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The thing about leadership is that it comes at the most sudden of times and in the most unexpected ways. Oluwande never thought his first act as captain would be throwing the old captain overboard but life was just full of surprises wasn’t it?
Izzy was begging for mercy while being hoisted over the edge when Pete suddenly cried out and the crew turned around to see a man, a familiar man climb over the edge of the ship.
“Izzy…I’ll take tea in my room.”
For a moment, there was complete silence as the crew turned to look at Blackbeard. The beardless face briefly glanced at them before walking towards the captain’s quarters. Izzy Hands was dropped out of the sheer shock everyone on board felt coursing through them. Only Roach was brave enough to say what everyone in that moment was thinking.
“What happened to his beard?”
The crew followed the direction Roach’s finger pointed and one by one they each made eye contact with each other, feeling hesitant to offer up any sort of explanation.
It was Izzy who broke the spell of silence first, holding up his hands to Oluwande and smirking as he spoke, “I suppose you’ll be taking these off of me then.”
The tone he spoke offered no question but Oluwande simply raised his eyebrows at the man and looked around at the others, “While Blackbeard might be Captain again, I see no reason you ought to be first mate.”
The surrounding pirates nodded and Black Pete said, “The mutiny was fully endorsed, by all counts you aren’t even a true member of this crew anymore.”
Frenchie looked over to Izzy on his left and tilted his head, “Does that make him our prisoner?”
Lucius grinned, “I think it does.”
They cheered and Fang, Ivan, Roach, and Frenchie hoisted up Izzy once more and then paused, not exactly having a direction to head to.
“So,” Roach started, “where exactly do we put prisoners?”
Everyone looked to Oluwande who suddenly felt a bit more flustered. It was enough pressure that he had been elected captain and now occupied some sort of grey-defined leadership role with Blackbeard’s return but now he had to think of somewhere to keep a prisoner.
“I think the Captain, the original Captain that is, converted the brig months ago,” Oluwande said, “Is there some sort of…really sturdy closet around we could keep him in while we wait to ask Blackbeard what to do with him?”
“The pickling pantry has a thick door,” Roach said, “keeps the smell out.”
Oluwande nodded decisively, “The pickling pantry it is then.”
The crew let out another cheer and began taking a struggling Izzy down to the kitchens where the pickling pantry was.
“You don’t want to do this!” Izzy shouted as they shoved him into the pickling pantry, “Blackbeard requested for me to get his tea, when one of you shows up with someone else the man will gut you all like the utter wretches you are.”
Oluwande shrugged, “I suppose we’ll have to chance that then,” and he proceeded to shut the door with a bang.
The moment the door was closed his eyes widened, “Oh fuck.”
“What?” Frenchie asked.
“We have to take Blackbeard his tea. And tell him why Izzy Hands there is indisposed.”
The pirates let out a variety of expletives at this before Lucius shouted out, “Noes goes!” And rapidly stuck his finger to his nose.
The others in the galley quickly touched their finger to their nose, some in the case of Pete practically smacking themselves in their speed to be out of the tea-taking running.
Sadly this left Frenchie, who had been a second too slow with the purpose of the nose goes, sadly looking at his half-raised finger.
“I suppose this is how I die,” he proclaimed and the others all chimed in assuring him he would be absolutely fine and this was no big deal and of course this would be a simple task.
Roach prepared some tea and handed the tray off to Frenchie, who was practically in danger of tipping the pot right off the tray with how badly his hands were shaking.
“Just remember,” Lucius whispered to him, “start screaming if he maims you terribly and we will come rushing in. Well not me. But certainly others.”
With a firm pat on the back from Oluwande, a hug from Wee John, and a thumbs up from Roach, Frenchie was unceremoniously shoved into the captain’s quarters fully prepared to meet the other end of a sword for daring to not be Izzy Hands and was instead…met with Blackbeard throwing all the pillows and blankets off the bed and onto the floor. One of the pillows was flung towards his face and Frenchie quickly ducked, one of the spoons falling off the tea tray in the process.
He watched the silver spoon fall off in slow motion until it hit the wooden floor with a cling. Frenchie forlonely looked at the rug only a few centimeters away that would have hidden the sound, wondering at gravity’s betrayal.
Blackbeard looked up then and – oh god those were tears at the corners of his eyes? Frenchie looked around frantically for any sort of table to set the tea tray on and let out a sigh of relief as he set it on a side table near the bookshelves.
He tried to turn and rapidly make his way out of the room before Blackbeard noticed him but instead the man said, “You. Wait there.”
Frenchie stopped as if paralyzed in the middle of the floor as Blackbeard walked over to him.
“Yes sir Captain Blackbeard sir.” Frenchie said, trying to be as unassuming and polite as possible in an attempt to not get skewered by Blackbeard, the Blackbeard, who he had just caught crying and throwing pillows around.
When Blackbeard looked at him however there was not a hint of anger in his eyes, instead well, the man seemed sad.
“You know how to sew right?”
Frenchie was caught off guard, “Sew? Uh, yeah, I suppose I am the best at sewing on board at the moment. Jim was a bit better but they were a bit slower than I am and it’s not like they are here now.”
“So you can construct things?”
“Yeah…”
“I need your help with something then. Do you know how to construct a blanket fort?”
Frenchie felt his eyes widen and he put all his energy into keeping a blank face, “A blanket fort?”
“I’ve never built one before,” Blackbeard replied with a dejected tone in his voice.
Frenchie thought back to his childhood. His mom had worked as a laundress for some fancy lords and he had tried to help when possible with hauling around the linens, sheets, and whatever else may need cleaning. There had certainly been times when he had strung the sheets across old chairs and hanging lines and pretended that underneath was a castle or fort but it had never been particularly complicated. He doubted his expertise in this area rather heavily but with Blackbeard in front of him, seemingly past his breaking point Frenchie simply didn’t feel right saying no to the other man.
“I could certainly try my best.”
Blackbeard nodded and started to awkwardly shuffle some of the pillow around and Frenchie looked around in confusion for a moment before brightening when he looked at the chairs. Quickly, he picked up the tea set and put it near the door and began moving two of the chairs around so the backs of the chairs were facing each other a few feet apart and he moved the lounge chair so it was against the fireplace.
“That should do it,” Frenchie said out loud, “uh, Captain Blackbeard would you mind handing me that sheet there?” He asked motioning to a big white sheet currently lying on the floor.
Blackbeard handed it to him and he seemed certainly to have stopped crying and said, “We are building a blanket fort together and it’s not like I have a fucking beard so the whole Blackbeard name seems a bit ridiculous now. Just call me Ed.”
Frenchie laughed and then put his hand quickly over his mouth.
“No it’s alright this deserves a laugh,” Blackbeard, Ed, said, “Kinda surreal if you think about it.”
“Yeah,” Frenchie said, throwing the sheet over the chairs and lounge, “if you think about it, which for the sake of my sanity I’m not going to. Just going to think about this as building a blanket fort with my good friend Ed.”
“My good friend Frenchie,” Ed repeated with maybe a hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth.
“So, if you look here,” Frenchie began, “The sheet will just fall right off if we leave it like this so we really ought to put some books on the seat of the chair and lounge here to give it a weight so it doesn’t move. Then we have this here triangle tent shape.”
“But the sheet is all up at the height of the chairs and there’s all this extra space underneath. Not a defensible fort at all. Anyone could sneak right in.”
Frenchie wagged a finger, “Ah that’s where this comes in,” he said walking over to the pile of pillows and grabbing one of the larger ones, “We put these around the side as a sort of wall and we can even use some of the other chairs as supports and hang more blankets from there. The pillows make the base and walls and the blankets are the ceiling.”
“Not really much of a blanket fort then is it?”
“Well I think blanket is more of a broad term than a technical one. Sort of like how Roach’s 40 orange glaze cake isn’t just made of oranges but also has the stuff that makes the cake.”
Ed looked over at Frenchie, “What stuff makes the cake?”
“You know. All the flour and wheat and all that.”
“I don’t think you have any idea what he puts in that cake do you?”
“When it comes to Roach’s cooking, I’ve learned it will be fantastic and I don’t need to know the ingredients. Never was good at cooking myself. Never got particularly good food growing up to compare it to either.”
“I never got a chance to try that cake. Heard about it however.”
Suddenly Ed’s face grew a bit darker and Frenchie remembered Stede telling Ed about it one night on the deck and he felt a sense of panic. Stede’s name had yet to come up in the conversation but there was certainly a reason that Ed wasn’t talking about him. And whatever that reason was, Frenchie had the feeling that Ed wasn’t exactly in the headspace to talk about that.
“Well it’s a fantastic cake. We can get some more oranges. Maybe visit Jim’s Nan again and get some of those. Really great Jim’s Nan. A nun. A very violent nun.”
“A violent nun?”
“Lot of knives.”
“A lot like Jim then.”
“Yeah…would you hand me those extra blankets and pillows…oh and that mattress!”
Ed handed them over and Frenchie put them on the ground so it wasn’t just the carpet.
He stepped back from the blanket fort that had been constructed and smiled. This was good. This was very good. Considering he had never exactly built anything this complex he was rather proud of it so he stepped back and waved some jazz hands at the structure and shouted a ta-da in Ed’s direction.
He didn’t expect Ed to crawl into the fort and immediately put his face into the ground of pillows and start screaming but well, clearly the man was struggling.
Frenchie looked around the room as if there would be an answer spoken to him from the walls itself of what to do when your captain starts crying in a blanket fort but no answers were so forthcoming. He saw the tea by the door and grabbed the tray before crawling into the fort with the tray.
“I know you originally asked for tea and that might help a bit. I’m sure it’s cold by now but I also think sometimes tea is better cold. Might be even be good if it was sweeter. Maybe a cold sweeter tea is exactly what you need right now.”
Ed looked up from the pillows, “Tea, oh yeah.”
He took a cup of tea and poured far too much sugar into it. Enough that the sugar stopped dissolving and sat there at the bottom of the cup. There wasn’t much light coming in from the blankets so it was difficult for Frenchie to make anything out. He pulled a candle into the fort and lit it. Probably wasn’t too safe but neither of them were very concerned. Ed seemed a bit better after sipping at his tea.
He looked up at Frenchie, “Didn’t I ask Izzy for tea? He always knows how I like my tea.”
Frenchie felt a chill go up his spine, “Funny story there.”
Ed raised an eyebrow.
“Well, after you. Weren’t here. Izzy was captain and no one in the crew was a big fan of that. We decided to mutiny. Oluwande was the new captain and when you came back we were sort of in the middle of tossing Izzy overboard.”
“And did you?”
“Did we what?”
“Toss Izzy overboard.”
Frenchie raised his hands, “No! No, we ended up deciding he was a prisoner. But we don’t really have a brig here. So we. We put him in the pickling pantry until we could figure out what to do with him.”
Ed chuckled then. And that chuckle turned into a laugh so loud that the teacup Ed was holding began shaking and tea spilled out onto his pants.
“Oh shit, shit,” Ed said, setting the tea cup aside and blotting at the liquid with his sleeve, “the fucking pickling pantry? I bet he’s pissed.”
“That would be an understatement.”
“And Oluwande was the new captain?”
“We elected him.”
“Elected? Now that’s an interesting choice. I guess with Izzy in the pickling pantry I need to find a new first mate, you reckon he’d be up for the role?”
Frenchie shrugged, “Probably not, he didn’t even like being chosen as captain. Which I think is probably a good sign he’d make a good first mate.”
“Let him know later.”
“...you don’t want to let him know yourself?”
“Nah, I don’t think I’ll be leaving this fort anytime soon. I might just captain from here. If there’s anything left in me worth being a captain.”
Frenchie now found himself in the odd position of being the hype-man for one of the most famous pirates around, “I’m sure there’s plenty that makes you a great captain. You have lots of talents.”
“Name one.”
“Well you make a solid blanket fort.”
“You helped.”
“I had prior experience, and let me tell you this one smells a lot better than the lye-soaped up sheets I used as a kid.”
Ed wrinkled his nose and Frenchie copied the gesture and said, “Yeah lye is a terrible smell. Got used to it as a kid however, mum was a laundress for some lord.”
There was a pause before Ed said, “My mum was a seamstress. Always got to feel the finery but never wear it.”
“Always got to see it cleaned but never got to clean stuff of my own too often,” Frenchie said back.
“Heard what you and Oluwande pulled with those rich bastards.”
“When I was a teen, my mom got me in the service for a bit,” Frenchie started, “I remember sitting and waiting on all those rich bastards and overhearing every word. They didn’t care if I heard. I might as well have been a piece of furniture for all they noticed me. So when confronted with those fake-Parisans on the boat, well, I knew exactly what they would buy into.”
“Pretty sweet deal, hit them where it really hurts.”
“I think the money hurt them for sure, but I think the fire burned them just a bit more,” Frenchie said with a laugh.
Ed smiled, “This is good,” he said, “This is really good. I thought everything was over but it’s not is it? I have a ship. I have a crew. I have a new first mate and I have my good friend Frenchie who is pretty great at building forts.”
Frenchie looked at Ed now, and took a chance, “I don’t know what happened when you were on land, but I know you came back without Stede. And if we need to hold a funeral or whatever then we can organize it ourselves. You don’t have to worry —”
Ed cut him off, “He’s not dead.”
“Oh.”
“He’s not dead. He just didn’t want to come back.”
“Then, if you don’t mind where–?”
“He went home.”
Frenchie’s mind blanked, “Home?” He said in a confused voice.
“We were going to leave. Together. I loved him. Stede didn’t show and He wasn’t back at the barracks. I asked around and he had taken a carriage back to where his wife and kids were.”
“He had a wife and kids?” Frenchie asked with shock, trying not to think too hard on the love confession just dropped on top of his head like an anvil.
“Yeah.”
“Oh.”
Frenchie didn’t really know what to say. When the crew had been hired Stede hadn’t exactly given them a run-down of what was going on before he was ‘The Gentleman Pirate’. It was a bit of a shock to be honest. Stede had never really struck any of them as a family man.
“Hey Ed, you know where he went?”
“Yeah.”
“If you ever get the need, we could always go and pay him a visit, let him know exactly what he’s missing by running back with his tail between his legs.”
Ed looked away and Frenchie felt he had said the completely wrong thing for a moment and then Ed said, “One day. Maybe. Show all his buddies who Stede Bonnet really is.”
Frenchie clapped him on the back, “Show them who he really is!”
“For now I think I’m going to have a bit of a lie down now.”
Ed then turned around and pulled a blanket up over his shoulders. Frenchie looked around for a moment, “Ah, I guess that’s my cue to leave.”
He grabbed the tray and backed out of the room and was immediately assaulted by the entire crew.
Buttons grabbed him by his scarf, jostling the serving tray which Lucius took away from under Frenchie.
“Are ye cursed?” Buttons cried out, shaking Frenchie.
“He looks fine to me,” Swede called out.
“Everyone back up.” Oluwande called out and Frenchie got some room to breathe.
“So?” Pete said, “What’s up with captain?”
“He’s not doing too great to be honest,” Frenchie said, “Roach, I don’t know if you can but I think he’d really like a 40 Orange Glaze Cake or something similar. We talked about that.”
“You’re telling me you were with Blackbeard for hours and you talked about cake?” Izzy asked incredulously.
“I mean what else were we going to– wait a minute,” Frenchie cut himself off, “Aren’t you supposed to be in the pickling pantry?”
“He was making a ruckus,” Roach said.
“And he had to go to the bathroom,” Swede finished.
“We don’t really know how to keep a prisoner and tying him to the mast seems a bit ridiculous so we’ve been letting him out of the pickling pantry in shifts,” Oluwande said.
“Good leadership,” Frenchie said, “And speaking of, Ed officially named you first-mate!”
Oluwande looked a bit taken aback by that, and ignoring Izzy’s scream of rage said “Alright then…wait Ed?”
“Oh yeah, Blackbeard wants to be called Ed now, on account of the whole…” Frenchie made a gesture at the bottom half of his face, indicating Ed’s lack of beard.
The crew nodded.
“Also,” Frenchie continued, “Don’t mention Stede around him at the moment, old captain ran back off to his wife and kids.”
“His WHAT?” Wee John called out in an uncharacteristically loud voice.
“Yeah, his wife and kids.”
“I knew it,” Buttons said, not knowing a thing.
“Oh. Wow. That’s. Alright then,” Oluwande said, “I suppose we all better get back to work or sleep then and figure out what Captain wants to do in the morning.”
He looked over to Fang and Ivan, “Would you all mind putting Izzy back in the pickling pantry for the night? Maybe we could drop him off at Jackie’s or something later on.”
Izzy struggled a bit less on his way back this time and Frenchie just stood there as the crew dispersed. They got ready for bed and Lucius opened up a new book and tried reading to the crew. And he couldn’t do the voices nearly half as well as Stede could but the crew was trying not to think of him at the moment.
Frenchie supposed, in many ways, he had heard tales of what serving under Blackbeard was like for years and not just from Black Pete. But never, in all the tales he heard had he imagined it quite like this. Sitting in bunks listening to Lucius read to them while he saw Ed poking his head out of the cabin, not quite ready to join but at the edge, hovering. Frenchie hope he would join them soon.