The Pirate Captain (40 page)

“Bloody woman!”

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As members of the Brethren of the Coast, equality for the men of the
Ciara Morganse
came in many ways: equal voice in affairs of piracy and equal shares in the resulting plunder, as well as equality in choosing who was to lead them through it all. Daily, Cate came to understand the delicate balance Nathan maintained as Captain. The volatility of commanding pirates raised its head with startling abruptness one morning.

The day had started with Cate waking from one of those sleeps so deep it took her several moments to collect where she was. She lay snuggled deep under the quilt. Blinking the drowsiness away, she listened to the ship and her people slowly come to life, as would any household.

The
Morganse
stirred from her slumber and shed her nightclothes of reefed sails. She stretched her arms with her fresh wardrobe of canvas and leaned into the wind with renewed intent. The water at her sides slipping faster, she picked up her daily song of wind and rigging. The holystones were next, cleaning Mr. Hodder’s sacred deck. Starting at the forecastle, the hollow growl of the great blocks of sandstone gradually increased as their handlers inched their way along on their knees. Directly behind came the thump of the pumps and gush of water. Next, the rhythmic slap of the decks being flogged dry.

Pryce and Hodder could be heard above it all. Pryce’s exact words couldn’t be made out, but there was no mistaking his thrust: some poor soul found slacking. As boatswain, Hodder required a voice that could carry from bowsprit to taffrail, topmast to bilges. What he might have lacked in Pryce’s resonance, he made up admirably for in volume and all around a nearly fist-sized quid of tobacco in his cheek.

From the salon came footsteps, a vehement curse—Kirkland’s, by the sound—followed by a heavy stomp and a simultaneous high-pitched squeal of a rat meeting an inglorious demise. Very soon after, she heard the soft padding and snuffle of His Lordship, considerably more industrious in his task. Whether it was for appearances—lest he appear laggardly in his duties—or spurred by hunger—having been robbed of his most recent meal—Cate couldn’t tell.

The bell clanged—eight times, she thought. Hodder bellowed the men to breakfast with sufficient force to spring Cate from her snuggery. She dressed to the slap of bare feet as the hands hurried to their meal.

Artemis, roosted on the back of the Captain’s chair, looked up from her preening when Cate rounded the curtain. It was an unusual sight, for the hold was customarily the owl’s preferred place.

“I suppose this means the rats have all moved up.”

Cate automatically checked along the walls and corners. She had lived in places far more infested, where one was awakened by feet tracking atop oneself. Still, it didn’t mean she liked having them about.

Artemis regarded her with baleful reserve, and then lifted a wing to continue preening.

Through the expanse of gallery windows, the Caribbean morning stretched before Cate. It was the picture of perfection, so long as one had a great appreciation for blue skies, billowing white clouds, dazzling sun, and vast stretches of indigo water. It was a far cry from the clouds, drizzle and fog of the Highlands. There the only variety was the degree of chill and damp. Far behind her were the round-backed mountains and stretches of pine forests, tumbling burns and sea-like expanses of moors. The smells of peat, heather, and pine, always sharp in the air, had been now replaced by tar, canvas, and salt.

The ship’s wake streamed white against the deep blue sea. Noting clouds on the horizon, impaled by an island’s mountaintops and heavy with rain, she checked for the wind: leeward, downwind, and hence no threat.

“Beginning to feel like an old salt,” she said, smiling to herself.

As always, coffee waited. It was the mystery of the ages as to how Kirkland foresaw her arrival, for the pot was always steaming, to the point of perilous to the unsuspecting. The porcelain cup and creamer might have been chipped, and the silver spoon a bit tarnished, but they were always there, carefully arranged, waiting. Almost at the same time that she noticed the honey pot and extra plates, the smell of scones baking rose up the galley companionway.

Cate settled in for her next routine: steaming cup in hand, leaning back in her chair, and listening to the ship come alive.

At the sound of feathers, Cate cracked one eye open in time to see Beatrice arrive. Alighting on the chair next to Artemis, the parrot set to a raucous outcry of indignation. She considered the Captain’s chair her private domain and voiced a piercing shriek of objection. Artemis looked benignly at Beatrice, and then to Cate. Finding no sympathy or reprieve, she flew away in an almost silent beat of feathers. Beatrice assumed the sacred spot and, puffed with satisfaction, struck a noble pose.

Peace restored, Cate closed her eyes once more. The ship hummed with increasing industry. A skeleton afterguard remained on the quarterdeck, for the
Morganse
was a lady of high maintenance, a queen always in need of her attendants. Their voices drifted down through the skylight directly overhead. She smiled faintly, the lowest regions of her belly tightening at the sound of Nathan’s voice.

Cate often wondered what Nathan’s voice would have been had it not been so destroyed. Soft, to be sure, for it still held vestiges of that, but never with the richness of Brian’s. His had been deep, and yet so very soft, a warm hug on a winter night. As she and he would lie together at night, reviewing the minutiae of the day, her cheek resting on his chest, its bass would resonate in her bones. Even at a whisper, Nathan’s gravel was like torn velvet, a more-worn woolen blanket on that same winter’s night, rough yet holding the promise of more comforts to come. She had never thought another voice would touch her as Brian’s had. And yet Nathan’s did, but differently, as no other.

“Clap on to that sheet, you ill-begotten son of a double-poxed Dutch whore! What the fucking hell…?” echoed down through the skylight.

Ah yes, touched her like no other.

“What?”

Startled, Cate opened her eyes to find said angel-voiced soul standing at the door with a puzzled look.

“Hm? Oh, nothing,” she said, sitting up straighter.

His curiosity deepened by worry, Nathan’s brows knitted tighter as he came further in. “You had the look as if you were hearing angels singing. You’re not going to lose your mess number on me, are you?”

The question didn’t seem intended for an answer, and so she didn’t.

A curl of his nose, a scowl, and a flutter of fingers deposed Beatrice from her roost. The bird moved to the edge of the table. Cate could feel the single-eyed stare as she peeled an orange, and eventually held out a section. Beatrice crab-stepped across the table, took the offering in her claw. She immediately sidled away to eat with as birdly manners as one might expect.

The pursuant absence of conversation wasn’t unique. Nathan was often preoccupied with matters of his ship. It was common to see him tapping the glass, pricking a chart, or writing in the log, while balancing his coffee in the other hand. Come to think on it, she had never seen him entering into a personal journal. Many people kept one, especially those seeking a connection. A captain lived elbow to elbow with men, and yet was isolated by the position of command. Pryce was probably Nathan’s nearest thing to a confidant, but even that was quite limited.

No secrets on a ship.

Indeed, that could well be the case, for nothing put to paper could be guaranteed as secret.

The scones arrived. As Cate ate, she tried to decide what it was that struck her so odd, thinking perhaps she was still deep in her earlier daydream. And then, she realized: Nathan was eating. He had plucked a mango from the plate, diced it into chunks with his knife, and was now using it as fork.

She often wondered what kept Nathan going, for it was rare to see him eat. Occasionally, he would walk about with a piece of smoked
charqui
tucked in the corner of his mouth, like one might a cheroot. She had seen him at times sipping from a cup of something that smelled similar to the hands’ meal, obviously thinned considerably. He had taken the fruit from a plate that had a permanent residence in the middle of the table. Strategically placed out of Hermione’s reach, with a dome of stiffened gauze over it and sprigs of sage around as deterrents to vermin, it held a ever-changing variety: fruit, boiled eggs, wedges of cheese, pickles, kippers, softtack,
charqui
, anything that could be grabbed and eaten. She suspected Kirkland, distressed by his captain’s apparent lack of appetite, kept it there in hopes of tempting him.

Cate watched with guarded pleasure as he plucked up a scone. She smiled privately at seeing him slather it with honey to the point of drooling over the sides.

There was one secret she knew about Captain Nathanael Blackthorne: he had a sweet-tooth. The honey pot, and its accompanying spoon, was a permanent resident on the table. His coffee was always heavily dosed. Many a time, she had seen him stop to either take spoonful as one would a dose of physick, or swirl his finger inside and pop a golden dollop in his mouth.

Nathan nibbled at the scone’s edge, the bells in his mustache flashing in the morning light as he chewed industriously, licking the dripping sweetness from between his fingers, and dashing the crumbs from his mustache and beard.

He flicked a Bombay bomber from his plate as casually as one would an ant at a picnic, sending it on a long arc out the window.

“Damned geckos have been slouching again. Might feed you to Artemis, if you don’t bear a hand and show a leg,” he directed louder to the general room.

Nathan paused in his chewing to eye Beatrice as she sidled over to Cate for another morsel. “You’re going to spoil her appetite.”

Cate wondered if he was speaking to her or the bird.

With a squawk of protest and a swirl of feathers, Beatrice soared out the gallery window and curved up toward the quarterdeck.

Mr. Kirkland topped the galley steps and came to a dead stop just as Nathan swallowed carefully, followed by a gulp of coffee. Joyousness flushed his florid face at seeing his captain eat. He eagerly rushed forward uttering an effusive list of other temptations—sausages, bacon, soft-boiled eggs, toasted softtack, fried fish, or an omelet—but was waved away as Pryce came in.

“The crew begs yer leave, Cap’n.”

The ominous weight in Pryce’s voice brought Nathan instantly to his feet. Cate rose as well without knowing why. Both men stood poised, an entire conversation in one look.

“What’s…?” Nathan swallowed, straining to maintain his casualness. “What might this be in regard to?”

Jaws flexing, Pryce’s grey eyes narrowed to slits. “They’ve…grievances, sir.”

A sharp rise of voices on deck gave veracity to his statement.

Nathan nodded faintly. “Who?”

“Same as before.” Pryce’s bass dropped to a bare shadow of itself.

“How many?”

“More than the last,” Pryce said, with considerable reticence, and then hissed in burst of hushed vehemence, “God rot their eternal souls and strike them blind!”

Nathan’s throat moved as he gulped. “Very well, I shall attend directly.”

Nathan stared in Pryce’s wake. He closed his eyes and swayed. Hands working at his sides, he emitted a low growl through clenched teeth. He shook himself like a great dog, and then turned to her, his features now carefully arranged.

“It might be best if you were to remain here.” He winced at the increase of impassioned shouts from outside. “It could be dangerous, what with the crossfire and all.”

Crossfire?

Cate stood confused to the point of speechlessness. Nathan came around the table to take her by the arms, his fingers digging her flesh. He threw loathingly glare over his shoulder toward the cabin door and the uproar beyond.

“Things could happen quickly. I might not be able to…” He choked off the thought. “When…
if
,” he emphatically corrected, “anything should…happen, stay close to Pryce. He should be able to protect you. They know you’re here, so there’s no hiding you. You have your knife?”

Mechanically nodding, Cate touched the side of her skirt and the reassuring weight there. Assured by that, Nathan went to one of the urns near the door and reached in to almost his armpit to draw out a pistol.

“Keep this with you,” Nathan said, checking the primer. He shoved it into her waistband and with a tone that turned her blood to ice said, “Save it for yourself.”

She stiffly nodded, her thoughts refusing to move.

“I’m sorry,” Nathan said haltingly. “I…I meant to do you better.”

Cupping her cheek in his hand, Nathan gazed intently at her, taking in every feature, and then kissed her on the forehead, warm and yet so brief. He turned to survey the room, as if committing it to memory. He drew up at the threshold and swayed. Squaring his shoulders, he stepped into the glare of day and tumult with his customary swagger.

Cate stood transfixed, trying to decide which was more startling: Nathan’s sudden trepidation or his kiss. She started at the sound of footsteps and whirled to find Mr. Kirkland at the top of the companionway, round-eyed and pale.

“I heard rumblings.” He looked toward the increasing mayhem on deck and wrung his hands. “I thought it to be only the usual complaining. I should have warned the Captain.”

“What is it? What’s happening?”

“Mutiny.” Blenching, Kirkland barely whispered the word. “I’m not saying for sure, but…”A cringing shrug completed the thought.

Cate strained to assemble fleeting bits Nathan had told her weeks ago.

Mutiny
. Nathan had said it, with his usual insouciance.

“…
once…marooned…lost me ship
…” Her embarrassment at having inadvertently broached something so delicate had precluded her from probing any deeper. It had invoked visions of anarchy, violent mobs, pistols, and bloodied sabers.

Heart hammering, Cate looked from Kirkland to the door and the invisible mob. “So, what happens?”