Though no Muslim cleric, the man known by some as a prayer of beads aboard the Bloodwake did learn to read the Qur’an while also learning the craft of the apothecary as captive, slave, and servant among Mussulmen. Remaining Christian in his faith, he did not lose his familiarity with the Psalms and Gospels of the Bible. It’s this other association that had occasioned this nickname of the man known by others as “Criss Cross”. In part it’s the patronymic of the Fleming Cristoffels De LaCroix that helped to reinforce the use of the moniker “Criss Cross” by more than a few. Nor a Christian cleric, yet a man of prayer, even if too he has been known to enjoy worldly pleasures when such opportunities have been presented.
Cristoffels De LaCroix forced subjugation among the Berbers was ended it’s been said in North Africa, afterward he’d settled in the French port city of Marseilles for only a short while. None of the pirate crew has discerned how De LaCroix came to be free walking about the streets and alleys of Oran once they learned this much of his story, but it was in a city tavern in Marseilles where Sally made the drinking man’s acquaintance.
While none may know the manner Cristoffels had come to be liberated, he in turn cannot recall if finding himself aboard the pirates’ ship was of his own volition, or if he was coerced. If the latter, fortune did not seem to be his. A night of happy drinking and Sally’s company gave cause for not being able to remember events between the tavern and finding himself at sea the next day. It’s not unlikely that he had agreed to join their fellowship, but by no means was he certain this was the case. Finding himself among them and not wishing again to be constrained his freedom in the case his cooperation to comply with the needs of the ship might be questioned, De LaCroix comported himself as if indeed it was his own idea to be there, and for this, he did not go unrewarded. Whose to know, with these rogues and bandits, he may gain opportunity to exact revenge on marauding corsairs, if he could learn to wield sword, dagger and axe, and in the process keep himself hale and whole.
Aboard the Bloodwake, Cristo later finds himself asea in the Caribbean far from the Mediterranean shores of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya.
No matter… without the benefit of the Church, Cristoffels De LaCroix took up with Sally. Their union added another soul to the ship’s company, Jacques van der Kruis. “Jake” was given his father’s family name, though because of the circumstance of his birth, he took the Dutch form. The apothecary complemented the crew’s barber-surgeon in more ways than one.
