Chapter 22
Twenty-Two
Perran the carpenter estimated the San Telmo’s repairs would bite two days from their journey, no more. Meanwhile, the Sévère would have to stay close and be tied alongside for ease of transport.
Everard had watched Romilly René’s face carefully as news of this decision was made to her, but nothing showed there—not impatience, not frustration, not anger.
Only mild acceptance and slight concern, as one would expect from the goods and wages distributor for a fleet of pirate ships, who now had to consider the resource sinkhole of another massive man-o’-war—even one with few surviving crew.
Because she’d assured there were vastly fewer mouths to feed, hadn’t she?
Everard, on deck repairing braces he’d helped dismantle, now watched the last keg of the five-eighths-divided rum roll across the amidships gangway to the Sévère and be received into Bellingham St. Clare’s waiting arms. The young man waved, and Everard waved back half-heartedly, swallowing down his jangling nerves.
Where was D’Arcy? If he was too drunk…
Having two ships-of-the-line tied alongside was one of few situations that continued to grate on Everard.
It was in a similar way that his Wanderer been lost, in ’12: her mast had been toppled with shot, her bow spun round as a result, and then she had entangled so thoroughly with the Americans, unable to flee and unable to be repaired, that she’d been obliged to surrender.
Then she’d been fired, sunk to the bottom of the sea.
It was the only sword Everard had ever given up as captain, so of course it was the one he had been court-martialed and made known for.
So, Everard made a few necessary suggestions.
He made sure they offset all six masts apart from one another, in case of listing and collision; long gangways were pushed between the hulls so they wouldn’t scrape.
It would be only two days of cooperation, after all, and there was not a cloud in the sky to threaten a storm.
But now sundown was approaching. Battle fatigue was setting in, and with it, as always, reality and regret. Soon, Everard’s body would make the decision for him, and he’d sleep whether he had something soft beneath—or a somebody beside—him or not.
He turned to Vitaliy: still there aboard the weather deck of the San Telmo, sat down with pen and paper and the nigh-impossible decision of which crew to allocate to their betrayer’s new ship.
“She had better take Perran’s first mate, just to be sure,” Vitya said, “though he won’t thank me.” He stretched, arms splaying wide, and groaned. “Has her cook not been spared? Her doctor?”
René shook her head, and Vitaliy was silent.
Of course not—no quarter. But every one of the others saw it as a victory, a prize, nothing more. They hadn’t seen Vitaliy shake and tremble below.
“She had no doctor,” Stephan put in, standing from his crouch before the line of injured survivors upon the weather-deck—the frightfully small one. He wiped his pale palms clean with a cloth. “From what I saw. Mess of a surgery, let me tell you.”
“Mmm.” Vitaliy tapped fingers on his thigh. “No captain, no doctor, no master. And she was meant to have come from Spain?”
“Did she come from Florida, perhaps?” Everard suggested.
Vitaliy nodded. “Florida… or Louisiana. She could have taken the Loop and doubled back.”
“But no gens de couleur among them.” Stephan gestured to his patients. “White men all.”
This, too, seemed an entirely intentional doing, and lent to Everard’s theory that the person who had orchestrated this knew Vitaliy all too well.
It was partly why Vitaliy had spent so long in the shrouds, silent and observant against the San Telmo: to confirm she had no slaves, no coerced men of color fighting for Lafitte for him to defeat, to kill.
For that was how Vitaliy viewed what they had done in battle that day: murder.
Everard privately agreed. But then he had never attempted to place justice or righteousness onto such a thing. He had only seen it for what it was, which was death; for him, the presence of means or motivation made no difference upon the scales. It was still, strictly, killing.
Murder aside, it had been a necessary distinction for the Sévère to make in all her engagements.
Any slave labor, any hint of human transport seen through Varfolomey’s glass, pirate or no, and the Sévère, Vitaliy had explained, would turn away from her prey, from confrontation.
Slavers would rather force souls overboard than be overcome and taken in by hunters.
The time between hailing a ship and raising the black was too vast, and the window for rescue towards a drowning person too small—that is, if they were offered the chance of the water at all.
Heard of third-hand, at the distance of Upper Canada, this practice had horrified Everard. Had been horrified by the lengths of depravity that profit would drive humanity to. The lengths of cruelty. He’d wondered how any slavers were apprehended at all.
As a result of these horrors—which Vitaliy resolutely would not say whether he’d experienced firsthand—the Sévère’s ripples were political and financial instead of literal, her violence second-hand rather than direct, her aid channeled and veiled in secrecy. It was a tightrope line.
And someone—someone there, on this weather deck, beside them—had exploited that fact, exploited Vitaliy’s care to their own gain. Had brought the conflict to him; had pushed him forward and not held out a hand.
René fiddled with the pen, glanced Everard’s way. “That is all officers accounted for, Vee. Who shall be leading her to Ha?ti?” she asked. “After all, we swim in capitaines.” She grinned and winked. “Too bad they are Navy.”
Everard looked away, too exhausted to even pretend to appreciate her false, friendly manner.
There to his right, Louis-Michel Alarie leaned against the larboard braces, pulling a swig from a bottle of brandy.
Damn him, too, for being a distracting, conspicuous donkey.
He had got himself a sabre slash across the face—exactly parallel to the wide jaw—which although beginning to swell and pinken along the edges, turned his features appealingly rakish. It would make a handsome scar.
“Swimming in Navy,” Alarie agreed, with a touch of irony and an unselfconscious nod to Everard.
His firm lips curved around the bottle’s rim, and Everard considered asking for a pull himself, even if drink would hasten his trajectory towards a pillow.
“But that makes us lucky, see. Bolívar, too, is asking after paid English, Irish, German, for his cause in Amérique du Sud. And they are only mercenaries, infantry such as these crétins.” He toed at the body of a dead, towheaded man who awaited only to be sewn up in a hammock.
Then, noting Everard’s glare, he drew back his boot, sheepish. “Not, hmm, experienced sailors.”
Everard shifted to face the Sévère, as Alarie was suddenly unbearable too. D’Arcy was still nowhere to be seen on the deck.
Where is he?
“I will take her,” Vitaliy said softly.
Everard turned round as Alarie rocked forward and exclaimed, “Pardon?”
René, too, squawked with indignation. There was no anger there, however: only surprise, disbelief.
“Do not be ridiculous, mon frère,” Alarie began, “she has barely a skeleton crew—”
“Port-au-Prince may not even receive her,” René said.
“I will write ahead to Pétion,” Vitaliy said calmly, meaning the president of Ha?ti.
Alarie tried again. “I had thought ourselves of an agreement, Vee!”
What agreement? Everard wondered. Vitaliy waved sharply, cutting at the air.
“The Sévère is untouched. Nothing has changed.”
Alarie scowled, straight brows contorting. “You cannot leave her again. Your men will be adrift. They expect you to lead so? You are their king!”
René cleared her throat. “We are taking the San Telmo into the fleet, Vee?” She bit her lip. “I am unsure for the resources…”
Of course she wasn’t sure. It had never been her intention to stay with the fleet, but to break out with her own command—
“For a little while,” Vitaliy confirmed. “After the junta, I will take her on the Gulf Stream and put out to sell her somewhere in the States. Charleston. New Bern. New York. We will not need too much.”
Silence. No reaction from either party, or Stephan, who had busied himself in sewing one of his dead patients into their hammock.
“Then who will take the Sévère in your stead, Vee?” René asked, twirling the feather pen once more. The matelot? she left thankfully unsaid.
Dark-blue eyes moved from where they’d been watching the weather deck to Everard’s own. Vitaliy’s face was otherwise impassive, but his chin rose slightly.
Everard blinked in surprise. He knew that look. That look had begun the whole thing.
Take it. Take what I’ve offered.
Everard raised a brow. Really?
Vitaliy’s expression was somber and steady. He nodded once. Another gift. A ship this time—truly.
Everard’s heart leapt as he considered it—as he seriously considered it.
He knew Vitaliy wanted someone he could trust to lead his beautiful flagship, someone he knew without a doubt hadn’t tried to orchestrate this very end. Everard fit those requirements. And traditionally, it was what was done between matelots who prized together.
More ironclad than tradition: the rights of the matelot were written already into their articles, their word of law; if Vitaliy was absent, Everard could stand in his place for a time. None of the crew would question his appointment, ex-Navy or no.
They could spur an election, of course, but it probably wouldn’t come to that in such a short timeframe.
Everard’s leadership had never sparked mutiny before.
And it wasn’t as though he hadn’t fought for the pirates with his own hands; he’d received many an indigo-banded shove and handshake after the battle.
He was well on his way to earning as much of the crew’s respect as he’d ever had as a Navy captain, if not more.
Blackhand could become something more than a taunt. Something more than a comma-bracketed designation attached to V. Varfolomey. Anderson de Anglada could become more than a struck-through name in a black book.
It was possible. It would work. It was a sensible, natural decision.
But…
Taking the Sévère would mean putting a pause—if not a potential total end, if things went sideways—to what had just begun again between them. Everard quite liked what had begun again. Furthermore, he wanted whatever it was to be more than just property and trade and sex and battle.
He wanted... partnership. Companionship. Trust. Maybe something else, too. Rainy nights in the doublewide cot. Sunsets in the shrouds. To see the colorwork appear on the pair of socks Vitaliy had just cast on, for he suspected they might be meant for him. What use was ambition, compared to that?
And in the end, one Spanish man-o’-war, a captaincy, was quite alike another. He’d had captaincies. There was only one Vitaliy Gray.
Everard brushed bits of rope flax from his hands and stood. “Yes, who shall take her? I haven’t been to the States in some years.” He paused, mostly to give everyone, particularly Alarie, time to politely conceal any disbelief. “And never port Charleston. I’ve heard it is beautiful there.”
The line of Vitaliy’s shoulders relaxed. His chin dipped, and his heavy-lidded eyes softened around the edges. And that look—sheer, settled-in fondness—that look was new, and delightful.
“Besides,” Everard added, with a good-natured grimace, “built-in though it may be, we know already the captain’s cot doesn’t harbour fleas.”
Stephan snorted. Romilly René laughed. Alarie raised a perfect eyebrow.
Vitaliy had two bright spots of flush on his cheeks—flush that crinkled and rose as he smiled.
It faded too quickly.
There was a sudden agitation on the Sévère’s weather deck.
A small, tightly knotted crowd had gathered, men’s voices alternating angry and hushing each other.
Everard craned to look: the epicenter was the weather-deck hatch, through which one Bellingham St. Clare came pushing through, bellowing they let him pass.
Everard’s throat closed painfully, his heart beating in hard pulses. Vitaliy stood and yelled, and the crowd let up marginally; St. Clare was able to haul up and dash across the gangway.
He was visibly distressed, panting hard as he crossed the rail.
“St. Clare?” Everard said. He put out a hand. His question of earlier became urgent, a mantra, but he couldn’t seem to voice it aloud.
Where is D’Arcy?
St. Clare skidded straight past him, coming to a stop before Vitaliy. He whispered.
Vitaliy listened. He looked up, stricken, to Everard, quickly over to the surgeon—oh, God, that meant something bad had gone on, something violent—and back to Everard. His expression was more cautious the second time around. Wary.
Everard knew then. It was heavy in his gut. He shook his head, disbelieving, and managed nothing more than a gasping croak of enquiry:
“No?”
Not Preston.
Louis-Michel Alarie stood. “What’s happened? Mon ami Vee? There was a fight? An attack?”
Vitaliy nodded reluctantly. He said, “The lieutenant.”