'Oh, who'd sit still for that?' Shirke griped. It was a cully's game for the newlies, to be named figurehead and smeared with shit before the others ran.
'The galley's built,' Keith said swaying over the table, thumping it with his heels. 'I'm standing on the bloody quarterdeck, but we need a figurehead. A contest to see who's the best! Pandora you have a huge set o' cat's- heads. Hop up here and and show us your carvings!'
The older Pandora was helped up onto the table, allowed Keith to undo her buttons, and shucked her sack- gown down to her ankles, and bared her breasts to the room, kneeling on one end of the table and bracing herself with the tall back of a chair to lean forward like a ship's figurehead. Candles were fetched to that end of the room so the men could judge better.
'Marvelous!' Keith said. 'I'll give her points for size, at any rate. Bit low-slung, though.'
'Not a bit of it,' Mayhew said, kneeling on the floor and looking straight up at them in awe. 'Easier to get to whilst doing the blanket horn-pipe! Like… hie… swivel guns!'
'Alan, trot your piece out next, she looks promising!' Shirke crowed. 'Nice swellings, there under her bodice.'
Alan turned to her, and she shook her head in the negative, rather forcefully; the first sign of any strong reaction she had shown all night. Fresh tears streaked her lovely face.
'If you'd rather not,' Alan said, putting an arm around her.
'Thank you.' She almost shuddered. 'I'd really… the mistress said it would be a nice supper, and… I'd really like to go, if I may, please? This is so…'
'Alan, come on!'
'Try Hespera,' he said over his shoulder. 'She looks like better pickings.' He led her to the dark end of the room and sat her down on a chair. 'You've not been long at this trade, have you, Dolly? Tell me true. I've heard enough whore's lies before to know.'
She turned away from him and began to sob as quietly as she could, and he knelt down to put an arm around her once more.
'D… don't call me a whore,' she wept.
'Well, what would you call it when you show up at a private party for four men and four women?' Alan asked.
'I don't know,' she muttered in a little girl's timbre. 'I was happy to… submit to my husband's desires, as a… p… proper… wife. I thought it would be no in… more unpleasant than that!'
'But this is low and common.' Alan softened, pulling her head over to rest on his shoulder, and she submitted easily, though one of her hands took hold of his coat lapel and wrenched it into a knot from the strength of her humiliation as she trembled and wept on his coat.
'Huzzah for Hespera!' Shirke hooted. 'I'll name my next ship for you, if you'll pose for the wood-carver, m'dear! Marvelous young poonts you have! Alan, you must come and see. They're like two in one. Round little darlin's, with little pink domes atop 'em for dugs. And another little mound of nipple atop that, would you believe? Mm, tasty, too!'
'Areolae, Shirke,' Ashburn informed him at the other end of the room. 'Mm, you're right, most delectable in form and succulence. From the Latin, you know. Juvenal loved 'em, as do I, better'n oysters!'
''Ere, wot 'bout mine, then?' Electra complained, slinging her garments to the four winds. 'Thort yew wuz sweet h'on me, me chuck!'
'Hell with it,' Mayhew shouted. 'All's… strip fer a boardin' action!'
'Let's get you out of here,' Alan said. Damned if he was going to board any woman in public for someone else's amusement. And damned if he was going to get anything from Dolly under these circumstances.
'Oh, thank you, thank you!' she uttered brokenly as he lifted her to her feet. He led her toward the door, stopping to pick up his hanger and clip it to his belt frog on his left hip.
'Ought to have some music with this,' Shirke said. He went to the door clad only in a loose shirt and shouted down the stairs at the top of his voice, a quarterdeck voice that could carry forward in at least half a gale of wind, 'Any fiddlers down there? Hoy, we want music up here, can't strum without it! Shake a leg, shake a leg, wakey wakey, lash up and stow! Stir up your dead arses, you farmers!'
The girls were shrieking with laughter as they were pursued in mock chase about the room, all of them now totally nude, and the males shedding what little they had left upon their persons as they ran and made the floor shudder.
Then, there was another wooden sort of thunder; the sound of many heavy feet pounding their way up the stairs.
'Shirke, your musicians are here,' Alan said, grabbing Dolly's hand and running for the only other door to the room.
'Bloody good!' Shirke said, breaking off and opening the door to face an obese (and very outraged) magistrate, his bailiff, and a pack of old gammers from the watch. 'The Charlies!' Shirke screamed and slammed the door in their faces. 'All hands, prepare to repel boarders!'
Alan wasn't prepared to stay and take the consequences. He led Dolly into a small bed-chamber, from which there seemed to be no other mode of escape, unless they wanted to consider shinnying down a drain-pipe from the narrow window to the courtyard below.
'Damn!' he hissed in the darkness. He felt along the wall with his free hand until he came upon a small door set into the wall facing the hallway, about three feet square. It was the closet for the chamber-pots, so that servants could pick them up from the hallway and empty them without disturbing the lodgers. It had not been used, so it was empty. Alan took the two tin pots to the door to the dining room and slung them onto the table.
'You'll need these, I think,' he said, slamming the door again. 'Through there, quickly, Dolly.'
'Oh, God!' she quailed weakly.
'Oh, for God's sake, follow me, then.'
He crawled through, saw that the coast was for the moment clear, and stepped out into the hall, almost dragging the young woman in his wake. They straightened their clothing in the small mirror of a hall table at the bend of the corridor, and he then quickly led her away from the noise.
'Damn!' he hissed again. There was no outside entrance from this hallway. They would have to go back the other way, which meant running into the disturbance, which by now was beginning to sound like a full-sized melee. 'Look, wipe your tears, Dolly, and look serene, or we're taken for fair.'
'I'll try,' she promised, taking a deep, steadying breath and groping in her small bag for a handkerchief. 'There, do I look calm enough?'
'You look lovely,' Alan told her, knowing it would buck up her spirits, and it did. And damme if she don't, he thought.
They advanced on the mob in the hall. Old men with cudgels from the watch, a huge bailiff the size of a plow- horse, the magistrate, several tavern servants, and many patrons, who were yelling for either peace and quiet, or more drinks. Shouts could be heard in favor of lynching the riotous heathens in the dining room, or the magistrate and his churls, or both.
'Excuse us, excuse us, if you please,' Alan said with a fixed smile as he led Dolly through the press, leaning back as the door was finally booted open and the party responded with a shower of crockery, glassware, a chamber-pot, and several gobbets of raisin duff. 'Will you let a lady pass, please, there's a good fellow.'
The Charlies from the watch were not having it all their own way. They could not use their cudgels, and were knotted in the door like a beer bung, even with the bailiff's huge shoulder applied to shove them in by force. Alan put his own shoulder to the back of one old man and pushed, and the Charlies finally gained the bulwarks, but it was a bad mistake, for drunken whores and revelers could fight when cornered, better than the poorly paid dodderers.
Once on the first-floor level, Alan fetched his own hat and led Dolly into the street.
''Oy, ain't you one o' them?' a servant cried out as they began to walk away. 'Yes, you is! Hoy, the watch! 'Er'es another o' the bastards!'
'My dear fellow, I don't know what you're talking about,' Alan countered. 'But, here's a guinea on my reckoning, and please inform your cook that it was a
The servant bent over to pick up the guinea from the mud, and Alan booted him in the face, which sent him
