Chapter 152: Merry Journey to Havana
The British flag had gone stiff with salt overhead, snapping in the wind as if it had been born to the Marianne’s yard, and James still hadn’t quite made peace with watching it there.
He walked through the deck, checking the ship.
A tug on the rope holding a tarp over one of her guns, some knot keeping the borrowed flag aloft. Six of her fourteen guns sat beneath canvas and cargo netting, and three more had been struck below, where no dockside eye would ever find them. That left just enough iron topside to make her look like a nice little trader with nothing worse in mind than minding her own business.
The gunports that couldn’t be emptied had been plugged and painted false, with enough dark to fool any man who wasn’t making a profession of staring at gunports.
"Convincin’?" Sam asked from the wheel, as casually as if he’d asked about the breeze.
"Enough I near forgot she was yours."
Williams stood nearby with a tally board, ticking off casks more by feel than sight. "Convincin’s cheap, Calloway. What matters is whether a Spanish officer feels like riskin’ his own neck to find out otherwise."
"There’s the goldsmith talkin’."
"Nah, just a man who’s been robbed twice by folk who looked more meek than we do right now."
Sam glanced over his shoulder, one hand steady on the wheel. "By the by, I see four passengers you pulled off yer own ship for this errand, Calloway. I’ve been wonderin’ when ye’d tell me why."
Near the mast, Mackerel Jim had a coil of line half-checked and mostly forgotten. The rope had plainly lost the contest for his attention.
"Jim’s good luck."
James explained. "Man’s near died a dozen times and walked away laughin’ every one of ’em. Worth somethin’, that, on a voyage like this."
"Thirteen times, Cap’n."
Jim straightened. "Fourteen, if ye count the shark off Eleuthera, which I do, seein’ as I’m the one who near died."
"Fourteen now, is it?"
James grinned. "Back in Nassau it was only eleven. Keep countin’ and you’ll outnumber every skeleton in the Caribbean before we make port."
"Numbers grow, as everythin’ else worth tellin’."
Tomás stood a few feet away, tending to a crucifix that hung beneath his shirt. He worked the little thing between his fingers, rubbing a thumb over the worn wood before tucking it back beneath the cloth.
"I imagine I’ll be the voice of the party again."
Sam gave him a sidelong look. "You seem resigned to it."
Tomás smiled faintly. "It has served me well enough so far."
Meanwhile, Kit had found his own way into the lower rigging, higher than the work required, with a blade tucked through his belt that had no business being drawn on a merchant crossing.
"And him?" Sam tipped his chin toward the boy.
James shrugged. "Refused to stay behind, told me flat he’d swim after the ship if I left him at the dock."
"I would have!"
Kit called down. "A man can’t build a name mendin’ fences, Cap’n. Keep me on land much longer and I’ll be eighty years old, and still have nobody claim I ever stabbed so much as a chicken."
"Easy lad, you’ll get yer chance."
"I’d best. Havana’s a big place, bound to be at least ten fools in it lookin’ to be famous first."
Near the rail, Ned had both hands locked around the wood. His face had gone somewhere between green and the pale underside of a fish.
"And the last one?" Williams glanced over.
"Ned’s other two mates were leavin’, didn’t fancy bein’ the one left standin’ on the dock."
"I get sick on calm water," Ned said, mostly to the timber. "Didn’t think that through."
"Least ye picked good company to be sick in front of, lad."
James clapped him once on the shoulder.
Ned gripped the rail harder.
By afternoon, the wind had calmed into some steady and dull enough breeze that Jim found himself with time to become a nuisance.
"Hear, I passed for a Spanish officer once."
The man proclaimed, planting his boots wide as if the deck had been built for his stage. "Off Trinidad. Talked me way clean past a colonial captain usin’ nothin’ but four words of the language and sheer, pure, drunken confidence."
"Which four words?" Tomás asked, still working at his crucifix.
"Doesn’t matter which four, matters I said ’em like I owned the ocean under his own keel."
"What were they?"
Jim clicked his tongue just enough to reveal that this part of the story had not survived whatever had happened to the truth.
"Rum. Silver. Woman. Later."
"Jim, I’ve heard drunks make better use of four words than that."
"Worked, didn’t it."
"If that worked, Jim, then Greasy Pete’s arse is as clean as a nun’s conscience."
"Never met the nuns of Veracruz, have ye? That’s the only way ye’d call them’s conscience clean."
He was halfway through the tale, naturally, when a gust caught the false flag and nearly tore the lashing clean from the yard.
"MIND THE FLAG!" Williams shouted.
Kit immediately dropped out of the rigging and Ned found a fresh reason to release the rail as a corner of canvas came loose, threatening to show its teeth to any passing sailor.
James hauled on a rope himself, laughing the whole while.
Jim kept talking through the confusion, insisting the colonial captain had wept real tears by the end of it, from respect rather than relief.
Once the flag was properly lashed and the tarp thrown back over the gun, Williams crouched to inspect the knot.
He brushed a thumb along a loose coil of spare rope on the deck.
"Four shillin’s, that coil. Five, if the hemp’s sound clean through."
"Go on, then," James said. "Price the boy while ye’re at it."
Williams looked Kit over.
"Nothin’, Captain. Nobody’s payin’ good coin for a lad who’ll swim after a ship out of spite."
"Cruel," Kit snorted. "I thought we were friends, not livestock merchants. At least tell me I fetched a respectable price."
He looked rather pleased to have been given an evaluation at all.
Evening came on slow, turning the light across the water the tone of watered wine. Once the deck had gone silent, Kit found his way beside James.
"What’s the plan, Cap’n?"
The boy asked, plain and without any performance behind it for once. "Once we’re there, in Havana."
James looked toward the horizon where sea met sky and let the question sit. "The plan, lad, is that I’ve got a plan, and you’ll hear the whole glorious idea of it the moment I’ve decided ye deserve to."
"That’s the finest pile of shite ye’ve ever handed me, Cap’n."
"Trust me, it’ll make a finer story told backward than it ever would forward."
Kit huffed, though there wasn’t much heat in it, and left James to himself.
Alone at last, James brushed a thumb along the worn wood and watched the last sunlight drain from the horizon.
"Right then."
He whispered, low enough that only the sea had any business hearing it. "Let’s hear what you’ve got. Who’s worth knowin’ in Havana, for a man lookin’ to move goods under the market?"
I was beginning to wonder whether you intended to reach Havana before admitting you had no plan. Naturally, you waited until the matter could no longer be postponed.
"Aye, well. Confidence and a plan are two different animals."
Of course you were. Why formulate an idea when you can simply wait for the universe to stock the shelves?
⚓ [FATE SHOP - PERSONNEL]
A Merchant of Flexible Morals
There is a person in Havana who deals in the sort of goods respectable merchants prefer to discover already unloaded. Discreet, well-connected, and blessed with the rare talent of knowing exactly which questions are worth asking
Cost : 50 Fate
"Done." James muttered. "Steep price, for some fella you won’t even tell me the name of."
Discretion costs more than information. You’d know that yourself, if you’d ever kept one.
James huffed a laugh and let the display hang there in the dark a moment longer before allowing it to fade, and turning his eyes back toward wherever Havana was waiting beyond the black water ahead.