Yet all was not gold and excitement here. I noted a number of men missing legs or arms or hands, men with patches over an eye, with fingers missing, with faces twisted by scars. These were the casualties of piracy and the sea, those who did not go down to Davy Jones’s locker or fiddler’s green, who did not walk the plank or dance from a yardarm but who had been so maimed that they went no more to sea, although many an injured man did if he was a known gunner or the like. A good gunner was literally worth his weight in gold.
I stopped by one such, who sat on a bollard looking at the ships. “A fair evening to you,” I said.
He was a stalwart, sun-browned man of forty-odd years, looking hard as a knot of oak but minus a leg and a hand. His eyes were glassy blue and uncomfortable to look upon, and I trusted him not even though he had but one hand.
“It may be,” he said grimly. “I’ve no seen the bottom of a glass yet.”
“You may see the bottom of several,” I said, “if you’ve news of the Abigail.”
“Ah? The Abigail, is it? I don’t know your lay, nor can I make you out by the cut of your jib, but I’d say a canny man would have nothing for the Abigail. That’s a cool lot aboard there.”
“They are,” I said, “and friends of mine. They are due to come into port, and I’d like to know when, for I am to sail with them.”
“Sail? Aye, there’s a good word! Once I swore I’d never off to sea again, but now that I cannot find a berth, I’d give an eye to be aboard a good ship now, with a prize in the offing. But they’ve no place for me.” He held up the stump of an arm. “Look, man! Eleven year at sea and never more than a scratch or two, and then one ball from a Long Tom and flying wood, and I am torn to bits.”
“You’re lucky you made it,” I replied. “Many do not.”
“It depends on the view.” He looked out over the water, then spat viciously into it. “I am a proud man, and one who worked hard and who fought well, damned well. Now all is gone and only to wait for dying.”
“Nonsense!” I said irritably. “You’ve one hand and two eyes, and you look to have been a sharp man. Such a man should find something he can do, can make, can be. If you quit at this, it’s because you’ve no guts in you.”
He glared. “It is easy to talk. You’re a whole man.”
“Easy it is,” I agreed, “but in your spot I’d not quit. There’s always something.”
From my pocket I took a gold coin. I showed it to him. “If I gave you a shilling,” I said, “you’d buy a drink or several, but if I give you this, you could live a month on it if you did not drink. It will give you time to look about and use your head for something besides hanging those gold rings on.”
“Who do you want killed?” he asked, glancing at the coin.
“I want an eye kept out for the Abigail and any report of her, and when it comes, take the word to Augustus Jayne. He will pass it to me. My name is Kin Sackett—”
“Sackett? Aye, I know that name! I knew a bloody tough man by the name once, a long time back. Saw him whip our skipper in the street. Whipped him well, he did, and easy as that. His name was Barnabas Sackett.”
“My father,” I said.
“Aye, you’ve the look of him, though taller, I think. Well, I should have sailed with him but didn’t. The Abigail, is it? All right, I’ll keep a weather eye out for her.”
He reached a hand for the gold coin, and I slapped it in his palm. “I’d have done it for the shilling,” he added. “I’m that hard up.”
“I know you would have,” I said, “but look about, see what you can find. There’s many a berth ashore for a man who kens the sea. So find it.”
So I walked away from him along the shore, and it was not until then that I realized it was almost dark. Shadows had found their way into the streets and lingered there, waiting the chance to rush out and engulf even the alongshore.
It was time I was getting back, but a sound of music drew me, and I went up the shore toward a place where the sailors were, and in the door I lingered, looking on at their gambling and carousing. A burly, bearded man grasped my arm. “Come! A drink! A glass of rum for old times’ sake!”
“Old times?” I smiled at him. “What old times? I never saw you before.”
His grin revealed a missing tooth. “So? Who cares? It is for old times we both have had, old times we should have had! Come! A drink?”
He thrust his way through the crowd, and amused, yet reluctant, I followed. It was a noisy, not unfriendly crowd, and many seemed to know him, for they shouted invitations at him. Resolutely he shook his head and went on until we found a table in a corner.
“Rum? It is a raw, bold drink. Not bad, either, if aged. But we will have something else, you and I, for I know you now whether you know me or not. I know you, lad, and it is a bit of the German you will have, a delicate wine from Moselle.”
“You can get it here?”
He looked over his shoulder at me from under bushy brows, beginning to gray. “Aye, you can have that and whatever you wish. It’s me whose standing for it, too, get that in your head.”
It was a bare plank table, and the benches on either side were crudely made. It was a rough place, thrown roughly together for a rough trade. A big man brought a bottle to the table, but my host waved it away. “White wine from Moselle, a good wine, a delicate wine.”
“For you,” the waiter said grudgingly, “although we’ve little enough on hand.”
When the waiter had gone, he looked across the table at me. For the first time I looked at him, to really see him. He would be thirty pounds heavier than me and four inches shorter, but little of the weight would be fat. His beard was dark and streaked with a bit of gray. His face was brown, wide and strong, with contemptuous, amused eyes, as if all he saw about him was ironically amusing. His hands were thick and powerful, hands that had done a lot of work and some fighting, too.
“Put it down that we’re two ships that pass and show our flags and each goes on his way. I like the way you carry yourself, lad, and I’m not one to drink alone nor talk to myself, although God knows it is all there’s been a time or two.”
He looked at me sharply. “You’re no seafaring man, although you could be. Are you here for long?”
“A day or two more,” I said.
I’d chosen the seat in the corner, and he sat opposite, but neither had a back to the room, for we sat in a sort of corner off the main room.
“Where are you for, then?”
“Plymouth. It’s a place on the coast of what was once part of Virginia. They be calling it New England now, or they are starting to.”
“Aye, I know the place. A psalm-singing lot, isn’t it?”
“That’s the latecomers. The first ones were an easier folk.” The wine bottle was cold and the wine nicely chilled. He filled my glass, then his. “Yet it is not my country. I live in the mountains in the west of Carolina.”
He shrugged. “Names! I have heard them used but know nothing of the land. How do you live?”
“We hunt. There is much wild game. We plant crops. It is a wild, beautiful land.”
“Savages?”
“Aye, if you wish to call them so. They have their own way of life, which is good for them. I could live it, although I should miss books.”
“Ah! There speaks a man of my own heart! I sensed it in you.” He lifted his glass. “You would not guess, but twenty-odd years ago I studied at Cambridge and was nearly always at the head of them all. I was destined for the church.”
“What then?”
He shrugged again. “What? A woman. I was young, and she was older but not wiser. We were discovered together … Nothing had happened, worse luck, for we were not believed, and her husband set some ruffians on me to kill me.”