Chapter 21
Twenty-One
After Vitaliy had briefly gone back to the Sévère and returned, down the hatch of the San Telmo they went, into the smoky dim of her second deck.
The Sévère crew had already swept through there, fierce with victory and intent on plunder, and enemy bodies were sprawled to every corner, sliding down to larboard, where the deck was lowest. Several hammocks still hung from their hooks: an extreme dereliction of procedure in Everard’s eyes.
Neither were there signs that the guns had been cast loose, or even attempted.
Everard said, “They didn’t clear it for battle?”
Vitaliy surveyed the deck with narrowed eyes. “I’d thought they wanted to take her intact. But this…”
For a warship to not clear the gundecks for battle… but instead spend the time to build a cheval-de-frise of pikes on deck and slick it… it made no sense.
“Why not surrender, straight off?” Everard said. “Why risk you broadsiding and sinking her, and no defence?”
Vitaliy frowned. He looked troubled. “Someone who thinks they know me well in a fight would have made that gamble.”
“That you wouldn’t sink her unless direly provoked?” Then Everard caught on. “Oh, you, you mean, not Varfolomey.”
Vitaliy nodded again, carefully sidestepping a wrong-way limb. “Me. Someone who knows the man behind the mask.”
The one who counts the souls imprinted upon his own.
“Out of curiosity, how many such someones are there?”
Vitaliy didn’t answer.
“Right,” Everard said. “Well, let’s take her sword before she sinks, shall we?”
In the San Telmo’s greatcabin, there was nobody sitting in wait, but no sword, either.
A handful of hammocks hung from the cabin rafters—further confirmation of a leaderless crew, and little to no preparation for battle—although the captain’s built-in cot to starboard looked rumpled and slept-in, too. Maybe they’d drawn straws.
There on the desk the planned trajectory of the Sévère was plotted on a Gulf map.
“This is absolute madness,” Everard revelled, looking it over. He paged through the scattered, chicken-scratch captain’s log. It revealed nothing in Spanish or English.
To plant false watchmen, pay four score mercenaries to sail a warship, and yet not utilise her properly…
“I simply can’t believe they’ve managed this,” he mumbled. “To rendezvous two warships of the same bloody Navy fleet would be feat enough.”
Vitaliy said, “It is just hunting. With enough foreknowledge, easy enough.”
“It seems they had a lot of that,” Everard said. “But nobody knew of your torpedoes?” he asked, half-hopefully, because it would certainly help narrow the potentials. Not that he wasn’t pretty damn sure who had done this. There’s nobody better at a dead reckon, especially the Sévère’s.
“Not a soul.”
“Damn. But then why fight anyway, once she was holed?”
“They need the ship. They couldn’t have her run.”
“Yes, but to provoke boarding… Varfolomey honors a surrender, doesn’t he?”
Everard didn’t have to ask. He’d heard the crew stories, told to him many times over and sung of at least once, how the Sévère herself had been taken: nary a drop of blood fell as the massive meregildo changed hands, the Spanish captain’s own shirt off his back making the final flying white.
The defeated crew and captain had been left alive in tenders just outside Spanish Florida, to flounder and make their way north.
To maybe even find their own fortunes in America, if they would.
Vitaliy looked over. “Always. If I had a guess…” He jerked his chin back to the second deck, the bodies and blood and viscera sliding down.
“These were mercenaries,” he said, low. “Paid to engage, to hunt. Nothing unusual for Lafitte. But I was thinking it felt like we’d outnumbered them by a larger margin than we should have. ”
Everard cursed. “You think it was slaughter a-purpose?”
A slot-in captain and a replaced crew. Why trouble with mutiny, he supposed, when you could sail off with one’s own man-o’-war and half the loyal crew who had just prized her?
Vitya swallowed, nodded. “And I called for no quarter.”
“But—salted earth,” Everard marvelled. “Who would do such a thing?”
So much callous death, and behind it the would-be captain, taking the San Telmo’s helm at incredible cost. Everard looked back to the hatch, where dust and smoke swirled in the light, falling peacefully in the deadly calm.
“The Sévère—is she in danger? We’re not worried of her being cut free and run, now we’ve been”—he swallowed—“victorious here?”
“No.” Vitaliy shook his head. “No. Milly has her; she’s secure.”
Everard’s heart thumped. How could he broach it, that awful suspicion? That awful knowledge? “I’m not sure… Would not René…? I don’t wish to imply—”
“I know you and Milly do not get along, but that doesn’t mean—”
“Do not get along? She spat on my boot!”
“She’s allowed to dislike you, matelot.” Vitaliy ran a palm over his mouth. “The lieutenant is there,” he added. “If that reassures you more.”
That was true. Everard had wondered what Vitya’d said to D’Arcy to convince him to stay back from the boarding party. But he knew over D’Arcy’s dead body would he let René or anyone take the Sévère and leave Everard behind.
“Does it reassure you?” he asked. “Preston’s being there?”
Vitaliy gave him a serious look that told him his hunch was correct. “I use advantages as I see them, yes.”
Everard bristled. “He isn’t an advantage. Or a tool, or an… an option.” Or a standby. “He’s my— He’s a person—”
“A capable person, who advantageously agreed to do what I asked.”
He thinks D’Arcy capable? Everard thought. Well, and rightly so.
“Excuse me—” Vitaliy swayed suddenly, lurching right.
“Whoa.” Everard groped for an elbow. “What the devil?”
Vitaliy pushed him away and stumbled outside the cabin, into the hold; finding a douse bucket, he knelt, and promptly vomited.
“Er.” Everard ventured out. “Were you hit beneath the belt?” he asked softly, as though this weren’t the reaction of most soldiers, coming down from a fight.
He merely hadn’t expected it from Vitaliy—for some reason—especially not so soon.
Vitaliy spat. “No.” He gagged once, shuddered, picked himself up from hands and knees, and stood with a groan. “I am fine. That has been coming awhile. I am well.”
Everard wasn’t convinced. Vitya stepped back into the San Telmo’s greatcabin and slumped into a chair, his strength seeming somehow lesser. He shook all over.
That was bad. Everard shut the door and bolted it, set down the ship’s log. “Vitya. Now I’ll ask you to tell me seriously: does the battle shock affect you so acutely as a usual circumstance?”
Vitaliy laughed harshly into his palms.
“All right.” Everard crouched and put a hand on his shoulder. “Now I’m really quite worried. We should go back to the ship—”
Vitaliy hunched away. “Do not—please don’t touch…” He shuddered. “No,” he gasped, as Everard drew hastily back. “Wait. In fact do touch. But… more.”
“Er.” Everard blinked. “Surely. What might I do?” Despite his concern, he smiled. “I’m going to need it direct.”
Vitya breathed out slow, but his lips twitched in faint amusement. “Lie upon me,” he said at last. “With all of your weight. Please,” he added.
“Gladly,” Everard agreed. “Let us only return—”
“No! Here.” Vitaliy stood and unbuckled his bandolier, let it slump to the floor. “Now.” He began on the blood-spotted gun belt, hands frantic.
“All right,” Everard said again. “Hang on. Let me. We can take a moment, I’m sure. She won’t sink yet—I can still hear prizing going on.”
“Perran’s mates have come over,” Vitya mumbled. “For the holes.”
“Good.”
He removed Vitaliy’s belt, the herringbone waistcoat, pulled the shirt free from breeches, and, at Vitya’s nod, tugged it off.
The breeches themselves, unfortunately, had to stay.
He maneuvered Vitya backward, until he was knees-back against the built-in, and threw the patchwork quilt across the mattress, praying for no fleas.
Everard laid his pirate down, boots and all.
Prostrate, Vitya shuddered silently, fists tight at his side.
“Just a moment.” Everard went to double-check he’d bolted the door. He even put a chair at angles beneath the brass knob handle. If the San Telmo would sink suddenly, he’d break a window.
Then he did as he was asked. He stripped his own filthy outer layers, nudged between trembling thighs, and spread himself along Vitya’s length.
“You’re not injured anywhere?” he asked, rather belatedly, and felt Vitya shake his head beside him on the pillow.
They lay there, just breathing. Vitya’s breaths were deep and long, the big body rising and falling with an imprecise rhythm not his usual.
Sometimes, the breaths hitched and held.
On one of these, Vitya’s hands came up to Everard’s shoulders, his back, splaying wide, and pulled, as though he could’ve got any closer.
“I’m not the heaviest option,” Everard said apologetically.
Vitya let out the breath, trembly and unsure. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I smell pretty horrific, too.”
Vitya shook his head again. His own scent was sharp and metallic—not from blood but from sweat dried amongst fear and terrible strain. He clutched harder at Everard for a moment, and then with a sigh his arms came fully round Everard’s waist and loosened.
After a quarter hour, his breaths settled, though his body remained tense.
Everard, whose own reaction to battle was a few hours off at least, and who was neither anywhere close to sleep, had in the meantime put one ear alert to the crew’s footsteps up and down the weather deck.
Things were progressing normally, in that someone had pulled up from the San Telmo’s stores of liquor, and singing had begun alongside the goodwill repairs Perran was ordering.
The other ear he’d put to listening to Vitya’s closing throat and halting lungs, as the man attempted to broach speech, again and again, giving it up each time.
Eventually he succeeded: softer than a whisper.
“I called for no quarter.”