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The air is still. Magnus is motionless. Even the tide seems to pause. But he doesn’t say anything.
I go on. “Captain Benecio Estevão challenged Chip to a game of cards for Fernanda’s hand in exchange for a ship in a bottle. Of course, he declined. They were a young couple, newly and happily married. From then on, Captain Estevão and his men tormented the coast, driving people away from Coco Key. As you know, that didn’t intimidate your grandfather. He built the Driftwood. They had a family. Life carried on.”
The dogs, giving up on their walk, lie down at my feet with forlorn, doggy sighs. I imagined telling this story with the backdrop of the ocean and Magnus’s rapt attention. Maybe a soundtrack. The ocean is there. Magnus is here, but he isn’t engaged.
Stifling a sigh, I continue. “The attacks and sabotage by the captain and his men continued. All this time, Chip salvaged old boats and, in so doing, heard many strange tales. Including one about a ship in a bottle. Supposedly, it was the fiercest that had ever sailed the region, but it was cursed and shrunk, stuffed in a glass bottle. It was the original ship in a bottle.”
“Sounds like something that would’ve interested my grandfather.”
“Upon learning the ship in the bottle might be relevant, Chip challenged Captain Estevão to a game of cards. If your grandfather won, he’d get the ship in the bottle and the pirates would leave. If the captain won, he wouldn’t get your grandmother. She wasn’t up for barter. Instead, Chip offered bottles of his recently distilled rum, Sempre Spirits.”
Magnus rocks back on his heels, the first time he’s moved in minutes. However, he doesn’t say anything.
I expect he will now. “Supposedly, the ship in the bottle was the Crimson Tide, captained by a woman who called herself the Devil’s Charm.”
Magnus doesn’t give any indication that he knows who that is. I didn’t either until Mrs. Lipman let it slip, filled with shock and awe.
“She wore a crown. A special crown.”
Still, nothing.
“Her given name was Márcia Sousa.”
He tilts his head as if he doesn’t believe me. “She would’ve been long dead.”
“True, but if the ship was cursed and shrunken, who knows what kind of dark magic was used.”
“Do you really believe that?”
I don’t know what to believe other than that he’s relatively non-responsive to this outrageous story.
“Chip brought his wager onboard. The card game was played. He won.”
“And the pirate was willing to trade a bottle of Sempre Spirits rum for the supposedly magic ship in a bottle?”
I shake my head slowly. “True to pirate form, they attacked Chip, and while wrestling the glass bottle out of his winning hands, it broke. Smashed on the ship’s deck. He noticed something interesting about the sail...it looked like a piece of a map. The tussle continued and he managed to get the map fragment into an empty rum bottle—his wager that they’d drank during cards—and tossed it into the sea, making it a message in a bottle.”
“It was all for nothing. Chip didn’t get the ship or the map fragment. Why would he do that? Chances of it washing up on shore are slim.”
I offer a mouth shrug. “The Pirate Defense League was formed to keep watch. They’ve been doing so all these years. My guess is that Benecio Estevão is long gone. But that ship returned. The card game waits. A debt is owed. Maybe the message in a bottle was recovered and is onboard.”
“And the old folks told you all of this?”
“Sempre Spirits did the talking.” I wink.
Magnus doesn’t respond. Perhaps he’s processing the outlandish account, trying to piece things together. I understand that it’s a lot to absorb. I hardly believed my ears as they told it all to me. I suppose it could be tall tales.
But as the days pass and the ship with the tattered sails appears and then disappears along the horizon, I can’t help but wonder whether the card games continue on the ship. If the message in the bottle is there. If the Torment pirate gang is looking for the same thing the McGregor brothers are.
Meanwhile, Magnus is slightly distant, but he had a close call with the spider bite. It’s hard not to think about how somewhere in the cottage there is a ring he wanted to give me. There are words on his lips that he hasn’t spoken since he was in a fit of agony.
For the most part, he’s acting like everything is normal.
It’s not.
But we can pretend, right?
* * *
