Chapter Fourteen ~*~

--

Barbossa slid his chair back and stood. He crossed to a small cabinet against the wall and pulled out a bottle of rum, poured two measures and returned with them to the table. He set one in front of me and sat down.

"I'm curious," he said, taking a sip of his drink, "and I'd hardly consider you boring, May." He gave me a smile that passed for charming. "I've told ye somethin' about mesself, now tell me somethin' about you."

"What about the map?" I asked, teasing him a little.

"It's vexed me fer five or six years, May," he said. "Another hour matters not."

"Alright," I agreed. I took a small sip of the strong drink in front of me, and proceed to tell the pirate my story.

--

While I was hesitant at first to talk about myself to Barbossa, I found that he was actually an attentive and polite listener. What I also know about him now, is that anything you ever tell him gets soaked up like water by a sponge and filed away for later reference.

As I began the tale of my trials and tribulations as a woman entering the male-dominated medical field, I was acutely aware of just how odd it was to be sitting in that cabin with the same pirate that had kidnapped me not two weeks earlier. While I won't say that I found him completely unthreatening by that point, I agreed with him that we'd come to a mutual understanding based on respect for each other's position and our pact.

I told him of how it started when I wanted to apply to the medical college, and how it took everything I had to convince the dean that I should be allowed to enter. Both my grandfather and father, extremely well-respected physicians, submitted letters on my behalf, as did several of their colleagues who had known mesince I was a little girl, verifying that I was certainly capable of meeting the challenges that training as a doctor would require.

I told him how I thought the dean would have very much liked to have made the easier decision, and turned me down, but I think he was a man that knew that the right thing is not always the easiest, and after great deliberation, sent me a letter welcoming me to the entering class that year.

The class of twenty-five, in addition to myself, would include twenty-four men, most who regarded me as little more than a curiosity, and wrote off my participation in our first lectures as something I had done on a whim.

As it became clear as the weeks wore on, that I was not going to be turned aside lightly by the daunting hours required or the enormous amount of reading, a few of them came to respect me for sticking with my studies. Unfortunately, while most of the others still considered my presence to be of little consequence, several of them started to resent that I had been allowed to stay, never mind admitted at all, and that's when the trouble began.

What I quickly learned, as some of my classmates set out to undermine my credibility by accusing me of cheating, and constantly insinuating that I didn't have what it took to be a doctor, was that if I was going to make it through to graduate from the medical college, I would not be able to get by just with adequate marks, but that I would have to excel at anything and everything my male counterparts did.

I didn't just want to be good enough to graduate with them, I wanted to exceed any of their lowly expectations of me to a point where they would have no choice but to acknowledge that I was damn well qualified. It became an obsession, and I went the next few years learning to do with very little sleep, and no recreation at all.

If my classmates studied for four hours, I studied for six. If my colleagues took time off to go swimming, I studied. If we were on holiday, I had my grandfather or father quiz me until I made them crazy.

Even when most of the class took off one beautiful hot afternoon to head for the lake, I was the only one that could be found in the classroom with a newly acquired cadaver, dissecting and exploring, trying to make as much sense of the mysteries of the human form as I could.

I told Barbossa about how Nigel Smollet, one of my chief critics in the class, managed to shut the door and lock me in the small room where the new cadavers were held for dissection, and that I'd been forced to spend the entire night in there since no one heard me screaming or pounding to get out. He said it was well known that I tended to be flighty and vague, and that I must have just carelessly allowed the door to slam shut behind me.

Of course, he and I both knew better, and I resolved to have my revenge. If I had been obsessed with my desire to excel before, I was now consumed by it. Nigel was probably the second most capable student in the class, as I grudgingly had to admit, but I promised myself that he would not be the first.

I ignored his daily ridicule and insinuations that I was inferior, and made better marks on almost every exam. Sometimes not by much, but almost always better.

Then came the day that he started the rumor. It wouldn't have been so damaging if he hadn't bullied several of his companions in backing him up, and the story of how I'd been exchanging favors of sexual nature with several of the professors in return for my good grades began to gather steam.

It was an obvious but brilliant ploy to get me expelled on his part –one that he never could have perpetrated with a male colleague. Too many of my peers, even if I was on good terms with them, were willing to believe it, and I think it stemmed from the fact that many of them may have liked me, but still didn't relish the thought of being beaten by a woman at anything.

Of course, the professors denied any wrong doing, since there had been none on either my part or theirs, but the rest of the staff would have expected them to deny the accusations even if they were true, so it didn't help my cause much.

The fact that I had spent so much extra time alone with some of them, debating theory and pestering them with questions, only served to support Nigel's rumor.

I was on the verge of being expelled for cheating and scandal only a few months before I would take my final exams, and the dean himself was in a quandary as to what to do.

Although I am sure he knew me and the situation well enough to know there was no basis for the accusations other than a petty attempt to attack my character and eliminate Nigel's principal competition for the coveted top spot in the class, he was under a lot of pressure to make the embarrassing matter disappear from the college.

It was only my desperate pleas that were keeping me in school those next few weeks, and unhappy that I had managed to cling to my tentative hold on the top rank in the class so long, Nigel actually became the reason I was never expelled.

Pretending to be defending my side of things, Nigel approached the dean with his false concerns that I had been wronged and suggested a way to vindicate myself. The dean, plagued on all sides about the matter, seized upon the idea at once, and I was soon informed that I would be allowed to sit for my boards.

However, while the rest of my classmates would spend the next two months preparing for their tests and practical exams. I was going to be put on the spot to prove or disprove once and for all, whether I had actually learned as much as I claimed, or whether I had earned the marks by less than honorable means.

I remembered it like it was yesterday, the afternoon I was told I had one week to prepare for my trial by examination, as well as the feeling of panic that set in. I might have actually given up at that point if it weren't for my family.

Five days before I was to have my examination, my father, my grandfather, and my uncles all showed up at the college, helped me pack up my books, notes and a skeleton we acquired from the anatomy department and moved me to an inn several miles away.

My uncle, the seaman, took care of making sure we had meals provided regularly, and served periodically as a faux patient, as the two doctors and veterinary surgeon who loved me so dearly, put me through days of an exacting, rigorous, and exhausting examination of their own.

I daresay what they did might have been worse than what the examiners could come up with, but the grueling test they challenged me with was probably the one thing that kept me from being expelled.

I remember one of the last conversations I ever had with my grandfather the morning of my examination at the college. After I had hugged my uncles and my father, and got ready to climb in the carriage to be driven to the college that early morning, my grandfather had hugged me and told me that whether I passed or not didn't matter to him. He told me he was never prouder of anyone, even his sons, and that he would love me as much as he ever had, pass or fail.

I think it was his last words before I was taken away by the carriage that had the final say in how I did that morning. I might have otherwise been too upset and too nervous to do as well as I did, but when my grandfather managed to open up the broader perspective for me about what was important, it took unbearable quantities of pressure away.

When I finished the grueling oral examinations that lasted over six hours, there wasn't a member of the college or my class that had any doubt that I had mastered all of the material to a greater extent than any of them could have possibly guessed, and I think it became clear that I had probably been much too busy studying all year to have time to have any dalliances with my professors.

Nigel, of course, was outraged that I hadn't managed to fail miserably under pressure, and faced the fact that he had to pass his own exams in spectacular fashion in order to overcome the very narrow margin I still held in grades.

While the rest of my classmates prepared for their boards, I continued to remain at the college despite the fact that there was no doubt that I would be graduating. I daresay many of them were the better for it as they now used me as a tutor to quiz them and help them prepare.

A week before the examination, a new matter arose which added even more drama to the situation. The dean informed us one morning, that Monsieur Jacques Dumond, the famous French surgeon, would be looking for a new apprentice, and would consider the top member of our class if that person met his qualifications.

Now, not only would the position as valedictorian of our class be riding on the outcome of Nigel's exams, but so would the chance to possibly study with one of France's most pioneering surgeons.

To give him the credit he is due, Nigel, despite the scrutiny he was under, did remarkably well on his exams, and if it weren't for the fact that my marks had been ever so slightly better during the year, we would have ended up in a tie. To my greatest satisfaction, when the final marks were posted that week, it was my name that held the top rank in the class, with Nigel's written just underneath.

I immediately sent a letter home, and began to think of what I wanted to say in front of the graduation ceremony that would be held the next week, as it was tradition that the valedictorian was required to give an address.

As things turned out, Nigel had not had his last say in the matter, and I needn't have spent all the time that I did agonizing over exactly what would be most appropriate in my speech.

Nigel, like myself, came from a long line of physicians, and his father, a well-to-do surgeon from London, took matters into his own hands when he heard that 'the girl' had taken top honors, beating out his son.

Dangling a generous contribution in front of the collective nose of the trustees, Dr. Smollet convinced them that somehow it was not seemly to have a woman stand up in front of a college of men to give the final address.

He managed to convince them that it broke with a very long-standing tradition, and that in addition, although I had passed my exams, no one had ever thoroughly disproved what I'd been accused of. He feared it would be a black mark in the college's history to have such a person of questionable integrity be awarded the top honors.

The trustees, despite everything that the dean said to defend me, voted in the end to allow me to be ranked as the first in my class, but decreed that the title of valedictorian would be conferred upon the top male graduate, who was, of course, Nigel.

He was insufferably arrogant after that, and insisted that he be the only one given the honor of interviewing with Monsieur Dumond. I must give credit to the dean for telling him, in no uncertain terms, that come hell or high water, I was going to be given the chance as well, and if he had anything to say about it, he would cast his recommendation with me.

The day I had my interview with Monsieur Dumond, I passed Nigel in the hall just after he had spoken with the man. The smug look he wore said everything that he was thinking. He knew that despite the fact I had succeeded so far, that it was very unlikely that I would be chosen for the position once again, because of my sex.

But what Nigel didn't know, was that Monsieur Dumond, being French, was much more open minded about women in medicine than his English counterparts, and that one of the main reasons he had come to our college at all was because he had heard there was an exceptionally driven student who showed great promise in the field of surgery.

It really hadn't mattered to him whether I was a woman or a man, and it was actually only after he'd arrived and gotten wind of the politics that were in play at the college that he understood the situation, probably better than any of the trustees or my classmates did.

My interview, although grueling, went very well, and when I took my leave of Monsieur Dumond, I left knowing that I had one small advantage over my classmate, and it had absolutely nothing to do with being a woman. Well, maybe it was indirectly related, but either way I had my late mother to thank.

In addition to making sure that I held my tongue if I didn't have a kind word to say, my mother, in order to try to counter the effects living with so many men had on me, was determined that if I was to be raised as a proper lady, I should be educated in a second language, and she schooled me mercilessly in the language of romance.

By the time she died, even though I spent endless hours in the woods with my father, learned to ride from my uncle the veterinary surgeon, and learned to shoot from my uncle the sailor on his infrequent trips home, she managed to see to it that I had a firm grip on becoming bilingual.

What Nigel didn't know, and wouldn't until after graduation, was that my interview with Monsieur Dumond, unlike his, and to the older surgeon's great delight, had been conducted almost entirely in his native French.

--

By the time I neared the end of the story I'd been telling Barbossa, I was a little light-headed from absently sipping at my rum while I'd been speaking.

He'd been silent almost the entire time I'd been talking, but finally spoke up from where he sat toying with his own cup. "Might I ask a question about yer story?" Barbossa asked.

"Of course," I replied, wondering what it was he would ask me.

"Ye won't take offense?" he inquired. His manner seemed to indicate that whatever he wanted to ask was meant in all seriousness.

I smiled a little. "I don't know," I replied lightly, quite curious about what the pirate wanted to ask that he felt might possibly offend me, "but go ahead and ask."

He nodded and stared into the rum in the cup he was holding. "This Nigel ye spoke of," he began, "the things he did were out of spite, aye?"

My brow knit together a little at his question. "Spite? How do you mean?"

Barbossa gave me a hint of a smile, but I didn't sense any sarcasm in his voice.

"Hard feelin's at bein' rejected by a smart, pretty woman," he replied, watching where I was blushing across the table from him at the fact that he'd sensed quite accurately there was more to my story than I'd told.

"I'm curious. Did yeh turn 'im down outright, or did ye walk away from him when ye knew 'twas a mistake?" he asked, watching to see what my answer would be.

I decided after a moment that I would answer him. "He wanted me to leave school...to give up being a doctor...said I should spend my time at home being a wife and a mother, and not playing at some imagined career," I said, staring at the table blankly. "If I'd married him I'd be stuck in London with him, the pompous arse, and I never would have become a doctor."

"Well," Barbossa said, his manner a little less serious, "Nigel's loss."

I smiled at him. "I like to think so," I said with a laugh.

"So, ye never gave yer speech?" he asked, changing the subject.

I shook my head. "No, but at that point I couldn't have cared less," I said truthfully.

He tossed his head back and drained the last swallow of rum he had left, and set the mug back on the table. "And Monsieur Dumond was who ye learned to do that right smart amputation from?"

I smiled at him again and nodded, realizing that he'd remembered I'd said that I'd learned my suturing technique from a French surgeon the day of the storm and the surgery.

"I'll have to remind meself to only kidnap French–trained doctors, in that case," Barbossa remarked smartly.

"Oh, are you setting up an interview process for captive physicians, now?" I asked with good-natured sarcasm.

"Aye, but me standards are likely to be quite high," he said, teasing me back.

I ran a hand back through my hair absently, feeling a little sleepy and lazy at that moment from drinking nearly the whole measure of rum. "And would I meet your high standards, Captain Barbossa?" I asked, teasing him again.

"'Tis you who have set them," he replied, no trace of sarcasm in his voice as his steel-blue eyes met mine steadily.

I wasn't quite sure how I felt about either that look or the meaning of his comment, and I looked away first, once again feeling my face become a bit warm.

"Mayhap ye might assist me again tomorrow with the map?" he asked, standing and seeming as if he might actually be giving me a choice. I rather doubted it, but if he was going to be so charmingly civil at the moment, I thought it best not to refuse.

"What about our agreement?" I asked, wanting to be sure I managed to get off the Rogue again for a while. I stood up, likewise.

"Help me in the mornin' with the map, and tomorrow evenin' you may go ashore again," he replied.

"Done," I said. I set down the empty cup in my hand and headed for the door.

Barbossa spoke once more before I made it out the door. "'Tis my opinion that ye would have given a fine speech, May," he said quietly.

"Thank you," I said over my shoulder, not trusting myself to look at him. I closed the door behind me once I was through, and feeling very confused at that moment, went to my little closet of a cabin.

The thing that was vexing me so, was that the kindest words of praise I'd heard in a very long while were coming from a man who had been responsible for the death of my companion a handful of days before.

While I very much was trying to cling to the principle that his ends couldn't justify his means, the fly in the ointment was the fact that his ends were to save me from being murdered by the rest of his crew.

He had done what was necessary to achieve that, and although I still had nightmares about Cornelia being tossed overboard, I was inclined not to bemoan the fact that I was indeed, still alive because of him.

The fact that Cornelia had treated me horribly, and in the end threatened to have me hung because she was irritated that I was wearing her dress, and upset that I had helped save Turk's life, was making it more and more difficult to feel bad that she was gone.

Likewise, even though I'd found that Barbossa could be harsh, and even cruel at times, my voyage on the Rogue Wave had proven him so far to be a man of some honor despite the fact that his principles were more than a bit skewed. I didn't think I could remotely say the same thing about Cornelia.

I read for a long while after that, only getting through about ten pages as I continued to read the same thing over and over, not absorbing anything because of my distracting thoughts about the fact that I was beginning to understand Captain Barbossa a lot more than I cared to admit.

--

A/N: Many of you already know that Smollet's name is a reference to the captain of the Hispaniola in Treasure Island.

I hope you enoyed finding out more about Madeline. This chapter is the only time that I venture off to tell a story of that length about her background.