And down the stairs came Captain Jack Sparrow...
Like Elizabeth, he tried to do it without looking. Unlike her, he tripped over his sword three steps from the bottom and stumbled into a table, sending a pyramid of chocolate-dusted oranges bowling across the dance floor. But he recovered gracefully, sauntered over to El Juez as if it were he who owned the Palace, and swept the ridiculous hat to the floor in an extravagant bow.
"Don Carlos -" El Juez began a carefully considered speech of welcome.
"Ah!" To Elizabeth's dismay and delight, Jack raised a warning finger, commanding the Governor to silence. She remembered how he had always used his hands when he talked - long-fingered swordsman's hands which this evening were festooned with rings. In the sudden, absolute quiet he produced a silver snuff-box, letting the quizzing glasses dangle from their silken ribbon about his wrist as he sniffed delicately, then fluttered a lace handkerchief like a lady-in-waiting flaunting a fan.
"This party," he said solemnly, "is the best party I've been to since I arrived in the Caribbean. It is, in fact, the only party I've been to since I arrived in the Caribbean. But I'm sure, if I had been to other parties, I'd still think that this one - was very good." He paused, beaming hopefully, until El Juez was on the point of replying - then gave a thunderous sneeze.
"We are... honoured," said El Juez.
Elizabeth glanced at him sharply. There was something in the voice. Surely El Juez, a man so determined to impress with his power that he paraded recaptured pirate booty worth a fortune in his Ballroom... surely he should have been delighted to welcome the king's ambassador - no matter how badly dressed? Yet El Juez spoke to the Duke of Casamontana with the same thinly-veiled loathing he directed at Will Turner, Port Royal blacksmith. He sneered.
"The pleasure is all yours," Jack said encouragingly. Both Turners winced. "Mine. Clearly you're a man of considerable wit and good judgment, and I shall be sure to inform His Majesty of your many qualities at the earliest opportunity, eh? Next time I'm having a beer with him, at the Palace." He leered at Elizabeth. "As for you, Love - I would like to stay and get better acquainted. Really. But I hear there's this ridiculously high-stakes card game going on in the next room, and you know what they say: Lucky at cards, unlucky in love. The way you're looking at me, Darlin', I ought to make my fortune."
He bowed again, nodded to Will, and headed for the card tables, pausing once or twice to peer at a giggling beauty through those stupid glasses - while Elizabeth fanned herself feverishly. Will looked bleak. They had both known Jack Sparrow to do some extraordinarily foolhardy things. But walking openly into Quatre-collines was lunatic even by his standards.
"Remarkable." El Juez watched him go. Then he too made his bows. "You will excuse me - I must not neglect my other guests. Do you know," he spoke lightly, "there are still some people here, guests in my house, who accuse me of signing your father's Treaty against the pirates merely for some... criminal purpose of my own? That I have even been called "pirate" myself?"
Suddenly he was looking straight at Elizabeth. "Perhaps my dealings with so... great a man as the Duke of Casamontana will change their minds. Your servant, Ma'am - Turner. I do hope you find the rest of the evening... instructive."
oOo
"What the Hell do you think you're doing here?" Elizabeth hissed.
The Duke of Casamontana lifted her hand in his and paced a solemn circle in time to the music, frowning as if this simple task needed his complete concentration - which it possibly did. Then he smiled the smile which, at one time or another, every woman in the pirate stronghold of Tortuga had wanted to slap. Elizabeth know exactly how they felt.
It was been Will who suggested she dance with Jack, swallowing his own fleeting jealousy to point out that she would be able to talk to him under cover of the music - to talk, and to warn him, although warn him of what exactly neither of them could have said. Any man swaggering into a colonial ballroom with the pirate brand on his fore-arm was daring Death to claim him. But Quatre-collines was different. Whatever was going on here, it went far deeper than starving slaves and a brutal approach to the piracy laws.
The trouble was that Jack knew it. Despite appearances, Jack Sparrow was very far from stupid. He had to have heard the wilder waterfront rumours about this place. He knew the risk he was taking, and, being Jack Sparrow, he was loving it. He was in no mood to listen to warnings.
He had played cards for nearly two hours. Elizabeth was left to fume and fret in the giggling flock of women and girls who fluttered like butterflies around the table, while the heap of coin at Jack's elbow climbed steadily higher, and the lies he was telling about the "Duke"'s life at Court became ever more ridiculous.
"I heard," a little red-headed girl murmured breathlessly at Elizabeth's side, "I heard he never wears the same pair of gloves twice, but has new ones made up every day from only the finest dog-skin. And he owns twelve palaces, and travels everywhere in a solid gold carriage..."
"Really?" Elizabeth had been thoroughly irritated. "Solid gold? And how many horses does it take, to pull a solid gold ca- ?"
"I use elephants," Jack said calmly. "White ones." His eyes met Elizabeth's, daring her, and she saw the flicker of amused resignation, the look that sighed, "Oh, very well, if I must... I'm bored with this anyway." Then it was gone, and the Duke of Casamontana was lounging to his feet, humming something under his breath which sounded dangerously like "A pirate life, yo-ho" as he scooped his winnings into the embroidered purse on his belt.
"Gentlemen - my thanks." His tone, like his bow, carried precisely the right amount of exaggerated good manners to be considered extremely rude, and his fellow gamblers - losers all - bristled indignantly. "Ladies -"
There was a flurry of jostling for position, during which Elizabeth had her toes stamped on by a large woman in her late fifties, and Jack stroked his chin, considering.
"No... no... sorry, Love..." The fat lady was simpering shamelessly at him over the feathers of a huge purple fan, and he winced - then leaned forward to whisper in the ear of a flustered fifteen-year-old, "Elderflower wine, Love - very good for pimples." He was turning away when he stopped short with a little start of surprise, and gazed reverently through the quizzing glasses, the very picture of a man struck silent in the presence of beauty.
Then he had tweaked his moustache into vain points, and held out his hand to the suddenly crimson-faced Elizabeth...
... So now they were dancing. And he still would not answer her questions.
"How's Will?" he asked, instead. "Only, I notice you are not dancing with said beloved husband. A lover's tiff, eh?" He leaned closer. "You didn't do that thing of yours with the rum, did you?"
Elizabeth put her chin in the air. "Captain Sp-" she caught herself in time. "Don Diego -"
"Don Carlos, Darlin'." Jack paused, frowning slightly with one vast boot still in mid-air. "Don Carlos Felipe... no, Don Carlos Domingo... Domingo Felipe..."
"I am trying to save your life!" Elizabeth whispered fiercely. "You were aboard the Maria Mercedes last night. Very well, then - you heard those screams. That, Don Whatever-your-name-is, was El Juez executing a pirate. You are in the deadliest danger every second that you remain on this island, and if your vain... stupid... swaggering self-conceit will not let you listen to reason -"
Jack had been following this whispered outburst with a solemn expression - laughing at her, she knew. But now his eyes widened in surprise, not at Elizabeth but at something behind her.
"Ready about, Love!" He gripped her arms and swung her sharply around, so that Elizabeth was now facing into the room - and he had his back to it. "I'm having an idea here," he said across her blossoming protests. "Why don't you and I go for a romantic stroll on the battlements. Eh?"
Elizabeth smiled weakly at the other couples in their set, now waiting with bemused good manners for them to continue the dance. For a man in disguise - and peril of his life - the Duke of Casamontana has an unenviable flair for attracting attention. She tried to side-step him, but again he moved deftly in front of her, still keeping his back to the room at large. "Why?" she asked.
Jack hesitated, trapped. Then he put his lips close to her ear. "The young lady in the blue dress is Sophie de Vauban, alright?" He spoke in the flat, bored tone Elizabeth had heard before, when he did not want to explain himself but could no longer see how to avoid it. "About four months ago, the Black Pearl captured the ship she was a passenger on, and I held the delightful Miss de Vauban to ransom for twelve thousand pieces of eight. Savvy?"
"For Goodness' sake!" Elizabeth stepped back, her eyes cold. Around them, the dance moved on - although she was aware of the scandal they had just caused, the Duke of Casamontana with his face buried in her hair in the middle of the dance-floor. It was not that which had enraged her. "This Ball is being attended by more than two hundred of the most powerful people in the Caribbean," she said icily. "Merchants, naval officers, governors. The very people most likely to become your victims -"
Jack winced. "Suppliers of goods, Darlin'."
" - who spend their lives hunting you down, and sit in judgment on you once you're caught. Did you really think it was likely none of them would recognise you?" She clutched half-heartedly at a straw. "I suppose she will recognise you?"
"Even in the dark, Love."
Elizabeth met his gaze steadily. Then she sighed, and offered her arm. She was suddenly weary. Angry, yes, and frightened for this man whose arrogance and swaggering vanity infuriated her all the more because she did like him. But above all, bone weary. "Jack," she tried again. "Why are you here?"
For a moment the dark eyes looked hurt, as if she had insulted him by not working it out already. "I intend to steal the Red Teardrop Ruby," he said.
oOo
Will watched the dancers from the shadows of one of the great, arched doorways. Elizabeth, he thought, looked lovelier than ever. Even hampered by Jack, whose cat-like grace as a swordsman seemed to desert him completely on the dance-floor, she floated on the music like a green silk petal on a summer breeze, and Will would never have tired of watching her.
All the same, he was deeply uneasy. He told himself he was being foolish, flinching at shadows. But the fact remained that something was very wrong here, and for Will, quiet and alone at the edge of the crowd, there was a fleeting moment when he could almost see it - as if the Evil itself were a live thing, coiled and waiting beneath the bright colours of the Ball like the gathering storm on the moonlit night outside.
Nor was he any happier about the new dancers who were appearing as the night deepened. The giant in the blue coat had announced no new names. Yet thin-faced young men in El Juez' pale uniform were drifting silently amongst the other guests. Gauntly beautiful girl, their white dresses floating about them like mist, could be seen in frozen glimpses through the crowd, only to vanish again whenever he looked twice.
Will stood awkwardly in the doorway, smiling and nodding at the passers-by, and all the while his knuckles were white about the hilt of his dress sword.
He was watching Elizabeth glide dream-like at Jack's side - even at this distance he could tell she was simmering - when he heard the noise.
The Ballroom was becoming rowdy, the atmosphere stifling. But by a trick of the echoes, the vaulted passageway at Will's back seemed quiet and still. A slight chill came from the stonework, faintly clammy in the warm night, and the second-hand candlelight which spilt out from the Ballroom was quickly swallowed in the shadows of a torchless staircase. Will cocked his head, straining to hear. For a moment he thought his imagination had got the better of him. Then he heard it again. Not crying exactly, but a single, despairing sob. The kind of noise a man might blurt out in spite of himself towards the end of a long fight, if he were desperate, and exhausted, and angry at his own betraying weakness - and losing. It came from the stairs.
Will Turner moved backwards, into the dark.
Then he slid his sword from its scabbard, and took the stone steps at a run.
oOo
Author's Note. Yep, shout-out in this scene for the epic Burt Lancaster film "The Crimson Pirate" - and thanks to Kia and Smithy for your kind reviews. Hope you're still enjoying it. ~Selkie.