TRIGGER WARNING!
I am not kidding you. This chapter is dark and covers domestic violence with a first hand look at the death it can cause. It is not necessary to read this chapter to continue the story going forward and will be quickly, and sanitarily, summarized at the beginning of the next chapter.
I WARN YOU AGAIN, READ AT YOUR OWN MENTAL RISK!
TRIGGER WARNING!
Chapter 57 – Weep Not My Love
August 11, 1660
"How's she doing?" I asked Evelyn after land was sighted ahead of us on the fourth day. The wind was pushing slowly into the north, not our best point of sailing, and we made very slow time with Timon off on his own ship.
"She's been through a lot," Evelyn told me as we stood at the 'door' talking. I wasn't able to get a good look at Lily and her little girl, the two tucked down in a hammock, but the Native was looking much better.
"What of her people?" I asked her, but Evelyn's soft shake of her head said all I needed to know. Wherever Lily's tribe had went, she either didn't know or wouldn't say, the former more likely as Evelyn had said Lily was a 'guest' of Hook during the Darling blowup and hadn't escaped until after the pirates had purged the island of the Lost Boys. It was this information alone that kept me from traipsing all over the island with the girls looking for anyone else as there shouldn't be anyone else. If there was, the girls would have known about it as they would have kept stealing supplies from the pirate's town.
"She's one of us again," Evelyn said as she let out sigh. "Probably a good thing because I don't think she had that much food left. Pregnancy really makes you hungry."
"Eat what you need," I told her to get a soft smile. "If I need to, I'll let Colette know you girls aren't to be rationed on food, though I haven't really had a problem with providing meals to the crew yet."
"She provides plenty," Evelyn informed me. "Even Ivy, hog that she is…"
"Hey!" Ivy said as she realized she was being dissed on. "Who was the one that had two pieces of hardtack and molasses with breakfast this morning?"
"It was good!" Evelyn said defensively as the pair started laughing at the good-natured ribbing.
Smiling as I left them, I returned to the poop deck in time to see a three masted pinnace leaving port. That it sported ten cannon didn't go unnoticed by me and was a ship I could live with in retirement, better than a Dutch jacht from which modern yachts took their name, with a major plus being it was a deep water vessel where the jacht had to lower keel leeboards to keep from heeling over in wind. Seeing Hercules at the wheel put a frown on my face that he'd leave his wife when it should be nearing her time, but figured that maybe it was a quick trip to a nearby port and he'd soon return, that or the captain he was signed on to was a jackass. That could happen, a problem still carried over to the modern day man who made his living by leaving home. Bosses expected you to be on the road no matter what and some were so calloused that even the prospect of your wife having her first child couldn't unfreeze their frozen hearts and allow you to stay home.
As I intended to sail the Queen out from port and leave the recently acquired ships behind, I held back and let Timon and Jasmine dock their boats first, then pulled up to the end of the pier with the shore on my starboard side. As such, I wasn't paying attention to the sailors on the dock as they tied off until she was almost at the end of the pier, her presence a slap in my face as she leaned heavily against a crate left behind and gave me that self-same smirk she always seemed to carry as she stood in the shade offered by the ships around her. It was easy to tell she was still heavily pregnant and hadn't given birth early, her belly swollen as if she carried a watermelon under her simple dress but seeing her again filled me with such joy that I forgot decorum as I grabbed the shroud securing the mizzenmast to the railing and swung to the main deck so she wouldn't have to crane her neck so high though her face looked swollen from weight gain of the pregnancy though I could only see half since her hair hung over her face.
"You should be in bed," I told her as my crew tied off the boat and I was forced to wait for the lowering of the gangplank.
"How could I stay in bed with you coming to port?" she called back sassily, her voice sounding strong with only the slightest waver to it which I took from the long walk of a pregnant woman not only into town but to the pier. Of course, it hit me that if Hercules had just left, she had probably been on her way home when she realized, or was told, that I was returning to port.
"Where's Phil?" I said as my crew began lowering the gangplank.
"Left with Hercules aboard the Plundered Whore as his quartermaster," she said sadly as she shook her head slightly as the gangplank was finally set but the crew, seemingly alert that I was suddenly in a bad mood, just stepped back as I made my way over..
"He got himself a ship?" I asked her as I descended the gangplank and she nodded once as my blood began to boil as I snapped out, "What kind of ass leaves his wife as she's about to give birth?"
"He..." she began to say as she went to take a step towards me but faltered as she tried to step into my arms. Without thought, I tried to catch her lest she fall but her unexpected weight and my sure grip had me following her off the pier and into the water.
Leveraging my size and ability to swim, I temporarily fought with her as she tried to use me to save herself but the strength in her arms went fast and I was soon able to get her into a proper back-to-front position before doing the sidestroke as my crew watched from the pier and the railings of the ships as I headed for the beach. Pulling her up onto the warm sand, she coughed up some seawater as she lay in my arms but I couldn't help the question about her confusing state and pulling aside her hair.
Seeing the bruised and nearly swollen shut eye, I suddenly wished I hadn't as I saw her swollen face through a new lens. It wasn't caused by weight gain, but by being beaten. With her cradled in my arms and the sun peaking between the masts I was able to see the bruises already forming on her honey-hued skin and knew she'd been beaten.
"What happened?" I asked her as she finally smiled up at me as a trickle of blood ran from the corner of her mouth, its color telling me her lung had been pierced by a broken rib.
"Herc…" she said softly as the smile left her lips and then it hit me as her bruises suddenly made sense.
"He did this?" I asked her and she nodded
"Sing for me," she breathed as she raised her right hand to my cheek. "I always did love it when you sang. Such poetry in your words..."
In that moment, I suddenly knew she was dying. Hercules was a big and powerful man with biceps that would make a body builder envious while Megara was a wisp of a woman. The blood leaking from the corner of her mouth told me she had severe internal bleeding and that Hercules was long gone from where he could inflict this told me her time was close at hand. As tears threatened to run down my cheek, I sang the first song that came to mind as I sang one last time to my love.
"Weep not for roads untraveled," I sang as I played piano chords in my head. The song was called Roads Untraveled by Linkin Park, hearing it first in the movie Need For Speed where it played near the end and loving a remixed version that cut the jingling bells out that gave me such a headache.
"Weep not for paths left alone," I sang as I tried to tell myself not to cry even as she smiled a soft, loving smile. "'Cause beyond every bend is a long blinding; it's the worst kind of pain I've known."
She coughed once as I stopped to catch my breath, a big pinkish bubble exploding from her lips as her eyes seemed to follow something else.
"Give up your heart left broken," I sang as she began to convulse as she began to sieze as her body died. "And let that mistake pass on. 'Cause the love that you lost wasn't what it cost; It's the worst kind of pain I've known."
With the final word said, her body went limp in my arms as she gave one final exhale, her eyes un-focusing from mine in death as the light left her. Her arm finally fell to her side where she'd caressed my cheek and her head lolling back as I jostled her slightly to raise a hand to check for a pulse and found nothing.
She was gone.
Cradling her body close, I found I could no longer hold back the tears as I held her lifeless body in the surf and a thousand thoughts ran rampant through my head.
This was supposed to be my fantasy! How could my worse nightmare come to pass now!
How could I find such love and passion only to lose it? Twice!
What kind of god condones such horrid give and take?
"Owen," a soft feminine voice said as a hand pulled me back to the twilight that was happening on the beach. I snapped my head around to see it was Rapunzel who had somehow found us, now standing in the surf with me as her husband looked on with several soldiers and a man I thought might have been a doctor.
"She….didn't make it," I sobbed, unable to hold back the pain I was feeling as I looked at her through tear filled eyes.
"I heard the report that one of the guards thought she'd been attacked," Rapunzel then told me as I looked back to Megara's wet body. "I brought the doctor as quickly as I could."
"Severe...internal...bleeding," I said as I was ready to ugly cry as I cradled her body close. "Nobody could have saved her."
"We'll find who did it," she then told me as I shook my head.
"Hercules did it," I said as I felt a wave of hatred for the muscular man run through me, centering my resolve and allowing me to find a spot to center my thoughts on. "She told me right...before…"
"We'll find him."
"Don't bother," I said as I began to scoop her body into my arms. "Tomorrow, I'll bury her and hunt that bastard down."
"We'll be there with you," the governor said as he stepped forward to put an arm around his wife's shoulders. "Megara was...important...to the island. She's going to be missed."
"Thank you, governor," I said softly as Rapunzel gave me a soft, if heartbroken smile. "Will you tend to her farm? It will need someone to look after it...now."
"We will," he said as I finally carried Megara out of the surf. I turned and began carrying her back up to the Wanton Queen, everyone on the pier backing up and giving me room as they removed their hats and bandannas and placed them over their heart at the somber occasion.
"We sail at noon tomorrow," I told the crew as I stopped at the top of the gangplank in the midst of most of my crew. "Until then, get off this ship."
My order given, I began moving through the throng of people to the stairs to descend down to the berthing deck when I passed Shang and Mulan. While I was unable to meet their eyes as I passed, the pair, followed by the Warriors Three who only spoke in Mandarin, all bowed as I began to descend where I could find a hammock to wrap her in for burial only to find Evelyn and the girls readying a table in the middle of the gun deck for the process. They'd already covered the table in blankets and were just then adjusting the hammock in the middle to wrap her in before noticing me and quickly falling back except for Evelyn who stood near the head of the table.
"Set her down here," she said as I approached. "There might still be time."
"Time?" I said as the girls surrounded her body and began to push me back.
"Anyone remember how Miss Clarion used to do this?" Angela said somewhat casually as she produced a knife and handed it to Sil who stood at the at the foot while Peri and Consuela raised her knees and spread her legs. Looks were exchanged by all the girls who then looked to me but it was Evelyn who acted.
"Captain," Evelyn said as she began to tug on my arm as she pulled me further away as it dawned on me what they were talking about. "We'll let you know."
"No," I said and every head turned to me. "I need to know if the babe survived. That's what you're doing, right?"
"Yeah," Sil said with a nod as she raised the hem of Megara's dress and began to operate.
"Captain, you don't want to watch," Evelyn warned me as she again tugged on my damp coat. "Trust me. I wish I never saw it done myself."
"I'll stay," I croaked out as Sil made a disgusted sound as she worked, but I wasn't able to tell what was going on.
"It's a boy," Sil finally said after a long, agonizing wait before adding a sad, "Was."
"Poor thing," Ivy said as she took the babe and laid it in Megara's arms. Getting my first look, it was evident that some of Hercules rage had been taken out on her womb, the babe quiet and slightly deformed.
"Things," Sil corrected her sadly as she dove back under the hem of Megara's dress. "She had twins."
At that, several of the girls darted for the gun ports where they began retching their dinners while Evelyn collapsed against me and buried her face in my chest. When no sound came from between Megara's legs, I found myself no longer wanting to watch and instead cast my eyes away to find Lily nursing her daughter silently in the background. The second babe was placed in the crook of Megara's other arm, hands folded across her belly while the hammock was sewn shut to lock the mother and her two sons inside, the babes repositioned to have their heads lie on Megara's shoulders while lying along her arms with their little legs tucked under her wrist until only their heads remained visible.
"Jiu wei," a voice called behind me. Turning my head, I saw Mulan leading the Warrior's Three onto the gun deck to take positions in a ceremonial carrying of a body.
"Ju qi," Shang then said to get all four to grab a corner of the hammock wrapping Megara and lift her into the air and onto their shoulders, Mulan and the shorter Yao holding Megara's feet while . "Xingjin."
With that last word, all four Chinese soldiers began to move Megara's body toward the ladder, Mulan and Yao leading while the taller Chien-Po and Ling carried her head. They moved in unison, acting like a true honor guard as they carried up and onto the deck where a board had been setup near the gangplank. The four soldiers set Megara's body onto the board to await the dawn when we'd bury her as a grave had yet to be dug but in the moment I had assumed the governor would take care of it. Mulan was the first to move away as Chien-Po and Ling moved forward to stand by the gangplank but she just retrieved my guitar that had been set nearby and brought it to me.
"She wanted you to play," she said as I took the guitar from her. Nodding, Mulan bowed to me before backing away and turning to Megara and bowing once more then moving to the gangplank where she and Shang went arm and arm down the gangplank to the pier with the Warrior's Three in tow. Sitting on a barrel as I tuned the strings, Evelyn and the girls soon swarmed up the stairs and, after pausing to pay their respects, disappeared one by one down the gangplank leaving me alone.
"So much for my happy ending…" I sang as I began to play, trying not to cry as I carried out the last task she had wanted of me; to sing.
