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

Three months aboard the Queen Anne’s Revenge, John was allowed to start doing dog-watches on his own. He stood on the quarterdeck blowing into his hands. It got a little chilly on foggy nights like this, after many rains had come and gone. They had raided one small town on an island barely big enough to even have one, but John and Ellis had remained aboard, watching from afar as Blackbeard and his men burned and pillaged, then rowed back aboard two days later with food, water, clothes, and other cargo, and set sail. John had had the pistol Blackbeard gave him still hidden under his shirt, watching Lance as he leaned on the portside rail. John had considered killing him then.

Now, a week after the raid, he blew into his hands and regretted his decision not to kill the piece of shit.

“Did you think what we did was wrong?”

John started. Blackbeard had appeared in the night, a wraith stepped from the fog. Somehow his heavy boots made almost no sound.

“Sir?”

Blackbeard had not spoken to him since the night he had given John the pistol. Now the captain leaned on the railing and looked around. Except for Mr. Goderick on the wheel, they were alone up here. “The raid,” he said. His breath came out in tiny white tufts. “Have you thought about it?”

John shrugged. “No, sir.”

“Lying. I told you I can sniff it out.”

He sighed. “I—that is, it’s not my place.”

“How old are you?”

“Eighteen soon, sir.”

Blackbeard pushed himself away from the railing and paced around the quarterdeck. He produced a flask and drank from it. For a long while, they stood in silence. John watched the water. Then the captain said, “You think it was wrong.”

John shrugged. “It’s illegal. It’s against the law. So…yes.”

Captain Teach paced closer to him. “The law. Who makes it, Laurier?”

“The government, sir. Kings, I suppose.”

“Aye, the government. And what is government but theft by consent?” He handed the flask to John, who drank reluctantly and gasped and coughed at what was inside. Blackbeard took it back. “They made the law because you and I weren’t around to stop them. Because we weren’t yet born when they set the whole World in stone. Then they tell you how to live, who you are, what you have to love, the songs you sing for the sake of the king or the queen or some dead lord’s victory that happened five hundred years ago.”

Teach sighed. And sipped from his flask.

John shifted his weight. And blew in his hands.

“This World is old, Laurier. They made their rules long before we came along, and when we were born they told us how things are, how things will be, and we said, ‘Yes, Mother’ and ‘Yes, Father’ and ‘Yes, my lord,’ and never gave it a moment’s thought.” He shook his head ruefully.

“Captain?”

“Yes?”

“Are we…are we ever going to be allowed to go home?”

Teach tilted his head quizzically. “What’s there, Laurier?”

He shrugged. “I hope to return and have my freedom. We only ran because we were—”

“Freedom? My God, Laurier, do you not realize you are now freer than any man back in England? Free to go where you want, chase after who and what you want, kill any man that wrongs you, and befriend anyone who loves you, no matter where they come from. Do you not see that?”

John nodded. “As you say, sir.”

“No, not ‘as you say, sir.’ You’re a man now. Despite me and everyone else calling you boy, you’re a man. And it’s time you realized that there hasn’t ever been a government built by men like you and me. Well,” he added, “not yet, at any rate. But that’s about to change. Something is coming, Laurier. A change in the winds.” He gave a judicious nod to himself. “And only I know about it. But it’ll come. The moon and stars shall all change and the rest of the World will be in upheaval, when demons rise from the sea, and many more moons than just our one will appear in the sky. I have seen it. In my dreams. After that, there will only be Libertalia.”

This all sounded rather outlandish, but John could not help himself. “Libertalia, sir? What is that?”

After a moment, the captain whispered, almost too low to be heard, “Freedom. As no man has ever known.”

“Sir?”

Blackbeard took another long swig, smacked his lips, and made a howl like a wolf while beating his chest. He cleared his throat, and said, “Have you ever done any acting?”

“Acting, sir?”

“Performance. Line reading. Stage plays. Any of that in your background?”

“Well, yes, sir. A bit of theater. One of my uncles used to put on plays. He taught me to project my voice, to enunciate so people at the back of the crowd could hear me.”

“Thought so, with your accent.”

“My accent?”

“What part of London are you from?”

“St. Giles, sir.”

“St. Giles. Rough patch of land. Been through there once, just before Queen Anne’s War. Your accent sometimes slips and I hear such articulation.”

“You fought in that war, sir?”

Blackbeard made no comment on that. “The lads like to put on plays. I’m sure you know, us sailors tend to get bored out here with no entertainment. But there are rarely any ladies, and so some of the slimmer lads have to take on the roles. Have you ever worn a dress?”

John tensed, and shook his head. “No, sir. Think I might look a bit silly in one, don’t you?”

“Not at all. It’s bracing. And very freeing on the balls. I’ll have Mr. Belcher find one that fits you tomorrow morning. And don’t tell anyone, not even your friend Ellis. Let it be a surprise to everyone.”

____

The dress was simple, merely a wool thing with red and yellow flower designs, and with loose sleeves and hem that were too short for his tall frame. But it was the gloves that he found most intriguing. The feel of them. Not at all like men’s riding gloves. Softer and rolling on like a sock up to the elbow. The low-heeled shoes pinched his toes but he liked the slightly elevated feel. Belcher, a carpenter’s mate, allowed him to see himself in front of a mirror. The makeup was caked on, his lips so red they almost looked bloody.

And yet he did enjoy it. He’d lied to Blackbeard, of course, he’d worn dresses before, but mostly as a joke when with a lover, or when he and Ellis were trying to lure in a mark. He agreed his balls were freer than in pants, and before wearing a dress he’d never thought he needed that. And the bodice was a surprise. The tactile feel of the lace against his bare back, where his shirt had gotten ruffled while trying to squeeze in, gave him a thrill. John had always been sensitive to touch, though he tried to suppress it. Certain touches, at least. The feel of a lover’s lips, the feel of Thomas’s beard on the back of his hand—

Thomas.

He had not thought of his friend since they had been caught by John’s father. Another bit of suppression that kept him going.

He wanted to show Ellis but the play was about to start and his reveal was to be a surprise at some pivotal moment that Mr. Belcher had scripted. He was supposed to step outside when he heard one of the actors yell, “There be a fair maiden aboard this ship, and I will save her yet!”

Then John was to come out and say his one line. And somehow he wasn’t nervous. He had suddenly discovered a species of confidence he had not felt even when performing in his uncle’s plays. I’m beautiful. He was smiling at himself in the mirror, partly because it seemed like a joke, something he and Ellis would laugh about forever, and partly because he felt transformed. He wondered if this was what a butterfly felt like after leaving its cocoon.

Outside, there was a ruckus. Men laughed as music was played and he heard swords clanging. Then he heard it: “There be a fair maiden aboard this ship, and I will save her yet!”

“That’s your line, Johnny! Go, go, go!” Belcher shoved him out.

When he stepped out of the curtained doorway of the companionway, John received laughter and applause from everyone. He walked up the steps, onto the plank laid across the barrels, to serve as a stage. He looked for Ellis in the crowd, momentarily afraid he wasn’t there. When he found his friend standing at the back, hands in his pockets, he almost waved to let Ellis know it was him, but decided that he’d know soon enough.

“The fair maiden be here!” he called. And then rested his cheek on his hands and fluttered his eyes at his savior. “And she is well in distress!”

Mr. Cawley served as the hero of the story, done up in big clothes stuffed with pillows to make him look muscular. Four other pirates lay on the deck, having been slain in the first act. The audience sat on the rails or up in the ratlines, and they cheered Cawley’s name as he swaggered across the deck, aiming to rescue the “fair maiden” when suddenly Blackbeard appeared in nothing but his nickers, much to the joy of his men, who threw coins and cups at him and jeered. Blackbeard played a parody of himself, waving two swords like a maniac with a brace of pistols hanging ridiculously around his waist, like he didn’t know how to put it on.

The sword-fighting went on for several moments, each man clanging blades and leaping out of the way. Blackbeard received a swipe across his arm, and it brought blood. The men cheered louder.

While this went on, Mr. Moore and Mr. Gently played their fiddles, and here John was meant to dance and toss his skirts around while the two brave men fought for him. Someone put a mug in his hand, and John drank the grog and the men all cheered, and then someone handed him another. It was all so ludicrous, a farce of a farce, Blackbeard and Mr. Cawley kept fighting and slicing at each other and occasionally falling down in a bumbling way, and some of the “dead” pirates rose up and joined in. The story no longer made any sense but nobody cared.

And John was laughing. Until he spotted Ellis near the prow, watching it all with a look of disappointment, even reproach. When their eyes met, Ellis put his hands in his pockets and turned away in what John could only describe as disgust.

John started to go after him. But someone grabbed his arm. “Here, let’s have a kiss, luv!” someone said. John pushed the lout away. And then the same someone grabbed his arse. “C’mon, then! Dress like a whore, might as well be a whore!”

John would never recall the exact sequence of events. One moment he’d rounded on the man, saw that it was Lance, and shoved him away. The next moment Captain Teach’s words were in his head—

—the time and place are yours to choose. When you’re ready—

—and John felt seething rage at the indignity of that night, when his pants were pulled off and there wasn’t anything he could do about it and he would’ve been raped if it hadn’t been for luck and now the man was staring right at him and was grinning and groping him—

—it’s ready to fire, just pull back the hammer—

—then there was a loud bang and smoke swirled in front of him and they were all looking down at Lance, no longer smiling, clutching his stomach.

The fiddlers stopped playing. Someone shouted. Blackbeard, sweating and panting, dropped his swords and pushed past Mr. Cawley, who was looking around for the source of the shot. John was numb, thinking he was only dreaming, standing over the dying man with the pistol in his hand, the same pistol he’d been carrying since Blackbeard gave it to him and he hadn’t even realized he’d gotten so used to carrying it that he’d tucked it underneath the dress.

“Peace! Order!” Blackbeard cried, when two men started to advance on John with sabres drawn. “Order! Order! This killing has been sanctioned! This man,” he gestured to Lance gasping on the deck, his wound sucking blood, “has violated one of our most sacred rules! He tried to bugger and harm a fellow pirate! Worse, the filthy piece of scum thought he could do it on Blackbeard’s ship!” Pointing at John, “And this boy was given the same choice I gave some of you sorry bastards! I allowed him to pick the time and place of his vengeance!”

The men all shifted uncertainly.

“Mr. Felt! What is the name of this ship!”

“The Queen Anne’s Revenge, sir!” the first mate shouted.

“That’s right. So listen here, you scallywags. No man gets vengeance on John Laurier, not for this, for he had my blessing. Many of you have had that same blessing. Some of you chose to get your revenge, some of you allowed your chance to slip away.” He wiped blood off his face, either his or Mr. Cawley’s, and clapped John on the shoulder. “It was a hell of a performance, nipper. Wasn’t it a hell of a performance, Mr. Sully?”

“Few better, skipper,” said the quartermaster, smiling proudly.

“Aye. I would agree. Now, an extra ration of rum for you, Laurier. Off with you now. Take whatever time you need. Well done. Well done, indeed.”

____

John wasn’t quite crying, and he wasn’t quite inconsolable, yet he did mourn alone. Mourn whom, he did not know. Certainly not Lance whatever-his-name-was. Was it himself he mourned, or the constable in St. Giles? Or was it just the fear that this was him now, and that somehow he had crossed an invisible sea that could never be crossed again?

Return to London if you like, Johnny, but you’ll never go home again. That voice sounded frightfully like his own.

He looked around.

Where was Ellis?

John had been looking for his friend ever since he went below. Above him, the music returned and men went back to dancing and revelry. But down here in the forecastle, down here in the dark with only a lantern to light his small world, there was no one but him. And the cat, Alder, running around somewhere in the shadows chasing mice.

“Take off the dress.” The voice came from somewhere in that darkness and John recognized it.

“Ellis?”

“Take it off, you look ridiculous.” He emerged from the doorway leading to the galley, thumbs in his waistline.

“It was just for the play.”

“I said take it off!” Ellis hissed.

John stood up. “Why? What do you care? I used to dress like this all the time for your little scams!” John fumed. “You left me up there. Alone. I had to defend myself against—”

“You wear that dress and you put out signals like a poof and you wonder why men—”

“Put out signals?”

“Take off the dress, Johnny! Put on proper clothes. You’re forgetting who you are.” Ellis paced around the hammocks, then screamed up at the ceiling, up at the revelers abovedeck. “All these fucking bastards and their fucking music! Learn to play something proper!”

“Ellis, what is it? What’s happened?” He knew his friend all too well, and just as he had learned how to judge the ship’s mien by touching the steering, he knew when Ellis was veering off course.

“I had a dream, John. I saw God.”

John blinked. “God?”

“Yes. I saw Him standing on top of a hill, surrounded by smoke and light. The hill was muddy, and there were hundreds of people around me, all trying to climb up, all slipping and falling back down to the bottom. But not me. And not you. That’s right, you were there, too, Johnny. You and I climbed up together and found God there, in a golden robe. He said, ‘Step away from the path you’re on.’ I heard it, such a crisp and clear voice. He wants us to veer off, Johnny. Your…perversions. He wants you to repent. And he wants us both to—what the fuck? Why are you laughing?”

John had not meant to, but his whole body still had the jitters. He actually thought he was crying at the moment, but it only came out sounding like mad laughter. Or perhaps he was laughing? After all, it was funny. “Ellis, mate, you’re angry with me for dressing up, but you’re not mad at me for killing another man. You killed your own man the first time Blackbeard offered you the chance. But now, suddenly, you’re what, a Protestant? A Lutheran? Which one?”

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Ellis stood an inch from his face. “Do not mock God.”

“You mean don’t mock you.” John was suddenly serious, his voice icier than he’d meant it.

“What are you talking about?”

“When we went after that woman and her purse, it was your plan. When we came aboard the Equinox, it was your plan—”

“You told Agatha it was a good idea!”

“Yes, and then I changed my mind when we were in that dung-filled wagon and you made my decision for me! Then, when pirates take us prisoner, I tell you I want to go home and you say we are home, that the Queen Anne’s Revenge is our home now! Now you’ve found God and you’re telling me I have to go with you again? On some sort of—”

“What the bloody hell is this? You’re getting an attitude with me? Need I remind you that I saved you from—”

“Being buggered? Yes, I know. And I saved us both from being beaten to death for a stupid scheme of your devising.”

In the lanternlight, Ellis’s eyes twitched. The edges of his lips upturned into a sinister smile. “You’re making friends with these pirates now. Performing for them. You’ve made a friend or two and now you like it.”

“As did you, in the beginning.”

“I thought you wanted to leave!”

“I thought you wanted to stay!”

“I said we were home, Johnny. I meant the sea is our home—”

“Just like ol’ Ellis Cockrell. Never admit you’re wrong, never admit you made a mistake, keep changing your mind until you land on something that works, a story that lets you be right, and then claim that was your plan all along. Isn’t that just—”

The fist crashed across his jaw, and John tasted blood and felt his neck crack. When he recovered, they stood there a moment amid the swinging hammocks and stared at one another. Finally, John cracked a smile. And Ellis chuckled and said, “You took that well.”

“Yes, well, I’ve learned how to take a beating.”

“Sorry for calling you a poof.”

“It’s all right.”

“Oh, Johnny, what are we doing here?”

“I think it’s obvious, mate. We’re finding a new place for ourselves.”

Ellis paced. “But there’s nothing for us here. We have nothing out here.”

“We do have something.”

“What?”

John fidgeted with his dress. “Libertalia.”

“What the bloody hell is that?”

“I—well, I don’t know, exactly. But the captain says it’s something that could give us all the freedom we ever wanted.” John hesitated on telling the next part, but Captain Teach hadn’t told him it was a secret. “And he mentioned something about a change in the World. Something about a reshuffling of the stars and moon. Ellis—he made it sound like something terrible was going to happen, like the heavens were going to fall.”

Ellis’s eyes narrowed in concentration. “You mean like the Book of Revelations?”

“He didn’t say. But Ellis…I think you were right before. I think there is a place for us here. Perhaps a place for us in the lands beyond, in the New World, the Colonies, a place where we can be whoever we want to be.”

His friend nodded to himself. But John saw that it was for his benefit only. Something had changed within Ellis, and had been changing ever since the day of the constable’s death. John only now recognized the stages he’d missed—Ellis’s fear of leaving England, then his fear of staying, then his uncertainty at every turn. He was always lost, just like me. He never had a plan.

And now he’s changed tack again.

Had it merely been a dream of God and some holy message? For the first time in ages, John could not read his friend’s demeanor.

____

A year at sea did nothing for their friendship. Neither did two years, nor three. Their beards thickened and their skins tanned and soon they were indistinguishable from men born at sea. They took up swords together when it was time for a raid—Captain Teach liked to hit the western isles in the spring, the eastern isles in the fall. John and Ellis sometimes spoke in passing, sometimes sang a shanty when Mr. Cobb called for it, but they never came too close to one another.

John put on more of the plays. He wore stranger dresses, learned that sometimes swooning and faking a tumble got the men to laugh. He used his amateurish fencing skills to occasionally choreograph a fight, and Captain Teach made sure that John and Ellis and the other men trained for real from time to time. They always sparred with real swords, sharpened by Mr. Namold’s spinning grindstone. Namold took John under his wing, showed him how to use the grindstone, because the surgeon, Mr. Sadler, said there was something wrong with his liver and he hadn’t long to live. John took over Namold’s duties as smithee and rarely did he and Ellis ever meet on the same task again.

Ellis was given a lashing for trying to proselytize to the men about Jesus Christ at night in the forecastle. Blackbeard would not have religion on his ship, not openly, and the beating was severe.

John said nothing. One evening Ellis passed him in the companionway when they were changing the watch, and he muttered, “I protected you from pirates, but you wouldn’t stand with me when the cat-o’-nine laid open my flesh. Judas.”

“What?” John said.

But Ellis ascended to the top deck and said nothing else on the matter.

____

The crew careened on dozens of islands and sat in the sun and fucked any women they abducted or brought with them from port. John pretended to see and hear none of it. Best that way. He wore his dresses ashore, even after the plays were over and none were scheduled. Someone once called him “Ladyman”, he would never remember who said it first, but it soon stuck.

Then, while leaving St. Kitts Island, they were attacked by a British man o’ war. It was the first time ever that anyone had attacked them. Queen Anne’s Revenge had been taking and taking, never once fearful of anyone at sea.

The battle was fought as a chase, over several hours, and ended in a draw when both ships had hammered each other enough that it was best to call it a day. The Revenge vanished into a fog that grew thicker as night fell, and Blackbeard disappeared into his cabin for hours before emerging to see the dead men tossed overboard. He allowed someone to sing a hymn just this once. They had lost a lot of cannoneers, so Blackbeard had Braithwaite teach John and the younger crewmen all about cannons.

They careened on a small island to repair, then sailed to the small harbour town of Nassau, and there rested in a wharf while Blackbeard went ashore to start building new contacts, and looked for leads on any Spanish or British merchantmen in the area that they might target next.

John hadn’t been on land this long since leaving home. They stayed for months, and during that time he met someone, a young man his age named Matthew, who was a carpenter on a privateer vessel called the Lively. They fell for one another. They made love a dozen times, Matthew teaching him all the while how to take what he wanted, and how to show when he wanted more.

Their love was a whirlwind that lasted a season and John thought he would die happy with Matthew. Then Matthew sailed away on the Lively, which was gone for months, and when she returned her first mate informed John that Matthew had gone overboard in a storm and drowned. Each night for a month, John got drunk in the local drinking hall and wept in his tent by the shore. For the first time ever, his face was unshaven, his beard grew long.

Ellis, meanwhile, found friendship with a priest named Athens, and had gone into the jungles for all those months John was falling in love, and emerged with a Bible, a robe, and a gold cross hung from his neck. He meant to begin spreading the Faith, here in Nassau, along with Athens, who, as it happened, had the authority to accept some of Blackbeard’s money in exchange for information on a group of slave traders shipwrecked somewhere on the island. Sitting ducks for the crew of the Revenge.

Nassau was then deemed safe for pirates, and, slowly but surely, the village would become a city.

It all happened so quickly. Or seemed to. One moment John Laurier and Ellis Cockrell were the sons of well-to-do businessmen in England, with bright futures ahead of them, and then, in the blink of an eye, the tides came in harshly and eroded the shores of their proper lives, carrying their joys and loves and dreams out to sea like so much flotsam and jetsam. And now they were pirates, yo-ho, and false priests, amen, and sailors and killers and thieves.

And the Caribbean was their home.

____

One night John lay on the roof of a building in Nassau, staring up at the stars. He meant to fall asleep up here, drinking and thinking about Matthew. Many people did this in Nassau, just fell asleep wherever they felt like. Rooftops, streets, on the cliffs, or down by the shore when they were finished fucking in orgies surrounded by bonfires. This night, someone climbed up here with him, and he drew his knife.

“Peace, brother,” Ellis said. He wore a brown robe with the hood pulled over his head. He sat down on the thatch roof next to John. “We haven’t talked in a while. Thought I should come over and say…well, goodbye.”

John stood up, and looked down at his oldest friend. “What do you mean?”

“I mean Queen Anne’s Revenge sails tomorrow for Havana, if you can believe it. Lots of British ships headed that way, trying to push the Spanish out, and the rumours Father Athens is hearing claim Captain Teach means to pick the bones of the wounded. I’m sure you’ll all do very well.”

John felt like spitting. “What are you talking about? You’re coming, too. You have to come, Ellis.”

“No, I don’t, Johnny. I’m staying. Braithwaite is staying, too. Captain Teach has finally had enough of him, for whatever reason. A few others are staying, too. The seas…they’re becoming too dangerous. Even Blackbeard isn’t as invincible as he once was.”

John’s mouth was agape. He tried to find the words.

Ellis sighed and looked over the rooftops, passed the palm trees, to the sea. “We cannot go back home, Johnny. You know that by now. Our real names have been spoken to too many people out here, they know us as pirates. Even if we returned to London today…a year, maybe five years from now, our reputations would catch up to us.” He snorted and laughed. “S’funny, innit? We came all the way out here to clear our names, and only ended up dirtying them even more.”

“We can go home,” John said.

“Will you listen to yourself? One moment you’re terrified of leaving London, then you’re terrified of pirates, then you’re making friends with them, dancing with them, fucking one of them, and now you want to go back home again—”

“I don’t know what I want, Ellis! But I haven’t had much of a choice, just like you! I just know I didn’t want it all to be like this!”

Ellis stood up and dusted off his robe. “We were fucked, you and I. Wasn’t our choice to leave our homes. That was our parents’ decision, tossing us both out like that. Wasn’t our choice to pickpocket and steal, we had to do that to survive. Wasn’t our choice to leave London, that’s just the way things shook out, because it was our best option. And it wasn’t our bloody idea to join up with pirates, that was Blackbeard’s doing.”

“Or God’s,” John said.

Ellis looked at him, his features limned by the moon hiding behind his head. “My God, you hate Him too, don’t you? Blackbeard’s got you believing God is your enemy.”

“Not God,” John said, more defiant than he’d ever felt in the face of a friend. “But religion? Government? Every order of Man?” He shrugged. “As you say, we chose none of this. They put us here. All of them.”

“And what now? You mean to make them all pay?” Ellis chuckled.

John smiled and looked out to sea. “What a famous thing that would be.”

Ellis winced as if he had some stomach pain or injury. He looked offended. He started to say something. Stopped himself. He stood and touched John’s shoulder and walked to the other end of the roof. When he started to climb down, he said, “I’ll always be here, Johnny. Here on New Providence. Father Athens and I are going to build something. Something wonderful.”

“Off the payment of men like Teach,” John said acidly. “You’re not leaving piracy behind. You’re just graduating to a different side of the business.”

“Goodbye, Johnny. I’ll say prayers nightly for you. I swear. Every night.”

____

The stranger arrived on a blisteringly hot day. He was a severe man of tall stature, a long face, a hand burdened by many rings, and a receding black hairline touched with grey. When he approached the table at the coffee-house where John was sitting alone, the stranger wore a yellow coat, almost like one of them Spaniards, and he cleared his coat tails from the chair as he took a seat, like some high lord. Not far away were two large African men, both armed with pistols, watching over the stranger. His guards.

“John Laurier?” the stranger said.

“Who wants him?”

The stranger smiled briefly. “So, you’re the one they call the Ladyman.”

John had been trying to drink away his lingering torpidity. He’d had his fill of Kill Devil Rum the night before and never quite gone to sleep, sort of waking up every few minutes to lay down some of the coins from his share of the Revenge’s take, ordering more rum, sometimes a beef stew or some conch. This whole bloody island was overrun with people selling and eating the oversized sea snail. Now that he was on land for a prolonged stay, he finally had use of his doubloons, and had developed a kind of sport of seeing how much rum and conch meat he could hold down before vomiting. He was up to three tries.

“You’re him, then,” John mumbled. He was sure it came out slurred. “You’re the Devil?”

“I’m Captain Arthur Vhingfrith, yes,” the man said.

“The Devil of Isla de Providencia.” John looked up and saw a blurry fellow looking back at him. “Can’t imagine you with horns,” he snickered.

Captain Vhingfrith smiled back politely. “I had them filed down.”

John laughed, and coughed, and sipped his rum. Once he’d let out the belch that had been building, he said, “You really strand those men on that tiny little island with naught but sand and a single tree? A tiny little island’s what I heard, within sight of a much more lush island juuuuust on the horizon. Just so’s they could see it, but couldn’t swim to it.”

“They were mutineers. Mutineers are dealt with severely. But it wasn’t my decision alone. Unlike yourself, I’m a privateer, we carry Royal Marines with us. In some matters on his ship, even the captain does not have a say.”

“Credit me with enough intelligence to know horseshit when I hear it, Captain Devil.”

“Oh, I credit you with ample, Mr. Laurier. I’ve asked around. You come from very good stock. You’re well educated, well versed in worldly matters, and a fast learner when it comes to sailing and fighting. So, I asked myself, ‘Arthur, how does a man of good stock come to be a loathsome pirate way out here?’ So I looked around, and was directed to a priestly friend of yours who told me a very interesting story. Of your connections back home. Of your family.”

John looked up at him warily, looking for the trap.

Vhingfrith held up his hands defensively. “No, I’m not here to arrest you, Mr. Laurier. In fact, I’m here to do business. Many men on this island speak highly of you. They say you’re a good man to have in a pinch, that you keep your word and never shirk duty, that you can handle a cannon as well as a bilge pump or a smithee’s grindstone. That you’re something of a prodigy in all matters seafaring.”

John shrugged.

“I find myself in a precarious situation. The island governors are being quite slow with dispensing their letters of marque—without which I am only a lowly pirate such as yourself and Captain Teach—and so just now we privateers find ourselves in a sort of competition to be the next one to get our letters.”

John shrugged.

“I could sail right now and chase down one or two leads—the San Miguel for one, the Santo Domingo de Guzman for another—but if I went after them, it would be unlawful. So, for the moment, I am unable to privateer, and therefore can only use my ship—that’s her down there in the docks, the Lively, I’m sure you know about her thanks to Matthew, who, incidentally, was the first to mention your name to me, just before he died—I can only use the Lively for ferrying cargo back and forth across the Caribbean right now. It’s good pay, but meagre when compared to privateering work.” He sighed wearily.

John eyed him. “How did Matthew die?”

“I’m sure you heard, it was a storm—”

“Yes, but how? He was smart. He would never have been near the railing if he knew the storm was that strong.”

Captain Vhingfrith pursed his lips. “I asked him to go aloft, up the mizzen. One of our masts had snapped and was in the water, still connected to the Lively by rope—it was dragging in the sea, dragging us down. He went up to cut the rope on my command. A rogue wave hit us and we tipped hard to starboard and he fell into the sea.”

John glared at him. “You gave the order?”

“I did. Now may I continue with what I was saying?”

John drank his rum.

“You see, Mr. Laurer, it is very easy to find a crew that wants to go privateering. The share of the prize money is enticing enough. But ferrying goods?” He made a face. “I find it difficult to invigorate men to sail with me just now, they’re all jumping aboard the ships who already have their letters of marque. Or,” he added, “aboard pirate ships.”

John shrugged. “So why would you think I’m any different?” he said, and took another swig.

“Because you present a new option. I’ll be frank with you, Mr. Laurier, I sometimes see opportunity in even a short-legged horse. It’s a gift. Where others see the horse cannot win any races, I see an animal only grateful to at least have a friendly hand feeding it, and who, with its shortened stature, can squeeze through tight paths in the jungle. The poor creature may yet have a purpose.”

“So, I’m a short horse?”

Vhingfrith laughed. “Benedict Laurier is a name I know. Last I was in England, I heard his name mentioned, among many others, in reference to families suffering misfortunes. These were families being affected by the Royal African Company. Have you ever heard of them?”

John shook his head.

“They’re an English mercantile company, set up by the royal Stuart family and the City of London merchants to trade along the west coast of Africa. They are led by King James himself.”

John winced. “The king…owns a company?”

“Oh dear, your father seems to have missed a very important part of your education. Yes, indeed, the Royal African Company are owned and operated completely by the British Crown, they have shipped more slaves across the Atlantic than any other slave traders in history.” Vhingfrith gestured at John. “Your father, and two of his business partners, a Mr. Franklin and a Mr. Loughlin, have pooled their money and purchased two sloops and two brigantines, and are loaning them to the Royal African Company.”

“So, the old man’s a slaver now. Brilliant. Always knew—” he hiccupped, “—he had it in him.”

“I want you to sail with me, Mr. Laurier. In so doing, I can promise you a ride back across the Atlantic, aboard a completely legal ship and under the Union Jack. You would also have far better company, I surmise, than those you sailed with on the Revenge.”

“In exchange for what?”

“An introduction,” Vhingfrith said, leaning forward. “And your word as a gentleman that you will do everything in your power to convince your father that mine is an enterprise worth joining, and that perhaps he and I can help one another.”

“He’s a stupid old man,” John laughed. “You think because he’s gone into business with the Crown he’s clever, but he isn’t. It’s Franklin and Loughlin that were always the brains. Mother always said so and she was bloody right.”

“That is exactly the sort of insight I require in my venture. I need to know who’s who, and what’s what, when it comes to the inner circles of British nobility.”

“He’s obstinate. And stupid.”

“Be that as it may, I still require the introduction.” Vhingfrith sighed and stood up. “Think about it. My ship leaves in two days. If you’re at the docks then, I can assure you, you will have far better quarters than you’re used to. Think about it,” he said again, and dropped a small jingling pouch on the table. “For your time. And, Mr. Laurier, if you’re afraid of seeing your father again, or if you think he’ll be ashamed of you, I wouldn’t worry. I’ve a son of my own, and I can tell you that all fathers—all fathers—wish to be with their sons. It just takes some of them reaching their deathbeds before they realize it. I would say you’ve been gone long enough. So, if you convince him to take me in, I will do my best to convince him to take you in.”

John looked at the coin pouch. Then up at Vhingfrith.

“Think about it,” the captain said once more. Then he turned and walked down to the wharf.

____

That night, John lay in a bed in an insalubrious hotel with curtains drawn and wept in darkness. Rain had set in, thunder beat at his walls, and all he could think of Matthew and what they had shared, and Thomas and what they had sworn to one another, and Ellis and all they had meant to each other. He saw his brothers and his sisters there, on the black canvas of the ceiling, and remembered them all as children. He, the middle child, looking up to some of them, while also protecting the younger ones. His drunken vision also showed him his dog, Dolly, snoring in the shade of the portico. His mother was there, too, sobbing as his father threw him out of the house. Out of his home.

John drank the last of his rum. He walked over to the mirror and looked at his face and despised everything about it.

“What are you?”

He touched his face. The beard had to come off, he was sick of looking at it. Then he decided to bathe in the tub, and then, at some point, tried drowning himself. It seemed like something to do. But he convulsed at his first gulp of air and came up, vomiting and spasming and laughing.

When he climbed out of the tub, he slipped on the floor and almost fell. He steadied himself on the bedside table, where Captain Vhingfrith’s pouch sat. John picked it up, turned it upside-down, and poured the silver coins onto the floor. Outside, he heard men laughing in an alley, laughing in the rain. He sat on the bed and thought about Matthew, and his hand went between his legs and he touched himself. He began stroking, and when he was finished, he climbed back into the tub and washed himself again and then stared into the mirror at a different man.

He dried off, clothed himself slowly in a new dress he’d bought days before, watching himself in the mirror as he pulled on each new article. He painted his lips, brightened his cheeks with rosy-red rouge, then combed his hair back and stared at himself.

“Libertalia.”

He walked over to the window, opened it, and leaned against the windowsill and stared out into the rain. From here, he could see over the treetops, and out to the black sea. Blue lightning flashed and showed him the angry waves.

“Who are you, John Laurier? Are you out there somewhere?”

The thunder answered. It rolled over the whole world.

“Let’s go find you. What do you say?”