Chapter 265: The Doors Are Listening

The lamp stood at the table, steady as a binnacle light, and caught Tib from below.

She was in her middle twenties, pale from too many weeks underground while a dusting of freckles crossed her snub nose beneath hazel eyes and above a sharp chin. Her brows frowned by habit, and her brown hair had been shoved behind one ear.

The coarse linen of her shirt had been washed soft as old canvas, laced low and rolled to the elbow over wiry forearms. With her arms folded, the thin cloth drew taut across a bust that sat high and pert, the lamp finding its form through the weave, while some belt cinched her narrow waist over the breeches taken in at the hip.

James stood because there was no second chair. He weighed every word carefully, his hat against his chest and hands plainly visible, blood dried dark across his split right knuckles.

"Tib, then."

He let the name sit. "I’m told me tongue’s wrought more ruin in this town than me sword, and God knows the sword’s had its holidays. So I’ll be brief, and you may cut me off the moment I start to wander."

Thin broth, with little to no rations for few dozen souls in a wine cellar.

Get them off the rock, then. Concordia had beds and bread, fenced plots, a market, and a schoolhouse full of children mangling the alphabet. The Runts lay there, ready to extract these people out Nassau and into their considerable more secure rock.

He drew breath. "There’s a way off this rock, for any soul that wants it. Couple days away with a fair wind, to a place with food, honest work, school for the wee ones, and not a soul starved nor beaten. She’s a town, mind, all a town’s troubles, but they’re ours, and they’re free."

Tib’s lips twisted and the words came out slow and ripe with it. "Pirates promise the moon, yer worship. Whole moon, on a plate, with parsley, then the bill comes up with the tide, and there’s a knife lyin’ next to it."

Anne spoke from beside the cot, plain and flat. "Things are safe there, Tib. No hand lands on a woman unasked, and the one that tries finds out why it were a poor notion. Meg keeps the house, and the girls laugh now. Laugh, Tib, out loud, I’d not say it if it weren’t so."

Then it returned to James to reinforce the argument. "Aye, Meg’d tell you the same, lass, and with a deal more salt on it, and so would every woman who sailed. If you want, name the few you’d trust and I’ll bring ’em to this very table to prove it."

Tib leaned over the lamp, and her folded arms came undone. About bodies and silver she understood, and masters she understood better still, so she squinted at him now like a pawnbroker over a ring over in search of the flaw.

Her voice cracked dry like old rope. "And who’s the king of this paradise, then? And what’s it cost a soul to get a bed? Don’t tell me it’s free, there’s no fool who only gives for nothin’, not even the Almighty."

The question pleased James, and it showed. "No king but the sea, lass, that’s the whole beauty of it. ’Tis the Assembly, where every soul of age gets a voice and a vote, women among ’em, and loud ones. As for the price of the bed, simply work, and your name or your mark on the stone inside a week."

Whatever sharpened Tib’s voice lowered into a tone far more low, and far more dangerous.

"Why’s a pirate care? Not how it’s done, I mean. Why you, why here, why us."

James spoke it with all the plainness of sincerity. "Concordia wants hands, I’ll not deny it. But I climbed down here tonight and I saw this all, lass, and now I can’t unsee a thing like that. There’s a reckonin’ comin’ for Nassau, and me name’s fetched it early, aye, although it’d have come regardless."

Tib’s chin came up a fraction. "Don’t bullshit me, Scourge. Some pirate don’t go down a well in the dark for hands and a good deed. So what’s the rest?"

James set his hat on the table and spread both hands.

"The English are comin’ to take Nassau, Tib, and they’ll manage it."

He leaned his weight upon the table, no nearer and yet closer. "When they come, I want every door in this town watchin’ them. Which ships, and how many. Who commands, and what he buys. Where they sleep, and what the officers let slip when the drink’s got the reins."

He kept his face as grave as a bishop. "Think on it, now. The laundress counts the shirts and knows whose they are, while some tapster hears what an officer says over his tankard, and a fool of an Englishmen says everythin’.

By then, a rueful gleam moved behind his eyes. "A chandler knows what supplies a ship’s drawn, and so what voyage she’s bound on, while the fisherman sees the sail afore God does. Word runs door to door in this town already, all I’m askin’ is that a trickle of it runs my way."

Tib’s chair scraped back, loud as a gunport in the hush, and she came around the table with a finger levelled like a boarding pike.

Her voice never rose above a hiss "Eyes, he calls ’em. Say it plain, yer worship, spyin’. And spies go to the gallows. I’ll not send some poor laundress to dance at the end of a rope on account of a bastard bright notion."

She wheeled on the wall and paced back, three strides each way like a tiger in a menagerie, the breeches drawing snug across her hips with every turn.

Each word came out hot enough to scorch. "And maybe the English are better than the likes of you, have ye thought of that? The girls can stand afore a magistrate, and no pirate ever offered me that, not even as a joke."

It took considerable effort for her to keep her voice low. "And what about the girls as keep the officers’ company, eh? That what you mean? Send ’em off to English beds with their ears open and a spy’s wage in their stockin’?"

James took the fury head-on. When he answered, the theatre had gone out of his voice, and what remained was even, and for once, wholly unadorned. "No, lass. Hear me. The girls should help however they want, and I’d cut out me own tongue afore I asked a girl to do more on my account. If it turns dangerous, I’ll tell you plain, and you may stop, the whole lot of ye, that very hour. Them those who go to Concordia owe me nothin’."

He continued, like a duelist saluting a clean thrust before delivering the next. "And you may be right, mind. The English may well treat the doors kinder than the pirate lot. Better, maybe, and shite all the same. I’d wager me boots every soul in this basement ran from the isles, be due the beadle, the parish, the bailiff, the indenture, the press, the Bridewell. The English’ll carry the lot of it back ashore with them, lass, and redcoats to see it enforced."

That was plenty enough for Tib to stop her outburst and drop into her chair like her strings had been cut short. Her voice came a great deal more tired.

"I’ll think on it, and I promise ye nothin’, not a blessed thing."

The question came sideways, quick and casual, like the last card palmed from a sleeve.

"How long’s that ship of yours lyin’ at the pier?"

"A couple of days, regardless."

"Then Dan’ll find ye when its time."

She jabbed a finger toward the arch. "Step soft goin’ out. The little kids have been told pirates eat naughty children, and I’d as soon they weren’t proved right by a giant."

James took his hat from the table and put it on his head.

As he ducked beneath the arch, the glow lay steady over the fresh mark. Anne leaned against the wall, and beyond the sailcloth the children breathed on.