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Hybris

Why didn’t anyone tell me that sailing on a pirate ship would be so boring?

The reports from the Governor of Carolina made it seem like we would be sinking ships and beheading merchants twice a day.

My experience on Patricia’s Wish has been the opposite—a bunch of muscular men sitting around sewing sails like in a lady’s quilting circle, but with more tattoos.

They offered to teach me to sew, and I had to laugh.

Me? A highborn male in my prime, wasting my days sewing? Dream on.

Since I have no assigned chores, I can lie back and scratch my itchy crotch.

While I never regret an encounter with a lady, I’m often given a parting gift when I venture out of my normal circle.

Let’s see…who could it have been? Lady Penelope was clean.

I did a thorough examination of her marriage box before settling into her heat—as she required.

I also checked Lady Margaret…right? It certainly wasn’t Lady Beatrice because her husband keeps her on a tight leash, so I’m her only affair. Ahh, but Lady Patrice…she’s a wildcard…

“If you scratch your crotch rot, you will only make it worse,” Chub grouses at me from his spot on the helm. I hung my hammock across the sterncastle deck to collect sunshine—not a lecture from the old salt. He sounds just like my father when my mother was out of earshot.

“It’s not crotch rot,” I reply like a petulant child. “I’m readjusting.”

“Oh, I’m not falling for that,” Chub shouts with a loud guffaw that has the crew on the rigging turning to look at us.

“I sailed under—no, not under, I was the only one who never lay under him. I sailed for Captain Teeth. The man had so many different ailments of the marriage rod that he built up a tolerance to them—like his body recognized the pox, Bube, or crabs and fought them off without the brain intervening. Many a night was spent in apothecaries, dispensaries, and homes of reported witches bargaining for oregano oil.”

Chub’s stories of the infamous Captain Teeth are the most exciting part of sailing.

I bet the boat was one big party when Teeth was captain.

Too bad I couldn’t do my summer internship with him.

I bet I’d gain more skills to be used in Boston than waiting for Captain Betts to give me duties.

Would Captain Teeth know the exotic ways to pleasure a woman?

There are rumors of tantric ways from the East that would make a European whore blush.

A world-traveling pirate captain would know if they exist…

and allow for time to practice them—unlike this boat of ninnies.

Every day is the same. The crew rises to complete their morning chores—rope braiding, cleaning, and sewing.

Then it’s an awful breakfast of biscuits, which are hard enough to substitute for lifting heels on my shoes.

Next, they take orders from Captain Betts to set a course for the day’s sail, followed by handcrafts, reading (or learning to read as is much the case), and, aye, more sewing.

Once the sun sets, it’s another round of cement biscuits, and the night crew takes over the boat.

Those who’ve been up all day enjoy themselves by drinking, dancing, playing music, and telling stories.

Even then, someone is always sewing. Soon, I’ll either break mentally or break my resolve and learn to sew.

“I bet the crew didn’t sew so much when Teeth was Captain,” I muse out loud.

“A hole in the sail could spell our doom, Young Hybris,” Chub lectures from his place at the helm.

“The wind tears through the snag to slow us down and decrease our ability to steer. If you ignore a small hole, you only end up with a bigger hole—one that tears the cloth from ye mast. Then what will you do with no sail? Sit idle in the ocean until your crew starves or a hurricane spins ye dizzy. Want to be a pirate? Learn to sew.”

“I never wanted to be a pirate,” I grouse as I uncoil myself from the hammock.

The afternoon sun blisters my sensitive skin—unlike the leather casings on most pirates aboard.

My face burns as brightly as the infection growing in my drawers.

I should retire below deck to search for the latest gossip or nap.

Most likely a nap since there aren’t enough people aboard to have juicy gossip.

If anyone is getting laid, there aren’t walls on the orlop deck to prevent everyone from listening in, but nobody cares who buggers whom. There are no scandals.

The crew’s acceptance and support of one another is positively dreadful.

I’ve never missed the double-crossing, backstabbing, and two-faced nature of Boston more.

We always had someone to talk about and, on a good week, someone’s life to ruin.

Pirates live by this stupid code that spoils all my fun.

“Good thing you never aspired to take the helm,” Chub says with a smile that says he knows more than he’s saying.

“You’d be rubbish at it. You may have the education of letters and figures, but your work ethic stinks worse than your trousers.

In the five days you’ve been aboard, Greenhorn has learned to read a new chapter.

He’s your age and catching up to you in smarts.

What have you done to better yourself? Caught up on sleep and irritated the dickens out of your pox? ”

“It’s not pox!” I take out my ire on the cords to the hammock. Blasted netting is tangled and won’t release from the sterncastle mast.

“If you cut that, someone will teach you how to rebraid the cords—”

“I’m not learning women’s work!”

The boat goes silent. Not even the ocean waves lapping against the hull fill the void.

Dozens of angry eyes glare at me from the rigging.

Chub slowly shakes his head at his shuffling feet.

I yank on the cords to my hammock. If they don’t release in the next few seconds, I’ll abandon it.

Embarrassment burns hotter than the sunburn on my cheeks.

I didn’t mean to make my outburst, but it needed to be said.

Men on the mainland assume that women are pirates to perform the women’s work on the boat—not to order about the men.

Hell, Chub’s wife is the cook—he has no room to talk.

“Good,” declares a feminine voice behind me. I whirl around to find Captain Betts leaning on a post at the base of the sterncastle deck stairs. I had forgotten the floor I stand upon is the roof of the room where she slept. “No woman wants to teach you anything.”

The crew laughs, and my face flames hotter.

“I didn’t mean to disrespect you, ma’am.” My apology lands with a splat at her feet.

Her chin lowers as her eyebrows rise. She doesn’t say anything as she lifts her hair from her lips, where the wind has blown it over her mouth. I follow the tendril across her lips like a caress. How soft is her kiss?

Chub smacks the back of my head to knock some sense into me.

“Captain,” I correct myself. “Not ma’am, Captain.”

She waves a hand between us as if dismissing the slight.

“It’s all the fussy handicrafts like cooking, cleaning, and sewing.

I didn’t mean sailing. I’ve sailed many times, so I doubt my parents sent me here to learn the basics of a boat.

” My mouth runs away, spinning my story faster than my brain can catch up.

What am I saying? I’ve never been on a boat.

I’m lucky my seasickness subsided after the first day.

“Is that what your parents told you? That I was taking you aboard to teach you to be a pirate?”

“Not a pirate exactly,” I reply with a roll of my eyes before I can stop them.

“My family imports many commodities from the East India Company. My father’s always complaining about the inefficiency of the voyages between England and New England.

I thought this apprenticeship was to prepare me to inherit the role of overseeing our import business from my father. ”

“Captain?” I can’t tell if Chub requests Betts’s attention or is asking her to flog me for disrespect, but it doesn’t matter. She puts her palm up to quiet him.

“You know how to sail,” she says as she climbs the stairs.

Did her hips always sway like that? I can’t pay attention to her words and hips at the same time.

“Yet your family hired us to teach you…what exactly? How can a voyage on a pirate ship help you learn your merchants’ inefficiencies?

” She pulls a string, and my hammock’s knots unravel at her command.

The web falls onto my feet with a deafening thud.

My toes hurt like hell, but I bite the insides of my cheeks to contain my cries.

I’m caught in a lie.

I either admit I don’t know the first thing about sailing, or I admit that I have no idea why my parents sent me on this boat.

When Betts rescued me from the tavern, I assumed my parents’ staff would rescue me from the pirates.

I swallowed my tongue when Betts made me drag the cart with my belongings to the harbor and sign for the trunks with the harbormaster.

“Captain,” Chub interrupts again, earning a glare from Betts.

“Perhaps there is a gentler way of telling the lad that the women’s work is what his parents hoped he would learn from us.

Perhaps this is an opportunity to teach him the pirate code—you know, how everyone is treated as an equal because everyone has a voice? ”

She squints at him before schooling her face.

Whatever is about to come out of her mouth will be a lie.

But why? Are my parents not merchants, but a store for offloading pirate contraband?

I rack my brain for images of my parents’ storehouses and shops…

nothing seemed out of the ordinary…but then again…

Would I know the difference between stolen goods and purchased ones?

Every time my father said our warehouse was out of an item, maybe it wasn’t a shipping error.

But was it something his pirates failed to commandeer?

“Fine,” she says, tossing her hair back just so the wind can sweep it forward. “I’m going back to bed. You deal with him.”

“Many thanks, Captain,” Chub replies.

“The rest of you,” she calls to the center of the boat, “excellent work today!”

They whistle and shout her praises as she descends the stairs to return to her cabin. Chub leaves his post to grab my shoulders, but my temper has taken control of my faculties. I shake loose my jacket, leaving it in the meaty hands of the quartermaster. My feet stomp down the stairs.

How dare she placate me with a lie and hand me off to a babysitter!

I won’t be treated like a child—not by her!

I shove my way inside the map room after her, but I won’t stop at the atrium if she tries to run.

I use my weight to slam the door shut. Flicking the lock is a dumb move, but I do it anyway.

I don’t want Chub bursting in here to save me from the monstrous Captain Betts.

She isn’t the boss of men with a pedigree like mine.

“I deserve to know the truth.”

“Do you?” She freezes in the doorway. There’s a full-length mirror in the captain’s quarters, so I can see her smirk in the reflection.

“Yes,” I snap. “It’s my fortune that pays you, so I deserve to know where the money goes. You have a quartermaster who keeps accounts. I’ve seen him work the ledgers—”

“Oh, so you want to know the workings of our business as if you were a part of it?”

“Yes, aren’t I a part of it if my fortune funds it?”

“Is it your money that gives you an equal voice and right to know? Because I can tell you, I don’t have two pence to rub together.

Chub grew up an orphan in the gutter. More than half the men aboard were sold into slavery before escaping and joining the boat.

The richest person aboard is Catalina. Maybe you should go to the kitchen? ”

“No, it’s the decent thing—”

“On my boat, all chores, voices, and people are equals. Period. If you want to know the contents of the contract between your family and the boat, you must be a member of the boat or write to your family to tell you…when we find a way to deliver your letter.”

“Everyone knows…but me?”

“When I say everyone has a voice, I mean an equal say in everything. Everyone on board voted on your fate before we met you…and I’d be glad of that if I were you.

After having met you, I’d change my vote.

Get out of my cabin and find a way to annoy me less, or you will walk the plank before sunrise. Do I make myself clear?”

“Clear as glass,” I sneer. “In fact, I can see right through you. Your craving. Your desire. You need a man like me to loosen you up. Did you dream of being Lady Penelope with my lips beneath your skirts? Your attraction makes you want to hold something over my head—put us on equal footing. As equals, you can ask me to give you the pleasure you know I can provide. If you want me—”

A jar of oregano oil smashes above my head, drenching me in the herbal concoction. That’s one way to dose me, I guess. “Aye, aye, Captain—”

My words are cut off by a knife flying past my head and lodging into the door.

“Get out,” she whispers. “Because I didn’t have to miss, and next time, I won’t.”