Chapter 308: The Shadow Over Concordia

We will leave James alone for a while. He lies in a bunk aboard the Rose, bedridden and fighting the Yellow Jack with everything his body can manage, while the armada hurries north from Panama towards the Bahamas as fast as it can.

A story has one advantage over a ship, it can get where it wants without waiting for the wind.

So we go on ahead, across the water, past the limping ships and the blue days, until we reach a flat green bay on the edge of Andros. The water there is smooth as a plate, and not long ago, a small thought observed that the sea never stays that calm for long.

The sea, having apparently taken offense, was about to prove it right.

Trouble had reached the young pirate republic, and danger seldom bothers to knock.

The Royal Navy intended to lay siege to the town. It would close the bay with a blockade and then burn Concordia to ashes, every building and pier, so that pirates from Tortuga to Nassau could see the smoke from a hundred leagues away.

A proper example requires a considerable fire, much the same principle as cooking a good ham.

The Royal Wrath had finally arrived in the West Indies, with plenty of guns, plenty of soldiers, and a flag for every occasion. London had been promising to send it to these waters for months, and now it had appeared at Concordia, a free town of nearly two thousand people.

The Scourge was away, the Bloody Rose was away, and the one captain who might have persuaded an entire fleet to sail into a ditch was lying flat on his back far to the south.

So the present captains and the founders of the town climbed to the alliance headquarters to discuss what they could do. We shall join them halfway through the meeting, generally the best time to arrive at one, since at the beginning, everyone is still clearing his throat.

Noise poured over the double doors of the west wing.

Afternoon sunlight streamed through the open shutters, and the bay gleamed below. At the far pier, the Royal Mistake still swung on her lines, having sailed all the way home in a hurry.

Bonnet sat with a teacup balanced on his knee, apparently prepared to meet the end of the world with a little refreshment, while Whitlock had his slate and quill ready and Mary kept her hand near her pistol.

Around the round table, Don Rodrigo sat with his parrot on his shoulder, while Roberts beside him maintained a straight back and drank his tea.

Nat cupped a hand to his ear, which helped him miss nearly everything, while Wat wheezed beside him and Gil slumped on the side, looking ready to attend his own funeral.

Mateo, Adrienne, Fenwick, and Isaiah occupied the remaining chairs, representing the Spaniards, the French, the English, and the freedmen.

Three men had to do without chairs, since twelve chairs were all the room had to offer.

Tom stood in his mended coat, stiff with salt, tar cracked into both hands, and exhaustion written plainly across his face, while Vallon stood by the window, twisting a rolled survey in his hands. Sawyer leaned against the hearth, sawdust over his elbows, and watched the oak table with mild concern.

Fenwick’s fist came down on the oak, and every cup on the table jumped an inch and landed again with a rattle.

"Nay, nay. Say it again, lad."

He leaned over the table until his knuckles went white. "Every word on it, and slow, so’s we can get it straight in our heads. I’ll not swallow owt like that on one hearin’, not if it were served me with gravy."

Sawyer winced. "Gently, Fenwick! Have a bleedin’ heart, will ya? That’s Concordia hardwood, and she took me the best part of a season to join, she ain’t one of your fence posts."

"Bugger the hardwood, Sawyer! I’ll buy ye a new one when there’s a town left to stand it in."

Tom placed his tar-cracked hands flat on the table. "East of Eleuthera, hull-down, same as I were bid, had me glass on ’em from first light, and never took it off."

At the word glass the parrot shot up on Don Rodrigo’s shoulder with its wings half open.

"?CATALEJO! ?CATALEJO! ?Mi reino por un catalejo!"

Don Rodrigo stroked its breast with one knuckle.

Tom continued. "Man o’ war, five frigates, sloops and transports all over the horizon, with enough sail to hide the sea. And a broad pennant at the big one’s mast."

Roberts lowered his cup into its saucer with such care that it made no noise at all, which in that room was a small act of defiance. "One thing more, Captain, and I’ll thank you to think before you answer. The transports, were they riding light, or were they riding deep? Everything hangs upon it, mind."

"Deep, gunwales near awash. Packed to the hatches with soldiers, so they were."

Whitlock’s quill scratched across the slate, and Tom’s knuckles tightened until they went white against the wood.

"Come out from behind Eleuthera and sailed west past Nassau."

A muscle jumped in his lips, and the next words came out with a rasp, bitter as bilge water.

"Bastards never even hurried."

He had been ordered to get home and warn one captain, but that man was a long way south, so Tom gave his report to the table instead, laying out the facts as plainly as a plank.

"I shadowed ’em the whole way. Course for Andros, straight for us, two days, if the wind holds."

He lifted his hands from the board.

"I were told run home and tell. So I’m tellin’, and that’s the lot of it."

For one breath, no one moved, then Nat leaned forward, his hand still behind his ear.

"TRANSPORTS? TRANSPORTS OF WHAT? DELIGHT? SPEAK UP, THE LOT O’ YOU!"

Wat hauled in a breath that seemed to start deep in his belly, and dabbed his jowls with a rag.

"Sol... hhhff... diers, Nat. Sol-diers, you daft ol’ barnacle."

He gulped air desperately.

"Lor’ help us... redcoats... hhhff... the whole bleedin’ lot of ’em."

Nat’s mouth stayed open, and no words at all came out of it, at any volume.

Vallon went on twisting his survey as though he meant to wring an answer out of it. "Cinq, five, but naturally, five. Four, it would have been cheaper, non? How thoughtful of the Admiralty, to spare no expense on our funeral."

Bonnet’s teacup began rattling against its saucer. "Forgive me, my dear fellow, forgive me, but I really must ask. Oh dear, oh dear. What precisely does this signify? A social call? A courtesy visit, with... with cannon?"

He turned a pale, damp face toward Mary.

"Mark, dear boy, you are such a practical person. Surely, surely, this cannot be a war?"

Mary closed her hand around the butt of her pistol, which was all the answer Bonnet received.

Around the table, Mateo spread his raw palm flat across the little bay drawn on the chart, as though he could cover it up and keep it safe. "Is a blockade, Capitán. No ship goes out, no ship comes in. The villages by the shore, they eat what the nets bring in that morning, no more, and when the nets come up empty..."

His palm closed slowly into a fist.

"... the people, they come up empty also."

By his side, Fenwick bitterly snorted. "A siege, then. A siege! They’ll sit out yonder on their fat backsides and watch us starve, patient as a cat at a mousehole, and not lift a paw till we come out squeakin’."

Gil addressed his boots, which seemed the only audience likely to agree with him. "I tell ye, I tell the lot o’ ye from the very first day it would end in tears, but does anyone listen to old Gil? Nay, nay, they don’t."

He sighed.

"Ye’ll mind it when they’re dancin’ on our ashes."

Adrienne had one hand at her throat, her gaze not on the room, but on a village that had burned far away from here. Isaiah laced his fingers together and slowly looked from one face to the next.

Roberts had said little since the transports were mentioned, so when he finally spoke, every head turned toward him. "It is as plain as a mainmast, gentlemen, or plainer, indeed, for a mast one can at least walk round. They bided their time till Captain Calloway and his best ships went chasing off after some relic or treasure, and now here they come, to make cinders of this town. Neatly done, I’ll say that, I would almost admire it, mind, were it not our town."

The silence that followed was heavy, even if it wasn’t quite silent. Bonnet’s teacup rattled against its saucer until he set it down, while Whitlock’s quill stopped halfway through a stroke.

The ship’s bell swung from its hook in a single dull note toward the window, followed by Wat’s wheezing, and even the parrot, who usually bellowed about everything, had no words to contribute.

Every face found somewhere else to look. The chart, the harbor, the empty space at the table, where a chair might have stood if the table had ever possessed a head.

Beyond the shutters, the bay remained flat and bright, and the sky above it was as clean as a swept deck.

Isaiah waited until the room had calmed enough for everyone to hear him.

"Then, what should we do now?"