Excerpt of Fire On Dark Water by Wendy K. Perriman

1: Murk Sunset and Foul Sunrise

1702 - 1712

There is something about me, ain’t there? You noticed the moment your eyes grew used to the dingy light of the tavern. And you came here, like everyone who struts these worn boards, for tattle of Anne Bonny and pirates. Buy me a dram, tread closer, and my tale will make your eyeballs roll. Do you remember that scoundrel Calico Jack? Well it all started way way way before his day. But what may surprise you is that I myself roved among them – the unsung miscreant – the one that slipped through their net. I see you are tongue-tied and burning to ask how we lived like sows? Rutted like pigs? Killed like boars? I’ll explain, good as I can, but you won’t like my answers I’m telling you now, Mister. There’s no glamour . . . no quest . . . no founding of colonies . . . just the tugging of the moon against fate. Who am I, you finally think to ask? You may as well know – I was Blackbeard’s thirteenth wife – and very unlucky for him.

Folks call me Lola . . . London Lola . . . The Gypsy . . . or just plain Doxy. It depends on who they are and what they’re after. I once claimed to be Cockney but that was to clothe my Romany roots – I wasn’t born nowhere near Bow Bells. So aye, I’m a gypsy and come from a long strand of travelers. Our lives were spent in tents or on carts, roaming round England from crop to new harvest. The men reaped grain when autumn permitted while youngsters picked fruit in the orchards and fields. My uncles sold horses (acquired by dubious means) and kept the cauldron stewing with fresh-poached game. I learnt many neat skills as I tagged along beside the woods and rivers. When the picking season ended the caravan rested on Battersea Common and the perpetual battle ensued once again against harsh icy winter and the even colder townsfolk.

Grandma Vadoma was the knowing one. She told fortunes in the markets for our sustenance and campfire stories for our pleasure on the road. Shona, my Ma, was a dancer – exotic, mysterious, mesmerizing. But it wasn’t her face that snagged farmers and sailors, who were drawn to her sinewy hips that slithered and writhed with forbidden allurement. She would tempt in the squares, fields, streets and taverns, and sometimes sold her nights to a high-enough bidder. I spent ten years absorbing the feminine divine and owe much of my charm to them.

Do you recall that before the Queen Anne’s War there had been a terrible famine? Well, Shona’s income became crucial to the tidbits earned from begging. So in town she frequented the docks and alley ways and was more in demand on her back than on her feet. But I ain’t been told much of the bastard that sired me – excepting he was an Irish sailor who may (or may not) have been called Paddy. He gave me the tint in my chestnut red hair, the blue eyes that marked me Outsider, and apparently paid for his pleasure with a plundered gold doubloon. I was born, inconveniently, at the height of the picking season in a ditch at the edge of a strawberry field. And so was named Lolomura (for the red berries) but everyone knew me as Lola.

By the fifth harvest I was already earning my keep, charming the gentry with Romany ballads and prancing. And you never saw nothing like me – I was a proper little dazzler. I learned that the ladies paid well for tradition and the gents liked it best when I pouted and swayed. So I watched every lilt, every thrust of Ma’s pelvis, and before long my belly worked figures of eight. The nobs would comment on dexterity and timing, admiring the artistry and rhythm, but I spotted how men's eyes were fixed on Ma’s nipples, and how they drew tighter breath whenever my little arse thrust backwards.