Chapter 289: Thank You, Yer Worship

The fish was a black grouper, close to two hundred pounds, with a mouth big enough to swallow a bucket, and four boys with a handcart were needed to drag him up the ridge, the kitchen door having to come off its hinges before they could get the brute inside.

Agnes checked the catch for a full minute, then sent Poll for the cleaver.

She fried the slabs in cornmeal instead of the oatmeal they should have had, served skirlie on the side with yam standing in for tatties, and boiled the head for the family table.

James ate with his elbows on the table and whatever manners he owned forgotten. For three nights the platter returned to the kitchen clean enough to pass for new, though the fish pale eyes watched him through every meal.

The fish also managed to, at last, make the sibyl stop sulking.

The dining room drew her downstairs every evening, where she sat at the table eating with less grace that she normally cared to show. Zephy put away her shells and bells, went about with bare wrists and plain hair, and began walking about town in linen, haggling a fishwife down on a pound of mussels as though she’d been born with a basket on her arm.

Anne remained as fierce as ever and spared not a second thought for the new lodger, as expected from the tigress who gutted redcoats without fuss.

Then the folk from Nassau arrived, and Concordia welcomed them with open arms, just as it had every soul that ever washed up on its shore. Those who knew Meg were shown the way to her establishment, and at noon the next day James went to see them.

The brothel’s shutters stood open to the streets, where a queue of patient men waited with their hats in their hands and no need to explain what they wanted. Beside it, carpenters had raised a pale timber building on scaffolding where the ground had stood empty weeks before, and now sat astride the ridge beam, whistling at the upper windows.

James stopped beside the corner wall, thinking of an east wing he’d once promised himself while lying in a net under the stars, though his own house still had bare plaster where the thing ought to stand. The brothel, meanwhile, had built its new wing without making any promises at all.

Meg stood on the entrance with her list tucked under her arm, tallying heads like a shepherd checking his flock at the gate, while Anne leaned against the doorpost with her arms folded.

Between them stood Tib, wearing a clean linen shirt cut for a larger body, her brown hair shoved behind one ear and her scowl up against at the door like a sentry.

"No one asked me for a bleedin’ coin, nothing!"

Her voice spread clear down the streets. "Loaf shoved in me soon as I’d a foot off the boat, and now there’s some woman with a slate wants my name carved on a rock like I were a dead bishop. I sat up the whole night with the knife under the pillow, listenin’ for the creak of the stairs, and did a single soul so much as bar the door?"

She snapped. "Did they, hell! There’s always a knife lyin’ next to the bill, always, and I’ve been under every bed they put me, and I’ll be damned if I’ve found the bloody thing yet!"

Anne’s gaze slid to the corner wall, lingered on the boots poking out beneath it, then came back to Tib without so much as a twitch. "Ah, sure, that’s a terrible state of affairs altogether, so it is. Go on, darling, tell us the worst of it. How foul was the bread?"

Tib’s lips quivered away at nothing, as if the word were gristle she couldn’t swallow. Twice she opened her mouth and shut it again.

"The bread was... hot."

James clicked his tongue, hid a smile, and stepped out from behind the wall.

Meg’s pencil drew one neat stroke through a name.

"James."

She let the name hang a moment. "You’ve been propping up that wall a full quarter hour, and I do note the poor thing never once asked for your assistance."

Tib blanked, crossed her arms, squared her shoulders, and blushed from her neck to her face.

"James!"

Anne shoved off the doorpost with a grin splitting her face.

"Tib has word she’s fair dyin’ to give you."

Meg’s pencil never twitched, but one corner of her lips did. "She’s been rehearsing it to the washing line since first light, James. And I’m bound to say the line was most deeply moved."

Tib’s chin shot up, though her fingers, the traitors, had already found the hem of her shirt and begun to wring it in embarrassment. "I’ve nothing to say to his worship, and that’s gospel! His worship can keep his flappin’ lugs on his side of that wall, thank very much!"

James put his face into solemnity, though his eyes were dancing a reel. "Och, no bother, lass. But if it’s a blade you’re hopin’ for, I’ve a braw wee dirk in me boot, and you’re welcome to slip it under your pillow and end the huntin’."

By then, Tib had twisted the shirt into a rope.

"I’ll not have yer rotten knife, ye gormless great lump!"

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph, woman, ’tis a handful of words!"

Anne threw both hands in the air.

"Spit it out afore I spit it for ye!"

Tib squeezed her eyes shut, red to the ears, and the hem was wound so tight around her fist that the knuckles gleamed white as bone.

Then it came all at once in a gabbled rush, addressed to the doorstep, as if only the timber could be trusted with it. "Thank ye, yer worship, for the bread, and the roof, and all the rest of it. There, it’s said, and I’ll not say it twice. Breathe a word to a livin’ soul and I’ll find that knife, I will, and it’ll not be under me pillow, I’ll tell you that."

James swept off his hat. "Accepted with honor, lass, and entered in the book! One loaf, one roof, one thank-ye, paid in full and receipted, I’ll have it cut into the stone, right under the rule about the goats."

Tib spun so fast the shirt-rope whipped the air.

She stormed inside, and the door slammed hard enough to make the hinges sing.

"Ye’ll do nothing of the sort, ye grinnin’ great beggar!"

Through the planks came a muffled, seething "...daft, grinnin’, great...", the rest of it lost to the wood.

Anne planted a flat palm against James’s chest with a smile. "Don’t worry love, she’ll scour every pot in that kitchen till they shine like the Pope’s bald head, just to be quits with ye, an’ you pokin’ at her’ll only make the poor creature worse."

She continued off on her fingers, daring him to argue with a single digit. "I’ve the lot of it in hand, easy enough. I know these women and they know me, so I’ll set each one to the work she fancies, and I’ll walk every last one down to the stone inside the week."

Meg tapped the list against her palm and tilted her head toward the pale timber building rising above the streets. "The old house has beds enough for them, regardless if they want to do with the trade. Some of the more... popular girls will move to the new wing, finer rooms for finer gentlemen at finer prices."

James tipped his head back to squint at the carpenters on the scaffolds.

"A luxury wing, is it? Well, bless the sailors souls and purses."

He let his shoulders sink an inch.

"Och, put me down for the first room in the new wing, Meg. I’ll settle the account in gold."

Meg glanced past his shoulder at the long line of men, hats clutched like penitents, and her voice cooled to the temperature of good marble. "You are standing on my doorstep, Chairman, and these gentlemen have been patient since breakfast. I’ll thank you to remove yourself before they mistake you for a new wall."

Anne leaned over him for a wild kiss that left his lips bleeding, and then pushed he away from the entrance. "Away with you, James, and be nosy somewhere else! Sure, it’s the one thing ye’re any good at."

Fair enough.

Out the brothel entrance and down the streets, James heard laughter from the corner.

Under a striped awning stood Enzo, wearing a waistcoat that still held its crease, with a cold clay pipe tucked into the corner of his mouth and a tray of sweets laid out on a clean white cloth before him. Half a dozen courtesans, their bodices loosely laced, crowded around the tray like gulls at a banquet table.

Enzo bowed to each woman in turn and kissed each hand. "Ecco, signorina, lacrime di melassa, tears of molasses, pulled thin as a lover’s patience! And this, madonna mia, croccante all’inferno, burnt sugar for the woman who forgives nothing. And here, pasticcini della regina, with candied peel, for the lady who deserves a crown!"

A woman with brown curls elbowed her way forward, some shillings drowned between her two curvaceous breasts, and waved under his nose like bait on a hook.

"Go on, Enzo, take the coin, love. Nothin’ comes free, an’ we’d know, wouldn’t we, girls?"

Enzo reeled back, hand flying to his chest. "Coin? Coin! Madonna santa, you wound me, signorina! A gentleman gives the sugar to the lady, the lady gives to him a smile, and the account is done! Is finished! Is beautiful!"

"Oi, Enzo! Say ’brittle’! Go on, say it slow, luv, so we can all enjoy it proper!"

Enzo’s mouth twisted around the sound as if chewing a lemon. He drew himself up and flung out a hand, the very picture of wounded dignity. "Bri... Brit... Madonna, no! Is croccante! A word with dignity! ’Brittle,’ pfft, is the sound of a stick breaking under a cart!"

The women shrieked with laughter.

This was the same man who had once offered a wrapped salted fish to a lady in Port Royal, only to be told that its dead eyes stared into her soul. Sugar, at least, had the advantage of having no eyes.

Enzo spotted James over the heads of the women and spread both arms wide.

"Capitano! Capitano mio!"

He pressed a sweet into his palm, as if it were a relic. "Mangia, Capitano, eat! Then tell the ladies the truth, only the truth! And after, I must put to you a matter of... delicacy. Of great delicacy."