A Pirate's Song.

Chapter Thirteen.

When I stepped out of the bathroom, nude from head to toe, a figure was seated on the bed in front of me. A woman dressed like a pirate with hair of blazing orange fire that shielded her face from my view.

I paused then chose to ignore her, heading over to the dresser where I pulled a long white gown from it, tugging the material over my head and onto my body, concealing it from the view of hungry eyes that I was so used to feeling.

“Why are you still here?” I finally asked, tugging my hair out from the neckline of the dress as I turned to face her. There was a hair clip on top of the dresser that I used to put my hair up with, clasping the strands back and out of my face.

“Let me see your arm” she insisted, getting up from the bed and dancing across the floor to where I was stood.

I pulled my arm from her hold as if she had burnt me and took a step back, away from her. She smelt strongly of guilt and was obviously looking for any and every way to make up for her earlier actions.

“Please leave” I tried to get her to go but she stayed rooted in place, her empty features looking down at me since she was a few inches taller than I was.

My mind went back to the promise I had made to myself before of wanting to get to know her and I reluctantly held my arm out for her to take. She slowly eased the sleeve of the dress up to examine the cut, her thumb pressing down beside it. I winced and pulled my arm back.

“You should bandage it” she warned, turning to open one of the drawers of the dresser, pulling a roll of bandages from it that she unwound to again reach for my arm.

I stayed still as she wrapped it around the wound, using her teeth to tear the fabric and tie it off at the end. She glanced down at my leg and started guiding me towards the bed but I protested, sinking into the chair I had slept in the night before. I didn’t want to go near it; I didn’t want to lay in the same sheets she had shared with him.

Rebecca shot me a curious look, kneeling down to tenderly wrap my leg.

“How do you know Caleb?” I randomly asked while she worked on my leg. There was slight hesitation in her actions after I had spoken but she quickly went back to tying off the material. She set the rest of the bandages aside and stood to look down at me.

“We grew up together” was her brief reply. She reached for the chair behind the desk and slid it closer to where I was, taking a seat with her front pressing up against the back of the chair and her legs parted, her dress skirt shielding my eyes from what lay between them.

“His mother was a harlot and mine a bakers’ wife” she had a way of telling things, a way of painting pictures when she spoke but this was different from when she had spoken about Mary, there were no visions, no unwanted images or sharp pains yet I could still see the story unfolding in front of me.

“He had a habit of always getting himself into trouble-.” her voice was as captivating as her dancing.

A small smile lit up her face at the thought of a younger version of Caleb, always coming home with cuts, scrapes and bruises having gotten into fights with the older kids.

“Because he grew up poor, he started stealing-.” the smile faded as if that was the turning point where the usual trouble for a boy would take a terrible turn and end in something much worse.

“It started with food then petty change, finally he began to steal jewels and valuable items” she gazed down at the ground, her mind going back to that time many years ago. Both her and Caleb looked to be in their late twenties to early thirties.

“He had gotten thrown into the brig a few times by the Campbell family-.” my eyebrows furrowed up in confusion at her words. She had first called him ‘Caleb Campbell’ when we had rescued her from that island she was trapped on.

She noticed my confusion and proceeded to explain “Caleb’s father was a nobleman who had paid to lie with a harlot. His noble blood was kept a secret for many years, only his parents knew of who he really was”

I found it hard to believe that the brute of a pirate Captain I knew was half a noble, he didn’t act like it, couldn’t read or write and hardly cared about his appearance at all.

“His father wanted nothing to do with him and treated him like just another street rat” my eyes fell back onto her, understanding why he was the way he was.

He was raised a poor harlot’s son and not a noble boy. Your blood could be entirely noble but if you were raised by commoners you yourself would be a commoner as well.

“He got locked away a few times and shortly after he had turned seventeen, he heard word of a pirate ship having docked near the bay-.” she breathed a laugh at the memory of a younger Caleb.

My hands gripped the arms of my chair, waiting for her to continue, to shed light on how Caleb had gone from a half noble street rat to a pirate Captain.

“Where there are pirates, there is gold’ he said before he set out to go steel from Captain Solstice” steeling from a pirate was a mistake everyone knew not to make. For Caleb to have considered such a thing he had to be confident in his skills as a thief, so much so that he would risk his life to get his hands on their gold.

“The Captain caught him in the act and threatened to have him walk the plank” the image of a younger Caleb, poorly dressed with his wrists bound, standing on the edge of a plank with his back to the sea lit up my imagination.

Rebecca breathed a laugh “But Caleb had a way of getting out of things” it wasn’t a positive trait but I could tell that she was grateful for it because if he hadn’t been able to talk over the pirates he would’ve most likely died back then.

I shifted to a more comfortable position, tucking my legs underneath me as I clasped my hands together in my lap, leaning back into the chair.

“He promised to bring the Captain the Campbell family’s most valuable possession in exchange for his release” a bargain made with the devil. I thought but said nothing, too afraid that if I spoke she would stop her tale and leave me with more questions than answers.

She pressed her forehead to her folded arms that were draped across the back of the chair she was seated on.

“You own the Campbell’s, you own the city’ he said, an offer a pirate like Solstice couldn’t refuse” there was a long pause as she stared down at the pillow of her chair below.

I felt like I had to say something so I decided to prompt her to keep going, hoping that it wouldn’t hinder her story.

“What was their most prized possession?” my voice was small, almost nonexistent, a mere whisper that reached her. She shook her head from side to side and smiled up at me, meeting my eyes with a sad but serious look in hers.

“Their daughter and Caleb’s half-sister” the air escaped my lips in a long released breath. She raised her hand, propping her elbow onto the back of the chair as she pressed her thumb to her lip in thought, eyes searching the corner of the room “Of course he had no idea that she was his sister at the time”

It made sense that he thought she was just some snobby rich girl who had everything he could only dream of having. She, too him, was just another privileged noble girl that had nothing to do with him, Rebecca or his mother.

“Once they had her in their grasp, the pirates invaded the city” there was a sense of fear radiating from her as she closed her eyes, almost as if to will away the haunting memories that refused to leave her mind’s eye. I knew exactly what she was feeling, desperately wanting for the memories to go away but the difference was that the memories haunting me weren’t mine, they were someone else’s.

“They pillaged the shops, r***d the women, murdered the men and burnt homes to the ground” the fire in her eyes reflected the image only she could see of a city engulfed in flames, the screams of women and children echoing out into the night as the streets ran red with blood.

“Caleb’s sister, Claudia, was murdered on this very ship” chills ran down the back of my spine, causing the hair at the nape of my neck to stand on end, my skin risen with goosebumps while my fingers nervously picked at the material of my dress.

My eyes glanced in the direction of the steps that would lead to the deck from the Captain’s quarters.

“His mother managed to tell him of his noble blood before she was dragged into the street, stripped naked and killed for being a harlot” I could hear the menacing laughter of pirates in the background as if to mock the woman who had birthed Caleb, as if to scorn him for being the son of a w***e.

“Caleb killed Solstice, took control of his crew and the Sunken Soul along with them” the very ship I was currently harbored on was the place where he first became a pirate, the place where he had watched his sister be killed and made a bargain that would end up sentencing hundreds of innocent people to death.

“He buried his mother and Claudia before setting sail, leaving me behind to grieve the loss of my family-.” I couldn’t understand, my brows knitting together as I wondered how she could care about the man who had caused the death of her parents?

She looked at me, drawn from her memories and back to the present where I was seated on the edge of my seat listening to her every word.

He killed off his entire crew, replacing them over the years” I felt more at ease with the thought of not being surrounded by the men who had murdered so many people.

I was sure that the Irishman wasn’t innocent but at least I knew that with both Caleb and Ben, he wouldn’t dare try anything.

She was done, her eyes sad and empty from traveling so far back in time but there was a question I had yet to have answered.

“Why do you care so much about him?” her eyes regained their life as she contemplated telling me. She stood, rising up from her seat and grabbing hold of the back of it.

“Because-.” she began in a whisper, smiling down at the floorboards “I fell in love with him long before he had met Solstice” there was a sharp pang in my chest for some reason, my body tensing and my breathing becoming ragged.

She noticed the changes in me when she began to drag the chair back over to the desk where she had found it. She gazed down onto the surface of the desk, both hands perched on the chair.

“But he only ever loved Mary” with that she allowed her hands to slip away from the chair and turned to leave me to my thoughts.

She was jealous of the noble girl, jealous of the effect she had on Caleb, jealous of the fact that I looked like Mary, like the love of his life. I assumed that deep down she was relieved that I was more interested in Ben than Caleb but at the same time she just wanted him to be happy and seeing me with Mary’s face giving affection to another man didn’t exactly do that.

I could understand why she had reacted the way she did earlier, my hand raising to touch my fingertips to my cheek that was no longer stinging. There were so many pieces to the puzzle that made up Caleb and his life, so many questions I still had regarding Mary, so many things I still didn’t understand.

I closed my eyes and went back to that moment under water, watching Gigas delve deeper into the ocean depths. The voice that had reached out to me and the words that it spoke ‘A heart of the sea’

What did that mean and why did it sound so familiar as if I had heard it somewhere before? When I opened my eyes, they landed on the leather bound book that was resting on the night table.

I lowered my feet back onto the ground and stood to approach it, running my fingers over the binding.

Something inside of me believed that once we would collect all seven treasures I would finally understand what I had been seeing, what it all meant.

I took the book in hand and sunk down onto the floor, leaning back against the side of the bed to continue reading, picking up where I left off at the location of the fourth treasure.