Chapter 1: Captured
Cannons fired all along the ship as I ran across the under deck of the ship. Our ship's cannons were good but not enough. The captain of the ship was a blasted idiot and hadn't even waited until the ship's starboard side cannons were lined up with the pirate ship that had come upon us. It had come completely out of nowhere, out of a fog bank that was set around a small series of nameless islands that dotted the Caribbean.
The ship rocked as the enemy ship's cannons returned fire, men dying as the pirate ship's port side broadside tore into our ship's starboard side. A cannon tore through the sailor beside me. His body was blasted apart in front of my very eyes. As I shoved the corpse off me I wondered how in the hell I'd ever wound up here.
My name is Leonardo Sanfino. I'm the son of an Italian silk merchant that took his business to jolly old England in order to take advantage of trade in the New World. I was taken from Florence Italy to London with my father and his business when I was only seven years old. My mother, she was a peasant girl fro the Tuscan country side that I never knew. My father's current wife was chosen for him. I have three half siblings, two brothers and a half sister. And as far as my dear father was concerned, I was a wretched mistake he made when he was younger. Why didn't he just cast me out then? I wondered that a million times. He never liked me. I was a bastard to him in all but name. But he apparently had a use for me. I became the caretaker of my younger half siblings and my father's personal workhorse. I worked like a dog, taking care of terrible snotty children that were taught from as old as they could remember that I was only a half brother, and therefor not really one of the family. I did all the menial work that was too good for him. All the menial work he was too cheap to hire actual help for. My step mother disliked me. My life was pretty miserable to be honest. No I suppose it's not really a surprise then that I jumped at the chance to get the hell away from them all.
I heard gunshots now and the sounds of swords clashing together. The pirates had boarded the ship. I jumped to my feet, scrambled over the dismembered body of the sailor and ran for the lower deck. I was no fighter, never had been. Never learned to use a sword. Never learned to shoot a gun. My father hadn't wanted to train me in anything, perhaps fearing I would use it against him and my rotten half family. So I ran. Was I a coward? Oh yes I was! But cowards were often the ones that survived! I ran into the cook's pantry and tried to close the door but then the cook himself knocked the door open and closed it, then turned and started when he saw me. "Why aren't you out there?" he asked.
"I could ask you the same."
"I'm a cook, not a dammed fighter! I ain't going to fight pirates!"
"I'm just a ship's boy, so neither am I!"
"You signed on for that!"
"I signed on to get away from my father, not fight pirates! Captain Brussels never trained me, nor did anyone on the ship! So what exactly could I do besides be another body for the pirate to play target practice with? Or sword practice with? I don't get paid enough for that!"
"Get out there boy! That's an order!"
The cook, a fat man named Charles glared at me but I just laughed. "Take the order of a fat cook who feeds us slop while Captain Brussels dines on roasted meat? Fuck you, you fat sack of blubber."
That made Charles, who's always been insecure about his weight, take a swing at me. I'm no sword fighter but I've been in enough dock side tavern fights in my life to know how to defend myself. I caught that fat cook's fist and yanked him forward. His momentum did the rest and he crashed headfirst into a barrel of lard. His head got lodged in it. I laughed as he tried to extract his head but then realized his thrashing and moans would bring the pirates to me. The sounds of battle were dying out above and that meant the pirates were winning. So I unlocked the pantry door and left.
Only to run into two dirty pirates with swords drawn. "Well lookie what we got here!" said one of them. Missing his front teeth and scarred. His accent was Irish. Wonderful. Me a pretty English ship's boy meeting an English-hating Irish pirate! "A cowering little brat?"
"I surrender!" I said.
"What makes you think we're here to take you alive?" asked the other one. A black man, one of the many former slaves that took the life of piracy rather than go back to the chains.
"Captain Cold Eyes orders, that's what!" said a third pirate, this one looking a little more refined, but hardly any nicer than the first two. "We take them that surrender alive, see if they're worth anything."
"This brat barely looks like a man! A pretty punk like him? He can't be worth much!" protested the toothless Irish pirate.
"Do I need to tell Captain Cold Eyes you're disobeying her order?" asked the third pirate. The other two shut their mouths instantly and then grabbed me by the shoulders and brought me along.
"You'll find the cook in the pantry, with his head stuck in his own lard. And I don't mean his fat ass." I said. I suppose I should feel bad about selling out a ship mate but that fat fuck had it coming. Not that I was thanked for my information, the Irish pirate promptly punched me in the gut. All the air left me in a huff and I decided to keep quite for the rest of the way back up topside.
"Merda," I said to myself in Italian, which I still spoke fluently despite having half grown up in England. As I was dragged top deck I wondered if escaping my father had been really worth it? I was as welcome there as the plague and had to endure my bitch step mother and her snot nosed bratty children but at least I had my own room and bed. As I got older I did more work for shit pay for my greedy merchant father. He hiked up his prices and stated they were because of the cost of importing silk from Italy. And the prices he charged for merchants to sail the silk to the New World were even higher! But money, and the affection of my cunt stepmother were the sole things in his world that mattered. After hitting my early teens I began looking for a way out. My father told me I'd be his workhorse forever but horses couldn't travel on water! So I began looking to the sea to escape.
It was a typical dream. Especially in the two hundred years since the discovery of the New World. Escape across the no-long-thought-to-be-believed-as endless Atlantic ocean. But actually getting taken on was no picnic. Boys looking to escape miserable fathers and lives were as common as rats on the streets of London. I was growing up good looking, as I'd learned from young girls who thought I was some Italian beauty from Venice or something equally ridiculous. Speaking Italian was the only real asset I had besides working hard. I spent two years trying to get away. As my step siblings were growing up I finally got a yes. From a merchant captain named Brussels. Captain Jack Brussels. His name had caused me to bite my tongue to avoid bursting into laughter. Who keeps the name of Brussels on the sea? But I held my tongue, lest it cost me my freedom.
Some freedom, I thought to myself as the sun hit my eyes. The deck as covered in the dead crew of our ship, the Sprite. Captain Brussels himself was among the dead. The pirates were hauling the ship's cargo over to their ship, which looked like a frigate class ship. The black flag flew behind the ship. As well as at the top of the tallest mast. I'd heard the name Captain Cold Eyes from the pirates below but his name didn't ring a bell. Thankfully I'd not been captured by Blackbeard, or Charles Vane, or Calico Jack. Hopefully this Captain Cold Eyes was merciful. Or at least, not as brutal as the other pirates on the Caribbean sea.
