Come What May, The Choices She Made

Living among the merchants of the seaside village of Wexford, Ireland, many people are known to have picked up many appropriate interests among the sea-faring town. Most of the boys of the community wanted to have jobs upon the sea, to become sailors, merchants, whalers, or men of the Navy. If not, they would become apprentices to the many sea-faring related trades, such as carpenters, caulkers, sail-makers, harbourmasters, or weapon-masters. Many girls of the common class became the participants of the port houses, selling their bodies every night for a few coppers. They gave their money to their families, trying to support them in the only way that they knew how.

On the other end of the social spectrum, upper-class girls sought to marry well with wealthy merchants or with high standing men of the Navy. However, there were some people who sought interests that were different from the rest of their standings. I was one of them. Even though I was of the caste of merchants, my heart belonged to the sea, and to the thieves and rogues who roamed it as their home.

Ever since I was a little girl, pirates have always fascinated me. Everything about them, the life without rules, freedom upon the open sea, being able to do whatever you wanted, it all encouraged me to learn everything that I could about them and their ways of life. Some of my knowledge, I had gleaned from the books at the local libraries, and from the local sellers of books. But these sources were just not enough.

Most of my information, I gathered under disguise. I dressed up as a boy on the nights when my father was not home, and I walked down to the seaside taverns to eavesdrop on the old sailors' talk. After I learned what I wanted, I would leave and write down all that I could to remember on paper; I guess it made me lucky that one of the gifts that the Lord had blessed me with was an exact memory. I would place the new information in the desk of my bureau, and crawl back into bed. By the next morning, I was Jessica MacFarlane, a respectable six year old daughter, once more.

As the daughter of one of the most respectable and prominent merchants in the town, I grew up in a privileged life. My family lived in a magnificent solitary sandstone home, surrounded only by the sunlit waters of the ocean. It was a short walk down the grassy hill to reach the cobblestone roads of the coastal town of Wexford. Our home was filled with life and beautiful things by my mother. Unfortunately, she had died giving birth to me, her fourth child. I do not think that my father had ever looked at me as a daughter, but rather as the reason why his beloved Catherine was no longer in this world.

My father did not see it fit to hire a governess or a maid to look after me, since I was perfectly capable to take care of myself. I was self-reliant even at my tender age. My brothers were hardly around to help me out. The servants kept to themselves. I was on my own, dividing my time between the bookshops and my private room.

My inner sanctum, which was painted a delicate shade of light blue, had an oaken balcony, which granted me a beautiful view of the ocean. It was especially gorgeous when the sun set every night, casting its light over the gently rolling waves. I made my bed with pale blue linens and a deeper blue comforter, on top of plump goose-down mattresses. Near the door, there was a closed closet of all of my dresses. Hidden under a loose floorboard, was my boy's clothing for when I went down to the pubs.

There was a wall-size maple bookcase, filled with classics by authors such as Shakespeare, the Grecian and English philosophers, and my books of piracy. In front of the case, there was a meticulously worked carpet of blue and white arabesques that Father had purchased for me from his travels to the Middle East. Finally, beside the balcony, there was a mahogany bureau and desk, where I would catalog and hide all of the information that I gathered about pirates.

As society dictated, as the only female of the family, my life was dictated by the will of my father, and all, if any, men in the immediate family. Since they all had control over my life, my father, J. MacFarlane, and my three brothers, Jacob, 16, John, 13, and Joshua, 10, saw it fit to frown as often as possible upon my deepened interests in piracy. All of them said that I wasted my time needlessly, and that I would be better off practicing my embroidery or playing the pianoforte instead. However much they wished not to believe it, I was a rebellious child by nature, and I continued to study the ways of piracy on my own, often late into the night.

Eventually, since I had accumulated so much piratical information and my desk had long run out of room to hide it all, I started a journal about pirates. During market day, the day I had just turned six and a half years old, I acquired a small leather bound book, filled with four hundred pages of blank cream-colored vellum. Every piece of information that I gleaned about pirates, from both my jaunts to the pubs and from all of the books that I had acquired, I added it to the creamy pages.

By the times almost two years had passed after I began my first journal, I had filled five similar books with all of my information. All of the piratical facts that I had gathered, I had collected from over four hundred books, all of which were in my current possession. I made sure that I wrote down every title of every pirate book into one of my journals, so that I would know which books not to get in the future.

Inside each journal, there were meticulously drawn maps of treasure locations, ocean currents, and drawings of the coastline of Africa, the Spanish Main and the Caribbean, and the coastline of India. There were also drawings of famous piratical flags. All of these drawings and maps were worthy of the finest Irish cartographer, in my humble opinion. These journals also contained biographies of famous pirates and privateers, The Code of Pirates, and even excerpts from rutter entries that I had picked from the pockets of unsuspecting captains in the pubs.

Father gave all four of us a weekly allowance of one hundred pounds to spend, as we would like to. I spent the money every second week. On that week, I would dress up in my simple gown of plain blue linen, without any fripperies or additions underneath it, and I would go into the local books stores. As a constant customer, the storeowner knew who I was, and hid all of the books on piracy in weird locations around the store. He knew how much I loved treasure hunts, so he turned each of my visits into a quest to find the treasure of books.

When I entered the store, he would hand me a rolled up piece of parchment, and then would quietly go back to his work. But out of the corner of his eye, he would watch me walk through the treasure hunt, finding the clues, solving the puzzles. When I found the stash of books, there were always at the most ten new ones; yet, the kind owner sold them all to me for the sum of two hundred pounds, my entire allowance. It was always so generous of him; seeming how a book of such quality that he sold to me, could have been sold easily for almost two hundred pounds a piece.

But as I matured and grew older, I put my interest in pirates behind me. The books of piracy and life on the high seas were slowly replaced with the feminine classics, and books "essential to my learning", or so said my crotchety old governess. My visits to the bookshop and the pubs stopped eventually, since my governess watched me in great scrutiny. At the insistence of this same old crotchety governess that Father hired when I had just turned eight years old, I began to take lessons that same year on how to become a proper lady in the Irish society of the day. Governess hired tutors to teach me how to properly play instruments, how to dance with a gentleman, how to act when in public, how to paint, how to sing like a linnet, how to use proper etiquette whenever I went, how to eat, sit, walk, speak, and act like a lady and not like a "romping wild child" or like a "wicked child", as she often called me.

Through these lessons, I grew up into the respectable, submissive, and poised daughter that was the model of today's society. I underwent a transformation into a prim and proper young woman, whose only destiny was to expect an appropriate marital arrangement through her father. After I finished my lessons at the age of eleven, I received my first surprise from my father. When my lessons had reached their conclusion, Father had deemed me the honor of bearing our family's name whenever I left the house.

As a proper young Irish lady, I was skilled in the feminine arts. I could play beautiful pieces from the classics on the harpsichord, the pianoforte, the flute, and the violin. I could sing beautiful songs that had not graced our home since Mother had died. I had advanced through my instruction of drawing and painting so quickly, that at the age of ten, I was able paint a watercolour of a horse in mid-step, just by looking at it once. In the ballrooms that Father took me along to across the country, men fought over the singular honor of the pleasure of dancing with me. All over our hillside house, there were framed artworks of the embroideries that I had completed: a bowl of exotic fruit in the shadows, an amber cat about to lick its paws, a beautiful bouquet of roses of many hues. Everywhere I went, I exuded the grace and gentile of a young woman who had just entered proper society.

During the time of my lessons, my body also began to change. My short chocolate hair slowly grew to waist length, and had subtly changed colors to a shimmering deep auburn, accented with flickering natural highlights of shades of dark honey tones. My chest grew fuller, filling in the tops of my childhood dresses. When Governess found out, she made me start wearing more elegant dresses that allowed me to show off my growing bosom. My bleedings began; once again, when Governess found out, she made start wearing a veil outdoors, and a horrid corset underneath all of my dresses. My face elongated, allowing for my face to become slimmer. Upon my visage, there were many features that accentuated my natural beauty. My soft, delicate pink mouth never opened in anger, but only in graceful conversation. My ears became smaller, almost into the shape similar to that of the seashells found around the shoreline of our home. The clear dark sapphire eyes upon my face were framed elegantly by a hint of natural rouge in my skin. My complexion, since I was forbidden to go outdoors without a veil, went from a ruddy tan color from my times outside, to an unblemished pale peach; it had the texture of newly made satin from all of the meticulous care I took.

Unfortunately, my family grew into incredibly hard times. My father's business, once flourishing and brimming with wealth, fell into debt and destitution. The cause was that his entire last shipment of ships had crashed, and all of the precious cargo had gone down with the ship. All of the trading waters that surrounded the British colony of India had gone into an unexpected early monsoon season, and all of the merchant ships that were unfortunately caught in it were being destroyed in the violent storms. The merchants of whom we shipped cargo for came knocking at our door, demanding recompense for their lost goods. We no longer had enough money to finance our staff members, so they all found themselves no longer in our employment. We were now utterly on our own. I was now in charge of the house; I was eleven years old.

My three brothers did not help out by continuing to live as if we still had caches of money to spend at their every whim. All three of them had no feeling for the terse situation around us, and completely frittered away all of their inheritances in their games. They now looked at my own with lust and greed growing in their eyes. They believed that all good in life came from a time of pleasurable company, exotic drinks in the ballrooms, and in their nightly gambling bouts all over the town.

Occasionally, they actually won at their gambling games they played, but we never saw a single penny of their scant winnings. All three of my brothers spent every pound on lustful and expensive fancies, particularly the whores in the higher-end brothels, waiting like voracious predators to snatch a prize and make their fortunes at their unmoral trades in bed. They would come home late at night stone cold drunk, and then, once they had sobered, they would act like I was their servant when I would come to clean up.

Since I was now our housekeeper, I had a lot of responsibilities on my shoulders. Luckily before she left, Governess taught me how to clean house, how to maintain a good household, how to keep careful records of the expenses of a household, and how to do household chores. I purchased all of the necessary supplies by selling my piratical books. It broke my heart every time I parted with one of my books. But, it was necessary for me to keep a clean house. I guess that I was lucky that I had written down every title of every book in my piratical journals. I began to clean, to dust, to wax the wooden floors, to do laundry, to buy our groceries, to make beds, to cook, and to clean dishes. I stopped wearing my dresses, and started to wear my shifts, so that the dresses would not become dirty.

As I sat down for the first time to run over our expenses and our past debts, I finally realized how much money my brothers wasted on their gambling games. The debts that they had incurred were a substantial portion of the debts that we needed to pay off to the bank, if we had any money left to pay them. However, my efforts went unnoticed; neither my father nor my brothers aided me in taking care of our now empty home. My brothers were more concerned with the continuance of their frivolous lifestyles; my father spent his days brooding in the study, wallowing in self pity and trying to reverse our current financial state to little success.

It never truly sunk in to my mind and my heart that Father was looking to have me married off now to any local richer merchant, to try and restore our now worthless family name. I always thought that my father would cherish my feelings over anything else. Unfortunately, I was proved wrong, when I was invited to come into his study one evening, almost a year after we became bankrupt.

"You called for me, Father?" I asked when I reached the threshold of the study. My hand gently grazed the wood of the doorway; it was red and chafed from the floors that I had cleaned and the dishes that I had washed.

"Yes. Come in, Jessica. Take a seat, will you?" Father leaned on the mantle above the stone fireplace, keeping his back facing me as I walked closer to him. A roaring fire was burning in front of him, casting his silhouette against the bookcases and the wooden floor. Fanning my shift around me, I sat in the leather chair behind him. Grimacing as my sore back straightened against the chair, I turned my full attention to him.

"Jessica, you know that we have no more money left." Turning around, he sat down in his own chair.

"Yes, Father. I have known for a long time now."

"You know that I would never do this to you, Jessica. But, I am desperate. Our family name no longer means anything to anyone. Would you do anything to help restore honor and dignity to our name?"

"I would do anything, Papa! Even with your sons'… indiscretion with spending copious amounts of money, I have done all that I can to keep this family and home together. I will do all that I can to ensure that our family name is restored to its former glory." I rushed out of my chair, and sat on the floor, placing my head and my hands on Father's knees.

"You are my good girl, Jessica. You always have been. But please, listen to everything I have to say before you give me your answer." Turning back to the fireplace, Father continued. "You are familiar with my old friend, Sir Frederick Goodall?" He began to stroke my hair, the way he used to when I was younger and upset.

"Of course, Father." I remembered him all right. About thirty years old of age, he was a pompous windbag, puffed up with self-importance. He was never caring about the misfortune of others, but he had come earlier that day to our doorstep, and laughed at our bankruptcy in my face. He had a baboon's face, rather puffy, just like his personality, and I had enjoyed slamming the door in that face. He revelled in the wealth that the merchant business had bestowed on him, living in the centre of the town, going to all of the fashionable parties and establishments, wearing only the latest fashions and styles. He had quite a penchant for powdered wigs, thinking it made him look more distinguished. I thought that it made him look like a miserly old gentlemen. He too had suffered in the Indian Trading Crisis, but not as bad as we had.

"Well, he has made an offer to me for your hand in marriage."

"Did you say 'marriage'?" I sat up on the ground. This was perplexing; of course, Father would never just give me away to a man for his money, would he? I was his precious, his little colleen!

"Yes. He is just the man to help us. He is willing to give me money to restore our family name, but only if you become his bride." He grasped my delicate hands in his callused ones. When I winced, he loosened his grip and began to rub my hands in between his to warm them up.

I had no choice in the matter. I just told Father that I would do anything to help restore our family name. He had me cornered and he knew it. "You already have my answer, sire. I would be honoured to marry such a fine man." Inside, my stomach was retching at the lies that just spurted from my mouth.

"I knew you would say yes! I could always count on you, Jessica. Your brothers… well, your brothers were not as trustworthy." He embraced me in a hug. "Now, since you have agreed, Sir Goodall will be sending a generous amount of money to assist us. After all, you are his betrothed and we are to raise ourselves back to our original level of standing in the merchant community. We can now hire back our staff, so you will stop working and concentrate on your dowry and on your wedding. Now, you must start to prepare!" He dismissed me, and went back to thinking about what good fortune had been granted in his favour.

I held my composure shakily as I walked away, until I reached my room. There, I fell on my bed, and just began to cry. How could Father do this to me? I could not stand it! My brothers, all of whom were at the age of a suitable marriage, could marry some rich daughter of another family, which had the possibility of bringing huge amounts of wealth and frivolities back to our family name. But, it seemed that the thought never crossed my father's mind.

Over the next few weeks, I wallowed in self-pity. Nothing seemed to matter anymore now that I was betrothed to the ugliest man this side of Ireland; my wedding date was set for six months from now, allowing for final details on the extensive nuptial plans to be taken care of. I sat at my desk, reading classics disconsolately. I took long walks by the shore, gazing at the open sea. Oh, how I longed to be free from this vile arrangement!

On one of my walks, I suddenly had a moment of epiphany, an idea about how to escape this betrothal. I rushed back to my room, and searched my bookcase for one book I had not sold yet, and had always inspired me, "Famous Female Buccaneers". This was perfect! I would go out to sea to escape my marriage! I would be just like Grace O'Malley. I began to take my future into my own hands.