I am somewhat sad to be nearing the end of my tale, but that is the inevitable consequence of having the entire plot planned from the start. I'd hate to give too much away, but for anyone wondering as to how closely I intend to follow Charles Vane's historical fate, you can take comfort in the fact that I am too much of a sucker for happy endings for characters I love.
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xxx
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"So pray tell me, Captain, how is it that you are so incredibly successful at catching these vile criminals?"
They are sitting in Holford's cabin; by now it must be past midnight, and the officers have long retired after the dinner; Eleanor was not surprised when Holford found a pretext to continue his conversation with her, especially since she herself was stalling for time, rather hoping for it. The dishes have been cleared off the table, leaving only a lantern off to one side, and the only refreshment – if it is indeed the correct term – consisting of a dark green flask that started the past hour full of rum and is now on its last legs, having followed close on the heels of another one.
"Please… call me Peter," he entreats her with an ingratiating smile.
Smarmy or not, but her well-being on board this ship rests on his regard for her; so she obliges.
"Very well, Peter, do tell me how you manage it," she insists, leaning on the table with both elbows so as to give him a better look at her cleavage.
"It's not that complicated, my dear," he replies, albeit his tone gives the distinct impression of bragging. "I told you how I receive rewards for the pirates and criminals I happen to capture…"
"Yes, you did, Peter." Earlier that evening, he explained to her how, after he retired from piracy, his initial unsuccessful attempts to make it as captain of a merchantman essentially gave way to bounty hunting.
"And so I use the proceeds from my earlier successful endeavours to, shall we say, encourage various local busybodies at the ports I visit to share information with me. At times it leads me on dead end chases, but all things considered, on average it pays off quite well in the end."
She slowly shakes her head in a sign of appreciation. "That's quite cunning, I must say, Peter. And quite brilliant. Might I please ask you to get some more rum?" she continues, shaking the last few drops out of the flask into her mug.
"Of course, of course, my dear." He gets up and walks over to a cupboard, and presently, having produced another flask, sets it on the table between them. "Let us drink to your happy and fortuitous deliverance!"
"Indeed!" she offers him the mug. "I can hardly express my relief when I heard you speaking to Captain Markham, seeing how I had been living in mortal fear for days – nay, months! – before that, locked away on a loathsome pirate ship. I almost hoped that my trials would be over when the storm struck, and I prayed that I would drown… imagine my dejection, Peter, when the ship was destroyed and of all the people who could have drowned, Vane was the only one who survived besides me!"
"Well, my dear girl," Holford counters, taking a hearty gulp from his mug, "he will not survive for long."
"I am counting the days, nay, the hours, Captain… Peter. I confess I am still dreading that he will break free and come after me, seeing how he hates me since I tried to get him hanged in Nassau, and now that he can no longer use me as a hostage. I am terrified of going to bed…"
"There's no great hurry, my dear; and you will rest more easily after we're done with this," he lifts the flask and gives them refills, though in her case, it is more of a top-up seeing how her mug is still mostly full. "Besides, I assure you that you are in no danger whatsoever from Captain Vane – well, the former Captain Vane, should I say – seeing how he is locked up in irons deep at the bottom of the cargo hold. Not only would he have to unlock his shackles in pitch darkness, he would then have to find and open the hatch leading out of the cargo hold, still in the dark, and then find his way through the gun deck past a score of sleeping crewmen without bumping into them. And then he'd have to know which cabin you're in."
"That could be easy, Captain, seeing how there are only two passenger cabins here besides yours."
"That is why I am saying you are safer here, seeing how I have this." He points to the pistol tucked into his belt. "And seeing how I'm the only person who has these," he adds, pulling a bunch of keys out of his coat pocket and dangling them in his raised hand, "Still, I'd say he's unlikely to make it up to here at all."
She smiles at him before taking a sip from her mug. "I feel safer already. I am so indebted to you, Peter, for apprehending this monster of a man. Here's to our timely meeting, and to the successful conclusion of this voyage in Jamaica, may Captain Vane finally meet his fate at the gallows... So how many of these criminals have you caught already?"
Holford ponders her question. "A couple of dozen by now," he ventures. "Though no one quite as lucrative, I daresay, as Charles Vane. I confess I had been convinced that he would never make it to these parts, seeing how he mostly frequented New Providence and the Carolina coast, and I knew him to be far too dangerous to be easily captured, so I did not pay proper attention to the proclamation Governor Rogers issued-"
"I persuaded him to issue it," she points out, "seeing how this despicable animal murdered my father."
"Quite right, my dear." Holford nods as he holds up his mug for another helping. "And what an excellent idea it was, setting the reward at ten thousand pounds." He adds, savouring the words. "And then His Excellency Governor Lawes made it even better, by increasing it to fifteen after Vane and his robbers made away with the Pearl of Jamaica. And just to imagine how close I was to missing all that, seeing how I had not kept abreast of the rewards for his capture when I first ran into him on Swan island…"
"And I could not speak to you, seeing how I was tied up there and kept away from the beach, and did not even know of the Royal Mary calling there."
"Ah, you poor darling. Well, it is a damned good thing, if you forgive my language, that as soon as I reached the English settlement in Belize I learned of Governor Lawes' latest proclamation, and I hurried back as fast as I could… and you can imagine my extreme disappointment when I reached Swan Island to find that Vane was gone." Holford empties his mug, grimacing at the memory.
"How fortunate then, Peter, that you happened to call in here at Georgetown, and on the very same night as the Princess came in."
"Quite so, my dear, quite so. Although to be precise, it was no accident. I was planning to call in here, albeit for a less important motive…"
"Really?" She leans closer to him across the table.
"Oh yes, although seeing how I have captured a much greater prize in the person of Captain Vane, I might as well weigh anchor at dawn so I could be in Kingston sooner... You see, I was given a hint that a bunch of pirates recently arrived in Grand Cayman, having had their craft dashed by the recent storm, and are kicking their heels around the port looking for passage. I was quite keen on seeing if any of them would fetch a reward above the standard fare, which would not give me much of a margin, but I am quite certain based on experience that the reward in their case is likely to be modest. Now Vane alone could set me up for a good couple of years of comfortable living; and if I use the money to buy another ship…"
"But why walk away from a reward if it is here waiting to be claimed?" she argues. "Besides, it would be downright irresponsible, criminally so I daresay," she adds sternly, "to have a chance to capture and hang a pirate and not do so. I am still furious over how Vane got away before I could hang him."
"Well, my dear, you will have your second chance now." Holford seems to have used up all his recent enthusiasm on his previous long-winded explanation; now he sounds tired, his tongue slurring the words.
"And I am very pleased with it, even though it will be Mr Lawes and not Mr Rogers hanging him. But please promise me, Peter, that you will get the other bandits too."
"Well…" he begins, rather unsteadily, then takes another gulp. "Seeing how… important this is to you, my dear… I am happy to oblige."
"You are a true gentleman."
He grins and raises his mug in a salute, then empties it.
"And I do hope Mr Lawes is just as uncompromising as you are."
"Oh, Mr Lawes is completely uncompro-" He falters, hiccups, and tries again. "Uncom… promising."
"I am so, so very happy to hear this." She rests her chin on her hands on the tabletop. "And so very grateful to you, Peter, for giving me a chance to put right my earlier blunder."
"You're verrry… welcome, my dear." He is going downhill fast; presently he props up an elbow on the table and rests his head on top of his open palm. "And I assu-"
This proves too much for him; he slumps, his cheek all but hitting the tabletop. He stays there with eyes closed, and in about a minute his heavy breathing gives way to regular snoring.
"You really, really are most obliging," she says, very softly; it elicits no reaction.
She gets up from the table, walks over to his side, and gently puts an arm around his shoulders; he does not move even a fraction of an inch.
Then, squatting down by his chair, she slips her fingers, as carefully as she can, into his coat pocket, and feeling the cool iron, does her best to grab as many keys in her hand as her awkward position will allow. Then she slowly lifts the entire bunch out of the pocket, picks up the lantern from the table, and backs out of the cabin.
xxx
"Charles?"
Her whisper echoes in the cavernous cargo hold, submerged in virtual darkness, the turned-down wick of her lantern doing next to nothing to illuminate it seeing how she still has the lantern wrapped in a pillowcase to avoid letting the light alert any crewmen who might be awake to her nighttime foray.
She is answered by silence, except for the light trickle of a couple of inches of bilge water swirling about the bottom of the hull; the air is heavy with the stale water smell mixed with tar. For a few moments she feels the rising panic as she wonders if she has come to the right place; if Holford lied to her about Vane's whereabouts; if he is there but beaten unconscious; or dead.
"Charles, where are you?" she calls out again, slightly louder. She has done her best to drag the heavy cover over the hatch behind her when she descended into the hold, as quietly as she could, but she could not close it fully for fear of complicating her – their, hopefully – escape afterwards.
Hearing no answer, she ventures forward on unsteady legs, picking her way among rows of water casks. Maybe he is there and relatively unharmed, just asleep.
"Charles?" she tries again.
"Why are you here?"
The voice that answers her is quiet but so low as to barely qualify as human; it is as if the ship itself is questioning her. Still, her shoulders sag in relief.
"Are you alone?"
There is a pause before he answers. "Yes. Why the fuck are you here? What are you doing?"
She turns up the wick and finally sees him sitting chained to the timbers, about fifteen feet ahead, staring into the darkness without turning to her.
"What do you think I'm doing?" She cannot raise her voice, even though she wants to; still, as whispers go, hers is one hell of a furious whisper.
"You tell me," he says, still in that bone-chilling tone.
"Getting you out of here, you fool." She picks her way over to where he is sitting, sets the lantern down on top of a cask, and pulls the keys out of a hidden pocket in the skirts of her dress, unwrapping them from a handkerchief she used to keep them from jangling. "Give me your hands."
He does not budge. "Why?"
"What do you mean why?... Come on, give me your wrists."
He extends his hands to her almost reluctantly; and it occurs to her that the greatest challenge she may be facing in this undertaking might not be fooling Holford, or drinking him under the table, or lifting the keys, or sneaking down past the crew quarters; the greatest challenge may well be persuading Charles Vane to escape.
Well, at least he does peel the irons off him when she unlocks the shackles, and does so quietly enough; and does not immediately launch himself to strangle her. But when he is done he still shows no sign of wanting to get out; they are just standing there, the lantern propped up on the cask throwing odd, angular shadows on his face.
"What are you doing, Eleanor?" he repeats. At least he is looking at her now, but it is little consolation; his eyes are as cold and clear as they were that fateful night when she snuck Abigail Ashe out of the fort.
She fights the desire to take a step back. "You- you didn't really believe that shit I was saying earlier today?"
He is still looking at her.
"I don't know," he says eventually in the same dead growl. "Four months ago you meant it."
It takes all her willpower not to scream out loud.
"Fuck you, Charles, are you getting out or not?" Her voice gives out halfway through the sentence; she is so hurt that she stumbles back and ends up sitting on top of another cask. The worst, the absolutely most painful part of it is that he is right; but it also means that he is ready to dismiss everything that happened since then as mere duplicity, and that is bordering on unfair.
She reaches down into the same pocket where she had concealed the keys for the other item she has kept there ever since he gave it to her, and, pulling the slender dagger out of its sheath, she gets up, takes a step back toward him, and holds it out to him, hilt forward.
"I swore to you I would never betray you again. If you don't believe me, if you think this is more treachery on my part, then take it and do what you think is right."
He stands still, arms crossed; but his eyes are suddenly brighter.
"Think about it," she blurts out; and there is no stopping her now that it looks as if she has a chance. "How else could I make sure Holford would let me go on his ship if not by declaring that I wanted to testify at your trial? Both he and Markham are bound from Grand Cayman for Jamaica, so I couldn't claim to prefer Holford's destination. I had no way of warning you, seeing how I didn't recognise the Royal Mary at anchor, I'd only seen her once from half a mile away, and it was almost dark when we sailed into the harbour here; and by the time Holford came aboard for dinner I was out on the stern gallery and only knew it was him when I heard him talking to Markham telling him he'd seen you and intended to take you prisoner. There was no way I could get off that gallery without walking past them. What the fuck would you have me do, Charles, let Holford take you and think I'd never see you again?"
There is another second or two of unbearable silence; then his shoulders sag.
"Holy fucking hell," he mutters, very quietly; then he raises both hands and runs them up his cheeks and into his hair, as if peeling off a mask; and finally he shakes his head with a silent laugh, eyes closed. When he opens them again she could bet he almost looks embarrassed.
She pockets the dagger again, strides over to him and puts her arms around him; and is infinitely thrilled and relieved when he does the same; and through it all, through the pain of knowing that for several hours he must have believed her monstrous betrayal to be true, she is nonetheless pleased to have been able to surprise the hell out of him.
Eventually he lets go of her just enough to put a few inches' distance between their faces; and when he looks at her now, his eyes are soft and tender.
"It's a shame you never considered a career in piracy, Eleanor. Seeing how you can outwit all the men around you, you would have kicked Bart Roberts clean out of these seas."
xxx
It must be three o'clock or thereabouts when they are saying goodbyes on the quarter gallery; and at this rate he still has an hour or so of the incoming tide to carry him to shore holding on to his makeshift conveyance, a water cask he emptied in the hold, secured to one end of a cable in a sort of harness, and lowered carefully overboard until it reached the water surface, the other end of the cable now tied to the quarter gallery banisters. It would have been faster to have just tossed it overboard, but even aside from the noise that could have alerted the crewmen on the watch, now dozing outside the forecastle, he needed to be sure he could find and grab the cask in near-total darkness; and he needed the cable to get down to the water.
With the Royal Mary anchored just over a quarter mile out to sea from Georgetown harbour, an hour should give him plenty of time to safely reach the island… if they can only stop kissing and peel themselves away from each other, which neither of them is in a hurry to do.
"Eleanor, come with me," he entreats her for the tenth time; ever since she explained her plan to him back in the hold, he has been resisting it.
She tips up her chin for another kiss. "You know it will makes things worse, Charles," she mutters presently. "You said it yourself, you will know no peace so long you are alive. With both of us and with his keys gone, he is bound to see through my deception and they'll be looking for us. Besides," she reminds him, "you need me up here to cut the cable when you've climbed down."
His only response is to wrap his arms even tighter around her.
"Go on," she says after a while, taking a reluctant half step away from him. "You don't want to miss the tide."
But when he already has his hands on the banisters, ready to climb over and descend to the waves below, she starts toward him.
"I love you, Charles," she whispers, peering straight at him despite the darkness, trying to commit his features to memory. "If we never see each other again, I want you to know…"
He takes his hands off the banisters to hold her close once more.
"Silly girl," he mutters against her cheek. A couple of years ago she would have punched him for saying it, now she wraps her arms tighter around him seeing it for the term of endearment it is meant to be. "Of course I know."
He stands away from her. "Stay safe," is his final admonition. "I'll see you when I'm dead."
And then he is gone; less than a minute later she feels the light tug on the cable, pulls out the dagger and cuts it loose, throwing the short end into the sea. His troubles, she hopes, will soon be over; hers, she knows, are just beginning.
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to be concluded
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I mentioned in my note to the previous chapter that monetary values on the show are a sort of compromise between real historical and modern ones. To make the point specifically with regards to bounties declared for the capture of pirates (if you recall, Charles Vane's life carried a £10,000 reward in S3), I quote here an excerpt from the proclamation issued by Alexander Spotswood, Governor of Virginia, in November 1718 just before Blackbeard's death in battle and the capture of his crew. He promised to pay:
"For Edward Teach, commonly called Captain Teach, or Blackbeard, one hundred pounds; for every other commander of a pirate ship, sloop, or vessel, forty pounds; for every lieutenant, master, or quartermaster boatrswain, or carpenter, twenty pounds; for every other inferior officer, fifteen pounds; and for every private man taken on board such ship, sloop, or vessel, ten pounds"
Other local authorities seemed slightly more generous; thus, an earlier 1717 proclamation somewhere on the British Caribbean islands promised £100 for a pirate captain, £40 for an officer, £30 for an "inferior officer", £20 for a seaman; and nine years later in 1727, there was even mention of a £500 reward for another notorious pirate's capture.
…But saying that Charles Vane's life is worth £100 just does not sound right :P