Chapter 87: That’s a Lie, A Lie, A Lie
The first night Anne claimed the captain’s bunk as her own, James strung a hammock beside the mainmast and assured himself he’d sleep well enough alone.
He woke sometime after midnight with a face full of copper hair and Anne sprawled across him, clad in a thin sleeping gown and completely unaware of where she was. His ears burned as he tried to figure out how to untangle himself without waking her.
"Touch me and you’ll lose the hand," she mumbled, her eyes barely open.
A moment later, they both realized she’d never actually walked there awake.
Two nights later he climbed into the crow’s nest, convinced no woman asleep could possibly scale a mast in pitch darkness.
He woke with Anne curled against his side, her boots dangling over open air, and neither of them ever discovered how she’d made the climb without waking either of them.
After that he tried sleeping in a spare longboat lashed to the deck, only to wake folded awkwardly inside it with Anne tucked against him once again.
By the fourth night, they both gave up arguing with Anne’s uncanny talent for finding James in her sleep, and the captain’s bunk simply became theirs.
Anne slept peacefully through every night, exactly as she always had.
James spent many of those same hours staring into the darkness, repeating anything that would keep his thoughts and his hands where they belonged.
Sheet bend, bowline, clove hitch. The four points of a compass rose. Half a psalm his mother used to hum over the wash basin back in Edinburgh.
Anything at all besides thinking about the woman breathing gently against his shoulder.
The rest of the crew drifted back over those same days, every one of them flat broke. Half had somehow misplaced a boot, a coat, or what little sense they’d started with. Every last man swore his coin had simply vanished on its own instead of being drunk away, gambled away, or handed over to company that charged by the hour.
Getting Bert back proved far harder.
Edmund found him into a drinking spree that had left him incapable of standing straight yet fiercely determined to prove otherwise.
It took James, Cudjoe, Edmund, and Wesley together to drag him back to the Rose. Bert fought them every step of the way, trying to challenge lamp posts, barrels, and at one point a horse to single combat.
"He does apologize for this, in advance."
Edmund ducked beneath a fist aimed squarely at his jaw.
"He always does, once he remembers how to speak proper again."
Wesley held Bert’s other arm without the slightest complaint.
"Certainly."
He murmured it each time Bert nearly broke loose.
Cudjoe earned a boot to the shin for his efforts and replied with curses loud enough to make people turn their heads three streets away.
Then came the dawn when the new canvas finally filled with wind.
The sails shone deep claret beneath a sky still pale with early light, while the oxblood hull below looked barely finished. The scent of fresh tar and paint lingered thick enough to sting the back of James’s throat.
He didn’t need anyone to tell him what it meant.
Every excuse for staying in Nassau had finally run out.
He called up the Rose’s status before he’d finished admiring her new hull, more from habit than necessity.
🏴 [BLOODY ROSE — STATUS]
Hull Condition : Excellent
Armament : 24 Broadside Cannons, 2 Mortars
Crew : 80 / 80
Morale : High
Loyalty : Steadfast
Perks : [The Rose’s Luck], [True Shot]
Men hauled on braces everywhere he looked, new sailors worked shoulder to shoulder with the ones Cudjoe had sworn were worth every trouble.
Kit had reclaimed the foremast shrouds and narrated his own climb to Ned and Tomás below as though scaling the rigging deserved its own heroic ballad. For once, neither of them argued with him.
Near the capstan, Mackerel Jim entertained Greasy Pete with another story about some mermaid who’d supposedly tried to drown him off Eleuthera and regretted the decision. The creature’s bosom grew larger with every turn of the capstan bars.
Across the strip of blue water, the Fortune carved her own course. From her new black sails to her freshly tarred hull, she looked as dark as a moonless night, riding low and lean beside the Rose’s broader oxblood frame.
Crick stood at the wheel with both hands resting lightly on the spokes, muttering something to the gulls overhead that James had no interest in deciphering.
Bonnet lingered nearby in a coat far too expensive for the salt spray already settling over it. He spotted James across the water and waved enthusiastically enough to nearly lose his hat over to the sea.
Whitlock worked steadily through the provisions record book with a quill clenched between his teeth. Near the bow, Mary Read ran a bare hand along a cannon carriage, checking every lashing twice before trusting it to hold.
🏴 [BLACK FORTUNE — STATUS]
Hull Condition : Good
Armament : 18 Broadside Cannons
Crew : 90 / 90
Morale : High
Loyalty : Unproven
Perks : N/A
James took the wheel himself as the Rose sailed through Nassau’s reefs.
Cudjoe stood to his left, watching the crew with attention.
Anne stood on James’s right with one hand braced against the rail. Her copper hair had come loose from its tie and streamed wildly behind her as the wind freshened beyond the harbor.
She wore a grin that seemed to grow with every fathom of open water. Her gaze never lingered on Nassau, but it stayed on the empty horizon ahead, as though every mile beneath the keel only made her hungrier for the next.
James found himself grinning too.
The harbor was behind them. The sails were full.
Before he quite realized he’d made the choice, he threw his voice across the deck.
"As I was going to Derby, ’twas on a market day!"
Anne caught the next line without missing a beat.
"I met the finest ram, sirs, that ever was fed upon hay!"
The crew joined the chorus at once, more than seventy voices finding the tune through enthusiasm rather than precision.
"That’s a lie, that’s a lie, that’s a lie, a lie, a lie!"
Doyle launched into the next verse, already three sheets into another batch of his latest brew, and his voice cracked gloriously on the high notes.
"This ram and I got drunk, sir, as drunk as drunk could be, and when we sobered up, sir, we were far away out on the sea."
"That’s a lie, that’s a lie, that’s a lie, a lie, a lie!"
Farrow answered from the gun deck without once lifting his attention from the cannon he was inspecting.
"This wonderful old ram, sir, was playful as a kid, he swallowed the captain’s spyglass along with the bo’sun’s fid."
"That’s a lie, that’s a lie, that’s a lie, a lie, a lie!"
Then James claimed the next verse himself, grinning so broadly his cheeks began to ache.
"One morning on the poop, sir, afore eight bells was struck. He climbed up to the sky’s I yard an’ sat down on the truck."
This time the crew answered as one instead of scattered voices.
"That’s a lie, that’s a lie, that’s a lie, a lie, a lie!"
Nassau slowly slipped behind them. Its taverns, its captains, and all its quarrels dwindled until they became little more than reflection against the water.
Ahead stretched the open sea, blue all the way to the edge of the world.
James kept the wheel steady and let the song carry them onward.