The Pirate Captain (37 page)

Instead Cate focused on the rhythmic circular strokes of his thumbs over the sore joints and spaces between. Toughened by years of handling ropes, a captain’s life had softened the calluses, leaving them pleasingly abrasive. Her lull was interrupted by an unusually rough spot near the base of his hand, pressing now and again into hers. She watched with mild interest to see what it was…

“You’ve been branded,” Cate blurted at seeing the raised “S.”

“Aye,” Nathan said, half-amused. “What did you think it was?”

“I don’t know: a scar or…something.” She almost said, “You have so many already,” but managed, “May I see?” instead.

“Not much to look at,” he said, but extended his hand, nonetheless.

The back of his hand cradled in her palm, Cate lightly traced the “S.” Old and well-healed, it stood out, pale and sharp. The leather palm protector had covered it enough for her to think it was no more than another scar. Blockish in design, its head sat at the brawn of his thumb. Most notable was the size. It was more akin to what would befit livestock, reaching well down onto his palm. It was a gruesome sight, her hand reflexively curling closed at the thought of the hot iron touching the delicate skin.

“It’s so barbaric,” Cate murmured on a surge of brandy-induced boldness.

“Ancient history.”

She gave Nathan a level look. “Ancient history is what they lock away in books. You carry that with you every day. I’ve seen brandings; they’re horrible.”

Nathan lifted one shoulder and let it drop. “Not the worst.”

“Did you mind?”

“I minded like hell when it was done,” he quipped. Brow furrowing, he sobered. “Smelling me own flesh cooking, hearing it sizzle, ’twas the most bothersome.”

Shuddering, Cate braced to allow a wave of nausea pass.

“It only lasted a few seconds,” he said, unmindful of her reaction. He frowned in vague concentration, slightly surprised by his own recollections. “I don’t remember anything after that.”

“And now?”

Nathan forced a smile. “Don’t think about it much.”

“I’ve seen you rubbing it.”

He stiffened. “No, I don’t. Aye, well, perhaps a bit, now and again,” he added, relenting under her steady gaze.

“How did you come to be branded?” Cate asked, sitting back. In a sense, it was a silly question. Brandings were common for a number of offenses. She mentally ran through the alphabet. A, B, D, F, M, R, T, and V: adulterer, blasphemer, deserter, fraymaker, murderer or malefactor, rogue, thief, and vagabond. It was a puzzle: “S” was usually reserved for slaves and applied to the cheek, not the hand. Two African members of the crew were proof of that.

Nathan took another drink, closing one eye against the brandy, then stared off to the point she thought that he might decline to answer. They sat with their knees touching, and yet he was so very distant. The candlelight gilded the sharp line of his profile and sparked on the beads in his mustache. From outside came the soft rumble of thunder. A press of freshened wind leaned the ship and it began to rain.

“I was arrested,” he said with great measure. “I broke the law. There was a trial and they did this.”

“Somehow, I don’t think it was quite that simple.”

The sable-framed eyes widened with discovery. “Can’t get much past you, can I?”

Nathan shook his head and blew out the long sigh. “I was a merchantman at the time. I’d worked me way up the ranks quickly; I was the youngest to make captain in the Company’s history,” he added with a bit of boast. “One day me employer took a dislike to me; must have irritated him somehow or another.”

Nathan glanced up, and then away. “I was accused of falsifying manifests and smuggling slaves.”

“You’re the last person I would think would deal in slaves.” There were a lot of things she didn’t know about him, but of that she was sure. Someone, who treasured his freedom as greatly as he couldn’t possibly rob another person of theirs, even if that person wasn’t considered a person in many circles.

He snorted. “Not bloody likely. I’d have shot any bastard I caught at it. The thought of being sold, treated like no more than a piece of livestock, shackled and confined…”

His voice shook with sudden vehemence. The knuckles around the bottle whitened, the cords in his wrist popping out. Realizing himself, he glanced up shyly.

“It was all very neatly arranged. There were bills of sale, paid witnesses and a magistrate whose mind was already made up. A man’s word, glowing recommendations from his superiors and years of stellar service were brushed aside. I was found guilty and given this.”

Nathan’s hand curled closed. The corners of his eyes pinched and his mouth tightened in recollection. Luckily, the body doesn’t recall the pain itself, only the memory that it had hurt.

He finally opened his hand to look dispassionately down at it. “Smuggler. I was banished from ever sailing legitimate again. No one would ever trust me with a ship or a cargo, or anything else. I’d be lucky if a captain would take me on as a hand, let alone able-bodied. I had to choose which hell I desired to live: pirate or never sail.”

He tipped the bottle for another drink, the ragged scar at his throat a reminder of the perils with which he lived. His shirt gapped, allowing her a glimpse of the banner and “Freedom” etched over his heart and the odd-shaped patch of corroded skin there. It was a vast understatement. For Nathan, freedom was a credo, a way of life no different than the swallows.

Head bent, Nathan pensively gazed at the bottle as he rolled it in his hands. The creak of his belts and the rain pattering on the boards overhead were the only sounds. His shoulders shifted under his shirt, hunched with humiliation.

He shook himself, as if to rid himself of the memory, and looked up with a smile that was but a shadow of its usual brilliance. “Captain Nathanael Blackthorne was born that day and I've been celebrating his life since. That was nigh on to twenty years ago; a ripe old age for a pirate. Captain Nathanael Jonathan Edward Blackthorne,” he repeated, as if being formally presented at Court.

“Almost sounds like royalty,” Cate mused in an effort to lighten his mood.

Nathan snorted. “King of the Gutters, I was.”

He gazed impassively down at his opened palm. “I thought of cutting the thing away. A snick of the knife and I could have had me life back, except…”

“Except that would have made your employer the victor.”

Her mind shied from the gruesome image, the cold calculation required to take a knife to the tender skin and peel it away. To do so, however, could have meant losing the use of it, rendering him a partial cripple.

Nathan tilted his head to regard her. “Sometimes I think you have a touch of the witch in you,” he said in wonderment. “You’ve the sight, to be sure. It’s those cursed eyes. There’s no hiding from you.”

She gently squeezed his arm. “I’m no one to hide from.”

“So it would seem,” he said, smiling faintly. “So it would seem.”

A delicate cough drew their attention to the door and Mr. Hallchurch. “Cap’n, Mr. Prythe’s complimenths and duty,” he said, knuckling his forehead. “He begth a word with you on the f’c’stle, at yer pleasthure, sir.”

Nathan nodded half-heartedly. “Me compliments to Mr. Pryce. I’ll be there directly.”

Cate demonstrably flexed her hand as he rose. “It feels much better. Thank you.” And in all earnestness, it did, the camphor glowing in every joint.

Nathan took her hand and bent to kiss her knuckles, his mustache a soft bristle on her skin. He smiled, one genuine with warmth and charm, and gave a hint of a wink. “Anytime, luv. Anytime.”

Cate gazed in Nathan’s wake. She was touched that he had lowered the curtain behind which he lived enough to allow her to see his vulnerability. The emotion had been genuine, the story not. It had been told with the ease of the oft-told lie, and yet the anguish and pain had been of a caliber which only reality could spawn. He had allowed her the story, but not the truth. That he couldn’t allow.

Not yet.

Once again, the more she learned, the less she knew about the enigmatic pirate captain.

###

It was several days later that, shoulders aching and fingers cramped, Cate rose from practicing her knots, a failure yet again. Hitches had been added to her expected
repertoire
. The clove came easily enough, but the rolling and backhanded still gave her fits. The function of a hitch being to secure a line to a fixed object, Nathan had provided her with a piece of handle from a broken gaffing hook. That now suspended on the arms of a chair, she had worked through one set of bells to the next, through the smoke and roar of gun practice and Hodder’s call to mess. Somewhere or another, she was making the same mistake time and again. Squealing in frustration and pitching it across the room had provided no insight as to her error. She told herself the fading light was why she quit, knowing full well it was no excuse by Nathan’s measure.

“Should be able to manage any knot in the dark,” was his evaluation.

Cate went out to find a particular hush had befallen the deck. It was unusual for an hour usually filled with merriment. Like putting a child to bed, the
Morganse
had been made ready for the night: courses and royals gull-winged, mizzen tops and topsails reefed, course posted on the traversing board and grog dispensed. She looked to the forecastle where the men usually gathered, but it was empty.

Instead of gathering on the forecastle, as was the custom, the men were clustered before the capstan. Seated, crouched and sprawled, their upturned faces were transfixed on the single figure atop it. Legs dangling, a lantern to one side and a bottle on the other, Nathan sat on the hub with a book in his lap. His roughened gravel voice was lowered into the rounded tones of an orator as he read aloud, adding his own subtle inflections to the prose. Hermione looked on as a benignly interested bystander, or rather, bylayer, comfortably ensconced on Cate’s forecastle seat.

The lamp’s molten halo gilded the line of Nathan's profile and glinted on his rings as he reverently turned each page. The contrast of two worlds colliding in this one man was startling: an educated barbarian, cerebral and complex, cocooned in ruthlessness and mayhem, a legend as a means to survive. He caught sight of Cate from the corner of his eye and stumbled over a word. Clearing his throat, he bent his head with renewed focus.

The end of the session was punctuated with a muffled thump of the book closing and scattered groans of disappointment. Cate hung in the shadows, until all had dispersed.

“So,” she said quietly, leaning against the capstan at Nathan’s knee, “the insensate, scurrilous pirate reads…?”

“Defoe.” Nathan held up the volume in exhibition and loudly cleared his throat. “
Robinson Crusoe
. ’Tis a favorite.”

She took the book and thumbed through the pages. “A man snatched away, marooned, yanked from one world to be rudely thrust into another.” She looked up, arching an inquisitive brow. “Any parallels?”

“It’s a good story,” Nathan said, examining his hands in his lap.

“Survival under adverse conditions, rising to overcome all odds, mastering of a world, is always a good story.”

He considered as Cate turned the pages. “One you have heard often?”

“Only on rare occasions,” she said with a level look. “Usually, it’s of someone of remarkable instincts and a sharp mind. A person of those traits is to be admired.”

The umber eyes searched hers carefully for hidden meaning or innuendo. Finding none, he snatched up the bottle at his elbow and took a drink. “Hardly. All I have done is gotten by, with a little help now and then. What of you? You’ve been abandoned, marooned in the middle of London, surviving the unsurvivable.”

“That was London,” Cate said, declining the proffered bottle. She had been no more than one more maggot in the festering carcass known as London. It had been hell, but nothing compared to what he must have lived, the scar at his throat and the brand on his arm testimony enough.

“’Tis easy to be alone in the middle of a crowd,” he countered. “You’ve been taken from what you know, thrown into what you don’t. You’ve adapted, made a life.”

“I had five brothers; it was easy to fit in here.” Uncomfortable with the subject being on her, Cate waved him away, a gesture alarmingly similar to one she had seen him use a score of times. “I was speaking of you, Nathan. Somewhere you lost your world, didn’t you?”

Now Nathan was the one uncomfortable. Leaning on his hands, he watched his swinging feet with exaggerated interest. “There are no secrets with you about, are there?”

She bent nearer, waiting until several hands passed before continuing. “You’ve lived elbow to elbow with people your whole life, and yet you’ve kept yourself so hidden you don’t even recognize yourself sometimes.”

The corner of Nathan's mouth tucked up wryly. A shoulder lifted and fell in a half-shrug. “There are times I am required to pause and recall how I came to be…like this. ’Tis a shorter trip than you might imagine,” he added judiciously.

“Do you like being a pirate?”

“I’ve learned to,” he said examining his tar-stained fingers.

“That wasn’t my question.”

Nathan looked up and smiled widely—a little too much so—and swept a grand hand. “Why wouldn’t I? Freedom. Me ship. The sea…”

The breeze tugged at the opening of his shirt to reveal the tattoo over his heart: “Freedom,” soaring swallows on his arms and fingers, symbols for the thousands of miles traversed and bare knuckles reserved for milestones to come. Those, plus the intensity which filled his eyes, left little else to be said.

“You could have all that as a merchant,” Cate said.

He sobered quickly. “That would be to exist at someone else’s pleasure.”

“And you aren’t at their bidding?”

Cate inclined her head to indicate the men now gathered on the forecastle, tuning their fiddles. Hermione regarded them balefully from her adopted perch. Apparently preferring solitude to serenade, she rose, paused at the steps to file a verbal complaint, and then clopped down.

Nathan winced, conceding her point. “Allow them a bit of plunder and blood, and they’ll follow nigh anywhere.”