Just Say My Name

Since that scene with the man called Jim, the name Princess had stuck. No one called me by anything other than Princess, unless it was ‘kid’ or ‘little girl’, which was rare, and I doubted that they even knew my name. My name was the one thing that I wanted to hear again, almost more than anything. I was growing accustomed to living on a ship, but the lack of hearing my name was starting to get to me.

So was a sense of helplessness and leftover anger from the insolent man’s jibes at me earlier in the galley.

I paced the captain’s cabin, forcing myself to be awake for when Eli came back into the room so I could confront him. I had decided it was time for me to do something about this helpless feeling roiling in the pit of my stomach, for me to show them that I was not to be messed with. And I thought I had the perfect idea of how to do that.

An hour after I had started pacing, the ship’s captain entered his quarters and looked up, barely any signs of surprise flashing across his face at the fact that I still stood there, awake, with my feet braced and hands on my hips. The only way I knew that he was at least a little surprised was the slight, almost imperceptible, raise of an eyebrow.

“To what do I owe this welcome, kid?” he asked, taking off his boots and tossing them to land beneath his hammock. He was the only one who commonly called me kid rather than Princess.

“I want you to teach me how to fight,” I spat out, wanting to get it past my lips before I could think better of the decision I had made.

This time I could tell he was somewhat surprised because he blinked and leaned back some. Then he regained himself and looked at me critically, as though sizing me up. Which, I amended, he might just be doing.

“What makes you think I’d want to do that?” he finally asked, showing once again that the pirate captain was an entirely different personality than the young man at the ball who had been courteous and kind.

I didn’t think the pirate captain was entirely the real Eli, though.

“Because you don’t want me to be overpowered by your men and forced into things. If you did, I wouldn’t be sleeping on your bed in your cabin and you wouldn’t be sleeping in a hammock so that I could have your bed.” I stated in a matter-of-fact way.

I had him and I knew it, so I pressed the point.

“If you don’t want me to end up like I would have that first night onboard had you not found me, training me to fight would be the best way! I’m usually a quick learner. I don’t want to end up that way, so I want to be able to fend them off! You need me to be able to show them I’m not a push over, right? So you don’t always have to come and help me?”

He sighed, then strode past me, going to his trunk and rummaging for a moment.

“Catch,” he said, a resigned tone to his voice, as he tossed something at me. I caught it and realized it was a sheathed rapier.

“What—”

“Draw. I want to see if you know anything about it. The stance, how to shift your weight smoothly, anything. So draw.”

I did.

He sighed.

“No,” he said simply, then moved forward to corrected my grip, show me a stance, and told me to sheathe the sword and draw it again.

I once more did as he told me to, and he moved forward to make a few less corrections, but still to make corrections all the same. The third time I drew it, I held it right and stood in an acceptable stance. He nodded, then said, “You’ll need a lot of work.”

“I won’t give up,” I said.

He kind of groaned and said, “I know. That’s what worries me.”

And slowly but surely, he began to teach me the art of fencing. Every night, I would wait up for him to hand over duty to his second in command, and he would help me for a bout an hour, maybe two, before going to sleep. I would get up in the mornings when he woke me and go to the galley to help out Geoff, and then go back to the cabin at night to wait for Eli.

The routine developed and was quickly followed daily. It took three weeks before Eli decided I knew enough to have mock duels with him, and even then I always ended up on the losing side. Occasionally I ended up with scratches when I couldn’t block and he couldn’t change direction fast enough, but he didn’t use his full strength, for which I was thankful as the beginner I was. We didn’t ever practice with fake swords; he didn’t believe in that, and I agreed that it would be more realistic with real blades. I was using a dull one, however, so that I couldn’t do too much damage to the captain if I ever managed to land a hit on him.
I was by no means a natural, but I was diligent and dedicated to the task, so the captain continued to train me.

During those first three weeks, I’d also become rather adept at not cutting myself while helping Geoff, and he started to teach me things about cooking that a noble such as myself never knew. It was kind of obvious that there wasn’t much cooking that could be done when the waters were rough and choppy, but you could handle a bit more on a boat when the waters were calm. I kind of enjoyed helping the kindly pirate cook, and would gladly have gone to the cook at my own home and offered to help her after the events that had occurred.

Marianne Walker was changing. And I wasn’t entirely sure whether these changes would have pleased my father or scandalized him. But I found, with little surprise, that I really didn’t care.