Rashieka's Trial II

“Your job to tell us when Rasheika strays,” Frendral said, short with words as always.

“Well yeah, but I don’t think she meant any harm by it. She gave up calmly enough, none of that trying to starve herself to death like she pulled back in the war. I think she was just playing around really. I got a couple of the other spies, spread some rumors around her troops and pretty soon her whole thrown together army fell apart. Then we went out for a couple of drinks, is that really so bad?”

“Tom, do you think everything is a game?” Kerma asked, exasperated. Tom chose not to answer that because he knew that the answer was yes. He didn’t have to answer anyway because Kerma knew the answer as well. “You are playing with other people’s lives, you do understand that don’t you.”

“Not like anyone died,” Tom said defensively. “People hardly got hurt, worst was a broken arm.”

“That doesn’t pardon you from using people like chess pieces; you’re as bad as Rasheika. People are not to be manipulated just because Rasheika gets bored and you are just as guilty because you can’t be bothered to stop her until it gets bad enough that you can play with her.”

“Now look here,” Tom said, now fully furious, who did Kerma think she was. Well she was his ruler but he hadn’t really acknowledged her as such, Frendral ruled him, Kerma was his friend, most of the time. “There are only six of us, and we work in pairs, and you expect us to be able to catch everything right at the start. We have a lot of ground to cover you know. We hadn’t even realized Rasheika had left Ferndale until I got the report that she was stirring up trouble.”

“Well maybe you should consider getting more spies if you can’t do your job,” Kerma snapped back.

“There aren’t that many people who are willing to live hand to mouth for nothing but a dashing image, maybe if you considered paying us for our troubles so we weren’t forced to survive by a life of crime,” Tom trailed off, realizing he had said the wrong thing. No government employee of Ferndale got paid since the city had no tax and both of his rulers worked themselves almost to death to make a living and govern the city at the same time. Tom knew he had had no right to bring up the subject of pay to the two of them and had the decency to look ashamed.

“You’ll testify against Rasheika?” Frendral asked Tom, his eyes flashing between Kerma and Tom. Tom supposed that he should be grateful that Frendral hadn’t snapped at him for picking a fight with Kerma, everyone knew that Frendral and Kerma liked each other even if they did try to be secretive about it.

“I’ll defend her,” Tom decided, “just like I did back when we first caught her after the war. If I’m defending her you can’t expect me to testify against her. Ask one of the other spies.”

“You’re setting as a lawyer?” Frendral asked dryly, though not much more dry then he always was.

“Due to the nature of my business I am pretty good at twisting facts and wiggling out of things,” Tom said, joking at his own expense to break the tension of the room, it worked. With both Frendral and Kerma laughing Tom excused himself and went to go find Rasheika where she was holed up in Kerma’s house before her trial. Ferndale didn’t have a prison so the rare prisoners that they did end up with tended to be put under house arrest. Rasheika usually stayed with Kerma when she was in town so that was where she had been confined. Tom could only hope that Kerma wouldn’t come home any time soon so they could talk in peace.

There was a guard on the door to Kerma’s guest room but he let Tom past without question. Tom was, though not considered a respectable one, a government official. Tom found Rasheika lying back on her straw tick, fast asleep. Looking around the room Tom found himself wishing that other cities’ jails were half as nice; he had seen the insides of a lot of them for his tendency of smuggling. The room was large and airy with a closet, a set of draws and a wash basin. There was a chair and bookcase as well but the books wouldn’t do Rasheika any good, she didn’t know how to read. Of course the room wasn’t very secure he noticed, Rasheika could probably escape any time she wanted to, but she didn’t seem interested in escape.

“Hey Rasheika, get up,” Tom said, sitting in the chair. Rasheika instantly sat upright.

“Oh, it’s you, I thought you were Kerma or I wouldn’t have bothered playing at being asleep, she lay into you too?” Rasheika asked. Tom grinned; Rasheika never had any remorse for her crimes.

“If her tongue was any sharper I’d be dead,” Tom admitted. “Must be hard on you living here with her, I can’t imagine.”

“She comes in peaceful enough, and then something sets her off. I don’t want to deal with it anymore so I just play at being asleep when she comes in. She’ll catch on soon, she’s stupid, but not that dumb. Still it’s gained me some peace.” Tom laughed, if you listened to Rasheika you would think that she hated everyone, but he knew all too well that Rasheika had more respect for Kerma then he did.

“I’ve agreed to defend you, just like last time, be grateful,” Tom said.

“Well I might as well give up on my freedom now,” Rasheika said. “With you defending me I’m doomed.”

“And how would we imprison you with no jail? Ask some city that doesn’t even know we exist to hold you? Come on, worst that could happen to you is exile if I can’t do my job right.”

“Which you never can, and I don’t see why they think that not being allowed in this hole of a city is a punishment. Exile is one of the worst punishment ideas I’ve ever heard, complete morons came up with that one.”

“Some people like it here, and if you don’t why is it that you always come back here?” Tom bristled, even though he knew that Rasheika was just being Rasheika.

“I come back because I don’t work and Kerma’s a big enough fool to give me free food and lodgings. So how are you going to tell the courts that I’m innocent when you know I’m not? Lie?”

“Wouldn’t work, too many witnesses to your guilt, we’ll have to admit you’re guilty.”

“What kind of idiot defense lawyer are you? You don’t tell people your client is guilty even when she is, don’t you know that? Not without my permission anyway,” Rasheika spluttered.

“It worked last time, admit you’re guilty but try to prove they can’t punish you just the same. If it worked once it might work again, and frankly Rasheika, I think it’s your only hope. You don’t have a lot of friends in this city after all, and God knows you’re guilty.” Rasheika only laughed, and Tom soon joined her, they were frequently likeminded and both looked at this whole thing as a game. Outside of the door the guard thought about looking in and seeing what was amusing the criminal so much but decided against it. Tom was one of the good natured leaders of the city but he had a reputation for being vindictive and creative when he was crossed. Looking into the room probably wouldn’t upset Tom but the guard wasn’t willing to risk it.

Ferndale didn’t actually have a courthouse to hold Rasheika’s trial in, so the rarely used Town Hall was used instead. People liked it better when they held their meetings outside, or at people’s houses so the Town Hall had to be cleaned before it was suited for any official purpose. Rasheika didn’t say anything when she was told that her trial was postponed for cleaning but her expression said a lot, she thought they were all disorganized idiots.

When Rasheika was finally shown into the Town Hall for her trial, under guard of course, she had to admit that they had done a fine job to make it look like a proper court room. It actually had furniture, which was a big change, with a platform at the head of the room where Frendral and Kerma sat. Over to the side there was a group of twenty people who she took to be jurors, they all hated her of course, there wasn’t a person in the whole city that didn’t. The crowd that had started to gather in the back of the Town Hall was very clearly hostile, and made all sorts of horrible sounds when she was led in. This wasn’t going to be an unbiased trial by any means and she hadn’t expected one. There was a box on one side of the platform that held John, Tom’s second in command, as well as a boy she recognized as her second in command when she had been in The Mound. On the other side of the platform was another box, where Tom already stood, that’s where she was led.

“I see they’re not taking any chances,” Tom said, nodding to her guard, who was binding one of her hands to the railing of the box. “Well you did escape us once, when you were a prisoner after the war.” Rasheika snorted under her breath and leaned over to whisper in his ear.

“You can stop playing around like a fool, he wasn’t a spy officially at that point but it was Ohanzee who freed me. I’m not an escape artist like you are. Was he working under an order of your queens or did you decide to do that by yourself?”

“Not the time,” Tom said shaking his head and whispering back. “We’ll talk about that later, somewhere private. Of all the times for you to decide you’re curious about that business.”

It is possible that this conversation would have continued but the crowd in the back of the room started to get violent and everyone was distracted by the guards trying to calm them down. There were members of the crowd who were shouting for Rasheika to be instantly banished and never allowed to set foot in Ferndale again, that was slightly more comforting then the people who were shouting for her death. Tom was shocked to find that, even with as popular as he was, people were calling him a traitor and calling for his expulsion from the city as well. The guards tried to subdue the crowd for about five minutes, and weren’t making a lot of progress, when Frendral jumped from the platform and started to advance on the audience. Instantly the room fell silent, Frendral was strong and had a nasty temper, for all that he looked like a banker’s clerk, and no one wanted to get on his bad side. Frendral regained the platform, still with a dark look on his face, and suggested that they start the trial since everyone was there that needed to be.

To be continued...

Rasheika's Trial

The year 3003, city-state of Ferndale

Tom leaped into the trees a half second before his rulers came to stand right beneath them. He climbed higher, like a monkey, with them staring up at him. It was easy for Tom to climb trees, he’d practiced a lot at one time, he had also practiced dropping dramatically from trees at the same time. The fact that he had felt this was an important life skill to learn had most of the town deciding that he was a nut case who had no business in the government. Especially not in as important a position as the official head of the spies, as far as most people of the world knew Ferndale didn’t exist and Tom and his spies were their only eyes and ears to the rest of the world. It was a very sensitive position, placed in the hands of someone who saw the whole world as a game.

Ferndale was in an interesting position as a city. They were technically just a group of kids playing around in a government school run by the underground cities. That would have been the end of the story if they had allowed it to be but they had decided to break ties with the school after a school wide, though bloodless, war. No one had died but it had still been overly complicated and not something that Ferndale wanted to get involved with again. Instead they had taken advantage of their distance from the rest of the school and hidden position to allow the world to forget them. That had been easy enough with the children of the school graduating every two years; all of the children in the school who had last seen them had already graduating. Ferndale was quickly turning into a legend in the school, something you told the new kids about. Ferndale however was still bustling, as busy as ever, with its population older, and more independent, then the population of the rest of the school.

“Adrian Bleeker, get out of that tree,” Kerma, queen of Ferndale, shouted up at Tom, who flinched at the use of his real name. Adrian as far as he was concerned was the name of a poet, not the name of a doer of daring deeds. Kerma would of course do the talking, Frendral the king of Ferndale, two years her senior at fifteen, wasn’t a talkative type.

“What are you, my mother?” Tom shouted back, he was the same age as Frendral and found it humiliating to be lectured by a girl so much smaller then he was.

“Do you really think you can hide up in a tree until we forget about this?” Kerma demanded. Tom knew it was too much to ask but he had hoped to hide until they had cooled off a bit. He hadn’t been quick enough though, they had seen him go up the tree as they ran after him, and now he was cornered. It was better to come down and take the lecture then become the laughing stock of the city for being treed by his rulers. Besides, he strongly suspected that Frendral would come up for him if he had to; Frendral wasn’t someone that Tom wanted to tangle with. Before Frendral had retired to come to Ferndale he had led the school’s only group of bandits. Tom dropped from the tree with a sigh, ready to get an earful from both leaders.

Frendral and Kerma had the decency to bring Tom into Frendral’s house before exploding. The business they had to lecture him on was of a sensitive nature and he was a government official, he had the right to some privacy while they yelled at him. They even waited until he sat down, across the table from the two of them.

“Now let’s go over this slow, just so you can’t claim you didn’t know any better,” Kerma said with biting sarcasm. “First of all, who is Rasheika?” Tom looked back at her boldly, he made a point to never look repentant, not that he ever really was. The only thing he regretted at the moment was that this wasn’t going to be a fast yelling at. Kerma was obviously going to make this as painful an ordeal as pulling teeth.

“She’s a girl I’m supposed to keep an eye on, to make sure she doesn’t cause any more trouble,” Tom said, hoping that this was what Kerma wanted to hear.

“And why would we be worried that she might cause trouble, what kind of trouble does she cause?” Kerma asked, her voice going sickly patient, like she was talking to a three year old.

“She tried to take over the school once, so she isn’t supposed to be allowed to do anything in politics anymore. If you listen to her she meant to go on to take over the underground cities after taking over the school,” Tom knew why they were angry with him so he tried to give them the answers that would speed things up.

“So you know all of this,” Kerma said scathingly. Tom had to resist the urge to point out just as scathingly that he had lived through the deeds that he was talking about while Kerma hadn’t come to the school yet. He had been among the leaders who had stopped Rasheika’s school takeover and had been one of the people at her trial when they had decided she could go free, with some limitations. It was moments like this that Tom had problems with his new queen, elected only because she was the only person willing to work with the difficult and antisocial Frendral. Tom actually respected Frendral, he was strong and had experience behind him. Tom couldn’t help but think of Kerma as the timid hotel manager he had first known her as.

“Tell us about Rasheika and The Mound,” Frendral ordered, speaking for the first time in the proceedings. Tom wondered if his rebellious thoughts had shown on his face.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tom said shrugging casually. Then he caught the look on Frendral’s face and realized that this wasn’t the time to play his usual games. The rulers gave Tom a lot of leeway because of the deal had had made with the original queens of the city several years before. He had been declared an independent unit that didn’t answer to anyone, though with the polite understanding that he would answer to them, or else. That same understanding now carried on through Frendral and Tom knew he was pushing it.

“Alright, so Rasheika got involved in politics again,” Tom admitted. “She gathered up some forces, even I don’t know how she convinced them to join her, and made her base in The Mound.” Tom hated The Mound; it was a fort, looking about as its name suggested, a half underground mound of stones with maze like passageways and no air circulation. It had been built by Rasheika’s forces during the school wide war that had been her first attempt at world domination, the students of the school still hadn’t figured out construction yet really at that point.

“Why did she do it? You know she’s going to have to be put on trial again and I don’t like her chances much,” Kerma said. It was an awkward place for her, she was one of Rasheika’s few friends and now she was going to have to preside over her friend’s trial.

“I think it was mostly nostalgia,” Tom said. “Why else would she go with The Mound? I mean the place was a dump even when it was first built, defensible yes, but she could have built a lot better in no time. Instead she decided to settle into The Mound, just like old days.”

To be continued...

The Exil Ship III

When I was called to the general of the fort’s offices my first thought was of what I had done wrong, but I couldn’t think of anything. I had been a very well behaved prisoner to the best of my knowledge, and other then Engel’s drunken antics I had kept my crew under fair discipline as well. It hadn’t been part of my duty anymore but I felt it reflected poorly on England if her sailors behaved badly in front of foreigners.

“You and your men are to be set free, you are being traded for,” said the officer in the general’s office, translating for his superior.

“My sailors included?” I asked, it was rare for common sailors to be traded for.

“Including your sailors, in one week’s time,” the officer assured me.

It was two weeks after my release, after a court of inquiry over my lost ship, that I stood in front of Admiral Jervis. The court had been extremely forgiving about everything that had happened; it had hardly been an inquiry at all. A few questions, and then the gathered captains had practically clapped me on the back and called me a brave man. It was all very confusing and not at all what I had been given to expect from the stories. Now that I was standing in front of Admiral Jervis however it looked like the world had righted itself again. Admiral Jervis was looking at me with the same look of distaste I remembered of old.

“Dammed foolish of you, you lost a lot of men. I want you to know that I don’t approve of this kind of attitude at all,” Jervis lectured me. “We need sailors and ships, not glorious deaths.”

“Yes, sir,” I agreed. I wasn’t about to deny how foolish the whole thing had been. I had honestly asked the advice of my sailors in an important decision that should have only been made by the captain. Of course I couldn’t tell Admiral Jervis that I had done something like that, he would probably drop me to a man before the mast faster then I could blink if I told him that, if that wasn’t his intention already. It had been my reckless behavior that had gotten me on his bad side to begin with and this affair was me at my most reckless yet.

“We don’t need brave, reckless, heroes in this service Commander, what we need are men who know when the odds are against them, for the good of the Navy and the country.”

“Yes, sir,” I agreed again, meekly. Admiral Jervis looked slightly mollified by my total agreement and tone because his voice lowered.

“I just wanted to make my feelings on the matter clear; I feel that you were extremely foolish. Be that as it may,” here the Admiral sounded down right resigned, “the public like self sacrificing scenes like the one you put on. You have become a glorious hero to people who know nothing about the navy, and as such you have the navy’s thanks. We are a service that is immensely unpopular with the public, what with the press and all, we are grateful for any good will we can scrounge up.” I caught my breath, it sounded like I wasn’t going to get screamed at, which is all I had expected from this man. I wasn’t about to say anything, anything that said might break whatever spell had changed the world so much in my favor. I didn’t have to say anything because Admiral Jervis continued.

“As a hero,” his voice was dripping with scorn as he said that, “you will be given an active commission on a twenty-four gun frigate, don’t sink her.”

“You have my word, sir,” I said as sincerely as I could have said anything. I decided that I was fine with the world turning upside down, it meant that people who were on the bottom came out on top, and that was fine by me.

The Exil Ship II

I suspect that Engels had been drinking again by the way that he stood on the deck but he climbed the mast easily enough. The main reason that I didn’t have him punished for his drinking, he already had scared welts from other captains lashes on his back, was because it never seemed to have an effect on his seamanship. He could climb like a monkey even when he had drunk enough to kill him.

“That cut of the sail isn’t one of ours, Sir, looks Spanish,” Engels shouted down to me, not even needing the glass that the boy held out to him.

“Damn,” I said. There was no way that we would be able to fight them with our tiny ship if they were large enough to be seen at such a great distance. Our main hope was to run and the entire ship knew it.

“What make is she?” I shouted up to Engels, even though I new already that she was far too large.

“Can’t tell for sure, sir, look likes she rates at least a twenty-four.” I knew that commanders were supposed to appear stoic in front of the common sailors, to be a captain was about as close as being a god on the ocean, but I bite my lip for a second anyway. Surely even the common sailors who surrounded me would understand the extreme circumstances we were under. We rated a twelve, a pathetic armament that was only really supposed to defend our ship until a larger ship could come to our rescue. The problem was no one would come to our rescue out here. Then I pulled myself together, if I showed concern then the crew was likely to feed off of my fear and fall into panic, possibly even mutiny.

“What do you think Mr. Levy?” I asked my lieutenant, he had been standing silently by my side this whole time. He was out here like I was, not through stupidity, but because he had angered this past captain. I heard that his last captain had actually tried to shoot him; I had never had any trouble with him, though when he had first come on board I had expected him to be a holy terror.

“Sir?” asked the lieutenant, shocked that I was asking his opinion about anything. I noticed my second lieutenant standing nearby but didn’t try to include him in the conversation, he was stupid, and I learned that early on. He had moved into his current rank through family power but even family power hadn’t been able to advance him farther then second on my ship, which said a lot. I had heard that his father still wrote almost weekly to the Admiral asking about the advancement of his son. The Admiral’s secretary didn’t even pass the letters along anymore, they were instantly destroyed.

“What do you think? Do you think they’ll catch up to us, or do you think that we can outrun them?” I elaborated. My first lieutenant hummed and hawed and I instantly realized what the problem was, he didn’t want to be responsible for the ship’s welfare, he thought I was shoving my responsibilities onto his shoulders. I was quick to assure him otherwise.

“Don’t worry if you’re wrong, I’m not going to blame you, no matter what we decide I’ll take responsibility.” I had a mental image of being dismissed from the service entirely, not just banished to this far corner of the ocean. It might not be an entirely bad thing I told myself, though of course I would still be eligible for the sweep and could end up a common sailor. That wasn’t a nice thought; I promised myself that if I was stripped of rank I would go to the country somewhere and get myself a farm or something.

“Well, sir,” said my first lieutenant reluctantly, “I think they’ll probably catch us. They can carry a lot more sail then we can and probably don’t ride any clumsier in the water.” I nodded my approval of his assessment and he looked relieved, his relief was short lived however because I had another question for him.

“So what do you think we should do? Surrender or fight?” I asked him. “If we surrender we’ll end up in a Spanish prison for the rest of the war, ‘cause you can bet anything you like that England won’t trade for us. Sure, as officers we’ll have parole for part of the time anyway, but the men will be less lucky. Even with parole being prisoners doesn’t seem attractive. Imagine what they would say about us if we struck our colors without a fight, they might even say some things that they haven’t already.” My lieutenant actually smiled at that, not something that I think I had ever seen him do before. “On the other hand if we fight the whole bloody lot of us might end up at the bottom of the sea with no thanks from anyone for our efforts.”

“I can’t decide which sounds worse, sir,” my first lieutenant said. I could now see what could be called a mast over the horizon from the deck, they were a fast ship. By now they had probably noticed us and were looking forward to our capture.

“I say we fight, sir,” said my second lieutenant unexpectedly.

“What makes you say that?” I asked, not dismissively or rudely but with genuine curiosity. It was rare for the man to give any opinion about anything and here he was volunteering one without being asked. Here in this time of extreme stress I was learning things about my lieutenants I had never known from sailing together for over a year. My first lieutenant could smile and my second lieutenant could speak without being spoken to first.

“None of us has anything to lose, right men?” To my total and utter shock my second lieutenant turned and addressed the sailors around us. I realized that during our discussion we had gained an audience and then chided myself. Of course the sailors would be curious what we chose to be their fate, their lives hung in the balance of our decision, my decision I corrected myself. I was still the commander of the ship, even if I had decided to actually include the other officers in the process, which was highly irregular. The entire group of sailors cheered at my second mate’s speech which worried me slightly, we did have something to lose, something that admittedly was important to me, we could lose our lives.

“Are all of you decided then?” I asked. The world had turned upside down, I wasn’t giving orders, this whole thing smacked of revolution and republic but having set down this path by asking my subordinates advice I felt like just going with the flow. Again all of the men cheered and we turned to face the enemy as it approached. I regained command of my own ship from the crew, after a fashion, I shouted to clear for action and beat to quarters but my orders were completely unnecessary. My men were moving before my orders were even out of my mouth.

My tiny ship against a regular frigate was something so ridiculous that only the entirely foolhardily brave would do something like it, either that or the incredibly stupid. I would like to think it was more of the former then the latter but I suspect it was about equal parts of both. As soon as we were within hailing distance and foppish looking officer shouted something to us about surrender but I couldn’t speak Spanish and understood very little so I could honestly say I didn’t get the message.

As soon as my men ran out my guns, this time on my orders, the Spanish ship did the same. I had a mental image of a child with a popgun facing a man with a rifle, the comparison was fairly accurate. Within minutes I was reminded why sand was spread on the deck and the gun deck was painted red, it made the blood so much more bearable, though the limbs that were scattered about and the pile of deformed bodies was gruesome. A cannonball took out an entire gun crew and now I only had eleven guns, I could only hope that I had done half as much damage to their crew, I wanted them to remember us. At this moment my biggest fear was that I would become just another stupid fight that they could forget after a few beers, or whatever it was the Spanish sailors drank. I wanted them to remember me even if it was just to say that they had met a crazy Englishman who hadn’t known when to surrender.

A captain’s main job in situations like this was to stand still and emotionless for the whole crew to see and hope that a cannonball didn’t find him, or one of the snipers that was now raining down bullets on us. Our ship didn’t even have a company of marines so we couldn’t effectively shoot small arms back. There were the navel issue rifles that the sailors could use, but they were all too busy with the ship or the cannons, besides the rifles that the navy issued were more effective for clubbing then shooting.

A cannonball came flying extremely close to me to crash into our mast, the only good part of that is that the mast fell in the opposite direction of me. Without a mast we could no longer run, had we wanted to, and couldn’t maneuver at all. Even if we won this fight, an impossibility, we had no spare spars to jury rig temporary mast, we would be helpless to the waves, this had officially become suicide no matter what.

I suspect that before this I had held some vague notion that we might win this after all but the knowledge we would lose even if we won gave me new strength. The Spanish ship had come close enough to us that all it would take was one more broadside and the bottom would be blown out from under our ship, they would be shooting right into us at point blank range. Again the officer shouted something about surrender but I wasn’t paying attention to him, we didn’t even have a flag flying anymore to lower if we did want to surrender.

My sword found its way into my hand, to this day I have no idea how it managed to be there, but I waved it as I charged. With me came the remainder of my sailors who could still move, I was appalled how few of us there were. I had somewhere picked up a cut on my arm, I had no idea how, I suspected a splinter had hit me but I didn’t remember it. As a pitiful shower rather then a wave, we splattered into the line of defenses on the Spanish deck.

My mind goes totally blank, except for the blurriest memories, fogged by madness and bloodlust at this point. I know people fell before me and I know that friends fell around me, but if I could tell the difference then I don’t know how because I don’t even remember looking at faces at that point. I had heard before that people went battle crazy sometimes but I had never had the opportunity to experience it for myself before. I only came to myself with three swords pressed to my throat and it still took me a while before I stopped struggling.

“Do you surrender?” asked a man in Spanish officer’s clothing in accented English. I didn’t say anything at first, just looked around as much as the swords at my neck allowed, some few survivors from my ship were being guarded farther up the deck where they had clearly given up the fight. The Spanish were already moving the wounded from my ship to theirs, it was obvious that even though I had not officially surrendered the considered completely defeated.

“I surrender,” I said with a sigh and I handed the officer my bloodstained sword, I noticed that he took it with great distaste. Only after I handed over my sword were the swords that were pointed at me withdrawn, as a gentleman surrendering meant that if I were to do anything now I would forfeit my honor. The captain of the Spanish ship now approached, having apparently watched my disarming. He said something to the officer who had taken my surrender who translated for me.

“He says it was very brave and very foolish of you to try to attack our ship. He says that your ship is not worth bringing as a prize of the government Spain. We will burn her,” the officer told me. I felt a pang, I had known that the ship wouldn’t survive the holes that the Spanish had put in her but I had expected to die with her and therefore hadn’t cared. Now that it was apparent, in spit of the many wounds that I had apparently picked up during the fight and disregarded, that I would live I regretted the lose of my ship greatly. The captain said something else and the officer translated again.

“He would like to know the name of the crazy man who fights like a mad dog,” the officer explained.

“Commander Mathew Witt at your service, sir,” I said, making a slight bow. If I was going to be a prisoner then I was going to at least make a show of being a gentleman about it. At the moment they thought I was a mad dog and that didn’t show England off in a good light.

“We will show you and your officers to the accommodations we have set aside for you for your very short stay on our ship,” the Spanish officer told me. Being and officer had its advantages, I reminded myself, even a disgraced officer. They didn’t keep you in the same pit they threw your sailors; you got your very own personal pit, with other people who befitted your station.

The officer had been honest when he had said that my stay on their ship would be a short one. They didn’t have far to travel to drop us at a fort to rot of course, not with Ferrol right there. There myself, and the five men who remained of my command, were deposited. My first Lieutenant, Levy, had died with most of the others; I had seen him fall even before the madness of battle had overtaken me. The second mate and Engels were among the survivors though and that made my imprisonment slightly easier. Because we were both officers, though of different ranks, I shared a cell with the second mate and Engels was allowed to be our servant. He still managed to get drunk I noticed, though not as frequently, but it was a talent that baffled even the Spanish guards much to my amusement.

To be continued...

The Exile Ship

Being banished, after a fashion at least, to parole the North West coast of Spain wasn’t what I wanted out of a career in the navy. There was a time when I had been a very ambitious young man, perhaps a little too ambitious. Admiral Jervis felt that way in any case. Favor, and disfavor, can affect someone a lot in the navy, especially when the person who is upset with you is someone as powerful as Admiral Jervis. I had risen to the position of commander when I met with him but I’m not likely to reach a higher position as it is. I don’t have any powerful family members or friends who could even start to regain my lost reputation with the Admiralty.

My ship is called the Maria; she was a prize of the last war that the Admiralty then commissioned to carry dispatches. Now that she is getting older and slower she isn’t any use at that anymore. Now they are using her as a fine place to throw everyone they don’t want, including her commander, me. That means the disobedient, the stupid, the diseased, the crazy, and of course other people who got on the wrong side of someone with influence.

My ship is the last to get new supplies, and when we do get new supplies they are always the worst quality. I don’t have enough power to sway the all powerful dockyards, or the money to. When I get kegs of water it has already been in the barrel long enough to go rancid, the same goes for our cheese and meat as well. Our biscuits have more then one ship’s share of weevils in them. Our spirits have always been watered down, undoubtedly earning someone a couple extra shillings on the side. Dockyard corruption is famous and my ship is one of their favorite targets.

Normally I, as the commander of the ship, would have my own food to eat that would be well above what the common sailors have but I have the misfortune of being poor. This means that I have to eat the same poor slop that all of the common sailors eat, including the spirits rations, I am unable to even afford wine on my meager pay. The sailor who acts as my steward has commented on the fact that I should get captains stores but he has never told me how I am supposed to get the money to do so. I don’t think he knows how poor I am and it wouldn’t befit my dignity to tell him.

The Admiralty expects nothing of my ship and I know it. We are charged with the duty of making sure that no ship leaves Ferrol but since the port in question is obviously not equipped to supply any ships with goods or supplies it seems like a pointless exercise. Spanish ships might of course take refuge there, under the guns of the fort, if a British ship was chasing them but in that case the other British ship would be there to take over the whole operation. I may not be at the bottom of the Admiralty list of commanders, therefore I might be superior to any new comer, but the new comer would probably be aware of my statues in the navy and give me orders anyway. I have resigned myself to my lot over the last year of this life, if you couldn’t tell by my tone, and it isn’t all bad.

Even though no one expects anything of me I still keep my ship in fighting order, mostly as something to do. I could probably relax ship discipline a little without anyone complaining but I have observed that increases the problems that one has with the crew. There is no way for them to desert out here in the middle of the ocean, on a foreign coast, especially since most of them can’t swim or speak Spanish, but there are still fights and disobedience that have to be worried about. The main concession that I make is that you will never see a starter on my deck. The ropes end that many petty officers use to make men work faster have been officially outlawed on my deck as being pointless.

Other then that one concession I keep my crew in normal order. We have gun drills regularly, more then on a normal ship in fact, since we lack anything better to do. My crew was soon clearing for action and running out the cannons about as fast as I figured the admirals crew could manage. I quickly learned that even the total landsmen that made up a fair portion of my crew, dredged up from farms and prisons, could be taught anything about a ship provided you had enough time to teach them, I had a lot of time. The Admiralty of course discouraged cannon practice with real charges because they said it was a waste of ammunition, which was expensive. That meant that while a lot of crews could be fast at running out guns and going through the movements few of them could aim properly and gage the distance when they had to. Having nothing to lose, already being out of favor, and little chance of real engagement I squandered our powder on target practice recklessly.

We also had sail drills, even my one armed cook, who had once been a great topsail man participated in those. It became a race between the Starboard and Port watches who could be faster at shaking out a reef or taking in sail. I encouraged competition like that since it made the men happier and God new that they needed something to be happy about.

Sunday morning I woke up late, no one bothered to wake me since my lofty position, on the ship anyway, made it so that I didn’t have to stand watch. Unless there was a dire emergency that my junior officers couldn’t take care of, I was able to sleep until the noon if that was what I cared to do. I got up and got dressed just the same, it being the first Sunday of the month I was obliged to read the Articles of War by navy regulations. It was an occasion that demanded I dress in proper uniform out of respect for the document that we all lived and died by. In many respects it got a lot more respect on board ship then the bible.

I had only just finished reading the final article and the men were breaking up from their assembled positions to return to whatever they should be doing, when the lookout called out. At first I couldn’t hear him, he was a young midshipman, only about twelve, and his shrill voice didn’t carry well over the wind. Finally I could make it out.

“A sail Sir, by God,” said my first Lieutenant. I could understand his excitement, there were only two possibilities as to what a sail could mean, it could mean an enemy or it could be a friendly supply ship. In either case there would be excitement. An enemy ship hadn’t ventured near in months, they liked to sneak around even my pathetically weak ship then endanger their precious stores. A friendly supply ship would bring news of home and the war, as well as food to eke out our dwindling store.

“What do you make of her?” I called up to the boy far above. It wasn’t very becoming my dignity to shout like a junior officer but the excitement was enough through the whole ship that I doubted anyone would care.

“I can’t tell yet, Sir,” the boy yelled back.

“Go take a look and tell me what you think,” I told Engels. He was one of my more experienced able bodied seamen. His main problem was his drunken habits, which had made him driven from every other ship he had ever been on. Drinking is common enough in the navy and many sailors would drink to excess but few are able to get their hands on drink as often as Engels was. I could never figure out how he would manage it, I could have the spirit store locked in my cabins and he would still show up on duty dead drunk and reeling.

To be continued...

Sweet Insanity II

I quickly discovered that getting locked up as a nut case was more complicated then I thought. It would have been easier if my wife hadn’t selfishly insisted on having doctors and psychologists inspect me to try and figure out why I had apparently gone insane. Everyone who talked to me of course said that I was harmless even if I was a nut case, that’s because I am. I never wanted to hurt anyone to prove that I was crazy, in this case I hoped that words would speak louder then actions.

It was months, months of still living with mild responsibilities with my family, until the doctors finally gave up on me. There was one particularly determined one who was sure that I was just faking it since my insanity didn’t fall into any of his categories. He was right of course and I was starting to wonder if I shouldn’t have read up more on psychology before this so I could decide what kind of crazy I was going to be. Now that I am in the mental health hospital I understand that there are a lot of types to choose from.

Now that I’ve been in here for a while I am starting to get bored. I mean yeah, there are no responsibilities, which is nice, and I get taken care of, no worries, all of that, but the act is tiresome. I’ve slowly been letting it slip, not fast enough to cause any comments; I just can’t keep it up any more. People are starting to use words like functional to describe me which bothers me a little. If they decide that I can function that probably means that they will make me. I suppose the vacation is over, though it lasted long enough that I now feel ready to face to world again.

Sweet Insanity

I decided to go crazy, it was a conscious effort, and it was an effort. You aren’t crazy until you can do away with social conventions and doing away with social conventions is harder then you would imagine. Having been raised as sane my whole life it was difficult to cast off that idea, as hard as I tried. For a long time I was considered simply eccentric, which wouldn’t do at all.

The idea of insanity first came to me when I realized how easy it was, I mean the life of a crazy person. When you are crazy then you don’t have to do anything, you sit in your room and people bring you food and take care of you, which sounded like a good life to me. No decisions to make, no work to do, no money to make, no bills to pay, that sounded beautiful. There was the problem with what my family would think if I suddenly went crazy but I soon realized that thinking about that was my first problem. If I was to go crazy then it would be their problem, not mine.

My first step towards insanity was that I started to wander the streets, digging through trashcans. I would sometimes not come home for days at a time, not go to work, and just wander the streets, talking gibberish to people. I think that my favorite line was “for I too can tell a hawk from a handsaw,” the only problem was when I ran into people who knew Hamlet.

Several times my wife sent the police to go find me and they would bring me home, lecturing me the whole time. My wife cried a couple of times, which made me feel a little guilty, but I told myself I wouldn’t feel bad once I was crazy. Other people’s feelings aren’t your business when you’re crazy. My children were just ashamed of me and that I didn’t mind at all, I didn’t care who didn’t like what I was doing, I was going crazy.

My next step in insanity, having gotten fired from my job and leaving home for a length of time, cleanly severing my ties to the sane world, was to surround myself with crazy people. I know that insanity isn’t contagious but I thought I might learn something from watching them. It’s harder to find crazy people then you’d think, there are people who others say are crazy but they usually aren’t. Finally I found a group of crazy people who hadn’t been found by the authorities yet and I got to know them pretty well.

There was one man who became my role model out of that group. He would stand on his head, every morning, and if you asked him why he would look at you like you were crazy. He drooled a lot, which always puts people off but looked like good fun to me. I tried it a couple of times but drooling voluntarily is harder then it looks. It looked as if being crazy was harder then it looked all around but I was sure that it would pay off in the end just like all hard work.

I finally went home after a few weeks of apprenticeship to the crazy men I had found. I had to admire the handy work I wrought on my family. Instantly my wife started to dial the mental health clinic and I had to stop myself from patting myself on the back, my plan had worked so well.

To be continued...

Twisting Thread

I made one loop and that was for Mother, a lovely woman who had moved to the country from the city to be with my Father, and that was another loop. My mother had been a high society girl, up on all of the fashions and always going out dancing with her friends. She was the daughter of a judge who then went into politics and made a name for himself. I still remembered my stern Grandfather, even though he had died a long time ago.

My Father had been a man born to a poor family on a farm. The eighth out of ten children, of course my grandparents on that side had no time for any one child so no one had paid a lot of attention to him. This my Father had quickly learned gave him a lot of opportunities to do whatever he wanted, including dating the judge’s daughter when his parents thought that he was helping somewhere on the farm.

When my parents got married both sets of grandparents were shocked. I guess Mother hadn’t told Grandfather about the country boy she was seeing just like Father hadn’t told Grandmother he was seeing the judge’s daughter. Well Mother’s father bought them a plot of land in the country for a wedding present just like they had wanted. So my parents settled down to farm in peace and they had several children, including me.

There’s another loop, that’s for my elder sister, Gillian. Gillian is one of the most charming and charismatic people I’ve ever had the pleasure to know. She always has a kind word for everyone, at least to their face, and that’s the problem. She decided to take after Grandfather and get into law and politics.

My older brother, I make a loop, his name was Gerald. He died young, joined the army and died with honor on the field of battle. I am glad of it; he didn’t have to see what happened later. I have always mourned him; don’t get me wrong, I wish that I had listened to his warning. A few days before he went to battle he told me to avoid Gillian and my future husband, that they would cause me trouble. I was always his favorite sister so he was worried about me, but I didn’t pay him any attention. He didn’t trust our younger sister much either.

Then there’s my younger sister and her loop, and I suppose that I can blame her as the source of all of my trouble. Her name is Grace, I wish she would live up to her name; I have never gotten along with her. She was the one to introduce me to my husband though, for which I don’t know if I should thank her or not, but there’s her loop done.

Here I am, already at my husband’s loop, Christopher. He was another politician, like my Grandfather. He did have a lot of charm, I will give him that, at first we all thought that he would hit it off with Gillian, they talked a lot together. In the end it turned out that their relationship was all business, politics in other words, and in romance I was his only interest though we had nothing in common.

Here we are at my loop, and I suppose I will have to actually think of my story, just as I have told the stories of the others as I make these loops. When I married Christopher I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I knew that he was a politician but even though my Grandfather and sister were in politics I knew nothing of politics. I had never taken an interest in such things. There would have been no way for me to realize that my husband and sister Gillian were in shady dealings together.

My sister Gillian has been in prison for the last two years, thrown to the wolves by my husband to get them off of his tail for a short time. My husband is gone now. I tighten the knot that I had been creating with our names and my thoughts, made by so many loops. I hung the knot on a string around my baby daughter’s neck before handing her to her nurse. I had no illusions that it would keep her safe; I have never been superstitious like that, but I thought it would be nice for her to have something of us. Then I stepped out of the house to face the angry mob, screaming for my blood in exchange for my husband’s sins.

A Better Trap II

“What are you looking to trap?” asked the man.

“I have a goblin running around my house and I’m trying to figure out how to get rid of it,” Mike admitted.

“About how large is it?” asked the man. It may have been Mike’s imagination but he thought that the man looked scornful at the mention of a goblin infestation.

“He’s about this tall,” Mike said, making a motion with his hand and flushing slightly.

“I don’t think we can help you,” said the man. “We don’t have any traps that large. You might want to go down to the exterminator for a job that large.” Mike didn’t leave in a happy frame of mind; he didn’t even look at the cash register beauty.

It took a few days before Mike finally grew annoyed enough with the destroyed food and torn wires to go to the exterminator. The final straw was when he found that the goblin had burrowed into the space in between his mattress and box spring and made a nest for itself. It never entered this nest at night, goblins were after all nocturnal and fairly intelligent, instead it slept there while he was at work. That was all fine and well except that it left things in its nest which made sleeping in the bed very uncomfortable.

When Mike finally found his way to the exterminators shop he was met with a scene that looked as if it was taken from a medieval torture chamber. The instruments of the man’s trade hung on the walls, from small enough for a baby mouse, to large enough for a badger, or a goblin.

The man who came out from the shops back room, hands covered in blood Mike instantly noted, looked like he fit right into the torture chamber motif. He was a large man, with a long beard and wiry hair that stuck out at strange angles from his head. He was even wearing a leather butcher’s apron.

“I was wondering if you could take care of a goblin problem?” Mike asked, trying not to look at the bloodstained hands.

“How many?” asked the exterminator.

“Only one that I know of but I can’t seem to get rid of him myself so I figured I’d call in a professional.”

“Small job,” the exterminator commented. “Hold on and I’ll make you an estimate.”

After Mike had shelled out the money, and the exterminator had carried away a squirming goblin with easy of long experience, Mike was finally able to sit down a think about how the goblin could have gotten in. He went over the house with a fine pick comb but never found any entrance it could have gotten into. It was only a few days later that he heard that the checkout girl at the local store had been raising a big fuss because her pet goblin had gone missing and that she was offering a large reward for it. She said that it had been trained to open doors and everything. Mike thought about the exterminators bloodstained hands and decided never to say anything about it, he never could look her in the eye again.

A Better Trap

It was after the first frost of the year, when the rodents and the insects began to find their way inside the house and every day is a battle against drafts coming through aged window frames, that Mike first caught a glimpse of the goblin. It was just darting behind the dresser when he saw it and by the time he got there it was long gone but the next day holes in the bag of bread confirmed it.

Mike hated to kill anything that he didn’t have to, it seemed like a waste, so he first set a live trap and bated it with a couple of the slices of the bread. Goblins are a little too smart for that he quickly discovered, he found the door of the trap had been propped open with one of his copies of Playboy, which the goblin had rolled up.

Since the goblin had refused to take the hint Mike decided it was going to have to go in a less pleasant fashion so he bought a glue trap, they were only a dollar something at the hardware store and highly recommended to him by one of his coworkers. He set out the trap and headed to his room, not because he was tired but because he knew that the goblin wouldn’t come out unless he was gone. Mike was sitting in his room, doing his homework for the first time in a week because he didn’t have anything else to do, when he heard a strange noise coming from the kitchen. He could only assume that he had caught the goblin.

Now Mike was confronted with a new and even less pleasant train of thought then the idea of the glue trap in the first place. Mike recollected having his mother tell him that you can’t get something out of a glue trap once it’s been caught, not without being bitten and catching goodness knew what kind of diseases. Mike’s mother had always told him that when she caught something in a glue trap she would just throw it out in the bushes by the back fence and allow it to freeze to death. It took Mike about an hour to gather up the courage to go into the kitchen to face this ordeal. The kitchen was empty, not only was there no goblin, there was also no trap, or any of his bread left from the shelf.

What drove Mike to finally buy a lethal spring trap was finding the glue trap, with the glue licked out of it, next to his bed one morning. That was when he decided that the goblin had to go no matter what, it was mocking him now. Winter had now truly descended on the city as Mike ventured out on his errand. His car was sitting in the driveway but the brakes weren’t working right on it anymore, making it dangerous to drive, and he couldn’t afford to get it fixed yet, so he walked to the store. It was probably only ten degrease below freezing but it felt colder because of the wind.

When Mike finally got to the store he felt too embarrassed to ask where the traps were and which ones worked best from the sales clerk who looked like an angel. He went to that store only to see her, though he had never gained the courage to talk to her, she was impossible to approach as she sat on her pedestal behind her till. Mike always went to a different check out, even when the line was longer.

After a fifteen minutes searching through the store he finally found the traps near the scented candles. They didn’t have traps large enough however; all they had were ones large enough for mice. Goblins might get their fingers broken, Mike decided, but they weren’t going to die from that, and by now he wanted this goblin to die.

“Do you have any larger traps?” Mike asked a nearby sales person in a hoarse whisper. Even with a entire store between them he didn’t want his checkout angel to know what he was looking for.

To be continued...

Finals and moving

I will probably not be posting for a while. I have papers to write, finals to study for, and then take. I am also moving and therefore packing. I will be going to a place without internet so while I will be writing a page a day I will not be updating as often.

Conversations II

“So I finally decide I won’t have anything to do with him again. I told him that, and then I blocked him from calling my cell. He’s no longer my friend on any chat, I took care of all that and thought it was over. I even started flirting with James and I told him I had broken up with my boyfriend. It looked like I really had a chance with him too.”

“So what happened? You said you two weren’t an item.”

Wouldn’t it just be easier to tell her you don’t care? Birds, a chickadee. Stop smoking. Oliver Twist. Newgate Prison. Lotion, hands dry. Shouldn’t write so much. Just a handful, sunflower seeds. Baking night, clashes with dance. Should decide. Grades.

“Then, and I haven’t told anyone else about this yet, I found out I’m pregnant.”

“What?!”

“Yeah, I know and I have no idea what to do. I mean of course it isn’t James’s. I’m three months along already they told me. I can’t juggle a kid and school.”

“So are you going to keep it?”

“I don’t believe in abortion, you know that.”

“I didn’t mean that, are you going to put it up for adoption though.”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

Three papers to write this week. Quiz in geo. Annoying girls. Rock salt. Rock Halite. Crystals structure, diamonds. Bandana, hair cut soon. Time, need time. Daddy, you want to get the best for me. Check mail, IRS.

“Of course I’m not going to tell him, I told you, I don’t even have his number anymore.”

“You could still find it out. I think you should tell him. Give him the chance to do the right thing.”

“He’s not someone I want around any kid of mine if I decide to keep it or not.”

“I still think you should tell him.”

“Well I’m not going to. I need to get to class though; I’ll talk to you more later. Will you be online later?”

“I should be.”

Close the window. No more. Dumb. Homework, dinner, party, boring, so boring. Pennies, penny saved, penny earned. Jar, jam molding, and wash it out. Go eat. Shower, date later, and don’t really want to go. Homework, granite, Dickens, Wellington. Stupid people talking. Can’t hear them now.

Conversations

“We met at the party a few months ago; I know I told you about him then. Only then I thought it was only a one night stand.”

“So it was more then that?”

“Well we hadn’t realized it before but we shared a class together and it was a little awkward for a bit.”

“I can imagine.”

Shut up, please shut up, the French, fighting instructions, Nelson. Where did I put? Oh. Wake up, wake up, Darling Corey. Cochrane, disgraced, use of poison gas, Russia. E-mail from father. Get out early and never have any kids yourself.

“Well our first official date went well; he bought me dinner at Bella’s.”

“Well at least he isn’t a cheapskate.”

“Wait. So I spent the night at his place that night and I figured we were going out, even though we hadn’t really talked about it.”

“Well yeah, I mean he took you out to Bella’s, sounds like a date to me.”

“Exactly, so I tell that really hot guy in Chem. that I’m seeing someone.”

If you’re going to talk can it not be outside my window? Things to do, busy. Is my laundry done? Twenty minutes still. Dinner looks like trash. Must listen to that song again. Grilled fish sounds good. Free pizza if I feel out that survey, I should. Napoleon, navel power, should underline that.

“Oh, you know him? Yeah, that’s right, brown hair and looks a little punk but totally cute. Well so the guy who I thought I was dating then doesn’t call me for a week and I start to wonder what’s going on. I called his cell a couple of times but he never got back to me. Finally I see him again on my way to class and I’m so mad I decide that I’m going to talk to him instead of going to class.”

“What did you say to him?”

Done, finally done, now on to English. First a break. I wish they would shut up. Could yell, cause a fight. Already unpopular. Could, won’t. Vitamins. Should go get a hamburger. Haven’t eaten. Haven’t slept. And did those feet in ancient times. Hate school. Hate people. Shut up.

“He really took you out again after all that?”

“Yeah, to Bella’s again even. After all of that he calls me up finally and asks if I would like to go to dinner with him. How could I say no? He was so sweet during the dinner and I forgave him completely. I went home with him again.”

“Again, didn’t you learn the first time?”

“I know, I know, but he was so nice through the whole dinner that I totally forgot. He even took me shopping, he was such a sweetheart that I forgot what he had said to me before completely.”

“He was totally taking advantage of you. You should have said yes to James and forgotten about that guy. Yeah, he’s a Chem. Major which is a little geeky but he’s so cute.”

Do both of you really care. All an act, you vent, you make noise. So annoying. What does it get you? Dickens. Today’s Dickens then. Pages, lots of pages, and I don’t have time. Look them over anyway. Crackers. Any cheese left?

To be continued...