And then there was the fine Captain, Hector Barbossa. His birth name had been imparted to her by this time and she would murmur it against his salty neck as he pounded her. His visits continued and contented her while they lasted and she tried not to think too much of him when he was gone, knowing she could hold no similar place in his thoughts. This visit he had brought to her an Oriental music box, beautifully lacquered with delicate depictions of dragons. It had a false bottom in which she could hide jewels and she coloured deeply for it was a rare thing indeed for her to receive a gift.
“’Tis nothin’ but a trinket,” he waved a dismissive hand to her shining eyes and dimpled smile. “I have given a dozen such things away the last few ports.” She ignored this reference to the other whores and wenches who entertained him – she was not a fool nor was she sentimental, but she saw no need to discuss the matter further than that.
“It were my nineteenth birthday a month ago,” she told him and he shook his head.
“I thought ye were younger, stunted as ye are. Well, many happy returns, Miss Evangeline. What did ye receive upon the blessed day?”
“A rash upon my neck and an unconscious rascal who had to be rolled down the stairs.” She remarked dryly and Barbossa scoffed, putting his feet up on her dresser chair and filling his pipe.
“Celebrations all ‘round. Do ye rue yer age?”
“Not yet. Do you?”
He laughed merrily and inhaled deep of tobacco. “Nay. I’m in a far better place now than I was at nineteen and no doubt. But I know well circumstances be in reverse for women.”
She lay herself across his lap and plucked the pipe from his lips, took a draw for herself. “I’ll not worry about that just yet. “
He grinned at her, pushing a lock of hair off her forehead. “All the time in the world, eh? It never seemed so to me. To me it t’were as if I hesitated even a moment, the world and all its riches would pass me by. Scarcely had I turned thirteen than I’d left home to try my luck at sea, and on the sea I have been ever since. “
She smiled and rested her head upon his shoulder as he took back the pipe and chewed on its end.
“When I turned thirteen,” she told him, “me mum’s ‘ealth became real troubled. She’d been ailin’ for some time, but it finally got the worst of it. We both knew she wasn’t long for this world but for the time we ‘ad two mouths to feed and she could barely work. Some days she couldn’t even get out o’ bed. So we knowed it was time for me to take up the game. “
Barbossa nodded, expression still and quiet. The tale was not an unusual one, there was nothing extraordinary about it, still there was something on his face that she could not read. His eyes sharpened as he gazed at her, a curious combination of desire and suspicion and she grew uncomfortable.
“Did you start as an honest sailor?” She queried and he laughed silently, sardony twinkling once more.
“Don’t we all?” Then he became reluctant to speak further, only grunting to her questions and so she distracted him with her warm mouth and soft hands until he was smiling and running his fingers through her hair once more. She poured wine upon her breasts and he licked it from her nipples and where it spilled upon her belly, letting out a roar in ecstasy and swigging greedily from the bottle. Their sport continued to its inevitable conclusion and she remained wrapped about him.
She found him contemplating her with a sharply thoughtful look in his eye, a thumb circling the opening of the bottle, a grave set to his lips. Searched thus, she became shy and focused her attentions on plaiting a strand of hair when he, having evidently come to some decision, began to talk:
“I began as a deckhand on a merchant vessel but ye can well imagine I had grander visions. I worked hard, that first year. Worked until I wore me fingers down to the bone, ‘til I’d sweated off all me baby fat and me skin was as browned as the planks the ship were made of. I worked through fever and seasickness, through any injury I suffered and I learned everythin’ there were to know about a ship and more asides. The Boatswain took a shine to me and showed me how to sail durin’ the cool, blue evenin’s when the moon climbed the empty sky and shone upon the waters, a silvery trail I ever yearned to follow and discover what be at its end… “ Barbossa’s eyes were shining with the reminiscence, his gaze fixed somewhere upon the past and Evie squinted her eyes and followed it, trying to see the young Barbossa, still a beardless boy, learning the art that was to shape the rest of his life. “T’was thanks to that Bo’sun that I learned each trade upon the ship, ‘prenticin’ me if ye will, til no skill upon a deck was unknown to me. Coxswain I quickly became, Sailmaker then Carpenter, Gunner, Quartermaster. Eight years until I be the Navigator and then the First Mate and had all but forgotten what life upon the land even be like. Hated I were, by those who had sailed longer but not risen so high. Loved by those who had trained me, and saw in me the image of themselves. Respected and admired by the boys we took on. But feared? No. No one on board that ship feared me. There were nothin’ to fear – not then. “ He came out of his reverie and looked at her, a whore who sat naked upon him, sultry in her languidness, ran a hand down her body and she felt the patched roughness of his life at sea etched there. Taking up his hand she turned the palm towards her and kissed it, the calluses hard against her lips.
“I was a virgin when I started workin’,” she took up the narrative, murmuring her story against his fingertips as he took another swig from the bottle. “My mum and me… we figured we ought make best of that, bein’ as I could only be a virgin once. So, my mum and I decided to auction my maidenhead off, as it were, to the ‘ighest bidder. She’d been workin’ ‘erself since fourteen or so and was known to all and begun tellin’ all her customers that I ‘ad a mind to join her and ‘ad not yet been touched by no man. She would drop it in conversation down the taverns, real casual like until the word had got right about, going so far as to travel offshore so as those what dropped anchor ‘ad ‘eard from others, in other ports.”
“A virgin on Tortuga, t’would be a rare thing indeed,” Barbossa mused. “What were yer mother’s name?”
“Meryem were ‘er birth name, but she was known as Miriam – Rosy Miriam.”
A grin sidled up the side of Barbossa’s mouth. “I remember her.” But said no more.
“Well, once enough interest was roused up, Mum began makin’ sure most of ‘er time was spent around them fellows what did the best business and it got so that she started whisperin’ to one, and then another, that one gent had offered ten gold pieces to be me first. It weren’t true, everyone just assumed I’d start workin’ one night and it was first in, best dressed. “
Barbossa laughed, low and dark. “The mercenary business sense of whores will never cease to astound me.”
“It fired these boys up to ‘ear it. But nobody knew what I was yet, or if I were worth ten gold pieces. She couldn’t take me out a-walkin’ with her ‘cause then it would be seen that I were workin’ and that would ruin everythin’. So she started takin’ me down by the docks durin’ the day when the wares were all up for sale, instead, so as all these gents could get a look at me. We’d pretend not to notice their stares until one of them made so bold as to enquire and then me mum would give ‘im a wink and tell ‘im that we was makin’ purchases for what she laughingly called my ‘trousseau’, as she did so ‘oldin’ up a set of stays or some stockin’s or some other such feminine garment of a personal nature.
“Well! After that the biddin’ started in earnest. One pirate captain, with a very fine red beard, told ‘er he’d pay fifteen gold pieces to ‘ave first go on me. A merchant sailor who only dressed in the very finest silks and satins offered twenty-five which prompted the first fellow to go up to thirty. It went on, me mum carefully keepin’ each gents’ name a secret but sometimes, word would sneak out – and there were a couple of bloody fights outside our doors for it. And amidst it all, me mum, calm as can be, speakin’ of me unsullied skin and untouched jewel, as pink and bright as any ruby. Finally, the winnin’ bid came, eighty-five gold pieces, an amount no one dared top, as much for who offered it as for the cost and that was the fearsome pirate Bartholomew. My mum gave me ‘alf of the fee and warned me against a swell ‘ead and ‘e was ‘andsome and gentle enough though ‘e wore me out. ‘E thought I was sweet and gave me a jewel brooch as a gift before leavin’ and smiled at me kindly. ”
“T’was through a whore I first knew a woman, my very first shore leave at age thirteen,” Barbossa mused, urging her from his knee so that he might stand and stretch, mouth stretching in a cavernous yawn. “A bewitchin’ creature all dark hair and green eyes and mountainous bosom who made as though she were flattered I chose her as my first, which I did because her eyes were kind and she were old enough to know what things were about. She were very patient with me and held me to her afterwards and kissed me when I lay a-tremblin’ feelin’ as though my very soul had been sucked from me. I spelled out her name for her and wrote it down so as she may see what it looked like and she got the funniest smile upon her face at that and folded up that scrap of paper and tucked it away into her bodice as though she meant to hold onto it always. ‘Fraid to say, I cannot recall what name she had now. “ He scratched his chest and lumbered over to the chamber pot, letting out a hissing stream as Evie retopped her glass of gin and pulled a coca leaf from her stash. “But I will never forget the exquisite feelin’ of first sliding into her, or how tightly she gripped me and after I wrote her name for her she kept me a few hours longer, teachin’ me the way around a woman’s body and that was so delightful I tried the same trick again next port, but that whore only looked confused and asked what she could be doin’ with her name scrawled out. There were no free time with her.” He laughed at himself. “And I could no longer trade on me own virginity for a little extra tenderness. I had to learn to be a man and there were many after that, whore and wench, who showed me what it meant and how best to please them. “
She came to him, sliding her arms around his waist, and pushed her breasts against his stomach. “What a good study you were too” she murmured, her tongue darting against his nipple, and he swung her up and into his arms so that she shrieked with laughter.
“I always were.” He said it simply, without pride. “My father made sure I learned my letters well and had the very best of schoolin’, though he dared never acknowledge me to society. Bastard I was born, to a maid who he was obliged to dismiss when her condition became noticeable. But he set her up and provided for her – and me – for his own wife never did bear him a son, only a sickly little girl he had no time for. A respected and well-to-do man, he were – a surgeon, with an appreciation for the arts and he was bound and determined I would be same. He denied me longin’ to learn swordplay, saying t’were books that were of the higher importance and so I had a sword on me belt from the first day I was at sea, and I scorned books for many years after, returnin’ to them only when I outgrew my boyhood petulance and thirsted for knowledge, any kind that I could have, the same thirst that saw me master of every corner on a ship. “
He had taken her to the bed and laid her down upon the pillows and she pushed back his long hair and kissed the bridge of his nose. “But how did you become a pirate? How was it that Hector Barbossa went from honest sailor to scallywag and feared pirate captain?”
He chuckled and sat up, pushing her legs apart so that he might gaze at her without hindrance. “I’d become a holy terror with the sword by the time of me twentieth year, and the crew would pit me against some local fighter, betting their all on my victory and it was many a man who fell beneath my sword at the end of a duel, and many a time the crew went back to the ship, richer for my efforts while I became notorious along the ports of the Caribbean. Perhaps it was this bloodshed, the favours I received from bawdy women who watched, the sums and accolades I won, but I were growin’ sore tired of being a merchant sailor, makin’ a pittance and with no signs the Captain had any intention of stepping down or recommendin’ me, for I was of too great a use to him. I were suffocatin’, as I had been in the town of my birth, crushed under the weight of others obstructions and I wanted to know what true freedom was, to be master of me own fortune and Captain of me own ship. So, in Jamaica one sultry evenin’, after I had laid waste to a braggart who could no more wield a sword than he could speak truth, when a brute of a man approached me and said his Captain had use of a fellow with my skills and would I be interested in takin’ me chances under the flag of a buccaneer, I said yes. And so it came that I sailed under the colours of Morgan, that great rascal they call the King of Pirates to this day, not stoppin’ even to say good bye to those who I had so long sailed with, no not even the Bo’sun who had so improved my prospects when I could’ve been no more than a powder monkey. Ten year I were with Morgan as Quartermaster and under him and the other fiends that made up his crew I completed my knowledge of the seas and ships and fighting upon them, and life were the sweetest I had ever known it. “
She looked up at his face, the broken capillaries across his nose and cheeks, the crows feet clustered in the corner of his eyes and the mist of grey hairs shadowing his beard and she saw each of those ten years etched there – the tilt to his chin and the set of his jaw, the hardness that made bright stones of his eyes, forever considering and assessing whatever he beheld. Was it sorrow that she felt, that she had not known him when he was a younger man, before life had hardened him so? Or would she have found that youth to lack the charm and worldliness of his grown self? She could see now he had a mind to take her and neared the end of his tale, his voice taking on a timbre of weariness.
“The first ship we took with me as part of its crew was that same merchant ship on which I had learned all I had to that point. I made no mention of this fact to Roberts, or to any man amongst me new compatriots. We sacked and looted the vessel and I impressed me new Captain with what he beheld as innovation in revealin’ those secret stows where the richest of the pickin’s were to be found. But I had still to prove me mettle and I was charged with dispatchin’ part of the crew, for Roberts found no man amongst them of worth – and so it came that I held a pistol to the forelock of the Bo’sun, that very man who had so moulded me those past eight years, who had smiled upon me so often findin’ me so quick and ready. So I found myself in a wretched predicament indeed, for were I to refuse – to show mercy – both the Bo’sun and I would be slaughtered and our bodies tossed overboard for the wretches of the sea to have as their supper. I were no coward. I met his eye and he met mine. He did not betray me to me newfound friends but deep within his eye I thought I glimpsed a flicker of sympathy – of understanding for what hunger had brought me to this very place and moment in time. Perhaps he had felt that yearnin’ in his own life, perhaps it were just me own guilt shadowin’ me gaze.” Leaning down he kissed her softly, a hand against her cheek. She wanted to ask him, but dared not, her hands grasping his bare and browned shoulders.
“Aye,” he answered her silence. “I killed him. Blasted his brains out there upon the deck. And so me fate were sealed and I were a pirate from that day onwards.”
She felt a stillness within her, imagined the scene – a hot day, perhaps, with the sun burning bright from above like an eye of judgement, making the young Hector sweat as he beheld the man he had been almost a son to for so long, on his knees and waiting to die. She imagined the weight of the pistol, its engraved metal cold and unyielding in his hands, indenting the soft flesh of the Bo’sun’s temple, the formidable Roberts looking on with pitiless eyes, demanding a blood sacrifice as the only true measure of loyalty. Did the trigger offer resistance as he pulled on it, did the ball kill immediately? Did Hector stand and watch the splash of blood and brains stain the deck, or did he turn his back as though he’d seen such a sight a hundred times before? And later, alone in the empty embrace of the night, did the boy still but one and twenty though a man of the sea, weep for the loss, or had he already accepted such deeds as the way of the world?
“Me mum were too sick to spend her share of those eighty-five pieces.” She spoke up suddenly, rousing Barbossa from where his thoughts were marooned. “Barely a month afterwards she was bed-ridden and I were lookin’ after her when I weren’t workin’, strainin’ what cookin’ skills I had to the very limit, tryin’ to nourish her, make her more comfortable. But she could soon manage nought but the thinnest of stews, everything else were wretched in her belly and came up quickly but leaving ‘er still in wicked pain. The day were filled with ‘er moanin’ and I doused ‘er with gin and laudanum for ‘er to get some relief but she would always awake and in worse pain than before. It came so that she had no control over what ‘er body did and every day I would change the soiled sheets, sometimes more than once, and clean ‘er up and pretended I didn’t notice she were weepin’. Thin and wretched she grew, she who ‘ad once been so buxom and proud. ‘Er ‘air started fallin’ out and that were the worst ‘umiliation of all. There were nothin’ anyone could do – the doctor just said to keep the laudanum goin’ and to ‘ope for a quick end. But it ‘ad already been on too long and one morning when I was servin’ up ‘er soup, she asked me to end it for ‘er. Said it should be me last act of gratitude as a daughter.” She had moved her gaze beyond Barbossa to the curtains that hung around them, outstretching one hand to play with a frayed edge. He said nothing to fill the silence, but let it swell. Finally, she shrugged. “I did it. With ‘er pillow. The laudanum would’ve been easier – and quicker too, I s’pose. But I didn’t think of that then.” The memory of that day blurred out the red velvet of the curtain replacing it with a pale sliver of sunshine that winked through the window of her mother’s room, falling across the face of the woman who had given birth to her but thirteen years before. Her cheeks were sunken and what hair that was left was plastered across her forehead, so drenched with sweat she was. Her gnarled fingers were grasping at her daughter’s sleeve as she pleaded, her voice weak and hoarse. As she begged, she coughed, a racking sound that made Evie shudder, and a little bile splattered across her hollow cheek. Evie had fixed her gaze above the bed where the superstitious doctor had placed a crucifix and contemplated the Christ figure’s mutilated body, as haggard and wasted as her mother’s. And still her mother pleaded, entreating her only child for mercy, for release. Not until her sight was obscured by tears did Evie move, pulling the pillow from under her mother’s head and pressing it down firmly upon her face. Her tears continued to fall, stinging her eyes such that she couldn’t see, could only feel the struggle her mother’s body put up in one final gasp for life, the muffled groans of the woman who had carried her in her belly and struggled for eleven hours to pass her into the world. Her mother’s broken nails had scrabbled at her arms, her legs had kicked beneath the coverlet and she bucked up once, hard, but Evie held the pillow firm, her sobs rising to drown out the wretched woman’s moans. A long time it had taken, longer than she had realised, but for a longer time still after the thrashing had stopped and her mother lay still and silent beneath her, she held the pillow there and gazed upwards until her tears ceased to fall and the little crucifix showed itself once more, the sorrowful face of the Christ figure unchanging and still upon the cracked plaster.
She had never told this tale to anyone – the doctor was informed Rosy Miriam had passed on in her sleep and accepted it without question. Her mother was buried, her effects passed on to her daughter. And so at thirteen, Evie was an orphan, having no knowledge of her father, and a whore.
Barbossa growled and tossed the empty wine bottle to the side with no further indication that he had even heard her story. ”Be sure ye have more of this on hand the next time I make port. It suits me not to go wantin’, as ye surely must know by now.” He rolled over onto his back. “I have a mind to sleep with ye arms about me. I’ll ask nothin’ further of ye this eve but that ye do not leave my side. Are you agreeable, Missy?” His tone was rough, abrupt, as though he did not care what her answer would be so long as she gave it quickly. And she did – drawing his head against her breast, an arm about his shoulders and a hand stroking his cheek, she stayed there as he slept, his grip on her arm remaining as stone all night long.
At dawn he tied his scarf about his head and adjusted his waistcoat and jacket, using her small, warped mirror to check his appearance. A popinjay he was, in the brilliant colours he so loved to wear, the vanity rings on his fingers and the gold earring at his ear sparkling in the newly lit candles. She knew the stories of his brutality, had heard the tales of his remorseless and devastating battles. “It suits me not to go wantin’” he had said to her some hours earlier and she realised that he would allow nothing to come between him and his desires.
He re-slung his cutlass then took her face in both his hands and turned it upwards to his.
“Ye did the right thing by ye mother,” he told her. “And it were better the Bo’sun died by my hand than by another pirate’s on that ship. Regret is not a luxury the likes of we have time for. I be too enamoured of life’s pleasures to dwell long upon its troubles.”
He kissed her, his tongue warm and tasting of wine and she surrendered herself to what pleasure she could have of life herself.
© 1998, 1999 Truffle