Chapter 9
Nine
The coffeehouse looked nothing like a traditional club.
The door opened to the parlour of what appeared to be a modest private residence.
It even had a kind of butler, who stood immediately when Everard walked in, his eyes flashing warning.
He looked Everard up and down and stepped forward, hands casual at his hips—the casualness that betrayed the presence of some kind of weapon.
Definitely not a traditional club.
“That door’s not the one I think you were wanting, sir.”
He was big, white, and, from his accent, Welsh. And when he met the man’s black eyes, something in Everard threw up signal flags. Same?
The man seemed to return that strange recognition without a lick of surprise; he jerked his head in an acknowledging nod. Same.
Nonetheless, when Everard refused to turn round and leave, the man spread his hands and said, “We’re invitation-only, friend, not a penny club. I’m sorry, but I don’t know ya. Owner won’t allow walk-ins.”
“Er…” Everard began, about to explain that he did have an invitation of sorts, or he thought he had—where was Vitaliy?
He appeared at last, shutting the door behind. He slid his hand on the small of Everard’s back, making him jump, and coughed politely. “Hello, Aedd.”
The Welshman’s entire manner changed. He exclaimed “Vee!” and pulled Vitaliy into a fierce, slapping hug. “’Twas said you were for the hulks!”
Vitaliy nodded. “Hanging, too.”
Aedd laughed. “Should’ve known they wouldn’t get ya. Coffee!” he declared. “That’s what you need.” He turned away, beckoning them down a hall, at the end of which stood a door. “Who’s the waistcoat?” he threw over his shoulder.
“’s’James,” Vitaliy said. The stark affection in his voice startled Everard more than the falsehood.
Aedd chuckled. “Ought to be more careful. James here almost saw the end of my knife.”
There was a pause.
Vitaliy said, “James can handle himself.”
The doorman turned and grinned toothily through a black beard. “Only jesting. C’mon.”
Everard snuck glances over to Vitaliy as they walked—he found himself somehow looking down, which was absurd, because he remembered quite well how their respective bodies lined up, and Vitaliy was definitely the taller.
But Vitaliy was hunching somehow, and had combed his hair back severely against his scalp, had queued it into a tight knot at the nape.
In short, he looked different, yet again. What connected the pirate Varfolomey, of Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico fame, to little Kingston, Upper Canada?
The Welshman pushed open the door to reveal a narrow single-file stair, and the familiar noisy clamor and clink of a coffeehouse came down like a wave.
“Good to see you, Vee. Have fun, boys.”
The door shut behind, and they climbed. At the top of the stair, Vitaliy held out his hand. Everard understood; doorman or no doorman, there would be eyes on them as they entered—eyes looking for mirror images, for same. He took the hand with his gloved one.
The staircase opened to an ordinary-extraordinary first-floor coffeehouse, sweltering in the June morning.
Ordinary: a handful of two- and four-top tables on pedestals, some of them occupied, were situated around a centre serve-station.
This was manned by a white woman in a peach-colored dress and bonnet.
To the left of the tables were four intimate wood-panelled booths with hat hooks; on the far wall, three twelve-pane windows overlooked the street and beyond, to the water.
Extraordinary: he and Vitaliy passed muster with no more than a few glances, and then they were ignored. Everard let out his breath.
Vitaliy let go his hand, and Everard went on to the farthest booth: unoccupied but for a bright stream of morning sunshine coming through the window. Vitaliy veered to the serve-station bar in search of a coffeepot. Hopefully a large one.
Through the panes Everard could see the masts and drawn-up sheets of Netley, naturally still in harbour. She probably already had a new captain read to her decks. It felt strange to see her unchanged when so much for Everard had.
Everard reflexively reached for his hat to put on the hook—found no hat—and sat sheepishly on the bench seat that faced the windows. He had the feeling Vitaliy was the sort to like to watch the door, “safe” or no.
“I didn’t know Kingston was a large-enough settlement for such an establishment,” Everard said when the man had returned, cups and coffeepot and newsprint-wrapped pasties in hand.
“And you a Navy man.” Vitaliy sat, glanced round at the sparse occupation. He poured unerringly into both cups. “It was louder during the war, I’ll grant you. Sugar?”
“No, thank you.”
Vitaliy’s eyes crinkled as he lounged back against the panelling, cup in his palm. “Didn’t think so.”
Everard watched the steam rise from his own cup and be lit into opacity by the sunshine. He sniffed appreciatively.
“Oh, good day,” he said, pleased. “That isn’t twice-boiled.”
“No.” Vitaliy sipped, heedless of temperature. “Amélie would have the server’s head.”
Everard marvelled to think that Vitaliy had been in Kingston at some point in the past three years. Long enough a time to know the manager of an invitation-only coffeehouse, one with a custom of men like them. He’d been so close… if Everard had been even a fraction less reserved...
Let’s not fool ourselves, a voice whispered. Uptight, not reserved.
He wondered if D’Arcy knew of the place. If they served alcohol, almost definitely he did.
Vitaliy did like to watch the door. Everard couldn’t blame him. V. Varfolomey, a thousand American dollars on his head; in his shoes, Everard would do the same. In fact, perhaps it was a practice he too ought to take up, now there were officially redcoat patrols out for him.
The problem was that if he let such a paranoia sink in, it would never let him go. Where Vitaliy kept discreet watch with heavy-lidded glances, Everard would sit like someone possessed, fingers under his thighs, staring wide-eyed at the door.
Indeed, best not. He curled his hand around the cup and sipped cautiously.
And then sipped some more. Just-off-a-boil hot, the coffee was certainly not the watery stuff doled out by ship’s mess. It was not even the tea-like replacement served in larger cities. It was true coffee, the rich stuff of his boyhood a stone’s throw from Arabia. He groaned.
Vitaliy asked, “What do you think?”
“I may curse,” Everard admitted. “It’s very good.” He looked up. Vitaliy was smiling.
“Surely, this can’t be the local preference,” Everard marvelled.
“If custom doesn’t like it as-is, they water it.”
Everard bet that they frequently did. As for himself, he was going to be very awake, very soon. “Is this Brazilian? Cuban?” he said, half to himself. He sipped again. “Not Indonesian, thank God.”
Vitaliy leaned forward. He looked intrigued. “Why not Indonesian?”
Everard held up a finger. Well, a gloved thumb. “For one, acidity isn’t right.” He licked his lips. “And I do believe my lips are about to go numb from the stimulant effect.”
Vitaliy’s gaze dropped for a moment, slid back up. He prompted, “For two?”
“For two,” Everard said, “Dutch East India are some ungodly, unprincipled bastards. They’d have a monopoly over coffea arabica given half a chance, and work the enslaved Javanese fingerless doing so. I’m glad this isn’t theirs.” He sipped again. “Well, probably isn’t.”
“It is not.” Vitaliy smiled again, close-lipped. “The Navy man cares for the provenance of coffee?” he challenged.
“I know a bit about trades, commodities, the like—I’ve read Locke as everyone else.” Everard coughed. “Anyway, my father is—was—in business. A tradesman. I told you I was of common stock,” he said, somewhat defensively.
Vitaliy’s eyebrows rose. “Locke, as everyone else.” He took a long drink of coffee. “And the Portuguese, the French, they are exempted their cash crops?”
“Of course not,” Everard huffed. “Look, you—you cannot bring me to a coffeehouse, pour me the stuff, and then reprimand my drinking it. I don’t see you abstaining.”
Vitaliy chuckled. “No.” He pushed the pasties closer to Everard. “Do all Navy men still carry a grudge against the Dutch? I thought that war was before our time.”
Everard unwrapped one and sniffed it: lamb and onion. “Thank you. I’m glad to hear you recognise that fact. In 1780, I was still in skirts. Nothing doing with merchantmen.”
Vitaliy smiled, softer this time. “As was I.”
“I suppose you weren’t always a pirate. No, my grudge against Dutch East India is that they’re slaver bastards.”
Vitaliy raised his cup in mock salud. “So says the moral Englishman.”
Stung, Everard merely said, “One tries.” He lifted the pasty in return salud, took a large bite, and ate in silence. He wasn’t English, not really, but it was hardly worth disseminating the nuances of his complicated citizenship to a pirate.
Then it occurred to him: “Aren’t you, though? English? You were lieutenant-marine…”
“An Englishman?” Vitaliy shook his head. “No. American. Pressed.”
Everard sat back. “American.” He laughed. “Of course you are. You’re the reason we went to war, you know, you lost American boys.” As Everard, too, had been lost—except from Spain.
Vitaliy shrugged. He himself was not partaking in pasty, but tapping his fingers on the tabletop in some kind of chanty rhythm, glancing towards the door at intervals. His cup sat empty. He had not poured himself another.
A suspicion formed, perhaps spurred by the drug or the steadying food. Everard lowered his voice and asked:
“It’s not only weapons you cargo to and fro, then?”
Really, no ship ever carried a single commodity, not if they could help it. But what he wanted to know was simple: was Vitaliy a slaver, like so many pirates were since the laws had gone through?
“No,” Vitaliy replied. “Not only weapons.”
Everard’s stomach twisted.
“You wish to know if I’m a slaver bastard,” Vitaliy said carefully. “Yes?”
Everard nodded.