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PART III
AUGUST, 1780
OFF THE COAST OF FRANCE
Then Elliott’s pickled brain managed to parse something else. “Aye, I see,” he drawled. “You didn’t need to after ye cut off her tits with yer cat o’ nine. Too many bloody cats in this tale.” And Elliott snickered at his own jest.
The look of deep remorse on the man’s face did finally manage to pierce Elliott’s fog. Dunham knew what he’d done. And would regret it for the rest of his life.
“Why didn’t ye just find a woman an’ settle down if ye didn’t want a girl on board wit’ ye?”
There was a long silence, but instead of answering, he asked slowly, “Where you from, m’boy?”
Elliott cackled again, but stopped and groaned when his head throbbed. “I am,” he said imperiously, standing, stumbling, attempting to sketch a bow and nearly toppling over in the process, “Fleet Commander Elliott Henry Flanders Raxham, cashiered from His Majesty’s Navy, traitor’t th’ Crown, smuggler, pirate, murderer, an’ the late fourteenth Earl Tavendish.”
“God’s bones,” Dunham whispered.
“Which makes me wife!” Elliott declared, his finger in the air. He stumbled backward and landed on his bunk. “Me wife is Calico Jack Raxham!”
That struck him as highly amusing and he fell back to lie on his bed whilst he guffawed at the magnificent joke.
He heard Dunham arise and awaited the moment Dunham would pick him up and throw him overboard.
But instead he heard the door open. “Boy!” he bellowed. “Coffee an’ food fer yer cap’n!”
“Don’ think to coddle me, Dunham. Get off me ship ’fore I kill you too. I’m not above it.”
“I ken,” Dunham mumbled vaguely, continuing to clean his cabin with the very same precision Celia had done it.
“Good God, she is you, ain’t she?”
The old man grunted. “Mayhap, but what I saw in ’er was ’er mother. I couldna let her go, bein’ the only thing I had of my wife, the one yer commander took an’ then abandoned.”
“Apologies fer ’im,” Elliott slurred.
Dunham cast him a glance over his shoulder. “That ain’t gonna help.” He paused. “Was when she started bein’ too much like me I realized what I shoulda done, but by then it was too late.”
“So ye sent ’er to Covarrubias to make her into the son ye wanted.”
“Nay, not quite,” he said thoughtfully, pausing to direct the cabin boys who bore coffee and food, as he’d ordered. Once the door was closed, he approached Elliott and forcibly pulled him up to a sitting position. Elliott grasped his head and groaned, but then accepted a cup of coffee with some gratitude.
“The lass has a mind Galileo would envy,” Dunham said low as he dragged a small chest in front of Elliott and set his repast on it. “I doonna like to admit this, but I sent her to Covarrubias when I could teach her no more.”
Elliott blinked and Dunham looked him square in the eye. “I am an educated man, Raxham,” he said slowly, precisely, suddenly possessing the diction of any Edinburgh-trained scholar. Elliott gaped up at him, shocked. “My father made sure of that. Whatever Hylton’s other crimes, he recognized Jack’s mind, encouraged her in her sums, made games of logic for her, taught her diverse ciphers, and had begun teaching her her stars. When I took her, she was primed to learn how to navigate. Teaching her French was necessary. Requiring her to learn Arabic was to keep her mind challenged. By the time she was fourteen, she’d exhausted my education. There were many men who could do her justice—but only one was brazen enough to train a woman.”
Elliott cleared his throat. Even his foggy mind could comprehend the gravity of this confession.
Dunham tapped his finger against his temple. “Her mind, Raxham. I wanted to see just how brilliant she was, and moreover, I wanted her to know.”
“And so you suffered Covarrubias,” Elliott said low, his own diction coming around now with a few sips of coffee and these sobering revelations forcing him to pay attention.
Dunham nodded and relaxed back in the chair he’d drawn up to the chest between them, his hands around his own cup. “Aye. But if I meant to raise a girl to know her mind, I had to trust her with the rest of her life. I ordered her to cut her hair because she nearly got it tangled in some lines during a storm, when she got called out of her bunk with no time to braid it. Furthermore, I did not attempt to ‘cut off her tits.’ I was angry and I was not thinking. Mayhap it is true I occasionally wish she were a son, but only when she is increasing.”
Elliott’s mind spun. “What?” he whispered. “I thought she was barren.”
Dunham shrugged. “Might as well be. She catches easily enough, but she’s never been able to carry a child through. My mother was like that. She was a strong woman, but she died in childbirth. I’d rather not see my daughter go the way of my mother.” He paused. “Jack was bedridden in Oranjestad just after that brawl. Did she tell you that?”
“Aye,” Elliott croaked.
“Did she tell you why?”
“Nay.” He was not sure he wanted to know.
“She lost Covarrubias’s … fourth? Fifth? I cannot seem to keep the number.”
Elliott could barely breathe. “How do you know when her mother doesn’t?”
He shrugged. “She’s my daughter. I make it my business to know. If her mother didn’t know, well … Jack must have her reasons.”
“Did Covarrubias know?”
“He can’t have. He may have been a right bastard, but he loved her insofar as he was capable of it, and he coddled her. He would never have left her to bear his heirs alone or illegitimately. He was a count, after all, and she bears the name of an English baron.”
Elliott closed his eyes and attempted to think, but he was obliged to put down his cup of coffee, open his eyes, and start counting on his fingers. “My God,” he whispered.
Dunham began to chuckle, but it was a very sad one. “If she had your child, it’s gone now. I can think of no other reason Solomon would have whisked her into Amsterdam. Nay, I’ll not get my immortality out of that girl, for a certes. She is the last of a long line, but if there is to be a last, I can think of no finer end.” He speared Elliott with a glance. “At least you won’t be the last of your line. You have a brother who can do the honors so long as the Crown never finds out you’re not dead. I suggest, Iscariot, that you find a new name once you attain your land, as you cannot go throughout your life with that one.”
“And I suppose you will hold my true name over my head,” Elliott said vaguely, simply for something to say as he was confused and angry and penitent and … overcome with grief.
A child.
His.
But Elliott’s father-in-law frowned and shook his head. “I’ve no reason to. I like you and I’ve no loyalty to the Crown, particularly after it laid my clan low and stripped me of my birthright. King George doesn’t know a quarter what I do to his precious Navy.”
“I must go after her,” Elliott whispered.
“Where is she headed now, then?”
“Spain,” Elliott said shortly, “to dispose of Covarrubias’s estate. Then Algiers.”
Dunham started. “What business has she in Algiers?”
“Solomon’s wife,” he said slowly, “is being held hostage by a sultan and they mean to retrieve her. I promised to go with her and assist.”
“Good God. The lass doesn’t do things halfway, I’ll give her that. There’s only one sultan in Algiers, who’s got an army and a navy.”
“Aye, and that’s why I need to follow—”
“Nay. She just witnessed the death of the father of the babes she’s carried and buried. She’ll not appreciate being deprived of time to grieve him. And considering she believes she caused Khersis’s death and so has never truly made peace with it, it could be a rather long time.”
Elliott groaned and dropped his face in his hands.
“She said she would find you?”
“Aye.”
“So far as I know, she has never reneged on a promise she has made. But I’ll go after her,” Dunham murmured, as he arose. Elliott felt a large, strong hand squeezing his shoulder.
“Wait for me—”
“She bid you win a war for her, did she not?”
“Aye,” Elliott croaked.
“Then do that.”
If you don’t want to wait 2 years to get to the end, you can buy it here.
Pirates!
At least one of those promises will be broken, methinks, one way or other.
(Is the beginning of this chapter supposed to be the same as the end of last?)
Yes. That is why it says 80B.
“That’s why it says 80B”
Well, yeah, right? But, I mean, like, it’s like anyone actually reads the l̵i̵n̵k̵s̵ titles…
*casual whistle-walk away, eyes prancing*
*continues casual whistle-walk, towards post* It’s NOT like anyone actually reads…
*quick shuffle-hustle away*
At first glance, I read it as “Dunham Bob.”
OT…
Which nepo baby…? Does it matter? His entire circle is made up entirely of rich, snotty youngsters larping at communism for thee but not for me.
Trump may launch insults and attacks on media. He may even issue relatively toothless threats of punishments.
I’ve yet to see evidence he gives any of them direct marching orders on how to report about him. Maybe he has some rightwing lackeys who get direct talking points, but since Obama this has been a thing where people on the left report what the political class (with a D after their names) tells them verbatim.
I really wish I had saved the story. It was one of those lengthy puff pieces on one of his cronies where he admitted he spoonfed everything to the media.
After that you had Journlolist. There was almost certainly a Journolist 2.0. And unsurprisingly, the socialists are all in on this tactic of controlling media.
Ben Rhodes?
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/magazine/the-aspiring-novelist-who-became-obamas-foreign-policy-guru.html
Yea, that’s the one.
Rhodes said the quiet part out loud.
Moj, sorry to steal your thunder. Is it OK to set up one’s own GiveSendGo account?
Am really multiply unwell.
Please email me. moriah at moriahjovan dot com
TY, madame. If I could maintain one. IDKY why not. Really struggling in all ways; am law-abiding and all that.
Fucking narcissists. Vampires.
That was meant theoritcally. Not organinized.
Moj, my cunty aunt Susie is my own mother.
And I thought Bob a/o I could help!
Bitch is directing me to her inherited fentanyl somewhere in her hoard. Just fucking evil.
theoretically
organizized
stet
With Trump weighing in officially on the Clancey case, that prosecutor can kiss ANY chance of getting a conviction out of a Mass jury goodbye. It was already political. It was already something that had rallied the blue hairs and the blue-hair-in-spirit leftwing broads. Now? Yea. Even if they got an all male jury, the majority of them would be too gutless to go face the batshit leftie women at home who would make their life hell if they voted to convict.
It’s done. Lesson here? For a lot of women, one woman being held accountable is akin to all woman being held accountable. And we can’t have that.
One plus of all this – repealing the 19th amendment has gone mainstream. I mean it’s not going to happen, but you have regular men saying it to themselves for the first time in my lifetime. Like the equality between the genders had been a fundamentally accepted premise of everyday life and this case didn’t do it on its own, but it was kind of the final straw for a lot of guys.
This goes beyond the normal dumb court case that the media sensationalizes because it really is a historical turning point.
So the left went so far into the cultural Marxism that they’ve brought back no-shit sexism and racism. Like many people aren’t really joking about either thing anymore.
The relentless destruction of male only spaces from Scouting to combat arms to workplaces has also done it, although mostly under the water. I was firmly in the equality of the sexes but there are absolutely differences in how men and women interact with other people, and it’s not always positive.
Ahem. No harbor here. I am but (by our standards) one sane woman.
Lord, if I could catch up here. Run off my feet.
No-shit racism has been loudly trumpeted in blue cities and states for decades and the reaction from whitey has ranged from meek acceptance to enthusiastic support. I don’t see any pushback outside of private discussions and the “dissident” internet.
There is no possible way to meaningfully reduce the franchise, no matter what the merits might be. You simply are not going to get people to vote to, err, not be allowed to vote. And you need a supermajority.
So, that won’t happen until the Constitution is on the ash-heap of history.
Morning, Glibs.
‘sup playa
not much
suh’ fam
whats goody yo
Sup, my Glibs?
🥩🍻🌤️
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c18iVOUpecI
🎶🎶
teh hype said “you’re late”
🤷🏼♀️
Morning, Glibsters,
Well into the coffee, planning out today’s work schedule
My son is visiting, motivating him is not always easy. Some things never change.
I have to seal the concrete steps before the weather gets too hot.
I’m not really looking forward to it, but I’m less enthusiastic about freeze-thaw cycles tearing it apart again.