Blaggard's Moon

by George Bryan Polivka

  It was always the little ones who least understood what was happening, who asked the hardest questions.

  “Mama, why are you crying?”

  “Why are we getting off the ship?”

  “Where are we going now, Papa?”

  If they lived, Delaney knew, they’d just grow up to turn pirate one day anyway, in the sway of either the Rylands or the Conchs of the world. For some, like Delaney and the Trum boys, it would come early, and no bones about it. For others it would come later, like it did to Jenta Flug, who lasted more than nineteen years a true young lady, against all odds.

  “Innocence,” he said aloud. “It’s hard to see it, and harder to see it go, in such a sorry world as this.”

  That’s what the song was! Delaney understood it now, all of a sudden.

  A true lang time,

  A lang true la…

  That’s why it was haunting. It was the innocence of it. Sung by a young girl, a sweet thing who loved her mama and didn’t understand about the wild, cold places of the world, and how they crushed and trampled sweet things, lovely things.

  …And down the silver path into a rushing sea,

  Where moons hang golden under boughs of green…

  That voice didn’t know about such darkness, and yet it felt the shadow of it. Sure, that was it. A lullaby. A lullaby did that same thing, sweeping your heart away from the hurtful parts of the world, even though it’s sung in the very shadow of the rising wave, the crushing that is to come, that always comes. A lullaby like that finds a place where, for just one moment, no bad thing will happen. Just for a moment. Where moons hang golden under boughs of green, A lang true la ’tis true…

  And then Delaney remembered his own mother. He remembered her lullabies. Not the words, not even the melody so much, but the sound. The feel. The safe place. He remembered. She would hold him. A long time ago, she would hold him tight and sing to him, sweet and lovely and deep and pure, and light was everywhere, and nothing bad could happen.

  And suddenly he missed her, oh so much.

  He put his face in his hands, and his shoulders shook.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ACES OVER QUEENS

  Captain Carnsford Bloodstone Imbry was known to play cards. He often dropped in on the guests in the private area of the famous Skaelington pub he owned, the Cleaver and Fork. There he would swoop in, make small talk, and encourage both the winners and the losers to continue to gamble, offering a free round of drinks, cigars, and plenty of good food. But he rarely played himself, except in even more advantageous surroundings. Whenever he was in the port of Skaelington, a night was chosen, invitations were sent, gamblers were ushered aboard the Shalamon, and poker was played until the early morning hours. When a man received an invitation to the Conch’s table, it meant three things. First, he was wealthy. Second, he would pay his debts. And third, he would lose. No one refused the honor of such an invitation, and no one managed to leave the ship with any of Conch’s gold. Or much of his own, either.

  “But Father,” Wentworth protested, looking up from the luminous script of the invitation in his hand, “I understand it’s an honor to be invited. But why me? I have no money of my own. Everyone knows that.”

  “True enough.” Runsford paused and swallowed, patting traces of egg from his mouth. “And you will have none of your own until you earn it, and none of mine until you prove you can manage it. And yourself.” He drank from a large juice glass.

  Wentworth rolled his eyes. The Lecture.

  “But you have been invited,” Runsford continued, “because I have had a chat with Captain Imbry. I have asked that he invite you. And not just you, but also Jenta. And her mother.”

  Wentworth paused, his slice of toast hanging in the air. “They’re to play cards with the pirate?”

  His father just laughed. “No, my dear boy. They will not play.” He slathered butter onto bread. “They are invited because you will set foot aboard the Shalamon a bachelor, and return to shore a married man.”

  Wentworth lowered his toast. “I’m to be married at a poker game?”

  “Imbry is a ship’s captain, registered as such in the Skaelington books. He has the legal authority to join you to your bride. A pause at the gaming table is all it will take. Quiet, discreet, done in minutes.”

  “But he’s a pirate! That’s not a wedding.”

  Runsford grew irritable, swiping his knife briskly across the bread, now leaving jam behind in swaths. “No, it’s not. It’s a marriage. You asked to marry her, if I recall. Did you not? Demanded it. Even the secrecy was your idea.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Then marry her in secret you shall. You can court her in public, and…here is the important point, son…she will have little choice but to remain interested in you, regardless of your indiscretions. We wouldn’t need such conniving if you hadn’t sent so many fine young ladies packing with your drinking and gambling and all your indecent—”

  “Yes, yes!” He leaned into the argument. “And when those young women found out I had no inheritance, that you will give me none, that’s when they lost patience!”

  “You have no inheritance because you have yet to earn it! You behave like a drunken rogue!”

  “And you treat me like a child!”

  “Nonetheless!” Runsford held his forefinger in the air, and took a deep breath. He was not going to argue the entirety of it again. He lowered his hand. “You’ve got your bride now. She’s the girl of your dreams. You begged me to let you marry her. So perhaps she’s not the girl I would have chosen. Perhaps it’s not the wedding you desire. That wedding, the glorious affair that I’m sure is her entire life’s goal, will happen in due time.”

  Wentworth shook his head, defeated. “To be married by a pirate, though. It seems…like madness.”

  “Yes, and that is why no one will believe it, even if word leaks.”

  “Word will leak. He’ll talk.”

  “I’m not worried about Conch Imbry. I plan to lose quite a bit of money tonight to ensure that he doesn’t talk. Your public wedding could hardly cost more. Captain Imbry is a lot of things, Wentworth, but he is a man who understands that a bargain is a bargain.”

  Wentworth’s look was full of venom, but he aimed it across the screened porch, out onto the yard, at the cottage where Jenta and Shayla lived.

  “What is it, son? Say it.”

  “I don’t trust his intentions with Jenta.”

  “Quite. But you see, that’s why I’ve chosen him, of all captains. He and I have struck a bargain.” He put a hand on the table, patted it as though it were Wentworth’s shoulder. “She is off limits to him.”

  Wentworth came back to the moment, and looked hopefully at his father.

  “You call it madness. But Wentworth, no policy is madness unless it fails. And this one will not fail. You’ll see.”

  “Gentleman’s ante!” Conch announced, tossing five gold coins onto the red felt of the table. The pirate was in fine form, wearing his bright yellow vest over his silk shirt, his wavy hair cascading down to his shoulders, his moustache waxed and drawn out, two perfect tips pointing left and right. His mood was light.

  Wentworth gasped. Five in gold? The amount was incredible; it would take him months to spend so much, even in the most expensive alehouses. It was a life savings for many hard-working families. Worse, Wentworth had already bought his chips, a huge investment in neatly stacked slices of colored, polished marble, and this “gentleman’s ante” was almost double his chip count. But no one else around the table, all proven and capable businessmen, even blinked. His own father tossed his five coins onto the red cloth serenely, as though buying penny candies.

  When it came Wentworth’s turn, he reached into his pouch, pulled out five coins, and left two. Feigning nonchalance, he tossed them onto the table. One caught an edge and rolled directly toward Conch, circled twice, then settled in front of him.

  The pirate swept the coin away, clinking it into its fellows at the
center of the table. “Pot’s right,” he declared. “Seven-card stud is the game. House rules. Three down, three up, one down. Three bets to a hand: one after the hole cards, one after the up cards, one at the end.” Conch turned to his right-hand man, who happened to be sitting on his left, the unimpressive fellow who followed him everywhere. Conch slapped a paw on his shoulder. “This here’s Mr. Mart Mazeley, who ye’ve already met by way of buyin’ yer chits. He’ll be doin’ all the dealin’ tonight. Not that I don’t trust each of ye with my own life, I do. It’s just that I trust Mazeley more. Any questions?”

  “Ah…just one,” a heavy-set man with long, gray whiskers offered. This was Glemm Gorsus, banker, in his first visit to the pirate’s game. “In a friendly card game the deal is generally passed. Is your Mr. Mazeley professionally licensed, perhaps?”

  Conch’s eyes went cold as stone, making Glemm Gorsus quite uncomfortable. “He’s dealin’ because I trust ’im. I thought I said that.”

  “You did, so you did!” Glemm exclaimed happily. He dug into his ear with a finger. “Hearing is the problem. Old age, you know!”

  “Age, eh? Well, let’s see how old we can make ye feel before the evenin’ is out. And so a toast to begin!” Conch announced, his good mood returned. “Where’s the rum?” A barmaid stepped forward with a platter of crystal tumblers and put one in each man’s hand.

  Conch Imbry stood. “To the gentlemen of means who grace this table. May ye leave here with even more grace…and a good deal less means!” He held the crystal high as his targets laughed at their own impending doom, then he swallowed his rum in a single slug. The others followed suit.

  “Well I’ll be,” Imbry exclaimed at the end of the first hand. “An ace on the final card. Ain’t that somethin’!” And he raked in the pot.

  “He’s cheatin’!” the young Trum boy shouted, alarmed. No one answered him. “Ain’t he?” he asked into the silence, suddenly less sure of himself.

  “Button yer flap,” Sleeve told him. “It ain’t cheatin’ if yer name’s Conch Imbry.”

  The others heartily agreed. “It’s just regular ol’ piracy,” one explained.

  “Let us just say,” Ham Drumbone suggested, “that the rules of Conch’s game were somewhat skewed from what you might consider the usual.”

  “Aye, Conch skewed ’em. He skewed ’em real good!”

  Laughter.

  “That is to say,” Ham’s bass voice rolled out, gently lapping over the others, “in the usual poker contest, the game is to match wits with opponents, all the while testing the fickleness of fate herself, as together you ride the unknown ebbs and flows of blessings and curses known to men as luck. Whereas, in Conch’s little den of thievery, the game was simpler. More like a child’s game, really. For at Conch’s table, it wasn’t poker at all, but more a game where gentlemen pretended to play poker.”

  Agreement all around.

  Dallis Trum nodded. “Play-pretend,” he said. Now he understood.

  So did Delaney. He’d done that.

  “That’s it for me,” Runsford Ryland said, well after midnight. “I’m cleaned out.” Mart Mazeley scooped up one more pile of chips and stacked them before the Conch. Runsford stood, swayed for a moment, then pulled the insides of his pockets out. “Empty,” he said to laughter all around. The men were in good spirits. Conch’s minions had kept drink glasses full and cigars lit, and Conch himself had kept the stories coming, tales of dark nights and fearsome attacks, hidden gold, close escapes from the clutches of the Royal Navy, and from the jealous husbands of beautiful women. The gentlemen soaked it all in, even as they kept up their extraordinary run of bad luck. As the hours wore on, the inevitable was fully embraced and the mood grew lighter and lighter.

  They all watched the amazingly dexterous hands of their dealer as he cut and shuffled, cut and shuffled, then flipped the cards around the table with swift, unerring precision. Unimpressive in most venues, Mart Mazeley was a master here. They never saw a fault. Not that they would have mentioned it if they had, for they all knew what they bought with their time and their money, and it was more than drinks and company. Conch would remember them. His raids on their ships would be few, perfunctory, and generally bloodless. Skaelington’s carefully crafted balance between altruism and treachery, liberty and lechery, fairness and foul play, would hold for another few months. A few gold coins at a poker game was a small price to pay for the continuation of a highly profitable way of life for all.

  “Perhaps a walk on deck would clear my head,” Runsford said, to no one in particular.

  The others paid him no mind, and Mazeley kept dealing. But Ryland did not leave, and finally Conch looked up at him.

  “All right, I’ll join ye, then,” Conch said gruffly, tossing his cards onto the tabletop. “I’m foldin’ this one in. The rest of ye play on.”

  “If you’re sure” and “Well, why not?” were the responses, as it dawned on the gathered sheep that if Conch wasn’t in the game, he could hardly fleece them further. There was a buzz of excitement as they realized that in his absence one of them might actually win something.

  Runsford cleared his throat loudly, and finally Wentworth joined his mind to the moment. “I’ll walk with you, Father,” he offered. He stood unsteadily, wondering vaguely if he had drunk too much, and then followed his elders out of the room.

  The pirate led the way to the captain’s quarters, but the short walk up from the Poker Deck, as Conch called his richly refitted aftmost cargo hold, had substantially worsened the pirate’s disposition. “Where’s the wenches?” he growled once they were inside his saloon.

  Wentworth stared a moment, not understanding to whom Conch referred, then said, “Oh, right. In their quarters, I’m guessing.” He looked from Conch to Runsford. “I’ll get them,” he offered at last, and went to collect his bride, and the mother of his bride.

  Jenta could not remember the last time she saw such sorrow in her mother’s eyes.

  “Perhaps you’ll grow to love him,” Shayla told her daughter. She looked at, and then past, Jenta.

  “Perhaps,” Jenta answered, hoping to ease Shayla’s pain. They were seated in the two chairs of a close but comfortable cabin just below the captain’s quarters. Jenta had a prayer book in her hand.

  “But I hope for your sake that you never do,” Shayla continued, from that same place of darkness. Jenta searched her mother’s eyes. Something lived there in that distance, something she had never let her daughter see. As Jenta watched, the years were turning back, and an old, deeply wrought memory came to the fore. “When you give your heart away,” she told her daughter, “you can no longer protect it.” And now, for a moment, Jenta saw the young girl that Shayla once had been. “When you love, dear girl, you give another the power to hurt you.” Shayla lived within her memory for a while longer, and then said, “If you love deeply enough, you give another the power to destroy you.”

  The words were spoken gently, but the force of them was harsh. Jenta shook her head. “Wentworth will not destroy me.”

  A rap on the door. “Ready, my sweet? My Jenta?” The words were slow and slurred.

  Shayla closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the mask of protection she always wore was fully in place.

  Jenta stood, handed the prayer book to her mother. She straightened her dress, a gray evening gown with white lace trim. “We shall make the best of it,” she said to her mother with, if not great hope, at least a full measure of confidence. Then she opened the door.

  Already dark, Conch’s mood now seemed threatening. “I don’t like doin’ yer dirty work.”

  Runsford blanched. “My dirty…? Dear Captain, marrying a man and a woman is hardly that. It’s an honorable duty.”

  “So is buryin’ ’em. I’ll want payment for this,” he then added in a low murmur.

  Runsford’s mouth formed unspoken words. Then he managed, “But we’ve agreed to the payment.”

  The pirate only harrumphed. He had more to say, but Jen
ta stepped through the open door, followed by Shayla and then Wentworth.

  “Are we ready, then?” Runsford asked, one eye on the Conch.

  Conch grunted, barely glancing at the women.

  Shayla produced the prayer book, and from it took a folded parchment with the words of the ceremony all written out in careful script. She held out the sheaf. Only Jenta noticed the tremble in her hand.

  Conch took the page roughly, frowned at it. “Here gathered,” he began, then trailed off, his lips moving. Then he said, “Let’s see. This and that, this and that, to be wed in holy mat…matrim…Wait, here we go. Do you Jenta Flug…” he paused, looked at the girl. “Flug?”

  Her eyes dropped to the polished planking at her feet. With a look and a word, Conch had knocked all the wind from her sails. The question was ungentlemanly. Even brutal.

  She had tried to catch his eye as she walked into his quarters, expecting to see the dashing, powerful man with whom she had so recently danced, expecting to nod and curtsey in pleasant recognition while he formed some appropriate words of greeting. She had prepared for this exchange—how could she not? He was the captain of the ship, the pirate legend of Skaelington, the man who would marry her to her husband. She was a lady. She wanted this moment to be memorable, and everything about it to be as gracious as possible under the circumstances.

  She had no reason to believe it would be otherwise. After all, it was less than a month ago at the dance that he had been a perfect gentleman. His grammar might have been poor, but his manners were not. He had bowed to her as he let her go, and said, “Thank ye, miss. We’ll meet again, I hope,” and she had responded, “I do hope so, and I hope it’s soon.” So she had readied her greeting for this evening, hoping to pick up just where they left off, to let him know that she remembered it all precisely.

  And so we do meet again, Captain Imbry, she would say, just as you had hoped. But not, I think, quite as you expected! She would speak the line cheerfully, a small, shared secret, but perfectly open for all who cared to enter in. This was what she loved about polite society—there was always the dance, always the secret, and then always the opening of the secret.