“She was gone before she was born, Red,” Jack started.
I shook my head violently. “No. No!”
“Red!” My husband’s hand cupped the side of my face. “Red, calm down. Your wish is my command.”
“Rusty, bring Loreena to the side of the ship, please.” Jack knelt and scooped a handful of sea water into his palm as Rusty squatted down, the little bundle securely in her arms. “Redella, say the words.”
Jack tipped his palm so that the sea water streamed down onto Loreena’s head. “Your father and I baptize you, Loreena Jacqueline Rackham, in the name of the Father—”
Jack scooped more sea water and continued to let it stream onto our baby.
“And in the name of the Son—”
One last scoop.
“And of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
My face crumpled. “Oh Jack, it was supposed to be holy water. Oh Jack, what have I done? Have I damned her soul with my—”
“Redella.” Jack’s voice had morphed from gentle to commanding once again. “Ask any seaman who has ever sailed the sea.” He took my face in his hands and forced me to look at him. “There is no holier water than that which the Almighty created Himself. He created the oceans, did He not?”
His words made sense. I nodded and patted his hand. “Pray for her, Jack. Please.”
“Rusty, continue sewing please.”
A slew of consecutive splashes made me jump. I glanced over my shoulder as Poison Lightning readied himself to push the last of Blackbeard’s men overboard. He must have felt me watching because he turned and held my gaze—mine, hopelessly watery while his, all business. He offered me a nod before turning back to complete his task of burying a rival pirate at sea. I turned back to my own funeral proceedings as my heart continued to break in fresh, unimaginable ways with each passing moment.
“The sewing is complete, Father.” Rusty’s voice was impossibly formal. “Loreena is ready for the journey.
“She mustn’t float for all eternity,” Jack whispered. “Place her in her crate, Rusty.”
Red Legs sidled up beside me. “Shall I nail the coffin shut, Cap?”
Jack sniffled. I didn’t look up, but it sounded as though he was crying. “Yes, Red Legs.”
Without fanfare, Red Legs stepped over to Rusty and patted her shoulder. “Go to your parents, Darling.”
Rusty nodded as her own emotions roiled up and over, reducing her to a blubbering female, not unlike her mother. I opened my arm to her, where she melted into my side as I had Jack’s.
Red Legs, perhaps in another life, would have been a fabulous undertaker. “Tell me, Jack,” he began in his trademark easy style. His words lightened the mood over our end of The Black Otter considerably. “Do you reckon Loreena would have grown to inherit The Black Otter fleet?” He pounded nail after nail into the boards. “What a silly question, of course she would have. And what a leader she would have been, coming from the two of you.” Red Legs stood and tucked his hammer into a pocket of his britches. “My she rest in peace, Captain Red. Captain Jack.”
“T-thank you, Red Legs,” I whispered.
“May I do the honors, Captains?” Solo’s tranquil voice appeared from nowhere. “I brought her into this world. I feel it’s my duty to see that she gets properly planted.”
Jack cleared his throat. “Yes, thank you, Solo.” He unwound his arm from around my shoulders and produced a book from the inside pocket of his duster.
“The Book of Common Prayer, 1662 edition.” I glanced at him. “From The Church of England.”
Jack cleared is throat and began to read. “Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” John 11:25-26.”
“Yes,” I whispered in answer. “Yes I do.”
“Me too, Mama,” Rusty whispered back. She squeezed my shoulders.
Jack continued. “I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; myself will see him with my own eyes—I and not another. How my heart years within me. Job 19:25-27.”
Jack cleared his throat, then cleared his throat again. Red Legs stepped over to his captain. “I can read, Cap. May I?”
Jack nodded and wrapped both of his arms around me. His shoulders shook, as did mine.
Red Legs’ voice was more commanding than Jack’s when reading from the prayer book. “For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. First Timothy 6:7.”
“Aye,” Tommy said. “That be true, it be.”
“Naked, I came from my mother’s womb—” Red Legs’ gaze flickered to me before focusing back on the book. “And naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised. Job 1:21.”
My thoughts swirled in my mind, like a tempest. God, please keep Loreena in Your loving hand—
Red Legs continued to read from the book, Psalms 39 and 90, then First Corinthians chapter 15, but I didn’t hear the words. My baby. My baby is dead.
Red Legs’ voice roused me from my daydream. “When they come to the grave, while the corpse is made ready to be laid into the earth.” He shifted his weight. “Mortals, born of woman, are of few days and full of trouble. They spring up like flowers and wither away; like fleeting shadows, they do not endure. Do you fix your eye on them? Will you bring them before you for judgement? Job 14:1-2.”
It’s time to bury my child.
Jack’s voice was loud and commanding again. “Solo, please bury our daughter in the ocean, that was briefly her home and is now her home for all eternity.”
“Yes, Cap.” Solo picks up the little makeshift coffin to begin to lower it into the water when Tommy, his dirty hat pressed to his chest and a coil of rope over his shoulder, and Poison Lightning appeared, toting a cannonball. Wordlessly, Poison Lightning attaches the cannonball with a short length of chain to the bottom of the crate.
