Skulls & Crossbones

by Andi Marquette

  "So?" Lucifer said. She was a rough-looking woman, and her face was unpainted. "Do you still wish to join us?"

  I didn't say anything. I could only look down at my feet. She laughed mockingly at me and then they left me alone with the darkness.

  The next day I asked Harlequin how the Harpy's crew had come to be. She no longer wore her mask around me. She had long, reddish hair and pale skin freckled across her nose and neck.

  "Shannon started it. She was a whore, and was sick of the life. Many of the girls here have similar backgrounds. They were whores or abused by their husbands, or fathers, or both. They spread the word to others like them, women who would rather live free and die by the sword than waste away in a home full of spite."

  We were reaching the end of the Mandrake's treasure now, and I knew that my task would soon be done. I felt certain that they would kill me—throw me overboard for the sharks to rip to pieces. These women had no cause to love men. Indeed, they had cause to hate them.

  "Tell me," Harlequin said, "did you like the other men on the Mandrake?"

  The question perplexed me for a moment. It wasn't really something that I'd thought about. "They pressed me when I was just a boy," I said. "My parents died when I was young, and after that I lived on the streets. The crew of the Mandrake were the only folks I really have known."

  "And you had friends there?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you plunder with your friends?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you rape with your friends?"

  Memories flushed into me, cold and bitter. I remembered the last foray ashore, the men as they huddled over the young women, their bare bottoms pumping in the misty air. They would always urge me, but I could not. Instead, I would save part of my share for moments when we put into Tortuga and I could visit Madame Brega's and my sweet, sad Gwendolyn. "No."

  "Why should I believe you?" she asked.

  "You have no reason to, I'll grant," I said. "And it's true I would put a sword through any man . . . or woman, who threatened me or mine, but that's all. I wouldn't put nothing else."

  She didn't say anything, and instead she turned back to the treasure, cold and dispassionate. We didn't talk again that day.

  One conversation I had with Harlequin stuck in my head, haunting my cell at night when it was dark and phantoms danced before me. "You said you sacrificed the crew of the Mandrake," I said.

  "Yes. To Amphitrite, Artemis, and Nemesis. To the gods."

  I knew of only one God and I said so. "Are you heathens, then?"

  Harlequin smiled. "Your god did nothing as I lay in my bed at night, begging him to come save me."

  "And your gods?"

  "Give us strong winds and swift seas, grant us victory over our enemies."

  "And you believe this?" I remembered the superstitions of the pirates that I knew.

  Harlequin smiled as if hiding some great secret. "I know it to be true. Because of the gods, we have become a scourge of the seas. Soon we will have another ship and our numbers will grow. Already our sisters spread the word of the old gods through the land. An awakening is upon us. And men will fear us even more for it. She knew this."

  "Who?"

  "Your mother. That necklace was a token of Artemis. Did she not speak of this to you?"

  "It wasn't my mother's," I said. "It belonged to the girl I love."

  "And how did it come to be on the Mandrake?"

  "Things sometimes end up where they don't belong," I said.

  By then, I had come to accept my fate. The cataloguing of the treasure would soon be finished and my usefulness with it. The thought of my death no longer scared me. Instead, it gave me a sense of freedom, a strange exhilaration. When Harlequin (I still did not know her Christian name) appeared once more, I asked her why we were doing this. "That is not your concern. Now, what of this necklace?"

  "No," I said. "I want to know why. I think I deserve at least that much. I have done as you've asked without complaint. Tell me why, or I won't continue."

  Harlequin glared at me, and in that moment I saw the steel core that hid beneath her harmless appearance. I held myself firm, though, as only a condemned man can. "Very well," she said. "I will return." She left the room, leaving me light this time, her long coat swirling about her. She returned a short time later, a strange expression on her face. She removed a key from her pocket and unlocked the door of my cage. "Come with me. But be warned—make any attempt to escape, any hint of violence, and I will cut you down. Not enough to kill you, mind, but enough to make you suffer for many days."

  "I have no such intentions."

  She took me out of the brig and through the ship, up onto the deck. The smell of the sea air when we emerged was like a benediction. I resisted the urge to fall to my knees for fear the action would be misinterpreted. The air was cool against my cheeks, and after the close, rank air of the brig, it was like an angel's kiss. For a moment, I thought I heard the sea calling me, calling me home, and I had the urge to throw myself over the side of the ship, to let the waves reclaim me the way I knew they longed to.

  Harlequin led me past other women pirates to a small cabin above deck. She turned to look at me and then opened the door. The odors that flowed out of that room were like none I had ever smelled before. Pungent herbs and the faint trace of smoke. Scents metallic and sharp, others moldy and mildewy. A hunched woman, older than any I had seen, sat there, on the floor, a black cane propped up next to her. When she looked up, I could see that her eyes were filmed over and milky, yet she still looked at me, as if her blindness was just another mask on that ship of masked women. "What will she do to me?" I asked. "Perhaps read your fortune. Perhaps eat your dreams."

  "I am Lucia," the old woman said, as if that should mean something to me. "It seems you want answers." Her accent was unusual, muddled. She might have been Italian or Spanish or even Greek. I wasn't sure.

  "I just want to know why I am doing what I'm doing," I said.

  "That is what every man wishes." She stood up, her body trembling against the cane. "I am a seer. What you might call a witch. I read the portents, and I choose the course."

  "What course led you to the Mandrake?"

  "Her decks were stained with the blood of our sisters. Her hold was heavy with their plunder."

  "That's it?" I asked. "It was revenge?"

  "Not just revenge," she said. "It was liberation. The Moerae came to me. They bade me seek out the treasure from the Mandrake's loins, bade me to place it in the hands of our sisters. That this would make us better. That this would make us strong."

  "And now that my task is almost done, will you sacrifice me to your heathen gods?"

  Her lips quivered, and small flecks of saliva gathered in the corners of her mouth. "Amphitrite has been assuaged for now. We are guaranteed golden seas. And yet . . ."

  She paused, and I thought that she might be having a fit. Then a wrinkled, fat hand sprung toward me like a venomous snake. Before I could react, it was upon my face, and it smelled like old blood.

  For a moment I lost control of my body. I could only stand there as she muttered strange words into the air around me. The light in the cabin flickered, as if by a strong wind, but the door remained shut.

  Then I saw them—strange shapes, half-shadows, in the back of the room. Women with snakes entwined in their hair, with great wings of night black. Their eyes wept blood. I could not move.

  Then, as if a scrap of dream were snatched away by waking, it all stopped. Lucia stood before me once more, a sagging old woman. Her eyes widened, white and large. "Take him away," she snapped.

  Harlequin led me out and back to my cell. I inhaled as much of the sea air as I could, trying to hold the smell with me as I returned to the rotting brig. It was all I could do to banish the sight of what I had seen. I slept with traces of it curling around my mind.

  I dreamt that night of Gwendolyn.

  It was my first time on a raid, the first time I saw what the men did, the raping.
They urged me on, but I couldn't. I fell in with the looters instead. It was in one of the homes that I saw her.

  She was my age, or slightly younger, with skin the color of pale milk. Her hair was black in the dim light. Her eyes widened when she saw me, but she did not scream. She never screamed.

  Hock was with me, and he laughed when he saw the way I was looking at her. "Fancy her, do you?" he said with a cackle. "She's all yours." Then he snatched the necklace from about her neck.

  I could have taken her, raped her there in that place, spilled my seed into her, but the thought revolted me. She was so perfect, so pure, like an angel. Still, I wanted her and I knew I had to have her.

  The hard part was getting her back on the ship unnoticed. She was light, a slip of a girl, but it was still difficult to bind her and stuff her in the sack. Her body lay still from the blow I had given her.

  The usual chaos of the raid helped keep what I was doing secret. Once aboard I was able to stash her in one of the empty casks. It hurt me to have to stuff her pretty mouth full of rags, but I couldn't let anyone find her. A woman aboard the Mandrake? I would be keelhauled for certain. And Gwendolyn would be thrown overboard, bobbing helplessly in the sea until Davy Jones claimed her at last. No, I couldn't let that happen. She belonged to me. I would sneak down to see her when I could, bringing her food, the occasional nip of rum. She knew enough to be quiet. She cried a lot, but I knew it was only a matter of time.

  When we pulled into Tortuga, I snuck her ashore one moonless, bloodless night. Madame Brega agreed to take her in and keep her safe and every time we pulled into shore, I would visit her, and demonstrate my love. I had never known love until that point. It didn't matter to me that she now shared her bed with other men—they were nothing to the love between us. She may have rented herself to them, but she belonged to me.

  In the morning Harlequin came for me. "Get up. You're needed."

  I wanted to tell her of the images that had crowded my head that morning—Lucia, toothless and slavering, bent over my head. Instead, I asked, "Who are the Moerae?"

  "The Fates."

  I knew them. I pictured them in my mind with familiar faces—Lucia, the crone; Harlequin, the matron; Gwendolyn, the maiden. The faces leered in my mind as Harlequin brought me to the deck. I started when I saw the crew assembled. At its head was Lucifer, Lucia at her side. They wore their masks again, and I could not stop shivering.

  Lucifer stepped forward and raised her hand. Gwendolyn's necklace dangled from it. "This belongs to a sister of ours," she said, as if to all assembled. "A fellow servant of the gods." She moved forward to me. "For her sake, we have decided to give you what you want."

  I felt a swelling in my chest. They were going to let me go. My love for Gwendolyn, a fellow sister, had saved me.

  I was so overcome with relief that it took me a moment to register the pain as Harlequin and another of her sisters grabbed me by the arms, holding me firm. Lucifer approached, the grin on her mask seemingly larger, wider than before. My heart beat madly in my chest.

  She pulled down my breeches roughly, leaving me naked below the waist. I tried to shrink away from her, but I was held too tightly. Lucifer grabbed hold of my manhood with one hand, and the other wrapped around a large, silver knife. She brought the one against the other and my flesh shriveled at the touch of cold steel.

  Lucifer's terrifying grin bored into me, and everything I was seemed to crumple up and blow away on the ocean breeze. I thought of Gwendolyn then, as my heart pounded in my chest.

  "Welcome to the crew," she said, and cut.

  Devil's Bargain

  Andi Marquette

  They loaded the four strongboxes onto the longboat. Each box required four men—one for each side—who waded into knee-deep seas. Sarah splashed after them with three shovels, and she made her way to the boat's side, where she carefully lowered the shovels within, left hand on the gunwale. Maintaining her balance proved difficult, as two men pushed the boat into deeper water and clambered aboard themselves. She clung to the gunwale, and water knocked against her chest as she waited for a hand. None came. She hung on the boat's side with both hands and tried to pull herself aboard, foreboding enveloping her as surely as seawater. "Not you," Crenshaw rasped. "Cap'n's orders."

  Stunned, she glared at him. "You bastard. Bloody, thieving son of a whore!" Sarah slung one leg over the gunwale and with a last effort, threw herself into the craft, to the imprisonment of rough hands on her arms. She struggled but only succeeded in drawing a boot to her neck. "Stubborn," Crenshaw said. "Thought you was a lady."

  The boot came off her neck amidst the coarse laughter Crenshaw's comment had generated, and the men who held her lifted her to her feet to face Crenshaw, whose smirk stretched the scar above his upper lip into a thin line. "I paid him," she said between clenched teeth. "We had a deal." Fear and anger clogged her throat. Two men held her, two more sat impassively on the strongboxes in the stern. Crenshaw balanced aft as the craft bucked beneath them.

  "Deal's off ," he replied with a shrug. "Cap'n's orders." He drew his cutlass. "Hope you can swim." He smiled then, but his missing teeth made it more a leer. "Many thanks for your help. We'll be sure to toast you in Nassau."

  "You lying—" She surged forward, momentarily breaking free. The tip of Crenshaw's cutlass slid cleanly into her gut, exited out her back. Shock, rage, and excruciating pain ripped her flesh with the blade.

  "Why'd you go and do that, now? You'd have had better luck swimmin'. Not even useful as a whore, now." He withdrew the blade to more laughter, nodded, and two men picked her up by her hands and feet and heaved her over the side back into the water.

  The warm waters of the Caribbean closed over her head and filled her wound with the sting of a thousand wasps. She broke the surface with a gasp, every movement searing. The longboat was already halfway to the schooner and her blood stained the waters like paint. Automatically, she pointed herself toward shore and half-swam, half-kicked, gasping and grunting at the agony in her abdomen. Her toes scraped bottom, and she threw herself ashore, one hand clamped to her gut. She knew her efforts to staunch the bleeding were futile, that a wound like this was a death sentence. She sank to her knees in the sand, pain and blood leaking between her fingers. Just a few more days of life, she thought. Just a few more days to find the scum-sucking captain of the Queen's Rest, the equally scum-sucking Crenshaw, and what was rightfully hers.

  She clamped her other hand over her stomach and hunched against the pain. Bastards. I'll haunt you both. Just watch me. She grimaced, her best attempt at a last smile. She still had the key and she still had her ring. Blakesley wouldn't be able to open the boxes. Not easily, anyway. He'd have to offload them somewhere and wait for his claim to be approved. The thought offered some comfort as blood continued to stain the sand beneath her knees. She watched it well between her fingers, and she wondered how much time each trickle cost her.

  The sun was hot on her back as her shirt dried, and the pain in her gut settled into her bones, into her veins. Each breath was a gift and a curse, because as grateful as she was when one came, she knew it only brought her closer to the end. She had failed. Her father's gold would line a privateer's pockets. Lady Sarah Churchill had not only failed in her quest, but disgraced the family name. She'd been consorting with thieves, whores, beggars, and privateers. Dead at the point of a pirate's blade, dressed like some rakish sailor. Damn you, Blakesley. And Crenshaw. Damn you both to hell, she thought, tasting blood in her mouth. She spat it onto the sand. I'll be waiting for you.

  Sarah stirred and opened one eye, though the effort to do even that hurt. Something blocked her view. She opened her other eye, and a pair of black boots, battered and scuffed, frosted with sand, came into focus. She slowly turned over onto her back, her stomach burning with the movement. From this position, her gaze was able to follow the lines of the boots upward along the grey-trousered thighs to the faded blue shirt.

  A woman, Sarah registered. A woman with dar
k hair pulled back, tied behind her head upon which perched a plain black tricorn. Sarah groaned again. Another damn pirate. She closed her eyes, waited a moment, and opened them again. Maybe she was hallucinating in her death throes. The woman regarded her, the expression in her dark, placid eyes cool. Sarah shifted her gaze slightly and looked past her. Three others stood behind her, a dozen feet distant. A man and two women, all attired in plain sailors' clothing, a longboat behind them on the edge of the water.

  The woman knelt down on her right knee and rested her left arm casually across her left thigh. "I can help," she said in a pleasant alto.

  Sarah stared at her, puzzled. "Help me what? Die?" Her voice was creaky in her throat.

  The pirate cocked her head, perhaps amused. "In a manner of speaking." Sarah very slowly got to her knees, caught in a wave of utter exhaustion and weakness that swept her limbs and dulled her mind. She checked the front of her shirt, crusted with dried blood and sand, and then she stared at the dark pool of blood coagulated on the beach beneath her. Was this, then, death? Sarah looked at the woman and she could discern no pupils in the dark, dark eyes. The foreshadow of a smile played across the buccaneer's lips. There was no warmth in the expression.

  "Lady Sarah," the buccaneer said, "I'm Nefi, captain of the Black Angel. You've lost something that meant a great deal to you." She raised an eyebrow. "Betrayed, yes?"

  Sarah nodded dumbly. How did this woman know her? She couldn't place her accent. Melodious and clipped around the edges, like her features, which hinted of ancient places etched in the sands of swarthy countries. "What would you pay to have these things back?"

  "Anything." Sarah surprised herself with the immediacy of her answer. But then, she'd come this far. She would do anything.

  Nefi propped her chin in her left hand, left elbow still on her knee. "And what would you pay to ensure a proper punishment for Captain Blakesley and first mate Crenshaw?"