The Princess and The Pirate, Ch 9: A Bird in a Cage

Fioretta spent the night on the comparatively comfortable bed in the Captain’s cabin tossing and turning. Occasionally, she dozed off because of the rocking of the ship, but she awoke with a start six times during the night. She was up looking out the port hole when the first rays of light began to creep into her room. She had opted not to tell the maids about the impending separation from their entourage at this point: there was no need to scare them before the time came. As soon as she was able, she went back down to the hold where the men were being kept.

Their conditions had markedly improved. The men were now spread out throughout the hold in the eight cells the ship had. All the men were happy to see her and glad that she was well, but Fioretta was uneasy. Should she tell them what she knew? It would certainly stir them up, but would it do any good whatsoever? She hated the thought of being separated from her kinsmen, especially the captain and Christopher, the young knight with the curly hair. She talked with the men until their jailers came with the men’s breakfast and sent Fioretta upstairs with her escort.

Jeff seemed more like a faithful watchdog than a young man. He was so quiet Fioretta often forgot he was there. As she came up to the top deck with her breakfast, she was stunned to see the very island in question off the port bow. It seemed to be a wild place, completely overgrown with vines and the like. She saw nothing that would help the men from where she stood. Jeff took her back to the cabin, securing her in there while she and the maids ate their breakfast.

At ten o’clock, the men from a world that was becoming lost to her filed past Fioretta’s porthole. No one came to let her out. She watched in desperation as the men were herded into boats and taken to the island. She began to cry in her helplessness and banged violently on the door. The maids, of course, did not understand, because they could not even see out the porthole, but as they tried to soothe her, they caught a glimpse of what was happening and were soon hysterical themselves. What awaited them once they were alone with the pirates? Slavery? Worse?

Soon the small boats came back to the ship. Fioretta could tell the men had not even been untied. She wondered how in the world they would ever survive. It wasn’t until the ship was well underway that the Captain himself came to unlock the cabin door. Fioretta brushed past him and ran to the back of the ship. He followed her without saying a word. She watched the island shrinking in the distance until it was little more than a tiny dot on the horizon. When she turned around, he was still there with a solemn look on his face. The icy daggers from her eyes hit him, pricking him a thousand times over with poisonous barbs. She walked back to the cabin, refusing to say a word to him.

The three young women mourned the men as if they were already dead for the rest of the day. They ate nothing that was brought to them. They refused to walk the ship with their escort. They refused to speak with any of the pirates. They could truly do very little, but a women’s ways of showing displeasure have a way of hitting home with men. The pirates all knew the women were starving themselves in protest. Every time he looked at them, Captain Matthew's brows drew together almost in a knot.

The starvation took its toll on the women. None of them had ever missed a meal in their lives. They grew more and more tired. Fioretta’s exhaustion overtook her completely as her head hit the pillow that night; she could not help but fall asleep. She slept the entire night without waking even once. She actually slept through the next morning and awoke to the delicious smells of stew around two in the afternoon. The captain stood over her like a mountain.
"Good afternoon," he said when she opened her eyes.
She said nothing.

"You need to eat," he continued.

She looked toward the wall.

"I know you are upset, but it is for the best. Starving yourself will not help those men. They will all be fine. They were given maps to the supplies, and a tool to begin untying themselves. They will be fine. You need to eat."

She neither spoke nor moved.

"I will only say this one time. I will count to ten. If you have not begun feeding yourself, I will force you to eat it even if you spit out every single mouthful or vomit it back up. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six."
Fioretta sat up and jerked the spoon out of the Captain’s hand.

"Now, that’s the spirit," he said. He watched her eat every mouthful, and then he took the dirty dishes out of the room. Fioretta wondered why he had not given the maids food, too, but then she realized they were not in the room. Where were they?

She got up, dressed quickly and peeped out the porthole. There was Jeff, ever faithful. She knocked on the glass. He opened the door and looked at her questioningly.

"Where are my maids?" she asked.

Jeff said nothing. He just shrugged and closed and locked the door back. The afternoon crept by slowly as she wondered what horrors the two young women were undergoing. Why had she trusted that man?

Fioretta felt like a bird in a cage. It was strange how she had never felt that way while she was growing up locked away in the castle, yet she felt like that now. She looked at the silver mirror and brush set lying on an exquisitely carved vanity. What need did the Captain have of these things? She picked up the mirror and ran her finger along the edge. What woman had owned this lovely piece of artwork? She wondered whether the woman was alive or dead. If her life still graced this earth, how had the piracy acts against her changed her life? Had she been devastated? Did she have a life and constitution such that she could pick up the pieces and begin anew?

Fioretta considered how the act of piracy against her might affect her life. Taking for granted that she would eventually be reunited with her parents, she could conceivably suffer very little affect from this interlude, unless something dire happened to Christopher or the other members of their lost vessel. The Captain seemed hellbent on protecting her, even against her will. She stood a good chance of finding this day a distant memory—one to set aside forever or to use to her advantage during dinner-party gossip. If, however, things changed drastically, and her virtue and purity were attacked, she could become a ghost of her former self and perhaps even go mad. She could conceivably never be rescued, in which case, her life would never be the same again.

Fioretta set the mirror down and considered her options. Escape seemed impossible with fifty or so pirates on hand all the time and an entire ocean acting as prison walls. Her only real hope lay in someone finding her message in the bottle in time or in wheedling her way into some pirate's heart then using him to make her escape. Neither idea seemed likely, though she would keep each request fervently on her tongue each time she prayed. Of course there was that other hope - the hope in the bright young man with the curly hair and the striking blue eyes who was falling farther and farther behind on an island while she sat in the Captain's fine quarters. Though he worked as a lowly sailor, his heart held deep secrets and training unknown to all here but Fioretta. Yes. She could solidly put her hope in him.

She spent the entire afternoon thinking. It seemed like the pirates had totally forgotten about her except at 7:30 when Jeff brought her the evening meal. She ate a few mouthfuls, but she really could not eat any more. She did drink her entire glass of wine. Too much weighed on her mind. She took in a deep breath of salty air and lay down on the bunk in the room. She closed her eyes, almost against her will, and allowed the waves rocking the ship to lull her to sleep.