The Dread Pirate Molly Hawke Ch. 01

Back aboard the ship of Alexander Hawke, two people looked at each other in a bit of horror, but it only lasted a moment. He rolled Cherrie over and the two of them fell to the floor and began to copulate.

Fifteen minutes later and at a distance of a hundred yards, Bess called for the sail to be slackened and for the ship to go hard to starboard. As the Sea Witch turned and slid almost to a stop, Bess stepped down the stairs to her gun deck and called for the four guns of her starboard forward battery.

"On your own time," she said, as she walked down the middle of the deck with her green eyes blazing and feeling her own hot tears on her cheeks, "I want one round only from each piece, aimed at the forward waterline. Try for ten feet abaft the prow."

As each of the crews made ready, Bess walked away and back up the stairs. By the time that she stood on her main deck again, the third and fourth shots crashed into Hawke's ship and she was beginning to settle where she lay in the shallow water beside the pier. It might be the evening when the governor's troops arrived, but she knew that Alex wasn't going far. They 'd probably come to their senses and step off the stricken ship in good time, but if what she felt was true, they'd be in a bed at an inn before long, neither one being able to think of anything else.

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The Dread Pirate Molly Hawke

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Bess called for full sails and asked for a course to Martinique. She wasn't that fond of the French, but she'd heard that they were offering letters of marque. She didn't understand the politics involved and by taking the letters, she was, in effect, becoming a weapon of the French in the eyes of the English.

To her, one was the same as the other and she sailed off.

Bess hadn't been at home when the governor's troops came for her and they found the little cove to be deserted. She was on a small islet with her crews celebrating and hiding some of their gold. If she was going to be an outlaw, she reasoned, then she was going to be a feared one.

Recognizing that her hitting the Spanish naval officer had been a fluke, Bess had sought for and purchased only matched sets of duelling pistols for their high quality and reliability. Her favorites were two sets in the Queen Anne style, for she loved the fine decorative work and she practiced with them often.

She was on the deck of the Sea Witch one day the next March when she heard a shout and felt the pull as more sails were called for by her watch officer and she heard the order given to hoist the black flag, which signified that they were pirates. She looked at the water around them and saw a dark shade of green and looking off in the direction they were sailing in, she could see that it grew lighter.

"Belay that," Bess said and she pulled the deck man aside and told him to tell any crew who had heard him that they were not going onto action, "I make the decision for this," she said quietly, "now go calm them down and when you're done, come back to me quickly. I want a word, Willem."

When she had him alone, she asked who had spotted the vessel that she saw up ahead and the deckman told her it had been the lookout. She called the man down and asked to see his spyglass.

"From now on, you must keep your glass clean, "she said to them both. "From this far away, I can tell that you want us to rob a sponge boat. It a nice thought, Willem, but I already have sponges for me baths and there is no money there. Also, you dive for sponges where the water is shallow and it likely full of rocks and shoals. Now get us outta here and back into blue water, Willem. You keep us here for much longer and me soon shit meself. Not a word to the others, mind. This is none a their business. Get us hard to starboard and away."

Later that day, she gave a smiling nod to Willem' request that he call for more sail to pursue a running merchantman. Bess looked with her own glass and thought for a moment.

"She not too big, but she sit low for a trader, so she have a bellyfull of something. Show her a Spanish flag and try to get us closer."

When they were at three quarters of a mile, she had him call for the full rig of sails, "You may tell the men now and have them prepare for it. When you get us inside of a quarter mile, you may pull down the Spanish flag and run up the black one. Get us alongside but we must still a keep a bit of distance. Tell the gunners that I want the port side loaded. This one will need a tender stroke before we squeeze him balls."

"Why, Bess?" Her mate asked and she nodded, "It don't feel right to me, that's why. Look how hard they're running. They have every sail they own up. Pace them and put a shot over the bow -- use a good gunner for this. I want no holes in their bow."

The reply to their warning shot was that all four of the guns on the near side of the merchant ship opened fire.

"The master is a fool and he frightened. Get us away some more," she said to Willem. "I need almost a half - mile. She only have carronades and they be small. Give me some room and let me know."

She turned away then to load her pistols. When she looked up, Willem stood there to report that they were ready and that Bess had been right. With only carronades facing them and not cannons, they weren't in much danger at this range. Bess was thinking ahead to the danger of the small cannons which could swivel through a wide arc. They were under three feet in length, but they were most often mounted at deck level and loaded with grape shot. That made them a hazard which needed to be considered.

Bess nodded, "Then heist up the red flag and tell me gunners that I want their hull left alone. Give them a reason to heave to. And before we get close, I want all the swivel guns set on the railings on the near side for them to see. If they have only four guns to a side, then I doubt they have more than four swivel guns at most. We've got a dozen, so I want to show them off. The first Spaniard who shoot a swivel gun, I want him dead, but don't alla you fire at the same time. "

After three volleys, the merchant hove to and sat in the water as Bess pulled alongside. She stood at the rail and bellowed out in Spanish that she wanted them to strike their colors. It turned out that there was only one fool aboard and he was the master of the ship. He yelled back that it would never happen, but Bess could see that the crew over there looked as though they'd rather live than fight a shipload of them.

She looked up and ordered the red flag run down. "Heist my pretty French one now! "she called out. She knew that in raising a pirate flag, she'd declared them to be pirates and not privateers. Doing that was like asking to be hung, but the reasoning was that the black flag was a warning to heave to and be boarded peacefully, if possible. Hoisting the red flag meant that all bets were off and there would be no quarter given.

Showing herself now to be a privateer after all, now that she was this close, would give the Spanish crew a hope for better treatment and that hope was what she read in the faces of those men.

"Who are you?" the captain called over and in her best Spanish, she called out, "I am Molly Hawke, and you are a fool, Senor." The effect of that name was a visible ripple as it ran through them.

While the other captain stared, trying to figure out what this all meant, Bess yelled over that she'd spare any man who surrendered peacefully. The captain drew his pistol, but he was clubbed down by his own men. Bess thought it a little odd, but the mate of the other ship explained to her later that the crew were not hired, but were indentured servants to a very wealthy family back in Spain, and that they'd been mistreated all of their lives by the current head of it -- who now lay dead.

It was a bit of a dicey thing, but they sailed for Tortuga, holding off until after dark before coming into a little cove where the merchant ship was gently run aground and anchored. Over the night, the wealth aboard was distributed and Bess made allowances for the hardships suffered by the Spanish crew. By the dawn, they were gone and the English governor had a something to scratch his head over.

At that time, what pirates there were based on the island were most often employed to hunt those still plying their trade, but Bess was known there to be working under French letters - which was an even bigger headache if she were to be prosecuted on the island, for there was a large French population there and no matter what, neither the French or the English minded it if the one of the Spanish boats came to a little harm. They all had memories of Spain's four previous invasions of the island and the murders which had come of that.

It was a little tight, but they stayed out for two days before Bess could meet up with her other boats and together, they sailed into the main harbor on Tortuga as though nothing had happened. Once ashore again, the Spanish crew disappeared into the dark little streets, most of them eager to sample the joys that a man might find wandering the brothels of a place known to have over two thousand whores. Sad to tell, but most of them would be penniless again within two days, but that wasn't Bess' problem.

She was present, though disguised, when Alexander Hawke had his day before the magistrate weeks later. She found that the mind of the judge was rather malleable to her will, even at a distance of a hundred feet and more as she made certain that there would be no clemency shown. As her former lover was led off in chains to the sounds of Cherrie Lynn's weeping, Bess remembered what her grandmother had said when she'd been told of it all.

"You cannae trust an Englishman," the old Scotswoman muttered, "not most and especially not one from a fine family like him." She turned then with her eyebrows raised, "Oh! You didna know who you were trying to please? He's almost a laird in England, though a lower one and it's not saved him from his fate. Probably his Da was too cheap with the bribes.

It's a sad thing to have te say te you, little fox, but what did you think would happen? Did you think that he'd take a dark-skinned lovely like you home to England when he grew tired of plundering?"

The proscribed punishment of the day for those convicted of piracy was the gibbet, a cage of iron bands in the shape of a man. The prisoner was locked into it either living or dead, though in most cases it was after being hung, his hands at his sides and he was hung in that thing from a yardarm set there on the docks for the purpose. The crows came for miles to pick at the man who couldn't lift a finger in his own defense.

Bess was there as well to see it, though she waited until the crowd had lost interest for the moment before she sidled close by and looked up. This was what was to happen to her if she hadn't known of her man's treachery, she thought. Alexander Hawke had no eyes and only half a face by then and though most of his ears had been pecked away, he heard her as she spoke to him softly.

"I 'ere ta do you one last kindness, me love, "she muttered, "but if you want it, you mustn't say my name out loud. I come ta give you release and peace, but you must tell me that it be what you'd want."

He begged her then, though he had no lips anymore to form the words and she said goodbye as she stepped away a little.

No one saw the tiny poison-tipped dart or the thick straw which Bess used to shoot it at him and he sagged -- still held upright in the gibbet - a dead man in only seconds. When she turned to go, she found Cherrie Lynn there pointing a pistol at her breast.

Bess smiled then as she stepped forward and slapped it out of Cherrie's hand.

"You don't want my blood on your hands," she said, "It would be only your sparing me my own dark fate if you kill me now."

"But I'm to have a child and no father to help me raise it," Cherrie said as she began to sob.

"Nothing has changed then," Bess said, "Alex was only tied to you because of me. Were it not for that, you'd raise his brat alone anyway. Alexander was never one to waste his time on a child. He was a spoiled child himself."

She stepped away and raised her chin, "So don' come crying to me now that you had what you wanted when you take him from me. I warn you, Cherrie. Stay away from my man, but you don' hear me. All that I see was two women weeping, but I was wrong.

I 'ave done alla my weeping for him. I here only ta ease him passing and that nothing to do with you."

She stepped forward and raised Cherrie's chin with her finger, "I give you a sparing in my own way, though you will never see it for the kindness that it is."

She leaned in very close to the blonde woman's ear and said, "Your child will be stillborn, so you may find someone to take him place."

As Cherrie began to wail in her sorrow, Bess walked back up the quay to find a tavern, hating Alexander and Cherrie both, but most of all, she hated herself.

Bess went down to the little cove where she had a small fishing boat manned by a crew of men and they slipped off to where her ships lay at anchor. She was curious about something which she'd seen in the port.

"I saw pictures and words that say something about rewards for pirates," she said to the mate of the Lily, her sloop-of-war, "What it mean, 'dread pirate'?"

"Not sure," the man said, "I think that if you take a ship on the open sea, then you're a pirate, if you have none of those letter things. But if you attack a defended town, that makes you a dread pirate."

She nodded, "Then we sail for Nevis on the morning tide. I want to send a message, since most of the English slaver ships pass through there."

"What message?" the mate asked and she smiled, "Me born the child of a slave. Most of my family were slaves, and there is Fort Charles there. I can send me love and become dread in one afternoon, I think. We hammer the fort and rob the town."

They flew no flags as they slipped into the thickly fogged harbor four days later. The harbor was all but silent as the fog thinned away. When the seven o'clock gun was fired at Government House, it was answered by twenty-six others, but those ones were not just firing powder. As the bombardment continued, Bess sent her boats ashore.

"Don't dawdle," she told her raiders as her cannons boomed behind them, "There are only a dozen cannon in the fort, but they are hard to stop. Get in and get what you can, but I don't want to hear of murder if it can be avoided."

She turned to the group of men who'd had experience as troops once, "There are smaller guns at the edge of the town. Spike them for me and I can give everything to the guns of the fort."

An hour later, there was only token cannonfire from the fort, but it was sporadic and far from accurate. Bess guessed that there might only be two pieces left in action and she felt that they weren't a threat. An hour after that and they were away with heavy purses and chests stolen from any slavers they found.

"Do you feel like a dread pirate now?" the mate said with a smile.

She shook her head, "I might be at the wrong time of the month. Today?" she shrugged, "No."

During the rare occasions when she reflected on it, Bess decided that she wasn't particularly happy with her life in terms of her relationships. Her husband had been a bastard, plain and simple. She really couldn't come up with a better word.

Her time with Alexander had been nice at first, but he was given to sneaking around and she'd always found that she'd had to tread softly around that ego of his. A month after she'd helped him take two galleons and not only one and it was as though she hadn't even been there to hear him tell of it. After Alexander's death, Bess would often take a large room at an inn and stay awhile if things were too hot out to sea and there were times when she'd surprised herself.

Her standards for men varied a little, but it was important to her that they smelled as though they bathed fairly regularly. As well, they ought to be good-looking, she decided and they had to possess a mind and know a thing or two about treating a lady well. Those were her standards, though depending on the man and her mood, everything but the regular baths might fall by the wayside now and then.

The Wayward Maid was a favorite of hers and she often stayed there. Her first mate Willem was a stalwart drinking companion of hers and he quite often took up the task of keeping an eye on Bess if she appeared to be tottering a little too deeply into her cups. It led to some interesting incidents now and then. There was the time that she'd argued with him gently, saying that she needed no one to watch over her virtue. She told Willem to go on and make sure that he had a good time himself, for he worked so hard in her service that she wanted him to enjoy himself. He shrugged and took up a seat so that he could see just what she'd get herself into without his running interference for her.

If a man by chance passed her muster and she thought that she might be in the mood for a little fun later on, she'd sidle a little close to him and tell him the she'd be in her room at the Wayward Maid later on, forgetting that it was where she was at the time.

On the particular evening when she'd shooed Willem away, she made to go upstairs and found three men waiting for her. She looked over and saw Willem grinning at her. She pulled herself away from her admirers and stumbled over to where Willem sat. "They all look familiar, Willem," she said, "Do I know them?"

He nodded with a sigh and said, "Yes. I hope they look at least a little familiar, Bess. You've invited all of them to spend the night in your room."

Bess looked confused, "I have?"

Willem nodded, "You have."

She began to turn away and then looked back at him, "All three -- on the same night?"

"Yes, Captain," Willem said doing his level best to keep it together, "All three. The same night, and that be tonight. I watched it all from here."

"Oh," she said turning back to the three of them, "Well, let's go then."

She wasn't disappointed that night. Well at first anyway. They took her one after the other and it felt so nice to her to just lie back and allow them this. But after a while, she felt that she was thinking about doing this with another man.

She didn't know which man; she just knew that she'd have wanted a whole afternoon and evening of sensual play as well as a lot of good fucking. The three that she had now had been drinking at a tavern, so there wasn't much more than this to be had, was there?

It came to her a little later, after she found herself in a bed with three sleeping men -- two of whom snored quite loudly -- that she'd never had what she'd discovered as a gentle want in her.

A good rain storm had the effect of making her ache for a good man's touch and a day or a long night of never getting out of bed, other than to make water.

She suddenly realised that she wanted to have a lover just one time who could make her have to crawl from the bed to do that and stagger back to his arms afterward on slightly wobbly legs and gently aching hips.

She'd never had that before.

When she caught up to Willem late the next morning as he was leaving his room, he asked how it had gone and she grunted once and said, "I think I still need you, my friend. I finished them all. They're all asleep and here I am, leaking out of everywhere with me head pounding fit to burst. I can't spot a good man to save me life. How did it go for you?"

"Alright, I daresay, "he nodded, "But now I want to be back at sea."

She leaned around him and peered into the darkened room, since the drapes were still pulled shut. "Willem? There's ... well, there's a young lady and a young man asleep in the bed."