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I think it's unfortunate that I'm writing this so close to the beginnings of the media push for PotC-2. Because it's going to look like that's the reason for pirates, rather than the actual original thought process, which went something like "All right, so... I've got an alchemist eating the back of my brain, but I can't only switch him in because he'd likely be too much like Hughes. I'd do a ninja, but there's a chance we'll get those in the next world-shift. So... opposite. Pirate. And... hmmm. A cowboy, because of Brokeback Mountain. He'll be the gay one." (We can call laugh at this now, because save for the alchemist, pirate, and cowboy part, every last bit of it turned out to be wrong.)
A Totally Non-Metaphorical, Somewhat Tongue-in-Cheek Experimental Sort of Pirate Story so Far Lacking Both a Proper Title and Actual Names for Characters.
Going “on account” was as natural a part of the job of the ships, rigging, and sea. Some more legitimate than others, though, just as ships could founder and the seas could turn grey and merciless. And from time to time there’s a certain treasury backing a certain job, whatever name was in front of it, that can’t be refused if you expect them to keep their pretty heads turned the other way long enough for you to keep on your merry way. This is almost never a problem, though, because when it comes down to it, if they’re down to asking you to get the job done, they don’t much care about the how so long as it gets done, and nobody but you, a lying scalawag, could tell anybody it was them that’d told you to do it.
I suppose you could call me both blessed and cursed in that way. An idiosyncrasy to my personality had me labeled early-on as a softie. This was naturally almost entirely untrue, mostly because it was founded on my soft spot for a certain woman who lived in the
This job, though, was more than the usual burn and plunder and make sure you take the credit for the entire inspiration. I’m starting to get a feeling they get nervous when you can sign your name with more than an X or a scribble and understand more than half the words on the page. Or I’d done something to make someone mad enough to want me sunk, which wouldn’t be surprising considering all the things I’ve done, a fair few of them just to get somebody riled up, especially if they’re fun to watch. One of the messengers, for example, had a nasty tick when it came to being insulted about his height, and if you pushed it far enough, he could destroy half a bar before someone knocked him cold to get him to stop. Free entertainment. The fact remains, though, that I was left heading back to my ship knowing that what I needed to do was find myself a good sea-seasoned woman if I was going to get the job done right.
“Women likely to be among the prisoners,” the paper said. Which usually means “have your way with them, men, while they’re grateful to be seeing you, and we’ll look the other way” except it was followed by “including Lady Winnifred,” who you weren’t to take liberties with if you wanted to keep your head, let alone your ship and all the parts you needed to sail her. Those three words, and I was tied into a job I had no choice but to find a woman for, to calm the lot of them down and take care of them once they were aboard, because even knocking them out or liquoring them up for the ride was out of the question. I knew I didn’t have a man among my crew who could tame the likes of any of the royalty, at least not in a way that’d leave him with the family jewels intact, so a woman it had. Might as well bring myself a ladder onboard and pace beneath it on broken mirrors, too.
They had to be aiming to undo me, I thought. Had to be, treating me to a job cut out for the navy, like I’d signed on to do their bidding full-time as some sort of politicking land-lover having an affair with his ship until he could get himself a sit-still kind of job. It was downright disrespectful. Because if there’s one rule of the sea that every man on my ship knows, it’s that having a woman aboard is bad luck. The worst sort of luck. And they know this because I’ve spent a good many years drilling it into their skulls to make sure they don’t forget. There’s no need of me going into exactly why it is that a woman’s bad luck, because the details can be a bit crude, and while I wouldn’t stop myself saying it out loud, there are things you don’t put to paper when you have a choice not to. The fact remains they’re worse than black cats, walking under ladders, breaking mirrors. Black cats can get the rats out of the bilge, at least, and any man with a ladder aboard a ship’s past being called a fool and deserves being thrown off it first bit of rocking his ship does and then laughed to the bottoms of the sea. No use going into the problems of vanity. Having a woman aboard was a lot like bringing a ladder. And a mirror. And, a lot like the cat, if she goes after one rat, she’s got to catch them all and next thing you know all your rats are fighting over who’ll get caught next.
Only thing worse for my crew would be having a cannibal aboard, as far as I’m concerned. Could probably come to just as bloody an end at certain times of the month, too.
Not but the numbers at the paper’s end kept my hand from throwing the papers back in the messenger’s face. More aughts than I had cannon fodder on my whole ship, and whatever we could plunder to boot, provided we returned the prisoners safely and completely unharmed and, unfortunately, unsullied.
I’m not ashamed that I’m a man quite easily motivated by the promise of a hefty sum, especially where there’s adventure involved on the way. I’ll not admit to anyone else, though, that I had a soft spot for the King, having his mistress go missing like that. Being unofficially attached myself, only on account of no church recognizing me long enough to let me get myself married, or not-recognizing me for long enough, as was more often the case, I thought I could feel for the man. And, considering the hush-hush of this particular mistress affair, it was clear as day why this hadn’t been handed to the navy on a silver plate. Though my sort had a habit of nicking the silver plate without looking back, Admirals were no good at handling these kinds of delicate social situations.
The problem, then, wasn’t me lacking incentive, or even that there wasn’t a soul suitable for the job in port. It was a matter of pride. There were at least three ships on the seas with crews of nothing but women. A few swore they were myths, a few swore they were real, but that their crews were hideous sirens and they’d dash out your brains given half a chance after running you aground on some uncharted island, but most ignored them because, except to a real hawk-eyed lookout, at sea they looked the same as any other crew until they’d boarded you. At which point they dashed your brains out, but that was more standard pirate issue than because they happened to be female. And any man worth his salt knew there weren’t any uncharted islands left this side of the continent for running aground on. It’s a wonder the way men can clam up around women in the same line of work when they have a reputation of taking advantage of all the rest of them any way they can. I suspect it’s because women in the same line can tell when you’re bluffing about your latest haul. Lucky I never went in much for that myself, else I’d be marooned right now.
Having been captured once, at a bit of a low point early in my career and with great injury to what pride I had, by one of these woman captains meant I always knew when her ship was in port. She had a habit of making sure I’d never forget the indignity she’d done me, the details of which are another thing I don’t think I’ll be putting down to paper willingly. Having it anchored in my memory is bad enough. Her ship was a spotless beauty anchored not far from my own, probably for the purpose of launching taunting notes into my cabin whenever it struck her fancy, which she had a habit of doing only when I was about to catch a few winks. Not being as deft with the pen as myself, though, most of her taunting notes were written in fire, which got the point across just as effectively so long as it was blunt, and probably saved on ink unless you were the adventurous sort that got it for free where it came from, being squid and octopus. It wouldn’t surprise me if I found out she did, and she’s probably spun more unlikely yarns herself, though what she’d have needed the ink for I’m not sure myself.
I knew it’d take me some fancy talking to get what I needed from her, and I hoped the surprise of stopping by unannounced would give me the advantage. My warm welcome aboard was from a group of stone-faced girls who led me straight to the captain’s quarters, though and seeing as how she wasn’t one for dancing about with words, I jumped to my point.
“Ye knew I was comin’, ye wench,” I said, wishing I’d brought my cutlass along in case this came to crossing steel.
“An’ if I did?”
“Loan me one o’ yers an’ I’ll weigh anchor without imposin’ on ye more?”
She seemed to consider, and for a moment I thought maybe I could see a glimmer of hope in my future for fair sailing.
“Aye, an’ make shark bait o’ me while yar at it.”
“Doin’ that shan’t be harmin’ me none.”
“Oh, swaller yar anchor, ya dog. I won’t give any o’ me girls to the likes o’ yars.”
There are certain situations during negotiations between two seasoned sailors when one has to be the man and stop the conversation from foundering on a great reef of petty insults, even if everything down to their accent makes you want to put them in their place.
“Please?”
I bit my tongue to stop myself adding “wench” to the end again.
“Ya’ve gone soft,” she scoffed after looking me up and down like I was some kind of great gaping fish come up with the anchor. “I’ll come with ya maself, but only as yar first.”
Now, I’d been planning on swindling one of her mates from her, but never had I counted on her offering up herself. I wasn’t soft, neither, but it wasn’t fair business to play a card like that so early in the game if you didn’t have a plan to follow it through, and worse if you did. As a first mate, she’d be out in the open for all to see, and giving orders to my men that they were actually supposed to be following. My plan, loose as it was, had been to hide whoever she leased to me belowdecks and send her ashore first while we faced whatever foes were holding the prisoners so she could pretend she’d been among them all along and to conveniently help get them back. It was bad form to allow stowaways, though, and to be caught with one aboard never sat right with the crew, especially if you owned up you’d planned it, because it meant someone wasn’t running the ship as tight as he was meant to, and suddenly there was another stomach splitting the rations. Bad for the reputation, too, allowing stowaways, and with a crew as good as the one I’d found for myself, she was fair certain to be found and I’d be left to explain myself to a crew it looked like I’d betrayed and cursed. But picking her as first mate for the work, even only looking at it as a problem of two captains on one ship, was right near foolish and asking for trouble on top of all the superstition. My thinking latched onto one crack in her plan, though, like a barnacle. She’d not made a mention of any other conditions, counting so on me refusing her offer, and being shrewd from dealing with the merchants so often in writing, this said to me in big fancy letters I had no obligation to cut her in on the loot any more than the rest of the crew were entitled, which was far less than the unfair share she was certain to demand for the loan of one of her crew.
I can’t say there wasn’t an inkling for revenge itching at me right then, too, and the idea of beating her at her own game before she even had the chance to start in on me was probably a little too shiny.
“Ye’ve got me word, love.”
My only regret was the word “love.” Bad habit, it was, and I knew from our first meetings that it moved her to anger more than any other careless nickname. Her mouth contorted into a cruel smile, and I swore I could see my life passing before my eyes, cruelly focusing on what she’d done to me the first time we’d met. Now I had to hope she’d never get herself enough sway over my men to lead some kind of mutiny in the two weeks it would likely take to sail from Transatlantica.
How had she known what I was asking her for? What was she scheming at? Was she aiming to steal my ship? My crew? The treasure? Of course, not a word of this struck me at the time, me being the impulsive type, especially after more than a few hours ashore when the land stopped rocking and you started wishing for something a bit more unpredictable.
Much to my surprise, it was smooth sailing for the first week out of port, and I was more than happy to forgive anything my first mate had done against me. She was right handy, and as I’d managed to assemble my men for a meeting before she got to my ship, none of them gave her more than a longing look for fear of syphilis and a nasty case of the clap. That sort of thing hadn’t stopped many of them before, but you did things differently when you were at sea. Differently, at least, when it comes to a comparison with what you did when you were on land. Myself, I had a bad habit of doing things much the same at sea as I always did, all the way back to my early days, which is why at the start of the second week I’d found myself tied between the four posts of my bed suffering from a mighty case of déja-vu after offering to help with any frustrations my new first mate might’ve been suffering from. She hadn’t taken kindly to the offer, which I should’ve expected knowing our past. Being tied up was never any part of it, but she must’ve put something in my drink, and I was left trying to focus on the songs the men were singing in the rigging above my cabin, rather than the fact that my hands and feet were slowly going numb to pins and needles from the ropes. That’s about when the singing stopped, because when things are going badly, they all go at once, and I knew she was up on deck giving orders because the singing shifted aft and next thing we were swinging hard to the south. The sinking feeling I had in my gut right then had nothing to do with seasickness. At that moment, most of the thoughts going through my mind weren’t worth writing down save for one. Most buccaneers, myself included, had a more than healthy fear of cannibals on the level of instinct, and knew that sailing south guaranteed a run-in with them. I didn’t bother with wondering what my treacherous first mate had planned, it needed to be stopped, and soon, before she steered my whole crew into the worst kind of danger. She’d hijacked my ship. She was captaining my ship. She’d as good as cuckolded me. And I was tied to my bed, making it about as bad a situation as you can get yourself into on the open seas without another ship in sight.
(Edited with the final, 9-page version. Yikes.)
