The Bride of Blackbeard (27 page)

Still on her knees, her head felt thick and
heavy with the memories and she let it droop into her hands. She
muttered, “No more suffering, please, please. No more.”

She rose to her feet. After a while, she
vaguely registered her feet were raw and rubbed bloody, due to the
rain. When had it started? She spied Taylor Creek over the hill to
her right and started down the slope toward the water.

Trudging down the slope, her feet slid in
the thick mud, and she made no attempt to stop her descent. In fact
she welcomed it. She threw her arms wide.
Enough of this torture
called life.

Torture in the fact that anyone or anything
she ever cared about had either been desecrated or died before her
very eyes.

As she slid, she felt the stones rip at her
back and head, but she cared not. She lay stone still, the freezing
stream rising up her legs. If she refused to move, she would
probably go under. The rain poured full force now and she opened
her eyes and stared into the canopy of trees. Her entire body
shook, almost like Megan’s in the throes of a fit.

Megan.

Lucian.

Will.

Ben.

They needed her. And if she died, what would
become of them?

Her mind filled with thoughts of Megan,
again.

Megan...the child who called her mother—a
word she never thought to hear or want to hear in her life. She’d
sworn that if she reared her brother and sister safely, she would
never tie herself down to any responsibility again.

But love isn’t interested in
responsibility
.

Now she understood how you could adopt a
child in your heart, and if you truly loved that child, it was as
if you had brought him or her forth from your own body.

This was how she loved Megan. And she now
realized the extent of the love she had for Will and, yes, even
Katrina, and especially Lucian. She would die for any one of them
if it came to it. She loved them as she loved her own flesh. Who
else would love them that way, if she permitted this surreal
reality to take her mind? Who would be brave enough to fight for
them every day?

No one.

There were still principles worth fighting
for.

She fought the blackness attempting to close
her eyes, never to open them again.

Sudden anger blazed violently, and she knew
if that devil Teache were in front of her she would be capable of
murder. Anger, not only for herself, but also for that pitiful
creature swinging in the wind in front of Hammock House. And for
who knows how many children and women Teache had fooled and
abandoned. Anger for her own lost childhood, her foolish mother,
and her irresponsible father who had subjected her to pain and
abuse that
no child
should ever have to bear.

The desire to return home blazed within
her...but not with the stench of him still clinging to her. She
refused to contaminate her home with his reeking funk. She climbed
full into the freezing stream and began to scrub. With all her
might, she tried to wash
him
off of her. She came back to
her senses when she saw blood trickling down her arm. She’d
scrubbed her skin until she bled.

Slowly she stood and made her way up the
hillside to the road. Horses were coming...she could hear
them...but didn’t bother to get out of the way. Trampling would be
preferable. She had to quit thinking like this.

The animals halted before her. Sitting
astride them were Katrina, Lucian, and a man she’d never seen, as
well as several others she vaguely recognized to be sailors. They
dismounted.

“Stanzy, are you all right? Are
you...intact?”

Intact?

Even as Lucian spoke the words, his face
worked as if he might go mad. His contorted face looked as if the
end of all things had arrived.

He knows. I do not even have to tell
him
.

Stanzy’s eyes met Katrina’s as she spoke,
recognizing the same flat tones her mother had used when spilling
lies. Stanzy looked at Lucian and said, “I escaped, darling, out
the window, and they have all departed in their sloop out into the
inlet.”

~ * ~

Stanzy sat staring out the window of the
cottage, waiting for Lucian to return from the barn. The last nine
months had slipped past, quiet and calm. Their homestead was
finished, and Katrina had finally found love—hopefully for real
this time. And to whom else but a sailor—the eldest son of one
Abernathy Hornigold.

Their mother had always said, “You reap what
you sow.”

The fall of Edward Teache at Ocracoke Inlet
on 22 November, and how it had been a gruesome battle, was the talk
of every town on the Banks. Two small sloops, the
Ranger
and
Jane
, leased personally by Governor Spottswood, had finally
caught up to the devil, thanks to the recommendations of Hornigold.
The larger, military ships wouldn’t have been quick enough to catch
Teache.

Purportedly, he’d received multiple musket
shots, and no less than twenty slices of a blade before going down
for good. He was then beheaded and his head taken aboard the ship.
It was said that his corpse swam the length of the boats three
times before disappearing into the watery depths.

Maybe he had been real evil.

At times, she found herself shaking when all
around her was peaceful, and at other times, any strong emotion
could elicit irrational fear. A hot flush of heat to the side of
her face ensued, and her heart raced as if she were in fear for her
life. And she rarely slept, because at night the dreams were full
of filthy pirates, lost babies and dead mothers with vacant
eyes.

Her nightmares over the past nine months
arrived from the moment she closed her eyes, until she woke sweat
covered and shaking every morn. Her mind felt like splintered
glass, just one sudden jolt might send it disintegrating into a
million tiny bits.

~ * ~

The mother’s belly contracts as she howls
in pain. Stanzy pushes down
as
she has a thousand times
before, but nothing happens. It is not coming. She gets behind the
woman and he
aves
her upright to speed the labor, but the
wailing continues. Smells issue forth, not common to
a
delivery room—sulphur and gunpowder. The walls of the delivery
room rip away like the sides of the manor in the hurricane, and in
their ste
a
d is the horizon, and ships. Ships flying black
flags of skeletons in different forms.

They are coming for her, the Brethren of
the Coast
,
and there is nothing she can do about it. And she
knows she will have to sail with them forever. She will not even
have the peace of death.

The horizon is red and the sea churns with
creatures. Not the creatures she so dearly loves, but horned,
scaled creatures of unknown names that slink in and out of the
depths, begging her to throw herself overboard. Then mermaids with
pointed, razor sharp teeth that they open and close, gnashing them
at her.

The woman yells again.

Stanzy stumbles to the bottom of the bed
to try to deliver the child. But something is wrong; the woman’s
water breaks and spills over the table, but it isn’t amniotic
fluid, it is
seawater
. The baby is delivered into her
hands and its tiny body is covered in black hair. And as she looks
at the face of the woman on the table for the first time she sees
her own face staring back at her.

Night after night, the dream recurs, and she
cannot escape it, awake or asleep. She prays that when the baby is
born, whomever the father, that the cursed dream will cease, and
permit her some peace.

~ * ~

Stanzy ran her hands over her pregnant
belly. Suddenly her water broke. Icy fear, instead of elation
filled her. She prayed that when she looked upon this child, the
hair would be brown, and his soul would be the salt of the earth,
and not the son of the devil with a longing for the sea.

~ Epilogue ~

The baby cried as Lucian handed him to
Stanzy. Tears streaked down her face blurring her vision as she
cradled him to her breast. She took a wet cloth and began to swab
his hair—fine, brown hair. When his tiny eyes met hers, she
recognized the exact beautiful hazel color which met her own gaze
each and every morning.

Lucian’s eyes.

She knew now she would be able to tell him
the truth of what transpired at Hammock House and perhaps with that
real healing could begin. All was forgiven. The baby was what they
had wished for, a beautiful boy in whom their love could continue
on for generations.

"He's perfect, Stanzy. He'll have your
hair." Lucian bent and encircled the two of them.

Love beat back the demons raging in her
head. A single beam of sunlight shone through the window, recalling
one word to her mind.

Hope
.

As she slept, for the first time in almost a
year, no creatures plagued her sleep. Only green fields where four
children frolicked, chasing one another’s shadows.

Author’s Notes

Lead Poisoning in the 1700s

As the parent of a child who has suffered
lead poisoning, as well as other metal toxicities, I have seen the
devastating effects of this problem firsthand. Symptoms of lead and
mercury toxicity can be malaise, gastrointestinal problems,
nephritis (kidney disease), and in extreme cases...convulsions,
pica (eating non-food substances), paralysis and death.

In 1786, Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to
the political economist Benjamin Vaughan, in which he related
recollections from his boyhood. At that time, Franklin recalled
legal cases involving New England rum, where distributors had used
leaden still-heads and worms in casks, and the lead had leached
into the rum, causing illness and paralysis. The Legislature of
Massachusetts enacted laws prohibiting this practice. Franklin also
discussed the case of a family that had consumed rainwater, which
had passed over their roof and had been caught in barrels, and were
affected by lead poisoning. Thus the barrel in our story was lead
laden...as well as the lack of moss on the roof, which could not
grow due to lead as well.

Blackbeard’s Wives

The only account on record that I was able
to locate on Blackbeard’s documented marriage was to a Mary Ormond
from Bath. It is said that Blackbeard would go into ports and find
the most desirable women, take them aboard his ship, and have one
of his crewmen marry them. This happened so often, it was
commonplace for his crew!

In the town of Beaufort, North Carolina,
there is actually a walking tour you can take of Hammock House, and
Blackbeard was rumored to have hanged one of his wives on a tree
from a noose until dead (TourBeaufort.com). Hammock House was
indeed at one time the home of Blackbeard, the time and
circumstances are purely a product of the author’s imagination,
however.

I encourage one and all to visit the Outer
Banks of North Carolina if you are a history buff, as the entire
coast is steeped in tradition and folklore. It is breathtakingly
beautiful.

US COAST GUARD

Lucian’s father, who drowned in a rescue
mission offshore, was created in this writer’s imagination, but it
is a matter of record that many truly brave souls have rescued
stranded passengers for as long as the Outer Banks have been
inhabited.

The Chicamacomico Lifesaving Station was in
operation from 1874 to 1915 and was a precursor to the Coast Guard,
which began around 1918.

Tactile Defensiveness

The behaviors of Megan—the inability to
tolerate clothing, or having one’s hair washed or brushed or nails
cut—is very much a reality in many disorders. It results from
improper nerve transmission to a person’s skin, so they either
react too much or too little to touch.

The exceedingly high pain tolerance is a
reality as well—the author has witnessed children pound their heads
on tile floors and never shed a single tear.

Tribute

Although the rape scene with regard to
Katrina and Stanzy is a part of my fictitious novel, I have known
in my lifetime a real story of rape, where one brave soul indeed
took another’s place and endured the torture of this deed to
preserve the innocence of a loved one. The telling of this tale is
a tribute to that brave and courageous person. There are few like
you on the earth today.

About the Author

Brynn Chapman

Born in Pennsylvania and
raised by two school teacher parents, Brynn loved reading and
writing from an early age. After reading
The Lord of the
Rings
for the first time
when thirteen years old, she was henceforth fixated on all fantasy
stories and folklore.

Concerned over the
practicality of becoming a writer when college bound, Brynn decided
on a medical career instead of a literary one. As she grew older,
the artistic side of her brain would not be silenced, so she
returned to her first love—writing.

Brynn still resides in
Penn’s Woods with her husband and three sons. She also works as an
occupational therapist for children with autism and at a charter
school for adolescents on the spectrum.

She is also the author of
the young adult fantasy,
Into the
Woods
, written as R.R.
Smythe and
Project Mendel
as
Brynn Chapman.