small; only fifteen men made up the crew of the Merry Martin back then) were out marvelling at the exotic fruits and meats they could find, Bluebeard had stumbled upon a primitive village. He had called upon his men to join him and together they had stripped it bare of all its food and riches.
It was then, while they were retreating to the ship with arms laden with supplies, that he had seen her. She was just a girl back then, tied up next to one of the villager’s huts. She was not like the other villagers: her body shape, skin tone and accent told him that she had been taken as a slave by the locals from some distant part of the continent hundreds of miles away. Even as a child, she had been mesmerising to look at. Her gift for astrology had manifested itself early on, so by the time she was eleven (which is when the Captain had found her) it was already fairly well developed. There had been something mystical, unnameable and irresistible in her eyes, as if she were in a constant trance, in constant communion with the gods and the spirits.
He had snatched her away immediately. To him it had just been about taking more booty, something else interesting to keep and collect on his ship. She, however, had seen it as rescue. The villagers of that strange place had treated her terribly. She had not been able to speak their language, so when they barked orders at her which she could not understand, she was punished for her “disobedience” with beatings and starvation.
On the ship, life was better for her. She had been given a role (an important one at that) and had gradually learnt to speak English. After one month, the Captain could have basic conversations with her; after one year, she was almost fluent. Her accent remained strong and thick to this day, of course, but that was part of her appeal: it was a magical, exotic accent which could seduce you simply by hearing it. The Captain loved it. Although he had initially been as harsh with her as the villagers she had escaped, he soon came to adore his little Eastern beauty and after two months of living on board, their relationship went from master and slave to something more akin to an unorthodox type of marriage.
The Captain always enjoyed his visits to Liu’s quarters. There was a feeling of peace there, which always fell away as soon as he left the threshold of her doorway. Now was no exception: as he stepped out onto the deck, he felt his anger return as he became once more the aggressive pirate captain, king of all who lived on his ship.
Agatha “Bottle-Neck” Saunders approached him, but he brushed her aside. He had not forgiven her and in all likelihood he never would. When he threatened her with the plank, he had meant it.
“Captain!” she called out. “Captain, please!”
He walked away from her towards the prow. When she persisted in following him, he pulled her close to him threateningly, holding her by the scruff of her collar.
“Bottle-Neck,” he growled. “If you keep following me like this, I’ll spare you the mercy of making you walk the plank into the sea and dash your body on the rocks instead.”
With that, he turned, leaving her quaking in her boots, and continued on his way to the prow.
Marley was standing there with McCluskey, who was still concussed and bleeding. The doctor was trying to administer a bandage to his forehead and stop the blood flowing. By now it had largely dried up, but a steady trickle was still coursing its way down his cheeks- much to McCluskey’s amusement. He was giggling like an imbecile and licking the blood as it entered his mouth. Marley was doing his level best to stop this deranged behaviour, but he was a man of mind, not muscle; the sheer braun of McCluskey’s form made it difficult for the medicine man to hold him down and do the treatment.
“For God’s sake, what’s happening here?” demanded Bluebeard.
“He won’t accept the treatment!” shouted Marley, flustered. He had to shout to simply be heard over the mindless chattering of the now insane McCluskey. “He just keeps trying to drink his own blood as if it were a game! Honestly, Captain, I’m struggling.”
“Give it here,” said Bluebeard. He pushed Marley out the way and shoved McCluskey onto the deck. The blood was now following gravity onto the wooden planks of the ship, no longer within reach of McCluskey’s tongue, and he was visibly upset by this development.
“Get off me Captain, get off!” he was yelling. “I need to drink my blood or I’ll lose it and I’ll die!”
“Get a hold of yourself, man,” ordered his Captain, but he could not be silenced. He kept wailing and crying and giggling all in one confusing cacophony of sound. Bluebeard tried to administer the bandage himself, but the man would not stop rolling about and moving his head. The task was quite impossible, so the Captain did the only thing he could: he punched the annoying loon right in the face and knocked him out cold.
“Captain!” exclaimed the doctor. “What have you done?”
“He’ll be alright in the morning,” replied Bluebeard. “Now put that bandage on him while you can.”
Marley went about his task immediately, silently disapproving of the Captain’s chosen anaesthetic. Bluebeard, meanwhile, approached the prow and looked out onto the beach.
“We’re going to have to assemble a landing party,” he mused. “Liu tells me this place is called Cutthroat Island, and that there will be much suffering here. She also tells me that we’ll win out in the end. We have no choice. We must go.”
He turned to Marley, who was almost done with the bandage.
“Marley, when you’re done with McCluskey, I want you to assemble every pirate on board this damned vessel who is able to come on land. And then- we raid!”
Although a doctor, Marley was also a pirate, and the mention of a raid inflamed his pirate instincts into a state of unbridled excitement. He punched the air with his fist and uttered an impassioned “arr!” before abandoning his patient (with the bandage not fully on yet) and dashing onto deck to find himself a landing party.
He returned in moments with a small group assembled and ready to go. As well as himself and the captain, there was old Ethelred, still nursing his wounds; Timmy the Brick, famed for both his clumsiness and his carpentry (which often clashed and were the reason he was missing several fingers); skinny, groggy Woody, who had lived in the forests of Ireland before joining the Merry Martin and was a skilled forager and hunter; and Jake the Peg, so called because of his wooden leg (which he earned after a ship-building session with Timmy).
More arrived soon after. Redbeard, Greenbeard and Yellowbeard all bounded up the steps together, triplets and younger brothers of the Captain; Princess Alice, a royal originally “kidnapped” from Sweden who had actually volunteered for Bluebeard’s crew to escape the stuffy life which awaited her as Queen; and finally, Agatha “Bottle-Neck” Saunders, so-called because of her long neck and her unique ability to open bottles with her Adam’s apple.
“No!” roared Bluebeard. “No, Bottle-Neck, no! I am not having you on this team, you dog.” He spat those words out with pure hatred. “Yellowbeard, Redbeard, take her to the brig. I’ll deal with her when I get back.”
“But it was an accident!” she protested wildly, desperately. “How could I have seen the island when you had called me down from the crow’s nest?”
Bluebeard raised a hand to stop his brothers, who had just grabbed the accused’s arms and were about to drag her away. He strode slowly, ominously, towards her until he was an inch away from her face. She could feel his breath bearing down on her skin; she could smell its vile stench in her nostrils and tried to back away, only to find herself held in place by the firm hands of the Captain’s brothers.
“Are you,” he began, slowly and sinisterly, “trying to say that it’s my fault we’re shipwrecked here?”
“No sir!” she cried out. “Not at all!”
Bluebeard didn’t accept her answer. Instead, he simply spat in her face and slapped her twice on each cheek, hard. She winced each time and involuntarily let out a tear- a fact which did not evade Bluebeard’s attention.
“Look at this, lads!” he gloated. “She’s crying, poor thing!”
The assembled
pirates burst into hoards of laughter. Bottle-Neck tried not to be phased by it all, holding her face as resolutely as possible. Her attempt at a poker face amused the pirates even more, and they nearly split their sides with laughter at the weakness of their comrade.
Eventually the Captain raised his hand to stop the ruckus. “Take her away, boys,” he ordered coldly and turned his back as she was dragged downstairs.
“Right, are we ready? Is this it?” he asked incredulously. It was a sorry sight: on a ship of thirty, only nine were standing before him. “Come on, where’s everyone else?”
As if in answer, Pointy Pete came dashing up the stairs to the prow from the galley where he had been looking after the cannons. He could be heard before he could be seen: a loud jangling noise of metal on metal and boots on wood, and then his long face appeared over the horizon of the staircase accompanied by three lads from the gunnery: Jawface Jones, Simon the Holy and Gunner Zach. Together, they brought the number of the landing party up to a more acceptable thirteen.
They filed wordlessly into the crowd and stood to attention, waiting for the captain’s orders. A pirate is normally by nature a raucous, wild creature, but the lads of the galley and gunnery were more disciplined and serious than most, especially when it came to war.
Bluebeard was happy with his