Hee hee, my first Pirates of the Caribbean fic ever. This one has been waiting, patiently, for me to finish more than a few paragraphs for months, so forgive me if the tone changes dramatically halfway through. It is good though. I think.
No Sparrington yet, but it will come.
When the door opened, the gentleman waiting at the door to the Governor's house was greeted by a rather breathless housemaid, whose short dumpy form did little to hide the scene of complete mayhem that raged in the hallway of the grand house. Servants were rushing about carrying various bowls and baskets of every commodity from some very beautiful flowering teas to the finest monogrammed linen that could be found. A party, no doubt. Strange how he hadn't heard a word of it. Then again, he had spent rather a long time away from this society.
"Excuse me, sir, but if you're looking for the mistress I'm afraid she won't be down for a long while yet. Master William is being rather troublesome, though young boys often are, I find." For a breathless woman, the dear housemaid could definitely talk. "Now, sir, if you could come- I say, don't I know you. A name in the back of my head, you know. I got this funny feeling I know you. Say, ain't you that navy man- no, he's dead. You look just like him though. Strange. Well, I once heard of a man who looked exactly like my husband who spent most of his time around that pirate port, Torluga, or Tarpuga or summat, but it can't have been my husband, because my John is sailing with one of those merchant ships what's bringing spices or coffee or one of them things."
The woman talked at such great speed it was impossible to get a word in edgeways,. However, despite her speed, the one-sided conversation still seemed to last an eternity for the gentleman standing outside in the muggy Caribbean weather that lingers before a storm with the mid-day sun beating down upon his bare head. His hat was in his hands as he had removed it, expecting to actually be allowed entry into the cool, breezy house.
A passing manservant shot the girl a dirty look. "Harriet, get back here. There is still much work to be done."
"Dreadfully sorry sir. This gentleman was just talking to me. Didn't catch your name, sir, I'll tell Mistress you called."
She paused and the gentleman took this as his cue to speak. However, the fates were set against his words, for he had barely muttered an apology and started his introduction before he was interrupted -right before he could utter a singly syllable of his name.
"James!" The cry came from the young woman who stood at the top of the stairs, a young child hiding in her skirts, clinging to them as a maidservant tried to pull him away. The young woman bent to remove the child tenderly before rushing down the stairs and through the hallway, narrowly avoiding Harriet, for although the housemaid was fast of speech, the same could not be said for her legs. The poor woman narrowly avoided toppling over before she hurried back to her duties.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Turner had taken over her spot in the doorway and was scrutinising her visitor. "It is you, isn't it, James? Weren't you…" She trailed off with a small nod to herself as he raised a sardonic eyebrow.
"I realise coming back from the dead is hardly the most original manoeuvre in these times but really when a man is continually floating in a small dinghy, originality escapes him. And before you ask," he added hurriedly as Elizabeth took in breath, "Naval men are original. Though perhaps Her Majesty feels they cannot compare to her brethren?"
"What?" Forgetting her manners, an entirely unladylike look of rude confusion spread over Elizabeth's face before realization dawned. "You've been talking to Will, haven't you?" She was rewarded with a rueful smile of admission as she sealed her own lips tight in mock disapproval. "And I suppose it didn't dawn upon him that telling the recently resurrected Admiral that his wife was a leader of the most notorious and bloodthirsty pack of pirates that every terrorised the Spanish main might be a bad idea?"
"Mis- Mrs Turner, I am hardly in a position to criticise you, let alone send you to the gallows. And congratulations indeed upon your marriage, as unorthodox as it may have been." James, for James Norrington he most certainly was, had genuine warmth in his voice, and a casual observer might never have guessed that he had once wanted the prize (for a prize she had been then, a painting, too perfect to be real) for himself. Then again, this casual observer, Joe Blogg, as we shall call him, would not have noticed the tendril of seaweed that still clung to the man's foot, nor the hole in his brocade coat which was now drawing Elizabeth's attention as she remembered how it had been made.
Vaguely, she thanked him for his congratulations before the subject brought her mind back from that night. "Yes, well, I'm glad you know about it. The insolence I have received has been unbearable. All the women I had the dignity to call upon on my return insisted on referring to me as Miss Swan and I nearly had to throttle the doctor and the priest to acknowledge dear William as the father of, well, dear William." She visibly fumed for some moments before her face lit up again. "But you are here! You can tell them about William, and our marriage and shove it in all their faces."
As she descended into gleeful mutterings, James could see the child in Elizabeth that had never truly left her, despite the horrors she had been through. It pained him a little, he had to admit, that he was to be the one to confirm her marriage and thus remove himself from her forever, but the main part of that work had been done already, by his own despicable actions and the connection that he knew the couple shared. With a smile that showed only a few signs of being forced, Norrington nodded along to all of the young mother's ravings. "It would be an honour."
After all, wasn't that precisely what he had returned to earn once more?
"Excellent, excellent. Oh, it really is marvellous you are here, not that it wouldn't be wonderful in any other circumstance but it really is doubly so and- Oh! Do come in. Sorry, I forgot, you must be exhausted from your trip – You did take a trip, I assume?" Elizabeth began to cluck like a mother hen as she led the truly weary Norrington into a morning room away from the commotion of the rest of the house. James was preparing for the onslaught when Harriet arrived, looking pink in the face, with the younger William in tow(there was certainly something of Turner around the face, and in the boy's posture.) He was sure he would never feel so glad to see the woman again as he was then for as long as he lived, amusing as she was, as Elizabeth was dragged off by Harriet to deal with some pressing matter to do with flowers, or flower water at the very least, and James was left alone and in peace.
Glancing around him, he was surprised at how little had changed. James had assumed that a new governor would have arrived and settled in by now, no doubt bringing with him an array of fashionable daughters and/or a wife and the most up to date décor from London, and yet nothing had changed, aside from the odd piece of fine silverware that looked to the naval man's trained eye, suspiciously like loot, similar to that found on the Isla de Muerta. Then again, who was he to criticise a Pirate Queen when he himself, on his own foray into piracy, had managed to get no further than Jack Sparrow's deck hand?
Still, he was astonished to find Elizabeth in residence. He had been told to expect to run across her – after all, as James himself had said, there ways had always seemed intertwined, and he knew better now than to scoff at fate. However, Norrington had expected to be met by the new governor, hopefully a wet behind the ears lordling who would accept any excuse with a enough nautical terms in it as a reasonable explanation for his not being dead and his absence for several years. Finding Mrs Turner had been a pleasant but definite shock.
He had little time to contemplate the matter, however, before the physically exhausted man fell asleep, unconcerned that the seaweed on his boot was beginning to leak its pigments into the pale rug. Harriet, however, who had been ordered to return to take care of the gentleman, tutted to herself disapprovingly before removing the boots from a polish. As she made her way back to the kitchen, she kept up her one sided conversation with whoever was passing until she was left alone, a mumbling but lovable fool.
"And he does so look like the Commodore. Or was it Admiral? Jimmy would know. Ah, I do miss my Jimmy. He would know. Ah, come here, puss, come sit with old Hattie – that's it. Oh, poor Jimmy. He'll be home soon, with money enough to keep us both, won't he, puss? And then I'll rest my old bones at last, there, can you here them creaking? Tired old bones, they are, tired old bones."
And, bless her soul, Harriet too fell asleep in the warmth of the kitchen and, partly out of relief that she couldn't cause more damage, and also partly out of the spark of warmth in his heart, the cold butler did not have the heart to wake her, and so two weary travellers slept in the Governor's mansion, whilst a small, mischievous boy plotted the awakening of one.
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Errr, I'm not sure where Harriet came from, but she's there and she refuses to leave. The next chapter will be longer and focus a little more on the actual canon characters and less of that particular figment of my imagination.
Hated it? Loathed it? Want to kill me? Whatever you feel, please review!