Chapter 2

Of Letters and Plans

--

Far from the cerulean waters of the Caribbean and nestled in the heart of the Indian Ocean, there was a small Island that went by the name of Bourbon.

There, situated in a small bay there was an equally small town called Saint Denis. It boasted a modest harbour that was overlooked by houses and shops and occupied by tall ships. Overlooking the town was a tall, grassy hill. A large manor sat at the very top – a harsh protrusion. The house had been lived in for many years and passed through many different families, until it finally found its way into the hands of its present owners.

The woman who resided there now rarely left the house, and lived with a man everyone knew only as her guardian. He was the one the townspeople usually saw, yet they had taken to sneering at him behind his back. He always refused to greet the other gentry of the town and instead went about his business with a permanent frown on his face. Many of the people avoided him. The same couldn't be said for the young woman who lived with him, no matter how she tried.

Sometimes on lazy days, the town's children liked to sneak onto the manor's property and cause all sorts of mischief around the house that made the servants chase after them and the maids threaten them with brooms. If they were lucky, the children would catch a glimpse of the woman as she took a stroll along the ocean Cliffside on her property, or spy her as she trotted around on her horse. They would giggle and throw rocks and shout names at her - "vieille fille!", "sorcière laide!" – because bored children were won't to do such things. The woman's horse had thrown her once, and the children hadn't seen her riding her horse for some time after that.

However, once darkness began settling on the town, the children would not dare to set foot on the property. Not for five derniers. There were such tales of wild dogs that roamed the fields at night to guard the house, and a watch that stayed out all night with muskets to ward off unwelcome visitors. Most of all, though, was the rumour that the woman who lived in the house on the hill was a witch. At night, one room within the house always stayed lit. There were whispers that her powers only came to her at night, and that was the only time when she could cast spells and brew potions. So she would stay at her fireplace with a bubbling cauldron and chant spells into the fire.

None of these things were actually true, of course. Once or twice, there may have been a coyote wandering the grounds, but at night, the house was still and quiet because everyone lay asleep. And one room did stay lit most the night, but only until the candle causing it burned out.

-

As it went, the sun was setting and that candle had just been lit. It sat in a lantern cover, flickering mysteriously as darkness settled in. One could see it from town – the far window on the left wing, one story up. Inside, someone was awake.

Vivien Brideau sat at her armoire, a pile of papers spread out before her and a lantern lit at her side. It dripped with a sense of laziness that completely eluded Vivien Brideau. She was looking for something, sorting through the mess of papers and putting most aside with a shake of her head. Then she paused, pulling a piece of parchment from underneath several others and tilting it towards the candlelight to read the date in the corner.

Le 26 octobre, 1708

Ah, that was it.

She pulled the candle closer and leaned over to read the paper, flattening down its curled edges and creases.

My darling daughter,

It started quite simply.

I'm afraid this might very well be my last letter to you for a long while. My crew and I are planning to sail from Cape Verde in Africa no later than the end of this week. From there, we will sail to Moluccas in the Spice Isles. You know where that is, don't you? It's a segment of the Indonesia Islands in the Malay Archipelago between Celebes and Papua. I wish very much to sail into harbour at Bourbon Island, but you must know by now that I cannot. I only wish someday to see you again, my love. I often dream of how much you have grown.

However, I fear unrest with my crew. The Grey Haven has grown into an old ship in my years of sailing as a pirate, and my crew as well. Unease has been present along the sea, and I fear my old habits are beginning to anger my men. Very soon, I feel there will be a revolt. You may be too young still, and you may not be able to read this letter without Amaury's aid, but I will tell you a great secret for fear I shant live much longer.

You are very well aware of the fortune's I send you on the dawn of each month, my dear? Of course you are. They are from my journeys as a pirate, and many a man I have stolen from to acquire them. One day when you are older, you may ask yourself why I must sail the sea away from you when I have so many riches on hand. Surely, I could settle down and stop my life of pirating? But alas, once the sea had taken me with her beauty and she won't leave me be without a fight.

Truthfully, my daughter, I had planned many a year ago to simply sail into harbour in Saint- Denis and step off my ship forever. All the riches I had amounted over the years would be shared out among my crew and I myself would have the largest portion--an amount large enough to sustain not one of me, but a hundred men as greedy as myself for three lifetimes each. But not only has the sea taken me in with her beauty, but my ship, the Grey Haven, represents my freedom, and to take away my freedom would be like confining me to imprisonment for the remainder of my life. Since I cannot give up my life as it is now, and I can never settle down with such riches as I have described, I wish to pass them onto you. This letter has come with the map that you will use to find the treasure I have amounted.

You have heard of the Caribbean, have you not? Everyone has. It is thriving with life and activity. It is also home to the true world of pirates, where I have always belonged. There are many dangers, true, but there are also a hundred other inlets and coves that have been overlooked and discarded over the many years. Some are small, no more than the size of your very house, others could fit fifty towns the size of Saint-Denis.

There, among the sharks and palm trees is an uninhabited isle, unnamed and unfound. On that isle, perhaps when you are old enough to set out on your own, my dear, you will use the map I have drawn out for you and included in this letter to find the hidden place where my wealth and riches lie. It is a long way from you home now, half way around the world from that place, but I trust you will find it. You are a smart girl, no doubt, being one of my own. I have complete faith in you. One day you will be a beautiful, immeasurably rich woman, admired by all those in the Caribbean.

And if all my fears are unfounded and these are just the ramblings of an old man past his prime, you will receive a letter no later than two months from now. Until then, I bid you farewell my light, my love, my heart.

Jacques

Vivien Brideau peered at the letter for several moments after finishing it, the words still flowing through her head. She closed her eyes, imagining some distant memory in her mind's eye, and a voice she could not remember. This letter, like most of the others, had been from her father. It was dated little more than twenty years prior, and was yellowed with age and from repeatedly being folded and unfolded. Often, when she had nothing to better to do with her time, she would sit in her room and dig out the many letters her father had sent her over the years.

It spoke of things she didn't truly understand, things that her father often told her about in his many letters. Her father spoke of treasure – of greed and power and the fierceness of the sea. He spoke of his ship, of his crew – so much so that she felt that if she had been introduced to any of them she would know them as if she had her whole life. In many letters, he told her how he had wished to simply sail home and forget his life of lawlessness. Those letters had obviously been written on bad days, because she couldn't recall him ever doing that: Giving up. Though, she had hardly known him at all. And although he told her in every letter how he loved her so, she wondered if that was so and why he was not with her at that very second.

She also wondered about the treasure he had spoken of so many times before. Often he would write vague hints of a huge fortune he held in the Caribbean, but the letter she held before her had been the only one ever truly revealing something. And the map he had sent along with it…well she didn't know how to read maps and wasn't foolish enough to ask someone to do it for her. So, she would scan over its surface just as often as the letters, burning every line and word into her memory and wondering where her father's treasure sat in waiting. Secretly, she had a desire to find it; just for the sake of having something to do with the man she had called her father.

But when her first guardian, Amaury, had died of illness when she was still a child and Dorian Belfast came to her house, sent by her father to be her new keeper, she had been forced to crush her foolish dreams. She had never shown him the map, and never would. She would never speak of it, and she would not be free of Belfast until she was married. There was little chance of that now. She was trapped.

Belfast was as mean as Aumary had been sweet. Though she remembered little of the elderly Aumary, she recalled that he had been like a grandfather to her, the closest thing to a father she had ever had. Belfast was neither. He was a tall man, and towered over her smaller form. He had a voice that thundered and a temper that was as fickle as the weather. She disliked the way he looked at her sometimes, and hated that he needed to know her every movement. Under his orders as head of the house, she was not allowed into town without his escort, and wasn't allowed visitors under any circumstances. So Vivien had stopped trying, and that was when she supposed the town had suddenly turned a wary eye to her and began whispering whenever she was in town, which wasn't very often.

There were plenty many things to do around the manor, anyway. What need did she have for outings?

Yet, Vivien considered herself somewhat of a coward, coward for being a woman her age and not being able to look Dorian Belfast straight in the eye. She always had the feeling that Belfast's intentions towards her somehow involved her father. He had questioned her once, asking if she knew about the treasure that her father had amounted during his years of piracy. He sounded merely curious, but Vivien knew better. She hadn't lied to him – she hadn't been able – but hadn't said a word about the letters. He didn't know about the letters. He didn't know about the map, now hidden in the deepest part of the lowest drawer in her bedside table.

The letter held in her hands had come a month before Amaury's death, a month before Belfast's arrival. At the time, she had been too young to make much of it. Amaury had read it, though, and had told her to hide it; she was never to speak of it unless it was someone she trusted. And Belfast that was not.

He had trusted her less than she him, young as she might have been. His had been pleasant at first, but that had changed quickly…and she found herself as she was now.

And while she was confined to the maison, rumours and suspicion spread about the port town of Saint-Denis far below the property. "Mademoiselle Brideau est une sorcière! She has been locked up to keep us safe!"

After all, what else could one say about a girl who never left the confines of her house to see the people of the town below? Never married? Never attended social events?

The people of Bourbon Island had always been overly superstitious.

A sudden, hesitant knock on her door made Vivien jump from her musings, and she just barely contained a yelp. Panicking, she fumbled with the letter, trying to fold it, and attempted to stuff the rest of them back into their drawer without making too much noise. This was an impossible task, and again the person outside her door knocked, a bit louder this time. Hurriedly closing the drawer and clearing her throat, Vivien went to the door and pulled the deadbolt open with a clank.

She opened the door less than a foot. "Yes?"

And elderly maid stood at the door. "Dinner will be at seven, Mademoiselle," she announced with a smile, and then hesitated a moment before continuing. "And Monsieur Belfast wishes you to wear your blue gown. Shall I send a maid up?"

Vivien nodded. "Yes…yes of course." She hated her blue gown because it was Belfast's favourite colour on her.

The woman smiled again. "Very well, then, Mademoiselle. I will leave until dinner."

With a sigh, Vivien closed the door behind the maid. Her eyes strayed to the clock ticking away by the armoire. Its hands read five, and she sighed with relief. There was still another good hour until she had to sit down to dinner with Dorian.

Letting her shoulders sag, the young woman made her way over to her bed and sat down on the edge, smoothing her skirts down. Across from her sat the window, large with its shutters thrown back to allow light to flow in from the view. It faced the harbour down below, where the sun settled each night in preparation for night. Right now, there was the barest hint of pink fading on the horizon, and her little candle hardly seemed like enough to keep the darkness away.

Slowly, her eyes strayed to the harmless little letter sitting by her bedside, and she let her thoughts take her back to the time when she had first received it. Her father had promised another one within two months if his fears were unfounded.

Not surprisingly, the letter had never come.

--

"Aye, so let me get this straight, Cap'n." Gibbs's voice started with a sort of exasperated sigh.

Jack, who was leaning on the helm aboard his Pearl, nodded to him. "Please, feel free to do so," he responded calmly, his low slur present.

He ignored his captain's remark and cast a quick glance at the port town of Saint-Denis from where the Pearl was hidden by the coastline. "You plan on setting the boats down, rowing into port, leading the whole crew through the streets of town, hopin' no one notices, steal up to the house on the hill and then knock on the door and ask for this map?"

Rolling his eyes slightly, Jack looked on as if bored. "No, I only plan taking six of the crew, lowering the boats down, rowing into port in the dead of night and proceeding my way up the hill before knocking pleasantly on the door and asking nicely for a map to this treasure. And we'll see where it goes from there," he explained as if it were the most obvious solution.

Taking a deep breath, Gibbs sighed. "Cap'n, that still leaves you with the problem of running about the town in the dead of night with a bunch of pirates—no doubt the locals won't take that to liking—and getting' this map from this old hag. And she's supposed to be a witch, I've heard," he said, before solemnly crossing himself.

Arching an eyebrow, Jack peered up the town, his eyes following a road winding upwards until they landed on a large manor sitting atop a grassy hill by the cliffs. Then, he turned to Gibbs, his usual hand gestures and jingling beads present. "I said I was taking six of my men, and we ain't going to 'run about the town', as it were. We're going to be quick and quiet. Savvy?"

Contemplating the eccentric man's words, Gibbs, too, turned to peer up at the large white house on the hill. He had to squint, as the daylight was slowly fading in time with the sinking sun.

Jack stared expectantly at his first mate as he observed the house. "What do you think then?"

Turning to his captain, Gibbs looked doubtful. "And how are you going to find where this treasure is from her, Jack, even if she does have a map?" he asked plainly. "No doubt she won't be willing to help you."

Immediately, a lazy grin spread over the pirate captain's face. "That, mate, is where my natural piratical abilities come in," he responded simply.

Gibbs stared at his captain with a half-grimace. Somehow, I knew it'd come to that…

--

French Translations:

Derniers – unit of French money. 1 dernier coin was about the equal of 1 English penny.

Maison- house

Vieille fille- old maid

Sorcière laide – ugly witch

Mademoiselle Brideau est une sorcèire! – Miss Brideau is a witch!

--Cayenne Pepper Powder