Page 111 of A Flash of Golden Fire

“Quite right. We can talk later.”

However, I hoped that by the time we were done here, he would be too exhausted and satisfied to remember.

*

Domingo made friends easily.

He had taken to wearing the linen pants and too-large shirt with panache, by tying a red sash that he’d gotten somewhere around his slim waist and wearing bedroom slippers on deck. He must have brought the slippers with him somehow, because I recalled him wearing them in the room of our passionate encounter. I wasn’t sure where they’d been tucked away on his person when he’d escaped with us, but I didn’t want to contemplate it.

He’d also asked Lahiri to pierce one of his ears and now had a hammered metal fish hook hanging from his dainty lobe. He liked to tilt his head this way and that to have the charm glimmer in the sunshine. A vainer person I’d never met, yet he charmed the fuck out of us all. Perhaps that was why he’d been so good at his previous employment.

Esmaralda often hopped about on Domingo’s shoulder as he walked around the ship and offered rude comments on the regular to the absolute delight of the crew. They’d even been teaching her new ones, which could scare the shit out of a person if you didn’t know the bird was near, as she sounded just like the person who taught her.

“Got a fag? Got a fag?” she would say in Martinéz’s voice, or, “Give over, Your Highness,” in a perfect replication of Lahiri’s sardonic tones. I was extremely proud of the “Your prick’s the size of a gnat!” that I’d taught her. I knew for a fact that one fellow had been ready to pummel me for the insult as he’d not been aware of Esmaralda’s presence and thought the speaker was me. The captain had had to demand that we stop teaching her these things because he anticipated the situation would end in bedlam and bruised egos.

But it proved impossible tounteachher what she’d learned, so we had to put up with the damage that had been done. I was secretly pleased that the endeavour had already earned me one spanking, and I had big plans to go against Dinesh’s wishes and teach her to say, “The captain’s dick is a truncheon!” because that would amuse me and certainly wouldn’t lead to any misconstrued slights.

Mr Guthrie had been resistant to the idea of having help in the galley, but since Domingo didn’t have any hands-on skills other than, as he himself described his proficiencies, ‘sodomy and prick eating’, Mr Guthrie agreed to the posting on a trial basis. He had also been reluctant to share his quarters with Domingo, knowing of his background, but they had soon eased into a benign association that might even be called a friendship.

Perhaps Domingo was relieved to be staying with a man who had sworn off sexual adventures of any kind and Mr Guthrie had realized that Domingo had had more than enough intimate encounters in his past to look for them now.

Our way was fairly easy. We avoided other vessels as much as possible, and if we did see any, we made sure to fly our decoy Dutch flag so we didn’t become a target and were able to continue on without issue. The captain and Hillier had made the decision to sail eastward toward China.

Captain Martin had grand ideas about exploring the Asian lands. He said attitudes toward men tupping other men were different there, and he wanted to see if that was true and what that might mean for the two of us. Whether the crew realized that their beloved captain was thinking about abandoning his ship in favor of a land adventure, I wasn’t sure.

I didn’t say a thing about the captain’s plans to anybody, but I was excited at the possibility of making a new life somewhere that wasn’t on the ocean. I was grateful to be aboard theArrow; don’t get me wrong. The captain and his ship had saved me when I was most desperate and lost, and I treasured my place here. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to live the rest of my life on this ship, and I had come to understand that neither was Captain Martin.

Chapter Seventeen

The Storm

On a subsequent afternoon, following an intensive rendezvous with the captain in his quarters, in between meetings that he had arranged with Hillier and Guthrie to discuss strategies and plans, I wandered up on deck to catch a breath of air.

The weather had been agreeable over the past few weeks, but as I came out of the sheltered hold, I spied skies like old porridge. The winds had picked up, and theArrowwas coursing like a thoroughbred over the waves. My hair had grown longer, and the wind whipped the feathery strands as I made my way over to Hanes, who stood at the rail with a worried look on his face.

“That don’t look good,” I said, starting to share his concern.

“No, it don’t. Not at all. We’re in for a pounding, I reckon.”

I frowned, not wanting to consider a storm at all. “TheArrow’sgot through bad weather before…”

She was a sturdy ship, her crew experienced and competent.

“Aye, but this looks worse than anything I’ve seen in months. Just before you came aboard, we had a terrible time. We’d docked at Port Royal to take our bearings and conduct repairs. I don’t like the look of that out there.”

Neither did I.

He cocked his head. “This ain’t one of yours, is it?”

“Pardon?”

He gestured at me vaguely. “This ain’t one of your vengeance spells? Like the one you summoned at Cayonne?”

I blinked. “No, of course not. It’s a…a natural storm, I suppose.”

“You got any power over that kind of weather? Because that might be handy.”

“I don’t think so. Those others… They’re not really storms. I don’t think. The truth is, Hanes, I don’t know.”

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