Queen of the Seas

Queen of the Seas-2

Simao’s eyes widened as he saw a man approaching his daughter with a dagger. “Please, don’t—” Gaspar silenced him with a raised hand.

“Now, it seems your papa doesn’t want to pay me back the money I loaned him to repair his boat. This hurts me and makes me regret the kindness I showed him,” he continued as if he was talking to Callisto, but his menacing eyes were on Simao’s.

“I swear it, sir. I just need a few more months,” Simao pleaded, keeping a careful eye on the man with the dagger looming just behind his daughter. “The season has started slow, but it will pick up soon. You will have your coin. I swear it by the new gods and the old!”

“Slow season, you say?” Gaspar rubbed his greasy double chin as if in thought. “Yet, Dado and Hahn have told me this season has been fruitful for them. Are you telling me those two gutter rats are better fishermen than you and your sons? Or is there something else you need to tell me?”

Simao cursed inwardly. He should have known those two would have talked against him. They were always trying to hurt him and his family in some way.

“No, sir, they have gotten lucky this year, that is all. Each year it takes time to track the new movements of the shoals. Sometimes luck is with you, and you find them quickly, sometimes not.”

“Do you really think me such a f*****g fool as that, Simao?” Gaspar snapped, his temper getting away from him.

Callisto snapped to attention at the man’s outburst and was about to move to her father’s side when a strong hand snatched a fistful of her hair and held her firmly in place.

“Papa, what is happening?” she cried, her feet barely touching the ground as the man held her painfully.

“Please don’t do this, Gaspar!” Simao cried out, knowing if he moved to her, the man would cut her throat. “Stay calm, my little sea slug. It is okay. Everything will be okay, I swear it!”

“Do you think I want this? Wanted to waste part of my day with this bullshit?” Gaspar growled. “But hear me now, Simao, I will have him cut her throat and the throats of your whole family if you lie to me again! Now tell me what you’ve been doing with all your fish!”

Simao’s shoulders sagged in defeat. He was caught, and his family’s lives depended on his truth. “I have been selling part of it to another for a slightly higher price. We needed new nets and medicine from the healer. My wife has been in much pain for months, and we do not know why. But if she doesn’t have the medicine, she moans and cries all night in her sleep.”

“Who are you selling the fish to, Simao?”

“Radburn Lopo…”

“Out of all the people you could have sold to, my most hated rival is the one you chose?” Gaspar snapped, moving dangerously close. “Have I not been kind? Have I not been fair?” He laid a meaty fist into Simao’s guts, doubling him over. “This is how you repay that kindness when I could have let your family starve and die?”

“Papa!” Callisto tried to pull away, but the man’s grip was unrelenting, and instantly she felt cold steel against her throat.

“Stay still, Callisto! Do not move! I am fine!”

A kick sent him flying over to his side, gasping for air.

“Please! Leave my papa alone!”

“Your papa has been a very, very bad friend to me. He has hurt me very deeply!” Another kick sent Simao crashing into a marble bench.

“He didn’t mean it!” Tears poured freely down her dirty face. “He is a good man!”

“I don’t know how he can make me think that again! He stole from me and then had the gall to lie to my face! Do you know what happens to thieves, girl?” As the words left his fat mouth, another man handed him a hatchet.

Callisto couldn’t believe what she was seeing. How could this be happening? Her father was a good, kind man; he made a mistake, that was all. Everyone made mistakes from time to time. At least, that was what her mama always told her. “Please, no, please don’t hurt him! Don’t hurt my papa!”

Simao stared up at the large man, his eyes pleading all that he couldn’t say aloud, for his voice failed him now when he needed it most.

Gaspar sneered down at his victim. “You have two choices here today, Simao. Take your own hand, or I have my man open your daughter"s throat. Choose before I grow bored and do both.”

Simao swallowed the hard lump in his throat, knowing no words would change any of this now. He had sealed his fate the day he had decided to sell to Radburn Lopo. A decision at the time that had seemed harmless enough.

It had never been for long-term gains, only to get ahead so that he didn’t have to borrow more money. He took the hatchet in a trembling hand, it felt impossibly heavy, and he almost dropped it. He could not meet his daughter’s eyes, for his shame would not allow him. “Turn away, Callisto, do not watch this.”

“No!” the fat man barked. “The girl watches so that she might learn an important lesson today about keeping one’s word and the status quo and where you and her fit within it!”

“Please—don’t make her—”

“You had your chance for niceties, Simao. Instead, you chose to lie and cheat me out of what was rightfully mine!” Gaspar spat. “Now, do it, or your daughter walks the dark road today!” With a nod, the man pressed the dagger harder against her throat.

Callisto watched in horror as her father lifted the weapon. This wasn’t happening; it couldn’t be real. Maybe this was some sort of test, but what would he be trying to teach her in such a horrible setting? Indeed, this man who had been so kind moments ago wasn’t this evil? How could such a thing be true?

The sun glinted off the polished blade, breaking her from her thoughts. She watched as if the world had slowed the scene as the hatchet came down in a smooth arc. The blade sliced through flesh, sinew, and bone. A heartbeat later, her father’s wails of agony cut through the silence like the hatchet had cut through his wrist.

The man released her, and she ran to her father, slumped down on his knees, holding his left arm tightly, trying to stem the flow of blood pumping quickly from the stump.

“I am here, papa! I am here,” she called to him, but his mind was distant as he stared at his severed hand upon the cobblestone. Callisto knew he would bleed out if the blood flow didn’t stop. She quickly ripped strips from her dirty shirt and began wrapping the stump the way he had shown her.

“Callisto,” her father mumbled in shock, “I—I am—sorry—I have failed you—your brothers—your mother—”

“No, no, papa, do not talk like that,” she pleaded, not knowing what else to say.

Gaspar looked down at the young girl. “Now, remember what you saw here today. This is what happens when one forgets their place in this world. Now pick that pathetic excuse you call father up and get out of my sight before I set the hounds on you both!”

Reaching down, he picked up the severed appendage and threw it to a massive hound by the doorstep. The dog quickly snatched it up and began chewing on it viciously.

* * *

Dusk was just about upon them before Callisto’s brothers, Macario and Tad found them on the roadway still two miles from their house. Worried at their father"s delay, they had hooked up the old nag to the wagon and set off in search.

They could not have come at a better time. Callisto’s body ached with the strain of half dragging, half carrying their father’s near limp form. He had lost so much blood that she was amazed he was still conscious or alive.

“What has happened?” Macario cried, jumping from the wagon before it could come to a complete stop. He ran to his father’s aid, seeing the bloodied stump where his hand should have been. Simao’s face was pale as alabaster, and thick sweat clung to his skin as his hollowed eyes starred blankly at the dusty ground.

Callisto’s eyes were crusted red from the last hours of crying, her cheeks stained with dirt and grim. “He—that man—was a monster—made Father—” she couldn’t force the words out, couldn’t shake the vision from her mind.

“Quickly, Tad, help me get Father into the wagon. We will take him to the healer!” Macario ordered his younger brother, taking the burden from his sister. “Father? Father, can you hear me?”

“He hasn’t said a word since—” she mumbled, wanting nothing more than to collapse and forget all of this. Wishing this was nothing more than a bad dream, the worst dream, but one where she could still wake up and all would be as it should be.

Tad, who usually would defy his older brother’s orders at every step, knew this was not the time for such foolishness. “By the gods, why would Gaspar do such a thing?”

Macario loaded their father into the back of the rotting wagon and covered him with an old, torn piece of canvas. “He must have discovered Father was trading part of the catch to Radburn Lopo for Mother’s medicine.”

“This is madness!” Tad said with bitterness. “That is no reason for an act of such nature! We will go to the Magistrate as soon as Father is in the hands of Master Cael.”

“Do you think Magistrate Daan or his men will care?”

“It’s their job to care. This can’t be allowed to stand. This has to go against some law! He crippled Father for no good reason!” Tad countered angrily.

Macario knew nothing would be done. Father had crossed a rich man, and rich men could do as they liked with the poor common folk of the region. A few gold coins in the right hands made ‘laws’ pointless against their kind. But he knew better than to argue with his younger brother.

“Let us first worry about Father.” He turned to Callisto. “Will you be alright to walk home? Someone needs to tell mother; she is beside herself with worry about you two.”

All Callisto could do was nod and watch her brothers ride off as quickly as the old nag would go under the harsh lash she now received in haste.

It would still take her some time to get home, and she wished her brothers would have taken her with them. But their father needed help quickly, and she knew she would be an extra weight that the poor nag couldn’t haul. She began the walk in the direction of their little cottage beside the sea.

Callisto’s legs began shaking with exhaustion, and she was sure she would collapse if she didn’t rest. She sat against a fence post in the dried grass beside one of the several homes along the road for a moment. She wasn’t sure who lived here; this part of the town was for folk far better off than her family.