The sun is very high. It beats down from almost directly overhead, cutting hot ribbons between the broad swaths of canvas and casting almost no shadow whatsoever. On the back of his neck, sweat is prickling now - beginning to itch under older, drier grime and salt spray -, and what wind there is blows from behind them: driving the Walrus forward before it so that the atmosphere's breath can hardly be felt on the ship's deck. But he isn't thinking of the heat. It's almost guaranteed that no one is, either here or over there on the heavy fluyt crawling before them. There are more pressing concerns.
The sternchaser on the merchantman's ship exhales a puff. A moment later, the bang-crack report follows. From his place on the quarterdeck, Flint can clearly see where the shot plummets wide to starboard, throwing up a great pillar of sea. He fixes his glass on the ship ahead of them; the crew if reloading the gun, just visible between despondent flaps of the English flag listing from its cable.
"If they miss again, that will be the end of it. They'll follow with the white flag after," he says to the Ranger man beside him, who is tall and with fair hair bleached sun yellow. 'His Majesty', the crew - in turns delighted by and sullen about any use of the Ranger's castoff intelligence, much less the passage of the man Vane's deployed to oversee the collection of his fair cut of the result - sometimes call him.
Flint lowers the spyglass from his eye by a fraction. He looks to Thomas in the narrow space, and the waxed end of his mustached twitches. There is some flash of teeth. It's a grin meant for being hidden behind a hand, one which reaches his eyes but doesn't brighten them.
A hand that once never knew work harsh enough to build the suggestion of a callus grips the wood of salt-worn railing; an improvement over a year ago, which would have demanded both hands and a far more tense posture. He didn't even flinch when the cannon went. He doesn't remember the last time he did.
"As you say."
Mr Barlow is still not a sailor. It's probable he won't ever be. Captain Flint, however, is a consummate professional in every way, and there is no reason not to place complete trust in him. In fact, being able to do so is such a pleasing luxury that the fine taste of it offsets the bitter metal flavor of impending violence. Almost enough to be complementary. (Thomas is not grateful that it took so long to see him again. But he is grateful that James did not witness his reaction to the first time a man asked him if he was ready before a clash like this. Soulmate or not, some things are always going to be reflected on with crippling embarrassment.)
Yes, I am.
And if he wasn't - too late anyway.
Does votre majesté not carry a sword? C'est pas grave. He's a good shot, haven't you heard. (Oh, dear.)
There are men who would say that it doesn't matter much - that unflinching response, any sense of ready. But Flint lowers the glass because he knows it will take somewhere between ten and fifteen seconds longer for the frazzled merchant sailors to bring their gun to bear again and there is no point in watching for what he already knows is coming.
Instead he lifts his hand to shield his eyes from the noon sun and calls up to the musket man in the foretop. "Range, Mr Beauclerc?"
"Nearly," is the disembodied answer.
He looks to Gates, the man's broad shape at the foot of the manladder on the gun deck. He has a hand on Williamson's naked ankle above him, keeping the man from popping up early. And then, unnecessarily (no point in looking for what he already knows), he glances back to Thomas.
BANG. The sternchaser's call ripples over the water. The shot falls in close to the Walrus's flank. Crack, goes the musket above their heads and over on the fluyt, the two man gun crew scatters.
A minute's patience is rewarded not with a white flag, but the English colors being pulled down.
"Close enough," he says, satisfaction flashing in his face as he at last snaps the glass closed and tucks it into his belt. He whistles. Williamson's ankle is released and the vanguard rises from behind the rail so that as the Walrus descends on her floundering prey, the merchant crew can get a proper look at what they've narrowly avoided.
Raised eyebrows meet that glance, something implying a smile, somewhere tucked far away from awareness of the shark filled waters (on board). After what they've survived, there's no day so dismal as to not be worth celebrating. One way or another.
BANG. And Thomas does smile then, wry as the vanguard fly off like valkyries leaping from behind a stormcloud. It may only be for show with the target surrendering, but there is nothing inherently harmless in a business such as this. He's done a few of these by now (with a much less civilized crew) (funny how it's the one with girls in), and it is his habit to be among the last over the rails - fine, for an accountant. Less fine, for someone who needs to make sure no one in the captain's quarters burns or throws and papers into the sea. This ship will have valuable stock, yes. The intelligence on its location came from the Ranger, its own crew too bloody depleted to take on another hunt, and so things will be divided. Thomas will keep an eye on the numbers and negotiate the way the bounty is cut, and not be even a little apologetic about holding to absolute evenness.
Mostly, though, this is about what correspondence might be carried as mail. Trade companies as powerful as, more powerful than, Whitehall, threading spiderwebs across the ocean and beginning to sink claws in. It is imperative to know the trajectory of their prospective operations, who their key investors are, who is expecting letters and who is writing them. Even the simple act of interrupting communication can delay the progression of empire by months and years, but having foresight, knowing whose journey to sink, is better than gold.
To him it is. Fuck England, anyway.
Up and over, there will always be something of looks like he's setting up for a horse to chase foxes on whenever he's doing anything physical, whatever, such is his cross to bear. Thomas weaves through sullen merchantmen herded into lines and cackling pirates, headed to push open the door to the greatcabin without a thought for if anyone's lurking behind it ready to fire a pistol into his head. That is also somewhat of a 'whatever' at this stage.
There's a pattern to this, in the way that only something chaotic can be. Meaning, mostly, that the Captain isn't meant to be over with the first wave because there's no telling exactly whether men made docile by uneasy surrender will buck back against their captors but when they do its often here: in those moments as they're first herded into some place of convenience, prior to the penetration of the ship's lower decks and before even the first cask or crate is cracked into.
Wait. Watch. If it begins, someone needs to be ready from the margin to see the first warning signs - not in the thick of it, too close to hand to see men at the fringe growing restless.
But.
But.
He's up and over on the heel of the vanguard (on Thomas's heels), pausing there on the rail where he might oversee--
A snap of the fingers and a gesture after the tall figure weaving toward the aft cabin. "Morley," --who can be trusted not to stab a man from the Ranger in the back now that it would be convenient-- "See that our guest doesn't take any liberties."
Now to find whatever miserable bastard is in charge and see that he clearly understands the situation to hand.
In the cabin, no hand flies up attached to a pistol aimed at Thomas' head. He opens the door and strides inside without any hesitation, because he knows what he lacks in ability in battle he has to make up for in nerve - and he's always had nerve, in every situation, whether it was helpful or not. He is polite to the crew of the Walrus, because he's more or less polite to everyone, but not overly so; he is signed to another crew and it would not acquit him well. He doesn't wait for anyone to join him, though he hears Flint's order and knows who to expect behind him.
The door closes behind him, too quick and too quiet. Thomas doesn't turn around because there's nothing he can do about it, even if it's not Morley -
- or if it is. He takes a breath.
(There hasn't been time or privacy to relate the encounter. Flint on one end of the boat, Thomas on the other, Mr Morley asking, So you're that Barlow, are you? Of Mrs Barlow? And little urgency besides. Why remark on something so innocuous, except for the intuiting in the back of Thomas' head that might as well be paranoia?)
Door opens again, louder like being kicked, a cry and a loud noise, two tangled bodies scrape Thomas' shoulder and he steps back, an almost artful sidestep, giving Morley and the merchant sailor space so he's not caught by a stray fist or blade.
He backs up further into the view of the cabin door, one hand extended even though his gaze doesn't break from the scuffle-- Everything's fine. Another man flies in, screaming with glee, to help stick a knife into the would-be-avenger.
"Let's not break anything."
A bloody grin greets him from the floor. "You looking for some new sitting room furniture?"
Which warrants a sideways look from Mr Morley even as he untangles himself from the mess of the merchant sailor and the second Walrus man. That look seems like 'Do you think so?' or maybe 'I'm not so certain,' but the man says nothing as he hauls his reinforcement up from over the body by the arm.
"Go on. Take Collier round and see that there's no other surprises waiting for us."
"But--" A meaningful and more bald look in the Ranger man's direction.
"Go." Only Morley still has him by the arm. "And send word that the cabin's clear."
Thomas gives Reinforcement an affable nod of thanks-goodbye as he's towed and released, choosing to pretend to ignore Morley's self-imposed tension. It certainly creates a funny picture for the retreating man, but then, Mr Barlow is always very temperate - if he has a wider reputation it's of being calm enough to be boring. Opinions were split when he came aboard this rival craft; Good thing they didn't send one of the nutters vs Too bad they didn't send one of the nutters.
He steps deeper into the cabin and approaches the desk without hesitation. Fine, his unconcerned gait seems to say, keep your powder-room conversations to yourselves.
Or perhaps he's just minding his own business and getting to work, and Morley is keen on reading into everything, watching him with a scathing gaze. He steps up behind Thomas and watches, paces, sticks fingers between the slats of a bookshelf that's been halfway boarded up to prevent the contents from being launched off in choppy weather. That he wants to ask something is tangible like the salt in the air, winding his intent in on himself like a spring coiling.
Thomas pulls open a drawer and removes the whole box it it from the desk, pouring the contents out. The records all look legitimate, nothing to indicate a black Do Not Show To Customs book hiding anywhere, but the captain is a packrat. Most of this is garbage, and he'll have to dig through everything. Outside, the shuffle of many feet and raucous calls of men are easily audible, drowning out whatever could go on in here with the door closed.
"You like it?" Morley asks, staring at him from the other side of the cabin.
"Mm?" Thomas doesn't look up.
"This."
"This?"
A pause then, beady eyes watching him closely. "'nother man, your woman."
Thomas huffs a rough exhale, near a laugh. "I knew it would be something like that."
"Like what?"
"Something stupid."
Another pause. The wind-up had been lackluster in its un-creative obviousness, and so Thomas feels safe volleying back impertinence, lazily delivered. He expects this is a test, the other man poking in to gauge this-or-that. Could be that this really is the thing he's bothered by and that's all there is to it. There's no followup snipe or sudden violence, so it seems to have worked out all right for the moment. Morley scoffs and leans against the wooden bulkhead. Thomas rather wishes he would fuck off so he could read some of these personal letters; if he is agitated by something beyond the far-off implication of cuckoldry, he suspects doing anything even innocently out of the ordinary will be inspected with hyper-vigilance. It is strange, though. He knows James and Miranda had been awfully discreet, even in Nassau.
Here at the edge of the civilized world, discretion is another word entirely. It is blatant looks traded between crew and Mr Morley's beady, watching eyes on Thomas as he shifts through the desk and waits to say something further; it is twenty merchant sailors rounded onto the main deck and no one looking up when they're asked where the Captain it, and the strange certainty that something is wrong that quiet inspires; it is sending Billy Bones below with five men from the vanguard and telling them to be tender about it.
In the cabin, this breed of discretion (which would never survive in any other place) chips and Morley begins to say, "Tell me, Mr Barlow--" and in the lower decks of the fluyt, a Walrus man goes to lift the cover from the hold hatch and is saved from being shot through the grating by pure luck as the ball glances off one of the cover's wooden crossbars and thumps home in the bulkhead beyond as opposed to anything more sensitive.
Crack, says the flintlock and the splintered wood. The sound carries farther than it seems it should.
If he has a wider reputation. Beyond the one that is just: he is the Ranger's gratingly well-mannered bookkeeper, his mistress is a French girl who is pretty but collects teeth, he has a wife in Nassau's interior, either the mistress or the wife is also fucking a captain, either Vane or Flint, no one is really sure or, honestly, interested enough to confirm. Any unspoken allegations of buggery flow in wildly inventive directions.
Thomas is going to interrupt him and say something unhelpful. Instigating, even.
Crack. Mr Morley's question is swallowed away, a whale closing around the tiniest fish. Thomas snaps his head up and frowns at him sharply.
(Unknown to him, a delusional man is staring at him and thinking You did that on purpose.)
"I'm sure you could send someone less useful in here to labor over their impotent thoughts in my direction," Thomas says, calm and just a touch agitated. "I know you weren't signed for your history as a governess."
Pop, pop, go two more reports somewhere distant, and then abruptly nearer there is a loud crack of a shot reverberating across the deck just beyond the closed cabin. Mr. Morley, sluggish to bid, twists away. As the door is opened, the distinct shape of Captain Flint's voice carries in - just sound, the words obfuscated by distance and the low sway whatever's being said.
The door bangs shut.
The thump of footfalls - two men, maybe -, first moving for here then veering elsewhere to clunk overhead on the stern deck. Then a sturdier, deliberate and unhurried step. The door opens again and Flint ducks through.
Thomas pulls the main log out from the pile of papers on the desk and wedges his thumb into it, prying it open to the different-textured stack of loose sheets that make up the manifest pinned inside. He holds it out to Flint. The cheap tin ring he wears, looted by its lonesome from a Dutch trader, winks a cheerful blue as he moves.
"Haven't found any shadow manifests yet."
But, hangs unspoken, evident in the overwhelming amount of shit out on the desk alone. Though nothing about Thomas' demeanor says he's stumbled into anything shady so far. About the cargo tally, at least. But this man has kept every shred of paper he's received since he was born, so perhaps there is one in here somewhere.
He doesn't ask what's going on. He has a mild suspicion and rather hopes he's wrong. Morley asks, "Something fucked about it?"
A sharp look cows further questions from Morley's particular corner, which is all the time he has for the Welshman. Flint flips through the manifest, juggling the loose pages - wood staves, linens, rice, two crates of fine porcelain which will be worth less than shit anywhere but Kingston, and--
With a low, irritated exhale, he tosses down the collection of papers. "He's armed them. And apparently found the right thing to say to discourage them from firing on him directly."
A stab of the finger. There are twelve lines on the open pages - twelve names, men and women between the ages of twenty two and forty; Bishop and Kerns and Howell.
"There's bound to be sentencing papers in there somewhere." Transportation is a well documented business.
I doubt there were such papers when I was transported
is not appropriate, and not actually funny. Thomas does pause, but it's not drawn out; the fact that Morley is staring at the two of them with renewed intensity is incidental. To react it so be human, and none are more human than those who live without restraint in the margins. Having an idea of what he's looking for, Thomas bends down to find another book, hauling out more and flipping quickly through. At least the official ledgers are organized.
"Here."
If Morley weren't still hovering he'd come round the desk and read it over Flint's shoulder, but instead he just stands there.
Get the fuck out, he doesn't say to the man lurking at the fringe of this. There are two dozen men tentatively being held in submission by little more than half their number, and another thirteen at minimum stowed away with God knows how many pistols and shot. The last thing anyone can afford is being asked questions.
Irritatingly, Morley knows this as well as anyone else. Maybe that's why he says nothing further as Flint pages through the ledgers and produces a thick bundle all signed and sealed by the appropriate hands. Jacob Pellumb, 32, nine years for petty larceny - and here, all the receipts of his contract and jail fees and the very name of the house where he'd been held prior to sentencing. It is a well tailored beast, a creature made for chewing through bone and sinew and leaving the shape of people behind. Harriet Kerns, 27, fencing. Jacob Bragg, 37, exporting wool to France.
Flint goes through a handful of the dozen, then folds the sum back into the ledger.
"I'll talk them out. In the mean time," --this to Morley-- "Help bring those stern chasers around and see what can be done to bring them to bear on the merchant crew should they react poorly. Load up with grapeshot and draw our men back to the rail."
Convict transportation is not a new concept, though the contracts for it are newly minted in ways Thomas hadn't seen before leaving - simply before. He remembers it as a 'merciful' alternative to the death penalty at the state's discretion; that it is now a thriving business and a handy way to thin out overcrowded debtors prisons is unfortunately not a surprise, given how slick an operation slave trading has become.
Alone at last, how romantic. Thomas considers a number of things to say, though none of them with any seriousness. (Do you think you'll sink this ship?) (Do you want me to speak to them?) (Pity you don't have any women on your crew after all.) (I suppose it's an especially good thing your crew's taken this lead, now, I think Charles would have just killed everyone already.)
Instead he sighs as he pulls another drawer out and says, "Fuck."
Is as succinct a way of putting it as any other - in fact, encompasses quite enough sentiment that for a moment (for two), nothing further occurs to him. Certainly there's very little that comes to mind to fix any part of this, though there is no doubt in his mind that it demands repairing.
There are only two ways this goes: they pull those people from the hold, or they burn the merchantman to the waterline with them still in it.
(There's no illicit profit to be made in transportation, thinks a smaller more blunted piece of him. As far as their business goes, it's wasted space.)
The scrape of the drawer in its housing seems very loud in the closed cabin.
"The good news is they haven't killed anyone yet." There'd be no coming back from that.
"Mm, you've said it." Yet. Thomas looks up, a smile on his face that hasn't been there in some days. That quiet, warmly knowing one only James and Miranda truly see. Fate is funny. They walk such a treacherous tightrope here - needing to maintain total secrecy of their truth for new reasons as well as old ones. This is the first time they've attempted this arrangement and God only knows how it's going to go, and while Thomas has preemptively made peace with whatever outcome will tumble through, he hadn't expected this sort of moral punchline. Well played, universe. (You asshole.)
He has to crouch down to pry out a heavy leather binder full of - aha, letters. Hm. Partially obscured he says, "I exist in forced neutrality between the brutal necessity of encouraging this encounter to its end as quickly as possible to further a broader goal, and the empathetic human - personal - desire to deliver each of those people to liberty away from the tyranny that's set them in chains. And,"
Thomas brings up a stack of letters-to-be-sealed. He looks at Flint. "I must of course lodge a formal complaint, owing to representing a ship whose code explicitly forbids entertaining peaceable action against any who deal in human cargo."
Is there something perverse about presenting Charles Vane's arguments in absentia as one might argue in London?
"That's out of the way. As always: please do nothing out of your ordinary on my account."
A huff of a laugh, a half turn as if to commiserate with some audience that isn't there: ordinary?
"Right. I'll do that."
With a deft motion, he sets the ship's ledger against his thigh and tears the problematic page from it. Nevermind his earlier thought. Would that the transports had actually shot what they'd meant to. It'd make this simpler.
"Good hunting," he says, turning and then shifting back. Changing his mind mid-stride to even that extent is irregular enough to disorient. "--if you can't ingratiate yourself with anyone, at least set a chair against the door."
Thomas says nothing for a moment, which is unusual enough to be strange; he should have a remark for that.
A few beats too late he scrapes together, "I'm sure I've ingratiated myself to the captain," which would be funnier for its deliberate banality if Thomas weren't also clearly sidestepping something else.
He shrugs at James and holds his hand out to take back custody of the ledger, as he'll need it. Later.
(There are strange, too long instances of quiet that linger like offset margin spaces in poorly printed books - not so extreme as to ruin, but somehow just crooked enough for the eye to recognize.
And he wonders in passing: how different have I become, and doesn't have an answer which satisfies. There's no change to the person, only the circumstances. Or it is all too reasonable to track the point at which their present selves diverge from others. Or--)
But its easy to set somewhere else, and to instead simply pass back the ledger. It's a broad book. Their hands do not touch in the course of its passage.
"If the guns begin working, stay here until they finish."
Perhaps in another life that goes even worse, improbable as that sounds presented against the horrors inscribed in their recent histories, Thomas Hamilton has cause to believe I am broken in this way because you are, because if we were not both twisted beyond recognition of who we were, then we could not recognize each other as we are, and we must.
It is much the same anywhere, anytime. I recognize you in silence, in the dark.
"Of course."
Yeah sure he'll totally hide, no problemo.
"If anyone speaks German--" he makes a vague sound, bending back over the desk already to pour through papers. "Some of these are that or Dutch. It may not mean anything." But he doesn't know that it doesn't. He's only been in here a few minutes. There's a corpse on the floor.
Mr Barlow does not put a chair up against the door, but he does poke his head out to critique off-tune whistling. It turns out to be Reinforcement, who, free of Morley's skeptical watch, is happy to swan back into the cabin and chat up this odd fellow from the Ranger. The door stays unlatched, swaying sometimes with the expanding breath of the sea, and they talk about cards and fingernail infections.
And in the ship's dark lower decks, a pirate captain is addressing men and women by their names. They're read from a torn sheet of paper, but there's no telling that part in the dense, humming dark. Anything is true. England is a distant shape here, made mute through any other possibility.
"I'll be more than happy to honor your request," he says, standing well back from the dark edges of the grate over the orlop hatch. "You only have to decide whether you prefer to live free here, or at your master's will in Jamaica."
That's the thing with voices in the dark. If someone were to lie, would either party ever know? And what else sits alongside in the pitch?
When the guns begin again, it's first with the crack of a pistol way down there in the dark. The shot burns down there somewhere. A woman screams, What did you do?'
Nine men and women are shepherded to the upper deck. They're stripped of their weapons and kept lashed to the length of chain strung between them. The merchantman's captain is not among their number, and once all parties in question resurface ten Walrus men are sent into the tops to begin stripping the ship of her sails.
It is interesting, that Thomas felt no mortal fear when Lieutenant McGraw was out on assignment, and that he has progressed past the days of gripping Gwenwhereistheumlaut's wrist and silently begging her not to participate, but his stomach still drops when the pistols start up and he knows Captain Flint is down there like a fox stuck deep in a hole with a flock of dogs upon it.
New experiences, he thinks, doing an admirable job of not looking stricken while Reinforcement is staring at him. Life is endlessly varied.
Should have seen that one coming. He does the next, at least, left alone only long enough for Hal Gates to shove the door open and say he's to come and go through the cargo alongside their own accountant.
"You've hired a new one?" he asks, adjusting the strap of a leather satchel full of papers across his shoulder. He has left the nicer one for purposes of someone fencing it; the one he's liberating for his own purposes looks like it's been used as a saddlebag on a very sad horse for many sad years. His gaze catches the line of newly present figures drifting by in their binds, and he feels an asphyxiated pang he's swallowed in the next heartbeat. "Did you hide someone under a bench this whole time, or will it be you and I and an abacus?"
Ingratiated is not the word for Flint's second, but he doomed himself to a friendly rapport with this resurrected radical when he made noise early on about having met him in a social capacity, thus preemptively ensuring nothing suspicious about them speaking informally. Thomas wonders sometimes if he wishes he'd never looked at him twice at Saint Kitts.
"That's funny," says Hal Gates, exactly in the tones of a man who has recently uttered the words No you cannot just shoot the prisoners. Why? Because I fucking said so, that's why. "No, no abacus today. The three of us--"
Here, a pause in which Gates realizes his new friend has been waylaid at the door. He makes a firm gesture of One Moment Please, then turns back to tell the interceding hostage taker to Kindly fuck off and find something better to do or I will find a job for you myself and you will not like it, at which point the temp hire in question is at last allowed past and remanded into the room.
"Mister Barlow, meet Mister Dufrense. Mister Dufresne here claims to read German."
Mister Dufresne's hands are not bound, but he does have the washed out and squinting look of a man who has recently seen more of a dark hold than the ship's deck. His hands tremble slightly as he removes a pair of glasses from the pocket of his battered vest. "Some. I said I read some German," he clarifies.
"Don't say that. We were just starting to get along."
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The sternchaser on the merchantman's ship exhales a puff. A moment later, the bang-crack report follows. From his place on the quarterdeck, Flint can clearly see where the shot plummets wide to starboard, throwing up a great pillar of sea. He fixes his glass on the ship ahead of them; the crew if reloading the gun, just visible between despondent flaps of the English flag listing from its cable.
"If they miss again, that will be the end of it. They'll follow with the white flag after," he says to the Ranger man beside him, who is tall and with fair hair bleached sun yellow. 'His Majesty', the crew - in turns delighted by and sullen about any use of the Ranger's castoff intelligence, much less the passage of the man Vane's deployed to oversee the collection of his fair cut of the result - sometimes call him.
Flint lowers the spyglass from his eye by a fraction. He looks to Thomas in the narrow space, and the waxed end of his mustached twitches. There is some flash of teeth. It's a grin meant for being hidden behind a hand, one which reaches his eyes but doesn't brighten them.
'Ready?'
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"As you say."
Mr Barlow is still not a sailor. It's probable he won't ever be. Captain Flint, however, is a consummate professional in every way, and there is no reason not to place complete trust in him. In fact, being able to do so is such a pleasing luxury that the fine taste of it offsets the bitter metal flavor of impending violence. Almost enough to be complementary. (Thomas is not grateful that it took so long to see him again. But he is grateful that James did not witness his reaction to the first time a man asked him if he was ready before a clash like this. Soulmate or not, some things are always going to be reflected on with crippling embarrassment.)
Yes, I am.
And if he wasn't - too late anyway.
Does votre majesté not carry a sword? C'est pas grave. He's a good shot, haven't you heard. (Oh, dear.)
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Instead he lifts his hand to shield his eyes from the noon sun and calls up to the musket man in the foretop. "Range, Mr Beauclerc?"
"Nearly," is the disembodied answer.
He looks to Gates, the man's broad shape at the foot of the manladder on the gun deck. He has a hand on Williamson's naked ankle above him, keeping the man from popping up early. And then, unnecessarily (no point in looking for what he already knows), he glances back to Thomas.
BANG. The sternchaser's call ripples over the water. The shot falls in close to the Walrus's flank. Crack, goes the musket above their heads and over on the fluyt, the two man gun crew scatters.
A minute's patience is rewarded not with a white flag, but the English colors being pulled down.
"Close enough," he says, satisfaction flashing in his face as he at last snaps the glass closed and tucks it into his belt. He whistles. Williamson's ankle is released and the vanguard rises from behind the rail so that as the Walrus descends on her floundering prey, the merchant crew can get a proper look at what they've narrowly avoided.
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BANG. And Thomas does smile then, wry as the vanguard fly off like valkyries leaping from behind a stormcloud. It may only be for show with the target surrendering, but there is nothing inherently harmless in a business such as this. He's done a few of these by now (with a much less civilized crew) (funny how it's the one with girls in), and it is his habit to be among the last over the rails - fine, for an accountant. Less fine, for someone who needs to make sure no one in the captain's quarters burns or throws and papers into the sea. This ship will have valuable stock, yes. The intelligence on its location came from the Ranger, its own crew too bloody depleted to take on another hunt, and so things will be divided. Thomas will keep an eye on the numbers and negotiate the way the bounty is cut, and not be even a little apologetic about holding to absolute evenness.
Mostly, though, this is about what correspondence might be carried as mail. Trade companies as powerful as, more powerful than, Whitehall, threading spiderwebs across the ocean and beginning to sink claws in. It is imperative to know the trajectory of their prospective operations, who their key investors are, who is expecting letters and who is writing them. Even the simple act of interrupting communication can delay the progression of empire by months and years, but having foresight, knowing whose journey to sink, is better than gold.
To him it is. Fuck England, anyway.
Up and over, there will always be something of looks like he's setting up for a horse to chase foxes on whenever he's doing anything physical, whatever, such is his cross to bear. Thomas weaves through sullen merchantmen herded into lines and cackling pirates, headed to push open the door to the greatcabin without a thought for if anyone's lurking behind it ready to fire a pistol into his head. That is also somewhat of a 'whatever' at this stage.
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Wait. Watch. If it begins, someone needs to be ready from the margin to see the first warning signs - not in the thick of it, too close to hand to see men at the fringe growing restless.
But.
But.
He's up and over on the heel of the vanguard (on Thomas's heels), pausing there on the rail where he might oversee--
A snap of the fingers and a gesture after the tall figure weaving toward the aft cabin. "Morley," --who can be trusted not to stab a man from the Ranger in the back now that it would be convenient-- "See that our guest doesn't take any liberties."
Now to find whatever miserable bastard is in charge and see that he clearly understands the situation to hand.
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The door closes behind him, too quick and too quiet. Thomas doesn't turn around because there's nothing he can do about it, even if it's not Morley -
- or if it is. He takes a breath.
(There hasn't been time or privacy to relate the encounter. Flint on one end of the boat, Thomas on the other, Mr Morley asking, So you're that Barlow, are you? Of Mrs Barlow? And little urgency besides. Why remark on something so innocuous, except for the intuiting in the back of Thomas' head that might as well be paranoia?)
Door opens again, louder like being kicked, a cry and a loud noise, two tangled bodies scrape Thomas' shoulder and he steps back, an almost artful sidestep, giving Morley and the merchant sailor space so he's not caught by a stray fist or blade.
He backs up further into the view of the cabin door, one hand extended even though his gaze doesn't break from the scuffle-- Everything's fine. Another man flies in, screaming with glee, to help stick a knife into the would-be-avenger.
"Let's not break anything."
A bloody grin greets him from the floor. "You looking for some new sitting room furniture?"
"You're getting paid off the same ledgers, sir."
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"Go on. Take Collier round and see that there's no other surprises waiting for us."
"But--" A meaningful and more bald look in the Ranger man's direction.
"Go." Only Morley still has him by the arm. "And send word that the cabin's clear."
He looses him then.
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He steps deeper into the cabin and approaches the desk without hesitation. Fine, his unconcerned gait seems to say, keep your powder-room conversations to yourselves.
Or perhaps he's just minding his own business and getting to work, and Morley is keen on reading into everything, watching him with a scathing gaze. He steps up behind Thomas and watches, paces, sticks fingers between the slats of a bookshelf that's been halfway boarded up to prevent the contents from being launched off in choppy weather. That he wants to ask something is tangible like the salt in the air, winding his intent in on himself like a spring coiling.
Thomas pulls open a drawer and removes the whole box it it from the desk, pouring the contents out. The records all look legitimate, nothing to indicate a black Do Not Show To Customs book hiding anywhere, but the captain is a packrat. Most of this is garbage, and he'll have to dig through everything. Outside, the shuffle of many feet and raucous calls of men are easily audible, drowning out whatever could go on in here with the door closed.
"You like it?" Morley asks, staring at him from the other side of the cabin.
"Mm?" Thomas doesn't look up.
"This."
"This?"
A pause then, beady eyes watching him closely. "'nother man, your woman."
Thomas huffs a rough exhale, near a laugh. "I knew it would be something like that."
"Like what?"
"Something stupid."
Another pause. The wind-up had been lackluster in its un-creative obviousness, and so Thomas feels safe volleying back impertinence, lazily delivered. He expects this is a test, the other man poking in to gauge this-or-that. Could be that this really is the thing he's bothered by and that's all there is to it. There's no followup snipe or sudden violence, so it seems to have worked out all right for the moment. Morley scoffs and leans against the wooden bulkhead. Thomas rather wishes he would fuck off so he could read some of these personal letters; if he is agitated by something beyond the far-off implication of cuckoldry, he suspects doing anything even innocently out of the ordinary will be inspected with hyper-vigilance. It is strange, though. He knows James and Miranda had been awfully discreet, even in Nassau.
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In the cabin, this breed of discretion (which would never survive in any other place) chips and Morley begins to say, "Tell me, Mr Barlow--" and in the lower decks of the fluyt, a Walrus man goes to lift the cover from the hold hatch and is saved from being shot through the grating by pure luck as the ball glances off one of the cover's wooden crossbars and thumps home in the bulkhead beyond as opposed to anything more sensitive.
Crack, says the flintlock and the splintered wood. The sound carries farther than it seems it should.
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Thomas is going to interrupt him and say something unhelpful. Instigating, even.
Crack. Mr Morley's question is swallowed away, a whale closing around the tiniest fish. Thomas snaps his head up and frowns at him sharply.
(Unknown to him, a delusional man is staring at him and thinking You did that on purpose.)
"I'm sure you could send someone less useful in here to labor over their impotent thoughts in my direction," Thomas says, calm and just a touch agitated. "I know you weren't signed for your history as a governess."
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The door bangs shut.
The thump of footfalls - two men, maybe -, first moving for here then veering elsewhere to clunk overhead on the stern deck. Then a sturdier, deliberate and unhurried step. The door opens again and Flint ducks through.
"Where's the cargo manifest?"
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"Haven't found any shadow manifests yet."
But, hangs unspoken, evident in the overwhelming amount of shit out on the desk alone. Though nothing about Thomas' demeanor says he's stumbled into anything shady so far. About the cargo tally, at least. But this man has kept every shred of paper he's received since he was born, so perhaps there is one in here somewhere.
He doesn't ask what's going on. He has a mild suspicion and rather hopes he's wrong. Morley asks, "Something fucked about it?"
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With a low, irritated exhale, he tosses down the collection of papers. "He's armed them. And apparently found the right thing to say to discourage them from firing on him directly."
A stab of the finger. There are twelve lines on the open pages - twelve names, men and women between the ages of twenty two and forty; Bishop and Kerns and Howell.
"There's bound to be sentencing papers in there somewhere." Transportation is a well documented business.
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is not appropriate, and not actually funny. Thomas does pause, but it's not drawn out; the fact that Morley is staring at the two of them with renewed intensity is incidental. To react it so be human, and none are more human than those who live without restraint in the margins. Having an idea of what he's looking for, Thomas bends down to find another book, hauling out more and flipping quickly through. At least the official ledgers are organized.
"Here."
If Morley weren't still hovering he'd come round the desk and read it over Flint's shoulder, but instead he just stands there.
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Irritatingly, Morley knows this as well as anyone else. Maybe that's why he says nothing further as Flint pages through the ledgers and produces a thick bundle all signed and sealed by the appropriate hands. Jacob Pellumb, 32, nine years for petty larceny - and here, all the receipts of his contract and jail fees and the very name of the house where he'd been held prior to sentencing. It is a well tailored beast, a creature made for chewing through bone and sinew and leaving the shape of people behind. Harriet Kerns, 27, fencing. Jacob Bragg, 37, exporting wool to France.
Flint goes through a handful of the dozen, then folds the sum back into the ledger.
"I'll talk them out. In the mean time," --this to Morley-- "Help bring those stern chasers around and see what can be done to bring them to bear on the merchant crew should they react poorly. Load up with grapeshot and draw our men back to the rail."
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Alone at last, how romantic. Thomas considers a number of things to say, though none of them with any seriousness. (Do you think you'll sink this ship?) (Do you want me to speak to them?) (Pity you don't have any women on your crew after all.) (I suppose it's an especially good thing your crew's taken this lead, now, I think Charles would have just killed everyone already.)
Instead he sighs as he pulls another drawer out and says, "Fuck."
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There are only two ways this goes: they pull those people from the hold, or they burn the merchantman to the waterline with them still in it.
(There's no illicit profit to be made in transportation, thinks a smaller more blunted piece of him. As far as their business goes, it's wasted space.)
The scrape of the drawer in its housing seems very loud in the closed cabin.
"The good news is they haven't killed anyone yet." There'd be no coming back from that.
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He has to crouch down to pry out a heavy leather binder full of - aha, letters. Hm. Partially obscured he says, "I exist in forced neutrality between the brutal necessity of encouraging this encounter to its end as quickly as possible to further a broader goal, and the empathetic human - personal - desire to deliver each of those people to liberty away from the tyranny that's set them in chains. And,"
Thomas brings up a stack of letters-to-be-sealed. He looks at Flint. "I must of course lodge a formal complaint, owing to representing a ship whose code explicitly forbids entertaining peaceable action against any who deal in human cargo."
Is there something perverse about presenting Charles Vane's arguments in absentia as one might argue in London?
"That's out of the way. As always: please do nothing out of your ordinary on my account."
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"Right. I'll do that."
With a deft motion, he sets the ship's ledger against his thigh and tears the problematic page from it. Nevermind his earlier thought. Would that the transports had actually shot what they'd meant to. It'd make this simpler.
"Good hunting," he says, turning and then shifting back. Changing his mind mid-stride to even that extent is irregular enough to disorient. "--if you can't ingratiate yourself with anyone, at least set a chair against the door."
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A few beats too late he scrapes together, "I'm sure I've ingratiated myself to the captain," which would be funnier for its deliberate banality if Thomas weren't also clearly sidestepping something else.
He shrugs at James and holds his hand out to take back custody of the ledger, as he'll need it. Later.
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(There are strange, too long instances of quiet that linger like offset margin spaces in poorly printed books - not so extreme as to ruin, but somehow just crooked enough for the eye to recognize.
And he wonders in passing: how different have I become, and doesn't have an answer which satisfies. There's no change to the person, only the circumstances. Or it is all too reasonable to track the point at which their present selves diverge from others. Or--)
But its easy to set somewhere else, and to instead simply pass back the ledger. It's a broad book. Their hands do not touch in the course of its passage.
"If the guns begin working, stay here until they finish."
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It is much the same anywhere, anytime. I recognize you in silence, in the dark.
"Of course."
Yeah sure he'll totally hide, no problemo.
"If anyone speaks German--" he makes a vague sound, bending back over the desk already to pour through papers. "Some of these are that or Dutch. It may not mean anything." But he doesn't know that it doesn't. He's only been in here a few minutes. There's a corpse on the floor.
Mr Barlow does not put a chair up against the door, but he does poke his head out to critique off-tune whistling. It turns out to be Reinforcement, who, free of Morley's skeptical watch, is happy to swan back into the cabin and chat up this odd fellow from the Ranger. The door stays unlatched, swaying sometimes with the expanding breath of the sea, and they talk about cards and fingernail infections.
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"I'll be more than happy to honor your request," he says, standing well back from the dark edges of the grate over the orlop hatch. "You only have to decide whether you prefer to live free here, or at your master's will in Jamaica."
That's the thing with voices in the dark. If someone were to lie, would either party ever know? And what else sits alongside in the pitch?
When the guns begin again, it's first with the crack of a pistol way down there in the dark. The shot burns down there somewhere. A woman screams, What did you do?'
Nine men and women are shepherded to the upper deck. They're stripped of their weapons and kept lashed to the length of chain strung between them. The merchantman's captain is not among their number, and once all parties in question resurface ten Walrus men are sent into the tops to begin stripping the ship of her sails.
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New experiences, he thinks, doing an admirable job of not looking stricken while Reinforcement is staring at him. Life is endlessly varied.
Should have seen that one coming. He does the next, at least, left alone only long enough for Hal Gates to shove the door open and say he's to come and go through the cargo alongside their own accountant.
"You've hired a new one?" he asks, adjusting the strap of a leather satchel full of papers across his shoulder. He has left the nicer one for purposes of someone fencing it; the one he's liberating for his own purposes looks like it's been used as a saddlebag on a very sad horse for many sad years. His gaze catches the line of newly present figures drifting by in their binds, and he feels an asphyxiated pang he's swallowed in the next heartbeat. "Did you hide someone under a bench this whole time, or will it be you and I and an abacus?"
Ingratiated is not the word for Flint's second, but he doomed himself to a friendly rapport with this resurrected radical when he made noise early on about having met him in a social capacity, thus preemptively ensuring nothing suspicious about them speaking informally. Thomas wonders sometimes if he wishes he'd never looked at him twice at Saint Kitts.
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Here, a pause in which Gates realizes his new friend has been waylaid at the door. He makes a firm gesture of One Moment Please, then turns back to tell the interceding hostage taker to Kindly fuck off and find something better to do or I will find a job for you myself and you will not like it, at which point the temp hire in question is at last allowed past and remanded into the room.
"Mister Barlow, meet Mister Dufrense. Mister Dufresne here claims to read German."
Mister Dufresne's hands are not bound, but he does have the washed out and squinting look of a man who has recently seen more of a dark hold than the ship's deck. His hands tremble slightly as he removes a pair of glasses from the pocket of his battered vest. "Some. I said I read some German," he clarifies.
"Don't say that. We were just starting to get along."
i don't remember where i was going with the german stuff sorry
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