Rogers finally wakes. He can hardly believe what he is looking at out on the market square. Captain Throckmorton has received the black spot. Max wants Eleanor to give into the demand, whereas Eleanor remembers Rogers' words about not fearing a ghost. Dr. Marcus informs Eleanor of the governor's recovery and she finally faces the judgment about her actions from the sole person who matters to her.

Chapter 33 - The Betrothed

Rogers stared at the ceiling and gently moved his head to look around him. Yes, this is my bedroom in Nassau. I am the governor. He vaguely remembered feeling sick, weak and burning with fever. He was parched. He tried to speak, but his throat was so dry and it felt as if his tongue stuck to his palate. He only managed to utter a dry croak. He heard the creaking of a chair and a woman rushed to his bedside. He was surprised to see it was Mrs. Hudson. He tried to say her name, but once more, all that he managed was unintelligible croaking.

"Do you wish some water, my lord?"

"Har." That does not sound like aye at all. Rogers simply nodded at her. As Mrs. Hudson filled a glass, he tried to sit up, and for a moment needed to close his eyes to let the resulting dizziness of his effort fade. He accepted the glass, brought it to his lips and drank.

"Easy, my lord. Not too much all once," she warned him. He waited before swallowing the water, looking at Mrs. Hudson, and then drank more slowly. "May I touch your brow, sir?" Rogers consented with a gesture of his head. He felt the chambermaid's cool hand against his brow. "Your fever has lessened. Do you know where you are, sir?"

Rogers coughed, and finally managed to rasp, "Nassau."

The chambermaid put her hand on her chest. "God bless." He cocked his eyebrows at her. "I must fetch for Dr. Marcus at once." She rushed out of the bedroom and for a moment he sat alone, adjusting his awareness, but also still remembering some vague flashes of terror. It was a dream, he realized. She died in my arms, but it was only a dream. Well, a nightmare.

From the neighboring room he heard muffled voices. The door opened and Dr. Marcus stood in the doorway. "Good day, doctor," Rogers said. His voice returned to him little by little whenever he spoke. He lifted the glass of water and took another sip.

The doctor beamed at him and then said to Mrs. Hudson, "You can go now. Perhaps you can wait in his office, while I make my examination."

"Of course." She curtsied the doctor and then bowed her head at Rogers, still smiling. Rogers rarely had seen her smile so much.

"Ugh," he croaked. No, my voice is still not entirely reliable. He drank another sip of water. "How long?" he finally managed to say, while the doctor took out his instruments..

Dr. Marcus held out a thermometer. Rogers opened his mouth to receive it. "A week my lord."

"Mh mhhhhhhhhhhhhm?"

"Yes, my lord. You lost consciousness a week ago. Sometimes you woke, but always in a state of delirium." The doctor took his wrist, laid two fingers on it and counted while he watched his pocket watch. "Your heart rate is almost normal again. Seventy nine. It should be seventy two." Then Dr. Marcus took out the thermometer. "Around 38 °C. Still high, but not forty anymore."

Rogers tried to digest the fact that he lost a week of his life, and at such perilous times. "Vane?" he asked, suddenly remembering.

"Who?"

He cleared his throat. "Charles Vane? What happened to him?"

"Hanged and gibbeted, my lord." Dr. Marcus waved towards the window. "Here on the square, five days ago."

Rogers felt bile rise into his throat and a gnawing sensation in the pit of his abdomen. He had to see it for himself. Rogers leaned on his knuckles and tried to swing his naked legs out of bed, despite the doctor's protests. But as soon as he dropped his feet on the floor and tried to stand, he knew he could barely manage by himself. "Help me get up, please."

"As your physician I advise against it."

"I insist."

Dr. Marcus sighed and supported him step by swinging dizzy step to the window. Rogers' heart stopped for an instant when he saw the gibbet on the square. Charles Vane. Once, Vane had been nothing but a blown up tale by sailors at Lloyd's. Then he was a name written on a piece of paper in a prison cell. He became the evidence of Eleanor's manipulative mind when she revealed he was a former lover. Afterwards he was Charles Vane of the fireship and a ghost of Eleanor's past that spiked feelings of jealousy in him. But now the pirate was no more than a tarred display in a cage on the market square. Rogers did not need any explanation who had made it possible. "Why here?" he asked finally.

"To appease the street, I believe."

Rogers raised his eyebrows and turned his head to look at the good doctor to make sure the man was serious. "The street?"

As the doctor relayed him about troublemakers demanding Vane's trial had to be held in Nassau, Rogers' knees did not just intended to give way for lack of strength alone. He grabbed for the wall beside the window. He remembered the fortress of his nightmare filled with ghosts, their chanting, Bonny's dead man's chest, and Eleanor sacrificing herself in the process in order to protect him. Rogers was angry, very angry.

Dr. Marcus said, "Perhaps it were better if I fetched Miss Guthrie. She knows all the particulars and has been most anxious for your recovery."

"Yes," Rogers said coolly. "I would be most obliged to you, doctor." He stared at his naked legs. She had seen him more naked than that, but he was still a gentleman. "First have Dyson sent for to make me somewhat presentable and Mrs. Hudson is free to take a day off."

xxx

Mr. Soames consulted with Eleanor in the assembly hall over some of the earliest reports of income and projected revenues. Since Vane's hanging all had been peaceful in Nassau. Eleanor hoped it would stay that way. But when she saw Max enter together with Captain Throckmorton, she asked, "Is everything all right?"

"Show her what you showed to me," said Max to Throckmorton with a sour face.

The captain flexed his jaw and pressed his lips together, as if he resented Max for it. Still, he lifted a folded piece of paper out of his inside pocket of his justaucorps and held it out for Eleanor to read. The letter came in the shape of a circle with a large black spot of charcoal drawn on it. Eleanor turned the paper around. "To the first to betray, I offer the first chance to repent. Remove the captain. You have until nightfall." Eleanor rolled her eyes and waved the paper in the air. "Where did you get this?"

"It was sitting at the foot of my bed when I woke this morning. Someone left it while I slept."

"The message, it would seem, is clear," said Max. "There is a voice out there yet to identify itself that wants to see Captain Vane's remains removed from the gibbet in the square."

Mr. Soames joined their circle and pointed at the paper in Eleanor's hands. "Why does it look like this?"

"An old wives' tale," Eleanor said irritated as she pressed the paper into Mr. Soames' hands. "Pirate lore. Avery's maiden crew was said to deliver the black spot as a warning to wayward crew members."

"Ignored on pain of death," Max added in a more sinister voice. Eleanor watched Max for a moment, wondering what game she was playing now. Max had over a week to figure out who the spy was amongst her own workers, but despite her self-avowed friendship to Eleanor, Max had never even mentioned the word spy to Eleanor again.

"I knew men when I was young who sailed with Avery," Captain Throckmorton rumbled reassuringly. "It was a bullshit story then, and it's no less a bullshit story now. Ma'am, cowards send notes."

"The form of the threat may not rightly be the issue," argued Max. "We are aware there is dissent on the street. Perhaps removing the gibbet would go a long way towards settling whatever unrest may be brewing."

Eleanor closed her eyes and turned away from Max, leaning against the table of the assembly hall. She felt nauseous. When will it ever stop?

"You're suggesting that the governor comply with an anonymous threat?" asked Mr. Soames astonished.

"I am suggesting the gibbet could be seen by some to be inflammatory," stressed Max. "The point has been made. The law has been satisfied."

Mr. Soames was not so easily cowed. "It is a well-settled statement of resolve to maintain the display."

Max's voice and words grated Eleanor's mind. For a moment she felt dizzy and in need of fresh air, as she gathered her thoughts, already able to predict Max's arguments before she made them. Eleanor hated the display herself. But Eleanor was not the law nor a judge, and she had been determined to adhere to the law. Nor did she dare to remove the evidence of her actions from the governor's sight before he woke. What would Woodes want me to do?

"If it is removed in the light of this threat," argued Mr. Soames. "In the light of Captain Flint's standing ultimatum against the use of it, would it not worry you that it might appear weak?"

Woodes' words about regarding Flint's threat still echoed in Eleanor's memory - That, I too, am so weak to fear a ghost?

"It certainly worries me to make self-defeating mistakes out of fear of appearing weak," sniped Max.

Eleanor had heard enough. Flint was no doubt engaged into battle by the fleet at that very moment. While there were agitators on the island, they could none of them be heavyweight fighters like Flint, nor even great in number. The black spot was a superstitious ghost story. Woodes would never give in to such a threat made by a rabble of dissenters. Eleanor ended the bickering. "He's right. He's right." She shook her head. "It gives me no pleasure having it there, no matter what the street may say." Eleanor met Max's eyes. "But to remove it in this moment threatens to undermine confidence in the governor's leadership." She regained enough air to stand once more. "That said," she addressed Mr. Soames. "At the end of three days time, I want it down and gone, not a minute longer."

Eleanor appraised him and said, "If you would like me to form a small detail to offer you protection in the meantime -"

Throckmorton pumped up his chest and grumbled calmly, "If anyone has a problem with my allegiance to the Crown, my men and I are happy to address it with them."

Captain Throckmorton was a tall, calm, sensible man near his fifties, one of Hornigold's generation. When Eleanor still ran her father's fencing business, she never considered him much. He was a reliable and steady source of income, and his goods had always come in tip-top shape. He was a bit of a gentleman amongst the pirates, with enough of a name for merchants to surrender without trouble to him. But he never picked a target that would pose much of a challenge either. She wished now that she had favored men like him more than wild Charles, who set the worst examples. Eleanor nodded at the captain. Just then Dr. Marcus called out to her from the staircase, looking at her from across his glasses. "Ma'am?"

"Excuse me," she bid them good day and ambled towards the doctor.

Annoyed with the result, Max watched Eleanor leave and walk the stairs. Has Eleanor learned nothing at all? Someone threatens those who took the pardons and they all ignore it, even Throckmorton. She was only trying to give Eleanor the best advice she could. Why does Eleanor ignore my advice? In a foul mood and disappointed, Max left the mansion to brood on all this on her way to her tavern. She was almost home again, when she wondered why the doctor had called for Eleanor.

Eleanor lifted her skirts and walked up the stairs, not daring to ask why Dr. Marcus wanted her. He did not leave her long in doubt and smiled. "Our lord governor's fever has lowered sufficiently for him to wake. He is no longer delirious. He is still weak and feverish though, but I expect it to progress positively in the following hours."

Eleanor leaned on the stair's banister to catch her breath, and thanked fate, god or science and all of them at once for the news she had hoped for every day since he had been taken ill. "He is out of danger then?"

"Yes. And he asked to see you."

"What is your medical advice?" she asked the doctor, feeling unsure what she was allowed to do or say.

"He should not exert or excite himself too much. The main aim should be in helping him regain strength and fluids. Nor should he be left alone for too long. But I think we can let the patient decide for himself what his body allows or not."

"Thank you, doctor," Eleanor whispered. "For all your good attentions."

Dr. Marcus grinned and gestured his head toward the door. "Well, go in, ma'am."

Suddenly nervous, Eleanor straightened her dark blue skirt and stomacher, before she laid her hand on the door handle straight into his bedroom. She opened the door slowly and walked in. The bed was empty and Rogers stood in his robe with his back towards her as he watched the square through his window. Her heart stilled for a moment, more of fright of seeing him up at all. "You should be in bed." She mustered a smile for him.

"I've spent enough time in bed," he said hoarsely and dark, without turning or looking at her. He was supposed to make the hard decisions and carry the burden of the responsibilities, not her. I am the governor, she my assistant. He could no longer lazy about, while she carried the heavy logs. No, my precious butterfly, I would rather crack my sinews and break my back, than allow you to undergo such dishonor again.

Realizing what, no who, he was staring out the window for, Eleanor's earlier relief was replaced with mortification. The graveness of his voice and his motionlessness like a statue told her that her worst fears were coming true. In silence, she joined his side by the window. She glanced out of the window towards the gibbet that displayed dead Charles Vane. Furrowing her brow, she tried to imagine what it looked like to him. Woodes had come determined with a universal pardon, wanting to give pirates a clean slate for a new life within the law, exactly because in part he understood them. He knew battle and the chase, but also adventure and having more freedom than any soldier or sailor with the navy ever had. If not for her, Charles would have been included in his pardon. It was his determination to appeal to the best nature within people that had made him a hero in her own eyes. Never mind that Charles would have abused the pardon to harm Woodes, that Rackham mistook it for weakness, that Flint rejected the plan that Miranda's former husband had grafted. She had robbed Woodes of the last illusion to make Nassau a better civilization than England. Even I failed him, she thought distraught. "I did what I did," she said low voiced, not evading her responsibility in it. "I know how it seems," her voice gained a touch of despair. "To the street, to you, but please understand –"

"It seems as though…" Rogers interrupted her gruffly. "A very difficult thing was done." He closed his eyes for a moment, and saw her stab herself with the dagger in his mind's eye. He opened them again to stare at Vane's gibbet. "It seems as though I am fortunate you had the courage to do it." Eleanor gaped at him, her armor breaking in thousand pieces over his words. While she ought to feel relief, she was closer to tears, feeling unworthy to take what she desperately wanted. "You have enemies here," Rogers said gravelly.

There was no doubt in his mind whatsoever that what he had witnessed in his dream was the truth of the matter. In his absence, each of her enemies had played their part to make her hang Vane. Eleanor had wanted to protect him. And he hated every one of her enemies for it. For the first time, he turned his face and his red rimmed eyes met hers.

Can it be true? Do you love me, she wondered.

While his stern jaw was set in bitter anger, his eyes softened. Unconditionally, beyond all limit of everything else in this world, I love, prize and honor you. His heart had flown to her service in his dream and it already resided with her. Despite her human flaws and raw emotions, she was peerless and perfect to him. For her sake, he would be her log-man. "Then let them be my enemies as well."

Dumbstruck, Eleanor's mind was a confused blank. For a long moment she doubted her own ears. She thought herself a fool for being unable to speak.

"Any and all of them," he said grim-faced, nodding slightly at her as he stared into her eyes. "And let them come." He let go of the wall and held his right hand out to her, wishing that heaven and earth could witness his silent gesture and would crown it with her hand in return. Will you be my wife?

Without giving it a second thought, she laid her own automatically into his. Are you my husband now, she wondered, the owner of my heart. He squeezed her hand gently. A thousand thousand.

Overcome with the emotion, Eleanor was almost incapable of bearing his determined stare. Her other hand went up to his shoulder, caressing his back and the silk fabric of his robe, as if feeling part of his body would make his words, his decision – this was a decision, right – more real than her mind could believe them to be. Shaken, Eleanor leaned her forehead on his shoulder, near the point of sobbing as she was awash with overflowing emotion. His male smell enveloped her like wings, and Eleanor settled for a sigh of relief. He was her warm human rock to lean on.

Rogers's eyes lingered on her face, before he looked out of the window again. Her leaning on him felt reassuring - real and alive. And he would let no one hurt her ever again. It was all so fresh, so new, this certainty of belonging, that neither of them spoke or moved, both thinking that no other person before them could have been this truly in love. Time would only be a breeding ground for it.

(Tempest - silent thoughts and actions when Eleanor joins Rogers in his bedroom reference scene 1 of act 3 of Shakespeare's Tempest - the personal betrothal scene between Ferdinand and Miranda. Other words are actually spoken by Rogers and almost none by Eleanor in the scene, but heavily hints at a mutual sublimal understanding. He literally and metaphorically begs for her hand. Without saying it, that is what we symbolically witness - Rogers asking for Eleanor's hand, a figure of speech when a man asks a woman to be his wife. The Tempest scene between Ferdinand and Miranda also ends with him presenting his hand and she giving hers. It was this 3x10 scene that originally made me think of using the Tempest as a literary allusion. To each other at least, they are husband and wife by the end of S3, like Rackham and Anne Bonny are (the 2x10 scene on the Colonial Dawn), which was why I incorporated Rackham in Rogers' dream chapter, both to the reminder of his legel wife Sarah as well as show him that Eleanor is the wife in his heart..

Max is only a short POV here. I could not yet use her conversation with Mrs. Mapleton about the spy, since that is the scene where Throckmorton drops, hanged. Since the black spot gave them until nightfall and it is daylight I take it is meant to happen the day after. The battle at Maroon Island may encompass a day with the night talk, but I'm going with a different passage of time for the island finale story. I have Rogers wake on the day of the battle, and Throckmorton dying the day after. The Epilogue will explain how Rogers comes to appoint Max to read the message of Long John Silver to the council. This chapter sets it up, with Eleanor feeling irritated with Max and Max being put off as well, and I certainly hinted on how Rogers views Max in his dream chapter already - together with Jack and Anne, but her back to them. It was inapropriate imo to start the process at the end of the symbolical betrothal scene.)