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It began, as these things often do, with a touch.
Down in the hold the air smells like standing water and swollen wood and unwashed men. Barrels and crates make looming, indistinct shapes in the darkness — the guttering candle Ed lit in the stairwell abandoned now to a sconce and left to shudder. Israel, of the poor night vision and only marginally better sea legs, hisses, “I can’t see shit down here.”
The semidarkness renders Ed invisible. He’s no more than a voice, a presence, the drifting smell of his sweat. “It’s here,” he says, mildly. “You’re just not looking hard enough.” There comes the deep grinding shift of wood on wood, a grunt of exertion. Israel bares his teeth into the shadows where Ed disappeared.
“Maybe Jack’s lying to you about it. Wouldn’t put it past the fucker.”
Ed laughs. “Maybe,” he says. “Except I found him drunk as an asshole the other night. ’S down here somewhere.”
There’s a sureness in his voice that is impossible to argue with. Their bounty is some of Jack’s infamous hooch — brewed up out of table scraps and god-knows-what, thin and vile and astoundingly alcoholic. He has jars of it stashed all over the ship, jimmied into crevices and secreted into crates, all in various states of fermentation. Ed has an inkling that there’s one ripe for the drinking. And whatever Ed wants, Israel facilitates.
He sighs, casts one glance back at that candle and its dimming circle of light. Then he’s easing himself between the barrels just as Ed did — strung along behind him like a fish on a hook. If he tests his tongue to the slick expanse of his inner cheek, he can almost feel where its barbs are buried.
Two years he’s known Ed. Two years, two birthdays, several scrapes with death, half a dozen ships and just about as many captains. Each month that passes the hook sinks deeper. There’s the faint tang of blood on the back of his tongue. If he could, Israel thinks he’d like to force it deeper himself. Until he can touch his stubbled cheek and feel the barbs just flirting with erupting through. Metal under skin. Blood in the patchy beard he’s recently started growing. The inside of his body turned up for Ed to see.
Up ahead, Ed is whistling. Quiet under his breath. Israel swipes at the sweat gathering at his hairline, and lets the sound lead him.
The floor is slick underfoot, this deep into the hold. The air damp and warm like breath. Israel probes his way through the darkness sightlessly, clumsily, his ears attuned to the shift of Ed’s body just ahead of him. Palming at the lips of barrels, worming his fingers at the lids of crates, looking for once that’s loose or damaged or — he curses as he stumbles, the ship listing with a wave, the roll making Israel lose his footing —
A hand shoots from the humid darkness. Unerring as a cormorant splitting the waves, beak a wicked dark point as it drives down towards its hapless prey. Under Israel’s feet the deck rolls again, but Ed’s hand holds him steady. Broad, warm, dependable; fastened so tight around Israel’s bicep that he feels it long after Ed has drawn away.
“C’mon,” he says, disembodied once more. His voice growing distant as he slips between the barrels that crowd the low ceilinged space. “I know that bastard stashed it somewhere around here.”
Israel is left to the darkness. Hand circled around his aching bicep as he listens to Ed move away from him. Somewhere behind them, unnoticed, the candle’s wick sinks and drowns in its wax.
——
Later, above deck, Ed turns his eyes on Israel and says, quite frankly, “You can’t see in the dark.”
Israel can still feel the place where Ed had gripped him. An ache, a warmth, tender when he presses his fingertips to it. He does it now; slips his fingers into his armpit and then down, Ed’s eyes boring twin holes into the side of his head as he tests that would-be bruise and mutters, “I can see just fine.”
Their trip below deck had been a success. Ed had dropped to his knees and inched his fingers along the baseboard until he found a crack and a slim flask within. I’m like a bloodhound, he told Israel, whites of his eyes flashing in the darkness. Then he’d tucked the thing into his pants, and they escaped to sunlight, sea air.
It passes between them now. Warmed from being held next to Ed’s skin, the two of them shuffling with their heads down to the stern, out of sight of the quartermaster so they could taste their spoils. When Ed hands it to him, Israel resolutely doesn’t think about where its been when he brings it to his mouth and takes a swill. The greasy, sour liquor within makes his toes curl in his boots, his face screwing up as it burns at his throat.
“You know that I know when you’re lying,” Ed says, while Israel is too incapacitated by Jack’s foul liquor to reply. His hair catches in the breeze, thick and unruly and black as his eyes. “You know that, right?”
Their eyes meet. Israel runs his tongue over his teeth. “I know,” he croaks. Down the length of the ship, somebody is calling his name.
He knows that Ed sees everything there is worth seeing. He just worries sometimes that it’s not as much as he hopes.
At night Israel dreams of Ed in fragments. His skin through the pinprick holes that line the seams of his weather-beaten t-shirts. The small of his back, the soft bend of his elbow. The raised lines of his tattoo where the needle sunk too deep and scarred. On a ship there’s nowhere to be alone but in sleep. Israel doesn’t even have that.
They dock in Nassau before the week’s end, where he and the others sweat themselves dry hauling their cargo onto the sand. A week previous they’d run down a small Dutch sloop stuffed to the gills with bolts of cloth and barrels of wine. It put the whole crew in a good mood — now Ed keeps up a breathless account of all the things he’s going to spend his cut of the profits on as they haul the stuff ashore. Eyes bright in his flushed, shining face as he pushes his thick shock of hair back from his face, the two of them lingering in the hot, piecemeal shade of a palm as they catch their breath. Across the sand their quartermaster talks to a small, bespectacled man nearly dwarfed by the ledger in his hands. Israel watches them, just to have something to look at that isn’t Ed. His body radiates heat at Israel’s side. The smell of his sweat is clean and alluring.
“A new dagger,” Ed’s saying, “how about it, Iz?” He blows a puff of air up his face. The strands of hair that shatter from his hastily-made ponytail bob in its current. “I’ve got my eye on a pretty little navaja myself.”
“You won’t spend your cut,” Israel mutters, absently. A cool wind is coming up off the water, stirring his hair and the sweat on his face. When he looks to Ed, it’s to find him looking right back, something like surprise in his expression. It drops just as soon as Israel sees it — replaced by a sly, teasing smile.
“You noticed.”
Israel doesn’t reply. Just lets his gaze fall to his boots, where the leather is peeling slowly but surely from the sole. “You’re too smart to waste it on girls and fuckin’ knives,” is all he says. He tongues at the inside of his cheek. “At least I think so.”
Ed makes a small, amused noise. The corner of his mouth twitches. “What’d I need girls for?” he asks, swaying close to Israel’s side. The long, lean shape of him — fond split of a smile, dark eyes flashing in his face as he adds, playfully, “I’ve got you, Iz.”
The sound of the sea becomes abruptly deafening. An endless rolling roar, rising and falling in some unknown and pendulous rhythm. It’s only when Ed laughs and steps away — when Israel’s world widens from the tunnel Ed’s words forced him down — does he realise that it’s not the sea at all. It lies flat and preternaturally blue against the shoreline. Sanderlings skitter in the calm surf. But in his ears, his pulse pounds. Rush of blood like storm waves.
——
The sun has long passed its apex in the sky by the time the goods are dispersed to the various warehouses on Nassau’s outskirts. Israel and Ed, they plunge together into the boiling core of Nassau’s town, and from there the afternoon unravels. Smears like wet and running paint at its edges, full of the sounds and scents of a town always toeing happily at the edge of chaos. Ed is the burning centre of it all. Firelight in his teeth. Carry of his laughter through the din. His hair thick and curling and swallowing the light; so black that Israel is sure it must be hot to the touch. He doesn’t reach to test it. Just orbits Ed at arms length, nose in a tankard and his thumb settled comfortably against the curve of his rapier’s hilt.
Ed gets into fights like some men get into games of dice. Gleefully, easily, at the drop of a hat. Today’s tussle earns him a bloody nose. When he smiles at Israel after it, reeling back from the figure of the man he downed — taller and broader but not so quick on his feet — blood webs the lines of his teeth.
“You see that?” he crows. Then, to the man himself: “Come on mate, it wasn’t so bad.”
He thrusts a hand out for the man to take; almost topples when the man seizes it and uses Ed to haul himself upright. Blood smears the hair on his forearm from wrist to elbow crook, streaked there by his cheerfully bleeding nose. When he spits into the sawdust a few minutes later, it’s tinged red.
“One of these days you’re not gonna be so fuckin’ lucky,” Israel tells him, watching Ed dab gingerly at his nostrils with the back of his hand.
“Fuck that.” He sniffs, spits. “You’ll back me up, mate.”
It’s true. They both know it. But Israel knows Ed likes to remind him.
Twilight finds them on the beach. A bottle of rum making a groove in the sand between them, still warm from the day’s breathless heat. The sea laps at the tideline, at the twist of kelp and driftwood that gathers there. Israel is slightly drunk, pleasantly mindless with it. Easing a shell from the sand, and sand from the shell; its pale curve like the twist of an inner ear. He licks it, tastes the salt. Buffs it dry against the fabric of his pants. At his side, Ed is quiet. Laid flat on his back, eyes faraway and pinned to that hazy point where sea and sky meet and merge.
“Do you save yours?” Ed asks, into the quiet. Israel looks to him, confused — before picking up the thread of conversation abandoned hours ago. Conversation with Ed is like this. He’s prone to chewing thoughts over for some time, continuing topics dropped days ago, and taking things at face value. Sometimes all at once.
“My cut?” Israel asks, just to make sure they’re on the same topic. Ed’s eyes roll to meet his own.
“What else?”
The sea kisses at the shore. Israel looks down at the shell between his fingers, toying idly with it as he says, “I save it.”
In a sock, in the hold. Several years pay converted into British bank notes out of force of habit. At the beginning he kept it all in his boot. His father, vicious man that he was, stuck around long enough only to influence in him the importance of the bank of boot and mattress. But Israel doesn’t have a mattress, and he has too much saved now to walk on top of it. Like Jack’s hooch, it’s secreted in some spot he’d never tell a soul — except maybe Ed.
He’s still watching Israel. Fingers toying idly with the front of his shirt, where the collar is growing ragged and thin. Worrying at it, black eyes softened by the low, yellow light of the sunset. Sometimes when Ed looks at him, he looks right through. As if Israel’s no more than thin air — his shape conjured only when Ed allows it.
Today, his gaze sticks. Something idly curious there, as he murmurs, “And what do you save it for?”
Israel takes him in. His long body on the sand. The way the fading sunlight catches in the rings on his twitching fingers, and sends a shatter of reflected light onto the underside of his jaw. Tiny, buttery, near-translucent. The line of his mouth is relaxed. His brow and his nose and the tops of his cheeks are flushed, reddish — the bite of sun to brown skin.
“For the future,” Israel murmurs, and tips his chin up, suddenly self conscious. “Fuckin’ obviously.”
Ed doesn’t smile, but his eyes curve. “Don’t be like that.” A beat passes. His hand flattens itself against his sternum. The line of his body is open, easy, loose. And then: “Aren’t you gonna ask me what I save mine for?”
It’s a common refrain. Ed, hand cupped around a bloody nose. Ed, puffy-eyed over breakfast. Ed, a handkerchief in his outstretched palm, a shining pastry from the captain’s table within. Aren’t you gonna ask how I got it? Aren’t you gonna ask about my dream? Aren’t you gonna ask if I stole you one too? Everyone has their roles. Israel feels lucky that his is so clearly defined.
Even luckier that he always wants to know.
“Let me guess first.” A glance at Ed shows he’s grinning — Israel has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep a smile from his own face. He pretends to ponder it, though he already knows the answer. Ed talks about it enough that he’d have to be an idiot not to know. A galleon, and a crew to man it — all of his own. It’s a pipe dream, but a nice one. “You’re gonna get another fucking stupid tattoo,” he settles on, and bears the playful punch to the bicep that Ed deals him with his head ducked low and a smile plucking at his mouth.
“They’re not stupid,” Ed protests, “and that’s not the right answer.”
“I know,” Israel says, and drops his shell off to the side to grab for the rum. It’s sweet and cheap but goes down a hell of a lot easier than Jack’s noxious hooch. He takes a swallow, and lets the burn of it force his next words up. “You’re saving for a ship. A crew.”
“That’s right,” Ed says, sinking back onto the sand. He sounds pleased, settling his hands on his belly as he tilts his face to look at Israel. “With you as my right hand man, Iz.”
A breeze picks up; warm and gentle. On it, the sounds of laughter, music, raised voices. It stirs Ed’s hair into his eyes. Plucks at the collar of Israel’s shirt. Again, that rushing sound — blood pounding through Israel’s ears, tepid and salty as the water in Nassau’s bay.
“Me?” he murmurs.
Ed’s smile settles. His eyelids dip. “You,” he says.
From the first moment he saw Ed, Israel knew that he’d one day have his own ship. His own black to fly. A loyal, hungry crew, and all the riches he could ever want. Before he knew his name, his face, the way he sleeps and walks and eats, Israel knew. Some things are just a given. The sun rises in the east. Turtles lay their young in the sand. Edward Teach was born for piracy. But he never assumed he’d be part of it. Lowborn son of a labourer with a weak stomach and a temper far bigger than his body can contain. Ed is coltish and beautiful and has black eyes that become brown in sunlight. Israel only ever feels good when he’s in his shadow.
Israel presses his cheek to his shoulder. His silhouette falls across Ed’s face. In this light, it looks more purple than black.
When he kisses him, Ed doesn’t move. He doesn’t react. Israel can feel his breath warm and even on his lips. Can smell his hair; that warm body scent warring with the soap he watched Ed lather through it a day ago. Can taste the blood still crusted in the wispy hair on his upper lip. Uncertain, Israel lingers, but Ed isn’t pushing him away so he does it again. Dips his face close to Ed’s and presses another dry, trembling kiss to his slack mouth.
Still, nothing. A gull cries overhead. Down the beach, men are laughing and singing — in an hour they’ll be drunk, and something will be burning. Israel leans back, his heart a fist in his chest. The idea of laughter seems unreal to him now.
Ed gazes coolly up at him. The last dregs of the day’s sun pick out a smear of spit on his bottom lip. Dark underarm hair creeps past the high sleeves of his undersized shirt as he throws a careless arm over his head, and asks, “Are you through?”
Israel feels his face go hot. A hard, prickly rush of shame. That fist in his chest opens, grabs, and pulls all his organs from his viscera in one smooth pull.
“Yes,” he manages, head feeling light on his shoulders. “Yeah.”
They regard each other in the dimming light. Grainy and blue; night gathers fast here. The lights of the town bleed into the gloom. Ed brings his hand up, and touches the back of it to his mouth. It’s a small, perfunctory gesture. Just get mad at me, Israel thinks, wildly, but he’s not even spared that. Ed simply looks away. A moment later, he sits up and begins rolling himself a messy cigarette. He’s never been very good at it. At his side, Israel wilts, tongue welded to the roof of his mouth with the force of his self disgust.
——
Israel endures two more days in Nassau before their ship sets sail once more. He and Ed spend those days apart, which makes Israel feel like a moon without a planet. Lost and spinning and profoundly useless. He stalks the length of endless beach until he’s footsore and sunburned. Sits with his back to the wall in all the drinking establishments that Ed frequents too. Watching from afar as Ed tosses his head back in laughter, as he palms possessively at a whore’s nape, watching for that moment where the grin slides from his face to be replaced by a particular and familiar blankness.
It’s in those moments that Israel knows Ed needs him. He’s seen that expression countless times. Lit by candlelight, moonlight, crackling orange flame. Obscured by the smoke of a firing gun, by blood, by his own black hair. Israel licks at the rim of his tankard. His sorry heart pulses sore in his breast.
Then it’s back to the water, where bad feelings are hard to keep hold of, and the space is so small that avoiding Ed is an impossibility. They strung their hammocks from the same beam when they arrived here together. A package deal, always and — Israel hopes — forever. On clear nights when the moon is in full swing, its light hits Ed’s sleeping face for some time in the dead of night. There’s nobody to see it but Israel. He’s back at Ed’s side before the week is out.
The days blur and merge. Israel takes a knife to the bicep during a tussle in the middle of the Mediterranean; deep enough that his fingers spasm and almost drop his rapier. Ed is there to clean up. To spear the man who stabbed him, to haul Israel to the ship’s doctor, the lines of his own hand bloody from cupping his palm over Israel’s wound to stem the blood. He hovers in the doorway of the room while Israel winces and curses through the doctor’s heavy-handed stitching. Through the rough and liberal painting of iodine to the wound, staining his skin deep orange over the blood. Tall and slightly stooped in the low-ceilinged room. His eyes wide and white in his face.
That scared you, Israel thinks, looking at him. Feeling the hot ache of his wound, stinging sharply when he hops down from the table he sat on. The doctor is done with him. The next man is being brought in; groaning low in his throat like an animal, his face so bloody that Israel can’t tell who he is. You thought I was more hurt than I am.
The thought shouldn’t warm him but it does. He is, after all, the child of absent parents.
They sit together on the quarterdeck in the aftermath. Backs to the rail, watching the rest of the crew move around the ship like busy ants. Those who aren’t hurt haul barrels of wine over from the ship they took. Two dead men lie on the deck, rendered anonymous in death by the sackcloth laid over their bodies. The smell of gunpowder lingers in the air. Ed is bleeding, just very slightly. A cut over his brow. He doesn’t seem to notice it.
“Does it hurt?” he asks, fingers knotting absently in the cuffs of his pants. They’re a little short; Israel can see the fine, bony turn of his ankle. The starburst tattoo that decorates the joint. In the last year Ed’s grown four inches. Israel himself has stayed stubbornly short.
“Not badly,” he grunts, and they fall silent. Out of the corner of his eye, Israel sees Ed press his cheek to his shoulder to look at him.
They share a smoke. Ed fishes his tobacco pouch from his pocket, and Israel takes it from him without thinking. He still feels shuddery from his injury; the adrenaline throbbing out of him now and leaving him cold and trembling. But his hands are steady as he pinches the tobacco into the thin fold of cigarette paper, the familiar motions soothing his jangling nerves. Ed watches him, cheek tilted to his drawn-up knees. The blood from his cut has smeared and dried in a long, rusty streak; all the way up to his temple. Israel thinks about flaking it away with his fingernail. His arm throbs in time with his heart.
“There,” he says, holding the smoke out to Ed, who eyes him for a moment longer before snorting, unfurling from the ball he’d drawn himself into.
“Lovely,” he says, taking it, “as always, mate.” Then he palms the back of Israel’s neck, none too gently. Like he’s shaking a dog from a bone. “You’re better at that than me,” he says, and smiles. His hand is warm, slightly damp. Israel ducks his head, smiling, but doesn’t reply. He doesn’t trust his voice. His chest is aching tender as a day-old bruise.