Other Islands

by Andrea Jones

  “One bruise is too many.” Hook slid his hand in the collar of Jill’s robe to expose the blue-green flesh of her upper arm. “I regret that I was unable to prevent it, my love.” Softly, his ringed fingers touched the discoloration.

  Cecco stared. As his wife’s robe opened to show her shoulder, the curve of her breast appeared as well. He now saw that she wore no nightgown, nor a shift. Her bosom lay open to view— a view Mr. Smee could see. A view Mr. Smee had seen, without doubt, in his ministrations.

  Cecco remembered the order he gave, in haste, to the commodore’s steward, the command to remove Jill’s wet clothing, to warm and dry her, and to lay her down upon her bed. Until now, Cecco had not given thought to the consequence of his own commands. Smee’s casual discussion of the lady’s condition, his entitlement in regarding her now through those ever-observant spectacles, brought home to Cecco the reality of his wife’s circumstances. Hook was not the only man who looked upon the tempting flesh of his wife. Hook was not the only man who touched her, intimately. Watching the three of them together, Cecco felt the truth, which until this moment he merely suspected, crashing upon his consciousness like a falling yardarm. The commodore was too free with his favors. Jill belonged to Hook, and whatever was Hook’s, be it clothing, table service, or mistress, fell naturally into his steward’s fingers. No doubt Smee tended Jill’s person like he tended that harness this minute: dutifully, lovingly, and thoroughly. Cecco knew for certain now what he had hoped was only the jealous conjecture of his imagination. Plainly, Hook did grant to Smee what he withheld from Cecco. Jill’s husband might not lay a hand on her. Hook’s steward touched her every day.

  Unable to repress his resentment, Captain Cecco allowed his lip to snarl as he remembered that once upon a time, these quarters and all they encompassed had been his. The cognac, the furnishings…the lady. A wave of bitterness rose within him, threatening to engulf his heart. Cecco gritted his teeth, calling upon his common sense, his loyalty, to stop himself from jumping to his feet and overturning the table. Given his will, he would seize his knife and, before the company could blink, he’d slash Smee’s Irish throat. Hook was unarmed at the moment, but Jill…

  With a steadying breath, Cecco let his gaze dwell upon her again, forcing himself to calm. For such an act, Jill would never forgive him. Smee was one of the several men Jill loved. She trusted Cecco to honor her wishes. Her deepest longing was as yet a mystery to her husband, but he knew she wished for accord among her company of pirates.

  And, for the present, Jill’s wishes ran parallel to Hook’s. Hot as Cecco burned to defend his wife from intruding attentions, he must keep a cool head upon his shoulders. His oath to Hook, too, insisted. For the time being, the commodore’s orders must be obeyed.

  Wishing to escape this torment, Cecco stood. “If we have covered everything, Commodore, I will take my leave.”

  Jill had adjusted her dressing gown to cover her bruise, and now she looked upon Cecco with disappointment. Did she regret his leaving, he wondered, or did she regret the threat he posed to her lovers? She wouldn’t allow him to speak with her privately. How could he know her feeling?

  Hook scrutinized Cecco. “Only one more point, Captain.” He indicated that Cecco should reseat himself, then paused to collect his subordinates’ attention. Grudgingly, Cecco sat.

  True to form, Hook minced no words. “The warrior White Bear is a member of the Council of Elders. I gather he wields a great deal of influence within the tribe. Pray, Captain, be discreet in your relations with his delectable sister-in-law.”

  As with his first insinuation regarding Raven, Hook took Cecco by surprise. Cecco shot from his seat and stumbled backward, upsetting his chair. Smee leapt up to secure it. Cecco’s jaw dropped open in protest. He stared at Hook in disbelief, then looked to Jill to determine her reaction.

  She sat still, locking eyes with her husband, then, cloaking her emotion, she dropped her gaze to her lap. Cecco caught a whisper, perhaps it was the waves on the hull, perhaps it was her own heart speaking to his. It echoed his dilemma. Beware, or you may acquire your desires.

  “Madam…Commodore…” Cecco gathered his wits. “Believe me— I assure you. I would not make a move that might endanger my shipmates. Nor do I diminish my marriage.” Cecco stretched his hand across the table, toward his wife. “I wish only for unity.”

  “Unity.” Hook smiled in irony. “The ship on which you were married, Captain.”

  Jill beheld Cecco’s outstretched hand. Her own wedding band beckoned to her, shining on his finger. She repeated, “Unity. Yes.” She turned her eyes up to Cecco.

  He tried to smile. “Your deepest wish, Lady, is the one that I must grant to you.”

  Cecco watched as Jill raised, not her pale left hand, the insignificant one she had extended since Hook’s return, but her crimson hand, the hand that signaled engagement. Hook’s emeralds sparkled on her ring. For a moment she looked upon that bloodstained hand, then she lowered it to the table and slipped it under Hook’s.

  Cecco felt his heart sinking. The old, unbearable disappointment rushed upon him, weighing him down. And then the feeling lightened, for Jill coaxed Hook’s arm toward her husband’s. She laid both of their hands atop Cecco’s. When Cecco’s flesh met Hook’s there, warmly surrounding her own, Jill looked to her husband. Above the gentle slap of the waves of Neverbay, her voice came low, but clear.

  “Like you, Giovanni, I wish for unity.” She raised their three hands together, and kissed first Hook’s fingers, then Cecco’s. Just as she had done when she embraced her two officers at the door, she shed her apprehension. As at that time, for one luminous moment, Jill appeared wholly satisfied.

  The three men surrounding her did not.

  The next thing Cecco knew, he stood on the companionway with the commodore’s door clicking closed behind him. The taste of cognac lay upon his tongue, his desire for his wife felt solid within his breeches, and Mr. Smee, more quiet than usual, descended the stairs ahead of him, the lethal hook and its harness in hand. And down below decks, Cecco now knew, the Roger contained a witness to a marriage: David, the Unity’s cabin boy.

  Unity. The hallmark of a successful company.

  The essence of a marriage.

  How to grant a wish so profound and so impossible? Cecco could not imagine. He turned to gaze toward shore. In the darkening landscape, among the fertile clumps of drowsing greenery, he spied the white, ghostly outline of the cliff top where— when the sun sailed high and the world was real— lovely, lonely Raven had run into his arms.

  He had forgotten, until that moment, that he had arranged an assignation with Raven. Tomorrow, at noon, his empty arms might hold her again.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Forgotten in his cell, David lay down upon the bench. Reluctant to muss his new clothing, he had resisted even sitting until now. He was determined to appear neat and spotless when summoned to the sacred presence of Red-Handed Jill. But he waited and he paced, and that summons never came. Now the sun was long abed, and only the dim lantern on the stairway lent light to David’s disappointment.

  He had heard the excitement, the huzzahs and cannon fire close to sundown. He didn’t know it meant that the commodore had escaped a hideous execution until an odd, repulsive man with gold teeth and a tri-cornered hat brought him some supper and told him about the Indians. David listened in shock to the story of Red-Handed Jill’s danger and deliverance, but he was too sickened by the messenger’s hands to ask any questions.

  The sailor introduced himself as Mr. Noodler, and he was grotesque, another ghastly show of the Island’s quirks. The hands that bore the supper tray were backward, as if someone had chopped them off and sewed them back again on the wrong wrists. Those hands had set the tray down, but David was too nauseated by the sight of them to eat anything they had handled. When Noodler left, David shoved the food aside and continued his pacing, the brittle straw chafing underfoot.

  According to Noodler, Jill was unscathed, but stil
l recovering from her ordeal. That must be why she left her captive languishing here in the brig. Sorry as he felt for himself, David’s heart cringed to think of Jill in peril. This afternoon she had shown that she could handle the Island itself. In David’s opinion, she was its queen. But no one could expect her to prevail against a pack of savage men. And what would happen to David if harm came to Jill? He didn’t hold much hope that Commodore Hook or Mr. Smee or even Captain Cecco had any use for him. Only Jill cared for David….Jill had kissed him.

  Soaring at the memory, David’s spirit bounded further as he contemplated the idea that Hook, who loomed so large and commanding on the Island this afternoon, might have perished that very evening. The Legend was mortal after all! David thought it a shame that the natives hadn’t rid his horizon of that menace. No doubt Captain Cecco felt the same. It was a wonder Cecco troubled himself to rescue Hook. David couldn’t fathom why a man would lift one little finger to serve the blackguard who had stolen his wife. The boy shook his head. No doubt it was just another demonstration of the depravity of pirates. Honor and decency didn’t exist upon this ship.

  Still thinking of Cecco, David looked up, and he gasped. There the man stood, his powerful hands wrapped around the bars of David’s cage, his dusky eyes glowering at him. He was darker, his bare chest broader, his arms more muscular than the cabin boy remembered. He looked as if he could tear the iron bars asunder. His countenance was hostile, as though he would sooner strangle David than not. In the feeble orange lantern light, the cutlass and the dagger David remembered from the attack on the Unity gleamed at Cecco’s waist. His earrings and bracelets also shone, and, for one blessed moment, David thought of the matching jewelry Jill had worn on her wedding day. The image of her in her finery did not sustain him for long. David shrunk back, suddenly glad to feel the protective bars of Hook’s brig enclosing him.

  Cecco’s Mediterranean accent was too familiar to David, with the same words he’d heard that morning at the clearing, this time uttered with contempt.

  “Ragazzo. Boy.”

  David swallowed.

  “You were too swift for me, but my lady hunted you down. Did she not?”

  The prisoner nodded.

  “I am told that you worship her.”

  David’s eyes bulged. Remembering the ritual he had performed hours ago, flagrantly pagan and naked in his cell, he reddened with humiliation.

  “I pity you, boy. You will never receive what you pray for.”

  Offended, David dared to speak at last. “What could you know of me or my prayers?”

  “I know everything. My Jill is a never ending story. Only striving and heartbreak await the man who seeks to hold her.” With burning eyes, Cecco continued to stare between the bars. “But you are not a man.”

  Unsure how to deal with his visitor, David stood and craned his head toward the top of the stairs, hoping to see someone, anyone, come down them. The light of the lantern revealed the left side of his face.

  Cecco laughed a cruel, mocking laugh. “Ah! I see!” He gestured to David’s cheek. “Jill has marked you. And you believe this mark signifies success.”

  Covering his cheek, David glared. “You’re jealous, Captain. And not just jealous of me. But I bet you don’t dare to talk to your commodore that way.”

  “I have more sense than to challenge the commodore. Do you? Boy?”

  “He’s the only one I’d bother to challenge. You seem to have lost your wife to him.”

  “Pitiable soul. Are you arrogant— or ignorant? A bit of both, I think.”

  “Do pirates take prisoners just to insult them?”

  “A prisoner is an item of value, or a prisoner is dead. Mark my words, my Jill will use you. Then she will discard you.”

  “What did you come here for?”

  “At last you ask an intelligent question.” Cecco sneered. “I came to use you, too.”

  David recoiled. He wanted to be used, in every conceivable way— by Jill. But this…this idea was a nightmare. David had heard tales of depravity among sailors. Beastly things might happen on the high seas to boys who shipped out with men. Up until now, David’s uncle had shielded him from the urges of seafaring queans. David looked sideways at Cecco, uncomfortably aware once again of the man’s physical superiority. The boy’s panic took over, as he imagined what it would be like to be imprisoned in those arms, to be the object of craven desires, and violated by that…body. David even imagined he could smell the man’s skin on his own, afterward. The cold of dread settled in the bottom of David’s stomach. More disturbing still, he felt a twinge of arousal at his privates, and shame invaded his soul. He tried to forbid these images to linger in his thoughts. At Cecco’s next words, however, relief made cold sweat break out all over David’s flesh.

  “What happened to the Unity?”

  David exhaled. His sense of deliverance made him brash. “Why do you care? You did your best to ruin her.”

  “Your captain and your surgeon. Do they live?”

  David sulked in silence.

  “Dead, then.” Cecco performed his gypsy banishing gesture, down from his forehead and across his chest. “I do not come to speak of the dead. You are alive. You are the last surviving witness to my marriage. Are you not?”

  Sensing he might gain leverage by Cecco’s need, David nodded. “I am. The only witness.”

  “And what proof exists? Do your captain’s papers remain?”

  “Nothing remains. The ship broke up in a storm.”

  “You did not aim for the Neverland. The Island called you here.” Cecco leaned his forehead against the bars and peered at David. “How?”

  David’s brow contracted. This question had never occurred to him. “I…I just washed ashore.”

  “In a boat?”

  “In what was left of it.”

  “With only the clothes upon your back.”

  David blinked. “That’s all.”

  “Your uncle entrusted no packet to you?”

  “No, nor valuables, either, if that’s what you’re looking for.” Defiantly, David tipped his chin toward Cecco. “You’ll remember that Jill took my own silver shamrock.”

  “Your good luck piece. Yes. She hung it on a necklace. I kissed her bosom beneath it, many times.”

  The look of loathing on David’s face confirmed that Cecco’s dart hit home. David retorted, “That shamrock was the Unity’s good fortune. Jill took everything when she took that charm.”

  Cecco observed Jill’s branding on the young man’s cheek. It had darkened, to resemble the vivid crimson of Jill’s hand. The boy was lying. “What from the wreckage did you manage to preserve?”

  David dodged Cecco’s eyes. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing. I have killed men for less.”

  David backed against the bench. As his knees buckled beneath him, he sat down hard. He felt ill and dizzy. He had the sensation that if the door to his cell opened, that moment would be his last.

  “Let me tell you a tale, cabin boy, a story that is real as these iron bars.

  “A dangerous man lurks across the ocean. He is a physician, a profession that commands respect in all circles, on land or on sea. He believes himself to be Jill’s husband. He holds papers that seem to prove his claim. When he catches up to her— and he will catch up to her— he will exercise his legal right to possess her. He will pry her away to a place far from her Island. A ‘civilized’ place, where only the law dictates right and wrong. A place where, because of the law, I cannot go to save her, nor can the commodore, nor any of our men. This man will convince the authorities that she belongs to him. He will keep her as much a prisoner as you feel tonight in this cage. He has money, he has influence, and he has tools to use against her. Tools more subtle than her sword, her whip, or her pistol— and far more treacherous. He will lock her up, he will drug her, he will brutalize her, until she submits to his rule.”

  David heard the fear in the captain’s voice. Strange fear, in a man so raw with physical
might. David could not doubt that Cecco believed this story, nor could he doubt that Cecco, pirate though he was, loved Jill with ungovernable force. Ashamed of his lie, David waited to hear more truth.

  “Young David. This is how to serve the woman you worship. You can save her from hell. You can turn this evil man’s morality against him. So I ask you again.” Cecco grasped the bars and steadied his voice.

  “Where is the Unity’s logbook?”

  And at that enlightening moment, the succor for which David had hoped arrived. Someone tramped down the steps. When Mr. Smee reached the brig, he peered over his spectacles and shot a look between the two of them. Judging by the expression on his face, their tension was palpable.

  “Why, Captain Cecco. Whatever would you be wanting with the lady’s boy, and at this hour of the night?”

  David jumped up from his bench. “Mr. Smee! Thank—” David faltered, then chose the orthodox form, “Thank God you’ve come. Captain Cecco says he wants me to warm his bunk— and I won’t do it! I won’t! Not if he rips me apart, like he’s been threatening to do this half hour past!” Jill’s handprint flared upon his cheek now.

  Cecco saw it. He stared at David for a long, brooding moment, then turned away. Under Smee’s quizzical regard, he headed heavily up the steps.

  David watched him go. Keeping up his pretense of outrage for Smee, he smiled only to himself. He felt an optimism he’d never hoped to attain since the Unity went down, since he dragged his waterlogged body from the brine.

  David wasn’t helpless any longer. Captain Cecco had a use for him. The man wanted David alive and well. The legendary Commodore Hook must come to value him, too, eventually. And Jill couldn’t help but be swayed when at last she realized how desperately she needed her David. After all, the insignificant cabin boy held more than a rubied ring in his hands now. He held Jill’s very life.

  When Cecco’s boots disappeared through the hatchway, David plunked himself on his bench, and wolfed his cold dinner down.