“No, but that’s the harbormaster. He’s the man I gived that note to.”
“Be still, Ivory. The Captain will inform us of this, I’m sure,” James said.
He didn’t. He shook the harbormaster’s hand and bounded back to the wagon. “We’ve no time to waste.”
“What is it, Razz? What’s happened?”
“Let’s get you to the Chandler’s first. We’ve no time to waste.”
Everyone was silent as Rasmus ran those horses all the way to our destination. The only sounds we heard were hoofbeats and the turning of the wagon wheels. Before I could conjure in my mind what had set him so ablaze, we were turning onto the road to the Chandler’s, and my heart pounded with excitement at seeing my cousins again.
“Is this where you live?” Kenny asked.
“For now, until the Captain returns and until this wound heals. Then, I’ll be back living upon the sea with the rest of you.”
“I’ve never seen the inside of a house.”
“Well, you’ll get used to it. Just don’t steal anything, or I’ll turn my cousins loose on you.” I smiled at him, and a minute later, the wagon stopped.
“It doesn’t appear anyone is at home,” James said.
“They’re most likely around the back. It is about time for the noon meal, and they usually take it in the garden when the weather is agreeable. Help me down,” I said to whomever would listen, and Rasmus answered my request. He scooped me effortlessly into his arms and raced up the front steps of the house as James knocked on the door.
We waited a few seconds, and he knocked again, until finally, the housemaid answered. “May I help you?”
“Step aside, lass. I need to bring this sack of sugar in and put her to bed right away,” Rasmus said.
The woman, who was unfamiliar to me, stood back as Rasmus pushed through the door and carried me inside, with James and Kenny behind us. “Where is everyone?” he asked.
“The Chandlers are at the chapel. Shall I go and get them?” she answered.
“Where are the girls?” I asked as I motioned to Rasmus to set me on the sofa.
‘The girls? Why, they’re gone, Miss. They’ve been gone for days.”
I looked up at Rasmus and felt my heart begin to pound in my chest. James appeared shaken as well and immediately turned to Rasmus for orders on what to do.
“What do you mean gone? Gone where?” I shouted. “How could they just be gone? Rasmus,” I said, pleading through my widened eyes for him to spring into action.
“Now let’s not imagine the worst, Ivory. Kenny, run to the chapel and fetch the minister and his wife right away.” Kenny bolted from the house as I sat trembling with worry.
“Where could they have gone?” I pleaded.
“You know they can take care of themselves. Don’t fall to pieces. We’ll find out soon enough.” Rasmus no sooner spoke the words than Mister and Missus Chandler burst through the door and ran to my side.
“Ivory, we’re so relieved you’re all right. You are all right, aren’t you?” Missus Chandler asked, taking my hand when she saw my crutch resting next to me.
“Where are they? Where did they go?” I asked.
“About a week ago, I overheard them talking about a ship. They saw it in the harbor. They said it was named Grand Fortune.”
“The pirate ship from Barclay’s log.” I gasped.
“They said they were going to do some exploring to see what they could find out about the ship, so they could tell you when you returned. When I overheard what they were plotting, I told Pastor Chandler, and we decided to confront them. They promised us they wouldn’t go, but when we awoke the next morning, they were gone. We haven’t seen them since.”
“I see it runs in the family,” James remarked, pacing back and forth.
“Is the ship still in the harbor?” I asked, frozen in terror at what may have happened to them. I turned and looked at Rasmus. He was staring across the room at the front door as if he wanted to bust through it and go. “You knew the ship was here. That’s what the harbormaster told you, isn’t it?”
“She was a week early, according to the log. Yes, he told me she’d been here, but I had no idea the girls would do anything like this,” he answered.
“I’ve looked every day for them since they left, and two days ago, when I went down to the port to search, the ship was gone. Since then, we’ve been at the chapel night and day praying for their safe return, and yours,” Pastor Chandler said.
“Ivory’s injured and needs to be cared for. James, come with me. We’ll need a couple of horses, and we ain’t got time to unhitch those two from the wagon.”
“Take any two you want from the stable. We’ll care for Ivory until you return,’ the Pastor said. “Come, I’ll help you.”
The pain in my chest from worry was far worse than the one in my hip. I wanted desperately to run behind them and go looking for my cousins, but I was helpless to do so. For the first time in my life, I had to allow someone else to do what needed to be done, and I hated it. I wanted to scream. What would possess them to do such a foolish thing? I knew they were capable of protecting themselves, but not against an entire ship full of pirates. I was angry and sick with worry at the same time.
Missus Chandler brought me some tea and set a plate of fresh baked biscuits on the side table next to me. “We’re so sorry, Ivory. You entrusted those girls to us, and we failed.”
“You didn’t fail. I raised them to be independent and strong. No one could have stopped them. Believe me, I know. We all have the same blood running through us.”
“Do you believe Captain Bergman will find them?” she asked.
“I believe if anyone can find them, it’s him.”
Several hours had passed, and we hadn’t heard anything. Rasmus and James were gone off to God-knows-where, and all I could think about was my cousins in the hands of those pirates, on their way to some port to be sold off. I tried to eat, but when I took a bite of food, I felt sick, and the pain in my hip was coming back. I begged Missus Chandler to bring me some rum to help the pain, and she swore she had none. I handed Kenny a few coins and sent him out to buy some. I drank three glasses while we waited for word, until I could no longer hold up my own head.
“Ivory, let’s get you into bed. I want to check those bandages,” Missus Chandler said as she and the Pastor helped me up the stairs and into bed. Once she’d tended to Rasmus’s handiwork, she tucked me in like a child and said, “I promise we’ll wake you, should there be any word.”
“I don’t expect much sleep, but I will rest with the knowledge that they aren’t helpless. I also trust my husband. He and James will find them, or at least, find out what happened to them.”
When I awoke, the bedroom was covered in darkness. I pushed myself up and lit the candle by my bed to find Kenny asleep on the floor, swaddled in a blanket. Having not been awakened with news of the girls, I lay back down and stared out the window at the night. I wondered if our lives would ever resemble an existence of calm and peace. I knew it wouldn’t. I knew none of us would ever be satisfied in that world. I’d months ago resolved inside of myself that I was, and always would be, a pirate; whatever that meant in the world. To me, it meant I would be free. It meant I could use that freedom for good, even if that meant being very, very bad.
I reached over and pulled my journal from the side table and opened it to the passage I’d written the morning after we arrived in Nassau at Valentina’s, as Rasmus had slept.
September 17, 1707: Sometime before the dawn
Rasmus reminded me again that we cannot save them all. I believe he tells me this to protect me from the disappointment I am destined to face. I sometimes forget he’s been doing this for quite some time alone and that my joining him on his quest is a gift, not a right, regardless of my freedom.
I do understand that we can’t save them all, simply by the evidence that so many of these girls are currently under the employ of brothels and inns. They are treate
d as no more than slaves for the amusement of men, plied with alcohol and coin. Francis has proven a disappointment to me beyond measure. I should have known something was amiss by the way in which she did not turn away from the lifeless body of the man I killed aboard the Belle, but rather stared at it as if committing it to memory and neither winced nor gasped at the sight of my deed.
No sheltered and treasured young woman could have possibly looked upon such a horrid thing and not, at the very least, shielded her eyes. I have so much to learn. However, I can’t help but feel losing Francis to that life would be a terrible tragedy– one I would consider my own failure. I pray the girl comes to her senses under Valentina’s watchful eye and that someday, she will wake up warm and safe in her bed back in Virginia, remembering this only as a bad dream.
Although this night has been filled with my husband’s lust and my fears of being discovered, at the time of this writing, I am conflicted. I’m lost somewhere between complete bliss and despair. It’s a place I’ve never been and a place I care never to be again. I miss the sound of my cousins’ voices. I miss their laughter, their banter, and their faces. Every night I pray for the strength to return to them, as well as the strength to relinquish control to my husband and Captain. I must learn to control my urges, or he will surely grow weary of me.
Love isn’t everything. Love is the only thing. However, contrary to poems and plays, love is not infinite.
“Love is not infinite,” I continued, reading aloud. “As much as it is bewitching to believe that someone will love you forever, in spite of yourself, being someone worthy of such of a love is impossible and as unreachable as the moon and stars. My greatest fear is that if I do find myself no longer loved, it will be by my own design.”
There was no joy now; only the emptiness of fear and my stifled tears. My dry eyes stared into the night sky past an open window through which I was physically unable to fly into the night and keep going until I truly could reach the moon and stars.
“Is that true?” I heard Kenny’s voice in the dim light speak to me.
“Is what true?” I answered, startled from my pondering.
“That no one can ever really love anyone forever?”
As I lay there, realizing I’d poured my deepest thoughts into the ears of a boy who’d never in his short life known what love is, I tried to think of anything I could say to withdraw the words from him. Before I could speak, he did.
“I still love me mum. She was no good. She left me with the drunkard whores she lived with and run off with some pirate, but I love ‘er still. She’s a drunk and a whore, too, but she was still me mum for a while, an I believe she loved me in ‘er own way.”
“You’re right, of course,” I whispered.
“They’ll find yer cousins. Cap’n will do anythin’ fer ye. You’re a troublesome alley cat, but I ain’t n’er seen no man , pirate nor priest, pray over a woman the way he prayed over ye and tend to ye like he did. Yer lyin’ there goin’ on about the moon and stars when ye got the whole world, and yer too stubborn to see it.”
The door blew open, scaring the hell out of me. Rasmus stood there, soaked with sweat and splattered blood. His chest was heaving from the flight to reach me. I sat up on my elbows and shouted to him, “What? What is it?”
“They’re aboard the Grand Fortune. Lilly pointed out a few men in the Gull who she claimed were rattling on about seeing some new girls near the dock, chatting with some of the crewmen from the Fortune only hours before she headed out. The good news is, the Fortune was headed for Tortuga. The bad news is, she’s probably already there.”
“Whose blood is that?”
“Those fellas didn’t like James and me asking questions. Sadly for them, James truly is a beast with a sword.”
“What are you planning to do? You have to get them back, Razz. You simply have to! Be my heart and my strength.”
“I have Green preparing to sail within the hour.” He rushed to my bed and took my hands in his and kissed them hard. “I swear to you, I’ll bring them back, and when I do, I’m taking you all away from here for good.”
“Taking us away? But where?”
“You once asked me to take you to England.”
“Rasmus, no. You can’t go back there,” I pleaded.
“I can go anywhere I want, and no King or Royal Navy will stop me. Now, I have to go.”
“What about Woodley?”
“I believe there’s a very good chance the Tainted Rose is either in Tortuga or somewhere close. Either way, let me do what needs to be done.”
“Please, come back to me, Rasmus. I can’t live without you.”
His worried gaze glowed in the candlelight, and the lines of his weathered soul showed clearly in the thin shadows around his bright blue eyes. He kissed my hands again and then sat down on the bed next to me, pulling me softly into his arms. “I’ll return to you, little Razor,” he whispered, pressing his lips tightly to mine. “Death will be the only thing that will ever separate us, and I’m too stubborn to die.”
“I’ll be here, awaiting your return.”
“See that you are.”
A moment later, he was gone.
My life was, again, an open wound. My remedy was gone, and along with him, the very air from my lungs. Of course I knew I had to fight my way back from this, but tonight, pressed into this bed of sorrow, staring out a window into the world I only yesterday believed was ours for the taking, I might as well have been dead. Remembering what I’d read in Barclay’s log about the Grand Fortune and her captain, Neville Turnbull, gave no comfort. Wealthy beyond imagination, ruthless and hardened by years at sea, the man left a trail of ships at the bottom of the sea simply for his own amusement. Suddenly, I pitied the man his ignorance of the wrath about to befall him.
I pushed myself up and blew out the candle. Something came over me, and every pain or ache faded like the last ribbon of smoke in the darkness. I believed with every beat of my heart that Rasmus knew what he was doing. My solace came also in knowing the Jade was, as of yet, unknown throughout the Caribbean, and Razz could easily slip into Tortuga as no more than a simple trading vessel. He knew it, and I could see it all as if I was standing at his side. Had my ravaged body allowed me the ease to leap into the air with joy, I believed I could, in fact, fly out the window.
Although I’d been jaded by the tides which had carried me back to this place, my exhaustion from my sleepless night of worry pulled me back into my pillow. Kenny was right. I did have the whole world in Rasmus, and now, I could sleep peacefully having handed my shield and sword over to him to carry for us both. At last, I succumbed to my weighted brow and the rum I’d sipped on for hours. I was no longer dreading my recovery, but rather welcomed it as a test of my worth. I’d not lay here in self-pity and pine away the days for the man I love. I’d embrace the pain and find peace in knowing I’d survive to welcome him and my dear cousins home.
I fell asleep and dreamed of Uncle William handing me his old cavalier, and I remembered why we left Charles Towne. That precious existence I longed for and longed to provide for others drove me onward, despite all the struggle and horrors I’d endured; at last to be accepted as a woman pirate in a world of men. To hoist a sail or raise my sword in battle, to continue my quest and not have to conceal my true self was no longer beyond my reach or the reach of others like me. I was whole, and my heart was bursting.
I knew what love was now. I loved my cousins so much that I’d killed for them to preserve our lives and happiness. I loved my husband, and regardless of my faults and failures, he loved me, too, and found me worthy of his faith. I would never fail him again.
I had to go on. There was no way I wouldn’t see this through, because there was no way Rasmus could lose. I held on to what got me into this in the first place and what my true motivation was for bringing us into this world. Through everything I’d suffered and been through, I knew of only one other thing that was worth fighting, killing, or dying for, and it always wo
uld be my true quest…freedom.
About the Author
P.S. (Peggy) has always had a love of books and writing. She also paints and draws and although writing takes up the majority of her free time by choice, she loves spending time with her friends and family.
Her first novel “Fireflies” was published in March of 2013 with GMTA Publishing and her second, “Hope From the Ocean” was published in March of 2014, also with GMTA.
Peggy’s goal is to become a full time writer and spend the remainder of her days creating worlds, characters and stories that will carry on long after she’s written her last word.
Follow P.S. Bartlett
Website: http://psbartlett.me/
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Jaded Tides (The Razor's Adventures Pirate Tales) Page 21
