Chapter 249: Monsieur Misère
James stepped onto Concordia’s stone pier with [Verdict] at his hip, [Counterargument] at his chest, and [Discretion] heavy across his shoulders. The sun climbed hard over the bay.
Cudjoe came down after him only to take the trouble for himself. "I’ll see tae the frigate an’ make sure His Majesty’s finest dinnae start weepin’ over the indignity o’ their chains, while ye stroll off wi’ yer grand airs tae play chairman."
"Och, better yourself than me, mate."
James clapped him once on the shoulder. "Try not to string the poor bastard up afore supper, aye? I’d hate to have you ruin the evening afore we’ve even sat down."
"Aye, look at ye, captain, mercy itself, with a heart o’ gold. Saint James, near enough."
"So I’ve been told."
Cudjoe peeled off toward the frigate, bellowing for hands. James let him go, then turned into the crush of his own dock.
Cargo went both ways across the planking, sacks, casks, and bales being exchanged faster than his eyes could accompany them.
The market square appeared beyond the last of the sheds with stalls stood three deep, Spanish plates beside French cloth and English tool-iron. The customs house stood thirty yards away with its doors thrown wide.
James figured this was the most sincere sort of thievery a pirate republic could hope to build.
"Calloway! Ho, Captain Calloway! There he be!"
"El Azote!"
"There he is!"
"Captain!"
By then his name had made rounds across the market, hollered until it started a ragged cheer. El Azote himself come home to see how his plunder was being commercialized.
James returned the enthusiasm without breaking stride. He had been around enough to get used to his reputation, for better or for worse.
While so, a shadow came alongside, keeping pace with him, a rolled survey clutched to a narrow chest like it was his only child.
"Capitaine... at last."
The word came out thin and put-upon, dragged up from near despair. "Three days, Capitaine. Three entire days I have waited for your ship to crawl into port, whilst my labor workers have spent every one of them discovering new and inventive ways to misunderstand a plumb line. I tell them, ’Make it straight,’ and they look at me as if I have asked them to construct the moon."
James turned and found Auguste Vallon exactly as sour as expected. Narrow through the shoulders, dressed for a continent considerably cooler than this one, and looking at Concordia as though the entire town had been built to ruin his day.
"Monsieur Misère! There he is."
James spread both arms wide.
"Missed you too, mate. And look at that, you’re still standin’. Good sign."
"I have informed your crew eleven times, Capitaine. Eleven. Each time, with the utmost clarity, that I do not wish to be called that."
"Aye, and eleven times it has been ignored. I’d say the matter’s decided quite thoroughly."
Vallon’s lips twitched around what never quite became a word.
Then he unrolled the survey in the middle of the street and jabbed a finger at its lines.
"Capitaine, despite this murderous heat, I have accomplished this much."
He shut his eyes as though the memory alone hurt. "And then there is the stone, Mon Dieu. I specify the gabions, I explain precisely what I require, and they bring me baskets fit for catching fish. I ask for a glacis, and they point to a hill where some drunken goat has apparently made the decision the slope is good enough."
"Can’t fault the beast’s judgement, mate. Sounds a fine goat to me."
"That goat is a disgrace to the very principles of engineering. I beg you, do not encourage him."
Vallon’s voice climbed a full note. "Besides that, there is one mason, one single mason, who has cut an embrasure four inches out of true. I point out the error, and do you know what this genius tells me? The tide is responsible!"
"Who else would you blame for a crooked wall?"
"It seems the entire Atlantic rises each night, precisely on his orders, just to ruin my measurements."
James laughed outright and let him finish the performance.
"Hell, mate, that’s a damn sight straighter than most masons manage when they’re sober."
He let that sit for a moment, the humor leaving his voice to a more serious whisper. "But here’s where the joke ends, mate. There’s a commodore out there by the name of Falcombe, out for our heads. So I need that wall of yours raised before the bastard comes knockin’."
Vallon exhaled deeply.
For one breath, the whole annoyance disappeared from his face.
"How much time do I have, Capitaine?"
"All I can tell you is it’ll be sooner than either of us would care for."
Resolve came in harder into Vallon’s face, as if he refused to let military authority, be it a British commodore or a French marshal, to ever decide his fate again.
He rolled the survey back up, cautious now rather than furious.
"Impossible has never stopped me, Capitaine."
"Now that’s the spirit, mate. Knew I could count on ye."
Vallon muttered in his own tongue what felt very little like gratitude, then headed toward the headland at a walk, carrying considerably more purpose than he’d had when he arrived.
James continued his merry way through the town, through streets here and there, till he was past the schoolhouse, its shutters thrown open.
From the building came the ragged chorus of children learning the alphabet with more enthusiasm than accuracy. Beneath it, a knot of grown sailors hunched over slates and learning numbers with reluctance.
A boy no older than ten corrected a bosun thrice his age on a column of figures, and the bosun took it with wounded dignity as if he had been shot.
The teacher, a broad middle-aged woman with chalk dust up elbows, caught James lingering at the window. She shot him a look that it wasn’t above rattling his fingers with a wooden ruler.
"Was there anything you needed, captain?"
"Nay, just takin’ in the view. Carry on."
"Make sure you do the same."
James laughed and kept walking.
He’d spent more than a few hours writing down every scrap of knowledge he had bought, knowing exactly what it was meant for. Seeing it put to use now, in a schoolhouse full of children and grown men alike, made all those hours feel well spent.
Farther along, a short queue waited outside the Assembly Hall, mostly newcomers, watching Hobbs move his way down the line with a lancet and a covered dish.
He scratched a bit of the pox into each bared arm before the poor soul in front could think better of it.
James clapped the poor bastard’s arm as he passed, shot him a grin that was no comfort at all, and kept climbing. The street rose toward the ridge, and from higher ground the whole of Concordia appeared below him.
Close-built buildings stood where scattered huts had once leaned, and forge smoke hung steady over the workshop district. Nearly two thousand souls were living lives that would never have existed without one hidden bay and a stubborn refusal to leave it alone.
He let the clear, absurd fact of it sink in.
The cove built to hide pirates had become a city with its own customs house, its own schoolhouse, and its own plan for keeping the pox off newborn babes.
If this was what burden cost a man, he reckoned he’d pay it twice before handing so much as a scrap of it back.
The pale stone estate waited at the top of the path, both his house and the loose alliance of pirates headquarters.
James climbed the last stretch with satisfaction. He looked back once over Concordia from his front step, then pushed the door open.
It swung shut behind him on the noise of a town he still could hardly believe was built by him.