The Dread Pirate Molly Hawe

***This is a story with a bunch of characters in it that I found I quite liked. They were originally developed for use in A Big Shiny Blue Marble, but sadly, they didn't make the cut.

I re-read the story a while ago and I thought it might fly if it was presented as a separate -- and very finite -- finished work of say two to four chapters for Mother's Day.

And I didn't make it, wanting to get another piece of the Marble up.

So to set the stage, the world in the second half is the same as in the Marble series -- same demons, same 'Humanity after the Fall' scenario. It starts long before that though.

The female protagonist here is a complex sort of girl. It caused me a few headaches at first.

She comes from a few different and distinct background sources, and she's very well spoken at times. At other times though, such as when her blood is up, she tends to fall back on her roots and what comes out of her then is a Jamaican patois, and that was my problem.

There is no written form of that.

All that I had was to try to write her lilting inflections as best I could and it still gave me fits.

I've known many women who speak it, but to WRITE it and not have my girl in this come off badly was the trouble.

But I like the character very much and if you have any trouble reading her lines now and then, just try to think of how 'Calypso' might sound in that pirate movie. Same sound to it. That's the best example that I can think of which would be available or known to many readers.

She wasn't patterned after that character, though.

She's patterned after Jacquotte Delahaye, aka "Back from the dead Red", a female buccaneer who was active in the Caribbean in the 1650s for about a decade and took to the life out of her desperation and poverty. Born of a Haitian mother and a French father, Jacquotte was a famous beauty, known for her mix of African features and flaming red hair, as well as faking her own death. She was never brought to justice. There's a great story right there, if you think about it. :)

A word about the adjective 'dread' as it applied to pirates of the time. You were a dread pirate if you had the ability (and the stones) to attack a town - not just another ship.

About the flags. The black flag or the more ornamented "Jolly Roger" in all of its designs was used as a warning to heave to and one could expect a degree of mercy. But if you didn't and were prepared to defend yourself, the red flag came up and no quarter could be expected if the raiders were going to have to really work hard at beating you down to rob you. Hoisting (or 'heisting', if the pirates were from the local poor) either one was asking to be hung if you lost or were caught.

Anyway, this will be late for Mother's Day, since I'm typing this only now, but hey, if you're a mom and you like to read a bit about swashbuckling (or even buckle swashing), this is for you from me.

Hope you like it. 0_o

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From Humble Beginnings

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Bessie Fox walked along the ancient concrete quay in the dark of the late evening. There wasn't a thing going on in the whole of the harbor -- there never was - and that was fine with her. There hadn't been a thing going on for her in ...

She asked herself out loud in a quiet voice, "Ow long has it been now?", and she answered herself with a sad and soft sigh, "I don' know."

She vaguely remembered that she'd been born in the Year of Our Lord 1698 and she knew that her family had been a little bit different, to be nice about it. Her grandmother had come from Scotland via England alone at a time when it perhaps wasn't the safest thing to do for a single woman to travel that far by herself -- if she wasn't wealthy enough to afford a manservant for things such as protection and maybe a little amusement in the dark of the night.

But then, the women of her family had never really been on the shy side, she guessed, and most of them from what she knew hadn't exactly been defenseless either. So old Winifred had come across when she was a young woman, looking for a safer place to be what she was and she'd made her home on the island of Jamaica.

And being what she was, she'd set up in a little cove which was half mangrove swamp back then and by luck and happenstance, she'd met Tumweh, a runaway slave. The two became inseparable for most of their lives together, Winifred practicing and teaching the skills which she possessed while Tumweh built upon his power as a houngan asogwe, or high priest and practitioner of obeah and voodoo.

Their union had produced three daughters, which was quite a bit of luck as far as Bess was concerned. Old Winifred had left Scotland, running from the witch hunts there and for a bit of good reason. In her family, it was said that the ability ran in threes in girls and Winifred was the third daughter of a third daughter, just as Bess herself was the third girl-child born to her mother, Millie, who was Winifred's third girl.

What Bess knew without doubt was that in the 'thirdlings' as these girls were called, the ability seemed to grow the longer that the chain ran unbroken. All of the girls became skilled witches in their own right, but it was in the 'thirdlings' that it was seen to be most evident. She'd asked about it one time as she sat on Winifred's knee while learning the phrases which would be used to funnel her young will.

"Aye, that's right," her grandmother said with a smile, "Look at what you're doing here," she pointed at the small trinkets which Bess was causing to tumble in the air for her own amusement, "Your mum's a strong one, but she wasn't doing at twelve what you can do at six. You've the gift quite strongly, little fox. And it doesn't all come from my blood like your hair and your eyes do. You're the thirdling of a thirdling three times over, but your grandda outside there, he's a seventh son."

Bess stopped to lean her hand against a piling, looking at it there in the darkness after a moment once she'd realized what she'd done.

She was becoming more and more solid, and she wondered about it for a moment but then went back to her memories.

She'd been born in the same bed where her mother and all of her aunts and sisters had been born, in the same old ramshackle house built on pilings far back from the cove, upstream a little in the swamp. Old Winifred had laughed when she'd laid eyes on the howling little thing as she began to clean her up after her journey down her mother's birth canal.

"She's got more of me in her than any of the others, "Winifred had chuckled as she'd swabbed her daughter's brow, "Mark you this, Millie, red hair already -- a full head of it and I daresay that I'll be looking at my own green eyes looking back at me in this little face afore long." She kissed little Bess then and smiled, "There's some strength in this wee bairn even now."

Her abilities and determination might have come from her Scottish ancestry and her African heritage -- and that came from any of several directions, but her strength of spirit came from her father, a poor Spaniard who'd been forced into becoming a plain and lowly sailor. With nothing but a short life on a squalid ship before him, he'd made good his own escape and come where he'd been welcomed by the largely black and Carib Maroons in the little community. They might have been as poor as anyone else, but they were a happy family and Bess couldn't remember a day in her life when she hadn't seen her handsome father smiling.

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The coming of the Sea Witch Molly Hawke

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Her name hadn't been Molly then; it was just something which fate had brought her later on. When she was a little girl, she liked to wander off for hours, often ending up by the seashore where she'd sit herself down and hope for a sailing ship to pass by, since she loved to see them. As she grew up, Bess became a rare beauty, turning out lean and strong for a girl and though she tried to hide it a little, that wild hair and those eyes in a girl with her mixed African and Spanish background was bound to get her noticed. The red mop and the bright eyes came from Winifred, the Spanish features from her father and being that all of the women in her family were of African descent and spoke patois, even Bess often joked that she had no idea who she was, but she hoped to find out one day.

She'd been married once, quite young and she'd run away from her husband once she'd grown tired of his cruelty to her and how he always sought to manipulate her. Their last meeting, where he'd caught up to her at an inn where she was working was the parting of the ways. He'd held her arm tightly enough to hurt and told her that she'd live as his wife again and die as his wife too, if necessary.

It had only caused Bess to laugh. She could speak well in good company, since she'd been taught by Winifred, but when she was feeling a little playful or was in a mood, then the patois would rise quickly to the surface.

"That will be some hard to do," she smiled slowly into the hard eyes which only then began to widen as the lout started to realize his peril, "I can only be the widow of a dead man, not his wife. I not run from you to save me life. I run away to save yours. But you come 'ere now and say I must go with you. I say that you must leave me be and go outside. It will be some time, but you find that you can't leave the square until your death come to you later tonight."

The next day, her husband was found dead in the main square of the town, his guts torn out and everyone wondering how that could be since there had been no screams heard by anyone, and by the blood, it was plain that it had been done there in the square. Unfortunately for Bess, her quiet statement had been overheard by two serving girls there at the inn who wanted to prevent the rise in Bess' popularity among the clientele. They wasted no time in going to the constable.

While the authorities were trying to determine if there was a way to lay charges and searched the town for her to hold her while that happened, Bess met and joined up with Alexander Hawke, a young English-born privateer who made quite a good living raiding Spanish and Portuguese towns all over the Caribbean. It was said that his own personal fortune was enough to buy many a small town for his own, but he'd never settled down, preferring to stay at sea as much as possible rather than live on land.

Hawke had a small flotilla of ships under his command and he used the three largest as his flagships, depending on which one he happened to be on at the time. He and Bess became lovers and when the mood was on her, she was the only woman on those ships who could walk the decks almost naked, wanting to feel the sun on her brown skin and knowing that she was perfectly safe there as she almost strutted the deck in bare feet and if the day was calm enough for it, she'd take her pretty walk by jumping onto the railing and walking there. In the doing of all of that once she'd become a familiar sight to them all, she'd become known simply as 'Hawke's Moll' and eventually, even she referred to herself as Molly Hawke.

Indeed, what she did wear then might best be described as the very sparse clothing and armor which related more to her new occupation, often not much more than a cutlass on a sword belt with a brace of pistols stuffed through it. She was fond of carrying a cut-down fowling piece as well, and it hung from a holster on a wide belt worn as a sash over her shoulder.

There was always a bit of turn-over in the men, new ones coming to them drawn by the bright prospect of making a fair bit of coin at what was essentially politically sanctioned piracy.

It would sadden her a little when it happened, but she knew the way that men could be and so when she felt the unasked-for and unwelcome touch of a rough hand on her backside, she'd warn the man once loudly. "Take your hand off me while you still have it, you stinking goat," she'd say in a voice which wasn't loud, but it could be heard rather clearly all the same as she switched to her more natural way of speaking, "De nex time, I'll 'ave your manhood off and spattered over de deck for you to clean away."

The trouble was that some men had it in their little minds that when a woman says 'no', it really means 'yes', or at worst, 'maybe later'. More than once every three months, she'd have to make good on her warning as a man took more daring liberties with his hands. By then a lot of times, the sight of her drawing her piece would make all but the most foolish or stupid back away quickly, but there were always some who preferred to think with their dicks.

Those ones would end up weeping in pain and regretful shame as they bled into a wad of rags held between their thighs while they were forced to wash their own blood off the planking. She'd originally thought that after her ' lessons', men like that would prove useful, no longer having the distraction which had caused them so much trouble, but the sad fact was that they all died within four days at the outside, no matter what was done.

She had two primary functions as far as Hawke's business went. She proved herself to be a quick study and in very little time, could demonstrate that she could handle a sailing ship as well or better than any man. In a fight with another vessel, Bess could command a ship's crew with telling effect -- yelling commands in her Jamaican patois even as she helped swab out the hot barrel of a cannon herself prior to reloading it and laying it onto its next target. And once the fight was gunwale-to-railing, she was among the first ones over to the other deck with a cutlass in one hand and a pistol in the other.

The other thing that she did for them all was either influence the weather -- or guide the ships around and between the storms of the Caribbean. Nobody was sure which it was, though she'd often proven to them all that she was worthy of their trust.

At night, Molly Hawke lay in the arms of a rather handsome man and she loved the way that his hands felt on her body. So often, he'd ask her to just stay with him there in his cabin and he could stare at her body for hours, so taken with her loveliness and the way that she did anything, from sitting and darning his clothing to just the way that she could sit at the window and watch the sea.

More than once, Hawke had given her command of an armed (and very fast) Bermuda sloop, a regular sloop-of-war, and one armed ketch. And one time to Hawke's amazement, she'd used them to carve through a squadron of Spanish warships, there to escort and guard a convoy of gold-laden galleons.

"How in the world can we get a bit of that?" Hawke had asked as they'd watched from the shadows of the trees as the galleons had been loaded the week before, "I am loathe to say it, Molly, but I think this nut is too hard for even us to think of cracking."

"De trouble wit these ones, "she'd had said in a lilting tone, "is that dey are so bound up in their importance." She pointed off a way, while not being too obvious about it, "Look at dem, " she said, indicating the armed escorts which lay at anchor at the far edge of the harbour, "Every little ting is correct an' perfect because to them, it more important to look their best. When you carry your nose in the air; that is when it happen that you trip over something small. It even happen to Spaniards," she smiled.

She put her arms around Hawke's neck, "Give me a ship and I can show you. While he wonder what it was that him trip over, I'll carve off him legs and he'll 'ave no stomach for the fight. Do this and I will hand you at least one galleon, Alexander, my love."

On the day that the galleons sailed, it had been overcast. As the day went on, it grew more so and a mist began to form as the wind held and the world seemed to close in on them all a little in a gentle rain. The warships guarding the galleons held off a mile distant, fearful of collisions in the fog.

It was near six that evening and the first of the meals was being served to the captains and higher officers when three ships were spotted by the lookouts. They came racing out of the fog flying no banners or flags at all and as they pulled into sight, they spread themselves to pass through the squadron at speed with every rag they had up billowing on their masts.

Other than this manoeuvre, it was as though the three ships weren't aware of the warships at all. The commodore in charge of the escorts was surprised, but it was clear that the newcomers appeared to be just as surprised by their meeting in the fog and took up their formation so that they could pass right through, and everyone doubted from their course and speed that these three ships even knew of the convoy in the first place.

No one but Bess knew that all of them had been wrong.

The commodore ordered the guns to be loaded as a precaution, but the crews had been looking forward to a bit of supper and things went a little slowly as the Spanish deckhands stood at the railings of their ships, trying to see and speculate on who this was and what they were about.

Three of the captains of the warships suddenly found themselves on the wrong ship, since they'd been invited to dine with the commodore -- an occurrence which Bess knew would happen the first evening out.

She stood alone at the wheel on the quarterdeck of the Bermuda sloop, knowing full well that every man with a spyglass would be watching. There were lots of her own marksmen lying hidden out of sight on her decks, but she knew that everyone only saw her as she kept her mast and yardarms from striking the slower ships that she was overtaking.

All that she wore was a pair of tight breeches stuffed into high boots and, while she wore a white shirt borrowed from Hawke - since it would be large and offer her freedom of movement while being visible, it was mostly open and her breasts were easily seen. She wore a kerchief on her head to keep her wild red hair out of sight and trouble.

The Sea Witch Molly Hawke was about to make her mark and become a bit of a feared name on the Spanish Main - or what was left of it by then.

They were still almost thirty yards away from passing through the squadron when Bess looked over - straight into the eyes of the watch officer on the nearest of the warships. He called over with a laugh, asking her what sort of whore that she was and the soon to be famous Molly Hawke smiled back and replied in clear Castilian Spanish that she was the sort known for breaking huevos -- eggs; a word which might also mean testicles in that language.

While dozens of Spaniards gaped at her breasts, she drew one of her pistols, yelled out an order as she cocked it and she fired as she began to pull directly across, killing the man instantly. The Spanish officers jumped at the sound and they stared as they watched the covers over the gunports of all three ships open and the dark muzzles of the cannons protrude from them ominously. There was nothing they could do but scramble, knowing that it would do them no good now.

The lambs were about to maul the lions, and right in their dens, too.

The Spanish crews braced themselves as best they could, but when Bess' cannons began their booming songs, they weren't singing at the sides of the Spanish ships. The gun crews of the warships watched in disbelief from their own ports as the raider's guns passed them by only yards away; elevated as much as possible to aim higher. The raiders were right beside them, and not one Spanish cannon was loaded and ready to fire yet.

Bess wasn't aiming at them; since that was where the best armour was on a warship anyway. Her guns below-deck were loaded with chain-shot and the air was filled with the whining buzz and smoke as the rigging on each of the four ships was shot to ribbons. Bess yelled again and the crews manning her deck guns jumped to their stations to haul back the tarpaulins from their pre-loaded guns and open fire, raking the Spanish decks clean of humans. Any man fool enough to even stand was obliterated in an instant.