I pouted and stuck out my lower lip while I balled up a fist. “Mistrust? August Talbot, if you have signed on with a ship of pirates, you are bound to hang as a criminal!”
He grabbed my shoulders and inclined our heads together, whispering, “Not pirates, Ressie. Privateers. Your feet stand upon the deck of the Falls Greenway, as true a sloop as ever sailed, contracted by the Crown to lay waste to them that scuttle her goods and profits. And I shall be rich before long and take back all that was stolen from us and more!” A breeze ruffled August’s hair, sticking out like feathers from a knitted Monmouth cap, the type worn by many of the men.
“Well, then. Well. If you are one of the sailors, then, master seagull second class, I wish to go home.”
“Nah. We’re headed north to the American colonies.” As he spoke he looked about himself as if he were now the proud owner of his own rig called Falls Greenway. “That ship you left behind was bound for Port Royal. There you’d be sold like any common slave and it’s a rum time you’d have of it. The quartermaster is watching for a ship to take. These three and their longboats—I mean, we call them snows—work together, you see, for the common good. We’ll surround her—Spanish, I think, more’s the gold—and the three will take her. I am to truss the tops’l if it’s called to me.”
“Port Royal! It is the other side of the island. Over the mountain to home! I would escape and get home to Ma.” I raced to the side and held fast to one of the pins. “I want to go home!” I cried aloud. The ship rolled. A gull squawked overhead and landed on the railing next to the table where the food sat. The bird dared to take a dash at the soup pot and left a splat of filth on the table, barely missing the open pot.
August cast his eyes around us. “You would drown. Do not even think of escape.”
Not think of escape? I pulled the shore closer with my eyes. “How far away are we now from Port Royal?”
August said, “Port Royal? Why, this ain’t Jamaica. This be Hispaniola. I told you we’re lying in wait. Our scouts have just returned. A Spanish brigantine be bound here before long and they’ll surround her. I hope we see some guns firing.” A light came from my brother’s eyes when he spoke. Sea madness had taken him.
“Like they did to us?”
His face sobered. “Well, and aye.”
Tears came then, running down my face and chin. “You’ve struck your lot with freebooters and picaroons. What about me? What about Patey? How shall we get home?”
“There’s nothing left there. Did not Pa always say to make the best of things? Keep it in your cock-hat that we’re bound for the northern colonies.”
A sailor had approached us unawares and now his shadow engulfed August’s form. “Get away from there. Sop’s thataway.” He jerked his head toward the table.
I recognized the voice. I suppose because of that I hoped for a moment for mercy from the man. My eyes gathered the spectacle of him from his boots to his coat and tricorn hat and my mouth dropped open. His clothes were different, his manner, too, but I knew him. We stood in the shadow of Rafe MacAlister.
“Aye, aye,” August said, and he darted away, with that foolish, boyish, duck-footed run he has. A pirate boy is my bonny brother. Well and aye, then. Uncle Rafe might have been looking upon me with disdain, I was not sure. That was one of those things that was hard to measure, for grown people always lie to children about whether they like them. No matter, for my ability to despise Rafe MacAlister had long ago grown to full breadth. Now that I found him here in the company of privateers, I knew I had been right to loathe him, and I kept my eyes away from his as I joined other captives at the soup kettle. Perhaps he had been the one to trick August into signing the ship’s articles, too. Not until I had a bowl in my hands and could appear preoccupied did I chance to turn and look at him. But the man was gone. As for August, I promised myself that if I should see him again I would tear out his eyes.