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

labour – A vessel is said “to labour” when she rolls or pitches heavily.

Mark these words,

wrote Remy LaCroix into his journal,

that on this day, 29th of August, 1716, the sun did not rise. And never shall again. The captain says today is the 30th, that we all merely slept through a day. That is a lie. I can see through it. Today is not the 30th, it is the 29th, and the sun shall never rise again.

The words seemed true the moment he wrote them, and truer every time he reread them. But for the single lantern LaCroix had been permitted to light, the small corner of the forecastle that was his lay mostly in shadow. The area was thick with spare rope, coiled and wrapped around the rafters. Like a spider in his web, LaCroix rested in his hammock and swayed more heavily than normal. There was no storm, and yet Hazard felt like she might be stepping into another squall. Her timbers creaked, and the wind crept its way lightly down the ladder, with footsteps as light as a ghost’s, and made him shiver.

Only a few men hung in their hammocks around him. None of them slept, but they all lay there trying.

The ship leaned heavily side to side. The only other noise besides the boards creaking was the scribbling of his pen. The inkbottle was squeezed between his knees, and the parchment rested in his lap. LaCroix had never learned to read or write in his native tongue, he had come to the Bahamas at fourteen, and had learned to speak and write in English, though not superbly, along with many other skills that were afforded him by a lucky acquaintance with an English inventor named Bennett. Bennett had been an agent for privateers in Jamaica, but after dabbling in marketing for pirates, he had been sent to Marshallsea Prison, where he sat for years, forgotten, until he died of the yellow jack fever.

That had left LaCroix orphaned. But he was used to the sensation.

Remy LaCroix had been a poor student in France, but Bennett’s attentions had allowed him to blossom into an apt pupil while in the Caribbean. The old man had been patient with the boy, uncovering his curiosity in the natural world and guiding it to his own ends. Bennett’s motives were not wholly pure; he taught Remy metallurgy and alchemy so that he could ascertain the difference between true gold coins and false ones; he taught Remy all about measurements so that he could help weigh payments on scales, to ensure pirates were not cheating Bennett’s many businesses; he taught him carpentry to help with repairs around his home; and he taught LaCroix writing and language and figures so that he could maintain the account-books. LaCroix’s education was for Bennett’s sake, not LaCroix’s.

Bennett had taken LaCroix in when both his parents (merchants with interests in the Caribbean slave trade) had died of plague aboard the Erasmus. And while he conducted business with pirates himself, Bennett forbade Remy of entering into any enterprise with them.

What would he think of his student now, residing aboard the Hazard, his teachings being put to the Ladyman’s purpose?

This ship labours. She has always felt prepared for anything, even when she is battered and in need of repair. Water moves around her smoothly, and she often feels eager for the open water. But now, even in Kepler’s capable hands, our ship labours.

Hazard has a soul. It seems as if she is holding her breath. There is a great precipice before her, before all of us, as I have never sensed before. Will she bravely take that plunge? I have never sailed into a nightmare, but surely this is what we are doing. I feel it now. A miasmic cloud is before me, obscuring everything. I know that I can now walk up onto the quarterdeck and I will recognize nothing I see. Not the clouds, not the stars, not even the waters or the moons.

Moons.

It feels strange even writing it.

But we are not in any Hellmouth, Abner and some others are stupid for believing so. I do not know what this phenomenon is, but I know it has a reason, and a solution.

His pen hovered above the parchment a moment. Then he wrote,

We must survive long enough to find the solution. If no solution soon, then we die.

LaCroix tapped the parchment with his thumb, thinking. He heard scraping underneath his hammock. He peered down and found Rory playing with some small bit of frayed rope he had found. The old brown cat seemed to recognize he had been spotted, and without looking up, he froze. Then, all at once, he darted into the shadows.

LaCroix rolled his parchment and closed the top on his inkbottle, and replaced them both in his oilskin sack. He eased himself out of his hammock and tiptoed across the swaying deck. A few of the men had now gone to sleep. He heard them begin to snore. It seemed some were relieved to hear Captain Vhingfrith’s lie, and they were easing into their comforts.

But the fact that they sleep only confirms the lie, LaCroix thought. According to the Lively’s captain, they had all slept an entire day, and he claimed that was the source of all their confusions, but LaCroix knew that was not true. If it were so, no man would now be able to sleep, for they would have had plenty. If we slept an entire day, then why do we all feel so tired? Also, why aren’t some of the men’s injuries scabbed over yet? Seems a day would be long enough for a bleeding wound to scab.

It was simple logic, the same sort that had told him to flee Bennett’s house the night the king’s militia came for him and dragged he and his mistress out of his bed. Remy had heard the news from Madagascar, of pirates being rounded up from a pirate settlement there and hauled over to Port Royal to be hanged. He had recognized some of their names from Bennett’s old account-books, which Remy had helped to write. Even after warning Bennett, LaCroix had been shocked to see the old man confident in his invincibility. They’d never lay a hand on me, he’d said. I’m too important to the militia’s operations. They need me as much as the pirates do.

As LaCroix went in search of Rory, he wondered what it had been like for Bennett when he died, alone in his cell, having not had any visitors for the two long years it took him to die. They said he spoke to no one but the guards, for he was tossed into a lower dungeon and practically forgotten. The tribunals had never gotten around to hearing his case and he rotted in his cell. LaCroix wondered what his mentor would have made of the sun’s disappearance.

Probably, he thought, stepping up onto the main deck, he would have taken a pistol and killed himself. He always was a proponent of suicide, when all seems lost. But perhaps not. After all, he lasted two years in Marshallsea, and in that time a man of his ingenuity ought to have conjured up a way of killing himself.

The two moons had further separated; the smaller, pinkish one, which was far more distant, was creeping lower on the horizon. LaCroix remembered watching it emerge from behind the white moon only two hours ago, as though the white moon was hatching it. The sense of horror he’d felt then had not lessened. Something evil was afoot. Perhaps the Africans had brought some dark forces with them, or maybe some Judas among their crew had performed some black magic, someone like Anne Bonny who covered her breasts in her own blood before every—

LaCroix heard low voices whispering. He walked past the Scotsman, currently resecuring rope on a bundle of barrels that had gotten loose as the ship heeled from side to side. He followed the whispering voices to the mainmast, where six men stood listening to Abner Crane. “—the Hellmouth is not Hell itself, I tell you! It is possible to leave,” the quartermaster said. “Only once we are down its gullet are we truly inside, at the point of no return. But if we renounce our fellowship of the Ladyman now, and beg God for forgiveness—” Abner stopped talking once he saw the Frenchman. “Bless you, lads,” he said. And, like a priest, he made the sign of the cross for them, and they mimicked him. “Get back to work.”

After the men had dispersed, LaCroix said, “Now you like my idea of turning back around and sailing out of here?”

The old man limped past him, mumbling, “We cannot merely sail out, not like that.”

“Then what must we do, monsieur?” LaCroix caught his arm. “You don’t believe we slept a whole day away, either, do you?”

The quartermaster said nothing more, he shook off Remy’s hand and walked aft, joining Kepler at the wheel.

LaCroix watched him go, then looked up at the sky, and shivered. The wind was a blade of ice, cutting deeply. That was abnormal for the Caribbean. He looked around for Rory for a bit, and when he couldn’t find the cat, he returned to his hammock and tried to sleep. He heard the dinging of the bell. Twelve peals. It ought to be noon at this moment.

Down in the galley, someone started playing a mournful fiddle. LaCroix felt the ship rocking him. He thought of Eze, the home he barely remembered on the French Riviera. He wondered what his life would have been like had his father never inherited his grandfather’s money and shipping business, and uprooted them all to move. Remy wondered where he would be right now, having never met Samuel Bennett or the people of the Bahamas. Married? Children? A whole family? Oui, that wouldn’t be so bad.

He heard someone weeping.

Someone else was mumbling prayers to himself.

Someone else close by was whispering, “Abner says it’s so. Says it’s just a matter o’ renouncin’ our pledge of loyalty. We’re in the Hellmouth, lads, make no mistake, and the Ladyman led us here.”

LaCroix’s eyes were still shut. He feigned snoring and slowly opened one eye and turned his head. The man speaking was Isaacson, and he had an audience of seven other men around him, all standing in rapt attention. LaCroix had never liked Isaacson, the man was said to be a rapist, and rumour had it he had tried to bugger Dobbs. The poor boy had barely survived thanks to Jenkins and Tomlinson, that’s what the rumour said. Once, while they were drinking late at night, LaCroix had overheard Isaacson joke about a time he and his fellow English redcoats had raped a small girl. The Frenchman had decided that if he ever got Isaacson alone, with no witnesses, he would kill him. It would not be difficult, for Isaacson was thin and weak and practically friendless, and LaCroix was sometimes keen on killing men who annoyed him, it was a good sport to pass the time.

Some of their words were lost as the ship moaned and water lapped against her hull.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

A conspiracy was alive inside the walls of Hazard. LaCroix had never experienced a mutiny before, but he believed that was what he was witnessing now. Abner’s words, Isaacson’s, the men’s, and the looks in their faces all told the story.

He waited for the men to stop talking and then got out of his hammock again to go for a walk. He did not go directly to the captain’s quarters, for that might look too suspicious. Standing on the main deck, he looked around for Abner, and saw him speaking to young Dobbs at the bowsprit.

Fuck.

The combined light of two moons shone across the sea and made the choppy waves glow. Hazard laboured, but she was a tenacious old vessel, spat out from the shipbuilders in Massachusetts Colony fifteen years ago and passing through the hands of two or three privateers before being taken a prize by the Ladyman. The reason Captain Laurier had wanted her was plain to anyone that looked hard enough. Her lines were uncommonly straight and rigid, her displacement and balance were perfectly in sync. One need only stand on her quarterdeck a few moments before they got the sensation of floating, as though she had a special relationship with gravity. Hazard was a cunning vessel, somehow built just right. The ocean seemed to roll underneath her as she clawed for the horizon. Somehow, despite being built ostensibly no different than any other vessel of her kind, Hazard penetrated the waves like no other sloop-of-war.

Some ships were like that, with a sort of mind of their own. LaCroix knew from experience—in the years after Bennett’s death, he’d been a shipwright’s apprentice. He was made a master builder just before the Ladyman found him and offered him three shares of a prize to be Hazard’s new head carpenter. Captain Laurier’s reputation was well known then, and LaCroix had never been one to settle in one place for too long, so he left port and sailed. The captain may be as cunning as a devil, but LaCroix was an avowed nonbeliever, and could not countenance the idea that Laurier was a demon, or a monster, nor could he believe that they were all bound for Hell.

Well, at least, not in this way, he thought, looking at the two moons.

A cloudless sky was above him, and the black dome of the world gazed down at him through a million pinpoints of light. LaCroix was no master of the stars, celestial navigation was Kepler’s realm, but Bennett had taught him enough to pick the constellations out of that star-strewn blackness and he knew more was wrong here than some pockets of gas making men sleepy.

He walked belowdecks. Unable to sleep or rest, he made his way down the companionway and paused in the galley. There lay Stephens, who had already been soon for death because of some malady or other, now grievously injured during the attack on the nao. The galley was being used for he and five other injured men. Cedar, Hazard’s only serviceable surgeon, sat in a corner monitoring the men, sipping at rum and reading a book by candlelight. The surgeon, in fact, had known little about surgery, let alone physic. But he had once been some kind of doctor that helped horses deliver their foals when pregnancy was difficult, and the Ladyman thought that was close enough to take him on as ship’s surgeon, and trust that he would learn on the job.

“When will he pass?” asked LaCroix.

Cedar looked up from his book with a start. It was then LaCroix noticed the book was a tattered Bible. “I assess soon,” he said. The man had a mop of grey hair, done up in braids, like his shaggy beard. He was sweating profusely. “Thank God he did not live to see this. Hopefully he walks with Saint Peter now.”

“Was he ever baptized?”

Cedar wiped his brow. “I’m not sure. Owens says no.”

“Then he isn’t walking with Saint Peter.”

The surgeon winced at the cruel statement and turned back to his Bible. “The stars are so beautiful, and so seemingly eternal, like the sun. And where should we be without them?”

“Without the stars?”

“Yes.”

“Have you not looked outside, monsieur? The stars are still out there.”

“But for how long? If the sun can disappear, Mr. LaCroix, what makes you think the stars have any more permanence?” He shivered visibly. “They will vanish soon, mark me. As we go deeper…” He trailed off.

LaCroix looked down at Stephens, who began mumbling to himself. He did not need to ask what Cedar meant by going deeper. He means the Hellmouth. God, Abner’s words seep in everywhere.

Cedar confirmed this by asking, in a solemn whisper, “Have you heard what Abner’s been saying?”

LaCroix sighed and leaned against a bulkhead nonchalantly, hands in his pockets. “Abner Crane says many things, most of which do not make sense to me.”

“He says we must renounce the captain if we want out of this.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes.”

LaCroix scratched his beard and shrugged.

“Do you not care?”

“Honestly, monsieur, no.”

“No? You don’t care that we are sailing at the head of a hellship, with a possible demon sitting in its captaincy? You don’t care that a demon in man’s clothing—woman’s clothing—tricked us into coming on this venture with him?”

“You are a stupid man, Cedar.”

The surgeon blanched at this.

On the table, Stephens let out an inarticulate cry, then said something that sounded like Mother.

LaCroix peered down at the man. Stephens was young, barely twenty years old, and just now he breathed shallow, his stomach pierced and sewn to keep in his guts, but the bleeding would not stop. The bandages pressed around his midsection were once white, now soaked red.

“Make sure you tell Tomlinson and Gregory when he passes,” LaCroix said. “They liked Stephens very much.”

He left Cedar alone, and walked uneasily along the swaying deck. At last, without truly knowing where he was going, he stopped in front of the captain’s door. He thumped it twice with a fist, and heard the door unlock from the other side. When it opened, the Ladyman stood there, a pistol held at his side, the hammer pulled back. “Yes?”

“We need to talk.”

“Are you alone?”

“I am,” LaCroix said, standing to one side so he could see.

Captain Laurier judged him a beat longer, then opened the door wider and admitted him. But as soon as LaCroix was inside, Laurier bolted the door. “Well? What is it? I’m busy.”

“You’re going to be a whole lot busier in a little while, Capitaine.” LaCroix sighed and took a seat in a chair. He pulled his long black hair behind his head and looked around. The smell of sweat and the lantern’s oil filled the room. Charts were scattered across one table, and books were laid open on the other. The largest of the books was Fiore dei Liberi’s treatise, The Flower of Battle. LaCroix was vaguely familiar with the three-hundred-year-old text. It was presently opened to a chapter on spada a un mano—the use of a sword in one hand. By the sweat on the captain’s brow it was obvious he had been trying to relax his mind by training. The Ladyman was a formidable fighter, famously lethal, perhaps the most lethal LaCroix had ever seen, but that skill was not the one that needed honing right now.

“You’re going to need friends soon,” he said. “Very soon.”

“I have friends,” said the Ladyman, uncocking his pistol and tucking it in his waistline. Laurier was no longer dressed in his lady’s clothes, he wore a simple white shirt and jerkin with grey breeches. His blue lipstick and shadowed eyes remained, though, as did some of his jewelry. “Did you have something specific on your mind, Mr. LaCroix, or is this just to discuss your shares again?”

“I feel quite confident that Capitaine will honour the agreement he and I discussed before the raid on the settlements,” said Remy. “I am comfortable with my shares. But I would like to know why you wanted me to rush my special concoctions down here, and just before Captain Vhingfrith came aboard.” He pointed to the two boxes in the corner.

“I assume it is obvious,” said Laurier, closing up his rutters and putting them away on a shelf. Without his feminine garb, the Ladyman seemed somehow diminished. It was rare to see him this vulnerable, like a warrior without his armour.

“You wanted the grenadoes here, in case you needed to use them against the whole fucking crew.”

Laurier only looked at him.

“I want to help you. I do not wish to end up like the others.”

“What others?”

“Please, monsieur. Let us not speak in code. When we get to Vhingfrith’s cay, we will careen, and the men will be allowed to go ashore, to either fish or relax or whatever else. Then you and your lover will decide whether to execute them or take your two ships and leave them all there, marooned.”

“I don’t know what you’re—”

“When we first met, you said you brought me on board because I am not stupid like the others. Please remember my intelligence, Capitaine. I am not like those men out there, so frightened of the unknown. This new upheaval terrifies them, but I suffer nightmares often, strange visions, and I have seen worse in my dreams. I sometimes dream myself lost in a dark ocean, with no ship, just swimming towards nowhere. Every time I wake up, I am exhausted, as though the dream was real and I had been swimming all night. My life has been nothing but upheaval. Two astrologers have told me I was born under a sign of never-ending suffering,” he chuckled. “And while I never put much belief into that, my life has proven them correct. So please, remember that. Remember that LaCroix is not like the others.”

They stared at one another while Hazard heeled to starboard, then back to port. A book fell off the captain’s shelf but he caught it before it hit the floor. As he replaced it, he said, “What do you want?”

“Just your assurances that I will not be among those killed or marooned.”

“You have those assurances always. I would have thought it obvious.”

“Well, it isn’t obvious. But perhaps it is clearer now.” LaCroix sighed and slapped his knees as he stood up. “But now we must talk about your quartermaster?”

“Abner?”

“Oui.”

“What about him?”

“He has not stopped talking about the fucking Hellmouth since all this started. He is out there talking about it right now, and telling men there is only one solution to this. He’s also made some remarks about you. Remarks suggesting we are trapped in this Hellmouth because of your sins.”

Captain Laurier turned to face a bulkhead, looking at nothing. “I understand.”

“Do you? Because Abner is loved by many, and right now, he has caught the mood.”

Laurier turned back to him. “What do you suggest, Mr. LaCroix?”

Remy scratched at his beard. The plan had been moving slowly through his mind, as slowly as molasses moves in the winter, ever since he heard Isaacson in his hammock. If he thought about it, the plan had likely been forming ever since the Lively’s crew came over to hold palaver. “Between you and I, I believe we can make a list of the men most loyal to you. At least, more loyal to you than they are afraid of Abner’s story.”

Laurier looked at him hopefully. “So, you do not rebuke the notion you just put to me?”

“You mean the notion of marooning some and killing those that try to get back on board this ship? No. And I believe I now have the confirmation I needed, as to why you wanted the grenadoes in here. If you have to take on large groups of men, you’ll need something that can take out many men all at once. I can use the grenadoes better than you because I made them. There is that. So, I say to you, with your permission, I will approach such persons as I feel are absolutely loyal to you, and after that, I will need to be left alone in the bilge with my ingredients.”

“What all will you need?”

“I understand we took some bottles of wine and rum from the Nuestra? Good. I’ll need any small-necked glass bottles you can spare, with plenty of birdshot—you ought to be able to find that in Tomlinson’s locker, he likes to shoot gulls when we’re close to shore—and any small fragments of metal. Use any flecks that came loose during the battle. Have it all brought to me by your most trusted men.”

Laurier nodded, his countenance appearing more hopeful than it had since Remy walked in. “Do you still have plenty of saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur from the last batch?”

“I do.”

“Excellent.” Laurier sighed and looked down at the two boxes. “My hope was to put these to use in our next raid.”

Now this surprised LaCroix. “Next raid, Capitaine? Against who? Where?”

The Ladyman smiled wanly. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

Now that is most enticing, the Frenchman thought, suppressing an eager smile. The Ladyman was renowned for planning far, far in advance, and using one plan to fold into another, even greater plan, and then folding that into yet an even greater plan. He was like Blackbeard in that way, they said, using the momentum of one victory to score another one. LaCroix had not been aboard the Hazard long enough to see that Grand Design yet, and now wanted nothing more than to know what the Ladyman was planning to do, ultimately, if they survived the coming mutiny.

Laurier said, “Go, get to work. I’ll send Dobbs with whatever you need. I think we both agree we can trust him.”

LaCroix nodded. “Oui. I’ve never seen such devotion in a boy before. That nipper will follow you anywhere, even further down the throat of an actual Hellmouth if you told him to.”

____

Two hundred yards to Hazard’s port, Lively’s lookout spotted land, and gave a cry do Dawson at the helm. The cay was so easily spotted, wreathed in the fierce double glow of two moons, which were now passing beneath the horizon.

Captain Vhingfrith had Jacobson fire a single pistol to signal the Hazard that they had found what they were looking for, and then he raised his long glass to his left eye once more. Not only did the cat’s-eye see exceedingly well in the dark, it also picked up greater detail wherever there was light. And via the glass magnification, he spied something that gave him great consternation.

And while the men cheered at having found land—probably their joy was enhanced that at least some things were where they were supposed to be—Benjamin stood upon the quarterdeck, and bit his tongue at what he saw upon the pink moon’s surface.