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“Frenchie?” The name is whispered, low and excited, across the creaking boards of the ship.
Ah, so he wasn’t sleeping either. From within the hammock they’d strung up, Frenchie answers, “Yeah, John?”
“S’different without the stars, ain’t it?”
The bard slips off the sash he wraps around his eyes at night and takes in the blue-black of the room. Their room. It’s a moment before his eyes adjust to the deep shadows and unfamiliar shapes.
Wee John’s right: the darkness of a room isn’t like sleeping on deck. It’s… more enveloping there. Wraps around them. Frenchie can see the sturdy trunk against the wall, along with the currently empty net hung above it. A candelabra—real silver!—catches what little light filters in from the porthole. Its stately tallow candles stand silent as nuns.
Frenchie turns toward his roommate. The big sailor is taking the cot tonight and he’s upturned to the ceiling with his well-loved rag doll curled up on his chest. Frenchie adjusts the pillow beneath his head before he says to him, “Feels a bit like living underwater, eh?”
John pulls his rag doll closer, into arms that can kill a man in half a dozen ways, but seek comfort all the same. “It’d be better if we could see the stars though, wouldn’t it?”
“I suppose.”
They are still undergoing redesigns on their room. The sitting nook, they both agreed, had been a smashing idea. Already, they’d each sat in the corner with great success. Zero sleeping had occurred. When Wee John had mentioned he could sew something just for them, Frenchie had suggested small fancy pillows which also were definitely not for sleeping. It sounds to him like the type of decorative touch that Room People might have.
Because, to face the facts, neither has much in the way of personal belongings. Changes of clothes are more the captain’s style. He has a whole wardrobe at the ready and they’d all been cast in plenty of roles in the past few weeks, so why clutter up their space with frippery? Frenchie had lobbied to store his lute in the trunk for the moment, and Wee John was more than amenable so long as he could keep his various knives in one of the open wooden crates for ease of access.
There are wooden pegs on the walls to hang their trophies when they get them. Hats if they like, too. A series of small drawers at eye height had enchanted Wee John when he spied them. He’d spent a solid quarter of an hour opening and closing them with gleeful laughter before he’d asked Frenchie to see what he could find to hide in there. In the end, they’d managed to shove one of Roach’s sandwiches into the first, a slipper purloined from Captain in the second, stored a batch of battle paint in the third, and then filled the other two with sachets of gunpowder. Just for fun.
That’s what Frenchie likes best about John: he is fun. Even if the big fella hadn’t tripped the Swede when he did, he would’ve asked him to come bunk with him. Two pirates can hold the place better than one, he might have said, but truthfully he likes John’s company. And he knows the man isn’t about to laugh at him like some of the other crew. Had even agreed to play the cat to his witch that time the Dutch had boarded them, thought it was a grand time. They still joke about it.
He likes most of their other mates fine—Olu’s a good lad—but John is a comfortable presence. Steady. Untroubling. Frenchie knows they have to be up for their duties early every morning, but he thinks he might not mind the lack of sleep if he spends the whole night talking with his roommate, planning out this sudden gift of space entirely their own.
He considers the fine wood of the ceiling.
“What’re you doing?” asks John after Frenchie gracefully exits the hammock.
He grabs the battle paint from the drawers, then drags the trunk between their beds to stand upon. “We need to fix it,” he says, a twinkle in his eyes.
When he’s done, Frenchie plops down onto the cot beside John and points.
“What’d ya think, roomie?”
John sits up then, still clutching his sweet doll, and a smile spreads across his face. He practically radiates happiness. “Oh, aye. Is that there meant to be Ursa Major?”
Frenchie laughs as he follows John’s finger to a series of seven yellow blots. “Yeah. It’s not exactly right, but I thought—you know—I’ve heard you talk about it.”
“It’s my favourite. It points to where you can—”
“Find Polaris,” he cuts in.
“—find the north star. Yeah!” John is right chuffed at that. For a long minute, they both admire Frenchie’s work. “They do look nice up there.”
“Sleep tight, mate.” Frenchie pats him on the thigh through the sack cloth blanket and hops back into the hammock. He considers the stars he’s hung and then says, “We can add more tomorrow, if’n you like. It’s our room now.”