A/N – With parts to three (count them, three!) Ripper Street stories idling on my computer, you'd think I'd get around to finishing and posting them, wouldn't you? But no. No. Instead, Toby Stephens had to go and break my heart on multiple (!) occasions over the course of S2 of Black Sails and now I can't go back to those until this thing sees the light of day. So thanks, Toby. Thanks for the feels. I hope you're happy now.
Disclaimer/Spoilers – If you haven't seen S2 and you want to be surprised, stop reading now. All episodes from both seasons are fair game. And I own nothing of any value, including (and especially!) these characters. If you want to share your thoughts, click the little review tab below.
If I told you what I was,
Would you turn your back on me?
And if I seem dangerous,
Would you be scared?
I get the feeling just because,
Everything I touch isn't dark enough
If this problem lies in me
I'm only a man with a candle to guide me,
I'm taking a stand to escape what's inside me.
A monster, a monster,
I've turned into a monster,
A monster, a monster,
And it keeps getting stronger.
Monster, Imagine Dragons
His grandfather once told him of a map he'd seen - a very old map kept in the captain's quarters of one of the ships he'd sailed aboard in his youth. On the far edge of the map, when the cartographer came to what was then the brink of the known world, he had written three simple words:
"Here be dragons."
Intrigued and mystified by this wonderful phrase, young James McGraw had asked his grandfather what the phrase meant. Were there actual dragons out there like the one that was slain by the legendary Saint George? Were there sea serpents in the depths of the Atlantic? Would he one day be lucky enough to see one for himself if he pursued a career on the water as well?
His grandfather's reply was simple and direct: "No dragons to speak of, my boy – at least none that I've seen. The mapmaker put that there because what lay beyond was uncharted and he feared it would be dangerous, so he indicated that the most gruesome monster he could imagine lived there so that sailors would proceed with caution."
"I wouldn't be afraid of any dragon," young James said with the cheeky bravado of youth.
His grandfather chuckled, then told him rather gravely, "I don't think a dragon is the worst kind of monster a man might encounter on the sea, lad."
###
The combined crews of pirate Captains Flint, Hornigold, and Vane – men who are bound together by necessity and commonality but not by loyalty to any but their own brothers - steer their stolen Spanish warship out of Charleston harbor as the city burns. Once graceful and quaint, cannon fire from the ship has rendered the city into a crumbling wreck of twisted brick and splintered wood. Plumes of smoke rise in blue and gray tendrils from rapidly spreading fires and, near shore, a handful of patrol ships list slowly onto their sides as they sink into shallow waters. No longer can they give chase to the pirates or even protect what's left of the ruined shoreline.
On the deck of the warship, Captain Flint observes as the rays of the setting sun cut through the carnage so that it appears for a moment as though the mouth of Hell itself has opened to swallow the town - a fitting end to the events of the day and a deserved fate for those on shore. There is a sting of salt spray in his eyes takes the place of any tears he might shed for the citizens of Charleston, for they would have watched him executed and applauded the action had his trial come to its inevitable conclusion; why should he now feel an ounce of pity for any of them?
Everyone is a monster to someone.
He knows that soon the stories will emerge from the ravaged city, stories told by the survivors of today's assault and distributed worldwide - exaggerated tales of an innocent and sleepy harbor that was beset by the fiercest, most inhuman monsters known to man. It was a pirate attack against good people on the right side of the law, the survivors will say – completely unjustified and utterly malicious. Captains Flint and Vane and their heathen followers proved in one afternoon exactly why the pirate scourge must be banished from the earth at once, for if a city as prepared for pirate attack as Charleston was can be laid to waste by such forces, what is to stop the monsters from doing the same thing to Savannah or Boston or any other peaceful, lawful colonial town?
The tales will spread, the fear will become epidemic, and along the way, the truth will vanish into vapor. Of that, Captain Flint is the most certain, for the only living soul who knows the truth – the whole of it from its start in London to its ugly finish in the dining room of the governor's mansion in Charleston – is him.
And who would trust the word of a monster?
You see, gossip is what holds civilization together. It reinforces shame and without shame, well, the world is a very dangerous place.
Certainly the fine people of Charleston would not trust his word, just as they did not trust the written words of young Abigail Ashe when they heard them read aloud. As such, it was really no sacrifice for Flint to assume the role of their chosen monster, for that was how Charleston already saw him and no artful words – not even true words – could alter the citizens' view. And apart from the discredited Abigail Ashe, is there but one single person on earth who might take the time to recognize that not Flint or Vane or any of the other men who fired upon Charleston today were actually born pirates? Is there anyone in Charleston or Savannah or Boston who might conceive the idea that no man is ever delivered to earth as the monster that people later believe him to be?
Monsters are made; they are not bred. This is something that all pirates know – Captain Flint best of all.
They're not animals, Mr. Scott – they're men starved of hope.
The men with whom he sails are all foundlings of one sort or another. They didn't follow a proud family trade or pursue a dream they hatched as young boys in England or Holland or Africa or wherever they come from to live this life on the fringes. It's a hard one, uncertain at all times, and a man must be driven to it; very rarely does he choose it willingly. As for Flint's men, a series of unwitting choices in their lives – their prior human lives – are what led them to be on thisship on this of all days. Had they made other choices, had they said "no" when they said "yes" or "yes" when they said "no," they could just have easily found themselves among the fine citizens of Charleston who have so recently been sliced to ribbons by a barrage of Spanish gunfire. But circumstances cast them into the world alone and the only ones willing to take up with them were those who shared their fate and that they now call brother.
Flint too was such a foundling once. He knows exactly what can happen when one pursues a path that others do not understand. Fear is incited and that fear subjects the man to lose the good opinion of those who accept him, who associate his name with reason and the side of right. With just one step too far over an invisible line, the man suddenly stumbles – a simple loss of balance at first from which he thinks he can easily right himself. But then he stumbles again and again, followed by an increasingly greater fall until ultimately he lands at the cold, unforgiving bottom of a very steep staircase to which he will nevermore ascend, his spirit bruised and bloody and no one willing to help him up except those who have fallen before him – the other cast offs from the world above who await him at the place below.
They – and they alone - welcome him with open arms.
For one brief moment last night, Flint thought he might be one of the lucky few to escape, that he might ascend the ranks of civilized society once more. He could glimpse it from where he stood – it was just outside of his reach but fully visible in his mind's eye – but yet one more sudden and violent act sent him tumbling headlong and he knows he will not rise again. Not only will society rebuff him at all costs in future, but he has rebuffed them too, once and for all. With the smallest of nods that released another round of gunfire from below deck to shred the remainder of Charleston's sand bar, he made crystal clear that any hope for reconciliation between himself and humanity died last night with Miranda.
Her word will be the last word for this place.
She did not return to the warship with him and she will not be waiting when they arrive back in Nassau. Instead, she remains in the ruins of the Charleston town square, her body laid out in a box that is strewn with the bits of garbage that were hurled at her during his trial, her once vibrant features gone gray and waxen. But as was her final wish, she oversees the downfall of Governor Peter Ashe and the world he built upon the devastation of her shattered life – of their lives. Ashe took Thomas not just from her, but from Flint as well; he forced them from their home and he had them branded monstrous just as certainly as Lord Alfred Hamilton and all the rest of his "good" society had – and all for the price of a colony and a grandfather clock.
We need to get you moving. When we get to the harbor, I'll arrange passage for you – anything you need that you don't have I'll see sent to you. In the meantime, my friends will ensure you are taken care of.
We won't be with your friends. We're not going to Paris or Brussels or Amsterdam.
Had Ashe known what he had wrought at the time? The wheels he had set into motion? Did he have any inclination that his betrayal of his friends had also cast his own horrible fate?
Of course not; the man lacked foresight and vision. All along it was Thomas Hamilton who possessed the power to see what something could be, what would happen when certain pieces fell into place in a particular way. But without him and his acumen, Peter simply scrambled to keep his footing for as long as he could until the fateful fuse was lit and his life exploded.
How fitting was it, then, for Flint to force Ashe to look into Miranda's once-beautiful face one final time, all while his life's work burned upon its foundation of treason and his blood drained into the sand?
I was there the day our lives ended and all of this began.
Alfred Hamilton was not a great loss. Ashe himself is not a great loss either. Thomas was the greatest loss until last night - until Miranda fell dead on Ashe's dining room floor, a pistol ball lodged in her too-sharp brain. Her loss is the one that severs Flint from all he was and leaves him as the last man who remembers the final casualty of this action, the final man killed in the battle that began ten years ago in London.
With Miranda, Flint has seen the death of James McGraw.
When the sun set last night, Miranda was with him, with the man she called James in familiar fashion. She was with the man she loved to argue with over Milton and Shakespeare, over whose wounds she fussed and whose maladies she treated with a knowing (and usually disapproving) frown. She knew everything about McGraw – where he came from, what he had seen and suffered in his life, what and whom he loved, and she sometimes even knew what he would say before he said it. She knew the James of old and the James of now and loved and accepted them both equally. She wasn't afraid to say it to him – just as she wasn't afraid to rail at him when she thought he'd gone astray.
She knew James McGraw, trusted him and was trusted by him, and therefore she only ever met Captain Flint a handful of times. On most of the days of her life – of their shared life in the wake of losing Thomas – there was no need for her to see Flint; he was not the one she followed from London all those years ago, nor was he the one Thomas had asked her to look after.
Captain Flint was naught but a mask to her – a monstrous one that McGraw wore to frighten people and commit heinous acts - whereas James McGraw was a flesh and blood person who could laugh or cry or bleed the same as any other man.
You're dripping blood across my floor.
Only on the terrible day when he discovered that Miranda had quietly worked with Richard Guthrie to try to convince him to accept a pardon from the crown for his acts of piracy did she see the mask come over the face of James McGraw and witness the depth of Captain Flint's rage.
They took everything from us. Then they call me a monster? The moment I sign that pardon, the moment that I ask for one, I proclaim the world that they were right. This ends when I grant them my forgiveness, not the other way around.
But on the other days, days when the Walrus sailed into Nassau's harbor and the crew made their way with haste to the brothel, the tavern, and whatever other sources of pleasure were to be found just steps from the beach, Captain Flint vanished into thin air and left James McGraw in his place - a man so tired and tortured that the only pleasure he sought was a set of clean sheets, a quiet place to think and read, and the chance to converse all day and into the night with the woman who never failed to challenge his thinking and lift his spirits. Certainly no monster like Flint would have had the good manners to take off his boots before crossing the threshold of Miranda's tidy cottage. No monster would think to bring her books for her much-thumbed library or have the decency to allow himself to be medically ministered to (and not swear when the treatment proved painful).
Monsters have no need of homes, after all.
Most people are attached to the idea of home, Flint knows. There is a pull toward it - a sense of relief, of contentment and belonging to a place that people can't help but be drawn to. It offers stability and refuge and gives a man a sense of being anchored to something that offers safety and relief from the suffering of life in the world at large. For James McGraw, home was never a roof with four walls, some windows and a door, but was instead a set of brown eyes that could assess him instantly:
Whoever tied this bandage was either blind or drunk.
I think both.
But if home is where one goes when he hopes to hide from the monsters of the world, where does one go when other monsters – monsters masquerading as civilized men - steal his home from him? Where does one go when he is no longer fit to cross a civilized threshold and his himself purely monstrous?
Nassau.
Not the Nassau that Thomas Hamilton dreamed of, nor the Nassau that James McGraw and Miranda Hamilton fled to so many years ago in the hope of carrying out Thomas' work. Certainly not the Nassau that Captain Flint and Eleanor Guthrie hoped to bring about together with the plan that brought him to Charleston yesterday. That Nassau is lost – it's gone the way of Thomas Hamilton himself, of Mr. Gates, of Richard Guthrie, and now of Miranda Hamilton and James McGraw too. But there is a Nassau that Charles Vane spoke of – a Nassau where the human world fears to tread, lest it be sacrificed to the monsters that inhabit it. The laws of that Nassau aren't to be found in Charleston or Boston or London – they pertain to survival, to loyalty to one's crew and captain, and to defiance of all things "civilized."
They are the laws of monsters and they are all Flint intends to live by.
Were she still living, Miranda could provide entry back into the land of men just as she always had, of course. All it would take would be the touch of her hand, her fingers linking with his as they did on the day he led her up the gangplank of a ship bound for the West Indies or as they did last night as he led her from Peter Ashe's dining room so that it could be turned over for the dinner hour. She could always pull the man James McGraw out of the demon James Flint with a deft touch and practiced ease. But what good would it do now?
Even she would certainly have to ask that question in light of Ashe's betrayal, first of Thomas and James back in London and then again last night when he attempted to serve James up to the wolves of the English Parliament. Even though she had no trouble discerning the James McGraw she knew of old within the weathered features of the pirate Captain Flint, would she still even want to see McGraw in light of all that occurred? Would she still have use for him? The thirst to avenge Thomas ran deeper in her than James ever knew – deeper even, perhaps, than his own – and were she beside him on the deck of the Spanish ship right now, perhaps she would be equally monstrous in her rage, a fearsome thing to behold.
I want to see this whole goddamned city, this city that you purchased with our misery burned. I want to see you hanged on the very gallows that you use to hang men for crimes far slighter than this. I want to see that noose around your neck and I want to pull that fucking lever with my own two hands!
But even in her fury, James still recognized the woman behind the beast. He saw all the parts of her in that moment – her honesty, her ability to love, and her ability to forgive all but the ultimate betrayal. But the tragedy of today is that now that the action is over, he has no way of knowing what side she would stand on in the calm after the chaos. Today she's been set free and he's merely a man trapped for all eternity behind a mask.
Billy Bones approaches and interrupts his contemplation with a gentle clearing of his throat: "Captain, Mr. DeGroot requests permission to set a course for Tortuga."
Flint nods his assent. "Fine. They'll no doubt have news of Charleston by the time we arrive."
Billy stands by and shifts uncomfortably from one foot to the other, clearly searching for the words to make another request.
"What is it?" Flint demands resignedly, the exhaustion of his flight with Vane and the events of the previous night beginning to take hold.
"It's Mr. Silver, sir," Billy begins, "he was injured by some members of Captain Vane's crew."
"Injured?"
"They've had to remove his leg, sir," Billy responds.
"Jesus."
"Mr. Muldoon wonders if they might put him in your quarters to recover. He's unconscious and there's no telling when – or if – he'll wake up."
So much waste, Flint thinks, shaking his head before telling Billy, "Tell them to do whatever they need to."
Billy remains after this decision is rendered and the monster within Flint threatens to rise up and attack if the young man doesn't finish the conversation quickly.
Bones appears to notice this and fumbles over his words. "I- I'm sorry to see that Mrs. Barlow did not return to the ship today, Captain."
Flint sets his jaw and blinks a few times in rapid succession before he turns stiffly and walks toward his quarters.
Who is Mrs. Barlow?
You've heard the stories, haven't you? She's a witch who pledged my soul to the Devil and anoints me with the blood of infants to keep me safe in battle.
Come on. I'm not stupid.
No. You're not. So you can probably guess it isn't as much fun to tell stories about how your captain makes a home with a nice Puritan woman who shares his love of books.
Muldoon and several of the others have laid Silver out by the window, his entire lower half obscured by a thick tartan blanket, and they all nod to the captain as they file past. There's a bottle of rum by Silver's hand and Flint snags it, noting that the sailor will have no need of it for now.
He brings the bottle to his lips and drinks deeply – monsters haven't the manners to use a glass – and when he sinks into the chair behind his navigation table, his eye catches a glimpse of the map spread across it. It's a map of Charleston harbor – the one he used to chart their course from Nassau – and as the rum settles warmly into his empty stomach and swirls its way darkly through his limbs, he sights one of Miranda's handkerchiefs lying abandoned on the edge of the table.
James McGraw might have shed a few tears for the woman who left it behind, but Captain Flint has no time or energy for such sentiment. Another swig of rum slides down easily to follow the first and he captures the handkerchief in his hand, wadding it into a ball that he clenches in his fist while his other hand secures a piece of charcoal and makes a neat notation across the edge of the Charleston harbor:
"Here be dragons."
He gulps once more from the bottle and leans back in the chair. His grandfather was right; dragons were not the worst monsters that a man might encounter on the sea.
FIN