Blind Fate
Chapter Three
By: Carina
When Anne awoke it was with a horrendous pounding in her skull and an overwhelming sense of disorientation. Being blind Anne had always made it a point in the last five years to know where she was before she fell asleep. On the rare occasions she hadn't made herself check she'd awoken with a fear of being trapped in a place that she couldn't escape. This time the fear was threefold as she was almost positive she was trapped and she couldn't escape it. Panic and hysteria started to bubble forth in her chest and into her throat but she made herself swallow it back and take many deep breaths.
After a great many of these deep calming breaths she still felt panicked, but she was more in control of herself. She forced herself to think. She needed to do something. She needed to find out if she was hurt and where she was first and foremost. Feeling better that she had a plan of action she opened up her other senses.
She was lying on her back on the very hard and uncomfortable floor?
No that's not right, she thought as she felt with her hand along the wood and finally to the space beside her and down.
She was on a bench! A bench attached to the wall!
She gave herself a score on the mental tally of herself verse the pirates.
Gingerly she sat up and sure enough her bare feet came in contact with the ship's floor boards. And she was still on the ship for she could feel the gentle swells of the sea. Carefully she moved all her limbs and checked to be sure her clothes, especially her undergarments where as they should be. Except for her dressing gown being torn everything was in working order. Her wrist hurt from when Sparrow had twisted it and of course her head pounded from where it had connected with the floor. She brought her fingers back to examine the back of her head and winced. She certainly had one big goose egg as Rosemary would say. Thinking of Rosemary made Anne's heart ache for the good natured cheer of her hand servant. She hoped the merchant ship had made it back to port safely and that Rosemary was okay and not too hysterical. Anne pushed her thoughts back to the situation at hand.
She took her fingers and traced them along the back end of the bench with the wall until the bench stopped. Standing she made her way over to where her hand was, feeling along with her other hand so she wouldn't hit the corner of the bench. Once there she started walking along the wall and counting her paces. After five paces she came into contact with iron bars. Iron bars that crossed each other to form a cage. Well at least she knew where she was now; she was in the brig.
It didn't seem fair to Anne. Brigs were for criminals. But out on the ocean this reality was not so. It seemed the criminals ran free and the innocents where imprisoned.
There are worse places to be, Anne tried to consol herself. And she was right she realized. She could have been tossed down to Davey Jones or chained to a bed for the men to-..Again Anne forced herself to not consider that word.
Sometimes she wished her father hadn't taught her the ways of the world and that he had let he be the naïve little waif women were supposed to be. But he hadn't. He'd insisted he accompany her on all his trips to the brothels of town to check up on his patients and that she learn all sides of human nature. Anne's mother had died when Anne was five and out with her father buying a present for her mother. Anne's mother had been a wonderful sweet woman with soft brown hair and a beautiful smile. She was smart in the ways of Latin poetry and stitching, she just wasn't very smart when it came to people. She thought every man a gentleman and every woman a lady refusing to see the deceitful side of even the noblest of "ladies".
On that fateful day twenty years ago, whilst five year old Anne had been out with her twenty four year old father, Loraine Margarite Bonnie, age twenty, opened the door on a traveling salesman who inquired about directions to a destination in town. Loraine had tried to explain them to him but the poor man had been so confused and turned around that she had invited him into the foyer telling him she'd draw him a map. She had her back turned to him at the small writing desk in the foyer that her husband left notes on when he went out, so she didn't see the attack until it was too late. That fateful day twenty years ago Loraine Margarite Bonnie, age twenty, was raped and brutally murdered in her own home.
When Anne and her father returned home, her father immediately noticed something amiss at the sight of the strewn furniture and spilled ink in the foyer. He ordered Anne to wait out on the steps and started to dash around the large yet modest town home. Anne reverently holding the cloth wrapped glass cat she'd gotten her mother thought it funny that her mommy had knocked over the furniture and spilled the ink. Anne was also thinking her mommy wouldn't get a time out where as Anne would if she'd made such a mess. She was getting impatient when a cry of horror from her father sounded from the open window upstairs. Anne dropped the parcel where it shattered on the stairs and raced inside wondering what was wrong. She made her way up the grand curving stair case where paintings had fallen and down the hallway to her parent's bedroom. She pushed open the door and gasped at the site before her.
The crème rug and white sheets where painted red. Even the sheer white curtains which were flapping in the morning breeze were spattered with the red.
Why would mommy paint the cloth? Anne thought, her young mind trying to comprehend the sight before her.
Her father heard Anne's gasp and shouted at Anne to get away. She gaped at him, uncomprehending the situation. Her father was on the bed cradling her naked mother to him, though there was so much paint covering her and parts seemed to be missing that Anne wasn't sure it was her mother at all. Her father shouted at her again only this time he told her to run to Mrs. Laverie's house and tell her to summon the guardsmen to Anne's house and that Anne was to stay with Mrs. Laverie until he came to get her. Anne wasn't certain quite what to do so when she hesitated, her father yelled, "Anne, now!" That was the only time she could remember her father yelling at her.
The next few weeks were a blur as Anne was told her mother had gone to see the Lord, as an investigation was launched for the brutal murderer of Madam Bonnie, as funeral preparations were made and carried out, and as finally the criminal was caught and hung at a very public, very advertised, execution.
The Bonnies were a prominent family in town but liked by all. Though they had money they didn't flash it about nor did they speak down to others. Almost everyone loved Loraine and her kind nature. She was the type of woman who would take care of the lonely old spinster when she was sick, making sure her house was kept clean and tidy and that the lady was brought back to health. She was the type of woman who would make food for families that were having hard times or were down on their luck. She was the type of woman that was prey to monsters such as Jim Conners.
The story of Loraine's murder was pieced together after another man caught Conners trying to attack his wife. The wife told the guard that he'd said he was lost and needed a map, and then he'd tried to attack her. She was lucky her husband had forgotten his umbrella or her fate would have been the same as Loraine's.
Conner admitted to three other of the same type of murders while he was being "interrogated" and was sentenced to swing at the neck.
After the funeral and execution Anne was sent to live with her Aunt in Wales. While Anne had fun with her cousins she missed her father. She wasn't savvy to what death meant, though she knew people who "died" went to heaven, and she had seen her mother buried in the church cemetery so through the strange process of acceptance a child possesses, Anne knew she'd never see her mother again and while she was sad it was a sadness that wasn't as bad as the one of missing her father. After five months her father came to visit looking ten years older and worse for the wear. At the first hug Anne burst into tears telling him she was sorry she broke mummy's present and that she hadn't listened to him and she'd never ever do it again if he'd just take her back home. Anne had decided her father was angry at her for these things and that he'd sent her away because he no longer loved her.
Hearing Anne's sobs, Anne's father had held back his own tears as he'd clutched Anne to him promising that he'd never leave her and that he wasn't angry at her. They left that night and her father kept his word.
What Anne would come to learn in later years from friends was that her father had not sent her away because he no longer loved her; it was quite the opposite in fact. Her father had gone into a whirlwind downward spiral of depression that he didn't want Anne to see. During those five months he stopped his newly begun physician practice and began to drink heavily. He became the man at the taverns who was the first to arrive and the last to leave. Gregory Bonnie, always a well groomed man stopped taking care of himself. He was scraggily looking with long finger nails and unclean teeth. He began to haunt the cemetery crying and shrieking through the night over his wife's grave.
His friends and acquaintances began to slip away thinking it was a shame that a fine man such as Gregory Bonnie had gone mad. After four months of this way of life, Charles Shire, the only friend Gregory Bonnie had left, stomped into one of the local taverns at around midnight and soundly smacked Gregory across the face. Charles then dragged his lifelong friend to his house and forced him to look in his mirror. He told Gregory that he had better straighten himself out because he still had a daughter whom loved him very much and needed him to be her father. That night Gregory finally let his wife go and moved on with his own life.
For the next month, with the help of his friend Charles, he began to repair his relationships with old friends. He started his business again and cleaned himself up. He even cut his drinking back. Though he no longer went to the taverns he allowed himself to have a drink of diluted wine each night. He made sure his finances were in order as well as the household and when he felt he was ready he arranged to visit Anne.
After the visit he brought Anne home and began to raise her as a single father. He opened his practice to the slums of the city, usually working for free with the poor and for a good fee for the rich. Anne learned to play with street children in the mornings and evenings and have lessons with tutors and other fine children in the afternoons. Her father taught her about human nature as gently as he could and she saw things that no other young girls would ever see especially when her father would be called to emergencies in the slums which usually involved rape. When Anne was eight he began to take trips to different countries in the Caribbean, Africa and even the Americas to research different medicines and healing practices. His wealth grew as did his knowledge and prominence in England. He never worried about Anne's lessons and her vast knowledge. He knew she was a bright girl and encouraged her to read as much as she wanted. She was his assistant in his medical works and in later years she would even go visit patients herself. It was only when Anne was about thirteen, the age when girls shouldn't be playing in the mud with boys anymore and the age when boys and girls begin to notice each other that the comments started on his rearing habits of Anne. Charles told him not to worry though he did cautiously suggest that Anne needed a female role model in her life to teach her the feminine ways of courtship and wifery. So Gregory, perhaps too rashly, married one of the current women who were chasing him. She just happened to be one of Loraine's distant cousins and Anne suspected this was one reason her father chosen Isabelle Trent to marry; in his subconscious he thought that perhaps Isabelle would be like his wonderful Loraine.
She was dreadful, though she kept her dark side hidden from her husband. She was recently widowed herself and had her own daughter who was Anne's age. Marie, her stepsister was an absolute witch. Isabelle convinced Anne's father that Anne should attend finishing school with her dear Marie and her father reluctantly agreed. While Anne found dressing up in pretty clothes and makeup fun, she found the table setting lessons and wifery lessons a dull. It would have been better had she gone through it with a friend but Marie made sure the other girls excluded Anne. Anne knew too much, she thought she was equal to a boy, and she found trying to catch the attention to a man ridiculous. So for two years of finishing school Anne was an outcast and miserable. Then when she was fifteen she returned home and begged her father to allow her to work with him. Much to the dismay of her stepmother her father agreed though there were conditions. Anne had to attend stuffy dinner parties and balls that her stepmother wanted her to go to if she wanted to travel with her father. It seemed a good arrangement.
At one of these parties Charles' son Daniel came home after graduating from Oxford. Anne never one to make eyes at a boy immediately found herself taken with Daniel who told her to call him Dan. He was winsome, handsome and kind. He also admired Anne's knowledge and they would often spend evenings playing chess or having deep discussions over politics, medicine, and philosophy. Dan had come back home to study with Anne's father because he wanted to work in medicine. Dan also brought back his best friend, Stanley Von Hoff to study with his own father. Dan's father was a wealthy ship merchant and captain, one of the best in the city. Stanley was to learn the trade with Dan's father. Charles, Dan, Stanley, Anne, and Gregory (sometimes Isabelle and Marie too) would often go on one of her father's expeditions together because the two occupations of medicine and sea faring intermingled.
There was an awkward moment between Stanley and Anne when he tried to court her. Anne had none of it and gently told him so with a light joke which was her way. Immediately after her refusal of Stanley, Anne started to pursue Dan, much to the amusement of Charles and Gregory and the appallment of Isabelle and Marie. When Anne was almost seventeen she shared her first kiss ever with a shocked Dan who was three years older than her. After that it was he who courted her and when she was almost nineteen they announced their engagement at one of the largest and most entertaining parties the town had ever seen. It was at this time that Stanley showed up with his own flower whose name was Maryanne. She was much shyer than Anne but sharp as a tack. The two became fast friends and Maryanne often accompanied Stanley on the group's trips.
Then a month before Anne's twentieth birthday and a year before her wedding day (her father though he was pleased with Anne's engagement couldn't quite bring himself to give her away at the age of nineteen so he made her promise to wait two years to marry Dan so he could get used to the idea of his daughter being a woman. Anne and Dan had laughed at her father and happily agreed.) that her father decided to sail to the Caribbean in search of a mythical island which was said to hold many cures for horrid illnesses. Isabelle refused to go and thought Anne should stay too to prepare for her wedding. Anne said no fore she wanted to go with Dan. Marie said everyone thought she was a harlot but that wasn't true. Marie was just jealous because her own engagement had ended when her fiancée jilted her for another. Perhaps Anne should have stayed home. Perhaps her father should have stayed and not tried to find that ill fated island. This expedition was the last time she ever saw her friends, family and beloved. It was the last time she ever saw again.
Anne came out of her stupor and ran her fingers over the iron bars turning at a right angle to count the paces of the wall. She found the cell to be five paces by seven paces. In the last corner she discovered what must be the privy for prisoners. The iron bars folded in and covered a box or a bucket she thought because she didn't want to touch it. The stench was almost more than she could handle. Anne had to give Captain Sparrow his mark though because not many captains would consider that prisoners might use human excrement for projectiles. Not many captains would be considerate enough to provide prisoners a privy at all.
Anne made her way over to the bench and sagged against the wall. She was suddenly tired and she vaguely wondered if she might have a concussion. Anne decided she might as well take a nap; after all, what else was she going to do? Go horseback riding?
She thought that if she woke up she would devise her next plan of action. She was going to get out of this cell and off this pirate ship if it was the last thing she ever did.
A/N: Well guys you made me do it and I don't know how! I got my itch to write and cranked all this chapter out in one day while I was at work. I have to thank you. Usually I get a story rolling and get stuck at parts as you can see with my other Tamora Pierce works. So thank you!
Also some people have asked me the time in accordance to the movie. I'm setting this a year after the movie, so Jack has had his ship for a year. You'll find out who's on his crew later.
