by Ed Gorman
Crimson tried hard not to sigh but failed. She let out a stream of breath that tousled hair from the corner of her mouth, shaking her head slowly side to side. She often wondered why it was so often forced to come to this—the men unable to admit defeat even when so close to getting their throats cut. What compulsion drove them to such stupidity?
"Answer me now, girl."
"Here, have it." Crimson gave the cur a sizable gash on the side of his neck to remind him of who was in control here. Jessup cringed and squawked like a chicken, finally dropping his arrogant demeanor.
"Blood!"
"You'll get nothing but your heart plucked out if you don't leave now while I'm still in a good mood."
"She bleeds me!"
"The whiskey in this place is thin as pond water so I doubt I'll be quite so benevolent in a short while. You can run back to your ship and face your mates or you can catch board upon some passing vessel. I suggest the latter choice, if you want to live out the week."
"You hussy witch—"
"None of that." She cut him again in the same spot, deepening the wound. Jessup cried out and hit a nice high squalling note that even the squeeze-box musician couldn't reach on his instrument.
It had been a fine spectacle. Almost everyone in the shadowy, lantern-lit tavern applauded and kicked up a ruckus. Especially loud were the other women freebooters, a few of the fishwives and whores. Though they dressed, swore, and even fought like men, it was still easy to see—with a few notable exceptions—that they too were ladies who needed their liberties. No man should be allowed to speak to a woman thusly in these parts. They raised tankards and cups in salute as Jessup stumbled out of the Hog's Head Inn, whimpering and holding his collar tightly closed as the blood pulsed between his fingers.
Owlstead gave her one brief nod and was gone, possibly to finish off the job, now that Jessup was beaten down and scurrying for cover.
When Crimson was done with the chubby sod, she sheathed her sword and returned to her table to sit over her cold supper. An old bearded man with a wild shock of white hair and a black leather eye patch sat beside her sipping whiskey.
"I thought ye'd have a harder time with him," he said.
"He was just an overconfident ass, like most of them."
"True, but he's still a butcher, truth be known. Some time ago I saw him cut the sex off a merchant in Mayaguana and stuff it in the dying man's mouth."
"Ah, well, and here I was hoping he'd marry me. Pity my naïve dreams. I need more grog."
Welsh—he'd never used another name in front of her—grinned with rotted stumps of teeth. His tangled beard smelled of gunpowder. Like Edward Teach, the notorious Blackbeard, Welsh often intimidated foes in battle by wrapping slow-burning lighted coils in his long hair. It was a good trick and kept their minds focused elsewhere. He had trembling hands but they were thick and powerful. "You've a poisonous tongue on ye, ye do."
"I inherited it from my father."
Ten years ago, while Crimson's mother lay dying of consumption, she had claimed that Crimson had come from the loins of Welsh. It was a blow she'd never quite fully recovered from, whether it was truth or not. Nobody wanted to hear that they'd been born to that pirate. Welsh denied being Crimson's father, but once you got past the scruffy white beard, the seamed skin and broken nose, you could see a definite resemblance. At least she could.
"Now don't go spoutin' that nonsense again, child. Order a second bowl of stew and get on with yer meal."
"I've lost my hunger. Another round of ale instead. Where's that damned barkeep?"
"And don't go sulking either, girl."
He could talk fatherly enough when he liked. "I do what I please, you goat, and don't be getting on me about it."
"Then keep yer jibes to yerself or stick 'em elsewhere."
"I put them where I like, and you be glad I don't use something sharper to stick into your sagging flank."
She was never sure why she pushed this matter, even after all these years. Considering how many families she'd seen ruined by betrayal, deception, and greedy appetites, she'd have thought she'd never want to meet up with any of her own relations, wherever they might be.
And yet there was a certain haunting weakness within her, a hollowness that made itself known from time to time. The need to discover her father. As a child, she'd had idle dreams that she was the daughter of the duke of some distant northern country, where her bedroom resided in a tower glazed with rime year 'round. It gave her something to think about under the burning sun.
Regardless, she enjoyed irritating the old bastard too. No matter how she prodded him or how similar their features were, she knew her mother was out of her head with fever on her deathbed. The woman spoke to the long-deceased and saw leering faces in the draperies.
Welsh tightened his leather wristbands in an effort to help control some of the quivering. His blunt knuckles had been broken so many times that they'd turned black. He could still wield a sword with tremendous might and dexterity, but in the little day-to-day things like rigging a sail or carrying boxes of cargo, his trembling would sometimes get so bad he couldn't hold on to what he was carting. He was always on the lookout to make sure enemies didn't spot his weakness.
He caught her eye and smiled, ignoring her unspoken comments. "Yer gettin' a notable reputation, lass. Word's been crossing the compass. There was a eighty-footer in yesterday called the Yardarm. One o' the riggers met up with a sloop called the Hopewell two days back and said a rich man named Maycomb and his wife're comin' to see ya about business. They've heard how good y'are at settling scores and locating what's been lost."
"Maycomb. English?"
"Originally, I'd guess. Scottish, maybe. Now he's in the Colonies. Virginia, the rigger said. Tobacco farmer."
"So he's money to spend."
"We can hope and pray. Trouble is, I'm thinkin', the Hopewell is run by Dobbins now."
"Christ spread on his cross," she said. "With Dobbins as captain they won't be alive when the ship comes in to anchor. He'll rape the woman and steal their coin if his crew hasn't already."
"He's been goin' easy on that sort of activity lately," Welsh said. "From what I hear. Cleaned his ship up some. Runs smaller smuggling operations. Keeps his men in hand."
"Does he now?"
Welsh grimaced and pursed his lips, thinking about it. "Well, most of 'em, leastways. Bad fer business when half the passengers who ship out wit ye turn up dead or not at all."
Crimson leaned back in her seat. "If this Maycomb is murdered before I get a chance to speak to him, don't let me forget to kill Dobbins."
"Be me pleasure to remind ye."
2
In the deep night, halfway to dawn, as she lays upon the sheets of her snow-covered tower, she whispers for her husband of only six months. He's dead, she knows, but that cannot stop him from keeping his promises. She feels him here, now, slipping between the shadows and easing himself from corner to corner. The curtains rustle though the shutters are closed and locked.
Mother was right, there are faces in the drapes, and they've always been there, watching and tittering.
She reaches out blindly, first in one direction and then another, hoping to grab hold of him. The door is bolted and the hinges are of iron, but a thin sheaf of light eases from beneath and looms against the stone floor, rolling like the water at high tide. The room brightens a bit. He touches her lightly in odd places. Behind the ear, in back of the knee. She spins and brushes his chest, his neck perhaps, as he settles beside her among the thick covers. "Tyree?" she asks.
He presses himself against her and finds her backed up against her velvet pillows. Darkness twines as her misted breath rises to his face like smoke and breaks against his strong chin. His breath isn't frosted in the cold room. She cocks her head, staring at the hard cords and muscles of his throat. The veins there are black and unmoving as marble. He doesn't breathe at all.
"Tyree?" she asks again, and the name, though familiar, is alm
ost difficult to form and say aloud.
He makes a plaintive sound. A sob perhaps, or a moan cracking distantly inside him.
"It's me," he says, and his voice, like the rest of him, doesn't seem to be entirely with her in this world anymore. "Don't be frightened, love. Here, take my hand. It's always me."
"Yes, I know that now."
She reaches but cannot find his hand. She remembers something else that she's been pushing away into the center of her mind. What's hidden beneath the bed, under the pillows. The well-sharpened sickle. Nine hoops of wrought iron. A pike also made of iron and twice blessed by two different bishops on the far sides of Europe, or so it's been told.
And also there, what she's carved from good solid mountain ash wood and rowan trees. Six stakes, a seventh only half-completed. Wood chips and splinters dapple the floor.
Far below at the base of the tower, the ocean rumbles an underscore to her heartbreak.
He had been taken by a raiding ship less than a week after their marriage. They said the ship was damned, and that those aboard didn't care about money or loot of any kind, only flesh. Men always cared about flesh: to love and hurt, to cook and eat. To drink. The stories were old and gathered power as they moved, on their own sails, from island to island, continent to continent. Those who were wise didn't dismiss such tales easily, if at all. On the sea, every superstition proved true. Each god eventually showed its face in the storm.
She can see his lips but not his eyes, as he shoves her back and begins to remove his clothing. His shirt snaps wickedly as if caught in a wind. She'd torn the buttons off many times before and re-sewed them back on. The broad muscles of his chest are comforting, smooth and intimate, although his touch is freezing. She doesn't need to feel his heart.
He speaks her name without affection or desire. It leaks listlessly from his mouth like slow-moving liquid. Her true name that only he and Welsh know anymore. "Cassandra."
Tyree repeats it, making the word more lyrical, drawing it out with his tongue as if he is lapping at it. "Cassssssandraaa."
A groan escapes her as she tries to draw aside and reach beneath the bed, knowing the time has come to do what she must do. She has to be fast. He can't help but hiss. It's because of all those new teeth that have suddenly grown in—too many of them to fit properly inside his mouth. They range all the way back into his jaw and deep down inside his throat, his gum line packed and overfilled, chewing anything that comes near.
"Cassssssssssssssaaaaandraaaaaa..."
"No, no, don't..."
"It's me, it's always me, love, and now it'ssssss yooou..."
As her hand tightens on a stake of ash, she squirms and knows she is too late, he's beguiled her and used her own love against her. She wants to scream but cannot, whispering, "Stay back."
Now he climbs upon her back creeping like a beast and shoves her deeper into the mattress, all those many curved teeth nibbling at her shoulder at first and then, sluggishly—so leisurely—moving along to rip out her throat and plunge his snout into the spouting blood.
~ * ~
Crimson awoke in her room upstairs in the Hog's Head, holding onto the sharpened pieces of ash wood. The wrought iron hoops lay directly beside her on a night table.
Her face was wet with his kisses and she dabbed at them, wondering if she was insane or merely crying. Drops ran across her jaw.
At first she thought these were only tears on her chin, but as she drew the back of her hand against her mouth, it came away bloody. A scream worked halfway up her throat before she realized she'd only bitten her lip.
He hadn't come to her last night and drawn her into his hell.
Not yet.
~ * ~
Crimson spent the morning of the Hopewell's arrival near the docks, watching galleons and other vessels anchor out beyond the reefs. Several skiffs were still making their way across the harbor, brushed back by the rising waves as the men rowing strained at their oars. She watched the many sailors landing, waiting for this Maycomb to make his appearance. If he was already dead, she'd be compensated by Dobbins one way or another.
Many of the men who were pirates now originally served the British Empire gallantly in Queen Anne's war. English naval forces were often assisted by private ship owners, and their crewmen who were paid to plunder rival merchant vessels. After the war ended several years back, many privateers turned to piracy. They sailed the Caribbean and the Atlantic along coastal waters of American colonies, stealing freight and payloads when they could.
Piracy had grown prevalent in Virginia and North Carolina, she knew, since most of the Colonial Governors could be bribed to ignore criminal activities. The trouble with newfound countries is that loyalties were so often divided under floundering governments.
With commercial ships using the major inlets to access inland ports, pirates found the coastal waterways ripe for plundering. Though pirates anchored in the deep inlet channels and came ashore occasionally, they rarely had any treasure at all, and what they did have they didn't bury, despite the rumors.
If the Maycombs didn't offer her good money to help them in their cause, whatever it was, she'd ship out on the Alexandria's Revenge under Captain Nordwick, a former Naval commander. She chose her ships and captains carefully, making certain that the flags she sailed under weren't drenched in blood. Most buccaneers sought only plunder, not innocent lives.
The dock markets were crowded with mariners and cooks seeking provisions. Oil, clothing, timber, liquor, fresh meat and water were prominent needs that kept the merchants shouting and scampering.
On the hill, at the edge of the dunes, two hanged men swayed in the breeze, executed for rape, of all things. Usually such crimes against women never made it to any court, but the victim in this case had been a nobleman's daughter. The execution had been well-attended, it seemed, with an excited crowd still gathered and watching the corpses twist. Crows sought perch on the dead men's shoulders and were shooed away by children holding sticks. She'd seen her share of hangings by the age of ten, but this was the first for rape, and she took some satisfaction from it.
Ten Negroes—seven men and three women of various ages—were being paraded up on the block past British and American slave traders looking to stock up their plantations. Slaves were becoming a staple product in the Caribbean, and though Crimson abhorred the men who sold human beings like cattle, she still sought a way to make a profit off the conditions. Some of those African kings might pay well to have their people returned. Some of them had empires that rivaled Persia, although their ways were too foreign for the likes of most.
Washed by the morning foam-capped tide, the sun-scorched beach lay choked with driftwood, seaweed and the usual spattering of bodies. Sailors slept off last night's drunk in the sands, and a few of the harlots had made their love-nests near the dunes. The scavengers would be along soon hoping to find booty that had been lost over the side of ships in weeks past, brought up by the current and the storms. They'd also rob whatever dead they found.
At the far end of this stretch of beach, Crimson spotted two bloated corpses that had been dragged up past the reef and torn to tatters by the rocks. One dead man looked as if his legs had been devoured. Sharks most likely, but there was always talk of islanders who still practiced cannibalism. Dismembered bodies like that one only served to fuel such gossip and rumors. The islanders had many tales of ghouls and evil spirits. She had a few of her own, as well.
At last, she watched an attractive couple disembark from the Hopewell's skiff. Both were middle-aged and dressed in the somewhat foppish finery of the British royal class. They must not have been in Virginia for very many years, Crimson thought. Maycomb wore a blue silk coat, extra leggings, and a three-cornered hat tipped far back; the wife with an organdy dress of cerulean and a roseate scarf flapping in the morning breeze. Being aboard a pirate ship surely hadn't taught them much about being inconspicuous. But Maycomb did carry a sword and a firearm out in the open, and she had to admit that he carr
ied himself with a refined demeanor that demanded a certain amount of respect.
She met up with them at the end of the pier, careful to keep watch on who else might be observing her business. You never knew who wanted such information or who might be trying to sell it. Maycomb must've gotten a description of her from that rigger on the Yardarm, for he appeared to know her on sight. He removed his hat and gave a bit of a bow, a gentleman even in these parts. "Lady Crimson?"
"Mr. and Mrs. Maycomb."
"I'm so glad you were still in port," he said. "It would have been a dreadful shame to come all this way for naught."
"It might possibly still be so," she said.
Lady Maycomb let out a mournful cry, more like a bird than a woman. "Oh please, dear, don't say that. We've traveled so far to meet with you and gone through such travails. Those abominable men and that detestable boat. And our situation is grave. This concerns our—" She would have continued but her husband hushed her with a gesture.
"I'll listen to what you have to say," Crimson told them, "and if I think I can help and it's worth my while, I'll tell you how much it will cost you. I don't haggle and I won't argue my points. That's the fashion in which I do business. You either agree or find yourselves someone else."
"Excellent," Maycomb said. "Then let us repair to a hotel and have some dinner and libation. That damnable ship has worn us to the very bone. I need whiskey. A cask of it."
~ * ~
There were three opulent hotels in Port of St. Christopher's, and they were more refined and secure than one would expect in a cove of pirates. The reason, Crimson knew, was that most major countries had dispatched sub rosa agents to work with the privateers. There was loot each nation wanted stolen and it fell to these representatives to procure vessel and buccaneers, and to give them a list of exactly what was to be stolen from any particular ship. It fell to port officials to keep these delegates, operatives, and other important subjects safe lest they create a political tinderbox. Sometimes one could find sanctuary in the most unlikely of places.
