Chapter Ten: Black Allen

The man with the periwig thrust the boys through the door and then stood aside to let Florencia into the dingy parlour of a tavern called the Pious Pirate. It was on the wooden end of the quay, crammed between a terrace of cottages and the next bluff.

Someone stuck their foot as she walked in and she found herself face down yet again as men roared with laughter all around her. Her face burned red as she picked herself up and brushed the dust off.

“Where in the world d’yer find this one, Walsh?” A hoarse voice called out, “I’ve got enough boys as it is!”

She supposed that whoever was talking had glared at the two boys in question, as the smaller one flinched violently and edged away from the shadows. His darker fellow, however, just scowled at the dark and rubbed his red cheek.

The parlour, meanwhile, fell silent. Florencia took the opportunity to squint at the speaker. He was sitting in a patch of shadow, but even so, she made out that he was thickset and rather old. The hair on his head was thinning and grey but his beard was still bushy and thick, if sawn short and rough with a knife. His old greatcoat looked as frayed and worldly as he did, sitting there with a new three cornered hat on his head and a tankard of beer gripped in his long nailed hand.

Walsh stepped forward and cleared his throat.

“Those two,” he glared disapprovingly at the two boys, “launched a back alley attack on this one, captain.”

He gave Florencia a nudge, pushing her closer to the old pirate who looked her up and down before turning his ire on the two miscreants in question.

“Get over ‘ere!” He barked, “That includes you, yer cowardly wretch!”

The smaller boy to whom he was referring had to be pulled out from the bar by Walsh, whilst the older boy stubbornly stayed put in the middle of the room. He too was fetched over, kicking and swearing as the dapper pirate seized him by his thatch of hallmark black hair.

“I could bloody well sell the both of yer fer a piece o’ eight each!” The old pirate roared, reminding Florencia of a bull, “an’ yer’d spend yer miserable lives working in some field or worse!”

She almost felt a stab of pity for the youngest boy. He was standing in front of his captain, hemmed in by the old man himself, Walsh, the fireplace and a table of grown men on his left, as he cried and snivelled, shaking his head fearfully. He was trembling too, Florencia noticed, as a sudden whiff of ammonia informed everyone that he had just wet himself.

“But I won’t,” the grizzled captain added after a pregnant pause, “call me soft or call me drunk, I ‘ave my reasons.”

He paused again, looking from one boy to the other, “You, Jim-blood alone keeps yer in me crew, an’ as fer you, Matthias-I paid your master good money fer yer, an’ unless I know that I can that gold back, yer mine, boy!”

Matthias made a choking noise; his eyes shone with relief. He shifted, conscious of the wetness between his legs and flushed red with embarrassment. He fled as soon as he was told to, unlike Jim, who hesitated, glowering at the old man with eyes like fiery coals.

“I said get goin’, boy!” His grandfather added with a bellow.

He slunk after his friend, his expression dark. Florencia watched him disappear from sight as the captain took another long swallow of beer. The rest of the crew had quietly resumed what they had been doing; playing cards and dice, drinking or muttering amongst themselves in low voices. Walsh, his face red and glazed with sweat, sat down where the light was best and pulled a leather-bound book of medical texts towards himself.

“Spit it out, then,” the old pirate said gruffly.

Florencia jumped. She had been looking around bar, squinting at the trying nets and sailcloth that hung over the beams, which appeared to be made from shipwrecked timbers. A lantern, broken, its glass body choked by wax, hung over the bar.
“Yer wouldn’t ’ave been ‘ere fer no reason,” he growled, staring fixatedly at her, “no ship’s been berthed at this end in months.”

He took another swig and looked thoughtfully at his tankard, asking, “Which ship did yer come in on, boy?”

Florencia opened her mouth and the closed it quickly.

“Well? Which? Yer can’t ‘ave flown in-!”

“Answer ‘im, boy,” one of the pirates said from behind her, “it’s rude ter answer a superior-didn’t yer cap’n teach yer any manners?”

“Yer’ll feel the lash o’ ‘is whip if yer don’t!” Another man jeered.

“What ship, boy?” The old man asked again, lifting his tankard, “I ‘aven’t got all day!”

She bowed her head and muttered, “Dark Horse.”

A few men near her looked at her with mild terror and disgust, whilst their captain frowned and Walsh warily looked up from his book.

“Eh?” The old pirate said, “Say that again, boy?”

Florencia repeated herself a little more loudly and blushed under the scrutiny that was coming from all around her.

“El Moreno Caballo?” He repeated, “What the Hell’s that? Speak English boy! I’m not some Dago-!”

“He says he came in on the Dark Horse,” Walsh muttered to him, leaning across the table and closing his book. He glanced warily around the room, and although most of the men had not heard or had gone back to their games and conversations with stiffened backs, a few were still watching them closely.

“Yer-?” The old man said. He looked from the young surgeon to Florencia, “But she sank off-!”

“That doesn’t mean she did,” Walsh told him, hushing him as the numbers of heads looking at them doubled, “Yer know full well what Storm’s like-”

The other man grunted, drank the dregs in his tankard and slammed it down, shouting, “Damn right!”

He glared at Florencia, who shrank back a little as he half lurched forward, booming, “Does yer captain’s ship ‘ave a horse for a figurehead? Is it painted black with one ear?”

She gasped in fright as he grabbed her by the front of her too-big shirt and pulled her right up close to him, so that his hot, beery breath was puffed into her face. Florencia wrinkled her nose up and turned her head away, squeezing her eyes shut as he shook her and bellowed, “Well? Does it?”

“Captain!” Walsh cried out, alarmed, “the boy-!”

“Stand down, you bloody butcher!” The pirate roared at him, his face blotchy beneath all his sunburnt skin, “Your sort don’t come thickly round ‘ere, so don’t make me flog yer-or worse!”

The surgeon fell backward, looking strained, as the crew looked on in mild and short lived bemusement, their cards and cup of dice in hand with their rum.

“Captain,” Walsh murmured, this time in a more beseeching tone.

The old man let Florencia go. She staggered back, shaking a little and holding her breath as the man reached into his greatcoat, but all he pulled out was a brass spyglass as he stood up, swaying a little.

“If yer want summat done,” he muttered, in a fairly thick Scottish accent, “yer have ter do it yerself...”

He stumped out of the tavern with all eyes watching him warily. Walsh grabbed Florencia by the arm, and, still shaken, she let herself be taken back outside, a loud buzzing following them as the crew began gossiping. The sky, she saw, had grown leadenly overcast without a single gap between the cloud masses, which had grown together like an ominous blanket.

She and Walsh waited on the wooden quay for the old pirate, who had limped his way up the bluff in order to see the Dark Horse at anchor. He took his time, during which something a little warm splattered onto Florencia’s face. She raised her hand to wipe it off, hoping it was not gull shit; instead, it was water, and as they waited in silence for the grim looking old man, more and more rain began to patter down around them in fat, lukewarm droplets.

“Yer lied ter me, boy!” The veteran buccaneer growled at her, “There’s no Dark-!”

“He might not be, captain,” Walsh broke in quickly.

Florencia looked at him. The man had his hand close to his necktie; indeed, his fingers were brushing it nervously as he swallowed and added, “Storm might’ve berthed somewhere else-somewhere more secluded. It’s not hard to, you know that yourself, captain, and he’s not a fool-”

“If ‘e’s ‘ere ‘e is!”

Walsh smiled with a touch of unctuousness.

“That might be so, captain, but he’s probably smart enough to not drop anchor somewhere like here. He might be up in Bonefish Bay, captain; you wouldn’t see him from here if he is. Why’d the boy lie about something like that, anyway?”

He looked very nervous, but as relieved as Matthias did when his captain looked away and fixed his slightly cataracted on Florencia.

“Yer sure yer ship’s the Dark Horse?” He rumbled.
She looked away and nodded quickly, flinching when his hand brushed the pommel of his rusty cutlass. The rain was starting to come down heavier; already her clothes were a shade darker and her hair felt rather damp as the old pirate grabbed her by the shirt again and pulled her to him.

“You tell yer Cap’n Storm,” he said, “that Black Allen knows ‘e’s ‘ere an’ that I’ll go ter the Governor himself if ‘e ain’t left by nightfall!”

He let her and pushed her away.

“We don’t need anymore pirate blood spilt,” he added, muttering to himself and stumping back to the shelter of the tavern.

Walsh started to follow him, stopping when he saw that Florencia had not moved.

“Go on, boy,” he told her, “go straight back to your captain and tell him what Black Allen said. It’s best for us all if you do.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but the tavern door swung shut behind him with a loud clang, leaving her alone on the quay. The sloshing of the sea beneath her feet, which she could see if she looked down, was making her queasy as the rain bucketed down on the island. A gust of wind blew the tepid water in her face, forcing her to raise an arm so that she was not blinded as she lurched back to town.

The downward turn of the weather brought a change to Free Town as different as the flipside of a coin.

Beforehand, when it was humid but sunny, everyone had been outside; mothers were working in their flowery gardens as their children played at their feet. The coopers had hammered away and the butcher’s yard had been echoing with the chilling squeals of doomed animals as woman in their finery, both mistresses and wives, promenaded up and down like it was the fashionable hour of the day. The market had thrummed with activity as men offloaded questionable stuff, singing shanties as they did so; now, however, with the falling of the rain, the painted and silk bedecked ladies had run for shelter and the cooper and his kith had stopping nailing wood. The butcher had gone inside to salt the meat and the dock workers had retreated to the relative dryness of the nearest alehouse. It was sheltered amongst the warehouses, through which Florencia, dodging the women tottering home in their pattens with a day’s shopping clutched under their arms. She had no idea where to go, and fought the urge to seek out Mariah on the off-chance that Newland had finally crawled over to the brothel.

“Florencia!”

The sodden brunette jumped and spun around, her bare feet covered in gritty mud. A figure came looming out of the sleeting rain with a package tucked beneath one arm; when they lifted their oilskin hood, a familiar olive face met with hers.

“Flower!”

Regardless of how strange it looked, Florencia ran forward and threw her arms around his waist out of sheer relief at the sight of him. His breath was knocked from him with an oomph as he brought her arm around her shoulders, holding her to him. She thought that some of the water on her face might be tears of joy as he said, “What’re you doing here? I thought Storm had-?”

“He left me with Newland-we went to the Cook pot to meet a woman, but she was meeting someone else so he went off with another woman and the first one took me away with this painter-”

The cook held his hand up, shushing her gently.

“He’ll be for it when the captain shows,” Flower told her with a small smile, “You’ll see. Now, let’s get you inside before you die of cold-”

She found herself spun round on the spot and guided to the biggish house that she had all but been standing outside of. It had a huge, walled off yard, Florencia saw, and a front door that stood at the top of three steps. It was so narrow that it was barely wide enough for a grown man to pass through as a growl of thunder wrent the hair.

The room behind it was dry and dry and quite cool. It was sparsely furnished too, with just a dining table with the cage of marmosets on it, four wooden chairs, an unlit fireplace in the left hand corner and pine dresser against the right wall beside a shadowy door.

“Luigia?” Flower called out, putting his damp package down on the table.

He began to unwrap it, and pulled out bread, cheese, a piece of bacon and a few small oranges.

“Luigia?”

“Papa!”

Florencia jumped yet again, and half feared that her heart might burst before the day was out with all the frights she had had.

This time it was a small girl who had startled her. She came hurtling out of the other door and flung herself at Flower, who received her with open arms and an ecstatic grin.

“Ana!”

He picked her up and swung her around a couple of times, which made the girl giggle and shriek happily. She had nigrous hair and flax-coloured skin with a pair of the glossiest dark eyes that Florencia had ever seen-except for one person. Her breath caught in her throat, which closed up as a memory of Margarita dancing and laughing welled in the forefront of her mind. She felt a tear be squeezed out of each eye and another after it, causing her to look away and wipe her flushing face dry.

“Florencia?”

She glanced over her shoulder and saw Flower looking at her with concern in his face. His daughter, still beaming at him and hugging his legs, looked at Florencia too, and with typical child’s curiosity, asked, “Why are you crying?”

The older girl quickly wiped her eyes dry and forced herself to smile, for everyone’s sake.

“No reason,” Florencia replied, turning to face them properly.

Flower looked relieved, and took half a step back to show her his nostalgia inducing child.

“This is my daughter, Mariana,” he said, with a proud father’s smile, “she’s just turned nine this June.”

“Who are you?” Mariana asked rather brusquely. She had quickly picked up on the fact that her father was using Spanish, although she too looked more Italian than Hispanic.

Florencia fought to hold in more tears that threatened to burst forth as though through a broken dam. Her sister had also just turned nine that June; she could remember the tea party thrown for her, so clearly that it might have happened just the day before.

“My name is Florencia, but people call me Flory too.”

“Then that’s what I’ll call you,” Mariana said matter-of-factly, before turning to look up at her father with childish excitement, rattling off, “I went to the market after school today-!”

Her father raised his hand and her pert face fell and became sullen.

“We have a guest, Ana,” he reminded her, looking pointedly at Florencia, who battled vainly to keep back burning tears of bittersweet memory.