London, 1846.
A damp morning fog drifted through the narrow streets near the docks, turning the city into a maze of shadows and gaslight.
Workers hurried toward the river, merchants opened their shops, and newspaper boys shouted headlines no one seemed eager to hear.
Near Wapping, a crowd had gathered around a long brick wall.
A wall covered with wanted posters.
Some were old and faded, their ink washed away by years of rain.Others were fresh, their edges still crisp...
Smugglers, thieves, escaped convicts, and murderers stared out from the paper in crude sketches.
But two posters drew more attention than the rest.
One showed a hard-faced man with long hair and a thick beard.
Captain Francisco Connor.
A bounty of $3000
Beside him hung the portrait of a young woman with wild dark hair and an unreadable expression.
Elizabeth St. Marie.
A bounty of $1000.
People whispered as they studied the drawings:
-"I heard Connor robbed a merchant brig off the coast of Portugal."
-"Nonsense. He sank it."
-"Pirates? In 1846? That's ridiculous."
A small boy squeezed through the crowd, holding tightly to his father's hand.
He couldn't have been older than eight.
-"Dad?"
His father glanced down.
-"Yes, Tommy?"
The boy pointed at the posters.
-"Are pirates still real?"
A few nearby adults smiled at the question.
The father looked at the wall for a long moment.
-"Not many," he said.- "Most of the famous pirates died long before you were born...Edward Teach,Jack Rackham,Sam Bellamy...Aye...The great pirate age ended nearly a hundred years ago."
-"Then why are they wanted?"
-"Because a few still exist."
The boy stared at Connor's portrait.
-"He looks scary."
-"He probably is."
The father folded his arms, chuckling softly.
-"Francisco Connor wasn't always a pirate."An old man's voice joined their conversation, his weathered face was lined with age and salt.
-"He worked for the East India Company years ago."
The boy and the father recognized that name immediately. Everyone knew it.
-"What happened?"- the father of the boy asked interested and the older man shrugged.
-"Depends on who you ask."
The crowd continued moving around them while he spoke.
-"Some say he was a useful man when the Company needed him. A captain,an escort,someone willing to sail dangerous waters."
-"And then?"
-"And then he wasn't useful anymore."
The old man tapped the poster.
-"They dismissed him,just like that..."
The kid frowned and spoke again:
-"That's unfair."
"This world is unfair,young one."- the man ruffled his hair and for a moment they stood silently.
Then the father pointed to the second poster.
-"What about her?"
Several people nearby exchanged glances.
The other man lowered his voice.
-"Elizabeth St. Marie."
-"Was she a pirate too?"
-"Eventually...No one seems entirely certain and rumors varied from port to port...no one really knows the whole truth but... people talk."
-"What do they say?"-The father asked curiously.
-Well... the most common tale claimed Elizabeth had lived in a small English fishing village along the coast...she had no family,no friends...She was alone,vulnerable...At some point, she somehow crossed paths with men involved in human trafficking...that's how Connor bought her from one of them."
At hearing that,many eyes around widened.
-"You can buy people?"- young Tommy asked and this time,his father was the one answering his question:
-"You shouldn't be able to...But evil men do evil things." -The father looked grim as he turned around to the other man:
-"What happened to her?"
-"No one knows for certain."- he answered, studying the sketch.
-"Some say Connor treated her as property,that he wanted complete control over her life... expecting complete devotion and loyalty...They say he broke her and rebuilt her his way...made her his woman and taught her to sail, fight, lie, steal, survive... And after a while, she became his first mate."
-"Do you think she wanted to be a pirate?"- the young boy asked his father innocently.
The question lingered in the fog.
Around them, the city carried on.
Wagons rattled over cobblestones,ship bells rang from the river...
Finally the father answered.
-"I think sometimes people become what the world leaves them."
The boy looked confused.
-"What does that mean?"
-"It means that if someone spends years trapped in darkness, they don't always come back the same."
The wind fluttered the posters and for an instant Elizabeth's paper portrait seemed almost alive.
-"What happened to them now?"- Tommy asked and the stranger man spoke again:
-"No one knows for certain...Last reported somewhere in the Atlantic,some say the Caribbean,others say Africa..."- he shrugged.
-"So they're still out there?"- the kid asked,this time a bit nervously.
-"Maybe..."- the old man shrugged once again.
The boy looked at the wall one last time...
Hundreds of faces:criminals,murderers,smugglers...
But only two had drawn a crowd:
A man abandoned by the world that once employed him and the mysterious woman he once bought.
The boy squeezed his father's hand.
-"Do you think they'll ever be caught?"
The father gazed toward the distant Thames where countless ships disappeared into the fog.
-"Every pirate gets caught eventually...Or the sea catches them first..."- he finally answered.
No one spoke for several moments but soon,a church bell rang somewhere beyond the fog and the crowd began dispersing,workers returned to their jobs,merchants returned to their stalls...
"Let's go,son...your mother is waiting for us."-the father sighed, politely tipping his hat and saying goodbye to the old man before walking away with his son,leaving the wanted posters fluttering against the brick wall while the fog slowly swallowed them from sight...
But Tommy glanced back one last time...
The two wanted posters fluttered among dozens of others.
Ghosts from an age that should have been over...
Yet somewhere beyond London's fog, beyond the busy harbor and the merchant ships, the sea stretched endlessly toward the horizon,and if the rumors were true, some remaining pirates were still out there upon it,vanishing into the mist whenever the authorities drew near, leaving only frightened witnesses, unanswered questions, and fresh wanted posters nailed to walls across the British Empire...
Because sometimes... history refuses to stay buried.
