1670, Caribbean Sea. She's the daughter of a legendary pirate. He's a Spanish captain. Their countries are at war. Their fathers killed each other. And they were destined to follow on their steps.
But sometimes destiny isn't written in stone: it's w...
It was no surprise when Governor D'Oregon withdrew his light frigate from the patrol only three weeks later, arguing it was his only way to stay in touch with Europe. Richard Hinault volunteered his ship to cover the area the frigate wouldn't patrol anymore.
Wan Claup, Laventry and Harry thanked him, and traded skeptic looks as soon as Hinault turned his back on them. D'Oregon's frigate had been patrolling the waters northeast of Tortuga, between Cuba and the Bajamar Islands up to Ragged Island: one of the busiest routes of merchantmen and galleons sailing from the Windward Islands to Havana, or from there to Spain. Plain to see good old Hinault was more interested in the prey than in the watch. But Laventry and Harry had made good prizes over their patrolling, so they weren't about to criticize other captains' sudden interest.
Worrying tidings came from Jamaica and even Curaçao those days. Despite the rumors that the Windward Fleet had left the Caribbean to escort the New Spain Fleet across the ocean, the facts showed the Spaniards were decimating the pirate ranks. The smaller ships were easy prey for the Spanish fleet, but not even larger pirate vessels were safe, because the Spaniards didn't only play on their numbers, but they also displayed an unusual guile.
Wan Claup, Laventry and Harry concluded that the Armada, against all precedent, didn't sail together anymore, but had spread all over the Caribbean Sea. Stories talked about ships ambushed near the Cayman Islands, and among the countless islets of the Windward Islands. The Windward Fleet had become unpredictable and lethal, and nobody felt so safe sailing under the black flag anymore.
"One day we'll have to stand up to them and teach them their place," Laventry said.
"We've got to find them first," Wan Claup replied.
And he kept to himself that until he was able to leave Marina behind on land, he wouldn't go around searching for the Armada with his friends. Not only because he wouldn't expose her to the peril of a battle. The problem was that the recurrent star of those tales and rumors was always the Lion. Both the ship and her captain. It looked like he was the main reason behind so much cunning, and pirates already spoke about him with dread. So Wan Claup was determined to keeping Marina as far apart from the Lion and the Armada as he could. And he didn't care if that meant spending his whole fortune on his crew's wages, in order to have them sailing for no prize at all.
That wouldn't last long. In a couple of years, the young man would get a promotion that would chain him to an office in New Spain or the Main Spanish, maybe even Europe. And if by then Marina wasn't sick and tired of sailing to the Mona Passage and back, and she was still in his crew, he'd be able to finally show her the true Caribbean Sea opening west of the Windward Passage.
Marina knew that wasn't the usual routine of pirate ships, but she was very careful not to say a single word about it. She was finally doing what she'd always dreamed—sailing! And she wouldn't do anything that could give her uncle any reason to maroon her at home. So she kept enjoying life at sea and learning as eagerly as the first day. And that was why she never found out that D'Oregon had appointed Laventry to lead five-hundred men against Puerto Plata and Santiago de los Caballeros, even though the Spanish harbor was on the northern shore of La Hispaniola, on the Sovereign's route.
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Wan Claup's crew soon grew used to having her with them, and treated her like any boy that had enrolled before. They all agreed the girl was smart and diligent, she never played lazy and learned everything easily and quickly.
"Way too easily," some said, suspicious.
Some of them had known the Ghost and remembered that the Andalucian boy had been just like that when he'd arrived to Tortuga. So they asked Marina how could it be that she only needed three words to understand what any sailor took weeks and even months to learn. The girl would look down at her own hands and shrug, or shake her head.
"I don't know," she would reply with perplex honesty. "Sometimes I find out my hands can do things I ignored. Or common sense tells me the best way to do it."
"Like you've sailed before?"
She would agree with another shrug.
That had caused some unrest among the crew. Until Maxó settled it with his usual blunt ways.
"So what if her father guides her from the afterlife? Fine for me! I knew Manuel since we were both ordinary seamen, and if a spirit from the other side is around, I'm telling you: nobody better than him. If he watches over his child, we're safe too. I mean, here we are, right? On the best ship of the Brethren of the Coast, with such a fine captain as Wan Claup. And the Ghost as our guardian spirit? I say bring it on! You have to be a real fool to believe that's bad luck!"
Any doubt the pirates might still harbor vanished when the anniversary of the Ghost's death found them out at sea. The hurricane season was over, but a swarm of dark storm clouds dragging rain and strong winds was coming at them from the southeast. However, in the morning of the anniversary, sunrise showed the squall had changed course to the west overnight. So instead of catching them, it'd go pester on the Spaniards in Puerto Rico and La Hispaniola.
From then on, the Sovereign crew would laugh out loud in the face of anyone even suggesting that having Marina onboard was bad luck.
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In the morning of the anniversary of Manuel's death, Cecilia went to Fray Bernard's chapel to light a candle in her husband's memory. Then she headed for the eastern cove. She spent a long while sitting on the warm sand, thinking how empty and lonely the place looked.
Because when Marina had enrolled on the Sovereign, Cecilia had gone to that spot of the island, which had witnessed her first kiss in the arms of the man she loved. She'd long gazed on the sad remains of what once was the best ship of the Caribbean Sea. And she'd made up her mind.
Alone in the solitary cove, Cecilia thought of her child at sea with Wan Claup like she did every day. It'd been six months since she'd first sailed from Cayona, and Cecilia knew that wouldn't last forever. Sooner or later her daughter would question that boring, fixed route, and would ask why they never set sail to the west, like any other pirate ship. Or she would simply seek to enroll on some other ship that would allow her to sail new horizons.
Cecilia knew what the future held in store for her daughter. Acknowledging it had been hard, but she'd never been weak, or coward.
She left the cove to head back to the chapel, where she met with the poorest children of the island to give them a good meal and teach them to read. That offered her a little distraction every day, because her home felt like a grave without Marina, so quiet and empty since her voice, her quick footsteps, her laughter didn't fill it.
She missed her daughter even more than she missed her late husband. But the salt in Marina's blood would never find solace in a quiet life on land. And Cecilia had learned to understand it and accept it.
