Page 65 of Evil Hearts

Escape To the Briny Deep

by Marilyn Barr

Jane

1718 AD

“Stop it withthe bell! We know we’re under attack, you pudding-headed lout!” My cries are lost in the wind, rain, and yelling between my place on the ratlines and the idiot on the ship’s bell. “Why does he keep ringing the bell?”

“He’s as nervous as a minnow in a school of hammerhead sharks,” Ellis replies as he peers through his spyglass at the melee below. My mentor won’t leave my side until the navy ship sinks. It’s the singular perk of being the captain’s daughter…or Ellis’s friend. “No one’s boarded thePetunia Fairin our three years of combing the Caribbean. That navy boat is like a dog with a bone; they won’t turn us loose now that they’ve got us.”

The grappling hooks shine in the lightning flashes as our ship is dragged closer to our enemy. Their sailors, wearing matching uniforms, stand still like hardtack biscuits on a baking sheet in their gunner galley. While our deck is a torrent of chaos, their boat is silent. They’ve trained to destroy, maim, and kill their entire career. Our sailors are nervous because our intent isn’t murder, it is equality. Father saysPetunia Fairand boats like her reset the balance between the haves and have-nots so the new continent doesn’t rot like England. I was born on our boat, which never docks in England, so I take his word for it.

Not that I have a choice, seeing as he’s Captain Glass and I’m a lowly ratline climber.

“You should go below and put on that dress of your mother’s,” Ellis says for the hundredth time. He runs his stubby fingers through his red hair and smooths his beard. “Don’t make that face at me! I’ll be arrested, cast in irons, and escape to another boat in less than a year—maybe I’ll even sail under Blackbeard.You won’t be so lucky. It’s not right what sailors under the crown do to pirates of the female persuasion.”

“I was hired to hoist sails, climb the ratlines, and defend the boat. That’s what I’ll do,” I snap. “Besides her dress is my wedding gown. You proposing, Ellis?”

“Be serious! You are the daughter of the infamous Captain Glass! Once heads start to roll, someone will sing to save their hide. Your secret is a juicy one. Please, lass, I don’t want your broken body hanging from the main mast any more than your father. You can pretend to be a kidnapped noble lady if you are dressed in proper finery. You have a better chance of survival—”

The shouts and scurrying on our deck stop dead when the first gangplank slaps our railing. A second and third gangplank hit with deafening thuds. Even the wind stops howling. Ellis shouts orders, but I can’t hear his words for the pounding of my pulse in my ears.

Nobody boards thePetunia Fair…

Over on the forecastle mast, me hearties clamber down to face our enemy on the deck. Our gunnery is sealed under floorboards as pirates abandon the cannons for hand-to-hand combat. More pirates rain down from the mizzen mast. It’s all hands on deck; even the cook emerges from the galley with the wicked knife he uses to gut fish.

I make eye contact with my father at the wheel. We shake our heads at one another.

I can’t tell if he’s apologizing or chastising me for not hiding in the captain’s quarters earlier. It’s too late for me to play damsel-in-distress now. Twice ten eyes will watch me traverse the boat from my place on the main mast. The safety of my father’s post seems miles away, but my memory fills in the lines around his eyes, the curve of his nose, and the pattern of grey hairs sprouting at his temples.

We stare at one another—locked in time—until the admiral on the other boat orders his soldiers to board us. He tips his hat at me, and lightning flashes off the prism he uses as a buckle, casting rainbows over my white shirt. He used to do that to make me giggle when I was a child. He hasn’t done it in years…

Somehow we both know we will die today.

“If you have half the brains under your mop of hair I suspect you have, you will at least climb to the crow’s nest to hide,” Ellis says, shaking me loose from my trance. His Irish brogue thickens with the tension between us. “Keep your weight centered in the nest and kill anything approaching you. With any luck, they will tow the boat to shore for the governor to fit us with hempen necklaces instead of sending us to Davy Jones’s locker. If you survive the journey, you can disembark to be some farmer’s wife.”

“I’d rather die than submit to being some man’s wife,” I snap with a smirk. No man would put up with the likes of me for long. I swear, I smoke, I drink, and I prefer trousers to skirts. The most outrageous attribute I acquired from my life on a pirate ship is my voice. On the sea, women get a vote—an equal say—in affairs of the vote. I’ll never forget when I turned fourteen and could vote for my father to continue as captain for the first time. “I’ll damn myself to hell before I give up my voice to some half-wit husband!”

With Ellis’s chuckle ringing in my ears, I climb upward to the crow’s nest. The ropes swing me over the sea as Ellis slides down to the deck. I hate to admit he’s right. The worst he will get on the navy ship is a beating—the same beating the sailors who run the boat get. He will serve a few months in a continental jail cell until they can’t afford to feed him. Then he will plot his escape as they fit him for a noose or be freed with the rest of the crew with a slap on the wrist. Within a year, he will sail the same waters ona different boat and under a different captain. All he must do is survive the swordfight on deck and he’ll be fine.

My father and I won’t be so lucky.

From my perch in the crow’s nest, me hearties look like ants dodging the flashing steel of the navy. The clash of swords screams as loudly as the fallen. The rain increases to a downpour, washing the blood and pain from our decks. My linen shirt and trousers stick to me as pathetic armor. The shirt is a pain in the arse, tangling in the ratlines at least once a day, but it was my father’s shirt when he swabbed the decks. I doubt the story of my parent’s romance is true—there’s no way a learned man like my father ever yielded a mop on this boat—but there’s something romantic about the captive noble lady falling for the lowly deck-scrubbing pirate.

I’d hoped to have a similar story to embellish over the years.

One by one, our biggest and bravest fall to men faster and more skilled at sword-fighting. Why didn’t someone teach fencing on one of the many days we spent sunning ourselves on the deck? Our boat was too peaceful for its own good—but not everyone. Ellis holds his own like a demon-possessed leprechaun, slashing men in half so they are his size. He has no problem stabbing sailors in the back as they battle other mateys. Bodies fall left and right as he makes his way across the main deck and up the sterncastle deck stairs. He’s spent his free time learning to man the helm, but I suspect he’s running to my father’s side—not the wheel itself.

If we live through this, I should make Ellis make good on that proposal.

Ellis joins the circle of pirates defending my father. So smart but so hilarious! Ellis tucks his shorter frame beneath my father’s sword arm. With each slash of the opponent’s sword, my father retaliates with two. How can he lose with twice the arms?

“What do we have here?” The gravelly voice behind me drops me into a crouch. Of course, his words suggest he already found me.

“The pirate who will send your arse to hell!” I twist while withdrawing my machete from its leather sheath on my belt. The weight in my hand and the glide of the flat panel around my waist press the gravity of the situation onto my shoulders. I’m about to fight for my life.

The good news is I surprised him and landed the first blow. The bad news is we’re too close to one another, so I lead with my wrist. The butt end of the sword’s handle catches the soft spot between his Adam’s apple and the underside of his chin. He squeaks and chokes, bending backward, as he avoids contact with my blade. The momentum is enough to knock the knife from his teeth, but not enough to send him to the briny deep.

---