by C. S. Quinn
‘We’ve a man at Dover,’ Atherton had told me. ‘He’s a privateer, a rough sort, ill bred, untrustworthy.’
‘Is there any other kind?’ I’ve hated pirates ever since I was a small girl.
Atherton had smiled. ‘It might take a bit of persuasion for him to get you aboard for the next tide. I’ll get a trunk loaded with whatever you need.’
Atherton’s eyes had clouded, apparently considering the nature of the man I would be meeting.
‘This ... mercenary,’ he’d said, ‘he’s the only one getting in. God knows how. He’s not as bad as some.’
‘That isn’t saying much.’
I allow myself to imagine how it would be if Atherton was here with me. It was harder than I thought, leaving him after such a brief return.
I first met Atherton when I was twelve, sitting on the wall of my father’s estate. I was barefoot. My hair was in rat’s tails and I was firing stones into a nearby tree with a sling, put put put.
Atherton had won me over by failing to comment on my feral appearance or my predilection for playing with gypsy children – I even had scars from our blood-brother oaths.
I’d shown off to him, hitting only red leaves on the tree with my slingshot.
Atherton had watched for a time then revealed he was to be my new tutor.
‘The work your uncle has given you copying accents,’ he’d explained, as I scowled at the idea of being educated. ‘I believe it is too easy for you. That is why you keep running off. How would it be if I taught you how to pick a lock?’
It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me.
I had turned back to the tree, pretending to consider and appear nonchalant. But when I let the next stone fly, it went wider than I intended, taking only the corner of the leaf.
‘Think about it,’ Atherton had said with a small smile. ‘You know where to find me.’
My thoughts are interrupted by a young man entering the tavern; I’d guess him to be late twenties. He’s got curling dark hair tied in a ponytail and is wearing a black linen shirt and the type of expensively buckled leather boots you don’t wear lightly in a port town. My eyes stray to his belt, where a full compliment of good weaponry is arrayed. There’s a dagger and sword I recognize as Spanish steel and a duelling pistol, English made, showy. The kind hot-headed unmarried men buy.
At first I assume he’s lost his way, then a few old sea dogs slap him on the back and I realize he’s well known here.
He produces a little bundle of tobacco leaves and slips it into the coat of a toothless old man, who grins gratefully. The sour-faced woman serving drinks cracks her first smile of the evening and pours him rum in a grubby glass.
He throws it back in one, surveys the tavern, sees me. Turning back to the landlady, he says something I don’t hear. She passes him a dusty bottle of wine and he begins making for my table.
I frown in annoyance, trying to decide how best to put him off. But as it transpires there’s no need.
‘Mademoiselle Mouron,’ he says, putting the bottle on the table. ‘Or should I call you Miss Primrose?’
CHAPTER 13
‘I LIKE YOUR DRESS,’ HE SAYS, NODDING TO MY DOCKSIDE prostitute attire, ‘but I’d recommend a bonnet,’ he adds, tilting his head to take in my long black curls. ‘Your hair is too shiny for what you pretend to be.’
I try not to let my surprise show. No one has ever seen through any of my disguises before.
‘Your captain couldn’t come ashore?’ I say, guessing him to be bosun’s mate or some other expendable person. He’s in much too good condition to have been at sea for long. ‘Is the brave pirate frightened of arrest?’ I can’t keep the contempt from my voice.
‘Oh, we all are,’ he says easily. He has a trace of an accent I can’t quite place – Irish or something like it. ‘Dover isn’t a friendly port for pirates, even legal ones.’
His eyes are green, with a pinkish coloration at the corner of the left – a burn or a birth mark. It runs down about an inch, like a teardrop.
‘I’m Jemmy Avery.’ He extends a hand with a single battered-tin ring on the index finger.
I hesitate and stand. We’re almost the same height, I notice, as I shake his hand, which must make him some way under six foot. Nor is he especially broad or muscular. Pirates are usually large men. I wonder what horrors he’s done to supplement his average stature.
‘I’m told your captain sails to France,’ I say.
Jemmy pulls himself a stool and sits, legs spread wide in front of him.
‘That he does. And I’m told you’re in need of safe passage.’ He pats the table and lifts the bottle. ‘Will ye join me for a drink?’ Jemmy draws the cork with his teeth and upends a generous measure into my tankard without asking, sloshing wine.
‘I must be sure you are who you say you are,’ he adds, ‘before I can take you aboard.’
I swallow my annoyance and reseat myself on the opposite stool.
‘If you make too sure of it,’ I say, ‘your captain will sail without us.’
‘We’ve a little time to get to know one another. Have you finished eating?’
I nod, expecting with relief that this is the reason he’s not yet escorted me to the ship. But to my surprise Jemmy leans forward, helps himself to a meat bone and gnaws away at the last morsels of flesh.
‘Shall I get you a knife and fork?’ I ask icily.
‘Please, don’t trouble yourself,’ he replies, clearly enjoying his food.
‘You’re from the colonies?’ I deduce, noting his lack of table manners.
‘Very good.’ He swallows the last bite. ‘I’m Irish. But I grew up in New York.’
This explains the accent. Jemmy fills his own empty tankard and looks up at me. ‘You? Where were you raised?’
‘Virginia for five years,’ I say. ‘Then England.’
He’s taking me in more fully now.
‘Is that so,’ he says, letting out a whistling breath. ‘Your father a plantation owner, was he?’
‘My father fell in love with my mother, in Africa. She was betrayed into slavery and he knew nothing of a daughter, until I arrived in Bristol. The Morgans refuse to acknowledge me, but my parents were legally wed according to the customs of my Mother’s tribe ...’ I notice his concentration has drifted. ‘You don’t care,’ I conclude.
‘In New York,’ says Jemmy, ‘we’re less concerned with whose mammy got a ring and whose didn’t. Breeding, or whatever you call it. Not like you English. Couldn’t even tell you for certain who my father was.’ He grins. ‘Me mammy says he was a famous pirate, but she says all kinda things.’
This is refreshing to me. As slaves we were all equal. But in my adult life I have had to learn who is the daughter or son of who, what that means and what it’s worth. Still, I think with a frown, his etiquette is appalling and his attitude of sitting splay-legged downright rude.
‘What of my father?’ I ask. ‘Do you care who he is?’
I’m wondering what a New Yorker might have heard of the brilliant, erratic Lord Morgan, a code-breaker whose searing intelligence is complicated by a weakness for narcotics.
‘Can’t say as I do.’ Jemmy looks me in the eye. ‘But what I should like to know,’ he says, drinking more wine, ‘is why a clever girl should want to get into Paris,’ he replaces his tankard, ‘when people are paying a fortune to get out.’
I look right back at him.
‘I’m sure a clever man would know that already.’
‘Paris is dangerous,’ he says. ‘What have you heard about France?’
‘King Louis has been spending money unwisely on foreign wars,’ I say slowly, careful not to paint myself as too knowledgeable. ‘The price of bread has risen preposterously. There’ve been ugly scenes, protestors shot at.’
Jemmy is nodding.
‘You know more than the propaganda that reaches most English people,’ he says, ‘but not enough. The nobles have ruled with a bloody fist. Commoners opposing the
ancient regime are boiled alive, broken on wheels, have their skin pulled off with red-hot tongs. Now the common people have a chance to turn the tables.’
‘Can you get me in or not?’ I reply.
He sucks his lip and sits a little more upright, frowning.
‘They told me you were the daughter of a noble,’ he says. ‘A translator of foreign words. I can tell from your fancy manners you’re expensively reared, despite your not being pale enough for English gentry. But in my experience, fine families don’t send their daughters into the care of pirates. Nor do spymasters take charge of their travel plans. So I can only assume you are a courtesan or a spy.’
‘A woman spy? Now you really are ridiculous.’
He eyes me, then appears to accept this.
‘Very well.’ He stands. ‘Very well.’ He finishes his wine and looks me up and down. ‘I can get you in. But it won’t be the fine quarters you’re used to. We’re a working ship. You’ll be either on deck getting showered in cold salt water or below with the reek of the boat bilge.’
I smile at this. ‘I’m tougher than I look. Shall we go now? It’s midday.’
Jemmy glances through the window at the sunny sky.
‘They won’t set sail without their captain,’ he says.
I stare at him.
‘You? You’re the captain? But you were to be wearing a leather coat,’ I reply. He is nothing like the roughened old salt Atherton described.
‘A pirate habit I can’t seem to shake,’ he says. ‘I don’t like to meet with government folk unawares. Though now I am all legal, of course.’ He flashes me a brief smile.
I’m staring at his hazel eyes and even features in a completely different light. He’s so cleanly dressed, so young to have maimed and butchered. Besides the teardrop stain at his eye, there’s not a mark on him. How did he manage it?
‘But you were a pirate.’
‘Aye.’ He grins proudly. ‘Best on the seven seas. Why d’you think your King hired me to rob Spaniards for his Navy?’
CHAPTER 14
THE SHIP IS NOT NEARLY AS ROUGH AS JEMMY MADE OUT and his quiet pride for the vessel is obvious as he walks ahead of me on the narrow gangway. He’s replaced his long black coat and is wearing a tricorn hat, which, along with his stubbled chin and dark hair tied in a ribbon, makes him look even more like a highwayman.
Men are hauling the heavier provisions aboard with ropes. Above us, canvas sails are tight in the breeze and the timbers creak as though straining to be free of the dock bollards. The air is sour with hot tar fumes from recently caulked deck seams.
‘Welcome to the Esmerelda,’ Jemmy says, waving a hand to a red-lipped carved woman fixed to the prow.
‘You’re the first pirate vessel I’ve seen to sail with a fully clothed figurehead,’ I say, noticing painted clothes on the once-naked torso. ‘Did someone lose a bet? Or is she your wife?’
‘A girl of mine,’ says Jemmy. I’m surprised. I’d been joking. He seems too carefree for the kind of relationship that comes with sentiment. ‘She had a fierce temper,’ he adds, nodding to the thickly painted clothing.
‘Is that how you got that mark on your eye?’
He touches it. ‘This? This is just an old burn. One of me mammy’s fellas turned nasty. I made the mistake of getting in the way. I was fast enough to duck the saucepan, but the boiling water took me by surprise.’
‘You’ve a fine ship,’ I say as we cross the well-scrubbed deck. I’ve sailed with pirates before and the decks are usually tumbledown affairs, loaded with rusting cannons and stinking-drunk sailors. This boat is neat and clean with a sober crew hard at work unfurling sails and making ready to cast off. Everywhere is the air of industry.
‘Aye.’ He says it tersely, but I can tell Jemmy is pleased. ‘She’s not so well armed as some, but she’s the fastest. We won her in the Caribbean and no one’s caught us since. Ain’t that right, Bailey?’ He raises his voice and a broad-shouldered muscular man with jet-black skin looks down at us from beneath a broad-brimmed hat.
‘Aye,’ he agrees, his eyes sweeping my face for a moment before returning to his work.
‘We rescued Bailey from an English slaving ship,’ says Jemmy. ‘You’ll never meet a cleverer navigator. He’s smarter than I am, but I don’t let it bother me.’ He lets loose that disarming grin again.
Bailey is watching me and I can see him wondering. Likely he has a better eye for mixed blood than most.
I’ve been inside slave hulls, with the stench of dead bodies and the moan of the sick and dying. Bailey has overcome his terrible ordeal and returned to sea at his own choosing. I wonder if he sees my admiration for him.
The wind catches the sails and the Esmerelda floats serenely out of Dover, taking my dark thoughts of slave plantations with it.
Jemmy leads me to a captain’s cabin at the stern of the ship, with a hammock and a small wooden bed. A spectacular sweep of salt-encrusted paned glass forms the upper back wall, looking out on the ocean. Including the double door, that makes two escape routes. I like this room already.
‘This is where you’ll be,’ he says, ‘for most of the journey. Could be some bad weather coming, so best you keep out of our way.’ He catches my expression. ‘I wasn’t serious about the boat bilge and the salt-water spray,’ he says. ‘I wouldn’t put a woman in those conditions.’
‘You were testing me?’
‘Something like that.’
He heads to a large desk where a wooden box holds a shiny brass instrument, round with hands like a clock. Jemmy glances at it and turns his head to a chart on the wall.
‘You can read longitude?’ I say, realizing this is a chronometer – one of the latest tools of marine navigation.
‘You assumed me an ignorant pirate.’ There’s the ghost of a smile on his face. ‘Careful with the dial there,’ he adds, as I move to the clock-like device. ‘It’s delicate.’
‘I’m setting it for the right meridian,’ I tell him, moving the hand. ‘You assumed me an ignorant woman?’
Jemmy smiles. ‘You’ve sailed?’
‘A little. I thought longitude was for explorers,’ I add. ‘What use could you have for it?’ Unexpectedly, his smile broadens further.
‘On land, the petty thieves lurk in dark alleys,’ says Jemmy. ‘It is the same at sea. Most pirates hunt the coastal trade routes – near to shore, easy to navigate.’ He smiles at me. ‘I decided to hunt the open ocean. Why be a robber when you can be a highwayman?’ He gives a flash of alarmingly white teeth.
I’m building an idea of how he came to be a privateer so young. He reminds me of my Sealed Knot colleagues: brilliant but with a reckless disregard for rules.
‘Is that why you dress like a lord on his wedding night?’ I ask, nodding to his frilled black shirt and coat. ‘Apart from the boots, of course.’
His footwear is the most nautical part of his clothing: heavy-duty leather, rolled over at the top, ending below the knee in expensive buckles. The kind worn by naval captains.
‘You don’t want to know how I got these boots,’ he replies.
‘And what of that fancy duelling pistol?’ I say, nodding to his flamboyant weapon. ‘You’d be better with another sword. Those things misfire more than they fire.’
‘Only if you shoot them in anger,’ he says, patting his belt.
‘So this is your cabin,’ I say, taking in the tidy desk and rolled maps. ‘You sleep in a hammock?’
‘Never liked to sleep flat when my sailors are swinging in hammocks,’ he says. ‘But there’s a bed for you, should you need it.’
‘I can’t take your cabin.’
‘When you’re on my ship, you’ll follow my orders,’ says Jemmy mildly. ‘Besides, your spymaster sent supplies here.’ He’s testing my reaction, watching me as my eyes fix on a large trunk.
‘I’m sure you wouldn’t want to forfeit it,’ he continues. ‘Contains all manner of secret things, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘See for yourself,
’ I say, striding over and opening it. Inside are three folded silk dresses: one blue, one green and one black and violet pinstriped.
‘Don’t be disappointed,’ I tell Jemmy, seeing his expression. ‘Perhaps there’ll be an exciting woman spy to take on the next voyage.’
‘If you’re not a spy, what are you?’
‘I’m a translator.’
‘One of those dried-up women who follow diplomats to foreign courts?’
I smile. ‘Exactly so.’
CHAPTER 15
GRACE IS IN A BACK ROOM AT THE ENGLISH EMBASSY ON THE Rue du Faubourg. The Ambassador is not here, but servants have allowed her to change her blood-soaked clothes for a rather inappropriate satin party dress.
She perches on the edge of a chaise longue wondering what will happen next. She moves a hand to her chest, feeling for the hard, lumpy presence under her clothing.
The Queen’s diamonds.
She knows how dangerous a thing she carries – priceless and worthless all at once.
Hunger and exhaustion are making her dizzy. Last night she slept – or rather didn’t sleep – on the streets of Paris. She’d had little time to think.
Grace spent the dark hours walking, acutely aware her bloodied clothing was a badge of wealth. The irony of this was not lost on her. Before Attica had brought her to be educated on the Morgan estate, Grace grew up poor by the Bristol docks, clawing and scraping to dress fashionably whilst her belly rumbled.
A maid in the French custom of black silk skirts and white apron arrives at the door and curtseys.
‘This way,’ she says, ‘we have a little room for you. It is simple but I hope will suffice.’
She speaks in English, which Grace is grateful for. Having learned late, her French is rather basic.
What Grace really wants is food. She is so hungry she boils with it. But it has been ingrained from a young age that it is ill mannered to ask for things and she is not sure of the rules or hours of eating in this house.
The maid takes her up a wide staircase and to a room at the back of the house.
‘In here,’ she says.
