VIOLENT DO NOT ENGAGE
Wood cracked and burst from the higher decks, shards raining down the steps with the crew’s shouts and pained cries. A distant explosion sent the ship shuddering.
“Pirates!” shouted a voice from above, followed by a scream. “It’s Captain Copson!”
Some of the women whimpered, several began crying, but they all kept quiet, save for the rattles and clinks of their chains as they tried to hide deeper in the growing shadows.
Cecily only gripped her shiv tighter.
Everyone knew who Captain Copson was. She had first heard of the infamous pirate ten years ago during one of her many visits to Baron Stinton’s estate with her father, when the baron happened to have left out a newspaper with Copson’s name printed in large letters across the front.
At the sight of it, he’d scowled and said the man was “simply dreadful” and that he’d “love to run this sword right through him,” while brandishing the exquisite weapon her father had made for him.
Cecily had laughed because Baron Stinton was famously kind, and she couldn’t have imagined anyone in her life wishing death upon another.
“Copson was famous even when I was a boy,” her father had told her afterward. “He must be very old indeed, and either very evil or very clever to live as long as he has.” Then he’d smiled. “He would surely be a sight to behold with a sword.”
For her father to say that was significant, as his expertise was better than most.
Naturally, after learning of Captain Copson, Cecily heard about him everywhere to such a degree that she was surprised she’d never known his name before.
Many admired that he hadn’t been caught by the authorities after reigning the seas for several decades.
Others said he was terrifying and cruel, known to slaughter entire crews and sink their ships if only to prove he was a king among pirates—and after all this, he refused to die until he reclaimed the treasure stolen from him nearly seventy years ago.
He was legendary, and all feared him for it.
Cecily took a deep breath to calm her thundering heart. One never expected to meet a legend by chance, and this one was not one she particularly wanted to encounter.
There were shouted orders overhead, pounding footsteps, and desperate cries to get the ship moving faster, as though that would save them.
Many of the women had their eyes shut tight, their lips moving as they silently beseeched God to save them. Cecily’s own prayers hadn’t been answered in any way she liked for a long time, so she only dragged herself closer to Hester and took her hand.
Beyond the grimy portholes, the sun fell closer to the horizon, piercing the gloom with streaks of gold and orange. One by one, those shafts of light winked out as something large moved beyond the windows, throwing the brig into darkness.
Copson’s ship. The Fortuna Royale.
The Sparrow jerked as pikes lanced into the hull from the pirates’ vessel.
Men screamed from above, the sound interrupted with gunshots followed by thuds, cries, and heavy thumps as bodies fell to the deck.
A guard appeared at the top of the steps, fleeing whatever horrors he faced on the higher decks.
Then blood rained down into the brig, and he fell down the steps with an ax buried in his skull.
Some women cried. Beside her, Hester trembled. Even Morgyn had tears in her eyes as she stared at the dead body. Within minutes, the commotion on the upper deck quieted, leaving only footsteps and voices.
Cecily was under no impression that the survivors were anyone but pirates. Surely they would have awful things in mind for a ship full of women, and they’d most certainly kill them all.
But she had prepared herself for death once before and could do it again.
Perhaps she’d negotiate for her manner of death and request that Copson kill her outright.
She could ask him to give her a moment to close her eyes and return to the home in her head so she could be somewhere beautiful while she died.
Already, she could see her little parlor. She’d wear a beautiful dress—red, so it wouldn’t show the blood, and maybe if she wasn’t worthy of Heaven and her father and the mother she’d never known, God would have mercy and let her spend eternity in her little home…
Boots thudded down the steps at the other end of the ship. Cecily opened her eyes as the newcomer descended into the hold.
The young man looked to be in his mid-twenties, and he was bald with tattoos crawling over his hands and up his neck. He hoisted a lantern before him, stepped over the guard’s body, and froze as he took in the faces in the gloom.
“Shiiiit,” he said, drawing out the low curse. He crept farther in, searching the cells in the dimness before turning on his heel and hurrying back up the steps.
“Captain,” came his voice from above. “It’s a prison ship all right, but it’s all women.”
A pause. Then a deep, resonant voice repeated, “Women.”
Cecily couldn’t discern a mood from the tone. No animosity or disappointment, like she would have expected from a man who held little esteem for women. But not terrible excitement either. Hester’s grip tightened.
The young man returned, followed by a man in his early fifties who wore a long black coat and a tricorn hat with a red feather. His heavy presence seemed to pull all of the air out of the brig, and Cecily would have bet the rest of her soul that this was the infamous Captain Copson.
His face hid behind a dark, trimmed beard, and he studied the women with storm-gray eyes as he paced down the aisle between the cells. He stopped halfway and took the lamp from the bald man. As he lifted it, his coat fell open to reveal a gleaming cutlass at his hip.
“How many are you?” he asked. He spoke with refined intonation that was at odds with his appearance and his legend.
“Thirty,” Morgyn answered in a thin voice. Speaking for all of them, as she should. Maybe Copson would kill her first. Cecily would prefer to live long enough to see that.
He considered them. “Greyson, what’s our number?”
“Forty-two,” the bald man answered. “Lost one today.”
“So thirty is adequate…” The captain rolled his lips between his teeth, thinking, then continued in a cold voice, “My name is Captain Robert Copson. I’ve killed this ship’s crew, and I’ll kill you all too.”
The women fidgeted, rustling as they made themselves smaller.
Hester grabbed Cecily’s shoulder, but Cecily didn’t move or take her eyes off the captain.
He didn’t look so dreadful or terribly old, not like he should after ruling the seas for as long as he had.
Had she seen him under any other circumstance, she would have thought he was a regular man.
His cutlass winked at her in the low light. She smiled back.
“That is,” he went on, “unless you wish to join my crew. I can promise you money and freedom from whatever hell you were bound for. You’ll not be mistreated or killed so long as you honor the laws on my ship.”
Cecily blinked. Confusion creased along her brow while murmurs spread among the others.
“In exchange for our virtues?” one of the women asked, boldly snide. “What’ll ya want from us?”
The pirate tilted his head, squinting. “Your virtues,” he said in a low, surly grumble that correctly insinuated this group of women had few virtues among them, “will be yours to give as you please. But on pain of death, you’ll not be touched against your will.
Many a pirate code assures the same, and mine is no different.
It behooves no one to have a ship full of strife and such a shameful lack of discipline. ”
His tone rang with commanding authority that left little room for doubt.
Cecily was under no impression that Copson’s code had anything to do with chivalry or morals beyond the discipline he spoke of, and surely the other women knew the same.
They were tired of being shackled and imprisoned, and so long as they wouldn’t be forced into anything, the offer of freedom was too attractive to forsake.
Morgyn stood first, saying, “I’ll go.” Many echoed her, pressing against the bars in their eagerness to be free.
Cecily, however, remained in her corner, trying to swallow her befuddlement.
There was a catch or a trap or some kind of evil punch line. Death was coming—it was what Copson was known for. It’s what she expected. He certainly hadn’t been paid off to keep anyone here alive, so she couldn’t imagine why he would.
To what end? she thought. What did he have to gain from good intentions?
Copson handed the lantern to Greyson and turned for the hatch. “Greyson will free you. Don’t dawdle.”
And just like that, Captain Copson, the wickedest man in the Atlantic, a pillaging, murdering, torturing pirate, had saved them.
It wasn’t that Cecily didn’t want to be free. It was that she had never expected to be, and in lieu of any sort of agency, she’d chased peace as it was the only thing she could win for herself.
But now she suddenly had all the agency in the world—so much of it that she felt as though she were drowning as she was offered her first true choice in a year.
Life or death?
Though it might have been a simple matter, the suddenness of being able to choose something for herself shocked her into indecision.
For so long, she’d courted desires for both death and life, her loyalty swaying to either depending on the moods and whims of her rotten heart and the weather of her thoughts.
The past was sunsets that became killing storms while the future was the all-consuming darkness before dawn—a dawn she’d had to wait a year for.
A dawn that came with pirates, but dawn nonetheless.
Meanwhile, Hester’s eyes began to shine with happiness. “We’re free,” she breathed. “I told you good things would happen.”
Cecily stared at the hatch. Was this good?