Some unedited piratey goodness

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Charming Nell’s had been a Rocky Point institution for three decades. Nell herself, a handsome widow, still kept the bar. Some said it was only one husband, some said a dozen and she always sought new to marry. What was in no dispute was Nell’s ability to chuck rowdies out the doors with her own hands, and the fact she stocked the best beer in the Caribbean.

For the truly belligerent, she kept a great mountain of a man that most just called Dog. Some said he was English, turned traitor and sided with the colonists in the Revolution. Others said he was just a sailor, sick of the sea. He stopped the rare brawl that Charming Nell couldn’t end. Rumor had it that he’d once thrown out fifty of King George’s Royal Marines, their red coats over their heads, their muskets lashed to their backs, their white trousers down to their knees, holding their bayonets in a most uncomfortable location and covering themselves with their hats. Some said he had quick-marched them back to their ship singing the hated “Marseilles” with dire threats to any man who lost the bayonet.

No one knew better than Thomas Harrison how tales grew in the telling. He credited maybe three of the redcoats to Dog’s story. He knew Nell was dead honest and would do any small humane task she was paid for.

Pete Ringrose and Habib, the Red Sea Pirate, carried Ezekiel in between them. He lay unconscious from a heavy dose of laudanum. Nell just stared.

“Hey, you can’t bring him in here. He’s dead drunk already,” Nell shouted over the din of her tavern.

Harrison leaned on the bar and smiled as much as his scarred face allowed. “Hullo, Nell. Been a while.” He put all his legendary charm behind the words.

“Thomas Harrison, is that reprobate one of yours?” She set a mug of her best beer in front of him. “They said you were fish food. They said Nathaniel Collins did for you.”

Harrison laughed. He unfolded the false hand to reveal six doubloons, a small fortune. “My crewman is ill. He has been medicated with laudanum and I won’t have him aboard. Two for you to pay for his room and your trouble in keeping him a week, two for Dog should he wake badly. And two for him to get passage back to Barbados and his mama.”

Nell nodded. Getting a sick man home would be a proper thing to do, and Harrison was willing to pay very handsomely. One of the coins would have paid a month’s rent on the room above her tavern, three meals a day for that period and all the beer Ezekiel could drink.

“Aye, we’ll see to him.” She beckoned Dog to take him from the sailors. “Take him upstairs and keep an eye on him. It’s laudanum, so sit on him if he wakes up bad.” She dropped two of the coins in his hand.

“Aye, Miss Nell,” he said, slinging Ezekiel over one shoulder and mounting the stairs.

Harrison bought a round for the whole tavern, drank off his beer and left with his crewmen. Nell just stared at the coins and tried to put the memory of his devil-made false hand, uncurling like a real one of flesh, out of her head.

Comments

Nit for you...

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

During this time period, would she be stocking it, or brewing it? I don't think there would have been a lot of breweries in the Caribbean at that point. It wasn't like rum, which was shipped all over the place at that point. Lots of housewives made their own then, I know, and many small pubs in England did right into the 20th century until the big breweries took over, save for a few holdouts. (Thank goodness brewpubs have come back in the States!) I know that ships did carry sometimes bring in beer, but only on short hops from island to island. Beer was more something that was made up a few casks at a time in a cool cellar than sometime that was imported. Now in large cities like Boston, you did have commercial brewers like Samuel Adams, but I'll bet that it was hard to buy commercially-brewed beer in the Caribbean in those days.