Posted by Barbanne on December 07, 2001 at 22:00:16:
Sykes Plantation stood on a rise to the north of the town of Portsmouth in the colony of Virginia.
It was an enormous holding with endless fields of tobacco and other crops, large herds of livestock, many outbuildings and the main plantation house, a sprawling affair with many rooms and wide shady verandahs all around.
Sykes was an Irish rogue who had fought against the soldiers of the English Crown in his native island and had been transported to the Americas where he had worked out his indentures and then assembled a vast fortune from smuggling, thievery and brute force and now was regarded as one of the gentry of Virginia. He had a beautiful wife, part English, part Cherokee and two gorgeous dark haired daughters.
Sykes was well known to the likes of Blackbeard and company and regarded them as, if not friends, at least acquaintances.
So why were we about to rob him?
For a long time Sykes had been rumoured to have a fortune in gold hidden within his mansion. Gold that had been sent by the Holy See to support the monasteries of old England but which had been stolen en route and had gone missing for a hundred years or more.
Sykes it was rumoured had found where it lay buried on the wild west coast of Ireland and had tortured and killed a dozen people to lay his hands on it.
Anne, Mary and Calico Jack were about to relieve Sykes of the catholic gold and I was to be their gofer.
I was terrified shitless. I'd say witless but believe me it was shitless!
Sykes had an army of black slaves who did all of the day to day work on his plantation and at night his great house was defended by a group of young slave men and women who patrolled his darkened estate clad only in the briefest loincloths, their gleaming ebony skin making them almost invisible, to say nothing of being the sexiest guards imaginable.
Anne told me she and Mary would despatch these naked warriors as necessary and it was my job to conceal the bodies.
"Yer not fussed by dead folks Barbanne?" she asked.
"Oooooeeerrrrggghhh," I said and my eyeballs rolled around.
"Yer'll be alright girlie."
We cast off in a row boat just on the midnight hour and with muffled oarlocks rowed ashore in the mangroves below the Plantation house.
All out and Anne, Mary, Calico Jack and me scrambled ashore. Now I knew why those boots needed to be knee high as I sank ankle deep in the slimy mud. I hate this I thought. I hate mud and seawater and bloody bloody mosquitoes. How come I know I hate seasides I wondered but it was too much to be concerned with right now.
We pulled our boat into the mud and tied it to a mangrove tree.
The grounds of the plantation came down to the water line here so once we had cleared the swamp we were at the bottom of the lawns that led to the big house.
Like four wraiths (or was that three wraiths and a dork) we hastened from shade patch to shade patch until we could see the front of the plantation house quite clearly.
The house itself and the surrounding grounds were lit by flickering flares stuck on bamboo poles and the resultant light made it very bright and also made the task of approaching stealthily almost impossible.
Together we crouched in a patch of deep shade and surveyed the scene.
I was wriggling around, very uncomfortable and wishing I had a bra (how did I know about them?) visualising lacy cups holding my sweaty breasts in restrained comfort when Anne grabbed my shoulder and hissed, "Be still you little fidget."
I froze and stayed that way and in the light of the flares we saw one of them!
Loping past like some wild African creature of the veldt. A leopard was what I thought of. But this was a young woman, just out of her teens and with an oiled ebony body to die for. Her only garment was a scrap of cloth tied around her waist and looped between her thighs, covering her sex. Like a g-string I thought and then I thought, "what's a g-string and why did I think of that?"
Her buttocks protruded like two polished orbs and glistened in the reflected light from the flares. But they were like no other orbs I had ever seen. They rotated as she walked, sliding past each other like well oiled machinery. I supposed my ass moved girlie style too but I didn't imagine any queue forming to look at my bare butt. This girl's ass wow! And her breasts, which were totally bare, sloped out from her chest with needle like nipples protruding from their crowns and then the undersides curved back into her rib cage like gloriously soft melons. And that rib cage, ah, like a sculpted statue by the greatest of masters it shone with healthy muscle tone and her soft tummy curved out like a tightly drawn bow. Legs that emerged from her butt and went forever with superb thighs, calves and neat ankles and long delicate feet. Her face was negroid with full lipped, drowsy eyed beauty topped by tightly curled black hair. This girl was a babe in the hundred and ten percent class and I realised I was holding my breath watching her. I also felt waves of jealousy wafting from both Anne and Mary and neither of them was a slouch in the woman department. As for Jack, pure animal lust was what came off of him, I could smell it!
Then another girl emerged from the shadows and she was, if anything, even more gorgeous.
Naked black amazonian pulchritude.
Amazing!
And they could fight!
And we were here to try and destroy them. I felt vaguely sickened by the thought.
"Come with me Barbanne."
I don't know whether Anne said it or I just imagined it. I felt her touch on my shoulder and then we were slipping across the darkened lawns in a crouching run. The two guards had parted and the first one I had noticed had gone on and the other was walking away to our right. Obviously they did circuits of the house. Anne and I (boy that girl could move quickly) were on our way to a point of intersection with this second black girl. When we were almost beside the house Anne sank down onto the grass and I followed suit rather clumsily.
The superb black girl paused and looked around.
Had she heard something?
We kept deathly quiet. She walked on and as she came so close I could see the sweat drops on her face, Anne suddenly rose up like some ghostly spirit and she and the black guard embraced and I saw steel flash and glint in the light of the flares and then the black girl grunted and fell to the ground.
Anne said, "Here Barbanne."
I scuttled across.
The guard was dead, killed by a clean thrust under the left breast and into her heart.
Her brown eyes were wide open and fixed and glazing, her full lipped mouth gaped open, red blood rimming her very white teeth.
"Get rid of her," said Anne, "put them where no-one will notice tonight."
THEM!
"Er....er.....," I said.
"Quick girl, in a pile over yonder under the pines."
I grabbed the dead guard by the wrists and tugged.
Oooower she was heavy.
I got closer and tucked my hands under her armpits. I could feel the slight dampness where she had been perspiring and now was cooling in death. I got down in a squat and smelt her musky odour, the scent of her skin and her sex now overlain with the starting smell of death. A faint coppery smell of hot blood recently spilt and the waft of a body cloaked over by the ending of life, of vitality.
I straightened up grunting and the girl came with me, her head lolling on her slender neck. I set off backward dragging determinedly and puffing with exertion. The girl's body drooped from my grasp and her heels slid silently across the dew wet grass. When I reached the deep shade in between the pines I laid her out on her back and straightening slowly inhaled a few deep breaths.
"Barbanne."
A sort of hissed "pssssssttt," noise.
I trotted back toward the house and Anne called, "Here."
I changed course and went over to where she stood over the recumbent form of the second guard. This one had succumbed to a knife thrust under the chin. I got hold of her under the armpits in my dragging grasp, almost as though I were about to wrestle her dead corpse and set off for the trees. In under the spreading pines I laid her out beside the other.
Three more times I was summoned and three more times I found Anne standing above another slain black girl. Each time I struggled with the corpse to drag her into my treed sanctuary. I dumped the new arrivals over the others and when I had finished I had five corpses lying in a neat heap with toes and tits pointing upwards, arms interlocked and hands curled by sides and faces gazing upward into the trees seeing nothing of the beauty of the night, just eternity.
I returned to the house which was now unguarded, but of my companions I found no trace. A window stood open, the blackness inside a room framed by the white painted timber. I scrambled inside and stood for a moment adjusting to the lack of light.
When I could dimly make out the outline of the room in which I found myself I crossed to where a door stood just ajar and cracking it open peered out into a dimly lit corridor.
I thought I could hear something away to my left and set out in that direction. I passed several doors and a cross passage while following the faint sounds I could still hear. At the end of the corridor I found myself at the door to a large room and in the far corner I thought I saw my three fellow buccaneers stooping down beside a large, but low wooden cupboard.
I opened my mouth to form the word "Anne" and a huge, rough hand clamped itself over my mouth. Another hand gripped both of mine and pulled them behind me.
A lantern was thrust into the room and in its glow I saw the faces of my companions turned toward me wearing expressions of mingled frustration, surprise and irritation.
"So Cap'n Jack, Anne Bonney and, Mary Read I do believe. To what do I owe the honour of this midnight visit and answer quickly if ye please or yer friend here will have an extra cake hole in her face.
The hand clamped over my mouth disappeared and I felt the sharp prick of a blade pressing into my neck just below where my jaw joined my windpipe.
"Er....er....er......er," I managed.
"Sykes," said Jack. "well met man, we'd a come looking for ye but we'd no wish to disturb yer sleep."
"Where are my guards?"
"Indisposed, I suspect," said Anne.
"Mebbe I'll indispose this gal then," said Sykes, for him it obviously was in whose grip I found myself.
"Ooooow," I managed and my eyes started sliding upward and I felt the chill that precedes a fainting spell.
"Let her go man, she's but a girl and no great danger to yerself."
The knife disappeared and I felt a hand in the middle of my back and I was shoved violently forward. I landed on my knees and just stayed there, looking back and forth.
Sykes, if this was he, was a huge unkempt man, all wild hair and gimlet eyes and sheer bulk, standing there in his night gown with a silvery dagger in his hand. Beside him a tall thin man carried the lantern.
"What'll ye be after then?" said Sykes, "as though I didn't know."
"Well Sykes, we are pyrates you know?" said Anne.
"The catholic gold? Aye its a myth ye understand."
"We're not convinced of that man," said Calico Jack.
"As we've been doing business before I'll give ye one minute to get out of here," said Sykes. "And tell that whoreson Blackbeard that if there's a next time I'll cut off his balls myself."
My female opening shrank and shrivelled at the very thought.
"And take this baggage with ye."
A big foot planted itself on my bum and I was propelled forward scrabbling at the floor and slithering in a most undignified manner.
The man beside Sykes carried a long flintlock of the sort favoured by mountain hunters and he brought this up and clicked the hammer back noisily.
Anne darted forward and grabbing the backside of my pants hoicked me up.
"We'll be back ye know Sykes," said Jack.
"Like hell," said Sykes.
We left.
To say we fled hints at cowardice and I can only vouch for myself that that was so. In any case we made remarkable time back to our boat and then back to the Adventure.
As soon as we were back aboard, the ship up anchored and sailed into Chesapeake Bay.
To say Blackbeard was unhappy is one of the great understatements of all time.
And I copped most of the blame.
"Stupid, stupid, stupid, dumbass, bloody bitch. Why did yer take her Jack? Anne, answer me that? Mary, was it yer idea to take this dopey fuckwit along? Lord sakes and the gold as good as ours except for this dumb cunt."
Stuff like that.
Like I said Blackbeard was pissed and so I made myself scarce.
We sailed up the bay and hove to off Tangier Island where the pyrates had a base.
A whole fleet of pyrate ships from just about everywhere were assembled there.
And that evening everyone went ashore to the low rambling tavern which dominated the settlement.
Their intention was to get thoroughly pissed. Totally rat assed.
And me not a drinker at all.
Anne and Mary took me with them and as we rowed ashore Anne asked me, "Have ye ever fought much Barbanne?"
"Never," I said.
"Not at all, not even maybe a bitty catfight with the other lasses when ye were a kiddie?"
"Never ever."
"Do ye fancy it?"
"Absolutely not."
"Hmmmmmnnnn."
"What hmmmmmnnnnn?"
"Well, you see when we come ashore here at Tangy its sort of a tradition for all the gals to have a bit of a stoush for the lads.............its sort of expected aye."
"Not me."
"Well Barbanne I'm afraid it is ye whether ye like it or not. Its EXPECTED."
"But.........but, I'll be hopeless."
"Aye ye probably will."
"I could get hurt."
"Aye ye could at that."
"In the tavern? But I don't even drink."
"Aye well, ye'll be trying lots new tonight."
"Do you two fight in this..................stoush for the lads.
"Oh yeah, that we do!!
When we arrived at the tavern it was crowded.
Packed.
Filled with humanity.
The booze was flowing freely and the whole fleet, or so it seemed, was assembled around a cleared space were the "stoush" was to take place.
To be continued.