Because of the size of the village, Anne surmised the general store was the sole source of any of the items found inside and thus probably sold liquor stored in the back as well. That made the general store the hub of information and trade, and their best chance at getting information.
That was if this were any ordinary hamlet with ordinary citizens. And, so far, this had been anything but ordinary.
The owner of the general store stepped out from the back and into the main room when he heard Anne and William enter. He gave the two the same wave and hello the others had and then walked over closer to them while still staying behind the glass cases so that he was handy to any of the items for sale.
"Hello, good sir, we're—" Anne bit her tongue.
She had been going to explain that they were sailors seeking supplies due to a storm forcing them off course when they happened upon the island, but she had doubts about her own cover story. The way these villagers were acting, however, could be part of the manner they were supposed to act around Silver Eyes' men. Perhaps the strangeness was synchronized through practice, and perhaps the relationship was a healthy one for both parties and explained why they were given a warm welcome. Maybe it was all in her head, and maybe not.
Anne decided to err on the side of caution and do her best to act as though she belonged there. She straightened her back, her eyes cast down with a slight air of hostility and authority.
"We're here for the next shipment," she continued. "But this is a new assignment for us, so we don't know who's in charge."
The older gentleman behind the counter smiled widely, his greying moustache curling as his plump cheeks rose. "Understood, ma'am. No trouble at all, I will see to the shipment personally. The name's Jules, and you're in the right place." His voice was upbeat and amicable, as though he were talking with a wealthy patron and trying to make a sale. Anne gave her name as Sofia Stewart, and though she loathed using that last name, it provided her protection now. "Any change to the supplies?"
"None," Anne replied. "But I will need a manifest for inspection. How long until the cargo is ready for shipment?"
Jules' face scrunched as he looked outside the window to the hamlet. Anne followed his gaze over her shoulder. She could see the crewmen milling about within view of the general store, and Victoria was talking with the women who were gossiping out front while Alexandre observed the gentlemen on the step playing their game of chess.
"Given the time, we could have it ready before nightfall. The road's a bit treacherous at night, are you sure you want to be heading back tonight?"
"No, I suppose not." Anne took a few seconds to assess the situation. If they indeed were from inland and part of the pirate's crew, they would not be arriving by ship. No roads were leading to the coast for cargo, and there had been no harbour that they could see for the stretch of land they'd been able to observe when sailing in. That meant mentioning the ship would be out of the question. "Would you have some lodging for my men and me for the night, so we may head back on the morrow?"
"Most certainly," Jules replied. "You can sleep upstairs. There are a few beds and some cots."
"Thank you," Anne said.
The interaction was pleasant enough to set Anne's mind at ease. The owner of the general store and the others in town simply thought they were part of Silver Eyes' men, and they acted accordingly, and seemingly not out of fear, either. If nothing else had happened, Anne would have thought that it must have been because the relationship between the two groups was mutually beneficial.
Then, Anne saw a fly crawling around on Jules' hand. He didn't seem to notice the fly, and because he was standing stock still, the fly was comfortable staying where it was. The fly soon moved up his arm, onto his neck, across his cheek, and settled on his nose. And he never moved, nor did he even twitch with the recognition that something unpleasant was there.
Anne glanced over to William, and by the look on William's face, cutting through the man's usual stoniness, he had noticed the oddity too. He looked as confused and disgusted as she felt.
"Jules, there's a fly… on your nose," Anne said, pointing to the insect.
Jules chuckled and waved a hand in front of his face. "So there is," he replied. Then with a shrug he said, "They don't bother us none."
"Right," Anne said, drawing the word out at the end. "I suppose they don't."
"You there," Alexandre called from outside the door of the general store, "Princess, Captain, Missus Thatch, whichever it is these days. Come."
Anne shot Alexandre a look of annoyance and was about to lay into him about his liberal use of titles in front of people they couldn't trust, but he had already stepped away from the entrance by the time she turned.
Anne left the shop to follow Alexandre, just in front of the two men playing the game of chess on a small table between two benches at the side of the store's deck.
"What is—?" Anne began, but Alexandre held up his finger.
"Observe," he said, as his finger pointed towards the men.
Anne looked at each man sitting at the table, a young man and an older gentleman who appeared to be in his fifties. The state of the game looked typical, but suggested an amateurish nature. Anne felt that if played correctly, the younger man, playing black, could win with checkmate in ten moves, or played poorly reach check within eight. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary.
"How is the game, gentlemen?" Alexandre asked.
"Terrible, just terrible," the older man replied. "Rotten. You teach the young everything they need to know, and then they use it against you."
Alexandre lifted a piece of paper he had been holding to his chest a moment before, and Anne noticed the same words, exactly as the old man had said to them, written on the paper. And there was more.
"Now, now, George," the young man said. "You can't expect your mind to remain as sharp as it ever was. I have to win a few games here and there."
"Nonsense," the old man cut in. "Respecting your elders means letting them win, young man."
The young one laughed, and then looked up at Alexandre, Anne, and William. "We shouldn't be much longer with our game, and then you can have a go if you'd like."
"Not if I have anything to say about it," the old man said finally, and then the two went back to their game.
Each word, verbatim, was written on Alexandre's page. No variation in the words whatsoever, and unless Alexandre was psychic or a seer, the two had said the exact thing to him while Anne and William were inside the store.
Before Anne could wrap her head around the implications, or even begin to formulate a question, Alexandre pocketed the papers and stepped closer to the two men playing.
He knelt closer to the table, placed his hands on the chessboard, and glanced over his shoulder at Anne to see if she was watching. After a moment, to ensure neither of the men playing had their hands on the pieces, Alexandre pushed the chessboard to the other side of the table, away from the men, and then backed away.
The men didn't react. They both stared in the same spot on the table where the chessboard used to be, as though it were still there. After a moment, the older man made the motion of picking up a piece, a rook by Anne's estimation, and moved the imaginary piece across the non-existent board.
"How about that?" he said triumphantly.
"Not bad, old man, not bad."
The older gentleman scoffed, taken aback. "I oughta have you switched for that. Make your move. Not bad, he says."
Alexandre turned to Anne, looking at her for a moment as though what he'd showed her were enough. Anne stared at the two men for a moment longer, pondering the problem.
She spun on her heel and walked back into the general store. After she and William had exited, he had gone back to some busywork about the store. Upon hearing them enter again, he gave the same hello and wave in that practiced way the others in the hamlet had all done.
"I'm rather hungry, and I'd like to purchase some of the dried meat you have."
"Why,
certainly," Jules replied.
He walked around the perimeter of the store to the left side with all the food and pulled down a glass jar filled with the dried and spiced meat within. He placed the jar down on the glass cabinet in front of him and took off the top. The long strips of what appeared to be beef wafted a gentle fragrance of pepper, cloves, and the unmistakable iron-like smell of dried blood towards Anne.
"How much?" Anne asked.
Jules scrunched his face in thought as he has done a few moments before, then pulled out his ledger from behind the counter. He rifled through the pages, his finger skimming down the lines of the ledger as he searched for his product. "Hmm, let's see… For one strip of dried beef, it would be… doo-doo-doo… Zero pieces of eight."
Anne had been fixated on the ledger and almost didn't hear what Jules had said. She was sure she had heard him wrong and looked up from the ledger, her brow cocked, and head turned slightly to hear better. "Pardon?"
Jules briefly glanced down at the ledger again, then repeated, "Zero pieces of eight."
Anne couldn't help but pause for a few seconds, incredulous, shocked, disturbed, or some combination of the three halting her natural ability to react quickly. "I'll take two," she finally said.
Jules held out his hand, waiting for the 'payment.' Anne mimicked the act of reaching into her cloak for some coins and dropped the imaginary pieces into Jules' outstretched hand. He accepted the mock coins and then tilted the jar towards Anne, allowing her to take some of the beef.
Anne, channelling the Frenchman and wishing to test things a bit further, reached inside and took all the strips of dried beef out of the jar in one bundle, leaving the container empty. "Oh! It seems you're all out."
Jules looked back into the jar, not noticing, or perhaps unable to notice, that Anne had taken well more than two pieces. "Oh my, terribly sorry about that, miss. I'm sure I have some more in the back, just give me a moment." Jules put the jar down and walked to the back of his store through an open doorway.
Anne turned around to Alexandre and William. "Something's not right with these people," she said, her fist clenched in a death grip on the dried strips of meat.
Alexandre smirked. "Astute observation."
Anne's anger flared, but she tempered the rage with a clench of her jaw. "Do you know what's wrong with them?" Anne gestured with the strips of beef, and after she realized she was still holding the batch, she handed some to William, some to Alexandre—despite him clearly not wanting any—and placed the rest on the counter.
Alexandre's brow raised. "My dear princesse, you of all people should know better." He crossed his arms in front of him, his face uncharacteristically serious. "Knowing a thing means you have an intimate awareness of the surrounding circumstances of a thing. This is no simple illness defined by a large rouge spot on an appendage. I have many theories, but not enough facts to say with any certainty what ails these people. They could be infected with un parasite, they could be acting, as unlikely as it may be, or they could be beings from the sky with no concept of our culture beyond a set of pre-described functions and phrases."
Anne's anger turned to a sour exasperation. Alexandre may be exhausting and withheld information at times, but he was proud and revelled in lording his superior intellect over others. If he didn't know a thing, and he said as much, then he didn't know it.
There was something they were missing, a crucial piece of information that would tie it all together. Anne took a bite from the beef and stared at the worn floorboards of the general store as she thought over the matter. She went deep, digging to every nugget of information Victoria, Christina, and, most importantly, Herbert had given about Silver Eyes over the years, searching for something that Alexandre didn't know that could turn one of his hypotheses into the most likely scenario.
"Three things come to mind that may narrow our focus," Anne said before looking up at Alexandre again. "One is the golden bell. It would be no coincidence were it to be the same metal as Edward's cutlass"—Anne touched the cutlass for emphasis—"and the same as Benjamin Hornigold's horn and his own cutlass. When he blew that horn the night we tried to kill him, it was as though the people around him went into a trance. Not all in the tavern, but most." Anne paused a moment, and after Alexandre nodded, she continued. "The second and third are things Herbert has said about Silver Eyes that you may not know."
"Yes, that could be valuable information," Alexandre agreed.
"He's said before that his crew never loses their morale, and when I questioned him about this further, he meant that in the most literal sense. They don't stop fighting, even if they lose their men, even if they lose their limbs."
Alexandre stroked his chin as he looked off to the side, tabulating the additional variables. After a moment, he looked at Anne again. "And the third?"
"Herbert also mentioned once that Silver Eyes has a unique method of persuasion. Whenever there were disputes with him among the crew, he could turn them around with a few pats on the shoulder, and some whispered words. Any would-be enemies, no matter how upset they were with him, turned jovial in mere moments. I don't care how silvery his eyes or his tongue are, no one's that good at persuasion, at least not with one hundred percent effectiveness."
Alexandre nodded as he took a moment to absorb the information. Then Anne saw something she never thought she would or could ever see from the Frenchman: his eyes flew open in shock for the briefest moment, and then he was angry. No, not angry; enraged. His eyes smouldered with volcanic activity, a stark contrast with his relaxed body. That look was the look of a man ready to kill.
"These people are under a forced trance." Alexandre said the words as though he were making a comment about the weather, but Anne could tell he was disgusted.
"Are you sure?" As soon as Anne asked, she felt the fool for asking. One did not doubt Alexandre's diagnosis.
"Of course."
Alexandre was now looking at the back of the shop, in the direction of the storage room where Jules was rummaging around unseen but heard.
"Can you help them out of the trance?" William asked, his first comment in some time.
"I don't know."
Alexandre was not his usual self. Anger showed in his typically passive eyes, but it went deeper than that. During times when he was short with people, as he was now, it was with an exasperation of not wanting to be a part of a dull conversation and a desire to end it as soon as possible. Now… Now Alexandre's short replies felt as though he were holding back, like he could explode at any moment, or as though he were distracted, not by something interesting to him, but by something upsetting.
"To be this far gone… " Alexandre closed his eyes and shook his head in a mournful expression and muttered a French expletive under his breath. "They must be under several layers of their own mind. Months of work went into this."
Anne suddenly realized what that would have meant and why Alexandre was so disgusted by the event to actually show it, and it made her sick. The people were docile because they had no choice. In their fugue, they probably weren't even aware of what was happening.
"Whatever you're thinking, it is far worse than that," Alexandre said, his eyes still smouldering, but Anne could see his profound pity for these people. "Putting one in a trance is a useful tool for the willing, something that can help ease pain or strengthen the mind. The trick is that you can't be put into a trance for long unless you let yourself. And, there are tricks to bring one out of a light trance as well. To do this," Alexandre gestured to the hamlet, "one would have had to start small. Perhaps one would begin with promising to ease the mind of the ailing or exhausted, then with a sense of letting go of worries. Deeper and deeper in the mind one goes, the easier it becomes to say yes. Soon, one wants to say yes without knowing why. Then, he could have made them question everything. Why do you toil for a worthless coin? It is just a burden. Give it for free. Released from your worldly possessions, you will have no more to worry about. Why live with worry?"
The anger made Alexandre's accent thicken, but he didn't lapse back to French, his mind caught between the two in a more perfect balance. His hands were a wild flurry of gestures with each statement, the kind only seen from those raised on the impoverished streets of Paris. He was more animated than he had been in years, and Anne was beginning to understand why.
"After this, consent is meaningless. The trance is so deep and penetrating that a sense of self can be overwritten. You may think it impossible, but with enough time and a few key steps, one can break a mind. I could convince you that you were not of royal lineage, I could convince William that he committed atrocities that had never happened."
"And this is just one of several villages on this island," William said, breaking into Alexandre's abyss of atrocities.
Alexandre sighed and resigned his arms across his chest once more. "Exactement."
Alexandre's explanation and William's observation sent an icy chill down Anne's spine. How many people had Silver Eyes entranced? How many were doing things against their will and being taken advantage of? Worst of it all, how many of the women were being victimized by this? Anne, though her time aboard was brief, had been on Calico Jack's ship before. His men were savage monsters that wouldn't hesitate to commit heinous acts against women, she knew that for a fact. Victoria was also living proof of it.
"This is abhorrent, and an affront to le médecine and les science." Alexandre looked deep into Anne's eyes. "Whatever happens on this island, Silver Eyes dies by my hand."
Another wave of shivers crawled across Anne's body. She nodded, knowing it wasn't a request, but a proclamation.
Blackbeard's Family Page 7
