The Pirate and the Soldier Boy

Chapter 3

She sat awake in her hammock day dreaming until the afternoon, when the door shook slightly as someone tried to open it. Carmen removed the chair leg from the door handles and pulled it open slightly, poking her face out. A grumpy looking woman, not much older than Carmen, probably around 20, and with short cut brown hair crossed her arms and frowned. Carmen gave a sardonic smile. "Should have knocked!"

The woman kicked the door the rest of the way open and grabbed Carmen in a headlock, steering her forcefully and onto the deck. Carmen struggled the whole way. "I don't like being manhandled! I would have come on my own if you had asked nicely."

Though Carmen couldn't see the face of the woman holding her, she could tell she grit her teeth as she spoke. "Well then if you hate being manhandled it's good we kill most men instead of taking them onboard. Soldiers, actually. All the soldiers we find. I'm told your father was one. Pity isn't it."

Carmen went silent. Her father might be dead. He could be rotting at the bottom of the sea as they talked. Over consumed with anger at this girl Carmen elbowed her hard in the stomach, wriggling out of the tight grasp and striding forward down the hall. She had to know.

She burst onto the deck where the captain was waiting. Just before she reached her Carmen crouched to the ground and swung her leg in front of her, toppling the tall woman. She scrambled up and knelt on the captain's stomach, one hand pinning her neck to the deck the other held in the air to deliver a crushing punch. "Where is my father?!"

Her voice was louder than it probably should have been. The captain sneered and stayed silent. Carmen slammed her fist into the woman's cheek. "You killed the rest of the soldiers! Is my father dead?! Tell me!"

The captain stayed silent still. Carmen landed another blow on her face, but as a noble woman, even with her father as a captain in the navy, she had received very little instruction on how to defend oneself, much less attack. After the second punch the captain laughed. The side of her face was bruising, and her eye would swell some, but she was not worse for the wear. She flipped Carmen off of her and switched their positions, before landing several punishing blows on Carmen's face and the arms that tried to protect it.

The captain stood, and finally Carmen could not hold back the tears that hadn't come before. They ran silently out of her eyes and mixed with the blood from a deep cut on her jaw line, and another oozing blood from a crescent moon shaped cut under her eye.Confused and dazed she missed a question directed at her. "What?" she whispered in pain.

The captain kicked her stomach and hauled Carmen to her feet. "A crew member stands when addressing her captain. And always uses correct forms of address for their superiors. As Captain you should always address me as such, or as 'Ma'am'. First mate shall receive the same respect. Any other superiors, which in your case is everyone, should be treated with respect."

Carmen looked up at the face before her. "What?"

The captain raised her eyebrows and tilted her head to the side. Carmen corrected herself. "What was that Captain? I don't understand what you are saying."

"You can't swim. And I assume you don't want to be thrown overboard at the next port with the other prisoners in the hull. So you work for me now. I lost a crew member in our last raid, and I need a replacement. You have energy and grit. You still need to learn, but you will work well." She put a hand to her bruised face and curled a lip in disdain. "And a week's work swab duty, since I'm feeling generous. Piper, teach her the ropes."

The captain strode off towards the other end of ship leaving Carmen with the brown haired girl who had been so forceful in pulling her out of her room a couple minutes ago. Carmen's tears had dried on her face with the congealing blood and s cut on her cheekbone, creating an uncomfortable mess that pulled at her skin, but she dare not try to rub it off in fear of worsening the bruises that were already swelling into a black eye, a bloated face, and possibly a fractured nose.

Piper turned and walked off. She disappeared around a corner and came back with a bucket full of water. She handed it to Carmen. "Wash your face. That's disgusting."

She gratefully took the bucket and set it on the ground, kneeling before it to dunk her hands in and scoop water on her face. Which was definitely a mistake. Her cut burned like it was filled with salt. Salt water, to be precise. She jerked back from the bucket and glared at Piper with murder in her eyes. Piper just sneered. "Get used to pain, kid. You're a pirate now, whether you like it or not."

* * *

Most of the rest of the day was spent with Carmen on her hands and knees scrubbing the stern deck of the ship. Piper sat down nearby and gloated a good portion of the time. This would probably have been her job in slightly different circumstances. She also poured out much Carmen would need to know about the ship, from who sat out on what night shifts, to when dinner was. Everything that wasn't useful to doing anything beyond scrubbing the decks and getting food. "Rule one, however." She said, sitting forward and looking much more serious than she had the previous hour and a half. "Rule number one is, don't ask about the figurehead."

Carmen looked up curiously but Piper cut her off. "Just don't. If we were meant to know, we would. And only Old Joe the first mate knows. Of course she was here when the ship was built and first set sail. She knew the captain when they were both kids and neither had set foot on a boat. No one knows anything about the captain's past but Old Joe."

"Old Joe?" Carmen figured it was a good time to change the subject. "What's that stand for?"

Piper laughed her first real laugh since Carmen had met her. "Old Joanna, but no one wants to surrender to Joanna. She's not even old. Only about forty, just older than Captain, but her hair turned white at least a decade ago."

Carmen shared in the laugh slightly, wondering what absurd nickname she would pick up before she left this place.

The sun started setting as they pulled closer to a foreign harbor of a country Carmen couldn't identify. They were only about a quarter or half mile away when they dropped the sails and stayed put in the water. She put her sponge back in the soapy bucket and turned to face the noise of the grate to the hull of the ship moving. One by one twelve women emerged from below and were led to the side of the deck. Carmen lowered her face as the captain passed, but heard her name called. The captain had turned back to look at Carmen. "You're Lefévre's daughter? Gaspard Lefévre?"

Carmen nodded. The captain gave her a sympathetic look. "He's not your father."

"What?"

The captain didn't even bother correcting her incorrect form of address. "He found you on his steps. Seventeen years ago. Got special permission from his commander to have paid leave from the army to raise you. He's not your real father."

Carmen shook her head. "He's still my father." She paused. "And how do you know this anyway?"

The captain shrugged. "I lived next door."

Carmen's voice broke as she yelled and gestured at the people by the edge of the ship. "Please captain, these people don't need to die. If you knew my father, have sympathy in his memory."

Then she stopped in her tracks and looked back at the deck. "Excuse me Captain for my outburst."

Carmen looked up slightly to make eye contact with her, and was surprised to see sympathy in the Captain's eyes. But it soon hardened. "They can swim. Or they would be in your position."

Carmen nodded her head, resigned. She looked into the face of of one of the prisoners she recognized, and had spoken to briefly before... before their lives had changed. "I know you don't really know me, but listen to what I have to say. I've become a part of the crew now. I can't swim, and they're using that."

Carmen looked down at the ground, tears again filling her eyes and her voice cracking her as she talked. "Lay down a flower for my father. Please. On my behalf."