Little Jane Silver

by Adira Rotstein

  Her body still ached, but she’d had Jim examine her and he said nothing seemed broken. Luckily, despite being so close to the fire, only her hair had been singed. She lay with her head in his lap now, letting him comb the burnt pieces out of her matted locks with his fingers.

  “Hush, hush,” whispered Jim, stroking her cheeks. He knew, from long association with her, that she was silently praying, although not a thing was said out loud.

  Please save Little Jane, oh dear God save, her, prayed Bonnie Mary.

  Long John remained quiet, knowing that that Little Jane wouldn’t be the only one in need of prayers now. Long John wondered if the old magistrate in New Jersey was still putting a good word in for his family with the man upstairs. For what else, thought Long John with increasing dread, follows the capture of known pirates by a king’s vessel but a hanging?

  When Little Jane woke for the second time aboard the fishing boat Medusa she smiled and snuggled into the warm blankets around her as she felt the brief burst of euphoria that sometimes accompanies that moment of waking, before we recall the problems of the day.

  All at once, the memory of what happened the day before slammed into Little Jane with the brute force of a cannonball: the spectres of the lost gunpowder, the fire, Ned Ronk’s betrayal, the Panacea, her parents, Melvin, the cutter, Ishiro, the fishermen — recalled one by one in grim procession.

  Terrified, Little Jane glanced around the tiny crew’s quarters she now found herself in. Light seeped through chinks in the rough wooden ceiling overhead. Whatever the crew was up to, they were away at any rate, leaving only herself and Ishiro.

  “Ishiro!” she yelled, trying to rouse him.

  The old cook rolled over and fixed her with one bloodshot eye. “Who wants to know?”

  She leapt out of her hammock on wobbly legs and danced upon the floor. “You’re all right!”

  “More or less,” he said, though “less” was really closer to the truth.

  “C’mon, Ish! Let’s find out where this tub is taking us!”

  Ishiro swung out from the hammock and promptly swooned backward. Luckily, Little Jane caught him before he could come to harm. Cautiously, she eased him back into his hammock. As soon as he emerged from his faint she went for the captain.

  Minutes later, Captain Hallbrook was down in the hold, shaking his head of matted grey dreadlocks at her. “I can’t say what’s wrong wit him, John.”

  John. Little Jane cringed slightly at being called by the false name she had given the fishermen. It occurred to her it wouldn’t be too hard to pass as a boy for the few days it took the Medusa to reach Smuggler’s Bay. She was too young for womanly curves and she usually dressed like a boy while onboard the Pieces anyway.

  Though she had always longed to try such a deception for fun in the past, it was prudent in this case. Many sailors considered females, even small ones like her, bad luck at sea. Little Jane had no wish to risk being thrown back out on the mercy of the leaky cutter. So John it was. She doubted her father would begrudge her the moniker. After all, she reasoned, it wasn’t his real name either.

  Like most sicknesses Captain Hallbrook had observed at sea, the cause of Ishiro’s malady was difficult to determine. “Maybe it be the shock from de water,” he said with another shake of his head. “We be taking you to the Spyglass at Smuggler’s Bay as ya asked. Lucky ting me braddah know da place.”

  “Thankee kindly,” said Little Jane with a small bow. “You have my gratitude and that of me family.”

  “Your family, ah. And who they be?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow.

  “Aye, well …” As much as she wished to unburden herself to the kindly Captain Hallbrook at the moment, she had been trained since childhood never to tell a stranger — meaning anyone not from Smuggler’s Bay or the Pieces of Eight — who her parents really were. It was not an idle precaution. Though pirates, Captains Bright and Silver were known to be rich. Little Jane did not expect Captain Hallbrook to be so unscrupulous as to attempt a ransom, but she thought it best not to invite the option.

  “The barkeep of the Spyglass is my Uncle Ishiro’s old friend,” she explained instead. “Jonesy’ll make sure yer crew’s taken care of. Sorry for making you sail all out of your way.”

  “Ah, don’t worry nah, lickle one,” said Captain Hallbrook. “Me boy Wayne’ll show ye around.”

  Wayne, as it turned out, was the fisherman captain’s eight-year-old son, a shy boy with a beatific smile and long dreads that almost reached his backside. Luckily, he didn’t mind donating an extra shirt and breeches to Little Jane.

  Though they were a little small, her new kicks were certainly an improvement on her old clothes, which had been burned, stained, soaked, and torn during the chaos of the past few days.

  Wayne, for his part, was instantly fascinated by Little Jane and glommed onto her right away. Within a day, Little Jane was recovered enough from her mild case of hypothermia to help the Hallbrook family with their fishing. Although they told her to rest, she refused. She was glad for the work and the way it tired her out, for whenever she stopped working, all she could think about was her poor family. Even a brief closing of the eyes could lead to images of the Pieces, not yet done burning in her mind.

  Little Wayne followed her around like a puppy. Although she didn’t know quite how to entertain him, she was glad for his companionship. His cheerful innocence was something she felt in desperate need of now. And so she did her best to keep him amused, teaching him all the knots she knew, as well as how to whistle Le Marseille and touch his nose with his tongue.

  A day away from Smuggler’s Bay, Captain Hallbrook approached her while she was busy filleting some sole for dinner. He fell in beside her, slicing the fish in time to her motions with practiced ease.

  “Seems me boy Wayne has really taken a shine to you, John,” he said.

  “He’s a good boy,” she said eagerly, knowing all parents like to hear nice things about their children, and besides, in Wayne’s case it was completely true.

  “You know it be his first trip away,” said Captain Hallbrook. “I never took me uddah boys out so early, but his Muddah, she be sickly in the lungs, and cahn’t have him underfoot. I been worried, he so shy and quiet. Got none but sistahs his own age left at de house. Guess all he need was a lickle female company ta feel at home.”

  “Female company?” Little Jane paused, her filet knife raised over the fish in her hand.

  Captain Hallbrook cocked an eyebrow at her. “You got your reasons, I’m sure.”

  “What — How could you tell?”

  He shrugged. “I got four daughters. A Faddah know dese things. I won’t tell no one, so don’t you worry.”

  Little Jane smiled up at the tall captain, resisting the urge to hug him. She couldn’t help being reminded of her Papa then, but all she did was salute and say, “Thank ye.”

  Down below in the hold, Ishiro was growing increasingly cranky in his convalescence. Despite his protestations to the contrary, and no matter how many times he explained he was, in fact, from a small Korean island — part of the famous chain of Ullung Islands in the Korean Peninsula, surely everyone knew of those — the fishermen still insisted on referring to him as “the Chinaman.” It was really quite infuriating.

  Aside from the irritation of being incorrectly identified as a countryman of a nation that had once thrown him in jail for piracy back when he wasn’t even a pirate yet, Ishiro was seriously worried about his health.

  He didn’t need a doctor to tell him that something was wrong with his heart. Even getting out of his hammock to go to the head caused his chest to hurt, not as bad as it had back on the Pieces of Eight during the battle, it’s true, but enough to frighten him all the same.

  And although the condition of this, his most vital of organs, did seem to be improving with each passing day, it was hard not to sink into despair, thinking about how useless he’d proved to his captains in their greatest hour of need. Just a good for nothing old man. Wistful
ly, he wondered if he’d ever wield his beloved Bi Su knives with his accustomed aplomb, again. Then he remembered that his beloved Bi Su knives were probably sitting at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea now and went from feeling wistful to just plain depressed. He wondered if his captains were down there at the bottom of the sea, too, and his heart clenched in agony again.

  No, best not to think on it, he told himself. Hold fast, mate, hold fast!

  For Long John and Bonnie Mary those first twenty-four hours in the brig crawled by on snails’ feet. Long John’s lips cracked with thirst and Bonnie Mary’s stomach began to eat itself, it was that hungry. Finally, when they thought everyone on the ship had completely forgotten about them, a sailor came down the ladder with a dipper and poured a little water into their mouths. The precious liquid dribbled down their faces, deliciously cool on their skin.

  “Captain’s a-coming,” their jailer announced. “Better make ya’selves presentable.”

  As if on cue, they heard the tramping of feet descending from above.

  Bonnie Mary and Long John rose creakily to attention.

  A group of sailors crowded down the narrow ladder. They stood before the cell, separated from the captives by the grid of slender iron bars. Standing shameless among the group was Ned Ronk.

  “Filthy coward!” spat Long John through the grill. “When I gets free, and mark me, I will — I’ll spit ye upon me sword like a Christmas ham, ya bleedin’ traitor!”

  Bonnie Mary shot Jim a sharp look, and turned to address the blurry shapes before her, polite as a fine lady at tea: “Please, gentlemen, excuse my husband’s rash words. I was wondering when we might speak to your captain?”

  Ned Ronk gave a harsh little bark of a laugh and Bonnie Mary knew, without having to see it, the insipid little smirk of a smile that played across the man’s ugly features. Her hands clenched by her sides, but she said nothing.

  “Traitor!” roared Long John.

  “Funny,” sneered Ned Ronk, “but I knows a man what has the same to say about you.”

  Before Long John could think further upon this strange remark, the captain of the Panacea, not one to waste a dramatic introduction, parted the group of men before him with the business end of a rifle. The crewmen moved aside, allowing their captain and the prisoners to gaze upon each other for the first time.

  Standing before them Bonnie Mary and Long John saw a curious stick of a man with large, fever-bright eyes. The captain’s clothes were very fine — a hat trimmed with gold braid and a peacock feather, and a coat of rich claret velvet, cut close at the waist to flatter his thin frame. Yet, strangely enough, these symbols of wealth did little to dispel the immediate impression of encountering a rather handsomely dressed scarecrow.

  A sharp gust of wind might blow him away, thought Bonnie Mary. And yet something about him was … familiar…

  “Dearest shipmates, your boatswain has already supplied me with the coordinates of your Nameless Isle,” said the captain, his voice dripping with scorn. The man spoke well, Bonnie Mary noticed, but his posh accent seemed affected, as if trying to hide something a little different than garden variety British naval English. In the dim light of the brig his eyes shone like two luminous black pools of immeasurable depth. Despite the signs of illness and encroaching age, the enormity of those eyes gave him a bizarre , child-like quality.

  Shipmates, he says. Now why ever would he call us that?

  “When we arrive there, you will show me the location of your secret trove, and all the gold that’s mine by rights you shall bequeath to me at last,” he rasped.

  “Oh, and then what?” asked Long John. “Do tell. We simply can’t take the suspense.”

  “Then, after most considerately showing me your gold, you, dear friends, will be taken post haste to England in chains. Then it’s on to the docket at Old Bailey and from thence most likely to be hung in Tyburn Square for the lowborn rogues that you are. Does that satisfy?”

  “Why in the world should we assist you if you plan to kill us then?” asked Bonnie Mary.

  “Because if you don’t comply, me good villains, you’ll be dangled from the yardarm at sunup tomorrow. Take your pick.”

  “That’s not a choice!”

  “Never said it was.”

  “I’ll do as ye say, Captain,” said Bonnie Mary, head bowed. If we can get to the Nameless Isle and off this tub, at least we might have a chance to put up a bit of a fight, maybe even escape, she thought

  Next, the captain turned to Long John. “And you, eh, shipmate?”

  “Shipmate!” sputtered Long John. “I wouldn’t bunk with the likes a you if ye was the last man before the mast. You—”

  Suddenly, Long John stopped in the middle of his tirade to stare, open-mouthed at the captain of the Panacea.

  The gaunt captain stared back, a slow smile curving his thin lips. The grin briefly illuminated the man’s sallow features, exposing the glint of two silver front teeth.

  Shipmate …?

  Long John gasped — the silver front teeth, the affected posh accent, the strange, low ship, the word shipmate!

  “Fetz!”

  The captain’s huge eyes twinkled with a ghost of amusement on the other side of the bars. “Captain Fetzcaro Madsea, at your service, Madam,” said the captain to Bonnie Mary and bent his lanky frame in a deep mocking bow.

  “Alive!” she whispered in astonishment. “Fetz, you’re alive!”

  “Good God, Fetz!” broke in Long John. “Are you all right?”

  From the black look that instantly crossed Fetz’s features, Long John instantly knew that he had just said The Wrong Thing at The Wrong Time.

  Captain Madsea let out a faint whistling sound like a faraway kettle and his face began to change colour as he felt the fury of many years’ wrongdoings stacking themselves, brick by brick, into a mighty wall of righteous indignation in his mind.

  “All right? You ask me if I’m all right! ” he seethed. “Leave it to you, Jim, to find the most asinine comment for every occasion! I spent years rotting in a French colonial prison in the middle of flamminging nowhere, with dripping ceilings and mouldy hay to sleep on, watching my cellmate literally cough up a lung while waiting to be executed, then escaping only to end up hiding in the godforsaken jungle, living off berries and bush-meat like some common criminal, finally picking my way through malarial swamps to the one English outpost on the whole blasted continent only to endure the most torturous deprivations in a six-month-long voyage back to England that was only supposed to take three weeks, complete with a botched mutiny, only to return home to be mocked by the admiralty and practically have to beg for a commission, by which time I was already half dead of consumption and tropical fevers and you want to know if I’m all right! Oh, I’m just peachy, thanks ever so much! ” He laughed hysterically.

  Long John remained silent, afraid to say the wrong thing yet again.

  Fetz paced before them, staring at the floor as if he hated the very boards that would tolerate Bonnie Mary Bright and Long John Silver to stand upon them unmolested.

  “We didn’t know,” protested Bonnie Mary. “We thought you’d been drowned or shot by the French!”

  “You should have at least tried to find out!” Captain Madsea glared accusingly at them.

  “You weren’t there! You don’t know the circumstances of what happened,” retorted Long John. “Mary and them others was hurt! I had to take ’em back! You know I would’ve come for you if there were a choice!”

  “There’s always a choice!” raged Fetz. He grabbed the bolt to the barred door and shoved. His men followed as their captain stepped inside, staring over the barrels of their cocked pistols, ready to fire at the least provocation. Ignoring Long John, Madsea approached Bonnie Mary by the dim light of the overhead grate.

  “Don’t touch her!” barked Long John and was rewarded with a rifle butt in the belly for his trouble. He stumbled backward, but maintained his footing.

  Anticipating a blow, Bonnie Mary tens
ed as Madsea came toward her; but he merely ran a finger down the old scar that cleaved the right side of her face from forehead to chin. Somehow that was worse. Bonnie Mary felt the hairs stand up one by one down the length of her spine, as Madsea peered into the cloudy orb of her damaged right eye.

  The eye gazed back at Captain Fetzcaro Madsea, pale blue and calm as the sea at sunrise, its lively hazel companion flashing him a disturbing look of bloodthirsty murder all the while. He shuddered and looked away. “You know I once thought you well-favoured, Mary,” he whispered. “Bonny like your name. What a terrible waste.”

  “I survived,” Bonnie Mary shrugged simply. “Many ain’t been so lucky.”

  Madsea turned to Long John with a shake of his head. “I knew you was common low, Jim Silver, but to throw your woman in harm’s way just to save yer own skin? Takes a special breed of gutless for that.”

  “And what do you know of it?” cried Bonnie Mary. “It weren’t that way! Tell him, Jim!”

  But Long John just looked at the floor. How could he defend the indefensible? Probably the biggest lie he ever told people was the one about not having any regrets. For even in the mind of a pirate, guilt has a rather nasty way of not respecting its proper expiration date. Somehow, he’d always find himself thinking back, imagining himself preventing it, taking the sword stroke for her. It galled him rotten still. And no matter which way he spun it, it shamed him that he hadn’t been there to protect her that day. What did everything else count for if he failed to protect the ones he loved? Jack-all, that’s what.

  “At any rate, he don’t got to justify to you,” Bonnie Mary finally responded, impatient with Long John’s uncharacteristic loss for words. “I’m me own woman, not his. Such things happen at sea, in battle. It was me own choice. I chose this path, Fetz, and I’d be a hypocrite to turn around and say it were some other bloke’s fault just ’cause it ain’t always been a bed of roses. I’m sad for what happened to ye, I truly am, but it ain’t like you didn’t know the risks of what you was gettin’ into.”