Read Cinnamon and Gunpowder for Free Online

but here men’s imaginations bloom. Their women back home are, all of them, Helens, breasts like sleeping doves, petal cheeks, voices like glass bells; their inns serve not beer but nectar; their gardens grow peas the size of fists. These fantasies are ferociously strong, and, compared to them, Conrad’s grey porridge is an insult. The man no doubt would have been cast overboard long ago save one of the captain’s commandments: He that molests the cook becomes the cook. Stronger even than their anger at Conrad is their fear of becoming Conrad. Thus he is left in peace to make his bubbling abominations.
    When not eating his “burgoo,” the sailors tolerate him well enough. There are worse things in a pirate’s life than a man who cannot cook and who talks too much.
    As I am compelled to linger in the galley, Conrad takes the opportunity to fill my ears with his prattling. He considers me a compatriot, and I haven’t the heart to correct him.
    A central theme of his monologues is his admiration for the captain, which, from his tone, is not without a touch of the prurient. This afternoon, for example, he said, “Well we’re on our way, aren’t we? She don’t lose a minute, the cap’m. Making up for time lost killing Ramsey. A mere holiday for her! But we’re on track again. The grand pursuit!” He chortled above his cauldron of porridge. “Oh, but she’s dogged as she is fair. She’ll find him soon enough. She’ll figure it out. Smart the cap’m, she took Ramsey by surprise, didn’t she?”
    “If it’s all the same to you, we will not talk about Lord Ramsey,” I said.
    “The man was a dog.”
    “I’m quite serious, sir—”
    “Strike me, then—do! Won’t hit back.” He lifted his chin, and I was surprised by the strength of my urge to wallop him. Instead I said, “You call her wise, but she put you here in this steam box.”
    “But I put myself here, didn’t I? Punched the other cook in the eye, which fairly blinded him one side. Well, it was lashes for me, and now I’m the cook. How can I complain? If God were this fair, the world wouldn’t be such a shit pile!”
    “We will not speak of God nor of Lord Ramsey.”
    “Well, you’ve got your druthers, hain’t you?” He made a rude farting sound with his mouth. “What’ll we talk about, then?”
    “Have you ladles? Tongs? A rolling pin? Where are the pie tins kept?”
    He laughed again, which led to coughing. “I don’t have your ’fisticated wit. Pots and spoons, that’s what we got. Pots and spoons.”
    I took note of what I could find myself. There are some iron skillets, wholly unused by Conrad, rusted and in need of curing. Pots—we are flush with cheap pots. One fine rasp and several knotty and oversized wooden spoons …
    Conrad went on: “It’s the same pots we’ve had for the five years I been cook. Near round the world twice hunting the Brass Fox,” he said. “The hunt is always in her mind. She won’t speak it, but she thinks of naught else.”
    “What kind of weapon is the Brass Fox?” I asked.
    “Weapon? Ha! The Fox is a thief—the King of Thieves.”
    “What does she need a thief for?”
    At this he laughed hard enough to reveal several teeth made of cowry.
    I wanted him to stop before he began coughing again, so I asked, “Is it treasure?”
    “Sure it’s treasure. But what type? Seen her, myself, chunk diamonds into the wake like sowing wheat. So it is hard to say, ain’t it? Mr. Apples prawly knows, but he’s tight as a barrel with no bung. Feng and Bai, well, they may know, ’pending on if they grasp the English tongue. But they’re about as talky as my elbows. So that leaves those of us who don’t know to speak on it. Grim has it that Cap’m is in hunt of the largest heap of gold ever heaped, left there by Ben Gaunt and his pirate ’federacy. Jawbone thinks she’s looking for the wood of the true cross, but Jawbone was kicked in the head by a horse when he was short.” Here Conrad tasted his