The Noble Pirates (5 page)

“Well, now, ’allo, poppet!” A male voice, too close for comfort, made me jump up and spin around.

Two men, their arms crossed, stood looking at me from the thicket. Although they were several feet away, I could smell them, and my weak stomach flipped threateningly. They looked to be in their twenties, maybe even in their late teens, thin and wiry, wearing dirty linen shirts and petticoat breeches. One wore a knitted cap while the other had a dirty calico scarf wrapped about his head. They both had knives tucked securely in their bright red sashes, new and clean against the rest of their clothes. The look in their eyes was… predatory.

I backed away instinctively, looking over my shoulder for help. One of the men wiped his mouth on his sleeve and mumbled, “Christ, but she’s a pretty thing! What a bit o’ luck, eh, Dick?”

The other nodded, his eyes sweeping me up and down. “I’ll say,” he replied. “It’s been too long…”

I bolted. I wasn’t just about to wait for those guys to finish their discussion. I knew, however, that there was no way I could outrun them. Not a chance in hell. Not with my lack of sustenance, my roiling stomach, my inability to run in the sand, in long skirts, wearing really uncomfortable shoes… So as a rough hand clamped down on my arm, I let out a scream to end all screams. A hand came down on my mouth, another yanked on my wet hair. I was back behind the sandfly bushes, lying in the sand, the weight of one of the men holding me down.

“You’re a feisty li’l slut!” the man atop me said, chuckling as he pinned my arms down. I was convinced I’d never smelled such ripeness on a human being. I was so busy trying not to vomit that it took me a moment before I started fighting against his attempts to pull up my skirts. They were soaked, and therefore heavy and clung to my skin, making it difficult for him.

The other man leaned against a palm, grinning. “We’ll not ‘urt you, sweet tits,” he said casually. “We only ‘ave need of your – ”

I thought, for a second, that he’d stopped purposefully, for effect. Then the man lying on top of me abruptly let go of my skirt, his weight coming off of me in a single move. I scrambled away, unable to push myself up quickly enough. My eyes went from the two men to what they were staring at: the glistening blade of a cutlass. I scooted on my bottom so that I could see between the two frozen forms of the men. The cutlass, as I’d desperately hoped, belonged to a very angry, utterly terrifying Edward England. Behind him towered Jameson, his face equally fierce, also holding a pistol.

England’s body language spoke of a relaxed man, the cutlass held loosely in his right hand and a pistol casually in his left. There were no lines of tension on his face, and his lips were not tight. But there was no mistaking the savage look in his blue eyes. His voice, when he spoke, was not the warm Irish voice I was slowly becoming accustomed to. It was like steel. “If ye enjoy living, my young puppy dogs, ye’ll put yer pricks away and hurry off without a word, am I explicit?”

One of the young men took an aggressive stance, his hand suddenly at his knife, and before I could make sense of anything, England’s cutlass flashed. As the weapon pierced the young man, England grabbed him by the head and pulled him against the weapon. I heard tearing, dull crunching, and the young man gurgled a scream. The body fell with a thud at my feet, twitching as its blood soaked the sand beneath him. I scuttled back as the other young man, ashen-faced, raised his hands in defeat, mumbling something unintelligible. England’s expression never changed, even as he forcefully drew the cutlass from the body and wiped the blood from his blade with a handkerchief. He looked meaningfully at the other man and said, “Off with ye, before I make fish food of ye.”

As the second of my aggressors ran off with the speed of a wildcat, the first slowly stopped twitching, his face half-covered in sand, his eyes open and blank. That did it. I turned my head and puked – what little food I had in my gut – into the bush beside me. I then drew a shaky breath, unable to take my eyes from the body. The young man who, just a minute ago, was thinking he’d scored, was now dead. I had just watched Captain England, my rescuer, the man I had come to think of as a kindly historical re-enactor, sink his cutlass into a man.

I had just seen Edward England, the pirate.

Chapter Six

  He held his hand out to me, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You’ve a weak stomach,
cailin
,” he said.

  “You killed him,” I said, taking his hand and letting him pull me upright. “For real. You killed him.”

“Yes, I did,” he replied nonchalantly. “And if I remember correctly, I told ye not to leave the house.”

“Nothing but trouble,” Jameson grumbled behind him, a stream of tobacco shooting from his mouth into the shrubs. “I say leave her be, Cap’n. She’s a mess o’ trouble, waiting to happen. Mark my word.”

“I can’t help ye,” England said, looking me straight in the eyes with his steely blue ones, “if ye don’t do as I say. There are no ladies here in Nassau. Only whores. Only pirates’ women. I may not know what ye are, lass, but I know this: Ye won’t last a second here without protection. Is that plain enough?”

I nodded. I wasn’t about to argue. I was shaken to the bone. “It’s just that… I wanted… a bath.”

England raised an eyebrow. “How now?”

I rubbed my face with my hands, stumbling a bit in the sand. “A bath. With soap. To get clean.”

The men exchanged glances and England grinned. “Well, now, why didn’t ye say so to start, instead of wandering out into the rain and nearly getting yerself raped and killed?”

“I tried… I asked Kat…” I sighed. “That was a bad idea. I’m sorry. I’m so confused… You killed that man…” I was starting to feel dizzy. Jesus, I can’t faint again. All I’d been doing since I arrived in 1718 was either puking or fainting. 1718. This was no act: I’d just watched a man die. I’d watched a pirate skewer another pirate dead with a cutlass. Dear God, was it possible?
I am in 1718.

As the sun set in a spectacular display of pink, purple, and orange over a placid, shimmering sea, the storm but a cluster of dark clouds in the distance, the men abandoned their work cleaning the hulls of several beached ships and loading cargo onto others to eat, drink, and womanize. England was watching me as we walked past the tents, the pirates laughing and cussing around their fires, mugs and bottles of ale and beer and rum in their hands. The prostitutes giggled and flirted and sat in the men’s laps, their breasts nearly tumbling from their low-cut bodices. “Ye’re not going to faint again, are ye, lass?” he asked warily, reaching for my arm. “Ye’re looking a bit pale.”

“Nothing but a load o’ trouble,” Jameson growled, a step behind us.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ll be fine. I just need a bath.”

England chuckled. “Do folk wash themselves often in 2011, then?”

I looked at him, finally cracking a smile. “Yes. Yes. Every day. Well, most of us do.”

Back at the house, Kat was gone. I breathed a sigh of relief. Jameson disappeared and England produced a bar of lye soap, a pitcher, and a clean rag. While my hopes of submerging myself in a bathtub were dashed, I was able to wash my face and body to a semblance of cleanliness. I rubbed a bit of soap at the roots of my hair, but didn’t bother washing it. It would have been impossible, anyway, with the amount of clean water I’d been given. This would have to do.

England had also left a stack of dry clothes for me at the door, and this set was quite a bit finer than the worn, smelly rags Kat had given me. The gown was made of fine aquamarine silk, which was delicately beaded and embroidered in silver thread, with a petticoat of damask. The clothes smelled of lavender, and a bit of must. Pirate booty. The owner must have never worn them before they were stolen.

As I struggled with the corset, England politely rapped on the doorframe. I was startled to see him in his finery – he wore a rich maroon knee-length coat with wide cuffs that were folded back and gold buttons that gleamed as he moved. His waistcoat and breeches were clean silk, his shoes were buckled, and he wore a large three-cornered hat on his head. Around his neck was a silk cravat, and his red hair was smoothed and tied back with a black ribbon. Best of all, he smelled a little bit less pungent, which meant he’d washed up. I noticed that, despite the sumptuous clothes, he still wore his weapons strapped to him beneath his coat.

England caught my admiring look and went red. Not knowing how to respond – the incident that afternoon had caused me to rethink my initial assessment of him – I turned my back and asked, “Can you lace me up? I can’t do this by myself.” I waited, hearing him shift behind me.

“Eh… Kat’s not back yet… I’m not sure where she went off to…” he muttered.

I looked over my shoulder at him. “Can’t you help me?” The man had carried me in his arms, watched me puke my guts out, smelled me at my worst, killed a guy for me… and he was hesitating over this? Maybe it was because I finally didn’t look like complete and total shit. I was as clean as I was apparently going to get, and I was wearing some pretty nice clothes. My hair was a wild mess, but there was nothing I could do about that. I had brushed my teeth and applied some of Tanya’s makeup – some powder, blush, and mascara. The small mirror on the inside of the makeup bag wasn’t big enough for a total assessment, obviously, but it did reveal that I was in dire need of tweezers. My eyebrows were getting out of control.

I waited, my head turned away from him, listening to the rustle of his fine clothes as he hesitated. Then I felt the laces tighten, and I straightened, trying not to hold my breath. I was focusing on doing the little things and forcing myself not to think about the big things. I wasn’t ready for that yet. I wasn’t ready to deal with reality yet. I just wanted to clean myself, dress myself, think about the small, trivial things in life. For a change. “So what’s going on between you and Kat?” I asked, dragging my mind away from the direction my thoughts were taking.

“Kat?”

“Yeah.” I realized that England was lacing me too loose – he seemed afraid of pulling the laces tight. He was probably afraid I’d faint or throw up. Because that’s all I’d been doing lately. “She seems possessive of you.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Does she now?” I could tell by the tone of his voice he had no intention of answering my question. Which was just as well, since I knew the answer already. Hadn’t he not-so-subtly explained it to me? There were no “ladies” in Nassau. Just “whores and pirates’ women.” I turned to face him, secretly glad he’d gone easy with the stays. He was merely a couple inches taller than my meager five-foot-four-inch frame, but it made no difference: I knew, looking at him, that he was not a man to be messed with. I opened my mouth to say something when Jameson burst into the house and, in the next stride, into the room.

His hooded eyes darted from England to me uncomfortably, his large jaw working his essentially toothless gums, when he said to England, “That jade o’ yours, Kat… been making trouble for this one here, she has! Went and cozied up to Charlie Vane, if ye get me drift, and told him we had a witch in our midst…” Jameson glared at me accusingly. “It was that bag o’ hers, filled with odd trinkets, and her running out in the rain, like she were mad…”

England froze, his expression unreadable. He looked at me steadily and said, “Now ye’ll be obliged to accompany me on my business this evening, lass, since leaving ye here is no longer an option. If word of ye has gotten out, then yer not safe alone, in my house or otherwise.” He then chewed the inside of his cheek, contemplating something. “For yer safety, ye’ll have to be willing to play a part, ye see?”

The nervous energy of the two men was contagious, and I found myself cracking my knuckles, twisting my fingers in my hands. “What part?”

England looked nervous, and Jameson guffawed. “The cap’n’s doxy, luv!” the quartermaster said.

I looked from Jameson to England, my eyebrows practically at my hairline. “You want me to pretend to be your… your…?” When England hesitated, the flush creeping back up his neck, Jameson continued to cackle. I took England’s arm, and straightened my shoulders. I wasn’t going to fight it anymore. Wherever I was and however I got there, I was in for a wild ride, and there clearly was no getting off.

I took a deep breath and smiled at the blushing pirate captain, now my only friend and ally. I said, “Let’s do this, then.”

We stepped out into the damp evening, nevertheless pleasant, with a light, cooling breeze. I lifted the hems of my skirts without thinking, not wanting to ruin the fine material with mud. I was exhausted, too exhausted to even mind the growling of my stomach, but ran on a steady trickle of adrenaline. As we walked, England briefed me on Charlie Vane, the unofficial “governor” of New Providence, the chosen leader of the pirate bastion. In addition to being a skillful navigator, naval tactician, and diehard Jacobite, he was a brutal man, reveling in the torture of his victims.

England relayed the story of the dispute that took place among the pirates when word of the king’s pardon reached Nassau: There were the more moderate pirates, forced into piracy through circumstance, who were thrilled to be given a second chance and raised the Union Jack over Fort Nassau – a pathetic, crumbling thing; then there were the pirate rebels, including Vane and England, who rejected the pardon and, angry and armed, tore the Union Jack down and replaced it with the death’s head flag.

England then told me how Vane and some other thirty-odd pirates had pretended to accept the pardon when a Royal Navy frigate, the HMS Phoenix, arrived at Nassau. Vane and his men surrendered long enough to receive their certificates of pardon, then, upon their release and before the Royal Navy’s very eyes, captured several merchant sloops, slowly amassing their pirate company from the crews, and eventually forced the Royal Navy out of Nassau, its tail between its legs. England had never surrendered, although he’d participated in the overt acts of piracy.