In the aftermath of Charles Town, a list of things:
There is repair work to be done on the warship. The bulk of the work - the truly impassable jobs which must be completed to make her seaworthy -, had already been affected before the business on the mainland had already been resolved. It may have been a job which Vane's crew created, but in the spirit of whatever shambling partnership they've now struck, it is also the job they've tended faithfully to.
There is a man's leg in need of tending. Mr Silver lies just there in the stern window bench of the large cabin, gripped by the ragged fever which accompanies the loss of nearly any limb. The salvage work of saving some part of the leg has been neatly done, but there is no such thing as an easy amputation and Mr Silver makes terrible sounds at night.
They have need of revictualing. They would have been short water and rum and bread from the journey North regardless, but the addition of a second working crew and the subtraction of only a handful of original Walrus men means there are too many mouths to feed for even half rations to be a viable option.
There are men to be buried and fighting between the mismatched crews to be managed.
And then there is the other thing. It is a trunk, inside of which lies an abbreviated series of carefully folded, clean linen dresses. They may be the best ones Miranda owned. They are the ones in which she could still fit, some of which yet retained the sometimes appearance of lace trim, and which still smell of the dried lavender and the storage from where they'd been fetched. There is a small hand mirror; there are all the pieces of a woman's delicate ivory toilette, and a mismatched set of combs. There are threadbare stockings and a small collection of books and a modest sum of money. There is a brick of tea wrapped in oiled paper to protect it from the damp.
Here is how ship's business is conducted in response: Sheets and halyards are spliced, backstays reset, and in less than three days after their departure it is as if the two-decker has never been acquainted with action, bloody or otherwise. Mr Silver is seen to with the faithful devotion of sunday parishioners happy to be led through their prayers. Charles Vane kills one of his own men to resolve a scrap when it breaks out on the upp gun deck. The chest is taken below and stored somewhere dry.
As to the question of stores and water - that is precisely what places like Port Royal are made for. They make their run to the anchorage in full light so the black can clearly be made at the Warship's stern. Even so, there is still some great clamoring response to the ship's appearance in the harbor. Gunboats are sent. One of the island's governors eventually comes out to meet them - Which ship is that? Who is her captain? From where do you come and what is your business here?
By that evening, news of their arrival and the happenings at Charles Town have travelled the length and breadth of the port and are beginning to make their second lap. In the morning, the governor will likely come to ask them to leave as soon as they're able. After all, there are English privateers in residence here as well, and someone will eventually take exception to the news. But tonight, it is quiet enough that he cannot tolerate overseeing the work being done on the beach. Instead, Flint makes his way up into the conglomerate of brightly colored stone and plaster buildings. He finds himself something to drink, and then he finds himself a low retaining wall over which the crash and foam of the surf can be observed through the dark. It isn't such a long way down, but he can tell from the suck of the waves that there are rocks at the bottom and the thought sticks between his teeth like something he has purposefully placed there to chew on.
It's a dark night. It is warm. A clever man would find something beyond the tide to engage his mind with, but what is there really? Nothing which will change the course of this evening, that much he is certain.
She's been in Port Royal long enough to grow to despise it some. It's thick with the smell of shit, choked with people, and full of questions like Anne Bonny, yeah? You lose Rackham on the way here? People know her, not for the better, and every fucking time it happens, her hackles come up.
But she stays anyhow, trying to smooth down that sense of pique (been working near as long as he has, hard as him, and these bastards still think--) and make the contacts Max asked for. She's going to do that much while she's here, however long it takes. And it does take time: finding the right people, getting something like trust out of them, putting the offer forth. She's never done anything like it before--it's the kind of shit Jack would've managed for both of them. It takes her longer than it'd probably have taken him, and she can't do it the same way he would've, but she gets what she's come for eventually. Names, agreements, promises she can take back to Max.
And then she's got a choice. Has to go back to Nassau eventually, deliver on what she's agreed to do. (It's occurred to her more than once that she doesn't have to--that Max might have offered this as a clean escape for the both of them. But she's done it, and she's not going to let the effort go to waste. Whatever things are like back in Nassau, she owes Max this much.) But staying there, waiting to see what scraps she'll get, dry-docked on an island where nearly everyone can point her out...she can't do it.
She delays her return, turning her attention to finding a ship. A crew. And it's more Rackham's sailing under his own name these days, he finally decide you were bad luck? most of the time, but she lingers anyhow. The alternative's going back.
And then she hears the name of Flint bandied about, and it's the first possibility in days that seems worth chasing. Even hearing of the destruction he wreaked on Charles Town. (Maybe especially hearing that.) So she gives chase, figuring out where he's at--him, not his quartermaster, she'll need the captain on her side if she's to stay aboard more'n an hour--and going there. A bottle of rum purchased, an extra coin for pointing out which direction the captain's gone off to--it's almost too easy, getting to him.
He's a familiar shape, however poorly acquainted they might be, and he's alone. Mightn't've been hard to find after all, in the end. Stopping several paces away, she makes her presence known; of all people, Anne's not one to risk sneaking up on a man and getting herself gutted. "Captain Flint."
For a moment, the man at the seawall does nothing. He is a deeper, darker shape in the night - a black form in an evening unsoftened by reflected moonlight. When he does finally move, it's a small tip of the head in her direction and little else.
"What are you waiting for?"
Anne Bonny doesn't appear out of the dark in a place where she has no reason to be unless she's been bid there for a particular purpose.
"Ain't here to stab you in the kidneys." Is he expecting assassination attempts? He's a hard captain, nearly lost control of his ship at least once, far as she knows--but what she's heard of Charles Town has been told like a broadside ballad, not an accusation. If anyone's ready to make him pay for his last jaunt up the coast, they haven't started whispering to others yet. (Or, at least, not to Anne--but that ain't a surprise.)
She does come closer, though, figuring on this being about as good an invitation as she's getting. Her free hand's on the hilt of a dagger, but casually, like she just feels like remembering it's there. If there's a way to be casual about having a blade at your fingertips, anyhow. In a moment, she's standing near him, not quite in arm's reach, leaning against the wall.
"Looking to join a crew." Anne's never been one to drag this shit out--if she's getting a no, she wants it fast and over with.
Well he certainly isn't expecting that. It draws something in Flint short, dredging his attention around in a way that the perceived threat of her knife had failed to do. His weight, checked against the wall a moment ago, starts to shift from it. Then--
He huffs out a low, sullen noise. "Vane intends to be out at the first opportunity. If you have business with him, then I would invite you take it to him."
"Been on Vane's crew. I ain't going back to that." However she might feel about him now--it's a fondness born as much or more from seeing Jack's regard for him, and not always easily--she remembers the hardest days she had on the Ranger. It's nothing she intends to repeat, particularly not when it means she'll have walked away from Jack and towards one of the men he esteems most in this world.
The obvious doesn't need saying: Came to you because I want on your ship. He's probably already making up his mind, her luck. So she waits, watching him from under the brim of her hat.
Here is the list of things that lives under all the others: What happens when they return to Nassau? What happens once the men realize that they have half a ship at best, have no ransom money, no Spanish gold, have nothing but the pleasure of having razed a piece of the colonies? There will be a fort to repair, hard labor, and debts to repay. A partnership alone, some change in the arrangement of who wants to throttle who, isn't enough to change that. It is in everyone's interest not to remind anyone of that this is what they're going back to. The last thing any of them need is a reminder of how many times they will be dividing nothing between them.
And here is what he knows, the sizzling tide that rises any time his mind turns toward questions of semantics: fuck that. Fuck all of it. And fuck anyone who can't see the point in using this moment to exert all that pressure to make a blade to hack England's head off with. It's the thought that swallows. He is standing over it and can see what it looks like from above better than he can those rocks below them now in the dark. Drown him in that.
"I got two." Anne knows how this works, if only from watching other negotiations. It ain't supposed to be this easy. Especially not with a captain known for being hard, especially not when it means he's agreeing to have a woman among his crew.
Might be the stories of his island witch have some basis in fact--not the shit about magic, but his being run by some woman's voice in his ear. Or his need for a good knife or two on his side outweighs whatever backtalk his quartermaster'll give him over bringing on a crew-killer. (Or he just don't know what you did to that bastard up with the whore. That's why he ain't said no.)
She can't guess, looking at the dark shape of his features, which it is. She can't remember ever being stuck in the same room as him before, not without someone else there to do the talking; she's going to have to learn how to tell one of Flint's faces from the next. (Simultaneously, she misses Jack and hates him, little curls of both sensations tangling up together.) Which all means she has to ask it straight out, little though she wants to. "You expecting trouble?"
It might've felt like being called up to face the schoolmaster's wrath, had Anne ever gone to school. As it is, she feels a twinge of concern when she slinks inside the captain's quarters, shutting the door behind her, but only a small one. Flint's hard, but she hasn't gotten the sense that he won't see reason. He's a clever man, by all accounts, and he needs her.
And besides, she'd like to think she could take him, if it proved necessary.
So she comes to the middle of the room and stops, waiting for acknowledgment. Still a few paces off from the great nailed-down desk and the man behind it, out of reach but near enough to bark at. She's not expecting much more than that--if he's heard how one of his crewmen now has lips that open too wide at the corners, he's likely heard why, too. And even if he doesn't know this is an improvement over the last time someone called her a cunt or suggested what she could do with her mouth if she wanted to make herself useful, she knows it is. She managed that much. She'll manage this, too.
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PORT ROYAL
There is repair work to be done on the warship. The bulk of the work - the truly impassable jobs which must be completed to make her seaworthy -, had already been affected before the business on the mainland had already been resolved. It may have been a job which Vane's crew created, but in the spirit of whatever shambling partnership they've now struck, it is also the job they've tended faithfully to.
There is a man's leg in need of tending. Mr Silver lies just there in the stern window bench of the large cabin, gripped by the ragged fever which accompanies the loss of nearly any limb. The salvage work of saving some part of the leg has been neatly done, but there is no such thing as an easy amputation and Mr Silver makes terrible sounds at night.
They have need of revictualing. They would have been short water and rum and bread from the journey North regardless, but the addition of a second working crew and the subtraction of only a handful of original Walrus men means there are too many mouths to feed for even half rations to be a viable option.
There are men to be buried and fighting between the mismatched crews to be managed.
And then there is the other thing. It is a trunk, inside of which lies an abbreviated series of carefully folded, clean linen dresses. They may be the best ones Miranda owned. They are the ones in which she could still fit, some of which yet retained the sometimes appearance of lace trim, and which still smell of the dried lavender and the storage from where they'd been fetched. There is a small hand mirror; there are all the pieces of a woman's delicate ivory toilette, and a mismatched set of combs. There are threadbare stockings and a small collection of books and a modest sum of money. There is a brick of tea wrapped in oiled paper to protect it from the damp.
Here is how ship's business is conducted in response: Sheets and halyards are spliced, backstays reset, and in less than three days after their departure it is as if the two-decker has never been acquainted with action, bloody or otherwise. Mr Silver is seen to with the faithful devotion of sunday parishioners happy to be led through their prayers. Charles Vane kills one of his own men to resolve a scrap when it breaks out on the upp gun deck. The chest is taken below and stored somewhere dry.
As to the question of stores and water - that is precisely what places like Port Royal are made for. They make their run to the anchorage in full light so the black can clearly be made at the Warship's stern. Even so, there is still some great clamoring response to the ship's appearance in the harbor. Gunboats are sent. One of the island's governors eventually comes out to meet them - Which ship is that? Who is her captain? From where do you come and what is your business here?
By that evening, news of their arrival and the happenings at Charles Town have travelled the length and breadth of the port and are beginning to make their second lap. In the morning, the governor will likely come to ask them to leave as soon as they're able. After all, there are English privateers in residence here as well, and someone will eventually take exception to the news. But tonight, it is quiet enough that he cannot tolerate overseeing the work being done on the beach. Instead, Flint makes his way up into the conglomerate of brightly colored stone and plaster buildings. He finds himself something to drink, and then he finds himself a low retaining wall over which the crash and foam of the surf can be observed through the dark. It isn't such a long way down, but he can tell from the suck of the waves that there are rocks at the bottom and the thought sticks between his teeth like something he has purposefully placed there to chew on.
It's a dark night. It is warm. A clever man would find something beyond the tide to engage his mind with, but what is there really? Nothing which will change the course of this evening, that much he is certain.
no subject
But she stays anyhow, trying to smooth down that sense of pique (been working near as long as he has, hard as him, and these bastards still think--) and make the contacts Max asked for. She's going to do that much while she's here, however long it takes. And it does take time: finding the right people, getting something like trust out of them, putting the offer forth. She's never done anything like it before--it's the kind of shit Jack would've managed for both of them. It takes her longer than it'd probably have taken him, and she can't do it the same way he would've, but she gets what she's come for eventually. Names, agreements, promises she can take back to Max.
And then she's got a choice. Has to go back to Nassau eventually, deliver on what she's agreed to do. (It's occurred to her more than once that she doesn't have to--that Max might have offered this as a clean escape for the both of them. But she's done it, and she's not going to let the effort go to waste. Whatever things are like back in Nassau, she owes Max this much.) But staying there, waiting to see what scraps she'll get, dry-docked on an island where nearly everyone can point her out...she can't do it.
She delays her return, turning her attention to finding a ship. A crew. And it's more Rackham's sailing under his own name these days, he finally decide you were bad luck? most of the time, but she lingers anyhow. The alternative's going back.
And then she hears the name of Flint bandied about, and it's the first possibility in days that seems worth chasing. Even hearing of the destruction he wreaked on Charles Town. (Maybe especially hearing that.) So she gives chase, figuring out where he's at--him, not his quartermaster, she'll need the captain on her side if she's to stay aboard more'n an hour--and going there. A bottle of rum purchased, an extra coin for pointing out which direction the captain's gone off to--it's almost too easy, getting to him.
He's a familiar shape, however poorly acquainted they might be, and he's alone. Mightn't've been hard to find after all, in the end. Stopping several paces away, she makes her presence known; of all people, Anne's not one to risk sneaking up on a man and getting herself gutted. "Captain Flint."
if this posts twice I blame dreamwidth
"What are you waiting for?"
Anne Bonny doesn't appear out of the dark in a place where she has no reason to be unless she's been bid there for a particular purpose.
no subject
She does come closer, though, figuring on this being about as good an invitation as she's getting. Her free hand's on the hilt of a dagger, but casually, like she just feels like remembering it's there. If there's a way to be casual about having a blade at your fingertips, anyhow. In a moment, she's standing near him, not quite in arm's reach, leaning against the wall.
"Looking to join a crew." Anne's never been one to drag this shit out--if she's getting a no, she wants it fast and over with.
no subject
He huffs out a low, sullen noise. "Vane intends to be out at the first opportunity. If you have business with him, then I would invite you take it to him."
no subject
The obvious doesn't need saying: Came to you because I want on your ship. He's probably already making up his mind, her luck. So she waits, watching him from under the brim of her hat.
no subject
And here is what he knows, the sizzling tide that rises any time his mind turns toward questions of semantics: fuck that. Fuck all of it. And fuck anyone who can't see the point in using this moment to exert all that pressure to make a blade to hack England's head off with. It's the thought that swallows. He is standing over it and can see what it looks like from above better than he can those rocks below them now in the dark. Drown him in that.
"I could use a good knife," he says.
no subject
Might be the stories of his island witch have some basis in fact--not the shit about magic, but his being run by some woman's voice in his ear. Or his need for a good knife or two on his side outweighs whatever backtalk his quartermaster'll give him over bringing on a crew-killer. (Or he just don't know what you did to that bastard up with the whore. That's why he ain't said no.)
She can't guess, looking at the dark shape of his features, which it is. She can't remember ever being stuck in the same room as him before, not without someone else there to do the talking; she's going to have to learn how to tell one of Flint's faces from the next. (Simultaneously, she misses Jack and hates him, little curls of both sensations tangling up together.) Which all means she has to ask it straight out, little though she wants to. "You expecting trouble?"
no subject
"I aim to create it."
And if little else can be said about Anne Bonny's reputation, no one would deny her talent for that.
ASEA.
And besides, she'd like to think she could take him, if it proved necessary.
So she comes to the middle of the room and stops, waiting for acknowledgment. Still a few paces off from the great nailed-down desk and the man behind it, out of reach but near enough to bark at. She's not expecting much more than that--if he's heard how one of his crewmen now has lips that open too wide at the corners, he's likely heard why, too. And even if he doesn't know this is an improvement over the last time someone called her a cunt or suggested what she could do with her mouth if she wanted to make herself useful, she knows it is. She managed that much. She'll manage this, too.