Chapter 327: James Calloway

In Concordia, the chapel bell kept ringing over the whole battle, while far to the south, a ship’s bell struck the watch aboard the Rose.

The story had promised to leave a man alone for a while.

Well, the while was over.

James lay in a bunk with his skin as old cheese, quite unaware about the world at large.

A wet cloth rested on his forehead, while two men fought near the bed. Their voices reached him in a haze, with no way for him to discern the words, much less acknowledge them.

"Bleed him! As ye bleed every sod that comes down yer ladder, so bleed him, afore he’s cold!"

"There’s no blood in him to spare, you thick bastard. We may as well try wringin’ a stone."

Then rough sounds came around the bed, and a back struck the bulkhead, setting the lamp chain rattling. Cudjoe had Hobbs pinned against it.

The quartermaster leaned in, close enough that Hobbs must have felt every word on his skin. The anger went out of his voice and left a lower tone behind, and far more dangerous.

"Dinnae ye stand there and tell me ye can do nothin’, Hobbs. Dinnae ye dare."

Hobbs’s voice cracked. "Bloody hell, Cudjoe, I’d give you my right hand this minute, I’d lay it on the table and hold the lamp for you while you cut, if it would cure him."

The fingers left him one at a time.

Cudjoe stepped back and let the bulkhead keep the surgeon. All the fight went out of his shoulders.

"Then give me a number."

It came out hushed, and he seemed more afraid of it than of the reply.

"Just the one, how many days have we got with him?"

"A fever’s no cannon, son. It doesn’t come with a fuse you can count down."

A fist hit the oak beside Hobbs’s ear. The lamp swung, and the shadows slid across the bunk and back, while the words tore out of Cudjoe’s chest before he could catch them.

"I want a damned num..."

The last word broke in half.

"When the black vomit comes, Cudjoe, ye’ll not need me to give ye a number."

On the bed, the water from the cloth tricked cold down his neck, and kept dripping until it was the Atlantic.

Back in a previous, distant life, the storm had arrived on an otherwise clear afternoon, and the wave that swallowed the little boat stood higher than a building.

James had spread his hands open to welcome it, for he had sold everything a man might be expected to return for, leaving no kin waiting on shore and no fight in his fists.

Then the sea closed over his head.

The cold turned to smoke.

He was lying on a deck in a borrowed body, with that man’s blood wet on the back of his head, where an iron fitting had killed the old James Calloway. From there, he walked to the deck, where a battle raged on, and every face aboard the ship turned toward him.

James grinned.

He had no home to lose and no relationship left to lose it for, and that was a very fine battle.

Then the deck grew warm beneath him, then turned to stone. He stood at the crossroads, where every free soul’s name or mark had been cut into it, with his own name sitting at the top, first among them.

Then the stone was wet with blood. The executioner’s axe had fallen at dawn, but the crowd wanted more, and a thief’s hands and a public show would do nicely.

James raised his hand, and the cries for merciless justice stopped. He kept it that way until all that remained was breathing.

When he turned, the round table stood behind him.

Its twelve chairs were occupied, and there was an empty chair at its head, one the real table had never possessed. The whole government of the town was looking at him, while a chicken perched on the stone, cocked its head, and waited for a decision.

James had proclaimed. "Hear it, and hear it well! Livestock by day, company by dark, and it’ll put its mark to the book with a claw, as every free soul in this town!"

The table laughed.

He grinned back, easy and whole, then tried to lift his hand and leave.

A latch clicked. The chicken flapped away into a darkness that stank of tar and tobacco, and back into reality, four pairs of boots entered on tiptoe.

Anne was asleep in the chair at the foot of the bed, so they kept their voices down.

Kit’s whisper kept trying to escape him. The first word came out a hiss, the next climbed halfway to a shout, and he clapped a hand across his own mouth as if it had bitten him.

"Oi. Cap’n. Cap’n, here."

He dropped to a mutter, hat crushed in both fists.

"Right, ye can keep the next pie, I’ll go halfsies with ye. Half and half, Cap’n, fair and square."

A sea chest creaked as Jim lay onto it, looking quite prepared to stay there until next year. "I’ll tell ye a thing, Cap’n, and it’s true as Gospel. I had the yellow jack myself, and I talked it clean out of me."

He gestured wildly. "Three days I sat with that fever and fed it stories, and by the third it was beggin’ to be let go. I’d no got past the abbess’s bedchamber when it went out the arse and swam for it, no fever born has the stomach for the Portuguese nun, Cap’n, no fever born."

Cool fingers lay against James brow.

Tomás spoke with a faint smile in it that didn’t quite reach his voice. "Ay, mi capitán. Heaven, she does not honor a note post-dated, and you, you have written a whole year of them. It cannot collect, not yet, no. Aguanta, mi capitán. Aguanta."

Behind them, the wood groaned beneath a very large man, which had to lean forward to get under the beam. "Mister Yellow Jack, sir. I do beg your pardon for the intrusion. But this gentleman is a friend of mine, sir, and I must respectfully insist that you take your leave of him. Directly, sir, even if this is an inconvenience."

Then the courtesy left Bert. What was left was a very large man speaking very small, in a whisper that seemed to come from below the floorboards.

"Fight on, Captain. Fight on, sir. I do beg it of you."

The chair creaked at the foot of the bunk, and every sailor in the cabin spanned into attention.

"She’s movin’!"

Kit’s whisper very nearly became a scream.

"Lads, she’s movin’, she’s movin’, go, go, go..."

Four grown sailors then tried to get through a door built for one, a knot of elbows and boots and strangled curses, a hat going one way and dignity the other.

Last of all came Kit, whose head reappeared through the door in the final second, eyes too big for his face, as solemn as handing in a password.

"Conqueror of Havana’s on watch, Cap’n, so it’s all right, see? It’s all right."

It began as the whisper in the doorway. Then it was a hundred throats, then a thousand, until every country James had ever entered was bellowing from the same pier. The Spanish said it like a prayer, the English like a curse, and the French like a joke they weren’t sure they’d earned, and the planks shook underfoot with all of it.

"EL AZOTE! EL AZOTE! EL AZOTE!"

The pier stretched out into a sea with no far end, every friend and enemy he had standing along it, with their palms pressed against the Rose’s hull. The heat rose from the wood as a forge, and James strode down the middle of the pier without destination.

Then he spotted the front rows.

The sailors who had died on the night he arrived stood among them, together with all crewmembers that died afterwards, every wound open and every hand raised. Kit was there too, with the face the soldiers had left him, a plate of bruises, roaring along with the rest.

"Did I do it right, Cap’n?" It was a very small voice. "Did I? Only no one ever told me."

James raised both hands. The crowd waited for his words, so he told them the first rule of the free town instead, loud enough for everyone to hear.

"Hear me! There’s no soul in this place can be bought, sold, nor held!"

The cheers swallowed his words. He shouted it again, and the dead in the front row cheered even louder, blood dripping from their wounds.

Then, out nowhere, the cries faded into the hiss of a wake.

James hands were on the spokes of the Rose.

Ahead, the sea was bright and empty all the way to the edge of the world.

That was the short road, with a laugh waiting in every harbor, a marvel beyond every horizon, and a thousand glorious moments atop one another until they became an adventure for the ages, a legend that would outlive crowns, outlast empires, and endure even the passage of time itself.

"Nae lookin’ astern, Cap’n. What’s behind us is God’s business, and He’s welcome tae it."

"Up she stays, Cudjoe! The devil can have the lookin’ back, and welcome to the lot o’ it!"

But he looked astern regardless.

The long road climbed a ridge behind him, leading to a house he never dared dream about, alive with laughter and the comforting din of a family.

His children and grandchildren played across the galleries, their voices carrying through open windows and sunlit halls, while an old man with white hair and a crooked nose sat at the round table, happily discussing the town’s chickens, the harvest, and a hundred other trivialities with people who answered to no crown, bowed to no master, and had no greater ambition than to live their days as they pleased.

James took both hands off the wheel.

The Rose kept her course, and the sea remained bright ahead, while his hands hung open, just as they had during the storm, with nothing in them.

Behind him, the chapel bell began to ring.

The bell became a ship’s bell, one stroke of the watch, and a voice whispered beneath it.

"Look at me. Here. At me, you great eejit. Look at me."

The light behind his eyelids dimmed as Anne turned the lamp down, then wrung out a cloth and laid it on his forehead, keeping her hand on top of it.

Her thumb lifted from his lips, and for a moment the cabin held nothing but the lamp ticking and the sound of her breath catching.

"I’m askin’ you, darling. Me. Asking. You know what that... you know it! So don’t. Don’t d..."

She dragged a breath in through her teeth, and what came out had iron in it, because iron was all she had left to stand on.

"Not like this, you’ll not go like this, d’ye hear? Not in a bunk with a wet rag on your head, like some poor devil no one’d miss."

Water fell onto the back of his hand, warm this time. The basin sat untouched on the deck, so he knew where it came from. Her voice rose out of her as a blade from a sheath.

"And if you do, if you dare, I’ll dig you up with my own two hands and kill you myself."

Her forehead came down against his chest and stayed there, her shoulders shaking against his ribs.

"I’ll kill you twice, and may God forgive me, I’ll enjoy the second."

The long wake and the bright sea faded together.

His fingers closed around a hand, the same fingers that had pushed open over the little boat and again at the ship wheel, and the hand closed around his in return.

James lips began to form a word. He had used it for a woman, for a ship, and once for a goddess in chains. No one in that cabin knew which one he meant, and the man speaking it didn’t know yet either.