Flint and Silver

“Cap’n, sir?” said Flint, rapping his knuckles on the spar that acted as a tent post.

“Uh? What?” said Springer, starting out of his doze. Flint nudged Billy Bones and nodded his head quickly towards the empty bottles under Springer’s hammock. Bones leered back. They’d become very familiar, these two.

“Sorry to disturb you, Captain, sir,” said Flint, advancing into the tent with a paper rolled up in his hand.

“Damn you, you bloody sod,” said Springer with reddened eyes. “Whassit now, you rat-piss streak of piddle?” He reached for a pistol that he kept by him and cuddled its heavy brass butt.

Flint saw the movement and smirked. Springer’s face swelled and his teeth ground together. He hated Flint beyond reason, and the more so because he didn’t know why. But his fingers twitched and lay still. He was a law-abiding man, incapable of putting a pistol ball through another officer in cold blood. Anyway, he was half asleep, half drunk, and having trouble keeping awake.

“Here’s the chart, sir,” said Flint, displaying the finished map of the island. “You’ll see I’ve taken the liberty of naming the prominent features: Spy-glass Hill, Mizzenmast Hill, North Inlet, and so on.” He pointed with his finger: “And here, sir, you can see that there is a better harbour than this, to the south.” He nudged Billy Bones again, craftily so Springer could not see. “But, of course, we never got the chance to try it.”

“Damn you, you whore’s whelp … you walking abortion … you …” Springer mumbled on and Flint spoke over his incoherent curses.

“I’m glad you approve of the chart, sir,” he said sarcastically. “For it was drawn entirely by myself.”

He rolled up the chart and produced another paper showing the lines of the little sloop that the carpenter’s men were building. “But that is not why I am here, sir, disturbing your rest.” He made a show of presenting the plans to Springer. “Here’s our little Betsy, sir. She’ll be sixty tons, two masts, sweet as a nut, and able to bear six guns.” He flicked a glance at Billy Bones, then continued: “Six guns and maybe forty men. Fifty at the uttermost, sir. We cannot build her bigger.”

“Damn you …” murmured Springer and fell completely asleep.

“So most of the people must stay on the island, sir …” said Flint, making a pantomime of deference to the unconscious Springer, “… while Betsy sails to bring rescue to those who remain.”

It was the plain truth and Flint had known it from the moment he and the carpenter had designed the new vessel. There was only so much that make-and-mend initiative could achieve, and some of Elizabeth’s timbers were rotten besides. The carpenter had been sworn to silence under pain of death at Flint’s own hand, should the secret leak out, plus the promise of being one of those to be embarked in the new ship.

But it would eventually become obvious to even the stupidest among the crew that there would not be room for all of them aboard Elizabeth’s child. Any decent officer would therefore have summoned his men, given them the truth at once, and trusted to their good nature as seamen to understand that there simply was no other way forward. And any decent crew would have understood. But Lieutenant Joseph Flint had fallen so deeply into temptation that he was now driven by quite another logic than that which applied to decent officers who led decent crews.

“Thank you, sir,” said Flint, as Springer – lost in sleep – snorted and gargled like a hog. “Bah!” said Flint. “Will you just look at the swab?” He plucked out the pistol from under Springer’s hand and turned to Billy Bones. “Give me your chaw, Billy,” he said.

“What?” said Bones, his brow furrowed in puzzlement.

“What, sir!” said Flint. “Just spit out your chaw, at the double now.” Flint held out his hand.

“Me chaw?” said Bones, tested beyond comprehension. “Into your hand, sir?”

“Spit!” said Flint. “Now!”

“Aye-aye, sir!” said Bones. He’d seen the look in Flint’s eye and dared not disobey. So he leaned forward and spat out a plastic gob of black-brown tobacco, sticky and slimy with saliva. It splattered into the palm of Flint’s hand. Flint smiled without the least sign of disgust. He squeezed and moulded the tobacco to his liking, then he filled half the barrel of Springer’s pistol with sand, and rammed the sticky plug of tobacco down on top of it as a wad. Finally he deftly replaced the pistol without waking Springer.

“There,” he said quietly as he wiped his hands on Billy Bones’s shirt. “Just in case he ever gets the courage, eh, Mr Bones?”

“Aye-aye, sir,” said Billy Bones.

Then they walked out again into the fierce heat and the high, blazing sun.

“We’ll set them building the blockhouse tomorrow, Billy-my-chicken,” said Flint, “and you can let the word out among the people that Captain Springer is going to abandon them.”

Billy Bones licked his lips. He blinked and trembled. He muttered and groaned. He summoned every grain of his courage … and he ventured to dispute the matter.

“Bugger of a risk, this mutiny, begging your pardon, Cap’n,” said Bones, instinctively adding that last word – the supreme honorific of his vocabulary – in the hope that it might protect him. It was an arm raised in anticipation of a blow.

“Billy-boy, Billy-boy,” said Flint in a peculiar soft voice, without ever giving Bones so much as a glance, reaching instead to pet the green bird that clamped its claws in his shoulder and chuckled and nuzzled his ear. “Don’t ever question my orders again. Not so long as you wish to live. Do you hear me?”

Billy Bones was armed equally as well as Flint with pistols and cutlass. He was the bigger man, being taller and broader in the chest. He was a man in the prime of his strength and was used to keeping discipline over the scum of the lower deck. But he gulped and swallowed in terror, he bowed his head, he shook in fright. Then he took refuge in the seafaring man’s universal safe response to the words of his betters.

“Aye-aye, sir!”

Chapter 7 (#ulink_2c165ead-7817-59f8-af65-12ff6fd4d1ad)

1st June 1752 Savannah, Georgia

As Long John laughed, he took care to keep an eye on the girl. He laughed till his belly ached at what she’d said. He laughed wildly over the thought that – of all the warped and twisted fiends that came in nightmares – Flint might be a gentleman. It was the solemn way she’d said it. It was the innocence of it, God love her, with her plump little arse and her big eyes and her bouncing tits. So even with the tears blinding his eyes, Long John kept a close watch on her, and on the room itself, Charley Neal’s liquor store.

The door was the only way out. The walls were heavily built, with one high window covered by an iron grille to make sure that the liquor did not wander off during the night. Still laughing, Long John kicked the door shut behind him, and leaned himself against it to make entirely sure she’d not escape.

He took these unconscious precautions because Walrus had been months at sea and not a sight of anything female had Long John taken in all that time, and when coming ashore to Charley Neal’s house Long John was as used to making up for lost time as any other seafaring man.

Finally, Long John drew forth a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. He took a deep breath, sighed happily and smiled at Selena, who all the while had kept an even closer watch on him than he had upon her. She was watching and waiting. She knew precisely what was in the man’s mind, and she knew that all the other girls were at that very moment laid on their backs with drunken sailors snoring contentedly between their legs, breeches blown to the four winds and hairy buttocks displayed to the world. She knew too, that each girl would be clutching a fistful of gold, which (after Neal’s percentage) they would keep for their own selves.

“Now then, my girl,” said Silver, “what might your name be? For I’ve taken the most powerful fancy to you, and no mistake!”

The words were true in a constricted sort of way. Long John looked at Selena in the dim light of the hot storeroom and he liked what he saw. The cheap cotton gown was her sole garment and it was thin. It covered her nakedness for decency’s sake, but all the pleasures beneath jutted and curved most appealingly.

“My name is Selena,” she said. “And I’m no whore.” She had made her decision and set down the rules. All she had to do now was enforce them.

“Indeed you ain’t,” said Long John. He smiled and produced a large gold coin. He held it up and turned it so it gleamed and shone.

“It’s no use,” she said.

“Oh?” said Silver, and looked at her afresh. “Aye,” he said thoughtfully, and nodded. “You ain’t like some o’ them dog-faced drabs neither, nor ain’t you neither. You’re quality, my girl. That you are!” He produced another coin. She sneered. He produced a third. There was now more money on offer than Selena could earn in years by any other means.

“I told you, John Silver, it’s no use. I’ve never been a whore, and I’m never going to be one.”

“Oh?” he said, with a sneer of his own. “Don’t tell me there’s been a virgin found in Savannah, for there ain’t never been one yet!”

She blinked, considering her own precise status in that regard, following attentions pressed upon her by a certain Mr Fitzroy Delacroix, who had once been her owner. Long John grinned, mistaking the signs.

“Well, there you are then, my little bird,” he said. “What was good for them, is good for me. And I ain’t no Jew nor Scotchman when it comes to paying the reckoning.” He flourished his three gold pieces. He set them on a nearby barrel. He thought the matter settled. “This’ll do nicely,” he said, looking round the room. “Private like, and quiet as a church.”

He threw off his hat and pulled his shirt over his head. He was a fine-muscled man: strong in the arms, flat in the belly, with a dominating physical presence. Selena crushed the impulse to run because there was nowhere to go. Instead, she stood her ground.

“I said, I am not a whore!” she cried, with all the force in her body, but she was seized by two powerful hands and hoist up off her feet, her eyes level with his.

“Well then, madam,” said Long John, glancing at the gold pieces, “just what is the price, then?” He grinned. “And don’t I get a little something for what I already laid down?”

He tried to kiss her lips, but she turned her face away. He ran his tongue all over and around the silky black column of her throat. She stayed rigidly still. He gave up. He set her down. He was puzzled and annoyed.

“Beach and burn me, girl!” said Silver. “Just how much d’you expect? You’re a rare fine shaped ‘un, I’ll grant you that, but this ain’t Paris nor London, and you ain’t King George’s mistress!”

“I told you. I’m not a whore!”