The town of Port Royal was at its busiest time. The morning was already underway; the hot sun of noon hadn't yet climbed to the sky overhead. With an empty basket balanced on her hip, Emily sidled down the edge of the path into the cluster of shops and stalls that was the market, carefully avoiding the mud that collected in wheel-ruts after the night's rain. Despite having been established for more than a century, Port Royal wasn't nearly as crowded as it should have been. People moved to other islands at the slightest hint of better prosperity, half of the youth ran off to sea at their earliest chance, and there was always sickness, pirates, and brawling to keep Emily from being jostled by too many bodies as she walked.
She stopped by Missus Weatherby's stand, a rather bright looking affair with its candy-striped umbrella shading the abundant, if scrawny piles of colorful vegetables and roots, fruits and melons. It was relatively clean, but the look of the vendor's stand was less of a draw to her regular customer than the vendor herself, a large, pecan-skinned woman with a wide smile of crooked teeth and a mouthful of ready gossip. The fact that it stood at the edge of the market nearest to the blacksmith was, of course, not even a factor.
"Looks as though Master Gerard's caught himself a fish," Emily commented lazily as she perused the produce, having already exchanged amiable greetings with Monique Weatherby. Leaning on the edge of the stacked wooden crates that made the stand, she glanced up to see the older woman nod knowingly.
"Aye, dat 'e did, but it's a stringy, tough little bit uh seafood dat evuh was. Hardly wuth showin' tuh the fishmongah, as it were." Monique let her hands rearrange the fruits as she spoke, masking gossip with a show of industry, as was her wont.
"I wonder what he's thinking, to harass the governor with that so directly? The fellow looked a bit nasty, but even taking him up before Norrington would make more sense, if he wanted to be vindictive," Emily speculated. "It doesn't seem like a way to win much favor, if that's what he's after."
"Or sum kind uh reward. Fo catchin' wot looks lak a hardened crim'nal."
Something in the vendor's tone warned Emily. "Looks like? Not 'is'?"
A snort. "Ah would've said 'is' if'n Ah hadn't saw the other fella, him dat was drunk dis very morn and braggin' tuh the walls how he'd passed off dem false coins, and 'scaped the blame. Figured himself right clevah, he did."
The maid pondered this tale, fitting it with the image of the compliant man being led up to the manor. It seemed right, after all, the man had protested his innocence, but at the same time something was amiss. Emily supposed she simply expected someone so scarred and weathered to have put up more of a fight, as he already carried marks of struggling against life. She shrugged. "Gerard might be in for some trouble then, if word reached him. What shall he do, if he learns this bit after turning in the innocent one?"
"Ah wouldn't call dat rascally fella innocent. Sea scum's all the same, Em'ly; they'll steal yuh blind if'n half the chance comes up."
Emily placed a few last potatoes in the basket before pulling out the bit of silver allotted to her for bargaining. "Just like you steal from your customers with such high prices, Missus Weatherby?" she teased, an eyebrow raised. "I've never seen so much charged for a bit of fruit."
Monique laughed, parrying: "Den you've neveh seen the rest of the market gel, or yuh'd be askin' tuh pay more fo such nice fruit."
Furious but good-natured bargaining ensued.
The peculiar incident soon faded from Emily's mind. After all, there was laundry to mend, furniture to be dusted, and beds to be made, and the application of justice wasn't one of the leading concerns of household servants. She did note, without any particular interest or consideration, the Governor's complains of certain valuables missing from the office at Fort Charles, but attributed the loss to his infamous absent-mindedness. And there were other distractions.
Sunday afternoon arrived with a basket of excitement for the citizens of Port Royal, along with a painfully clear sky and an absence of the light breeze which had livened the last few days. The weather wasn't a deterrent, however: today was the promotion ceremony of Captain James Norrington, and therefore almost a festival day. Preparations and expectations were raised to a level that certainly exceeded that which would be found at a similar event in England. Wives arranged luncheons for afterwards, their husbands gathered friends for games of croquet, and everyone looked forward to the display of British discipline and civility. For the shopkeepers, craftsmen and plantation workers, it reminded them of their loyalties and reawakened pride in their home land, as well as providing a spectacle to relieve the repetition of daily labors.
Emily found herself in a position to enjoy the ceremony from a somewhat more privileged viewpoint than that of the manor's other maids and servant. Governor Weatherby Swann had presented his daughter with a gift, a parcel that Charles had taken his old bones down to the port office to fetch from the post, and from which Emily had seen him unwrapping the coarse paper. Her anticipations of its contents were not disappointed. A half hour later, she was helping Estrella pull tight the cords of a cloth and bone corset around Miss Elizabeth.
The governor hovered outside the small salle d'essayage, his voice drifting over the decorative wood-and-silk barrier in an answer to his daughter's question. "Does a father need an occasion necessary to dote upon his daughter?" The attending maid hid a smirk. He didn't, of course—the amount he spent on his beloved daughter well pushed the boundaries of its allotment on the household budget; even in a moderately successful plantation and trade colony, there were limits. Ordering goods from England, textiles and the like, was prohibitively expensive. Silks from the East India Company were almost less dear, and Emily even harbored a cynical thought about the likeliness of the dress's fashionableness. By the time it arrived in the west, the London socialites probably had deemed it so démodée that the beggars were salvaging such dresses from refuse piles.
All the same, the governor's tone was fairly transparent to the maid's experienced ear, and likely anyone else with two thoughts in their head. Of course there was a reason for the gift.
"Although I did think you might wear it to the ceremony this afternoon," he continued, a pause barely noticeable. "Captain—or I should say, Commodore—Norrington's promotion ceremony."
Emily nodded inwardly, pleased that she had been correct. It was fairly common knowledge, though unspoken, that the governor was hoping to marry his daughter to the upright, rather dashing captain. As a promising member of the Royal Navy and a pirate hunter of some renown, it wasn't too hard to recognize the governor's ambitions for the pair. And recognize Elizabeth did, as was evinced by her small moue of distaste. "I knew it."
Her father gave up any pretense of indifference. "A fine gentleman, don't you think?"
There was no answer. "He fancies you, you know," he added with a touch of fatherly pride in his voice.
Tired of wrestling with the strings, and arms beginning to ache with the effort, Emily gave up with an exasperated sigh. Positioning a foot on the small of her lady's back, she pushed off and used the leverage to yank tight the ties before Elizabeth could do anything but gasp at the sudden constriction. "There," Emily murmured quietly, stepping back with a face reflecting nothing but placid gratification in a task well done. Only later would she giggle madly at the memory of the look of shock on Miss Elizabeth's face.
As she and Estrella, the other apron-clad maid, began slipping the delicately made over-dress past their charge's shoulders, the governor was called to the door. There was a caller waiting in the hall, it seemed. As Governor Swann vanished through the doorway at the summons, Emily's heartbeat sped up in rebellion to common sense, and her fingers slipped at the buttons down the bodice with the thought of who the caller might be.
The dress sword had been the topic of all Will's conversations for weeks now, and as a longtime friend Emily had almost heard more about this commission for Norrington than she ever cared to know. The trials of precisely balancing it, the techniques for folding the steel, endless notes on the captain's fencing techniques and how they would affect the shape of the sword, all poured into her sympathetic ear whenever they met together after church or for dinner.
The blacksmith to whom Will was apprenticed, Master Brown, was a friend of Charles. It was a rather unlikely pairing; Emily had difficulty seeing what the stiff steward could possibly have in common with a drunkard, but according to the knowledgeable Missus Weatherby, Brown had been a master of his craft and a 'gud man' before his wife had died, and Will had confirmed it. Emily herself had no idea. She hadn't ever had a chance to meet Hannah before she passed away—she had arrived from England six months after the sickness had passed through the town. It hadn't been a bad one, as plagues went, but it had taken the eldest and the weakest, and it was said that Hannah had never been strong.
In any case, Master Brown and his apprentice were cordially invited up to the servants' mess in the manor at least once a week, for a warm meal and more sober company. Otherwise, as Will confided, their meals were mainly bread with a great deal of ale to moisten it. Pity, then, and a wish to keep his old friend from drinking himself asleep every night of the week, spurred Charles to make the invitation. Emily couldn't say she minded any chance to see Will. She didn't even mind the times when Charles asked her to take a basket of foodstuffs down to the smithy—not that anyone in the governor's service could ever think of disobeying even a mild request from the authoritative servant. As a result, she had an abundance of opportunities to hear about this sword, and had even—she remembered the incident with a warm glow of pride—been consulted as an authority on fashion and matters aesthetic for the design and amount of gold filigree to be laid into the handle.
Finished with dressing Elizabeth, Emily tugged the lower hem of the new dress straight while Estrella pinned up the girl's curls. Without so much as a nod to the two maids, Elizabeth swept out to the stairs. Emily followed, hastily smoothing and straightening her own clothes, a bit crumpled from kneeling on the floor. She remained on the balcony as her mistress descended, eyes immediately drawn to the sheen of light reflecting from an elegant sword being handed to the governor, and the handsome young man holding it. The governor's words floated faintly up to where she stood.
"A fine piece of work," he praised heartily. "Do pass my compliments on to your master?"
Emily winced at both her master's lack of tact and his unawareness as her friend's face fell. He was so proud of that weapon, and he did like being recognized for his skill. From what she could see, he was completing most of the orders that came into the shop now, from plows to belaying pins. It wasn't much talked around though, out of respect for Master Brown, and apparently Governor Swann wasn't within the circle of townsfolk that were more in touch with such things.
But Will's disappointment vanished—or was at least put aside—as the two men glanced up to see Elizabeth poised on the stairs. Their glances turned to stares, the governor's of approval, Will's of dumbstruck awe. Her eyes only on Will, Elizabeth posed a moment more before gliding down the rest of the stairs, a smile on her face. None of them noticed the maid watching their tableau, or heard the sigh she heaved in resigned observation of the way the lady and the blacksmith looked at each other.
She turned and slipped through a disguised door in the wall, taking the back stairs down to the servants' quarters. She needed to change into her good dress yet; while the governor and his daughter might take the carriage down to the morning church service, the maids and lower servants were walking, and still had the ceremony to attend afterwards.