Kage Baker - Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key

“You’d best go below,” he said, turning away from her and looking out at the lights of Tortuga. “I won’t tell a soul what you done. You mustn’t do it anymore, mind. Not as long as we’re aboard this craft.”

“You have my most fervent gratitude, Mr. James,” said Mrs. Waverly, rising and adjusting her garments, which had become a little disheveled in their embrace. She wished him a pleasant goodnight and went below.

JOHN WOKE WITH THE sun in his eyes and the awareness of having heard a loud crash. He leaped up and fell sprawling from his hammock. The crash came again; something was striking the hull, amid a great deal of drunken laughter. He scrambled to his feet and went to look over the side.

One of the boats had come back from town. Mr. Tudeley lay unconscious in the bottom and Sam Anslow sprawled back on the oars, so their blade ends rose dripping from the sparkling sea. Sejanus was attempting to jump for a bit of knotted rope that hung down from the rail. As John watched, he caught it and pulled himself up, giggling.

“Good morning, sir!” he declared. “How was your delightful conjugal evening?” He fell over the rail.

“Hope yours is as nice,” said John, feeling mean. “If you ever get a woman to marry you. What the hell happened to him ?” He jerked his thumb downward at Mr. Tudeley. His question provoked a fit of fresh laughter from Sejanus, and Anslow sat there snickering too.

“Oh, that’s quite a story,” said Sejanus, getting to his hands and knees. “Yes sir, that’s what you’d call one of those epic stories. Where to begin. Where should we begin? How would you say we ought to begin, Mr. Anslow, sir?”

Mr. Anslow made a gurgling noise in reply.

“Well, sir,” said Sejanus, pulling himself up on his knees via the rail. “Well. Little Mr. Tudeleley, or Winty as he asked us to call him—short for Winthrop , don’t you know? He had this rotten tooth. We went ashore, he said, ‘Oh, please, for the love of Jesus let us find a barber-surgeon to draw my tooth, before we do aught else’. So we were agreeable—weren’t we agreeable, Mr. Anslow, sir?”

“Was,” said Anslow.

“We searched high, we searched low, but no place could we find us a barber-surgeon,” Sejanus continued. “So I said we ought to go drink some rum, as it might take the edge off Winty’s toothache. And first he said he couldn’t possibly, and then he said he really couldn’t, and then he said, ‘Oh, well, if you fellows are having some too I suppose a dram wouldn’t hurt’. So we went to a little rum-shop and we set about drinking.

“By and by, this other fellow noticed Winty’s groaning and swishing rum around on his tooth, and he asked what was the matter with him. We replied for Winty, didn’t we, Mr. Anslow?”

“We did,” said Anslow.

“And this man said, he said, ‘Monsieur, I shall be happy to draw your tooth, in return for a drink.’ I asked him was he a barber-surgeon and he said no, he was a blacksmith. Same thing really. And before Winty could do more than scream, Mr. Blacksmith had Winty’s head under his arm and a pair of pliers out. Luckily—” Sejanus rose, with infinite care, to his feet and stood there swaying. “ Luckily , one of us thought to stop him before he pulled out a tooth at random, and told Winty to point out the rotten one. Was it you thought to stop him, Mr. Anslow?”

“Naw,” said Anslow.

“Why then, it must have been me. And, crack! Out came that tooth, and Winty was on his hands and knees on the floor spitting blood. So we picked him up and told him he was a brave hero. We bought rum for him, and the jolly blacksmith too. Little Winty liked the rum so well after that, he had another, and still another. By and by he said, ‘Let’s go roistering, my lads!’

“I said to him, I said, ‘Define roistering for me, Winty, my man’ and he replied with a word that is not generally used in polite company. And as I recall Mr. Anslow said—what was it you said, Mr. Anslow?”

“Hell yes,” said Anslow.

“And we asked Brother Blacksmith if he knew where there was an establishment properly fitted up for the purpose Winty had in mind. Brother Blacksmith said ‘Why, yes, indeed, I do know of such a place!’ So we went there. We bought a bottle of rum to take with us, just in case there wasn’t any where we were going.

“But it turned out the ladies kept a fine cellar full of good drink. Which was fortunate. I will draw the veil of discretion over what we did there, sir, but Winty astonished everyone by his fortitude. We could scarcely believe it, could we, Mr. Anslow?”

“Could have knocked me over with a feather,” said Anslow.

“Even if we hadn’t had those two other bottles,” said Sejanus. “The ladies begged us to take him away, at last. They were exhausted by his company. They had to send out to the house down the lane for reinforcements. So we loaded Winty on a chair and carried him back. And here he is.”

“You forgot the part about the tattoo,” said Anslow.

“Bless me, so I did.” Sejanus hiccupped. “Well. What do you think? Shall we pass a bight of rope around him, and haul him aboard?”

“We’d better,” said John grimly.

So they brought Mr. Tudeley over the side. He never woke once during the process, so boneless that John and Sejanus had to carry him down to his cabin between them. Then Anslow fell into the sea while attempting to climb aboard, and they had to lower the rope and pull him out too.

“Rig a bosun’s chair for the lady,” he said, when he had come over the rail at last and lay there with a pool of seawater spreading around him.

“What lady?” asked John.

“One in the boat,” said Anslow. “Sejanus’s girl.”

“There’s no girl in the boat.”

“Is so,” said Mr. Anslow, and belched. “Pretty little neeg-a-ress. Powerful taken with him, she is. Come along with us in the boat.”

“Well, she ain’t there now,” said John. Sejanus, who had stretched out in a triangle of shade and gone peacefully to sleep, was unavailable for comment.

“Awwww,” said Anslow. He rolled on his side and went to sleep too.

All the ill-gotten gains of the cruise were unloaded over the next day or two, into flat-bottomed boats rowed out by M. Delahaye and his servants. Most men spent their share of the profits quickly, on rum and roistering (though Mr. Tudeley went no more ashore; his hoarse scream on discovering his tattoo had awakened half the ship). John prudently stowed his share, which amounted to about three pounds, in the bottom of his sea-chest. He still entertained ideas of quitting the life piratical and taking up his trade like an honest man, whatever Mrs. Waverly might say.

He did go so far as to venture ashore for an afternoon, and walk the lanes where he had once lost a fortune in a night, in days gone by. He tried to imagine himself setting up shop there. He even went into one or two grog shops, and looked around at their sandy floors to calculate how many bricks it’d take to do the common room. He tried to interest the landlords in making improvements to the premises, but they shrugged and shook their heads.

In the end he went back aboard the Harmony . He helped load the new stores aboard her, and did such an excellent and methodical job of stacking them, Captain Reynald appointed him Ship’s Purser thereafter.

They stayed a month in that place, till all the money was spent. Then they hoisted sails and moved out, in search of more loot.

Mrs. Waverly did not resume her place in John’s cabin, but kept to her own henceforth; and there was a lot of muttered talk about that, though more people were sympathetic to John than otherwise.