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1715. The seas near New Providence Island.
In the bowels of the defeated merchant ship, the crew of the Walrus were getting about their work. Cargo was being catalogued, weapons were being cleaned, wounds were being tended.
The pale young man with the dark hair picked his way over the bodies of his crewmates. He never had been much good in a fight, and frankly he hadn’t been willing to risk his life to protect some rolls of silk and a few barrels of tobacco.
He was following the gruff pirate towards the bosun, trying not to trip over the debris on the lower decks, and trying not to make eye contact with any of the merchant crew who had somehow survived the pirate onslaught.
The tanned bosun looked up from his work. Blue eyes met blue eyes.
And unbidden, a memory flashed into the pale man’s head.
Polishing a sword. Laughter. Stealing a water bottle and throwing it from man to man. Armour with no sleeves, because the size of the knight’s arms were enough to quell half of the threats that might arise.
He blinked it away. For a moment it might have looked as though he was ogling the shirtless man’s impressively muscular form, but in truth he was just trying to get through the day in one piece without his lost memories distracting him.
He knew he would survive the day, he always did. But dismemberment remained a very painful way to spend one’s time, and he had no desire to experience it again.
For the pale man with the long dark hair who stood now awaiting the bosun’s instruction was not all that he appeared. While he might be exactly as cowardly as the poor deceased ship’s cook had accused him of being, he was not young.
This man had walked the earth for nigh on twelve hundred years. Twelve centuries of faces, names, fights and wars and horror.
No-one could remember so much life; the human brain could not even fathom the concept. And so the great wizard Merlin, Emrys, the sorcerer of Camelot, servant of the mighty King Arthur had passed into legend.
Now his name was John Silver. He had heard of the myths, of course. But the knowledge of his own part in them, of his powers, of his own history… lost in a haze of memories that only now returned in occasional flashes of brilliant colour.
All he knew was that however hard someone tried to kill him, his body would piece itself back together and jolt awake with new life. He did not know his age, he did not even know his true name.
His fragmented memories were all he had as he made his way through the world, trying to cling on to the one thing he knew beyond all doubt.
He loved his king. He would serve his king until the day he died.
The question was who on earth this king could be. And poor John Silver had no idea.
The bosun, Billy Bones, escorted him to his new station as ship’s cook. Introduced him to crew members. Explained the rules of the pirate ship, so different from that of the merchantman.
“No-one gets preferential treatment, no extra rations, no better cuts of meat, not even the Captain. Everyone is equal.”
A round table. A place for every man to be heard. A place where every man is equal.
The bosun dressed in shining armour, a long red cloak about his shoulders, a bright broadsword at his side.
A circle of friends, of brothers-in-arms, of men who would lay down their lives in protection of each other.
A gold and red figure in a beam of light.
A name rose unbidden to his lips.
“Percival,” he muttered, turning to the cook pot. Shaking his head to clear it of the strange images, John Silver got to work. He couldn’t afford to lose focus. Not with a piece of paper of such inordinate value tucked within his pocket.
Whoever this man was, whatever he might have been in John’s past, there was no time to try and remember it now. He would worry about it later, once this business was done.
After all, he had all the time in the world.