Chapter Text
Your name like a song I sing to myself,
your name like a box where I keep my love,
your name like a nest in the tree of love,
your name like a boat in the
sea of love.
To be honest, Stede could have chosen a better time to bring it up than over the first dinner his family has enjoyed together in weeks.
He’s never seen anything like it, never even heard about anything like it! He was just so eager , so interested to know what it meant that he lets his curiosity run away with his sense, and so right before the fish course is served he opens his stupid mouth and says -
“A weird little silver mark appeared over my heart last night!”
For a moment there is silence, like the quiet that comes right after the shattering of a plate on an earthenware floor. (Right before the shouting starts.)
There is no shouting, not here at this well appointed table with bleached white linens and shiny silverware. And yet Stede knows he has seriously erred when his father slams his hand down on the table and upends his mother’s wine.
“It’s not anything,” his father says, in a tone that Stede knows well, as the wine stain soaks into the table, sprints across the cloth. “You’ll mind yourself not to mention it again.”
“Yes sir,” Stede says, and he has learned how to make his voice very small, knows what his father wants to hear, how he wants to hear it.
“To anyone, ” his father emphasizes, and Stede Bonnet is not an idiot. He knows the fear behind his father’s eyes, the disappointment, has been well acquainted with it since his earliest childhood. This is bigger than the three people sitting at the table in varying states of discomfort. This is something that others cannot know, a secret that if revealed would mean something beyond the walls of the stuffy dining room and the smoky, sputtering candles.
He bows his head, and does not ask again.
He listens, instead, to his mother and father’s argument whispered in screams later that night behind the walls of their bedroom. It’s for tradespeople , his mother says, spitting the word out like bad champagne. Or sailors , his father replies, in a similar tone.
I knew an officer -
An admiral --
He’s not fit for that sort of life -
If he were a second son, perhaps --
What if he learns -
He won’t.
What does it mean?
Nothing. It doesn’t mean anything. Nothing changes .
He doesn’t understand - how could such a strange mark cause such a fuss? Is this another mystery he’s been left to flounder with, just another one of those secrets about growing up and existing in the world that everyone else has figured out and left him confused and trailing after? He’s had it with all of them, tired of the other boys laughing at him, at his lack of manliness , his lack of understanding. He vows that this time he will not be kept in the dark.
And yet Stede lacks resources. His parents will be of no help. The servants will gossip, and gossip has a way of getting back to his father. He has enough difficulty with his peers without throwing whatever this is into the mix (he’d rather not be made to kiss a horse again, thank you very much), and so Stede learns about his mark as he does most things: alone and among his books.
Shakespeare, despite his coy references to a fisherman “mark’ed by the sea” has nothing of use to say on the subject, (although there is a reference to Viola and Sebastian of Twelfth Night being “nigh alike in their countenance, tho’ not if their marks could be seen ‘neath their mantles.”) Johnson is completely silent on the subject, and when he goes a little further back, this time to Plato, he is rewarded with nothing but a single line in The Symposium, a thrown away line of Pausanias, who declares that “All the gods of love ought to have their praises given to them, and lest we forget Poseidon, who sets those chosen by the sea apart by his Mark!” But in the manner of ancient histories, this single line is never referenced again, and Stede thinks he might start screaming.
It is not until he turns to history, to Herodotus, that he finally finds a clear answer, sitting there among the customs of the Lydians.
So far as we have any knowledge, they were the first nation to introduce the use of gold and silver coin, and the first who sold goods by retail. They claim also the invention of all the games which are common to them with the Greeks, and the first recorded Watermarks in all of history, although this assertion has long been contested by the Phoenecians, who, it was said, had so impressed the gods by their prowess upon the sea, that they were blessed not only with a mate with whom they might be perfectly matched, but also with the knowledge of them bourne as a mark upon the body in the region near the heart. These they declare that they recorded about the time when they colonised Tyrrhenia, an event of which they give the following account…
A watermark.
That's what this is. He doesn’t understand much about the blessing from the sea bit (he’s always loved the sea, despite his limited experience upon it, and maybe that’s enough, this time. Or maybe it’s why his mark doesn’t look like anything much but an amorphous blob. Perhaps he needs to love the sea more , perhaps he needs to sail away upon it and never return.) But he understands the other part, the part about a mate with whom they might be perfectly matched , and the thought makes his heart race in the confines of his ribcage.
A mate? A partner?
Stede Bonnet has hardly even had a friend ! Someone who would understand, who would look at him and not see a spoiled little rich boy, or a boy who simply did not fit in. Someone with whom he could sit and share his secrets, oh that would be divine indeed!
He tries to imagine what they would look like. He cannot quite picture a woman’s face, a woman’s form, as the person the sea would choose for him, but he has no experience of the other, and so he settles on a shape as vague as the mark on his chest, with a welcoming smile and kind eyes.
Stede Bonnet knows they are out there. He merely has to leave his world behind, and go looking.
He does not.
He stays at home, he does his duty, he watches the tides roll in and out of the corner of his eye as he learns how to contort himself into the uncomfortable shapes society demands of him. The mark upon his chest changes, and sometimes, especially when he has been reading too long in the dim candlelight, he thinks it might be taking some sort of shape. He squints, and turns his head, but it’s like trying to peer through water. As soon as he thinks he’s finally sussed it out, it goes and changes again.
The years pass. He gains a wife he knows will have no mark, an estate of his own too far from the surf to smell the salt, and two children who hate the ocean as much as their mother. The mark over his heart remains, and the sea does not leave him.
Ed asks his mum about them once. The marks.
He must have been twelve then, or not even, and in a few years he was going to tighten a rope around his dad’s neck until the man’s eyes went red and his tongue swelled up like meat in his mouth - but this is earlier. This is before, when he still follows his dad ‘round to work, guts fish at the docks if they need him (this is before, when he’s too small to be angry, and is only allowed to be afraid. Doesn’t last long, does it.)
There are all sorts at the docks while he’s working, and some will give him a kick or a cuff to the skull if he gets in their way, but many of the men are gentle. Maybe they’re fathers themselves, of a different kind than Ed’s. They don’t seem to care if he throws the odd scrap of fish to the stray cats that gather at a distance, meowling and watching him work. Some of them talk to him even, show him shells and weird fruit and rocks they’d found on their travels. Some tell him sailing stories, give him a bit of bread and a swig of beer from their own bottles. And in the dead heat of summer, when they work bare-chested in the vicious sun, Ed can’t help but notice the odd marks on them. Just to the left of their breastbone, a flash of silver like scar tissue that healed well (Ed knows enough about that, has too many scars that’ve done otherwise.)
“It’s a watermark,” one of the men tells him, catching Ed’s stare. “Ain’t your da’ ever told you about those?”
The mark on him shines like a fancy H, all extra loops and curls (Ed recognizes it; H is in his name, the very last letter. Sometimes he forgets the ones in the middle.)
“It’s how I knew my Helen was the one,” the sailor says. “A gift from the sea, it is. To guide your path to your true love."
“It’s rubbish,” Mum tells him later, when his dad is out to the pub and the house is easy again. “Don’t listen to anything those old fools tell you, they’ll fill your head with stories.”
“Does Dad have one?” Ed asks, and his mum shakes her head, lips tight. "Do you?"
“Enough questions about this. It’s a sailor’s superstition, nothing to trouble yourself over. Here, look what I have for you.”
Turns out the lady at the fine house had given her a spoonful of fancy tea to take home. They drink it together by the fire, and it tastes like rose petals and cinnamon, and Ed's happy.
But he keeps thinking about those marks. About gifts from the sea, and the pinched look on his mum's face when he asked her. How can it be a superstition, how can it be rubbish, when he can see the proof in front of him? Old Bill has a flower on his chest, says his true love was called Rose before she died (he’s married now, has five kids and is a happy sort of drunk. But his watermark is the same as it ever was.)
Handsome Jack has a word that he swears is French, and he’s always on watch for traveling merchant ships in the harbour. One of the younger men has something that looks like a playing card, says his love is Lady Luck (and the other men laugh at him, but he never seems to want for coins, and one day he sails off on a boat he’d won the night before, gambling with a half-shot baronet down the pub.)
“Why doesn’t everyone have one?” Ed asks, when his dad is out of sight and hearing, the only time he dares to speak up.
“Might as well ask the sea that, lad,” Old Bill tells him. “She only blesses those of us she loves."
There are a few men at the docks without marks, and Ed can't help but feel a bit sad for them. Are they lonely? Is there no one meant for them? And what if the person you’re supposed to find dies before you find each other? What if they marry someone else before you meet? What if they live on the other side of the world and your paths never cross? What if the sea gets it wrong?
His questions make the other men laugh, and that night, when the house is asleep, Ed looks at his own bare chest. Skinny ribs and a hollow stomach and more than a few bruises. He squints in the darkness - is there any sort of mark over his heart? The start of one, even?
No.
There’s nothing there, however long he looks. Course, he isn’t a sailor yet, can’t expect the sea to love him before he’s taken a single step off dry land.
But someday she will. He knows this. Someday there will be a shiny silver patch of skin on him, and he’ll feel what it’s like to belong to someone. Not in the angry, ugly way his parents belong to each other, but in a way that means - safety. Home. He’d like that, he thinks, just knowing someone’s out there, looking for him. He wonders what they’ll be like. If they’ll like him when they meet.
The years pass. Ed becomes a sailor then a pirate then a ghost in turn. He pays the sea in gold and pints of blood, and no matter how many times he checks, the skin over his heart stays empty.