the Dalaverse

Lo and behold, I was actually able to get some writing done tonight. And it's request-oriented, if y'all can remember that far back. linaelyn requested Cotton ampersand, and that's what this is.



Refrain


Out of all the whores in Tortuga, Nancy wasn’t the prettiest or the lewdest or the merriest, but she was the only one could read. Leastwise, she’d never met any other. Later she wondered if he had sought her out a-purpose or if he came upon her by chance. He was a keen one, that old sailor, and he listened. Now and then she watched him in a group of his fellows and saw how most folk forgot he could hear because he couldn’t speak up, couldn’t interrupt their prattling tales and boasts. Men were funny like that. The women never forgot he had no tongue to wag.

It took some patience and, she must admit, some jingling of his purse before she could make sense of his gestures and his bird’s speech that first time.

“Sing?” she asked, confounded. “Ye want me t’ sing?”

John Cotton touched his grizzled throat again and nodded. The parrot cried, “A chantey, a chantey for the morn!” and then fell blessedly silent.

“An’ ye’ll pay me for’t, aye?” Nan wanted to know, suspicious, for no man’d ever approached her with such a proposition. Cotton nodded gravely and counted out the coins, the fee she’d named plus a bit besides, right into her hands. So Nan sang for her supper that night.

That was all he ever wanted, her voice and as quiet a spot as they could find for to make the most of it, ordinary though it was. He sat beside her, his blue eyes closed, patting her hand in reassurance when she fumbled a note. She knew a good number of songs and didn’t run out till the third time; he didn’t seem to mind her repeating her favorites.

Before long he was bringing her grubby sheets of music, handing each over like it was something precious. She would work out the shaky letters and bad spelling while he tapped the rhythm on his thigh, until between them they managed to cobble together something fit for singing. A couple of times he brought her ballads in Spanish or French, languages she’d heard often enough to mimic its cadence and spirit, even if she didn’t understand a bleeding word. Once there was a sweet tune in a lilting tongue unrecognizable yet tiptoeing on the edge of familiar, like she’d heard it in a dream sometime. That was the time he brought her an orange, peeling it while she sang so the scent filled her with each breath between verses.

The other girls giggled whenever she went off with him, needling her about Grandad and his wrinkles and his empty mouth. Nan took John Cotton's arm, gave his parrot a hunk of stale sourdough, and left them to their night's work.