’," Fenwick added.

He started to raise a finger for each word. "Farmin’, fishin’, haulin’ timber. We didn’t have room for ’em to sit around with their hands in their laps, so we put ’em to work as soon as they had ground under ’em."

James leaned back and let the number there for a few seconds. He already had an idea due the township display, but only then he was forced to actually reason with reality.

Then Adrienne put both hands flat on the table. He had seen her annoyed, amused, impatient, and murderous, but this was the first time since that she looked as though the matter had given her genuine cause for concern.

Her tone only reinforced the caution. "And now, with two hundred more souls, the town wants to grow again. The problem is, it cannot agree which way to grow, and we have three groups with their own plans, each convinced the other two have lost their wits."

Fenwick continued to count on his fingers as he went. "One wants the marsh drained, dyked and with ditches cut to carry the water off, turn the whole thing into farmland. There’s them who reckon two hundred new bellies are reason enough by themselves, folk don’t much fancy learning what hungry days looks like."

James nodded. The reason was fair enough, and so the plan.

Fenwick continued. "Then there’s the ones who want the bay built up with warehouses, a sizable wharfage rather than some piers trying to serve the whole town. From there customs, market squares and whatever else a town ought to have, least in their not-so-humble opinion."

Adrienne took over without missing a beat. "And the third, considerably more ambitious, an entire workshop district. Essentially ironworking, sawmills, stonemasonry and what is necessary to build up the town to be more than a ugly assort of wooden shacks."

James considered them. There was reasonable argument for both proposals, and he found himself thinking which of three to favor, the very doubt that had plagued the entire township.

Then his curiosity drew him to her. "And which of those three do you prefer, Adrienne?"

"Whichever stops mobsters from fighting at the assembly hall."

She glanced at Fenwick, and her lips twitched. "Though I have noticed our farmer here has developed a remarkable passion for drainage ditches and dyked marshland all of a sudden."

"I favor the sensible option," Fenwick replied with solemn dignity.

James grinned. "About as subtle as a cannon, Fenwick."

Fenwick didn’t bother denying any of it.

"Don’t make the marsh a bad idea just because I’ve got a liking for seeing it dug."

Adrienne sighed, and the amusement left her face. "Either or, the problem is that none of the three won the votes. The little assemblies discussed in circles for the better part of a month, and every vote came back split three ways."

Fenwick nodded. "Two in three, sixty-five in the hundred. That’s the rule for anything grave, and building half a town in one direction or another is about as grave as it gets, short of hanging a man."

Adrienne picked up from there. "So we put it aside, rather than force through a result nobody would trust once we set it aside for you, monsieur. Whenever you finally saw fit to remember you had a town waiting on you."

By then James was finished with the meal, and with pretending the decision needed much thought besides.

Havana still owed him a reckoning, and he intended to fetch it soon enough. But Havana could wait a couple more weeks.

There were worse ways to spend time than standing before his own town and watch it decide what it meant to become next.

He had built the place on instinct, stubbornness, and precious little else. The idea to see it argue itself into actual governance seemed no bad thing to witness firsthand.

James smiled. "Set the date, and tell whoever’s countin’ pebbles that this one, I’m standing in front of. Not the four little ones you managed without me. This one, I lead myself."

Adrienne watched him for a moment, then gave a short, satisfied nod.

"About time, monsieur."

Fenwick merely grunted and got to his feet. Judging by his expression, he was already thinking considerably less about James and considerably more about which of his arguments for the marsh he meant to sharpen before the whole town gathered to hear them.