Paid to the Pirate by Una Rohr

Chapter 33

Charlotte, the past, aged 16

One day, I’ll be a lady.

I tugged at my unruly mop of hair as I made the vow for the thousandth time. With fine silver combs. I smacked at the dirt upon my breeches. And gowns of pink.

Or gowns of any color, at least.

I owned but one dress, and while it hung to dry I made do with the hand-me-down shirt and breeches of a boy I never knew, two sizes too big. I tightened the belt at my waist. Had I some curves or muscle or any meat on my body at all, the tattered clothing would at least fit better. But to build meat on my bones, I needed to eat more often than I did.

Leaning down in the town square to retrieve my basket of eggs, I flinched as something flew by my head, narrowly missing.

“Charlotte’s a boy, Charlotte’s a boy!” came the chant from my right. I turned to see the three girls I least wanted to see. Despite our ages -- ranging from fifteen to sixteen -- they acted like children, often forcing me to respond in kind. I hated them all as much as they hated me. More. Because I had reason and they’d despised me all my life when I’d given them none.

“Have you been sleeping with the cows again?” Rebecca mocked, knowing full well we couldn’t afford our own cows… though I had been known to nap in George’s barn some afternoons.

Behavior I planned to cease. As soon as I was a lady, of course.

Father and I lived on the outskirts of town, on a small plot of land we helped farm. It was my job to bring the produce to market each day, but days like this were bad, bringing these three girls taunting, laughing, and twirling in their finery. Rebecca was the worst.

“You’re just a cow yourself, aren’t you?” she smirked, ostentatiously playing with the blue silk ribbons on her dress. “Isn’t she, girls? She looks like a cow and smells like a cow. Must be a cow.”

My hands itched to box her ears. Or better yet, to use my fists. It wasn’t a ladylike thought, but I couldn’t be bothered with that now.

“She’s too skinny to be a heifer and where are her teats?” one of the girls behind Rebecca taunted. “Cows have teats for milking. She looks more like a bull.”

The barb smarted and they knew it. Malnourished and underdeveloped, I didn’t look like the other girls, and wearing boys’ breeches didn’t help the matter.

“I’m not a cow and certainly not a bull,” I cried, finding my voice.

Rebecca’s grin was pure malice. “Go on then,” she urged, advancing. “Take off your shirt and show us your teats.”

Heart pounding, I realized the imminent threat these three girls posed. As they eyed me maliciously, I got the sense that if I didn’t strip my clothing, they would pin my arms and do it for me. Glancing down in panic, I saw Rebecca had tossed a rotten onion at my head. I almost reached down to throw it back, but I had a better idea and retrieved an egg from my basket.

Quickly, I drew the largest and took aim.

Splat.

It landed right in the middle of her chest, splitting open and sending yellow yolk running down her blue bodice in gooey trails.

Rebecca bared her perfect teeth. “You’ll pay for this!” she swore “I’ll tell my father what you’ve done and I’ll see you whipped!”

“Go ahead,” I challenged. My father, a gentle man, would never raise a hand to me… though I did worry about hers, and what trouble he might cause. Rebecca screamed and started toward me, but I grabbed another egg.

“Stay back, unless you be wanting more,” I yelled.

The threat wasn’t effective.

All three girls charged, reaching me before I could escape. In the tussle, Rebecca knocked my eggs from my grip, smashing them all as the basket clattered to the ground and out of my reach, and sending my heart breaking along with them. We needed that money.

I had only enough time to retrieve the basket of ruined eggs or run, so I ran, hot tears streaming down my cheeks as I heard the girls laugh behind me.

By the time I made it to the safety of George’s barn, I was sobbing. It wasn’t like what happened was anything new, but once I started crying, I couldn’t stop. I am just so tired of it all. So hungry all the time. The girls were right -- my underfed body didn’t resemble that of a woman’s. Some days I was so frail I thought I barely looked human. In the summer, when we ate better, I still had no breasts to speak of, my hips were as narrow as a boy’s and my curses hadn’t come about yet. But in the winter, when food was less plentiful, my cheeks hallowed, my shoulder blades stuck out, and my legs looked like sticks.

Father said I was blessed to have my mother’s wild waves of hair and her soft, full lips. But I didn’t even have a picture to know if that was true.

That afternoon, I cried myself into a deep sleep.

#

Blinking my eyes open in George’s barn revealed I’d been asleep for maybe two or three hours. The barn stank, but the space was better than the cramped hovel I shared with Father. As I moved, the underside of my arm brushed against something sticky in my hair and I furrowed my brow, bringing my hands to my head.

The shrill scream I released would have rattled the devil.

Stickiness. All over my head.

My stomach sank as horror washed over me.

Tar.

Whilst I slept, someone had covered my beautiful hair in tar. Hot tears sprang in my eyes. Covered it to the root.

Sobbing hysterically, I ran though the fields toward our home. By the time I threw open the door, I was inconsolable.

“Oh, my sweet girl,” my father sighed upon seeing me. “What trouble have you gotten yourself into now?”

“It wasn’t my fault!” I cried, running into his arms like a child.

“Careful, now,” he cautioned, retrieving his blade. “We don’t want to get that sticking anywhere.”

Over the next hour, my father hacked my hair. Tarred, matted chunks fell onto the floor. I sobbed all the while, feeling like I was six and not recently turned sixteen. It was gone. My mother’s pretty hair, gone.

“Shh, you’re still my beautiful girl,” my father said. “It will grow back in no time. You’ll see.”

“It will take years,” I wept. “I shall never marry. I have no dowry and now I have lost my best feature. I have nothing to offer a husband.”

“Hush,” my father chided. “You have everything to offer, my daughter, and I’m more concerned with what he be offering you.” Finishing up the area around the back of my neck, my father said, “I wanted it to be a surprise, but I’ve been saving up. We can go to the shop next week and pick out a bolt of cloth for a dress, a new dress. All your own, one that’s never been worn before.”

Who cares about a new gown, now? I thought, when I look like this? But I didn’t want to disappoint Father, who worked so hard to cheer me. Instead, I said nothing when we set the table for dinner and I ate nothing as we sat.

Finishing up our meal, the last rays of the dying sun still shone through our greasy windows when we heard a noise coming from outside our small house. It sounded like several loud men approached. My father immediately tensed, but I wasn’t alarmed. After all, anyone who’d meant harm would approach stealthily, I decided.

My father raced to the window and stumbled back, stricken.

“Quiet!” he whisper-shouted, making me jump. “Hide! There, behind the dresser!”

What was happening?

The color had drained from his face as Father looked me over. “If anyone finds you, you’re Charlie, you hear me? Charlie, my only son.”

Who was outside?

Father shook my shoulders. “What’s your name? Say it!”

“Ch – Charlie,” I repeated.

Shocked, I watched father retrieve a pistol from beneath the same mattress upon which the two of us had slept when I was a child. Now nearly grown, my father usually dozed in the armchair at night, giving me space. Had I slept above a weapon nightly, never knowing?

“Do what I say, no matter what!”

My father released me and I scurried behind the chest-of-drawers with my heart pounding so loudly it seemed to fill our home. Curling into a tight ball, I did as I was told. Seconds later, I heard the door creak open and the ominous, heavy fall of boots upon our wooden floor as three or four men entered our tiny dwelling. I knew I would never forget that sound as long as I lived. It was the sound of dire fate.

“Don’t do anything stupid and we won’t harm you,” announced a man’s gravelly voice.

In our small hovel, I could smell the men, wafting into the room with so much ale and rum in their bellies it leaked from their breath, their pores, and scented the already-stale air. Crouching, I peeked beneath the chest-of-drawers and could see three pairs of dirt-caked black boots, as well as the prints of fresh mud they trailed behind them.

I realized there was another reason men might not bother to hide their approach -- confidence. They had nothing to fear from us and sauntered into our home with all the bravado afforded by their sense of security and superiority.

I hated them. I feared them.

“May I introduce Captain Colt,” one of the men said. “We’ve only come to get some information about your town. Give it to us and we’ll be on our way.”

“On your way to plunder it,” my father countered with anger. “On your way to kill.”

I heard Father move, feet sliding against the floor of our hovel, causing the pirates to quickly move in turn.

“Don’t fight, old man,” one of the men warned. “We promise you no harm if you do as we say. In fact, the more you help us the more lives will be spared. I give you my word.”

“The word of a pirate,” Father spat. “Did my wife have the same vow when your kind killed her?”

What? I froze, chills running down my spine and locking me in place. Mother died in childbirth. Didn’t she?

“I’m Captain Colt,” a deep voice said. “Not whoever that was. And when I make a vow, I keep it.”

My head spun. It was hard to keep up with what was happening mere feet from my hiding place and process what my father had said about my mother’s death and suppress my rising terror.

“We should kill him,” someone said. “It’d be doing him a favor, judging from this hovel.”

I can’t let them kill Father. I’d rather they kill me.

I heard a noise and moved without thinking.

“No!” I shouted, jumping from my hiding place and coming to my father’s defense. My arms were raised wide as I prepared to throw myself in front of him as a sacrifice.

I saw the blood drain from my father’s face before I fully faced the men.

“Charlie, no!” he shouted, pushing me out of the way. “Charlie, don’t do it, Charlie, my boy, no.”

“What’s this?” Captain Colt asked, stepping forward. He’d gripped his pistol but hadn’t raised it, like the others. Still, that left two pistols aimed at us from the men behind the captain. One was especially muscular and had a head of sandy hair and a pierced ear. The other was brown-haired and not as tall as Colt or as strong as the other man, but far meaner-looking than both.

Father pushed me back toward our rear window and threw himself between us.

“Kill ’em and be done with it,” that gruff voice said. It belonged to the snarling man with brown hair and blue eyes, standing behind Colt.

“Robert, nobody’s ki-”, Colt began with a sigh, but my father cut him off.

“Run!” he cried, holding up his hands. “Run and save yourself. Tell them they’re coming. Do as you’re told, boy!”

For a moment, I froze with indecision. I didn’t want to leave father. But I didn’t want to disobey him either and I’d made a vow. Thinking I could bring help, I leapt for the window.

I was yanked back by Colt’s rough grip on my shirt. He was impossibly fast. Deciding to make a leap for me, however, caused him to be preoccupied while my father raised his pistol.

Wrapped in his arms, Colt could have used my body to block the shot. But out of instinct, I supposed, he ducked and shoved me sprawling onto my hands and knees. And the same time, he raised his own pistol --

-- and fired directly into my father’s chest.

In the span of three seconds, my world changed forever.

“Father!” I screamed, throwing myself at my father’s lifeless corpse. “Father, Father, Father!” I wept.

“Shut the boy up,” Robert grumbled. “He’s giving me a headache.”

“You killed him!” My red face was covered in tears and snot. I could barely choke out the accusation.

“He tried to attack us,” Colt said, voice full of pity, if not remorse. “We told him not to fight.”

“He was protecting me,” I sobbed, clutching my father’s lifeless body.

“We promised him no harm if he didn’t raise a hand.”

“And - and he was to believe you?” I choked. “Pirates!”

I didn’t know how long I cried before the realization of the danger I was in washed over me. Slowly, I looked up.

Captain Colt stood, indecisive as he considered me. His gaze burned.

“We’ve as good as killed the boy if he’s got no one to look after him,” he said, speaking to the men and not me. “Take him. We could use a new swab on deck.”

What? He couldn’t mean that.

One of the men shrugged, then stepped forward as if to grab me.

“I won’t go with you!” I shouted. “Please, let me bury my father. He needs a proper burial!”

Father, father, father. My only family in the world.

“There’s no time,” Captain Colt said. “Your townsfolk will take care of him.”

Baring my teeth in rage, I declared, “I’d rather die than go with you.”

“We don’t have time for this,” Robert argued, but the third man approached anyway, ready to rip my world from me.

“Father!” I yelled, clutching at his body, helpless as I was pulled away. “Please, no!”

“You’d rather stay here?” the captain asked. “There will be nothing left of your town if things go sour and there’s nothing left in this house from the looks of it.”

“Please, no, wait! Let me have his handkerchief.”

The crewman holding me allowed me to stretch forward and grab the handkerchief from my father’s pocket before quickly whisking me back while I screamed.

“Gag him or he’ll alert the whole town to our arrival.”

Someone produced a gag as well as rope. Colt’s two men held me down while my wrists and ankles were bound. Still sobbing, I was tossed over the strong man’s shoulder.

“Bring him back to the ship and leave him with Miguel. Hurry back to finish the job here.”

Bouncing roughly over the pirate’s shoulder, I cried too hard to notice much of the journey. The blood rushing to my head made me woozy. I heard the call of gulls and smelled the sea when we neared the harbor and I began my struggles anew. Once deposited on that ship, I’d have no hope of escape. No hope of seeing my father ever again.

But the man carrying me was too strong. After a quick ride in the jolly boat, I was hoisted onto The Dark Blade like cargo.

Pirates. I despised their kind. Pirates had killed my mother and my father.

I curled into a ball in the brig.

They’d probably kill me too.