The Lioness of Bermuda

By Richard Johnson

The lady Janice, an Irish Noblewoman, vacationing in Bermuda, finds her home invaded, her friends and lovers taken and her life destroyed.
She seeks redress agaisnt the invaders by raising the flag of piracy to enact revenge against those hwo harmed her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Johnson
• Release date: Apr 27, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476153841

Book preview

THE LIONESS OF BERMUDA

By Rick Johnson

Published by Richard Johnson (Desert Dragon Productions) at Smashwords.

Copyright July 2010 Richard Johnson

ISBN 9781476153841

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

THE LIONESS OF BERMUDA

By Rick Johnson

INTRODUCTION

(This was found at an archive website, the original having vanished as does happen so often with the internet. Any spelling errors are the result of the original poster and are retained. Proper names and contact info have been redacted)

Who was Lady Janice?

I know she was a lesbian pirate in the 17th century who pillaged men and freed women but can anyone tell me more?

The lady Janice was an Irish princess driven from her throne by the English. She was a lesbian who sailed the Carribbean with her crew of womyn pirates, hounding and robbing men. Even Blackbeard was afraid of her.

Lady Janice was an inspiration to all womyn who wish tobreak the chains of slavery and be free. As Ulrike Klaismann, Marian Meinzerin, and Gabriel Kuhn said in Women Pirates and the Politics of the Jolly Roger, the Pirate ship which was shaped like a vagina, was theperfect means for wimin to express themselves and all ofher crew were wimin that she had freed from the slavery of their husbands and masters.

Lady Janice was extremely feminine and contemporary descriptions remark on her beauty, fashion and how she enjoyed fine gowns and jewelry. She was a bit of a libertine and partied often attending the grandest balls given by the nobility of Europe.

How dare you say that! Lady Jancie was a Witch and a Lesbian and hated nmen for their depredations. She dressed in comfortable clothes, cutehr hair short for battle and devoted her life toending slavery.

There have been any number of female pirates mentioned in history, some of these were Irish such as Grace O’Malley, but few are as poorly known and more interesting as the Lady Janice Obrien who was known as The Lioness of Bermuda.

Born of noble stock, Lady Obrien (a minor sept of the O’Brien clan) was one of the few women in history who managed to live her own life, and yet remain, distinctly, feminine. Renounced as a Pagan, Lesbian, Amazon, revolutionary, assassin and whore, many were the labels applied to this woman who associated with peasant and king and whose exploits can be found as far east as Japan, as near as England, and as exotic as Romania. Such was her fame that often fact and myth are so intertwined that it is impossible to separate the two and even serious historians doubt that she even lived, preferring to list her as a heroic mythological being along the lines of Odyssus or Baba Yaga. She has been named as a concubine to any number of pagan horned gods, a hunter of vampires and werewolves and yet sought after by kings and emperors who wished her for a bride, is it any wonder that her very existence is in doubt?

In seeking information for this book, I discovered tantalizing clues to the Lady Janice. Mention of her name appears associated with any number of famous (and infamous) people including pirates, but often only as a footnote. At least three famous painters are known to have done her portrait, but little is definitive. There is just enough to convince me that the Lioness of Bermuda DID exist! Thus I can only give to her a single four page chapter and must warn the reader that much of even this is simple conjecture.

From A History of the Pirates of Bermuda by Edmund O’Connor,

printed in London, 1963

Back to Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

PART I—EUROPE ( 1714 )

Chapter 1- Amsterdam

Chapter 2- The Duchess

Chapter 3- Mr Vandersnoot

Chapter 4- Margarithe

Chapter 5- Barbary Pirates

PART II--AMERICA

Chapter 6- Boston

Chapter 7- A Trio of ladies

Chapter 8- Merlott’s Inn

PART III--BERMUDA

Chapter 9- St George

Chapter 10- Calico Jack

Chapter 11- Mary Read

Chapter 12- Caught in the Act

Chapter 13- Raymond DeVille

Chapter 14- The Fight in the Tavern

Chapter 15- Atonement

Chapter 16- James Flannigan of Belfast

Chapter 17- The Slave Ship

Chapter 18- Blackbeard

Chapter 19- Constance

Chapter 20- Benjamin’s Seduction

Chapter 21- Planning a Party

Chapter 22- The orgy

Chapter 23- Invasion

PART IV--PIRACY

Chapter 24- Rescue

Chapter 25- Charleston

Chapter 26- Julia

Chapter 27- John Silver

Chapter 28- Blood and Gore

Intermission- Elizabeth Bathory

Chapter 29- Mutiny

Chapter 30- DeVille again

Chapter 31- Pardons

About the Author

AUTHORS NOTE:

If I have made free with history, please understand that this is a work of fiction, not history. And so to entertain, I have combined persons who were separated by some few years and probably never met though my trivia of the times is accurate.

I have also followed common belief about many of the characters I describe, even when such beliefs lack historical accuracy or popular acceptance.*

Basically, what I write is true, I simply made it entertaining and combined a 20 year period of history into a couple years of fun.

*note: During the early 1700s, it was common for slaves to be freed by law after seven or nine or ten years. It was also common for slaves to own other slaves and even black slaves owned other black and even white slaves, a fact carefully ignored by the political correctness of modern American history books.

It was Oliver Cromwell who sought to repress Irish dissent by selling 25% of the Irish people as slaves to the new World. Note, these were true slaves, not to be confused with bondsmen who sold themselves into virtual slavery in return for a trip to the new World.

A major providers for the African Slave trade were the Dutch who encouraged the freeing of slaves in America as such a law encouraged the Dutch to continue their trade to replace what had been freed.

The jury is still out as to the relationship between Calico Jack, Mary and Anne and even Elizabeth Bathory. I prefer to follow popular belief for the entertainment value even when I believe the opposite.

As for Janice, herself. _Lioness of Bermuda_ is but one of a series of novellas and short stories about her that start in Renaissance Russia and move about here and there. If there are some aspects of her that you find curious, request me to publish the rest of the series.

All maps, paintings and woodcuts are contemporary and historical, drawings are by me.

Richard Johnson

PO Box 40451

Tucson, Az. 85717

[e-mail]

http://Rick-Johnson.webs.com

Back to Contents

PART I

EUROPE

1714

CHAPTER ONE-Amsterdam

I was bored! So bored I could scream. I felt trapped and could not change anything until… I don’t know when but if I could figure out which feckin’ god or goddess I pissed on this time, I’d give my fortune as penance and even sacrifice a virgin, assuming that I could find one. I certainly didn’t meet that requirement. I felt like I was back in Poland and still married.

I tried to go home and failed. I tried to change myself and failed. I tried to contact friends and family and failed. I even tried to read the cards and stones to find out WHY? And failed.

And I was stuck here!

Finally I hired a coach and chose a direction at random and drank myself into a depression as the coach bumped down the road. We stopped for lunch, my footman introducing me to the landlord, Behold! I present the Lady Janice Obrien, Baroness Innis and Duchess Kolchek. I insisted that my Irish title precede my Polish even though the latter was the greater both in rank and might, for Poland was a major military power in Europe and Ireland naught but a poverty-stricken nation held in thrall to the hated British.

The food was adequate but I had eaten far worse so complimented the Keep on the effort that he made and taking another bottle, returned to my coach. His daughter being too young for my tastes and his wife too old.

Finally it was announced that we were approaching Amsterdam. All I knew of the city was that is was the financial capital of Europe and even I banked there, though through my Swiss agents. This promised interest so I bade my driver to continue and find me a decent place to stay.

We must have crossed the city a half dozen times though each time they stopped at a place, I bade them to move on. I disliked the neighborhood, the canal stank, I liked not the other guests. Finally I chose one only because the sun had set and I had no desire to sleep in the carriage. Thus we stopped and as my bags were unloaded, a cutpurse actually had to bollocks to rob me!

Amsterdam 1700

Back to Contents

CHAPTER TWO- The Duchess

I suppose that in this world of corsets and panniers and ladies taught to faint at the sight of a mouse, he felt that I was good prey, but we Irish are made of sterner stuff.

Instead of releasing my purse and falling in a swoon, I took greater hold, braced myself and pulled. My assailant, already off-balance with his attempt to run, fell backwards to the stones where my heel struck him in the arm, thus freeing my belongings. Then a strike with my parasol kept him occupied until the coachmen could take his arms.

I tossed the men some coins with the words, Thrash that man for me, if you would. And entered the hostel to the painful cries of my would-be thief.

After checking in and paying my bill for a week, I enjoyed a meal and a nice bottle as I sought company for the evening, company I found in an attractive woman who returned my glances with a demure smile. These Dutch were a bit more open to my desires than would be the Germans or English and so inviting her over, we shared a meal and vintage then, later, when alone, each other.

***

I awoke, alone, unfortunately, for the previous evening’s entertainment made me wish for more, after a refreshing nap, but things are as they are so I wrapped a robe about my naked body and looked out the window to the sights that I could not see in the dark. My window overlooked a large canal, doubtless the stench I was suffering as I placed a perfumed kerchief to my nose. Workers strode along that canal intent upon their business and upon the occasional ship that was tied to the wharfs.

I loved the sea, having been born into a family that sought its lost fortune at fishing and farming, with the occasional cattle raid and piracy. But then, we Irish saw nothing wrong with what the English labeled ‘crimes’. Perhaps being an occupied nation where we fought each other as often as we fought the hated British made us so complacent in our violence.

Dressing, I had made arrangements for a maid to assist, I left the hotel in comfortable shoes and parasol with my wakazashi hidden in the folds of my dress for I intended to explore this city and had no desire to be harmed by assailant or blister. The city was, like all major cities of the early Eighteenth Century, a mixture of the wealthy and the poor with none between. Only here, the wealthy were peasant merchants who had made their fortunes betting upon the colour changes of tulips, the tea trade in Indonesia and any sea venture that promised a quick fortune. I found it refreshing after the German class-system that allowed a German noble the right to rape a man’s daughter and burn his home if she failed to please him. But then, the British and French were much the same.

It may seem strange that I, a Noble myself, would feel so but I had learned that peasant revolts were often successful and peasant revenges upon their hated nobility to be overly cruel. And so found that a kind word and few coins would purchase for me the good will of the lesser classes, good will that had done me well upon occasion. At least I remained alive while many of my contemporaries were not.

I had a meal at an open air establishment and was sipping a