Blackbeard's Family

by Jeremy McLean

  Now on deck, Edward was able to get a better look at the woman who appeared to be in charge—Grace 'Copper Legs' O'Malley, by Edward's estimation.

  Her coal-red hair was cropped short and, if not for her attractive features, would have made her look more a boy than a woman. Her body was voluptuous and well figured, with plenty of meat on her bones and quite different from the women on his ship, but from what Edward could tell, it was all muscle.

  "My, my, you are a big one, aren't ye?" she said as she eyed Edward up and down, her voice drawn out with a hint of Gaelic on the edges. Her accent was faint, as though weathered away after years away from home. The barest hint remained like single boulder on a sandy beach.

  She walked around Edward, poring over him, studying his features beneath his loose clothes. Though she was far shorter than he, and shorter than most of the men aboard, her gaze made Edward feel exposed. A woman he should be wary of was measuring him against some unknown weights.

  Edward clenched his jaw and returned the gaze. He needed to project strength, match her, and beat her at her own game to impress her. He needed her to need him more than how little she would feel she needed Herbert. And so, he scrutinized her in return.

  She was built like the northern mothers he had heard about from other sailors telling stories—the mothers who could match the men in feats of strength and could cook you dinner after breaking your arm in an arm-wrestling match. He had thought they were jovial jesting meant as a tall tale of boasting, or a jibe when the sailor lost a match but claimed his mother could whup the other sailor handily. Edward now suspected they weren't just stories.

  Most striking was her legs, or that which covered her legs. She had on solid copper greaves, which covered her feet, calves, and knees, stopping just short of her thighs. Edward could see small indents and holes in symmetrical vertical lines on either side of the front of the armour, but they didn't look like bullet holes from battle, they looked to be there by design. What design they served, Edward could not even guess.

  The medieval armour seemed out of place on a wood-and rope-and canvas-laden ship, but not so out of place on her, perhaps. Her hair nearly matched the shade of the greaves, and she walked in them with no sign of hindrance.

  He noticed her looking straight at him, and so he ended his inspection and returned her steely gaze.

  After a moment, O'Malley nodded appreciatively. "I'll have to test you further, but for now, I think you'd make a good addition to our crew. You've obviously been hardened in battle, and you've got a sailor's calluses." She turned a sidelong look over to Herbert. "You, however, need to leave. We can't have you on our crew."

  Just as Edward had predicted, but without the preamble given to him. No inquisitive inspection, no scrutinizing of his features, only a dismissal. Edward had known this would be difficult, but he hadn't thought it would be this difficult.

  "This man is my brother. Wherever I go, he goes."

  "We don't have cripples on our ship," she replied curtly. "They slow us down." She let out a sigh. "Off my ship then, the both of you. No more wasting my time."

  With a wave of her hand, some of the crew moved forward, pressing Edward and Herbert back to the gangplank.

  "My brother has the best eyes you've seen. He's also the best man at the helm you could ever want."

  "I already have a helmsman," the captain replied as she walked away. Then she glanced over her shoulder. "Besides, I don't like the look of him. All I've seen from his eyes are hatred, he's like a cornered dog ready to strike."

  Edward flashed Herbert a glance and noticed she was right. Herbert had the same look in his eyes he'd had when they'd faced off against Gregory Dunn, one of Calico Jack's other crewmates, and a crewmate Herbert had personally known.

  Thinking on his feet as the crew pressed in on them further, Edward created a convenient excuse. "How can you blame him? Five of your crewmates have had their weapons at the ready from the moment we stepped onto the deck."

  This stopped the captain in her tracks for a moment, and, as though they had eyes in the back of their heads, the crewmates pushing them off the ship stopped as well.

  "There were six, Ed," Herbert chimed in. "You missed the one with his hand on the hilt of a cutlass hidden by the fife rail." Herbert pointed to a man standing half behind the mainmast.

  Edward followed the finger to the man, and with the too-casual, too-slow movement of a man caught in the act, the crewmate moved his hand from where it had rested to the top of the fife rail.

  Edward looked over at O'Malley again, and she too had followed Herbert's pointed finger to the crewmate whose hands had been hidden from their view. When she turned her gaze back to Herbert, it was with a bit more scrutiny than before. Just a bit.

  This was the opening that Edward needed. If he just pushed a bit more… "If you won't accept my brother as a crewmate, then accept him as a passenger. I'll do the work of two crewmates to make up for it." The words would have come out as pleading from any other man, but coming from Edward, they were a statement of fact.

  O'Malley spat. "You'd have to work as hard as three men for all the trouble it'll be worth to bring him along." There was a pause as she glanced at the floorboards of the ship for a moment. Edward let her her peace as she thought it over. The tension in the air lifted as she considered. After another moment passed, she looked straight into Edward's eyes. "If you can pass our tests, you and your brother may join. For the moment."

  Edward and Herbert glanced at each other, relief in their eyes but not reflected in their faces. This was just a step back on the plank, a small step to their final goal.

  "I'm ready," Edward said, despite not knowing what was going to happen next.

  O'Malley eyed Edward skeptically. "Nigel, Tiege, Grant, get yer asses over here."

  The man who had first accosted them when they'd tried to board stepped closer, along with two other men of equal stature and similarly weathered faces. All established sailors, all established fighters. All three were not ones Edward wanted to be facing in a fight, especially all at once. Especially in a test he needed to pass.

  "Yes, ma'am?" Nigel asked, though to Edward it felt as though they all knew what was coming next.

  Edward ignored the next words from the captain of the Black Blood and instead chose to take that time to steady his breathing and center himself. He breathed in through his nose the full, unfettered sea air tainted with hints of the vile town and odorous men around him. The smell threatened to break the calm he was forcing onto himself, but he pressed forward, and his heartbeat steadied.

  Upon opening his eyes, the three men had surrounded him, the weight of their hard, blood-hungry eyes pressing on him from all sides. Edward focussed his senses on his immediate surroundings, filtering out the noises of gulls squawking above, of the wind rustling the trees and myriad sails along the harbour, of the shouting men and clamour of boots and wood knocking about. He filtered it all out just as he had been trained until it was just him and the three men.

  Edward felt a shift behind him, and he stepped aside. One of the crewmates of the Black Blood stumbled past him, his balance shattered with a too-confident punch. Edward spun around and punched the staggered man in the back of the neck. The force, multiplied by Edward winding up as well as punching down due to his superior height, sent the man crashing to the floor of the deck. His chin hit the wood with a loud crack, and he lay there slack and unconscious.

  Edward faced the other two men, who at first were shocked, then snarled in anger at their crewmate so quickly dispatched. Before they could rush Edward, O'Malley stopped them with a shout. They backed up a pace or two; one man calmed a bit with O'Malley's order, but the other, Nigel, kept the snarl of anger plastered on his face. The more time passed, the angrier he seemed to get.

  O'Malley walked over to the unconscious crewmate, her greaves clanking slightly as she nudged the man with her foot. She frowned.

  "Impressive," she commented. "I suppose we don't need to see how
well you fight if you can do that with one punch." She levelled her gaze at Edward. "Now I want to know how well you follow orders." O'Malley walked back behind Nigel and the other crewmate still conscious. "You're going to let these two fight you, and you will not fight back under any circumstances. I don't even want to see you block any of their punches. Hear me?"

  Nigel's snarl turned into a sneer of glee at the prospect. Edward didn't like that look, nor what it meant.

  "And what is this to prove, exactly?"

  "As I said, it will show that you can take orders," she replied, her Gaelic hints making the words more sinister in their intention. "If I'm to be your captain, I need to know you will do what I say. I can't tell you how many come aboard, wide-eyed and ready to please, only to balk at taking orders from a woman. If I must beat it out of you now, all the better."

  O'Malley's smile was even more sinister than Nigel's, and Edward started regretting their leaving the Queen Anne's Revenge already. He glanced over to Herbert, who was watching the scene with a mix of horror and coiled rage blanching his face. Edward guessed he was regretting a few things as well.

  But they couldn't back down now.

  "I won't be much use if I'm dead or have a broken bone," Edward said flatly. He knew there was no way out of this, but he had to try.

  O'Malley grinned. "Don't worry yer pretty little head on that, son. The boys'll make sure not to damage the goods. Ain't that right, boys?"

  "Yes, ma'am!" the two replied without looking back at their captain.

  Edward took a deep breath and prepared for the onslaught.

  5. They Don't Bother Us None

  The sun was just past high noon when they caught sight of land on the horizon. The small speck of black jutting out on the horizon was still too far off to recognize colours, but was unmistakably a piece of earth in the middle of the vast ocean—too irregular and too small to be a storm, and, should Christina's navigation prove accurate, just in line with their calculations based on their maps and Victoria's approximations of where the island was located.

  Anne, through her lookout on the crow's nest, coupled with a spyglass built into the wooden apparatus, was able to see the point of land well before her companions on deck. Unless particularly well endowed with vision above that of a normal man, they wouldn't be able to tell the land was there for some time yet.

  "Land spotted," she shouted to Christina below. "Half point to port."

  Christina nodded and repeated the order in a carrying voice she had been practicing for days. "Half point to port, aye Captain!"

  The loud boom, almost unnatural coming from Christina's mouth, half-woke the wolf, Tala, lying underneath a nearby table. Anne could just make out the coppery-furred muzzle of the creature opening in a yawn as it looked around for a moment, and then, satisfied there was nothing of note occurring, went back to sleep.

  Anne watched Christina turn the giant wheel of the helm clockwise, and the unseen rudder shifted with it. Slowly and imperceptibly, the ship drifted to port for a brief few seconds before Christina turned the wheel counterclockwise, and the ship levelled out at the new heading.

  Christina, one hand holding the wheel steady, pored over a few instruments to double-check the heading, but Anne already knew her movements were correct. Christina was steadily treating the helm as an extension of herself, intuitively recognizing the shifting of the ship with each bob of the waves. She only needed the instruments for more significant changes or double-checking that the movement she saw and felt was correct.

  Anne recalled a time during one of the trials left by the ship's previous owner, Benjamin Hornigold—whom they now knew to be Edward's father—where Christina had been able to navigate an ever-shifting maze. She had somehow managed to find her way through and back from the labyrinth by memorizing the changes and returning the way she had come. At the time, it had seemed nearly impossible, but Christina's mind and memory were unparalleled, and any other crewmate, even Anne herself, probably wouldn't have been able to manage the task.

  That memory was a part of her; working out the way the ship moved, how it pitched and rolled, and how her movements of the wheel translated to movements of the ship. As she gained confidence, and provided that the crew followed orders, Anne didn't doubt that Christina could forgo using those instruments except in the direst of circumstances. The ship would become an extension of herself, like a sword to a fighter, until without thought she could wield it as though it were her own arm.

  Anne stopped staring at Christina, then took one last look at the approaching land. Their course was righted, and if Victoria's information was correct, they would make landfall on the eastern side of the island farthest from the town Silver Eyes made his base in.

  "Relief," Anne called out. William looked up to Anne, then ordered a crewmate up to the crow's nest.

  Anne jumped over the side of the railing keeping her secure in the nest, and with deft hands trained over the years, she climbed down the rope ladders secured in a chaotic pattern from the mast to the deck. Her fingers were no longer the dainty fingers of a cultured woman; they were the rough fingers of a sailor sanded and scoured by handling rough rope, rough work, and the occasional rough rogue.

  She landed with a thump on the quarterdeck and walked over to Christina. The noise and jolt brought Anne a glance from Christina and the cautious animal underneath the table nearby. The younger woman's strawberry blond hair fanned out in a great wave across her back despite the tie holding it in at the base of her neck. As Anne came closer, she noticed that the wooden rose Christina typically wore around her neck was what kept her hair in place now.

  She touched the rose, gently caressing the beautiful carving of Caribbean pine, the same as the Queen Anne's Revenge's deck. As she did, Christina glanced over her shoulder and smiled, though tinged with sadness.

  Christina pivoted on her heels, and the hair fell from Anne's hand. Christina then pulled her unruly hair over her shoulder in front of her, closer to her heart. "It looks nice on you," Anne said, smiling widely.

  Christina looked at the rose as best she could as she ran her fingers through the wind-swept strands of her hair. "Thank you." She returned the smile, but it was the same marred smile as before. Then, after a reflective moment, her eyes focused on Anne's hip, and she pointed to the cutlass at Anne's side. "That looks nice on you as well," she said with a more genuine grin curling up at the corners.

  Anne followed the finger to the golden cutlass, Edward's cutlass, resting on her hip in its sheath. She appreciated the unique steel at her side. It became a comfort against the anxious energy creeping up from her gut.

  "A shame to waste a good weapon by saving it for the fool of a man who left it behind."

  The two women chuckled at the barb for a moment, and Christina seemed back to her usual self. The worry creasing her forehead relaxed a touch, and she let out a large breath. She turned away from Anne and looked back to the horizon. "What do you think we'll find there?" Christina nodded her chin towards the open ocean.

  Anne stepped forward and placed one hand on the quarterdeck railing just in front of the wheel, and another on the cutlass at her side. "Victoria said that the island is a major resource for Nassau, providing crops and other supplies to the pirate haven. I can't imagine the relationship is mutually beneficial, so perhaps we can convince the people around the island to join us."

  Christina nodded. "And if we can't?"

  Anne gave Christina a sidelong glance for a moment and then turned back to the speck of black on the horizon. "Then we burn it and salt the earth."

  Christina's jaw went slack for a moment. "Remind me not to become your enemy."

  Anne chuckled. "I get it from my parents."

  She let out a long sigh, turned around, and leaned against the quarterdeck railing with her arms crossed in front of her chest. "My father, though his station is mostly a formality, wanted to avoid being seen as weak, and pursued an education in war as well as fitness for combat. He doesn't gener
ally take an active role in battles… except in that one instance…"

  "Except in that one instance," Christina repeated, no doubt recalling the incident that had seen Edward eventually imprisoned so long ago.

  "And," Anne continued, "he ensured that interest was passed on to his children."

  Christina's brow raised. "Children? You have siblings?"

  "Had," Anne corrected. "They passed from sickness. Some survived longer than others, but I outlived them all." Anne tried her best to keep her composure, but her last few words came out ragged, stilted by remembrance. Childhood images, marred by age and fear, of so many siblings taken by disease, miscarriage, and stillbirth flashed in her mind unbidden. The thought of their rictus bodies scarred by sickness or the simple act of passing the womb already broken sent a shiver down her spine even now.

  "I'm sorry," Christina said after a moment of Anne's quiet contemplation. "I shouldn't have asked."

  Anne raised her head, noticed tears forming in her eyes, and wiped them away before shaking her head. "No, no, it's fine. I've just not thought about them in… quite some time." Before she went into her contemplation again without thought, Anne got up from the railing and wrapped an arm around Christina. "Besides, I have a new sister right here… I hope."

  Christina blushed and looked away from Anne despite leaning closer into her embrace. "You don't need to say it aloud, you know." Her voice was barely a whisper.

  "And then how will I see such a cute embarrassed face?" Anne replied, a huge smirk tugging at her cheeks.

  Christina pushed her hip against Anne's, forcing her away. "Back to the crow's nest with you!" she shouted angrily, but she couldn't rid herself of the smile on her face.

  "All right, all right, I'll leave you alone for now… sister," Anne said over her shoulder as she went down to the weather deck.

  Transitioning from the quarterdeck, meant for officers and guests, to the bustle of the main deck would have been jarring to Anne years ago. She had been on ships when she was a child but had stayed sequestered far away from the sweat-soaked, rough, sea-hardy sailors. Now she was one of them, and a pirate no less. She forced herself to acclimate, lest she fall behind.