Terrouge Magazine
Emancipation
John watched the water rushing past the prow of the ship. The grey-green ocean frothed into white at the crests of the waves. Salty fingers reached to brush his cheek, and the water was blessedly cool against the heated sun. The wind whipped across his face and tugged at the loose linen cloth of his shirt. His ears filled with the rush and hiss of the waves, and the steady creaking of the ship’s timbers.
A step sounded on the boards of the ship behind him and stopped behind him. John didn’t look up from the white-capped water. He felt the shadow fall across his shoulders. His fingers curled around the splintered wooden rail. His shoulders hunched to make himself look smaller— a small boy with pale blond hair crouched over the rail of a ship.
“Hello, John. Enjoying the view?” The voice was big and hearty. It boomed in John’s ears over the rush of the ocean. It felt as if they had left Charleston months ago. It had been barely a week and the ship grew smaller and smaller each day. The same three decks and the same cabins, the same people day in and day out.
A large figure leant on the rail beside him, looming high above John’s head. John didn’t have to look up to see the big, bluff, red-nosed face of Nathaniel Trapper, with his brown beard and his battered tri-corn hat squatting on his head.
“You have to be careful, lad.” Nathaniel laughed deep in his throat. “It’s a great big sea out there. It’d swallow someone your size right up.”
“I like it.” The words slipped out of John’s mouth almost involuntarily. He scowled and stared harder at the unchanging ocean.
“I’ll wager you do, likely lad such as yourself.” He still laughed, then reached out to ruffle John’s hair. John nearly flinched away, but caught himself. His fingernails bit harder into the rail. “That’s the future out there, my boy. The great big bounding main. I’ve made a fortune, I have, and I can show you how to do the same.”
Against his will John looked up. Nathaniel’s teeth showed white against his beard as he smiled. He looked hungry. His dark eyes glittered underneath his hat. John turned his face away just as Nathaniel dropped a heavy arm over his shoulder. The heavy cuff brushed hard against his cheek, and the reek of sweat and tobacco filled his nostrils. His stomach turned.
“Aye, John, we’re going to be the best of friends, you and I. Just wait until we get to Jamaica. You can see the house, there. I’ve got a snug little room all ready and waiting for you, and you can go to the school just down the street. We’ll make a proper little clerk of you, by heaven!” John felt the laugh reverberate in Nathaniel’s arm around his shoulders. “The best of friends, I say!”
The sea still rolled out in front of John’s eyes. When he closed his eyes he could almost imagine the ship was a great bird, the great billowing canvas sails wings to send the vessel skimming through the air, flying across the surface of the water like an albatross. He inhaled deeply and tasted salt.
“Cap’n!”
The call drifted faintly from across the ship, followed by indecipherable murmurs and the thuds of movement. John twisted his head around back towards the ship. Nathaniel had heard it, too— his arm dropped from John’s shoulders and he turned, a frown furrowing his face.
John saw the Captain up near the prow of the sloop with a spyglass in his hand. A cluster of men surrounded him, one of them pointing out towards the open ocean. An excited babble of voices set up.
“What’s this about, then?” Nathaniel shouted across the deck and strode towards the group. His boots made satisfying thuds on the deck. They talked for a moment, angrily and out of John’s hearing. Nathaniel stalked back, face black and furious. He checked himself before going straight past John. His voice snapped in the air, harsh and commanding.
“Find your mother and get below decks.”
“What’s happening?”
“Just do it!”
John stared at him for one stricken moment and then ran for it. He flew across the deck as shouts from the Captain and mate began to clash through the air, ordering the crew up on deck. John’s chest heaved as he stopped near the below-decks hatch, nearly running into a woman in a pale yellow dress. Her face beamed at the sight of him, wrinkling around the eyes. She wrapped an arm around him and buried his face into her skirt.
“John! Good heavens, what is all the commotion? I could hear Nathaniel shouting away all the way from my cabin. Has something happened?”
John pulled away. “I don’t know,” he said, staring upward into her face. She smoothed his hair down.
“We’ll ask Nathaniel. He will know.”
“No, mother, he said…”
Her hand tugged on his arm and led him across the deck towards the cluster of officers, Nathaniel’s hat looming out from among them. Grim voices drifted across the open deck.
“…ship going that fast, it’s got to be pirates.”
“Nathaniel!” John’s mother looked confused. “What has happened?”
Nathaniel looked up from his terse conference with the Captain, his brow furrowed. His grim expression slipped into one of worry. He opened his arms. John’s mother dropped John’s hand and ran to Nathaniel.
“Hush, my Anne. It’s nothing you need to worry about. Everything will be just fine.”
“Is it pirates?”
John pressed himself against the rail and stared out at the ocean. He could see the ship coming in at a fast clip from the east, sails bulging full of wind. A flag snapped from the mast but he couldn’t make out the insignia.
“Quiet, boy. It’s none of your concern.” The harshness in Nathaniel’s voice made John flinch. He twisted around, eyes wide, but Nathaniel was stroking his mother’s hair, voice now quiet.
“We’ll take care of it, dearest,” he said. “I need you to take John and go below decks. Stay there until I come for you. I’ll take care of you.”
He pulled her towards him for a kiss and John twisted his gaze away as bile flooded his mouth. He didn’t look up again until his mother’s hand took his shoulder and gently pulled him away. Her voice shook as she led him across the deck.
“It’ll be just fine, John. Nathaniel is going to take care of everything.”
John’s head twisted around to look back at the ship even as he allowed his mother to lead him away. He heard the Captain’s gruff voice raised above the murmurs of the crew.
“Fight? Man, are you touched in the head? We’re going to run, and if that doesn’t work we’re going to try everything else to get out of this with our lives. Everyone do exactly as I say, or I’ll kill you myself!”
John followed his mother into the darkness below decks, and there they waited. Silence reigned for a long time. Then a thunderstorm of footsteps followed muffled hails on the thick boards of the deck above his head. Everything stopped, suddenly, and John could hear his own blood pounding in his head. His ears strained for any sound, but only heard his mother whispering prayers. Unable to stand it anymore, John slipped towards the hatch.
The sun burned his eyes after the dimness. Wincing and shrinking low to the deck, John scurried under the protective shadow of one of the ship’s longboats. No shouts or cries follow him. He could see the long stretch of the deck from his hiding place.
The crew stood in a line against the far rail of the ship, most of them looking sick and white. Some of them looked angry. Two pirates with flintlock pistols guarded them. They looked, to John’s surprise, much like any other sailors.
“We are the merchant ship Bonnetta, on our way from Charleston, South Carolina to Jamaica, carrying a cargo of cotton.” John leaned out and saw the Captain, talking in his quick, gruff voice. “We bear you no ill will.”
“Cotton? How terribly unexciting.” It was an unfamiliar voice, spoken with a smile in it, coming from a slender man standing near the aft of the ship. His left hand rested on the butt of a pistol and in his belt a cutlass dangled in his right hand. He looked to be in his twenties, and handsome. A black handkerchief crowned his head. “But while you are so kindly introducing yourselves, let me give you my humble designation.” He bowed gracefully. “I’m Sam Bellamy. Black Sam, to my friends.”
The Captain took a quick intake of breath but nodded back in curt enough politeness.
“What do you want with us?” Nathaniel’s voice cut harshly through the quiet tension in the air.
Black Sam raised an eyebrow. “Your cotton, I presume, though I cannot imagine what I will do with it. Beg pardon, we haven’t been introduced. Black Sam, Prince of Pirates. You?”
Nathaniel stood a few feet from Black Sam, his face a bright red behind his beard. He towered at least half a foot above the slim figure of the pirate, and glared down at him.
“I am Nathaniel Trapper, the owner of this vessel. You have no right to stop us like this.” His beefy finger shot out to point accusingly at Black Sam. “Put one finger on that cotton, or any one of us, and I’ll see you hang!”
Black Sam threw back his head and laughed from the tips of his toes. “My dear man, I’ll be hung for things a lot worse than stealing cotton, and I’ve been threatened by men a lot more impressive than you.” He waved a hand dismissively. Nathaniel turned almost purple. His meaty hands clenched into fists, but Black Sam’s pirates stood all around, decked out in firepower and grinning.
Black Sam nodded to his crew, his smile never leaving his face. “He ain’t so talkative now, is he lads?” Amid the coarse laughs he leaned forward and casually knocked off Nathaniel’s hat with his cutlass.
The battered leather tri-corn made little sound as it plopped to the deck and half-rolled to a halt. Nathaniel’s eyes bugged out, staring at the hat, and then raised to stare at Black Sam. The pirate was little more than a foot away now, standing almost toe to toe with Nathaniel. The top of his black handkerchief came up to the bottom of the merchant’s bristling chin, but he didn’t seem to notice— his eyes sparkled with taunting amusement and a condescending smile curled his mouth. His face was alive with daring, and he still held the cutlass loosely in his hand. The sun sparkled off the curve of the blade.
Nathaniel stared back with the sun beating down on his unprotected face. Sweat ran down his brow, trickling in rivulets across the web of wrinkles tracing his face. His skin was blotched red and purple with rage. His tongue protruded from his mouth to run across dry, cracked lips. He almost spoke.
Black Sam leaned even closer. “Do you have something to say, Mr. Trapper?”
Nathaniel gritted his teeth and looked away. The smile disappeared from the pirate’s face. Black Sam raised his voice to a bellowing roar, a voice well-suited to giving orders.
“Do you have something to say, Mr. Trapper?”
“No.”
The smile returned in a flash and Black Sam leaned back. He turned his back to Nathaniel and faced his crew, spreading his hands and accepting their cheers.
John watched from behind the mast, hardly breathing. He could see Nathaniel’s face in profile as it stared with malevolence at the back of Black Sam’s head. The hand clenched once more into a fist and half-way raised. A shadow fell across the pirate’s back.
Nathaniel’s fist fell, limp, to his side. He dropped his head and stepped aside. Beside him the Captain let out an audible breath of relief. Black Sam turned again, still smirking, and nodded with obsequious politeness.
“Well done, Mr. Trapper. We’ll just be taking your cargo, now, and then be on our merry way with no further inconvenience to your good selves.” He stopped suddenly and stared in John’s direction. John froze. His eyes squeezed shut but didn’t stop his ears from hearing Black Sam’s voice.
“I believe I spotted something. You lads go and fetch it, will you?”
John didn’t have time to protest the two pirates taking firm hold of his arms and bodily pulled him from his hiding place. They drug him across the deck, fingers biting into his arms and overwhelming him with a smell of sweat and gunpowder. They half-threw him at Black Sam’s feet. John stood there speechless, staring upwards at the pirate.
“Well, well, well. A cabin boy?” Black Sam looked more menacing up close. Taller, angrier. More lines on his young face. “Name and age, right quick.”
“John King, sir, and I’m nine years old last October.”
“Are you now.” Black Sam leaned down and stared him straight in the eye. John took a breath and stared right back. The pirate’s eyes were brown, flecked with gold, alight with cunning.
“Mr. Trapper!” He shouted without turning his gaze. “To whom does this charming boy belong?”
Nathaniel’s voice sounded strangled. “He’s mine.”
“I am not!” John’s voice burst forth into loudness with sudden fury. Rage burned in his narrow chest. “I’m no part of him, sir.”
“Tell me about it.”
“He’s just a b—”
“I asked him, Mr. Tanner.”
Nathaniel lapsed into silence. John licked his lips and didn’t let his eyes leave Black Sam’s face. It was harder and sharper up close. “He married my mother, sir. My father’s been gone these last three years.”
“Ah. And do I sense some family strife? A touching family drama.” Black Sam sniffed. “Reminds me of my own dear family. Quite moving.”
“He just needs time.” John felt Nathaniel’s hand on his shoulder and jerked away. Black Sam’s eyes narrowed.
“Time or not, he can speak for himself.” He straightened suddenly and stared at Nathaniel over John’s head. “Or not. What intentions do you have towards this boy?”
“No business of yours.”
“Ah, but it is. I believe I’m firmly in charge of this situation.” Black Sam glanced at the tri-corn sitting on the deck. “In my humble opinion—”
“John?”
Anne stood by the hatch, her face dead pale. As everyone turned to stare at her she broke into a run and swept John up against her.
“Don’t you touch my boy.” She stood toe to toe with Black Sam, eyes blazing and John behind her. Black Sam raised his hands in an inoffensive gesture and stepped back a pace.
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Madame. He’s all yours.”
Anne gaped at him. Nathaniel stepped forward and took her arm, drawing her back. “It’s alright, darling.”
“Touching indeed.” Black Sam smiled and clapped his hands together with delight. “Well, I’ll be taking your cargo, then.”
Anne’s arm had fallen away from John’s shoulder. He stood between his mother and Black Sam, heart suddenly in his mouth.
Nathaniel looked back with a face pinched and angry. “Come along, John.”
John swallowed and looked up at Black Sam. The pirate eyed him with an amused smirk. “Take me with you.”
“What was that?” Black Sam’s eyebrows rose.
“John, no!” Nathaniel lunged towards him and John darted away, his face suddenly furious.
“You have no right to tell me what to do!” he shouted. “I would rather die than come with you.”
“Strong words! Very impressive. Very ambitious.” Black Sam applauded slowly.
“You can’t let him do this,” Nathaniel said.
“I’m not one to stand between a boy and his dreams.” The pirate smiled, showing white teeth. “If he wants to come, he’s welcome.”
“No, John.” Anne’s voice was barely above a whisper. She touched his sleep and stared at him, horrified. “I don’t understand.”
John stared at her for a moment and then looked away. He didn’t trust himself to speak, or even to look at her. But he looked at Black Sam and met the dark gaze and quick, secret smile, and his chin lifted.
“Goodbye, mother.”