Chapter 250: Home, Such As It Is
James stopped in the middle of his own courtyard and, once again, failed to quite believe the place belonged to him.
There was stone tile under his boots, a basin in the center fed from the cistern, and citrus trees standing around it in tubs, too young to deserve the name of grove. Two wings spread off in different directions, one north toward the residency where he actually lived, one west toward whatever trouble the pirates alliance managed to leave behind.
An entire township figured this house should exist and raised it in one dry season, with Spaniards responsible for the architecture. It was a strange thing to come home to for him, who had spent enough years at sea to regard a roof as only borrowed for a while.
Along the courtyard hung the only decoration James had ever put there himself.
It was a scrap of Spanish flags torn down from San Felipe el Real, tattered but nevertheless a symbol of the blockade. Beneath it hung a Frenchman’s smallsword, taken from Enseigne Corbin’s hand aboard Le Faucon after the duel he still remembered from first blood to the end.
Between those two rested an old ship’s lantern. Its brass had gone green as an old coin, and James had hauled it up from the wreck of the Falmouth the same week he’d found stranger things inside a drowned commodore’s chest.
Three naval battles, near enough, were hanging on that wall like a butcher’s trophies, and James was perfectly satisfied with the collection. He had never been much for decoration, but a courtyard ought to have enough mementos worth looking at.
He left the west wing to its darkness and turned north.
The housekeeper, Agnes, met him just inside the gallery door, the heavy ring of keys at her belt. She was a Scottish woman in the full maturity of her years, broad-hipped and curvy, with a fine face weathered only slightly by the Caribbean heat.
Dark hair streaked here and there with silver, pinned neatly beneath her linen cap, and there was an assurance in how she managed the household.
Her eyes went from his boots to his face, lingered there for a moment, then dropped back to the mud. "Look at ye. Come home lookin’ half-starved, and I’ll wager ye’ve been livin’ on whatever could be thrown in a pot."
She caught him by the elbow and turned him toward the dining room before he could get a word in.
"Only so. Enzo’s kept me fed like a lord, when he wasn’t trying to kill me with his cooking."
"God save us. It’s a wonder ye’ve enough strength left to walk through the door."
She had come to Concordia by the very reason that seemed to bring half of its population eventually, due a husband lost first to a Darien venture that never paid a shilling, then to a fever before their winter in the Indies was over.
That left her with two daughters, no trade of her own, and a captain who spent weeks at sea, leaving a house much too large to leave unattended.
James had heard that story from enough faces around this sea that it no longer surprised him.
By then, Agnes had pushed him into the room and returned to her daily work.
She called over her shoulder. "Cecily’s seein’ to yer supper already, and Poll’s likely eaten half of it in her head by now. Ye’ll have both o’ them on ye before ye’ve one boot off."
As expected, Cecily came around the corner a moment later carrying an armful of linen. She was a small, bright-faced Scottish girl of about fourteen, with brown hair escaping in wisps from beneath her cap and a scattering of freckles across her cheeks.
With a quick and shy smile, she dipped close enough to a curtsy down and had his supper seen to immediately. "Fresh fish for ye tonight, Captain, if ye can bear to wait on Poll. But there’s salted ready now, and I’ve known ye long enough to know which one’ll be sittin’ before ye first."
"The salt’ll do me fine, lass. I’ll not have ye waitin’ on me."
"Aye, I knew my captain would."
She was gone toward the kitchen then, in the way things usually seemed to work in this household.
Not much after, Poll came around the same corner at a run, a wiry Scottish girl of twelve with a round, freckled face and brown hair that had long since escaped whatever attempt had been made to keep it tied back. Her sleeves were rolled to the elbows and one stocking had slipped loose around her knee, but she seemed entirely unconcerned by either.
She skidded the last few feet over the tile with both arms thrown wide. "Captain! Is it true? The dock’s sayin’ ye took a frigate clean out from under the enemy, and put the King’s soldiers to flight with their teeth rattlin’ in their heads!"
"Och, every glorious word, lass, or near enough."
"How big was she, then, Captain?"
James held his hands apart to show the width of the whole room, then widened them another good deal besides, spinning her a tale with considerably more of Mackerel Jim’s school of storytelling than strict fact.
He did it for the pleasure of watching her eyes grow round as shillings.
Once he asked for food and drink as well, she tore off after her sister at a dead run, shouting that she meant to fetch it first even if it killed her. This was probably the reward for lying to children, and James had no complaint about receiving it.
He let them to it, crossed the gallery and went to his room.
The bedroom contained more space than he had a reasonable use for. There was a four-poster hung with netting fine enough to keep out every insect the Caribbean had ever thought worth breeding, jalousie shutters thrown open to catch the breeze and French cloth covered the bed.
He shrugged [Discretion] off across the foot of the bed, unbuckled [Verdict], and laid both beside [Counterargument], as casually as putting down an argument he had already won.
Once, James had slept standing up in a hammock built for a smaller man. Now he owned a bed wide enough to hold a full watch in comfort, and he still couldn’t decide whether that was a promotion or a new form of punishment.
Although, truth be told, he hardly slept alone.
Anne was still down at the docks and Milagros was somewhere between here and Havana on Esperanza’s account, welcome the instant she came through the door and never quite expected until she arrived.
James had learned not to ask the sea when it intended to return what it had taken.
He brought a cup out onto the balcony, forged at Concordia’s new works and still rough enough at the welds to catch a careless sleeve.
Cecily had left a jug there, a dark, heavy Jamaican rum he had kept for himself from the very Kingston convoy he’d nearly bled his whole crew dry taking. The liquor had already lived a respectable life before James stole it.
Beside the cup sat a twist of rolled Havana leaf, dark and oily, the sort of tobacco considered a luxury.
He lit one from the lamp, poured himself a drink, and let the whole bay spread below him.
The ships rode easily in the harbor, and beyond the market, some fiddle was doing its best against a crowd that plainly had no intention of helping it.
He had drowned once, and now he stood on his estate balcony, drinking plundered rum and smoking tobacco he’d plundered as well, like some Spanish Don with more silver than brain.
James figured that was a dangerous thought to encourage, so he left it on the balcony, finished his cup, and went back inside. There was no profit to get used to miracles. They became ordinary too quickly, and those were always the ones most likely to be taken away.
Off the bedroom, there was a small chamber with an unspoken luxury. It was a copper bathtub into brick and kept fired low, on Agnes’s standing order, whether James was home to use it or not.
He dipped two fingers into the water and found it warm.
It was the warmth he could have in his old life by turning a spout, and he’d done so without thought. James had since learned that ordinary comforts were often the kind he missed most after going without them.
He scrubbed the dust from his face and the salt from his body, thinking of a night not so long ago when he would have handed over his purse for exactly this. Having it every evening hadn’t worn the shine off it, and he doubted it ever would. There were worse things for him to become spoiled by than hot water.
With that done, he put on a simple linen shirt and breeches and walked through the gallery to the room nearby.
The office had the grandest windows in the whole house, glass instead of shutters. Through them, James could still make out the headland, Vallon’s bastion built on the slope stone by stubborn stone.
One broad desk stood beneath the windows while charts were pinned across the wall, ink and quill laid out and waiting for a hand that had found little reason to use them that day.
Cecily brought the plate and cup in herself. There was salt fish done up stovies-style, yam standing in for the tatties, and a round of bannock baked with cornmeal.
It was Agnes’s idea of home cooking, made from whatever this half of the world was willing to give her, rather than what the other half had once given her.
"Will ye be needin’ anything else, captain?"
"Nay, lass, I’m fine. Much obliged to you."
She dipped her head and pulled the door shut softly behind her.
James was alone again, with his supper, his charts, and enough business to keep three men busy. Some time passed until he set the plate aside half finished and knelt beneath the desk.
He worked loose a catch hidden beneath the lower drawer until it popped with a small, stubborn click. The false bottom lifted free, revealing a length of oiled cloth wrapped tightly around an object no bigger than the palm of his hand.
He unwrapped it with deep, cautious care.
The stone lay black and cold against his skin, a serpent carved around itself. It looked just as it had the day he found it on a drowned commodore’s strongbox. James turned it once in the lamplight and watched the coils catch what little glow remained in the room.
He had told himself, riding home, that he would look at the damned thing again the moment he made it back to Concordia.
Well. Here he was, looking.
He had made it home, and the stone was with him. That was about as much of an answer as expected.
The lamp burned on for a good while yet.