Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key Read online

  * * *

  They drank to Tom’s memory, and dined on salt cod and maize cakes, with a pot of sweet chocolate. Before the end of the meal, Mrs. Waverly was sitting on John’s lap, feeding him morsels from her fingertips. By the time they’d cleared the cloth, she had unlaced her bodice and was opening his breeches. John, nothing loth, carried her off to the bed, though he half expected she would go all faint on him again or exclaim that she had a headache.

  To his amazement, she stripped off her clothes eagerly, and moreover helped him disrobe. She sprang onto the counterpane lithe as a tigress, and John followed rather more clumsily. What followed next was better than all his dreams.

  They did not set foot to the floor all the rest of the day, save to go back to the dining table for the other bottles of rum. When they weren’t fornicating madly they lay there passing the bottle back and forth, and Mrs. Waverly told John all about the places they might go now, Paris or Rome or Amsterdam or Charleston.

  Anywhere there was glittering Society, she explained, there were well-to-do folk who occasionally required certain services performed: indiscreet letters recovered, information gathered about the daily activities of junior princes or archdukes, the placing of well-born bastard children with suitably distant foster parents. These services paid quite well, apparently. Mrs. Waverly felt that a man of John’s strength and imposing appearance would do very well at her side.

  She told him much more, but by that time John had taken a great deal of rum on board and wasn’t able to follow her words any too well. The last thing he remembered clearly was her telling him all about the fun to be had in Versailles at this time of year. Then she had rolled over, and invited him to do something he’d never done before. He wished afterward he could remember what it had been.

  * * *

  John woke alone, sick and groggy and near blind. The gray light of dawn was creeping in shamefaced, slow as though it was catching and tearing itself on all the masts and spars in the harbor.

  He lay there a moment, trying to recollect where he was. When the memory came back, he rolled over and looked for Mrs. Waverly, but did not see her.

  John fell out of bed and stared around the room. He saw his clothes, neatly folded on a chair, and his sea chest. The breakfast dishes were gone, and so were the empty rum bottles, but there was something white on the table. Moving unsteadily, he made his way to the table and peered down. He saw a piece of paper with writing on it.

  Dearest John, I gave you my all, therefore I am taking your half.

  He read it over three times, stupefied, before he caught the meaning. He looked around the room and saw that the big trunk was gone, along with its contents. She hadn’t even left him a copy of the Book of Common Prayer.

  John hadn’t the strength to curse. Moving cautiously, lest his head fall off and shatter, he pulled on his clothes. He reflected that he was slightly better off than if he’d gone out drinking with Hairy Mary from the Turtle Crawl; she’d have taken his raiment and his sea chest too.

  He went to the window and looked out. He could see five ships on the horizon, three of them already far out to sea, and Mrs. Waverly might be on any of them. As he stood there, running over the events of the past months in his mind, he remembered the four pearls he’d got when he’d looted the Santa Ysabel’s great cabin. He’d kept them in their twist of paper, like peas in a pod, tucked in his spare shirt.

  Opening his sea chest, John looked down at his clothes, that Mrs. Waverly had laundered and neatly folded. He rummaged through them. Lying atop the crossed arms of his spare shirt he found the twist of paper. On it she had written: Pray excuse my little frailty.

  He sighed.

  * * *

  Walking along in the gloom before sunrise, John spotted the Revenge moored at the common landing by King’s Wharf. Men were offloading boxes of china, silently and swiftly, and Sejanus and Mr. Tudeley stood in quiet conversation with a merchant. Money exchanged hands. The china was trundled away on a cart. Sejanus and Mr. Tudeley were turning to go back on board when they spotted John.

  Clearly, they had been ashore with money to spend. Sejanus had a fine black coat of watered silk to match his hat, and a silver-topped ebony walking stick. Mr. Tudeley had gotten a fearsome new tattoo on his chest, of a grinning skull above crossed bones. It was still bleeding slightly. To their credit, neither of them laughed as they watched John come slinking up with his sea chest on his shoulder.

  “The lady changed her mind about marrying, did she?” said Mr. Tudeley. “I thought as much. Not really a suitable girl, old fellow.”

  “We’re about to sail,” said Sejanus. “Coming aboard?”

  “It’s only for a cruise or two,” said John. “Just until I make enough of a pile to set myself up in a shop.”

  “To be sure,” said Sejanus, with a straight face.

  They went aboard the Revenge. Before the sun rose she was under sail, well past Deadman’s Cay, bound for Tortuga.

  FB2 document info

  Document ID: bc8ddf88-d5a5-4f79-ba5b-0c1562546a73

  Document version: 1

  Document creation date: 09 August 2010

  Created using: FictionBook Editor 2.4, AlReader2 software

  Document authors :

  mtvietnam

  Document history:

  1.0 — Scan, OCR, proofreading — mtvietnam (2010)

  Few punctuation errors and apparent typos have been corrected:

  ‘By the powers, what’re you?” — closing quote was changed to ’

  “Oh Grand Turk, may I introduce my master — opening quote was changed to ‘

  He voice came from behind him — was changed to "Her voice"

  The boat lay in the scuppers with Sejanus rolling in it — a missing period was added after "in it"

  FOR A WHILE THEY took turns baling, until the rain stopped at last — a missing period was added after "at last"

  Close your eyes if you’re scared. Sing!’ — closing quote was changed to ”

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