Gentle Reader:
If you would kindly recall, I had just completed observing the event of the Chocolate Beauty's defiling by my First Officer, Jorge. While at first he had allowed himself to be trapped by the dusky female, he had later conquered her and controlled his rage, pleasing me.
Now moving towards my cabin once again, I vowed nothing would keep me from Fair Bitch, my goal. Although hearing my name called by another female voice, I did not let my path waver and soon quietly entered my cabin. The lamp had run out of fuel and thus the cabin dark. I lit a wall lamp near the door, and saw the reflections of the light in my lovely lady's eyes. Twin green flickers in the darkness led me to her side. My hands quickly freed her from the shackles, and soothed her wrists with a cooling balm.
*
"My Captain and Master has returned," she said in French. "I have heard your declaration to the crew of your abandonment of the gold and slaves; I must indeed be valued highly in your eyes, Sir."
"You have seen enough roughness and coarse treatment, Fair Bitch," I replied. "No more shall be seen while you sail on the 'St. Veronica'. Do you consider the words of your surrender to be yet valid?"
"Aye, my Captain, I do. Valid as a wedding vow taken at the altar. Your gentility and kind ways, even in the taking of the Dutch merchantman, prove to me that you are no Pirate in normal terms. I would on being introduced to you under other circumstances imagine you an educated gentleman, learned in Languages and History, perhaps, or Medicine." I opened a bottle of fine Italian wine, and brought some fine pewter goblets to pour it in. Some fresh bread and wine would revive my tired soul, and relax my Slave Companion. We shared it quietly for a few moments, enjoying the rich flavor of the white wine and the texture of the bread.
"Indeed your perceptions are correct, poppet. I have indeed studied, not just in Portugal, but also in Paris, London, and Rome. In Rome I learned religious ways, history, Latin, and Greek. In Paris, the way of the sword, medicine, and French. In London, gunnery, seamanship, navigation, Dutch, German, and English. But it was in Portugal, my birthplace, that I learned my most valuable lessons, Fair Bitch. There I learned deception, fraud, theft, and evil. There I faced those I should trust most and watched them destroy my innocence. There I met the end of blood family, and the beginning of Pirate family, by the Code!
"The Portuguese authorities hanged my parents because they were poor. They took me to the house of our local priest, and he beat me for lessons learned, whether well- or poorly-so. He gave me no clothing and little food; I was to beg and steal in the streets to meet my needs, as the Simony was rarely enough to meet his. And he took perverted pleasures on my body.
"Yes, my dear, I am an educated man. I killed the priest and took his gold. I tanned my skin darker, took his robes, shaved a tonsure atop my head, and begged passage to Rome. Study there and living expenses were free, and high grades got me into schools in Paris and London. Believed to be a wealthy priest, all doors were open to me.
"After five years of study, I had the knowledge I wished and yet more gold than with which I had started. Allowing my hair to grow and buying fine clothes, I managed to work out a way to steal this fine craft from her very building docks and crewed her with honest men upon whom the law had looked with scorn. All swore allegiance to me and to one another, in the manner of the physician's oath: First, do no harm. While we must steal to live, we do little except to women and wealthy bankers in London and elsewhere.
