Chapter 15
Fifteen
By lunch mess, they’d sailed clear of both Jean Lafitte’s territorial waters and the loop current, and were making three knots southeast past Havana.
There were no storms nor sail on the horizon.
D’Arcy was by now back to his usual self, but that might have been that the Sévère’s cook—Rob Appleby—had made good with the fresh rations, having taken the influx as an excuse to slaughter a quantity of the ship’s cocks, “for space.” The result was an exceptional spiced capón a la barbacoa with sauce, and fluffy rice and potatoes, fresh and unbored by bichos.
They’d taken on Louis-Michel Alarie and his pretty face in one of the teniente’s cabins, since he shared their ultimate destination of Ha?ti. The Birch—which had a necessary Spanish marque—had left their convoy outside Havana, leaving the Sévère to give the slaver port a wide berth.
To Everard’s dismay, Romilly René still did not join her but stayed on, apparently essential.
Selfishly, Everard wished that she had gone, but no; there she sat beside Vitaliy, her long, ruthlessly clean nails digging into fowl flesh and pushing it daintily into a rouge-stained mouth.
While Alarie ate in the greatcabin parlour, as befitted His Governorship, Vee never took his meals there, but seemingly at random hours with the crew mess.
By chance, they’d all ended up together today, awkwardly ignoring each other from opposite ends of the table.
Messes upon the Sévère were organised thusly: everyone ate in shifts, either in the second-deck teniente’s parlour, with its long table and row of windows, or in the regular mess, where the proximity to the galley was preferable for a hot meal—except, of course, at the height of Caribbean summer, when nowhere without a through-breeze was preferable.
It was nearly like being a midshipman again, except that the rations were vastly better. The company, too.
D’Arcy hadn’t been telling the full truth when he talked of crew hierarchy.
The crew sorted themselves into shift watches, messes, and ingroups as persons were wont to do; there was a gang of Welshmen all the others kept warily clear of, reminding Everard of Aedd from the coffeehouse.
But quite like nearly every person aboard knowing their way around a cannon, jobs and responsibilities were unspecialised, and no one was held higher than another.
Food rations were portioned as equally as could be managed.
Above all, Everard realised, the main difference was choice.
No one had been wrangled from the docks with ropey sailors’ arms and shoved into a dirty, sloshy underbelly hold.
They’d chosen—even if it had been that choice, between the devil and the deep blue sea, or between the sea and slavery—and would get a fair share for at least four months’ term.
Early on, he’d asked Vitaliy what portion of his crew was plucked from enemy prizes, and the offhand number had shocked him: almost no one had been forced over the years.
Unofficially, of course, because forced men could be tried as reluctant criminals instead of wholehearted deserters.
But although there were a bare handful they’d picked up from storm wrecks—and true, most preferred solid land after surviving a wreck—most of Varfolomey’s pirates were hired in much the same way as on a merchantman, only with terms far more appealing, and that it came with a higher risk of death.
Of runaways and plunderers and exiles, Vee had first pick.
That, he thought, was probably enough for Jean Lafitte to hate his rival on its own.
Lacking old newsprint gossip as research, Everard asked D’Arcy what of the Sévère’s reputation with prized crew. He chuckled, said, “Of those ships he’s boarded? Probably few enough persons left in shape to force, if I’m being honest.”
It meant no mercy. No survivors. V. Varfolomey didn’t play games; he was deadly serious.
D’Arcy watched his expression, snorted, and said gently, “He’s not a hunter, Ev. If anything short of a man-o’-war’s stupid enough to take on a pirate meregildo with a fleet behind her, they deserve it.”
Everard had some thoughts on that, most of them disagreeing.
He watched Vitaliy give a quiet half-smile to something Romilly René said. At the moment, his lips were more starkly outlined than usual, bloodred from the heat of the spice rub Everard could still feel on his own tongue.
Vitaliy looked up, first all around the dining room in a quick sweep, and then directly to Everard, like he’d known he’d been watched all along. He murmured to René and stood.
The moment, two moments it took to reach Everard were long ones. Everard looked down to his nearly empty plate. What would he say? What did Vitaliy want? Was everyone else in the mess watching his approach?
D’Arcy was tense beside him. And how many years had Everard, that he himself felt as unsure as a boy?
He looked up just as Vitaliy got near, as he placed a hand on Everard’s shoulder. The tips of two long fingers nudged close to his nape and beating pulse respectively, a featherlight touch. Calculated, almost proprietary affection: he was aware of the audience, too.
Lucky, that in this heat, Everard wasn’t wearing a shirt with more collar—then there were goosepimple chills cascading down his neck, and Vitaliy’s half a smile had slowly become a full one. Everard couldn’t help himself. He smiled right back.
Vitaliy removed his hand and leaned to murmur, “Have you finished? I have something to show you. Will you come?”
D’Arcy coughed obnoxiously. “Oh, bravo, well done.”
Everard said quickly, “Yes, let’s,” and stood.
They exited to knowing mutters and chuckling. The first two-finger whistle that started off a true cacophony was unmistakably D’Arcy’s.
Everard felt somewhat forgiven. Not enough.
Vitaliy shook his head, but he kept his smile.
“I’m assuming that was intentional,” Everard said, when the noise had faded, and they had put some distance behind them, “but not intended for aught. Yes?”
For Vitaliy had led him not to the greatcabin for a sort-of assignation, as everyone undoubtedly had assumed, but down to the orlop to the carpenters’ workshop.
Vitaliy stilled before the door. “Does it bother you, what they think?”
“No,” he lied. But that he’d have preferred it not to have been farce was what bothered him at present. He wasn’t going to say that. “What need do we have of Perran?”
Perran was ship’s carpenter, a solid Cornishman of the best sort of seaman, with a salt-grey beard and arching black brows; he was gruffly friendly to Everard in spite of the deserter’s brand the Navy had burnt into the flesh of his left cheek.
Vitaliy hesitated, hand on the latch. “Nothing of him. It is still in many crates,” he said. “But it is a gift. For you.”
“A gift?” Everard said, stunned. “Whatever for?”
No one had ever gifted him anything, not even a bottle of spirits. Not that he would’ve wanted them to, or that he would’ve kept any said gift in his possession beyond a week; still.
A soft pink flush had returned to Vitaliy’s face. He rubbed the back of his neck, scratched his fingers into the nape of ribbon-bound hair. “I would have said yesterday, but there wasn’t time. I wanted to have it built…” He trailed off. “But as it happens, I am not a patient man.”
“Oh, no?” That wasn’t the impression Everard had got. Not at all.
Vitaliy nodded solemnly. “The sea takes what little I have.”
“That it will do,” Everard said politely. He was eager to get back to the gift. “Er, what is it that’s in many crates?”
Then something in his memory hitched, spun round to the proper place, and he realised—it comes in many crates—
“Oh, you didn’t!” he exclaimed. “Not a bloody printing press?”
“I did,” Vitaliy said, smiling now. He pushed open the door.
Neither Perran nor his apprentices were anywhere to be found—Vitaliy had timed their intrusion well—but taking up most the floorspace was, in fact, a grouping of timber crates.
Vitaliy cleared his throat as Everard goggled at the floor. “You could build it faster than I, anyway.”
“Yes, probably,” Everard said at once. “Well, not by my lonesome. But—good lord, it is a press, isn’t it!”
What was wrong with him? He sounded eager. Delighted, even. Everard didn’t want to own a printing press. They were huge, expensive, required regular maintenance, and he had no place to put it—
Vitaliy nodded. He looked pleased. “Yes, it is.”
“How the devil did you manage this? I was there when you purchased the other! What kind did you…”
A press was a thing, a tangible, beastly piece-of-property thing. But a useful thing. It didn’t merely sit and exist; it produced, produced information and knowledge—
“May I see it?” Everard asked at last.
Vitaliy pulled down the lantern. Flickering light bloomed. “Of course.”
Everard yanked a crowbar from its tiedown on the bench and cracked open the crate most easily reached: which happened to be largest. Nails fell dully onto the floor as he shoved at the top; then Vitaliy came to his assistance, and they lifted it clear.
Everard buried his fingers in straw that smelled sharp and metallic, as though someone had just bled all over it.
“Aha,” he said, and laughed, a little maniacally. “It cannot be.”
“Careful—rats,” Vitaliy murmured. Everard barely heard him. He touched cold, greased cast iron, felt down the rough curve of an arc, squat and bell-shaped.
“It is a Stanhope!” Everard exclaimed. “But so few of these exist this side of the Atlantic…” His right hand traced over letters, revealed them: STANHOPE, INVENIT. And beneath that: № 76.