Chapter 8
Running and slipping down the sandy side of the hill towards the ocean, I don't even look around to make sure that I am not being followed.
My breathing heavy from having sprinted through the village twice in the past half hour, I finally make it to the cave, where, before entering, I catch my breath.
Hearing something, I quickly quiet my breathing and lean in closer.
Voices can be heard from inside the cave, and I freeze, confused and a little frightened.
"Who could that be?" I whisper to myself.
Not baring the suspense any longer, I enter the cave.
Silently and carefully picking my way through the rock, I try to stay in the shadows, not fully trusting anyone that could possibly be connected to Jack's old life.
I stop in my tracks, my eyes wide with surprise as I finally come into view of the platform where Jack and another man are talking, completely oblivious to my presence.
"You." I barely manage cough out.
Both men turn around, wearing shocked, guilty, and completely awkward expressions on their faces.
The young man, formerly known as Frederick Barrington, suddenly angry at seeing me, clenches his fists and eyes Jack like a predator does to his prey.
"You said she was gone!" He says through gritted teeth. "You said you sent her away!"
"What is going on?" I shout as the man grabs Jack by the scruff of his shirt and pulls him close, lifting him few feet off the ground and raising his fist.
"Stop it!" I shout. "Stop it right now!"
"Frederick" glares at Jack for a few more moments before slowly lowering him back into his chair.
"Please just tell me what is going on." I tell them.
Sighing and running his fingers through his hair, the younger man takes a seat on a large rock and leans forward, as if in thought.
My eyes expectant, "Frederick" is first to speak.
"I apologize." He says sounding slightly nervous and completely remorseful. I can almost hear the anguish pouring out with every word. "Not only for my outburst just now, but for the night of the party. I wasn't thinking, and I was wrong for lying to you. I do not live in Harbor View and my name is not Frederick Barrington, it is Thomas Calder."
"Thank you." I say, "But why did you almost flatten Jack's face? And what was "You said she was gone!" all about? And why on earth did you come to the party?"
"Well," Thomas starts, eyeing Jack, "Jack had promised me that he wouldn't let you visit any more and that you would have nothing to do with him."
"Why would you make Jack promise something like that? Is this about what you said at the party about me staying away from pirates?"
"Yes." He says and Jack snickers.
"Thomas thinks that all pirates are bad, even me."
"Thinks? I know, Jack! Pirates are all right in songs and bedtime stories but the real life things are as good as dirt and barnacles on the underside of a ship. They steal from the poor and destroy other people's property. They murder, Jack! Do you actually think that it is okay to bring a young, naïve girl into that kind of life?"
"If you think that I'm naïve, you should really meet my sister, Elizabeth." A dark cloud passes over me, "Well, not anymore."
This for some reason pricks Jack's interest. "What are you talking about?" he says, "And don't say nothing. Any moron can see that something is wrong."
Sighing, I tell him about what I had learned at the fort.
Both men fall into silence during my story and for a few minutes later.
"Why did you come to the party? Why did you ask me to dance? How do you know Jack?" I ask "Frederick", eager to leave the subject of Elizabeth for now. I don't want to deal with it at the moment.
Thankfully noticing my discomfort at the subject of my sister, Thomas goes along, "Could you slow down?" He chuckles sofly.
"Why did you come to my party?" I repeat
"I wanted to see you."
Taken aback slightly, I let it slide, promising myself to bring it up again later.
"Why did you ask me to dance?"
"I didn't fancy anyone else." He says as if it was pretty obvious.
"How do you know Jack?"
"Well, well, well." Jack says with a sly grin, having been surprisingly quiet during the entire conversation. "You're back to me. I was afraid you had forgotten me."
I don't say anything, not truly knowing if I forgive Jack yet for his deception. He had led me to believe that Thomas was just another man that wasn't the purest of hearts.
"Why did you hide from me that you knew Thomas?" I ask him
"He was sailing for the first year that you and I knew each other and how on earth was I supposed to bring up the fact that I had a son afterwards?"
I gasp, "Son? But you don't look anything alike! You don't even act alike!"
I turn to Thomas for an explanation.
He just shrugs, "Informally Adopted."
I only nod, still shocked.
Jack adopted a person? That is impossible! That would mean that he has a…a…a heart.
"You said earlier," I start slowly, "That you wanted to see me. How on earth did you know about me?"
At this, Thomas turns slightly red and chuckles nervously.
He gets up and holds out his hand to me. "I'll show you."
Looking at his hand indecisively for a few moments, I take it and Thomas pulls me to my feet.
Leaving Jack to his own devises, Thomas leads me through a small opening in the wall, which I had noticed before but never really paid any attention to.
Still holding my hand, Thomas enters the small crack and pulls me along with him. After a couple dozen steps, we arrive at a room where a table, two chairs, a crate, and a chest are placed.
"This is my room." Thomas says as we both drop our hands.
I look around, embarrassed at being in a man's room for the first time, alone, with a man who has already admitted to taking a fancy to me. The situation is a tad awkward.
Seeing my expression, Thomas quickly says, "Sorry, not my room. This is my house."
I smile at his attempt to make me more comfortable which strangely succeeded even though not the way he probably planned.
"You said you would explain how you already know me." I tell him.
"Right." Thomas replies and retaking my hand, he leads me to a corner of the room where we start climbing a wall which thankfully has rocks jutting out, giving us footholds.
When re reach the top, everything becomes clearer.
We have arrived at a small platform which is quite spacious even with the low ceiling. The floor is completely covered with layers of blankets, carpets, and rugs and in the corner is a small crate which is filled with what seems to be personal belongings: Locks, a small book, a satchel of money, a extra shirt, and a picture of a family.
I pick up the painting and stare at it. The father, although slightly bald, has a large black mustache and is dressed in a British military outfit complete with at least five military awards. He looks stern but his eyes gleam with an amusement and pride as he looks at the camera, his back as straight as one can be.
The young women sitting on a chair is young, maybe in her mid-twenties. Her dirty blonde hair is wavy and put up. Her lips are curled into a small smile as if she is the only person let in on a joke.
Beside the mother, standing in front of the father is a seven or eight year old boy with black hair and his eyes are a piercing blue.
On the mother's lap is a little boy probably not yet a year old. His hair is white-blonde and his large brown eyes are framed by long dark lashes.
"Is this you and your family?" I hold up the painting towards Thomas, already knowing what his answer will be.
"Yes." Is his only response.
Nodding, I put the painting back, aware that I must have touched a nerve.
"Sorry." I say under my breath.
He doesn't hear my apology and takes a seat on the blankets.
Noticing my surrounding, I finally understand what is going on.
The little room that we are in is something of an overlook with a part of it open to the real cave.
"You must have been up here when I came with Jack's food."
With the pieces now all fitting together, I look at Thomas.
"You were spying on me?" I ask him.
"Uh…" he says backing away slowly. "Not really, I just happened to be here when you first visited and… almost every time afterwards."
Rolling my eyes, I turn away to cover up the smile that creeps onto my face. Even if he had been spying on me, I find it kind of charming and sweet that he had been too shy to talk to me outright.
"Thomas," I start hesitantly. "Could you tell me why you almost broke Jack's face? Or should Jack be the one to explain?"
"No," Thomas says, "It's all right, I can tell you."
Taking a seat beside him, I look up in anticipation.
"I am a merchant of sorts, and a few weeks ago, maybe a month or so, I was in Tortuga, the pirate port, when I came across an older lady. She was lying on the streets, her clothing dirty, tattered and reeking of sewers.
"When I walked past, she jumped out at me and started pleading with me to help her, tears running down her face. I tried ignoring her, I admit, but she followed me, wailing for my aid only a few feet behind me, sometimes grabbing onto my shirt or holding on to my shoes. I don't know why she picked me but, after a few hours, I decided to see what she wanted. She told me to follow her and soon we arrived at a small box in an alleyway. Inside was her young son. He was coughing and his voice was like a rock, rough and barely audible. I could tell that he was on the brink of death.
"I did the only thing I could, since I had no money for a doctor or medicine, not that there would be either in Tortuga. I brought him to my ship, along with the mother. That night, I decided to return to Port Royal to see what could be done for the boy if he survived the journey. Unfortunately, in the middle of the night, the little boy passed away. His mother, in grief, threw herself into the ocean."
I guess I didn't give him the reaction he was looking for because he repeated, "The OCEAN, Anna. There are sharks in the ocean."
Realizations dawning on me, my eyes widen but I stay silent, not trusting myself with any words.
"Her screams could be heard for the next thirty minutes or so but it felt like hours." He continues after it sinks in, his voice slightly softly cracking.
"What became of the little boy?" I ask airily, unsure if Thomas really wanted to tell the story or if he only did it because he felt obliged to me.
"I gave him a proper burial a few miles down the coast." Thomas says. "But that isn't the point of the story, Anna. This family, if you could call it that, had been completely ordinary. As I learned while talking with the mother on the boat, they had lived as well-off shop keepers in Harbor View. It was pirates ransacked the town, killed the father, and kidnapped the mother."
Thomas puts his hands on his head and takes a deep breath, "When the mother threw herself in the water that something snapped inside of me. I couldn't, I can't, let you be sucked into that life, Anna. It isn't one that someone should live. I have probably seen more death and terror in the past eleven years than normal people would see in two life times."
"Eleven years?" I ask, a playful smile tugging at the corners of my lips, "But surely you are older than eleven."
Smiling, Thomas replies, "I was eight or nine when the ship carrying my family and I got destroyed in a storm. Only a handful of those onboard survived including my older brother, Charles, and I. Charles was the one who got me into pirating in the first place.
"After the shipwreck, we found ourselves in a small fishing village, not far from Tortuga. We traveled there by foot and Charlie started pick-pocketing for money and valuables we could sell to make a living for ourselves. He wasn't very good at the beginning and we sometimes fell asleep, our stomachs empty and sore. We also almost died from starvation a few times and yet Charlie would never even consider selling this."
Thomas pulls out a metal bracelet overlaid in brass and decorated with a large mosaic rose right in the middle, created with dozens of gemstones.
I gasp softly, "It's beautiful." I say through my breath.
"It was the gift from my father that my mother loved best." Thomas says, his eyes locked onto the piece of jewelry.
"Anywise," Thomas continues. "Jack found us and took us under his wing around a year later. Charlie was the best pick-pocket, even stealing hats from heads without anyone noticing. I guess that the profit Charlie sometimes brought in was the main reason that Jack decided to become a surrogate father to us. Charlie died from the cold when he was sixteen and I was fourteen. Jack, afterwards, started teaching me the ways of the world.
"I wasn't as good as Charlie at making money but when Jack lost the freedom of movement and was confined to sitting, I was the one that took care of him and since then, Jack has become less harsh and milder."
"Milder?" I laugh half-heartedly, unable to make light of Thomas's life story, "He must have been a nightmare."
"Thomas," I say, looking down at my hands after a few minutes of silence. "What did you mean when you said that you came to the party because you wanted to see me? It seems that you had already seen quite a bit of me from up here.
"It isn't as interesting or complicated as some may think." Thomas begins, "A few days after Jack promised to send you away and never speak to you again, I decided to talk to you, as I had been thinking of doing for a long time, before you were "banished". The party seemed like the perfect place and time."
"Allright," I say, "I have one more question for you."
Thomas turns slightly and waits.
"Where were you when I was here this morning and the past few visits since the party? I know it isn't important..."
"I have been conveniently on errands for Jack." Thomas says, sounding annoyed. "This morning, I was actually in town." Thomas says, "I had gone to check the damage of last night's attack. And I actually learned something interesting about one of the town's blacksmiths."
Will!
"He had aided one of the pirates from prison escape and they had cleverly commandeered a ship."
The conversation seems to run out of fuel at this moment, leaving us both in deep thought and silence.
Oh, the amount of things I have learned today!
The cool sea air drifts up from the entrance of the cave, finding its way through my nightgown, which is dirty and wrinkled from a night spent outside, and to my skin, leaving Goosebumps.
Not truly thinking, I scoot closer to Thomas, our bodies touching and I feel his whole self tense up. Grabbing a blanket behind us, I hold it up to Thomas and we wrap ourselves up in the warm wool.
"THOMAS! ANNA!"
I jump up, jolted, and sigh loudly.
Just when I was getting comfortable. I tell myself, blushing at how that would have sounded if I had said that out loud.
Throwing off the blanket, I, followed by Thomas, exit the overlook, walk through the house and slowly follow the winding hall back to the main cave.
I look at Jack, annoyed, but slightly curious because of the strange face he has on.
A crooked grin distorting his face and a mischievous glint gleaming from his eyes, Jack turns to us.
With a chuckle rising from his diaphragm and threatening to come out into the world, Jack looks straight at me and says. "I know how we can save Elizabeth."
