Chapter Thirteen: Newland Left Behind

It was still raining in Free Town.

However, the wind had died down, letting the chilly water fall straight down from the night sky. There were no stars and the moon was barely visible as some hazy light a long way off.

“Well this is just brilliant,” Flower muttered drily, holding onto Storm as the man slumped against him, half conscious.

Florencia, clutching her slice of pie, was glad that she had shoes, for a thin layer of noxious mud oozed and squelched underfoot as she edged closer to the cook and the captain. The nauseating stink of wet, rotting rubbish rose all around them, almost unbearably.

“The captain’ll never be able to walk back in this state,” Flower said to her with a half sigh, hefting the other man a little.

He looked up the road, squinting at the watchmen that were drinking and gaming on the street corner.

“Should I-?” She began, pointing at them.

Flower shook his head, saying, “They won’t help.”

He grunted, pulling Storm closer against himself as he all but dragged the drunken pirate along the street and out to junction outside of his house, where he nodded at the watchmen and genially called out, “Evening!”

The two men, who both wore their hats pulled down low against the falling rain, poked their noses out of their oilskin greatcoats, which were buttoned up to beneath their chins.

“What yer got there?” One said, pointing.

“My captain’s had too much to drink,” Flower replied indifferently, “I’m taking him back-”

The other man, who had been squinting in silence, stood and grabbed a lantern. He stepped out of his sheltered guard hut and came up close to scrutinise Storm.

Florencia saw Flower tense as the man held the lantern up and then hopped back, shouting something that she did not understand, for he was speaking in Patwa, but nevertheless, she saw his fear. Behind them, meanwhile, the front door of the Anchor Inn banged open, ejecting some of the half dead rabble, still howling about fetching the Governor.

“Best get a move on,” Flower muttered.

He and Florencia hurried up the street, slipping on the cobbles as Flower huffed and heaved Storm along. The latter was heavier than he looked, it seemed, as they dodged a drunken rider careering down the road after them. The horse, foaming at the mouth, nearly trampled them as it hurtled by and disappeared into the darkness, through which candles, like dim fireflies, were glowing.

“Best get going,” Flower added, glancing over his shoulder at the mob spilling out from between the warehouses, “that rider’s gone the wrong way, but those ones haven’t.”

He nodded at the pair of horses they could just see disappearing down a beaten track that lead, Florencia presumed, to the other end of the island.

“What are we going to do?” She asked flower, “The boat’s miles away-”

“Cab stand’s just up there, though,” he jerked his head at the road leading north, “shouldn’t be too late-”

He refused help with carrying Storm, who seemed to have been knocked out cold by something hitting him on the head-or by the drink, as his coppery breathe was laden with bumboo when the brunette caught a whiff of it. His boots were very scuffed by the time Flower got him to the small space amongst the houses, where one man and his sodden horse were standing, alone and forlorn. A single, flickering lantern that hung from a post beside a tiny copse of trees lit them up.

The driver, dressed like the watchmen, lifted his own lantern up as Flower approached him, and, after staring hard for a moment or so, said, “It’ll be nine pence at this time of night!”

“Fine,” the cook told him, a little short, “I’ll tell you where to we need to stop-”

“Yer mate’s not gonna be sick, is ‘e?”

The driver looked both alarmed and disgusted, holding his lantern up higher as Storm and Flower came closer.

“I doubt it,” the latter replied, shaking his captain vigorously in order to stir him.

The driver looked disbelieving but said nothing more as Flower steadied Storm, who gripped the doorway, groaning. His hand, pale in the lantern light, trembled slightly, and it took him a while to even manage to put one book on the step without nearly falling over.

“Up, front, boy!” He slurred bloodily as Florencia made to climb in after him.

Flower frowned. The rain was still falling on them, turning the unpaved cab stand into a muddy, stony sea mixed with horse dung and other rubbish that made it smell terrible.

“But captain,” he said, “it’s still raining. Let the boy sit inside for once. He’ll catch his death of chill otherwise, and then you’d have to buy another one-”

Storm did not reply, and Flower jerked his head, indicating to Florencia that she could climb inside, which she did gingerly, smelling leather and wax as she slid along the bench opposite the pirate until she came to face him. He had buried his face in the wooden wall, against which he leant, groaning and clutching his ribs. His coat jangled with gold whenever he moved, and it seemed that he had more gold than when he had left his ship.

The cook slid in beside Storm and shut the door just as the carriage began rumbling forward, splashing through puddles and affecting a careful trot up the road. Florencia took the opportunity to peer through the window, which was only blocked by an oilskin curtain. She did not see much; they were travelling a bit too fast and the rain decreased vision, but nevertheless, she saw candles a-glow in the houses as they flitted by. Flower banged on the roof when he judged that they had gone far enough, and they slowed to a stop accordingly.

“Best get out first,” Flower told her, “this’ll take a while…”

Storm was only prized free with a lot of difficulty, by which point Florencia was soaked again. However, he soon stood, or rather slumped, in the middle of the road, near to where there was a patch of gaping darkness between the houses. He gripped onto Flower for support and staggered to the trees through which they had come earlier.

“Go through and see if Greer’s still there,” the latter asked her, “He should have a light-”

The brunette did as bade and pushed a path through the undergrowth, shuddering whenever the leaves tipped water down the back of her shirt as she fought the invisible branches and tumbled onto damp sand.

“Mr Greer?”

Although hidden by cloud, the moon shed a little hazy light on the scene, and by it, Florencia saw Greer’s huge, hulking outline, hunched over in one of the rowboats.

The man looked up sluggishly, peering at her with watery eyes. He said nothing, however, and with slight wariness, she asked him for a lantern, and eventually had to find it herself as he knew no Spanish. He had not lit it, and, rueing that Flower has not brought his magic stones, she cast it down and fought her way back in the dark.

“He does not understand,” Florencia told Flower, “I tried-”

“Greer can’t understand anything that’s not brute violence,” Flower said, and with a sigh, he pulled Storm’s arm around his shoulders and tramped through the jungly lane. The former kicked up the soft sand as he was dragged through it, mumbling something that Florencia did not catch.

Flower let him go and moved away to berate the other pirate.

“You could’ve helped me!”

Greer remained gargoyle-like, not even shrugging. However, Storm, now gripping onto a palm tree in order to stand, said something and began lurching over, which in turn prompted Flower to rush over, only to be pushed away.

“I’m not drunk!"

Storm promptly stumbled over his own feet and fell forward, arms flailing. He briefly caught his balance but then, the Florencia’s mirth, caught his boot on the edge of the rowboat and fell into it face first, leaving the brunette unable to contain her giggling.

“You’ll do yourself a mischief, captain, if you go tearing round,” Flower warned, although he did not help the man pick himself up.

Instead, he glanced into the rowboat, and noticed, by the moon’s smazy light, that both of the boats were half full of water.

“Greer, you could have started bailing the boats out at least!”

“Stop shoutin’!” Storm hollered at them, high voiced, but he was ignored.

The cook, aggravated by the other pirate’s muteness and unhelpfulness, sighed and grabbed a bucket, with which he began to scoop the sea of rainwater out.

“Help me, would you?” He asked Florencia raggedly, “this lump won’t.”

She took the bucket he held up, and clambered into the second boat, but even with teamwork it took a while to throw the worst of the water overboard. A shallow pool remained in each as the rain stopped falling and the clouds thinned to expose the star-studded indigo sky and the pearlescent moon.

“Where’s Newland?” Flower demanded of Greer, who just shrugged like an ape.

“Are you sure he’s not been here at all? Since we left? Since this morning even?”

The big man nodded dimly, and Flower looked around, at a loss for an explanation.

“He was up by the Cook Pot with one of them…women,” Florencia repeated weakly, “But I have no if he went-”

“Get me back to my bloody ship,” Storm groaned from behind them.

Flower looked at him, thinking.

“Cast off,” he told Greer, “the captain wants to go back. It’s not as if Newland won’t be happy here-”

Florencia jumped into Storm’s rowboat as the other two men pushed them out to sea. The waves frothed around their knees, cloudy with sand, as they fought their way out to calmer water.

“Wait!” Someone shouted, crunching closer.

Florencia looked around; running down a narrow coastal track, his too big frock coat flapping wildly as he used his hand to hold his hat on, was Newland. He had not tied his breeches up, she saw, and it sounded like he was going to keel over as he barrelled down the beach, splashed through the surf and scrabbled into the second rowboat, wheezing and with his eyes bulging.

Meanwhile, Storm, still muttering inanely and groaning in pain, clasped his forehead and massaged his banging temples. He winced at every loud noise, and, when he rolled over, a large velvet bag fell out of his coat pocket. It clanked loudly on the boat’s bottom and Flower, having climbed in, picked it up and weighed it with his hand.

“A good day’s sale and games, I see,” he said, handing the bag back, although Storm dropped it again with a wet thunk as he curled up in a self-pitying ball and groaned.

“I’ll just look after these for you,” Flower added, tying the bag to his belt, “We don’t won’t you loosing your winnings now, do we?”

“Just shut up,” the other man moaned, as though he was dying.

Flower smirked, and sat back to look at the sky again; Florencia followed his lead, and could not hold in a gasp at how beautiful the night was. The clouds had gone away and left behind an endless indigo canvas dusted liberally with diamond powder. She watched as the stars winked and glittered, before looking down and seeing the distant lights shadows from the Dark Horse at anchor.

“Miracles upon miracles, they haven’t blown her up,” Flower murmured to Florencia, who giggled and did not stop when Newland glared witheringly.

“Why d’yer leave me behind?” He growled.

“You’re here, aren’t you?” Flower told him, “We didn’t leave you behind-”

“Doesn’t mean yer weren’t gonna!”

“It’s your fault for not being where you should have been-”

“Yer were rowin’ off without me!”

“I figured that you wouldn’t mind living in Free Port,” Flower countered, “what with all them talented women-”

“An’ pay ‘em with what? Blood-?”

“Shut up!”

*

However, the Dark Horse was not as quiet as it seemed from a-far. The pirates left aboard had gotten drunk on both rum and freedom, and Florencia could hear Taffy singing about his Welsh homeland and the girl he had left behind as soon as they got close.

Flower, moving to climb up the sides, narrowly missed being conked on the head with a bottle dropping from the upper deck. It hit the rowboat, smashed and woke up Storm, who had been dozing near the rudder.

“Let me at ‘em!” He roared, jerking a flintlock out of his belt.

“Put it away,” Flower told him wearily, “It’s not even loaded.”

“I’m not carryin’ ‘im below!” Greer grunted in a rare moment of vocalisation, pointing at Storm with a pudgy finger.

“Nobody’s asking you to,” the cook replied through gritted teeth as Newland pushed him out the way and scrambled on board, “Just put him in his cabin.”

The man in question appeared to have fallen unconscious. He made a noise and kicked wildly as Greer grabbed him by the waist and slung him over his shoulder like he had done with Florencia in the past. Storm swore and clawed his back, befuddled with drink as he demanded to be freed, but the larger paid no heed and carried him aboard like cargo.

“Up you go,” Flower nodded at the rope and stick ladder.

Florencia swallowed. She had never climbed up it by herself.

“What if I fall?” She whispered fearfully.

“Then I’ll catch you,” Flower smiled, almost fatherly “now go.”