Once more, I don't own Shakespeare. Cora just seems to be addicted to him.
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Chapter Four
Port of Call
in which respects are paid
Four bells in the darkness, and Jack Aubrey's innate sense of time told him it was two in the morning. He lay wide awake in the darkness, his body still slack with sleep, and felt the wooden world of the Deliverance shudder around him. She was starting repeatedly, griping at her course and veering uneasily from the wind. His body roused he rose from his hammock and pulled on his boots and coat; it was uncommon cold.
The deck was utterly dark. A few clouds scudded across the moon and stars, unable to stop their light entirely, for scarcely a light was necessary on deck. He could make out the entire watch without squinting his eyes. His eye drifted naturally towards the rear of the ship and saw with some surprise that it was the captain at the helm. She'd removed her hat and coat and seemed very much at ease. When he looked closer, he realized her eyes were closed.
"Good morning, Captain."
Jack couldn't help but start at the gravelly voice behind him. He turned to see an old sailor with side-whiskers leering at him, drinking from an ornate canteen. He recognized him as one of the prisoners from the Surprise and immediately made up his mind to dislike the man for cheating death.
"Good morning to you, sir."
"Joshamee Gibbs is the name. Bosun, quartermaster, cox'n... whatever you need me for."
"Are you needed at the helm? Your captain seems in need of relief."
Gibbs glanced at the helm and for a minute his forbidding face softened in a smile.
"She's always so happy up there. Born to these waters. She can sail 'em in her sleep, like she seems to be doing now."
"Perhaps someone should wake her. It would appear our wind is dying."
"Aye, so it is, and it takes a strong wind to keep this ship alive. I'll drop our studdings'ls and raise the royals and she'll pull us into Normandy a little later today, so we might pay our respects."
"To whom?"
"The dead." He raised his canteen to his lips and took another drink, as if in saluting.
Jack was uncertain precisely where the resemblance lay, but he was reminded of Killick as he stood beside the grey old sailor. The realization brought a twinge of longing into his breast- a longing for a ship of his own where he might be woken every day by the steward's angry grumbling. Not that it wasn't nice to travel with old Tom for a bit, to get away from land and all its pressing needs (debt knocking at his door again, Mrs. Williams worse than ever, the barmaid's child that looked enough like Jack to have Sophie in a tizzy) but he wanted so very much to be a captain in his own right once more.
"Ye'd best be heading below again, Captain," Gibbs said, mocking him without ever knowing he did so. "The men won't take kindly to being gawked at."
"I suppose that's the reason their captain sleeps at the helm."
Gibbs's eyes hardened.
"Is she tells me her ears have been buzzing, I'll tell her it's you that was talking about her. That's the last thing she needs, after-"
"Pass the word for Mr. Gibbs. Raise studdings'ls and set royals."
Gibbs left to his captain's call without ever taking his leave of Jack. He stood amidships, feeling vaguely lost and hating the sensation, until Cora passed by him.
"Miss- Captain Turner, I beg your pardon. It seems so very strange still." He bowed slightly.
"I'd settle quite happily for you calling me Cora at this late sage. I seem to have inherited some quality that gives men a terror of my first name. My grandfather had scarcely begun to call my grandmother Elizabeth at the time of their wedding." She smiled a little. "But I'm for my hammock. Good night, Captain Aubrey."
"Good night."
The conversation felt strangely unfinished as he grappled for the correct name to call her; once she was gone he turned his head to his other conversation, also left to flap open like a hatch in a storm wind. It was quite possible that old Gibbs had meant nothing more than what had happened on the dear Surprise by his last statement, but the same instinct that told him what time it was when he woke told him that this was not the case.
He looked around him and opened himself up to that intuition once more; he could feel the unhappiness in the ship, in Gibbs's defense of her captain, in Anamaria's prompting, and in the way the crew watched her as she left the deck.
You mark this now, Aubrey. Something is afoot.
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"Ah, I see her there. Normandy is abaft us, is she not?"
"Dead ahead, old soul," Jack sighed. "Our wake is abaft us."
Stephen glared at Jack and then put his eye to the glass once more.
"A rather small island, I should think. I wonder what manner of beasts are to be found there. It is more than likely that the wolves the pirates brought killed off most of the indigenous species, and I shall find nothing but cattle and sheep and homo sapiens. I say, Jack, the lens of this glass is quite scratched up. Ought you not buy a new one while we're in port?"
"The moment I have a ship I shall. I must've looked a scrub aboard the Renown, always asking the mids to borrow their glass. Tom tried to make me a gift of one of his, but I couldn't bring myself to accept it."
"Nor could I if I were you, joy." Stephen said kindly, giving back the wounded glass to its equally injured owner, and wishing there was something he could do to repair them both. "I know how difficult it has been for you to come by a command."
"Unless it's been through your connections. Not that I am ungrateful, not in the least degree at all."
"I understand your meaning. Never fear. I only wish the Admiralty would stop snubbing you for something that happened seven years ago."
Jack's career had just barely survived the fact that he pardoned Cora and let her go free- she didn't even have a belly to plead as Anne Bonnie and Mary Read had. In hindsight Stephen realized that she had, although none of them had known it at the time. Briefly he contemplated bringing it up in private with one of his connections, and then he discarded the notion; it would do little to improve Jack's case if he said that the pirate he'd pardoned was pregnant with his surgeon's child when he pardoned her.
They lapsed into silence. The deck was awash with midmorning sun and the off-watch had appeared on it to join their fellows in various games. Dice and cards abounded, and Stephen sensed Jack's disapproval; Cora had been fair in admitting that they made their allowances to naval rules when her family adopted them. Another group stood apart from these small clusters; Gibbs, Anamaria and another sailor were playing tops with Dominic. Stephen's eyes drifted irresistibly to him in the silence.
Then that silence was shattered with oaths and the slithering sound of swords drawn. Both their eyes flew to the furthest group of sailors and saw two of them with cutlasses out feinting and dodging, clearly reading for a fight over an unfair toss of dice.
Stephen had to put his hand on Jack's to prevent him from rushing to stop it; the urge to command was strong in him, but this was for the ship's real captain to decide. He wanted to see how she would handle it, curious to know how a woman who'd never had a sense of her own worth would feel under the yoke of command.
Said woman was produced moments later by the call of her first mate. The men had already been separated and she strode across the deck with amazing calm. Jack and Stephen joined the large cluster forming around her.
"What's all this?" She asked when the perpetrators were held before her, bloodied and sweating and not looking very guilty at all.
"A dice game gone awry. They were both prepared to kill." Anamaria said.
Every man on deck- even Dominic, who'd wormed his way to the front of the crowd -waited with baited breath for the verdict. Cora stood silently in their midst, hardly breathing herself. Yet she didn't seem lost in thought. Instead she seemed hesitant.
"What will be their punishment?" Anamaria prompted, as before, like a schoolteacher waiting for the answer to a simple question.
"No rum." She turned and started to walk away. Another difference they'd noticed immediately, of course, was that nothing less than pure rum was tolerated by the crew.
"For how long?" The dark woman called.
"Until we reach Alameade." She kept walking.
"That be all for drawing cutlass on your ship with a mind for murder?"
Cora stopped at last and turned to face her first mate.
"Work them double tides for the rest of the voyage as well. They are to be kept in separate messes and banned from all card games."
"Is that all, captain?"
A strained pause followed. All eyes turned to the captain.
"Yes, that is all."
She disappeared back into her cabin.
The crew shifted back into their spots but there was no longer so much noise. Cora appeared after one bell to change the trim of her sails and they seemed relieved with an order to carry out. She reappeared once more after another bell and collected Dominic from Gibbs and Anamaria.
"Go and fetch your sextant, it's time for the noon observation." She said.
"Very like the Navy indeed." Jack said. Her eyes flickered to him but she said nothing.
Dominic reappeared shortly and Cora guided him slowly through the same exercise Stephen had seen midshipmen go through countless times. It was at once comforting and unsettling; it belonged to another world, to the Navy's world, and Stephen had never ceased to think of Cora as a pirate. It wasn't with spite or disapproval. It was simply what she was.
Watching Dominic Stephen strained to see something of himself in him; he was clearly wedded to the sea, as Cora was, but was this a product of birth or of rearing? It was more likely than not that his interest in the natural studies was Cora's doing, an attempt to plant something of Stephen in his son. And if it was, what did that say about her feelings for him? He dismissed the thought just as it was made noon.
"You performed the observation just as well as any midshipman I've ever seen," Jack praised as Dominic passed by him. "What else has your mother taught you?"
Dominic led him eagerly away to put him through a long discussion of every piece of the ship he knew; Stephen found a moment to be glad that he hadn't inherited his lubberliness, which until now he had assumed was an inherent trait.
He realized that Cora had remained beside him at the taffrail, once their sacred haunt, only as she was turning to walk away. Without stopping to think about the motion he reached out and caught her hand, pulling her back. For a frozen moment they stood there, staring at the connection of their bodies and wondering where precisely they went from there.
Stephen dropped her hand and she didn't move away, and only when their eyes met did he remember to speak.
"I'd wondered if you had time to take a walk with me." As we used to.
"There is nothing pressing. I don't see why not. Why don't we go up to the mizentop and get a better view of Normandy?"
Stephen imagined the high, cramped space, finding himself so close to her and unable to touch her.
"I'm afraid I'd only slow your climb."
"Well, we could simply... sit here I suppose. Or we could take a walk in the hold, down to the orlop- why did I suggest that?" She turned and seemed ready to walk away, then held herself and turned back to him. "God damn it all, Stephen, I have never been able to speak properly around you."
She walked away and he followed. They moved to the starboard rail and walked along it, mostly silent.
"What color are Dominic's eyes?" He asked at last. "I haven't found the opportunity to look. It was hard to tell when we met."
"Blue." She answered after hesitating. "I thought they might be like your eyes when he was born- they were so very light -but now they're blue. The palest shade of blue I've ever seen." Another pause. "He freckles like you, sometimes, if I let him out in the sun without his shirt."
They reached the bow, and stood there feeling the spray.
"You've kept his hair long."
"All the men in my family have. I thought yours was a little strange when we first- but then when I touched it for the first time I- oh, hell."
They kept walking. They were on the larboard rail amidships when a sailor ran to them.
"Begging your pardon, Captain, but it's Dominic."
Her face darkened immediately. "What's happened?"
"He's-"
"Look, Momma!"
All three heads swiveled up to see a small boy clinging to the mainmast. Jack was nowhere to be seen.
"Dominic, come down here." Cora called.
"I'm going to climb to the topgallants Momma, all the way up!"
"Come down now, Dominic. You remember what happened last time. You only got halfway up and then I had to come and get you."
He continued to climb.
"Shouldn't you simply bring him down now?" Stephen asked. Cora sighed.
"He has to learn. Besides, it gives me heart knowing you'd be here to patch him up if he did fall. It gives me heart." She repeated more softly as they continued to walk.
Stephen saw the man coming first and seized Cora, pulling her out of the way and leaving the rolling drunk to crash into the rail. He grinned toothily at them, collected the pair of dice he'd run after, and returned to his game.
He'd caught her around the waist and for the briefest of instants the full line of their bodies touched. Then they heard Anamaria's strong voice berating the sailor and stopping his rum for the remainder of the voyage- "More for the rest of us!" Was the last they heard before she was upon them and they were a respectable distance apart.
"Captain, I must speak with you. Something funny happened with our stores in Port Royal."
"I'm glad we're docking at Normandy then, so we can rectify it. What seems to be amiss?"
"It's not that we're missing anything- just come and see to the accounts with me."
Cora gave Stephen an apologetic look and left. Apparently the Service wasn't the only thing with requirements.
He remained where he was for the moment, watching the island in the distance growing steadily closer. He was in danger of losing himself in his own mind when he felt the roll of the sea change and strengthen and heard the sharp cry.
"Momma."
Dominic's frantic cries were joined by those of other sailors. Some were shouting for sailcloth to catch him in, others for the captain. Stephen ignored them all. He shot up the mainmast to the boom where the boy was dangling faster than he'd ever climbed before. He didn't have to prompt Dominic to take his hand; the boy curled himself around his torso as securely as a sloth.
"You're safe now." He whispered, one arm around Dominic and the other tight around the mainmast to steady them against the roll of the sea below them. "Never fear. You're safe."
"I want to go see Momma." He managed to say through his tears.
Stephen tried not to feel a twinge of jealousy at the words. He was soothed only by the fact that when he asked Dominic if he wanted to climb down himself or not he shook his head and clung more tightly.
"I'll stay with you."
His descent was far slower and less graceful than his ascent had been. He'd ignored the roll and swell of the sea that had put Dominic of his balance in the first place when he raced up, and now he found himself sweating and doubting his footholds. Luckily several sailors met him halfway up- "We'll take the boy, sir, no harm done," -he turned them down on this offer but was grateful for their guidance and ready hands as he completed their descent.
Cora was already waiting along with the greater part of the crew when he set Dominic down at last. He felt strangely cool where the small boy had clung to him; he had an impression of wiry strength, very like Stephen's own, in the little frame.
"Is he unharmed, Doctor?" Cora asked, trying to keep the tremble from her voice.
"Yes." He kept Dominic's hand in his.
"My thanks, Doctor, for saving him."
"It was no trouble." With that, he released his son.
Dominic ran to Cora but she wouldn't let him embrace her. Instead she took his hand and very quietly led him to the great cabin.
Anamaria instinctively took control of the deck and ordered everyone back to their places. Stephen was left adrift by the mainmast and finally went back towards the quarterdeck. It was on his way there that he happened to glance into the ajar door of the great cabin, where he saw the captain on her knees clutching her son and trying not to cry as she soothed his own tears. It occurred to him that as they had both held Dominic that close in the past five minutes it was as though he were a connection between them; it was also as though he was the one thing keeping them apart.
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Eight bells and the first dogwatch began. The sailors filed back onto the Deliverance, shore leave filling their head with thoughts that carried them far away from the terror on the mainmast at noon. It had drifted in and out of Stephen's head all the rest of the day as he wandered over Normandy, especially when he found the small wolf pup crying pitifully in the jungle. She gnawed on his finger now and squirmed against his side as he waited for her new caretaker to arrive.
He had no time to give her away at first, since several sailors that came aboard had been involved in a bar fight and required his attention. Some of their fellows had worn flowers in their hair, and privately he noted down them down to prepare himself for the inevitable venereal diseases.
Half the crew was at their dinner and roaring with merriment when he left the orlop for the great cabin, a book in one hand and a wolf in the other. He knocked and only faintly heard a voice calling for him to enter.
Dominic's miniature hammock swung empty and the boy was nowhere in sight, but his mother was. Cora sat slouched in a chair, a book in one hand and a bottle in the other. She didn't turn to acknowledge him until she'd taken a healthy swig from the latter.
"I see you've found another wolf for dear Dominic. Perhaps this one will be Tybalt."
"I should think not, seeing as that this wolf is a she."
"Ah. Juliet then? No, I shall persuade him to name her Viola. Her tale has a much happier end." She raised her book as if in illustration.
"Twelfth Night?"
"Yes indeed.
Good madonna why mourn'st thou?
Good Fool, for my brother's death.
I think his soul is in hell, madonna.
I know his soul is in heaven, Fool.
The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul, being in heaven."
She smiled bitterly, put down the book and took another drink. Stephen noticed that her cheeks were rosy, and not just with alcohol. They gleamed wetly in the candlelight. "I saw my grandparents when I went to visit the old Wolfe mansion. My uncle Matthew died the day we left for Alameade. They brought him here to be buried beside his wife. They've lived to see their great-grandson, but they've had to bury two sons along the way. I pray to any god that will listen to spare me that fate. I doubt they'll listen.
"My family seems to be very good at dying. I'll bet you my sister Ashli is dead too. I know she escaped prison in Port Royal, but where has she been? Not with me. She could never speak to the woman who destroyed us all."
Stephen set his book down beside hers, found a chair and sat at her side.
"I'm afraid all I have to offer are condolences. Perhaps you should try and take the advice you have just read to me. Give me that," He said softly, indicating the bottle.
Cora handed it to him and he set it on the floor beside him. It didn't matter if it spilled; it was already mostly empty.
"I'm so glad you've come to see me, Stephen. If it was anyone else I'd have to be the captain and hold myself in one piece. With you I can be my wonderfully unraveled self. I was going to invite you to dinner tonight, you know. And Jack too."
"You don't appear to be in any state to entertain, my dear. For you I suggest a meal and rest."
"I'm sorry I won't be able to entertain tonight," She sighed. "I very much detest being alone."
It stole over him, as strangely as in a dream, with the memory of a frightened young boy clinging to him in the backdrop. He scarcely knew what he was saying, but knew that once it was out of his mouth he would regret it forever.
"It is strange," Stephen replied. "To think that one who professes to hate loneliness should never reach out for comfort in seven years."
Her face, dreamy and sorrowful before, turned instantly into a snarling mask of range.
"Get out."
He left, feeling little joy at the blow he'd snuck at her, and hating himself all the more knowing that he had been guilty of the same crime.
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A/N-- I swear, I have no idea what is up with Shakespeare and Cora right now. They must be having an affair in my head. I've got every copy of his plays in my house lying on my desk. But hey, if it keeps the muse going I'll go with it, and I just wrote two chapters straight.
Reviews, bitte? Thanks to silverwolf of the night, Fuchsia II and Oriana8 for their thoughtfulness! School just started for me, so more reviews will guilt me into continuing to write more.
