image [https://i.imgur.com/15eGPa6.jpg]

the pirate code – First set out by the Portuguese buccaneer Bartolomeu Português in the early 1660s, the First Tenet is as follows: Every man has a vote of affairs in moment; has equal title to the provisions, including strong liquors, at any time seized, and may use them at leisure, unless there be a scarcity. The Eighth Tenet states that no man may strike another while at sea, and that all serious quarrels are settled on shore, with a single sword, and a single pistol with one shot only.

ABNER DRAINED HIS mug of rum and limped to the portside rail, his mind a tumult of dark clouds. Hands shaking, he fought to compose himself. Something had hold of him, had hold of them all. He feared the night sky. Fearing the waters at night was nothing new to him, but now, for the first time ever, he actually feared the night sky. “Be at the capstan, young man,” he muttered to Dobbs. The boy obeyed without saying anything. None of the men were saying anything, and even Anne Bonny, normally unflappable, seemed keen on keeping herself close to the lanterns. Close to the light. The sun had not shown and some of them thought they had entered the Hellmouth. Abner himself might have believed it. Might’ve been him that first uttered the word to the others. Hellmouth. In fact, Abner was sure it had been him, half an hour ago, when speaking with LaCroix and Stewart by the bowsprit.

The Lively ran smoothly alongside them. Both ships reefed their sails, and anchors were dropped to keep them steady. Ropes were thrown over and planks were set up between them so that the two captains could have their palaver.

Abner looked abaft. The sun ought to be rising over the stern railing, but it was stubbornly absent. The stumps of his missing fingers touched the cross at his neck.

He looked across at the Lively, just in time to see some turbulence amongst the men was being quelled. There had been flames on the main deck, just aft of the helm, and for a moment everyone aboard the Hazard had watched in stunned silence as the crew of the Lively raced with buckets, dousing the flames before tackling a man with a torch.

“What’s going on?” asked Reginald, the cook. “They lighting a fire on their bridge on purpose?”

“Someone did,” said Okoa, hopping up alongside Abner. “I saw it all. One man set fire. Saw captain tackle him.”

“Who the bloody hell would set a fire on a ship on purpose?” said Bonny, passing through their group like a wraith, practically unseen. She wore a short coat with broad, plate buttons, but she wore no shoes or stockings. A brace of three pistols hung from her shoulder like a bandolier. Most of the blood from the earlier fighting had been washed away, but some still clung to her fingernails.

As always, no one answered her.

Abner looked away from the filthy woman, he needed no more reminder of her tonight. She was perhaps second only to Captain Laurier himself in blasphemers, and just now Abner had little patience for that.

Okoa and Reginald—both wearing red handkerchiefs around their heads, both wearing yellow sashes, from which hung their pistols—launched into speculations about the fire aboard the Lively but Abner was barely listening to them. He massaged his aching knees and looked around at the ashen faces of his crewmen. Some of them he knew well, most of them he had had only months to become acquainted. He loved them, almost as much as God loved them, and he feared for their souls. They were all dressed for battle now, perhaps expecting a trick from the Lively’s crew.

Their fears were self-evident. Tomlinson had already vomited over the starboard rail, but had done his best not to be seen doing it. Others looked just as sick with worry. Jenkins and Owens were huddled at the bow, leaning against stays and muttering to one another. Abner heard someone weeping, but he thought it was below the main hatch, so he could not tell who it was. Thirty other men chattered about their theories, their speculations, their fears. Someone was talking about stealing one of the longboats and just rowing away from both ships, as they believed the Hazard and the Lively were now joined in a curse, and that somehow getting distance from them would bring back the sun.

And there were the faces of the new men, the Negroes liberated from the Nuestra. Their flesh was so black it was near impossible to see them in the dark. They walked about with nervous faces, all except the one with the scarred face, who Okoa said was called Akil. The man was large, and finely muscled, and a full head taller than the tallest of Hazard’s crew, with the calm predatory eyes of a raven. Those raven’s eyes raked slowly across the sea, as if he himself was contemplating the anomaly. The other Africans stood behind Akil, sometimes muttering in their mongrel tongue.

Is this their doing? Did the captain curse us all by liberating them?

Captain Laurier said they were crew now. The Ladyman had taken on such despondent souls before, and even more wayward ones. It was not the captain’s charity that worried Abner so much, but the stories he had heard about African slaves turning on their masters and slaughtering whole crews. Some even did so after they were liberated. Black Caesar had been one of them, and everyone knew what a demon he was.

Lord in Heaven, has there ever been a less auspicious night?

Abner looked to the night sky and prayed. They were all praying. Had to be. Even though the Ladyman forbade it, Abner could see it in their eyes, could see their lips moving. Doubtless, they were calling upon the favours of angels and dead relatives they had not spoken to in ages. Even young Dobbs, so enraptured by Captain Laurier’s prowess in battle, was breaking the rule by muttering something under his breath constantly, an old Scottish prayer. Abner kept touching his crucifix, the stumps of his two fingers worrying over the tip of it. A few times he kissed it and silently offered God his own soul in exchange for the rest of the men’s safe passage back through the Hellmouth.

We must be in the Hellmouth, he now decided. It’s the only reason it is so dark. We’ve been swallowed whole. Then his bitter heart spoke what had been growing inside him. Because the Ladyman’s love for the Negro captain is unholy.

It was the first time the reasoning had entered into his mind, and though he dismissed it, he knew it would return.

We are in the Hellmouth, and no mistaking it.

Abner had seen the Hellmouth only once in a painting of the Last Judgment. It had been an accidental sighting, long ago, when he was just a boy in London, passing through an alleyway behind a museum. There he witnessed the museum’s curator hauling the painting into a wagon. The image was horrific, naked souls screaming as they fell into the black gullet of some demon, with a bare splash of red at the back of the demon’s throat, hinting at Hell’s eternal flame waiting for them. He had asked a priest about it, but the priest’s answer had only unsettled him more. It is the passage into Hell, he had said, which some believe is like a great throat all damned souls pass through on their way down.

“You’re thinking it’s the Hellmouth, mon ami,” said an accented voice.

Abner turned to see the Frenchman there. “What?” he said, trying to sound calm.

“All the men are whispering about it,” said LaCroix. “I assumed it was you that started the rumour.” His black hair was disheveled, his trimmed beard clumped together, no doubt because of the rum he had spilled into it, the rum Abner could still smell on his breath. They had all been drinking in revelry when the word was quickly spread that the sun was late. Abner’s own head was pounding from it. Perhaps that was why the Frenchman spoke in such a self-possessed tone, with a grim and mocking smile. “But if we sailed into it, we can just turn back around and sail the other way, and back out of it, oui?” He laughed, but it was an empty laugh, made to sound like he was not worried. But he is. God help us, even the Frenchman is scared.

“It is not that simple,” Abner said, and looked back at the smoke rising from the Lively’s deck.

Beside him, Dobbs had stepped up. He looked uncomfortably at the Frenchman.

“Why is it not that simple?” LaCroix asked.

“Because it isn’t.”

“Why not?” Dobbs asked. Apparently, he had overheard every bit of their conversation.

“You see, mon ami? Even the boy here must’ve been in a Nassau whorehouse, for he knows how to back out of a hole he’s not wanted in.” LaCroix wheezed with laughter. Others around him gave menacing looks. The Frenchman did not know how close to death he was, for despite his cleverness and ingenuity, he was not as popular as he thought.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Abner’s anger was inflamed. LaCroix had always enjoyed teasing the quartermaster more than others. Abner started to chastise LaCroix, but just then Tomlinson strode up and whispered, with slurred speech, “But that’s jes the point, is it not? Perhaps we are wanted here. In the Hellmouth.”

“What do you mean?” asked Dobbs, shivering visibly.

“I mean, we may be in the Hellmouth by purpose of a grander design, li’l nipper.”

Dobbs’s face, already pale white by lanternlight, turned even paler.

“Don’t frighten the boy, you,” Abner said.

“You mean don’t frighten you, old man,” said LaCroix. “Let young Dobbs figure out for himself what is—”

“We’re no’ in any ’Ellmouth!” said Jaime. The Scotsman came striding out of nowhere and gave the Frenchman a shove. “Away’n bile your head, ye simple Jessie. We’re nae in any fookin’ portal into ’Ell.”

“I’ve still no idea what you’re saying, monsieur, even after sailing with you for six months I’ve no idea. Your people speak as if goat’s balls are always floating in your mouths—”

“Fook you, Frenchie.”

Dobbs gave a nervous chuckle.

Abner hissed at them all to keep quiet. It looked like an argument was about to spark into violence when the Ladyman appeared from belowdecks in a new and elegant blue skirt and jacket, followed sharply by Kepler, Cedar, and Oliver. The last three were speaking heatedly to one another in hushed tones. The Ladyman spoke to no one as he strode past them, his skirt snapping in the chill breeze.

“It’s cold,” Tomlinson said. He had a blanket pulled tight around himself.

“That’s ’ow yeh know it’s nae a ’Ellmouth, lads,” said Jaime. “No one e’er accused ’Ell of bein’ cold.”

Abner watched the captain closely. They all did. Laurier paused at the plank. He turned suddenly, walked quickly over to Abner, and continued past him and spoke to the Frenchman. “LaCroix, have you any more progress to report on those devices?”

What devices? Abner thought. His mind suddenly raced with questions. What is this intrigue?

LaCroix nodded. “Aye, Capitaine.”

Laurier’s face became ruminative. “Bring them to my quarters. Now.”

“Aye.”

Abner did not ask what this was about. LaCroix left quickly and the Ladyman went to the port rail to receive the captain of the Lively. It ate at him, though, that he did not know what had just transpired between the captain and the Frenchman. As quartermaster, Abner was never the last to know about anything. It made him uneasy to be kept out of the loop now.

But Abner’s mind was never far from his duty. He watched three men working the capstan and limped over to them to remind them to place the toggle through the bight of the rope, and then he himself slipped another toggle through the bolt to keep everything in place. He growled at them, “You ought to remember this by now without me having to tell you!” They looked suitably chastised, and Abner knew he’d snapped only so as to vent. He looked up through the masts. Hazard was at bare poles, all sheets rolled up and secured. Dead in the water. Then he looked aft, at the moon riding low on the horizon. Far too low. But something else caught his concern. Abner wondered if he was the only one who saw it…

The moon. Something strange about it—

“Coming aboard!” called one of Lively’s crew. It was a tall, bald man who preceded the half-Negro captain. Abner knew the man was Jacobson, first mate on the Lively. A most formidable man, with a bit of a reputation in the Caribbean, practically legendary in his bravery and fighting skills. The story from Hazard’s crew was that they had seen him fighting like hell aboard the nao and slew many men on his own, even after he had taken a shot to his arm.

Abner believed it. During his time with Hazard, he had chance to meet with Jacobson on many occasions. Hazard and Lively were intertwined in a way that few crews liked—the privateers aboard Lively knew they were skirting a line by getting help from pirates to take down a Spanish vessel, and the pirates aboard Hazard knew that at any moment the privateers may try to make good on the rewards offered on many of their heads in Nassau and Port Royal.

But the alliance between the two ships had worked out thus far. Swimmingly, in fact. Never had either ship come into greater riches than when their captains leaned on one another to ensnare a Spanish vessel in some pincer or trap. Together, the Hazard and the Lively had half sunk a Spanish brig along a string of cays, harried another one until it ran aground on St. Lucia, and split the treasures on both. And that was just during the time Abner had been with them. Before that, stories said the Ladyman and the Devil’s Son had partnered on many ventures, including capturing two Spanish sloops secretly anchored in an inlet at Madagascar. The story went the Ladyman anchored his ship around the headland, and that he and what few of his crew that could swim (there were always few of those) swam beneath the waves for almost an hour, and boarded one of the sloops at dusk, while the Lively hammered the other one from sea. And after every two or three ventures like that, both the Ladyman and the Devil’s Son would separate, traveling apart for months before rendezvousing again. Then, they would both have need to replace at least half their crews once back in Port Royal—few people could tolerate either captain’s strangeness for very long.

This arrangement between the Lively and the Hazard had been very lucrative for both ships for years, Abner knew, that is, until some disagreement between the two captains drove a wedge, and not long after that England began having a severe distaste for piracy, despite the many Spanish ships the pirates in the Caribbean had sank, and while Captain Vhingfrith had done the predictable thing and maintained legitimacy by acquiring letters of marque, and paying a percentage of his prizes to the Crown, Captain Laurier had remained what he always had been: a rogue of the sea.

“Strange business, this,” said Anne Bonny, pacing in front of Abner. “No sun. Strange moon.”

So, she sees it, too. Something about that moon…

Across the plank came the Devil’s Son. Even for Abner, so accustomed to things that would be seen as taboo outside of the Caribbean, he found the mere idea of a mix-breed almost as grotesque as the vision of that same mix-breed being made captain of anything. It was not completely unheard of. The famed pirate Black Caesar was himself captain of a vessel, but Caesar was a pirate, and Vhingfrith was a privateer. It might be hypocritical for Abner to be so severe in thinking England, a country he loathed, was somehow besmirching all white men by debasing itself to permit a half-Negro to be captain of anything…But I don’t care. It isn’t natural.

Nor is what the two of them get up to when they are alone.

That part galled him the most. Almost to the point he forgot that the reason for this premature rendezvous was because the sun had so far not deigned to rise.

Abner looked back at the moon. Something so strange about it, and it was growing stranger by the minute.

What is it? Is it the shape? It does appear to be more egg-shaped than—

Abner watched Vhingfrith and his first mate step down onto the deck of the Hazard, and fought back his disgust and stayed by Captain Laurier’s side. Abner and Jacobson nodded curtly to one another.

When Laurier and Vhingfrith laid eyes on one another, it was immediately clear to Abner what their true relationship was. A smile was all he needed to see, a feigned formality when they shook hands. It was in the air between them. Lust, shame, bitterness, love. Abner could detect all the revolting aromas.

They were men of the Molly-house, performing dalliances meant to be conducted only between a man and a woman. Or once had been. Abner had caught men buggering in shadows and brought them before captains to be given their twenty lashes, so he was ingrained in the laws of the sea, which had always forbade two men lying with one another. Not to mention his Faith told him of the immorality of it. He had hoped his love and loyalty for Captain Laurier would never give him conflict again. But the Ladyman liked to test him. He liked to test everyone.

“Captain Laurier,” Vhingfrith said.

“Captain Vhingfrith, welcome aboard.” The Ladyman smiled. Has he reapplied his lipstick? Abner wondered. Yes, he has. And it was blue now, instead of red. And by torchlight he saw the Ladyman had applied black charcoal around his eyes, as well as fresh rouge to his cheeks. “We saw fire on your deck as you approached. Is everything all right?”

“One of my men is suffering from a mind sickness, I’m afraid,” said Vhingfrith. “And in his panic he caused a fire and then only made it worse by his ministrations. Just a small matter, nothing to concern you.”

Laurier smiled again. “I see. Well, good of you to come aboard during this rather strange predicament.”

Predicament? Strange? Abner’s mind raced. You make it sound like we’ve merely run aground. What do you mean predicament? The fucking sun is missing!

“Of course,” Vhingfrith said, all smiles. “Perhaps we can figure this out together.”

“I’m certain that we can.”

Then, Abner caught a look in both the eyes of Vhingfrith and his first mate. Their gazes raked across the crew of the Hazard. Abner registered the contempt in them, and his agitation from the moment only swelled. They judge us. Abner had seen this look of disdain before. All of Hazard’s men were labeled pirates and many of them were set to be hanged. Not only that, but some of them were wearing petticoat-breeches and laced shoes that, to a careful eye, would obviously have originated from well-to-do Englishmen, or even officers of the Royal Navy. They’ll be a-wondering how came we by such garments.

By piracy, of course. And murder of Catholic-hating Englishmen, which Abner was usually quite fine with and sorted out with his Creator after each violent offence. Vhingfrith and Jacobson had allied with the Ladyman before, but how long before scenes such as this would put them over the edge?

“Why has the sun not come up?!” someone shouted abruptly, interrupting Abner’s thoughts.

Others took up the call.

The two captains merely glanced in the crowd’s direction. Then they both smiled as if this was all just a silly matter, and Laurier directed Vhingfrith belowdecks. Jacobson followed, and so did Abner. But before they went down the ladder, Abner saw the subtle movement between the captains.

They reached out to one another to shake hands again, to seal the partnership.

Their hands touched.

Abner saw it. They all saw it, they had to. A spark of something more, a kind of love that ought to be reserved only for a partner as God intended. In that moment, Abner Crane saw his years-long mistake of serving at Laurier’s side. It happened in an instant. God in Heaven, forgive me for being so blind. Save us.

He took one last look back at the moon, its shape somehow odd to him. And he was now certain there was only one way out of this Hellmouth.