Chapter 153: The Grandest Little Lie
The cry came down from the masthead sometime after noon, thin and ragged against the wind.
"Land! Land off the bow!"
Sam had the spyglass to his eye, one hand steady on the wheel while he hunted for whatever the lad above had spotted. A moment later, he found it.
"There she is."
He lowered the glass and called down the length of the ship, without raising his voice any more than the occasion required.
"Trim her in, lads. We’ve a harbor to make ourselves polite for."
The canvas came down a notch at a time as the hands answered him, and James found himself grinning for no better reason than the plain relief of having somewhere real waiting beyond the bow at last, instead of another damned horizon. A week of open water, with little to look at except Jim’s ever-growing account of near deaths, had worn thin several days before.
Within the hour, the coast had risen clear of the haze, all pale limestone and green scrub baked hard beneath the Cuban sun. Beyond it, the harbor mouth opened between two stone towers that looked built for no other purpose than to tell the Caribbean to mind its manners and then shoot it if it didn’t.
"El Morro."
Tomás said, nodding toward the nearer one. "And La Punta, across the channel. My uncle sailed past them once, when he was a boy. He told me the guns never wavered."
Kit gave a low whistle from the rigging.
Sam drew the sail tighter and brought them through the narrow passage between the forts at a gentle pace that did not invite anybody to put a shot across their bow.
They had gone perhaps another hundred yards when a boat pushed out from beneath El Morro’s walls, oars pulling hard and fast. A man in a dark coat was already standing in her bow.
Tomás leaned over the rail, cupped both hands around his mouth, and replied,
The officer watched the Marianne for a moment, then the flag snapping overhead.
Tomás pointed toward Sam at the wheel.
The officer looked to Sam, then back to Tomás.
At last, he waved them through without another word and was already turning his boat back toward the fort.
"That’s it?" Kit called down, almost disappointed.
Tomás stepped back from the rail with a small shrug. "We’re licensed merchants carrying goods to sell. What reason has he got to trouble us?"
Past the forts, the bay pushed open into a harbor so choked with shipping that James lost count somewhere after thirty hulls and decided he had no business counting any further.
Spanish galleons rode near the fortress walls, gunports dark and shut, among fat-bellied merchantmen and little fishing craft that slipped between the larger ships like rats between barrels.
Beyond all that rose Havana herself, pale walls running along the shore, bell towers poking above red-tiled roofs, and warehouses yawning open along a waterfront so busy it looked as though the whole city had turned out to carry, sell, steal, buy, or shout about something.
Along the nearest wharf, gangs of men sweated beneath the sun, iron cuffs flashing on more wrists than James cared to count, backs bent beneath sacks of sugar and coils of tobacco leaf.
"Christ," Kit twisted around in the rigging for a better look. "Nassau’s a fishin’ village next to this."
James crossed the deck and stood a moment just taking the whole sight in.
Williams stood beside him, doing his own kind of inspection, "There’s a fortune sittin’ in that harbor, Calloway. More silver passes through here in a season than most kingdoms see in a lifetime."
"Aye, and every last coin of it belongs to lads mean enough to shoot ye for touchin’ it."
Jim leaned against the rail on James’s other side, already halfway lost in whatever tale he meant to make of the sight. "I’ll tell it this way, sailed into Havana harbor with the whole Spanish fleet standin’ at attention, every gun crew snappin’ to salute the finest little sloop ever to grace..."
"You’ll tell it any way you like, so long as you don’t tell it till we’re ashore."
By then Ned had finally stopped clutching the rail like it meant to throw him overboard. The harbor water was kinder to his stomach than the open sea had been, though his eyes kept climbing the city’s walls as if he were already counting how many ways a man might vanish in a town that size.
"Big enough to disappear into."
James laughed. "Or big enough to get yourself disappeared. Depends who ye ask."
"That’s not helpin’, Cap’n."
"Never claimed it would."
Sam picked out a berth with a nod toward a stretch of open wharf beyond a moored merchantman, then called down the length of the ship.
"Take in the tops’ls! Stand by to warp her in, lads!"
Hands scrambled and canvas came down in fistfuls, and half the deck seemed determined to shout over the other half before the work was done.
"Mind that line, Ned, ye’ll take a man’s fingers off!"
"Not my fault if the man’s fingers are in the way!"
"Cap’n, permission to throw the first rope!" Kit called, already halfway to the rail with a coil in both hands.
"Permission denied, ye’ll brain some poor dockhand."
Somewhere ashore, a Spanish voice answered with a curse for the fool who had nearly caught him with the rope. Another called instructions back toward the ship and a third shouted for room along the pier as a cart rattled through.
The ropes went out, were caught and made fast, and the Marianne docked against the wharf with a groan from old line and older wood.
Once she was properly fast, Sam called the crew near the mast. He had a scrap of paper in hand, one Williams had drawn up somewhere during the crossing, with names and cargo dressed up respectable enough for a British trading sloop.
"Right."
Sam held the paper as if it might behave better than the crew had. "We’re humble traders here for heartfelt business. Nobody boasts, nobody starts a fight, nobody so much as looks like he’s ever fired a gun in anger."
Jim agreed at once. "Speakin’ of which, did I ever tell the pair of ye about the time I talked a colonial captain to tears off Trinidad?"
"Jim."
"Just establishin’ my own credentials as a humble man, is all."
Sam turned to Kit.
"And you’ll keep that blade out of sight the whole while we’re ashore."
Kit looked wounded all the way down to his boots. "Out of sight? Cap’n, a man without his own steel in a strange port’s as good as beggin’ to be robbed."
"A man waving steel around in a strange port is as good as beggin’ to be hanged."
Williams snickered. "Leave it below."
"This is an outrage."
"Write a strongly worded letter about it once we’re back at sea."
James let the whole thing run its course, arms folded, grinning through every second of it. Whatever Sam had meant the briefing to accomplish, it had gone overboard somewhere around Jim’s second interruption, and nobody aboard seemed inclined to fish it back out.
When the laughter finally died down, James turned his attention to the wharf itself. The grand view from the harbor passage had narrowed into nearer, louder, hotter, and considerably more crowded.
Merchants in fine coats haggled and cursed over prices with men who looked as though sleep had been outlawed in Havana, while Spanish soldiers stood watch at the customs house, muskets in bored hands as though the greatest threat they expected that afternoon was tedious commerce.
Somewhere behind it all, a church bell tolled the hour, near enough now that James felt it in his chest almost as plainly as he heard it.
A fish seller hollered her prices above the racket, with enough force to make half the harbor know what her mullet cost, and near enough some woman balancing a basket of oranges on one hip shouted after a boy who had tried to steal one and missed.
The whole waterfront had the aroma of tar, salt fish, hot stone, sweat, and whatever else the sun had spent the day cooking. Spanish rolled through it all, tangled with Portuguese and half a dozen African tongues, until the whole waterfront was more like one long argument nobody had the good sense to win.
"Grandest city I’ve ever seen," Kit said, leaning over the rail beside him.
James clapped him once on the shoulder.
"Funny new world, innit?"
The gangway came down last, eased over the rail, and was lashed fast to the wharf like some poor plank being sent ahead to negotiate with the enemy.
Then the deck went silent, every man near the gangway and not one of them quite willing to be the first bastard over it.
"Well."
Sam looked out at Havana waiting beyond the end of the plank, bright and busy and full of men who would be very interested in the wrong sort of truth.
"There she is."
"Aye."
James popped his shoulders and grinned at the ridiculous business they were about to attempt.
"Let’s go tell some very believable lies, then."