Page 17 of Rears & Vices

“So, shall we?” D’Arcy finished on a whisper.

“You cannot just… That wasn’t even a proper list!” Everard croaked at last. He carefully took the key. “Thank you, Preston.”

D’Arcy smiled wide for a moment longer. Then, sober-faced, he turned to the boy.

“And if, dear Jack,” he said warningly, “you find anything objectionable in all of that, I must inform you that you’ll be shut up in this here cabin until we accomplish our crimes. You understand.”

“Errr—no. Of course not.” Thom shook his head vehemently, eyes wide. “I mean yes. I agree with all o’ that.” The youth flushed hot-red. “I mean—mebbe not all⁠—”

D’Arcy laughed and laughed. Everard covered his eyes with a hand.

The boy blew out a breath, and tried again. “It’s very romantic! Especially… especially the bit about him being a pirate.” His eyes lit up in the way only a fifteen-year-old’s eyes can at the prospect of excitement, of adventure, of unknown.

And then: “Are there pirate girls?”

D’Arcy had recovered enough to say tearily, between fading chuckles:

“God, yes. Absolutely. What kind of sailor are you, haven’t heard of Anne Bonny?”

It was only as Everard went abovedeck for the second time in the early hours of la madrugada that he felt it: freedom. True liberty.

Not like the Yanks called it, liberty and property, or somesuch. This was liberty of the mind and spirit, knowing one was taking one’s own destiny firmly in hand. It was a feeling of finally; por fin y postre. At last; at the end.

And to the end it might very well be; but God, was it exhilarating.

He felt it as the three of them filed up out of the hatch, and he walked quickly, his heels snapping on the deck. It was loud. He didn’t care.

Is this how D’Arcy felt all of the time? Fearless, and flying for it?

In a blink they were beside the larboard jolly boat, and D’Arcy and Thom began relaying her down rapidly, rope falls whooshing in the blocks. Two could do it; thanks to the Netley’s size, its jolly was hardly larger than a canoe.

For they did need a boat. There were three of them, and were taking along all of Everard’s worldly possessions in a small ironbound trunk besides. Everard could’ve swum the harbour as well as D’Arcy had, and Thom surprisingly assured them that he could swim, too, but in wake of the sudden cold, in the interest of conserving energy towards infiltrating the prison hold of a frigate-of-war, they decided on the risk of the boat.

As the jolly slid down, Everard stood observing: straight, unmoving, heart thumping wildly beneath his own hastily donned undress coat. As though everything in the world were normal, and he were still captain of this little ship, awaiting transport. At three in the morning.

His uniform was their temporary shield against enquiry, and then he’d cast it off—forever.

D’Arcy looked strange tonight, and it was not so much that he was working ropes like a common sailor as that he was without his blue superfine coat and breeches. Tonight he wore wide-leg cutoffs and tie-waist shirtsleeves; Everard’s loaded pistol hung belted at his slim hip. His arms were taut muscle against linen clinging rather damp and close. As he let the boat down slowly, lit by the silver moon, he grinned over to Everard; chestnut hair shone silky and curling from lake-water.

Memory hit Everard with acute force, and he remembered—though he tried and tried not to—precisely why he’d let the man break through the shell of strict acquaintance and let him have his way with him, rank or no rank.

Had he been speaking seriously earlier? About love?

The jolly hit the water and steadied, and D’Arcy clambered over the rail and down, Everard’s little trunk under a strong arm.

Everard was to go second. He swung himself over the rail, and looked to Thom standing waiting, ropes in hand.

Taking the boat meant desertion in no uncertain terms. Desertion, grand larceny, intent to conspire; and all of that only the beginning of their criminal acts.

“You’re quite sure, lad?” he whispered. “Absolutely and totally?” The youth could still go back, say he’d been ordered under threat, say he’d been coerced⁠—

Thom threw ropes to D’Arcy and nodded, once. “Yessir.”

Everard climbed down. Well, he’d tried.

Meanwhile, D’Arcy had sat himself to larboard and was readying the oar in the row-lock. Everard scowled and muttered into his ear:

“Away with you. You swam the harbour, for God’s sake. Thom and I will pull her.”