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Frenchie chewed on his fingernail, pacing a little as he waited in the stateroom. Well, it wasn’t the stateroom anymore, was it? Not exactly. While the sofa, the table, and the secret cupboard he’d found were all his now, Frenchie wasn’t going to be using this place as his captain’s quarters. They’d swapped round—now the newlyweds had the bed nook, Frenchie and Wee John had their old room, and the trio-plus-Zheng were in the former jam room.
No, “stateroom” wouldn’t do. Frenchie would need to call it something else. The captain’s office? Eurgh, that sounded a bit stuffy. The table room? The Captain Cave?
…Okay, he’d workshop it.
There came a knock at the door, and Frenchie near about jumped out of his skin. “Hey,” Lucius said, popping his head in. “This still a good time?”
Frenchie swallowed his apprehension. “Yep,” he said. “Come on in.”
He’d already put this off twice. It’d be no good to do it again. He had to get it over with sooner or later anyway, so it might as well be now.
As Lucius stepped into the non-stateroom, Frenchie gave a sweeping gesture toward the table, which was laid out with all of Stede’s maps. “Ready to go,” he noted.
Lucius nodded. “Yeah, cool.” There was a writing journal tucked under his arm, and he set it on the table as he grabbed a seat. He turned to look back at Frenchie. “D’you wanna sit down, Frenchie—er, captain?” he prompted.
Fingers fidgeting at his sides, Frenchie approached the table and joined Lucius, perching on the very edge of a chair. “Frenchie’s fine,” he said. “Whatever.”
“We’re still getting used to it,” Lucius pointed out. “I’m sure we’ll all be saying ‘captain’ before long.”
“I’m not bothered, really,” Frenchie assured him. He looked down at the maps, gripping the edge of the table. “Okay, let’s do this.”
Frenchie had a decent knowledge of the Caribbean, but he didn’t exactly know it like the back of his hand—he was no Buttons. Real navigating would mean he needed to read the maps, and that required, well, reading the maps.
“Right,” Lucius said. “Just crack on then?” With a sigh, Frenchie nodded.
“We can start with the bigger islands,” Lucius suggested, “work our way up to all the fiddly little ones.”
“Sure,” Frenchie agreed.
“Okay.” Lucius pointed at the tail-looking peninsula sticking out at the bottom of the American colonies. “St. Augustine. That’s an easy one, ‘cause it’s not actually an island.”
“Right, that one I knew,” Frenchie said. “St. Augustine.”
“Then this long one right beneath it,” Lucius went on, “that’s Cuba.”
Frenchie nodded. Drumming the fingers of one hand on the table, he pointed from peninsula to island with the other. “St. Augustine, Cuba.”
“Uh huh,” Lucius told him. “Next, we’ve got Hispaniola.”
Going back to the start, Frenchie bounced his finger along the map. “St. Augustine, Cuba, Hispaniola.”
“Right,” Lucius said. “Oh, and going back a bit, this one here is Jamaica.”
This wasn’t that bad—could’ve been worse. Frenchie repeated, “St. Augustine, Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica.”
“Are you gonna start from the beginning every time?” Lucius asked. “There’s over 25 islands on here. That’ll be a long list.”
Okay, maybe it was that bad. Frenchie was coping with the bigger ones all right, but what about when they got to all those little ones sprinkled over on the east? Just looking at that side of the map made his vision go funny as the scrunched-up letters seemed to swim in front of him.
There wasn’t really any way around it, though. Frenchie couldn’t keep asking Zheng to help him plot their course, and he couldn’t run to Lucius every time he needed to consult the maps. He had to learn this. “It’s just how I do it,” he explained, letting his hands sink into his hair.
“You know, if you want, I could probably teach you to actually read it,” Lucius offered. “You know a little, don’t you? You can recognize letters and stuff? Might be easier than trying to memorize it all.”
Frenchie shook his head. “Don’t bother, mate.”
“We can give it a try anyway,” Lucius told him. He grabbed the journal and flipped it open. “Let’s switch it up. Here, why don’t we find all the islands that start with ‘B’?”
Frenchie knew that wasn’t going to work. Sure, that island there might start with a ‘B’ right now, but who’s to say the letters wouldn’t rearrange themselves the second he turned round?
“It’s no good,” Frenchie insisted. “I haven’t got a head for it.”
“Don’t say that,” Lucius said in an encouraging tone. “You’re clever, Frenchie.”
“Yeah, I know!” Frenchie retorted, sounding more defensive than he meant to. “Never said I wasn’t. I just can’t read.”
He pushed back his chair and got up from the table, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. Frenchie started a bit as he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“I shouldn’t have said it like that,” Lucius told him softly. “I didn’t mean anything by it. Look, why don’t we take a break?”
Frenchie looked back at the table and groaned. “We’ve still got all that to get through.”
“I know,” Lucius replied. “Just a short break, yeah? It’ll keep.”
After a moment of deliberation, Frenchie nodded. He flopped backwards onto the sofa and reached up to twist one of his coils.
“It’s not a knock on your teaching skills,” he pointed out to Lucius. “I’m sure you’d do a good job with it. I’d just be a bad student.”
Lucius quietly pulled a chair over by the sofa and sat down. “Why do you say that?” he asked. “You’ve never been to school or anything, have you?”
“Not properly,” Frenchie admitted. “But when I was a kid, sometimes my sister and I would skip out on our work and sneak over to the school where they taught the merchants’ kids. We’d peek in the windows, see what they were learning about.”
“Not the most robust education method, getting it second-hand,” Lucius noted. “You might do better with—”
“No, ‘cause I could learn numbers and history all right,” Frenchie retorted. “It was the reading—got my head all turned round.” He twisted around to look at Lucius. “And don’t say it’s ‘cause reading calls for better schooling than we got, because my sister took to it like a fish to water. She’s five years younger than me, and it was no trouble for her.”
He was the problem.
Frenchie sighed. “I just couldn’t make sense of it.”
He didn’t see how anybody managed to read. The way the letters would get all jumbled and wobbly? Trying to work out individual words was bad enough, but to read books like Stede or Lucius did? Row after row of letters crammed together, wavering back and forth as you tried to get them to stay still? Just awful—closing his eyes, Frenchie rubbed his temples, which had already started to ache.
“All right,” Lucius said gently. “We’ll leave the reading alone.”
“Cheers,” Frenchie replied, nodding.
“Is that how you normally keep track of things?” Lucius asked. “Just muscle your way through memorization?”
“Sometimes,” Frenchie said. Slowly, he blinked his eyes open. “When I was in service, I’d doodle myself reminders on my arm—you know, like a list of my duties—while I was still getting the hang of the routine.”
“Mmm,” Lucius murmured. “Polish the silver, lay the table?”
“Yeah, that sort of thing,” Frenchie said.
“A bit easier to doodle than ‘Hispaniola,’” Lucius mused. “Okay, memorization it is, then. But maybe I can come up with some kind of nemonic for you. That could help.”
Frowning, Frenchie propped himself up on his elbows and turned toward Lucius. “Come up with what? A demonic? I’m not messing with anything witchy.”
“No, nee-monic,” Lucius clarified. “It’s like a catchy little phrase to jog your memory. Like, erm…” He looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling. “Oh, here’s one I learned for the names of the planets.”
Ticking off the words on his fingers, Lucius recited, “‘My very elegant mistress jiggled seductively.’ You see?” He counted off again. “Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. Each word of the phrase starts with the same letter as—”
He cut himself off, frowning. “Oh shit, does that work if you can’t read? I didn’t think about that.”
Frenchie turned the phrase over in his head. My very elegant mistress… “They start kind of with the same sound,” he noted, “so that makes sense. But isn’t that just more you have to learn?”
“More at first, but it can make learning the rest of it go faster,” Lucius explained. “Look, why don’t I see if I can think up a nemonic for you, at least for that long string of little islands over on the right side?”
With a shrug, Frenchie conceded, “It’s worth a shot.”
“Cool,” Lucius replied, getting up from his chair. “You stay there a bit longer while I make a start. Although, it might take me a few days to come up with something good—if we need to, we can always leave those islands for now and fill in some of the easier ones in the middle.”
“Yeah, okay,” Frenchie said. He liked the idea of not having to do the whole thing right now. Closing his eyes again, he listened to the scrape of Lucius’s chair as he pulled it back to the table, then to the soft scratch of his quill against the paper.
Frenchie curled up on the sofa, hugging one of his knees to his chest. “Nee-monic,” he mumbled to himself. He smirked a little. “Knee-monic….”
A thought popped into his head. Only half-formed, but it quickly began to take shape. “Lucius,” Frenchie said, sitting up.
“Question,” Lucius posed. He didn’t look up from his journal. “What do you want me to do with all the St. Whatever islands? Like, St. Christopher—should that start with ‘S’ for ‘St.’ or ‘C’ for ‘Christopher’?”
“Hold on,” Frenchie told him. He scrambled to his feet and came back over to the table. “I might have an idea. Can I use that quill?”
“Er, yeah, sure,” Lucius replied. “What’s up?”
He handed over the quill, and Frenchie twirled it between his fingers as he repeated the places they’d already gone over. “St. Augustine, Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica. Right.”
Seizing Lucius’s journal, Frenchie tore off a little scrap of paper and drew a small pot with a lid. “There!” he announced, triumphantly placing the scrap beside one of the islands.
“Well…done?” Lucius said, sounding uncertain.
“It’s jam!” Frenchie told him. “For Jam-aica!”
After a moment, a smile slid across Lucius’s face. “Well, fuck me,” he remarked. “Not bad.”
“And here,” Frenchie went on, tearing off another scrap and drawing a second doodle.
Lucius frowned down at Frenchie’s new drawing. “What is that, a snake?” he asked.
“It’s Hiss-paniola!” Frenchie said.
“Will you get ‘hiss’ out of that?” Lucius wondered. “How will you know it’s not ‘snake’?”
“‘Cause there’s not an island called Snake, so it’ll have to be ‘hiss,’ won’t it?” Frenchie countered.
“Right—fair enough,” Lucius admitted.
Soon, Frenchie had come up with doodles to accompany St. Augustine and Cuba. “Come on,” he urged Lucius, tapping the map. “What’s next?”
Some islands were easy, others took more thinking. Plenty of them were based off the name somehow, a play on the sounds, but some of them were tied to associations Frenchie had with that place: specific trade it was known for, or maybe something memorable that Frenchie had seen there.
He wasn’t sure how long they were at it. Long enough that Roach brought them tea and muffins. “Some brain food,” Roach offered, coming into the room with a serving tray.
“Cheers, mate,” Frenchie said as he drew a few bottles of spirits for Bar-buda.
“Yeah, thanks,” Lucius agreed. “Actually, Roach, would you mind fetching Wee John? We need his pincushion.”
Frenchie glanced up from his doodles. “Huh?”
“We’ve got to pin all these down, Frenchie,” Lucius pointed out. “Otherwise they’ll blow off or get knocked off, and you won’t know what’s what.”
“Mmm—fuck, that’s right,” Frenchie realized. Just like letters, they wouldn’t do much good if they couldn’t stay put.
He turned to Roach. “Yeah, if you could tell Wee John we need his pins,” Frenchie said. “Say it’s for a good cause, and if he can do without for a few days, I’ll get him some new ones as soon as we come into port.”
“Aww, buying a gift for your ‘roommate’?” Lucius asked. “And bless, it’s actual pin money!”
“Who said anything about buying?” Frenchie replied. “I’m probably just gonna nick ‘em.”
“Yeah, that works too,” Lucius said with a shrug.
Roach set down the tray, leaning over the map as he handed Frenchie his tea. “What’s all this?”
“Reading aids—sort of,” Frenchie told him.
“Is that a snake?” Roach asked.
“Hey, Frenchie can make sense of it,” Lucius said. “That’s the part that counts, so what does it matter if it’s a fucking snake?”
“Eh, good point,” Roach reasoned. He clapped Frenchie on the back. “How’re you doing? Is your head okay?”
“Oi, rude much?” Lucius exclaimed.
“No, it’s fine,” Frenchie assured him. Turning to Roach, he added, “It was hurting worse before, but it’s not so bad now.”
Frenchie hadn’t told anybody how much he was dreading having to work on the maps, but he’d admitted earlier to Roach that trying to read always gave him a headache. He’d thought it’d be best to let Roach know ahead of time, in case he found himself in need of doctoring afterwards.
Roach nodded. “Drink your tea, and eat something,” he advised. “Once you’re finished here, you might want to lie down for a bit. Put a cool cloth over your eyes if they’re bothering you.”
“Will do,” Frenchie promised. “Thanks, babe.”
“Anytime,” Roach replied. “I’ll grab Wee John for you. Happy map-reading!”
“Cheers,” Frenchie called as Roach headed out.
By the time every island had been labeled with a doodle, every doodle had been appropriately pinned down, and Frenchie had run through the complete list three times, they’d polished off the tea and muffins (not counting the muffin he gave to Wee John in exchange for the pins.) “There,” Frenchie said, standing over the map and surveying his work. “How’s that?”
“It’s what works for you,” Lucius noted. “That makes it spot on. I think it looks great.”
“You can still make a nee-monic if you want,” Frenchie offered. “I’m sure you’d come up with something good.”
“God, no!” Lucius replied with a laugh. “I’m not messing around with all that if I don’t have to. I’m glad we found something that did the trick.”
Frenchie nodded. “Me too. Thanks, man. I appreciate your help on this.”
“Oh my god, it’s literally what I’m here for,” Lucius told him. “Seriously, anytime something needs reading or writing, call me up. Lord knows I’d rather be doing that than, like, swabbing the deck.”
“Right-o,” Frenchie said.
As Lucius picked up his journal and quill, he asked, “Will there be anything else, captain?”
“Naw, not right now,” Frenchie replied. There were other features to go over—ports and shipping lanes and things—and some additional maps, but they could get to all that another day. Just knowing they’d gotten over this first hump made the prospect of tackling the rest feel less daunting.
“Mmm, I’d best go find Pete then,” Lucius said. “See you at supper.”
“Yeah, see you,” Frenchie said.
For a few minutes, Frenchie stayed admiring the map, brushing his fingers along the little scraps of paper—mindful of the pins, though. Then he decided he ought to take Roach up on that nap. While he knew from experience that he could’ve been feeling much worse, he did have a bit of a headache. So he crossed to the wash basin, got himself a damp cloth, and brought it back to the sofa.
Not a bad sofa, this, Frenchie thought as he lay down, draping the cloth over his eyes. Good place to think. Good place to take a load off after a hard day’s work.
Hey, there was a thought. Maybe he could call this the sofa room.
Having a map that he could properly understand gave Frenchie a huge boost. He knew he still wasn’t the absolute cream of the crop, captain-wise—when Zheng was aboard, nobody else could compare—but he could get a better grip on it now. He could picture himself studying the map, could picture himself plotting a course on his own. Yeah, this captain business was all right.