The Swashbuckling Yarn of Milady Vixen (13 page)

“What colors be it flying?”

“From the main mast I see the white-and-blue-striped flag with the golden tree in the center—Balzac’s colors. Devil take us! That be no sleepy carrack, but a seventy-four gun Ship-of-the-Line!”

“Shiver me timbers! Be that behemoth friend or foe?”

“She’s spotted us. I reckon she’s comin’ in for a closer look.”

“Blast it all, we’re flying Effingham’s colors!” Tom shouted.

“Avast, me hearties!” Vixen roared. “Strike those colors and string up our own. Hop to it, ye bastards, ere we are fired upon!”

Even brave men can know fear. Faces turned to look in the direction of the massive warship bearing down upon the
Sea Fox,
and many of those features went pale with fright. Pirates and sailors call this
to have the Davies,
meaning to be scared to death or in fear of it. The momentary paralysis allowed this big craft to draw nearer and prepare for action. Vixen screamed at her crew, jolting them out of their fearful state. But alas, it was too late.

“All hands ahoy! Weigh anchor and give me full sails or face Balzacian guns!” she screeched.

“We have men on the shore!” Ginger Tom reminded her.

“That’s their misfortune. If’n we wait, we’ll be torn to pieces!”

“It’s the
UBS Dreadful!
” a powder monkey shrieked. “She’s the pride of the Balzacian fleet. We’re doomed, Captain!”

“Belay that drivel, ye craven brat!” she commanded the boy.

The
Sea Fox,
being a brigantine, weighed one hundred and fifty tons and would be quicker in the water than the eleven-hundred-ton Balzacian vessel, and thus typically would’ve been out of cannon range faster than a jackrabbit on a date. However, Vixen’s ship had been anchored while its foe already rushed through the waves. All her craft managed to do was give its opponent the opportunity to unleash almost half its seventy-four guns.

I have often spoken about Vixen’s uncanny ability to remain erect during stormy seas or even a cannonade. However, when thirty-five cast iron guns each flinging a shot ball weighing thirty-two pounds crash into the side of your ship, I’d like to see you not fall on your ass. The
Sea Fox
tossed about like a giant had taken it up and was trying to use it as a salt shaker.

“Return fire!” Vixen shouted, climbing to her feet.

There was a deep, creaking groan that went through the vessel like it was sobbing in pain. Her ship’s starboard side was more kindling than timbers, and soon water poured into her holds. Listing with a jerk, the ship lurched, sending many a man-jack overboard only to surface and strike out for land. Meanwhile, the
UBS Dreadful
closed in like a shark scenting blood.

“We’re doomed!” Tom said, standing upon shaky legs.

“Damnation!” Vixen snarled. “Out-foxed by my own wits am I! I surmised flying the flag of Effingham so near to her shores would keep us from being investigated.”

“We must abandon ship!”

“Nay, I will not slink from combat.”

“Vixen, it will be ye death.”

“Death comes for us all, Tom. I simply choose to greet it on my own terms, not running away like some lily-livered coward who hopes to evade it.”

Another wave of white smoke billowed out of the
Dreadful
’s side, whisking away quickly due to the ocean’s breeze. In the wake of this, another volley slammed into her craft, snapping masts like twigs, shattering flesh into red mists and quaking the ship violently. Wiping blood cut into her face from flying splinters, Vixen noticed bemusedly the ship’s wheel was gone. Moving without direction from her hands, the
Sea Fox
curved and wallowed like a pregnant whale toward a rocky outcropping off the Effingham coast.

“’Ware the rocks!” Tom said, spitting out blood. “Our keel will be ripped to smithereens!”

“That be the least of our worries!” She laughed.

“Strike ye colors!” a man’s amplified voice pealed out of a megaphone from the
Dreadful.
“Stand down and prepare to be boarded!”

Looking about the sundered deck, Vixen snarled as her crew began tossing aside their weapons. With a growling oath, she drew her rapier and brandished it at the huge ship. Grappling hooks flew through the air to bite into the wood of her craft. The two vessels were soon tied to one another, and red- and blue-jacketed Marines began pouring over the side of the
Sea Fox,
herding her cutthroats toward amidships. Their bayonets gleamed, sending dancing sparkles into the buccaneer captain’s eyes. A squad leaped onto the poop. Vixen spat out an oath, her sight colored in a misty hate-filled rage.

“Over the side, Tom!” she screamed, leaping for the railing

Her lover followed suit, and when they surfaced shots rang out, splashing the water all around them. Swimming like all the demons of the deep were chasing them, Tom and Vixen struck out for shore.

“I thought you said,” the flame-haired man started, “that you wouldn’t shrink from combat?”

“Shut up and keep swimming,” Vixen retorted.

Upon reaching the far shore, the two soggy sailors staggered up the dunes and quickly rushed into the forest. Dripping wet and dusted with a gritty coating of sand like some bizarre cookie, Vixen cursed her ill luck in language I’m not going to repeat. Plus I’m not sure I know what all the words meant.

“What now, my Captain?” Tom inquired.

“They’ll be sending a boarding party after us, so hanging around here isn’t wise,” she answered. “We need to strike into land and hope they don’t pursue us too far.”

“Vixen! This is the middle of a war zone!”

“We have to chance it or we’ll be just as doomed as my poor crew.”

“Aye, they were a good lot—brave and true.”

“I’ll miss every man-jack of ‘em. No captain could’ve been prouder of the scalawags under his command than I. Let’s go, Tom—the
Dreadful
is putting several boats in the water, and they’ve been kind enough to fill each one with Marines.”

Striding into the foliage and trying not to look back, Vixen abandoned the ship she had called home for many years. Tom didn’t mention it when the single tear coursed down her soft brown cheek, for she would’ve just said something was in her eye. Plus, of course he had taught her too well the use of a sword.

A Breakfast of Oath Meal

Now sailors aren’t knowledgeable in the ways of woodcraft. Spending most of their time at sea limits, their experience for striding through the forest and learning where to step to remain quiet and… What was that sound I just heard? Oh, it is true enough buccaneers would venture into places like this, but only to buy treasure or find water. Still Tom and Vixen found themselves quite lost in the woods, rudderless and without a compass. They skirted a few farms and a village or two, but without a map to guide them, the two pirates had no idea where they were, nor which sovereign held this part of the world. Walking aimlessly, they ended up bedding down for the night just outside of a sleepy little hamlet until they could spy out whether it be held by friend or foe. To say it was a rough night would be stating the obvious.

Morning came, and after a full day without sustenance, the two were as angry and temperamental as a she-wolf with a bad paw.

“I say we just walk down and pay for a meal,” Tom snapped. “If’n they aren’t friendly, at least my belly won’t be complaining so much.”

“No, but your throat will!” she counterattacked. “I’d rather not grace some gibbet just because I was hungry. Look at the condition of those folks! Ye be able to see their ribs jutting into their shirts. I reckon they haven’t a scrap of food to spare, and I don’t feel like slashing my way through a starving population just to quell my unruly guts.”

“Devil take you, woman!”

Tom jumped up and strode brazenly toward the cluster of smoking structures with nary a look back. Vixen hissed at him to stop, but he kept going. Cursing under her breath, she climbed to her feet to follow her mutinous first mate.

Shoulders squared, he entered the town, and to her surprise not one of the inhabitants seemed to take note of it. Pushing forward with her longer legs, the she-pirate caught up to Tom and strode alongside of him. A small child, no more than eight years old, ran up. Dressed in dirty gray rags, her features were pinched and pale. Vixen and her mate stopped in the middle of the street.

“P-please, ma’am,” a tiny voice said. “Do you have something to eat? My brother and I haven’t had anything since last Tuesday. Surely dressed in the fashion you are, you can spare us just a piece of cheese or a chunk of bread.”

“I’m sorry, child, I have no food,” she answered the waif.

“What happened here?” Tom queried.

“There was a battle two weeks ago,” the girl answered. “Two armies went at it for days until one drove the other off. They took everything we had to eat, slaughtered our animals, ravished our larders and just left us here to starve.”

“A battle, ye say?”

“Yes sir.”

“Who rules this land, child?” Vixen demanded.

“I have no idea, ma’am. For years we lived under the King of Effingham, or so the old graybeards in the village told us. Ever since I can remember we’ve been at war.”

More and more people began filing out of the buildings. They appeared to be nothing more than skeletons thinly clothed in skin, hunger evident in their wet eyes. Like ghosts they drifted toward the two pirates. Somewhere in the distance a dog howled in misery while the dirty hands of the villagers thrust themselves out, palms up, silently begging for aid.

“We’re starving—have pity!” a woman wept.

“I-I have nothing to feed you with,” Vixen remarked softly.

They didn’t hear her words. Pushing and shoving against each other, they penned the two buccaneers in amidst a ragged, filthy circle of humanity. Their cries turned to pitiful moans while their eyes pleaded and begged. The condition of both the village and its population violently yanked upon Vixen’s heartstrings. In the end, the fact that she and Tom had no morsels to share penetrated their gut-gnawing starvation. Drifting away, the decimated mob shuffled off in an eerie manner.

“Why be this village in such despair?” Vixen asked softly.

“War be not pretty, my Captain. These lubbers have been reduced to hungry ghosts because either the defeated or victorious army carried off all that be edible. Have you never seen the aftermath of such things?”

“No.”

“A wretched thing is war. At least when we pirates do battle, we have the decency to either sell or slay our enemies. Notice they didn’t bother to try to rob us—for gold cannot purchase that which isn’t being sold. Since they can’t eat it, it has no value.”

The memory of her standing before her father’s marker, swearing in a loud voice to bring bloody-handed revenge upon the nation who had cast her out, came thundering into her brain. Every face that had turned her way bore the marks of her poorly thought out oath. Those lying motionless in the doorways, too weak to walk over like the rest, forced her to turn away in shame. Bitter tears rolled down her cheeks. The fruits of her ten years’ labor had been given a face, and it wasn’t a pretty one at all.

One often likens enlightenment to being struck by lightning—but no storyteller ever remarks how painful this would be. To the teller of tales, enlightenment is a series of words that evoke an instant flashing of realization. This is the way of the world, my child. To suddenly know you have caused undue misery upon innocents is nothing short of being stabbed through the heart with a sword. Such it was with Vixen.

“This is my fault,” Vixen muttered. “I wished this destruction upon those who treated my mother and me so poorly. I stood by my father’s grave and swore vengeance against Effingham, but I never saw how those who wished no ill upon my family would suffer.”

“Aye, Captain, when you set about pitting Gaston and Effingham at war, we never thought Balzac would be so crass as to launch an attack on a weakened Effingham. We are to blame—and God’s punishment is now upon us. We are adrift amid a sea of hungry and battered faces, and I am ashamed to have been part of it,” Tom whispered, his voice thick with guilt.

“Let’s leave. I can bear the stares no longer.”

Trudging down the road, the two sorrowful swashbucklers walked the rest of the day without a word between them. Each step she took made Vixen feel a blow across her shoulders as if her guilt were lashing her like a whip. As she passed torn-up fields littered with the bloated, fly-blown bodies of man and animal, the stench of death filled her nose. Finally, after an hour, she found she had no more tears to cry.

I’d love to say things will get better, but I never lie to those I offer my tales. However, the story isn’t over just yet.

* * * *

The road ahead was blocked by a pair of overturned carts. The flash of smoke rose just before the dirt kicked up in front of Milady Vixen. The report of the musket shot echoed in a dull, crinkling sound that carried over and past them. Reaching for her pistol still stuffed in her belt, the sea captain froze when a squad of red-jacketed men wearing white trousers stepped out from behind the barricade.