in which maggie meets the former priest
Nov. 9th, 2013 01:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smackenzie"I believe I do. I shall do it here and then take control of this ship." She grinned widely. "Did I not say I was looking forward to captaining my own ship?"
"You did indeed. We will have to vote on our next course of action and then it is all yours."
Bernade read the Articles to the merchant sailors who had elected to join the crew, they all signed, and then Maggie had everyone gather on the deck of the merchant ship to determine their next action.
Voting occasions like these could be very rowdy affairs, with everyone shouting out suggestions and shouting down other pirates and demanding the voting proceed quickly so they could get back to searching and the plundering. This time was no different. Maggie had learned to let the crew talk - or shout, most times - and only take control of the options to be voted on after it seemed as if most of the suggestions had been made. They voted with a simple "aye" or "nay", with the end result that - surprisingly enough - they would keep the merchant ship under Bernade's command and sail both it and the Black Lightning in search of more booty.
After that, the crew was split between the ships, Bernade divided the plunder that could be easily divided, and they continued on their way. Severein was still the only person qualified to be sailing master, which meant he was the only person with charts - the navigator on the merchant ship had elected not to join the pirates and was one of the two men put to sea in the rowboat. He had taken his charts and his astrolabe with him in an attempt to thwart Maggie and her crew. So the Black Lightning would lead and the merchant ship would follow, at least until they captured someone with enough skill to read and navigate by Severein's charts. When that happened the two ships might split up, Bernade as captain of one and Maggie as captain of the other, or they would sail the merchant ship back to Port Doras and sell it whole or scuttle it and sell it for parts.
But in the meantime, they had some booty and more provisions, and while any excuse was a good one for pirates to celebrate, the successful capture of a ship was an especially worthy one. The crew lashed Black Lightning and the merchant ship together and laid planks across the gunwales so pirates could cross from one to the other, and the whiskey and rum flowed like water as the men and women on both ships celebrated and caroused and gambled away their newly won plunder until nearly sunrise.
The former priest had ended up on the Black Lightning, and when Maggie finally went to bed she was mightily surprised to find him sprawled across her bed, an empty bottle in one hand and an empty candlestick in the other. A pirate captain's cabin held no guarantee of privacy, and Maggie was now used to people wandering in and out at all hours, but finding a drunken former priest - one who until that afternoon had been a passenger on a merchant ship - flopped on her bed was not something she would have expected.
"You're very beautiful, you know," he slurred, looking at her upside-down.
"And you're very drunk," she told him. She herself had had very little to drink, just a glass from one of the barrels of whiskey they had captured.
"I am. I am very."
"I am not going to sleep with you." He was pretty, for a man, but she would not break her own rule to sleep with a man while still on board her ship. She would be no example for her crew if she did.
"Oh? No?"
"No. Get off my bed."
He waved a careless hand in her direction. "I am harmless, I assure you. Harmless. I was a priest. We are men of God. We do not fuck." For some reason this was very funny to him, and he laughed at his own words. Maggie had known enough priests in her life to know that his words were not always true, and the higher you climbed in church hierarchy, the more likely it was that you could have a mistress without negative consequence. Sometimes the men at the top reaches of the Church were the most honestly holy and faithful, and sometimes they were the biggest hypocrites. Maggie wondered where this priest had sat in the ranks of the ordained - had he been a parish priest in a village, had he led a city congregation, was he a bishop's right-hand man, was he in line to be bishop himself? Perhaps in the morning she would ask him. But for now, she wished to sleep.
"I do not care if you have had women or not," she said. "You are not going to have me and you are not going to sleep in my bed." In the Navy she would have had a servant, a young sailor acting as a maid, to help her get the priest out of her room and headed towards his own quarters. But pirates did not go in for personal servants, so she had to haul him off the bed herself. He was heavy in the way of half-asleep people, boneless and languid from all the whiskey he had drunk, and completely uninterested in moving himself off Maggie's bed and into more suitable sleeping arrangements. She finally managed to shove him onto the floor, where he lay like a beached whale and started to snore.
"You will be sick in the morning and I will laugh," she told his body, before pulling off her coat and boots and waistcoat and breeches, and climbing into bed wearing only her shirt. The boat rocked her to sleep despite the priest's snoring, and she slept deeply and well.
He was ill in the morning, as she predicted, but by afternoon he was recovered enough to find her on the quarterdeck to talk to her.
"Have you come to apologize for your behavior last night?" she demanded. She would accept that behavior from one of her crew, but he was not a pirate and should not be expected to act like one yet.
"No, but I will do it anyway." He swept a deep bow, which Maggie thought might be mocking her rather than seeking her forgiveness, and said "Please accept my most humble apologies for lying on your bed last night and making you think I wished to sleep with you."
From his words, she could assume he had never meant to come on to her, but from his actions she was pretty sure that he did not mean a word. She elected not to respond.
"So why have you come to find me? Bernade handles all disputes between pirates, so if you have a complaint you should tell her."
"Are you not the captain?"
"I am."
"And does a captain not discipline her crew when necessary?"
"You do not know anything about pirates, do you, priest?" She looked him square in the face. He was not much taller than she was, although to be fair her boots had heels and his did not.
"I know enough to understand that every man and woman on this ship, myself included, is bound by your code of conduct. I know that you could have killed the men who refused to join you yesterday. Why did you let them live?"
"I showed them some mercy."
The priest's mouth quirked up the tiniest bit in what might have been intended to be an ironic smile. "I would not call leaving them to die in a rowboat an act of mercy."
Maggie shrugged. "There was a ship ahead of us a few days ago," she said. "If they could signal, they could attract her attention."
"They will die of exposure."
"That is a hazard of sailing without an escort into waters known to be frequented by pirate ships."
"You are a cold woman, captain."
Another shrug. She did not want to debate morality with a former priest. She did not want to debate morality at all.
"Do you need something, priest?"
"I merely wished to talk to you. I have never met a pirate, much less a pirate queen."
She laughed at that. "I am not a pirate queen. I am a woman with a ship and a crew, and yes, we rob and we plunder and we steal merchant ships from the trading companies that can afford to lose them. I am a pirate captain, but I am not a pirate queen."
"You have been at large two years or more, and you have never been captured. Honest sailors fear you, some of them admire you, and some of them would never admit it but they wish to join you."
Maggie felt a small thrill run through her at the knowledge that men feared her and admired her. She wondered how many of those she could use, how many of them she could convince to support the king-in-exile for his inevitable attempt to reclaim the throne.
"You are an infamous woman, Red Maggie," the priest continued. "Infamous and famous, among the law-abiding and the criminal alike."
"I could almost think you were hoping my ship would capture you. You did wish to sleep with me last night, so you could say you'd bedded Red Maggie and lived to tell the tale. You called me cold, but the truth is that you want to know exactly how warm I am." She wouldn't mind sleeping with him, if she were to be honest with herself. He was an attractive man, for a priest. A former priest, rather.
"And who would I tell who would care? I signed your Articles - I am one of yours now."
"You are one of mine, as you say, for as long as this voyage lasts. Articles of Association are renegotiated and signed each time a pirate ship sets sail, and the contract ends when she comes back to port. I am only captain by majority vote, and if I do not give the crew what they want, and lead them in a manner they deem fitting, they can elect someone else captain. Bernade is now in control of the merchant ship, and there is always the chance that if we sell it or scuttle it or another crew steals it, and we are left with the Black Lightning, I may be voted out of the captain's chair and she may be voted in." The priest looked thoughtful. "You did not know any of that, did you. You know enough about me to call me famous, and yet you know nothing of how I run my ship."
"Do you wish me to learn?" He sounded as if he were mocking her again.
"I do not care what you learn, as long as you do whatever tasks are assigned you and do not violate the Articles you signed. And since you decided last night that my bed was a good place to lay down, I should take the opportunity to remind you that there will be no sex between men and women on this ship, on penalty of flogging. If you wish to lie with another man, that is a different matter. But do it quietly."
The priest did not seem to know how to react to that, which gave Maggie a perverse satisfaction. She did not dislike him, but she did not much like him either. He wanted to catch her off-guard. He liked to needle her. He called her cold, but perhaps she was. There was not much space for mercy in a pirate, much less in a pirate captain. She might come to like him, and her. But it did not matter - she imagined he would leave whenever they finally returned to Port Doras. Crewmembers acquired from a captured ship sometimes did. This was not a life for everyone.
She would think about him later, if he was indeed worth thinking about. But he did not leave, apparently preferring to stand on the quarterdeck and watch and listen as she gave and received orders and the daily business of running the ship went on around them.
words: 2013
total words: 9454
"You did indeed. We will have to vote on our next course of action and then it is all yours."
Bernade read the Articles to the merchant sailors who had elected to join the crew, they all signed, and then Maggie had everyone gather on the deck of the merchant ship to determine their next action.
Voting occasions like these could be very rowdy affairs, with everyone shouting out suggestions and shouting down other pirates and demanding the voting proceed quickly so they could get back to searching and the plundering. This time was no different. Maggie had learned to let the crew talk - or shout, most times - and only take control of the options to be voted on after it seemed as if most of the suggestions had been made. They voted with a simple "aye" or "nay", with the end result that - surprisingly enough - they would keep the merchant ship under Bernade's command and sail both it and the Black Lightning in search of more booty.
After that, the crew was split between the ships, Bernade divided the plunder that could be easily divided, and they continued on their way. Severein was still the only person qualified to be sailing master, which meant he was the only person with charts - the navigator on the merchant ship had elected not to join the pirates and was one of the two men put to sea in the rowboat. He had taken his charts and his astrolabe with him in an attempt to thwart Maggie and her crew. So the Black Lightning would lead and the merchant ship would follow, at least until they captured someone with enough skill to read and navigate by Severein's charts. When that happened the two ships might split up, Bernade as captain of one and Maggie as captain of the other, or they would sail the merchant ship back to Port Doras and sell it whole or scuttle it and sell it for parts.
But in the meantime, they had some booty and more provisions, and while any excuse was a good one for pirates to celebrate, the successful capture of a ship was an especially worthy one. The crew lashed Black Lightning and the merchant ship together and laid planks across the gunwales so pirates could cross from one to the other, and the whiskey and rum flowed like water as the men and women on both ships celebrated and caroused and gambled away their newly won plunder until nearly sunrise.
The former priest had ended up on the Black Lightning, and when Maggie finally went to bed she was mightily surprised to find him sprawled across her bed, an empty bottle in one hand and an empty candlestick in the other. A pirate captain's cabin held no guarantee of privacy, and Maggie was now used to people wandering in and out at all hours, but finding a drunken former priest - one who until that afternoon had been a passenger on a merchant ship - flopped on her bed was not something she would have expected.
"You're very beautiful, you know," he slurred, looking at her upside-down.
"And you're very drunk," she told him. She herself had had very little to drink, just a glass from one of the barrels of whiskey they had captured.
"I am. I am very."
"I am not going to sleep with you." He was pretty, for a man, but she would not break her own rule to sleep with a man while still on board her ship. She would be no example for her crew if she did.
"Oh? No?"
"No. Get off my bed."
He waved a careless hand in her direction. "I am harmless, I assure you. Harmless. I was a priest. We are men of God. We do not fuck." For some reason this was very funny to him, and he laughed at his own words. Maggie had known enough priests in her life to know that his words were not always true, and the higher you climbed in church hierarchy, the more likely it was that you could have a mistress without negative consequence. Sometimes the men at the top reaches of the Church were the most honestly holy and faithful, and sometimes they were the biggest hypocrites. Maggie wondered where this priest had sat in the ranks of the ordained - had he been a parish priest in a village, had he led a city congregation, was he a bishop's right-hand man, was he in line to be bishop himself? Perhaps in the morning she would ask him. But for now, she wished to sleep.
"I do not care if you have had women or not," she said. "You are not going to have me and you are not going to sleep in my bed." In the Navy she would have had a servant, a young sailor acting as a maid, to help her get the priest out of her room and headed towards his own quarters. But pirates did not go in for personal servants, so she had to haul him off the bed herself. He was heavy in the way of half-asleep people, boneless and languid from all the whiskey he had drunk, and completely uninterested in moving himself off Maggie's bed and into more suitable sleeping arrangements. She finally managed to shove him onto the floor, where he lay like a beached whale and started to snore.
"You will be sick in the morning and I will laugh," she told his body, before pulling off her coat and boots and waistcoat and breeches, and climbing into bed wearing only her shirt. The boat rocked her to sleep despite the priest's snoring, and she slept deeply and well.
He was ill in the morning, as she predicted, but by afternoon he was recovered enough to find her on the quarterdeck to talk to her.
"Have you come to apologize for your behavior last night?" she demanded. She would accept that behavior from one of her crew, but he was not a pirate and should not be expected to act like one yet.
"No, but I will do it anyway." He swept a deep bow, which Maggie thought might be mocking her rather than seeking her forgiveness, and said "Please accept my most humble apologies for lying on your bed last night and making you think I wished to sleep with you."
From his words, she could assume he had never meant to come on to her, but from his actions she was pretty sure that he did not mean a word. She elected not to respond.
"So why have you come to find me? Bernade handles all disputes between pirates, so if you have a complaint you should tell her."
"Are you not the captain?"
"I am."
"And does a captain not discipline her crew when necessary?"
"You do not know anything about pirates, do you, priest?" She looked him square in the face. He was not much taller than she was, although to be fair her boots had heels and his did not.
"I know enough to understand that every man and woman on this ship, myself included, is bound by your code of conduct. I know that you could have killed the men who refused to join you yesterday. Why did you let them live?"
"I showed them some mercy."
The priest's mouth quirked up the tiniest bit in what might have been intended to be an ironic smile. "I would not call leaving them to die in a rowboat an act of mercy."
Maggie shrugged. "There was a ship ahead of us a few days ago," she said. "If they could signal, they could attract her attention."
"They will die of exposure."
"That is a hazard of sailing without an escort into waters known to be frequented by pirate ships."
"You are a cold woman, captain."
Another shrug. She did not want to debate morality with a former priest. She did not want to debate morality at all.
"Do you need something, priest?"
"I merely wished to talk to you. I have never met a pirate, much less a pirate queen."
She laughed at that. "I am not a pirate queen. I am a woman with a ship and a crew, and yes, we rob and we plunder and we steal merchant ships from the trading companies that can afford to lose them. I am a pirate captain, but I am not a pirate queen."
"You have been at large two years or more, and you have never been captured. Honest sailors fear you, some of them admire you, and some of them would never admit it but they wish to join you."
Maggie felt a small thrill run through her at the knowledge that men feared her and admired her. She wondered how many of those she could use, how many of them she could convince to support the king-in-exile for his inevitable attempt to reclaim the throne.
"You are an infamous woman, Red Maggie," the priest continued. "Infamous and famous, among the law-abiding and the criminal alike."
"I could almost think you were hoping my ship would capture you. You did wish to sleep with me last night, so you could say you'd bedded Red Maggie and lived to tell the tale. You called me cold, but the truth is that you want to know exactly how warm I am." She wouldn't mind sleeping with him, if she were to be honest with herself. He was an attractive man, for a priest. A former priest, rather.
"And who would I tell who would care? I signed your Articles - I am one of yours now."
"You are one of mine, as you say, for as long as this voyage lasts. Articles of Association are renegotiated and signed each time a pirate ship sets sail, and the contract ends when she comes back to port. I am only captain by majority vote, and if I do not give the crew what they want, and lead them in a manner they deem fitting, they can elect someone else captain. Bernade is now in control of the merchant ship, and there is always the chance that if we sell it or scuttle it or another crew steals it, and we are left with the Black Lightning, I may be voted out of the captain's chair and she may be voted in." The priest looked thoughtful. "You did not know any of that, did you. You know enough about me to call me famous, and yet you know nothing of how I run my ship."
"Do you wish me to learn?" He sounded as if he were mocking her again.
"I do not care what you learn, as long as you do whatever tasks are assigned you and do not violate the Articles you signed. And since you decided last night that my bed was a good place to lay down, I should take the opportunity to remind you that there will be no sex between men and women on this ship, on penalty of flogging. If you wish to lie with another man, that is a different matter. But do it quietly."
The priest did not seem to know how to react to that, which gave Maggie a perverse satisfaction. She did not dislike him, but she did not much like him either. He wanted to catch her off-guard. He liked to needle her. He called her cold, but perhaps she was. There was not much space for mercy in a pirate, much less in a pirate captain. She might come to like him, and her. But it did not matter - she imagined he would leave whenever they finally returned to Port Doras. Crewmembers acquired from a captured ship sometimes did. This was not a life for everyone.
She would think about him later, if he was indeed worth thinking about. But he did not leave, apparently preferring to stand on the quarterdeck and watch and listen as she gave and received orders and the daily business of running the ship went on around them.
words: 2013
total words: 9454
