Protection

Elizabeth’s laughter was something that always made him smile, no matter his mood. This time her laughter was accompanied by splashing sounds and the giggling of a redheaded, blue eyed, boisterous fifteen month old boy. It was their first night at home since boarding The Pearl for a three month long voyage, and now the royal family looked forward to a few weeks respite at what had become the royal palace; the very same island home and light that had once been Elizabeth’s exile. But Elizabeth was no longer exiled. She was a queen, his queen. Hector felt his heart flutter and smiled again.

He stopped just short of the nursery door, peering in unnoticed, his own smile broadening as he watched his queen and their princes. It was difficult to tell who was the wetter, Elizabeth, or their boys who set about splashing one another with gusto.

“Cape!” Elizabeth laughed his name, though her body stiffened as another splash of water landed across her face, her hair dripping water onto her shoulders. “That’s quite enough now, you’ll get the soap in your brother’s eyes.” She gently decreed, and leaned forward to move the other redheaded, blue eyed fifteen month old boy back from his splashing twin, but he was rambunctiously swirling a washcloth beneath the water as though it were some predator of the sea. “Cove,” she sighed with a smile, plucking the washcloth from his hand. “You boys seem to always be under the impression that this is play time, not bath time. Now come on, we’ve business at hand, gentlemen.”

Hector smiled, shifted his weight to take a step forward and offer his wife a hand with their newest arrivals, when a tug at his coat tails made him turn around in the hallway. “Laveer, yeh were to be in bed half an hour passed.” He wasn’t surprised to see her there for the girl had lived up to the defiant meaning of her name and always seemed indeed to sail against the wind. But, try as he might, the gruffness that came so naturally as Captain Blackheart, King of the Brethren Court, could not be summoned when he spoke to his children.

“I know, Papa.” Laveer nodded, her fingers twisting in her long blond locks, the doll her father had given her a year ago when she’d turned eight years old clutched in her other hand. “But how can I sleep when Hawser has the lamp lit and is reading to Weatherly and Gallant still?”

“Yeh’ve yer own room, Laveer.”

“I can still hear him!” Sang Laveer up to her father, and began to laugh a bit, knowing full well her father enjoyed these minor disobediences of hers.

Hector sighed, but couldn’t hide his smile. Hawser, now eleven, had developed a clear penchant for books, and the ones missing from his father’s shelves were usually accounted for in his eldest son’s hands. He leaned down and swooped his second eldest into one arm and began down the hall. “So, what’s yer brother readin’?”

“[i]Don Quixote[/i].” Laveer hoisted her doll in one arm in a similar fashion her father did her. “In Spanish.”

“Not writ in anythin’ else, girl.” He explained as he strode down the hall, able to hear Hawser’s voice the closer he got to the door, and he was pleased, if not impressed, that his oldest read and wrote languages so very well, but wondered as to how entertained six year old Weatherly and four year old Gallant were by the story, being as how the Spanish tongue yet eluded them. “And yer sister and brother have been still for Hawser’s readin’, have they?”

“Yes, Papa,” nodded Laveer as her father’s hand pushed the door to her oldest brother’s chamber open. “Hawser said Don Quixote attacked a windmill!” She laughed.

“Ah, the windmills!” Laughed Hector as the door swung open and his eyes immediately fell upon Hawser, sitting with his legs tucked under him on his bed, flanked by his sister, Weatherly and brother, Gallant, all of them looking up at him eagerly.

“That is what is says, right Papa?” Asked Hawser, closing the book with his finger in it, marking his place for now.

“Aye boy, it does indeed.” Hector confirmed with the smile of a proud father, tousling the ever reddening hair of his oldest son, but then reached down and slid the book from Hawser’s hands. “But as yeh may have gathered from Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra, too much readin’ makes a man daft.” He shifted Laveer in his arms as he laid the book on Hawser’s night table. “Time for each pirate prince and princess Barbossa to be turnin’ in.”

There was a collective groan, but no obstinate protests, Weatherly sliding down from Hawser’s bed and taking the hand of Gallant as he slid to the floor, and then taking her father’s offered hand. “But why does Cape and Cove get to be awake still, Papa?” She asked, looking up at her father with her mother’s perfect brown eyes, strawberry blond tresses pulling wildly away from the braid between her small shoulder blades.

“She does make a point, Papa.” Agreed Hawser, turning down his sheets and eyeing longingly at the book on his night table. “Why don’t the babies have to go to bed first?”

“Babies?” Questioned Hector, with raised eyebrows, making Laveer laugh. “Cape and Cove not be babes, meh boy. They be two devils what drain the vigor from yer ma and meself, and use it so they ne’er need a wink of sleep!”

At that the children all laughed, with the exception of Gallant who balled up his little fists and stick out his lower lip, taking a step closer to his father, his blue eyes slits. “I notta baby, Papa,” boldly proclaimed the blond haired toddler, barely taller than Hector’s knee, but Hector laughed.

“Of course yer not, boy! Any day now yer beard’ll be overtakin’ me own!” Hector loftily told him, slipping a hand down to Gallant’s back and gently ushering him towards the door. “But for the time, yeh’ll all be goin’ to bed. Havoc to be reaked tomorrow, lads and ladies; fish to catch, the Pearl’s hull to empty, apples to pick—“

“Hector!” Elizabeth’s voice rang down the corridor in a needful but not angry way, the sounds of the twin’s unruly antics in the background. She’d always managed the children quite well, but twin boys, well, they were more than a handful. “If you’re not too indisposed, I could use a hand with these two wild beasts.”

“Speaking of havoc…” sighed Hawser as he climbed into bed, turning once to drag his fingers across the leather bound cover of the book on the table.

“Yeh were once like that yer own self, meh boy.” Laughed Hector as he lead Weatherly and Gallant out the door, still carrying Laveer. “Goodly night, Hawser. [i]Don Quixote[/i] will be awaitin’ yeh in the morn.”

Though he tried to hurry, getting all four children to bed and tucked in took nearly fifteen minutes, and by the time the last promise to tell them the story of how he’d met their mother again tomorrow night and the last kiss goodnight was given, Hector arrived back at the nursery to see Elizabeth wielding each of Cape and Cove’s nightdresses as the two naked children ran circles around her, laughing and making her laugh, despite how obviously she wished this game to end. His chuckle in the doorway made her look up, and when she did, she sighed with a smile and threw up her hands, shaking her head.

“I get Cove dressed, and while I turn to dress Cape, Cove takes his clothes off again, and vice versa!” She shook her head and sighed, collapsing into the chair behind her. “I do say Hector, keeping clothes on your sons is more difficult than it is to keep clothes on you at times.”

“That so?” He smirked as he stepped into the room, holding his hand out for Elizabeth to throw him one of the nightdresses. She did and he caught it, lowering himself to one knee as he shook the garment from the tumbled knot it had become. “If’n I chose to be offended by that comment, I’d still have to ponder its bearin’.”

“Oh would you?” Elizabeth laughed also straightening the nightdress she held and prepared to dress one of the boys again. “We’ve six children, Hector. I think that provides adequate bearing.”

Hector only laughed, though he could have easily reminded her how he alone was not responsible for each conception; his wife had remained his quite eager lover. Later, he’d remind her later, after the two [i]wild beasts[/i] were soundly down for the night. “Cove,” he said with a sharp jerk of his head that the boy understood to mean his father was not to be disobeyed this time. “C’mon meh boy, yeh’ve all but done yer poor Ma in. This here is goin’ on and stayin’ on this time.”

“Do you hear that, Cape?” Elizabeth asked the other boy, sliding out of the chair and onto her knees, gathering up the nightdress around the opening for the child’s head to slip through. Cape watched as his father slipped Cove’s nightdress on then began to pick him up. Immediately Cape tugged the nightdress from Elizabeth’s fingers and ran to his father with it, standing there with the garment raised in his hand, shaking it impatiently at his father. Elizabeth sighed. “All this time, all my struggles, and this was all it took?”

Again Hector laughed, stooping as he set Cove down and then seeing to Cape. “Well meh queen, over these last nine years yeh’ve proven yerself a fine mediator of disputes between the brethren, a fair judge in any trial, and hard worn enough to sit at table and provide counsel to our court even as the misery of our third child set to make her entrance into the world was upon yeh, but as I told yeh once before, Lizabeth, the children favor meh.”

“Hmm, that well maybe. And in the case of these two, I believe I’m pleased to hear it.” Elizabeth laughed, relieved to finally have her youngest sons dressed and ready for bed. A curious and mischievous smile overtook her face and she sighed, pulling a lock of her deep blond hair over her shoulder and combing her fingers through it coyly, her eyes flirtatiously hooded as she spoke. “If I’d known what you were getting me into that night some 15 months ago…you came to bed, fresh from your maintenance dose of the Agua de Vida…that’s probably what makes the both of them so lively, you were quite energized yourself that night if I remember correctly.”

That night? Only on that night? Hector cocked an eyebrow as he pulled the nightdress down over Cape’s head. He’d expected that she would be tired after the voyage and look forward to getting a good landed night’s sleep in the steadiness of their palace bed, but was that a challenge? “Am I to understand yeh find meh lackluster otherwise?”

With a furtive grace, Elizabeth stood, her smile less curious and more sly now, the sway of her hips unmistakable as she moved passed him and their sons. “I think all are agreeable to you getting them settled, aye Hector?” She half laughed, her strides long and slow. At the doorway she turned her head and looked back and him with a beckoning arch of her eyebrow. “I believe I’ll go for a moonlight stroll, along the beach.”

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Thank you for reading, and sorry for the looooong delay! Chapter six will follow, but only if you let me know you're all still interested!:-)