Prologue
Edward Teague was an outlaw, but with an aristocrat bearing. A legendary pirate in his own right, the Pirate Lord of Madagascar and a man who liked to keep his friends close and enemies very, very far away. Many people described him as being a fearsome figure with an unmistakable touch of sweetness and vulnerability.
Many people described his wife as being just plain nuts.
It was not even two weeks after Jackie had been born that his wife had enough and jumped off at the next port suddenly, skipping away to South America, quickly becoming lost to him. So he sailed on, knowing what sort of woman he had married- half having expected something like this really- but now with a newborn bundle of screaming trouble.
He was a fugitive, a criminal, hunted wherever he went and had attempts at his life at least once a week. His ship was no place for a child, especially not such a young scoundrel that his boy was rapidly showing himself to be.
His first thought had been to leave Jackie with the clan, Grandmama, Aunt Hazel and Valerie, all snuggled in that rubble they called Shipwreck City. Then he got wind of a good friend whose wife had suffered her sixth miscarriage in a row, no children after a decade of trying and desperate.
Teague though about it for a long time, a whole week in fact, most of the time just watching the horizon as they sailed, fiddling thoughtfully with the crucifixes and rosaries that ran throughout his hair. This was a good friend they were talking about, with a good wife and a very, very fine position that many could only dream of. A man of the British Royal Navy…his son would have so much- education, medicine, fine food, influence…did he want this? Did he want to give his son away?
Joshamee Gibbs was more than eager to take his son, which was for certain. This was a man who had saved Teague and his crew's lives on numerous occasions, a man who had once admitted in a dirty bar that he dreamt of becoming a pirate, but didn't dare, a man on such good terms with Teague's Grandmama that he was sure the man was suicidal to some degree; a man who now seemed so frantic to smother a child, any child, in love and share his fortune. Jackie was still so young, born premature and still so small, if the wife were to stick a pillow under her garments, lock herself away for a few months; it would be a smooth transaction with no suspicions.
So in the dead of night, Teague delivered his son personally to their door. A bundle of baby, a bundle of youth, a bundle of bones really. Half of him, half of the insane woman he loved like it was a curse. Leaving…forever…his Jackie…
He could never have been more grateful, that when Joshamee took his child off him he had looked into his eyes and promise,
"We will tell him of you, Captain Teague, sir."
For that he could never have been more grateful.
It's a seamstress you see. A woman who says she worships the lord and his word, yet spits on the needy who grab at her heels and hates with passion the aristocrats she serves. One day the governor comes in with his twelve year old daughter. A dress so expensive it would feed her children for weeks, just because his 'precious daughter' was 'wonderfully behaved today'.
She clenches her yellow teeth and continues on, pushing needles and measuring out fabric. She happens to really like this certain fabric, a deep purple that looks like it has got blues and pinks shimmering about underneath it even though it doesn't.
She overhears the child whisper to her wigged and powdered like a buffoon father. Poison purple? She calls it poison purple because it looks deathly and vile? Does she know that purple is the colour of wealth, the hardest to find and most expensive to make?
She's got a pair of shears in her hand, and it is so tempting, so temping indeed to just…just stab someone.
The Lord strolls out to talk to someone familiar out on the street, the girl stays and walks about, jabbing her fingers on every surface. This seamstress is crazy; she just doesn't know it yet and manages to hide it rather well. Her husband left her years ago and her 'children' are actually little canaries that she keeps in cages around her woozy home above the shop. She is crazy and she's had this tempest of hatred growing for too long. For too long has she been working her fingers to the bone, seen it happen literally too many times, been slapped and insulted by the wigged and powdered buffoons.
She went crazy long ago and now it's snapped open like the gates of hell, but upon the wrong person.
She grabs the girl by her hair from behind, covering her mouth as she tries to scream and drags her steadily out of the shop, binding her in rope and stuffing her mouth so she can't talk, hiding her in a cart under sheets of dress fabric. She whips her laboured hag of a horse and gallops the girl out of Port Royal, into the jungle that surrounds it, heading for a place where no one can find them in time.
Will Turner's circumstances are a lot easier to explain. No Jack, no Black Pearl, Bootstrap gets to raise his child the whole way through, Will grows to be a happy-go-lucky pirate.
While travelling with his father, preparing for a raid on Port Royal, he finds a bound a gagged girl half buried in the jungle's undergrowth.
"Look after the young lass for me boy!" One of the men say to him, Will does that, interested in what the girl is doing here, covered in blood and tattered like a pack of wolves had descended upon her. He's halfway through checking her pockets for missed valuables when she wakes up gasping, hand outstretched and catching the sample square of purple fabric that he had found on her.
"Hey, you're alright!" He looks at her and finds that he likes the colour of her eyes. "I'm Will Turner."
"… what?...I…Elizabeth Swann… my father, I was taken- I…I…" she says before promptly passing back out. Will's eyes widened- the governor's daughter!
Several moments pass as the men around him prepare for the raid, loading guns and sharpening their swords.
"Get a name boy?" Someone asks as they come up beside him,
"Elizabeth Brown," he says quickly, trying to hide the girl's identity. The pirate snorts,
"Brown hey?" Will nods his head sharply and stands up, the most energy expensive thing he has done in ages. He likes to laze, this Will Turner boy, he's too comfortable with being a pirate, you see…son of Bootstrap and all…too comfortable
"Mhum." He grinds, a venomous response to the doubtful pirate.
It's lucky that the next time she wakes up; she's so traumatized upon seeing the weapons, the cannons and prickly men that she understands her predicament and doesn't go shouting out her names, sitting up straight, using table manners or anything that could give her away.
She says that her name is Mary Smith, a daughter of the cook at one of Port Royal's Inns. She said she was climbing in the trees of the jungle and fell. One of the men look back at Will, who is casually sitting back against a cannon and rolling himself a cigerette.
"You said her name was Elizabeth Brown," he hisses into Will's ear. Will just lifts his shoulders and rolls his eyes.
"You lied," the man snarls,
"Pirate," Will says to him with innocent attitude.
The secret rests with him now, like a heavy circle of cursed metal resting over his heart. Her secret is with him now. Because do you know what pirates do to aristocrats and people of the high life? Ransome and murder.
Ransom than murder, mate.