It had been relatively easy to slip unnoticed into the large chest of finest Nottingham lace that had lain unheeded on the bustling quayside. Such was the merry melee of jolly jack tars and haggling merchants that nobody had noticed a ragged youth picking a stealthy way over to where the goods were loaded high and wide, ready to be carried on board the East India Company clipper bound for the Americas.
The Americas and a new life, away from all the trouble and danger of the present here in Bristol.
The bolts of delicate fabric made an acceptable bed, and Kit Tremayne burrowed down, trying to sleep to pass the dark enclosed time before it would be possible to emerge and claim a place in the ship's crew to earn passage. The lurching and swaying motion into which Kit was swung within the hour was unexpected, but probably attributable to being carried on the shoulders of men who had been availing themselves of their last few hours ashore rather too thoroughly. There was a roaring sound that was difficult to place, and then a long and blessed silence. Yes! In the hold of the Western Rose, bound for Boston and freedom. It would be a few scant hours before Kit could prise off the lid and experience the voyage from the upper decks. A sailor's life for me.
In the event, Kit did not need to employ any feats of escapology. Blinking up into the gloom of the hold, the stowaway was rudely awoken from slumber by two raggle-taggle shipmates, who made short work of hauling their unexpected guest out of the frilly nest and up to the Captain's quarters.
"We've got a stowaway, Captain," opened the taller of the men grimly, pushing Kit through the door so that an undignified entrance on hands and knees was effected.
Captain Jake Prince looked up from the documents he was perusing with an expression of long-suffering irritation. A tall, lean man of about forty, with luxuriant black hair both atop his head and around his face, which sported a long slash of duelling scar, Captain Prince did not suffer fools on his vessel. He stood up, his manly figure enhanced by the billowing black shirt and tight black trousers that he wore, swaggering boots up to his knee and a variety of belts and gleaming blades arranged around his person.
Kit's lips parted in dismay. Who was this? Not Captain Forrester of the Western Rose, surely. Forrester was an older man, grey-haired and respectably clad. This was...not right.
Kit shrank back as Captain Prince took a few steps closer, jingling as he moved, his eyes alert and questioning.
"Where did you join us?" he rasped.
"Bristol, Captain." Kit made every effort to sound as gruff and hard as possible, but the Captain smiled, almost laughed. Damn! Did he know?
"You must have come in those chests of lace we stole from the quayside. I suppose you think you're going to seek your fortune in America, do you?"
Kit nodded mutely.
"Bad luck," said the Captain mockingly. "You're on the Occidental Orchid, uninvited guest of myself, Captain Jake Prince. Kit gasped. The Black Prince. This was the most miserable luck; Prince was the most notorious pirate working the Meditterranean; a dreadful blackguard of whom the most bloodcurdling tales were regaled in every inn on the coast of Britain and beyond.
"Ah, so my reputation precedes me." Prince's voice was striking; rich, deep and with a deadly smoky allure. Kit could understand why he was considered a legendary womaniser. "You have heard of me. Have you also heard how we deal with extraneous crew?"
"No." Kit's negative came out as a strangled sob.
"We lash them till they can barely stand, then send them down the gangplank to give the sharks a treat." Captain Prince left a beat of silence during which he smirked, revealing a prominent gold tooth, at Kit's stricken face.
"Of course," murmured Prince, his lips disconcertingly close to Kit's ear, "I would never use the cat o' nine tails on a woman."
Kit froze, barely daring to breathe. Goddamn him; how could he look at this grubby bag of rags and see femininity?
"I'm not a woman," gritted Kit stubbornly.
"Really? Then take off your shirt."
"I will not!"
"I can't imagine why you think you are in a position to defy me. Take it off, or I'll take it off for you."
Prince's strangely elegant hands drifted through the air towards Kit's torn, stained chemise. Kit looked around blindly, considering making a run for it, but the facts had to be faced. There was nowhere to run, if you didn't count the Bristol Channel. Grudgingly, and with face aflame, Kit lifted the disgusting garment over her grimy face and shorn matted hair, throwing it down with a challenging slap and failing to meet the Captain's eye. He was bound to have the most enragingly arrogant look of triumph on his face and she wanted no accidental glimpse of it.
"As I thought. I can smell the tang of female from across Billingsgate Market; you presented very little in the way of challenge, my dear. But we will discuss this further after you have been cleaned up. Moody, Fagin, scrub her up and bring her back to me. Without those filthy rags."
"You mean...naked?" bleated Kit, all bravado tossed to the four winds.
"As the day you were born, my dear," purred the Captain, as the two pirates grabbed an arm each. "And if I hear that either of you barbarians have laid a finger on her...female treasures...I will have the pair of you flogged until your spines are visible, is that clear?"
"Yes, Captain," muttered the henchmen, and they dragged a topless Kit off to what she assumed was going to be the most humiliating experience of her life.
*
So far, her assumptions were not proving mistaken. Kit stumbled and lurched forward in the wake of her captors, highly conscious of her firm young breasts bouncing this way and that as they descended ladders to the deck. Curious glances, catcalls and whistles assaulted her ears and she wondered fearfully if she would make it back to the Captain's quarters without some attempt on her maidenhead being made.
She had been an idiot; she could see it now. But she really had had no other course. She could not stay and be arrested for her uncle's murder. Would the noose really be any worse than walking Prince's plank though? Desperately, she played over the possibilities in her mind. Could she plead with the Captain to spare her life and drop her off at the next sea port? She would have to try.
While she was thus occupied in painful musings, Moody and Fagin were filling a large round wooden tub with soapy water. Their task took some time, and Kit sat down on the boards, crossing her arms over her exposed breasts and feeling the harsh sun on her back and shoulders. She had to admit, a bath would be welcome; she should make the most of what might be one of the last pleasurable experiences of her life.
It was difficult, though, when she had to pull down her britches in front of the two leering pirates and give them a good eyeful of her pubic bush and her nude behind before climbing into the tub and sliding as far into the water as she possibly could. From beneath the greyish bilge, she looked up at the crow's nest and the men gesturing obscenely down at her in the rigging. One even had his hands down his trousers, either pretending or masturbating for real. Serve him right if he lost his footing and broke his back, she sulked. She immersed her entire body in the water's warm embrace, feeling the week's worth of dirt and degradation wash away for sublime seconds before having to come up again for air.
Too soon, she was chivvied out of the protective suds and handed a cloth to dry her dripping body. As she vigorously rubbed herself all over, it was hard not to notice the bulges in the trousers of her companions. It was like being in a dream; an awful dream from which one struggled to extricate oneself into the relief of full consciousness. But this dream would never end, unless with her death. No, she must not allow herself to think such thoughts. Fortune favours the brave.
She held her chin up and stared straight ahead as she was led, completely naked, back to the Captain's quarters, running a hideous gauntlet of unwanted lustful attentions.
