Winds of Fate [Books IV - VI]

Chapter 181.2: Chosen One

The crew remains quiet, unable to even nod, for they feel the weight of her words now, and Anton, seeing she is not to be persuaded, can only sigh deeply. Torkin pats his trousers to urge him to sit, and Poco pulls him down with a tiny bite. He follows, for he understands her... perhaps not as her husband, worried for her. But as a fellow captain, who takes responsibility for her men.

"Boston changed the path of my life." Eleanore crumples her skirt. "Mama and Papa had little love for each other, and he chose to leave even after we warned him of the weather. To England. To the King, to get his mission." She shakes her head. "Papa and his ship sank. He was met by the Sea-Devil himself." She bites back her tears. "I heard it from his dead crew. I heard it from Hendrik Van Der Decken, who Jones possessed to do the raid. Just like that."

Anton watches for the Doctor.

And as expected, Doctor Wells covers his gasp at what he just wrote.

Aggy winces. "Goddamn that monster." And James thoughtfully agrees across her. Eugenie remains quiet beside Victor, torn by how they can now see the life of their captain, and how she is tied to a larger plan.

"It left me and Mama alone. I still asked why." Eleanore presses her knuckles to her eyes. "But we had no one to turn to in a foreign land. Despite the pain, I prayed, in my tears, to the God I knew in Spain. The same God the Puritans said they pray to also." She closes her eyes. "I know all of you have been through so much darkness and pain... it brought you here. Piracy."

The crew is silent at that, each thinking of the paths they took in life. Anton winces in pain. How many here have suffered so much? They lost their loved ones. Their way to work. Their good names, even. Yet, they all loved the sea... they can never leave her.

So when the world spat them out, they had spat back. Equally vile. Equally dark.

Hopeless.

"As a child..." Eleanore winces too. "I thought life was just all about death and burying the ones we love. A never ending sorrow. My father's death at sea broke my mother's heart and spirit." She trembles and doesn't look in their eyes, tearful ones like hers, having lost the people they love as well. "Then she died beside me, in that bare pigsty we called our home, during the winter... and-and‐" Aggy embraces Eleanore, seeing Anton cannot exactly reach her so far from him, and for that he is grateful. Eleanore sobs. "I was the one who sought a doctor, and Jones came instead. He replaced the poor physician, took his body and form, so that when I called, it was him who went with me. And... and he killed her." She weeps. "The Sea-Devil killed my mother and father."

No one but him knows that until now.

Thus everyone stares in horror. Anton clasps his hands tightly at the burning sorrow he shares for her. He would never forget how devastated Eleanore was when she told him in Nassau. And now, when before this crew did not understand their Captain's sadness and her tendency to withdraw and spare them her pain and fears and worries, now they know and they are greatly troubled, pained.

For they also now see the malice of Jones, in plain view.

Aggy is taken aback too, but Eleanore assures her she needs to relay the rest. "When she died, I was left all alone in the world. Not a coin on me. Nothing but the clothes on my back and my mother's last gift—our grandmother's medallion from the New World. Passed on, from mother to daughter. The food that the Rogers left me and those I bought with what I sold, I had stretched so far and ended up gone too. I ate moldy bread by the third month."  She shrugs. "I too was an urchin like many of you. I saw and avoided so many things in the streets... if I had taken you in, it is because I know how it felt to be all alone in this world, without a family and a home."