The crew of the Anarkhia is in a piteous state. The captain decides to sail his brig to the desert island located to the East and to moor there for the night. The seamen who are not too wounded busy themselves for a good hour under the Irishman's orders. The others tie up and watch the prisoners on deck. But others are dying.
The sea is calm. The wind is low. This is a piece of luck. When the massive anchor touches the sandbank, the ship steadies.
Around me I see only exhausted, shocked and wounded faces. It is difficult to sort the sleeping seamen from the dead bodies. Three men die early in the evening. Two from their wounds and the third killed by Steven himself. The ship's boy had his entrails pierced. His heart-rending cries were painful to our ears and our souls. When all was said and done, he died in peace in the arms of his captain.
All the bodies are thrown into the sea by the gentle light of the end of the day. The Spaniards are permitted to say a Catholic prayer for their comrades who died in combat.
Bappé speaks their language. A rapid inquiry informs us of their position in this location.
Our theory was correct. Three galleons and a caravel were on their way from the Americas to Spain. A fleet of English privateers had set upon them the day before. Theirs was the only ship to have survived the attack, but not without difficulty. They had already lost three-quarters of their crew and those who had survived were in a bad way.
The Irishman is only moderately satisfied. The casket is filled with silver coins. Not gold. No rubies. No golden retirement under the sun. This will cover the price of the destruction of the fire ship, the barrels of gunpowder and the oil. A bonus will be granted the crippled seamen. Cook will buy himself a tart on Tortuga.
So many dead for so little.
Even I am disappointed.
I had hoped that the casket would be full of riches, that it would be overflowing with precious gems. Steven Kelly would have been able to forget his contract. He would have let me leave without ado.
I am dreaming, I know.
I take part in the sea burial of the bodies. I help to clean the ship and then spend some of the evening drawing sea water to spray the deck. I take a moment to wash and change my clothes. Nobody is looking. Even the Spanish prisoners have gone to sleep at the foot of the main mast, tied to each other. Without asking for permission, to feel more at ease, I don men's clothing. As for the red dress, I throw it into the dark sea where it will join the bodies at the bottom of the ocean. After such a day, I no longer need to burden myself with illusions. I am no longer a young lady.
I do not know who I am. Nor who I have become since my abduction. A scrap of vermillion fabric cannot define what I wish to be.
Night has already fallen when I come back to the cabin. Steven does not expect to see me. He jumps.
"What are you doing here?" he rages with his back to me.
Horror of horrors, he is fondling his crotch with a flask of spirits!
He turns round, staggering. I was afraid of a terrible sight, but the truth is even worse. Steven is wounded; his skin is deeply cut in the groin and the wound rises up to his navel. He has lost a lot of blood. His pale face is frightening. He is sewing himself up.
"This is madness!" I cry out. "You need a surgeon!"
"I don't have one to hand."
He is as drunk as a lord. His wound is a serious one. Another strong shot of terror runs through my veins. My life is in the hands of this pirate captain, who is inebriated and half-dead.
I make a decision. The decision. The kind that will change my future for ever.
"Lie down!" I order. "I am going to look after this."
"Out of the question."
I grab his arm. He is too weak to answer. My lips smile in a modicum of satisfaction. To have him at my mercy is more exciting than I thought. I could kill him, take my revenge and have him pay for all I have suffered. Steal his life as he has deprived me of mine.
"You are too intelligent to kill me," he murmurs.
How did he guess?
It is true, my decision is more sensible than killing the pirate in cold blood. I take his bottle and pour some of the amber liquid over my hands. When I pour some on his wound, he holds back a cry. His eyes bulge with the suffering. I smile.
"I was not as good at cross stitch as Alexandrine," I explain to give myself courage, "but I knew how to get by. In any event, I will do it better than you."
Indeed, Steven had begun to scrape his skin. There is nothing decent about his work. I take the thread and the needle, some clean linen that I had washed that very morning and soak the fabric in the spirits.
"You fought… well," he slurs with a grimace.
The needle has just pierced his skin on the hip. I have to pinch the skin on both sides so as not to touch the bone. The chestnut bush of his member rises finely to his navel and makes it hard for me to concentrate.
"I know."
He laughs, his eyes hazy with fatigue and alcohol.
"It hurts?" I ask him.
"Indeed! A Spaniard slashed my belly."
His feigned aggressiveness would not frighten a suckling baby.
"Try to think of something else. So, tell me how you became a pirate."
He just shrugs and puffs. I am annoying him.
"Come on, it will pass the time" I insist.
He hesitates. Has he ever opened up to anyone even once in his life?
"There isn't much to say. I'm Irish. The sea is in our blood. At first, I wanted to join a merchant navy ship. The captain did not want me. I was too scrawny."
A pauper. The word "scrawny" tells me a lot about his childhood. He interrupts his tale, lost in his memories. I let him drink a few mouthfuls of rum and wait for him to continue.
"I was young and under-nourished, like all the nippers who wander the streets of Cork," he says with a dark look.
He seems to want to reproach me the fact that I have never been starving.
"I used to steal from time to time. Cook and I were on to something big. We almost got caught. We preferred to embark on a rotting tub with shifty fellows. One thing led to another, and here I am!"
He spreads his arms proudly to show me what he has accomplished. A street brat who has become the captain of a beautiful sixty-foot brig.
"You have no family?" I continue to question him, to distract him from the area that I am going to stitch up.
"A father who liked gambling and drank too much. And a whining brother."
"No mother?"
"No."
Silence in the cabin. The torments of his past have pursued him to the end of the world. I suddenly feel less alone.
"And Cook, why the nickname? I have never seen him cook anything on board."
"Ask him, if you dare. He cut off the ear of the last fool to ask him that question."
"Charming!"
"So, what about you, why are you here?" he grumbles as if he was coming to.
"You know this better than I; you are the person who abducted me," I answer nastily.
"No, my question is why did your family reject you. What happened back there in France, for them to send the daughter of a marquis to the other side of the earth? It is not solely a question of lost virginity, or the New World would be full of pretty deflowered noblewomen."
He is enjoying this and is proud of his joke. I stay stony-faced. I sew. He is right and this annoys me. Yes, there is more. Mother would never have sent me into exile if I had not pushed her too far.
Jérémiah and I had been making love with regularity when I felt the first changes. My breasts had grown larger. I salivated more. Odours nauseated me.
Even though I had grown up in surroundings where I had been preserved from the harshness of life, I was well aware that I was pregnant. I told no-one. I cherished this secret as a treasure until I could no longer hide it.
First Jérémiah. I remember his sad look on the night when I told him. His tears. His last kiss on the palm of my hand. It was only logical that he should be the first suspected. He left the next day, under the pretext of an urgent family matter. We never saw each other again.
A month later, I told Mother. It was not anger I saw in her look. Just disgust. And a horrid sneer as if to say: "I knew it. I already knew full well of the rot piling up in your being, little fool."
Perhaps she actually had a less nasty thought. I shall never know. Mother rarely talked, but each time she spoke out, it was always to crush her adversary.
The baby was born two months later. The suffering was atrocious. A whole day and night of horror. I wanted to die. The pain made me forget all my fears. All I desired was not to feel the unceasing torments in my lower back and my pelvis.
Mother feared that the information might be broadcast around the Château de l'Aigle. Rumours terrified her even more than the death of her own daughter. A lady from a remote village was in charge of delivering the baby. Paid handsomely to keep quiet about it. This stranger, whose name I still do not know, supported and encouraged me. She was good. She was gentle.
Thanks to her, I was not alone to bear my ordeal. Finally, the child was there. My baby. I saw it for a second before the woman wrapped it in a blanket. Mother entered at that moment. She had been absent right through my gruelling labour and she chose this precise moment to intervene. Like a lioness waiting for her prey to be at its weakest before leaping.
She snatched up the child, my child.
"Stillborn," she declared. "God recognizes his children from bastards."
And then she left. I yelled, cried out, pleaded. I raced after her on my bloodied legs. The door had already been locked for some time. My nails scraped the wood. My sobs resounded all around the building.
The stranger confirmed that Mother was telling the truth. The baby had not survived birth. Jérémiah's daughter died before she even saw the light of day.
And she took part of my soul with her.
It takes me the whole night to finish my task. I am concentrated and careful not to let him suffer more than necessary. He drinks, faints, regains consciousness, drinks some more and then returns to the limbo of his unconscious. I am half way through the wound when he is suddenly seized with nervous shakes.
The first rays of the sun break through the clouds in the sky. He wakes up again. He raises his hand and tries to caress my left breast. I do what I should have done when we first met. I hit him violently on the temple. After that, he does not wake again. I have all the time I need to finish my sewing.
If he does not die of a fever in the days to come, he will pull through. And if he dies, I will need to find myself new allies on the ship. Not John. I would rather bet on Cook, Nick, and my crony of the pestilent teeth. I think his name is Rick.
Exhaustion overcomes me. I lie down beside Steven and tighten my belt around my hips. I have returned neither the axe nor the ankle dagger. They are mine. I have earned them. If the mate tries to come near me, I shall strike.
Now, I know that I hold the sound of death in my hands.