Malcolm gaped at her. Blackbeard? He replayed what she’d said earlier, calling him Mister Thache. Malcolm knew that Edward Thache—also known as Edward Teach—was the name of the infamous pirate, Blackbeard. He shook his head in wonder, understanding now as a door opened in his brain, allowing his host’s memories to flood over him. He’d somehow been holding those memories at bay until now.
Malcolm was in Bath Town in Bath County, North Carolina. It was either the evening of November 20th or the morning of the 21st, 1718—Malcolm wasn’t sure. The naked woman’s name was Mary Ormond, and they had married several months earlier in a ceremony presided over by the Governor of North Carolina, Charles Eden. Malcolm frowned, for what little he’d read about Mary Ormond—the gentile daughter of plantation owner William Ormond—did not quite agree with the brazen young woman he was talking to at the moment.
“Are you all right, dear Edward?” Mary asked, sounding concerned now. “You look as if a ghost just sat down in your lap and tugged on that glorious beard of yours.”
“Yes, I’m fine,” Malcolm said.
He knew well the story of Edward Thache—as much as anyone did, anyway—and he realized by the date that he didn’t have much time left. What Malcolm needed most of all right now, he decided, was somewhere that he could be alone to plan what to do next. He needed to find Claire, of course, that was obvious, but he also had to follow the events of history at the same time. Claire might be trying to disrupt the future, but he wasn’t, which gave her a huge advantage over him. But first things first, he needed to get away from Mary.
Malcolm looked at the young girl. “I’ll be returning to the Adventure now, my love.” Malcolm was referring to Thache’s ship—an 80-ton sloop with eight cannons. He tried not to think about Mary’s breasts, which he could see outlined beneath the blanket as she moved. He also tried not to dwell on the fact that he knew she was just sixteen years of age. It clearly hadn’t mattered much to Edward Thache, but Mary’s age certainly mattered to him.
“But why leave now?” Mary asked, her lower lip stuck out in a pout. “It’s an ungodly hour to be moving about, Edward.”
Malcolm leaned forward and kissed her forehead, simply because he knew that was what was expected of him. Thache and Mary had only been married for several months, but Malcolm knew the pirate truly loved her, and by the look in her eyes, she loved him just as much. “There’s no help for it, my love,” he said. “Thomas will be wondering what’s keeping me.” Thomas Miller was the quartermaster of the Adventure, who the pirate had left in charge. Malcolm knew Miller had no expectations of seeing Thache that night, but Mary didn’t know that. “Go back to sleep. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He winked, letting out some of Thache’s character. “If ye marry a seaman, lass, then ye marry the sea along with him.”
Mary frowned, pulling back the blanket, giving Malcolm another glimpse of her rounded breasts, along with a hint of flat belly and more. “Are you quite certain I can’t persuade you to stay until the morrow, dear sir? The sea has only limited possibilities, but mine, I think you’ll find, are endless.”
Malcolm averted his eyes. “Perhaps another time, lass.” He saw a plumed hat sitting on an oak coffer and snatched it up and perched the thing on his head. As an afterthought, he took the heavy sword down from where it hung and draped the sash awkwardly over himself. He felt ridiculous, like a child going out dressed as a pirate on Halloween. Malcolm bowed awkwardly to Mary, then crossed the room and opened the door before stepping outside. He found himself in a cramped hallway and followed the thread-bare rug to a set of stairs leading down. Each step creaked alarmingly beneath Malcolm’s heavy boots, and he paused when he reached the bottom. He was in a kitchen, he saw.
An older black woman lay sleeping before an arched, scorched-stone fireplace that took up one entire wall. The flames had burned themselves out long ago, with only glowing coals left, but the room was still warm. The black woman would be Margaret, the house slave Malcolm knew. A long wooden table sat in the center of the kitchen, with cups and bowls sitting on it, along with a half-finished needlepoint stitching in a round frame. Malcolm barely glanced at the table as he carefully made his way across the stone floor. He let himself out the first door that he saw, breathing a sigh of relief when he was outside with the door closed behind him.
Malcolm drew the cool November air into his lungs as he surveyed the tiny town of Bath, which consisted of perhaps twenty houses. He began making his way along a beaten path, going no more than ten yards before a shadowy form appeared in front of him. Malcolm jumped and clutched clumsily at his sword.
“Now, is that any way to greet a mate?”
Malcolm relaxed, recognizing the dark face of the man grinning back at him. His name was Caesar, a former slave owned by Tobias Knight, who Thache had freed almost two years ago so he could join Blackbeard in his pirating ways. “I thought you were a thief come to slit my throat,” Malcolm grunted, glad the darkness hid the shake of his limbs.
Caesar laughed. “Were that true, Captain, your purse would be much lighter and your blood spilled by now.” He glanced past Malcolm’s shoulder. “Is the love bird leavin’ the nest on purpose, or has the wee fellow been pushed?” Malcolm hesitated, not sure how to respond just as Caesar chuckled and slapped his arm. “I swear, Captain, you’re acting awful queer this evening. Are ye feeling all right?”
“Never better,” Malcolm said. “Miss Mary is unwell, so I thought it prudent to leave her in the capable hands of Margaret and return to the ship.”
“Ah,” Caesar said, nodding as he fell into step beside Malcolm, the smaller man trying to keep up to Thache’s long strides. He glanced sideways at the tall pirate. “Have ye been to visit Master Hands yet, Captain? I’ve just come, me and some of the other lads. He’s in fine spirits now that he’s got a decent amount of rum in him.”
Malcolm grunted as he shook his head. Israel Hands was Thache’s second in command, and Thache had shot him by accident, having been aiming for another of his crewmen who had invoked his fury. Hands was recuperating somewhere in the town, though Malcolm knew he’d never walk properly again. “I doubt Mister Hands would be in favor of seeing me at the moment, Caesar,” Malcolm said. “Regardless of how much rum the man’s had.” He allowed a small grin, starting to feel a little more comfortable in Thache’s skin. “I expect he believes I shot him on purpose. Though I assure you if I had, the silly codger would be cozying up to Davy Jones right about now.”
Malcolm waited, holding his breath. Had he used the pirate lingo correctly? Malcolm had read Treasure Island as a boy, and though many people believed he had a photographic memory, that wasn’t entirely true. He considered his skill to be more selective than anything, with the ability to remember things existing on a sliding scale of interest. Treasure Island had not been at the top of his interest list, though he remembered vaguely that he had enjoyed it. In fact, now that he thought about it, Israel Hands was the name of one of Robert Louis Stevenson’s fictitious pirates that had so plagued poor Jim Hawkins.
“Aye, Captain,” Caesar responded, his face serious. “That be the truth of things.” Malcolm slowly relaxed as the two men walked along what passed for the main street in Bath, with the bigger man studying each house with careful attentiveness. “Might I ask, Captain, what it is we’re looking for?” Caesar finally asked. “The Adventure is that way, but your eyes be fixed this way. If it’s a lady friend or some rum you’re after, I expect you can find both down at the inn with the rest of our mates.”
Malcolm paused, automatically lowering his left hand to balance it on the brass handle of his cutlass as he faced the former slave. “Tell me, Caesar. Have you noticed any strange women around lately?”
Caesar smiled, his white teeth gleaming in the moonlight. “All women are strange, Captain. It be just a measure of by how much.”
Malcolm chuckled, finding himself liking the former slave. “That’s not what I mean.”
“No?” Caesar said. “Then,
what exactly do you mean, Captain?”
Malcolm hesitated, not sure what he could say. Then he thought of the Blackwood crest. He knelt in the dusty street lit by moonlight, scratching out the coat of arms with his finger. “Have you seen anything that looks like this?”
Caesar bent over, removing his hat to scratch at his bald scalp. Finally, the former slave shook his head. “Can’t say as I have, Captain. Whose colors are those? I’ve never seen the like of them before.”
Malcolm stood and sighed, letting his eyes roam over the silent buildings. If Claire really was close by, then it shouldn’t be that hard to find her. But the truth was, he had no idea how effective the markers in her serum would prove to be. Just because they’d been so close together as Neanderthals did not necessarily mean that was going to be the norm with every past life. Claire could be anywhere, perhaps miles away, or years for that matter. He really had no idea. Malcolm paused in indecision, mulling over his next move, then he cursed himself for a fool. He’d just assumed Claire would be a woman in 1718, but the reality was that she could be anyone—man, woman, or even a child. He turned back to the former slave.
“Caesar, have you noticed anyone acting strange lately, out of the ordinary? One of the crew maybe, or someone in the town?”
“Nobody but you, Captain,” Caesar said with a straight face. The pirate jammed his hat back on his head and shrugged. “Dawn be coming soon, Captain. Perhaps we should be getting back to Adventure? I’m missing the feel of a good deck beneath my feet.”
Malcolm’s eyelids fluttered as he went over in his mind the events that would soon lead to the death of Edward Thache, the notorious pirate known as Blackbeard. He needed to follow Thache’s timeline as closely as possible and getting on board Adventure now seemed to fit that timeline. He could only hope that Claire would show herself soon—in whatever manifestation she was in—before the pirate’s gruesome ending at the hands of Lieutenant Robert Maynard of the Royal Navy. His biggest concern and fear was that Claire might be aware of the significance of this moment in time and might be planning to save Blackbeard, potentially changing both the West Indies and British colonies' entire history. Malcolm couldn’t let that happen, even though he knew it meant accepting a hideous death just over a day from now.
He gestured to Caesar. “Come on, mate. We’ve got a date with history, and I don’t want to be late.”
Caesar chuckled as the two men turned and headed back the way that they’d come. “A date with history,” the former slave said, grinning widely. “I like that, Captain. As the Good Lord is my witness, I truly do like the idea.”
CHAPTER FIVE
CLAIRE: Bath Town, North Carolina, 1718
Claire knew now that she’d made a mistake—one that she should have anticipated and compensated for when creating JPL-7. How many past lives had she lived now? Ten? Eleven? It was hard to keep track anymore. Several had been in the bodies of old people, and she hadn’t had a long stay with them, but most had been young and healthy, giving her many years of life. She’d even been a seven-year-old girl in Ireland in the late nineteenth century and had lived well into her sixties. But although all those lives were slowly starting to blend together in her memory now, the one thing that they had in common was their gender. Every single past life that she’d lived so far had been in the body of a female—which was something that she hadn’t even considered back in her laboratory. She’d just assumed that gender wouldn’t be part of the equation, but she had been horribly wrong.
Claire had always considered herself a feminist. Not the militant, in-your-face kind, but more the proud and confident, women-can-do-anything-men-can-do kind. She’d proven that repeatedly over her career. But the grim reality was that the struggle for women’s equality only began to gather steam near the middle of the twentieth century. Before that, by and large, women were viewed as mostly weak and emotional by their male counterparts, and, as such, best left out of the decision-making. Barefoot and pregnant was a common expression that even she remembered from her youth—popularized by the author Arthur E. Hertzler, who wrote in the early nineteen hundreds that, when the wife is kept barefooted and pregnant, there are no divorces.
Hell, women in the United States didn’t fully get the right to vote until 1920—only a measly one hundred years before Claire would take the serum at her desk. She snorted, kneading the sticky dough before her aggressively. A hundred years! That was a drop in the bucket compared to what she’d seen since taking JPL-7. But despite always being comfortable in her own skin and proud to be a woman, Claire was also a realist. She wasn’t living in the twenty-first century anymore, and the indisputable truth was that the past belonged almost entirely to men.
Claire thought of Gerald, knowing that she needed him more than ever now. Not only for his knowledge of history and his love and support, but also because if his serum worked as hers did, then each of his past lives would likely be lived as a male—which was important if they hoped to change things in the male-dominated past. Claire knew her husband was probably somewhere close by, having been freed from the fur-clad and stinking body of that hideous Neanderthal. Claire’s host had been clubbed down moments later, killing her as well and allowing her to jump and follow after Gerald. Claire wasn’t sure what would have happened if her host hadn’t been killed. Would she have jumped anyway? She just didn’t know.
Claire had arrived in her current timeline in the middle of the night, taking over her new host’s body as she slept. She had been so excited after seeing Gerald in the forest that she’d stayed awake for hours working on her latest coat of arms before finally she’d grown weary and had fallen asleep. She’d finished the Blackwood crest upon waking, and now all she had to do was find a way to look for Gerald without having the locals come after her, thinking that she was trying to escape. Claire didn’t want to put her current host or herself through something like that if she could avoid it. Just because she was living in another body in the distant past didn’t mean she couldn’t feel the same pain that the host did.
“Don’t forget to put out the washing,” a woman’s voice floated down from the stairs behind her. “You hear me down there?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Claire said dutifully over her shoulder before turning back to her work. She wore a simple skirt with stitched pockets on the sides and a blouse with thick buttons down the front. Worn leather shoes covered her feet and a bright red cloth was wrapped tightly around her head, tucked in at the back. Her hands were large and strong, the fine black skin covered with white flour and bits of dough.
Claire heard the stairs creak and she turned as her Mistress came down the steps. “Did you see Mister Thache leave this morning, Margaret?” she asked.
“Why, no, Miss Mary,” Claire said, continuing to knead the dough. “I thought that he was still upstairs with you.”
“Sadly not,” Mary Ormond said with a frown. “He left long before dawn.” She came to stand by the bigger woman, taking a chunk of the dough and flattening it with a rolling pin aggressively. “I had hoped he would join me for midday meal, but it seems that as usual, the Adventure requires more of his attention than I do.”
Claire looked sideways at the young girl, knowing by Margaret’s memories that she was smitten with the former buccaneer. Then she snorted to herself. Even though Edward Thache had been pardoned by the governor, Charles Eden, he was still up to his old swashbuckling ways. The pirate and Eden had made a secret deal to share in whatever plunder Thache took in exchange for the governor looking the other way about Blackbeard’s activities. Poor Mary didn’t know anything about it, believing his frequent absences were due to a contract to patrol the coastline, protecting the port and town from possible pirate attacks. All the slaves in Bath Town were well aware of Blackbeard’s renewed maritime activities, though many of the white folk seemed oblivious to it. Edward Thache was considered more of a curiosity to them, like a lion with its teeth and claws pulled out. However, Margaret knew better.
“That is tr
uly a shame, Miss Mary,” Claire said. “I was hoping to get Master Thache to try my Sweet Potato Pie.”
Mary giggled. “Don’t be silly, Margaret. A gentleman of importance like my husband must not be seen eating slave food. What a ridiculous notion. Sometimes I wonder where your head is at.”
Claire clamped her mouth shut, letting Margaret’s body work automatically, trying not to think of the many injustices this current timeline in history contained. She’d dealt with similar attitudes already in some of her other past lives and knew she had been reasonably lucky with where she’d landed this time, all things considered. Mary Ormond was without question a product of her times, but for all that, she didn’t have a mean bone in her body and clearly adored Margaret. Many of the slaves Margaret knew were not so fortunate, as their masters and mistresses were unduly cruel and harsh for no other reason than they seemed to enjoy tormenting helpless people.
“Oh, look,” Mary said, gesturing to the framed needlepoint. “You’ve finished it.”
Margaret glanced to the hutch, where the needlepoint she’d been working on lay alongside some dishes.
“But what in the world is it, Margaret?” Mary asked in wonder as she wiped her hands, then lifted the stitching to stare at it. “This isn’t what you were working on the other day, is it?”
“No, ma’am,” Claire said. “I started over.”
Mary tilted her head as she studied the picture. “Is this some kind of heathen shield from Africa, Margaret?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Claire said as she worked. It was easier to tell the lie than explain why a colored woman in 1718 was stitching a Scottish clan coat of arms from the fourteenth century. Claire intended to carry it wherever she went, hoping Gerald would see it.
Past Lives (The Past Lives Chronicles Book 1) Page 5