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intheheartTitle: Day One
Rating: PG-13 for violence.
Summary: Captain Nathan Kendall meets Mistress Gail Hirschfeld.
AU: EPIC PIRATE AU
Notes: Part one of the story of doom.
The deck underfoot was slippery with blood, but the ship itself was in good condition, and remarkably, most of the crew was still alive. Not that they were terribly valuable either way, but Nathan did hate to waste life, and they hadn't fought back very hard. Might as well let them ransom themselves with whatever they had, then let them go ashore at the nearest landfall.
After all, it was easy to steal from dead men, but very difficult to do so more than once. And Captain Nathan Kendall was nothing if not practical.
"Nice ship," Davy Hunter said, and spat over the side. "Too damn bad she's Spanish."
"Not for long," Nathan replied, and did not remark on the spitting. His first mate and best friend could be a bit crude about things, at times-- just one of those things you had to accept. Particularly, he supposed, when privateering. "Take her into port, give her some fresh paint and a good scrubbing, and she'll be good as new. And ours."
"Yeah, yeah." Davy ran a hand through his hair. "I suppose you want me to do it."
Nathan turned to face him, and raised an eyebrow. "Let's look at the other options, shall we? Sajiv doesn't have enough experience with ships of this size. Ian will probably steal it. Pat would do well enough until he saw a better ship, then he'd destroy this one trying to take the other one."
Davy sighed. "Aye," he said. "I suppose. But I don’t like leaving you with this crew." He eyed the ragged men currently swarming over the galleon with extreme disfavor. "What happened to the last one? I didn't mind turning my back on them."
"Half of them joined up with the Navy," Nathan said, regretfully, and a bit enviously-- he wouldn't trade his son for anything, and life was easier now, but he did miss the Navy sometimes. "Half of the rest have gone elsewhere. The remaining quarter are either here or too badly injured to sail." Like poor Jack Higgins, leg blown away by a stray cannonball and only half an arm left. Nathan made a mental note to look in on him as soon as they'd got back to Plymouth.
"So it goes," Davy said, and spat again. "All right, then, I'll take her in. But if I'm to take half of this crew I want to take Sajiv too. I'll need an extra eye on this lot."
"He could use the experience." Nathan nodded. "Go ahead and ask. If he wants to go, you can have him. I need Pat and Ian, though."
"You can bloody well keep Ian. He steals everything. I don't even know why you still employ him."
Nathan snorted. "Has it escaped your notice that we steal things for a living, Davy? Constant thievery is very useful when pointed in the right direction."
Davy merely grinned at that. "You may be a thief," he said. "I am a respectable fisherman who occasionally picks up unconsidered trifles no longer needed by their former owners."
Nathan refrained from pointing out that this was usually because said former owners were either dead or in no position to object. "If you say so," he said, instead. "All right, I'd better head down into the hold and make sure they aren't pocketing too much of the cargo."
"What's she carrying?" Davy asked, directing a gimlet eye at the hatch and the men going in and out. "I'll go and keep an eye on the thieving idiots for you."
"Manifest said silk and sugar," Nathan said, "and thank you."
Davy waved the thanks off. "For all you know I'll be pinching a bit of sugar myself," he said. "Emma's got a sweet tooth."
"By all means," Nathan said, "get your wife some sugar. Tell her it's from me. And tell her I look forward to the day when she leaves your worthless hide and comes into my waiting arms."
"I'll be sure to pass that on," Davy said, dryly. "Shall I get some for Aaron as well?"
Nathan held up a hand, thumb and forefinger held just slightly apart. "A bit. A pinch. Any more than that and he'll be racketing off the shrouds."
"Ah," Davy said. "Yes. Let's not repeat the time he went overboard."
Which incident had occurred in calm and relatively shallow waters, far away from anyone who might want to shoot at them, with about ten people watching who'd promptly dived in to help and to a boy who'd quite literally known how to swim before he could walk, but Nathan still woke up in a cold sweat sometimes thinking about it. "Indeed," he said. "Let's not."
He was about to say more when the normally unflappable Ian appeared, face grey under his tan. "Captain," he said. "Mr. Hunter. You'd better come and see this."
Nathan exchanged glances with Davy, warily. "See what?"
Ian shook his head. "You have to see it," he insisted, backing up towards the captain's cabin. "You won't believe me if I tell you."
Nathan exchanged another glance with Davy, and set off after Ian at a run.
The captain's cabin contained nothing of much interest; apparently the man currently being tended to by Nathan's surgeon hadn't seen the benefit in living much higher than his crew. A philosophy Nathan happened to agree with, although not, of course, when it was adopted by the Spaniards. Probably the Spaniard just didn't have enough of the ready to furnish his cabin in a properly lootable way, or was new-promoted and hadn't had enough time. In fact, the only things of much interest were a silk dressing screen, hand-painted if Nathan's eye wasn't out, and a single candlestick of heavy gold.
And the man lying unconscious next to the table.
Nathan frowned, and moved forwards. That was one of his crewmen, not a Spaniard they'd missed somehow. What had happened to him?
...and come to think of it, didn't candlesticks like that usually come in pairs...?
"Captain!" Ian shouted, and grabbed at his sleeve, just as a woman stepped out from behind the screen and swung the missing candlestick very hard at his head.
Fortunately, Nathan, who had been a privateer for years and a Navy man for years before that, had excellent reflexes. He ducked sharply, reared back, and grabbed the candlestick before the woman could swing it again. He tried to jerk it out of her hand, but she had quite an astonishing grip, and held on even when he lifted her to her toes.
"Here, now," he started, and had to drop the candlestick and jump back when she twisted to the side and brought her knee up fast and hard. "Hey!" he yelled. "There's no call for that!"
Somewhat to his surprise, she lowered the candlestick at that, though she did not put it down. "You're English," she said, and to his mild surprise her own accent was unmistakably English as well. Fairly well-born English, if he had to guess, with the rounded vowels and careful consonants of the lords who'd funded this little expedition.
"Born and bred in Plymouth," he said, keeping an eye on the candlestick in case she chose to swing it again. "You're English."
She nodded, cautiously. "Kent," she said, and left it at that.
"If you're English," he said, "what the bloody hell are you doing on a Spanish ship?"
An expression he couldn't read spasmed across her face, and she lifted the candlestick, just a bit. "I was on a Portuguese ship," she said, coldly. "Then these pirates attacked it and took me hostage. What makes you any different?"
"I'm not a pirate, I'm a privateer," Nathan said, obscurely offended. "I've a letter of marque from the queen herself. What were you doing on a Portuguese ship?"
"That," she said, levelly, "is none of your business. And you didn't answer my question."
Since she was still holding the candlestick in a fairly threatening manner, Nathan thought it was time to reassure her a little. "The difference between us and them is that we are English," he said. "And we won't hurt you."
She eyed him suspiciously, but before she could say anything, the ship rolled under their feet and she staggered sideways, catching at the table to keep upright. And Nathan, to his much greater surprise, noticed something that he'd missed, before. Somehow.
He was losing his touch, really. Managing to miss that.
"Ian," he said, without taking his eyes off her. "Go see what those idiots are doing with the sails, and whatever it is, stop them doing it."
"Yessir," Ian said, and took himself off sharpish, closing the door to the cabin carefully behind him.
The woman watched him go, then returned her gaze to Nathan, still suspicious, still nervous. But then she had every right to be, if what she said was true. In her shoes, Nathan wouldn't have trusted anyone either.
Especially because she was very, very pregnant.
--
"Won't you sit down?" the man asked, gesturing politely to one of the chairs.
Gail kept hold of her candlestick, but sat, with a sigh of relief. Her feet and ankles were swelling dreadfully, and had been ever since her pregnancy really became apparent; it felt good to be off them. Not that she really expected to be sitting for long. This could end at any moment, and spectacularly. Even if these people were English.
She looked up to find the man-- the others had called him captain-- watching her with a steady gaze. She stared right back, and tightened her grip on the candlestick until her knuckles whitened. If he was expecting her to put down her only weapon, he was sadly mistaken.
He watched her for another moment, then sighed. "Mistress," he said, and paused. Gail did not fill in her name, and he went on, after a moment. "Mistress, may I see to my crewman? You gave him quite a blow."
She stiffened. Was he going to object to that? "He frightened me," she replied, voice tight.
To her surprise, he only nodded. "I expect he did, and you of course defended yourself. I should like him seen to, all the same."
Surprised, and puzzled, Gail nodded.
The captain nodded back, then crouched and hauled his man up, the other's head lolling onto the captain's shoulder. He walked the man to the door, carefully, then put his head outside and yelled for someone-- a surgeon, perhaps. Whatever he'd meant, a number of hands took the crewman away from his captain and helped him staggering outside.
Gail noticed with a small spark of satisfaction that no one else would enter the room, and the one or two men who poked their heads inside took themselves off again fast.
The captain turned around and caught that satisfied look on her face, and a surprised grin crossed his. "You scare them," he said. "Not much does."
Gail folded her hands primly over the swell of her belly. "I was, as you said, defending myself," she said. "If they aren't used to people defending themselves, I am surprised they've made it this far in piracy."
He looked annoyed. "Mistress, once again, we are not pirates. We are privateers. I'm sorry for your dealings with this crew--" a swept arm indicated the ship and the Spanish crewmen aboard it-- "but we are not like them."
She sniffed, as haughtily as she could manage under the circumstances. "You will forgive me my skepticism, but I have thus far seen nothing to indicate any difference."
Blood on the decks and the Portuguese crewmen dead, rough hands on her body, Spanish rattling above her head and talking, talking, saying any desperate thing that might save her and the child that grew inside her...
She had no idea what look crossed her face, but whatever it was made the captain regard her with something enough like pity to turn her stomach. "They aren't dead," he told her. "The crew. At least, not the ones who surrendered."
"They're pirates," she said, her traitor voice shaking. "What do I care for the lives of pirates?"
He shrugged. "Perhaps nothing. Perhaps much. At any rate, they aren't dead. They'll be taken ashore at the nearest landfall and allowed to ransom themselves, or they'll be taken back to England and dealt with as prisoners of war."
Gail looked away from him, down at her folded hands. "It doesn't matter to me."
"Very well," he said, and this time his voice was sympathetic. "Mistress, what were you doing on a Portuguese ship?"
Perhaps there wasn't any harm in telling him. "I was trying to get home," she replied, still looking down. "My baby-- I was living in Portugal, and... things happened, and I needed to get home quickly. Some of the men in the village needed to go that way as well, so I took passage with them." Then shots, screaming, blood... "Then we were taken by pirates, and you took them."
"Mmhmm." He sounded a touch skeptical, and she looked up, arched an eyebrow at him.
"You don't believe me."
"I do believe you," he said. "I'm just a bit confused. Why didn't they kill you? The Spanish, I mean."
Ah. A fair enough question, she supposed. "I led them to believe my father would ransom me," she said. "With enough money to make their lives much easier." And if that implied that her father would not have done so, well, so much the better. She didn't want to put herself into precisely the same situation if she could help it.
The captain looked her up and down, taking in her half-bodice and stained skirts and worn chemise, then said, "Forgive me, mistress, but I have no idea why they believed that."
She shrugged, and lied, "I don't know either. But they did." The child kicked, and reminded, she added, "Perhaps they hesitated because I am with child. I don't know."
"Papists," the captain said, as if it explained everything, and shrugged. "Very well then. So you need to go back to England."
She nodded, cautiously. "Yes. I have no money, though." Not anymore. She'd sold her wedding ring, the only thing she had of value once the creditors were done with her husband's estate, in order to get herself on the first ship home, and now...
"I will make you a bargain," he said, propping his chin on his hand and watching her over the table.
Gail clasped her hands on the table and tried not to show how much fear those words had sparked in her. Never show fear; people took advantage of that. Instead, she lifted her chin, looked him directly in the eye, and asked, "What sort of bargain would that be?"
If not for her pregnancy, she would assume an improper one. But men didn't look at her twice now. Not the Portuguese men, not the Spaniards, and certainly not the Englishmen on this ship.
Mostly the Englishmen had just looked surprised. She'd always treasure the look on that first crewman's face after she'd hit him.
He narrowed his eyes and scrutinized her closely, making her shift nervously, then straightened in his seat and said, "I have a son."
That was so very much not what she was expecting him to say, and for a moment she could only stare. "How... how old?" she asked, weakly.
"Five," he said, and to her further surprise his face softened. "Only just. His name is Aaron."
The child inside her kicked again, and she laid a hand open-palmed on her belly, soothing. "How lovely," she said, for lack of anything else. "What has this to do with me?"
He shrugged. "He's a good boy and willing, but he's undereducated. I..." and here, a little self-deprecating smile that should not have tugged at her heart the way it did, "did not receive a very thorough education, and my crew are... not the brightest. There's no one to teach Aaron things beyond reading and writing, and a little figuring." He eyed her sharply. "You, I think, could."
She thought of her childhood, of the endless rounds of instruction, the constant presence of tutors, her father railing that if she ever wanted to go to court, she'd best learn to keep up with the queen. She'd never gone to court, in the end, but she still had that education. "I could try," she said, cautiously.
"Good!" he said, briskly, and rubbed his hands together. "That's settled, then. You teach Aaron for the duration of this voyage, and I will take you back to England and let you loose to do as you please."
"Teach him what?" Gail asked, aware that she had no choice and that she probably would have agreed anyway. She liked children, and a small boy would probably be much easier to handle than his father.
Probably. She'd met enough small boys to not be entirely certain of that.
Captain Kendall waved a hand, and she blinked, returned her attention to him. "Anything. Everything. Whatever you feel he should know. My preference is for languages and figuring, but useful things will not go amiss."
She knew languages. Latin and Greek and Italian, a bit of French and Portuguese, even some Spanish (though little enough of that, and mostly rude words). She knew figuring too. She could do this. "And you'll set me ashore in London."
"No," he said. "We sail from Plymouth. I'll be setting you down there."
Plymouth. Well, it was better than nothing, and certainly better than Spain. And oddly enough, the negative answer was reassuring. If he'd meant to deceive her, he would simply have told her yes, they'd take her to London.
"All right, then," she said. "We have a bargain."
"Good," he said, again, and stood. "You had better come aboard my ship. My first mate will take command of this one for the time being, and I doubt you'd like him very much, mistress."
The pause this time was not in the least expectant, but Gail filled it anyway. "Gail Hirschfeld," she said.
He smiled, an open, warm expression. "Captain Nathan Kendall, at your service, mistress."
That smile demanded a return, and she obliged, somewhat reluctantly. "I am pleased to meet you, sir." She held out her hand from long habit, and realized too late that it was her left hand.
He bowed over it, registered her lack of ring, blinked, and looked very much as if he wanted to say something but didn't know where to begin. But his eyes had flicked to her belly, and anyway Gail knew what he was thinking because it was the same thing that everyone thought when they noticed.
She sighed, and rubbed her hand across her belly, protectively. "I am a widow," she said, "and I had to sell my ring to pay some debts," and left it at that. She had no desire to even think about her late and unlamented husband just at the moment, and much less to talk about him to a privateer she'd only just met.
To her relief, he seemed to accept that, saying only, "Very well. Ah... the voyage will take six weeks, near enough. Will that be..." Another hesitation, this one delicate. "A problem?"
It took Gail a moment to realize that he was asking if she was going to give birth any minute. "No," she replied, as calmly as she could. "It won't."
Which, God willing, it wouldn't. By her calculations she had two months of her pregnancy left. Enough time to get to Plymouth and from Plymouth to home, if she was careful. If she wasn't... well, she would worry about that when it happened.
Her child would be born on English soil.
--
Nathan was more than a little relieved to hear that. Mistress Hirschfeld seemed a formidable sort of person, but his crew was going to have a hard enough time with a woman on board (that they knew was a woman, anyway) without dealing with such a very feminine activity as childbirth. Come to that, he wasn't sure he could deal with it.
Fortunately for all of them, they wouldn't have to. He dismissed the thought from his mind in favor of more pressing worries, as he helped Mistress Hirschfeld to her feet.
The worry foremost in his mind was, of course, his crew, and that worry only intensified when he got out of the captain's cabin, Mistress Hirschfeld at his back, to find that Davy had pinched all the best and most reliable men to sail their stolen ship. Which, all right, did make sense-- Davy had charge of the prisoners and much of the cargo, after all-- but it was still highly irritating.
He'd get Davy for it later. Right now he had a pregnant woman to settle. Good Lord in heaven, what had he been thinking?
Somewhat to Nathan's surprise, Mistress Hirschfeld did not demur when presented with the plank he and his crew used to get between ships. Instead, she gave it a resigned look, then gathered up her skirts in one hand, held the other out for balance, and crossed the distance as swiftly and nimbly as any of the sailors. It was impressive, and slightly intimidating, but then what about this woman wasn't?
"Are you coming?" she called back, hands on her hips, and Nathan realized he'd been staring.
Well, honestly, who wouldn't?
He shook himself and crossed after her, landing on the deck of his own ship with a feeling of relief. There was a reason he never sailed his prizes back to Plymouth himself; he never felt quite comfortable away from the Bedrock Drift, from her familiar worn boards and stout rigging. His own ship.
There were things he missed about the Navy. This was not one of them.
Mistress Hirschfeld had also been gazing about his ship, and seemed more than a little skeptical, but whatever she thought she kept behind her teeth. Instead, she said, "Is your son about? I should like to meet him."
"He's around somewhere," Nathan said, taking stock of his crew. He spotted Pat, hanging upside down from the rigging and hollering at an unfortunate crewman not hauling a shroud in quickly enough for her liking. Ian was nowhere to be found, but that in itself was not unusual after a fight, and was probably less so given the fright he'd had earlier. Sajiv and Davy had gone over to the other ship already. "Probably in my cabin, or belowdecks," he added. "Aaron knows to stay hidden during a fight."
Mistress Hirschfeld gave him a sharp look. "He lives on board ship with you?"
"His whole life," he said, giving her a sharp look right back. "Where else should he be but with his father?"
She arched an eyebrow. "Perhaps with his mother," she said, voice quite gentle.
Hah. If he had a mother. "Aaron's mother is no longer with us," he said, shortly.
As he'd hoped, Mistress Hirschfeld looked rather ashamed of herself. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't know she'd passed on."
"She didn't," Nathan said, or at least not as far as he knew, but he didn't intend to discuss his son's mother with anyone, let alone a strange woman. "My parents died when I was a boy, though. I wasn't about to leave my son with strangers."
She accepted this with a little nod. "Sensible, I suppose. Although it seems hardly safe for a small child."
"Safer than you'd think," he said. "My men would kill to keep Aaron safe." Or at least most of them would. Most of this crew he didn't trust as far as he could throw them, and he certainly wouldn't let them around his son unsupervised.
Mistress Hirschfeld seemed to be thinking along the same lines, because she glanced around the deck again, then said, somewhat dubiously, "If you say so."
He dismissed the crew with a little motion of his hand, and said, "I'll go find him. You're right, you should meet him. I..."
"Nathan?"
He turned around to find his first mate, small bags of sugar in each hand, staring at Mistress Hirschfeld with horror writ large on his face. "Nathan," Davy repeated. "You're not."
"Captain, Davy, if you please," Nathan said, irritated.
Davy, as was his wont when surprised, ignored him. "You can't possibly," he said. "You can't."
Nathan narrowed his eyes. "I need to attend to Mistress Hirschfeld," he said. "If you've something to say to me, you can take it up with me later. Not that I've any idea what you're talking about." Which was a lie; he knew perfectly well what Davy was objecting to, and from the wry twist of her lips, so did Mistress Hirschfeld.
"Oh, no," she said. "I wouldn't dream of delaying you. I'll go and find him myself." And without another word, she set off across the deck, keeping her feet remarkably well. At the hatch into the hold, a crewman popped up and stared at her; Mistress Hirschfeld paused, looked down her nose at him, and managed to cow him without another word being said.
Nathan's admiration for her spiked another few notches.
"There goes a woman," he said. "All right, Davy, have it out."
"You cannot possibly do whatever you're planning to do with her," Davy said. "Emma would have your head."
Nathan sighed. "Emma would have my head if I left her there," he replied, "and anyway I'm not planning anything. I'm simply taking her back to England."
"You're what?" Davy's voice spiraled upwards.
"I'm taking her to Plymouth," Nathan repeated, "and for heaven's sake keep your voice down. I don't want everyone knowing my purpose in this."
Davy looked a little wild around the eyes, but obediently lowered his voice. "You can't take her to Plymouth. You can't! You don't know the first thing about her!"
"I know she's a pregnant Englishwoman who needs help," he said. "What else would you have me do? Throw her overboard?"
"No, but..." Davy shifted, uncomfortably. "We aren't far from the coast. We could set down in France. Drop her off. Someone would see she got where she was going."
"You're willing to trust an Englishwoman to the French?" Nathan asked, incredulous. "Brave man."
Davy scowled at him, and muttered, "Bad luck to have a woman on board. Everyone knows that."
He almost said 'say that to Pat,' but unfortunately Davy still believed 'Pat' stood for 'Patrick.' "Then it's a good thing for you that she won't be on board your ship," Nathan replied, instead of letting him in on that little secret. Though it would be a splendid sight when someone finally did enlighten him, and he only hoped he was there to see it. "I gave my word, Davy, and she's an Englishwoman. We'll bring her home, and I'll hear no more on the subject."
"Your funeral," Davy said, dourly.
"My choice," he said, in the tight tones he used when he was particularly displeased. "That's the end of it. I'll see you in Plymouth."
"If we're all still alive," Davy said, and bid him goodbye.
--
Captain Kendall's ship was quite a bit smaller than the Spanish one, and a good bit shabbier, paint chipped, sails patched, splinters all over the deck. Gail supposed it had just been through a sharp fight, although she didn't remember much cannonfire. Still. She didn't much approve.
At least she didn't feel as if it would sink at any moment. She remembered the crossing from England to Portugal, and shivered at the thought. This ship was much sturdier than that leaky tub.
She'd found her way into the hold, a quiet, relatively still place packed with boxes and bags. Evidently Captain Kendall had chosen to store his valuable cargo elsewhere; everything in here appeared to be foodstuffs, and not particularly valuable foodstuffs at that. Wheat, hardtack, from the smell of it dried hay in bales. A perfect place for a small child to hide unnoticed, if that child had got a bad fright earlier.
For that matter, it was doing wonders for her overstressed nerves. Captain Kendall seemed all right, but she had not cared at all for the way his crewmen looked at her. She felt much more comfortable alone in this warm, quiet space that smelled of (only slightly stale) hay.
She made her way among the dim stacks, listening carefully, and at last heard a faint scraping of cloth against wood, behind a stack of crates just against the tall curving side of the ship.
"Hello?" she called, and bent awkwardly to peer between the crates.
A pair of suspicious grey eyes met hers, scrutinizing her from the darkness as narrowly as Captain Kendall had earlier. "You're not a crewman," the boy informed her, without leaving the shadows.
"Aaron Kendall, I presume," she said, and lowered herself carefully to sit on a solitary crate nearby. This seemed like it might be a long conversation. "No, I'm not a crewman."
"Who are you, then?" he asked.
"Gail Hirschfeld," she told him. "Your papa is taking me back to England."
The boy must have decided that was good enough, because he crept into what little light made it down into the hold. He was small for his age, Gail thought, and resembled his father greatly, with flopping brown hair curling over his collar and freckles dotting his nose and cheeks. He regarded her with misty grey eyes that he must have got from his mother, a puzzled frown wrinkling his nose. "Why are you so fat?" he asked, at last.
Someone else might have taken offense at that. Gail had been around small children too often, and only laughed. "I'm not fat," she told him. "I'm going to have a baby."
The boy wrinkled his nose more. "Aunt Emma had a baby," he said. "It screams a lot. But she didn't get fat, she only got cranky."
"She must have," Gail said. "I expect you were at sea with your father when she did."
Aaron regarded her for another moment. "How do you know?"
"That I'm going to have a baby?" How to answer this in a way that the boy would understand? "I can feel it move," she said, at last.
"Really?" His eyes went wide. "Can I feel?"
She hesitated, then shrugged-- why not? He was only five. "All right," she said. "Come here."
The boy approached her with a reverent air she'd previously only seen in church, and put out his hand, then paused. "Where do I feel?"
"Right here," she said, took his hand, and laid it flat against her belly. Obligingly, the child landed a solid kick against his palm. She let out a quick huff of pain, and laughed. "See?"
Aaron looked at her as if she'd just performed a minor miracle. "Oh," he breathed. "There really is a baby in there!"
Gail laughed again. "Yes, there is. It kicks very often."
"How is it going to get out of there?" the boy asked, peering at her belly as if it would split open at any moment.
Well. Somehow she didn't think that was what Captain Kendall expected her to be teaching his son. "It will come when it's time," she said, rather vaguely, and changed the subject. "Well, then. Your father has asked me to teach you things, to pay for my passage home."
Aaron tilted his head to the side, and to her vast gratification did not pitch an immediate fit. "What sort of things?" he asked.
She shrugged. "Anything you want to learn, I suppose," she replied. "He mentioned languages first, but I can teach you a great deal more than that if you'd like."
"Oh, yes," he said, and his eyes brightened. "I like knowing things. I can read and write!"
"Can you indeed?" she asked, pretending surprise, but not much of it. "That's wonderful!"
He nodded, proudly. "I can read the Bible and I can write my name and I can figure a little bit. I can show you! Papa has paper."
Hmm. Captain Kendall got still less uncouth than he'd first seemed. "You must show me, then," she said. "And perhaps I can teach you a little more figuring than that. Your papa wanted me to teach you Latin and Greek, also."
The boy's brow creased again. "I don't know," he said. "That sounds hard."
"It is, a bit," she said, and saw his eyes go round again. "But I think it's worth it. You can learn ever so much more if you know them."
"And Papa wants me to know them?"
"That's what I understood," Gail said. She shifted on the crate, the wood digging uncomfortably into her thighs.
He still looked doubtful, but he said, "Oh, all right then. If Papa says."
Gail eyed him slantwise. "And do you always do what your papa says?"
Aaron nodded again, this time solemnly. "Yes. Papa is big and brave and smart. And he never says to do something unless he has a good reason. And he'll always tell me what it is. Unless it's bad and I have to do it now but then he explains later."
Her heart clutched suddenly, and her hand went to her belly. "You have a good father, then." If only her child's had been as good.
"The best," Aaron said, emphatically. "My papa is the best papa in the whole world."
She smiled a little at that, in spite of herself. "And you would know, I suppose. Having been so many places."
"I have though!" he said. "France and Ireland and England and Portugal. And Papa says we'll go to the New World someday."
"The New World!" she said. "My goodness."
That was the last word she got in for the rest of the afternoon. Little Aaron could certainly talk, and talk he did, telling her all about his papa and his life at sea and the men he'd known, under the pretext of a tour through the ship. About halfway through she learned that one of the big, burly men she'd seen on deck was actually a woman-- "Oh, but I wasn't supposed to tell that, so you mustn't tell anyone"-- and that 'Aunt Emma' was not actually related to Captain Kendall, but was his first mate's wife -- "Her baby is only a girl, which is all right, I guess, and I don't mean anything bad, but girls are boring. Except you. You're splendid."
She also learned several pertinent things about Captain Kendall, namely that his son worshipped him, that he was unmarried-- and wasn't that an interesting little fact-- and that he'd been in the Navy before he'd joined a privateering crew shortly after his son's birth. Aaron had gone on at great length about the Queen and how she'd personally given his father the letter of marque, so at least that was true. On more personal matters, the boy either didn’t know or didn't talk about his mother, and Gail resolved privately to get that story out of Captain Kendall or one of the crew as soon as possible.
He did talk about the crew, or at least his father's usual crew. To Gail's slight alarm, she learned that this crew was a rather slapdash one picked up at the last minute. Aaron didn't say as much, but she suspected he considered them unsafe, and she knew that his father did.
She paid more attention to the men after that, and caught the mutters, the sidelong glances at her and Aaron and, when they passed him, Captain Kendall. Her nerves, which had settled a little in Aaron's exuberant company, began to wind up again. Something seemed to be bubbling under the surface of this otherwise calm little ship, something that felt dangerous and violent. It was only a matter of time before it boiled over.
Gail could only hope she was safely in England before it did.
Rating: PG-13 for violence.
Summary: Captain Nathan Kendall meets Mistress Gail Hirschfeld.
AU: EPIC PIRATE AU
Notes: Part one of the story of doom.
The deck underfoot was slippery with blood, but the ship itself was in good condition, and remarkably, most of the crew was still alive. Not that they were terribly valuable either way, but Nathan did hate to waste life, and they hadn't fought back very hard. Might as well let them ransom themselves with whatever they had, then let them go ashore at the nearest landfall.
After all, it was easy to steal from dead men, but very difficult to do so more than once. And Captain Nathan Kendall was nothing if not practical.
"Nice ship," Davy Hunter said, and spat over the side. "Too damn bad she's Spanish."
"Not for long," Nathan replied, and did not remark on the spitting. His first mate and best friend could be a bit crude about things, at times-- just one of those things you had to accept. Particularly, he supposed, when privateering. "Take her into port, give her some fresh paint and a good scrubbing, and she'll be good as new. And ours."
"Yeah, yeah." Davy ran a hand through his hair. "I suppose you want me to do it."
Nathan turned to face him, and raised an eyebrow. "Let's look at the other options, shall we? Sajiv doesn't have enough experience with ships of this size. Ian will probably steal it. Pat would do well enough until he saw a better ship, then he'd destroy this one trying to take the other one."
Davy sighed. "Aye," he said. "I suppose. But I don’t like leaving you with this crew." He eyed the ragged men currently swarming over the galleon with extreme disfavor. "What happened to the last one? I didn't mind turning my back on them."
"Half of them joined up with the Navy," Nathan said, regretfully, and a bit enviously-- he wouldn't trade his son for anything, and life was easier now, but he did miss the Navy sometimes. "Half of the rest have gone elsewhere. The remaining quarter are either here or too badly injured to sail." Like poor Jack Higgins, leg blown away by a stray cannonball and only half an arm left. Nathan made a mental note to look in on him as soon as they'd got back to Plymouth.
"So it goes," Davy said, and spat again. "All right, then, I'll take her in. But if I'm to take half of this crew I want to take Sajiv too. I'll need an extra eye on this lot."
"He could use the experience." Nathan nodded. "Go ahead and ask. If he wants to go, you can have him. I need Pat and Ian, though."
"You can bloody well keep Ian. He steals everything. I don't even know why you still employ him."
Nathan snorted. "Has it escaped your notice that we steal things for a living, Davy? Constant thievery is very useful when pointed in the right direction."
Davy merely grinned at that. "You may be a thief," he said. "I am a respectable fisherman who occasionally picks up unconsidered trifles no longer needed by their former owners."
Nathan refrained from pointing out that this was usually because said former owners were either dead or in no position to object. "If you say so," he said, instead. "All right, I'd better head down into the hold and make sure they aren't pocketing too much of the cargo."
"What's she carrying?" Davy asked, directing a gimlet eye at the hatch and the men going in and out. "I'll go and keep an eye on the thieving idiots for you."
"Manifest said silk and sugar," Nathan said, "and thank you."
Davy waved the thanks off. "For all you know I'll be pinching a bit of sugar myself," he said. "Emma's got a sweet tooth."
"By all means," Nathan said, "get your wife some sugar. Tell her it's from me. And tell her I look forward to the day when she leaves your worthless hide and comes into my waiting arms."
"I'll be sure to pass that on," Davy said, dryly. "Shall I get some for Aaron as well?"
Nathan held up a hand, thumb and forefinger held just slightly apart. "A bit. A pinch. Any more than that and he'll be racketing off the shrouds."
"Ah," Davy said. "Yes. Let's not repeat the time he went overboard."
Which incident had occurred in calm and relatively shallow waters, far away from anyone who might want to shoot at them, with about ten people watching who'd promptly dived in to help and to a boy who'd quite literally known how to swim before he could walk, but Nathan still woke up in a cold sweat sometimes thinking about it. "Indeed," he said. "Let's not."
He was about to say more when the normally unflappable Ian appeared, face grey under his tan. "Captain," he said. "Mr. Hunter. You'd better come and see this."
Nathan exchanged glances with Davy, warily. "See what?"
Ian shook his head. "You have to see it," he insisted, backing up towards the captain's cabin. "You won't believe me if I tell you."
Nathan exchanged another glance with Davy, and set off after Ian at a run.
The captain's cabin contained nothing of much interest; apparently the man currently being tended to by Nathan's surgeon hadn't seen the benefit in living much higher than his crew. A philosophy Nathan happened to agree with, although not, of course, when it was adopted by the Spaniards. Probably the Spaniard just didn't have enough of the ready to furnish his cabin in a properly lootable way, or was new-promoted and hadn't had enough time. In fact, the only things of much interest were a silk dressing screen, hand-painted if Nathan's eye wasn't out, and a single candlestick of heavy gold.
And the man lying unconscious next to the table.
Nathan frowned, and moved forwards. That was one of his crewmen, not a Spaniard they'd missed somehow. What had happened to him?
...and come to think of it, didn't candlesticks like that usually come in pairs...?
"Captain!" Ian shouted, and grabbed at his sleeve, just as a woman stepped out from behind the screen and swung the missing candlestick very hard at his head.
Fortunately, Nathan, who had been a privateer for years and a Navy man for years before that, had excellent reflexes. He ducked sharply, reared back, and grabbed the candlestick before the woman could swing it again. He tried to jerk it out of her hand, but she had quite an astonishing grip, and held on even when he lifted her to her toes.
"Here, now," he started, and had to drop the candlestick and jump back when she twisted to the side and brought her knee up fast and hard. "Hey!" he yelled. "There's no call for that!"
Somewhat to his surprise, she lowered the candlestick at that, though she did not put it down. "You're English," she said, and to his mild surprise her own accent was unmistakably English as well. Fairly well-born English, if he had to guess, with the rounded vowels and careful consonants of the lords who'd funded this little expedition.
"Born and bred in Plymouth," he said, keeping an eye on the candlestick in case she chose to swing it again. "You're English."
She nodded, cautiously. "Kent," she said, and left it at that.
"If you're English," he said, "what the bloody hell are you doing on a Spanish ship?"
An expression he couldn't read spasmed across her face, and she lifted the candlestick, just a bit. "I was on a Portuguese ship," she said, coldly. "Then these pirates attacked it and took me hostage. What makes you any different?"
"I'm not a pirate, I'm a privateer," Nathan said, obscurely offended. "I've a letter of marque from the queen herself. What were you doing on a Portuguese ship?"
"That," she said, levelly, "is none of your business. And you didn't answer my question."
Since she was still holding the candlestick in a fairly threatening manner, Nathan thought it was time to reassure her a little. "The difference between us and them is that we are English," he said. "And we won't hurt you."
She eyed him suspiciously, but before she could say anything, the ship rolled under their feet and she staggered sideways, catching at the table to keep upright. And Nathan, to his much greater surprise, noticed something that he'd missed, before. Somehow.
He was losing his touch, really. Managing to miss that.
"Ian," he said, without taking his eyes off her. "Go see what those idiots are doing with the sails, and whatever it is, stop them doing it."
"Yessir," Ian said, and took himself off sharpish, closing the door to the cabin carefully behind him.
The woman watched him go, then returned her gaze to Nathan, still suspicious, still nervous. But then she had every right to be, if what she said was true. In her shoes, Nathan wouldn't have trusted anyone either.
Especially because she was very, very pregnant.
--
"Won't you sit down?" the man asked, gesturing politely to one of the chairs.
Gail kept hold of her candlestick, but sat, with a sigh of relief. Her feet and ankles were swelling dreadfully, and had been ever since her pregnancy really became apparent; it felt good to be off them. Not that she really expected to be sitting for long. This could end at any moment, and spectacularly. Even if these people were English.
She looked up to find the man-- the others had called him captain-- watching her with a steady gaze. She stared right back, and tightened her grip on the candlestick until her knuckles whitened. If he was expecting her to put down her only weapon, he was sadly mistaken.
He watched her for another moment, then sighed. "Mistress," he said, and paused. Gail did not fill in her name, and he went on, after a moment. "Mistress, may I see to my crewman? You gave him quite a blow."
She stiffened. Was he going to object to that? "He frightened me," she replied, voice tight.
To her surprise, he only nodded. "I expect he did, and you of course defended yourself. I should like him seen to, all the same."
Surprised, and puzzled, Gail nodded.
The captain nodded back, then crouched and hauled his man up, the other's head lolling onto the captain's shoulder. He walked the man to the door, carefully, then put his head outside and yelled for someone-- a surgeon, perhaps. Whatever he'd meant, a number of hands took the crewman away from his captain and helped him staggering outside.
Gail noticed with a small spark of satisfaction that no one else would enter the room, and the one or two men who poked their heads inside took themselves off again fast.
The captain turned around and caught that satisfied look on her face, and a surprised grin crossed his. "You scare them," he said. "Not much does."
Gail folded her hands primly over the swell of her belly. "I was, as you said, defending myself," she said. "If they aren't used to people defending themselves, I am surprised they've made it this far in piracy."
He looked annoyed. "Mistress, once again, we are not pirates. We are privateers. I'm sorry for your dealings with this crew--" a swept arm indicated the ship and the Spanish crewmen aboard it-- "but we are not like them."
She sniffed, as haughtily as she could manage under the circumstances. "You will forgive me my skepticism, but I have thus far seen nothing to indicate any difference."
Blood on the decks and the Portuguese crewmen dead, rough hands on her body, Spanish rattling above her head and talking, talking, saying any desperate thing that might save her and the child that grew inside her...
She had no idea what look crossed her face, but whatever it was made the captain regard her with something enough like pity to turn her stomach. "They aren't dead," he told her. "The crew. At least, not the ones who surrendered."
"They're pirates," she said, her traitor voice shaking. "What do I care for the lives of pirates?"
He shrugged. "Perhaps nothing. Perhaps much. At any rate, they aren't dead. They'll be taken ashore at the nearest landfall and allowed to ransom themselves, or they'll be taken back to England and dealt with as prisoners of war."
Gail looked away from him, down at her folded hands. "It doesn't matter to me."
"Very well," he said, and this time his voice was sympathetic. "Mistress, what were you doing on a Portuguese ship?"
Perhaps there wasn't any harm in telling him. "I was trying to get home," she replied, still looking down. "My baby-- I was living in Portugal, and... things happened, and I needed to get home quickly. Some of the men in the village needed to go that way as well, so I took passage with them." Then shots, screaming, blood... "Then we were taken by pirates, and you took them."
"Mmhmm." He sounded a touch skeptical, and she looked up, arched an eyebrow at him.
"You don't believe me."
"I do believe you," he said. "I'm just a bit confused. Why didn't they kill you? The Spanish, I mean."
Ah. A fair enough question, she supposed. "I led them to believe my father would ransom me," she said. "With enough money to make their lives much easier." And if that implied that her father would not have done so, well, so much the better. She didn't want to put herself into precisely the same situation if she could help it.
The captain looked her up and down, taking in her half-bodice and stained skirts and worn chemise, then said, "Forgive me, mistress, but I have no idea why they believed that."
She shrugged, and lied, "I don't know either. But they did." The child kicked, and reminded, she added, "Perhaps they hesitated because I am with child. I don't know."
"Papists," the captain said, as if it explained everything, and shrugged. "Very well then. So you need to go back to England."
She nodded, cautiously. "Yes. I have no money, though." Not anymore. She'd sold her wedding ring, the only thing she had of value once the creditors were done with her husband's estate, in order to get herself on the first ship home, and now...
"I will make you a bargain," he said, propping his chin on his hand and watching her over the table.
Gail clasped her hands on the table and tried not to show how much fear those words had sparked in her. Never show fear; people took advantage of that. Instead, she lifted her chin, looked him directly in the eye, and asked, "What sort of bargain would that be?"
If not for her pregnancy, she would assume an improper one. But men didn't look at her twice now. Not the Portuguese men, not the Spaniards, and certainly not the Englishmen on this ship.
Mostly the Englishmen had just looked surprised. She'd always treasure the look on that first crewman's face after she'd hit him.
He narrowed his eyes and scrutinized her closely, making her shift nervously, then straightened in his seat and said, "I have a son."
That was so very much not what she was expecting him to say, and for a moment she could only stare. "How... how old?" she asked, weakly.
"Five," he said, and to her further surprise his face softened. "Only just. His name is Aaron."
The child inside her kicked again, and she laid a hand open-palmed on her belly, soothing. "How lovely," she said, for lack of anything else. "What has this to do with me?"
He shrugged. "He's a good boy and willing, but he's undereducated. I..." and here, a little self-deprecating smile that should not have tugged at her heart the way it did, "did not receive a very thorough education, and my crew are... not the brightest. There's no one to teach Aaron things beyond reading and writing, and a little figuring." He eyed her sharply. "You, I think, could."
She thought of her childhood, of the endless rounds of instruction, the constant presence of tutors, her father railing that if she ever wanted to go to court, she'd best learn to keep up with the queen. She'd never gone to court, in the end, but she still had that education. "I could try," she said, cautiously.
"Good!" he said, briskly, and rubbed his hands together. "That's settled, then. You teach Aaron for the duration of this voyage, and I will take you back to England and let you loose to do as you please."
"Teach him what?" Gail asked, aware that she had no choice and that she probably would have agreed anyway. She liked children, and a small boy would probably be much easier to handle than his father.
Probably. She'd met enough small boys to not be entirely certain of that.
Captain Kendall waved a hand, and she blinked, returned her attention to him. "Anything. Everything. Whatever you feel he should know. My preference is for languages and figuring, but useful things will not go amiss."
She knew languages. Latin and Greek and Italian, a bit of French and Portuguese, even some Spanish (though little enough of that, and mostly rude words). She knew figuring too. She could do this. "And you'll set me ashore in London."
"No," he said. "We sail from Plymouth. I'll be setting you down there."
Plymouth. Well, it was better than nothing, and certainly better than Spain. And oddly enough, the negative answer was reassuring. If he'd meant to deceive her, he would simply have told her yes, they'd take her to London.
"All right, then," she said. "We have a bargain."
"Good," he said, again, and stood. "You had better come aboard my ship. My first mate will take command of this one for the time being, and I doubt you'd like him very much, mistress."
The pause this time was not in the least expectant, but Gail filled it anyway. "Gail Hirschfeld," she said.
He smiled, an open, warm expression. "Captain Nathan Kendall, at your service, mistress."
That smile demanded a return, and she obliged, somewhat reluctantly. "I am pleased to meet you, sir." She held out her hand from long habit, and realized too late that it was her left hand.
He bowed over it, registered her lack of ring, blinked, and looked very much as if he wanted to say something but didn't know where to begin. But his eyes had flicked to her belly, and anyway Gail knew what he was thinking because it was the same thing that everyone thought when they noticed.
She sighed, and rubbed her hand across her belly, protectively. "I am a widow," she said, "and I had to sell my ring to pay some debts," and left it at that. She had no desire to even think about her late and unlamented husband just at the moment, and much less to talk about him to a privateer she'd only just met.
To her relief, he seemed to accept that, saying only, "Very well. Ah... the voyage will take six weeks, near enough. Will that be..." Another hesitation, this one delicate. "A problem?"
It took Gail a moment to realize that he was asking if she was going to give birth any minute. "No," she replied, as calmly as she could. "It won't."
Which, God willing, it wouldn't. By her calculations she had two months of her pregnancy left. Enough time to get to Plymouth and from Plymouth to home, if she was careful. If she wasn't... well, she would worry about that when it happened.
Her child would be born on English soil.
--
Nathan was more than a little relieved to hear that. Mistress Hirschfeld seemed a formidable sort of person, but his crew was going to have a hard enough time with a woman on board (that they knew was a woman, anyway) without dealing with such a very feminine activity as childbirth. Come to that, he wasn't sure he could deal with it.
Fortunately for all of them, they wouldn't have to. He dismissed the thought from his mind in favor of more pressing worries, as he helped Mistress Hirschfeld to her feet.
The worry foremost in his mind was, of course, his crew, and that worry only intensified when he got out of the captain's cabin, Mistress Hirschfeld at his back, to find that Davy had pinched all the best and most reliable men to sail their stolen ship. Which, all right, did make sense-- Davy had charge of the prisoners and much of the cargo, after all-- but it was still highly irritating.
He'd get Davy for it later. Right now he had a pregnant woman to settle. Good Lord in heaven, what had he been thinking?
Somewhat to Nathan's surprise, Mistress Hirschfeld did not demur when presented with the plank he and his crew used to get between ships. Instead, she gave it a resigned look, then gathered up her skirts in one hand, held the other out for balance, and crossed the distance as swiftly and nimbly as any of the sailors. It was impressive, and slightly intimidating, but then what about this woman wasn't?
"Are you coming?" she called back, hands on her hips, and Nathan realized he'd been staring.
Well, honestly, who wouldn't?
He shook himself and crossed after her, landing on the deck of his own ship with a feeling of relief. There was a reason he never sailed his prizes back to Plymouth himself; he never felt quite comfortable away from the Bedrock Drift, from her familiar worn boards and stout rigging. His own ship.
There were things he missed about the Navy. This was not one of them.
Mistress Hirschfeld had also been gazing about his ship, and seemed more than a little skeptical, but whatever she thought she kept behind her teeth. Instead, she said, "Is your son about? I should like to meet him."
"He's around somewhere," Nathan said, taking stock of his crew. He spotted Pat, hanging upside down from the rigging and hollering at an unfortunate crewman not hauling a shroud in quickly enough for her liking. Ian was nowhere to be found, but that in itself was not unusual after a fight, and was probably less so given the fright he'd had earlier. Sajiv and Davy had gone over to the other ship already. "Probably in my cabin, or belowdecks," he added. "Aaron knows to stay hidden during a fight."
Mistress Hirschfeld gave him a sharp look. "He lives on board ship with you?"
"His whole life," he said, giving her a sharp look right back. "Where else should he be but with his father?"
She arched an eyebrow. "Perhaps with his mother," she said, voice quite gentle.
Hah. If he had a mother. "Aaron's mother is no longer with us," he said, shortly.
As he'd hoped, Mistress Hirschfeld looked rather ashamed of herself. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't know she'd passed on."
"She didn't," Nathan said, or at least not as far as he knew, but he didn't intend to discuss his son's mother with anyone, let alone a strange woman. "My parents died when I was a boy, though. I wasn't about to leave my son with strangers."
She accepted this with a little nod. "Sensible, I suppose. Although it seems hardly safe for a small child."
"Safer than you'd think," he said. "My men would kill to keep Aaron safe." Or at least most of them would. Most of this crew he didn't trust as far as he could throw them, and he certainly wouldn't let them around his son unsupervised.
Mistress Hirschfeld seemed to be thinking along the same lines, because she glanced around the deck again, then said, somewhat dubiously, "If you say so."
He dismissed the crew with a little motion of his hand, and said, "I'll go find him. You're right, you should meet him. I..."
"Nathan?"
He turned around to find his first mate, small bags of sugar in each hand, staring at Mistress Hirschfeld with horror writ large on his face. "Nathan," Davy repeated. "You're not."
"Captain, Davy, if you please," Nathan said, irritated.
Davy, as was his wont when surprised, ignored him. "You can't possibly," he said. "You can't."
Nathan narrowed his eyes. "I need to attend to Mistress Hirschfeld," he said. "If you've something to say to me, you can take it up with me later. Not that I've any idea what you're talking about." Which was a lie; he knew perfectly well what Davy was objecting to, and from the wry twist of her lips, so did Mistress Hirschfeld.
"Oh, no," she said. "I wouldn't dream of delaying you. I'll go and find him myself." And without another word, she set off across the deck, keeping her feet remarkably well. At the hatch into the hold, a crewman popped up and stared at her; Mistress Hirschfeld paused, looked down her nose at him, and managed to cow him without another word being said.
Nathan's admiration for her spiked another few notches.
"There goes a woman," he said. "All right, Davy, have it out."
"You cannot possibly do whatever you're planning to do with her," Davy said. "Emma would have your head."
Nathan sighed. "Emma would have my head if I left her there," he replied, "and anyway I'm not planning anything. I'm simply taking her back to England."
"You're what?" Davy's voice spiraled upwards.
"I'm taking her to Plymouth," Nathan repeated, "and for heaven's sake keep your voice down. I don't want everyone knowing my purpose in this."
Davy looked a little wild around the eyes, but obediently lowered his voice. "You can't take her to Plymouth. You can't! You don't know the first thing about her!"
"I know she's a pregnant Englishwoman who needs help," he said. "What else would you have me do? Throw her overboard?"
"No, but..." Davy shifted, uncomfortably. "We aren't far from the coast. We could set down in France. Drop her off. Someone would see she got where she was going."
"You're willing to trust an Englishwoman to the French?" Nathan asked, incredulous. "Brave man."
Davy scowled at him, and muttered, "Bad luck to have a woman on board. Everyone knows that."
He almost said 'say that to Pat,' but unfortunately Davy still believed 'Pat' stood for 'Patrick.' "Then it's a good thing for you that she won't be on board your ship," Nathan replied, instead of letting him in on that little secret. Though it would be a splendid sight when someone finally did enlighten him, and he only hoped he was there to see it. "I gave my word, Davy, and she's an Englishwoman. We'll bring her home, and I'll hear no more on the subject."
"Your funeral," Davy said, dourly.
"My choice," he said, in the tight tones he used when he was particularly displeased. "That's the end of it. I'll see you in Plymouth."
"If we're all still alive," Davy said, and bid him goodbye.
--
Captain Kendall's ship was quite a bit smaller than the Spanish one, and a good bit shabbier, paint chipped, sails patched, splinters all over the deck. Gail supposed it had just been through a sharp fight, although she didn't remember much cannonfire. Still. She didn't much approve.
At least she didn't feel as if it would sink at any moment. She remembered the crossing from England to Portugal, and shivered at the thought. This ship was much sturdier than that leaky tub.
She'd found her way into the hold, a quiet, relatively still place packed with boxes and bags. Evidently Captain Kendall had chosen to store his valuable cargo elsewhere; everything in here appeared to be foodstuffs, and not particularly valuable foodstuffs at that. Wheat, hardtack, from the smell of it dried hay in bales. A perfect place for a small child to hide unnoticed, if that child had got a bad fright earlier.
For that matter, it was doing wonders for her overstressed nerves. Captain Kendall seemed all right, but she had not cared at all for the way his crewmen looked at her. She felt much more comfortable alone in this warm, quiet space that smelled of (only slightly stale) hay.
She made her way among the dim stacks, listening carefully, and at last heard a faint scraping of cloth against wood, behind a stack of crates just against the tall curving side of the ship.
"Hello?" she called, and bent awkwardly to peer between the crates.
A pair of suspicious grey eyes met hers, scrutinizing her from the darkness as narrowly as Captain Kendall had earlier. "You're not a crewman," the boy informed her, without leaving the shadows.
"Aaron Kendall, I presume," she said, and lowered herself carefully to sit on a solitary crate nearby. This seemed like it might be a long conversation. "No, I'm not a crewman."
"Who are you, then?" he asked.
"Gail Hirschfeld," she told him. "Your papa is taking me back to England."
The boy must have decided that was good enough, because he crept into what little light made it down into the hold. He was small for his age, Gail thought, and resembled his father greatly, with flopping brown hair curling over his collar and freckles dotting his nose and cheeks. He regarded her with misty grey eyes that he must have got from his mother, a puzzled frown wrinkling his nose. "Why are you so fat?" he asked, at last.
Someone else might have taken offense at that. Gail had been around small children too often, and only laughed. "I'm not fat," she told him. "I'm going to have a baby."
The boy wrinkled his nose more. "Aunt Emma had a baby," he said. "It screams a lot. But she didn't get fat, she only got cranky."
"She must have," Gail said. "I expect you were at sea with your father when she did."
Aaron regarded her for another moment. "How do you know?"
"That I'm going to have a baby?" How to answer this in a way that the boy would understand? "I can feel it move," she said, at last.
"Really?" His eyes went wide. "Can I feel?"
She hesitated, then shrugged-- why not? He was only five. "All right," she said. "Come here."
The boy approached her with a reverent air she'd previously only seen in church, and put out his hand, then paused. "Where do I feel?"
"Right here," she said, took his hand, and laid it flat against her belly. Obligingly, the child landed a solid kick against his palm. She let out a quick huff of pain, and laughed. "See?"
Aaron looked at her as if she'd just performed a minor miracle. "Oh," he breathed. "There really is a baby in there!"
Gail laughed again. "Yes, there is. It kicks very often."
"How is it going to get out of there?" the boy asked, peering at her belly as if it would split open at any moment.
Well. Somehow she didn't think that was what Captain Kendall expected her to be teaching his son. "It will come when it's time," she said, rather vaguely, and changed the subject. "Well, then. Your father has asked me to teach you things, to pay for my passage home."
Aaron tilted his head to the side, and to her vast gratification did not pitch an immediate fit. "What sort of things?" he asked.
She shrugged. "Anything you want to learn, I suppose," she replied. "He mentioned languages first, but I can teach you a great deal more than that if you'd like."
"Oh, yes," he said, and his eyes brightened. "I like knowing things. I can read and write!"
"Can you indeed?" she asked, pretending surprise, but not much of it. "That's wonderful!"
He nodded, proudly. "I can read the Bible and I can write my name and I can figure a little bit. I can show you! Papa has paper."
Hmm. Captain Kendall got still less uncouth than he'd first seemed. "You must show me, then," she said. "And perhaps I can teach you a little more figuring than that. Your papa wanted me to teach you Latin and Greek, also."
The boy's brow creased again. "I don't know," he said. "That sounds hard."
"It is, a bit," she said, and saw his eyes go round again. "But I think it's worth it. You can learn ever so much more if you know them."
"And Papa wants me to know them?"
"That's what I understood," Gail said. She shifted on the crate, the wood digging uncomfortably into her thighs.
He still looked doubtful, but he said, "Oh, all right then. If Papa says."
Gail eyed him slantwise. "And do you always do what your papa says?"
Aaron nodded again, this time solemnly. "Yes. Papa is big and brave and smart. And he never says to do something unless he has a good reason. And he'll always tell me what it is. Unless it's bad and I have to do it now but then he explains later."
Her heart clutched suddenly, and her hand went to her belly. "You have a good father, then." If only her child's had been as good.
"The best," Aaron said, emphatically. "My papa is the best papa in the whole world."
She smiled a little at that, in spite of herself. "And you would know, I suppose. Having been so many places."
"I have though!" he said. "France and Ireland and England and Portugal. And Papa says we'll go to the New World someday."
"The New World!" she said. "My goodness."
That was the last word she got in for the rest of the afternoon. Little Aaron could certainly talk, and talk he did, telling her all about his papa and his life at sea and the men he'd known, under the pretext of a tour through the ship. About halfway through she learned that one of the big, burly men she'd seen on deck was actually a woman-- "Oh, but I wasn't supposed to tell that, so you mustn't tell anyone"-- and that 'Aunt Emma' was not actually related to Captain Kendall, but was his first mate's wife -- "Her baby is only a girl, which is all right, I guess, and I don't mean anything bad, but girls are boring. Except you. You're splendid."
She also learned several pertinent things about Captain Kendall, namely that his son worshipped him, that he was unmarried-- and wasn't that an interesting little fact-- and that he'd been in the Navy before he'd joined a privateering crew shortly after his son's birth. Aaron had gone on at great length about the Queen and how she'd personally given his father the letter of marque, so at least that was true. On more personal matters, the boy either didn’t know or didn't talk about his mother, and Gail resolved privately to get that story out of Captain Kendall or one of the crew as soon as possible.
He did talk about the crew, or at least his father's usual crew. To Gail's slight alarm, she learned that this crew was a rather slapdash one picked up at the last minute. Aaron didn't say as much, but she suspected he considered them unsafe, and she knew that his father did.
She paid more attention to the men after that, and caught the mutters, the sidelong glances at her and Aaron and, when they passed him, Captain Kendall. Her nerves, which had settled a little in Aaron's exuberant company, began to wind up again. Something seemed to be bubbling under the surface of this otherwise calm little ship, something that felt dangerous and violent. It was only a matter of time before it boiled over.
Gail could only hope she was safely in England before it did.
