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‘Infuriating, isn’t it?’
‘Beg Pardon?’ responds Flint in the fuck-off tone he perfected as a midshipman. Quaffing Canary came later, and he puts his practice to good use as he tips his current glass forward. It slides along his tongue accommodatingly, while the disembodied voice, floating off the starboard quarter, continues to blather.
‘To have him disregard everything you deem valuable. It’s what I’d call infuriating.’
‘Is this meant to be a guessing game, Mister Rackham?’
The acerbity of Flint’s question glances off Rackham’s resolve, for he folds his long limbs into a chair drawn up along broadside to renew his bombardment.
‘By no means. I was speaking of Charles and his habit to be outright dismissive. Hard to argue with a man whose idea of luxury encompasses no more than a wide berth in which to swing a hammock.’ Here Rackham pauses to appropriate the contents of the wine bottle, or would have, if his mouth were not an independent actor propelled by Newton’s leges motus. ‘The man’s more sea spray and spume than flesh and blood. No parents to speak of,’ he continues.
‘And in this story of divine conception, is he Pontos or Venus?’ mutters Flint, if only to offer some resistance to the volley of words.
It is a mistake.
Rackham, having understood the allusion, shines with a light akin to maternal pride.
‘If Guthrie is anything to go by, both, I’d say,’ grins the scoundrel in answer.
The intimacy sets Flint’s teeth on edge. He does not wish a camaraderie with Calico Jack.
‘I fail to see the relevance to myself.’
‘You chose to partner primordial Pontos.’
‘Our aims align.’
‘It’s the misalignment of motive, I was speaking of. You and I want the freedom to recreate king and country, sans king. He wants the freedom to create a world without countries.’
And now that Flint has raised his head from a studied contemplation of the viscosity of his remaining Canary, he sees the king’s fool has proffered these lines with uncharacteristic sincerity, but to what end?
‘What are you hoping to achieve here, Mister Rackham?’
‘An avoidance of pitfalls? A continued armistice? You have to admit that you two have a history of unmatched volatility, and I would avoid a…combustive end.’
‘He saved my life.’
‘He has also tried to take it on occasion.’
And to both their surprise a sound known widely abroad as laughter erupts from Flint’s mouth.
‘Boyish games,’ he says in weak rebuttal.
‘Violent delights will have their violent ends.’
‘And in their triumph die, like fire and powder.’
Which as they kiss consume, hangs unfinished. If Rackham intends to complete the line, the thought is dispersed by a scarred hand, permanently blackened by filth, reaching past his shoulder to seize upon the untouched Canary.
Flint turns in time to see a ragged nail clink against the glass, and an old, slavish sense of propriety makes him shudder at this marriage of heaven and hell.
‘Why you wastin’ time here?’ questions the Scottish she-devil.
‘I’m doing my damnedest to explain Charles,’ says Rackham.
‘What’s to explain? He fights. He fucks. And half the time the one ain’t much different than the other.’
‘Eloquently said, my dear.’
‘Fuck your eloquence. You always gotta complicate what ain’t complicated. Charles is alive, simple as that.’
‘As succinctly put as that was, she isn’t off the mark. You cannot motivate Charles Vane with tomorrows.’
There are many years and nautical miles between the present moment and the drawing rooms of Flint’s past life. Jack Rackham is no bumbling country squire, and Anne Bonny could sooner pass for a climbing boy than a lady. He is freed then from the necessity of excusing himself.
Draining the last sip of Spanish ingenuity, he departs their company without a word, his decampment impeded only by the bumblings of one or two drunkards, which cause him to circumnavigate a table before gaining the door of the Black Dogg. And with enough long strides, the sound of men cavorting in Saturnalian pleasure fades.
Enter not into the path of the wicked…For they sleep not, except they have done mischief.
It is this mischief, more than His Majesty’s navy, which will sink the dream of Nassau. Flint knows this. He knows the quality of the men he has been tasked to lead; a short-sighted breed prone to inebriation and capricious malice, who given the chance would devour him as a lion dines on Christians.
The morose course charted by his thoughts has led him to the water’s edge. There is a temptation to keep on walking, as Christ did in his flight from the crowds of Galilee, only the waves would not similarly buoy him. With the first step, the surf would swirl around his feet, as a harmless caress; another and the Atlantic, so cordial here in comparison to his home waters, would lap at his knees; a third and his clothes would begin to be a burden. Ten steps and he could prove Paul wrong. It is not charity, but the tide which covers the multitude of sins. All manner of depravity can be washed clean, should the Sea drag it down to her depths and there bless it with expungement.
A splash redirects Flint’s attention outwards. Yards away, a form has destroyed the orderliness of the waves. As it stretches skyward, the water parts around it like courtiers scurrying to make way. A prince of Atlantis is coming to shore. The moon has mantled him with silver light, and he emerges with no other attire, as shameless in his nakedness as Adam must have been before the Fall.
‘Captain Flint.’
A greeting requires an answer, but Flint is entranced by the droplets clinging to the raised scar on Charles Vanes’ chest. Rackham’s Pontos has been branded like a criminal, or chattel.
Eyes squinted in assessment pass over Flint and then turn away with indifference. The body follows the head, until it has settled itself beside a bundle of belongings nestled in the sand. Vane makes no move to dress himself, but sits with knees crooked, teeth already uncorking a bottle of rotgut, only to hold it out, offering the first swallow to the intruder on his solitude.
‘Well?’ he invites.
Flint moves to sit beside him in controlled collapse. The rum, when sampled, squeezes his insides in a rough embrace, and its fire lingers on his tongue even as he passes it back.
‘We’re fucked.’
The words have voiced themselves with no consideration for his consent.
‘We were always fucked,’ answers Charles.
The agreement comes so quickly, Flint must retract a half-formed defense. He has forgotten how to converse outside of argument and counterargument.
‘You agree,’ he settles on, uncertainly.
‘I’ve known we were fucked all along. I’ve been waiting for you to play catch up.’
‘Then why….’
‘Why save you? Why fight? What else should we do? Place our necks in the noose for England? It was never about winning, Captain Flint, so long as we make them bleed before the end.’
A calculus of misjudgement works itself out in Flint’s mind, with Rackham’s earlier earnestness slotted into the proof. He has not known the measure of this man because an attempt was never made to know him.
‘Which, if not victory, is yet revenge,’ he muses to himself.
‘Eh?’
‘We’re of one mind, Vane. Here’s to power sufficient to disturb Heaven,’ he says, while holding out his hand for the rum.
‘You have it wrong, Flint, we’re defending Heaven.’
‘James.’
‘James,’ says Charles, accepting the offer of equality like he is sampling a foreign delicacy that doesn’t quite suit his English palate.
‘Charles,’ Flint rejoins.
‘Drink you fucking rum, James.’
And Flint does, wondering if Charles is correct, and if this is not a return to the garden.