Beauty’s leg had been cut off. She couldn’t remember how it happened, maybe it had snapped off when she pirouetted in the ringbolt, but she limped around on a shortened, splintered peg, trying to get the remaining seamen on their feet. It was late afternoon, and as Fallon was below decks being treated for his wound, Beauty decided to get the ships to the lee of Eleuthera Island to anchor for the night.
She assigned a crew to Renegade and, as they let the sails fall, she released the grappling hooks to free the ship from Nuevo Año’s side. Then she ordered her weary men to set a decent foresail and mainsail on Nuevo Año so they could make their way across the channel, as well. Both ships anchored in thirty fathoms of clear water, protected and safe, with utterly exhausted men having to climb aloft to furl the sails and snug the ships down for the night.
Elinore and Fallon appeared on Nuevo Año’s deck, she holding him more or less upright, just as Beauty returned from the bows of the ship.
“How are you feeling, Nico?” Beauty asked, although she was arguably covered in more blood than Fallon. At least she could stand on her own two legs, even if she did lean a bit to one side.
“Well enough, Beauty. Well enough,” answered Fallon, with a pained expression on his face as he looked about Nuevo Año’s deck. Men lay where death had befallen them, splayed and crumbled bodies already stiffening, sightless eyes staring wildly into the sky.
“It worked, Nico. Remember that the wiggly tongue worked and Clayton is dead,” said Beauty. “The price was high, too high, but that fucker will never kill another person. None of those pirate fuckers will. So just hang onto that.”
Fallon looked at her and knew she was right. They’d done what they had to do, had sworn to do, and there could be no second-guessing the price.
The dead pirates were thrown into the sea without ceremony. Then the Sea Dogs were lowered overboard, each body sewn in canvas weighted with round shot so it would sink quietly to the ocean floor and not wash ashore. Fallon said the prayers for the dead in a barely audible voice, and the living hung their heads in silence. After that, it was agreed that Fallon, Somers, and Elinore would transfer to Renegade for the night, it being more commodious, while Beauty would remain to manage the rehabilitation of Nuevo Año from a killing field into a sailing ship again. The blood on the decks would have to wait until the morning.
Fallon stood uneasily with Elinore and her father on the quarterdeck of Renegade, that hated ship that had caused such death and misery for so many. To his surprise he found he could admire her lines and armament in spite of himself. Somers suggested they take a look below, while there was still light, and they slowly made their way down the companion-way steps.
They expected a slovenly mess, and they were not disappointed. It was a pigsty—but now that the pigs were all dead it could be cleaned and washed and made as habitable as it had ever been. While Fallon and Elinore moved to see the great cabin, Somers went to explore the hold for food and water, for they had more than thirteen hundred miles to sail to Bermuda.
Fallon opened the door to Clayton’s cabin and was struck by the reek of old food and spilled wine. He quickly opened the stern windows for some air.
“It looks like Clayton wasn’t much for housekeeping,” said Elinore. “Neither was his woman.”
Fallon looked in the desk drawers for papers and a ship’s log, but found nothing. Well, he mused, it wasn’t like pirates had orders or kept a log.
Elinore held up a scarf, a familiar scarf, and Fallon gave a low whistle.
“I think I’ll just take this and wash it,” Elinore said, folding it up. “I may wash it twice, in fact.”
The scarf had been Fallon’s once, given to him by his father years ago for Christmas, and Elinore had seen him wear it many times. He always carried it aboard Sea Dog every voyage for good luck. It had turned out to be bad luck for Clayton.
They were just going through Clayton’s few clothes out of morbid curiosity when Somers appeared, a massive grin on his craggy face, and in his outstretched hand he held gold coins.
“Bags and bags of them, Nico,” he exclaimed. “And silver bars. Enough to buy a country! It’s all in the hold stacked up as pretty as you please!”
Apparently, Clayton had not buried all the treasure on Misery Island, or wherever he’d buried it, for no doubt he needed working capital to keep the ship running and to pay the men at least some of the split. What Somers described was a fortune below, and every man jack and woman aboard their two ships was now rich beyond imagining.
Correction: Their three ships, for Fallon had nearly forgotten Élan, so utterly exhausted was he. Tomorrow they would rig a ship’s boat with sail and send it to Nassau with the good news, and hopefully by noon the schooner could join them. He would need to confer with Beauty about dividing the small crew among three ships, for there were not many hands to go around, but somehow they would get the little fleet to Bermuda. My God, he thought as he struggled into the cot in his new cabin that night, Bermuda. It seemed impossible and absurd to believe they were going home.
SEVENTY-TWO
IN THE twilight the three ships entered St. George’s Harbor and dropped their anchors—home. There was still daylight enough to see that nothing had changed. The buildings still glowed at sunset, the windows a shimmering gold, the shrubs and trees and beach around the harbor all the same. Fallon stood at Renegade’s railing with Somers as the ship glided into the harbor, the two men quietly discussing their possible partnership, with Fallon agreeing that maybe it was time to settle down a bit and look to the future.
“One thing,” Fallon said, unsure if this was the time to bring up a potentially divisive subject, but he pressed on, “I’d like to talk about the slaves.”
Somers looked at him quizzically. “If you mean the slaves onboard who are still alive, they are free men thanks to you and will share in the fortune aboard. By God they will!” said Somers with conviction.
Fallon took a deep breath. “Actually, I mean the slaves who work for the company on Grand Turk,” he said firmly, sticking his nose squarely into Somers’s business. “Raking the salt pans is a truly miserable living, as you must know, and dangerous, for no wages, and under the thumb of an overseer. I can’t imagine it for myself or any man or woman.”
This took Somers aback, and he grew pensive and dark. “Where is this leading, Nico?” he asked.
Fallon realized he was breaking the spell of a victorious homecoming, and he was certainly aware of Somers’s volatile temper, but the question of Somers’s slaves had nagged at him since Grand Turk and now seemed as good a time as any to bring it up.
“Can you imagine Aja a slave on the salt pans?” he said softly. “Half-blind from the sun with boils on his feet? Raking salt every day for the rest of his life?”
Somers stared at Fallon a moment, then looked out across the harbor toward his home. A home he’d built and paid for with salt. He took a deep breath and put his shoulders back.
“Nico, be reasonable,” he said. “You have to take emotion out of it. This whole business of salt is based on labor, slave labor. It’s like tobacco or sugarcane or cotton. If you don’t have slaves, you don’t have salt.”
All three ships were swinging at anchor now, the men preparing to go ashore. There would be no need for an anchor watch except on Renegade, a wise precaution with a fortune in her holds.
Somers looked at Fallon seriously, aware that the fate of their potential partnership hung in the balance. Perhaps their friendship, as well.
“I’m waiting for your answer about Aja, sir,” said Fallon respectfully, but digging in now, giving no quarter. “He’s a strong boy, so I’m assuming you’d want him on the salinas raking salt. No emotion now, as you said, just a simple question about a slave.”
Somers’s shoulders dropped. “No,” he said in resignation. “In answer to that specific question about that specific person I…I can’t imagine that, I guess.” And then Somers grew very quiet, almost whispering, “I can’t
imagine that boy as a slave, much less my slave, putting him to work raking salt.”
Fallon stood looking at the shoreline, grateful Somers didn’t blow up in anger at the conversation. “I know it changes everything,” said Fallon at last. “But sooner or later everything has to change.”
Somers turned to look directly into Fallon’s face. They were now at a place, and he knew it. It could be confrontation or cooperation. “What is it you suggest we do, Nico?” he asked, deliberately using the plural, we.
Fallon relaxed his grip on the railing, unaware that he had been clenching it tightly. Well, he thought, it was in for a penny, in for a pound.
“We could pay fair wages to free men, sir. And give them boots and big hats. And not ask them to rake in the heat of the day. I mean, the company practically has a monopoly on salt in the Caribbean. Can’t we adjust our prices to fit new expenses?”
Fallon was trying to think like a businessman now, trying to make it make sense rationally. He knew Somers was fighting change, giving into it, backing away from it, an old man being asked to adapt his thinking, no doubt his mind busy working on the financial implications to the company of wages and boots and big hats.
Elinore came up from below at that moment, lovely in the soft light, to give both her father and Fallon a hug, glad to be home. Then she stood back, aware that she had interrupted something important but not knowing what. The two men looked at each other a long moment, Somers seeing a captain who had proved to be as fearless in conversation as he was in battle. And the dark shadow seemed to leave the old man’s face and his mood appeared to lift.
“Do you know Heraclitus, Nico?” Somers said with a wink. “He said, ‘Nothing endures but change.’”
“I don’t know him,” said Fallon smiling back. “But he should be in the salt business! He’s the partner you want.”
Somers moved to put his hand on Fallon’s shoulder. “No, son,” he said firmly. “I know the partner I want.”
The ship’s boats were dropped overboard and Somers shook Fallon’s hand, kissed Elinore lightly on the cheek, and went over the side to be rowed to shore by Aja, chatting with the young man the whole way about the battle aboard Renegade. Somers was enormously satisfied that he’d played a part in sending Wicked Fucking Jak Clayton to hell. Old though he might be, he could still fight.
The Sea Dogs headed to the White Horse, which they never planned to leave until the senior Fallon ran out of drink. They had a deep thirst and enough stories for a lifetime of telling. And, just as important, their credit was now good.
Beauty was the last to leave Élan, helping first to see the wounded into the ship’s boats to be delivered ashore into the care of a local doctor who took them into his home. One of the men had made a splint for her peg so she could walk without limping, and she pushed off the side of the ship for the short row down the harbor to be closer to the walk to Suffering Lane, where she was raised and where she lived, and where there might be a light in a window that had burned for months just for her.
And finally, Fallon and Elinore rowed to shore from Renegade, the moon lighting the way to the dock and then, once they’d tied up, they walked and half-ran up the dock and then down the familiar path to the old fisherman’s shack, Elinore running ahead to open the door with the key Fallon had produced from his pants pocket. She went inside and lit a candle while he stood for a moment and looked at the stars just coming out.
Elinore called softly from the bed inside, her voice low and husky, suggesting the promise of the night. He smiled and stepped over the threshold and shut the door.
Indeed, Fallon thought, it was a night when anything was possible.
The Bermuda Privateer Page 29