The Pirate Captain (67 page)

“We went back to get him, but there was nothing but a burned out hulk and bodies. The only prisoner they took was Nathan.”

He fell quiet, meditatively studying his hands as he flexed them.

“From what I heard,” he said. “Creswicke met Nathan at Bridgetown with the writ for his arrest in hand: smuggling, falsifying documents, flying under false colors, you name it. There was a trial, if you’re inclined toward calling it that. In the middle of it, some poor slave woman was dragged forward—one of Creswicke’s own—to swear that Nathan was her son. With that black hair and black eyes…” He faded off and glanced at her. “I’ve seen mulattos near as light as you. It was no great stretch for Nathan to be one.”

“And the son of a slave is a slave,” Cate sighed.

Thomas nodded. “And the property of the mother’s owner. There were paid witnesses present who swore to anything. Hell, it coulda been Mother Clary’s cat and the magistrate’s finding would have been the same. Nathan was declared a slave.”

Thomas fell quiet, his eyes narrowed to slits as he recalled.

“Nathan was thrown in the holding pens with the other poor bastards waiting to be sold. Garrick—a mate of ours, and a good one—and me were there when Nathan was brought up on the block. Like the others, they stripped him naked and shaved his head. You could see he’d been beaten to the point of barely able to stand. There was an auction, of sorts. Creswicke made a grand show of bidding for him, and then…”

He drew a deep breath and blew it out. “And then, he was branded.”

“But the ‘S’ is usually on the cheek,” she said, still mired in disbelief.

The corner of his mouth tucked up grimly. “It would seem Creswicke couldn’t bring himself to ruin the very face he cherished so much.”

A dull silver lining in a dark cloud: Creswicke’s unseemly appetites had turned out to be Nathan’s salvation.

“It wasn’t good enough for Creswicke to use the regular iron. Like Nathan was an animal, he used an iron meant for one. The executioner stood on Nathan’s hand to hold him still. Every finger was either broken or disjointed from Nathan struggling…and the scream.”

Thomas shook his head with disgust. “But Creswicke wasn’t done with his little sham. The law was every slave taken in Africa was to be branded by the company shipping him. And so he had the Company mark put on Nathan.”

His hand came to rest high on his chest, above his heart. It was exactly where the odd-shaped scar was on Nathan’s chest, just below the banner and the word “Freedom” etched in his skin.

He fell quiet again, carefully recalling.

“Creswicke had this sick smile on his face, his eyes all bright and shining as he declared Nathan was a runaway, claiming it was bounty hunters, not privateers, that had brought Nathan in. Punishment was fifty lashes.”

“That bloody, frigging, swiving bastard.”

Her blasphemy brought a smile to him. “Aye, that and more. Save yourself the trouble, m’lady. I’ve called him every name, in every language.”

He fell quiet again, his face going dark. “Nathan been flogged before; he knew what was coming. Only hatred kept Nathan on his feet as they tied him to the gibbet. Fifty lashes and the man was silent as a monk to the last.”

Thomas peeled a cautious look her direction. “Do you know what it is to see a man have his back flayed, to hear his skin rip with each stroke?” He shuddered violently. “I’ve seen it too many times; still can’t abide it. I’ve only let the cat out of the bag once in my command and regretted it since. Nasty business. It’s no pleasure to see a man standing in his own pool of blood.”

A cold prickle crawled down Cate’s back. Yes, she had seen floggings, and no, there was no pleasure. If anything, he had grossly understated the brutality. A man, his limbs bound, his body bared, the torn flesh tense and quivering in anticipation of the next blow. The tang of blood would have replaced the stench of scorched flesh. A man’s character was revealed at the first strike; some collapsed and sobbed like a child, others met each stroke with stoicism braced by pride. It went beyond punishment: it a meant to break a man.

Thomas blew a long breath, exorcising the grisly scene. “Garrick and me found Nathan that night. He’d been flung like the night’s slops into a pen not fit for a pig. I think Creswicke was hoping Nathan would crawl off someplace and he could catch him for a runaway again. Only God and the Devil know what he would have done then,” he added under his breath.

Cate knew what Thomas couldn’t put to words: inhuman cruelty. Confinement, hacked limbs, whippings, blindings, castrations…and worse.

An outcropping of rock blocked their way, and so they perched there, watching the tide purl out. A number of tidal pools formed in the scooped-out rock, the diamond-like grains of sand in their bottoms sparkling in the now-rising moon. It was a miniscule world of claws, antennas, and spines.

“Me and Garrick tried to care for him,” Thomas went on, kicking at a shell with the toe of his boot. “Nathan was out of his head for days. Rum and laudanum didn't answer. I had the knife in my hand, ready to cut the damned ‘S’ off him.” he said, looking down at his own palm, flexing his hand. “It might have cost him his hand, the use of it at the least, but at least he’d be free.”

He shook himself of the thought. “But Garrick stopped me, representing that there was another way.”

“Pirate,” she heard herself say dully.

Nathan was a marked man. He could either live among the vilest of the vile, where capture meant to be hung, his body tarred and left on display to rot, or his head on a pike, the walnut eyes gone black in death, picked to vacant holes by the crows; or he could risk being caught as a slave, meaning captivity and degradation at the hands of a monster.

“Aye,” Thomas sighed solemnly. “Freedom, in another world. There was no escape else. Every bounty hunter in the Seven Seas knows what that ‘S’ meant. But it needed to be Nathan’s choice, so we waited.”

The strength of friendship. “Two, mebbe three” Nathan had said, when she had asked how many he had had in his life. Two, for sure, for they had held his life in their hands and kept him safe.

“We took him to a conjure woman—at least I think she was a woman. She sent us off, made us leave him there. I paid my last respects, because I figured him to be a dead man.”

He stared, but was seeing something far different than the campfires, now directly across, flickering orange jewels along the shore. The gay voices and music could still be heard, broken and muted by the distance. The
Morganse
and
Griselle
sat like somber queens, adorned in their amber-glow necklaces of lamplight.

Gone in thought, or overwhelmed by the memories, Thomas was quiet for some time. The rattle of crabs scuttling behind her, Cate watched a phosphorescent fish dart about in one of the pools. Feeling as if she were being watched, she turned slightly to find a pair of disembodied eyes on stalks peering interestedly back.

“Never sure what happened,” Thomas threw into the silence, his angular features troubled. “If it was that conjure woman, or Creswicke, but Nathan was never the same. I mean, aye, on the outside he was, but inside…When you looked him in the eye, he just wasn’t there anymore.”

“I wish I could have known him before.”

His mouth a firm line, he said with gentle sadness, “No, you don’t. That person is gone; it wouldn’t answer.”

His fist balled where it rested on his thigh. “That was when we all turned pirate: Nathan, Garrick, and me. Garrick had been in the Brethren. He had been aiming to go honest, but went back, and took us with him. Neither one of us wanted to leave Nathan alone; we knew he’d go do something crazed, just to get himself killed. He did his best, in spite of us. We mended him from burned to broken, beaten to slashed. We were with him when a blade run him through. Killed that bastard myself,” he added in a pride-laden aside. “You’ve seen his leg?”

“No, I've never seen him—” Cate looked away, industriously brushing at a non-existent spot on her skirt.

“Oh, aye, of course.” Thomas demonstrably cleared his throat. “Aye, well…hmm…we almost lost him there. It festered to where we considered takin’ it. Then a conjure woman showed up; I swear she stepped out of the night.” He frowned, pondering. “She gave him some herbs or potions, or some such, and brought him through. He walked with a crutch for months after; made it bloody difficult for him on board.”

“But there isn’t a brand on his chest now,” Cate said haltingly.

Looking off into the night, Thomas nodded grimly. “Nathan put up a fair front—he’s good at that, you’ll have noticed?”

She nodded wryly. “Fair front” was a vast understatement.

“He did his best not to let on, but you could see the thing eating at him. The ‘S’ was bad enough, but to have Creswicke’s initials on him, marked and owned, it was like Creswicke had his claws around his heart, squeezing the life out of him.”

Thomas blew a long sigh. “So one night, whilst he was lost in drink—a fair regular occurrence—I—” His voice caught. He looked down at the hand resting on his leg. “I cut the damned thing off.”

“What did he say?” she asked, horrified. Waking up to a piece of one’s chest cut away had to have been a bit of a shock.

He looked off, intrigued by the thought. At length, he shrugged. “He never said…and I never asked.”

They rose and headed back. They walked in silence, emotionally drained. Cate's anger with Nathan for lying about the branding and Creswicke surged anew. She then chastised herself. It was her own fault, for poking her nose into matters that were obviously too sensitive, had she taken a moment to realize. She couldn’t begrudge him. She harbored a few of her own secrets for which she would lie or any number of other things to protect. It was hurt she suffered most, Nathan’s failure to trust her. She had gained his confidence enough not to be told no when she inquired, but no further. He had allowed her only what his pride could allow.

“What made all of you go your own way?” Cate asked at last.

Thomas’s broad shoulders twitched. He looked off into the night and said off-handedly, “Oh, time and tide. Garrick stuck with him for a bit longer, but I…chose to move on,” he finally landed on.

“Somehow, I doubt it was that simple.” Cate said tartly, peering up at him.

He cocked his head to regard her. “You're a smart woman; tall, but smart. Heaven help the man that gets himself tangled up with a smart woman,” he declared with a gesture skyward. “Aye, there was more to it: a woman.”

“What else?” she snorted.

“Money and women, only two things worth losin’ a good friend over,” he said sagely. “We both thought she fancied us; even came to blows over her. She’d filled him full of all manner of notions. When she finally chose me, he disappeared.”

She glanced toward his left hand; she didn’t recall seeing a wedding ring, but admittedly it wasn’t a reliable guide. “What happened?”

“Oh, eventually she ran off with the captain of a packet she fancied more.” He rubbed his finger thoughtfully alongside his nose. “I heard later she died in childbed.”

Something said he wasn’t as unaffected by either the separation or the death as he would like her to believe. Cate felt more than heard the beat of feathers whisking past her head. Jerking aside, she looked up to see a soaring shadow disappear into the darkness of the trees: Artemis, on the prowl.

“I’ve wondered if, maybe, Nathan had somebody, somewhere, a wife, or family, or…something,” she ended lamely.

It was an explanation that had risen more than once, when striving to rationalize Nathan’s disinterest in her. As unpleasant as that truth might have been, it would have explained so much.

“Nathan?” he sputtered. “What in all that’s holy made you think a thing like that?”

“He wears a ring on his wedding finger.” Cate was flustered by revealing how closely she had observed Nathan. She reflexively twisted at her own ring. Aside from his hair and bells, his pistol and sword unadorned and workmanlike, there was no flash or flourish. The rings seemed quite unfitting.

Thomas burst out laughing, the deep rumble echoing across the water. It startled the killdeer into flight, protesting as it arched off into the night.

“If you’ll notice, Nathan wears several rings,” he said, dabbing one eye.

He stopped to exhibit a massive fist before her face. “A fist makes a much stronger impression on a man’s jaw when it arrives in the company of metal.” He jabbed the air to punctuate his point. “Nathan’s never been a big man; a little help answers well.”

Thomas resumed walking, his hands falling to rest on the heels of his weapons.

“Nathan drop the anchor? Nay, I doubt it,” he said, returning to her initial question. “I haven’t seen him for a
long
while, but he never was one to pine over a woman half a world away, when a dozen are at his feet. He takes his opportunities as they rise, beggin’ your pardon, ma’am.” He mockingly tipped his hat.

“I just thought, maybe, since he…never…”

“Never!” He skidded to a halt, gaping. He bent closer, as if he might have misheard. “Never?”

Cate shook her head, grateful for the protection of darkness to cover her heated cheeks.

“Never,” Thomas repeated to himself. His face screwed in puzzlement. “Now that is a wonder. And a handsome one like you? Nay, it defies all logic. I’ve never known him to pass up anything in a skirt, sometimes even without. You’re sure?” He peered down at her skeptically, as if she was confused. “I could have sworn…”

He trailed off in invitation for her to pick up the thought. She was mum.

Head down pensively, hands folded at his back, Thomas walked for a short bit.

“Hark ye,” he said, stopping again. “What if we were to have a little fun? Make him think…?”

“No, I'm not playing sophomoric games. I remind him of someone, someone he thoroughly detests.” The admission came no easier then than the dozens of times she had repeated it in the privacy of her bed.

“But, you’re interested?” Suddenly shy, he kicked the sand, sapphire blue peeking up from under the straw-colored lashes. “I’m just asking, because if it weren’t him, I would be willing to step forward.”