Chapter 259: Absolution in Advance

The morning tide had come and gone. By the second day, the Rose was still beating her way across the trade wind, which had planted itself square in her prow and apparently figured Nassau was somewhere she ought not to visit.

It made long boards under claret canvas, cracking through every tack.

After a bath he could actually enjoy and a house with more rooms than he had business owning, the wheel remained the one place where not a soul asked James to settle whether a chicken was livestock or company.

Belowdecks, the larboard watch snored in heaps. Across the rail, two sailors repairing a topsail idly gossiped about their destination.

"Lad, there’s a lass out back o’ the Rat wi’ a laugh like a cannon an’ tits to match her, so there be! An’dthis time, by Christ, I’ll be gettin’ introduced to ’em, boots on!"

The news about Nassau had spread through the crew faster than the flux, and the fever now had a queue at the mainmast.

Tomás sat at the head of it on an upturned bucket, slate balanced on his knee, as calm as waiting for the tide. The crew had elected him chaplain, though not a soul could remember holding an election.

"Absolve me, Tomás, if ye’d be so kind! Aye, afore the deed, mind ye! There’s a barmaid in Nassau an’ a wee debt I’m fair set on runnin’ up wi’ her, an’ I’d sooner have Heaven’s leave beforehand than its hand on me after."

"Forgiveness follows the sin, my friend. Heaven honors no postdated note."

Tomás tapped the slate with one finger. "But listen, hijo. Penance, this we may pay now, and draw against the sins as they fall due, like a good merchant. Drink is cheap, dice are dearer, and a woman, ah... depends upon the woman."

The line accepted the bargain at once.

Back in the line, some sailor asked whether a Frenchman was considered full rate.

"A Frenchman’s soul, it weighs the same as yours. God, He does not weigh by the country."

James laughed aloud. Tomás gave him a small inclination of the head toward the quarterdeck, one professional acknowledging another.

Then the galley firebox in the waist burst into a blue flame taller than the main boom, and every head aboard turned. The scent arrived a heartbeat later, like dinner that had taken a wrong turn and ended up in a distillery.

Enzo and Doyle came up the ladder carrying a covered dish, while Doyle’s left eyebrow had apparently figured to leave the rest of him ahead.

"Capitano! Capitano mio!"

Enzo whipped off the lid like a man unveiling royalty. "Maiale all’Inferno! Ah, Capitano, the pork, she is salted, she is cured in the molasses, she is seared until she weeps, bellissima! And then, then, she is married to the spirit of Signor Doyle! Madonna, the women of Nassau, they will weep, Capitano, they will weep for joy, and then, ecco, they will smile!"

"Sweet Reprieve, ye know it."

Doyle gestured toward the dish.

The sauce was green, thick, and unmistakably flickering.

James had never refused a dish set on fire on his own deck, so he took the spoon and swallowed.

The world went very bright, then very distant. His lips left first, then his tongue, then his teeth, each departing like a crewman ashore. It took him three attempts to produce a word, and the first two belonged to no language known to man.

"Ish bloody grand..." he managed. "Can’t feel me own bloody teeth."

Enzo wept and hugged the dish to his chest.

"Did you hear, Doyle? The Capitano, he says grand! Ah, Madonna mia, now I can die happy!"

Doyle beamed.

"He says it, so he does, on account o’ not feelin’ his own face, God love him! Bless the stuff!"

Amidships, perched on the head of a cask, Rook and Twice run the largest wager the Rose had seen since Havana, and for Nassau. Three captains had given the island three different names, and the deck had put three different prices to them.

"Right, lads, lads, lads, gather ’round! Sunk pays longest, an’ I’d leave that one well alone."

Rook kept one hand flat on the slate. "’Cause ye can’t sink a bleedin’ place that’s already sittin’ at the bottom, can ye? Drunk pays evens, see, for a drunk town still keeps ’er landlord. An’ gone to the dogs pays short, me beauties."

Twice sealed every stake with a slow nod.

When one hand asked for the terms in writing, Rook told him the nod was the writing.

Then Greasy Pete shoved his way to the front. "Nah, nah, nah, hear me out, ye soft-’eaded sods! A drunk town’s got a landlord, right? Snorin’ in the cellar, like, but a town gone to the dogs, that’s got the bleedin’ dogs pourin’ the ale!"

"That’s the same bloody bet, Pete, ye great daft lump! Dogs, drunks, it’s all the one!"

Pete answered with his fist.

The crowd closed around them. A thousand shillings, an umpire two days away and probably drunk, and a wager had all the makings of a funeral.

Then Briggs put down the rope he had been coiling at the foremast and crossed the deck with steady hurry.

He stopped behind Pete.

It was the sort of silence that had already learned everyone’s mother.

The shouts died in pieces, and the stakes were forgotten on the slate. Briggs caught Pete by the ear, marched him to the forward hatch, and dropped the cover behind them.

The deck below bellowed a deeply, hurtful cry.

A vast silence followed.

Then came another cry, higher than the first, closer to the wails from the dead.

The Articles forbade striking a shipmate aboard and left the penalty to the boatswain, who had never been accused of making such matters brief.

Briggs came back alone and resumed his coil.

Pete surfaced some time later, walking with his knees together and one hand held carefully behind him, and he refused every seat aboard.

Across the deck, Briggs caught James’s eye, who ouched two fingers to his brow.

The noise was gone by then, and the sun went astern in bars of gold and sideways light.

Then two arms slipped around James’s waist from behind.

He kept his hands on the spokes while chin lay onto his shoulder, her warmth across his back, and her breath brushed his ear. Anne’s copper hair blew across his face, carrying the scent of tar, rum, and sea.

Her lips found the side of his neck, where an old bite had healed into a pale crescent, and stayed there.

"Ach, all the subtlety of a broadside, lass."

Anne whispered against his skin. "Sure, let ’em look at the sea instead. ’Tis bigger than you are, me darlin’, and a great deal more of it."

She loosened her arms, came around to stand beside him at the rail, and put her eyes on the horizon.

"Say, why are we sailing straight toward the place the Brits’ll strike first?"

James put the helm down and called, "Ready about!"

The hands hauled on the braces, the boom swung across, and the Rose drove her nose through the eye of the wind with a hard slap of canvas.

He then replied to Anne. "Why, to have a look at her, lass, what else would it be? See how the old girl’s standin’, whether she’ll hold when the British come knockin’, and whether there’s work we might do to better her chances."

He said it easily, the wheel turning beneath his palms.

She listened with a little tilt of her head.

Then, realization came in, and her lips twisted into a nasty smile. "Then you mean Nassau for the decoy. Oh, convenient, that, the rock bein’ a bare two days’ sail from your own bed."

James smiled, broad and easy, and it stayed there.

Anne watched it for a long moment, then turned back toward the sea, her hand still on his arm.

"Laaand hooo! Nassau, Cap’n! Two points off the starboard bow!"

James raised his glass with one hand.

The first sign of land was a low green loom, hull-down and gilded by the sun behind them. The hills followed, then the smoke, more than he remembered, rising in pillars through the evening.

The water paled over sand, and the leadsman in the chains began calling out the depth.

The harbor rose from the dusk as a crowd with ships everywhere, some drawn onto the beach and half stripped for timber, and not a single flag flew over the harbor. Tents and shacks had spread beyond the old boundaries of the town, and every stretch of beach had some poor soul on it.

It was a sty, a kingdom, a compliment all at once, and it was still there.

Roars went up across the deck.

Sunk was dead.

Rook climbed onto his cask with solemnity and collected his winnings, while Twice gave one nod over every coin. Behind them, the argument between drunk and gone to the dogs began again, and at the foremast Briggs turned his head.

The shimmer appeared, then.

⚓ [ALLIED TERRITORY - NASSAU]

Faction : Flying Gang (Fractured)

Status : Pirate Republic (Disputed)

Population : Approximately 2,100

Stability : Volatile

Harbor : Major, Protected by Reefs, Unwatched

Facilities : Taverns, Brothels, Shipwrights, Markets, Warehouses, Careening Beaches

Faction Status : Celebrated Absentee