warm sunlight stream into the cold, marble entrance hall. Next came the Boy’s head, bloodied and bruised. His expression was disgruntled to say the least at having been treated so roughly, and upon seeing his former crewmates leering down on him with menacing glances, fear also made an appearance in his visage. His whole body was forced through next: not through the doorway itself, but through the small, splintered hole in the door which had been made by the repeated striking of blade on wood when the pirates had initially tried to gain entry. He winced as his skin was scratched and scraped by the unfriendly oaken gateway whose splinters became embedded in his flesh.
A moment’s pause came as the Boy lay in a crumpled heap on the crimson carpet and his crew flashed pure hatred at him from their eyes. He glanced up at them sheepishly, apologetically, as if to say “I didn’t do it”- but they all knew he had. They had seen him on the boat, their boat which he had stolen, laughing and joking with his new ninja friends. He was a traitor all right and nothing he could do or say would change that fact.
They were about to move in on him, draw their weapons and lay an end to him when Bluebeard finally followed his boot and marched in, hands on hips, triumphantly. The doors swung wide and the glory of a rising sun was his backdrop, making him into a heroic silhouette with a vast blue hedge where his chin should be. He stepped forward into the hallway, into his crew’s vision, and stood wordlessly before them smoking a cigar.
He did not say anything. He did not need to. He was their hero, their leader, the man who had found them this mansion and brought them this captive. They were all in awe of him, almost ready to bow down to him if only he would have asked.
The moment was ruined by a whimper from the captive.
“Please,” he begged. “Please, have mercy. I have seen the error of my ways. Please!”
Bluebeard brandished a sword stolen from the ninjas and placed its blade near the Boy’s throat, daring him to utter another word.
“Then where’s our gold, fool?”
“I- I can lead you to the ninjas’ camp,” he said falteringly. “They won’t be expecting you.”
“You didn’t answer my question, Boy,” growled the Captain. He pulled his victim up to his level, leaving the Boy’s legs dangling in thin air like a squirming fish, so that he could look his interviewee square in the eyes. Their gazes met: the eyes of an old, wizened veteran of the seas piercing into the pure, innocent, lying face of the faithless youth who had stolen his treasure. “Now try again. Where’s the gold?”
“It’s at the camp!” squealed the Boy. “The ninjas have it! It’s at their camp!”
Bluebeard was holding him up by one hand and keeping the blade pressed against his throat with the other. He increased pressure, allowing one solitary drop of blood to leak from Jack’s skin. Any more pressure and his gullet would be cut, his oesophagus severed and his air supply denied. The Boy knew this and writhed about even more, much to the crew’s amusement. They laughed at the Boy’s helplessness and cheered their Captain’s success.
“And this is the truth?” the Captain interrogated, speaking painfully slowly to maximise the child’s torture. “You’re not leading me into a trap, boy?”
“I’m not! I’m not, I swear! Please, let me lead you there, let me redeem myself!”
Another drop of blood, and the Boy’s squirming grew wilder. His breathing was heavy now, as if he were taking in every breath with relish and enjoying what could become his last few moments on Earth.
“You know I’ll gut you like a fish if you are lying, don’t you boy?”
“Yes, yes I know! I know you’re a great and fearsome captain and I should never have tried to steal from you!”
The Captain’s eyes narrowed. In one moment, one movement, he dropped the Boy to the ground and seamlessly slashed the air as his body span, leaving a terrific gash in the traitor’s back.
The Boy cried out in pain, yet considered himself lucky. To have faced a man such as Captain Bluebeard at such close quarters when he was so full of rage and pride and the necessity to look strong before his crew, and to have walked away with simply a cut on his lower left back, was luck indeed. He knew it was conditional, though. His life was now in the hands of the mad man who had just held him so tightly, the strange ghost of the seas with beard as blue as the waters he sailed on. To have deceived him even now would cost him the air in his lungs; even if he did lead the man into a successfully orchestrated ninja trap, the Captain’s last act before meeting his end at Eastern hands would be to take the Boy down with him, to deprive him of life just as he was suffering the same. It would not do to disappoint his Captain.
“Right, lads,” yelled out Bluebeard to his crew, “We’ve got ourselves a raid! The booty: our old treasure chest and our beloved Liu, and anything else we can steal from those caddish ninja scum buckets. Who’s with me?”
His crew let up a mighty roar of approval and moved as one to join their Captain. They all stepped forward in his wake and prepared for battle and glory against their newfound enemy.
All, that is, except one.
“A good idea this is not,” protested Greenbeard, standing alone behind the rest of them.
Those six words froze the whole ensemble of pirates in the hallway. They were like linguistic knives, cutting into the jubilant, care-free mood of lads off to adventure, tearing holes in their sails and taking the wind out of them. Bluebeard span on his feet, livid; mutiny was just not what he needed. Yet the rest of the pirates around him seemed more curious than angry, worryingly willing to question their Captain’s will based on the doubts of his power-greedy little brother.
Bluebeard was growling now: a low, guttural, involuntary noise of passion and rage and betrayal. His rage was silent, deadly, the worst kind for it was directed at a brother he was forced to respect yet did not want to. The passions in his gut pulled him involuntarily towards his Green brother. His feet were walking towards him with the steady purpose of one shaking to keep control, yet who is almost losing it himself: for it seemed not that he was walking but that he was being pulled by some string attached to his chest, some unavoidable fate, while his feet were merely following for appearance’s sake.
All was silence. The ferocious Captain now stood an inch away from his kin looking down upon him with open rage. A full head taller than his siblings, Bluebeard’s blue beard found itself entangled in the hat of Greenbeard and in his own mass of green facial fuzz. The effect was startling: it looked as if Bluebeard’s beard had grown its own body, which was challenging its master.
“Jack the Boy we cannot trust,” came the nervous, if muffled, explanation from Greenbeard.
The crew murmured in thought. The Captain whipped his head round to glare at them, silently daring any of them to join his erstwhile brother in dissent. None with sense would have taken him up on the dare; yet, as it would turn out, Yellowbeard did not have sense.
“Lead us to the ninjas he will,” he offered, stepping out of the crowd to offer moral support to his brother.
“That’s the point,” replied Bluebeard. His lips barely moved as he spoke- not visibly, at least. His voice filled the whole room though; not with volume but with pure intensity of emotion, pure Captainly authority.
An authority which seemed to have lost its edge.
“Surprise us they will,” added Redbeard, joining his brothers. Greenbeard scuttled out from under the Captain’s grasp towards Yellowbeard and Redbeard did the same. Now they were together as a threesome, and now they were unstoppable: their collective trilling reached a fever-pitch of production as they added to each other’s ideas and sentences, building up the case against a raid.
“Ambush us they will.”
“Ambush and deceit!”
“Slit our throats!”
“Behind our backs, slit our throats!”
“Stupid!”
“Stupid, stupid idea!”
“Horrendous!”
“Suicide! Suicide I declare!”
They paused,
they looked at each other and in a wordless collective decision they nodded to each other.
“We’re not coming,” they all declared simultaneously, and waddled together over to a corner in the hallway while Bluebeard, and the rest of his crew, looked on amazed.
The Captain took a few steps forward and issued a stern warning. “I will not have mutiny in my crew,” he said with a low voice full of rage. “So get back into rank and we’re leaving.”
“No,” said Greenbeard, and that was that.
Bluebeard drew his sword and hovered it threateningly over his brother’s beard. He raised his eyebrows faux-compassionately and pierced Greenbeard’s gaze with his clear blue eyes, giving him one last chance to repent. His brother refused. So, with a shake of the head and a stroke of the blade, Bluebeard’s passion manifested itself in a movement so swift it was almost invisible. The pirates gasped, and Greenbeard wept as he stooped down to cradle the fallen tangle of green hair now lying on the floor at his feet.
The crew were shocked. Bluebeard turned menacingly upon them, brandishing he blade, but instead of fear or reverence he was faced with simple stony disapproval from the assembly before him. A pirate can do many things. He can steal treasure that is not his own. He can kidnap wenches and make them his slaves. He can force a traitor to walk the plank. But he can never, never (and this is the highest law in pirate code) cut off a fellow pirate’s beard-