Chapter Text
For weeks, Stede ignores the nightmares.
The first night he leaves Barbados, he sleeps as soundly as he ever has. He’s exhausted, having rowed quite far, then finding his marooned crew, then having to row back exactly the same distance, multiple times, to bring them all to safety.
He’s heard their story, and he’s begun to grapple with the enormity of the mistake he’d made with Ed.
And then, three nights in – when reality is really, really setting in - he dreams of distant bells, and suffocation, and blood, and wakes gasping with the taste of dirt in his mouth and his head ringing.
He chalks it up to nerves.
He’s been through a lot, ok?
The nightmares persist, through commandeering a new ship, then losing that ship to better pirates, then commandeering another, less cool ship, then chasing the Revenge, then losing the new ship to a storm, then finally reuniting with Ed on the island where he and the crew had all managed to wash up after the shipwreck.
The nightmare changes shape every night, the plot, such as it is, twisting and turning like Stede himself lying on deck, on a different deck, and in the sand on a warm beach – but the main elements stay the same: distant bells, suffocation, and an awful headache.
***
The other ship is foundering. It’s a big storm and even an experienced captain – Ed – is finding it a struggle. But the Revenge is a better vessel and makes it through to the other side. Ed is slumped over the railing, breathing hard from exertion, hips sore from the rope he’s had tied around them for hours to keep him on deck, when Jim runs up and smacks him in the head with a telescope.
‘Fucking look,’ they snarl at him, and he’s so startled he takes it but then doesn’t know where to look, so Jim grabs his hands and yanks him around to the right bearing.
And then he can’t look away, because the other ship is sinking, and people are bailing out of it into a dinghy that is much too small, and one of those people is Stede.
‘Oluwande!’ Jim screams into the wind. The pain and love in their voice breaks something in Ed. Jim’s been trying to kill him for weeks, and not, like, in a joking manner, but they stand shoulder to shoulder, passing the telescope back and forth between them as they watch the tiny, overstuffed dinghy flail its way across the peaks and valleys of the waves, disappearing and reappearing like a cruel mirage.
‘We’re going after them,’ Jim says, as soon as the sea is even a little bit calmer. It is getting dark and they’re both struggling to make out anything through the scope.
‘Yeah,’ Ed says, heart slamming against his ribcage.
They don’t speak as they row after the other dinghy, at least not until Jim spots a light on the horizon – Ed’s rowing at that point, hard, and sees some realisation dawn on Jim’s face before they say a word – but then Jim starts talking, low and fast.
‘There’s a light over there.’
‘What?’ Ed twists around and sees it.
‘Looks like they made it to one of those little islands,’ Jim says. ‘And lit a fire.’
Ed exhales sharply and keeps rowing.
‘You know you fucked up, right?’
Ed gives up pretending to be hard. It’s extremely fucking freeing. ‘Yeah, I know.’
‘You going to make it right?’
Ed hesitates. ‘Up to Stede, really.’
Jim rolls their eyes so violently Ed thinks they might injure themselves. ‘Cabrón. I am not fucking talking about Stede. You two are huge fucking idiots who are obviously stupid in love with each other and need to fuck.’
Ed blinks. ‘You think he’s-‘
‘I said what I fucking said,’ Jim snaps. ‘I am talking about you making it right with the rest of us.’
And then suddenly Jim is standing up, wobbling dangerously, and Ed realises they’re in the surf at the edge of an island. He hauls the dinghy to shore while Jim sprints towards the fire on the beach. Ed watches for a moment, scanning for Stede.
***
Ed wakes Stede from a particularly vivid variation of the nightmare with a hand on his shoulder. Stede’s first thought is that he must look like a drowned rat, but the look of terror on Ed’s face suggests that he looks dead.
‘Stede?’ Ed asks, crouched at his side, voice rising. ‘Stede, are you-‘
‘Ed,’ Stede says, dumbly, because he’d been in utter despair last night, had stomped away from the fire the crew had made and thrown himself into the sand, believing he was further from Ed than ever before and just needing to fucking sulk instead of be a leader of men. ‘Ed, what are you doing here?’
Ed jumps back so fast that he sits down hard in the sand. It does not look particularly cool. Ed’s eyes are smeared with black paint and he’s got a new beard coming in, the stubble much whiter than before. Stede finds him unreasonably beautiful.
‘Fuck, man, we saw your ship go down, we couldn’t get close because of the waves but we came as fast as we could-‘
‘Ed,’ Stede repeats, even more dumbly. His head is ringing like a bell.
Ed’s mouth is doing something very complicated. Stede’s eyes focus in on it of their own accord, and before his brain can do a thing about it, he’s pushing himself up onto his knees, unsteady in the sand, and smashing his mouth into Ed’s. A half second later he loses his balance and falls into Ed’s lap, but Ed’s got his hands on Stede’s forearms now, and is hauling him close, and saying against his lips, ‘Where the fuck have you been, Stede?’ in a shaking voice.
‘I’m so sorry I’m late,’ Stede tries, pulling back a little and making eye contact with Ed, and even though he wants to keep looking at Ed’s mouth, even though he really wants to keep kissing Ed’s mouth, he’s going to get through this, he’s going to say this.
‘Late?’ Ed repeats. He looks as dumbfounded as Stede feels. ‘You’re – you’re sorry you’re fucking late?’
‘I came back. I never left,’ Stede tries, which is a line he’s been thinking of but isn’t too sure about. It doesn’t sound nearly as good as it would have if Ed had said the first part, and Stede had been able to reply, but sometimes you’ve got to make your own cues.
Ed blinks. ‘But you did leave.’
‘So did you, when you said that to me, to be fair.’
Ed blinks again, then seems to find something within himself beyond being stunned. ‘I left for like eight hours, man. It’s been weeks. And I didn’t know – you didn’t say goodbye! You said you were fucking coming and I waited for you all night and you never fucking came!’
Stede can see that Ed’s getting upset. He’s still half collapsed in Ed’s lap, with Ed’s fingers digging into his arms and his knees starting to hurt on the hard sand. He’s got one other thing to say, the thing every cell in his body has been screaming for weeks: ‘Ed. I love you.’
Ed’s fingers clench and Stede yelps. ‘Fuck,’ Ed says, jerking his hands back like he’s been burned, ‘are you – what the fuck, Stede?’
Without Ed’s support, Stede topples into him and they go down together in the sand, Ed on his back with Stede pressed into his chest. For a breathless second they just look at each other, and Stede thinks that now is the time to be a real romantic hero and kiss Ed breathless and he’s going to, he’s really going to, he’s going to ravish Ed on this beach, when there’s a gunshot and a bullet whizzes past the top of Ed’s head.
‘Where the fuck,’ Black Pete yells, already reloading, ‘is Lucius?’
***
Lucius, it turns out, is alive, hiding on the Revenge, and has been being fed and cared for by Frenchie, Jim, Ivan, and Fang. Ed’s so shocked to see him that he disappears into his cabin and doesn’t emerge, despite Stede sitting outside the door and pleading with him for hours. Stede eventually listens to every other person on the ship – including Izzy, who screams it at him as he’s rowing away for points unknown – and decides to give Ed some space.
***
Ed sits inside the cabin with his back to the door and takes deep, shuddering breaths, while Stede sits on the other side of it and tells him a rambling story about trying to leave the academy and getting held at gunpoint by Chauncey Badminton (whose name Ed had forgotten or maybe never even known and it takes quite a few context clues before he understands who Stede means) and running back to his wife and children before setting out again to find Ed. Ed’s not sure how he feels about any of this but every word Stede says burrows into the wall he’s built around his heart like the tendrils of a vine and starts growing until the wall is a shattered, sharp thing.
And then at some point Stede says, voice shaking, ‘I’m just going to give you some time to think,’ and he leaves.
It would be easier, Ed thinks, to never feel like this again. He decides to wait Stede out. But on the third night, when Roach brings him one of his increasingly elaborate meals – this one involves some kind of flambeed element and three spoons – Ed’s traitorous mouth asks, ‘Is Stede still on board?’
Roach looks at Ed like he’s lost his mind. ‘He’s the one who keeps asking me to bring you food,’ the Revenge’s chef-slash-chief-medical-officer says and Ed drops his forehead to the desk and keeps it there until Roach leaves. And then he eats everything – fuck it tastes good, he’s missed Roach’s meals so fucking much – before he plunks his forehead back down on the desk and tries to remember why he’s not at Stede’s side.
***
Stede sleeps on deck in a hammock with the rest of the crew for three nights, and the nightmare comes back on each one. Stede has read many a medical text and attributes them to, variously, whatever Roach cooked, a mermaid perhaps glimpsed off the bow, bad humours in the air after the Swede opened a barrel of fish, and, most convincingly, the fact that Ed has not emerged from his cabin in three days and it is destroying Stede’s soul.
On the fourth night, Stede is deep in the clutches of a nightmare – he’s spitting dirt down a beautiful white embroidered waistcoat and feeling sick to his stomach knowing it will never come clean – when he’s awoken by someone climbing fully into the hammock with him. That someone is heavy, and wearing a lot of leather, and has a spiky shark’s tooth on his shoulder that catches on Stede’s shirt as he settles in against Stede’s body.
‘Ed,’ Stede breathes, as quietly as he can, trying to come out of the dream, trying not to wake anyone else on deck.
Ed doesn’t say a word, just presses his face into Stede’s neck and lets Stede put his arm around him and takes Stede’s hand in both of his and clutches it tightly. Stede manages to turn in the hammock enough that they are facing each other and Ed wraps a leg around Stede’s waist for good measure. Stede strokes Ed’s face with his other hand and just looks at him, really looks at him, and Ed does the same in the moonlight. Stede’s heart aches with how beautiful Ed is, and his arm aches from the shark’s tooth, and when he leans in to kiss Ed’s mouth, Oluwande says from the deck below, ‘Please for the love of god go to your fucking cabin.’
Wee John suddenly calls out from the wheel – there’s a ship on the horizon. They spend the rest of that night and all of the next day evading the Royal Navy, eventually finding a cove Ed knows about to tuck the Revenge away and hide for a bit.
After they’re sure they’re safe, around sunset, Ed’s eyes find Stede’s across the deck. They meet at the cabin door.
‘Um,’ Ed says. ‘You, um.’
‘I love you,’ Stede says, because it’s really all he can think about when Ed looks like, well, Ed.
Ed’s mouth does that complicated thing again. Stede doesn’t know if he likes it. He starts to lean in and Ed says, ‘Fuck, man, I have to warn you –‘
There’s not much he could say right now that would warn Stede off – he’s got shark teeth in his mouth? Stede’s ready to get cut. Then Stede remembers what everyone said about space and takes a deep breath and asks, ‘Warn me?’
‘I, uh, did some redecorating.’
‘Oh,’ Stede says. ‘Yeah, I know, the crew told me.’
Ed looks shifty. ‘You mad?’
Stede ponders that question. Honestly his head is ringing too much to think. He wonders how long it’s been feeling that way. Huh. Anyway. ‘No. It – it surprised me.’
Ed raises his eyebrows. God, he really is stunningly handsome. Stede tries to focus. ‘What?’
‘Like,’ Stede says, and he wishes his head didn’t hurt so much, because he swears he used to be eloquent, and he feels like he can barely string two sentences together. ‘Like, you cared so much for me – you – you felt the need.’ Ed stares at him, so Stede tries to clarify. ‘I didn’t know you cared so much.’ Ed is still staring at him, and Stede starts to panic. ‘Maybe I’m misreading this but –‘
‘Stede,’ Ed says, tone indecipherable because Stede’s head seems to be filled with bees, in part because it hurts and in part because Ed has put a hand so, so gently onto his shoulder, and is steering him into the cabin, and shutting the door, and his hand is still on Stede’s shoulder, and now he’s turning to Stede, and facing him, and saying, every syllable soft but so, so clear, ‘Stede, I’m fucking in love with you.’
Well. That’s something, isn’t it? Stede feels the world narrowing down, and then, without realising what’s happening until the second before the floor rushes up to meet him, he swoons.
***
Blackbeard’s not scared of anything, but Ed’s scared of plenty.
Ed holds his dagger in his hand for comfort and paces as he watches Roach examine Stede in his bed. Lucius returns to the cabin with a bowl of water and several rags and the rest of the crew is crowding into the room, trying to see what’s going on with Stede, and Ed is flipping the knife from hand to hand rapidly and thinking about gouging thirty new holes in the desk and –
‘Edward,’ says Lucius. It’s the first thing he’s said to Ed since he emerged from hiding. He’s got a steely look on his face and is holding out the bowl and rags. ‘I got them for you. This is your job.’
Ed has never in his life been grateful to receive an order until now. He manages to put the knife back into his belt with shaking fingers and tries to steady his hands enough to hold onto the bowl. Lucius’s face softens a fraction and he carries the basin to Stede’s side, beckoning Ed to follow.
‘There’s nothing I can see wrong with him, Captain Blackbeard, sir,’ Roach says, inching away as Ed approaches, like a man who has recently been marooned and does not want to repeat the experience.
‘But he,’ Ed says, and feels sick, remembering Stede’s eyes rolling up into his head and the way he’d just – just fucking – and even though Ed had grabbed for him, he’d hit his head – ‘His head?’ he tries to say, pointing to the spot above Stede’s temple. ‘Right there?’
‘He’s got a lump there,’ Roach admits. ‘But that happened after he passed out, right, Captain, sir?’
Ed nods. And then Stede’s eyes flutter and the rest of the crew starts to chatter and Ed snarls, ‘Out, all of you get the fuck out,’ before snatching the rags out of Lucius’s hand.
‘Ed?’ Stede asks, voice very weak. Ed’s body seems to lose all of its bones and he melts down onto the bed. He dips a rag into the bowl as he hears the cabin door shut and gently presses it to Stede’s head.
‘Hey,’ he says softly.
‘We’ve got to quit meeting like this,’ Stede rasps, and Ed swallows, hard, tries to smile.
‘You passed out, man. What are – are you – are you ok?’
Stede gets an abstracted look on his face, like he’s trying to remember. Fuck, he’s got this perfect little curl on his forehead. He’s the most handsome man Ed’s ever seen. ‘I -,’ he pauses, blinks, and then says, ‘I think I am. I’ve been sleeping poorly. I think it’s catching up to me.’
Ed nods and holds the rag in place. ‘You hit your head.’
‘That explains the headache,’ Stede says, grimacing. Then he suddenly blinks and looks directly into Ed’s eyes. ‘Ed. You said.’ Ed can feel himself start to smile, despite everything, as Stede clutches his arm, ‘Ed, you said you love me?’
‘Yeah,’ Ed says, and then he’s got to make a joke of it or else the weeks of misery are going to come out in an embarrassing way, so he adds, ‘and you fucking fainted a second later. Hard to tell if that’s good or bad.’
Stede beams like the fucking sun. ‘C’mere,’ he says, holding out his arms. Ed sets down the bowl and climbs into the bed. They curl around each other like commas, both being careful, feeling out how they fit against the other.
‘You ok?’ Ed asks softly, peeling off his gloves and touching Stede’s face.
A troubled look crosses Stede’s face. ‘Honestly, my head really hurts,’ he says. He scrunches up his nose adorably. ‘Not very romantic, I’m afraid.’
‘Shh,’ Ed says. He tugs Stede in closer, fitting Stede’s head into the crook of his own neck and kissing Stede’s forehead. ‘You said you haven’t been sleeping well. And you bonked your head when you swooned.’
‘Swooned?’ Stede murmurs, sounding a little scandalized.
‘Mmhmm,’ Ed says, kissing his head again because he can. ‘I said I love you and you full on swooned.’
‘That’s the story you’re going with?’
‘Absolutely.’
Stede’s hand on Ed’s waist squeezes, and then slides under Ed’s shirt to rest warm against the skin on Ed’s back. ‘I guess I did swoon,’ he mumbles, ‘I mean, you really are very dashing,’ and then his breath evens out and he’s asleep. Ed holds him tightly, feeling as safe and warm and content as he ever has in his life.
***
Ed wakes, shivering, in darkness. One side of his body feels like it’s pressed against ice, and he tries groggily to sit up and finds that there’s a weight on that side.
Stede.
Ed’s sleeping in Stede’s bed with Stede’s body curled into his.
And for some reason, Stede is fucking freezing cold.
‘Hey, Stede?’ Ed says, scared. ‘Stede – wake up –‘
Stede’s eyes open, glittering in the dark, and for a moment Ed can tell that Stede has no idea where he is before he makes a little gasping inhale and starts shivering violently. Ed grabs the blankets he’d kicked down to the bottom of the bed when he’d been falling asleep in the fucking Caribbean and pulls them up around them before wrapping Stede in his arms.
‘Ed,’ Stede says, and his voice is panicked.
‘I’ve got you,’ Ed says, hoping he does not sound equally panicked, stroking Stede’s hair. Ed presses a hand to Stede’s forehead, feeling for a fever, but the skin there is just as cold as the rest of him. What the fuck what the fuck. His eyes have adjusted to the light and he can see that Stede’s lips are blue.
‘I just had a horrible dream,’ Stede says. He shrinks in against Ed.
‘Yeah?’ Ed asks softly, trying not to scare Stede even though he is very scared himself. ‘You want to tell me about it?’
‘It felt so real,’ Stede says. ‘I keep having similar dreams. But this one was the worst.’ He swallows hard enough that Ed can feel it. ‘I’m somewhere pitch black that smells of earth. There’s usually dirt in my mouth and I have to spit it out.’ Stede winces. ‘This time I spit out a bunch of – of teeth. And blood. With the dirt.’
‘Fuck,’ Ed murmurs, stroking Stede’s cheek. ‘Teeth dreams are the worst.’
‘They were all broken,’ Stede says. He looks at Ed, eyes dark with fear. ‘Mine are ok, right?’
Ed would take any opportunity to look at Stede’s mouth. He runs a finger along Stede’s lower lip and looks. ‘They’re perfect.’
Stede shuts his eyes for a long moment. Then he says, ‘I can hear a church bell. In every dream. And I feel like I can’t breathe. And my head – my head hurts.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘Fuck, Ed, my head hurts.’
‘Still?’
‘Yeah.’
Ed sits up. ‘I’m gonna get Roach,’ he declares. ‘And probably – Buttons. And Frenchie.’ He hesitates. ‘I’ll get everyone.’
‘What?’ Stede sits up too, and then presses a hand to the back of his head, wincing. ‘Why?’
Ed’s a sailor – superstitious at heart – and he does not like the sound of this dream. At all. And Stede’s cold, and his head hurts, but he doesn’t have a fever. That shit’s fucked up. ‘We’re gonna talk it through,’ he says, grimly, before heading up top to rouse everyone.
***
Stede thinks Ed is being ridiculous. His – well – whatever Ed is, his co-captain, he supposes, that’s the one name they’d settled between them – had gently led him out of the cabin to sit in front of the capstan in the dawn light, wrapping a blanket around his shoulders and sitting beside him. Ed is now holding court with the crew about Stede’s dreams.
It’s very sweet, but Stede really does think he’s just had a very tough past few weeks – months – years, actually – and the fact that he’s found someone who makes him feel words like home and safe and comfortable in his own skin after decades of nothing like it is catching up to him. He thinks wryly that it’s just like his brain to decide that it needs something to be anxious about, that it can’t handle how easy he feels around Ed.
‘Captain,’ Oluwande says, looking at Stede, ‘when did you start having these dreams?’
Stede tries to remember. ‘Three nights after I left Barbados, I think,’ he says finally. ‘I think it was the night we spent above that pub before we stole the first ship.’
‘That was a good room,’ Wee John sighs. ‘Nice of you to sell your ring so we could stay the night there, Captain.’
Ed glances at Stede. ‘You sold your ring?’ he asks, and when Stede nods – carefully, so as not to set off the throbbing in his head – Ed frowns and asks, ‘Didn’t you have any coin?’
‘Oh,’ Stede says. Right. He’d forgotten to tell Ed this bit. ‘No, see, I faked my death.’
Ed stares at him. ‘You what?’
‘He did a fuckery,’ the Swede volunteers. ‘But there wasn’t any singing.’
Ed never takes his eyes off Stede. ‘Why? To get the English off your back?’
Stede blinks. He had actually forgotten that aspect of the whole thing. He knows plenty of English officers socially back in Barbados and not a one seems to have cared about him breaking the Act of Grace. ‘I had to make things right with my family,’ he says. Something flickers in Ed’s eyes, some emotion that Stede’s not sure how to read. ‘So, I faked my death so they could inherit everything and get on with their lives.’
Whatever that emotion in Ed’s eyes, this sentence seems to magnify it. He reaches for Stede’s hand and Stede lets him take it, even though he feels self-conscious at the physical affection in front of the crew. To cover his awkwardness, Stede says, ‘I’ve been wanting to tell you about how I did it, by the way. It’s quite a fun story.’
‘Oh?’ Ed looks down at their joined hands and winds his fingers through Stede’s. ‘Tell me.’
Stede tries to make it short, because the crew’s already heard it, but Ed’s grin and laughter keep him from leaving out any details. He concludes, ‘So then the carriage pulled up in a cloud of dust and I pulled the body double out and hopped inside myself – it looked like the carriage ran me over! And then after the carriage drove off with me inside, they dropped the piano on the body for good measure!’
Ed is grinning at him. ‘You’re incredible,’ he says.
‘Thanks,’ Stede replies, grinning back.
‘Where’d the body come from, Captain?’ Frenchie asks. ‘I don’t think we asked you that before.’
‘Oh,’ Stede says, ‘the undertaker’s wife got the body for us.’ He smiles, remembering how much Evelyn had wanted Mary to kill him. He’d deserved it. ‘She’s friends with my wife.’ Ed’s fingers go stiff in Stede’s, then tighten. Stede looks at him in surprise and sees Ed looking down at their hands again, chewing on his lip.
Lucius, who has been quiet throughout, says, ‘Captain, don’t you mean your ex-wife?’
‘My widow,’ Stede says, smiling around at the crew to share the joke. ‘Since I am, of course, now dead. And buried, I suspect.’ Stede leans back, story concluded, and thunks his head against the capstan. He nearly retches from how badly it hurts. ‘Fuck,’ he gasps. He reflexively puts up a hand to touch the back of his skull and then jerks it away at even the thought of the pain.
‘Stede,’ Ed says, sounding scared.
‘Just my damn head,’ Stede mutters. ‘I swooned earlier, remember?’ he asks, just for Ed’s ears, trying to make a joke of it. He doesn’t want the man worrying about him. He’s caused enough trouble for Ed already.
Ed’s brows are drawn together. ‘But Stede,’ he says, ‘you hit the side of your head.’
Stede blinks several times at Ed. ‘What?’ he asks. ‘But the back of my head feels like –‘
Ed raises their joined hands up to Stede’s temple and presses Stede’s fingers lightly to a lump there. Oh. That’s a bit sore – like he’d hit his head. Nothing at all like the crushing pain in the back of his skull.
‘Stede,’ Ed says, voice very quiet. ‘You said – you said you chose the body double based on the hair, right?’
Stede wants to nod but knows it will hurt, so he says, ‘Yes.’
‘What about the face?’
‘Oh,’ Stede says, not sure where this is going, ‘we knew that would be tough to match so we made sure to have the body lying face down. That way when the carriage and the piano hit it, it would be believable as me, but the face would be unrecognisable.’
‘So,’ Ed says, and he sounds increasingly panicky, ‘what you’re saying is that the back of the head is what took the hits from the carriage and the piano?’
Stede frowns at Ed. ‘Um, yes, I suppose so…’
‘Where?’ Ed asks. ‘Can you show me?’
Stede tries to remember. ‘I’m not really sure,’ he admits. ‘The piano, well, pretty much everywhere on the back of the head. And the carriage I think would have clipped the back right?’
Ed says, in the gentlest tone, ‘I’m going to touch you, and it’s not going to feel good, but I’ve got an idea, and I’m so sorry,’ and then he puts a hand onto the right back of Stede’s head. The touch is feather light, but Stede’s eyes start watering immediately. He crumples into Ed without a thought beyond comfort and Ed wraps his arms around him and holds him against his chest. Stede thinks he must black out for a moment, because when he comes to, Frenchie and Buttons are arguing about the mechanics of demonic possession.
‘If he was possessed, he would be possessed all the time,’ Frenchie says, exasperated. ‘But Captain Blackbeard said he’s warm now!’
‘Aye,’ Buttons says calmly, ‘but what if the spirit only possesses him at times when it is convenient to the spirit? Spirits have business of their own to conduct, they can’t be haunting the same man all the time!’
‘What if it’s like a message or something?’ Wee John asks.
‘A message about having a headache?’ Lucius demands.
‘I think it’s a ghost,’ Ed says, and his voice is quiet, but it cuts through the hubbub around them immediately. ‘I think it’s the ghost of the body double.’
Everyone falls silent and looks at Stede. Stede looks up at Ed, his mouth slightly ajar. ‘A ghost?’ he repeats, sitting up way too fast for his aching head. ‘Ed, really.’
‘What?’ Ed looks at him.
‘Ghosts aren’t –‘ Stede hesitates. He’s made mistakes before, with the crew, about things like this – he knows he’s had much more education than all of them, and that superstition is rife at sea. He’s just never seen it in Ed. He settles for a more questioning tone, trying to be understanding rather than critical. ‘Ghosts are real?’
The entire crew starts shouting at him, but Ed’s got that crease between his eyebrows. ‘Yes, Stede,’ he says, very gently. ‘Of course ghosts are real.’
‘Have you seen one?’ Stede asks, raising his own eyebrows. He can feel the crew hanging on their words.
‘I’ve seen a few,’ Ed says casually, and the crew exhales as one. ‘I’ve been to Roanoke,’ Ed adds, and the crew starts absolutely buzzing. ‘And seen the lovers who walk along the shore near Boston.’
Stede’s trying to control his face from absolute scepticism. ‘Listen, guys,’ he says, ‘I honestly think I’ve just been having a tough time these past few weeks. I think it’s just catching up with me.’ He looks at Ed. ‘Plus, let’s say it is a ghost,’ he adds, trying to be as kind as possible in letting him down. ‘What would we even do about that?’
Ed’s jaw is set. ‘We’d have to go see the ghost and make it right.’
‘Ghosts are reasonable,’ Frenchie adds. ‘It’ll have something we need to fix and then it can rest.’
‘Unless it’s a different kind of ghost,’ Buttons mutters.
‘Go see the ghost?’ Stede repeats. ‘Well, I imagine he’s buried in Barbados.’ He hesitates, not sure of the appropriate verbiage. ‘Or, er, I think his body is. Probably.’
‘Yes,’ Oluwande says, surprising Stede. Oluwande too? The man always seems so sensible. ‘You said the nightmares started three days after your supposed death. That’s probably when they buried him.’
Ed’s nodding. ‘They must have had a funeral for you,’ he says to Stede. ‘And then buried the poor bugger.’
‘But Ed,’ Stede says, feeling rather that the conversation is getting away from him. ‘He was already dead. We just – borrowed his body.’
‘And didn’t respect it,’ Buttons points out. ‘You ran it over and dropped a piano on it!’
‘And then he had to go through a funeral with someone else’s name,’ Jim says, and Stede thinks despairingly, you too?
‘Well,’ Stede says in exasperation, ‘he’s probably buried under the wrong name too.’
‘What?’ Ed asks, sounding shocked. ‘What do you mean the wrong name?’
Stede laughs, feeling hysterical. ‘My in-laws gave us gravestones as a wedding gift,’ he says. ‘So I have a gravestone with my name on it, which I assume is what Mary had him buried under.’
‘It’s a fucking ghost,’ Jim says, sounding shocked. ‘You really fucked up.’
‘Hey,’ Stede and Ed say together.
‘Show some respect to your captain,’ Ed says to Jim, before looking back at Stede and adding, ‘but Stede, that is fucked up.’ He pauses. ‘On a lot of levels.’
‘What? Why?’
‘I mean,’ Ed says, ‘You got a gravestone as a wedding gift, for one.’
‘We were meant to be together for eternity,’ Stede says. Ed gives him another unreadable look. Stede doesn’t care for it. The crew is babbling around them and Stede suddenly wants to be alone with his co-captain. ‘Ed,’ he says quietly, ‘can we maybe have a little chat about this in the cabin?’ Ed nods and stands, helping Stede up with him. Stede’s a little unsteady on his feet. Stede sees several members of the crew look like they are about to rise as well and adds, ‘Alone,’ pointedly.
‘Don’t be doing anything too vigorous,’ Buttons calls after them. ‘The ghost won’t like it!’