Chapter 15 #2
“Aided by thee,” Everard whispered, “O Art sublime! Our race spurns the opposing bonds of time and space.” He shoved straw to and fro, revealing more and more black iron.
“With Fame’s swift flight to hold an equal course, and taste the stream from Reason’s purest source…
” She was immaculate, not a speck of rust on her.
“Vice and her hydra sons, thy powers can bind, and cast in Virtue’s mould the plastic mind. ”
“Hydra sons of vice.” Vitaliy had a smile in his voice. “I have met one or two, maybe.”
Everard looked up and grinned. “Printer’s Grammar, 1808. There’s a print of a Stanhope as frontispiece. The poem is McCreery—pray do not ask me to recite it in entirety; it’s thirty-some pages.”
“I won’t.” Vitaliy’s eyes glowed in the lanternlight. “Though it reminds me of another… do you know it? ‘On the Freedom of the Press’?”
Everard sat back on haunches, crowbar over his knee, and thought for a moment. “Offhand… I need a visual callback, an image, a page, a pamphlet… Who wrote it?”
“Franklin; the Almanack. No need,” Vitaliy said quickly, as Everard opened his mouth in sudden recall, “I know it.” And he recited:
The Press from her fecundous Womb
Brought forth the Arts of Greece and Rome;
Her Offspring, skill’d in Logic War,
Truth’s Banner wav’d in open Air;
The Monster Superstition fled,
And hid in Shades her Gorgon Head;
And lawless Pow’r, the long kept Field,
By Reason quell’d, was forc’d to yield.”
Everard knew he’d never, so long as he lived, forget this moment.
While it wasn’t exactly remarkable for him to remember a moment—especially words read or recited—he’d never seen anyone do it quite as eloquently or as…
beautifully. Vitaliy had a deep, soft voice, and they weren’t even in theatre, but a dusty, unexpectedly resonant woodshop in the heart of a pirate ship.
Everard cleared his throat. “That one is very like, now you mention. A bit less abstract. Ah—and a rather longer piece, for Franklin, isn’t it?
” He stood, put his hands on his hips, and stared down at the new press so that he wouldn’t stare at Vitaliy, make the man feel awkward. “You’re quite familiar, then?”
Vitaliy made a small, amused noise. The quiet subtlety of it emphasised just how close he stood, not that Everard wasn’t very, very aware—
“Not as well as you, perhaps. Philadelphia was my boyhood home,” Vitaliy said. “And my mother, political.”
“Ah.”
“Yes.”
“And yet ‘It comes in many crates’?”
Vitaliy shrugged. “You are pleased?”
“Of course,” Everard said hastily. “It’s wonderful. Thank you. It’s just I’ve never owned such a thing before.” Or anything. “And—where are we to put it?”
Vitaliy drew back. “Put it?”
“You said you’d wanted it built… Where had you in mind?” Inspiration struck. A floating castle… “Aboard the ship? Oh—the greatcabin? The parlour? Large enough, surely. Gad, but do you think it might need some sort of gimbal?”
There was a long pause before Vitaliy replied, slowly, “Built… at whichever destination you chose.”
An equally long pause, as Everard’s pleased, sea-sparkle feeling faded, in favor of confusion. “Destination?” he asked. “Is there one in mind?”
In his mind, he hadn’t much thought beyond the load and unload in Ha?ti. If he had, he might have imagined a perpetual loop of the Indies, doing pirate things like hunting Spanish men-o’-war and Portuguese merchantmen, endless sun and sail.
Vitaliy, too, had two deep lines of confusion between his brows. He looked uncomfortable. “Wherever you like. We will meet with the Vuelte—she will go on to Philadelphia. Enemistad will call in Boston…”
He trailed off. Everard was silent.
“I have a house there,” Vitaliy said abruptly. “Philadelphia. Which is now yours, legally. Two stories, brick-built, in town… I don’t have slaves—if you stay ashore, the Crown is unlikely to reach you—”
“I don’t want…” Everard’s reaction was visceral, gut-borne. Nausea. Not only did Everard generally not do well with long stretches on land, but… a house? Property?
“It would be simple to convert it to a printshop... hire help… You would be well needed,” Vitaliy finished. “Necessary, in fact. You could be wealthy, not even including what I will send you.”
At a loss, Everard stooped to retrieve the nails he’d scattered. He shouldn’t have been so hasty, should have counted and bagged them. The carpenter would not thank him for leaving them.
Needed. Necessary. Kept, kept, kept.
With anger-fueled strength, he heaved the crate cover back over the Stanhope, one-handed, before Vitaliy could attempt assistance. Everard could not, however, accurately hold a nail with his left thumb and knuckles—nor switch hands and grip the hammer well enough to pound straight.
He stood there for a moment, with the nails in two useless palms.
“I don’t want a house,” Everard said. “Or a printshop. Or”—he made a face—“wealth. I’ve already a ship—half a ship…” He trailed off, as Vitaliy looked mildly horrified. “Yes? Or was I completely mistaken?”
“No,” Vitaliy said quickly. “Yes, I mean… no. The Sévère is… I don’t own her.
We don’t,” he corrected. “The crew owns her, piecemeal. They decide her leadership. But I would have too much stake in it if I were her owner. No crew would agree to keep me as her captain if I did, not when half are joiners late off greedy merchantman. I thought you knew this. Would know this.”
You should know better.
Everard truly didn’t know anything at all, did he?
He placed the nails atop the crate, a neat little pile of iron. He faced Vitaliy, who was stoic but for a hint of wariness.
“Then I thank you. But this”—Everard swallowed down more anger—“press is not a gift. It’s employment.”
Vitaliy stepped forward. “It is—”
“Would you oblige me to print whatever I liked, or only certain truths? Advertisements? Cartoons?”
“I would not control—”
“And what else might be included in this shore arrangement?” Everard whispered harshly. “Hmm? Shall I be shoved over to one side of the bed upon every instance of your being at port? A shore wife?”
Vitaliy sucked his pink, spice-swollen lower lip beneath the other, let it go even redder. His eyes had narrowed. “That is not what I had in mind, but your disdain is showing quite clear.”
“Oh, indeed? Perhaps you had need of one? It won’t be me.”
Now Vitaliy’s eyes widened. “You demean women—”
“I’m not demeaning nothing, sir—”
“Your tone alone—”
“I am simply declining your offer. Because first and foremost, I am a sea man—”
“I know,” Vitaliy growled.
“I was a captain—”
“Please let me speak!” Vitaliy’s voice rose.
Everard winced. Resonant, indeed; and it was a small space. Chastened, he shut his mouth.
Vitaliy breathed, cursed viciously in Russian, pulled his hands through his hair, and said softer: “I’m sorry. I should not yell. But I cannot think whole thought with you biting from every word, and also you speak quickly, it is very difficult.”
Everard counted two, three heartbeats before he responded.
“I’m sorry. Truly. I didn’t realise. Don’t apologise for yelling; I’ll have been yelled at plenty, you know. Navy man.” He wasn’t sure anyone had ever apologised for it before. “And with considerable less cause and… desperation.” He paused again. “Perdóname. What were you to say?”
Vitaliy took a deep breath. “The press is a gift. It trails no strings. You can print what you like, where you like; here, on board ship; it is your machine. I thought you would like to become printer. I thought the house convenient, as it stands empty. I didn’t mean to imply that sort of sexual arrangement without asking, not that it would be bad thing for either.
And…” He looked up to the ceiling. “What else? Yes.” He met Everard’s eyes.
“I did not think you would ever want be truly pirate, so I found solution for you. Or not solution; alternative, option. Options are good. But I see now I should’ve asked. ”
Everard sat on the crate, waited ten heartbeats this time, just to take all of it in properly.
“You do know your way around a lack of articles, you Russian.”
Vitaliy blinked down. He hadn’t refreshed the kohl pencil since the storm—Everard suspected he didn’t know how heartbeat-inducing it made him look, or he’d have done it for Alarie—and his lashes were so blond as to be nonexistent. It was charming.
Then he laughed, and sat beside Everard on the crate, crossing his boots at ankles. “Only when not trying,” Vitaliy admitted. “Between Russian father, Quaker mother, and trader French, it is a wonder I am understandable at all.”
“Don’t forget Jackspeak. Which was your first?” Everard felt he already knew.
“It was Russian. Seal-hunter’s Russian. Mostly curses.”
Everard laughed. “Curses are first to come. Ask any child.”
“But I didn’t speak until I was yea tall, on fishing boat with my father, so that is why.” Vitaliy gestured, perhaps three feet high. “Otherwise, it would have been my mother’s plain speech. Although English comes better than all the rest, so mayhap it still was.”
Everard understood then. “Your mother was a shore wife?”
“Is,” Vitaliy corrected, then frowned. “Isn’t. She lives still. But she and my father never wed, and she certainly never waited ashore for his return.”
Everard wondered if that also meant he hadn’t returned at all. It wasn’t the sort of thing one asked.
“I have the utmost respect for shore wives,” he said, “wed or not. I do. I merely don’t wish to resemble one.”
Vitaliy’s mouth quirked. “Nor have need of one?”
“God, no. Wish I could have had, some days, but no. Not built that way, I suppose.” With his thumb, Everard began to arrange the nails beside him into formation.
After a moment, he said, “You thought I wouldn’t want to stay upon Sévère as a pirate?
After everything? I should think I have the qualifications.
A suitable epithet, ready-made,” he jested, waving the gloved hand.
“A handful of capital offences. An infamous pirate of a spouse.” He looked up. “Don’t I?”