Five

Tobias

The funeral of Blackbeard was held on the docks the very next day at noon—any earlier would have been too early for pirates. All of Nassau was in attendance, crammed shoulder to shoulder on the half-rotted wood. They were wearing black, and each mourner carried a bottle of rum.

Tobias had been hoping to show up at the last minute and slip into the crowd unnoticed, but upon his arrival, the assembled pirates had immediately broken into song.

"God save our Pirate King! Long live our fearless King! God save the King!"

And by "king," they still—weirdly, ludicrously, most stupidly—meant Tobias. On account of his being Blackbeard's favorite son.

It was like his pa was getting the last word from beyond the grave. But Tobias had no intention of letting a crown anywhere near his head.

"Send him victorious," belted out the pirates, "wicked and glorious, long to reign over us, God save the King!"

This was his worst nightmare.

He felt a squeeze on his shoulder and opened his eyes. Mary. She gave him a sad, sympathetic smile.

"I hope wearing black at funerals doesn't catch on," she said, fanning herself.

(Reader, we had questions about this, too. Here's what we found out. While wearing black at a funeral is a tradition that goes back to the time of the ancient Romans, when funeral-goers would swap out their everyday white togas for black ones, in this particular time—the 1700s—it was not a normal thing. It wouldn't become standard until the 1860s—a good 130ish years from now—when Queen Victoria wore all black to mourn the death of her husband, Prince Albert. Because she was such a trendsetter, that Queen Victoria.)

"Yes, why black?" complained Jack from Mary's other side.

And yes, Jack was there, too.

When Tobias and Mary had arrived and the terrible singing had begun, Jack and Anne had (of course) spotted them and waved them over. Tobias hadn't wanted to socialize, but the couple would provide a decent buffer from the rest of the funeral, so he'd agreed.

Jack was wearing a black calico shirt with a very subtle white floral print (where he could have gotten this fabric is a mystery that we narrators have not yet solved) and tight-fitting black striped pants. Black sash. Black boots. Black tricorn hat with a white feather in it. He didn't dress like any man Tobias had ever met, but it suited him, somehow. As Tobias watched, Jack sniffed at his own armpit and grimaced. "Why on the good dry earth would anyone pick black to wear at an outdoor event?"

"To match the beard, I guess," Anne Bonny said. "I rather like wearing black."

"And you look ravishing in it, darling." Jack leaned over and kissed her enthusiastically, then abruptly pulled away. "Sorry, sorry," he said to Mary. "Is kissing inappropriate for a funeral? This is the first official one I've ever been to."

Who is this guy? Tobias thought.

Mary had been acting strangely from the moment she'd first seen Jack at the Scurvy Dog last night. They'd been having a normal conversation, talking about Alexander Pope's new translation of The Iliad , which they had both recently read, and then she'd suddenly gone still. Her face had drained of color. And she'd jumped out of her chair and yelled, "SON OF A WITCH."

Which was, to Tobias's mind, completely out of character for her.

Maybe, he'd thought at first, this was the guy who'd hurt her. The one she didn't talk about. The one he saw her thinking about occasionally, a mix of fury and humiliation passing through her azure eyes. The reason she refused to ever go to Charles Town. Maybe she was about to stick her dagger in that man's gut and be rid of him for good. As the bloke undoubtedly deserved.

But then there'd been the hugging and the super-intense staring into each other's eyes, and then she'd dragged Jack into the storage room, emerging all rumpled and flushed, and Tobias had been totally bewildered.

Bewildered and (let's just admit it) jealous.

Wildly jealous.

Unreasonably jealous, considering that Tobias knew perfectly well that Mary saw him only as a friend.

Then she'd introduced Jack as her cousin, and Tobias had felt, well, relieved.

But there was something odd between them, a way that Mary looked at Jack that reminded Tobias of how she sometimes looked at him . Jack had been her best friend, she'd said. And then Tobias had been her best friend. And now Jack was in her life again.

And Tobias was back to jealous.

But then Blackbeard was dead—he was gone, and his entire crew was gone, which meant that Tobias had also lost Caesar and an entire group of decent, brave men he'd basically grown up with—and Tobias was feeling way too many things to focus on jealousy: confusion. Relief. Grief. Anger. More confusion. Yearning. An awful numbness every time he thought of his pa. And, to top it off, something very close to outright panic whenever the pirates sang that damn "long live the king" song.

Stop singing that! he wanted to scream. Pirates don't need a king!

Mary squeezed his shoulder again. It helped. But it was not enough.

"Mr. Teach, you'll need to come with us," said Bess, aka Captain Vane's ex-sweetheart, aka the madam of the Saucy Siren. (According to our research, Bess had been tasked with organizing the event, which we think was smart. If Bess could manage a whole brothel, why not a funeral?)

"Oh dear God, why?" Tobias asked. Would they make him stand up and be anointed the Pirate King right here in front of everybody?

He wouldn't do it! He'd refuse to be anybody's Pirate King.

"To stand with the family," Bess said gently.

Oh. Well, that was only slightly better.

"It's all right, Toby," Mary murmured. "We'll be right here."

"Yes, cheering you on from a distance," added Jack. "We'll be sending you our very best in the way of moral support, won't we, Bonn?"

"Sure, we will," Anne agreed.

Tobias looked at Mary as if to say, Who is this guy?

And she smiled again, reassuringly, like, It's fine. You should go.

So Tobias hurried after Bess, who led him to the end of the docks to join his fifty-two brothers and Blackbeard's various widows.

"Watch your step." Bess pointed downward, where a long match cord snaked across the dock and vanished behind other people's legs and feet.

Then he realized there were about a dozen match cords.

"Uh, what's going on?" he asked.

"You'll see!" she said cheerily. Ominously. Then she moved on to speak to another son.

"Oh, Toby, my dear," one of the widows said tearfully. "Your father always spoke so highly of you."

He sighed. He didn't know this woman. And she obviously didn't know him.

The widows were interesting, though. Blackbeard had fourteen wives, and a multitude of lovers. They were a diverse group, women with a range of skin tones from deep black to pale white, but here, on the docks, they all wore long black dresses, veils, and gloves, and they were weeping copiously, wailing loudly, and wringing their hands, like there was some kind of competition between them over who could act the saddest.

And of course they were all expecting Tobias to be sad. Which he was. He thought he was. He was just feeling too many other things to be able to tell for sure.

He dropped his gaze to his boots, just waiting for the funeral to begin—so that it could end.

You're mad! Leave me alone!

He could still see the pain in Blackbeard's eyes when he'd said that. The disappointment reflected there. The betrayal. And now he would never get to make things right. He wondered, as he had so many times since last night, what Blackbeard had wanted to talk to him about when he'd written the postscript: Toby, ye come, too.

But now he would never know.

The bell tolled noon then.

A large, official-looking man (dressed in black, of course, but with a white collar) came forward to the front of the crowd. He wasn't a priest, Tobias knew. He was an actor, hired to play a priest. Because Nassau, not having much use for priests, didn't have any. But they had a surprising number of excellent actors. This particular fellow was called Herbert the Strong, because his name was Herbert and he was, well, strong.

"Dearly beloved, we've come together today," Herbert the Strong said in a grand, booming voice, "to remember the life and legacy of Captain Teach, also known as Blackbeard, also known as the King of Pirates. Let us have a moment of silence." The mourners all went quiet—as quiet as hundreds of people could be, anyway—and bowed their heads.

For about two and a half seconds, Tobias just listened to the rush of water against the piles. Then he was caught in a flash of memory that struck him like lightning on the water: himself as a boy of seven, peering through a doorway to see Blackbeard at a roaring fire, combing his copious beard. A white man but his father, the nurse had told him. (His mother had been a Black woman who had gone to the angels when Tobias was born.) And now Tobias was old enough that this man—his father, at last—wished to see him.

"Come in, lad," Blackbeard called, waving him forward into the welcoming heat of the room. "Come here, son. You're to be my new cabin boy. That means you'll go with me on a big grand ship. How does that sound?"

And to Tobias back then it had sounded so good. To have a father. To be with him. He promised himself right then that he would be the best son Blackbeard could have asked for.

Tobias clenched his fists, bringing himself back to the present with the pressure of his fingernails digging into his palms. He'd been having flashes like this all day, memories that would strike him, randomly, vividly, about his father.

Herbert the Strong cleared his throat, breaking the moment of silence. "Whew! Glad that's over with! Let's talk about how great Blackbeard was. And by great I mean that he was the baddest, scariest, most talented scallywag to ever sail the seven seas!"

Blackbeard's other sons cheered. The widows wept harder.

"For one thing"—Herbert held up a finger—"Blackbeard could drink any man under the table. The Pirate King could certainly hold his rum."

Tobias remembered, in another flash, sitting at the table in the captain's cabin of the Queen Anne's Revenge , Blackbeard thrusting a brown bottle under his nose. "You're nearly a man now, my boy," he pronounced. "Time to get some hair on your chest." Tobias was nine then, and not sure he wanted to be a man just yet. But when he gazed back at Caesar, hesitant, the older man gave him a faint, encouraging nod, so Tobias sipped the rum and then coughed and gasped, making Blackbeard boom with laughter.

Tobias shivered when he thought of that laugh—it had been a fixture of his life as reliable as the rising and setting of the sun. It could be cruel sometimes—a hard bark that never failed to make Tobias's heart beat faster. It could be maniacal—the smell of sulfur and burning as Blackbeard lit the fireworks in his beard and turned his sparking face to his enemies. It could be kind.

He tuned in to the funeral again. Herbert was now in the middle of describing Blackbeard's capturing of a hundred different ships, his battles against the British (or Spanish or Dutch or French) military, all his bold and courageous exploits, which Tobias knew would not have been possible without Caesar and the rest of the crew. It didn't feel fair, that it was only Blackbeard being honored here, when so many other lives had been lost. They always want to talk about the king , Tobias thought a bit bitterly. They never want to talk about the soldiers.

"He was a great lover, a courageous fighter, and a shrewd leader," Herbert continued. "He was, to put it frankly, a pirate's pirate. Some say he was the richest pirate who ever sailed. Some say"—Herbert paused for dramatic effect—"he amassed the greatest treasure the world has ever seen."

Oh yes. The treasure. Tobias had almost forgotten about that.

"But I guess now we'll never know," Herbert said mournfully. "Seeing as he left no map to any treasure, and told no one of its whereabouts."

Tobias couldn't help it—he immediately pictured himself at age twelve following Blackbeard into a dark vault, lit only by the hot torch Blackbeard held out ahead of them.

"Look here, son," Blackbeard said reverently. "This is my legacy—everything I've worked for."

He'd stepped out from behind his pa and gazed around in wonder. The walls of this room were covered in rich tapestries, all woven in different styles and featuring different figures. It was clear they had all come from the ships of very wealthy and important men around the world. There was a pianoforte, a golden chandelier, and even a desk with a massive ledger lying open.

But that wasn't what Blackbeard had wanted Tobias to see.

No, it was the huge chests of weathered wood and banded iron, stuffed so full the hinges looked ready to break.

"Go on," Blackbeard said. "Open one."

Tobias hesitated, certain the latches must be booby-trapped somehow and that he was about to humiliate himself in front of his pa. But the eager look in Blackbeard's eyes wasn't the booby-trap-related eagerness—Tobias was intimately familiar with that particular expression—so he reached out for the nearest chest and touched the clasp.

The lid popped open and gold came spilling out. Coins, trinkets, and even a few teeth.

Tobias was dazzled and delighted. "There's so much treasure, Pa! Are they all this full?"

"Open another and find out."

The next chest held silver—so many Spanish silver dollars that Tobias thought there had to be more than a thousand pieces of eight in here. Another chest held jewels: loose gemstones, necklaces, and dozens of rings (a few still on fingers).

"Caesar tells me you have a head for numbers," Blackbeard said gruffly. "Is that true?"

"Yes, sir." Tobias stood up a bit taller.

"Good, good. Toby, you're my cleverest son. The one I trust. You're the only one who could understand the value of all this. You're the son I choose to have by my side. This treasure—my legacy—will be yours and yours alone."

His eyes were suddenly hot. A headache throbbed at his temples.

"Unfortunately," Herbert was saying, "as dear Blackbeard and his crew could not be recovered, today's burial will be of the symbolic sort." He swept around to direct everyone's attention to a ship sitting in the middle of the harbor, a single-masted sloop with its sails furled. A small rowboat was rowing away from it as fast as possible.

That was when Tobias noticed the hissing.

He looked down just in time to see a flame racing along the match cord, winding its way between feet and along the dock until it reached...

A cannon, aimed out at the harbor.

An immense BOOM rocked the docks, and a moment later, the cannonball struck the sloop broadside, leaving a gaping hole in the hull.

The crowd roared with appreciation.

Then Tobias caught flames traveling the other match cords.

BOOM. Another hole in the sloop.

BOOM.

One by one, the cannons blasted holes in the ship. Out in the harbor, timbers groaned and cracked until the entire vessel finally gave out and the poor sloop vanished beneath the waves. An enormous cheer filled the docks. Then, almost in one motion, the mourners lifted their bottles of rum.

"To Blackbeard!" Herbert the Strong called.

"To Blackbeard!" they answered, and drank.

Tobias lifted the bottle to his lips. He'd never really come to like the taste of rum. Or the burning. But he drank one small swig for his pa.

After the drinking, the mourners turned to go, but Herbert the Strong called out, "There's one last thing! An announcement, if you please."

Tobias's heart sank. There was more ? He wanted to go home now. Read a book. Stare at the wall. Anything that wasn't being here.

Slowly, the assembled pirates quieted, tense and waiting.

"Most of you know that, before his untimely departure from this world, Captain Blackbeard called a meeting of the pirate captains, to decide the Future of Piracy. What you probably don't know," Herbert continued, "is that at that meeting, Blackbeard intended to announce his retirement."

Another rumble made its way through the crowd. Blackbeard, the world's most famous pirate, retire? Unthinkable!

Tobias was equally confused. He'd never imagined his pa retiring. Ever.

"Pirates don't retire!" someone—who sounded suspiciously like Captain Vane—called out.

"Oh, shut your gob!" yelled a woman—obviously Bess—from the crowd. "They do, too!"

"Not if they're real men, they don't!"

"What does that even mean, real men ?" Bess fired back. "You see? This is why I broke it off with you! Well, that and you're an arse!"

"Everybody calm down," Herbert said. "Now is not the time to get into personal grievances. It is true, I assure you, that Blackbeard intended to step down as the Pirate King. He meant for there to be a new Pirate King, Blackbeard's heir and successor, one extraordinary man to represent the Golden Age of Piracy to the entire world."

That's when Herbert looked directly at Tobias.

Then everyone else looked at Tobias.

Tobias contemplated whether or not he should leap off the dock and into the water.

But then Herbert the Strong turned to regard a line of men who'd come forward.

"In the wake of Blackbeard's death," he said, "these three captains have come together to form a new organization. They call themselves the Admirable Association of Retired Pirates, or the AARP for short."

"But pirates don't retire!" Vane yelled again.

"Oh, be quiet!" screamed Bess.

"Don't tell me what to do, woman!"

"SHUT UP!" This was from Herbert, who'd clearly reached the end of his patience with Captain Vane's relationship drama. "THIS IS A FUNERAL, FOR PETE'S SAKE! SHOW SOME BLOOMING RESPECT!"

"Er, sorry," rasped Vane.

Herbert sighed. "Now where were we? Oh yes. The AARP. I give you Benjamin Hornigold! James Hook! And Henry Morgan!" As Herbert called out each name, the pirate captain in question lifted his hat and waved it, which incited more shouted comments from the crowd.

"Captain Morgan died a long time ago, didn't he?" said one.

"No, I think he makes rum now."

"And I thought Captain Hook was fictional?" said another.

Herbert the Strong stepped back and gestured for one of the retired captains to take over as MC. Captain Hornigold shuffled to the front and cleared his throat. "The AARP would like to honor Blackbeard and his wishes to crown a new Pirate King."

Everyone swiveled again to look at Tobias.

Tobias looked into the water. He could do it. He could swim for it and hope there weren't any sharks this close to the shore. He'd prefer being eaten by sharks than being the king. How could he continue to rage against the machine of arbitrary titles if he inherited an arbitrary title?

"But, of course, a Pirate King must be chosen in the most democratic way possible," Hornigold added sagely, and then everyone was back to looking at him.

"Of course, of course," the pirates agreed. "Democracies are important."

"Will there be a vote?" one pirate asked. "Will it be a proper election?"

"There's a lot of pirates. Maybe captains should vote on behalf of their crews. That way every ship is represented equally."

"Well, that's not fair to the bigger crews!" declared another pirate, probably from a bigger crew. "Everyone's vote should be equal. One man, one vote!"

"And why do only pirates get to vote!" someone in the audience cried indignantly. "The whole town should get to vote!"

A bunch of pirates cried "Aye!" or "Nay!" or "Arrr!"

They were about two seconds from a brawl.

"Calm down!" Hornigold yelled over the noise. "I'm trying to tell you how it will work!"

The pirates calmed down. As much as they were able, anyway.

"We all know there's only one way to handle this," Hornigold said, "only one way that's fair to everyone, that gives every man a chance to become the next Pirate King. We're going to hold a contest!"

Well, that sounded ridiculous.

But, Tobias realized suddenly, a contest meant that no one expected he would inherit the title of Pirate King.

It was a great idea. He started to clap.

"The competition will officially begin in three days." Hornigold grinned toothily. "May the best man win!"