Disclaimer: I do not own Pirates of the Caribbean, and I did not write the song 'Brandy' (sung by Looking Glass), and I'm not going to try to steal either because I'm too gutless (boy, I'd be a rubbish pirate, wouldn't I?).
Author's Note: You can sort of thank my dad for this one. This song was on a CD of his and I was surprised at how much the lyrics matched something that could've easily happened in Pirates of the Caribbean. The lyrics are at the end of the chapter so you can see for yourself.
Brandy
In a port on the West Side of the Island of Ireland, there was a tavern known for miles around. Not known for some of the things bars are known for though, for the barkeep was an honest man and had four daughters he loved and respected and honored by not keeping unsavory company. It was not the barkeep who brought the sailors and town folk to the tap, but these girls of his, one of which was named Brandy, and in the opinions of many, there might be a prettier girl in looks but surely not a girl with prettier eyes.
These girls, including Brandy, worked at the bar, catering to the needs of the clientele by serving drinks, food, and lending an ear to the stories they had to tell. Although her younger sister Jane was the most beautiful of all, not to mention the sister with the most suitors, it was Brandy that was the company favorite – Charming Brandy, who always had a smile on her face, a joke on her lips, and, of course, the prettiest eyes in town.
"Ey, her sister Jane is a lil prettier," agreed the men.
"And aye, her sister Katharine is a little smarter," agreed the school teacher.
"And aye, her sister Georgiana has a little finer figure," agreed the women.
"But there really is not a girl anywhere who has eyes that could steal a sailor from the sea," agreed the town.
Indeed, when Brandy had turned fifteen, the declarations of love started, and when she was sixteen, so did the marriage proposals and promises: the baker's boys; the blacksmith's son; the new tanner whose master had retired scarcely a year before; and sailors by the dozens, all of whom said the same:
"Oh Brandy, so pretty and so fine! Won't you be, won't you be my bride? Don't you know what your eyes could do? Don't you know what a fine wife you would be for me?"
All offers were declined, for differentiating reasons: her pa, a widower since Brandy was a girl of twelve years, was not yet ready to be parted from his daughter, who was "much to young" to be married off so soon. Brandy, though she batted and joked and teased a little bit along with her sisters and the other barmaids, showed no interest, because she was already in love with someone else. To prove it, around her neck hung a locket, crafted from the finest silver from Spain, brought to her by the man whose name lay on the locket – the man Brandy loved.
He had come one day in July, one of those hot days where everything seemed to move more slowly, especially people, and where all people wanted to hear was good news and good stories. His hair was long and dark and wild, his large but slender hands callused from working with ropes and wood and sea water, his features were handsome but in an almost unusual way and seemed to be chiseled, and his dark eyes seemed to glow when he was telling a story, a memory that Brandy cherished.
Everyone gathered around at the Five Birds Tavern, listening to the stories and collecting gifts that the mysterious sea man gave away freely: coral from far off islands, sea shells and pearls both white and (most extraordinarily) black, silken scarves from the Orient, and a few more items, some made from Spanish silver. One of them was a silver locket that the sea man gave to Brandy a week after his arrival.
They'd caught each other's eyes almost immediately; Georgiana had tried to steal his attention away, but once the sea man saw Brandy, her eyes captivated his whenever they flickered to her. Despite this, however, he told her at once that he could never give her what he wanted.
"Lass, no harbor is my home," he warned her. "I'm a sea man, and so my life, love, and only lady is the sea."
"What if I came with you?" asked Brandy brashly, her eyes bright. "Why can't I? I've always dreamed of sailing the sea – can't we both sail it together? Can't you bring me that horizon?"
But the sea man gravely shook his head. "Brandy, what a fine wife you would be," he said, echoing the sentiments of her past suitors. "But I told you before and I tell you again, my life, my love and lady, is the sea."
Going against all the sense she had exhibited before, she had nevertheless spent every moment she could in his presence, all about town, in her father's tavern, and on his father's ship. He couldn't resist letting her, because although he meant every word he said about the sea, he too was enthralled by her, even if he knew it wouldn't last forever like she hoped.
It was only when he was about to leave, she begged him to give her some token, some bit of remembrance. "Something that will make me think of you, and smile, of course," she said, "but more importantly still, something that you will remember giving to me, and smile."
And so he obliged, giving her the fine silver locket, and, after she gave him a kiss he could not resist accepting, he left the port.
On nights after the bar would shut down and it was time to slip into her bed she shared with her younger sister Jane (Brandy was the second oldest, and Georgiana was the youngest), she would sometimes tip-toe down the hall to the big window (an object of her father's pride – stained glass like in "Londontown") and look out to the harbor and sea. That's when she'd touch her locket, and think of that day when she'd first saw him, with his waving hands and dancing eyes as he told a story. Then she'd think of her parting kiss, and wish tenderly that it was his ship she would see on the horizon one day.
Her wish was granted, for a year later, when she was eighteen and he was twenty, he came back. Surprisingly he had remembered her over the year and thought of her often, and even though it would most assuredly end in heartbreak, he couldn't resist seeing her again, Brandy, with the pretty eyes and lively manner.
He kept coming back, over the next year, and each time she left she would kiss him goodbye, but he never her. That soon became her new wish, for him to kiss her, which she would think about often as she tried to understand this need, his need, for the sea, and why it kept pulling him away.
Finally, over two years after their first meeting, she literally could not stand this, this constant waiting and hopes that kept getting dashed. That's when she begged him, just like she begged for a token, for him to marry her.
"Either you marry me right now," she told him, her eyes starting to stream as she cast all her cards on the table, "or leave, and don't come back."
He was torn, his eyes raking over her face, and when they finally rested on her own dark orbs, he saw that she was not lying. And he knew that it would not end well, and that the sea was still his life, and he told her so, but….
"Mayhap," said he, "mayhap I can have two loves, two ladies. Mayhap we can try." And he took her into his arms and kissed her.
They were married a month later, in a ceremony on a hill overlooking the harbor, the sea breeze ruffling their hair and the saltwater filling their nostrils. Thus Brandy Sparrow and the sea man, simply called Teague, were at last married.
The first year was perhaps the hardest, because once you get a taste of the forbidden fruit you want it more. Teague kept convincing his father to come back, and Brandy kept welcoming him home. The second year was a little easier, especially since Brandy and Teague had a child, a girl named Neimh. Less than two years later Melanie came along, and a year later a baby named Gabriel that did not live longer than six months, which struck Brandy with grief and caused her to moan and sob for days: "Oh, what am I going to tell Teague when he comes back? His little boy – dead! Mary and Melanie's only brother, my littlest baby – dead! Oh, what will I tell him?" The couple healed, the death affecting Teague possibly more than his wife – who had not been there, to comfort Brandy? Who had not been there, to watch over their son while Brandy slept a few hours that had been insisted, not by Teague, but instead by her sisters and father? Who had not been there, to hold their young daughters as they cried when their baby brother was laid into the ground? That was why, when he came back again one day a couple years later, he was both nervous and happy to see Brandy's belly starting to swell with child again. Perhaps a child will bring back the old beauty of Brandy's eyes.
Teague tried to make Brandy happy. He took her around town, relaxed with her and the children on the beautiful green moors, and took some long overdue shore leave. He purchased a small sailboat, not much bigger than a dingy, and took her on trips around the cape. Brandy told him that the baby seemed to enjoy it – the girls certainly did, splashing the water and trying to hold it in their fat fists.
Teague sometimes forewent the sailboat in exchange for the actual ship, when it was in port. It was on one such trip, where Brandy was close to nine months pregnant, that a storm unexpectedly struck and where, amid the spray and howls of the sea and sky, and the roar of a cannon, that a bouncy baby boy was born over a cannon – a real "son of a gun." The boy was named Jack, after Teague's uncle that had been lost as sea shortly before.
The boy was probably the most beautiful baby Teague had ever seen, more beautiful than Gabriel had been or Neimh and Melanie were now. His eyes were the same color of his mother's, but his hands were slender and would undoubtedly be large one day, when he was grown. He was the only living boy, and the only one to inherit Brandy's eyes, and it was fitting, since Jack was the last child Teague and Brandy ever had together.
Satisfied that his wife would be okay, Teague had left, and for a long time at that. Brandy was left like she had so many years before, waiting at the window looking down at the harbor, wishing for him to come back and kiss her, even as she tried once again to understand the sea. This battle between them, her and the sea, on who would command Teague's affection, was starting to make her uneasy. When they'd gotten married and survived the first years and had the two healthy girls, she'd thought she'd been the winner. Now she wasn't so sure, now that Teague was gone more and more.
His words were ringing in her ears all the time now, those words he'd always said: "Brandy, what a fine wife you would be, but I've told you before and I tell you again, my life, my love and lady, is the sea."
Ten more years passed, during which she herself moved to India because that's where Teague said she'd live best (Brandy never knew that her husband was a pirate, and that it was because India was closer to the trading routes that Teague had them move there), and her children began to turn into adults – including Jackie, who had his mother's eyes and surname, but his father's wild ways and hair and slender but large hands.
It was at the end of these ten years that Brandy's life was abruptly cut short – murdered, in cold blood, by a slave recruiter, who had tried to take the girls and Jackie. It was then that Jackie became Jack, because it was he that fired the bullet that killed the slave recruiter, and death is both the most brutal and the most effective of ways of transgressing from childhood to adulthood.
It happened by sea shore, where Brandy had taken the girls and the boy so they could toss a sea shell into the ocean whilst hoping for the waves to bring their father home soon – a variant to the old wishing well she'd had as a child, back at her home in Erin. They did this every so often, and every so often there would be another or more on the soft sands of the white beach – soldiers seeking a place to relax, sailors not ready yet to turn their eyes away from the sea, other wives and children and perhaps a father, the occasional lonesome youth hoping to slip away for a small while. That was why it was not alarming when a man in salt-smelling clothes came upon the beach. Unlike other old men who visited the beach, however, he did not smile or ask what they were doing. Instead he withdrew a pistol.
It happened so quickly. First the man was bellowing at Brandy and grabbing Jack and Melanie. Melanie screamed, her vivid red hair streaming prettily in the air (just like her Aunt Georgie's did) and twisted frantically, and Jack tried to fight but then a pistol was pointed at his temple as his sister screamed. Then he saw Neimh, brave and stoic dark-haired Neimh with her big blue eyes, leaping at the man and knocking him to the ground, enabling Brandy to dive at the gun that had been flung on the ground. Melanie was tossed to the ground, and there was a small crack as her ankle broke when she landed on it wrong, and Neimh just kept kicking the man because she didn't know what else to do and Jack tried to help but was pulled back by his mother and the man was reaching into his tunic and pulling out a gun. He threw Neimh off like she was a rag doll, but Neimh managed to turn the fall into a roll. Jack threw himself over at Neimh, wrenching himself out of his mother's grip and out from between her and the hunter (something he never really forgave himself for), and knelt over her, trying to get her away. He grabbed Melanie's hand, and there was a gunshot, making them all freeze. But the gunshot was louder than any gunshot Jack had ever heard and he turned and his blood stopped in his veins as his mother fell, bloody, clutching her smoking pistol and the man fell, bloody, clutching his smoking pistol, and the white beach was stained red and there was no one there….
It was then, with only her children around her but no husband, no wild and handsome and captivating husband with the glowing eyes named Teague, and the sea lapping at her ankles, and the silver locket bearing the name of a man Brandy loved, and the words of the townfolk and Teague ringing in her ears ("Brandy, what a fine wife you would be!") that Brandy realized the sea was the winner, and that she had no right to be sore because she'd never won in the first place.
There's a port on a Western bay and it serves
A hundred ships a day
Lonely sailors pass the time away
And talk about their homes
And there's a girl
In this harbor town
And she works
laying whiskey down
They say, "Brandy, fetch another round."
She serves them whiskey and wine
They say, they say "Brandy, you're a fine girl!
"What a good wife you would be!
"Yeah your eyes could steal a sailor from the sea!"
Brandy wears a braided chain
made of finest silver from the north of Spain
A locket that bears the name
of a man that Brandy loves
He came on a summer's day
Bringing gifts from far away
But he made it clear he couldn't' stay
No harbor was his home
He said "Brandy, you're so fine, what a good wife you would be!
"But my life, my love and my lady, is the sea!"
Yeah Brandy used to watch his eyes
When he told his sailor's story
She could feel the ocean fall and rise
She saw his raging glory
But he had always told the truth,
like he was an honest man
And Brandy does her best to understand
At night when the bars close down,
Brandy walks through a side of town and loves a man
Who's not around.
She still can hear him say,
She hears him say, "Brandy, you're a fine girl, what a good wife you would be!" (Such a fine wife)
"But my life, and my love and my lady, is the sea!"
"Brandy, you're a fine girl, what a good wife you would be…"