Chapter 12 #2
He was restless, though. Restless and wanting.
Vitaliy had hardly been present to put forward such a thing in either case. Today was the first day that he had spent longer than an hour aboard the pirate flagship. Tonight would be Vitya’s first night spent aboard. Their first night, sharing this greatcabin as sworn mates.
Everard was absolutely not nervous.
He picked up the quill, dipped it, and made one tick more upon the lengthy list before him.
First nights were new to Everard; administration of ships was not.
His mind didn’t need written lists, but it liked them, and a captain’s requirement of documentation was drilled into him.
Vitaliy didn’t mind him making them as long as he burned them after.
Three-quarters of the way down, Everard made another tick with some trepidation, clearing his throat. This, unfortunately, he had to bring to Vitaliy’s attention.
“René sent her Jack to us at breakfast. Galveztown port authority let out a corsario en route to Florida last night, with two dozen Black and one dozen Indigenous slaves aboard. Unpapered. Of course, she carries a Mexican marque.”
Vitaliy’s lips pressed thin.
A marque was a privateering ship’s official papers, allowing her to act under authority of the issuing country—sometimes in violence.
That a ship carried a marque from any rebelling Spanish colony, as Everard understood it, meant that even with the anti-slave trade laws being what they were, neither American nor British ships would seize her due to neutrality agreements; nor could they pay other privateers to do so.
It was taken advantage of by many, Varfolomey’s contemporaries most of all. Jean Lafitte in particular.
“She is sure it was to Florida?” Vitaliy said.
Everard reached for the stack of papers adjacent to his left elbow. “The letter reads—”
Vitaliy waved off his ignorance with a flop of knitting. “The states are selling ‘stolen’ slaves back to their rescuers, at half-price, with good title. They’re en route to New Orleans,” he said firmly. “Afterwards they will go to Spanish Florida, slaves and fresh titles in hand.”
Profit yet to be made. Everard frowned. The tick mark he’d scratched beside R. René’s Letter stood out brutishly, ink slowly darkening as he stared at it.
“That’s horrid.”
“That is capitalism.”
They shared a grim look.
“Will you try to catch her?”
Vitaliy shook his head. “I don’t take slavers outright. It is too dangerous for the souls aboard. But… what was her name again, the corsair?”
Everard double-checked, mostly for show; he had the feeling Vitaliy thought his memory was mere conceit, instead of the fatiguing burden it was. “Anemone.”
Vitaliy stood and stretched, arms high. “Forget the rest of the list,” he said, “it will wait, and Milly will meet us at Ha?ti. Are you hungry?” he asked abruptly.
Everard replied he was not, gracias.
“You’ve eaten? No one saw you at dinner mess.”
Keeping watch on him in his absence, was he?
“Earlier,” Everard said. “At lunch bells, I believe.”
Vitaliy looked taken aback. “It’s…” He groped for a pocket watch, and Everard had a small thrill, recognising the gilt thing. “Half-nine?”
“Yes.” Everard frowned. He wiped the quill, set it down, and self-consciously stacked the list onto the pile of papers to be burned.
The watch bells rang every half hour, and yet Vitaliy had lost track of them?
“I’m sorry,” he said stiffly. “If I had known you were staying aboard tonight, then I would have requested something be brought up.”
Vitaliy’s expression flattened; he seemed irritated. But when he replaced the pocket watch with a one-armed shrug, the expression melted away.
“No, don’t bother Rob,” he said, meaning the ship’s cook. He walked to the sleeping alcove. “Do you sleep to right or left?”
Everard slept in the centre like any single, average-sized man would. Was Vitaliy taking the subject where he thought he was? He looked over.
The hanging cot which Everard had been occupying the past week, alone—Vitaliy’s cot, at his insistence—was not average-sized. It seemed to be a custom model, wide enough to accommodate the man’s size. Wide enough for two.
Now Everard noticed that thoughtful Thom had acquired another pillow; it sat neatly beside. He felt his face turn crimson.
“I… don’t,” he said uncertainly.
Vitaliy gave him a sidelong look beneath his lashes. “You do not sleep either?” He began to pull his shirt from his breeches. “To which side does the lieutenant shove you, when in he sneaks?”
His true accent, slipping through; Vitaliy was more tired than he let on.
“He— I— To neither side,” Everard said indignantly. He looked politely away, down to the desk, and found his hand clutching the edge of it, like his straight, tensed arm alone kept him back, kept him seated there. “D’Arcy does nothing of the sort. Sneaking.”
Vitaliy hummed. “Fine, too. Though I do not think it will fit three.” He paused. “It may. I’ve never tried.”
Three…? Face still hot, Everard peeked over once more.
Vitaliy was down to drawers now, and not much else. Socks, too, the madman.
“I don’t wake for much,” Vitaliy said, “but I do object to… hummm, elbows meet ribs.” He pushed aside the mosquito netting and clambered in, fell onto his back; the cot swayed, silent, with the force of it.
He threw an arm over his head, large and bare and blond-fuzzed.
His hair spread across the pillow like a fan.
Everard stared, suspended, bewildered.
Ought he join him? Sleep in the armchair? Find a hammock belowdecks? That last was not very mate-like, at least to crew eyes.
“And cold feet,” Vitaliy breathed, already half-asleep. “I object those.”
“Er,” Everard began, “d’you wish that I… sleep… um…?”
“Oh, no. You can sleep where you like.” Vitaliy roused slightly, and squished himself, broad shoulders and all, further into the side of the cot closest to the wall. It swung more with the movement but didn’t creak. “Only, please you will keep in mind?” he murmured.
Everard supposed he had his answer. One of them, anyway.
“Cold feet,” he replied, and cleared his throat. “No, of course not.”
Vitaliy smiled, and fell immediately to sleep.
Everard woke first. It was still raining, a light tapping on the deck four feet above his left ear. The sun wasn’t yet up, not that it mattered; once awoken, he would stay that way.
Beside him, Vitaliy seemed as though he would stay asleep.
The slow sway of the cot had pushed them together in the night, and his warm naked back was practically stuck to Everard’s front, both of them sheened with sweat.
Last night’s air had been the muggiest Everard had experienced yet in the Gulf.
He hoped it would only improve. He missed the crisp snap of early Canadian fall.
And snow. He missed snow, after all. The first occasion that he and Vitaliy had slept beside one another, in the fur trader’s cabin three years past, sharing warmth had been a necessity, a delight. Not a consequence.
Best not think of those memories now, pressed up against so much of the man as he was.
Everard slowly unglued himself, groaning, and rolled onto his back. He bent his right leg to keep Vitaliy from falling into him; for other reasons, too. A hank of olive-oil-soap–smelling blond stuck to his cheek. He hooked it gently free.
I don’t wake for much, Vitaliy had said. That had been the truth.
Above them, the rain spattered louder against the deck: one of those rolling rains that sometimes preceded a hard gale.
It meant Everard really ought to get up.
Morning storms at sea were the most dangerous, as no one could see what manner of clouds had come towards them in the dark.
But as a floating base, practically a village unto itself, the Sévère was already hove to, far enough from shore and sheets backed to let her go whatever unsteered way she would in the Gulf.
He should still get up, but Vitaliy was breathing deep next to him, the cot swayed comfortingly with the roll of the ship, and he didn’t even have a particular need for the head; so he was unusually tempted to fall back to sleep.
Everard compromised. He put an arm behind the pillow, took a minute to think.
He didn’t know why he was there.
He knew his own motivation towards saying yes to such a ludicrous arrangement—extreme curiosity, loneliness, novelty, sheer lack of option—and knew Vitaliy’s given one: his reputation.
But he didn’t have an idea why Vitaliy had not only given Everard charge of a three-deck Santa Ana–class but had also signed the necessary papers to make Everard his legal inheritor to her.
Nor why he had shrugged away the potential appearance of another lover, then made room like Everard belonged beside him regardless.
On the one hand, it seemed monumental; on the other, it seemed like nothing. It was either a lot of baseless trust or very little care. Everard wanted to entertain neither option.
The wind was in fact picking up, and crests were buffeting the ship irregularly now, so high that Everard could hear them slapping even there within the stern.
The cot swayed more and more on its ropes.
The whole ship heaved, bow up, and the desk chair scraped across the floor an inch or two: a telltale sound that would have woken Everard in a moment had he not already been alert and listening.
Vitaliy, however, was dead to the world.
Everard raised up on elbows, mindful of the low mosquito net, and looked over. Vitaliy’s sleeping profile, barely visible in the dark, was as beautiful as ever.
He whispered, “Vee?” and raised a hand to nudge—
Sitting up had been a mistake. A sudden lurch turned gravity sideways, and sent Vitaliy’s bulk flopping back as the cot swung, sent Everard bodily into him. “Oof.”
Vitaliy began to grumble and stir, hands reaching, groping—
“Sorry,” Everard said, “hang on—we’ve heeled a bit, it’ll come round—”