Chapter 258: Spit the Beans

The treasure took a day and a night to haul out of that hole, and by the second dusk every worker who had touched so much as a basket was convinced the island owed him something.

Whitlock ended the uproar with a trestle table, a copper bell, and a slate.

By nightfall every digger, sailor or tomb robber had his share down to the last shilling, and the grunts dwindled to them counting their silver twice.

On the third dawn James shouldered open the double doors of the alliance headquarters and threw back every shutter.

The room had kept its darkness for a while, but now the light revealed a round table of Concordia hardwood, wide enough to launch a longboat from, in the middle. Twelve chairs stood around it, with no head.

The Rose’s flag hung on one wall, and beside the door a Royal Navy ensign had been nailed upside down. An eighteen-pounder taken from a drowned queen held the door open while a ship’s bell hung by the window, and boarding axes were crossed over the hearth.

Beyond the window, the Winchelsea sulked at the far pier beneath the stump of her mainmast.

Black Sam, one of the captains present, let out a whistle that went round the table twice.

"What a fine parliament of cutthroats we have here lads."

Near enough, Cudjoe walked the circle of chairs, brushing a finger across their backs, and stopped beside an empty one as if it owed him money.

"If only, there’s twelve chairs and five arses here, Sam. A mighty lousy parliament."

James dropped into his seat and hooked a boot up on the table’s polished rim, lord of all he surveyed.

"Room to grow, ’course. We’re an ambitious wee fit, Cudjoe."

Bonnet lowered himself onto one chair, teacup balanced on his knee like he was expecting to be asked to leave, and lifted his eyes to the wall. "Captain, forgive me, I do not wish to seem pedantic, but is His Majesty’s ensign... upside down? Upon purpose?"

"Aye, on purpose. Distress signal, His Majesty’s favorite."

Don Rodrigo had taken his chair by their side, with a parrot on his shoulder and an old Spanish chart spread before him.

The old conquistador smoothed the parchment gently. "A thing that is stolen, hijo, it does not forget where it was born. Look at her. Still Spanish, this map, but only pretends otherwise, to be polite."

The parrot swelled to twice its size and screamed at the rafters.

"¡CATALEJO!"

James kindly ignored that and spread both hands over the chart like he was about to deal cards he hadn’t seen. The vision had been sitting behind his mind, just refusing to turn into words, while he had rehearsed the discussion twice to the stars.

"Right. I’ve had a notion."

Cudjoe bit the word like a coin he suspected. "Christ. When the Captain’s got a notion, someone’s about tae get shot at."

"More of a picture."

Cudjoe’s eyebrows climbed in slow, eloquent stages.

"A dream, then. Two places, and worth prize having at each. Don’t ask me how I know."

Sam tipped his chair back until it complained, hands laced behind his head.

"Be this the heartbeat malarkey again, Calloway"

"A cousin of it, aye. A wee stone, like the one you felt beat."

Bonnet’s cup chattered faintly against its saucer. "Oh, I remember the heartbeat. I remember it most vividly, thank you. I have not enjoyed a proper night’s sleep since."

Rodrigo sniffed at the room as though it smelled of copal and stroked the parrot’s breast with one knuckle. "Ay, a serpent with feathers, I suppose. In the Yucatán, hombre, I marched past ten thousand of them. Carved, painted, snarling off every wall. We burned those walls, and they burned like any other."

He raised a finger.

"And cousins? Do cousins marry? Pah! In the best houses, always. Ask the Habsburgs."

The parrot added some insult in Spanish that James, with his beggar’s grasp of the language, could tell wasn’t fit for a priest. Rodrigo pretended to be deaf.

Sam’s chair legs banged back to the floor.

"Where be it, then?"

There it was, the question James had been hoped someone else would ask, so he wouldn’t have to be the one to say it aloud.

"Aye, well. That’s the bother of it."

James swept a hand across the chart and let his eyes go far beyond. "There’s a harbor curved like a fishhook with some fort on a rocky point, shaped like a star, with a white flag snapping over it. Then cane plantations climbing the hills behind the town, and a blue wall of mountains behind that, like the edge of the world."

Sam squinted at the chart and counted on his ringed fingers.

"Fort-Royal. Cap-Français. Half a dozen more I could name if I’d a rum in me."

Rodrigo raised one finger as if to bless the table. "A white flag! Ay, Dios mío. With a Bourbon in Madrid, both Crowns fly white now, cousin to cousin. I cannot tell my own flag from my enemy’s, hijo, and believe me, I have tried."

The second picture was worse. It came with wet air and mud and a low sky pressing on the back of his neck.

James explained it. "The other’s a brown river, spilling into the sea like strong tea, under a sky the hue of a bruise. A King’s ship, and a fat transport alongside, with a broad pennant on the nearest mast."

Across the table Cudjoe’s eyes narrowed and stayed narrowed.

Bonnet lifted one finger, tentative as a schoolboy. "Might I suggest the Mosquito Shore? Or perhaps the logwood cutters in the Bay of Honduras? Dreadfully damp places, both. I’ve read of them with genuine revulsion."

"Or the Darien, for all I know, or the inside of me own hat." Sam shrugged.

James frowned at the inked coasts as though they had blurred on purpose.

"None of those, all of them. I don’t know."

Cudjoe’s pencil scratched short and hard into his little book.

Rodrigo informed the ceiling.

"It rains in the Indies, always, it rains. Since Columbus, it has not stopped."

It was the ramble of an old man on the edge of a doze, and it was perfectly true. James rubbed the back of his neck, which still felt damp.

The parrot agreed with a single flap, like a small sermon.

"¡Llueve!"

The notebook snapped shut. Cudjoe folded his arms like a portcullis and shot James the look he usually saved for loaded dice.

"Come on, Captain. Spit out the beans, or I’ll fetch Kwaku tae ask ye twice."

"I’d pay good coin fer that, I would, front row, and a pie." Sam laughed.

"So would I," Bonnet murmured into his teacup, in a voice no bigger than a thimble.

"Beans," Rodrigo added gravely, as if the word was his to keep.

James lifted both hands, palms out, a man surrendering a very small fort.

"Right. New matter."

"Ye’re changing the subject, Captain. Dinnae think I didnae notice."

"Aye, I am. Because this one’s on fire."

He jabbed a thumb at the window, where beyond the glass the Winchelsea sulked at her pier under the stump of her mainmast.

James then started. "That’s the Crown’s first knock. The captain we took, the one in the new gaol, told Cudjoe and me that a commodore named Falcombe wants every man in this room on the gallows, with a governor’s commission behind him."

He let the silence sit.

"Nassau inside a few months, a pardon or a noose, and a fleet behind whichever."

Bonnet set his cup down very carefully, as though it might go off.

"Captain, do forgive the impertinence, but how could you possibly know that?"

"Because it’s what I’d do, sat in the Admiralty. And once Nassau’s finished, they’ll want to know where the rest of the rats went."

It was a good answer, and true as far as it went. James was fairly sure nobody at the table would ask how far that was.

Sam scrubbed his face with both hands, as if he could wash the year off it. "I told ye once, a man wants somewhere to put his feet when the roof starts burnin’. Never reckoned I’d need it by spring, and the Whydah not yet dry. Nassau be a dreadful woman, Calloway, but she be ours."

He scowled at the little scatter of the Bahamas as if it had insulted his mother. "Vane calls the island a sty. Jennings calls it a kingdom. Levasseur said summat in French I took for a compliment. But all three agree on the one thing, that it’s a right shitfest."

Bonnet cleared his throat as delicately as if the name might be catching.

"And, forgive me, Hornigold? Has anyone had word?"

"Not a whisper in months, nobody’s clapped eyes on him."

"The auld man’s been a ghost ever since the chair went."

James looked at the round table, at the twelve chairs, and found nothing there he wanted to say. The name sat above the room, and he let the it shroud over it.

Sam tapped New Providence with a ring, twice.

"Near enough to go an’ have a look, ain’t it? Right on our doorstep."

Cudjoe planted a thick finger beside Sam’s ring.

"Aye. Better the day than the morn, better sooner than late."

James watched the chart. One place he couldn’t name, one far away, and Nassau right here under two fingers.

"Nassau first."

He set his finger on the little mark where a Spanish hand had inked two words.

Rodrigo bent so close his nose nearly grazed the parchment and read them with tenderness.

"Nido de ladrones."

"A nest of thieves." Bonnet translated faintly, with polite dismay.

James stood, and all twelve chairs seemed to lean away from him.

"Morning tide but one. I’ll sail with the Rose."