I was happy for two years. Then those letters changed everything. Laurence showed them to me; he'd hidden them in the bottom of a drawer. On them, there was the stamp of the navy and that of the governor of New York. There were clear coordinates and conditions written down: renounce piracy, surrender the vessel and everything in it, and let the navy capture the whole crew. Out of an envelope slipped an official document declaring a royal pardon for me and Laurence.
"No..." I checked the coordinates and realized that Laurence had led us there under false pretences. "What did you do, Laurence?" I growled, through clenched teeth.
"I'm sorry. I knew you wouldn't like this whole thing, that's why I kept it from you."
"Do you realize you're betraying us all?"
"Not everyone. Not you."
I stood up, abruptly, moving a few feet away from him. For the first time Laurence disgusted me. "So it's not a French merchant ship we're waiting for, but the British navy? Jesus Christ. We must get away from here! They'll be on us any minute now."
"Del... We're not going to do anything like that."
"Do you want to hang your entire crew? Really, Laurence? Really?"
"If those are the conditions for us to live a life worth living... then yes."
I couldn't even look him in the eye. I felt my muscles tense, my fists so tight that my nails pierced my flesh.
"I can't believe it," I muttered in a broken tone. There was a lump in my throat. "I can't believe what you're doing. Who are you?"
"Darling... Del. It'll all be fine. You will see that you will change your mind. Just trust me."
I spit in his face. My lump of saliva ran down his chin. He quickly wiped it off with the sleeve of his tunic and his eyes flashed dangerously.
"I have to..." I swallowed. "I have to go out there. I'll tell them what you did. We need to turn immediately." My head was spinning. I didn't know what to do. Sparking a mutiny meant killing Laurence. Doing nothing meant having the entire crew arrested.
"Are you going to kill me, Del?"
I looked around, as if searching for a third option, an easier solution, but it never came.
"I'll ask them to spare you," I said, though I knew something like that was unlikely.
And it was with that sentence that Laurence became altered. He grabbed me by the neck and threw me to the floor. I hit my head on the corner of the bed and lost consciousness.
When I woke up, my arms and legs were tied. There was an incredible noise outside the door, a sign that the raid had begun. I tried to free myself, but it was he who had taught me every trick I knew to untie myself from ropes and chains. He knew what I knew and had made it so that I could not free myself in any way.
When he came for me, he found me in tears. He was surprised; it was the first time he had seen me cry.
I didn't open my mouth for the next three weeks. I refused to sit with him at dinner, to be in the same room with him, to acknowledge his presence. The whole situation disturbed me in a way I couldn't bear. Laurence had grown grumpy at seeing me grow cold, silent as a sphinx. Laurence Baile, my husband, became for me a man to be afraid of. A man to run away from, a man to avoid when approaching me. He couldn't accept the fact that after what had happened on the Neptune, I had stopped regarding him as I used to. His fury was untameable, his hands a weapon against me.
All the members of the Neptune's crew, except Laurence and myself, were lied to the gallows. The story of their execution made the front page of every newspaper.