“I wish you the joy of your first command, Robin.”
I have called him into the cabin in the morning to give him his orders before he departs with the prize. It is the first time we have been alone together since he was released from the brig.
He comes up to me and takes my hand and holds it to his lips.
“I don’t care about my first command. All I care about is you. Why did you not send Jared or Harkness back with the prize? I want to . . .”
“I know what you want to do, Robin, but we can’t do that now. I am the Commander of this ship, however crazy that sounds, and you are my First Mate. We have to keep it that way, at least for a while, till this is all resolved. I do have great affection for you and I do love you, in my way, but . . . I’m confused . . . and I do intend to live single all of my life, as I am convinced that would be best, considering the mess I usually make of things.”
“That’s nonsense, Jacky, and you know it.” He puts his arm around my waist and draws me to him, but I push him back.
“Please, Robin. We must deal with the problem at hand. Your orders are to sail the prize back to England and register it with the Prize Court. See if there are any problems. Get a lawyer if that seems wise. It is your job to protect the crew’s money. This is our big chance and we are all counting on you. When you get that done, hire a boat to bring you and the prize crew back as soon as possible. This scam won’t last forever, and I’ll need you here.”
He glowers at me. I soften a bit.
“I’ll need you here, my beau sabreur,” I say, and put my hand on the hilt of his new sword that hangs by his side. I had given him the French Captain’s sword in the way of reward for how he had handled himself and the men of his Boarding Party when we took the prize. I turn my face up to his. “Now a kiss for good luck, and then go.”
Our boat takes Robin over to the prize and he climbs aboard to take command. I had given him the money we found when we ransacked the French Captain’s quarters. It wasn’t much, but it will probably do to get things started—especially since I added a few gold pieces from Captain Scroggs’s stash to it.
Jared has the watch and he comes up next to me to watch the Emilie sail off. He, Harkness, and Drake are in rotation as Officers of the Deck with Ned and Tom. I’m off the Watch list as befits my station. Pretty soft, that, but I do need my rest. No telling what is to come.
Jared is clad in his new warrant officer’s jacket as befits his new station, and he looks good in it. The coat is black with a high collar and the gold tabs of rank sit upon the shoulders, and I know he wears it with pride. I can tell that by the way he takes a deep breath every now and again so as to feel it tighten across his chest. Higgins had somehow rounded up uniforms for the three new officers—probably from the stores of the unfortunate Mr. Harvey and Mr. Smythe. I shall have to make sure they are reimbursed for their loss. I’m sure Captain Scroggs will be delighted to pitch in.
“Why did you send the boy, Lieutenant?” he asks, as usual skirting the edge of insolence. “I could have sent Harper over with that ship.”
“Because he’s a gent, as well as a fine young man, Joseph,” I say with narrowed eyes. Robin has proved he is no mere boy. “And we both know that will go a lot farther with the Admiralty than any of us common types showing up on their doorstep. If he runs into trouble, he’ll ask his father or some other relative and they’ll get a lawyer and things will be said in the right ears and things might work out well for us. You do know it’s not a sure thing with prizes?” I ask, watching his face.
He grunts and says, “You mean they may call this piracy instead of prize taking?”
“Something like that. It depends whose ox is being gored in the loss of the cargo. There was someone in England waiting for that ship, you know.”
I think back to the jolly time we had with the Fletcher wine company’s product last night when I dined with my new officers. It was a wonder what Higgins had done with the musty old cabin. Fresh breezes blew through newly cleaned curtains. The bed mattress had been turned and set out for an airing and then returned to the bedstead and made up with fresh sheets and pillowcases. The table had been set with a gleaming white tablecloth and the place settings were perfect, the silverware polished and set just so, and the cabin positively gleamed with new wax.
The glasses twinkled merrily as Higgins poured the fine wine, and we drank toast upon toast to each other and to our bravery and to our cunning and we sang songs and told tales. It was then that I presented the French Captain’s sword to Robin, saying that such a fine young gentleman should not be flinging himself onto the decks of enemy ships with a common cutlass in his hand. I gave him a peck on the cheek as I presented it to him, but that was all he was to get in that way. I saw him sneaking glances at the newly cleaned, newly aired, and newly fluffed-up bed beneath the speaking tube, the bed in which I would later be sleeping. I know he is picturing me as I looked in my bed in the midshipmen’s berth the last time we were there together.
And that is another reason I sent Robin off—to try to cool his ardor a bit. It’s a touchy thing with Robin. For me to have actually offered myself to him that time, as I did, and then to turn around and pull back into propriety, well, I know it’s hard on him. Explaining that the circumstances are different now doesn’t seem to help much, either.
My crew, as well, enjoyed themselves hugely at dinner, with the booty taken from the Emilie’s stores and the ration of wine set out for them. I announced that singing and dancing was allowed until six o’clock, and from my cabin I heard the sound of a pennywhistle, something I had not heard in a long time, and I vowed to find out who was the player. He was pretty good.
I rouse myself back to the present and say to Jared, “Keep a sharp eye out for any more that might try to cross our wake, Mr. Jared,” and I leave the quarterdeck and go below to check on the prisoners.
First off, we had packed them all into the brig, there being only about twenty of them, but they were so packed in there that they could only stand and not sit. Drake worked furiously with the shipfitters and carpenters to fashion a larger prison down under the fantail, on the lowest deck down, and that’s where they are now. It’s pretty foul but they won’t be down here long. They don’t know that, though. They probably think they’re going to be taken to England to be hanged, and I let them think that, but I won’t really do it. Harkness had asked me about it, about why we didn’t just send the prisoners back in the hold of the Emilie, but I said that they were just sailors like us and I didn’t want to see them jailed or hanged just for doing something that we might be doing ourselves someday. He snorted and asked me what I was going to do with them then, and I said I’d decide later.
Damn! There’re so many details to this plundering business.
I look them over and they seem healthy enough. I ask them in French if they have been fed and they sneer and say that yes, they have been given what we English would call food. It galls them all the more that I am a girl, but I am not down here to enrage them, merely to observe, so I leave. But not before I notice that one of them, better dressed than the others, stays far back in the pack, like he doesn’t want me to notice him. He was a passenger and we tossed his room but could find nothing except for some clothing. On his person, he just had a small pistol and a little money, I recall, all of which we took.
Something about him strikes me as curious, is all.
I go back up the three levels to the deck, confident that the smugglers are secure, and emerge into the light. I hear the sound of chatter and look up and see that the ship’s boys are playing follow-the-leader with Tucker in the lead. The little deck apes are going hand over hand over the fore-topgallant brace, high over the deck, goading each other on. Georgie is the third one in line, right after Eli. A few more days, Georgie.
“Higgins,” I say. I don’t see him anywhere around, but as soon as I say his name, he appears at my elbow. I’ve found he is very good at that.
“Yes, Miss?”
“Will you ask Mr. Drake if he will join me for a little shooting on the fantail? Then bring up my pistols and the bottles we saved from last night’s dinner.”
Peter Drake shows me how the pistols are loaded and primed and we set up the empty bottles on the rear rail of the fantail, the stern of the ship. He shows me how to aim and asks me if I have ever fired a gun before.
“Only once, when I killed a pirate in a skirmish when I was on the Dolphin.”
I fire, missing all the bottles. I try the other pistol and miss again.
“It must have been a very unlucky pirate,” says Drake, drily.
“He was that,” I say. “But then, he was a lot larger and a lot closer.”
I reload and try again, trying to hold the gun steady as I sight across the barrel, and this time I get one, shattering it off into the ocean. The fact that it was not the one I was aiming at does not diminish my pleasure in seeing it go.
Peter and I trade shots and I find that he is a dead shot. I would not want to face him in a duel.
I upend the black powder horn and recharge, tamping it down, then ramming down the wad, and then the ball, and then another wad to hold it in. Much like a cannon, I’m thinking.
I fire again and hit another bottle and I hear something from the boys in the rigging overhead.
“What’s going on?” asks one who was plainly below when we started all this and has just come up.
“The Captain’s shooting bottles off the fantail, is what,” comes the casual reply from Tam Tucker, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.