The Finger of Fate

Aargh – a tale is it, the price of this quest? Hehehehehehe. Let me look about me person, and see what I can find.

Well, now, would ye look at that. Sure, I haven’t given this anny thought at all in years, yet here it is, in the lining of me coat. What is it, ye say? What does it look like?

A map? A treasure map? You’d not be wrong.

I was on the Black Hearted Trollop when I came by this map. Her captain was Desdemona O’Herlihy, as black hearted a trollop as you’ll ever meet, and pray you don’t ever meet her. She used to be a high born lady, so they say, but the call of the sea dragged her away from the estate of her father, Lord O’Herlihy, and into a life of piracy and wickedness. O a fine beauty she was, with her long black hair and flashing green eyes, but she’d give no man quarter. If you wronged her she’d hunt you down to the ends of the earth, to extract her vengeance.

The previous captain of the Black Hearted Trollop – one Gules Hart - could tell you many tales about Desdemona, if he still lived. They were lovers once – she pursued him like a woman possessed, but when she caught him dallying with a barmaid on Pirate’s Cove, didn’t she turn and set fire to his ship in the harbour, burning it away to a film of black ash on the sea? And didn’t he then have another ship built, and called it the Black Hearted Trollop in her honour?

As far as Desdemona was concerned, a ship named for her was hers by right – so she set out to take it, and make the poor man walk the plank for daring to cross her in love and piracy.

The Black Hearted Trollop was the fastest ship at sea – there was nothing that could outrun it. It had sails as black as night, and it crept up on its prey like great black bird, with not a sound. It would not be an easy task to capture a ship like that, but Desdemona never shied from a challenge – beside, she was the canniest captain on the seven seas, and the one place the Black Hearted Trollop couldn’t hide was when she put into Pirate’s Cove.

Of course, Gules Hart was no fool either and he had many cronies at Pirate’s Cove, but he didn’t have the Finger of Fate. Desdemona did, and she wore it round her neck in a little leather pouch. No one knew its power but me – you see, I stood guard as she cut it from the hand of Scurvy Alice herself as she lay in her coffin. Scurvy Alice had strange powers, ye mind – she could point her finger at a man and he would drop dead in his tracks. We don’t know whether she died by design or accident – but believing there was an enemy concealed behind a curtain in the Crown and Anchor Bar, she pointed her finger at it – then the curtain dropped and revealed a mirror.

`Tis thought the pub owner did it, being tired of Alice killing his customers.

So one morning when the Black Hearted Trollop put into port and Gules was swaggering along the doc, Desdemona took the finger out of the leather pouch and pointed it at him – and sure as I’m sitting here, he clutched at his heart and dropped dead.

And didn’t his men go white at the sight of the finger and their leader’s body and turn and run like the scurvy dogs they were? All Desdemona had to do was walk aboard the Black Hearted Trollop and take command of her. None dared stop her because of the Finger of Scurvy Alice.
Such wicked times we had – there was not a treasure ship afloat that could ward off Desdemona and the Black Hearted Trollop. But while we grew in strength and riches, something was happening to Desdemona. Something was eating into her soul – one night I caught her trying to throw the finger overboard. But it would not leave her, and she screamed in rage when she saw me.

``Back away!” she cried. ``It points now without my direction!”

I scuttled below as fast as I could and hid myself in my bunk. I dared not go near my Captain – she spent her time alone in her cabin, or in the cave where we stashed the treasure. Though she was more beautiful than ever, no man went near her because those that did all died.

Where is she now? Well, I can tell you – this is the map to the treasure of the Black Hearted Trollop and welcome ye are to it. She left it to me when she took refuge in the cave, sickened by the loneliness the Finger of Fate caused her. For all I know she’s still there – guarding the treasure she massed with the Black Hearted Trollop, Scurvy Alice’s finger making sure no one comes near enough to take it.

Never was a pirate’s treasure better guarded.