The Ciara Morganse sailed on. Instead of hours, Cate’s life now passed in four-hour blocks of two categories: Nathan belonging to his ship, or Nathan belonging to her. The time he was with her, they made love with a fury in preparation that they might survive the next separation.
Cate found she had finally been at sea long enough for her landsman’s sense of time to fade. She no longer thought of time in relation to hands on a clock. The ship’s time-keeping, however, was still beyond her comprehension. Four rings of the bell could mean it was either eleven or three p.m., or eleven, seven or three a.m. It was perfectly rational to the ship’s people, but utter chaos for one accustomed to the security of a twelve-hour clock, with hands which moved with the regularity of the sun.
The four hours Nathan wasn’t hers, Cate was obliged to fill the vacancy with passing glimpses of him. Her heart capered like a maid’s with each glimpse, forgetting entirely what she was about, often in mid-sentence, just at the random sound of his voice. When he could, Nathan would seek her out to idle a few moments. His rules of demeanor, however, were staunchly honored. The thrill of a passing kiss or touching was almost as thrilling as the knowing that she now could, but had to be reserved for when they were in the privacy of the Great Cabin, or on the rare occasion when they were entirely alone, a feat not easily achieved with nearly two hundred hands aboard. Nathan seemed much of the same mind, plucking at her clothes or hair, brushing against her, sitting as near as he could, without actually touching.
Nights pivoted around the hours of “late” and “ungodly,” which was the only word to describe the hour when Nathan either rose from their snuggery or returned to it. It was that time of day which was too late to be claimed by the night and too early for day to take it. The air heavy and still, one tended to whisper, for it seemed as though the entire world still slumbered. Mariners did not, however. The world might be sleeping, but a ship never did. That entity was always alive, always awake and always in need of her people.
That particular night’s ungodly hour, Cate had wakened from wild dreams of riding an ivory – colored stallion with a tattoo at its neck and ankles, and a tangle of sable braids dotted with silver bells for a mane, to Nathan standing there, bleary-eyed and slumping, chilled by the night air. She brought him to bed and urged him to warm himself inside of her as nothing else could warm him.
Cate woke still glowing, to the pink of morning flooding through the scuttle. It was no surprise to find Nathan already gone, nor to find him at the table. Clear eyed, revived, he wolfed down eggs and fried fish, those having foregone net or hook by delivering themselves to the fore-castle in the night, washing it all down with great draughts of steaming coffee. Next to his chair, His Lordship sat up on his haunches, expectation bright in the vertically-slitted eyes. As he chewed, Nathan scrutinized a chart at his elbow.
“We seem to be flying along,” Cate said lightly as she sat, thinking perhaps speed was his concern.
“Eh? Oh, aye. Nine and ten knots at every toss of the log. The glass says the wind should hold,” he added with a backward glance toward that sacred instrument on the bulkhead. “Today’s noon reading should confirm it but, as I make it, we’re over halfway.”
And then, Cartagena. The thought of lying with Nathan in a vast bed, with pillows and sheets had often caused Cate to cast an eye toward the sails and wonder if she were to puff her cheeks and blow, the ship might move a little faster.
Nathan paused to stab several more mouthfuls, gobbling, at least for him. “‘Tis just a matter of whether we pass near enough to Aruba or Curacao to put in. Damned Dutch are in residence there these days, but we should be able to slip in and out without their notice. It’s been me long experience to never pass up the opportunity to wood n’ water,” he finished sagely. “The wise mariner avoids Gallinas these days, the natives being so inclined toward in hospitality. But, if it rains—again, unlikely,” he added, canting his head toward the glass. “Then we rig the canvases and collect it until we’re filled to the bumpers.” A sweep of his fork punctuated the grandness of that notion.
“Avast w’ye!” he declared with a good-natured swipe at His Lordship. “Enough indulging you with fish when there’s rat’s aplenty for the having.”
With something which might have been called a mongoose-ish huff, His Lordship lowered to all fours, set his nose to the floor and shuffled off, audibly sniffling along the way.
Great spate of cursing came from somewhere on deck, more vehement than most mornings, even for the bosun.
Nathan rolled his eyes tolerantly as he drank his coffee. “Mr. Hodder is near apoplexy this morning again.”
“The boys?” Cate glanced up, thinking perhaps Nathan, by now, might have noticed the resemblance between him and John, hence recognizing him as his son.
It seemed not.
She wondered over her coffee, if Thomas had noticed the resemblance, if that were why he had sent the lad over to the Morganse? A more charitable thought suggested to think such a thing might be doing Thomas an injustice; injured and preoccupied with his ship sinking, he mightn’t have laid eyes on the boy. Sending the lad over could have been a part of a general order to Mr. Al-Nejem, his First Mate, for a number of Bristols to be sent to the Morganse. Whether the Griselle’s First Mate had taken notice of the lad was anyone’s guess, nor would the question ever be posed. Large enough to dwarf Thomas, she found the man more foreboding than Pryce and Hodder combined.
“I don’t have to listen to no bunch o’ sodding, arse bandit pirates!” John’s voice carried aft.
“Ew! Now that was an unfortunate choice of words. The lad was blessed with a tongue and the balls to use it,” Nathan muttered under his breath. “The two crossed Hodder sufficiently yesterday to earn the right to scrub the heads for the next fortnight.”
Cate shuddered. The seat-of-ease for nearly two hundred wasn’t a pleasant sight. The question was if the assignment had been given in the hopes one or both might fall overboard in the doing.
“The scrubbing might answer nicely to clean them up after all that oakum tearing,” Nathan went on thoughtfully. He shook his head in dismay. “It’s coming to the point the louts don’t have time for their duties, what with all the punishments they have to serve.”
Another stream of curses rode the air. Swearing was of little consequence to Cate; Lord knew, she had her own tendencies toward the low and course. If she blushed at every Lord’s-name-taken-in-vain, she would have never lasted an hour sitting on the f’c’stle. Her fathers and brothers had been very fluent, and Brian, her husband, had been even more imaginative than Nathan, if that were at all possible. John’s cursing rivaled Hodder’s. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree on colorfulness, either. Since she had boarded, Nathan had reserved his worst for among the men on deck and out of her presence, but that courtesy had been hard-pressed, of late. But, if cursing was any measure, the mood aboard had taken an ugly turn. Sour, to say the least. And it couldn’t be said the shift was entirely the fault of the boys or their dundering ways. The Bristols, as a whole, had to carry a good portion of the blame.
Part of that mood swing aboard was on her account, or rather, the men waiting to see her reaction to the product of the Cap’n bedding another woman walking the decks. In truth, she wasn’t yet sure of her reaction, mostly because she was still in a state of numb. A shock at seeing him, for sure, but she couldn’t, in all honesty, call John a surprise. With all the women Nathan had known, in the biblical sense, offspring were inevitable. Logic told her as much. Her heart, however, told her something quite different. Emotions ran hot and cold, skittering around inside her like water droplets on a hot griddle. She needed to do something: hit, scream, cry, smash… Violence was foremost; how, when or in what way she couldn’t say. If Nathan had known, the eruption would have quite probably been immediate and long since. The uncertainty of his reaction had put a clamp on hers; she didn’t wish to tip the scales. Nathan’s reaction to John’s paternity would be of his own accord, and not because of something she had done. As it was, however, she was keenly aware of the hands circling her, as if she were a grendo with a lit fuse and with no notion of its length.
The bell clanged, and the timbers vibrated with the pounding of the men rushing from their breakfast to their duties.
“It’s me watch,” Nathan said, dashing his mouth on his sleeve. He rose, grabbing his hat as he came around the table to her chair. “See me off,” he said, bending over her.
The kiss was meant as only a quick stamp, but parting didn’t come easily for either of them… for some time. Finally, Nathan pulled away with a low groan.
“They do say duty is a heartless master,” he said against her cheek.
And the Morganse an unrelenting mistress, Cate thought to herself, but said aloud “I’ll be right here; I’m not going anywhere.”
Grinning, he paused to swirl a finger in the honey jar and then he was gone.
Being at sea had provided Cate with a sense of routine. With the rhythm of bells and watches, how could she not? After she had breakfasted, she reported to her makeshift sick bay: a table between two guns on the gundeck, her blood box delivered by either Hughes or Cameron. There, she attended the day’s cases of cuts, smashed fingers, cracked ribs, rashes, boils, all the day-to-day ailments.
She had no formal schooling in doctoring other than the school of experience. That detail, however, seemed to be of little consequence to the men, so accustomed they were to the custom of the sea: the cook attending illnesses; the sailmaker, when a body needed sewing; the barber, if there were one, to pull teeth. Nathan’s contempt for a ship’s chirrugeons was well-founded, for most were charlatans at best and drunkards at their worst. Many could brag of less training than she, for at least she had been through a war. Anyone could staunch a wound as well as she, but it was her company which seemed to have the greatest palliative effect. Illness or injury, the men beamed under her attention, willingly taking their bolis or whatever potion she contrived to pour down them.
The cases that day, however, were a bit more complicated than usual. It had been a little over a week since the Morganse’s last battle, and those wounds remained to be dealt with, two still bound to their hammocks. The immediate result of a sea battle was in many ways worse than on a battlefield. The damage wrought by eighteen-pound balls of iron, chain shot or langrage—a sea-going version of grapeshot—was shocking. As she changed bandages, removed stitches, and applied salves or poultices, she found herself looking into the faces of the very men she had felt she had deserted during her sojourn on the Griselle. Looking carefully, the only recrimination she found was on her own part. Overall, pirates—mariners in general—were a cheerful lot, especially in victory. Still, had she not been so foolish, had Nathan not been so blinded by rage, she would have been there for them in their time of need. Hell, on further reflection, the entire thing mightn’t have happened. Instead, men had been killed, ships sank.
The number of injuries allowed a fair assessment of what the Morganse had been through in those weeks she had been away. On deck, she had seen a good number of fresh scars, slings and hitched movement that was caused by minor injuries. Worse yet, were the faces gone missing, too many. Where Cate’s imagination failed, the men were more than willing to regale her with their tales of blood and glory. Combined, it painted a picture which confirmed her suspicions: Nathan had led a dogged pursuit of her, with no notion of hazard to himself or his ship. He had raked and burned whoever had the misfortune to blunder into his path, then pressed on like smoke n’ oakum for the next threat to the Griselle.
When sick bay was complete, she moved up to the main deck to an upturned match tub, under the shelter of a dodger rigged on the foremast shrouds, with her honing basket containing oil, rags, a leather strop and honestones. There she spent the next while. Every man aboard was required to carry a knife for the safety of not only themselves, but the ship and everyone aboard. Most were the short-bladed, rigging-knife variety, but everything from curved to nearly as long as her forearm was present. As the men gathered around her waiting their turn, it didn’t go unnoticed that many blades presented for sharpening still had edges which could rival a razor. It was more an excuse for female conversation, to speak with “someone that doesn’t have hair growing out of every crevice,” as Nathan put it.
Cate’s return to the Morganse also meant her return to her knot lessons. A certain part of her looked forward to them, for it meant sitting next to Nathan, as near as could be managed without actually touching if they were on deck, his breath warm on her arm. His fingers brushed hers, sometimes going so far as to grasp them in order to guide them. His distress at her ineptitude continued to spike. Often, he cast curious glances, wondering if she were feigning ignorance or if she really were that cod-handed.
Just call me fish, then, she thought crossly.
Nathan insisted the knots were integral to her becoming an “able-bodied seaman, what can splice, knot and steer.” If he were expecting her in the tops or hauling on a bowline next, she wasn’t sure. He was an unrelenting master. Once a knot was mastered, thicker ropes were introduced. Then a glass was flipped, obliging her to work furiously with one eye on the rope and the other on the sand running out.
The rudiments of navigation were introduced as well, showing her how to prick the charts and take solars. More and more, Cate found herself the target of explanations regarding the sails, those driving the ship as opposed to those used for steering. Like everything else aboard, the rudder didn’t work alone; the sails were a combined balance of push and pull, all relative to the ship’s center—not to be confused with that equidistant point between the bow and the stern. The more she knew, the more complicated it became, and the more she appreciated and envied not only Nathan, but every man aboard for their knowledge.
When the Morganse was too demanding of his time, Nathan relegated her lessons to Stubbs, her sea daddy. Grizzled yet ageless, Stubbs had a pair of kind blue eyes. A blade to the throat rendered him more or less speechless. The name was ironic to the point of painful, for ship’s expert knotsman lacked not only several joints, but three entire fingers. His infinite patience fell short of suffering her temper tantrums, squealing and flinging the rope across the deck.
Faced with a long voyage, no sail in sight, land a distant promise, boredom became the enemy for all aboard. Anything could prove a fascinating distraction: porpoise, schools of flying fish, Bombay bomber races. Pastimes became more prevalent and apparent: draughts, chess, backgammon, whittling, playing instruments, knitting, or drawing. A theatrical play, complete with costumes, was being written and organized by the foretop, larbolin watch.
As Cate sat with Stubbs one day, an odd grating sound caught her attention. She went to join the small audience which had gathered around Mr. Warren, a Bristol, mizzentopsman starboard watch, busily scratching on something with an old sailmaker’s needle. Carving and whittling was very common, wood, bone or horn, even salt horse. She had been given a needle case carved from that very stuff—but this was unique.
Apparently, Warren had once served on a whaler in the Pacific. The lumpish, triangular object he worked on was represented as a whale tooth.
“In the islands, they’re a show of a great man’s tabau,” Pryce, standing next to her, said with significance. “Buried with him when he dies.”
Cate forbore asking how Warren had managed to come by it.
Stubbs, to her other side, nodded gravely. A glimmer of appreciation touched the gentle eyes.
The piece hanging at Warren’s neck was a fascination. It was a long, flattish piece, a tusk or horn of some kind, covered with etchings of an island, mountains, palm trees, a bay and a ship at anchor. Simplistic, but amazingly clear in what it portrayed. The handle of the knife at his side showed an island girl—or woman or nursing mother, judging by the physical attributes—with long hair and a skirt made of either grass or fronds.
“Bloody scrimshander,” someone muttered in passing.
“I ain’t loungin’. I’m not on watch, Michael Smith,” Warren growled after him good-naturedly.
Like everyone—Hodder included, fingering his rings, eyes bright with visionary fervor—Cate was drawn to watch as Warren etched in designs visible only in his eye. Every few days, however, he paused to rub tobacco juice, hence, revealing his handiwork to all.
A small crowd gathered that day, Warren taking up Cate’s spot under a dodger rigged on the foremast shrouds. A press of sweating bodies circled around, for it was one of the days on which Warren was due to reveal his last days’ work. Cate crouched down, so others behind her, Pryce and Hodder in particular, might see. Others could be heard gathering in behind them.
“Did ye find the Cap’n, as I bid?” she heard Pryce say behind her.
“No… sir.” The last came as an afterthought. There was no mistaking the laconic voice: John. “He’s swiving his whore. Don’t expect it will take long. Men his age don’t have the endurance.”
Pryce jerked and spun around. Realizing John’s folly, the crowd fell away.
The shrouds next to them trembled and jerked, and Nathan dropped down, landing heavily just behind the lad. “That’s odd. I thought I was in the foretop advising Mr. Fox on a studs’l boom.”
John whirled around, at least having the good grace to look abashed.
“I recollect sendin’ ye to find the Cap’n,” Pryce said ominously, looming over the lad.
John glanced irritably over his shoulder. “I thought I did.” Bald-faced lies came shockingly easy. Turning back to Nathan, John leaned his head back to look at him down the long line of his nose, a gesture was so much like his father’s, Cate coughed and looked away. “Must be someone else in there stirrin’ around.”
Pryce wasn’t in a believing mood. The stern grey eyes hardened, a look known to set many a man to sweating. “Failure to follow a direct order n’ lyin’ to cover for it,” he announced, loud enough for both the f’c’stle and the afterdeck to hear, perhaps even anyone who might be lurking in the hold.
Cate glanced between Nathan and John, waiting. She knew the look of a Blackthorne on the verge of an eruption; now she was seeing double. Those who knew Nathan knew well how dangerously close it was and inched away further.
Pryce stepped forward, clearing his throat loudly, in hopes of breaking the mutual stare. “We’ll take care o’ it, sir.”
Cate slipped around everyone to take Nathan by the arm, in hopes of urging him away, but discovered it was much like seeking to move the mainmast.
“Mr. Pryce,” Nathan said in an ominous rumble, his gaze fixed on John’s unrepentant one. “Hermione has forgotten herself on the quarterdeck. I suggest this gentleman might see to it, as he shall for the next fortnight.”
“Very well, the brooms are—”
“Belay that,” Nathan said, his cold gaze unwavering. “No sense in soiling those when we’ve two fine hands what will serve very nicely.” He stabbed a finger hard into John’s chest, and said in a low rumble loud enough for the benefit of all, “Hark me well. If I find one turd anywhere, you’ll be having it with your morning porridge.”
One look around the deck was consensus enough. There were a few isolated dark looks, but mostly those of pleasure, as when a spoiled sibling gets its comeuppance. Cate glanced around, feeling those eyes on her again, not threatening, just… watching.
She hooked her arm more firmly into the crook of Nathan’s and gave a more insistent tug. Finally, he heeded her low murmurings of “C’mon. Let’s be away” as she directed him toward the Great Cabin. Pryce threw her an imploring look as she passed.She sighed, resigned. The time was nigh.
Inside the Great Cabin, Nathan paced before the curved stern gallery.
Kirkland’s head popped up at the galley steps and immediately ducked out of sight. Rats deserting a sinking ship, all of them, leaving her to do the dirty work, Cate thought ruefully.
Very well then, as Nathan would say, “On to it, then.”
Fuming, he rounded on Cate with a thunderous glare. “Doxie? And now ‘whore’?”
“I’ve been called worse.” It was true. Lady Bart’s powdered and puffed guests had called her that, if not outright, then certainly to her back. It wasn’t so much the word, but the contempt with which it had been flung. Were she to be further truthful, she would have loved nothing more than to cuff the little scrub. A lot could be said for a solid sense of respect. The only thing which kept her from thoroughly trouncing the lad was the possibility that she might over-set Nathan’s delicate equilibrium. She was as incensed by the word as he, but if she was to get through this next bit creditably, calm was going to be needed all around.
Churning back and forth, Nathan flung his battered leather hat on the table. He spun around, stabbing a finger at her. “You are the lady of this ship and, by God and thunder, you’ll be treated—”
She stepped close enough to put a finger to his lips, silencing him. “I can manage,” she assured quietly.
Nathan jerked away. Rigid with indignation, he stalked back and forth, the fringe of his scarf jouncing at his knees. “He has the manners of a hog drover. If the little bastard were a few years older, I’d call him out.”
“You can’t do that.”
“The hell and Devil, I can’t!” As if on its own volition, his hand curled for a sword which wasn’t there; he’d taken it off before going aloft. “Certainly not as captain, but I can take it ashore and settle—”
“You. Can’t,” she said more firmly. Clearly, her facade of calmness wasn’t contagious. If anything, it seemed to have quite the opposite effect. The pirate was just under the surface, coiled and ready to wreak havoc. Her own irritation was spiraling upwards to a level she wasn’t sure she could wrangle. This could all go very badly.
Nathan slammed the flat of his hand on the table with a crack! like a pistol shot. “Damnation and seize my soul, woman! I’ll do what I—”
“You can’t kill him, Nathan. He’s your son!” She bit her lip, having spoken far louder than intended and with far less eloquence.
Going pale under his tan, Nathan’s jaw sagged. Then he batted a hand. “You don’t… You can’t… know—”
“Yes, I can,” she said, propping her hands on her hips. “Hell, everyone aboard can, if they take a good look.”
Nathan paced, his boots heavy with agitation. Finally, he whirled, jamming another finger at her. “Don’t ask! I know damned well what you’re thinking. How the bloody hell am I to know who his mother is? Hell, I was probably too drunk to know me own name, let alone hers.” He grimaced, realizing what a heartless cad that made him sound.
“I’m not asking who the mother is.” Though she was morbidly curious. “I’m just saying we all know who his father is.”
“Impossible! It could have been a brother or an uncle or… or—”
“Your family is that extensive?” she asked, barely patient.
“Dark eyes and dark hair, and some quirk doesn’t indict a man,” Nathan shot back heatedly.
Arms crossed, Cate silently watched him steam back and forth, for there was no debate to be had.
“You can’t just look and… and…” he went on.
“Oh, for the love of—!” She seized him by the arms and pushed him before the peering glass over his shaving stand. “There!”
Yes, she was ashamed to admit she had made a very in depth comparison. The resemblance went far beyond hair or eyes. It was the gait and the two front teeth which were squarer than the rest. John’s hair wasn’t the same black, but he did have the same ivory skin, curve of the head and set of the shoulders. So much so that, when caught from the corner of her eye, her heart fluttered, the way it always did at seeing Nathan unexpected. So much of the boy was his father’s, it made one wonder if he had anything of his mother?
John’s voice was the curiosity. In spite of its tendency to hitch and crack, Cate often found herself closing her eyes, thinking perhaps she was hearing what Nathan’s might have been before it was so damaged.
Nathan stared into his glass for some moments, opening his mouth several times to speak and then clapping it shut. Finally, he slumped. “You mean they all…?”
She stood back and exhaled. The worst was over. “Yes, ‘they all’. The grander question is, if he knows.”
Nathan snorted. “You can bet your sweet grand-mum’s knickers the crew has made a grand point of making sure of it, if it is as obvious as you say.”
“It is,” she said coldly gazing at him. “It is.”
If John had been unaware when he came aboard, he clearly knew by now; his attitude toward Nathan was evidence enough. The boy’s vitriolic resentment, contempt, and bitterness were natural to a child unclaimed. The hurtful part was to see Nathan made the brunt of it even though he wasn’t entirely innocent.
“It goes a long way to explain the fights and unrest,” Nathan said, considerably more composed. “The men will be dishing it to him for sure. Before-the-mast is a cruel place, especially when there is any sense of favors being given, and they will most certainly think I’ve been favoring him, all evidence to the contrary,” Nathan added ruefully under his breath.
He paused in his pacing to look warily at her. “How long have you known?” There was a hint of suspected conspiracy and wonderment of what her reaction had been, along with relief of not being there to witness it. She had nearly a week to reconcile herself, to come to terms with who John was. Still, she was nowhere near as sanguine as she had hoped.
Now Cate was the one to snort. “Since the moment I laid eyes on him, no differently than everyone else.”
Nathan sank into a chair and buried his head in his hands, the sable braids tumbling about his shoulders. “Christ, this has to be hell on you.”
“It’s not easy, I’ll grant you that. I’m nowhere near as charitable as I had hoped.” She wrapped her arms about herself against the tremors, whether from fury, despair, fighting against the urge to punch Nathan, run screaming from the room, or just slowly falling apart she couldn’t tell.
A tense silence filled the room, broken only by the Morganse’s song. Shouting came from somewhere in the tops; a minor crisis of some sort. A fife twiddled, the men sang, the chanty’s rhythm providing the tempo for hauling on a sheet. A soft wind blew through the stern windows, as it had since they had set sail for Cartagena, the course putting the wind almost directly astern.
Finally, Nathan lurched up for the liquor cabinet and snatched up a bottle. He took a long pull and then swore darkly. Cate was pleased to see him bring a glass for her, for she was in definite need. He watched her as she sipped, but still avoided meeting her eyes. It was rum. God, she hated the stuff, but was in no mind to take issue. She closed her eyes briefly, waiting for its restorative effects, but was disappointed.
“Darling, I’m sorry, If I had known, if I had—” His mouth moved, but words failed. He reached for her hand. Suddenly revulsed by the thought of his touch, she shied away, coming up against Merdering Mary’s carriage.
“What?” she asked, cocking a brow. As outlandish as the thought was, the sincerity with which he said it was touching. “You wouldn’t have gone with all of those hundreds of women? You’re a lot of things, Nathan, but meant to live like a monk is most definitely not one.”
Nathan stood contemplating the bottle. “You should know, I didn’t go about just begetting children. I took me precautions, when I could, when it—” He bit off the thought. “Rest assured, I was as faceless to them as they were to me. It was me coin they fancied, not me.”
“You’re assuming John’s mother was a whore?” she asked, attempting casualness. Her mind was taking paths she didn’t wish to explore, mental images arising which she didn’t wish to see.
A grim smile danced under his mustache. “Given the odds, highly likely.”
Nathan moved to the window and stared at the v-shaped wake, now several hundred miles long. “When Calypso first sent me back, there was still this great hole, an emptiness in me. I was a debauching satyr, lusting after every woman what crossed me path. A score a week I bedded, just to prove I was alive. ’Tis not to brag, mind.” A coffee-colored eye peered at her over his shoulder. “Truth be told, all I really needed was just to lie with someone warm.”
She couldn’t reprove him, for she had suffered much the same, years of never feeling the touch of another, unless in anger. Sometimes, she had intentionally bumped into someone walking down the street, or dove into a crowded market just for the warmth of another. Being jostled by a stranger was preferable to the emptiness, of lying in bed wrapping her arms about herself because there were no others to hold her.
“But you met John’s mother long before that.”
And yes, she had done the math, time and again, just as Nathan probably was doing that very moment. John was fifteen; Nathan would have been roughly seventeen or eighteen when the boy had been conceived, barely more than a boy himself. At that age, she had been a new bride, deeply enraptured with another man.
A shoulder barely moved at her point. “’Tis all one… one grand indulgence,” he said bleakly.
Exhaling wearily, Nathan sat on the sill and braced his forehead in one hand, the bottle still clenched in the other fist. “Truth be told, I always fancied any seed of mine what caught would never live to draw breath. The woman would have availed herself upon an angel-maker straightaway. No one would desire a child if they knew it was mine.”
“But there are some… some who have drawn breath,” she asked carefully. Obviously, John, for one, but logic dictated there were more, many, many more.
He swiveled his head in his palm to look at her and then away. With a twitch of his shoulders, he said “Aye… some.”
She gazed at him with steady expectancy. Breathing was no longer a natural thing. She took another drink, in dire need of fortification.
Nathan glanced to verify what she was asking and, more importantly, promised no remonstrations. He sighed, long and resigned. “Three… four… And now, five.”
Slumping against Merdering Mary, Cate nodded woodenly. Five children: the family she would never have. So many, and yet perhaps not as many as she had imagined. And yes, her imagination had been running rampant of late, amok, more like. Nathan’s confidence that she was with child had proved contagious, for she longed to give him what no one else had. God, the folly of that! Proof of her simple-minded naiveté walked the decks, insulting her to her face.
“I do what I can, when I can, for them,” Nathan went on, matter-of-factly. “I’ve given money only to have it thrown back in me face betimes. Others allow me to do more.”
“Didn’t you ever wish to stay and…?” she heard herself ask.
“Face me responsibilities?” he said dryly. “Nay, I’m just like me father on that one: spawn ‘em and leave ‘em,” he said with more self-loathing than was comfortable to hear.
“The oldest is a bit younger than knucklehead out there.” He closed one eye in calculation. “The youngest would be… three or four now, I expect,” he said, the number surprising him a bit.
“Perhaps John’s mother cared for you,” Cate suggested. The romantic side of her wanted to believe she might have been a woman not unlike herself, caught up in Nathan’s charms, or in the glory of the legend, of the famous pirate captain. Or perhaps, she had been a grasping one, with visions of a child being an avenue to riches. If that had been the case, then clearly the poor soul hadn’t known Nathan well; riches were the farthest thing from his mind.
Nathan snorted. “More likely she hadn’t the foggiest notion who the hell sired it. Once it became evident, she abandoned the lad, if as you say, it’s that obvious.”
“It is,” Cate sighed, gazing at him once more. “Ben told me John’s mother was killed.”
She opted to omit the not so small detail that a pirate had killed her. The point carried little relevance, and could only hurt Nathan when he was already vulnerable.
Nathan’s mouth tightened grimly. “Easier for the little bastard to admit to that than to admit to being abandoned altogether. Yes, Mr. Rowette?” he called at hearing a significant clearing of a throat at the door.
“Mr. Hodder’s compliments, sir. He bids me to report the t’gallant stud’s’l boom won’t answer, sir. He represents the martingale requires reeving through the block clinched on the bends—”
“For the love of Christ, Rowette! Do I look like a fucking bosun’s mate! Lash, reeve, or tally the damn thing and be done with it!” Nathan bellowed.
Rowette knuckled his forehead and scurried out.
In Rowette’s wake, Cate and Nathan stood, the air between them growing thick with tension. She was nowhere near as open-minded as supposed. Her jaw worked, the blood pounding dully in her ears as she strove to fight down a rising anger. She saw Nathan through alternating veils of fury and jealousy. The latter was a consuming green, devouring her from within, not the slow winnowing of ships’ worms, but great chunks being torn from her insides by a ravenous predator.
She turned to the window and shrieked “Dammit!” her entire body vibrating with it, and pitched the glass. Spinning around, she took a blind swing at Nathan. “Dammit! Damn you! Damn all of them!”
A pounding of feet marked men racing toward the cabin. They skidded to a halt just inside the door. Seeing the commotion was only Cate having a fit, they jostled in retreat. Another commotion drew Cate and Nathan’s attention up to the faces lining the open skylight, peering down at them.
“As you were!” Nathan’s bellow scattered them like a covey of quail. Still, grumbling under his breath, he grabbed Cate by the arm and roughly ushered her into the sleeping quarters, the rings clattering as he jerked the curtain shut.
Cate stood, chest heaving, a sore throat and a throbbing hand from hitting Nathan’s buckle now adding to her misery.
“I’m jealous,” she seethed.
Nathan jerked. “Of who?”
“Them… Everyone… Anyone you were ever with. I’m sorry. I don’t share well; I never have.” The admission didn’t come easily. Yes, she hated John’s mother, as she did any and every woman who had ever occupied more than a passing pleasantry of Nathan’s time. Damn every one of them who had ever brought a light to his eye. Damn to eternal hell any of them who had ever made him sigh as he did in her arms. And damned herself for being so insufferably lacking in the sophistication and forbearance which made her so damnedably unable to overlook it all.
“Darling, I told you I don’t care a fig for—” he began.
“Can you guarantee more John’s aren’t going to pop up at every island, every town, hell, every ship you take?”
He opened his mouth, but saw the wisdom in not responding. “I can’t change the past.”
“Nor can I live with it, not graciously,” she shot back. “Neither can I bear watching you pining for your precious Hattie,” tumbled out before she could stop it.
He peered at her as if she were feeble. “Why the bloody hell would I do that?” he cried in a whispering shout. “The bitch shot me and then took me ship! I mourn for her presence, aye, but only so that I might return the favor.”
“Oh, no, no! I’ve watched you and had to wonder? Did you hold her there? Did you kiss her there? Did you make love to her there?” she cried, blindly stabbing her finger in various directions of the room. She looked down at the bed with loathing. “I’ve had to lie there—probably in the very same spot, on the same damned pillow—and wonder if the things you just did with me were the same you did with her?”
To have to have this conversation standing over that very bed was too cruel. A more charitable voice pointed out that Nathan had to have felt much the same standing on the very planks which bore the stains of his blood.
“You’re working yourself into a frenzy—” he said, striving for patience.
“You damned right!”
“—Over nothing,” he said, raising his voice over hers.
“For everything, at least for me.”
Nathan reared back, his eyes narrowing to dangerous slits. “Since you’re so fixated on what we did do, mayhap you might be interested in what we never did?”
Cate jerked her head aside in disinterest.
He drew the pistols from his belts and tossed them at her. Annoyed, and not a little confused, Cate pitched the weapons on the bed. “There! I’m unarmed! Here’s me back!” he added, turning around.
“Don’t you see?” he cried hoarsely, turning back to grasp her by the arms. “I could never do that with her. As for all the rest,” he went on, waving an irritated hand. “She was never that good in bed, not like you. For her it was more like a duty, whereas with you, it’s—” He bit off the thought, a path imprudent to pursue. “I’d seen whores with more enthusiasm,” he finally said. “And at that, it was more for me coin than me. I’ve told you, I don’t give a fig about any of them. Hell, I wouldn’t know John’s mother from that capstan out there.”
She was slightly abashed.
“Believe me, darling, pining is your purview,” he said, with a rueful roll of his eyes.
“What?!”
“Brian.” He could never utter her husband’s name, but it came out with cutting clarity then.
“I don’t!”
“Aye, but you do,” he said coldly. “You cry out for him in your sleep. It’s enough to wake the dead.” He shuddered dramatically. “Hell, you still wear his ring.”
Her hand reflexively clamped over that very thing. He jerked his head with the grim satisfaction of that gesture toward her most precious possession.
“I begrudge every year he had with you,” he went on, seething. “And all I’ve had is a few months, and barely that. And then, to think he just threw you away… ”
“It was nothing like that.”
“Ah, yes! I’m well aware of his grand nobility,” Nathan said with a sweep of his hand. “You’ve men popping up at every turn!”
“Men?!”
“Yes, men: Thomas, Harte, at Charles Town,” he said, ticking them off on his fingers. “Hell, everywhere you go, for Christ sake, sniffing after you like… like… like flies after a fish cart.”
“Your flattery will turn my head,” she said icily.
“I meant to say ‘like dogs after a bitch in heat,’ but I fancied that would be less than pleasing.”
“You’re too kind,” came even frostier.
Aware they were shouting to the point even the foremast jacks could hear what they said, they retreated to their respective corners. Suddenly, in a space where she usually welcomed him, nay, longed for his presence, she felt pressed and claustrophobic. A part of her wanted to take the knife from under the mattress corner and cut away every memory of his which didn’t hold her. A mental picture rose of a piece of lace, topped by black braids and a faded-to-near-colorless headscarf, for that would be all that was left of him. Too much of him belonged to too many; precious little was left for her. And too soon, she would be just another one of those holes.
“I need a drink!” Nathan declared. He whipped the curtain aside and went out into the salon. Cate hesitated and then followed.
He seized the bottle from where he had left it on the table and took a large gulp.
“Here,” he said, fetching a glass. “You look like you need one worse.”
Nathan’s fingers brushed Cate’s as she took the glass. They lingered, reaching for her and then fell away. Feeling crowded again, she sidled next to Merdering Mary, turning toward the window so she didn’t have to look at him. She took a drink and closed her eyes waiting for its restorative qualities. God, she hated rum, but Nathan seemed in no mood to fetch the brandy. Neither did she, for that matter. Suffering through it seemed far more fitting.
She drew several deep breaths and dashed at her face. Dammit, she didn’t want to cry! None of this had gone how she had envisioned it; far too much had been said. Nathan prowled somewhere behind her, circling like she was a lit fuse.
“I’d change things, if I could,” he said.
“As you have so eloquently put it, we both have our dunnage. Yours is just a little more… tangible,” she said over her shoulder.
She took another drink and grimaced. “The worst part is that they were able to give you what I can’t.” The admission didn’t come easily.
“And what the hell might that be, besides a case of the French pox?”
“A child.” She checked herself; it was a dangerous path to follow. Nathan’s confidence was so very contagious. She was so afraid to hope. With so many losses and failures, dreams shattered and hopes destroyed years before, it was easier to believe it couldn’t happen. The pain of barrenness was far more bearable than the anguish which came with miscarriages.
Nathan came close enough to curve an arm around her waist. His hand splayed over her abdomen. Still flat. No change, and yes, she checked every morning, and every morning she found little reason to hope. “Ah, but you can, can’t you?” he said low in her ear.
“Nathan,” she sighed, feeling thoroughly dejected and worthless. “There is no child. There never was, nor will there ever be.”
“Ah, but that was then, in another place. This is here, now and with me.” His hand pressed harder. “There is one now, you’ll see. Another few weeks, a month perhaps, and you’ll know too, finally.”
“And then what?” she wanted to ask. But she knew already. Any joy in that condition would be quickly dampened by the cold reality. If he were correct, a child meant confinement, and confinement meant land; there was no place at sea for a woman great with a child. There was the chance barrenness was a well-disguised blessing: it meant she might have Nathan a bit longer. She was caught on the horns of two longings: having him for as long as she might, or cutting that short—by how much she would never know—in order to have a piece of him.
“One more among the hordes?” she said coldly. “Number five in a list sure to grow.”
“No,” he said in a bare whisper. “This one is different. This one will be a piece of you.”
She pushed his hand away and moved out of his reach. “You keep calling John a little bastard. This one will be no different.” There was no need to explain what that meant; Nathan had lived it. Acknowledged by his father, with his father’s name, he had little else from the man.
“Everything will be different!” Nathan paced about the cabin, fuming once more, the rum shooting from the bottle as he waved his fist. “He will not want for a thing, nor have to wonder where his next meal might come from. Neither will he have a mother who has to sell herself so he might eat.”
He drew to a halt before the stern gallery and stared. “Had I been a better thief, Mum mightn’t have had to take the coin.”
Slumping on the sill next to her, Nathan looked off. His jaw twisted sideways, as always when perplexed.
“Hell, I never wanted to be a father. Never thought it would happen. Aye, I sowed me seed, and it grew. But they were just…” A flutter of fingers finished the thought. He turned his head, his eyes finding hers, dark and intent. “But this child I desire with all my heart, because it will be a part of you. I aim to give it what I never had: a name—”
“And a father?”
He winced, his gaze falling away. “Aye, that too.”
It didn’t matter, Cate thought, toying with her glass. Its image shimmered, and she blinked away the wetness in her eyes. None of it mattered, anyway. The only son of Nathan’s she would ever see was now walking the decks. The only thing she could do was make the best of it, if for no other reason than for Nathan’s benefit.
“His mother was killed, you say?”
Caught so far afield, it took Cate a moment to follow Nathan’s line of thinking. “According to Ben.” Again, she avoided the “killed by a pirate” portion of Ben’s story. It was better to leave Nathan thinking the lad hated him for abandonment, as opposed for Nathan being what he was, what he loathed himself for having become.
“I thought as much. Hell, the streets, nay, the whole damned world is full o’ similar stories. The difference is in how the soul manages. You can either do your best and move on.” The lilt in Nathan’s voice suggested himself a prime example. “Or, you can wallow in it,” he finished with a mocking bow in the general direction of the deck, and presumably, John.
“A guiding hand mightn’t go amiss,” Cate said, with a suggestive lilt. “Consider that Providence perhaps has provided an opportunity. Perhaps you might bend him, guide him toward something better.”
“Better than being a buggering arse bandit, eh?” Self-deprecation raised its head once more.
She started, thinking Nathan had seen through her ruse of omission, by some quirk he might have learned much more about John’s mother than supposed.
“No, I didn’t say that,” she said patiently. “Just a bit of forming.”
“The back o’ me hand might answer better for that.”
“That would be vinegar. Perhaps a bit of sugar would answer better? Please?”
Nathan looked at her, thinking surely he had misunderstood and then shook his head, befuddled. “That makes no sense. You despise him—?”
“I don’t despise him. Your philandering isn’t his fault,” she said evenly.
“You flatter me.”
“I despise you for doing it and his mother for having him, but it’s not his fault.”
“He insults you and then you plead his case. God help me trying to understand a woman’s mind!” Nathan intoned to the beams overhead.
“If he were anyone else, I would hand you the switch and help hold him down. But he’s not just anyone, is he? He’s your son.” She winced at uttering the word. Dreams aside, it was something she could never be able to give Nathan, nor never have to keep her company once he was done with her and gone.
“Please?” She hated using their friendship against him. It was manipulative, no better than women who feigned fainting. On the other hand, she harbored no doubt that Nathan wouldn’t scruple to tell her to “Go to hell,” if he didn’t wish it.
Finding her hand between them, Nathan took it. Gazing at her affectionately, his fingers entwined in hers, stroking her knuckles. “You have room in your heart for the world, don’t you? It would be ever so much more manageable, however, if you could be just a bit more selective.”
Nathan’s face screwed as he considered. Finally, he shook his head, muttering as he rose and picked up the bottle once more.
She found herself staring, transfixed by the beauty of him. The curve of his body, moving and twisting under his shirt as he lifted the bottle to his mouth; the movements of his throat as he drank. Or when that walnut-colored gaze settled on her, or that gold and ivory smile which never failed to touch her heart and so many other places. God help her, she loved him… which only made this hurt all the more.
“Consider it a favor,” she said.
He closed one eye to peer narrowly at her. “If you wished me to suffer, couldn’t you just settle for severing a couple of me fingers?” he asked wryly. “Far less painful, to be sure, and far more to show for the effort after the fact.”
A severe lift of her brow cut him short. He slumped. “Oh, hell.” He ran a tired hand down his face and exhaled wearily. “Consider it me penance.”
“And not as captain,” she advised. “I’m not talking tender kinship.” That would be too much to hope for. “Just—”
“What?” he asked warily. “Try not to fling him over the taffrail the first five minutes?”
Nathan paced once more. “Father, eh?” He mouthed the word like it was a sentence handed down from a court. “Hell, I never had one. How the hell am I supposed to know how to be one?”
Captain, leader, warrior, sailor. Pirate, lover, friend: Nathan wore so many titles, and yet father was one which was difficult to make stick. Perhaps it was “Freedom” on his chest or the swallows on his fingers for the thousands of miles traversed. Perhaps it was his failure to ever mention anything of hearth and home; his aims and goals never went beyond the sea. Being a father smacked of domestication, which was no more in him than a fish breathing air.
Leadership, guidance, disciplinarian, authority figure, steadiness: the line between captain and father was only a matter of blood. As captain, Nathan was a virtual father to nearly two hundred. A bit heavier on the authority, a bit lighter on the discipline, especially for a pirate captain, but the roles were nigh inseparable. As a captain, he was a resounding success. Father shouldn’t be a long leap.
Cate wrinkled her nose encouragingly. “Just follow your instincts. You’ll do well.”
Nathan shifted on his feet. Head bent, chin deep in his chest, he regarded her from under his brows. “Seeing as how you are sending me to brave the Gates of Hell, some token of farewell or good luck wouldn’t go amiss. A token of goodwill, perhaps, that I might be welcomed to your bed once more?” His words were teasing enough, but uncertainty pinched the corners of his eyes.
Curbing a smile, Cate intended only a brief touching of the lips. After all, not all of her annoyance with him had entirely dissolved. His mouth found hers, however, and held it, seeking assurances as no words could allow.
At the end, he leaned back far enough to regard her, his heavy lashes curving dark on his cheeks. “Ah, I’m advised to still have a care, eh?”
She drew him closer and kissed him again, a brief, but deep exploration, letting him know what would be expected of him in order to atone, finishing with a teasing flick of her tongue.
She felt him smile against her lips. “I’ll come to you when I may,” he said in a throaty whisper.
Nathan jammed his hat on his head and stalked toward the door. He drew up near the mizzen, however, and turned to face her. “Be it known, none of this alters the fact that the boy is a pestilence. I swear to you—in blood, if I must—that he’ll be off this ship the first land we touch. I don’t care if it’s a goddamned atoll or spit of land what exists only at the ebb, his little arse is gone!”
He ducked a mocking bow, tapping the brim of his hat in salute, and headed for the door once more.
“Bloody woman!”
Nathan leaned over the chart, hands braced on each side. He was in the midst of pricking the chart or, rather, preparing to. The Master-of-the-Watch’s responsibility was to see the latest reports from the traversing board delivered to him. The end of the Forenoon Watch had just rung; heading and speed were expected directly.
On the chart under his left palm rested Cartagena, the great city of the Spanish Main; homeport of the silver and pearl flotillas; gateway to South America and the wonders which lay beyond.
He aimed to indulge Cate there. Grand hotels… luxurious rooms… luxurious beds. Baths. Silks. Finery. Chocolates, until she was as plump as a bishop’s wife. He aimed to give her everything she desired, and perhaps a few things she did not, probably didn’t even know existed. Devil and burn him, it was like prying barnacles off a rock to learn of what she desired. Wine, champagne, feasts: he’d woo her until she surrendered and spoke her heart. A home, if she desired; those jaguar eyes always lit at the mention of one, at any rate. A cottage, at the least, a grand estancia, if she preferred, with fountains, gardens and servants to wait upon her beck and call. She spoke the language like a native. Was second or third, or some such, cousin to the popish Hapsburg sitting the Spanish throne. He’d make sure that small bit of information was put round; she’d be received as damned near to royalty! She would be free of any threat of arrest. Hell, they might even laud her for having taken part in that Papist upstart’s attempt to overthrow Ol’ King Georgie.
A meaningful clearing of a throat brought his attention to the door, necessarily leaning to see around the mizzen to do so. John stepped over the coaming—or rather, tried to, tripping, righting himself and then halting with the attitude of someone who would rather be anywhere but there.
“Mr. Hallchurch’s compliments and duty, sir.” The words were starkly void of the deference which usually accompanied them. John rolled his eyes toward the overhead beams with the effort of recalling. “He begs me to… inform the Cap’n that the log reads… eight knots and a fathom…”
“Certainly, feels like we’re going faster, perhaps more like nine?” Nathan prompted.
John flushed. “Aye, nine and a fathom. And bearing… bearing… bearing…” His voice faded. “Three-sixty!”
Nathan cast an eye out the stern window. “Hmm… By the looks of the sun, I would have thought Two-sixty.”
“Oh, aye! Two-sixty ‘twas, west by north, northwest.”
Nathan cut a sideways glance. “Usually that’s considered west by sou’, sou’west.”
John broke from his gaping—would be his first time in the Great Cabin, and clearly hadn’t expected anything so grand, grand, at least, in comparison for one living below decks—and puzzled for a moment. “Aye, that’s it!”
Nathan closed his eyes and shook his head, praying privately for guidance. Lord help the poor dundering swab.
It had been some days since Cate had caused him to face the ghosts of his past. The lad was his, God help him. He had agreed—more or less—to have a word with the wastrel. Truth be told, he had avoided the lad like a suppurating case of the pox, but the hard line of those angel-wing brows and a green-eyed—Yes, they went the color of spoilt pease when she was displeased—stare revealed she knew exactly what he was about and took a dim view. And now, here the boy was, larger than life, staring at him like a damned gawk. Cate required her pound of flesh, and so here it was. A few moments of pleasure fifteen years ago—and a few moments had surely all it had been—hardly seemed worth it now. But he had never been one to shirk his responsibilities, thanks to Mum and a good many lashings to make the point.
“Come over here and stop shouting like a f’c’stlejack. Over here in the light, allow me to look at you.”
John glared, but sidled closer, nonetheless, his usual cockiness over-shadowed by a nervousness heretofore unseen.
He eyed the lad. Overall, he wasn’t a bad sort. Comely, well-shaped, manners of a hog driver and didn’t seem to have the sense to step in out of the rain, but he’d shipped with worse, far worse. Cate’s claim was a curiosity. Likeness? In that lubberly, cod-handed, stumbling and bumbling wreck? Suffering Jesus, he hoped not! He saw nothing of himself, but betimes, he did have a sense of his brother or Mum looking back, an uncanny likeness which made his skin creep, like stirring ghosts thought long dead.
John took on an angry yet determined expression. The muscles in his jaws worked as he began fumbling with the fastenings of his breeches.
“What the hell do you think you’re about?” Nathan exclaimed seeing him push his breeches down over his hips.
John stopped, looking up with glittering hatred. “It’s what you expect, is it not? What all you buggering pirates expect, isn’t it?”
“For the love of… No! What the…? Hell and death, make yourself decent, man!”
John ducked his head, fixing his attention on readjusting his clothing.
“Has anyone laid a hand on you lad…here? Have they?” Hell’s fury, he couldn’t help what might have happened on the Bristol—His own experience was testimony enough that men, pirate, merchant or Navy, would be men—but be damned if he would have such skullduggery on his own damned ship! The lad might have been a pestilence, but he wouldn’t wish that on his worst enemy, Lord Breaston Creswicke aside.
“Name names or just toss a biscuit at them as they pass, and I’ll see to it the skulking bastards molest neither man nor woman for the rest of their unnatural life!” Nathan growled.
John drew a breath, wanting to say “Yes” but then faltered. “Not here… yet.” He sounded almost disappointed, mostly because he would have loved to throw it in Nathan’s face.
“How the hell did you come to be on the Bristol, on the Company’s coin, anyway?” It was a question Nathan had longed to ask, perhaps anxious to hear the Company and Lord-High-and-Pompous Creswicke was indeed to the bottom of the barrel. It would mean his capers had great effect.
John’s brows drew together, the ghostly image of Nathan’s brother appearing once more. “They promised food, pay, riches from prizes… and killing pirates,” he added with a cold glare.
Nathan made a caustic noise. “So claims every master on the docks looking to fill a ship’s bill. And you bought into that cock-and-bull story?”
He winced. Christ, he was sounding like ol’ Beecher, now. It was a day of ghosts rising.
Ignoring Nathan’s admonitions, John noticed what lay on the table and craned his head. Unable to contain his enthusiasm, he came nearer the table and bent. “Lovely charts.” He flushed. “Always had a fascination; dunno why.”
Nathan winced. His charts were his pride, but they were also his torture. He had always had a fair hand, thanks to many a torturous hour with Mum, his hands going black with charcoal, ink and paper being beyond their means. Any captain worth his salt was part cartographer. He had lamented long and often the lack of the time required to bring them up to what he envisioned: roses, cartouches, scales and notations were yet to be added to render them the true works of art. Each one held a lifetime of readings, soundings, warnings and observations.
John’s eyes drifted lovingly to the dividers, pens, and parallels, the ebony whipstaff gleaming in its case.
“Do you know what those are for? How to use them?” Nathan asked.
“No… I mean, yes, I know what they are for, but no, I have no notion of the how of it. Always desired to,” John said, his gaze fixed on the instruments. His eyes went from the charts on the table to the porcelain urns, which held a great many and then upward to where even more were stowed between the beams.
“The Atlantic, Mediterranean, Europe and the like there,” Nathan said, with a general sweep of his hand toward the urns. “The Pacific and India Oceans, East Indies, and so on up there.”
“Have you been to them all, sir?”
The lad’s eagerness caused a tightness in Nathan’s chest. He had thought the boy to not have a drop of the sea in his veins—had feared and lamented as much—but perhaps his judgments had been premature.
“Aye, most,” Nathan sighed. “From one high fifties to the other, and ‘rounded the Horn enough to know the odds are against me the next time. I crossed the Line the first time at the ripe old age of eleven.”
John nodded, as one did when comprehension failed.
“Have you a head for numbers?” Nathan grimaced. Considering the report just delivered, that gift had gone ungiven. One could hope it was but a matter of practice. Even brass gone black could be brought to a shine with sufficient elbow grease.
Nathan handed John the parallels. “Very well, let us see if there is a navigator in there. My last solar fix put us here,” he said, pointing to a mark on the chart. “Find the bearings on the rose. No, up there. No, two-sixty, remember? Line up the parallels on the compass rose. No, the bottom edge. That’s it. Precision is everything; off by a hair is the difference between making land, and dying of starvation and thirst wishing you might. Good, now walk the parallels up, until the top edge touches your position…”
They stood shoulder-to-shoulder bent over the chart. Nathan showed John next how to use the dividers, measuring the distances, estimating expected times. Forward motion was easy enough, but alas, if only a ship traveled in a straight line. Side slippage, currents, curvature of the Earth… nothing was ever as simple as one could wish, but if there were a bright mind in there, willingness, there was hope. It was a marvel the mastery with which the boy handled the instruments; those were Mum’s hands. Nothing so cod-handed as witnessed on deck. God help him, he was still tripping over the coaming!
An odd sensation tightened Nathan’s throat, familiar, but seemingly misplaced. And then, he realized it for what it was: pride.
Strike me buttons! Is this what this father-thing is about? It felt more like being a captain.
Never had a father to bestow it upon him, so how was he to know if it were fitting?
“What was your mum’s name?” Nathan asked delicately at one point.
“Mary. Mary Wareham,” John said, with a slightly hopeful tone that Nathan might recognize the name.
Christ, half the women he’d bedded—those he had bothered to learn their names, that is—had to have been named “Mary.” The thought occurred their names might have been a ruse, just telling him whatever they thought he expected to hear. Had he been questioned at the time, he would have thought them to be assumed names, but names had hardly been the first thing on his mind. Still, an unexpected displeasure struck at the thought of having been so cunningly duped; worse yet, that he had so willingly played along.
He envied men like Millbridge, who could pass a woman without notice, who could go for weeks, nay months without giving one mind. Not lusting for men, just not lusting.
God! The peace o’ mind that must bring!
It would have been ever so much more easier to not have a cock which was like a damned compass to north. Instead, he had enough lust for a dozen, randy as a satyr at every port. And now the proof of those dalliances strolled the deck.
Until you saw a quivering, sodden lump puking on your deck.
Belay that.
He was aware of the knowing looks and grins from the hands as they passed. Damn their eyes, they knew and were getting a grand bit o’ enjoyment out of it. As if none of them had stopped a woman’s monthly. The pain came with knowing Cate knew. Christ, what it must cost her to have to look daily at the proof of him having bedded another woman, fruit of his loins ogling her. Peering carefully at the boy while trying to appear not to, Nathan looked for some hint of the lad’s mother, some scrap which might jog his memory.
Nothing.
Nathan shifted uncomfortably. “I’m ‘fraid I don’t recall.”
“No mind,” John said flatly without looking up. “She was nothing.”
“Aye, well, mothers are easy to hate. They spread their legs for any man and bring us into this miserable world without a by your leave,” Nathan sighed. He’d suffered a similar animosity toward his, not for the whoring—It had been either that or starve—but for dying too soon. Abandonment was a bitter pill, regardless the age.
“But you also need to mind that, just like men, women cannot be all put in the same bag,” Nathan said. “Women is what’s good in this world. Men are nothing but bravado and aching balls; we plant our seed and we’re gone. ‘Tis the woman what gives life; they make it and then they nurture it. You’ll notice that even for the lowest of we men, there is always a woman what will take him in.”
John snorted, a sound so very familiar. “I don’t need women, either. Nothing but whores.”
Nathan straightened to eye him severely. “Now there’s where you’re wrong, and I’ll not hesitate in the saying so. I can state on good authority it was a woman what brought you into this world. And there’s a fair chance that a woman might take you out.”
John flung the dividers down and backed away. “Go to hell.”
“Sorry, lad, been there already,” he said evenly, bending over the chart once more.
“You’re just being led around by your cock.”
“You’ll find that observation usually comes from jealousy, as opposed to sage insight,” Nathan said blandly.
“And I don’t need a damned father!”
Nathan paused in walking the dividers to look up. “Well, that’s a mercy, because I’m not, nor never did look to be one.”
“I don’t need a mother, either.” The lad started making agitated paths back and forth. “Why should I care about an old bitch that sold me to her whoremonger for the price of a bottle of gin and a new frock?”
Nathan winced at the sick feeling in his gut. Once more, he tried to recall Mary Wareham. The effort brought forth a flood of the whores he had gone with. He had tried to pick the better of the lot—and a haggard and hollow-eyed lot they were—but unfortunately, an aching pair of balls often preempted discretion. Aye, he had taken his precautions, when it answered, but whores always knew how to either avoid it or be rid of it. In cold truth, his seed would have been one among the many that day.
“I wanted to cut my nose off… something… anything to make myself ugly, useless, but I… I… I couldn’t manage it.” John’s voice wobbled and then cracked. He stood head hanging, his fists working at his sides. Finally, he stiffened, regaining himself. “After the first week, I vowed I’d never let them see me…” Wetness shimmered in his eyes. Realizing he was about to make a confession to one he didn’t wish to show weakness, his face grew more determined. “I vowed I’d never weaken before those perverts again.”
John meditatively rubbed his arm. “The bastard beat me, until one day I yanked that cane out of his hand and gave him a taste of his own medicine.”
“Feel better for it?”
“Not much… a little,” John finally conceded. “He said I was too pretty to be wasted. I suppose I could thank my sire for that.” The acid in his voice was punctuated with a cold glare.
Unable to master his expression, Nathan looked to the table. Every man, if and when he dreams of a son, fancies him to be handsome, but he knew first-hand that there was such a thing as being too comely. Too delicately featured; a beard too late to sprout, a voice too slow to drop: all those flukes of nature which doomed a lad to a host of abuses.
“The bastard sold me to a better house, but a cock in the arse is still a cock in the arse,” John said bitterly. “The only difference was the liquor on their breath was a little more expensive, the beds were cleaner and the food was better.”
That such houses, ones which specialized in unique tastes, existed came as no great surprise. Entire floors, hell, entire establishments dedicated to providing those with fetishes, fixations and perversions: sadism, bestiality, necrophilia, pederasts, a veritable zoo of deviancies. He had heard of one which obtained bodies fresh from the gallows. Men were dark creatures, to be sure.
“Finally, I ran away. I damned near starved, but I was my own man. And I’ll be my own man, from now on! No bastard, let alone some stinking, buggering pirate is going to best me.”
“I’m sorry,” Nathan heard himself say.
John whirled around, the dark eyes cold with hatred. “Sorry for what?” he spat. “Sorry you left her? Or sorry I was born?”
“No,” Nathan said slowly. “I’m sorry I didn’t know about you. I’m sorry that I couldn’t have—”
“You can take your ‘sorry’ and shove it. You’re just a pitiful wreck of a man, bein’ led around by a whore—”
John’s thought went unfinished, for Nathan was around the table and had him by the shirt front, twisting hard enough to cut him off. He lifted the lad until only his toes touched the floor.
“Have a care, lad, for I’ll warn you but once. That woman out there is the closest thing to purity aboard or at sea, hell, anywhere! You’d be wise to appreciate it. You can spit all that venom at me all you wish, but not a drop shall fall upon her.”
A fear initially flashed across John’s face. Then it settled into what could only be called contempt. “Permission to leave, sir.”
Nathan gave him a final admonishing shake and let go. To do else would have resulted in a good many things he might regret. The lad was like a wharf cur that had been beaten too many times, he thought as he watched John stalk out. The soul had been soured; no amount of sugar was going to cure that.
On many counts, he couldn’t reprove the lad. Hindsight was a constant companion, a terrier nipping at one’s heels with could-haves and should-haves. The long and the short of it was there was no changing the past, as Cate had so eloquently pointed out. No, he didn’t wish the lad dead, but if it were possible, he would wish he would have foregone Mary Wareham and saved Cate all this anguish. Hell, he would have forfeited women entirely, for it had been a grand waste. Aye, there had been some grand times, but for her… had he known what awaited, had he known what those grand times would cost her…
She was a woman built for one man, like a ship for one captain, and expected the same. Apparently, Brian had been something of a paragon of virtue, damn his everlasting, immortal, purity!
Purity was not his nature. It was an impossible guidepost for one who lived in the gutter.