China Joe’s nasal, syllabic laugh made me cringe, even as a memory. But it was another sound that came soon after that froze in my mind and turned my blood to ice.
The helpless, hopeless screams from below deck.
Monica Joan.
She cried out for help that would never come. Tears welled up in my swollen eyes as I sobbed against chunk of driftwood as the memory of shriek after terrified shriek pained my ears afresh. I’d let down my only friend, and it had cost her life. And my husband, my precious husband. Promised to find me.
I love you, Jack. I’m not worth finding.
Before I had the chance to get too worked up, something bumped my foot.
Was that one of the chains?
The anonymous something bumped me from the other side and spun me around. I kicked but hit nothing.
The way Solo’s smile had melted as the old hook-handed seaman swore by his theory that sharks smelled blood gripped my spine. Without warning, silver-bodied fish began to breach the water, jumping around me in a hopeless bid for freedom. But from what?
I dared a peek just as a gray dorsal fin broke the water before me.
•
“I’d say you was in need of some assistance.” A woman’s voice forced me to open my eyes. “You done found yourself in a bait of sharks.”
I shielded my eyes. The outline of a person standing on the deck of a small boat blocked out the ceaseless sun. For a moment, I wondered if I was seeing a mirage.
However, mirages weren’t supposed to talk. “Where am I?”
“Lost at sea, of course.” The large, snaggletooth woman let go a laugh as she flung the rope ladder over the side of the boat. She grinned as she offered me a rotund hand and helped me onto the deck. “Now, you’re safe aboard a vessel that is always in the right place at the right time. Some call us the Ship of Dreams.”
I glanced back into the water. Sure enough, four fins circled the driftwood that had been my saving grace. I shuddered. “Many thanks.”
“It’s said those critters smell blood. Meself, I think I’d have a hard time smelling anything underwater.” Her wide, tan face was decorated with a spiderweb of white scars. “Then again, I ain’t no shark.”
An impassioned groan from somewhere gave me pause. I rubbed my eyes and studied the ship where I’d found myself, or who’d found me. Rum-heavy air hung thick over the deck, like a drunken storm cloud. Men lolled about with half-naked, smiling women. Their money hungry giggles were reminiscent of those that came from the beds of the most downcast of the women in the London poorhouses. Women who decided they didn’t want to be poor any longer and sold the only thing they had left to sell. Themselves.
She gestured up to the fluttering flag. The same black flag Jack pointed out to me the day before, with the white outline of a bare breasted woman. Up this close, I saw that she also sported a fish tail. “Welcome aboard The Molly Maiden.”
I looked at the woman. Heavy-set like their symbol, her voluminous chest was barely concealed by fabric wrappings that were probably once quite nice. Stringy blonde hair was piled high, and salt-heavy tendrils dangled around her wrinkled face in an attempt to be seductive. She could have been somebody’s governess in another life, or even somebody’s grandmother. “Ships take a day off sailing to pay us a call. Merchant ships, pirate ships, soldier ships—they all stop for The Molly Maiden.”
“I, um, see.” I chewed my lip. “I suppose business is well, then.”
“I’m Rhodesia.” She studied me a moment through clear, brown eyes. The bags beneath them told of a lifetime of sleepless nights. “Speaking of passing ships—”
My eyebrows knitted together. Before I could respond, a naked blonde laid out on several barrels groaned as a man with greasy gray hair moved his oral attentions from her mouth to her breasts.
I glanced at Rhodesia, who wore a knowing smile.
Beside us, the blonde’s eyes were shut as she took his hand and put it between her legs with a muffled moan. With his free hand, he struggled with his britches until his ripe manhood sprang free. At once, she turned on her side and took it hungrily in her mouth. The man began to thrust, but the odd position made such actions look ridiculous and painful. Still, I was powerless to look away.
“Tell me. A pirate ship from The Black Otter fleet stopped by, with news of one of our former best customers. Commodore Jack Rackham who refuses to be called such but will go by Captain Russian Jack until the day he dies.” Rhodesia, the snaggletooth wench, ignored the blonde and her impassioned suitor. “You know, I think I have it figured. One of the pirates mentioned that Captain Jack married up with some young thing after he marked her face with his cutlass. To warn off other men, no doubt.”
Jagged gasps and moans finally turned Rhodesia’s head. We both watched as the man roughly pried his whore’s legs apart and buried his face where his hand had been moments before. Somewhat awkwardly, he clambered atop her on the barrels. He bucked viciously, but with a hitch. It wasn’t until then I noticed he was missing part of a leg.
Their passionate noises reached a climactic octave as Rhodesia turned back to face me. “Their ship will come back for them at sunset, once their business in Portugal is complete,” she explained. “These prisoner transport ships always bring the business.”
“Prisoner transport ships?”
“Taking convicts from London across the sea. To the New World.”
I looked around the deck again. Sure enough, like the one-legged man, most of the men performing services to the woman—or having services performed upon them—were clad in the same dingy striped prison garb. One man caught my eye as he hitched up his blue hose and didn’t offer so much as a glance to the brunette whore who wiped his seed from her face. With lust in his eye, he stepped to a black-haired beauty whose charms no blouse could conceal. He whispered something in her ear and she nodded before he dropped to his knees and disappeared beneath her skirts. She opened her legs wide and her head threw back as he obviously tasted the forbidden fruits of The Molly Maiden.
Strangely, I was the only one in chains.
“How do the prisoners earn the right to be turned loose in such a manner?”
Rhodesia shrugged. “It’s a long haul across the Atlantic. Most men yearn for some bit of freedom before their sentences are carried out. Those who are favorites of the guards get to have just that.”
“Aren’t you afraid they’ll try and take over the ship? Or jump ship and swim to freedom?”
Rhodesia laughed, sending a ripple across her ample bosom. “Jump and swim through shark infested waters? Let them have at it, if they’re that idiotic.” She sobered. “As for taking over The Molly Maiden. No one would dare go up against Irish Bon, no matter how hardened a criminal he—or she—be.”
Irish Bon. Where have I heard that name before?
“Who pays?” I was powerless to stem the questions that flooded my mind as lust flooded the ship. “For your services, I mean.”
“The prison system of Jolly Old England.” She slapped my back. “So well they pay that they may just have The Molly Maiden on the payroll!”
Shock filled me as the prisoners filled the women who serviced them.
“Prison guards are hornier than the prisoners themselves.” She cackled again. “Let’s get you out of those wet clo—” Words fell dead from her tongue and she grabbed my chin. Rhodesia turned my face this way and that. “Say—how’d you get this mark across your cheek?”
I steeled my face and stared back into her questioning eyes as the innocent, shy girl I had been slowly melted away. Redella may well be dead in the water, with no hope of resurrection. “My name is Red. Left for dead by China Joe. Wife to Russian Jack. Co-Captain of The Black Otter and her fleet.”
“You don’t say.” Her face flushed a robust pink, then broke into a sly smile. “Since you won’t be needing a job to work off your room and board, you will have to make other arrangements. I’ll see to it you get in to see Captain Bon straight away.” She turned and hurried toward the cabin. Her fat legs smacked together as she ran. “Come along, Captain Red. Let’s get you out of those wet clothes. It’s almost time for dinner.”
An emotion I couldn’t quite place swelled in my chest as I strode along behind her, my broken chains clinking behind me. Nobody paid me any mind. Still, something told me I’d just been raised a notch on The Ship of Dreams.
“Get dressed and scurry on to the galley. Pantalets are in the dresser. Blouse is in there, too. Bon will know how to get you out of those irons.”
After all that had transpired since coming to live aboard The Black Otter, from marrying a notorious pirate who wasn’t my fiancé, to doing murder, to getting thrown overboard and picked up from amidst a shiver of sharks, nothing seemed as absurd as wearing pantalets on a boat full of whores.
I dropped my hands to my sides and fingered the wet fabric, heavy with salt water, that clung to my legs. Rhodesia let out a hard, toothless laugh.
“See there, you’re pretty much wearing britches already.” She clapped me on the back so hard I stumbled forward. “Least these in here are dry.”
Chapter Nine
Aboard The Molly Maiden on the high seas
