Hello everyone! Thank you for taking a look at my story. You may have noticed that my username and the story title are the same, but that's because I really couldn't think of a username! I hope you enjoy my story, and constructive criticism is appreciated. Thanks for taking the time to read this, and a review would be really appreciated! Lots of love, WR124.
Chapter One: The Test
"Tha's not known t' meaning o' hard graft 'til tha's tended bar in Tortuga."
This was Anna Carmichael's warning. It was the warning she'd been given on starting her first evening shift in the tavern the Blue Moon, and now it was the warning she passed on to the young and earnest girl stood before her.
In Anna's experience, the barmaids of Tortuga went one of two ways. They either became tough, hardened battleaxes who took nonsense from no man, where oblivious to male charm, and could sell water to mermaids with their persuasive skills, or they became whores. Anna fell firmly into the first category, although admittedly it is rather difficult to retain moral values and conduct when you spend your entire working life surrounded by the type of debasement and depravity that abounds Tortuga, and undoubtedly joining the ranks of the ladies of the night who patrolled the Blue Moon had its financial benefits.
She mentally assessed the young girl, who regarded her with wide dark eyes, more than a little nervous. Abigail Tanner, Anna could predict, would be a weeping violet. She'd be a wreck by the end of the night, having had every square inch of her body mauled by the wolf-like men who peopled the tavern. She would not yet have learnt how to defend herself against them, to scare them so much that no man ever dared lay a hand on her again within the Moon's walls. She'd not yet know how to win them. She was probably new to the town, an import from one of the richer ones such as Port Royal or Villa de la Vega. Anna considered whether Abigail would even last the night. She probably would, she decided, following a swift glance at the girl's tiny waist and alarmingly protuberant collarbone – she looked hungry enough to subject herself to almost anything to get the measly wage afforded to the occupation, though whether she'd become a whore remained to be seen.
Anna drew in a breath, deciding the time was upon her to release Abigail into the shark-infested waters of the tavern. Her main job would be to collect tankards for cleaning. "Keep yer wits about y'," she nodded sagely, and watched the newest addition to her bar staff reluctantly float out into the room.
"Reckon she stands a chance?" The voice of Agatha Butcher, an old faithful member of Anna's staff came over her shoulder as she polished up a tankard prior to filling it with ale for a customer. Agatha was as trusty as a loyal mule and had never let Anna down.
Anna sighed. "Wun't put money on it."
The night was a typically busy one. Anna was serving customers left right and centre, leaving little time for babysitting Abigail. She had to intervene once when the inexperienced barmaid tripped, bumping into a man and spilling his tankard all down him. He was, of course, angry at the waste of his paid-for alcohol. Anna serenely glided over, apologised smoothly, and pressed a full tankard into the man's wet hands. Since the spilt tankard had only been half full, he couldn't really argue. Abigail smiled gratefully at her boss, but Anna looked at her sternly. "What did ah tell thee earlier?"
"Keep your wits about you," Abigail replied in little more than a whisper.
Anna nodded. "Don't let me down again." With that, she returned to her station behind the bar, all the better to keep an eye on her new recruit.
A rueful laugh reached her ears. "You're a harsh mistress, that's for sure."
Anna didn't give her heckler the satisfaction of seeing her turn around just yet. It wasn't a voice she recognised, so not one of her regulars, then, the ones with whom she'd built up a steady rapport of banter and light flirtation to elicit more business. She decided to ignore the remark and serve an averagely scraggly-looking man who waited on the other side of the bar.
"Ye'd make a great pirate captain with a steely countenance like that. Ye could put the fear of God into a crew of miscreants easily."
Anna sighed and finally turned around. The man mocking her was, undoubtedly, a pirate himself. His skin boasted a golden tan, complimenting deep brown eyes which were the feature of an unmistakably handsome face. Dark dreadlocks spilled out across his shoulders, with trinkets interwoven here and there. His goatee, too, featured multicoloured beads. A tricorn hat sat atop his head, completing the intriguing image of a well-travelled scallywag. Anna's voice held a tinge of weariness as she addressed him. "Ah feel like a captain of a hellishly overcrowded sloop sailin' on a sea o' rum while me crew attempt to prevent the passengers from wilfully drowning themsens in it."
The pirate laughed. "That's a hell of a sense of humour you've got there, and an accent. Whereabouts in England are you from?"
Anna opened her mouth to tell him to mind his own business, but paused. Why shouldn't she tell him? It was certainly a change to be prompted to talk about herself – well, aspects of herself which weren't on the front of her chest or between her legs – so she told the pirate. "The north. Yorkshire.'
"Ah, a white rose!" The pirate threw back his head and smiled.
Anna almost felt a semblance of a blush stain her cheeks. That this pirate knew anything about her homeland and its symbol, the white rose, was certainly a shock. His accent, though diluted with pirate dialect, was clearly southern, as were most of the English migrants who came to the Caribbean. The south was far wealthier and where most of the ports were – most northerners were too poor to travel so far south and buy passage on a ship for the Caribbean. Anna had never been rich – her father had been an iron worker. The iron company he worked for, that of the Walker family, made cannons for warships, including some for the great ship the HMS Victory. He would often tell her wonderful adventure stories about these great ships, their voyages to exotic places and their battles, all helped by the cannons her daddy had made. Anna had always imagined what it would be like to sail on such a ship to a place where the sea was blue as the sky and the sand as white as the clouds. Following her father's unexpected death in an accident at the works, she had inherited what savings he had. She'd had nothing to stay in England for – an unmarried fatherless woman had no power or social standing. She had just enough money to realise her dream to sail aboard a fine vessel to the beautiful Caribbean.
She hadn't quite envisaged becoming a bartender in a notorious pirate port town, but needs must. She'd needed money, and she wasn't unhappy. She got occasional days off when she could stroll the golden sands and savour the summer wind that blew in from across the sea, and that was more than every other poor, working-class girl from Yorkshire got to do. What did it matter if she wasn't living the high life now? It wasn't like she'd ever known what the high life was like. The happiest time of her life had been during her voyage from Portsmouth to Port Royal, spending every day looking at the beautiful ocean and chatting with fellow passengers and crew. She'd felt so excited, so full of anticipation for the new life she was about to begin… that was, until she'd been shipwrecked.
This pirate seemed unusually agreeable. She thought it prudent to ask him his name.
"Captain Jack Sparrow," he replied. So he was a pirate. A pirate captain, no less. "And what's yer name, love?"
Anna smiled at the use of the term of endearment which was also her favourite to use. "Anna. Anna Carmichael."
He smiled and briefly tipped the edge of his tankard towards her in a gesture of new acquaintance. She glanced at its contents, not like she needed to. Pirates always drank rum.
Captain Sparrow took a long drag from the tankard and then replaced it on the bar with the thud of iron on wood. "So, love, tell me about yourself."
Oh, this was starting to sound a bit more familiar. The drunkards that populated the tavern often pretended to be interested in her for more than her physical qualities – that is, the quality of being a female – thinking that if they let her talk for a while about herself (as the favourite conversational topic of all women is, apparently, themselves), she would surely open her legs. Anna was a tad disappointed. She'd hoped Captain Sparrow would be different and they might be able to have some semblance of a nice conversation to break up the monotony of her night. Maybe, a voice at the back of her mind niggled, he would still be. She decided to apply her test to him.
Anna's test was a little speech she had devised as an answer to the question the captain had asked, a question she was asked so many times. It was her way of sorting the few decent men who patronised her tavern from the many scummy ones. She took a deep breath, and gazed levelly into the captain's brown eyes.
"I like brandy, the way it burns my lips." She turned her gaze away and seemed to stare into the distance for a moment. "I'm a shipwreck survivor," she paused to swallow hard, and continued, "With a great pair of hips." She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. This was the first part of her test. He didn't look down at her body despite her mentioning her figure, which she knew was pleasing to the male eye. Anna was pleasantly surprised. He continued to look into her face, with something akin to fascination upon his face. All right, so maybe he wasn't going to try to bed her.
Next, she looked straight into his eyes with her most piercing stare. "And my eyes," she pronounced carefully, "have seen it all." This, the captain considered, was probably true, having worked in a tavern in Tortuga for long enough to be in charge at night.
"I tend bar in the tavern they call the Blue Moon. When the drunkards call me 'Little Annie', I say 'that's Miss Carmichael, to you'."
The pirate laughed raucously at her half-rhyming sauce. Good, she thought. He passed the humour part, too. Now, she returned her gaze to his eyes, and regained her cool, calm, level-headed look. She leaned in ever closer to him, resting her weight on the bar with her arms. As she pronounced the last line of her speech, her voice was low and rich with implication, laden with warning and intent. Her words were not empty words. They were to show him, and any man, that she was not to be trifled with. Captain Sparrow was under no such impression as she heavily enunciated the words, "And I'll put a knife in almost anyone."
Whatever the captain had expected her to say, it was not that. Though his eyes did widen slightly in surprise, he did not recoil or flinch as if in guilt. This showed Anna he was unlikely to try to hurt her. He'd passed all three parts of her test.
Anna drew back from him a little, still maintaining eye contact. Something seemed to pass between them, a mutual understanding. The captain began to open his mouth to speak, but he was interrupted.
A man, soaked to the bone and breathless, had burst into the tavern and rushed to the bar, panic in his eyes. "Miss Carmichael! Miss Carmichael!" He shouted desperately. Anna's eyes tore away from the captain's to regard the frenzied man. "There's been a shipwreck! Come quick!"
Anna's face took on an expression of shock. She cried out for Agatha to come and tend bar as she was hurriedly untying her apron from behind her back with fevered fingers. In a matter of seconds, she had shed the ale-stained white garment and skirted the bar, looking through the captain as if he wasn't there. The wet through man ran from the bar, and she jogged in his wake.
Captain Sparrow stared after her, slightly dazed. What an odd, intriguing, utterly fascinating woman. Definitely not what you expect to find in a Tortuga tavern. Admittedly, he had started with the intention of bedding her. She was a true English rose with soft features, a classical, stately kind of beauty despite her undoubtedly rough origins. In fact, her broad Yorkshire Tyke accent added to her attractiveness. Now, however, he thought such an attempt would do them both a disservice. She was far too intriguing to simply bed and forget about. No, much conversation would be in order first.
He was drawn from his reverie by a strong feminine voice. "You alright for a drink there, sir? Sorry about that, you seemed to be having a good old chat with Anna there."
He turned to see a barmaid stood in Anna's place, smiling slightly at him. Though not unattractive, she was plainer with hair as black as night. This must be Agatha, he thought. "Aye, we were," he said, settling back down. "She's an interesting woman."
Agatha smirked. "She sure is. She give you the test, then, I take it?" Agatha knew all about Anna's test, had even used a variant of it herself occasionally. However it seemed to work better if you had Anna's looks.
Captain Sparrow's brow furrowed. "Test? What test?"
Agatha's eyes seemed to laugh. "Oh, you'll have to ask her."
He sensed he wasn't going to get any more out of her, so he asked, "Where's she gone? I don't see anyone else running around to help the shipwreck survivors."
The barmaid sighed heavily. "She likes to help them. She's not trained to do anything useful, mind, but she can provide towels and fresh water and bandage the odd wound. Most of all they like her to sing to them, the ones that are real goners, you know. Just soothe them while they pass on. She was shipwrecked herself, you know, on her passage over here. It certainly had an impression on her, seeing all those poor souls less lucky than her dying in pain. That's why she does anything she can now to help those unfortunate ones."
Captain Sparrow considered this new information. It was interesting, for sure. She certainly was a complicated character, one he would surely enjoy unravelling if he had the chance. "If I come back here tomorrow, will she be here? I should like to talk to her some more."
Agatha shrugged noncommittally, but said, "I daresay."
He nodded to her. "See you then, then." With that, he withdrew from the bar, and then the tavern. Within seconds he was gone into the night, his tricorn-ed head disappearing through the doorframe.
Agatha watched him go with a hint of amusement. Anna had a suitor, it seemed! How deliciously unusual. She usually scared all men off with her test. Agatha chuckled to herself. She could just imagine Anna's face when Agatha would mock her about the captain tomorrow!