Arrival 

In matters of revenge, there is no better agency than the reason of a shameful man. 

The Damned Promise found a current moments before land was hailed. Black luck. “Blacker than I remember.” Redbeard mused as he peered into the waters leading to the port of his former home. “Blacker than they have a right to be. Do I bring this storm, or is the deep aware of my intentions?” The familiar swoosh of lapping waves against the hull was his only reply. He looked up and watched the port slowly come into view. The town had a few new buildings that he didn’t remember. So many months at sea only to return to the place of greatest pain. A pain he hardly recognized- shattered glass lost at sea until the waves had ground the edges smooth. Still broken, but like a shark his choices were to stop and die, or hunt. He could sense blood in these waters. 

Redbeard stepped onto the dinghy and nodded to his men. This trip was his, and his alone, to make. They lowered and released the tender. The docks were a fair distance, but this was a job that reminded him of lighter days. Carry your weight. He settled into the strokes and made his way to the slips. He could feel a fire in his belly, stubbornness and indigestion competing for room where rum and salt pork had already paid the rent, but the former won out. He swallowed and spit. “Promises be damned.” 

As the jolly bumped the slip, Redbeard tossed a rope to the dockhand. The boy caught it deftly and secured the line. Once the boat was moored, Redbeard stepped up and whispered quietly before tossing a coin that glinted gold in the midday sun. The hand caught it and tucked away before anyone noticed. “The golden rule.” Redbeard chuckled mirthlessly as he headed ashore. 

The boy mentioned that all roads led to the Whaler, a small but bustling inn where sailors and travelers alike could find a meal, a warm bed, or a drink, ‘as it pleases.’ That seemed like the Rome to which his target would return. So, Redbeard walked the backstreets he remembered, taking in the scents and the scenes. The occasional horse ambled by with a rider atop, but there was no welcome, no commentary, no notice. Better that way. He settled on a corner where he could put his eye on the entrance of the inn without appearing to be focused upon it, and relaxed his posture. A man at rest. A man already dead. 

Shame 

The hay that scattered on the floor of the Whaler was, thankfully, fresh. It made what James Burbank was about to do slightly more tolerable. Slightly. The contents of his stomach poured forth, which inspired a dramatic opening of the midday crowd. If seen from above, you might think it coordinated, like a dance. Upon the hub of what would be this ever-expanding wheel, however, you could not mistake the vile instigator of motion. 

“Enough, then.” Shouted the keep, putting down a glass. “Alton, see him out, please.” She lifted her skirts and quickly moved to collect the hay that captured the mess in the hopes that she might be able to contain the stench and the patrons’ appetites. 

Alton snatched James by the scruff and lifted him from his knees. “Unhand me brute, do you know-” James squinted to find the aggressor but was surprised to discover himself rising from the floor. His stomach lurched. “Do you know, mmph, who I am?” His voice grated, burned by the bile. 

“Unwelcome.” Alton muttered as he began to drag the drunkard to the exit. This fool had been chatting up the betters for months, never to the improvement of the atmosphere. He hoped the lady would ban him soon. 

“I. I was a great man once; a great man.” Burbank had to swallow his stomach between words and phrases lest he deliver more good cheer upon the patrons that he slid past. 

“Sure’n you were, good sir.” Better to placate and keep the rabble calm. “Sure’n you were.” Alton dragged Burbank out the front and leaned him against a pole. “Sir, all due respect, this in’t the place for ya.” He grabbed James’ chin and waited for him to focus. “Go. Home.” There was a moment of defiance in Burbank’s eyes, but it faded. He looked away. Alton let him go and returned to the noise and bustle. 

Burbank wandered through the side streets before pausing to center himself. How did he fall so low? He closed his eyes.  

A man lies dead before him. He reaches for a letter of encumbrance and folds it away in a pocket. Three sailors drag the body out of the quarters. He nods. Burbank shakes his head, the memory is replaced. A widow and her children cry out before an empty grave.  He watches. To an onlooker, he appears sad. But it is not sadness, it is conflict. He shakes his head, again. Ships follow his own. He is proud now; well dressed, and he wears his success openly. A crack, quickly followed by a boom, snaps him from his revelry. It cannot be. He shakes and spits this time. Burbank holds the little girl, justice is finally his. He looks Redbeard in the eye as the knife moves. Halfway through, he feels it. Not justice, something else… 

Vengeance 

Redbeard calmy and without intention, as breezeblown smoke, scanned the man before him. “There was a time when I understood, or at least believed, that of a purpose were my actions burdened and born; that I acted in their names.” The weakly merchant, ever-condensing into the brownstone behind, noticed his aggressor for the first time. “The righteousness was warm and welcoming… It wasn’t their love or their memory, no. That was the bottomless pit at the center of me. But, it was something I could see at a distance. The smoke of a campfire peered by a tired and hungry man. I followed it in the belief that I could bury myself in its coals and awaken the next day, reborn, like a phoenix. But I am ash, charred by these flames of vengeance.” Redbeard opened his palms, one empty, one hilt-heavy, and was lost for a moment in the memories of the hunt. He could still hear the name of his daughter’s murderer being said aloud for the first time. 

In a moment of recognition, anger and clarity rose in Burbank, who seemed to wear the same weight as Redbeard, though cut of a different cloth. “Righteousness.” He scoffed. “Was it righteous when you stole my ship, my trade, my business? I, I employed sixty men, and those men fed hundreds. Hundreds, just like you and your beloved family. I am all that is left, cursed to remember those that trusted me to care for them.” The ragged and filthy man gripped at his clothes then collapsed inward. He whispered. “When you look at me. When you remember your family. When you are filled with hatred and loathing. Remember, you look only into a mirror. You have always, and ever, chased yourself.”  

“Mm. ” Redbeard grunted as he steeled himself for the vengeance that was so long in the making. “Very well goodman.” The stench of the alley clapped his nostrils and he grimaced. “When this earth ground you between stones and reminded you of how small you really were, you, too, chose malevolence.” Redbeard resigned. It was there, at the corner of pity, fear, hatred and resolve that he finally chose his path. “But by all means, paint me the villain.”  

As if the dying breath came before the strike, the pallid man intoned, “I paint you nothing, you are become,” then moved to stand.  

The cutlass had seen blood, had worn it for many years. Had sheathed and slept with it. Lunge. The taste, the sensation, the darkness: familiar. Gasp. The blade remembered the path and moved through it with ease. But the emptiness; the other side was annealing. The anger and shame that had tempered this blade and made it nearly indestructible was recrystallized in a brief moment. It spread from tip to hilt, from hilt to hand, from hand to heart. All remained. He was not satisfied, he was not fulfilled, and he most certainly did not forget what had been taken. But the hatred was reforged; it was shaped now- into resolve. And the shame, instead of crawling across the skin, seeped into the metal of the cutlass to give it strength. He remained the inferno, but the fires were now held within a furnace and given billows to direct the intensity.  

A quiet came over the street as two heartbeats became one. It was not a silence- no town stops for the dead, but it felt like one. He exhaled, realizing he had held his breath as he watched the life leave Burbank’s eyes. A breeze lilted down the alley and for the briefest of moments, he thought he heard laughter. Redbeard shook his head, sheathed his cutlass, gathered himself, and returned to the Damned Promise, whispers of the lady of the wood timing his steps. A damned shanty for a damned man.