A gambit in the tons the.., p.25
A Gambit in the Tons: The Silver Locket, Book 7, page 25
Hugh huffs a small laugh despite the heavy air, and beside him, Lil, face shrouded behind her veil, peers up to admire her uncle.
“He paid me a little of each share for nearly ten years. Though I’d long ago stopped counting, he wouldn’t stop paying it. You all know what was left, don’t you? Twenty gold pieces. He’d never let me, or anyone, forget that he still had a debt to pay.”
Bennett takes in a great breath of air and shakily releases it into the wind. It is clear that Bennett has nothing left to say.
Then Foster steps forward from the gathered crew holding a gold piece between two fingers. “Nineteen, Captain.” Bennett laughs, thinking it one of Foster’s many jests. But he presses the coin into Bennett’s hand. “I mean it. We all got a bit of Pax’s share when he died. He’d give part to you, just as you said.”
Michael digs in his purse with his working hand and produces another coin to match Foster’s. “Eighteen.”
Digging into my purse, I find a gold coin as well, my mind on all the copper and silver coins Pax gave to me toward the debt owed to Bennett when we all thought Bennett dead and unable to collect. “Seventeen.”
My brother and I place ours in Bennett’s palm and his jaw drops to find a few coins in the hands of every sailor gathered. Even Jon, who got no share of the treasure from Sneaky Lass, produces a silver coin from his purse for the pot.
Twenty pieces to pay an old debt and a few for added insurance are gifted, until Bennett is holding them cupped in both palms together.
Laughing, with a look of awe on his face, Bennett turns to Pax’s only living family. The woman Pax worked for so long to free.
She gasps beneath her veil when Bennett lays the coins in a pile by her slippered feet. “Remember this lot of pirates well, Sister Mabel. Your brother’s hands did the labor, but it was always your memory that safekept us through many storms and guns.” Straightening, Bennett releases another sigh, barely containing his emotion beneath his skin, and turns toward the sea. “We best be off. Hiacin will grow no closer and the year will only get colder.”
Finally, the sister standing behind Bennett finds her voice through her shock. Shaking her head at the coins by her feet, she murmurs, “I cannot accept this. I paid you my debt, Captain Holt.”
“Then donate it to your many causes, Sister Mabel. Give it to some pirate doomed for the gallows. Plant a new garden. Whatever you please. Your brother, though he never saw you again… I think he’d really like to see you happy.”
The crew nods. We all know the captain is right.
Walking forward, Bennett takes my hand and leads me back toward the beaches and the boats. We have had our final respite. We have said our goodbyes to land, Goran, and a departed friend.
A new life awaits.
Chapter 38
Jon sits beside me on the ratlines, finding the same easy seat I always have in the rope ladder that lines the sides of our lives at sea. He has officially paid for his crimes against this crew by bearing the weight of forty-eight lashes. The final cuts and bruises have long ago healed from his second run in with the lesser cat. He does not think himself clean-slated, but the punishment is done.
I wish it could be so simple for Lil. She might have done better being beaten by the cat as Jon was. I never thought a lashing to be a kindness until I saw how she punished herself. Now, she has moved on to hiding her hurt, as she does so well with all her pain, but I fear her guilt rests even closer to the surface than all her grief does.
My thoughts stray away from Lil and Jon to Zachary, who is sitting on the deck beside Emma. Doris is sleeping belowdeck in a little cot that Zachary built from scraps around the ship. The two are whispering to one another, their faces so close together their foreheads touch. I think they will be very happy together now that they have found some common ground. There will be more children to come, and those children will have wide open spaces and fresh air in Hiacin. Zachary will build them all a safe and cozy house. Those children will have parents who love them and want them to be safe and happy.
It is painful to picture that future for them. Jealousy eats away at my ability to smile for their joy, but I keep trying. It is easier when I remember all I have that they lack.
Lil is below, not sleeping, but hidden away busying herself with writing in her journals, reminding us all so much of her father. Barnaby is missing, so the dog is probably with her. Michael and Hugh are on the deck with no eyes to hide from. Michael’s right arm remains in a cast and sling, but it will soon come off. Both men watch the stars, their fingers entwined between them. Their hands whisper, no one will notice, but to those who care to look, they shout, I love this man.
Bennett stands on the quarterdeck steps, his eyes darting over to me, waiting for Jon to leave so he might join me.
These are the familiar scenes of family. I am glad to be bringing them with me to such a faraway place as Hiacin.
“Jane, you know when you first made the plan I ruined to get the name Holt back, and you kept asking me what was wrong?”
My gaze shoots back to Jon in the lamplight, but he is not looking at me, he is watching the sea. “Yes.”
“Do you mind if I tell you why now?”
Jon keeps his gaze distant. In the weeks since we sailed away from the continent, he has hit another massive growth spurt. In the dim glow from the moon on the water and the lamps, Jon’s square jaw looks like that of a man and he is slumped with troubles that weigh him down. “I would still like to know your mind, yes. Always, Jon.”
His lip tugs skyward at the corner.
“It stung that you didn’t want to live that ruse with me. I really like pretending to be your son. Now, I wonder if… Can I call you Ma, Jane? For real, not only in pretend?”
I am not Jon’s mother, but I have often felt like it. I have no living children to compare it to, so I do not know if what I feel is as strong as a mother’s love or not, but my bones know better. I would do anything for him.
Though seawater is rushing into my ship through the holes in my heart, I answer the honest truth and forget all the sinking I might do. “If you would like to call me Ma, I would like that. Even if it takes some getting used to.”
Jon smiles, but he will not look at me. In the dim light it is hard to tell his coloring, but I think he blushes. “You are my ma on paper, and it makes me so happy that I don’t know the right song to dance to. I’m afraid my own Ma would roll in her shallow grave over it, and her bones would wake all the other bones around her. I was afraid you would not have it. I’ve really liked sharing a name with you, but I know you were trying to get your name back. I promise I didn’t mess it up on purpose.”
Allowing Jon to call me Ma sometimes might fill me with guilt. Like I have replaced the children I have lost, and may never have, with a suitable filler. That is the angry water wishing to sink me. Still, I answer Jon with something I tell myself often when feeling guilty on behalf of people that are no longer here. Perhaps it is wishful thinking, meant only to comfort me, but if any souls exist to bear a grudge, they would forgive me this. “I think ghosts, if ghosts exist, are likely a very understanding lot. I think they would have to be.”
Jon’s eyes find mine again and he no longer shifts with nerves but looks upon me with shock. “Lil said that when I ran asking you about this by her. Almost those exact words. Have you told that to her?”
Shaking my head, I reach over to Jon and put my hand on his knee between the ropes. “No. Young as she is, we have just come to the same conclusions.”
Silence rests between us again. Eventually, Jon lifts from his makeshift seat. By how his eyes shift to me and away again, I know he is still deciding what would be right to say. I can only speak to the feeling I have now, whether it makes any sense or not. “Jon, I do not believe in gods and fates much, but you wanting to be my son makes me feel like I am being given a gift from them.”
Jon’s uncertainty fades from his long limbs. His brown eyes are not those of a boy, but of the man he is growing up to be. He blinks twice and then nods like he was speaking to a ghost and the conversation is now through. “I do not mind being a present, Ma.”
At my new title, he drops his gaze to the deck. The mantle of mother, taking it on in full, pokes at a raw part of my heart and I settle in to let it hurt.
I smile at his retreating back as he finds his way beneath the forecastle and, just as I thought, Bennett joins me a moment later, gazing up at me from the deck, transporting me to a different time and place with his words. “Will you join me in my cabin for a drink?”
We have been sailing in the middle of the sea for weeks now. The weather has been fair, but the wind has been frigid, keeping us all in our cabins often. It is a fair night tonight, but the longer we are left without the sun, the more chill the air grows.
Sliding through the ropes that have served as my perch, I land on the deck beside Bennett. “What is it?”
“I should be asking you that. You looked bothered up there with Jon.”
“For now it is all a bit complicated. I do not think it will stay that way forever, though.”
“Good. Come. One drink.” Grinning at me, Bennett turns and waves me after him. He appears eager, bouncing on the balls of his feet and wearing a broad grin. I cannot begin to guess at what has him so giddy, but I follow him in, interested in both his offer of a warming drink and whatever it is he means to discuss.
Inside our cabin, in the center of the small table where Bennett and I often sit and share drinks, is a box about the size of a man’s cap. He is glancing between the gift and me, wearing a prideful grin. “Go on. Open it.”
Having received few gifts in my life, I cannot help but approach this one with some degree of suspicion. “What is it?”
“Come, don’t ruin the surprise. Open it and find out.”
Still watching Bennett, I approach the box and lift its lid. Nestled safely inside a velvet lined case are two faceted, crystal glasses. Before I can stutter out my question, Bennett is answering me. “Emma inherited them, they were to be used at a wedding feast that she and Zachary never had. She was going to pawn them in Port Haven, but I insisted upon buying them off her.”
He picks up a bottle of spiced rum, wax seal still in place, and begins the task of opening it, occasionally looking up at my stunned smile with a grin.
“What question do you have to ask me that requires such glasses between us? We have been gone from Port Haven for weeks and you chose tonight.”
Popping the cork, Bennett lifts the glasses between his fingers and pours one for me and one for himself. “Well, with so many of my logbooks gone to the sea in the time since, I can’t be certain of the day, but it was right around this time of year three years ago that I met you. Three years since you signed the charter as Dixon Ables and mostly stared at your boots in my presence. It’s a fine night outside. I thought it a fitting wind to mark the day with.”
Passing a glass to me, I take a swallow of cold rum, because most things on this ship are cold right now, and am warmed by it as it burns down my throat. I take a seat across from him and try to put myself into the frantic mind of the desperate woman who ran away from Grand Port three years ago, struggling to do so.
I am so much safer now.
Bennett takes a seat and sips his own drink, admiring the glass in his hands. “I like these better than the last set. I know you had quite an attachment to them, but they were all that remained of a set of six that once belonged to…” He shakes his head and moves on with a new thought. “I like these better. They fit in my hand better.”
I will not push him for the previous owner’s name. I can take a solid guess at it anyway. “I like them because they are a gift from you. Do you have a question for this fine drink, Bennett?”
“That future you envisioned for us in Alouett is getting closer each minute the wind blows. Only a short ways left now. What color would you like for me to paint the shutters? Should the door face the rising sun or the setting one?”
Finding myself in a world where I will soon be faced with such mundane questions brings another smile to my lips, but I press, “I am being serious.”
Bennett, hazel eyes filled with all his love for me, asks, “Are you happy? Will you still be happy where we go?”
He is asking the same question that we have been leveling at one another for months now in different words. Are we making the right decision?
“I am happy wherever you are.”
“Be it ship, farm, castle, or shanty?” He quotes me from a long-ago conversation when things were far less certain than they are now.
I nod, sipping on my drink. “Anywhere. The bottom of the sea, even.” With a teasing air, I add, “I do not care at all what color the shutters are, but I would like our door to face the rising sun so when I step out with you in the morning, I am met with its warmth.”
Bennett salutes, drink in hand. “Aye, Captain. Do you have a question for me?”
Finishing the last sip of the rum in my hand, I ask, “Are you afraid?”
“Not for any of the reasons you think.”
“How would you know?”
Smirking into his glass, he mumbles, “That’s two questions.” He finishes his drink to the roll of my eyes. “I’m a little nervous to return to Hiacin for a few reasons. This lot will want me to get a bird, and I don’t fancy myself tattooed. I’m frightened of a ghost I might find on the shores as well.” His eyes drop to his locket that resides around my neck now rather than his.
I can do nothing for the fear of his sister’s ghost on the shores south as south goes. He was taken from Hiacin as a boy with her screams still ringing in his ears and now he returns a man in full. I have no words that might keep a haunting at bay. The rest, I may alleviate. “Perhaps they will allow me to get two birds to save you one.”
Bennett considers it, I watch the thoughts churning behind his eyes. “Nah, I’ve been avoiding this bird a long time. I’ll face it.”
A comfortable silence rests between us and our fine, empty glasses now. I place mine, still a little sticky, back into its protective case and Bennett follows suit. I like the idea of this case always smelling a little bit like every drink we have ever shared. Scooching my chair closer to Bennett’s side, I rest my head on his shoulder. “Have I ever thanked you for saving me?”
Bennett’s soft laugh warms me. “Why would you? You have always saved yourself.”
Thinking about that night three years ago when I climbed aboard Sneaky Lass for the first time dressed as a man, terrified, beaten, planning to bolt at the next port and vanish into anonymity and sin once more, I know he is wrong.
“Had you never leaned upon the rail beside me and thought to ask where my mind had wandered, I am certain I would be dead today.”
“Ah, well, I’d do that again. I’d do it all again.”
When he wraps his arms about my shoulders and holds me against his beating heart, every wrong ever done to me is washed away by fresh water and crisp wind. However long our lifetime will be, I am glad to spend it in the arms of this man.
Eight Months Later
The village of Stanton, or Runyth if you ask the natives, is occupied by a mix of peoples from all over the world. Though Goranese currency is the legal tender here, trade is a booming business and, with every coin going toward a fresh start, I am completing a trade this morning for a necessity.
Zachary is on the roof completing the other half alongside Bennett and Jon. Their hammering has been the tempo to which I have worked all morning. They are replacing every shingle on the docking office roof while I scrub the floors inside with more gusto than they have ever been scoured before. All for the sake of a piece of that long-ago imagined perfect world. Two nanny goats and a buck.
Livestock are still in relatively short supply in Stanton. They are purchased months in advance in these distant colonies. When the beasts get off the ship they are already bought. No one in their right mind will part with one they have bred themselves for less than a small fortune. With these tasks, alongside the half-dozen or so others we have been chipping away at this month, we are going to jump to the top of the list and catch a steep discount.
Mr. Cathy, the man in charge of every waiting list in Stanton, steps out from his office and smiles at my work. He has worked me to the bone of late, but he is not an unkind man. Far from it. He is greedy, though. Perhaps a little power hungry, too. As the person in charge of the shipping offices here, he enjoys being the man everyone must owe favors to in this town.
“Well, it would seem you lot have managed it. You’re lucky to have so many hands in your family, Missus Digby. Someone has always been ashore to work.”
He is right. For now, Hugh is captaining Blessed Gun alongside Michael to another colony with a shipload of goods. Foster and most of the crew went with them. With all the extra work we have picked up, we will soon be able to afford a second ship if we are frugal and remain lucky. I would be with them if not for this endeavor with the goats.
“We really need the goats, Mr. Cathy. I have never seen anyone so eager to wean a child as Emma is now. Doris has almost a full head of teeth.”
Even being a man of books with no wife and no children, he winces in sympathy for Emma Cosper’s plight. “Yes, well, you’ve got them. Yours is the first name I’ll call. They should be here any day if the winds have held for the next shipment.”
I cannot help my prideful smile from spreading across my cheeks when I straighten, pop my back, and wring out my rag with blistered fingers for the final time. Somehow, we are making this happen. By taking turns at sea, we have managed to build a modest house, a shed and a fence to go around it, a barn for goats that are soon to come, and a pantry deep enough in the earth that it will remain cool all summer. The days have been filled from dawn to dusk with work for every one of our number and it is beginning to pay off.
