Part IX - It's Just My Cross to Bear (or in Which We Watch Bluebeard Get Some: Some Food, Some Punch, and Some Other Stuff I Can't Mention in a Family Publication.)
After our failure to find St. Cuthbert's cross in Durham, England, Fabio went to the backup plan. In this situation, he said that our best chance was to head forward to the next place the cross was seen, in the possession of a pirate, who was believed to have buried it with his treasure on some Caribbean island.
We went through a hazy doorway in Durham, and came out in a warm tropical type forest, supposedly on the island of the pirate type guy we were looking for. We had two surprises here, the first being that Brian Young was conscious, and with us. He told us that he'd been with us since Antioch, but that we, and everyone else, never noticed him. He was also the guy along with the storm troopers we were trailing in LSD land. The second jolt was when Joe Supple fell through a second dimensional portal. He looked a little better than when we left him, except for his clothes, a mix of Greek and ratty modern styles. He was also carrying a flaming torch, that for some reason, none of us noticed until much later.
This actually threw Fabio for a loss, as he was unable to explain Joe's sudden reappearance in this manner, this not being something he was responsible for. I suggested that this was the act of some second party, interfering with our little game, and Chappell gave this idea some consideration.
Once welcomes and explanations were out of the way, we got as much of the situation from the Elf as he ever gave us, and tried to come up with a strategy. We decided that showing up, and saying, "Hi there, Mister Pirate, we understand you're going to bury some treasure, can we help?" would be a pretty bad move.
On a wild guess, we asked if Chappell could by any chance, turn us invisible. It turned out that he could, in two ways, one, we would be intangible and undetectable, and, the other, we would be invisible, and able to be heard, felt, and interact with things. We decided we could use the first method to scope things out, and then switch to the second to swipe the cross.
After foraging for food, as we wouldn't be able to get any while intangible, we went down to the beach, and then headed in the direction of the town, according to the elf-boy. Along the way, we saw two sailor/pirate type guys pull up their dinghy (pulling their dinghy, hehe) onto the beach. One got out and walked towards town, and the other went up under a tree, to take a nap. Jon and I went towards him, with Jon going up to talk, and me hanging back. After a useless conversation, that just convinced the pirate (like everyone else we'd met) that Jon was a nutcase. It also didn't help that we were dressed in our robes from the secret society of the second coming of Jon, carrying our weapons, and three people were wearing some kind of armor.
We headed into town, and found a popular looking (seedy) tavern, and went in to see what we could see, hear, smell, and step in. Jay decided to stay outside, so as not to be corrupted by the evil influences inside. We went in, got some ales, paid for with Joe's 2000 year old Greek silver pieces, and checked out the clientele (Joe wasn't happy about that, since he intended that to be his retirement fund). We didn't get anything useful, the only interesting thing was a young man who came up, mistaking us for clergy, and asked us to pray for his brother, whose ship was missing at sea. He also bought us some drinks.
This was all great fun, but nothing was getting done, so we headed back to the woods, to turn invisible. Chappell whipped up the invisible/intangible spell, with the warning that we must all stay close together, or the spell would break down, and then we headed back to scope things out. We went back to the bar, and checked out the cashbox where Joe's money went, so we could figure out how to get it back later. We found out that it was really funky if we walked through objects, or stuck our heads into the heads of other people. This was fodder for many jokes, but also got nothing accomplished.
Finally, after a while of this, a flamboyantly dressed gentleman with a very large, bushy, black beard bounded through the door, and started to party. The drink of choice for the evening was "punch", a very strong rum drink from the descriptions, but Blackbeard never really got drunk. At one point he went to a secluded table with only one other person, to talk about his latest haul of treasure, and he showed the man a fancy looking silver cross, which Fabio felt was the one we wanted, from my description.
For the rest of the evening, we stuck to the beard like ugly on, well, something very ugly, or better, like cat hair on a lollypop. Anyway, we followed him around, and watched the coat pocket that we saw the cross go into. He left the bar for a while to go get laid, but we didn't watch, much. We did try to make sure that the cross didn't stay there though. Eventually he went back to his ship, and we trailed him there too. He put the coat with the cross in it in a large chest, (the hooker he visited also had a large chest) and went to sleep.
The elf said that it would be six hours before he could switch the spells, so we just stayed in Blackbeard's cabin, and went to sleep, telling the elf to keep an eye on things, as he didn't need to sleep. After six hours, he woke us, with Blackbeard still asleep, and us ready to change forms of invisibility. We went out into the woods, and ended up waiting for dark. We ditched the heavy, noisy stuff, and made our plans.
Jon was going to go into Blackbeard's cabin to try to get the cross. I was going to tread water under the cabin window so that he could put the cross in a plastic bag, and throw it out the porthole to me (to prevent people from seeing a cross floating around the ship.) Jay had spotted the armory, and wanted to swipe some weapons, Joe was just going to stand on the pier and keep watch, and Brian just wanted to stay in the woods with the stuff.
I stripped down, other people dumped their stuff, and we turned invisible. We went down to the docks, trying not to bump into anyone, I got into the water and into position under the window, Jon and Jay went onto the ship. All I knew at the time was that I treaded water for some time, there were shots and yells from the ship, and then shortly thereafter, everyone went running away, calling for me to come along. From what they told me, it seemed that Jay easily swiped some pistols, but Jon had trouble with the locked cabin door. He went and got Joe's help, and apparently put gunpowder in the lock, burned the door down, and broke the chest open, but there was no cross.
The next move was to head to the whorehouse, as that was a likely place for the cross to end up. There was a burly guard at the door, and Jay decided to do the good Christian thing, namely to start shooting at the guard, as well as anyone else who walked by. The rest of us went around to the back, and I boosted Jon through a window. There were various noises, and Jon and Jay came back. Jon said that he found the woman, and said that he (still invisible) was the ghost of Bluebeard, and wanted his cross. She swore that she didn't have it, the guard and Jay showed up, they took care of the guard, and came back down.
They told us what they got (nothing) and I asked if they'd actually searched the room. That idea had eluded them, so they went back up to check it out again, and again found nothing. At this point, we had nothing better to do, so we thought we'd go rob a bar.
We went to the bar where we got gouged for the drinks, and went behind the bar to rob the place. Jon and Jay were going to throw bottles over the bar to cause a disruption, then grab the cash box. As I was still naked and unarmed, I borrowed my original mace back from Jay for defensive purposes. When those two started up, the bartender started moving, so I thumped him with the mace to stun him, and he hit the floor. Jay fired his pistols, I fired the bartender's pistol, and a good fight broke out. They made it out with the cash box, and I followed, but I caught a bullet along the way.
We made it back to our stash of possessions, got everything back, turned visible again, and Chappell said that we were going to go for the second backup plan to find the cross. Blackbeard had left the harbor at the island we were on, to head up the east coast of the American colonies, to a secret pirate harbor somewhere in the Carolinas. Chappell turned Brian Young invisible, and sent him along with the ships, with food and instructions, and skipped us all ahead in time, to the place that the ships were due to be arriving in, and a rendezvous with destiny (well, not really destiny, maybe fate, no, not that either. Would you believe a rendezvous with the mundane and everyday?)