Sailing by Carina's Star, page 26
When René draws his cutlass, he points it straight at Captain Benjamin.
René’s heart thumps hard. “I don’t suppose you’d care to keep going.”
He’s met with nothing but silence, the naval sailors all taking a step back.
Captain Benjamin seizes the bottom of René’s red coat. Someone’s foot presses the captain down onto the deck, the attacker’s dirk glinting in the sunlight.
“Don’t even think about it.” Auden’s voice catches fire, his wavy brown hair falling loose and dripping with seawater and sweat. “Value your life.”
Auden doesn’t notice Captain Benjamin reaching with his injured hand toward the top of his boot. A flash of silver comes toward René’s leg, and then there’s a blur rushing toward them, her braid swinging.
Flora kicks the knife from Captain Benjamin’s hand, stepping on his palm with her boot heel. Captain Benjamin gives a strangled cry, and this hand, René suspects, will take quite a while to heal.
“You don’t know when to give up, do you?” Flora asks. “My friend is right. You should value our mercy. You wouldn’t show us any if given the chance.”
“What are you about?” Captain Benjamin shouts. “Going to mock me before you burn my ship? Make me watch with the last few seconds of my life? Lure my men to your crew with false promises?”
“No.” René places the tip of his cutlass beneath Captain Benjamin’s chin, the edges of his red coat fluttering in the wind. Finally, the captain goes still, pinned down by René, Auden, and Flora all at once. “It’s as Captain Danso said. Surrender, and you’ll leave without another scratch. We do not hang men in front of mobs and then display them in the harbor like trophies.” René pauses, remembering something Jahni told him one day while pouring over the most recent newspapers they were able to get. “Do you know how many men were employed in His Majesty’s Navy during the war over the Spanish succession, Captain Benjamin?”
“What?”
“Fifty-thousand,” René answers. “Fifty-thousand men. When the war was done, the Navy tossed three-quarters of them out. Now, that’s too many men for the merchant marine, isn’t it? Even if they do find employment, the pay is less, and the treatment is as bad if not worse. I was certainly cheated of my pay more than once when I was a merchant ship deckhand. Sailors are left in poverty, and their necks are put in nooses at Tyburn and Wapping and all over the New World for daring to steal something. If they’re not killed, they’re leased out to labor until they fall down dead. I’m not really sure offering them a better life is luring them with false promises.”
“And you think this gives you the right to your violence?” Fear blossoms in Captain Benjamin’s eyes as René leans down closer, Auden’s foot still planted on the captain’s chest.
“I wonder”—René presses a touch harder with the point of his cutlass, just enough to draw a dribble of blood—“if you missed the part where you stole these boys from their home. Is that not violence, sir?” René whispers the words like a sweet, honeyed threat, and the captain jolts. René should pull back, he knows he should, but he doesn’t. “Until the day men like you stop trying to crush people under your feet, until there is another way for people to make themselves heard, then yes. We will continue our present course. I think you’ll find that most of us are not half so violent as the British empire.”
Captain Benjamin swallows. He looks at Danso instead, as if thinking he might find a different answer. Help, even.
“If you want to survive,” he says, “you might want to think twice about having this monster as your consort captain.”
Danso’s eyes hold a sharp glint, his voice less kind than usual as one hand runs over the edge of his green coat. “I’m quite content with my choices, Captain Benjamin.”
“You have no idea the might of the forces that will come after you once I report this,” Captain Benjamin spits. “And you, lad, will be at the top of Delacroix and Jerome’s list if I have anything to say about it. Right beneath your Captain Robin Hood the Merciful here. I expect you’ll both find your necks in a noose sooner rather than later.”
René’s rage rips through him. His vision whites out. All he sees is this powerful bastard. All he hears is that threat and Danso’s name spoken in the same breath as his father’s and Jerome’s. How dare this man speak this way about Danso? The world ceases to exist. His blood boils in his veins. When he blinks, for just a moment, his grandfather’s face replaces Captain Benjamin’s. Flora and Auden step away, and René seizes the front of Captain Benjamin’s shirt, hauling him roughly to his feet and yanking him close.
“Would you like to threaten us again?”
René holds his cutlass inches away from Benjamin’s neck. He pushes down his darkest impulse, the impulse telling him to kill this man and burn this ship. But there are men here who are bound to the whims of this wretch. Danso wouldn’t do it. Danso’s only burned a ship once, a slaver, and they evacuated the crew first.
“No.” Benjamin shakes his head, a grown man reduced to whimpering.
“Captain,” Danso warns. Carefully. Gently.
René knows he needs to calm himself. He needs to tamp down this unfathomable fury. This is a game. Just a game. He played plenty of them when he was a boy. What would a man like this expect him to do? Who are the players in this tale, and what are their roles? If he is to be a devil, then how does a devil behave?
He forces a smirk onto his face, his grip on Captain Benjamin’s shirt tightening.
“Captain,” he says, a darkly amused laugh on his breath, “do you honestly think I’m afraid of the pirate hunters? Do you honestly think I’m afraid of their noose? I knew from the start what I was getting into, and I promise you, it is no matter. Now go, before I change my mind.”
Captain Benjamin stumbles backward when René releases him. He stares. He trembles.
“Stand down, men,” he says. “I’ve no desire to return this ship to Kingston in worse shape than it already is.”
René tenses, holding himself in check. Kingston? A breath catches in his chest. When Marc brought back his information on Captain Benjamin, New York and patrols up the eastern seaboard of the American colonies is what they were told. Never Jamaica.
“We will go first.” René leaves no room for protest, a glimmer of dread in Captain Benjamin’s eyes. “Once we’re out of your sight, you may go. Do not follow us. We’ll be sweeping your cabin and the hold for any other goods we desire to take with us.”
René turns away, and Danso falls into step with him.
“Are you all right?” Danso whispers. There’s not much time, and Danso needs to return to the Misericorde.
René nods, Captain Benjamin’s earlier insult ringing in his ears.
Monster.
Monster.
Monster.
He thinks back to that little boy who thought there was something inherently wrong with him because he couldn’t please his grandfather no matter what he did. Lord Travers hurt him deeply years before the first blow ever landed. When he came to Nassau, when he found this crew and these friends, this family, that fear of his own monstrousness lessened, but it was never quite gone.
Monster.
Hearing that word makes him ache like that nine-year-old boy on the receiving end of his grandfather’s slap. Like the eight-year-old who had the homemade book knocked out of his hands. Like the fourteen-year-old with a broken nose, blood dripping down onto the floor.
You monstrous, worthless child.
Danso’s words mix with his grandfather’s, half drowning them out.
You’re not the monster, lad. He is. I promise you that.
“I think so,” René says, even though he’s not sure. Even though he’s scared himself. “You?”
“A couple of nicks, but I’m fine.” Danso leans over, whispering in his ear. “We got those boys out and I’m glad of it. The Endeavour”—Danso pauses, looking at the naval vessel, which will have to sail slowly with all the damage—“shouldn’t be able to follow us in this state. I don’t think we’ll need to cut the mainsail.”
René clasps Danso’s shoulder before looking across at the Saiph to see Elliot standing in the center of the knot of boys, bending down so he’s at their height. Chema stands beside him with Elliot’s medical bag in his hands, sword tucked haphazardly into his sash as if he’d only just had time to stow it.
“Jahni?” René calls out once he’s back aboard, and his friend appears at his elbow in a matter of seconds. “Are we all right to make it back to Nassau?”
“Their guns were powerful, so even though they’re much worse off, we did sustain some damage,” Jahni answers. His eyes catch on Flora across on the Misericorde as she starts directing the patching of one of the mizzen sails. “We should be all right to make it back, but we’ll need some time to tend to the ship after that. Nothing catastrophic. My men are tending to small rips in some of the sails. Benoit’s going to make some notes as well.”
“Thank you.” Exhaustion and angst flood through René’s veins. But they’ve rescued these boys and that matters, as Danso said. “We’ll set sail as soon as we see the signal from the Misericorde.”
Jahni nods, pulling affectionately on the sleeve of René’s coat before he goes, calling out orders. Marc and Frantz replace him almost instantly.
“I had no idea he sailed from Kingston,” Marc says without preamble. “Abeni’s cultivated that contact for years, and his information is usually good. He’s that customs officer in St. James Parish in Jamaica. Davidson.”
“Don’t worry, Marc,” René says in reassurance. The contact Marc speaks of is usually trustworthy, and one of the few Abeni’s been able to risk keeping contact with in Jamaica. “Your information was likely right at the time, and we’d never have known anything about him if it weren’t for you and Abeni risking yourselves to go speak to Davidson. It’s not your fault if his information was out of date.”
Marc departs with a press to René’s shoulder, leaving René alone with Frantz. They walk without words toward the wheel, and René watches a few of the Misericorde’s sailors carry a chest of something up from the hold of the Endeavour—coin, hopefully. The men deserve something easy after this risk. One of the Saiph’s crew brings Benjamin’s captain’s log, which René hopes to peruse for intelligence. A half hour later, the signal from the Misericorde goes up.
It’s time to head home.
“Kingston,” Frantz finally says, eyes scanning the horizon.
“Unfortunately,” René says. “Even if he made port somewhere else there would have been a report sent to my father and Jerome, given their duties. But now ....”
“They will receive a more direct account.” Frantz looks over at René. “They will see his injuries, and he may describe you. Jerome already has clues as it is. Other men wouldn’t latch onto them, but Jerome is ... well he is the way he is. Obsessive.”
A colorful image of Jerome emerging from the curtain of rain on the night they ran away appears in René’s mind. He knew from the look in Jerome’s eyes then that he would never give up chasing them.
Frantz speaks into the momentary quiet. “All right?”
“All right,” René echoes. “You?”
“All right,” Frantz repeats, a heaviness hanging on the words. “Elliot said we were lucky. Only some serious injuries, rather than deaths, on the crew. Half a miracle for an engagement with a naval ship. One dead on the Misericorde though. Carter. Cannons got the poor soul.”
That is, René thinks, what waging war against an empire will earn you. Even as guilt and grief over the loss poke and prod at him, he knows the men on these combined crews voted for their fates. It’s more than he can say for any soldier or naval sailor.
They are all caught up in civilization’s wheel. The only thing to be done is to break it and build something new. They’re doing that in Nassau. They’re trying.
Two of the boys walk away from the group arm in arm toward the rail—the Black boy and the white boy with the bruise on his cheek. One word beats against René’s brain.
Kingston.
Chapter 2
Kingston, Jamaica. October 1714
A pounding knock on his office door interrupts Jerome’s work.
“Yes?” he calls out, keeping his eyes on his papers and signing off on one last document. This report is a long one—heaven only knows if the Admiralty will actually read it.
“Sir,” Admiral Adams’ clerk, a lad no more than twenty-one, says when the door comes open.
Jerome looks up, sliding his new reading spectacles down his nose. “Something wrong, MacMillan?” he asks, lowering his quill. “I hoped not to be disturbed this afternoon.”
“I’m afraid it is urgent, Captain Jerome.” MacMillan grasps the fabric of his coat in one hand, leaving a sweat mark behind when he lets go. “I was just down by Commodore Delacroix’s office, and I ran into Admiral Adams, who was leaving there. Captain Benjamin’s crew has returned, sir, and the Endeavour is in bad shape. The captain himself sustained a few injuries in the scuffle, and three men were lost to cannon fire.”
“The scuffle?” Jerome asks, removing his spectacles now. “What sort of scuffle?”
“Pirates, sir,” MacMillan explains. “I don’t know all of the details, but there were two, apparently. Ships, that is. Admiral Adams is leaving for Spanish Town and could not stay, but said that he trusted you and Commodore Delacroix to get a full and detailed report to give to him upon his return.”
Well, then. More paperwork.
“Is Commodore Delacroix waiting for me in his office?” Jerome rises from his chair, donning his new tricorn hat and arranging his cravat back into place, the former a gift from Michel.
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you, MacMillan.” Jerome gestures at the documents on his desk, collecting them into a neat pile. “I’ve finished signing all of those papers, so they’ll be ready for Admiral Adams when he arrives back.”
“Yes, sir,” MacMillan repeats. “Good luck.”
Jerome nods, bidding MacMillan farewell as he exits his office and heads toward the docks. He’s a good lad who pays excellent attention to detail, but his manners are odd and anxious. Not that Jerome can say he was different at that age. He only hid it better. He takes the shortcut across the beach, sailors from privateer and smaller merchant ships stepping back when he walks by. He snorts. It’s not as if he arrests anyone on a whim, but if these men want to fear him, so be it. A few of the Navigator’s crewmen wave as he passes, and he arrives soon after in front of Michel’s office. The door opens just as he raises his hand to knock.
“Oh, hello,” Michel says, looking fretful. “I was just coming to find you.”
“MacMillan told me about Benjamin’s crew,” Jerome answers. “I came right over.”
Michel’s hair is mussed, his cravat is crooked, and his coat is rumpled.
“Something bothering you?” Jerome prompts.
“What?” Michel sounds absentminded, almost like he’d forgotten Jerome was there.
“Is everything all right?” Jerome asks, taking the first step down the hallway, encouraging Michel along.
“My apologies.” Michel shakes his head, falling into step with Jerome. “I had a bit of a tiff with Captain Benjamin before he set sail, you see. And now this news.”
“You didn’t mention. May I ask what about?”
“I didn’t think anything of it at the time.” Michel smooths away one of the wrinkles in his coat. “I caught him striking one of his cabin boys rather forcefully. I asked him to stop. Discipline is one thing, unnecessary force is something else, especially on such a young lad.”
“I see.”
There are ghosts in Michel’s eyes, and Jerome doesn’t comment further. Michel runs a tight ship, but he’s one of the few captains who doesn’t resort to physical punishment unless truly necessary. That is one point upon which they disagree. Jerome knows that with some men there is nothing else to be done, and the threat of physical punishment certainly deterred him from making mistakes when he was a younger sailor. He remembers the punishments he did experience quite vividly.
Michel frowns. “If the initial report I heard is true, the pirates took four boys Benjamin press ganged into his crew. I do not like impressment. I think it creates disloyal men, and I certainly do not approve of taking children in without consent, however young some boys who take to sea are, but I would not sanction pirates to end it. I don’t want Benjamin thinking I had anything to do with this, or that I won’t take what happened seriously.”
“I do not think anyone would say that of you,” Jerome replies. “No one would dare accuse you of associating with pirates.”
They might if Jerome’s suspicions about René turn out to be true, but he doesn’t mention that now. Even the barest suggestion did not go well before.
“Thank you, Nicholas.” Michel’s smile fails to meet his eyes, tight and plastered on. “I am growing more paranoid as I grow older, I’m afraid.”
They fall into an easy silence for a few minutes as they walk toward Captain Benjamin’s rented rooms, where Michel said the doctor was seeing to some final things before they arrived. They pass the HMS Endeavour on the way, and Jerome stops short.
“What in the devil?”
“Christ,” Michel mutters, gazing at the holes at the water line and the multiple patched sails, one of the masts very much in danger of cracking in half if it isn’t tended to quickly. They clearly took damage on both sides.
“How did they even get back here?” Jerome asks.
“Admiral Adams said they had enough extra sailcloth to replace two and patch the rest,” Michel answers. “And then they stopped off somewhere because they were taking on water. They must have made some repairs, though I don’t know more. The pirates went after the Endeavour on purpose. Sought her out.”
Shock courses through Jerome’s veins, and he can’t shake the unsettled feeling clinging to him. “I haven’t seen a ship of the line damaged like this before.”
“There were two of them—frigates, that is—which might put them near to the same amount of guns, and they’d have the speed advantage. Less than a sloop, but still.” Michel removes his hat, twisting it in his hands. “The two frigates were flying under the same colors.”
René’s heart thumps hard. “I don’t suppose you’d care to keep going.”
He’s met with nothing but silence, the naval sailors all taking a step back.
Captain Benjamin seizes the bottom of René’s red coat. Someone’s foot presses the captain down onto the deck, the attacker’s dirk glinting in the sunlight.
“Don’t even think about it.” Auden’s voice catches fire, his wavy brown hair falling loose and dripping with seawater and sweat. “Value your life.”
Auden doesn’t notice Captain Benjamin reaching with his injured hand toward the top of his boot. A flash of silver comes toward René’s leg, and then there’s a blur rushing toward them, her braid swinging.
Flora kicks the knife from Captain Benjamin’s hand, stepping on his palm with her boot heel. Captain Benjamin gives a strangled cry, and this hand, René suspects, will take quite a while to heal.
“You don’t know when to give up, do you?” Flora asks. “My friend is right. You should value our mercy. You wouldn’t show us any if given the chance.”
“What are you about?” Captain Benjamin shouts. “Going to mock me before you burn my ship? Make me watch with the last few seconds of my life? Lure my men to your crew with false promises?”
“No.” René places the tip of his cutlass beneath Captain Benjamin’s chin, the edges of his red coat fluttering in the wind. Finally, the captain goes still, pinned down by René, Auden, and Flora all at once. “It’s as Captain Danso said. Surrender, and you’ll leave without another scratch. We do not hang men in front of mobs and then display them in the harbor like trophies.” René pauses, remembering something Jahni told him one day while pouring over the most recent newspapers they were able to get. “Do you know how many men were employed in His Majesty’s Navy during the war over the Spanish succession, Captain Benjamin?”
“What?”
“Fifty-thousand,” René answers. “Fifty-thousand men. When the war was done, the Navy tossed three-quarters of them out. Now, that’s too many men for the merchant marine, isn’t it? Even if they do find employment, the pay is less, and the treatment is as bad if not worse. I was certainly cheated of my pay more than once when I was a merchant ship deckhand. Sailors are left in poverty, and their necks are put in nooses at Tyburn and Wapping and all over the New World for daring to steal something. If they’re not killed, they’re leased out to labor until they fall down dead. I’m not really sure offering them a better life is luring them with false promises.”
“And you think this gives you the right to your violence?” Fear blossoms in Captain Benjamin’s eyes as René leans down closer, Auden’s foot still planted on the captain’s chest.
“I wonder”—René presses a touch harder with the point of his cutlass, just enough to draw a dribble of blood—“if you missed the part where you stole these boys from their home. Is that not violence, sir?” René whispers the words like a sweet, honeyed threat, and the captain jolts. René should pull back, he knows he should, but he doesn’t. “Until the day men like you stop trying to crush people under your feet, until there is another way for people to make themselves heard, then yes. We will continue our present course. I think you’ll find that most of us are not half so violent as the British empire.”
Captain Benjamin swallows. He looks at Danso instead, as if thinking he might find a different answer. Help, even.
“If you want to survive,” he says, “you might want to think twice about having this monster as your consort captain.”
Danso’s eyes hold a sharp glint, his voice less kind than usual as one hand runs over the edge of his green coat. “I’m quite content with my choices, Captain Benjamin.”
“You have no idea the might of the forces that will come after you once I report this,” Captain Benjamin spits. “And you, lad, will be at the top of Delacroix and Jerome’s list if I have anything to say about it. Right beneath your Captain Robin Hood the Merciful here. I expect you’ll both find your necks in a noose sooner rather than later.”
René’s rage rips through him. His vision whites out. All he sees is this powerful bastard. All he hears is that threat and Danso’s name spoken in the same breath as his father’s and Jerome’s. How dare this man speak this way about Danso? The world ceases to exist. His blood boils in his veins. When he blinks, for just a moment, his grandfather’s face replaces Captain Benjamin’s. Flora and Auden step away, and René seizes the front of Captain Benjamin’s shirt, hauling him roughly to his feet and yanking him close.
“Would you like to threaten us again?”
René holds his cutlass inches away from Benjamin’s neck. He pushes down his darkest impulse, the impulse telling him to kill this man and burn this ship. But there are men here who are bound to the whims of this wretch. Danso wouldn’t do it. Danso’s only burned a ship once, a slaver, and they evacuated the crew first.
“No.” Benjamin shakes his head, a grown man reduced to whimpering.
“Captain,” Danso warns. Carefully. Gently.
René knows he needs to calm himself. He needs to tamp down this unfathomable fury. This is a game. Just a game. He played plenty of them when he was a boy. What would a man like this expect him to do? Who are the players in this tale, and what are their roles? If he is to be a devil, then how does a devil behave?
He forces a smirk onto his face, his grip on Captain Benjamin’s shirt tightening.
“Captain,” he says, a darkly amused laugh on his breath, “do you honestly think I’m afraid of the pirate hunters? Do you honestly think I’m afraid of their noose? I knew from the start what I was getting into, and I promise you, it is no matter. Now go, before I change my mind.”
Captain Benjamin stumbles backward when René releases him. He stares. He trembles.
“Stand down, men,” he says. “I’ve no desire to return this ship to Kingston in worse shape than it already is.”
René tenses, holding himself in check. Kingston? A breath catches in his chest. When Marc brought back his information on Captain Benjamin, New York and patrols up the eastern seaboard of the American colonies is what they were told. Never Jamaica.
“We will go first.” René leaves no room for protest, a glimmer of dread in Captain Benjamin’s eyes. “Once we’re out of your sight, you may go. Do not follow us. We’ll be sweeping your cabin and the hold for any other goods we desire to take with us.”
René turns away, and Danso falls into step with him.
“Are you all right?” Danso whispers. There’s not much time, and Danso needs to return to the Misericorde.
René nods, Captain Benjamin’s earlier insult ringing in his ears.
Monster.
Monster.
Monster.
He thinks back to that little boy who thought there was something inherently wrong with him because he couldn’t please his grandfather no matter what he did. Lord Travers hurt him deeply years before the first blow ever landed. When he came to Nassau, when he found this crew and these friends, this family, that fear of his own monstrousness lessened, but it was never quite gone.
Monster.
Hearing that word makes him ache like that nine-year-old boy on the receiving end of his grandfather’s slap. Like the eight-year-old who had the homemade book knocked out of his hands. Like the fourteen-year-old with a broken nose, blood dripping down onto the floor.
You monstrous, worthless child.
Danso’s words mix with his grandfather’s, half drowning them out.
You’re not the monster, lad. He is. I promise you that.
“I think so,” René says, even though he’s not sure. Even though he’s scared himself. “You?”
“A couple of nicks, but I’m fine.” Danso leans over, whispering in his ear. “We got those boys out and I’m glad of it. The Endeavour”—Danso pauses, looking at the naval vessel, which will have to sail slowly with all the damage—“shouldn’t be able to follow us in this state. I don’t think we’ll need to cut the mainsail.”
René clasps Danso’s shoulder before looking across at the Saiph to see Elliot standing in the center of the knot of boys, bending down so he’s at their height. Chema stands beside him with Elliot’s medical bag in his hands, sword tucked haphazardly into his sash as if he’d only just had time to stow it.
“Jahni?” René calls out once he’s back aboard, and his friend appears at his elbow in a matter of seconds. “Are we all right to make it back to Nassau?”
“Their guns were powerful, so even though they’re much worse off, we did sustain some damage,” Jahni answers. His eyes catch on Flora across on the Misericorde as she starts directing the patching of one of the mizzen sails. “We should be all right to make it back, but we’ll need some time to tend to the ship after that. Nothing catastrophic. My men are tending to small rips in some of the sails. Benoit’s going to make some notes as well.”
“Thank you.” Exhaustion and angst flood through René’s veins. But they’ve rescued these boys and that matters, as Danso said. “We’ll set sail as soon as we see the signal from the Misericorde.”
Jahni nods, pulling affectionately on the sleeve of René’s coat before he goes, calling out orders. Marc and Frantz replace him almost instantly.
“I had no idea he sailed from Kingston,” Marc says without preamble. “Abeni’s cultivated that contact for years, and his information is usually good. He’s that customs officer in St. James Parish in Jamaica. Davidson.”
“Don’t worry, Marc,” René says in reassurance. The contact Marc speaks of is usually trustworthy, and one of the few Abeni’s been able to risk keeping contact with in Jamaica. “Your information was likely right at the time, and we’d never have known anything about him if it weren’t for you and Abeni risking yourselves to go speak to Davidson. It’s not your fault if his information was out of date.”
Marc departs with a press to René’s shoulder, leaving René alone with Frantz. They walk without words toward the wheel, and René watches a few of the Misericorde’s sailors carry a chest of something up from the hold of the Endeavour—coin, hopefully. The men deserve something easy after this risk. One of the Saiph’s crew brings Benjamin’s captain’s log, which René hopes to peruse for intelligence. A half hour later, the signal from the Misericorde goes up.
It’s time to head home.
“Kingston,” Frantz finally says, eyes scanning the horizon.
“Unfortunately,” René says. “Even if he made port somewhere else there would have been a report sent to my father and Jerome, given their duties. But now ....”
“They will receive a more direct account.” Frantz looks over at René. “They will see his injuries, and he may describe you. Jerome already has clues as it is. Other men wouldn’t latch onto them, but Jerome is ... well he is the way he is. Obsessive.”
A colorful image of Jerome emerging from the curtain of rain on the night they ran away appears in René’s mind. He knew from the look in Jerome’s eyes then that he would never give up chasing them.
Frantz speaks into the momentary quiet. “All right?”
“All right,” René echoes. “You?”
“All right,” Frantz repeats, a heaviness hanging on the words. “Elliot said we were lucky. Only some serious injuries, rather than deaths, on the crew. Half a miracle for an engagement with a naval ship. One dead on the Misericorde though. Carter. Cannons got the poor soul.”
That is, René thinks, what waging war against an empire will earn you. Even as guilt and grief over the loss poke and prod at him, he knows the men on these combined crews voted for their fates. It’s more than he can say for any soldier or naval sailor.
They are all caught up in civilization’s wheel. The only thing to be done is to break it and build something new. They’re doing that in Nassau. They’re trying.
Two of the boys walk away from the group arm in arm toward the rail—the Black boy and the white boy with the bruise on his cheek. One word beats against René’s brain.
Kingston.
Chapter 2
Kingston, Jamaica. October 1714
A pounding knock on his office door interrupts Jerome’s work.
“Yes?” he calls out, keeping his eyes on his papers and signing off on one last document. This report is a long one—heaven only knows if the Admiralty will actually read it.
“Sir,” Admiral Adams’ clerk, a lad no more than twenty-one, says when the door comes open.
Jerome looks up, sliding his new reading spectacles down his nose. “Something wrong, MacMillan?” he asks, lowering his quill. “I hoped not to be disturbed this afternoon.”
“I’m afraid it is urgent, Captain Jerome.” MacMillan grasps the fabric of his coat in one hand, leaving a sweat mark behind when he lets go. “I was just down by Commodore Delacroix’s office, and I ran into Admiral Adams, who was leaving there. Captain Benjamin’s crew has returned, sir, and the Endeavour is in bad shape. The captain himself sustained a few injuries in the scuffle, and three men were lost to cannon fire.”
“The scuffle?” Jerome asks, removing his spectacles now. “What sort of scuffle?”
“Pirates, sir,” MacMillan explains. “I don’t know all of the details, but there were two, apparently. Ships, that is. Admiral Adams is leaving for Spanish Town and could not stay, but said that he trusted you and Commodore Delacroix to get a full and detailed report to give to him upon his return.”
Well, then. More paperwork.
“Is Commodore Delacroix waiting for me in his office?” Jerome rises from his chair, donning his new tricorn hat and arranging his cravat back into place, the former a gift from Michel.
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you, MacMillan.” Jerome gestures at the documents on his desk, collecting them into a neat pile. “I’ve finished signing all of those papers, so they’ll be ready for Admiral Adams when he arrives back.”
“Yes, sir,” MacMillan repeats. “Good luck.”
Jerome nods, bidding MacMillan farewell as he exits his office and heads toward the docks. He’s a good lad who pays excellent attention to detail, but his manners are odd and anxious. Not that Jerome can say he was different at that age. He only hid it better. He takes the shortcut across the beach, sailors from privateer and smaller merchant ships stepping back when he walks by. He snorts. It’s not as if he arrests anyone on a whim, but if these men want to fear him, so be it. A few of the Navigator’s crewmen wave as he passes, and he arrives soon after in front of Michel’s office. The door opens just as he raises his hand to knock.
“Oh, hello,” Michel says, looking fretful. “I was just coming to find you.”
“MacMillan told me about Benjamin’s crew,” Jerome answers. “I came right over.”
Michel’s hair is mussed, his cravat is crooked, and his coat is rumpled.
“Something bothering you?” Jerome prompts.
“What?” Michel sounds absentminded, almost like he’d forgotten Jerome was there.
“Is everything all right?” Jerome asks, taking the first step down the hallway, encouraging Michel along.
“My apologies.” Michel shakes his head, falling into step with Jerome. “I had a bit of a tiff with Captain Benjamin before he set sail, you see. And now this news.”
“You didn’t mention. May I ask what about?”
“I didn’t think anything of it at the time.” Michel smooths away one of the wrinkles in his coat. “I caught him striking one of his cabin boys rather forcefully. I asked him to stop. Discipline is one thing, unnecessary force is something else, especially on such a young lad.”
“I see.”
There are ghosts in Michel’s eyes, and Jerome doesn’t comment further. Michel runs a tight ship, but he’s one of the few captains who doesn’t resort to physical punishment unless truly necessary. That is one point upon which they disagree. Jerome knows that with some men there is nothing else to be done, and the threat of physical punishment certainly deterred him from making mistakes when he was a younger sailor. He remembers the punishments he did experience quite vividly.
Michel frowns. “If the initial report I heard is true, the pirates took four boys Benjamin press ganged into his crew. I do not like impressment. I think it creates disloyal men, and I certainly do not approve of taking children in without consent, however young some boys who take to sea are, but I would not sanction pirates to end it. I don’t want Benjamin thinking I had anything to do with this, or that I won’t take what happened seriously.”
“I do not think anyone would say that of you,” Jerome replies. “No one would dare accuse you of associating with pirates.”
They might if Jerome’s suspicions about René turn out to be true, but he doesn’t mention that now. Even the barest suggestion did not go well before.
“Thank you, Nicholas.” Michel’s smile fails to meet his eyes, tight and plastered on. “I am growing more paranoid as I grow older, I’m afraid.”
They fall into an easy silence for a few minutes as they walk toward Captain Benjamin’s rented rooms, where Michel said the doctor was seeing to some final things before they arrived. They pass the HMS Endeavour on the way, and Jerome stops short.
“What in the devil?”
“Christ,” Michel mutters, gazing at the holes at the water line and the multiple patched sails, one of the masts very much in danger of cracking in half if it isn’t tended to quickly. They clearly took damage on both sides.
“How did they even get back here?” Jerome asks.
“Admiral Adams said they had enough extra sailcloth to replace two and patch the rest,” Michel answers. “And then they stopped off somewhere because they were taking on water. They must have made some repairs, though I don’t know more. The pirates went after the Endeavour on purpose. Sought her out.”
Shock courses through Jerome’s veins, and he can’t shake the unsettled feeling clinging to him. “I haven’t seen a ship of the line damaged like this before.”
“There were two of them—frigates, that is—which might put them near to the same amount of guns, and they’d have the speed advantage. Less than a sloop, but still.” Michel removes his hat, twisting it in his hands. “The two frigates were flying under the same colors.”
