Chapter 191: A Harbor Worth Sailing Into
Sawyer stood there for a moment.
From the look on his own face, he would much rather have been elbow-deep in wet timber, fighting with a plank that refused to cooperate, than standing here with nothing between himself and all Concordia but his own voice.
He squared his shoulders as a man does when he is about to lift something heavier than he expected, then raised his head.
"I don’t know a bloody thing about votes."
He said it as plainly as a man might, and there was not an apology in it. "Nor Codes, nor whatever else ye’ve been squabblin’ over all week. That’s work for sharper tongues than mine."
He rubbed his thumb along his chin and put another streak of sawdust there. "But I’ve had my hands in this island’s dirt and timber longer than any soul in this hall, and there’s one thing I know well enough to say."
He pointed toward the open doors and the harbor beyond them. "Them ships wants a harbor worth sailin’ into, not some piss-stained piers where a crew parks their boat and prays the tide takes pity on the lass. Stone-cut, with good moles for a ship to lie against without fear of stoving her own hull."
He raised a second finger. "Them goods wants broad buildings for storage, not some shrimp sheds fit to ruin ’em. Warehouses, and a chandlery besides, so a crew doesn’t have to sail clear to Nassau just to buy rope and pitch for their ship."
Up went a third finger. "Them merchants wants a market square, and a customs house besides, to know who they are supposed to pay and who they oughtn’t trust."
He let his hand fall. "This town built the finest whorehouse in the whole Caribbean, then left the poor thing standing empty for a month before a soul walked through the door. Maybe, just this once, we build the damned thing that earns its keep."
He looked over the hall. "Hidden bay and all that, fine place to disappear, sure. But if we want this town to be more, no ship worth her salt sails toward a coast that has nothing to sell and nowhere safe to leave cargo."
A laugh broke out near the end of the crowd, rough and quick.
One more voice came booming over the rest, thick as a coil of tarred rope. "Aye, and put the privy and fish stall at opposite bloody ends this time, Sawyer! I’ll not eat me dinner downwind of either one again!"
The hall erupted harder at that than James jokes all morning.
James made the smart decision this was not personal and therefore would not be taking it personally.
Before the laughter had properly died down, a woman shoved her way out of the crowd. She had her skirts hitched high and planted herself where nobody could possibly miss her.
She declared, and half the hall laughed again once they understood who she meant. "I’m the very woman that cornered your captain beside my rotting indigo, so I’ll thank you all to listen this time, since apparently a shed full of ruin wasn’t reason enough by itself."
She had the sort of voice meant to cross a market without assistance, and she put every ounce of it to work. "I buried my husband past Eleuthera, and I’ll tell you plain, he rotted slower wrapped in canvas than my own goods rotted in that shed! I’ve lost more coin to damp than I ever lost to a Spaniard, and at least a Spaniard has the decency to rob you straight to your face!"
She folded her arms and stood there daring anybody to laugh.
A weathered man pushed forward next. The morning’s catch still clung to him so strongly that the men nearby took half a step back without appearing to notice they’d done it.
"Amos Kettle."
He introduced himself, as though the smell hadn’t already made his trade obvious to most of the hall. "Fisherman, nothin’ grander than that. Good chunk of what I haul goes green in the sun by noon, on account of there’s nowhere fit to lay it out before the flies get there first."
He raised both hands, weathered things scarred by old hooks and older rope. "I’ve sold mackerel out of me hat before now. Ye’d be surprised how little a hat holds, and how much worse it smells afterward."
That got a roar from the crowd, and Amos waited it out, a man who’d told the joke often enough to know when it had landed and when to carry on.
He said when the laughter stopped. "Give me a square and a scale, and that’s coin in my pocket ’stead of feedin’ the bloody gulls."
The laughter had hardly begun to die when a voice rose from near the traders, thick with a Frenchman’s accent and carrying clear across the hall. "Oui, oui, and ’ow you say, a warehouse zat does not leak! Mon Dieu, I ’ave lost more sugar to zis island’s rain zan I ever lost to ze bloody English. And believe me, m’sieur, I ’ave lost plenty to ze English!"
Near the back some French folk applauded outright, and the Frenchman bowed to them as if he’d been invited to take the stage.
Then Bonnet stepped forward.
He waited patiently, and before long every eye in the hall was on him. "I feel I ought to confess, before I say further, that I’ve distinguished myself chiefly by nearly wrecking my sloop before I ever learned to command her."
He let the little ripple of laughter pass and seemed entirely at home in it. "Trade and hospitality, however, are matters I understand considerably better. I was raised to precisely that business, before the sea saw fit to claim me for work considerably less respectable."
He clasped his hands behind his back, looking every inch the gentleman despite standing among a crowd that smelled of fish, sawdust, and hard work. "Consider, if you will, what a stranger observes the moment his ship reaches our bay. He might find wharves waiting to receive him, a customs house that deals with him fairly, one hand and one due, so no stranger walks away robbed."
His voice dropped, though the certainty in it did not. "If we wish to stay hidden, then there is very use for a stranger that will not exist. Yet if we wish to attract prosperity, we ought to build a harbor capable to support our ambition."
James watched it all with plain and sheer interest.
The various different ways of saying it, and every one of them had managed to sing the tune without rehearsing together. A case put together that neatly deserved a moment of silence before he spoiled it by calling for the next one.
"Right then."
He straightened on the platform.
"The harbor’s had its say, and it’ll stand for the vote. That’s one road properly heard."
He looked across the crowd.
"Whoever wants to speak for the marsh or the forge, you’ve got the floor. Let’s hear it."
Fenwick immediately shouldered his way forward, sun-browned and plain in his broadcloth.
James raised an eyebrow at the speed of it.
"Bloody hell, that’s considerably quicker than the last lot managed."
A few laughs answered him, but Fenwick didn’t slow his stride enough to acknowledge them.
James nodded him up all the same.
"Floor’s yours, Fenwick."