The moon hung luscious and low over the water, and the Captain watched as the amber light of fireflies danced on the nearby shore.
The Captain was alone on ship, as was his custom, the crew relieving themselves on land after weeks at sea.
They were given free rein to rob and make merry, to debauch themselves and drink as they wished, but there were to be no rapes. He was strange in this rule, but hard, and his knife showed displeasure in any who broke it. Men who raped were made men no more. Such sport was reserved for the Captain alone.
Only that afternoon the crew had seen him line up the young women in town, their white petticoats poking out under calico skirts, as enticing as rubies in the sand. All eyes had been on the Captain as he selected a girl with ragged hems and dirty knees.
To choose maidens made sense to the crew, for the Captain was young and slender. However, they never understood why he always took the most downtrodden wretch, nor why the chosen girls looked happy afterwards.
If his crew begrudged him the maidenheads of blushing youths they did well by him in other ways. He was generous in sharing plunder. He kept a healthy ship, his kitchens well stocked with food and fruit, and provided rum enough for a few merry nights. He let all dock who wished it, and once he had strolled around a town, and perhaps taken a girl to ship, he guarded the vessel himself, as with today. He retained old or crippled men who many others would have abandoned, and gifted them gold when they retired. He kept ahead of the royal fleets with an uncanny knack, and his name was feared and revered around the Caribbean waters.
The Captain had his strange ways, too, and he knew that the crew spoke of them. They hardly ever made port in the same town twice, which made it difficult to hoard treasure or keep a family. His musket blasted seagulls that came near the boat, which chilled some men to the bone. He was oft to be found staring at the night sky through his scope or in his chamber with books, activities too cerebral for the crew’s liking.
On shore the mate, who had long served the Captain, would drunkenly tell a tale of a woman who had wronged the Captain when he was a child. The mate had been there when the Captain had found her and punished her cruelly, slicing off her long hair and stuffing it in her mouth before stringing her out to die on the cliffs.
That the story of the woman’s execution was known was not to the Captain’s liking, but the past was the past.
The past. On an evening such as this, when stars blazed and silver moon teased in the sultry sky, the past called him like a siren song. It had been on such a balmy night that the Captain had last played with his brother. They had run around a busy harbour like feral cats, darting between the legs of seamen and labourers. Their games had caused more than one barrel to fall, but as no damage was done they were let go by most with soft cuffs around the ears. After all, men had been children once too.
One man had been unforgiving. A fat fellow he was, with a tight waistcoat and silver buckles on his boots. The children had threatened the unloading of fine silks from his boat and he had swatted the older boy hard aside, as if he were nought but a mosquito.
The Captain still remembered the sound of the boy’s back as it broke on the hull of the boat, of the splash his body made as it hit the water, of the cries of men as they tried to rescue him, and of the voice of the man with silver buckles as he called the dead boy a nuisance.
It was a harsh sound, a foul sound, a sound the Captain now heard in the screeching of the gulls who so relentlessly pursued the ship. It was a noise that had followed him home to his mother that cruel night, to the evil harpy whose screams were for the loss of inheritance in the loss of the boy.
The Captain remembered the boy’s body, lying unshrouded on their shared bed, as their mother stood by with a knife. Of the knife cutting into soft flesh as the mother etched the scars of her dead son on the face of her living child. Of the same bloody knife cropping long locks short. Of a length of fabric binding a tiny girl’s chest, a binding that continued for all the years ahead. Of a hand, slapping the mutilated cheek as her daughter wept for a lost brother, lost identity, the end of girlhood.
Their mother had begged for mercy at the end when her own face and hair were cut, but the Captain had left mercy to the gulls and the wind.
It was curious how little satisfaction the Captain had gained from punishing her mother, so many years later. Revenge had been served, but it tasted bitter. Finer than revenge was the enlightenment the Captain gave her girls. She chose the most bereft, unhappy, abused child she could see, and bestowed knowledge in her mind, gold in her pocket, and sometimes a knife in her hand. She sent the girls back to shore with their new power, heads raised high at the knowledge of a happier future. It was not much, but it gave her comfort on the lonely nights.
‘Ho!’
The shout brought her back to the present. A small boat cut through the clear waters and the older men made their way merrily back to the ship. The Captain watched them by moonlight, skin prickling with anticipation despite the warm air. It was nearly time to make sail, to feel the salty wind on her skin, to search out the next port.
For the next port might be home to the man with silver buckles. The next port might be the one at which the Captain would finally avenge her brother, and lay to rest a childhood lost.
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Find out more about L. A. Anderson on www.landerson.co.uk
