Chapter One
MynameisJamieDavis, and this is my story. The circumstances of my childhood are not happy ones, nor are they uncommon ones. My mother was a local seamstress in the portside city of Brittlecreek, and my father was a sailor by trade. My mother passed from illness when I was still in leading strings. My father was always traveling the seas, so I was sent to live with my Uncle Nedry, who worked for the local shipbuilder as an assistant.
My time with Uncle Ned was beneficial, in that I learned to read and write, something that neither of my parents could do. Uncle Ned was a confirmed bachelor, and his employment created a modest but comfortable living for us. I thought that perhaps I would one day follow in his footsteps and become a shipbuilder myself, or sail the seas like my father. Neither was to be; at least, not in a recognizable way.
When I was nine, a terrific storm capsized the vessel my father was on, leaving me without parents. I would never forget the cry of anguish from Uncle Ned when the port authorities came to tell him my father was lost, for my father had been his only remaining relative besides me. Uncle Ned then threw himself into raising me as a stalwart and honourable young man, and I presumed our lives would continue as they had.
On the eve of my fourteenth birthday, Uncle Ned was arrested for embezzlement, which I knew to be patently false, as he was a model of honesty and charity. But despite his pleas to the contrary, he was found guilty and transported for life, and all of his assets were seized, including the only place I had to call home. The local constabulary decided that, rather than sending me to a workhouse for orphans, my reading and writing skills could be turned into profit, and I was sold as a ward and indentured servant to Squire Harrington, a local dealer of antiquities.
Squire Harrington was an older man, a recent widower who had lost his wife of over forty years. They had never had children, and I admit that I had hopes that he would see me as more than an apprentice or ward. My time with Uncle Ned had given me a sense of family that I yearned for again, as my life had been turned upside-down in a matter of days. I lived with the squire, his lodgings being above the antiquities shop. He had a maid in once a week to give the place a cleaning and to prepare a hot meal for him, but otherwise, most of the work he left to me.
He was a kindly man, soft-spoken, no more bravery than a field mouse, with a curly, white wig that he wore under his slightly shabby tricorn hat. Nearly everything he owned was out of date, out of fashion, and mended or covered with patches. I discovered, when I was tasked to get the household accounts in order, that despite owning his own shop, Squire Harrington was terrible with money. He was as disorganised a man as one could ever find. He was also much too kind for his own good, lending money to friends in need and not getting it properly repaid to him. Through snippets of conversation and various letters and papers, I was also able to discern that he and his late wife had never been particularly well-endowed when it came to finances. Her mental and physical decline had taken its toll on the running of the household in her last few years, and he had fallen far behind on his bills and taxes. His grief at losing her had also produced in him a sort of melancholy where he was often unable to rouse himself from his bed, leaving his shop unopened, which did not help his financial state.
As such, I discovered that the squire had accumulated debts far beyond what his shop would be able to provide for. My heart ached as I realized that the kindly older man was positively drowning under the weight of financial obligations that he had no way of ever repaying with his limited means. It seemed unfair that someone who was so generous and good would struggle so much. He had used his meager funds to take me in to help him, which spoke without words of his desperation to get his life organised. Despite the grief of losing my uncle, I made it my goal to do whatever I could to help the old gentleman in any way I was able.
He was the sort of man who never raised his voice, even to scold me if I did something foolish. The only time I ever was afraid around him was when I was sixteen, and he found me out behind the shop with the butcher’s son, our hands down each other’s trousers as we shared clumsy, wet kisses. The other boy had fled, and I stood, trembling, afraid that Squire Harrington would strike me, or worse yet, send me away.
Imagine my surprise when he led me inside and told me that my lust for the same sex was understandable, and he would not discourage my proclivities, only warned me to be more discreet. Buggery was illegal, and the sentence was transportation. While I was not afraid of what might happen if I were transported to a new land, I was not ready to give up my life in Brittlecreek, and, still being a child, I was concerned with how I would make a living if I were to lose my position with the squire. And my apprehension for what the squire would do without me solidified my resolve to be more cautious with my explorations of these strange feelings that were making themselves known to me.
Squire Harrington found use for my education, having me catalog and organise some of his various collections. I was learning about different ages in history, from the time when the land was populated by giant reptilian creatures, to some of the civilizations across the sea that still existed today. Squire Harrington dealt in all types of artifacts, from fossils to coins, ancient clothing and jewelry, rudimentary tools, and all manner of writings. His knowledge was quite extensive, and it was through his teachings that I gained my love of history, architecture, and archeology. For my seventeenth birthday, he gifted me a fine silver compass on a chain. It was the first thing I had owned that was truly mine besides the clothing on my back, and I kept it hidden under a loose floorboard in my room, when I was not wearing it about my neck, like a “dandy peacock,” as the squire would tease me.
I was not entirely sure if when I came of age I would stay on with him or find a use for these passions I was developing. But when my eighteenth birthday came and went, the squire made no mention of me leaving, other than to say that I could now do as I pleased, and if I wanted to find another trade, he would wish me all the best. I chose to stay.
Chapter Two
Itwasonedaynot far into my eighteenth year when Squire Harrington traveled out of town for several days with his carriage, leaving me in charge of the shop. When he returned, he had a man with him. The man couldn’t have been older than the squire, but his face was haggard and looked like it had weathered many a rough day and night. His curls were thick and gray, hanging in scraggly tendrils about his sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. He shivered in the carriage, despite being wrapped in a mass of blankets that nearly doubled his size around.
Squire Harrington introduced him as George, an old friend of his, and said that George would be staying with us for the foreseeable future. I wondered to myself how long that might be, as the poor man looked like he could drop dead at any moment. His coat was of such patches that I could not tell what color it might have originally been. He had a large sea chest with him that the squire put in one of the spare rooms above the shop.
George spent most of the time in his room, staring out the window, muttering occasionally to himself and peering about with an old spyglass that looked as though it had seen as many rough days as he had. He was a very silent man by custom, until he had the spirits about him. The first time he ever addressed me, it was in a tottering voice that sent a shiver up my spine, as if someone had walked over my grave. “Boy,” he creaked. “Be a good lad an’ fetch ol’ Georgie a drink of rum, woulja now?”
I presently fetched him a bottle, with the squire’s permission, and George ignored the glass I brought in favor of swigging directly from the bottle, which he clutched in both his withered hands. I recall him to be one of the most prolific drinkers I was ever acquainted with; how the squire always managed to have enough rum about to satisfy him, I will never know.
Much of his time was spent drinking, and when he became drunk, he was quite the storyteller, though whether his tales were truth or the product of his own fraught mind was entirely up for debate. He told me he was a former sailor and had spent his life on the ocean, starting “when I were no more’n a weevil half yerh size.” By his own account, he must have lived his life among some of the wickedest men that God ever allowed upon the sea. He had tale upon tale of fighting the king’s soldiers, which I deemed were mostly true, and yarn upon yarn of meeting beautiful mermaids and other creatures of the deep, which I deemed were mostly not.
Our evenings, which had once been quiet, were now often filled with stories from George Conley, and those not filled with stories were filled with him banging away at the squire’s wife’s old spinet, slightly out of tune, singing at the top of his feeble lungs,
“A man at sea needs wind and rum,
So storms he can confront.
A man on land needs rum and gold,
So he can buy a c-”
“George!” the squire would interrupt him with a pointed look in my direction, and George would make an apologetic bow toward me that would almost topple him off the bench.
I asked Squire Harrington why George was staying with us, if perhaps he had family who would be wondering after him. But the squire merely shook his head and told me that George had no one from his former life who could be trusted to look after him. He told me that he had met George years ago when the man lived at an inn along the coast. George had once been a pirate, Squire Harrington told me, as if revealing a great secret. A first mate and trusted advisor to none other than the great pirate captain, Charles Locke.
I knew the name Charles Locke; there was hardly a soul in the land who did not. He had been one of the most notorious and vicious pirates to ever sail the seas. His reign of terror had lasted for a number of years, though he was dead now. He had been caught by the king’s fleet, and he and the crew that were on board were sentenced to hang for piracy. The day he stood on the trap door at Execution Dock had been like Christmas for the townsfolk, the feasting and parading going on all day and all night. I had always thought it in poor taste to celebrate the demise of anyone like that, but both Uncle Ned and Squire Harrington had told me that I had a remarkably soft heart.
I wondered how George Conley had managed to escape the hangman’s noose, so one day, when he seemed to be in fine spirits and about as sober as he probably could actually get, I asked him.
“Jamie, Jamie, Jamie,” he said, patting my shoulder. “Pirating ain’ no job fer an old man, an’ I were older than the cap’n by a good amount o’ years. I took me leave uh them, and good timing too, fer weren’ more-an six months later that Cap’n Locke was in the ground, God ress his soul.” He slapped his hand upon his chest in a show of respect that might have honoured his former captain if not for the great belch that accompanied it.
I had never been on a ship, let alone a pirate vessel, but I suspected that life on the seas was rough. My father was proof of that, as were the hundreds of deaths that occurred every year amongst sailors, whether pirate, merchant, or soldier. I didn’t know if George had been as much of a drunkard aboard Captain Locke’s ship, but if he had, he certainly would not have lasted much longer at any rate. I had never seen a man able to put away an entire bottle of rum the way George did, and I was surprised every morning to find him awake and tucking into his breakfast with the relish of a man ne’er had a drop in his life.
While friendly to the squire and I, George kept his eye on every person who came into the shop from his perch at the window that overlooked the front door. I asked him only once if he was looking for someone in particular, and he rounded on me with such a fury that I almost sprinted for the stairs. When his mood was no longer soured, he apologized, gave me a coin to buy myself a cross bun, and told me, “There be a score of men out there ta fear, Jamie, my boy. Always best ta keep a weather-eye open. If anyone comes a-pokin’ ‘round lookin’ fer ol’ Georgie, you let him know, an’ there’ll be another coin for yer troubles.”
