Page 18 of Maggie and the Pirate’s Son

The instigator picked up his tankard and joined them, dropping down on a bench across from Bash, and casting a discerning eye over Maggie. “Sure and it’s a wonder you can sit if your arse is as chapped as your lips. You should go and see the doc about a salve. Aye, O’Riordan?” he added with a conspiratorial wink before glancing back at his mates, where a red-bearded sailor lifted his own drink in answer.

“A salve? For the lips or the arse?” someone called back, to another round of guffaws.

“Drop into sickbay any time, my boy,” the red-haired O’Riordan offered. “I’ll be more than happy to help. Don’t worry. I’ll be gentle.”

“You try it, Butcher, you’ll be needing a surgeon next,” Bash said in such a light tone you could almost pretend not to hear the threat.

Maggie shot him a look. Surely being too protective would make them all suspicious of her sex, but to her dismay they were roaring with laughter again, half-drunk already.

“O’Riordan’s no physician,” Bash huffed. “He’s a frustrated barber who likes to hack off limbs.”

“It’s good to see you taking an interest at last,” the instigator across from Bash said, winking at Maggie once more. She was beginning to feel lightheaded. There was too much heat and noise, too many people, and she was suddenly overcome with weariness.

She’d made a terrible mess of her egg, bits of shell littered the table but also covered her peas and half of it still clung to the egg, seeming to crumble instead of peel off as it should.

“The right arse’ll do that though. Make you interested,” the man was saying.

Why was he still here?

“Fuck off back to your food, Balthasar,” Bash growled.

To Maggie’s enormous relief and surprise, the instigator offered a salute and returned to his laughing friends.

“They’re acting as if—” she began in a whisper. She’d been going to say, They’re acting as if they know the truth, but caught herself. “As if they think I’m…”

“You’ve a lot to learn about men at sea,” Bash cut her off in a gruff, low voice, and though Maggie was curious, something told her she ought not hurry to unpack every mystery here.

He took the egg from her trembling fingers and replaced it with his own, perfectly peeled and smooth, then he dragged away her bowl of peas, passing her his own shell-free bowl as well, and began to eat hers, shell and all. She watched in shock for a moment before her hunger took over.

After four days at sea with only dried berries to suck on, for she knew the dried beef would make her too thirsty, she devoured every bite, wiping up the remnants with a hard tack biscuit, enjoying the meal all the more for not having to cook it, nor to navigate the crunchy bits of eggshell.

Why had Bash done that for her? It rather went beyond the protection he’d sworn. It was kind.

Belly full, she leaned back against the bulkhead in a drowsy sort of contentment. Her eyes grew glassy as the rowdy pirates picked up more steam. Several came over to speak with Bash, one after another, or by twos and threes. They spoke of navy captains and ghost ships and loot swallowed up by a whale. None of it felt real.

“Do you think we’ll finally catch Willy Walsh?” asked a young sailor with dark black skin and big, sad eyes. “Sometimes I reckon there is no Walsh, and no gold neither.”

“Sometimes, Samson, I think you could be right. But keep it to yourself, aye?”

The young man nodded, and Bash jerked his head, sending him on his way.

Maggie was impressed with how much authority Bash held amongst the men, though he was younger than most. He must have felt the force of her gaze studying him, for he turned to catch her, and after holding her eyes captive for a too-long moment, he seemed to come to a decision.

She licked her lips, suddenly nervous under the weight of his unrelenting stare after all the bawdy talk.

“You need sleep,” he told her, and got to his feet.

“Aw, now, where you going, Nav?” the instigator, Balthasar, called, holding up his cards. “Stay for a hand. You can wager your cabin boy.” That earned him another roar of mirth from the nearest men.

“You know it’s lights out at eight bells,” Bash answered, steering Maggie, who had tripped over her bench, to another round of raucous laughter.

“Yes, yes, Nav, by all means,” the barber-surgeon, O’Riordan, called. “Tuck your cabin boy into bed.”

The hooting and hollering followed them all the way to Bash’s tiny berth near the front of the ship.

When they stepped inside the alcove, he surveyed it as though for the first time. “There isn’t room to string another hammock,” he observed, like he’d only just realized it.

He scratched his head and looked at her, and she tried to mask her face in stone so he wouldn’t guess she hadn’t expected to sleep in his cramped quarters with him.