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The night of the party Abshir had very kindly brought dinner into the office that Frenchie and Oluwande had taken over, but the two of them had been too busy talking to eat much of it. On their way out Frenchie had spotted a table of hors d’oeuvres mostly untouched by the fire and had wrapped as many of them as he could carry in a tablecloth. He’d let Oluwande deal with the money and the rest of the loot but food was different. Food he didn't mind dealing with.
It was late when they rowed back to the Revenge but some of the crew, both new and old, were still awake and waiting for them. Stede and Blackbeard had conferred briefly with Blackbeard's scary-looking first mate and then retired to the captain’s quarters. Frenchie waited for Blackbeard’s first mate to go below and then took the treasure he had managed to steal out of the dinghy and told whoever else was still hanging around--Wee John, Roach, Lucius, and Pete, it so happened--to meet him in the mess.
Oluwande had gone down to his room to change clothes (“I can’t eat with these stupid floppy sleeves getting in the way,” he’d told Frenchie. “I don’t get how Stede does it.”) and that gave Frenchie enough time. By the time Oluwande arrived, with Jim tagging along behind him, Frenchie had made everything and everyone ready. As Oluwande entered the mess everyone followed Frenchie’s lead: they stood and as one sank into a deep bow.
“My prince,” said Frenchie in as serious a voice he could manage. He gestured with his sleeve, flouncing the lace as much as he could, at the food laid out on the table. “Check out the spread.”
“Oh fuck off,” said Oluwande. He rolled his eyes and looked deeply embarrassed. “Stand up straight. He put you all up to this?” Oluwande pointed at Frenchie.
“He said we couldn’t try any of the food if we didn’t,” said Pete, picking up one of the flat brown oblong-shaped biscuits at last. Frenchie had thought they would be sweet at first, but in fact they were savory little cracker-like things with black pepper and slivered almonds baked in, deliciously snappy. “You really convinced all the swells at that party you guys were princes?”
“He was a prince, I was a viceroy,” said Frenchie. “Big difference.”
“Well, did you get anything out of it?” asked Pete. “Besides…whatever the hell this is?”
“That’s a cherry tomato, babe,” offered Lucius. He was curled in the chair next to Pete, practically in his lap.
Oluwande had grabbed one of the tomatoes, which had been stuck on skewers in between pieces of soft white cheese, but at Pete’s question he paused with the tomato raised halfway to his mouth, eyebrows raised almost to his hairline. “Uh, well—“
“What on earth would we have got out of it?” asked Frenchie innocently. “Besides some amazing food.”
“Oh, and is there something wrong with the food you get around here normally, hmm?” asked Roach, who was the only one not sitting at the table. He loomed over the spread with his arms crossed, like all the tomatoes and cheese and little biscuits and figs had personally told him his cooking was shite.
“Well, I’m talking about booty,” said Pete exasperatedly. “You know, loot. Treasure.”
“Lucre,” offered Lucius as he again picked up one of the skewers and held it out to Pete.
“That’s such a good word, babe. You’re so smart,” said Pete. He grabbed another tomato from Lucius’s skewer and popped it into his mouth with a smile.
Wee John had grabbed one of the figs and was sniffing it; at this exchange he caught Frenchie’s eye and raised his eyebrows, his expression and the roll of his eyes saying something like: you see what I’ve been dealing with all day?
“I’m talking about stuff you could have brought back to share with the rest of us,” Pete went on, refusing to be distracted. “Not just food, real stuff. Stuff real pirates would take.”
“Well, that wasn’t the mission for this evening,” said Frenchie; Oluwande was gaping like a fish, but after their evening together it was natural for Frenchie to cover for him when he was floundering. Oluwande wasn’t a bad liar, Frenchie had been delighted to find out, but he was really only any good at it once he got into character. “It was more of a moral victory than anything. We really brought the house down, believe me. You gonna eat that fig, Wee John, or just sniff it all night?”
“What’s this stuff stuffed inside of it?”
“It’s chèvre,” said Frenchie. “Goat cheese. And I think there’s some lemon juice in there too, and maybe honey. What do you think, Roach?”
“I think you’re supposed to savor it, enjoy it, not stuff it all in your mouth at once,” said Roach, smacking Wee John, who had done just that, on the arm.
“Thought you didn’t like this food,” said Jim. They had split open one of the figs, spread the chèvre around on one of the biscuits, and handed the empty halves of fruit back to Oluwande. This was a novelty, just like their very presence. Jim usually didn’t eat with the rest of the crew, and when they did they rarely spoke.
“The food I don’t mind,” said Roach. ”But theoretically I mind that people don’t appreciate what I’m sure was a lot of hard work. Food is real stuff, thank you very much,” he said, glaring at Pete. “Thankfully I have better things to do with my time than splitting open dozens of figs and stuffing them each individually with cheese for you ungrateful swine.”
“Your swine is always grateful,” said Frenchie. “Give us that, at least.”
“Anyway, you missed the excitement around here,” said John, his voice still thick from the chèvre. “Lucius got into a shouting match with Blackbeard’s guy. Izzy.”
“Not a shouting match, I outfoxed him in a game of wits,” said Lucius. “Not to brag or anything.”
“Izzy, is he the one with the cool scalp tattoo?” asked Frenchie.
“No, that’s Ivan,” said Wee John. “Izzy’s the shrimpy little fucker with the vein in his forehead always about to pop. He found Lucius in the storeroom, and then—"
“No, no, no, let Lucius tell it,” said Pete. “It’s Lucius’ story, let Lucius tell it.”
Lucius sat up straight, looking at Pete with a sweet kind of smile Lucius rarely showed to anyone, one hand resting against his chest with false modesty. “Well. I’m sworn to secrecy but if I must. If you all insist. So we were in the storeroom, minding our own business—"
“He was giving mind to something, alright,” muttered Wee John, and Frenchie, who had decided to encourage this change in subject with his most rapt attention, grinned at John with one side of his mouth but nudged him with his elbow not to interrupt.
Lucius laid it all out for them; he couldn’t do voices, not as well as the captain could, but his impression of Blackbeard’s first mate captured the essence of Izzy Hands, even if it wasn’t a perfect imitation, and by the end even Roach finally loosened up and laughed. Even Jim was smiling into their food.
“Izzy the spewer,” said Lucius, savoring each syllable more than he had any of the food. “Can you believe it? He ran off with his tail between his legs. Technically I'm sworn to secrecy about all of this, by the way, so, you know. Don't spread it around.”
"'Course we won't," said Frenchie. "We're all discreet here. From your lips to God's ears."
"From your lips to half the ears on the ship," said Olu, rolling his eyes again and biting into another emptied fig from Jim.
“Make sure Lucius shows you the drawing of Fang, though,” John said to Frenchie. “You’ll like it, it’s got very strong linework.”
“Very strong,” said Lucius, nodding.
Roach started shooing them out of the mess then, and told Frenchie to help him clean up so they could save for tomorrow what was left of the party food for the others who hadn't been able to try it. This was extremely fair-minded of Roach, considering how annoyed he’d been about the whole idea of the food in the first place, so Frenchie was cheerful enough about going around to put out the lamps. While Roach busied himself in the rear of the galley Oluwande approached Frenchie in a corner of the mess.
“Hey,” Oluwande said. Frenchie had put out most of the lights already; Oluwande’s face was mostly in shadow now, but there was light coming in from the passageway by the door, where Jim was waiting for him. “I wanted to thank you.”
“No problem,” said Frenchie. “Sorry about the chèvre, but at least you liked the figs. Probably won’t run into any of those again anytime soon, but if we do—“
“No, not the food,” said Oluwande. “For…all of it. The whole party, and dealing with Pete and…I could have explained it to everyone but I didn’t want us to have to justify ourselves, you know? For giving all the money away.”
“No,” said Frenchie slowly. “No, you shouldn’t have to justify that.”
“I knew you’d get it. You’re a really generous person, Frenchie.”
Frenchie rubbed the back of his neck. “I mean. Trust me, I'm not mad at all that you gave it all to them, to Abshir and the rest. Fine by me. Not my problem. But if I'm being honest, if it’d just been me? Probably would have kept it. Maybe most of it, I dunno. Not ‘cause I’m greedy, just. Old habits die hard, you know. Gotta hold onto your share, all of that.” He hadn't thought much of it until now, but the evening had confirmed something he'd always suspected: generosity was easy enough when your own meal ticket was in. So to speak.
“No, I get it,” said Oluwande. He laughed. “If I was them and I had that kind of money dropped on me I dunno what I would have done. Died of shock, probably. Maybe I wasn’t being as kind to those guys as I thought I was being.”
“No, you were,” said Frenchie with a pang, thinking but deciding not to point out that Olu had had that kind of money dropped on him and he'd selflessly given it away without a thought. Olu, whose meal ticket had probably come in at the same time Frenchie's had, though that was mere assumption. Frenchie had never bothered to ask.
“I suppose you understand that, too," said Oluwande. "You've been in the same boat as them, right?”
“Well, I worked in a house, not a boat. But that was a long time ago.” He paused; Oluwande tilted his head to the side. The light from the doorway illuminated one side of his face and his eyes were so bright and attentive. Maybe it was that unfamiliar feeling still prickling at Frenchie--like guilt but not exactly--or maybe it was simply Olu's uncomplicated friendliness that made it all spill out of him like a flood. "I stole some of their silver. And a nice suit of clothes, ha." Frenchie flicked one of his lace sleeves again as a demonstration. "And my lute, of course." The instrument didn't even count as stealing, Frenchie had thought; no one else but him had touched it since the vicomte's son had left to get married years earlier. It had been sitting in the music room unused and usually undusted. "I made it to the city, got a butcher from town to give me a ride in his cart. I pretended to be someone important but down on his luck and they bought it, or at least they believed it just long enough that I could pawn the silver. And then I got myself to the closest port, and well." He threw his hands out, the lace sleeves fanning around him as he did so. "Here I am, all these years later."
"Wow," said Oluwande, his eyes still shining. "That's really cool."
"Oh fuck off," said Frenchie, rolling his eyes. No one had ever asked to hear the story before, and telling it had been more enjoyable than he'd expected. Certainly more enjoyable than living it. He was wondering at himself, smiling, and so was completely unprepared for Oluwande's next question.
"And your family," said Olu. "Did you have any family living there too or--you don't have to tell me if you want, I was just wondering."
"I had four sisters," he said, completely disarmed by how brightly Oluwande's eyes were shining in the yellow candlelight. "I have four sisters, I should say. My oldest sister did pretty well for herself, she was a really good seamstress. Still is, I'm sure." Olu nodded. "And she…well, with the way she was, I can't imagine they're starving. They're probably all doing alright, but I can't exactly go back without getting them all in trouble at this point."
"Yeah," said Oluwande quietly.
"What about you?" asked Frenchie. "Do you have any family--I mean, obviously you don't have to tell me, but--"
Oluwande pulled Frenchie into an embrace instead of answering, holding him tightly. Frenchie was surprised for a second but wrapped his arms around Oluwande. He was sad, more for Olu than for himself, but it was nice. Oluwande still smelled like all the figs Jim had been feeding him, and he was just tall enough his head wedged perfectly under Frenchie's chin.
Roach had finished putting the leftovers away and had already gone to bed, but Jim was still by the doorway. The mess was mostly dark except for the light from the passageway. Over Oluwande's head, Frenchie could see Jim just outside the door. Jim was pointedly not looking at the two of them or even like they had any interest in eavesdropping at all. He wondered how much, if any, they'd overheard.
Oluwande let go of Frenchie, wiped his eyes on the back of his hand, and cleared his throat. "Thanks again, Frenchie. I mean, uh. Mr. Viceroy? Is that the title?"
"Close enough," said Frenchie. They said good night to each other and he watched Oluwande leave. Jim, waiting by the doorway, looked back at Frenchie for a second, their narrowed eyes speaking to something like suspicion or dislike or even, god forbid, jealousy. A second later Jim looked as impassive as ever, though, and followed Oluwande down the passage to their shared room.
There was still one small candle lit by the galley window. Frenchie went over and for a few seconds he held up one of the cuffs of his sleeves to the light. The shining cambric and the lace stitched over it called to mind another candlelit room late at night, when his oldest sister had forced him to sit still by putting him in her lap and making him count each of the loops as she stitched them, telling him that if he gave her the correct number at the end of a row she would let him hold her third-best leather thimble. He could still feel the soft cotton ridges of the lace, which she'd made him hold down, and the much rougher feel of the hard-won leather thimble when she'd let him have it at last. He'd given her the correct count, or so she'd said, only after she'd finished the last row and made the final loop of the night.
She'd always been meticulous, efficient, and never comfortable around children, or most people for that matter, but she'd treated him scrupulously fairly, too, in her own way. Her humorlessness had kept him from ever confiding in or even liking her that much. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her before he'd run off. The memory of the candlelit room, the dark lace, and the beloved thimble came much more vividly to mind as he contemplated the way the light moved over the fabric of his sleeve, the hours of work it represented.
The dull ache that was almost but not quite guilt was back but at least his eyes were entirely dry. He finally snuffed out the candle, submerging the mess, the galley, and what felt like the whole ship into total darkness once more.