The Pirates of Fainting Goat Island

by Teresa McCullough

  “Vlid,” Daton said. “You must be the one who reappeared recently. I’ve heard rumors but would appreciate the story.”

  “Gladly, sir.” Vlid told him what happened, only giving oblique references to Milea’s situation. He gave full credit to Jerot and ended with a description of carrying Jerot in a wheelbarrow. Daton asked both Vlid and me a few questions. His questions to me were mainly to see if I confirmed Vlid’s report, which seemed odd.

  “Father told me about having someone try to join the pirates to discover where to find them,” Cranket said after Daton was finished questioning us. “I just didn’t realize he had my brother do it.”

  “Your brother?”

  “Berot, Jerot. My half-brother. Father didn’t talk about him much, didn’t impose him on my mother. I don’t know why. My parents weren’t married until years after my brother was born.”

  “I’m sorry about what happened to your brother, but many councilors lost ships and even family to pirates,” Daton said. That hardly excused they’re beating up Jerot, but there was no point to saying that.

  “Are they going after the pirates?” I asked. I wanted the pirating to stop.

  “It sounds like the pirates have a natural fortress, and it’s weeks away,” Daton said.

  There would be no assault on Fainting Goat Island.

  “I’m not here to talk about fighting pirates,” Cranket said. “I just want to be certain my brother isn’t arrested if he walks the streets of Lagudia. Nor any of those who saved him.”

  “I don’t think they plan to do so,” said Daton. “The only evidence against your brother was his statement, and he also said he was doing it on Council orders.” In other words, the reason to believe Jerot was a pirate was to believe part of what he said, but not all of it.

  “Could you make certain he and his rescuers he won’t be arrested?” Cranket asked.

  “Of course, although you could wait a few months and I wouldn’t need to be the one who did it,” Daton said, emphasizing the word “I.” Cranket appeared to understand what Daton was talking about, but I didn’t. We left.

  When Cranket walked me home that evening, he asked if he could come to breakfast the following morning. When he came, we were squeezed on benches around the table as before. Cranket pulled a piece paper out of his coat pocket and said, “I wasn’t certain how you wanted to divide it, but I’ve arranged to pay a finder’s fee to each of you for returning the Eagle to me.”

  “I’ll take my one-seventh,” Amapola said. After a brief pause, she said, “Thank you.”

  “One-eighth,” Jerot corrected.

  Amapola looked uncertainly around the table. Her eyes came to rest on Little Vlid. “Surely you don’t mean for him to have a share?”

  “There are two ways to do this,” Jerot said. “We can do it by person or by how much each of us contributed. If you think your contribution is more than one-eighth, we will calculate it accordingly. I think Milea’s nightgown was more valuable than your sewing.” Cranket appeared curious at this reference but didn’t ask. Vlid’s description didn’t include that detail.

  “One-eighth,” she said, looking at her lap.

  Jerot turned to Cranket saying, “You can save yourself one-eighth. I can’t take your money. I don’t want to profit at your expense for my time with the pirates.” My first thought was that Jerot should take the money, since he didn’t know if he would ever get a ship again. Then I realized he had a point.

  Roddy said to Cranket, “Lad, I’d love to be able to refuse your money, because I shouldn’t be paid for doing what’s right. But I have responsibilities that don’t allow the luxury of pride. I’ll take my one-eighth and Lina will take hers too.” Lina looked a question at Roddy, who turned to her, saying, “We can’t let pride get in the way of the well-being of our child.”

  Amapola looked at Lina and said, “You’re going to have a baby? But you only just got married.” This was the woman who ran away with Merko?

  “You are lucky you’re not caring for Merko’s bastard,” Jerot said.

  “It wasn’t luck,” Milea said. “When she got to the island, I fed her herbs that prevent pregnancy.” Milea lived in one of the cottages then, but the cottage women helped serve meals. She probably made sure she served Amapola.

  “Without telling me?” Amapola looked around and saw that no one supported her. “I loved him. I thought he loved me.”

  Did Amapola only think love was enough in her case, not in anyone else’s? If Merko weren’t willing to marry her, would he support their child? I doubted it.

  I refused my share also. Although I once thought the Eagle belonged to us, I now realized she didn’t. She helped us escape from the pirates, and that was enough.

  Jerot turned to me and said, “Are you sure? You certainly earned your share.”

  “I’m sure. I have my pirate gold, my cooking, and my enhancing,” I said. I also had my inheritance, which wasn’t generous, but was enough of a cushion to help me if things were to go wrong.

  Vlid spoke up, “I’m sorry to say, I’m in Roddy’s position. I make good money, but if something happens to me, I want my sister and her children to be provided for. It’s ironic that the two who contributed most to the escape are the two who aren’t taking any money.”

  I understood his and Roddy’s point of view, but I had no one depending on me. Earlier I told Merko I wanted to be put in a major port and would accept doing so with nothing more than the clothes on my back. Milea didn’t even feel the need for clothes. I escaped, unharmed, and that was reward enough. I was richer than when I left and didn’t need more. I could earn my living. I also had an irrational distaste for profiting from pirates.

  “Instead of paying ten percent, you’re getting away with seven and a half,” Roddy said.

  “I wasn’t going to pay you ten percent,” Cranket said. I thought he was going to disappoint me and say he was paying five or three or some other lower figure. He continued saying, “I was going to pay you twenty percent. I wouldn’t have the Eagle at all if it weren’t for you.”

  “Don’t be so generous, Cranket,” his brother said. “You should save your money. You don’t want to spend your inheritance.”

  Cranket looked at his brother and said, “You never really knew our father. He lived frugally except for that ship he bought when he retired and turned over the running of the business to me. But he was a rich man. I can afford this.”

  Cranket was running his father’s business interests? He was hardly an adult.

  Jerot shook his head.

  “Why do you think Daton is willing to arrange amnesty?” Cranket asked.

  “I wondered that,” Jerot said.

  “He owns the bank where I keep my money. He knows how much I’m worth. But more importantly, he knows in five months I will satisfy the twenty-twenty-twenty conditions.”

  Vlid and Jerot both looked startled by that.

  “What’s that?” I asked, since no one was explaining.

  “Lagudia is ruled by the Council,” Vlid said. “Requirements for being on the Council are very simple. You must have attended twenty meetings in the past year. The meetings are every week, which means it isn’t hard. You must be at least twenty years old.” He turned to Cranket. “I assume you will be twenty in five months?” Cranket nodded. “And you must be one of the twenty richest men in Lagudia who apply for a seat on the Council.”

  Cranket? Rich? He dressed no better than the others who came to the tavern where I worked. He didn’t act rich but spoke earlier of not being able to buy friendship. I wondered if his unostentatious lifestyle might be an attempt to see if he could make friends without buying them.

  Cranket suggested we take care of the money immediately. Jerot claimed he couldn’t make the trip to the bank, but entrusted Vlid to open an account for his pirate gold, saying that he didn’t want to keep money in the house as a temptation for robbers. Vlid brought back papers for him to sign and told Jerot he would drop them off at the bank o
n his way to work.

  “I believe the lad’s as rich as he says he is,” Roddy told me when they all returned, including Cranket. “We were whisked in and out as fast as a wave on a beach.”

  “My cousin was at the bank,” Vlid said. “He was annoyed when we were taken in front of him.” Vlid was pleased with his cousin’s annoyance, which made me wonder about how they got along at work.

  That evening Cranket didn’t come to the tavern for dinner although The Kettle of Fish had three guests who looked like rich men, being well dressed with discrete jewelry. One of them was hugely fat, with a belly that on a woman would suggest twins. A second merely looked well fed. The third was skinny. I called them Belly, Fat, and Thin in my mind. They brought two bottles of wine with them and ordered dinner, which was fish stew with bread. The only unusual thing they asked for were mugs for their wine, offering to pay the price of an ale for the use of the mugs. Cranket once said that I treated everyone the same, but I didn’t need my boss’ whispered order to be more attentive to these rich customers’ wants.

  They asked me questions, which almost seemed like an interrogation. Did I like working here? Where was I from? Did I expect to work here a long time? Yes, Ship Town, and I’m not sure, since I was filling in for my boss’ wife who recently had a baby.

  The following morning Cranket came for breakfast with apologies. “Berot must appear to receive amnesty. Heleen, Daton wants you to come too. I’m sorry, but I thought I could take care of it without you.” Cranket was uncomfortable with what he was saying to us. I wondered if this was a prelude to us all being arrested.

  “I’ll come,” Jerot said. “But there’s something I need to do first.” Jerot found some paper Vlid used to take notes with and started writing. “I’m making a will in favor of Vlid,” he said. “He’s male and my cousin. He’s of age. There should be no problem with it.”

  Jerot addressed Vlid, “If I die, want you to divide it evenly with everyone who came on the Eagle. Seven ways. I want everyone taken care of.”

  “Why not just leave it to us?” Amapola asked.

  “You are a woman, and you were the mistress of a pirate. Someone would be assigned to dole it out to you. He might decide you didn’t deserve it, and you would have no recourse. You would be lucky if you received half the money.”

  “Of course, I’ll follow your wishes,” Vlid said, ignoring the interchange between Amapola and Jerot. “My word on it.” They both reached across the table and shook hands.

  “How long before we need to be there?” Jerot asked.

  “We have to leave in an hour,” Cranket said.

  Jerot signed his short will. Roddy, Cranket, and Lina witnessed it.

  We tried to look respectable. The dress Amapola made me was faded from daily washing, but still better looking than anything else I owned. Jerot shaved and trimmed his beard into a goatee. Roddy shaved his usual stubble. Amapola announced she had to go to work since wouldn’t be needed. Vlid looked as neat as he always did when going to work. Milea stayed home with her son. None of us wanted her to be questioned by the Lagudia Council.

  Jerot spent his time during the walk to the Lagudia Council building trying to persuade us to let him go alone. Cranket said I had to be there, but wouldn’t explain why. It didn’t take Jerot’s will for me to realize he expected to die. Cranket kept trying to reassure him, but Jerot ignored him.

  We weren’t first on the agenda, and the waiting was difficult. I wanted to run away. There were large windows letting in the light, and without candles my enhancing wasn’t good protection. I recognized the three rich men who visited the Kettle of Fish the evening before. They were Councilors. Cranket must have told them about me.

  Jerot stood in the witness circle and was asked to give his story. He told of his father’s request and described how he was recruited. “My father suspected Merko but didn’t have enough even to question him,” Jerot explained. “When I was fourteen, there was a sailor who was a pirate before, although he concealed it from the ship’s captain. The sailor taught me a song that pirates sometimes sing.” I remembered the song. “I used that information and sang it at a tavern where Merko was eating. I pretended to be drunk and enough information was dropped that I looked like a good recruit. I also staged a fight with someone we hired for that purpose. I thought I would be a lowly sailor and never be noticed until I went ashore in some big city, but after I found out about Fainting Goat Island, I wasn’t able to jump ship except at isolated locations, where it might take me years to reach Lagudia.” Like Ship Town, I thought. It wasn’t on an island but had the mountains between us and the mainland and infrequent ship traffic.

  “I crewed on a captured ship and we were caught in a storm,” Jerot said. “I took over because no one else knew what to do. Merko was on the other ship but was told about me. Before I knew it, I was second in command.”

  They questioned him for a long time. He explained how Merko was voted leader and that his only real rival was Kalten. Jerot even ran against Merko once at his request, splitting the votes against Merko. He told of Merko killing my parents to recruit me. It was hard for me to hear this in public. Since I thought about it many times a day, it surprised me that it bothered so much. I felt guilty they were killed to recruit me, although part of me realized there was nothing I could have done to prevent that.

  They asked about Jerot’s past before Merko. He told them about the captain who taught him how to use a sextant, and the captain who saw that his crew learned how to fight. He named captains and I could see that many were known to some of the Councilors. Jerot was the captain of one of his father’s ships for about a year before he became a pirate.

  The questions were courteous, but suddenly a Councilor named Epan, who was younger than the rest, and hadn’t spoken before asked, “Did you kill anyone?”

  Lie, I thought.

  My father taught me that I should tell the truth, but if I lied, not to waste it on a lie that could be contradicted. I wished I could send Jerot the thought that he should lie.

  “Yes,” Jerot said.

  There were murmurs throughout the room.

  “An innocent person?”

  “Three innocent people. Well, they were trying to kill me, but I have no reason to think they weren’t innocent. They resisted Merko and tried to bring the battle to the pirate ship. I defended it.”

  “So, you say,” said Epan, who asked the question with contempt in his voice. The contempt was not as impressive as he probably wanted it to be, because his voice slurred. He turned to look at his fellow Councilors, looking for support. They weren’t with him. Instead of leaning forward, eagerly watching the questioning, they were relaxing in their comfortable chairs. One was taking sporadic notes, and another looked mildly irritated. If he thought Jerot was lying, it would be anger, not irritation I would see. It seemed odd, especially the unanimity of their attitudes. “I’m not sorry I ordered your beating, since you are clearly a murdering pirate, in spite of your claim you stayed on the pirate ship. How did you arrange that?”

  The other Councilors were interested in that question. Daton exchanged a glance with the man I called Belly and they both seemed pleased.

  “I told Merko I was a better sailor than swordsman. I was deliberately incompetent when we practiced fighting.”

  “And he didn’t change your job when he saw how many you killed?” Epan didn’t believe Jerot, but the others appeared to.

  “I lied to him. I told him another pirate killed two of them, and I only killed the third when he was skewering the pirate I credited with the killings. I was the only witness. Kalten wasn’t there at the time, so I got away with the lie.”

  “Who’s this Kalten you keep mentioning?” he asked.

  “The worst of the pirates. He enjoys killing. He also has truth-telling magic. By sheer luck I told Merko in front of Kalten that I didn’t want to go ashore in Lagudia because I might be recognized. They assumed I meant I might be recognized as a criminal, not as a ship�
��s captain.”

  “You mean they used Kalten to recruit?” the Councilor asked. “Did he ask people if they really wanted to be pirates?”

  “Nothing so direct. Kalten mainly kept order. The pirates left their gold in their rooms and everyone was asked if they ever stole from another pirate.”

  Truth-telling magic! Maybe someone in the audience was signaling the Councilors. More likely, one of the Councilors had it. Daton? It would be an asset in banking. He could learn if the people who borrowed money intended to repay it. A rich man could become richer if he knew when people were lying.

  It would also explain why he asked me to confirm what Vlid told him. He knew Vlid was telling the truth but didn’t know if Vlid was deceived. My support of Vlid’s statements meant that if Vlid was fooled, so was I. But Jerot was the only one who really knew.

  The secret of using truth-telling magic in the Council must be closely guarded, since one Councilor didn’t know. He looked drunk. Coming to the morning Council meeting drunk was probably enough to make the others not trust him with their secret. Witnesses would give themselves away more if they didn’t know a truth-teller was verifying their veracity.

  Epan was clearly curious about the gold. A few questions established that most of it stayed on the island when the pirates left. He also asked Jerot about the location of Fainting Goat Island, which Jerot was happy to repeat.

  Epan took another drink from his tankard and changed the direction of his questions to Jerot. “Have you ever killed anyone else?” His voice slurred more noticeably than before.

  “Yes. I was second mate on the Duke’s Pride when the Rocky Coast Pirates attacked. I killed two of them and wounded three more.”

  “Bragging,” said the clueless Councilor. He drank a bit more.

  “Understating,” said another Councilor. “My nephew was a passenger on that ship and Berot rallied the men when the first mate was killed and the captain wounded. My nephew wanted to reward him, but Berot said to give the money to the next-of-kin to the sailors who died.” I wasn’t surprised to hear about Jerot’s integrity.