As it becomes clear who blew up part of Fort Nassau, Eleanor begins to understand Teach's plans. While everybody else is sure that Teach's surrender is nigh, Eleanor's worst nightmare seems to take form. As Teach and Vane make their escape under darkness of the night, Rogers is confronted with his own feelings about Eleanor and Eleanor dreams of a warning.

Chapter 9 - The Fireship

"One of the pirates wanting the bounty for Vane must have used gunpowder to gain access," Chamberlain said as he joined Rogers who gazed at the blast of Fort Nassau through a spyglass. "I expect the message from the beach to concur that Captain Vane is caught any time soon."

Rogers stared darkly at the evidence of the destructive blow. "Captain Hornigold knows I want that fort and what's in it whole. Mr. Dufresne and the captain were to relay that message to every pirate that surrendered and surrounds the fort." He lowered the spyglass. "More than likely it is an attempt by Vane and Rackham to escape. Signal the beach that the fort must be secured immediately, before anybody loots the place. Let the pirates of Nassau hunt Vane in the streets afterwards. The gold has priority over anything else."

Before long, they received a reply signal from the beach. The blast was caused by Charles to make his escape. Rogers rose the stairs and said in a low voice to Eleanor. "Vane is at large, but all the island is hunting him now as we speak."

"What about the gold?" asked Eleanor with alarm. "Was Captain Hornigold able to secure it?"

"Its status is as of yet uncertain. The blast did not help matters." Rogers inclined his head sideways and appraised her with some wonder.

Eleanor squinted at the fort and Nassau in the distance. "But the men inside the fort, surrendered, yes? Rackham, Featherstone?"

"No names were mentioned, only that all resistance inside was defeated."

Her hand around the rail tensed and Eleanor dug her nails in the wood. Rackham and Charles are up to no good. Even when desperate, they come up with the most devious plans. If they blew up the fort's wall to escape, then Rackham would have had a plan, surely. But there would not have been any time to carry a whole fortress of gold out, not under the watchful eye of the crew - maybe a few bars here or there, no more than they could stuff in their pockets. She became aware Rogers was still watching her and instinctively glanced over her shoulder at him.

"Miss Eleanor Guthrie sees past her anger and self-interest, and focuses on the greater end instead, thrice in two days. How did that happen?"

Eleanor turned and looked up into his puzzled blue eyes. You happened, she thought, but she said, "I read a book."

This brought a twinkle into his eyes and an amused smile. Rogers nodded, inhaled deeply, leaned on the banister and looked into the distance. Eleanor stared at him for a moment longer, stilled her heart, turned and let her eyes rake across the roofs of Nassau town. While wondering what might be happening down there, her eyes trailed off towards the tents on the beach and on to Teach's fleet. Something clicked. "Charles joined Teach!" she blurted.

"Beg pardon?"

"Teach saw Charles as his son. He knows signal code as well as the Commodore." Finally, Eleanor understood why Teach had returned to Nassau, why he refused to surrender and yet had not made an effort to breach Rogers' fleet formation. Eight years was a long time, enough to forgive Charles' betrayal to him, and with the news that she had been convicted in England, Teach wanted to retrieve the one pirate he respected and made in his own image. "I think Teach may be out there on the beach to retrieve Charles Vane to join him."

Rogers gestured at an officer. He went down the stairs, reached out his arm for the spyglass held out to him, and brought it before his eye. When he lowered it, he turned, looked up to her and nodded. "You are right! I just saw them both climbing aboard."

Eleanor sighed. "Are you sure it was Charles?"

"One large man with a black coat and black beard and a shorter, younger man - strong, fighting man - with light brown, long hair down to his waist. Like you described him." He gestured her to come down and held the spyglass in the air. "Do you wish the spyglass to verify?"

Eleanor shook her head, then lifted her skirt and walked down the stairs, her hand on the handrail, surveying the formation of Teach's fleet, filled with crew who would rather die fighting than accept pardons. She wandered past starboard, frowning at the ships, until she finally joined Rogers waiting for her. "Teach will try something," she said. "He wants to escape, with that fleet and Charles."

"I had the Commodore maneuver a frigate around the Hog to prevent them from escaping via the east channel when the tide rises." He smiled at her, reassuring, and yet she felt a dread. "Let us go downstairs and await more news there. The Commodore will inform us of any change."

Hours later, after nightfall and dinner, Commodore Chamberlain reported his beliefs to Governor Rogers. "They are without option now. Sooner or later they'll realize their only escape is to surrender Captain Vane and stand down." He bowed and took his hat from under his arm. "Gentlemen," he said to his officers guarding the door to have them follow after him as he left.

They were alone again and Eleanor started for the door as well. Her working relationship with Rogers would start off having a bad influence on gossip if she remained after dark. "What would they say?" asked Rogers.

"Who?"

"Your enemies on the island," he said. Eleanor's heart skipped a beat. "You seem concerned about what I'm going to hear them say about you. Maybe it would be better to hear it now, while all else is quiet."

Rogers had considered her warning about her enemies and how keeping her by his side might derail the support from Nassau. Hornigold handed her to England to be hanged and had eyed Rogers with misgivings when he learned that Eleanor was part of Rogers' endeavor. And yet, her actions, her opinions and counsel today had been invaluable. Of course the conundrum was that she herself counseled him against her senior advisor position, not because she would counsel him badly, but because what others might say about her.

Eleanor trembled, stood in doubt. But eventually she turned to face Woodes. "They would say I'm untrustworthy. That I would turn on anyone at any time, no matter how close they were to me." Her voice became a whisper. "No matter who it hurt or how severely." She raised her eyebrows and looked away, unable to look him in the eye then. "That, given my history, only a fool would allow me to get close to them again." She met his eyes finally and fell silent, spellbound, quivering.

He stared hard at her, grim, severe. "Would they be right?"

Eleanor searched for words, opened her mouth, but her throat was dry and thick. They were right about her untrustworthiness in the past. She could not look back upon it without shame. But if he asked her whether she would betray him – no, not him. It would however sound like a hollow lie given her history. Nor did she dare to speak the reason why they would be wrong. How could she find the words to convince him, when she herself barely figured out her own feelings and thoughts? It had all come so rapidly, and realization only started to dawn the day before. More, any such confession was inappropriate. His own behavior today had told her that despite his own attraction to her he wanted to keep their relation within social acceptable boundaries. Hence, Eleanor was utterly speechless.

Seeing her forlorn, Rogers made a decision, more on intuition and instinct than on reason. He rose from his seat. "You tamed this place once, despite what anyone may say of you." He walked round the desk and came to stand in front of her, leaning his hand relaxed on the back of a chair. "And I desire your counsel, despite what anyone may say of you. So let us move forward, despite what anyone, whether from your world or from mine, may say of you."

Eleanor was flabbergasted, humbled by his continued assertion he would have her by his side, no matter what people said of her. Is he real? Or a figment of my imagination?

A knock on the door interrupted them. "What is it?" he said annoyed.

One of the lieutenants entered, a Lieutenant Perkins. "The Commodore thinks you better see this for yourself, Lord Governor. Something is happening with the fleet of the pirates."

Rogers hastened through the corridor and Eleanor attempted to keep up. "Is Teach surrendering?"

"We are not sure, sir. But there seems to be a ship sailing our way."

Could I have been wrong about Teach, Eleanor wondered. Rogers demanded a spyglass, climbed onto the quarterdeck with strides that took two stairs at once and studied the darkness before them. From the lower quarterdeck, Eleanor saw nothing on the water yet, not under the cover of darkness.

"It's a schooner, sailing towards us," Chamberlain said. "She's under a white banner. Gunports closed."

"How the hell did she get so close?" Rogers wanted to know.

"She was hidden behind their line. By the time she emerged, she was fully underway. She's subject to our full broadside," Chamberlain tried to assure the governor. "She's either surrendering, or we have her dead to rights."

The dread she had been feeling ever since Charles rejoined Teach twisted and coiled in her stomach, making her feel ill. Hornigold had slipped past Teach under the white flag, and not to surrender himself to the pirates on the beach. She looked up anxiously at Rogers, who glanced down at her. Please remember my words about Teach and his fanatics, she thought. Finally, Eleanor could see its sail and its white flag herself emerge from the darkness with her own eyes. She held her breath. It was closing rapidly.

Rogers ordered in a low voice, "Slip the anchor cables."

"Break our line over the approach of a schooner?" Chamberlain protested. "I think you overestimate - "

"While there is still time, cut the goddamn cables!" Rogers overruled the Commodore.

A whistle coming from the schooner sounded over the water. Eleanor heard splashes. It could only mean one thing – men aboard that schooner had just jumped overboard. Oh, gods, Eleanor thought, I was right. It's happening. And then all of a sudden, flames erupted from its deck. It quickly spread to the topmast, the yards and the bowsprit, as if a firesprite set the schooner aflame.

"Fire ship!" the look-out shouted.

"Bloody hell," swore Chamberlain under his breath. And finally he shouted the order, "Cut the anchor cables! Get us underway!"

The order was shouted down the line of officers, captains and sailors. "Cut the anchor! Cut the anchor cables!"

All of the schooner was now ablaze, from waist to crow's nest, in every cabin, and all flames met and joined into a giant bonfire that cracked and roared.

"Starboard batteries!" yelled the Commodore for the gunmen to hold ready. "Fire!"

Eleanor found herself in the middle of a mayhem of cannons firing and gunshots, while orders were shouted at the top of their lungs. The thick, white smoke rising from the cannons stung her eyes. The air itself smelled of burned charcoal, ammonia and left a bad taste in her mouth, like rotten eggs. The deck and the bay had become a world of fire and brimstone. The cannons kept firing but with little success. Meanwhile the schooner was a fireball, nearing ever closer and unstoppable. Do something! Eleanor glanced up at Rogers who studied the fire-ship through the spyglass. Surely he can do something.

"Too high," Rogers mumbled. "You're aiming too high!" he bellowed. Rogers ran down the stairs, past Eleanor. "Forget the rigging!" he barked at the gun crew as he approached the lower gun-deck. "Aim at his hull! At the waterline!" He clapped the gunners on the back. "Aim for the waterline!" He leaned over deck and roared at the men below. "Gun crews, redirect to the waterline! Redirect to the waterline!"

His orders were repeated, but in the midst of people shouting all sorts of orders, explosions and the roar of the fire on the schooner that drew closer, Eleanor could not make out whether any of them actually listened to him. Rogers stepped back from the lower deck and gaped at the terrible, burning schooner that lit the night. Almost instinctively, Eleanor left the quarterdeck and rushed to his side. How close it is, she wondered - a fiery, ominous torch. She felt the heat reaching as far as her face. She could smell the burned wood, pitch and sulfur. It looked both horrific and beautiful all at once – a ship from hell. Then a fireball exploded, like a thunderbolt. For a moment, Eleanor was blinded by it and she felt a searing heat pass. Next she saw sparks of flame raining down on her. Instinctively, she tried to shield her face, while she thought, I die now. A man jumped between her and the flames, grabbed her by the shoulder with one arm, locked his hand around her wrist, and pushed her to the door underneath the raised quarterdeck.

"Lieutenant!" Rogers hollered as he pushed her into the young man's arms. "Get her inside!" He raced back to the main deck and gesticulated, "Go! Go!" She whirled around to hold on to him, but the lieutenant's hold on her was strong and he dragged her by the shoulders below the quarterdeck.

"He's still out there, in that hell - the fire," she muttered. "You have to go get him," she mumbled at lieutenant Perkins. She whirled around and grabbed his arms. "You have to go get him!" Her hands were shaking, and she felt her knees buckle. They felt like rubber.

But the young man simply smiled at her as if she were some child. "He'll be fine, miss. He knows what he's doing. This is not his first battle."

She gaped at Perkins and suddenly felt foolish. He's right. Rogers had battled at sea before, caught himself two Manila galleons. He's the Captain-General of the fleet, a commander. What sort of commander would he be if he were to hide inside his ship, while his men risked their lives? "I'm sorry for my outburst, Lieutenant. I don't know what came over me."

"It's quite all right, miss. You're not used to this." He opened the door to the governor's quarters.

Mrs. Hudson rushed to her side from the corridor. "I will see to her, Lieutenant." Her chambermaid and companion took her by the hand and led her to a chair. Eleanor lifted her hand and willed it to remain still. But it was no good. She simply could not keep from shaking. "Did you hurt your hands, Miss Guthrie?"

Eleanor looked about her. There was only her and Mrs. Hudson in the quarter. The lieutenant was gone already. Her hands looked black. It did not hurt though. "I don't think so, no."

Gently, Mrs. Hudson supported Eleanor's right hand and dabbed a cloth soaked in cold water with it. "It is only soot," assured Mrs. Hudson. She pulled Eleanor up. "Let me inspect whether you have any burns." Mrs. Hudson made her turn slowly. "Only soot and smoke, Miss Guthrie."

A sequence of scenes repeated itself over and over in her head. It all had happened so quick. One moment she was in the line of fire raining down on her and she thought she was about to die, and the next he had pushed her away and blocked the fire's path. He saved my life twice now.

Mrs. Hudson walked to the other side of the quarter, opened a cabinet, took out a justaucorps, made her sit down again and draped the jacket over Eleanor's shoulders. "That's for the shaking."

She was not even aware that she was shivering, until Mrs. Hudson remarked on it. It smells of him, Eleanor thought. It was a rather worn one, simple, for everyday wear. Eleanor stopped trembling. But her mind was still reliving the fire-ship coming at their line. It had been coming straight their way, originally. The cutting of the line had ensured they drifted off away from the schooner's line just far enough. It was meant to destroy the Delicia, and everyone on it, me, him. She was suddenly sure of it. More than likely, Teach had seen her on deck. Maybe, Charles had too. Has this turned into a race of who kills who first?

Rogers burst into his quarter. "Were you harmed?"

"No." Eleanor shook her head.

"What were you thinking, coming so close to it?" He ran his hand through his hair, strode to his bar, poured a good deal of brandy in a cup and downed it in one go.

"I-I…" Eleanor lowered her head. "I wasn't."

Rogers stood frozen and wordless for a moment and then glanced sideways at Mrs. Hudson who tried to retreat into the background. "Well," he said. "Well." Rogers picked another cup, poured brandy in it and then held it out to her. "You look like you need this."

She took it with both hands, sipped and coughed as the liquor burned her throat. "What happened? Is it over now?" She felt the heat of the liquor spread from her throat to her chest.

Mrs. Hudson closed the doors for them. "Yes." Rogers flopped onto a chair. "Once we broke our line, Teach and Vane sailed away under the cover of darkness. The fire-ship's brightness made it hard to see their fleet. It was a trick to make their escape with the Man O War and the rest of the pirate fleet, just as you said. They're probably on their way to Ocracoke, never to be seen again." Rogers sighed. "They're gone."

"What about the fire? Was anyone hurt?"

"Only material damage and minor burns," he assured her. "It hit the Willing Mind. Everybody on board managed to escape by jumping in the water along backboard. The doctor is seeing to their burns and cuts as we speak." Then his tone got darker. "But the Willing Mind has been damaged beyond repair. It's only good for wood and gun salvaging now. And all of the stock inside, almost all of the stock we brought with us, was destroyed." Rogers rolled his eyes. "Good thing that both are insured."

They fell silent. Eleanor sipped her brandy like a child her honeyed warm milk, unwilling to leave from under his coat that enveloped her. Rogers sat brooding, his booted legs wide and his elbows leaning on his knees, while his brandy in his hand hung forgotten in the air. Her mind wandered back to the fire-ship. There had been a bawdy song sung once in her tavern, made up by a resentful pirate of Charles' crew after she had him deposed of his captaincy. The coward had left Charles' side after her decree, but sought to frequent her bar to taunt her, instead of employment. The song had gone along the lines of Vane firing his cannon and ramming into a rakish fire-ship. Eleanor had the rascal kicked out for it. But on the beach, amongst the tents she could hear drunken pirates sing it once in a while. I was no fire-ship, she thought. I gave him my maidenhead.

Rogers' mind too was filled with the memory of the hellburner, first to the losses he had suffered from it – vessel and stock – then to Chamberlain who had debated his command in full view of everybody, today and yesterday. But finally to the moment where he ducked and turned away from the raining fire, only to knock her over almost – he had not known she had been standing right behind him - and the fright he felt for Eleanor's life at that instant. When he had finally allowed himself to depart the deck, his first thoughts had been of her health and assuring with his own eyes that she was well. His angry outburst over her carelessness had taken him by surprise.

Rogers glanced at her, warm beneath his favorite cloak. Her hair was wild and in disarray, her cheek smeared with soot, as were her otherwise rose-colored hands. But her eyes beamed with a wild fiery light like that of Greek fire, green-blue as her dress. His heart drummed like a batter ram in his chest, for during his earlier angry outburst, he was stupefied by the sudden apprehension that if he did not heed himself, he was in a fair way of falling in love. In the eyes of Mrs. Hudson, who had once served his wife, it must have been a highly inappropriate scene. And it was all his own fault. Like a warned boy, he had played with fire of a honeyed lamp to see better and if he were not careful he would suffer the burn.

All the while, the silence endured for so long that both grew uncomfortably aware of it. And when finally it became unbearable, Eleanor set down her cup on his desk, and lifted his coat from her shoulders. "Thank you," she whispered. She rose from the chair. "I think I must rest now."

He shook his head slightly, to wake himself from this daze. Rogers stood as well, as a gentleman must do. They stared at one another for a lingering moment, unmoving, but the several feet between them seemed as wide as an ocean. "Yes, rest. Tomorrow we launch."

When she lay down on her bed in her own room, Eleanor closed her eyes, exhausted, and dreamed of her dead father, looking rich and strange in the darkness. A bell tolled. Down in the vaults of hell, shaped like a maze, Eleanor ran in fear of pursuit while holding a box she had been sent beneath the earth to fetch. The tunnels smelled of sulfur and it was so hot that even the walls sweat. She fumbled with the keys to unlock the door of bars and pushed it open with all her might. Dragging steps echoed against the walls. Frantically she pushed the screeching gate closed, fast perusing the hundred of similar keys, needing to test each one before she could seal the lock, just in time.

There was his torch at the other side of the gate. He looked at the box and said, "That is mine, which you stole. Give it back and I'll forget you ever took it. Come back through the gate. We'll be together, eternal, here in my dark keep."

In her dream though, Charles was not the handsome man she used to remember him as. He was still fierce and strong, but bent and misshapen, grotesque and dark. Eleanor took a step back, away from him.

"You wound me," he growled, and she saw blood seeping from his shoulder and chest. Eleanor turned and ran, chased by his howling echo. "I assure you, you will hear from me again!"

A burner from hell sailed straight in her direction. It exploded and before her very eyes turned into a spectacle high into the night sky. As she stood in the eruption of flames a shadow toppled her, and Eleanor fell. She believed it to be a spirit with a brave form that held her down.

Her father laughed. "No, my dear. He eats and sleeps, just like us."

Then she finally could see Rogers' face, stained and scarred. Eleanor still held the box, and in that moment she opened it. A slow melancholic air of sweet music filled the heavens – violins and her mother's harpsichord. The swelling violins made it sweeter and more virtuous than Eleanor had ever heard before. Along with the music, Eleanor gave the grieving man who searched forlorn his beauty back, for goodness he already had.

(The Tempest - The description of the fireship alludes to Ariel's retelling of setting Alonso's ship aflame to cause the shipwreck (act 1, scene 2). Ariel's song with Prospero commenting on Ferdinand features in Eleanor's dream.

Fireship - slang from the second half of the 17th century, means "whore, with an STD and/or thievish". "A Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery of Shakespearian and Stuart Literature" by Gordon Williams sums a whole list of sources of its use. 'Pokey whore', 'Poxy whore', 'Punk', 'Rakish', or in reference to men having lost their nose from syfilis, then still deadly and untreatable. A link to a badwy song of the time - html/songs_sorted_by_name/with_music/f/the_fire_ - html/songs_sorted_by_name/with_music/f/the_fire_

"And when she moored herself to me, I knew she was a whore.
But still she was a pretty girl; she shyly hung her head.
...
But little did I ever think she was one of the rakish kind.
I played with her for quite some time, and learned to my surprise,
She was nothing but a fire ship rigged up in a disguise.
So up the stairs and into bed I took that maiden fair.
I fired off my cannon into her thatch of hair.
I fired off a broadside until my shot was spent,
Then rammed that fire ship's waterline until my ram was bent.
Then in the morning she was gone; my money was gone too.
My clothes she'd hocked; my watch she stole; my sea bag was gone too.
But she'd left behind a souvenir, I'd have you all to know,
And in nine days, to my surprise, there was fire down below."

An anecdote called the 'Comical Exchange Or, a Fireship instead of a Maidenhead' is referenced in reverse when Eleanor denies being a fireship for she gave Vane her maidenhead.

In The Ovid Travestie by Radcliff (1681) Paris says this to Helen (of the Illiad):
"Brother, quoth she [Cassandra], beware, beware, I say,
You do not meet a Fireship by the Way :
A strange wild Wench, I hope she did not mean
That any where your Ladiship's [Helen] unclean ;
Heav'ns forbid : Good Soul, she meant no more
Than Flames of Love, as I have said before."

When Rogers thinks of the fireship scene, he thinks of Eleanor in terms of 'flames of love' where I equally refer to Cupid being burned by Pysche's oil lamp, and thus as Eleanor as his 'honey'.

Charles seeing Eleanor through the spyglass - In the show, she comes down from the quarterdeck and moves freely in the direction of the midship. Vane believed she was there to anger him, to force him into making a mistake. This implies he was angered, and not just because she's alive or being excluded from the universal pardon. I think Vane had a glimpse of a scene, short but just long enough, to make him feel jealous and in the eyes of Teach possibly irrational. So, one can imagine Charles spying Eleanor, when in this chapter she walks to Rogers and leaves the deck together with him. Within the context of his own former relation with Eleanor, we can imagine Vane believing that she's "rummaging around with Rogers in the hull". The flames raining down on Eleanor, the "Willing Mind" being "rammed" by a "fireship" creates a message from Vane that means "you punk whore, you burned me." The fireship becomes Vane's insulting opinion on Eleanor. He took her as a 'maiden fair', 'played with her for quite some time', 'rammed her until his ram was bent', and he woke 'bereft from Abigail' after she fucked him.

Eleanor's nightmare: mixes references to Psyche & Cupid, the Tempest, and Venus-Vulcan mythology. Psyche is in the underworld on a mission fto get the 'box of beauty'. With Psyche being 'a Venus in human form' her lover Vane acquires aspects of the deformed Vulcan, god of fire, smith and husband to Venus. Instead of Psyche being gifted the box by Persephone, here Pscyhe steals it from Vulcan. A mix of Cupid and Tempest's Ferdinand saves her, with her father telling her he's a real man, not a spirit, and a good man at that (Tempest reference). When she opens to box of beauty Rogers becomes a beautiful man to her, because of his goodness.)