Chapter 48: The French Have It Coming
The walk back to the dock gave James plenty of time to work through the sums. The numbers, unfortunately, had a talent for making a good day feel expensive.
Over the next day or two, Juan’s men would move the goods out of the Rose’s hold in small loads, tucked inside salvage paperwork before selling it through merchants who specialized in cargo best left unquestioned. Clean as a confession, and twice as profitable for the man hearing it.
James’s own share, however, had shrunk before he’d even touched it. The mortar and two cannon had come straight out of his cut. He’d walked into Juan’s office feeling like a rich man. He’d walked out having paid handsomely for the privilege of declaring war on France.
There were still four more cannons and another mortar waiting if they finished the job. That alone made the bargain worthwhile.
It was still the strangest deal he’d ever made. He’d somehow managed to leave poorer than he’d arrived while becoming wanted by two empires in the space of one afternoon.
By the time he reached the Rose, the crew had fallen into their masterpiece of productive laziness.
Rook and Twice crouched beside the mainmast over a card game with all the gravity of admirals planning a campaign. Farrow knelt beside the third gun, muttering criticism into its touchhole. Mackerel Jim had stretched himself across a coil of rope as though it had been designed as a bed.
At the bow, Kit lectured young Ned with solemn conviction while Ned wore the expression of a man searching desperately for an escape. Nearby, the Hollis brothers fought over something that seemed to matter only because they were arguing.
"Right then, ye beautiful disasters!"
James called, climbing onto an overturned barrel as though he’d been born to deliver speeches from one. "Gather round. I’ve got news, and some of it’s even good."
That earned him exactly the response he expected. Pirates drifted closer with the cautious suspicion. Good news usually came attached to bad.
"We’re sailin’ west!"
James shouted. "There’s a French harbor that’s grown altogether too comfortable. We’re goin’ to burn a few warehouses, sink whatever’s floatin’ in the harbor, and leave Mobile spendin’ the next season patchin’ herself back together. We do it right, and we come home with mortars mounted on this lass. Next poor fool who decides to fuck with us gets a much rougher welcome than the’ll expect."
Kit’s face lit with impossible excitement.
"Ned. Ned!"
He caught the boy’s sleeve. "This is it. This is the sort of thing they write songs about."
"I don’t even know where Mobile is."
His voice cracked halfway through.
"Doesn’t matter! I didn’t know where Nassau was either. Worked out well enough."
A one-eyed pirate with three gold earrings dangling from the same ear beat everyone else to it.
"We were promised Nassau! Rum, women, and a bed that doesn’t rock beneath ye! Not another cursed coastline full of people who want us dead!"
A broad-shouldered brute whose beard had somehow collected more crumbs than hair clutched a hand to his chest.
"I’ve got a wife waitin’ for me at the Drowned Rat! Sweetest woman in Nassau."
Half the deck groaned.
"She ain’t yer wife, ye idiot."
"She is when I’ve got coin," the man shot back. "And I’d rather she kept thinkin’ I’m delayed than hear I got meself shot over a Spaniard’s politics!"
Greasy Pete hauled himself upright and jabbed a finger toward absolutely nothing.
"The Spanish ruined two perfectly good coats! D’ye know how hard it is findin’ one that fits me?"
"They did look expensive," James admitted.
"They were custom-made!"
"Aye."
James nodded solemnly. "Which makes this simple enough. The Spanish put holes in yer coats. The Spanish and the French are thick as thieves. Near as good as family. By my reckonin’, the French already owe ye two coats and an apology. They just haven’t realized it yet."
Pete frowned.
"That ain’t how it works."
Pete scratched at his head, thinking it over with surprising seriousness.
"...Is it?"
Farrow called without looking away from the cannon. "Did they say what size the mortar was? Sixty-pound bore, thereabouts? Makes a difference when we stow the shot."
"I didn’t ask."
"Ye should’ve asked, Captain."
Mackerel Jim sat up, looking personally wounded by everyone’s lack of experience.
"I’ve been to Mobile. Fought an alligator behind the fort, thing was as long as a longboat. Bit clean through me boot."
"You’ve never been anywhere near Mobile, Jim."
"Aye, well."
Jim pointed confidently at a perfectly undamaged boot. "The wound’s still healin’. Best not call me a liar too quick."
Grey never looked up from the chart spread before him. "Harbor’s a bastard. Sands never stay where ye left ’em. Come in at low tide and ye’ll be sittin’ in the mud. Hug the eastern point too close and it’ll tear the bottom clean out o’ ye."
His pencil stopped.
He studied the line he’d just drawn.
"...Well. That’s yer way in."
"Nobody asked, Grey, but I’m happy you answered."
Near the mainmast, Rook laid down another card without looking up.
"Mobile."
"Mm."
"French."
"Mm."
"Reckon ye’ll get yerself shot."
"Reckon I will."
Twice added another two shillings to the wager.
Doyle fished out his bottle from whatever mysterious place Doyle always kept it and silently handed it to Ned.
Ned took a long swallow.
When he lowered it again, his eyes watered so hard he looked on the verge of confessing to crimes nobody had accused him of.
"Actually..." He swallowed. "Sounds like a grand sort of adventure."
Bert had wandered over beside Edmund, and the pair had begun arguing in flawless sentences.
"One might argue that attacking a colonial holding under a deniable arrangement introduces a fascinating moral complexity worthy of discussion."
"Though I have not yet reached a complete conclusion, I would point out such arrangements, while unconventional, are hardly without precedent."
"Certainly," Wesley declared to nobody in particular at exactly the wrong moment.
No one had the faintest idea what he’d agreed with.
Hobbs climbed up from below looking like a man delighted to arrive late to his own funeral.
"French surgeons are butchers. Ought to show ’em what proper cuttin’ looks like."
Ezra Hollis folded his arms.
"I say we go. Good prize. Better guns afterward."
"I say we don’t. It’s suicide."
"You’re a coward."
"I’m the sensible one, Ezra, and ye know it."
A moment passed.
Ezra frowned.
"...Actually, now that I think about it, this sounds completely mad."
"Aye." Silas nodded. "Mad as anything. Which is exactly why we’re goin’."
Neither brother seemed aware they’d just switched positions.
Sawyer rested a hand against the hull and tilted his head, listening as though the ship herself had something important to say.
The timbers groaned softly in the afternoon heat.
He nodded once.
"She says she’s in."
"Here’s how I see it."
James hopped down from the barrel and wandered into the middle of the gathering, clapping Greasy Pete on the shoulder hard enough to make the big man sway.
"If you sail into Nassau with silver from three treasure ships, then ye’re just another lucky crew."
He drifted past Doyle, borrowed the bottle for a quick swig, handed it back, then pointed toward the Rose’s broadside.
"But if you sail in after burnin’ a French harbor under a Spaniard’s own nose..."
His knuckles rapped against one of the cannon.
"...and ye’ve more beauties mounted on this lass to prove it..."
He spread his arms toward the crew.
"...every man in town’ll buy you a drink before ye’ve finished tellin’ the story."
A scar-faced pirate with a jaw like an anchor grunted in approval.
A bald old salt missing half his teeth decided French wine was better than Spanish anyway, so the whole affair balanced out.
The Hollis brothers nodded to one another as though they’d resolved something important, despite neither of them likely remembering what it had been.
Briggs, standing near the rigging, said nothing. He let out a quiet breath that almost became a laugh before returning to his rope as though the decision had been made long before today.
Cudjoe moved through the crew without raising his voice, yet men stepped aside all the same. They always did when Cudjoe felt like a conversation had gone on long enough.
He paused beside James. "Ye’ve a gift for makin’ disaster sound like dessert, Captain. Dinnae know whether that’s a blessin’ or somethin’ I ought tae be prayin’ against."
Cudjoe’s eyes drifted toward the gangway. He jerked his chin in that direction.
Thatch stepped aboard as though the Rose had been expecting him all along.
