Chapter 264: Gentle, You Great Lump

Anne led them through Nassau’s back streets like it was her own parlor. With a black scarf over her copper hair and her cutlass at her hip, she stopped at every corner to raise a flat hand, then crook two fingers and wave them across.

Her voice came back over her shoulder, nearly a hiss. "Hat down, James, cuffs under and all. That gold of yours shines like a lighthouse. And you with the ironmongery, wrap that chain tight afore it sings the lot of us straight to some brawl."

James pulled his brim down over his eyebrows and folded [Discretion]’s cuffs inward, while Kwaku wrapped his iron weight in a rag, like he was forced to gag an old friend. Wesley brought up the rear on tiptoe, which was no small accomplishment for a barrel trying to pass as a shadow.

Around them, Nassau was showing its worst side. The cressets had burned down to stubs, tents crowded the slope, and an open kennel ran watered shite down the streets like a bilge.

Some light burned in a high attic window, and Anne made an unknown gesture to its direction. The light went out at once, as if it had been waiting behind the glass for precisely that signal.

That was how the doors talked here, and Anne had once been one of the people who kept them.

Safe places spread through the whole town, maintained by tapsters, laundresses, chandlers’ wives, caulkers’ widows, fishermen, and whores. This network gave a bed to a woman when a captain’s temper turned ugly and a hiding place to a girl who had crossed a quartermaster.

At a black alleyway, Anne stopped them, caught the front of James’s coat, and hauled his head down until her mouth was beside his ear. "Gentle, ye great lummox. I know you’d sooner cut off your hand than lay it on one of them, but they don’t, James, they’ve no way of knowin’.

Every word came out slow and flat. "Every soul down in that hole has been robbed, or beaten, or hauled into some back room by some fella. Pirates can be terrible folk, and you’ll be the biggest pirate they ever laid eyes on, so mind your tongue, your hands, and leave the talkin’ to me."

The grin that lived at the corner of his lips went out like a snuffed wick, and what stood in its place was a face few had ever seen him wear.

"Once, Anne. I’ll say it the once, so hear me true."

His voice came low and serious. "No one down there comes to harm through me nor mine lads. I’ll keep me hands where they can all see ’em, and me mouth shut till I’m asked to use it. On me life."

Anne watch him for a deep moment, patted his cheek, and turned back toward the alleyway.

She took them through an absurd route where alleys doubled back twice, through some basement beneath a laundry where wet sheets hung like sails in a calm sea, then, at last, towards a walled well-house with a windlass and iron rungs descending into blackness.

Anne went first, James after her, and Tomás crossed himself.

Kwaku swung a leg over the rim, chain muffled in its rag, and peered into the black throat below.

"Then it is a well, madam."

He gave the hole a courteous little nod. "I have been carried to many places in this life, by many persons, and never once was I asked, but this is the first time I am invited to descend into one. I find the novelty almost unbearable."

Wesley came down the shaft like a cannonball sliding down a barrel, every rung complaining beneath him. From the blackness below, Anne’s whisper floated up, hollow and damp off the stones.

"Left foot, Wesley. That’s it, aye. Gently now, or you’ll bring the whole well down on me head."

At the bottom, a narrow passage spread toward a heavy door with light glowing beneath it.

Anne knocked twice, waited, and knocked once. The door swung inward onto a blaze of yellow light, and a gaff came stabbing out of it, stopping an inch from her throat.

"Easy, Dan. It’s me."

"Christ on the cross!"

The fisherman behind the gaff was grey-bearded and stiff with salt.

"Anne! Anne, girl, I near gutted ye like a mackerel!"

The gaff dropped, and he brushed his beard in embarrassment.

Then doubt crossed his face. "But they’re sayin’ things, Anne, that ye took the black rag. went off pirate. Is it true, girl? An’ who in God’s name are these ye’ve dragged down me stairs behind ye?"

The light found the others and the black coat, the swaddled weight, the giant ducking beneath the lintel. The gaff rose again, trembling, and one more fisherman backed away with his boat-hook rattling in his hands.

"Oh, Lord love us. ’Tis him. ’Tis the Scourge. Mother o’ God, he’s in the cellar."

Anne stepped into the line of the trembling gaff rather than around it.

Her voice stayed clean and calm. "Put it down, Dan. He’s come to talk, to talk, do you hear me? And I’ll answer for him with me own neck. Cast yer mind back to Cormac Walsh, that black-hearted leech, bleedin’ you for a debt you’d paid twice over, who d’ye think put that one in the dirt? Him, this man. There’ll be no problems, on me word, Dan."

Dan’s eyes rolled up to the vaulted ceiling, as if the Almighty might lean down and resolve the matter for him. "Ah, Anne, girl. Tib’ll skin the lot of us and hang us on the line to dry like her washin’. It’s the one rule, d’ye understand? No pirates below, an’ if there’s a man alive she had in mind when she made it, I’d lay me last shilling he’s the one standin’ there."

Her chin came up, and the corner of her lips twitched, daring him.

"Then she’ll skin me first, and welcome to it. Go on now, Dan, take me to Tib."

Unfortunately for the poor fishermen, there was little argument to be made. He let out a deep breath out through his teeth while his hand found his chest and crossed it twice.

"God forgive me for a soft old fool."

He stepped aside.

James held his hat against his chest, and the strain of keeping his tongue under control appeared on his lips. The most talkative man in the Caribbean was carrying silence like a hot coal.

Dan led them through a corridor of brick vaults, once a gentleman’s wine storage from before there were pirates to flee from. Its niches had been stripped bare, and its arches were covered in sailcloth.

Some small fire beneath a smoke vent warmed a pot of thin fish broth, and a slate beside it brought rations in three short lines. The few dozen souls that lived there were laundresses, tapsters, caulkers’ widows, fishermen asleep on their nets, women with tired faces, and children slumped against them.

Any conversation snuffed out when the four passed, while the mothers pulled their child behind their skirts.

"The Scourge."

"Holy Mary. It’s him."

"Is it? The real one? God keep us, in here..."

"Mam! Mam, is that a pirate? Look at the size of his coat!"

A hand clamped over the child’s mouth, and the whole vault listened to her squirm.

At the end of the corridor, Dan pushed open a small door and stepped back with the other fisherman. Anne went in first, and the others ducked through after her.

The little room was both office and bedroom. There was a cot, a table with its lamp, and an arch so low that Wesley had to bow his head beneath it.

A woman stood at the table with fists planted on its edge. She was dressed in a man’s shirt and breeches, her brown hair hanging to her shoulders, her lithe frame topped by a tomboy’s face in a scowl.

Anne stepped into the lamplight and tugged the black scarf loose, letting her copper hair fall.

"Tib. It’s me."

Tib’s knuckles had gone white on the table, and when her eyes finally lifted, the scowl had set like plaster. "I can see that, can’t I? Look what the tide’s gone and washed down me well, every bed I ever found ye, every bleedin’ thing we built in this town, you and me, and this is what I get."

Her eyes raked past Anne toward the blood on James’s knuckles, the steel at every hip, the giant folded nearly double beneath the arch.

Then they snapped back to Anne, sharp as a sail-needle. "And then ye go and take the black rag, don’t ye? Sail off with a pirate captain, deserter! Turncoat! Daft little ninny!"

She swung on them, and her voice dropped from a roar to a venomous hiss on account of the babes asleep beyond the wall. Her hand shot off the table and flapped them back like a washerwoman shooing geese.

"What in the bleedin’ hell have you dragged down on me doors, eh?"

Anne stepped between Tib and the merry band, palms out, calmly.

"Tib. Tib. Look at me."

She took the anger with ease, without flinching and without handing any of it back. "The doors were the only home I ever had in this town, Tib, and you know it. I took the black rag with both hands, and I’d take it again tomorrow, I’ll not lie to you about that. But I’m standin’ here all the same, because he’s the only chance these people have got."

The fury ran out of her like water from a cracked cask, and what was left beneath it was very small. Tib looked at Anne for a deep moment, then sighed from down near her boots.

When the words finally came, it was from somewhere under the scowl.

"First wrong word out o’ that gob, your worship, and y’all are out."

She dropped into the chair behind the table and folded her arms.

"Go on, then. Say your piece."