Blaggard's Moon (58 page)

Of course, she was a mother now. That would likely make a difference.

He had been on watch, him and Lemmer Harps, ordered by Belisar to sit outside the ship's brig where Jenta and her daughter were locked up below decks on the
Shalamon
. He'd approached her first with great wariness, as though she was some magical person, or royalty, someone to whom a small, no-account sailor like Delaney might not even talk. But she was kind, and said hello, and so he said hello back.

“You're staring at me,” she said after a few moments.

“I'm guarding you,” he answered. He stood a little straighter, to better make his point.

“Ain't suppose to talk to the prisoner,” Lemmer Harps reminded him. Lemmer had got there before Delaney, and he had his stool pulled up to
the brig, his back against the bars, his big floppy hands resting in his lap. Relaxing. But he knew Lemmer was right. So he looked around and saw the small stool that the guard before him had used on the last shift, and made a show of moving it around to get it just right, so that she'd know he knew his business, and then he sat facing her. He watched her carefully. So that she'd know she was under guard.

For some reason, this seemed to amuse her. “What's your name?” she asked. Her blue eyes were very kind. She was as beautiful as they said, though dressed now in peasant clothes, like a farmer's wife. But she wasn't a farmer's wife, that was plain. And now at last he knew what “hair like fine sherry” looked like. And it was fine, just as Ham described it.

“Ain't supposed to talk,” Lemmer reminded her. Then to Delaney, “You talk, I got to report ye,” he intoned. “Cap'n's orders.”

Delaney shrugged in her direction, to apologize. She winked.

He blushed.

It was about two hours later, when Lemmer started snoring, that they spoke again.

“What's your name?” she asked again, gently this time.

“I still ain't supposed to talk, ye know.” He eyed Lemmer, whose head was leaned back against the bars, his mouth open. “Rules don't change just 'cause someone else falls asleep.” He said it in a knowing way.

“I don't follow rules very well,” she confessed.

“Me neither,” he replied quickly, but then wondered why.

“Is that your daughter?” he asked. He pointed to the girl who was sound asleep on the bench, with her head on Jenta's lap. She wore a bright yellow sundress. Delaney knew it was Jenta's daughter. He was just being polite. He figured, now that he'd told her he was one to break the rules he'd better break one, if only to show her he was a man of his word.

“Yes. Where are they taking us?”

“I can't say, ma'am,” he said, honestly enough. He didn't know.

“Are they taking us to Conch Imbry?”

He looked at her strangely. “Conch Imbry's been hanged these four years.”

She took a deep breath, and let it out. “That's what the last one said. It's just hard to believe it's true.”

“Oh, they hanged him, all right. Big to-do there in Skaelington.”

She patted her little girl's hair, then stroked it.

Delaney noticed that the daughter had blonde hair. Damrick's was
dark, they said, maybe even black. It was Conch that had yellowish hair. Almost that same color. Delaney didn't know how to remark about that, so he didn't.

“So, you're a pirate?” she asked.

“I'm guarding you, ain't I?”

“You don't act like a pirate.”

He furrowed his brow. “Now, what's that mean?”

“I don't mean to insult you. It's just, you seem like a dear little man.”

“Well, I ain't,” he assured her, and crossed his arms. “Ain't never been dear to no one.” He paused, then added, “Except maybe my own Poor Ma.”

“Your poor ma?”

He brightened. “You know her?”

“I don't think so. What's her name?”

Confused now, he didn't answer. So instead he asked a bold question. “That Damrick's little girl?”

Now she stared hard at him. “Yes,” she said. “Did you know my husband?”

“Of him. Never met him myself. I suppose I'd be dead if I ever did. He didn't take much to folks like me.”

They were both silent for a while. Then she asked, “What was it like to be a pirate, and to know he was out there?” She seemed to want to know, but only to be talking about him. Like she still missed him.

He scratched at an ear. “Oh, I'd been a pirate less than a day when he died. I was up on the wall of the castle…” he trailed off. “Maybe I shouldn't be talkin' about that.”

“You were there? You were in Mumtown that day? You fired on us?”

He sat a moment, then said, “I told you I wasn't a dear man.”

But she didn't seem to mind. “You have questions about me,” she guessed.

He shrugged. “Belisar will give me the lash, I keep talkin' to ye.”

“Not if he doesn't know.” Then she said something he couldn't ignore. “You probably want to know about Captain Imbry's gold.”

Then he knew for sure that she'd been talking to the last guard about it. How else could she guess that? He looked around at Lemmer, who was still snoring. A fly was walking around his chin. It walked right up to his lip, but didn't go in. Rather, it walked back down his chin again. Delaney looked back at Jenta. “Did you keep that map?”

“Map?”

“Aye,” he whispered, leaning in. “The one you stole from Conch's cabin. We heard all about that.”

She said nothing, but her look seemed a bit sly to him.

“When you was in the tin box, and got saved from us shooting at ye, and got yer dress ripped, I always wondered, did ye keep the map, or did it rip away?”

She shook her head, but she didn't seem upset at all. “You have quite an imagination. No part of my gown ever ripped away, that I recall. And I do think I would have noticed.”

“Oh.” He blushed. “That's what I was told.” If Ham would lie about that, what else might he have lied about? Now Ham's whole story was in doubt. “Did you say goodbye to Damrick under the boardwalk? The dock, I mean? Where he died?”

She looked down at her little girl, and stroked her golden hair.

Delaney was afraid the question was too harsh, so he rephrased it. “I was just wonderin' if ye really did choke up and all that, with you tellin' him stories and such just afore he cashed in.” Still too harsh. “I mean, passed out.” But that wasn't right. “I mean passed over.” He turned red. “You know, afore he died away.”

She said nothing, then after a moment she looked back up. She didn't seem angry or upset or anything. “What's your name?”

It was the third time she'd asked. This time he said, “Smith Delaney, ma'am.”

“Some things are private between two people, Smith Delaney.”

“I know that, ma'am.” Ham did know the truth, then, though he'd added some details of his own. Better to ask simple questions, get her mind off all his fumbling around. “How'd you get out a' Mumtown? How'd you get back to Mann?”

“I saw a boat with a ladder, and it seemed like no one was looking, and so I climbed it. But no sooner was I aboard then a man with a blunderbuss appeared from inside the cabin. He was angry. His wife came up behind, glared at me.”

“What'd ye do?”

“I said I needed to get to Nearing Vast. The man and his wife took me. I was very fortunate that they were secretly enemies of Conch Imbry. They hated him, and loved the Gatemen.”

“Good luck that.”

“Before we left, late that night, we went back under the dock. The three of us. We wrapped Damrick in canvas and took him with us.” Her
look was far away now. “I haven't spoken of it but once before, to his father.”

“Ye took him home to bury him?” Delaney asked.

“No. Far, far out to sea, somewhere between the Warm Climes and the City of Mann, we gave him to the ocean. Buried in salt water and tears.”

“Amazin' thing,” he said. It actually wasn't much different than he would have guessed, but he liked to hear it from her and wanted her to know he appreciated it. “So what happened back in Nearing Vast?”

“I asked after Didrick Fellows, of course, and was eventually introduced to those who knew him. They took me to my father-in-law, who worked a tiny farm he'd bought with the gold he earned on his one, last voyage as a freighter. He took me in.”

“As Damrick knew he would.”

She paused, then said, “The next summer I gave birth to Damrick's child, this little girl.”

“Ye named her Autumn.”

She looked puzzled. “Yes.”

“Then Belisar found ye.”

“Four years we had.” Her face seemed drawn. “But I couldn't hide forever.”

“He'd been looking all that time?”

“You tell me, Mr. Delaney. You sail with him. Has he been looking for Conch's gold for four years?”

Delaney knew he had been, though it was the sort of thing that seemed like it should be kept secret. Soon as there was talk of gold, he needed to keep mum. But he remembered well how Belisar had come aboard and taken over the
Shalamon
, and he told her the story.

“I weren't any good at it,” he informed the
Chompers
. Not that he could see them now. He couldn't. But he hoped they were still there. “Never should try and tell a story. Should leave it to Ham and others.” There were many good storytellers in the world, and he'd heard a few. Ham was the best, of course, but on many ships everyone took turns. Delaney didn't like to, and Jenta found out the reason why. He could never seem to get things to come out straight. He'd be sure he had it right, and then she'd ask the craziest question. And then he'd answer it, and she'd ask something else completely odd. Eventually he figured it was probably him, not her, but it was hard to know, when you were the one telling it.

“We flew all ahead flank out a' Skaelington harbor, we did, for the men agreed on that point. But only for a league or two, and then the agreements come to an end. Some wanted to go back for the Conch, some said go get more help. They started arguin' about whether, and there was shouting, then the boys started working out the answers with their knuckles. And then their knives.”

“They fought about the weather?”

“Nah. About going back for the Conch or not. I stayed out of it, 'cause I knowed early on that the answer to that question would be bloody. I was right, too. But only two died, and they didn't want to go to Mumtown. But one who got killed was the first mate, so that's where we went.”

“You went to Mumtown?”

“Aye. Like I jus' said. But anyways, ever' bad thing that can happen asea happened on that voyage. We had shootings and whatnot. Regular hands like Gunner Steep and Boom Saller, who'd sailed with the Conch fer years, they were the worst about always saying what Conch would want, and backing it up with fists or daggers if no one agreed. See, there was no captain or first mate or Mazeley left to step in and send that one to the brig or that one to the grate, so it never got set straight and all stayed catawampus. And then it got bad.”

“It got worse than that?”

“Ye don't know.” He shook his head.

“I guess I don't.”

“There was the lookout who called out seeing a Firefish, which jus' got everybody mad and him going crazy, foaming like a rabid hound and pointing and yelling, but no one believed him but he swore it was so, until they dangled him out over the sea like a worm on a hook and proved it.”

“They proved there was a Firefish?”

“No! That it wasn't no Firefish, just a man hanging from a rope with no beast to eat him. But they let him hang there a good while, and then they draggled him through the water until eventually they pulled him in dead, and they ate him.”

“Who ate him?”

“The sharks, a' course.”

“Oh. Thank goodness. I thought you meant the pirates.”

“It
was
the pirates.”

“The pirates ate him?”

“No! The pirates pulled him in and the sharks ate him.”

“You mean they'd already eaten him?”

“Good bits of him. Anyways, we made port in Mumtown. That was where we knew we'd be safe from Gatemen. At least, everyone but knucklebrains here,” he glanced at the snoring man. “Lemmer, he got ribbed good for the way he shook and muttered as we sailed in. He was fearing that every last Cabeeb would be wearing one a' them leather armbands like what happened in Skaelington. Had nightmares about it, I believe.”

“Poor man.”

“But Mumtown was as it ever was. None of the boys knew what to do there, either, no better'n aboard ship. But instead of fightin' on deck, at least they were fightin' in the pubs. So that was a mercy. Though a few of 'em did land in
Horkan
Meeb's prison. But since they was already pirates, they got out after a day or two, and that's when Belisar the Whale comes in and straightens us all out.” Delaney grew almost cheerful. “He come in from Skaelington in a stole ship, for he'd lost his own recently, and he climbed right aboard and called for the men to gather. It took a devil of a long time to get everyone back from town or jail, but he finally did get most, and he lined us all up, black eyes and bleedin' lips and all, and he delivered the happy news. I remember jus' what he said: