Chapter 187: No Rest for the Nearly Hanged
The Grand Dame sat low in her new berth, taking up more of the dock than Concordia’s harbor had ever been called upon to surrender.
Sawyer’s lads crawled all over her rigging like ants that had found a mango and meant to make the most of it. James had nothing to contribute to a job that belonged to the master carpenter from beginning to end, so he left the man to it.
Instead, he went looking for whatever else had changed while he had been occupied with getting himself nearly hanged.
From the pier to the town itself, his boots soon brought him to roads that had not existed in quite this fine a state when he sailed for Havana. Raised timber walkways now existed along its length, planks laid side by side over ground that used to swallow a boot to the ankle whenever the rain came down.
James made the whole stretch without once feeling mud seize his heel.
For a town built by pirates and renegades, he considered that a small miracle.
Farther on, workers had finally dug the midden and put a fence around it, enough to keep the shite well away from both the well and the cookfires. The last time James had seen it, the town’s entire way of dealing with waste had apparently been to wait for the ground to become soft and let nature make the decision.
The cistern had a roof now, too, which kept dead leaves and rot safely out of the water. And new house plots stood back from the main street, their timber frames pale and raw beside the weathered older houses, each one behind its own low fence, precisely as the Code required.
James walked through the middle of it with his thumbs hooked into his belt, looking faintly delighted and faintly insulted at the same time.
The whole place had managed perfectly well without him.
The shipwright’s yard stood farther along, and it was much nearer to conclusion than it had any right to be after only a handful of weeks. Dozens of seasoned lumber was stacked nearby beneath canvas, drying slowly, as good lumber ought to, while the yard had the smell of fresh-cut wood and pitch heating over a low fire.
James went on a curve past the establishment he knew well enough from the open shutters alone. Meg’s brothel was doing a brisk trade at an hour that would have made a religious town pretend not to notice what went on there.
A line of men waited outside with patient, hopeful faces and laughter came rolling down from upstairs loud enough to reach the street.
Meg herself stood near the door with a list tucked beneath one arm, counting heads steady attention, as if she was herding a flock of sheep.
She spotted James and smiled lightly.
"Back from the dead again, I see."
"Seems to be a habit of mine."
"Mind you don’t make a habit of dying on my doorstep. Bad for business."
She turned back to her line before James could think of an answer worth the effort. He left her to it, wearing a grin, and continued down the road.
The assembly hall stood a short walk beyond the crossroads, roofed and done, with actual glass in the windows that caught the sunlight in a way none of Concordia’s other buildings quite managed.
James let himself in and found every bench empty.
Near the front, a slate board still bore the chalk marks from the last vote, green strokes outnumbering red by a comfortable margin.
He stood in the doorway for a moment and looked the room over.
Whatever matters had been decided here, they had apparently been dealt with without requiring James to lift a finger.
"Right then."
He spoke to the empty benches, since there was nobody else about to hear him.
"Glad to see the place hasn’t fallen to pieces just because I went and got myself nearly hanged."
There was no reply, which was hardly surprising, considering there wasn’t anybody there.
The chapel stood close by, smaller and plainer, with nothing above its door except a bell some religious folk had taken the trouble to hang properly.
A handful of citizens knelt inside with their heads bowed, and the murmur of prayer was calm enough that James could not make out a single word through the open doorway.
Near the back, a little girl had abandoned the business of prayer altogether and fallen fast asleep against her mother’s shoulder.
Her mother simply let the girl sleep through whatever the rest of the room had come to ask of God.
James watched them a few seconds more than he intended, then left them to their prayers and continued down the street.
By the time the chapel was behind him, his stomach had begun to complain, loudly enough to earn him a look from a passing woman.
He laughed and followed his nose toward the nearest cookhouse.
The place had a bench free along the open side facing the street, and he took it without hurry.
Without waiting for James to order, the old lady responsible for the cookhouse set down a plate for him. Salt fish stewed soft with cassava, a few slices of plantain fried dark around the edges, and a cup of ale to wash it down.
The ale tasted considerably better than anything he’d been given in Havana, which was not a hard thing to manage.
He ate with elbows on the table and precious little in the way of manners, tearing into the fish with his fingers like every other sailor at the surrounding tables.
The plantain had gone sweet where the fire caught it, and the ale was thin enough to drink two cups without dizziness, which suited James perfectly on an afternoon that seemed to ask nothing of him except tranquility.
He decided that was worth savoring, and proceeded to do just that. Yet only halfway through the meal some shadows crossed his table.
James looked up and found Adrienne Lavigne standing over him with her arms folded, wearing an unimpressed expression.
"Monsieur Calloway."
It felt like a debt had finally come due. "Alors, I confess I did not expect to find you eating fish while this town waits upon your word."
James put down his cup, already smiling. "Adrienne, come join me? Plenty of plantain to go around."
Fenwick came up a step behind her, and looked at him with considerably less patience than Adrienne had brought with her.
"There’s business to discuss, Captain, and we ought to do it at once."
James looked from one to the other, his plate still half full.
He felt the last of his easy afternoon slipping away, just as every easy afternoon he’d ever been foolish enough to trust.
"Well." He set down his fork. "Out with it."