Chapter 12 #7
“Because I grew on you all.” Raven grinned, picking up a mop, wielding it virtuously over a grease spot in the corner.
Cook grinned back. “Like a wart, you grew on us.”
“Raven,” Merry said carefully, “the whale boat—it was an honest way to earn a living.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you’d ever darted a bad-placed harpoon into a mother bowhead and seen her take an hour to die and her calf left to starve.
Any day I’d rather rob a fat merchant ship.
Insured to the gills, most of them. Ever see a whale that carried insurance?
Whaling ships. Know what you get for supper?
Black liquor and biscuits oiled in blubber. ”
“You young bucks,” growled Cook’s assistant disgustedly.
“Always got something to bilge about. A man ought not to be complainin’ as long’s he’s got biscuit.
Wait once till you’re becalmed! Oncet I was on a little sloop that got caught in the horse latitudes with no wind for more than three months.
Aye, we’d’ve gived our hands for biscuit, oncet all that was left of ourn was powder ’n’ the grubs eatin’ that.
Water was yellow as mare’s teeth, and stinkin’, and we didn’t get more than a cup, rationed, in a day.
We ate the sawdust, and the oxhides from the main yard, and rats was going for half a crown each, if’n the selfish bastards what caught ’em didn’t keep ’em to ’emselves. ”
Catching the revulsion on Merry’s face, he added slyly, “Aye, there’s rats all right on the ships that sail at sea.
Got ’em on the Joke too, same as any other.
Don’t see ’em in the day, but at night they creep out, when yer asleepin’, and stare at you with’n their teeny red eyes, and then they come creee-ping”—he stretched out the word—“up and nibble on the dead flesh o’ yer feet. ”
Merry’s white cheeks turned whiter.
“Nah, Merry, don’t listen to him. Rats’ll only bother you if you take sick and are too weak to—” Seeing that this line of logic was not having a particularly salutary effect on Merry’s blanched countenance, Raven abandoned it with careless finality and, insistently cheerful, switched to, “You’ve been down here long enough breathing smoke. You ought to go aloft and—”
“She won’t go,” said Cook. The boy had been standing over his assistant, frowning at the job the older man was making of rubbing clean the floorboards with a piece of canvas.
“Hey, strike a light, You! Is that clean or is there enough grease left there to lubrify a harem? You’re lazy as Ludlam’s dog that leaned against the wall to bark.
Put some spark in your soap, hey?” He tossed a handful of lye into his assistant’s bucket. “That’ll do it.”
“Aye, and take the skin off me too,” grumbled his assistant. “And turn my fingernails brown and buckled to barn shingles.”
“So, who are you—Beau Brummell? When I set you to scrubbing, it’s the only time yer hands get a good cleaning.
” The boy steered his attention back to Raven.
“Of course she don’t want to go up, loblolly.
Scared of Devon. And you know what a foul humor Cat’s in—not that that departs none from the customary. ”
Raven stared in an appalled way at Merry’s bright eyes and burning cheeks. “Poor little soul! I wish—”
“Don’t wish!” Cook snapped. “Or you’ll wish you hadn’t.
She belongs to Devon, and it’s his business the use he wants to put her to, and there’s an end to it.
” But the gray eyes, resting on Merry, were so much kinder than the voice.
“Tell you what, though; who says she can’t stay down here long as she wants?
” And over his shoulder, “Hey, You! Finished wiping the sideboard yet? Shake a leg, eh? And then go run up the chow rag to let the crew know what’s coming and bring down the biggest wooden kid from the storeroom. ”
In a heavy sea, as many times as not, tall waves shook the ship, and food on its way from the galley to the after-castle was dashed to the decks and fed through the scuppers to the angry ocean.
Today, with light breezes and fair skies, Cook and his assistant could carry off the meal with safe footing.
They were barely out of the door before Raven tossed down his mop, lit the small bowl of his pipe, and established himself comfortably on the table, feet up and against the counter.
Merry began to laugh at the pantomime of sly indolence.
An incautious movement of her hand set a copper pan spinning on its peg, upending an earthenware bowl that showered Merry with sugar.
Cook heard her soft cry and the crack of shattering clay.
He flew back into the galley to find Raven standing over her, looking full of alarm and trying to gently brush sugar grit from her heavy eyelashes.
Crystals caught and sparkled in the curve of her throat and cuddled thirstily down the line of her young breasts.
It was not the kind of thing Cook was likely to look away from quickly, but when he did raise his eyes, he met Raven’s polite but overstimulated brown gaze.
“Well,” he said slowly. “Heaven help us. The girl’s tried to make herself into dessert.”
Descending belowdecks, the brightness and human clatter of the afternoon muffled behind him, Devon paused, his eyes adjusting to the dimmer light.
The hallway air was thick with warm wood musk.
Ship’s smells. They delighted him, like the scents of rich coffee and forest humus at dawn after a thunderstorm.
It was one of the amazing quirks of Morgan’s character that the man could give to his pirate vessel the atmosphere of a home.
Last week Devon had learned of Napoleon’s victories at Craonne and Reims. Again he felt anger at the well-meaning interference that had banned him from Europe, where he wanted to be, and driven him across an ocean to report on a war he opposed to high-placed men in England who had good reason to ignore his recommendations.
Britain’s war with the United States was a fiasco.
The majority of Britain’s great resources were being poured into the death struggle with Napoleon; this stupid secondary conflict with her former colonies wasted men and money.
As for the United States, it had been a piece of bloody-minded arrogance for the war hawks of President Madison’s administration to declare a war when they didn’t have the money to pay for it and, what’s more, had indebtment outstanding from the Revolutionary War.
With customs revenues down due to the tightening blockade the national income last year had been less than ten million dollars; and yet, he wouldn’t be surprised if the United States had run up a debt of more than a hundred million dollars before the war was over.
Yankee politicians were more likely to plunge their country into beggary than they were to raise taxes, accountable as they were at the next polling to a frugal electorate.
It was one of the hazards of democracy. America was borrowing like a bride’s little brother, and it would be interesting to find out who was going to have the verve to pull them from the brink of bankruptcy.
Devon doubted that it would be the Madisonian war hawks.
The conflict between Devon’s country and the fledgling United States was a string of petty incompetencies, and he was not a man who found it easy to tolerate incompetence, particularly in a war. It was the thing that had first drawn him to Morgan. Rand Morgan did things well and with flair.
There were reasons for Devon to be here, doing a job that was beneath his talents and not to his taste.
It gave him a chance to spend time with Morgan and Cat, a boy well worth being made into somebody’s project, especially considering who he was.
Not, thought Devon with a grin, that Cat was any more amenable to being made into somebody’s project than Devon ever had been.
If you show promise too young, there are too many well-wishers eager to force you to realize it.
Little though Cat’s well-wishers might know it, the boy couldn’t be in better hands than Rand Morgan’s.
Morgan never forced potential to perform; he just gave it the opportunity to grow.
What else had brought Devon here? There was an autocratic old woman who would be pleased to have him in England; and Devon had no desire to please her.
And finally, it gave him the chance to pursue his private war against Michael Granville.
In the same theft that had netted Merry, Cat had brought back a set of letters that linked Granville to felony insurance fraud.
In his heart Devon briefly felt the tug of a faint and familiar agony.
One day Michael Granville would pay with utter ruin for the murder he had committed.
The penalty for fraud wasn’t even close to adequate punishment for a man-monster, but it was more than Devon had dared hope for.
Cleverly handled, it might be enough to bring him down.
But it would be months before he could return to London and begin to use the incriminating papers, so he deferred his interest in the matter as neatly and purposefully as he had filed the papers in the locked cabin desk.