![[I saw three ships]](../2005-1icon.png)
It was on those nights, in Port Royal, when Arabella and all the rest of the good people were sleeping, that Peter Blood walked the walls of the fortress and remembered. He would leave his wife in her bed and go out to the sea and to the stars which are the same over Jamaica, Tortuga and Virgen Magra. He walked the old stone parapets and he remembered the feel of the deck, the pitch of a ship beneath him.
Queer how three short years of piracy left their mark on the rest of his law-abiding life.
Levasseur. Jeremy. All the others, good men, liberated slaves, but those two clouded his mind the way rum used to. He watched the tide roll in, the foam on the beach, possibly the same foam as washed over Levasseur's dead face all those years ago.
He turned his thoughts away from the French captain and to Jeremy Pitt; dear Jeremy, who had started all this with that fateful midnight house-call. His own Jeremy, who had been beaten and exposed under the Jamaica sun but had not told of their plans, all for love of him. Jeremy had become Admiral Pitt of Port Royal, a splendid posting for a humble navigator, especially one that had never married and had no family connections.
The night intruded, with the smell of sea and fire and flowers, the deep stench of rum and the docks. Many nights in Tortuga, in the gambling houses, the painted ladies a distraction and nuisance as he played with Levasseur. First with dice. Then with words. Then, one fateful night, when the ladies had been dismissed, and the rum had flowed very freely, that one single night when a half-drunken sword fight had turned to more.
Blood pulled his thoughts away from that, tried to remember the way Arabella looked the day she bought him or the day he bought her back. But even that led back to the Frenchman. Long of body, long of face, with the thin mustache that was ridiculous and menacing by turns.
An ill-conceived partnership, that was all it had been. A pairing that he should have never undertaken. He told himself this as he walked the stones, listening to the sea. Three years on shipboard, the rest of his life on land, and he still listened to Neptune's advicemore freely than to any human counselor.
He thought of Jeremy instead. Jeremy who had taken more than one glass of rum out of his hand, who had sent more than one painted lady on her way with a quiet "The Captain is indisposed." Jeremy who had stopped the duel, not before it turned to more but because it had turned to more.
The memory wanted to come. On nights like this, he always let it. It was not adultery, not treason to his beloved Arabella for it preceded her. Were he another sort, he would seek the dives near the docks, looking for fair hair or a long face and thin mustache or both at once, as it was that night. But no man could be other than himself and Peter Blood was true to his lady after all these years, in body if not in the privacy of his mind.
There, he was back on Tortuga, in the fine Spanish style house, with its great high ceilings and polished wooden floors. Two bottles of rum sat empty on the table and a third was barely half full.
"And now, mon Capitan Blood, it is said the English are the worst swordsmen in the world. This is why you had to use archers at Agincourt, non?"
"So you say, my friend, but you are wrong!" The good rum in his veins giving him courage, Blood sprang to his feet drawing his sword. "Come, we shall settle this as men. To the first blood."
"Oui, I shall taste the blood of Blood tonight!" Levasseur leapt to his own feet drawing his sword. They clashed, laughing and shouting, harrying each other to and fro. In a fit of daring, Levasseur jumped to the table-top and Blood followed.
They dueled down the length of it, locking swords and eyes often. At the end, when Levasseur could give no more ground, they had locked again. Their eyes met. Their faces closed. Their lips barely brushed before Blood laughed and let Levasseur have the offensive. At the next end, the kiss was more lingering.
"What are you drunken fools doing?" The quiet reprimand from the door cut over the sound of steel and laughter, stopping them halfway down the table. Jeremy, always Jeremy, watching out for his welfare. "You'll break your necks and save Bishop's hangman the trouble."
Blood leaped from the table with a laugh and seized his friend. "My Jeremy, have you met my good friend, mon capitan partner Levasseur?" He held the fair young man too close, the warmth of his lean, tanned body as intoxicating as the rum.
Jeremy nodded curtly. "I have indeed met Captain Levasseur. You are very drunk, my friend. Let me take you home."
"Faith, I won't go. Not when there is such company to be had." Merry and flushed, Blood kissed him on the forehead. "A vivacious Frenchman and a fair Englishman, what prize pickings for the finest pirate in the Carribean!" He threw back his head and laughed long and loudly.
"Peter, you are drunk. Please, I'll take you home and in the morning we'll speak of plans to sail."
"Non! Mon petit, you will not have him this night. This night, Blood is the plunder of Capitan Levasseur." He pulled Jeremy away from Blood and hissed at him, "Too many nights you have robbed me, little one, taking away his drink, taking away my sport. Tonight, he is mine. You may have him back tomorrow, little cabin boy with your fine Greek ways."
"I'm English and the navigator," Jeremy snapped, his face twisted and voice hard.
Levasseur laughed. "For all of that you would be on your knees for him once you got him home, pretty." He leaned closer fingering the navigator's hair. "My taste, it is blond Englishmen. Yours, the same. Maybe, there is the accord, non?"
Blood listened, his mouth dry at what his partner had implied, wanting it so badly he could taste it. When Jeremy stole a look at him, he smiled widely and nodded.
"No." Jeremy's voice was firm. "I will take my Captain home. He is not your prize, nor do we succumb to the French vices." He cast off Levasseur's arm and gripped Blood's. "Come, Peter, it is time to go."
Peter Blood heaved a sigh and looked over the Jamaican waters. He had gone with his friend and slept alone that night, dreaming of the Frenchman's kisses and his navigator's hot eyes that burned with jealousy.
He had entered the long hard body with harder steel, leaving his partner to lie in the spume of the ocean. He had never tasted Jeremy again and the other man had never spoken of the kiss or the words Blood had said as he helped him into bed. But he had never married either.
Blood looked down on his island, his town, and saw the light in the window of the Admiral's house. He could go to Jeremy even now, speaking of the love between them, and have the kisses that he had always desired. He went back to Arabella's bed.
But he knew there would come other nights when the sea called him from Arabella's side and he would walk the parapet and remember.
![[fin]](../2005-1banner.png)