A brutal fantasy tale of piracy, friendship, romance and revenge on the high seas…

The demise of their leader effectively robbed the few remaining Spaniards of any desire to fight. In compliance with the rigid rules of piracy, they were herded into a longboat and provided with water and food. Whether or not they made land was in their own hands.
As the last grizzled veteran climbed into the boat he raised puzzled eyes to where Gobby was halfway up the main mast maniacally waving a huge cutlass he had liberated from the body of a dead sailor.
“Why ain’t that rat dead? I seen the hidalgo run him through. Why ain’t he dead?”
Jack grinned. “Gobby? He is dead. Been dead since forty-four. He’s just too stupid to notice. There’s that many holes in his gut that when he takes a tot of rum it runs out and the fleas get drunk.”
As the longboat pulled away, Jack’s attention was drawn to some sort of a commotion emanating from the forecastle cabin. Bony Mary came out onto the deck with something or someone in her arms. The huge woman appeared to be crying, which was unusual enough to have Jack pushing his way to her side. She was carrying the frail body of a young woman cradled tenderly against her brawny chest.
“Look what the bastard was doing,” she said bitterly. “Just look.”
Jack looked. The young woman was deathly pale, except for her slender neck, which was discoloured by deep bruising and multiple bite marks.
“Oh,” he said softly. “So that was his game.”
“What?” Mary demanded. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that somebody needs to behead the corpse of the Don. And that we’ll be taking it back home and giving it to the obeah woman to burn. Because, if I’m not mistaken, and I’m not, he was regularly drinking the blood of a virgin in a bid for immortality.”
Mary hissed and one of her ‘girls’ hastened to hack off the corpse’s handsome head. After a few minutes’ effort she stood up holding the head by its immaculately curled hair.
“What now, Jack?”
“Have some of the boys put the body in a sack and load it on the Runner. You lot take the head. We’ll give them to Mama Ouija when we gets home.”
With that decision made, the pirates got down to offloading the treasure and Jack looked with some pity at the girl in Mary’s arms.
“Carry her onto the Runner. There’s nowhere to rest her on the wrecker. She can have my cabin, and one of your girls can stay with her. You, if you like.”
Mary’s smile showed a lot of very white, very even teeth. She patted Jack on the top of his stockinet cap. “For a one-legged dwarf you ain’t a bad sort.”
Jack sighed. “I’m only a half dwarf. If I knew who my father was I reckon I’d be in a mine or a smithy somewhere earning an honest living.” Then he showed his own teeth in a rueful grin. “Or maybe not…”
“At least they built you a decent false leg.”
“The contentious little shits just about had to, as I lost the real one saving their bloody foreman from a rock fall. But that’s all water under the keel. Right now I got work. You take the girl to my cabin and I’ll have someone bring you some wine. Get her to drink it. She needs to rebuild her blood.”
Back on Retiro de Ladrones, Jack made sure Don Carlos was disposed of in such a way as to ensure he couldn’t rise from the dead, then promptly forgot all about him. There was pirating to be done, and he was never more alive then when he stood on the deck of his ship feeling her timbers move through his one good foot and smelling the tang of salt in the air.

Jane Jago

There will be more from Bony Mary and her crew next week…

Cold rain falls and hard winds blow
No, no, November, no, no.
Heavy clouds that threaten snow
No, no, November, no, no.

Plants and trees no longer grow
No, no, November, no, no.
All the fields lie fallow
No, no, November, no, no.

Cold sets faces all aglow
No, no, November, no, no.
Chills each finger and each toe
No, no, November, no, no.

Autumn soon we will see go
No, no, November, no, no.
Winter waits her face to show
No, no, November, no, no.

But our spirits are not low
No, no, November, no, no.
Cos November tells us so
No, no, November, no, no.

E.M. Swift-Hook

The following Friday saw Sam and Anna ensconced in their room in a very posh London hotel. He was dressed, and Anna had tied his tie. She was almost ready and just wriggling into her little dress, a process Sam found truly fascinating.
“It’s a shame we have to meet a lot of very boring people for cocktails. Watching you wriggle has given me all sorts of interesting ideas.”
“Tough tit, Sam. It’s taken hours to buff and polish me. You are welcome to mess me up all you like after this shindig. Until then. Hands off.”
He grinned wickedly, but complied. Anna gave herself a quick spritz of perfume and picked up a tiny weeny evening bag. She gazed critically at herself in the mirror, then Sam came to stand behind her.
“You look stunning,” he whispered before offering her his arm.

They sailed out of the room, looking like the successful professional people they were, but with an overlay of happiness that made people stop for a second look at them as they passed along the carpeted corridor of the hotel talking quietly.

The cocktail hour was as boring as Sam suggested it might be. The committee members and their partners were overly polite and politically correct, but the hospital dinosaurs and their mostly brittle wives spent the time checking Anna out, either covertly, or with shockingly rude thoroughness. She let neither approach ruffle her calm demeanour, and Sam remained rooted to her side despite a myriad of subtle and not-so-subtle attempts to detach him.
“Cripes Sam,” Anna hissed as they headed for the ballroom where dinner would be served, “this lot are even worse than a room full of accountants.”
He sniggered, then Anna felt him stiffen at the sound of a female voice.
“A little bird tells me my ex has had the poor taste to turn up with some bint in tow. I must just have a look at what has picked up my leavings.”
Anna turned a bland face in the direction of the voice, and what she saw had her stifling a giggle.
“What?” Sam hissed in her ear.
“Tell you later. It really is too good not to share.”
Sam’s ex-wife was a very curvy blonde, who obviously thought she bore more than a passing resemblance to Norma Jean, which would have amused Anna anyway, but it was the woman’s escort who had her biting the inside of her cheeks to control the giggles. He was a darkly handsome man, beautifully tailored, and possessed of a carefully tended athletic build. His eyes met Anna’s and he dropped her the ghost of a wink.
“Christina, my love,” he said reprovingly, “that came out very rudely. I’m sure you would like to apologise”.
For an instant she looked mulish before dropping her eyes. “Oh. I’m sure I’m very sorry,” she muttered.
Anna inclined her head, then held out a hand to the dark man.
“Tariq. What a pleasant surprise.”
He bowed over her hand.
“Anna. Likewise.”
Then he scooped up his sullen-looking lady friend and more or less towed her into the ballroom.

Sam held Anna’s arm gently and they stood allowing their party to precede them. Anna put her mouth to his ear.
“No time for the whole story now, just one thing for you to think about. Unless that particular leopard has changed its spots radically, your ex will be sitting on a very sore bottom tonight.”
Sam gave her a quizzical look, then the penny dropped and he grinned.
“How delightful,” he murmured. “Shall we?”

The evening dragged, mediocre food was followed by a mediocre after-dinner speaker, then a mediocre band played mediocre middle-of-the-road music. The entertainment culminated with a cringe-inducing charity auction. As Anna whispered to Sam it was no more than an excuse for wealthy upper middle-class people to pay way over the odds for stuff they didn’t want just to show off to their peers.

By the time they could decently leave, Sam’s jaw was aching with the effort of not yawning.
“I have to slip to the men’s room. I won’t be long. Then we can escape and I’ll watch you wriggle out of that dress.”

When he returned, he found Christina, Tariq and their party at the table making their farewells to Anna. Christina’s father moved away from the table and grasped his hand firmly. “That’s a lovely girl you have there,” he said in his rich, Lancashire brogue. “I’m glad my little madam didn’t put you off women for good. Mind you. She’s met her match with this one. Perhaps he belts her like neither one of us did. Whatever. It seems he has known your Anna for some years. Says you’re a lucky man.”
Sam just smiled and watched. Christina, jumpy and edgy and seemingly unable to keep her eyes or her hands off her escort. Tariq, urbane and polished, but with an underlay of something much less civilised. His ex-mother-in-law, made faintly uneasy by something she couldn’t understand, talking randomly to the wife of one of the older doctors. And Anna. Anna, who seemed unaffected by the undercurrents around her. Serene and lovely, she smiled charmingly at everyone but was careful not to catch Sam’s eye. The giggles, he surmised, were quite near the surface.
As Tariq and his party moved away one of the senior doctor’s wives turned to Anna.
“He’s an attractive beast. How do you come to know him?”
“Purely professionally. He’s a financial adviser and I audited the books of some of his clients.”
“Oh. Boring. So there’s nothing you can tell us about the man then?”
“Other than the fact he’s rich, successful, unmarried and a quarter Iranian? No.”
The woman who had asked the question had the grace to blush, and her husband rescued her from further embarrassment by announcing himself ready for bed.
This effectively broke up the party allowing Sam and Anna to escape. They got into their room and Anna dropped face down on the bed in a serious fit of the giggles.
“Sorry Sam,” she mopped her streaming eyes. “I’ll explain as soon as I can stop laughing.”
He looked down at her.
“I’d sooner watch you wriggle out of that dress,” he said darkly.
She got to her feet and obliged with an exaggerated shimmy of her narrow hips. Sam growled deep in his chest and began to throw off his own clothes while she stood and watched him, clad only in a tiny thong and skyscraper heels. As soon as he had fought his way out of his dinner suit he grabbed her.

From The Cracksman Code by Jane Jago

Born she was from darkness
In the bosom of the night
Daughter of indiscretion
Selene who shines so bright
Relaxes she and grows by day
Secret as a nun
And then she bellies like a sail
Giving back the sun
Born was she to wax and wane
In her appointed time
She calls the seas to rise and fall
A Circe in her prime
Born she was from that dark sky
Wherein we see her face
Silver sister, crescent moon
Epitome of grace
Born she was from darkness
Born she was to die
Consider our mortality
The crescent moon and I

© jane jago

Listen to Granny because Granny always knows best!

I have a circle of ‘lady friends’ ranging in age from ‘old enough to know better’ to ‘bloody hell she’s out without a nurse again’. What binds us together is the love of a drink or two, the mistrust of politicians in all their shades of belief, and a sort of jaunty independence that moves us to stick up our middle fingers at life.
Until recently, I would have also said we were bonded by a broad streak of common sense. However.
That was until Beryl’s god-bedamned daughter-in-law bought her a ouija board for her birthday. A crowd of us descended on Dunshaggin – Beryl’s five-bed three-bath cottage off the high street – for a weej night.
I went along – hoping for plenty of booze, a buffet of belly-busting proportions, and a bloody good laugh at the silly game.
Got the first two. No problems. And the food, having been delivered from the local branch of the middle classes’ favourite supermarket was excellent. In fact, until the weejing started it was being a blast.
But then Beryl got the bloody thing out of its box and they all sat around it like hopeful sheep.
After rather a lot of jockeying for position, everyone had a finger on the wheelie doodad and Beryl dimmed the lights.
We were left with one spotlamp shining on the table and everything else as dim as the coal house on a December evening.
Even then I expected – or maybe I just hoped for – a bit of a laugh. Boy oh boy was I disappointed.
For a long time, nothing happened, except Brenda demanding to know if there was anybody out there and the occasional fitful jiggle of the wheelie thing.
After what felt like three hours of this, I got bored, and, somehow or another, wheelie sprung into action.
It was such a busy little doodad, scurrying about bringing messages from beyond to all and sundry. There were messages from departed loved ones (particularly touching were the words of love from pets who waited on the rainbow bridge), there was advice both emotional and financial (mostly of the ‘that’s a scam you silly old cow’ variety), and there was a sprinkling of rude jokes to leaven the pudding.
Oh how merrily we weejed. And oh how sad we’re we when mister wheelie launched himself off the table in a hissy fit.
And that, I rather hoped, would be that.
But of course it wasn’t.
Weej evenings became all the rage, although, sadly, nobody gets messages like that first night in Brenda’s house.
Me?
I don’t go any more. I have the perfect excuse.It was the message from my old dog, Susan, I explain. Warning me against any more contact across the great divide.

Yeah, doh. Of course we can speak. But what’d be the point? Two-legs would just get creeped out.
I mean. One time there was this horse. Ed he was called. Used to talk to his two-legs all the time. When other two-legs found out they put his’n in a place for madders and ole Ed got boiled down for glue.
No. You take my word for it. Don’t never even try to talk to a two-legs no matter how much you love it.
Just put love in your eyes. If you’re lucky it might even understand.

©Jane Jago

In the skinny, cluttered office, Gribble looked around for a seat. He found no surface that wasn’t covered with paper. “Why do you have so much paperwork? Surely most of your accounts and stuff could be done on the computer.”
“It could, if the University was not averse to The Motherboard knowing all our business. But we aren’t here to discuss my conditions of employment, it’s the conditions under which you employ your geeks that are in dispute.”
“Dispute?” Gribble pushed out his lip in a show of boyish petulance, before he remembered that the Bursar was not of an ilk to be cajoled or seduced by the likes of him. Instead he hunched a shoulder. “Where do I sign?”
“I thought you might see sense,” her smile was just on the acceptable side of smug. But only just.
Scrabbling about in the teetering pile of paper on the windowsill, she dragged out a sizeable parchment and unfolded it.
“You sign here, here, here and here.”
Gribble pulled a pen out of his pocket and signed as indicated. The Bursar inserted the signed document in a slot in the wall and after a few seconds a disembodied voice filled the air.
“Contract duly witnessed.” The unwieldy parchment slowly reversed out of the slot to fall unnoticed to the floor.
Gribble eyed the Bursar.
“Right. When do I get my geek?”
“Tomorrow morning.” He opened his mouth to argue, then his face caught up with his brain and he snapped his teeth together. “Good thinking. Now cut along. I’ve got work to do.” The Bursar waved a wrinkled hand in dismissal.
Even an ego as colossal as Gribble’s recognised the pointlessness of arguing with a tetchy female colleague who was not only senior to him in the University hierarchy, but who also disliked him quite a lot. He left the dusty confines of the office, shutting the door behind him with exaggerated care before stomping along the disorienting curve of the corridor cursing and kicking random pieces of furniture.
Behind him, the Bursar listened to muffled swearing and assorted crashes. The smile that spread across her face made her look like a crocodile that smells fresh meat. “You, my temperamental young colleague, ain’t seen nothing yet.” She returned to her figures, obscurely comforted by the hard lesson Gribble was about to be taught.

From Gribble’s Geek by Jane Jago which is only 0.99 to buy throughout November.

The forest path was crosshatched with shadows and sunlight. Lithe trees clad in pied silver, stretched up, twig-fingers touching above me, leaves dazzling peridot in the sunlight. Patterned foliage against the sky, dappling the ground in muted emeralds, and faded jade where shadows fell.
Bird song, from many feathered throats, was music for my passage.
Then came a low buzzing, like a million bees swarming in anger, lifting in pitch and adding a whine, finishing with a biting choke.
I arrived as, with a cracking cry, another tree fell and the roar of the chainsaw started on a fresh victim.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Prandium was a pleasant meal, with Aelwen dispensing smiles and cuddles and the adults chatting lightly. By the time everyone had progressed to spiced milk and tiny cakes, Aelwen’s head was drooping like a poppy on its stalk so Julia buzzed Luned who came and bore the little one away for her afternoon nap.
Once they were gone, Julia looked shrewdly at her guests. “There is a fire in my sitting room, and a decanter of Llewelyn brandy. We can be comfortable and undisturbed, and you can tell me what the problem is.”
Lavinia took Marcella’s arm. “I told you Julia would see there was something wrong.”
“You did, Mater, and you were right. The question is more whether or not she believes me.”
“When we are all sitting by the fire you can try me.” Julia ushered them into her sitting room and closed the door. 
Lavinia settled her daughter on a deeply cushioned settee and sat beside her. Vulpes came to stand beside his mistress with his big head on her lap. She smoothed his ears and turned her sightless eyes on Julia.
“I heard somebody being killed last night.” When Julia didn’t react she carried on speaking. “Because I’m first violin, and because I’m blind and need a dog, Vulpes and I merit a dressing room to ourselves.  Anyway, after the performance last night somebody from the hotel where we are staying was supposed to come and collect me. But they must have forgotten. It wouldn’t be the first time. And somebody always remembers in the end.” She patted her mother’s arm. “It’s okay, fach, as long as I have Vulpes with me I’m fine.  But I digress. There is a big sofa in my dressing room, so Vulpes and me cuddled up. I must have nodded off, because I woke up feeling a bit disoriented. Vulpes was growling softly, but I shushed him and pulled a blanket over us both. He remained alert and I became aware of voices. Quiet voices, three or maybe four, arguing viciously. They seemed to me to be talking about some sort of a scam or con trick. One of them wanted out, but the others weren’t having any. Said he was in too deep to quit. He suddenly seemed to snap, and shouted. ‘I’m out and you can’t stop me.’ One of the others laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. Then I heard a sort of a muffled pop. And the sound of something heavy falling to the floor. I didn’t dare move or make a sound, and even Vulpes kept silent although all the hairs on his spine stood on end. We heard something being dragged along the corridor outside. Then whoever came back. Laughing. Said something like ‘nobody will find him there’. Then they went away. I was just wondering what I should do when I heard a familiar footstep. It was Claudius, my umm… sort-of boyfriend, come to find me. For some reason I didn’t want to rock the boat, even with him, so I kept my mouth shut and just pretended to be asleep…”
Marcella wound down and, by the look of her, she was on the verge of tears, but Julia’s investigative instincts hadn’t been blunted by her time out of official law enforcement.
“That isn’t all, though, is it?”
Marcella stopped stroking Vulpes and her hands writhed together miserably in her lap.
“No,” she whispered. “I think somebody suspects I heard. And I don’t think they are the sort to leave living witnesses behind.”

From ‘Dying to be Believed’ one of the exclusive bonus short stories The Third Dai and Julia Omnibus by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook.

He couldn’t sign up fast enough. A new world called joyously.
This would be a place where he could write what he saw and felt, in words that said how he saw and felt it.
The injection in his arm and the promise of a new life when he awoke. Bliss. His mind filled with colours and explosions and flavours.
Who knew how much longer it was when he awoke to blazing joy.
“It is time for your orientation classes, the AI explained.”
“Today’s lecture is entitled ‘filter words’.”
They didn’t know you could kill a lecturer with a stylus….

©Jane Jago