Viola

Bad Pastries

My eyes opened and brows drew together. I had been unconscious in the Lady Captain's bed for far too long.

"You know, you're prettier awake than asleep,"

My mouth opened. I attempted to scramble off the mattress but my limbs wouldn't work quite right.

Her face turned serious. "You're also very, very lucky,"

"Who was that man?" I demanded.

She looked me directly in the eyes. "Madeleine. How often, exactly, have you gone out alone in a port?"

"Once!" I tried to fire all my indignance into that syllable.

"Once before?"

I suddenly wanted to shrink down into myself, compress myself like a telescope. "No. That was the one time,"

The Lady Captain's eyebrows drew together and she shook her head. She muttered something under her breath.

"I found you in the arms of a man I doubt you had ever met, which I wouldn't blame you for singularly since I was about to do a similar thing myself. It gets lonely out on the sea, with only men for company. But I figured you and I are not similar people and would not have the same inclinations. Anyway,"

I was not going to get out of this easily. From what I could gather, it was night time and the ship was back on the open water.

"So I was coming back from the bordel, and I saw you being carried by this man and I asked him where he was going and who the young lady was, and he said you were his cousin, Anna, and you had gotten dreadfully sick from some pastries and he was simply taking you home. This alarmed me for two reasons: there are no pastry shops in the direction you were coming from and your name is not Anna. So I obviously had to take out my little knife, see?"

At this point she got up and pulled out a rather large knife from her dresser drawer.

I saw. It had a rather jagged looking edge, as though it had been shattered and refiled into something vaguely resembling an ancient spear.

She smirked. "And simply give it a little taste of his insides. I let him down on the sidewalk and told passersby he must have had a bad pastry, then picked you up and took you back to the ship. By all accounts I should've left you there,"

"But why did you kill him?"

She set the knife down. "Do you know what that man was?"

I shook my head no.

"That man was planning on selling you to some rich man to be, to put it politely, deflowered. To put it impolitely, Madeleine, you almost got abducted and raped,"

Understanding widened my eyes.

"It's been two days since then." She sat down in a chair. "And if you don't mind, I would like to sleep in my bed soon."

I noticed something then. The Lady Captain's hair was a bit brighter, just a bit sandier than the young man's. And her eyes were just a bit darker, just a bit more endless than his.

"I'm... sorry,"

"Oh, don't worry. We had a good time without you, even if our party had to be a bit short,"

"Party?" I questioned.

"We always have a party after we sell all our wares, but it's mostly funded by what we sell and we didn't quite get to sell everything because of one person I'm thinking of who's sitting in my bed and making a general nuisance of herself at this very moment. Anyway,"

"Anyway?"

"Anyway, now that you're all out and up and about it's time for you to pedal yourself back down to your hammock where you should actually sleep,"

I nodded, getting up. My limbs worked much better this time. "Alright,"

And I realized, yet again, that I was still wearing my nightgown from over two weeks ago. It had become familiar to me, like a uniform.

But I also realized for the first time that the Lady Captain had rescued me when by all accounts it would have made a lot more sense for her to leave me and be sold into legal slavery. The Lady Captain, it seemed, did not betray the members of her crew, no matter how insubstantial their contributions to the crew may be.

The hull, for once it seemed, fell silent as I walked in. I traveled a straight path to my hammock; every pirate was at a standstill. I said hello to Henri and conversation exploded. It seemed the sin chief among pirates was gossip.

"Why did you run away?"

"How did you get back?"

"I heard you were kidnapped."

"Who did it?"

"Why did you come back?"

"Jeez, Adrien, the Captain carried her back!"

"Did she really?"

"Why were you in her room the whole time?"

"Did you guys avez baisé?"

"What happened?"

"Want to play cards?"