Chapter 201: Plan B Was Always Bribery

The Grand Dame waited beyond the harbor with her sails half-furled, watching to see whether her captain could conduct the day’s business without being arrested before she had to put her hull into British docks.

Ten men went by ship’s boat.

James and Cudjoe sat amidships, Kwaku occupied the stern with his chain coiled loose over one knee, and Tomás and the other sailors pulled at the oars.

Some stevedore shouted down from the pilings, quick and easy in Spanish.

"To the mooring post, not the ring!"

Six of the ten men looked at one another like fish that had just discovered the hook.

James reply without a flicker of concern. "On it boss!"

The stevedore nodded, satisfied, and went back to his work.

Once they climbed onto the planking, James let out a short breath.

"Aye, well. I hadn’t expected the flag to carry us all the way."

"Ye didn’t expect it, or ye didn’t plan for it?" Cudjoe snorted.

"Both, if I’m honest. Which is why there’s a plan B."

"And what’s plan B, Captain?"

"Same as it always is. Good ole bribery."

James pulled his hat low over his brow, then worked a length of cloth up over his nose and mouth to keep the wharf’s considerable stink from killing him outright.

As he did, he reflected that a coat named [Discretion] was a poor disguise indeed if a hat and a rag had to do all the work.

"Right, then."

When he tried his voice again, it came out softer, the edges rounded and the vowels bent toward some place he had never visited.

"Sure and it’s a grand mornin’ for honest men doin’ honest business, so it is."

Cudjoe stared at him.

"That’s nae Irish."

"It bloody is."

"There it is again."

Cudjoe’s eyebrow rose. "That’s a Scotsman pretending to be an Englishman pretending to be Irish, and none o’ the three could pass the test."

James cleared his throat and tried again.

"It’ll do."

"It willnae."

"It’ll do," James repeated in the same voice.

He squared his shoulders. "Captain Rory Flynn, at yer service. Late of nowhere much, and here on entirely forthright business."

The disguise done, the group found the man they wanted in a low shed near the head of the wharf.

He was small and round, sitting behind a table buried beneath papers.

There was far too much arrogance in his voice than expected. "Not one bit moves off my wharf, nor onto it, without my hand on the paper first. Wharfinger’s word is law from the high-water mark clear to the Crown’s warehouse door, and I’ll thank whatever captain you are to remember that."

"Captain Rory Flynn."

James greeted, offering a hand and a grin.

"And a fine, well-run wharf it is too, sir. Could see that from the water."

Grubb’s little eyes went from James’s face to his hand, then from the hand to the pocket behind it, where he had already decided some coin ought to be waiting.

"Flynn."

He considered the name, as if checking whether there was money hidden inside it.

"And what business brings an Irish captain into Port Royal, Captain Flynn?"

His eye wandered past James’s shoulder and through the open shed door. The Grand Dame waited beyond the reef, her Spanish colors hanging plain enough for any man with decent eyesight to read.

"... with some Spanish flag."

He spoke slowly now. "That’s a Spanish flag flying off my harbor, and here stands an Irish captain asking for my good favor, with a runaway slave at his elbow besides."

The real answer nearly slipped out of James before he caught it and shoved it back into what Captain Flynn might plausibly say.

"Sure, and that’s a heavy charge to lay at an honest captain’s door, so it is."

Cudjoe’s mouth twitched.

Grubb had stopped listening to them. "The Fifteen’s not a year cold. Spain’s court wept for the pretender loud enough for all Europe to hear it, and now there’s a Spanish galleon crewed by an Irishman sitting bold as brass outside my harbor."

He muttered, his voice climbing with every word. "I’ll wager there’s gold aboard her, bound for some cause I’d rather not name in my own shed, and I’ll wager twice over that I’m expected to look the other way while it’s landed."

Neither man standing before him saw any advantage in correcting him.

James let him talk.

Every new piece of the conspiracy made it more dangerous for Grubb to repeat it beyond the shed, and he saw no reason to stop a man who was doing such good work to convince himself to keep quiet.

Cudjoe let him carry on for a while longer, then cut in, dry as old rope. "Aye, well, if that’s what ye’ve managed to discover all by yerself, I’d wager it’s worth a good deal more than whatever ye were plannin’ to charge us for tying up a boat."

Grubb’s expression changed multiple times.

Then it went right back to doing sums.

Kwaku had not spoken once. He stood by the door, turning his chain slowly through one hand, watching Grubb with eerie calmness.

"Thirty pound," Grubb started. "For my silence, mind ye. Nothing more."

"Twenty," James haggled, still speaking in Flynn’s voice.

"Twenty-five, and not a shillin’ less, now that I know what I know."

Kwaku spoke for the first time since entering the shed. "I have broken larger men than you over smaller disagreements, Mister Grubb. I slept well after every one of them."

Grubb’s mouth opened and closed without finding a word for some time.

"Twenty," he said at last. "And I’ll forget I ever saw any of ye."

James counted the money into his hand without blinking. Twenty pounds meant little to a man who had ransacked an entire trade fleet.

Grubb bit hard on the top coin, turned it in the light, and apparently found the result pleasing.

"Well now."

Every scrap of bluster had vanished from him.

What replaced it was almost friendliness. "Well now, Captain Flynn, I’ll say this for ye. Ye’re a good gentleman, and I’ll not breathe a word of it to a livin’ soul. Not the naval officer, not the searcher, nor even my own wife."

Behind them, beyond the harbor, the Grand Dame had already begun coming toward the wharf.

Her canvas came down from the yards one sail at a time.

Outside the shed, James clapped Cudjoe once on the shoulder.

The moment the door shut behind them, his real voice returned as easily as if Flynn had never existed. "Right. You’ll hold the dock and mind her in, as always. I’m takin’ a few fools up Thames Street to see what this city’s den of sins has got that’s worth signin’."

"Am I to believe this is how ye’ll recruit new blood?"

James laughed. "Aye. This isn’t Nassau, Cudjoe. Can’t stand on the quay here and shout for volunteers, got to do it discreetly in loud rooms."

"And who’s coming with ye?" Cudjoe asked.

"I am." Kwaku immediately interjected.

James looked at him.

Kwaku’s chain slipped back around his wrist. "It has been nearly a fortnight since I last struck a man who properly deserved it, Captain. I have begun to miss the exercise."

"Fair enough, come on, then."

James looked over both their shoulders toward the Grand Dame, now close enough that they could make out faces along her rail.

"Right, then. Who else."

He considered the choices aloud. "Mary’d do well enough in a room full of rough men. Bonnet’d charm them to agree with any ridiculous recruitment. Jim’s no use to anybody sober, and he’s never sober past noon, so that works either way."

He was going to need a second boat just for the fools he already wanted.