🏝️ Chapter 2: The Sign of the Green Cormorant
The storm became my sole companion. It scourged the narrow lanes, driving any sane soul indoors, which was my only blessing. I was a ghost in the downpour, a fleeting shadow against the wet stone walls. My world had shrunk to the next gas-lit puddle, the next alley mouth to dart into, the next labored breath burning in my lungs.
I did not stop until the lights of our village were far behind me, swallowed by the rolling, gorse-covered hills that led inland. Only then, sheltered beneath the skeletal branches of a great oak that groaned in the wind, did I allow myself to look back. Nothing. Just the impenetrable darkness and the relentless hiss of the rain. My home, my father, the dead man on our floor—it all felt like a fever dream, a story that had happened to someone else.
But the chart was real. I could feel its crisp parchment edges against my skin, a dangerous, tangible truth. So was the weight of the two gold guineas and a handful of silver shillings in my pocket, a fortune that felt like blood money.
Find Josiah Harker at the Sign of the Green Cormorant.
The words were my only compass. Bristol was a two-day walk for a man in good health. For a rain-drenched, terrified boy, it felt like a journey to the edge of the world. I walked through the remainder of the night, my clothes soaked and heavy, my mind a whirlpool of fear and guilt. The image of Captain Thorne's sightless eyes mingled with the imagined disappointment in my father's. I had abandoned him. The logic of survival felt like a hollow excuse in the face of that truth.
Dawn broke, grey and watery, doing little to warm me. I kept to the side of the muddy road, flinching at every creak of a farmer's cart, every distant shout. Every man I saw was the man with the scar. My hunger was a sharp, gnawing pain, but I dared not approach a busy coaching inn. At a small, isolated crossroads tavern called The Weary Traveller, I took a chance.
The warmth of the taproom hit me like a physical blow, the smell of stew and woodsmoke so overwhelming I nearly wept. A few old men eyed me with mild curiosity. I must have been a sight: a boy, alone, plastered in mud and shivering uncontrollably.
"Lost your way, son?" the innkeeper asked, not unkindly, as I ordered a bowl of stew and a hunk of bread.
"On my way to Bristol," I said, my voice a hoarse croak. "To… to find work with my uncle. A chandler, on the docks."
The lie tasted foreign on my tongue. The innkeeper merely nodded, his attention already on a new customer. I ate the stew so fast I barely tasted it, the hot food a brand in my cold stomach. I paid with one of Thorne's shillings, flinching as the coin left my hand, half-expecting a cry of "Thief!" None came.
The second day was a blur of exhaustion. The rain eased to a persistent drizzle, but a deep, bone-chilling cold set in. My boots, never meant for such a journey, began to fall apart, the soles flapping with every step. The rolling hills gave way to flatter, more populated land. The air began to change. It grew thicker, carrying a new, strange cocktail of smells: coal smoke, rotting fish, and something else—a dense, human stench of too many people living in too small a place.
By the evening of the second day, I saw it. A smudge of black smoke on the horizon, beneath it a thousand pinpricks of light. Bristol. The city was not a place you entered; it was a beast you were swallowed by. The road became a river of humanity: carts piled high with goods, herds of sheep being driven to slaughter, merchants on horseback, and a endless stream of people on foot, all flowing into the great, stinking maw.
I followed the flow, my senses assaulted. The cacophony was unbelievable—the shouts of hawkers, the braying of animals, the rumble of wheels on cobbles, the clang of a hundred smithies. The buildings leaned so close they seemed to whisper to one another, cutting out the grey sky. The streets were a filthy, flowing stream of mud and worse. I had never felt so small, so anonymous, or so terrified.
My mission surged to the forefront of my mind. The Green Cormorant. I asked a pie-seller, his cart wreathed in steam.
"Cormorant?" he grunted, wiping his hands on a filthy apron. "Down by the quay. Wapping Street. Mind your purse, boy. Cutthroats down there."
The quay. The direction he pointed was towards the source of the strongest smells: salt, tar, and decay. The streets grew narrower, darker, the faces harder. I passed taverns with names like The Jolly Roger and The Devil's Anchor, their windows grimy, the sounds from within rowdy and threatening. And then I saw it, swinging from a rusted iron bracket over a low, timber-framed door: a faded sign depicting a green bird, its wings spread as if in mid-dive.
The Sign of the Green Cormorant.
It was less an inn and more a hovel squeezed between a rope-maker and a boarded-up warehouse. Light and the faint sound of a mournful sea shanty leaked from its windows. My heart hammered against my ribs. This was it. Josiah Harker was behind that door. What if he was one of them? What if this was a trap? Thorne could have sent me to my death.
But I had nowhere else to go. The chart felt like it was burning a hole through my chest. Taking a deep breath that did nothing to steady my nerves, I pushed the door open.
The air inside was a solid thing, thick with the smell of cheap tobacco, cheaper rum, and unwashed bodies. The shanty died on the lips of the old man singing it in the corner. A dozen pairs of eyes turned to me. They were the eyes of sharks—dull, predatory, and dispassionate. This was not a place for boys.
I stood frozen in the doorway, the weight of their gazes pinning me to the spot. The man behind the bar was a mountain of a figure, his head bald and scarred, his arms covered in faded tattoos. He was polishing a pewter tankard with a rag that looked dirtier than the mug.
"We don't serve orphans," he growled, his voice like gravel being dragged across stone. "Piss off."
A ripple of laughter went through the room. I felt my face flush. I had to speak. Now or never.
"I'm… I'm looking for Josiah Harker," I stammered, my voice barely a whisper.
The room went utterly silent. The barman stopped polishing. He placed the tankard down with a deliberate slowness and leaned his massive forearms on the bar, his eyes narrowing to dangerous slits.
"Are you now?" he said, his tone low and devoid of all humor. "And what would a scrap of a thing like you want with me?"
My blood ran cold. This was Josiah Harker. I had found him. And in doing so, I had stepped directly into the lion's den.