Flint and Silver

Up on the river bank, Mr Charles Neal, a stocky, respectably dressed man, sweated in the oppressive heat, and shoved as close to the edge as he dared to catch Flint’s eye. At once, Flint swept off his hat and bowed low.

“Ah,” said Neal, and raised his own hat. He sucked his teeth and hissed in irritation at the damage to the brigantine’s mainmast. He could see that he would have to replace it before the vessel undertook a proper voyage. He shook his head and wondered if the likes of Flint ever considered the consequences (that is to say, the cost) of damaging so expensive an item as the mainmast of a ship. He supposed not.

“Boy!” he said, summoning the slave who followed him about with a big parasol to keep off the sun. “Best speed now! Run back to the liquor shop. Tell Selena to get out all the best. Every table and chair in the house, and all the girls washed and cleaned. Tell her I’ll be along later with Captain Flint.”

Neal thought of Selena. She would do the job. She was his best girl. For that matter, she was his best man – he laughed at his little joke. She was the only one he could trust. The best of all his people, and she’d been with him only thirteen months, and even she didn’t know how much he now relied on her. It was his good fortune that she had come to Savannah. But then, where else could she have gone? This squalid colonial outpost on the banks of the Savannah River was the only place where she could hide.

The town was no place for a man like Charley Neal, who’d been destined for the Inns of Court (or at least their Dublin equivalent) until his temper and fists intervened. Savannah sweltered and stank. It festered with diseases. Its houses were hovels of rough-hewn timber shared by men, hogs, horses and slaves, all living in a constant shadow of danger from the Indians in the surrounding forests.

Mother of God, thought Neal, it’s worse than a bog-house shit-hole!

But then he shrugged and reflected that here, at least, he did not need to watch his back as he would have done in Ireland. Here, almost everyone was welcome: English, Irish, Scots, Swiss and Germans – even dissenters and Jews – and all were left alone, and none pursued for little sins in past lands. Little sins like the mashing and smashing of a holy Jesuit Father who’d tried to take an unholy interest in one of his pupils.

Only Spaniards were banned outright from Savannah since their king had his own ideas about who owned Georgia and who did not. Spaniards were banned and Catholics very unwelcome, so Cormac O’Neil had trimmed his name slightly, and risked his soul considerably, by affecting the protestant religion. And now, Charley Neal consoled himself that Charles was not the most protestant of English royal Christian names, and hoped that God might forgive him in the end.

More to the point, Savannah was teeming with growth. It was close enough to the Caribbean sugar islands to trade with them – and there were other opportunities too. Very profitable ones, since it was acknowledged that, in Savannah, King George’s law ran only on Sundays. And in the absence of law, business worked excellently on trust. Thus Neal’s dealings with the likes of Captain Flint were conducted on that basis. Flint trusted Neal to receive the ships he brought in and to turn them into cash, while Neal trusted Flint to cut his throat if ever he attempted deceit.

Half an hour later, a roaring crowd of townsfolk arrived at Neal’s liquor shop, following at a respectful distance behind Flint, who was arm-in-arm with Charley Neal himself. The liquor shop was a long, dark timber shed with seating for hundreds on low stools arranged around long tables, with fresh sand and sawdust on the earth floor. There were storerooms attached for the drink, and a cook-house to provide food. At one end stood a row of jugs and barrels from which the drink was served. Here stood Selena in front of a row of girls, mostly black, waiting like gunners at their pieces before battle was joined. Neal looked at Selena as he entered and nodded in approval.

Their eyes met and she nodded solemnly, and without smiling, the little madam, as if he didn’t know all about her.

In fact, he did know all about her. She was a runaway. Worse, she’d committed murder. Selena had turned up on his doorstep with a sack made of bedlinen, crammed with gold and silver items she’d stolen from her master’s “special house”. She had money too, doubtless taken off his dead body when she’d finished shoving a knife in him, or shooting him, or bidding farewell to him by whatever means a slender girl finds to do away with a fourteen stone man. And then she’d got as far as Savannah!

Neal shook his head in wonder. How did a sixteen-year-old manage that? She’d run in the night, with no plan and nowhere to go in all this wild land with its scalping, cannibalistic savages. No doubt she’d bribed and paid her way, either with money or that other currency that God gave women for the temptation of men. That would have been easy enough. She was uncommonly shapely and her face was pretty as a doll’s.

“Ah well!” he said. He was over sixty and not greatly troubled by these things any longer. His passions focused on his strongbox. So he’d taken her into his household, claimed an honest quantity of her money, and made her his own legal property, safely secured with all necessary papers and her life’s history washed clean of all stain.

And now she was amassing her own small pile of gold, running the liquor shop – and running it well. As Charley Neal had anticipated, everything was ready to receive his guests. A host of horn tankards stood deployed like a regiment on parade. Corks were drawn and barrels tapped. The cook was blowing up the ashes of her fire while her helpers sliced the pork and slit the fish, and the shutters of the long windows were thrown open for the air, with shades of sail-cloth braced outside to keep off the sun. In one corner, the house band of musicians were already playing. There were two fiddlers, three pipers, a horn-blower and a mulatto drummer, groaning, twanging and battering away at a pace to set the pulses racing.

Thus entered Flint and Neal, followed by Billy Bones in the company of Mrs Polly Porter, owner of the biggest breasts in Savannah, who never laid down for less than gentlemen or those in possession of a Spanish Dollar. Then came Flint’s officers, his men, and all the lesser folk, until the house was filled to the very limit of its capacity to receive them.

It was instant bedlam. Selena and her girls were run off their feet, dealing with the wants of the mob and keeping eager hands out from under their skirts. Food and drink poured down throats, cash poured into the strongbox. Songs were called for, and roared out to shake the walls. Those who felt capable got up and danced. Men piddled in corners, fights flared and died, hogs scavenged scraps, and here and there a copulation beneath a table caused the pots to shudder above, while folk peered below the planks and urged the amorous couple to go to it.

Selena herself served Neal and Flint.

“Selena!” said Neal, taking his rum punch.

“Mr Neal!” she said, and “Sir!” to Flint, who was handsome, with a most beautiful smile and gorgeous clothes. He was by far the finest man she’d ever seen.

“My dear,” said Flint, looking her over.

Ah ha! thought Charley Neal, spotting advantage. “Be nice to the captain,” he mouthed at Selena. But Selena had other work to do, so this duty passed for the moment.

Meanwhile Selena cast an eye over Flint and his crew – and was fascinated by what she saw. She was surprised at how young they were. Aside from some of the officers, they seemed mostly in their early twenties. They were tanned like old leather, and dressed in their best shore-going rig: white ducks, buckled shoes, coloured shirts and stockings, and silk handkerchiefs bound round the skull. They were tattooed and pierced with gold earrings, and each man bore enough arms to start a small war.

But what marked them out from common seamen even more than the pistols and blades was the fact that every man had the authentic look of trouble about him. Savannah was no place for weaklings, but even by Savannah standards, Flint’s “Chickens” stood out as hard cases. Fortunately, today they were in the best of spirits.

When, after some hours, they managed to drink themselves unconscious and things became quiet again, Flint and Neal withdrew to Neal’s house to discuss business, leaving Selena and her crew to clear up the mess. She was in the storeroom, sorting out full bottles from empties, when a sound made her turn around. Selena jumped when she saw the man. This wasn’t one of the drunken swine from the main room, risen on his hind legs to search for more drink; he was stone-cold sober and his clothes were fresh. She’d not seen him before. And yet she already knew him. Or at least she’d heard of him. Flint and his men were the talk of Savannah, and she’d heard plenty about them from Charley Neal, whose business it was to know what went on among his dangerous clients. These men could have one leader one day, and another on the next. Neal had to be ready for such changes and did his best to keep up with the various plots and rivalries.

So Selena already knew quite a lot – by reputation – about the man who’d just come in. He was very tall, with yellow hair, long limbs and large hands. His face was wide and his eyes large and intelligent. He was remarkably neat and clean, and everything in his manner and bearing told her that here was a man quite out of the ordinary. He looked down into her eyes and smiled.

“John Silver at your service, ma’am!” he announced, and bowed like a courtier, sweeping off his hat.

“Long John!” she said. “You’re the one they call ‘Long John’.”

He smiled again, as if pleased with her.

“The very same, ma’am,” said he. “An’ a smart little thing you are an’ all, to spy me out so quick. Smart as paint, you are, I saw it the instant I clapped eyes on you.” He cocked his head on one side in surprise. “And gifted with the speech of a lady, too! Now I wonder how that might be?”

Selena shrugged off this potentially dangerous question and threw back one of her own.

“Long John Silver,” she said, “the one that Captain Flint is afraid of?”

“What?” said Silver, surprised. “And where should a pretty little thing like yourself hear such wicked lies?”

“From the trash in there,” she said, glancing towards the big room with its stupefied inhabitants. “They say you were great friends once, but he’s afraid of you now.”

“Ah, well, there we have it,” he said, nodding wisely as if perceiving some happy explanation of what had seemed like bad news. “ ‘Tis clear that some of the poor lads …” he ticked off names on his fingers: “George Merry, Mad Pew, Black Dog and some others …” He frowned and shook his head like a parson reflecting on favourite pupils who can never quite get the catechism right. “And even Mr Billy Bones himself … ‘Tis plain that some o’ my shipmates just cannot keep a hitch on their jawing tackle, once the first bottle has gone down.”

But then his smile came back and he reached out a long arm and patted Selena’s bare shoulder in avuncular fashion.

“So there y’are, my dear. Weren’t no cause to believe none o’ them. Not at all.”

Selena frowned in her turn and shook off his hand. She didn’t follow the logic of his argument, nor really what he was talking about.

“But whilst we’re on this tack,” said he, genuinely curious, “just what were those lubbers a-saying about old Long John? And why in heaven’s name should Joe Flint be afeared o’ me?”

“Because you want to take the ship from him,” she said, repeating what she’d heard from a score of drunken lips.

“Shiver me timbers!” said Long John, staggering back with every convincing show of horror and amazement. “Me heart fair bleeds to hear of such wickedness from so sweet a child as yourself.” He grinned and shook his head. As far as Long John Silver was concerned, there was no captain other than Flint, whatever might be the gossip on the lower deck, and whatever Flint’s little weaknesses.

But then Silver moved a pace closer and ran his hand lightly down her cheek. She twitched away as she realised that he only wanted what all the others wanted. She tried to slip by him, but he was too quick and kept between her and the door.

“I can prove my loyalty to the dear captain,” he said, manoeuvring her into a corner, “for if I had wanted the ship, then … why, I’d have took her!” He seized Selena’s wrists and pulled her close. “For I’m a man as takes what he wants, my dear.”

“But you can’t!” she said, once more quoting from the drunken gossip of Flint’s men. “Because you can’t set a course, not with charts and quadrants and dividers.”

Silver’s face worked horribly as Selena’s words stuck a red-hot iron right into his most tender, most shameful, and most agonising weakness.

“Can’t I?” he snapped.

“No!” said she. “You can’t, because it’s gentleman’s work, which Captain Flint can do because he is a gentleman!”

“Flint?” he choked. “Flint … is … a … gentleman?”

“Yes,” she said. But he did not reply. The spasm of laughter was so uncontrollable that he could barely breathe, let alone speak.

Chapter 6 (#ulink_aede7ccf-0073-546c-b070-518f1237bc98)