“Aye,” interrupted Francisco leaning into the men. “His little brother Julius. Careful. They say the pirate threw a man overboard once for laughing at his brother when he cried. They say the man wailed as he tread water, but they made full sail anyway until his visage obscured on the murky waters and his cries were drowned out by the rising sea.”
“Oh my,” whispered Isaac. “I begin to see the nature of his character.”
“Even I do not know his nature and thrice I have had to suffer the man’s company at sea,” said Francisco.
“You looted with him?”
“Never,” said Francisco. “Unless you consider the plunder of a wayward Barbary vessel loot. That I did, Isaac. And we boarded them and killed them all, killers they were too.”
“In the Pacific?”
“We crossed paths there.”
“So we just sail to this place and collect our bounty?” asked another sitting by the leader’s side. He had tangled grey hair and looked to be older than all else and spoke with a raspy British accent as if he had just woken from sleep.
“That’s what they said,” snapped the pirate. He sat his brother down then he sat on an adjacent stool.
“Jerimiah,” said Francisco extending a hand. “Forgive, I did not recognize you after so many years.”
“I scarcely recognize myself,” said the old man as he took the hand.
“Come here you bastard,” said the Mexican, and the men stood and embraced.
“What make you of the Barbarys?” asked the pirate.
“I sailed with the Queen’s Navy for eleven years,” said Jerimiah as he sat again. “Never once saw a hint of the Barbarys in the frozen seas. Those seas which will take the best of what you are even in the best of cases. Still, I would not put that past them.”
“Well they say sometimes you sail back!” A woman spoke up from a stool outside the group. Long and tall, raven-haired and brown-eyed too, those eyes were still and certain. She rose and sat at the table and none challenged her gait.
“Long time Captain Turner,” said Francisco.
“Does me well to see you Francisco,” she said, and the two clasped hands. “Forgive the intrusion.”
A man sat near the woman, tall and nervous, rusty of hair and beard.
“Nothing to forgive,” said Francisco. “Who be your shipmate?”
“Walsh,” she said. “My first mate.”
The man extended his hand and that was met by the Mexican’s own. “Well met,” he said.
“Well met,” replied Francisco.
Walsh scanned the room nervously.
A tavern hand poured each sitting a shot of whiskey, which was promptly downed by all. “Leave the bottle,” said Captain Turner.
“Don’t tell me that woman!” hissed the man.
With one motion she unsheathed an obsidian-handled poniard and held it to the man’s throat as he froze; his eyes danced while she leaned back on the stool, keeping the knife out.
“Woman. One more time, man,” she said. “Say it! Once more!”
“I am…sorry,” said he.
“A sorry man indeed,” she said as she sheathed the poniard swiftly and silently.
“And what would you know of the sea?” said the pirate. You understand why I ask.”
“A tour on the Temporal Sea, I would know,” Captain Turner said.
A few gasped and the pirate stood up roughly, his stool clanging on the wooden floor. “The Temporal Seas! South of Cape Horn?” he shouted.
“There’s only one Temporal Sea, pirate,” she said calmly, downing a drink. “Do not waste your time. The tuna are not the size of whales, I am afraid. Nor are there any whales to be had.”
“Wasn’t planning on it,” said the pirate as he sat again.
“I mean no disrespect,” Isaac spoke up.
The woman raised her eyes and gestured for the writer to go ahead.
“I have oft heard that the Temporal Sea was a rumor.”
“For years it was,” Turner said. “But there is always a price, man. Sail around Cape Horn and save yourself time, which is like gold at sea. Sail too far south, and get swallowed by the Temporal Sea, and so the rumor became reality when the first tried that maneuver. I offer no proof.”
“Aye,” said Francisco. “Four lighthouses dot the cape now. They all blare foghorns and flash when the seas are stillest, and you see ships queued in the night. They wait for the right time to round the horn now. An unforgettable sound, like a symphony of the sea.”
“The Temporal Sea,” said Jerimiah. “I’d rather live in the great American Desert. My own cousin only spoke of the Temporal Sea once, and said never would he touch water again, save to quench his thirst. And for that he usually just did so with wine.”
“Well many actually do,” said Isaac, pushing up his glasses. “More and more every year, until one day the west looks like Boston or Trenton or Charlotte.”
“Live in the desert?” asked Jerimiah.
“Aye and without the coast and all the bounty that entails,” said Herb.
The head pirate eyed the hunter up and down. “That an elephant gun?” he asked.
“It is,” said Herb proudly.
“The seas of Buffalo make up for that,” Isaac quipped.
“Ha. I’ve seen the plains,” said Herb. There is nothing for us there. I’ll take my chances on the sea before a god damned slaughterhouse in Detroit becomes my life’s lot.
“Well if Baffin Bay held such bounty,” said the pirate, “why would we not know by now? The bay be a frozen hell-hole but men have ventured there, and men don’t miss the gleam of gold and silver, ever.”
“The Inuit who trekked south said it appeared overnight, back in early summer,” said Francisco. I met one in Halifax. He took twenty silver rounds for the information before it came in the newspapers. Twenty silver rounds! That very day I wrote you and Isaac. Though you were almost impossible to find, there I was riding a fortnight between postmasters.”
“Lucky I was in Albany,” said the pirate. “Suppose you’ll be wanting payment,” the pirate sounded like he was giving a command rather than asking a question.
“Could have bought me partway to my captaincy. We shall be among dozens racing for the bay. Hundreds, maybe. Get us there and the debt is settled.”
“Aye,” said the pirate. “It makes little sense for the Barbarys to stow their loot at Baffin Bay, but I would not put it past them after all. Alas they are not arctic explorers, whatever they are.”
“So they say,” said Francisco. “But how many travelers grow resentful from too much wandering with too little reward, I wonder?”
“Most,” Captain Turner interjected. “But silver is a funny thing. Not lusted after as men do for gold, but men are foolish when it comes to riches. As are women to be fair.”
“I like the way silver feels in my hands,” said Herb. “I admire its luster. But gold. I love everything about gold. Every angle tells a different story, ever untarnished. Gold is the sun on a day marred by the rain.”
“Everyone loves gold like that, knave,” scolded the pirate.
“What else make you of this rumor, Captain Turner”? Francisco asked the raven-haired woman.
“I was on the Temporal Sea when the Barbarys fell,” she said, downing a drink and filling another one from the now emptying whiskey bottle. “I won’t speak where I am unsure, but sure as hell I will race for the island rumor or not.”
“For god sakes,” said Francisco. “How long then were you swirling trapped?”
“One year,” she said.
Francisco raised his glass. “Neither man or woman would ever want to leave dry land again, I would think.”
“I am not like most men or women,” she shouted.
“I am sorry,” said Francisco.
“Don’t be sorry for saying what you mean,” she said.
“Why risk such a voyage?” said Isaac.
“Because the Temporal Sea can make a man,” Captain Turner sai
d. “Because the bluefish deathly as they are have bones the strength of steel, costing far less than steel but selling at premium. Because their meat is said to taste as Ambrosia might were the food of the old gods available to us all,” she said.
The hunter Herb shook his head. “I’d still take that voyage,” he said. “Sooner than I’d ever run a trapline again through those godforsaken pines. Gettin arrowed by the Cree and Iroquois come north. Bein chased down raw by Frenchmen who-”
“Would you!” Turner shouted. She slammed both hands down upon the table and most of the flagons tipped as did a candle still in its silver stand flickering sideways and casting long shadows onto her face.
Herb kept eating, head down, but his eyes shot up from a bearded face as a dog ready to pounce. “Nothing worse than coming home empty handed,” he said. “Nothing worse at all.”
“The Temporal Sea is worse,” said Turner. “Neither compass nor sail could take us from that deathly spiral, that cyclone where ships circle endlessly, men wailing after a day,” she said as her eyes gazed through the far bulkhead.
Francisco set up the candle straight again and it flickered downward and shortened as if following Turner’s own temperament.
“Still remember her face,” said Herb. “The way her eyes changed, my wife. That day where I came back eighteen months older and three fingers less and not a shilling or a silver to show for it. Nothing. The way she looked at me. There ain’t nothin worse for a man. Not death,” said the hunter.
“Are we your brothers?” asked the pirate. “Only just do we make your acquaintance. Your candor sickens me and we are not yet at sea.”
Herb shook his head and raised his cup. All looked on him with empty eyes. “This will do that,” said he. “Take away my shame. Make us all brothers and sisters, even me and Mexico here,” he said, tipping his tankard at Francisco.
Captain turner raised her tankard. “Well hear hear to that,” she said.
Herb wiped his mouth quickly and nodded and with his cup touched Captain Turner’s. “I know this,” said the hunter. “Men will prevail, whether by sea or sand.”
All save for Francisco and Isaac raised their cups.
Francisco turned and surveyed the room, so full now that men had barely a shoulder’s length betwixt them. “How did so many hear of this rumor in this little time?” he asked.
“That’s the power of the newspapers today,” interrupted Isaac. “Word travels by means other than foot and horse, now.”
“That’s right,” said Francisco. Only reason you are here, after all. Is it not?”
“It is,” said Isaac. “I write what I see and report it back in New York City. But the fall of Fur and Pine has become well known, though they mask it in charades.”
The head pirate focused on the writer with an expression that looked to be half rage and half curiosity.
“In any case,” said Francisco. “What else are we to do? Some men aren’t meant for those affairs on land.”
“I was a hunter,” said Herb.
“And I a fucking pirate,” said the leader, downing a drink.
“Weren’t we all?” said Francisco.
“You were a whaler,” Isaac corrected the Mexican. “Why put yourself in their lot?”
“Whalers are nothing more than pirates of the deep,” said Captain Turner.
“And I was a fur trapper once, too,” said Herb, his eyes glazed over.
Francisco chuckled. “For three years, you said. Barely enough time to master the trap line.”
“Aye, for three years. Before the beaver left the rivers and the forests grew barren. Never would happen, the elder Frenchman would say, my mentor so to speak. Grey and worn by the snows, he would lose his breath in joy when men would warn that Marten and Beaver had run dry. Never in these woods, he would say, they are too vast, he would say. I heard later in those forests, there was not a sound in the end. Not a single track to follow. Not a single pelt to be had.”
“Why are we here, then, ladies and gentlemen?” asked Francisco. “But not to make this group of whalers and fur trappers and hunters take to the sea.”
“Is that a question Francisco?” asked the head pirate.
“It is. How long since you have been at sea? You have lost your zeal, pirate. They say you used to be the ghost of the sea. Just a pauper now, not so much a raider. You were all zeal in the southlands, too. It was too hot for you down there. You do not take to the sun kindly, what better chance for you to escape into the blue again?”
“Speak of my zeal again, Francisco. And speak of my deeds while you still have a tongue.”
The writer Isaac stood up, arms out. “Gentlemen,” he yelled. “Clearly this band of trappers and whalers can come together for a cause?”
The pirate eyed the door as the Irishman stepped in, behind him the Inuk.
“We need to lease a ship,” the pirate said, still eyeing the duo entering the tavern. “And if any of you seek to sell our whereabouts to Fur and Pine, I’ll shoot you dead myself.”
The Irish mercenary stopped and stared at Captain Turner.
She leaned back on her stool.
The man smiled but his eyes somehow did not. He raised a glass toward Captain Turner.
“Ahoy McDaniel,” she bellowed. “So sorry to betray your namesake.” She rose her hand and let out a middle finger and all laughed.
The smile ran from McDaniel’s face, leaving only the eyes which revealed a look of rage and betrayal at once.
“New Bedford is our best shot at a ship,” said Francisco. “We can take the railway from here partway. If we can get a spot.”
The other men laughed as the pirate scowled. “I’m not getting on one of those contraptions,” he said.
“Railways may soon usurp the horse,” said Isaac.
“Nothing will ever usurp the horse,” the hunter Herb barked.
“Why not depart from here in Boston?” asked Isaac. “I will be exhausted before we sail,” he said while writing in a journal bounded of leather.
“New Bedford is where my letter instructed those who would join us to meet,” replied the pirate. “Not in this damned place.”
“Because too many plan to sail from here,” said Francisco with his head down eyeing the room nervously. “It will be like lobos fighting over the kill.”
“Aye,” said Turner. “You speak the truth. And beware the Irish who just came in with the Inuk, do not look as I speak,” she said. “Fur and Pine hath already sent droves to round up dissenters and frankly any who make sail for this voyage. Boston Harbor will not be safe come the dawn.”
“Then we will take the railway,” said the pirate with a frown. “Lest we lose another day.”
“The railways,” said Jerimiah. They are miraculous, Julius,” he said putting a hand on the child-like man’s shoulder. “I rode one in Montreal once. A short journey, loud and uncomfortable but miraculous. You see the mountains fly by like clouds.”
“Let’s stay bedded down here today and tonight,” said the Mexican, glaring at the droves of men entering the already crowded tavern. “Let us keep our bodies rested and ease off the liquor, just for a while. Before all of America decides to join us,” he said. “We have lodging down yonder,” he said pointing to the stairs.
“I have a crew on standby,” said Captain Turner. “We will make our own way and it seems perhaps meet as enemies at sea.”
“I do not wish that,” said Francisco.
“Nor I,” said Captain Turner. “But it is a race to the silver gleam,” she said. She stood and picked up the pirate’s tankard and finished his drink and tossed the tankard to the floor and without a word paced across the tavern and whisked outside.
Herb laughed heartily and the lead pirate shook his head as if dismayed. “Send word to the cotton mill inland that we be in need of one man,” the pirate spoke. “Any who has been at sea before will do. A deckhand. Tell them if they pull their weight there will be a lay better than any they would ever take as a whalem
an. And tell him if he opens his mouth of this I will cut out his tongue.”
He handed the messenger boy a fistful of shillings. “Leave at once,” said the pirate.
The messenger boy nodded and bolted out the door, his shadowy figure blending with those of other figures in the night.
“I think even with our lot we will need more than six men, or seven with this random foremast hand you recruit,” said Francisco. “Seven men cannot man a whaleship.”
“We’ve no time. I’ve sent word over two moon’s back up there to Fort Coulonge, to the ones who complained of no work when we were there last, and they to pass it on to Fort Cognac itself.”
“Stepping on Fur and Pine’s toes,” said Francisco. “Their Chief Trader at Cognac will have something special in mind for you.”
“Fur and pine are in the death throes,” the pirate said. “Languishing in the shadow of companies already come and gone from the wood.”
“And a Grizzley in the death throes can still shred five men to ribbons,” said Herb.
“They know the frozen seas,” said the pirate. “With all hope in the next days they will arrive, Cree or Inuit probably. And with them they will bring their best sea legs and their fabled spears with ivory tips. To each man ten ounces of fine silver when we set ashore, and one hundred when we return home, plus a share of whatever other bounty might be had, that goes for all here equally,” said the pirate.
VIII
Inside Fort Cognac the halls were dark and void, only the icy winds howled as the Ordained ate, a single candle illuminating his meal. With a knife he poked tiny potatoes, still steaming, and mixed them with spinach and crab. White and black peppered Newfoundland Dogs sat by a crackling fireplace lined with heavy black stones and he tossed emptied hollow shells toward them.
They whined and growled and rose to meet the shells while Dupan paced into the chamber, opening the door without knocking. “Sir!” he exclaimed.
“Knock when I am eating,” said the Ordained. He sucked the meat out of a crab leg and threw its shell toward the dogs.
Dupan looked like a child scolded.
“What news?” said the Ordained.
The black bearded ogre stood silent.
Sea of Two Suns Page 5
