After Bertha left, I set the rocking chair right-side up and sat down on it. I opened the envelope. The map had been copied in Violet’s own hand. I recognized her neat, elegant handwriting.

A memory suddenly crept into my mind unbidden. I remembered Violet and me as kids receiving our unconventional schooling on the ship, my father teaching us how to write.

Even though he was a pirate and lived an unorthodox life, raiding the houses and businesses of the rich and keeping the money to give to the poor and allow his family and friends to live comfortably, his upbringing had been quite different. My father had been the firstborn son of a nobleman, Sir Oscar Williams. He’d been sent to the best schools and encouraged to study law so he could enter politics. He went on to study political science at Oxford, but his studies led him to realize how unfairly society treated the downtrodden and desperately poor in England, especially London, where he and his family made their home. This realization changed his life.