1. With A Drunken Sailor
"The life that I have chosen,
And there will be content,
And the salt sea shall be frozen,
Before that I repent."
- Lowlands Of Holland, traditional.
The resin echoed from the bow string as it danced across the fiddle. Raw and warm, a slow and wistful tune followed in it's footsteps through the close evening air, the salty tang of the sea and the vague smell of sweat serving as the sheet of paper the harmonies danced across.
The Old Avery was a bustle of tales being told, the clinking of bottles and the occasional spirited jeer. Beyond the huts, the sea gently rolled to and fro upon the sands, eroding away the beach with no care for the conversation of mortals.
James Kidd, bastard son of a bastard pirate, perched on a stool, hunched over with his arms hung over his knees. In one hand, he slung a bottle loosely, rolling it around some before taking a decisive swig.
His hazel eyes never left the sunset, a burgeoning red, gradually slipping below the horizon; all the while he slipped gently into a comfortably looser state. Just enough to keep his thoughts from whirring like a windmill in a tropical storm, but always stopping before he became the storm. He had been blazing drunk a scant few nights in his youth - enough to convince him that clarity was a treasure.
A soft voice spoke from behind him, the lilt in dulcet tones that he would have known anywhere.
"Evening, Jim," the redheaded woman who tended the tables from time to time picked up the empty bottle on the barrel in front of him with a tired smile. "Will it be another?"
"Not right now, Anne, thankyou." He looked up at the woman unlucky enough to have been taken by Calico Jack's daft charms, or perhaps, lack of. She was a wiry Irish woman with the heart of a lion and a wit sharp enough to strike a man's overbearing flirtations down to the size of a pea, a necessity when dealing with the punters that rolled in from the docks.
James held a great fondness for Anne ever since she had begun working at the bar a year ago. They would often be the only two sober enough to hold a conversation in the small hours. He'd often lend a hand in clearing up around the passed out drunken sailors sprawled across tables, occasionally manhandling patrons out - though admittedly, Anne did most of the manhandling. For the sake of good conversation in a place otherwise desolate of talk outside of greed for gold and want of women, James didn't mind at all.
They would often talk about their lives growing up in both England and Ireland, and James had listened most sympathetically when Anne, in one of her rare vulnerable moments, confessed her sorrow over the state of her marriage to a failed man who was drifting away like flotsam. That was also the only time James had seen Anne three sheets to the wind and had carried her home, away from the lust of undesirables who had watched her like vultures, waiting for the carrion to finally drop.
Now, James simply watched his wise and warm-hearted friend for a moment as she picked up a few empty bottles from the surrounding tables and placed them in the bucket that hung loosely on her forearm.
Anne looked up after a moment, tucking a loose strand of her vibrant red hair behind her ear as she watched James back.
"You're always here, nursing your bottle. Who nurses your heart, Jim?"
James shrugged, giving her a wry smile. "Sadly, I am beholden to none."
"Don't you ever want to meet a fine lass? Someone to come home to?" Anne tilted her head to the side as she watched James mull the question over, his body language suggested he squirmed under the question before collecting himself to deflect the question.
"I 'spose it depends how you define home." James ruminated, thinking she hadn't noticed the subtle change. "It's not England anymore. But the sea..." He trailed off raising his hand to the shore.
"She's a harsh mistress," Anne followed his gaze, watching the water ablaze in red as the sun headed down.
"Aye, she certainly keeps me in line." They remained in comfortable silence for a moment, watching the sun light a red path from the shore to the horizon.
"This new ship... you could take charge, y'know." James suggested, observing the Matthias as it sat in the docks. It was a fair ship, a little small but well-armed and delightfully pirated.
Anne's now estranged husband had discovered her affair with Calico Jack several moons ago now. Honorably, Jack had tried to pay James Bonny off to agree to annul the marriage, however James had firmly turned this down, hounding Anne and informing Woodes-Rogers of her association with pirates in attempt to get her publicly whipped for her disobedience.
The request ignored, one of Jack's finer (and only) victories had been stealing one of James Bonny's own ships from Kingston a few months ago in response.
In a swift attack, Jack had led a small party of jaded drunken sailors on to the Matthias one afternoon, finding James in the cabin and making short work of the man who sought to make Anne's life a misery. Jack, in one of his thoughtful yet misguided moments, gifted the flintlock that ended James Bonny in a shower of bone and brain matter to Anne as a wedding gift. She was still none the wiser that James was dead, left in the bay of Kingston as scraps for the seadogs, and Jack rather liked it that way, thank you very much.
Anne chuckled brushing the notion aside as she looked at the ship as it bobbed gently in the tide. "Hardly, what would Jack say to that?"
And yet, James saw her pause for a moment, to quietly admire the unweathered paint of the newly crafted ship. Her brow had furrowed before she began walking towards the bar to return the bottles and it was these nuances that convinced him.
James, now fully on to a potent idea, rose to his feet and followed to continue their talk. He strode past the tables of patrons, lost in conversation, satisfied that they would pay no mind to what he was about to say.
He leant casually on the bar beside Anne as she offloaded the empty bottles to another barkeep.
"There we go, Micah. If you can take these out to the warehouse, I'd be grateful," Anne said, handing the bucket to the bright eyed strapping boy, who nodded and did as he was told, the bottles clinking noisily as he set off with several buckets.
Anne, seeing no customers at the bar, exhaled tiredly and rested against it as the brighter stars that the sky offered began to shimmer through the fading blue.
"The way I see it, Anne," James began, speaking in a slightly lower voice. "That ship's yours. Seeing as James, under British law, is still your husband and he isn't supporting you... well... frankly, I'd see that as fair dividends."
Anne smiled sadly and reflected James' - the better James - hushed tone. "Appropriation's a lovely way of looking a it, but Jack captured it... I suppose it's more his for that."
"Be that as it may, when you set sail," James said, gesturing his thumb to where Jack was drinking with some other unfortunates who looked bored by the tale he was spinning. "A few months out at sea... what happens when him and the crew are too pissed to bloody steer?"
Anne spoke hesitantly, brow creased, as she leant to face him fully. His face certainly held no hint of jest. "I don't know, Jim. I haven't the faintest idea how to pilot a ship. That ain't work a woman does."
"Tosh!" James suddenly put his bottle down on the bar and spoke with a soft but fiery defiance. "I've seen a score of ladies who can reef a sail and spin a capstan."
Anne looked up and found James' eyes, filled with possibility and realised he wasn't joking or merely acting out strange grandiose ideas. He was being absolutely serious about the concept. She looked James' up and down and now wondered if she could be that.
"And... would you teach me to fight? With a cutlass, like?" Anne began to entertain the notion. "And maybe handle a pistol?"
"All that and more," James' eyes lit up, a fire behind them, usually brought on in men by whisky or women - but this was a fire that burned solely for the ocean. "But you have to want it. And work for it. There's no stumbling into true success."
There was a commotion at the table opposite, the dull clang of a tankard slamming on wood. "Oy! Lad! That's my lass you're making love to! You lay off or I'll cut ya!"
"Up your arse, Rackham," James waved him off. "Lad is the last thing you should be calling me."
"Oh! Oh, is that right, is it? LAD!" Jack was on his feet, the stool he was sat on clattered to the floor behind him, his companions stepping away from the table warily.
James in truth was nearing thirty years of age and tired of his fellow sailors making a point to call him "lad". In a group context, he supposed that he was indeed a lad but the persistent singling out by Rackham had lost it's novelty long ago - that ship had truly sailed.
Anne looked from Jack, who swayed where he stood, hands on his hips - usually a sign of one of his foul moods - to James who appeared nonplussed on the surface. Close enough to truly see the lack of facial hair that made him appear younger than his years, Anne looked beyond the shadow of grime and wondered how he kept his jaw shorn so smooth.
"Aye, that's right," James said coolly. "It's captain to you."
"A captain without a ship ain't much of a fucking captain, is he?" Jack growled, muscles tensing.
"I may be without a ship for now, but I never took the Pardon. A pirate with a royal pardon ain't much of a bloody pirate, mate. Rather be shipless than pandering to the King," James quipped back. For the first time in a long time, James allowed the little alcohol he had consumed to speak for him and watched as the sailors around Jack took a further step back, a murmur spreading among them. James turned to them. "You want to watch yourselves - old Jack here's got a reputation for marooning his crew without rhyme or reason."
"James..." Anne spoke softly and frantically, putting a hand on his arm to draw his attention from Jack and his aura which was now tinged with hints of red. "You know what he's like... it's probably best to-"
Jack's eyes widened furiously at his woman's hand on James. "You fuckin' crap sack!"
Before either James nor Anne realised what was happening, Jack had covered the five paces between them, casting aside the table and landed a square right hook to James' jaw.
James' teeth rattled as he was nearly knocked from his center of gravity and he saw a flash of white. Dazed for a moment, Anne was saying something beside him, but he no longer heard. The white became red as he stretched his jaw and flew forward with a fist to Jack's gut.
With a solid "OOF!" Jack staggered backwards slightly before collecting himself and with a lowered head and charged towards James, slamming his fists into his chest while grabbing the lapels of his jacket.
Jack hauled James to his feet by the front of his green coat, taking a moment to hiss in his face as Anne ran over to try and intervene. "I've ended one James, I'll bloody end you too, gobshyte lad."
"Get your ratty hands off me, you bloody scurve." James hissed right back, kneeing Jack squarely in the knackers. Blinded with rage, he heaved James, spun him so his back was against the wooden rail and shoved upwards firmly, flipping James over the rail and to the deck below.
The air sailed past James' eyes as his orientation hung in disarray while he spun backwards in momentary freefall. Somewhere in the panic, he tried to get his muscles to respond to balance him out before it was too late, but time was not in his side, and the table on the deck below rushed up to meet him.
Aiming for around a ten-part story - there's so much about that the time from the Observatory and beyond that remains untold. I hope you enjoy this as much as I am still grieving for Mary. (Also, dammit Ubisoft. There's Black Bart and Ah Tabai action figures, but no James/Mary or Anne? Not cool.)