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Max does not like changes in her calculations.
If someone had told her three months ago that within a year, she would be where she stands now, she would not have believed them. If they had claimed that she would not only lose Eleanor but be almost relieved to see her gone, she would have laughed in that person’s face, and if they had claimed that she would also be a partial owner of the greatest fortune taken by a pirate since Henry Avery himself, she might have passed that man off as far gone on rum or perhaps insane. Now, though - here she stands, mistress of Nassau. Here she stands, but perhaps not for much longer, and all because Captain fucking Flint and Charles Vane are on their way back to her shores and appear, from all reports, to have lost their fucking minds.
“What the fuck do you mean they sacked Charlestown?”
She is still sitting in her bed, her robe wrapped around her, and that only because Featherstone has entered her chamber and stands at the foot of the bed, looking torn between being uncomfortable speaking with them in their current state and being too flustered to speak at all. The latter is winning - the short man’s eyes are darting to her, to Anne sitting beside her in nothing but a shirt, and to Jack, who possesses no sense of modesty whatsoever as far as Max can tell and is still very much nude beneath the sheets, his hair stuck up in all directions. Max resists the urge to reach over and smooth it - they have not yet reached a point where she may do so without causing him unnecessary consternation. Instead, she turns her attention to Featherstone, who does not seem to know where to put his gaze besides not on Anne.
“Mr. Featherstone, an answer if you please,” Jack says, and Featherstone gathers himself at least partially.
“It’s true. Flint and Vane razed the town to the ground, there’s hardly anything left, and they’re on their way here. They’ve gone and bloody started a war. The moment they hear that the treasure’s been retrieved -”
Max holds up a hand.
“They razed Charlestown.” She still cannot wrap her mind around the concept, but not for the usual reasons. She was here when the Spanish came through. She knows the sight of a town in flames, knows the horror that comes with it. No - she is not concerned with that, but with something else entirely. “That does not sound like Captain Flint,” she says, a frown creasing her brow. “Nor does it sound like Captain Vane. They do not sack cities. They are not so bold - or so cruel.” She speaks of them separately - Flint is not so cruel, and Vane not so bold. Although... perhaps together?
Featherstone looks even more uncomfortable, and beside her, Anne cocks her head.
“When they left - when Flint went - he took his woman with him, didn’t he?” she asks, and Featherstone nods.
“Yes. The rumor is that it was her. That somehow the Barlow woman made them do it. I don’t know how, but -”
Max sits back in the bed. Featherstone may not know - poor, oblivious Featherstone who has been wrapped around Idelle’s finger so neatly since the first time she fucked him, but Max knows all too well. She looks to Jack, and sees the same realization dawning in his eyes. He knows, too, and she cannot tell whether the hint of a smile on his face is because he knows and Featherstone does not or because he in some way approves of the woman who has just changed their situation so drastically, but Max finds that she cannot share either sentiment.
“Mrs. Barlow,” she rolls the name over her tongue. She does not know the woman - and yet, she cannot escape the feeling that she knows her perhaps better than anyone else on this wretched island - the woman who has kept Captain Flint leashed, seen to his hurts, been custodian to his anger, shared his dreams. Yes - she knows what that is like, and she knows where it can lead. She pulls her robe tighter and begins to rise, squeezing Anne’s hand as she does so.
“I want to know everything about her.” Featherstone’s eyes widen even further, and he stares, obviously taken aback.
“Ma’am?”
“Where are we standing, Mr. Featherstone?” she asks, and he straightens.
“Your establishment, Ma’am. Long may it stand.”
“A month ago, I was no one. Nothing. The woman that Eleanor Guthrie turned to for comfort. If I may go from such a role to mistress of this island, then there is nothing to stop Mrs. Barlow from doing the same. I would know who it is that I am dealing with before she arrives at the head of a fleet, yes?”
“You think Flint’s gonna let some woman tell him what to do?” The look on Anne’s face matches the incredulous tone of her voice. “You think Flint’s crew is gonna let her?”
Max turns to her lover.
“Ma chere -” she starts, and Anne shakes her head.
“No. It don’t make any sense. Why the hell would Flint just roll over like that?”
“Darling -” Jack attempts.
“It’s not gonna happen,” Anne predicts. “Whatever you’re thinking - ain’t no man does that for a woman. Ain’t nobody does that for -”
“”Do you know what I would do for you?”
Max cuts her off, and Anne turns.
“You sayin’ you’d raze a city for me?” she asks. There is something approaching scorn in her eyes - scorn that disappears the longer she looks at Max, those eyes widening. “You’re joking,” she says. “You know I don’t like it when you do that. You’d never -”
“I am not Captain Flint,” Max tells her. “I do not know what I would do if I were, but I know that men will do the strangest things for love, and women as well.” Anne’s eyes are still fixed on her, and Jack is looking at the pair of them, something wistful in his eyes.
“Jack?” Max does not look away from her lover, but she sees Jack’s hand reach forward, and he squeezes Anne’s shoulder.
“You know how I feel about you, darling,” he says quietly, and then turns his attention to Featherstone. “Information, Augustus. Quickly, if you please.”
*******************************************************
She cuts her hair somewhere between Charles Town and Nassau.
In some cultures, it would be called a mourning ritual. For James, certainly, it would be performed in the spirit of grief and heartbreak - she well remembers the day that she had entered their bedroom in the small house on New Providence to find James sitting, the floor littered with his shining copper locks, sobbing incoherently after they had received the letter telling them of Thomas’ death. Miranda, though, has never been given to such gestures, and so when she takes a knife to her flowing black tresses, it’s a practical gesture, more than anything else. She is conscious of the fact that Anne Bonny has found a way to keep her hair from becoming entangled with bits of the ship while she’s working, or so James tells her, but she has no particular desire to hide herself under a hat the way the younger woman does or play at being a man by drawing it back into a queue, and so her long hair goes the same way as James’, sacrificed to the sea like so much of the rest of her. He does not ask questions, just runs a hand through her newly shortened locks, places a kiss on the top of her head, and assures her that she looks lovely.
“James,” she says, exasperation in her tone, “I look as though I’ve been playing with scissors like a five-year-old child. There’s no need to act as if I might break.” He winces, and she rolls her eyes. “Help me even it out,” she asks, and he takes the knife from her hands and moves behind her. There is a series of tugs, short and sharp as he does what must be done and then he reemerges, several short sections of her hair in hand, and tosses them over the rail. He runs a hand through her tresses again, ridding her of any remaining loose pieces, and then stands back, looking at their handiwork.
“That looks well,” he tells her, and she raises an eyebrow.
“James?” she half-admonishes, and he shakes his head.
“I’m not lying this time,” he tells her. “It suits you.” The look on his face speaks for his honesty, and Miranda feels her heart melt a little at the sight of James looking at her like that. It’s always surprised her, that look - more now than it used. There have been too many years where she wondered if James would ever see her again and not also spot Thomas’ ghost standing over her shoulder but in recent days it is as if he has refocused his gaze as she has refocused her own. She no longer searches for the traces of the crisp young Lieutenant she has tried so hard to cling to all this time and James no longer winces at seeing the familiar face of the woman he had fallen in love with in a carriage and somehow they have both begun to find those people again, even if only in the way that they have begun to be gentle with one another again. She gives him a smile, and he comes closer, wrapping his arms around her waist. It is a relief, of a sort, she thinks - for him to be able to express affection for her publicly. It is less than he deserves, and yet she cannot express how very good it feels to be here, with him, in his arms instead of being tucked away on New Providence, awaiting his return and talking to the chickens in his absence.
“Your crew will start to think you’ve gone soft,” she murmurs after a moment, and he holds her tighter.
“Let them talk,” James answers quietly. “They’ll stop muttering soon enough.”
She withdraws a little, and he meets her gaze.
“A capital sentence was passed against a pair of pirates the day before yesterday,” he tells her, “in Barbados. If I am to wage war on civilization and win, then it’s time they began to fear us.”
“You intend to go ashore,” she says, and he nods.
“If you still want to do this -”
He does not finish the sentence. He does not need to. The anger that flares in her at the very thought of English magistrates and their laws - the laws that have stolen her husband from her, laid down by men who would not know decency if it slapped them - is clearly legible on her face. She wants this war. She wants to see their world, the world that had no room for their love, burnt to cinders that they may rise from the ashes into the new world she will build in Thomas’ memory - in the memory of the people they were. James looks at her, and she can see the moment that James McGraw becomes Captain Flint once more. He gives a nod.
“We’ll be in Nassau by morning,” he tells her. “We’ll see to securing the gold, and then we’ll make arrangements to pay a visit to Barbados.”
********************************************
She kills her second man in Bridgetown a week later.
It is a different feeling, she discovers, to kill a man not in a moment of utter unbearable rage and newly realized betrayal but deliberately. She sits with James later, much as she had done the first time. His hands stroke over her skin, and she sits, shaking, her hands folded in front of her.
“This raid,” he starts to say, “was the first. If we continue down this path-”
Her teeth clench. She feels her hands tighten around his, and he stops for a moment.
“This can stop here,” he offers finally, and she -
She considers it for longer than she would like to admit.
“He would hate this,” she says lowly, and James gives her a look that is purest agony.
“Miranda -” he starts to say, and she holds up a hand.
“No,” she says sharply, firmly. “No. You and I have skirted around speaking of this since it happened and I’m finished. We have denied him his place in our lives for too long - my God, James, when was the last time you said his name?”
“I don’t need to say his name to remember him,” James snaps. “I don’t need to keep prodding at that wound, hoping to find that it’s miraculously healed over in the night. I don’t want -”
“But I do! ” The words escape her suddenly, and James regards her with surprise. “I need to remember him as he was, or I swear to you I will quit this ship, never to return, and you will find me a month from now gone quite mad, wandering New Providence like the witch your crew has made me out to be. I miss saying his name,” she tells him, and the words feel as though they have been festering inside of her for ages. “I miss Thomas, and if he were here right now, he would hate this. He was -”
“He wasn’t the dreamer everyone took him for.”
James’ voice is surprisingly firm. She looks at him, and he looks back, and suddenly he sounds so very weary.
“Thomas was a good man,” he says. “You’ll never hear me say otherwise, but he wasn’t a saint. If he could see us now, I don’t think he would disapprove of what we are doing - rather the opposite.” He looks at her, and she stares at him. It is the first time she has heard her husband’s name in her lover’s mouth in months - the first time she has heard James speak more than two words about him, most especially to disagree with her about the man they both loved, and the very notion of it shocks her into temporary silence.
“What is this war if not an attempt to make of his vision a reality?” James asks. “He knew that this was the alternative to his plan. He tried to avoid it, but if he were here, with us, do you truly imagine that he would look the other way in the face of all England has done, to us and others - that he would be so short-sighted as to become fixated on the cost in the short term without thought to the cost of allowing civilization as we know it to continue unhindered?”
“Do you think he would not know that that is not why I am doing this?”
The words escape her before she can call them back. They are a whisper - harsh in the still air left behind by James’ oration, and the look he gives her bores a hole into her lowered head even though she cannot see it. She is staring at the floor, and so all she sees is James’ feet as he comes closer to her. She feels his hand on her chin, and then he gently redirects her gaze to him and she allows it.
“They took him from us,” she says, her voice shaking. “They stole him from his family and locked him in that horrible place, and I want them all to regret it. God help me, James - I want every last one of them to know that they took a good man and killed him and that I am coming for their heads, because I will not allow them to whisper that I hurt my husband one moment longer. I want them all as furious as I am at the men who did it, if not because they understand who Thomas was, then because they fear me - because they fear us, and we would not be threatening them if he were still alive. I want them all to pay dearly, and every day I think it, I can hear Thomas chiding me about doing things for the right reasons and I don’t care. ”
She is almost panting - breathing hard, her voice rising as she speaks, and by the end she is all but shouting, the anger building in her chest. She is so angry, now - all of the time, festering behind everything she says and does, and the only way that she can stand it is to do this - to be this now. That, too, feels wrong, and she looks at James, something lost in her expression.
“We were happy,” she says, and it is all she can do not to weep with the frustration of it, with the sheer senseless waste of it all. She feels James wrap a hand around her own, and then he brings her in for a hug, his hands hard against her back, the shaking in them almost matching that in her own as she holds onto him. When he pulls back, he does not let go of her shoulders, just looks into her eyes.
“Thomas would understand,” he repeats, solemnly, fiercely. “And as for how this ends - I’ve said it once and I’ll say it now. We end this when they beg forgiveness of us, not the other way around.”
She nods. If they want her to stop this war - if they did not want their towns to burn and their magistrates to die - then they should never, ever have taken Thomas from them. If they want this to end, they can find a way to give him back.
Neither one of them notices the sound of the door closing, or the clunking footsteps that move away from it, but they miss Silver’s presence the next morning and find the note he leaves, and Miranda silently wonders if in another world, the slight, cunning little man might not have found a way to stay on instead of taking his portion of ill-gotten treasure and running for all that he’s worth.
**************************************
“Tell your Governor!” James bellows months later. “You tell him we’re coming!” The forest is full of dead redcoats, the air reeks of gunpowder - and Miranda Barlow does not flinch, does not pause, simply stands at her husband’s side and watches the men run, the blood dripping from her sword in heavy drops.