The Curse of the Pirate King

The Curse of the Pirate King


February 29, 1824 – off the Yucatan Peninsula.


Cannonades of lightning shattered the storm's eerie green dimness and turned wind-ripped spume to white flame.  Alone on the deck, Captain Jean Laffite steered his crippled flagship through the gale. 

The hurricane had blown up in the night without warning and mauled Pride for sixteen grueling hours, carrying away almost everything above decks.  Tall masts that had once driven the vessel were now only splintered stumps anchoring tangled rigging, cable, and fallen spars.  The deadly wrack scoured the mid-deck with each roll and pitch from wave’s fury.  Pride could only run with the storm. 

Tied to the wheelstand, Captain Laffite rode his ship's plunging deck, battered by wind, rain, and spray.  He'd been there when the plunging mizzenmast had killed his first mate.  The rest of Pride's crew was either drowned or cowering below decks.  Captain Laffite couldn't blame them; the storm was not natural.  Voodoo had raised a tempest on his birthday and Jean Laffite feared he knew why. 

Nailed to the deck beside him, a linen flag fluttered madly in the gale.  This drapeau du veve was covered with voodoo symbols, each dedicated to a voodoo loa spirit.  It was the only tool for calling upon the voodoo loa that could survive the storm. 

No matter, thought Jean Laffite.  Most of his life he’d secretly been a sorcerer, a houngan to the gods of voodoo.  Those loa would hear the call of their servant.  He raised his voice to the Mysteries and called loa Shango, master of storms.

Jean felt a presence right away, almost as if the loa had been waiting.  Pride pitched viciously, thunder cracked and the ship somehow stopped atop a wave.  Wind howled and rain slashed as she balanced there, timbers groaning.  Between blinding stabs of lightning the loa manifested above the mid-deck.  Instead of Shango, Mademoiselle Charlotte floated before Jean.

No gust stirred Mademoiselle’s dusky rose gown and her pale Caucasian skin outshone the storm.  In her left hand she held a black rooster by the feet, in her right a satin parasol.  The hanging rooster, an aspect of the death-guide loa Maman Brigitte, eyed Jean greedily.  The pirate king knew the storm's reason was now before him.

“Ah, my love, why would Shango quell your storm when it is I to whom you owe a debt?”  Mademoiselle Charlotte's French was perfect.

 “Debt?”  Jean shook his head like a lion and roared over the gale’s din.  “You?”

“Come, come, Jean, you remember.”  Lightning cracked with her frown.  “I promised to favor you, convinced my brothers and sisters to help.  You've lived like a prince, even called yourself king.”  Her smile paled the lightning.  “I assured your fame and fortune these three decades, for which you swore me your son.  You’ve reneged.”

“Lie!”  He momentarily released the wheel to point.  “Your promises all turned to ash!  Outlaw to my own America, commander of a broken fleet, my men ragged and starving--where is my good fortune now?  Yet my son, your payment, awaits you in New Orleans!”
  
Mademoiselle’s lip curled in a delicate sneer.  “That harlot Marie Laveau, whom you chose for the mother, duped my Father Damballa into the boy’s protection.  I dare not cross Damballa, father to all loa.  You owe me a son.” 

“So,” Jean muttered, “neither got what we desired.”

“Hardly, sweet Jean.”  She winked and blew him a kiss.  "You received everything you asked for."

“I was a foolish youth!"  Regret tinged Jean's angry reply.

"You were strong," Mademoiselle sighed.

"You seduced me," he whispered.

"It didn't take much."   Her smile grew crooked and sparks flew from her eyes.

"You tricked . . . ”  A fountain of seawater choked the rest.

“Enough," Mademoiselle snapped.  "Forfeit yourself to my service,” she said, then raised the rooster, “or send your soul on death's journey with the Gede.”

“No!”  Teeth bared, Jean clutched Pride’s wheel as the seas waxed mountainous around the becalmed ship.  “I’ll not be your slave nor go quiet to death!”  He laughed fiercely.  “You must kill me or call us even, betrayer.” 

“Prideful, stubborn man."  Mademoiselle Charlotte stamped the air petulantly.  "Neither, then,” she said.  “A curse upon you and yours, Jean Laffite.  If I cannot have you, then neither shall Death.” Her eyes glowed with spite.  “And while you beg for Death’s surcease, all of your blood will suffer with you.”  She gave a courtesy and disappeared. 

Mournfully croaking a stream of Creole obscenity, the rooster faded as well.

The storm redoubled its fury.

Pride dove off the wave's crest and knifed half her length under the sea before wallowing back to even keel.  The following wave rose like an iron-grey hill, then a cliff, then a curling maw as Pride mounted the swell.

“I am Captain Jean Laffite,” he howled, “King of Barataria, Hero of New Orleans!”  His beloved ship shuddered and lost way far short of the wave’s crest, began slipping astern.  “Ever betrayal, never justice!  I will have revenge!” 

Spinning her wheel hard, he tried to bring Pride about before the mountain of water.  The brave ship turned, but heeled over as the giant crest rolled down.  Caught abeam, Pride capsized and the spray-fanged wave swallowed her whole. 

Last of the privateer kings, Jean Laffite died as he'd been born, in mystery.


August 22, 2027 – Central Africa.


Sgt. Jimbo Cartier ducked back from the side door as small arms fire plunked into the old HH-60G2 Pave Hawk.  Locate and evacuate had just become search and rescue. Sgt. Cartier couldn’t help but remember and agree with the last transmission they’d been tracking; “Just make sure I get home.”

He keyed open his mike, clutched his safety strap as the helicopter jinked and slewed.  Jimbo saw the new guy sitting across the cabin, head between his knees, holding a barf bag over his face.

“Sorry, Chief, didn’t see anything,” he called to the flight crew in the forward cabin.  Twin turbines whined, the airframe creaked and pinged.  “Too much incoming.”   Search and rescue my ass, he thought.  I just hope this rattletrap holds together, for all our sake.

“That’s enough of that shit.”  CWO Walters, mission pilot, throttled up and maneuvered the helicopter toward safer altitude.  “Keep your head down back there, Jimbo.  We got help coming.”

 As the Pave Hawk turned to orbit the rescue coordinates, Jimbo could clearly see that help.  The UAH-3a Yaqui seemed to rise out of the African veldt, a sleek, cybernetic predator on the hunt.  To Jimbo the unmanned autonomous attack helicopter looked like something from an alien invasion movie.

The Yaqui curved smoothly over the savannah, then suddenly spun, assumed a nose-down attack posture.  Hydra Missiles streamed from the wing-mounted pods, each detonating over the veldt and launching a deadly load of flechettes.  Within seconds over twenty thousand projectiles blanketed the target area.  Before the dust cleared the Yaqui swept over the area, gun turret swiveling back and forth to deliver precise radar-guided bursts into the murk. 

Hope our boy ain’t in the middle of that shit, Jimbo thought.  Still, he was sure any tribals who happened to survive would keep their heads down now.

CWO Walters didn’t wait for an all-clear to resume the operation.  A fellow soldier was down there somewhere, waiting for help.  If the tribal insurgents got to him first, they’d chop him up and carry away the body parts.  For the tribals it was a terror tactic; for Walters it meant unacceptable failure.

In the end, the Pave Hawk crew had to dismount and conduct a foot search under the comforting presence of the hovering Yaqui.  They found Sgt. Alvarez half-buried under a thorny bush, dead.  The crew didn’t talk as they bagged and loaded the corpse.  After the Pave Hawk lifted off, Jimbo keyed his mike. 

“I don’t get it, Chief,” Jimbo said. “Why would the tribals bury him like that?”

“They didn’t.”  Walters shook his head, not caring if Jimbo couldn’t see him.  “He knew he wouldn’t make it.  Buried himself so they wouldn’t find him.  Jammed his microphone open to make sure we could.”  Walters exchanged a glance with his copilot.  “That’s dedication.”

Jimbo reached out and turned the G&R tag so he could read the name.

“You got what you wanted, Sgt. Alvarez.  You’re going home.”

 
February 29, 1876 – An abandoned blacksmith's shop, Rue Bourbon, New Orleans.

 
The Carnival clamor of Mardi Gras was hardly dulled by the old French style brick-between-post walls of the old blacksmith’s shop.  Two women held up lamps against the darkness, revealing their fine mulatto features and gleaming satin ball gowns.  The older of the two took a long look around the room, pointed to a tall work stool near the door.

“Bring that, Jamie,” she said to her niece, then hefted the carpetbag and stepped carefully through the disarray.

“Auntie Marie,” Jamie announced after examining the stool, “it’s dirty."

“Just fetch it, mon cher, if you ever want to get to the D’vereaux masquerade.”  Marie pushed a tangle of junk off the outer hearthstones of the fireplace, careful to keep her skirt hems clear.

“Grandmaman told me not to get dirty . . .”

“Maman isn’t here, so don’t act like a baby, oui?”  Marie was glad to help her niece, but sometimes the girl seemed absolutely simple.  “The stool, please? 

Using her kerchief, Jamie carried the stool at arm’s length and set it upright on the hearthstones. 

"Auntie Marie, why must we do this tonight, of all nights?"

"Don't you want to break this curse and marry that boy?  There could not be a better time."  Marie held up three fingers.  "Jean Laffite was born on this day a century ago.”  One finger down.  “This," she waved a hand at the smithy and lowered another finger, "was his and he did much business here.  His spirit is still connected.” 

A drum began to boom near at hand.  "And that,” Marie pointed the last finger at the door, “is the Rue Bourbon Bonhomme Association parade.  For at least an hour no sound we make will be heard outside.  Bon?"

"This will take an hour?"  Jamie looked horrified.

"Not if I can help it, mon enfant.”  Marie sighed.  “Not if I can help it."  She pointed again at the door.  "Please go stand there, but don’t go outside.  Comprenez-vous?"  The White League Democrats were not patrolling in armed gangs this year, but even Federal troops in the streets couldn't seem to suppress their random violence against coloreds.

Jamie safely out of her way, Marie indeed took every shortcut learned from decades practicing voodoo at the side of her mother, Marie Laveau.  Necromancy was tricky at best, but with so many confluences present Marie was confident. 

With all proper ritual she begged Papa Legba to intercede with Gede Nibo, seeking permission to exchange messages with Jean Laffite's spirit in the underworld.  All went well, but no message came, neither from smoke writing nor casting of bones.  She was soon frustrated.