Chapter Two: The Dark Horse

Her dress flapped in the wind as she tapped her way along the deck. The miles of canvas sailcloth above her billowed in the wind as she walked up behind the tall Frenchman and tugged his coat sleeve.

“Excuse me,” Florencia said, as he jumped violently, “What are you looking for?”

Captain Marchand looked down at her, apparently relieved that it was only an eleven year old girl and not a pirate. She was short compared to him, for the top of her head barely reached his elbow.

“Pirates,” was his grim reply, once he looked away.

She looked a little surprised, and when he looked back, there was a little more humour in his hollow face.

“Your sister sighted the ship yesterday, and I know she told you. Lucie said as much, but your Rita is much too young to know the truth. I would rather not tell you, but your mother’s already told me how smart you are.”

Florencia blushed, and let him take her by the hand. He led her closer to the bowsprit where he was standing, and where a length of net had been stretched out over the pole to catch falling men. There was a curved piece of railing as well, and she leaned against it, following his hand as he pointed out the three islands on the Le Dauphin’s starboard side.

“The pirates weight anchor over there and appear from beyond those islands when ships go sailing past,” he told her, “the place is quite inhospitable, with only turtles and iguana to eat. There is a town, but they will dare to raid it, so they prey on fools like us for nearly everything.”

He handed her the spyglass. It was heavy and the metal hot from where Marchand had been holding it all morning; on peering through the thick, flawed lens, Florencia saw the flat expanse of sand and scrub more closely than she had ever done so before.

“Flory!”

She jumped and dropped the spyglass. It narrowly missed her toes and started rolling away as the Condesa waddled up them; Marchand grabbing it, frowning.

“What on Earth are you doing up here, child? I thought Clara told you to stay in your cabin and keep your sister company!”

The Condesa took her eldest daughter by the arm and pulled her in the direction of the hatchway. Florencia tried tugging herself free and told her mother, “Captain Marchand agrees with Rita. There are pirates out here-”

Her mother stopped abruptly beside the hatchway, and her daughter almost collided with her.

“Nonsense!” She said loudly, attracting the attention of the surrounding crew, “Pirates? In this day and age? Do not be absurd, child! Jules is putting stories in your head-Rita’s too! There is no such thing as pirates-not anymore!”

She looked at her husband for support, but at the same time reproved him, as he strolled down from where he had been standing.

“A man called Rogers did try and put a stop to piracy,” the Frenchman half agreed, “he was English. His way of dealing with them was to give out a Letter of Marque to each one he met-but it didn’t work. The pirates, you see, are a bunch of brutes who cannot read. A fine waste of ink and paper his venture turned out to be.”

He looked sheepish as his obese wife glared him. She pushed Florencia through the hatchway and immediately started berating him that she did not want him scaring her children.

Florencia did not listen in for long. She got a whiff of manure as she reached the bottom and made her way back to her cabin.

“You were right,” she told Margarita as she shut the door, “We are being followed by pirates.”

“I thought so,” the second girl had pulled out her toy tea-set from under the bed, although she had no cups and saucers, “It looked a bit funny to be a seabird-”

A panicked cry from above made them both jump. Their mother stopped squawking abruptly as Marchand let out a muffled swear word and ran back to the prow, shouting orders at the top of his voice. The Le Dauphin slowly started turning around and even Aunt Clara sounded somewhat hysterical as the sisters listened to her dithering about.

“What the-?” Florencia stared at the ceiling, whereas Margarita looked dismayed at the sight of her silver-gilt tea-set rolling off the bed. It clattered loudly to the wooden floor. The former bent to pick the up the pieces as feet tap-tapped down the corridor to their room.

A wrinkled face with excessive crow-feet peered myopically around the door once they had thrust it open. The old maid was clasping her rosary again and muttering unintelligibly.

“Pia?”

The door slammed shut and the woman locked it as Florencia lunged for the handle. She rattled the knob violently, but it would not budge.

“Pia, let me out!” She banged her fist on the wood, “I’ll tell my mother-!”

She could just about hear the shrivelled crone murmuring a feverish Ave Maria on the other side of the door as something hot and airborne whizzed overhead.

It plopped down somewhere in the sea, but not before it had caused a hail of wreckage to rain don on the crew and deck. Margarita tugged on her sleeve.

“Not now, Rita,” she told the girl shortly, “Pia, please-”

“Listen!” Her sister said earnestly.

Florencia stopped shaking the door, and cocked her head. The men had stopped moving about and even her mother and aunt had fallen silent for once; all she could hear were the sails flapping and the timbers around them creaking as they sped along.

“I don’t-”

Then she heard it.

It sounded rather like crump. There was a high pitched whistling noise after it that seemed to be getting closer; both sisters froze and screamed along with their mother as the Le Dauphin suddenly lurched violently. The deafening noise of splintering of wood fill their ears as the whole sloop shuddered with the force of the impact.

Florencia found herself thrown against the wall. She banged her knees against the bed and grabbed her sister as Pia wailed outside. The animals squealed down the corridor squealed and lowed in terror as the drumming of feet thundered above them.

“Maman?” Margarita called; their mother had stopped screaming. “Maman!”

The little girl with the dirt-dark hair wore the most hysterical that Florencia had ever seen on her china face. She glanced at her and then at the door, which, without warning, she threw herself, shaking and banging on it.

“Pia-let us out!”

The door clicked and she nearly fell through, tripping on the woman snivelling outside. Pia was curled up and partly blocking way as Florencia gaped at the debris littering the corridor.

“Stay here!” She cried at Margarita, whose face was red and screwed up with tears and fright, “I’ll be right back!”

The Le Dauphin was still moving-although without direction, it seemed, as the wooden floor weaved beneath her feet. Florencia clambered into the dusty light and was confront with a scene of confusion, as the men, pale and scared, hauled uselessly on the ropes dangling from the masts and sails. Her Aunt Clara, looking stupefied, was grasping a section of railing, heaving for breath and trying not to bring up gallons of expensive green tea. Florencia instinctively moved to her side.

“Maman-?”

She found herself directed to the main mast by a wobbling, flabby hand. She turned and immediately recognised the swollen behind that belonged to her mother.

“Maman!”

Florencia clattered up to her, getting slower and slower as she realised why her mother was sobbing and ignoring her.

Captain Jules Marchand was propped against the mast. His papery skin was the colour of chalk, and there was a large spike of wood sticking out of his belly.

Florencia could only watch as her mother sobbed into her dress hem. Her whitened hair was in disarray and her lead face-powder was running with her fat, pearly tears. Her daughter took a step closer, stopping when something bumped into her shoe; when she looked down, she saw that it was Marchand’s spyglass, and she swooped to pick it up.

It weighed even more than before without the captain helping her, and Florencia struggled to hold it up enough to see out of it. The lens was misty and cracked with the force of the last fall; nobody stopped her as she tottered over to the railings and balanced the spyglass there. She had to incline herself to see out of it, as she was taller than the said railings, but managed to see the three green islands from earlier.

There was, however, something moving out from behind the headland. It was being blown along quite merrily and had a grubby red flag flying from the mast.

“Pirates.”

Florencia jumped and spun around, dropping the spyglass as she did so. It hit the deck with a dull clunk and bounced before rolling away from her, but not before the lens had detached itself and broken in two.

The person who had spoken was a sailor with bloody cheeks and a jagged gash across his forehead. He had spoken dazedly to nobody in particular and was staring wildly out to sea, where the enemy ship was as clear as a big black dot.

He shoved her aside and gawped at the ship in question. It appeared to be following them at an almost leisurely pace, and Florencia, standing silent and ignored, noticed that the man had grown very pale beneath his dark tan.

“Man o’ War,” the sailor said hollowly. His bristly jowls quivered, “French-tis the Dark Horse!”

He danced away from the edge and eyeballed everyone with livid fear in his wide eyes. His mates were as white and scared as he was, as he yelled, “The Devil himself is upon us! Flee for yer lives!”

He scrabbled for the only jollyboat that the Le Dauphin had. His fellows quickly came to help, and Aunt Clara thundered up to them shakily.

“What in God’s name do you think you are doing?” She demanded loudly, “I demand you steer this ship away that one!”

She pointed at the man o’ war on the not-so-far horizon, but was brutally cold shouldered, although one bloodless man did tell her that the rudder was shot and that they could not steer without it.

“We would be blown about with the wind!” He cried, “Into Satan’s arms!”

Florencia looked over when she heard the jollyboat splash into the water on the larboard side. The crew started scaling the ropes as Aunt Clara stood mouthing and goggling at them.

“You have no provisions!” A fat man called from where his top half stuck out of the hatchway, “You have no guns!”

He waved his Brown Bess musket pointedly.

“And what about us?” Aunt Clara shouted, ignoring the cook, “The children-my sister-!”

“We’ll happily take the girls,” a third sailor called out with a grin on his freckled face, “But you and that other sow-forget it! We’ll be sunk!”

He cast the rowboat off, and Florencia, with a gloomy sigh, came to stand by her outraged aunt as the men rowed off towards the huddle of islands they had just passed.

“Well I never-!”

Florencia threw herself away from the railings. She squeezed passed the obese cook who was still standing in the hatchway, where he was talking to his prize sow as though she were his wife. She barrelled to her cabin as soon as she was free of him, and, heedless of Pia in the way, threw open the door, startling her sister.

“Flory?” A small voice asked weakly.

Margarita had crammed herself beneath the spindly white writing desk, from where she outstretched a hand almost feebly. Her black hair was mussed, and in her other twiggy arm she was crushing Adora to her chest so tightly that Florencia feared that her pretty porcelain head would pop off.

“Where are Maman and Aunt?” She asked as her brown haired sister moved into the cabin.

“They are still on deck,” Florencia told her, although she did not know what else to say as she too squeezed herself under the writing desk with her sister. She swept her dress up and covered them both with floral blue cotton, as they waited in nervous silence. It was not long, however, before the sound of raised and scared voices wafted down through the hatchway and under the door to them.

The cook had apparently moved up on deck to allow both Aunt Clara and their tearful mother to make their way below along with their expansive Watteau dresses. The girl listened to the fabric rasping and scratching against the woodwork as the women came closer and closer.

“Get up, Pia!” Aunt Clara barked, grabbing the old maid by the bony upper arm and jerking her to her feet, “We are not going to die!”

“Of course we are!” Her sister shrieked, “We should pray like she is-!”

The Condesa was the more religiously inclined of the two, and merely earned herself a black look from her usually calm and level-headed sibling who opened the cabin door.

”You may be with child but that is no way to talk!” Aunt Clara told her firmly, “And you are scaring your other children!”

Margarita gazed at them with wide, frightened eyes that bubbled with crystal tears; dark tracks stared to appear on her porcelain cheeks.

“Are we going to join father, Maman?” The nine-year-old asked tremulously.

“Of course not, girl” Aunt Clara huffed irritably, butting in, “Your Mother is just touched by the sun!”

She glared blackly around at everyone, and repeated, “We are not going to die!”

The enormous gentlewoman seized her wobbly little sister by the shoulder and steadied her on her small feet as Pia tried sinking back to her knees. Florencia, who pulled herself out from under the writing desk, could not help but notice that the two large women had transferred jewellery so that Aunt Clara wore everything valuable.

“Where do you think you’re going? You stay you with your sister-!” The Condesa squawked.

“I want to see-”

She pushed past her fat aunt and climbed up the staircase once again. The sun warmed her skin as it blazed sunnily down on the Le Dauphin, which was much quieter without the crew working. Florencia spotted that the cook and a sailor, one who normally had a foolish expression and whom her mother denounced as a simpleton, had covered Captain Marchand with a spare length of sailcloth. He was attracting flies already, and both regarded his lifeless corpse with very sombre expressions.

“Flory!”

She hurried to the starboard side of the Le Dauphin and gasped at how close the pirate ship had come. It was now near enough for Florencia to see the patches sown on the billowing sails, and she also made out the ragged men scrabbling around the deck.

“Oh my-”

She turned, and found Aunt Clara standing in the hatchway. The woman appeared to be remarkably steady despite how bloodless she looked beneath all the toxic face paint. She was staring, aghast, at the man o’ war that was less than half a mile from them; with a loud splash that made Florencia jump, the pirates threw their rusty anchor overboard. The latter were clambering to lower a rowboat as the other two watched.

“Flory,” Aunt Clara wrung her clammy hands, “come downstairs.”

Florencia swallowed warily but did not obey. She kept on watching as the first consignment of pirates had detached themselves from the old man o’ war. The goofy looking sailor who helped the cook blinked gormlessly as the sun stung his eyes, even as Aunt Clara called him a cloth-eared peasant and shoved him aside on a personal march to fetch her niece. He seemed unperturbed at being called something bad, although Florencia thought he might have too much thick skin between his ears to make neither head nor tale of her aunt’s spiteful comment.

“Aunt-” She said, edging away as the woman stumped up to her.

The latter slapped Florencia. She had never done so before, but her palm was cushioned by decades of deposited fat, which softened the blow, although her niece, more from surprise than pain, hissed and screwed her face up. She let herself be led away, however, but still not entirely deferent. She noticed how shocked the cook looked as her fingers sank uselessly into thick flab, and as tears of frustration and burgeoning fear rolled down her face.

Aunt Clara just propelled her down the stairs and back along the corridor.

“In!”

Florencia did as she was told, but bitterly so. She saw that her mother was fiddling with an agate rosary and weeping quietly; Pia had prostrated herself on the floor beside the Condesa with a muttered psalm on her shrunken lips. The door was slammed the door shut with a force that made the frame rattle, and it was locked too as Florencia turned to Margarita. She was still peering out from beneath the writing desk.

The cabin had become an even stuffier wooden box since the last time, Florencia realised unhappily. She crawled in beside her sister again with a huffy sigh and watery eyes, wishing for a puff of cool air. There was no room for her to move either in her sack-gown as she huddled in silence with the little girl and her doll.

The atmosphere remained hot and tense as they waited in mounting fear; they could hear their mother crying and Pia praying for her soul, whilst outside, the sea sloshed against the hull.

A bare moment later, there was a dull bump against the side; Margarita gasped, and her sister’s stomach sank as the first boatful of pirates arrived.