The Noble Pirates (7 page)

“Has all the cargo from the St. Martin been conveyed?” England asked Vane, ignoring Rackam as he clumsily plopped down at the table.

“It has,” Vane answered solemnly. He looked at England for a long while then said, “Are you still set on Africa, then?”

England nodded. “I’ll be sending Jameson to Abaco in a few days, where he and some of my men’ll await me.” He smiled wanly at Vane. “I’ve no desire to abandon Nassau. Not yet.”

“Protecting your ship from Rogers, are you? A bit premature, sending it to Abaco so soon, no?” Vane asked.

“I’ll not take the chance,” England replied. “But as I said, I’m hear to fight with ye. I’ll not leave until I’m damn sure Nassau is lost to us.”

It occurred to me to ask England, “Africa? Brazil? What about me?” but I was too busy trying to extinguish the fire in my mouth. I grabbed England’s mug, fairly certain that I would not find water in it. Maybe, just maybe, it would be port or beer. Maybe, if I were really lucky, a claret or other fine wine looted from a prize. I drank deeply and then very nearly spewed the fiery concoction all over the pirates who were conversing earnestly at the same table. They stopped to look at me, and almost immediately started laughing. Even England cracked a grin, despite himself.

Rackam spoke first. “A rumfustian virgin!” he cried gleefully as England retrieved a cup of water for me. I felt the heat leave my face as I downed the water, watching over the rim of the cup as Vane wiggled his eyebrows at me and the prostitutes cackled like witches in the background.

“What the hell is rumfustian?” I asked England in a choked voice when he was seated next to me again.

“‘Tis a powerful brew, eh?” he said, smiling. “This one’s got raw eggs, gin, beer, sherry, and sugar.”

“There’s no rum in rumfustian,” I said hoarsely, and this caused the pirates to burst out in a fresh round of hearty laughter.

Vane’s humor improved at my expense, and he finally addressed me directly, asking, “How old are you, sweetheart?”

Rackam said, “I’d say a score and five years, at most,” then took a swallow from his bottle. England looked at me with interest.

I sat before the three pirates, thrilled that I knew what a “score” was. Rackam thought I was twenty-five. I smiled at the men and answered, “Actually, I’m thirty-one.”

I relished the looks of surprise on their faces. Vane cried, “Why, you’re as old as that one!” He jerked his thumb back at Kat, who was looking pretty pissed off. Kat easily looked like she was in her late forties. I suddenly felt sorry for her – what must it be like to be a prostitute in 1718? The kind of hard living she had endured, only to be cast aside by these guys, must have been horrible. And she was probably one of the lucky ones, getting a piece of pirate booty. And by booty, I meant “plunder.” I had yet to see a single pirate whose booty a prostitute would be lucky to get.

Rackam suddenly tossed three dice on the table and, with a mischievous grin said, “A game of passage, Eddie?” I was beginning to wilt with fatigue. England noticed almost immediately and replied, “Nay, Jack. I think I’m for bed.”

Vane and Rackam exchanged looks and then leered at me. “I don’t blame you,” Rackam said, grinning. “Not one bit.”

England led me from the tavern back to the house. We didn’t speak – I had a million questions to ask him, but my brain was too exhausted to articulate them. By the time we got back I could barely keep my eyes open. England bid me goodnight but, before he could leave my small, stuffy room, I said, “Edward?”

He turned to look at me, surprised. “Aye?”

“Don’t leave me,” I pleaded, sounding far too desperate for my taste. But there was no helping it – I was desperate. “Whatever your plans are – Africa, Brazil – just don’t leave me.”

I saw his jaw tighten before he answered, “I swear to ye, lass, I’ll make sure yer safe. Don’t worry yerself over it. Now get to sleep.”

“Why are you doing this for me?” I tried to keep the tears out of my voice, but I was so tired, mentally, emotionally, physically…

England looked at me for a long moment, something tender in his expression. For a second, it looked like he debated something, then, resigned, he said gently, “Ye need to sleep, Sabrina. To bed with ye.”

He left and I kicked off my shoes, curling up on the cot. Something about our exchange was nagging me, something… Before I knew it, I was in a deep, dreamless sleep.

Chapter Eight

  Mental note: Do not fall asleep in a corset. I awoke to find the strips of whalebone digging into the flesh of my abdomen and my breasts aching from being flattened.

  I sat up suddenly, my head spinning. Where was I? As my eyes focused, I remembered. As with every time I had awakened in 1718, I still wondered if I was dreaming, still experienced that plummeting feeling in my gut every time I realized that this was, in fact, not a dream.

I was in 1718.

I stumbled through the house, looking for England. On the table, I found a pitcher of water, pieces of fruit and a hunk of cheese on a plate, and a note tucked carefully under a pewter cup of ale:

Loading the ship. Infection abound, stay in the house. Edward

Infection? Great. Just great. All I needed right now was to get sick. Immediately, I washed my hands and face, creating as much lather as possible with the bit of lye soap I’d been given. I peeled and ate an orange while I opened the shutters of a window to let in some fresh air. The stench that wafted in was beyond anything I had ever smelled before, and I found myself slamming the window shut in a hurry. Only once had I smelled anything so bad, and that was when a raccoon had died in the wall of my house. Was anyone surprised that there was “infection abound” when the air smelled like rotting flesh?

I sat down and put my head in my hands. A green fly buzzed through the room, settling on the cheese. What was I going to do? I needed to speak to England, ask him what his plans were. With the pirates losing Nassau, he was going to Africa, that much was clear. But what was I going to do? On the one hand, I didn’t want to be separated from England. He was, as he had so aptly put it, my protection. I wouldn’t survive a second on my own in this place.

On the other hand, I had to stay here. What if the sea around Nassau, around the Bahamas, was the key to my returning home? The idea had come to me in a dream: I had been thinking about my last moments in 2011, the storm, the captain shouting something about the compass not working… Was there some link to the Bermuda Triangle? I remember watching a special on TV once about time warps and the Bermuda Triangle. What channel had that been on? Not the Sci-Fi Channel, I hoped. Jake had made fun of me for watching it, but I’d been procrastinating at the time and anything, including pro wrestling, was better than working.

How else could I explain what had happened to me?

A time warp. Wormholes or something. Jesus, what a horrible nightmare. If this were, in fact, the way I’d gotten here, then leaving the Bahamas was a bad idea, right? But then, what would I do? Set myself adrift on a boat and wait for something to happen? Hope to stumble on another time portal? I felt my eyes fill with tears. There was no reasonable way out of this. I had to focus on simply surviving at this point. And the key to my survival in this strange and volatile world was Edward England.

But while I clearly needed him, he most certainly did not need me; if anything, I weighed on him, a woman who claimed to be from the future, a woman who knew nothing about anything and wouldn’t stop passing out or throwing up. I couldn’t think of a bigger pain in the ass for the average person, let alone a pirate. A man who was defying the king and country and losing his home base was putting his own needs aside to help me, to take care of me. Maybe he felt something for me, maybe he thought I was cute. Maybe I reminded him of his mother. Who knew? But at some point, he was going to have to ditch the extra baggage. The last thing an outlaw needed was a weak, confused woman holding him back.

I had to convince England that he needed me. The question was, how?

I pulled out the cropped picture of Sophie that I kept tucked in a secret pocket in the front of my corset. I remember hearing somewhere that this pocket was used to hide small fragrant sacks of perfume (you know, to mask the stench of their unwashed bodies). I used it to keep Sophie close to my heart. As I examined the worn photograph, wishing that radiant smile had been for me and not Jake, my stomach rumbled.

I grimaced, tucking the photo away. I knew the time would come when I would have to… relieve myself, but I’d tried my best to hold it in. Using a “piss-pot” that I later dumped out into the street was repulsive enough; but having to actually go to the privy, which was little more than a hole over a cesspit? I shuddered. If the alternative was a stomach ache, then so be it. But what I was feeling was more than just a tummy ache from “holding it in” - it was, without a doubt, caused by eating and drinking in 1718.

Using the privy, at this point, was no longer an option. It was a necessity.

I rummaged though my backpack, desperate to find something I could use as toilet paper. I settled on a few pages out of Sky’s romance novel,
The Pirate’s Fire
, and almost smiled at the irony. I would use my reading material to wipe my ass afterward.

After emerging from the nightmare that was the privy, I scrubbed my hands with soap until they were raw. I felt queasy, gutted. It was that damn water, I was certain. Any water I drank would have to be boiled, plain and simple. It would be good for England to learn about water sanitation, in any case. He and his pirates had to learn simple hygiene, for God’s sake, if they wanted to live long enough to…

That was it. That was how I would convince England to keep me around.

My grandfather had been a missionary doctor in Haiti, and had taught me a thing or two despite my unwillingness to learn. Hopefully some of it had stuck. In any case, I knew as much as any educated person of the twenty-first century – washing hands with soap and water, boiling the drinking water, using alcohol as an antiseptic and citrus fruit for scurvy… Those things alone should be enough for most of these guys to start worshipping me. Or, in the unfavorable alternative, to burn me at the stake.

I began to look around the house, near the hearth, where a big kettle hung. I found a tinder box easily enough, but was puzzled by its contents. A ring of steel, a piece of flint, and some pieces of charcloth for tinder. Jesus. When the hell were modern matches invented? Oh, what I would have put in my backpack on the fateful morning of that booze cruise, if I had only known…

England returned later that afternoon to find me sitting before the hearth, my head buried in my arms, my knees drawn to my chest. “Lass, what are ye about?” he asked, squatting down next to me.

I looked up at him, knowing I had dark circles around my eyes. “I’ve been trying to light a damn fire. I can’t do it.”

He wiped his brow and took the firesteel and flint from my hands. In under five minutes, he had a fire going under the kettle. He smiled at me. “Are ye cooking, then?”

I shook my head. “No. I’m boiling water.” I leveled a look at him. “We need to have a chat, Eddie.”

I tried, as best I could, to explain to him the broader points of microbiology. It reminded me of the time I had the talk with Sophie about hand-washing after the potty, except this time I was talking to a grown man wearing no fewer than three weapons on his person.

England scrubbed his face with his hands, trying to digest everything I was telling him. “Lass, I don’t know what to say. Ye’ve turned everything I know on its head.”

I sighed. “I know. But you have to believe me.” I stood up and started to pace. “The privies – they’re a major problem. You can’t let waste get into the drinking water. That causes cholera, dysentery, typhoid fever…”

“And boiling the water kills these invisible culprits, ye say?” he asked, looking up at me from where he was sitting at the table.

“Most of them. You need to start boiling the water you drink. And since I don’t know how to store disinfected water, you’ll have to do it often. You’ll need to take lots of fruit on your ship to prevent scurvy – lemons, limes, oranges, apples. And be sure to load lots of garlic and vinegar. Also, any soap that you’ve got. Your men need to start washing their hands before they eat and – ” I stopped, seeing the expression on England’s face. “What is it? You believe me, don’t you? You have to believe me!”

He was silent, staring pensively at nothing, and so I walked over and kneeled before him, taking his hand. He sat up, surprised, as I said, “Edward, listen to me. I know you don’t really believe that I’m from the future, but I swear to you, I am. And I swear that if you take me with you, I’ll try my best to keep you and your men healthy with what I know.”

England’s expression hardened, his red eyebrows coming together. “I can’t take ye with me, lass. There be no women aboard pirate ships. And ye’d not last a moment in that kind of life.”

“But then what will happen to me?” I cried, letting go of his hand.

“Nassau will become a proper Crown colony once the King’s governor arrives,” England said, trying to soothe me. “I’ll be sure to leave ye in the hands of a trustworthy man, a clean man, who’ll settle ye here in Nassau with a proper home – “

“No!” I yelled, standing up.

“Sabrina,” England said firmly, “I’m going to Africa, to cruise abroad. If ye come with me, ye’ll never get back to where ye came from. Ye’ll get sick, and ye’ll probably die, if not from some malady then by the hand of a brigand with no nation and, very likely, no soul.”