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grog blossom – Someone with a red nose from drinking too much. An alcoholic.

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THE STORM CAME rolling in past midnight. Jack and the four dogs (sometimes six, sometimes eight, a few of them came and went as they pleased) ran away from the North Docks at the first thunderstrike, and the waves were just starting to slap against the posts where the dinghies usually tied off.

Jack was huffing as she started up the rocky hill. She took one look back out to sea, wondering about the sea monster. Ol’ Charley the pirates had called him. Said he tended to follow the Lively wherever she went. Yet the Lively was here and there was no sign of any sea monster. Jack looked at the ships bobbing lightly in the choppy water. The Lively was moored at the end of the longest pier. She had heard the story from dockworkers gossiping. “Ol’ Woodes Rogers brought her in, and that Devil’s Son, too,” one old seadog had said. “Said he may have made a pact with the Devil for real, summoned up Ol’ Charley. I have a friend sailed on the Duke, an’ I asked him was that all they saw out there. ‘No,’ said he. Said, ‘Before we took the Coronado, we seen men floating in the water from a scuttled ship, we did.’”

Looking at the Lively, Jack wondered if its whole crew had been arrested along with Captain Vhingfrith. There didn’t seem to be anyone aboard it, no one attending it.

And for a moment she wondered how hard it could be to simply sail one of those away. Could she steal it now, with the storm blinding everyone and nobody aboard? Was that even possible?

No, I’d need someone to help me let out all the sails, weigh anchor, all of it.

That brief dream dashed, she headed back into town.

The dogs followed her everywhere now. She didn’t know how that happened. She had no scraps to share and they had to know it, but perhaps they also smelled the desperation on her and knew that she could access places she could not, such as Mr. Cowert’s old stall. It was obvious now someone or something had killed him or else he’d gone on a business trip to Kingston and died on the way. Either way, nobody had heard of him and so far no one had taken over his stall. So Jack slept there now. She had not returned to her treehouse since that terrifying night the boys shared their pig and she saw some nightmarish Monster tear one to pieces and eat him.

Pickpocketing at the docks was now her last best hope. The jungle was home to Caribee who locals now said were worshipping some strange god or gods from Elsewhere. The Fish Market was now filled with paranoid faces, some of whom had recognized her, one old woman had even chased her, shouting, “Oi, you! Come back here? You’re the one what took my purse! Constables! Constables!” The Golden Goose was the same, as was The Dip and The Tilted Lady. All pubs and inns shooed her and the other children away when they saw them. A dozen boys, whose faces she didn’t know, roamed the streets constantly. A few times they had told her to keep out of their alleys and she had listened, lest they discovered she was a girl.

Thunder boomed overhead. Clouds moved in cursed fast. Jack and the dogs were trotting up Queen Street when the downpour came. She slipped in the mud a few times, dodged out of the way of a man and his horse in a hurry.

Lime Street was crowded, people were hustling home, running from the Long Night which had just set in hours ago. The sun had been high in the sky, then simply winked out, and the world went cold and a chilled wind moved through the streets and new stars swam quickly overhead. But some people remained in the streets because they had nowhere else to go. More girls than ever were offering themselves to men in the streets, hands out, and the militiamen rarely did anything about it.

Jack ran up to one shop owner just now closing her stall. “Sorry, young mister!” the near-toothless hag said. “We’re closing—” She cut herself off when thunder boomed. The clouds had moved in fast, swirling like smoke-coloured eels.

Jack took one of the purses she’d purloined from a grog blossom down on the North Docks and planted it on the stall’s top. “Jes some bread, please—”

“All I got’s hardtack, now git!”

“I’ll take whatever yeh’ve got.”

“It’s old, young mister. Old and covered in weevils—”

“Don’t care, hag! Whatever yeh’ve got, said I.”

The hag shrugged and took the coins and tossed her some old rotted bread wrapped in rags. Jack didn’t bother thanking her, she and the dogs dashed through the alleys to a stall owned by a man named Umber. The dogs knew the routine now. They knew which routes she took when she was in a hurry. On the way, they would sniff the corners of each building, and a lucky mutt could snatch a rat. There were lots of those this close to the docks. Her father used to say they liked ships and knew when new ones had come in to moor.

Mr. Umber was a mushroom farmer with some sort of supply service set up with a couple of privateers that came and went from the North Docks, and he often had fresh chickens in cages. They were brought from the far side of the island or sometimes another island entirely. Jack didn’t know his business and didn’t care, she only cared that sometimes he and his wife were so busy unloading them that they got sloppy and didn’t see one go missing. The dogs were a welcome distraction because whenever Mr. and Mrs. Umber saw them, they became distracted, shooing them with brooms and throwing rocks at them, convinced it was them who were stealing the chickens.

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And this storm. It would only provide more noise, more confusion. If Jack got there before the delivery wagon reach the Umbers’ place of business…

But she was too late. She felt the sinking of her stomach as she rounded the alley and saw the wagon already pulling away.

“Fuck your mother!” she growled. An old curse of her father’s. Jack used it because she thought it made her sound more like a boy. And because she was wroth with the world entire. She looked out at the wagon, watching it vanish through the rain and the night. Two lamplighters on horseback came through that same curtain of rain and went galloping through the mud and Jack and the dogs had to skitter to avoid being run over. It was as if they didn’t even see her. “Fuck your mothers!” she called after them. She suspected she was crying, but couldn’t tell for the rain running down her face.

She and the dogs ran fast as they could up the hill, beyond the gag-inducing midden that was at the edge of town. The dunghill grew by the day, with fewer and fewer drovers to haul it off. Many had gone to Kingston, along with a few potters, cloggers, metalsmiths, and livery owners.

Jack and her dogs ran until they reached a gazebo coffee-house she knew was usually closed this hour. The rain and Long Night ought to have chased any late-night drinkers home, but strangely there were two men sitting there under the canopy. Jack bit back a curse. The last time she’d come to the gazebo when there were paying customers the one-legged proprietor had come out chasing her with a broom, shouting, “You stink to high heaven, boy! Your odour’s offensive to m’customers!”

Fuck their mothers. Will they chase me away again?

She chanced it. She walked slowly up onto the wraparound porch, trying to make her diminutive form invisible as she slouched under the canopy. The dogs tried joining her and she shooed them away. Better not to attract any attention.

“—what are you saying, Armond? Speak plainly,” a man was saying. He was well dressed, in fancy brown breeches and a long black coat. His hair was long and brown and pulled back neatly. He gave a slight glance at Jack but other than that paid her no mind. “It cannot be as you say.”

“I’m tellin’ yeh straight, Cap’n Rogers,” said the other man. Older fellow, bent, with a potbelly and rings in his ears and face. A pirate, perhaps. Some sailors who stayed in the Caribbean too long got piercings like some of the natives on the other islands. “I know at least three fellows in Porto Bello, they all say the same.”

“But they cannot be sure of the ship,” said the well-dressed man.

Jack broke off a piece of her bread and ate it. From the bottom of the steps the dogs looked up at her hungrily, waiting for any morsel she might share. Jack was known to give in and share from time to time.

“The ship, sir?”

“Yes, the ship. They cannot be certain of the ship that was used, I’m sure.”

“Said she was called the Elizabeth, but she was a sloop-o’-war, no mistake. Enrique—that’s this fellow’s name—Enrique says to me, he says, ‘Armond, a few of the Viejos survived and they tol’ the story. Was a man-woman, deceived everyone, did he. Man done up in lady-like clothes, moved like a woman, talked like one. And the Africans were black as night, like Moors, only more vicious.’ Then he says to me, he says, ‘Armond, it be the Ladyman done this to us. Seduced poor Major Solucio and killed him.’ That’s what Enrique said.”

The Ladyman. Now Jack had to pretend hard not to listen, for her ears were drawn to the name like her belly to food. The Hunger was the same.

“But this explosion on the fort,” said the man Rogers. “What was it? What manner of attack could cause such an incendiary thing? A sloop’s cannon’s can’t hope to reach, eh…how high did you say it was?”

“Four levels,” said Armond, sipping his coffee. “Four levels up a fortress built into a wall, an old secret fort made t’look like some old abandoned thing, in a cove few Spanish ships e’er get to see. They’re a-sayin’ there’s nothing like it in Porto Bello’s history. I swear to yeh, Rogers, my man Enrique ain’t no liar.”

Rogers, she thought, looking out into the rain but trying to strain her ears to hear every word. Captain Rogers. The pirate-hunter. The one who took down the Coronado with the Devil’s Son and then arrested him. Jack’s mind reeled at his revelation. The Ladyman was said to be friends with the Devil’s Son. Whispers said more than friends.

“Recount the tale again,” said Rogers. “From the beginning. Spare no detail but leave out all embellishments. It’s a Long Night, we’ve got time.”

The man Armond hove a sigh and drank down his coffee and began again, and as she listened, Jack’s heart quickened. The Hazard renamed the Elizabeth, the Ladyman posing as a woman who had lost her voice and seducing men, his freed Africans attacking as ferociously as Black Caesar, a trap sprung on all of Porto Bello’s defenders, and some tale of a Monster risen from the depths and crushing men in its grasp, leaving their bodies flattened and with their guts coming out of their faces.

Jack sat at the edge of the gazebo looking out into the rain but listening to one man retell the story, and in her mind the legend lived. Captain John Laurier stood tall in her mind and she could see him there—just over there in the mud—tricorne hat and bodice and skirt and sword cutting through armoured Spaniards like they were made of butter. And his ship conquering the fort, smashing it to pieces where it had no business being that powerful. She could see John Laurier dancing away from swords and daggers—

“What can he be planning?” said Rogers, crossing his legs and gazing ruminatively out at the rain.

“I think he already done it, Cap’n,” Armond laughed. “Probably halfway to Cartegena by now.”

“No, all he’s done is robbed a fortress. Impressive though it is, treasure stolen is useless if you cannot spend it, and right now there would be no port willing to take him in, English or otherwise, not after this. Bastard that he is, no one’s ever called him stupid. So why do it? There’s something more here, if your story is true. I don’t like it. There are depths of this plot yet unplumbed.”

“Oi!” a voice cried. “What’ve I told you—?”

She was already up and running away from the gazebo, into the rain, even as the coffee-house’s proprietor started to give chase. And the dogs ran alongside her, barking like they thought she was after something.

Jack ran so hard she became lost, which was hard to do since she knew Port Royal so well. But she couldn’t stop running. And laughing. She didn’t know why but it made her proud. A child’s heart was suddenly flooded with thoughts of adventure and freedom and daring maneuvers. The Ladyman had done the impossible. In her mind it was respite, brief reprieve from the daily hunger and struggle for survival. She skipped down York Street and the dogs seemed to catch on, and frolicked around her, biting each other and growling. The Ladyman had done the unthinkable, taken down a secret Spanish fortress. A better pirate never lived.