Voyages of the Dawn Chaser
Voyage Three - Lucifer's Sword
Chapter 10 Whys and wherefores
Why was he doing this? Why, exactly, was he doing this? That thought continued to rattle around in his head as the night edged towards morning.
Jack had given up any hope of sleep several hours ago, almost fearing what might emerge from the shadows if he did, so instead he lay cursing his wondering and a mind that seemed to be less biddable since his return from the locker. Particularly during darkness. All sorts of things seemed to haunt his nights these days, t'was true that some that had been lurking for years but there were many that were more recent, but more worrying was the inescapable fact that no amount of rum drove them away any longer. His last refuge was lost to him courtesy of the water of life, or so he assumed.
Not that he had any rum if he had wanted it. But then rum hadn't helped the last time he had been here either….. He shuddered and decided he really did not want to remember that.
So why was he here? Why had he trekked to this god forsaken place seeking answers to questions that he didn't really want the answers to? That thought, that question, had eaten at him for most nights since he had started out on this new quest, and he had found no resolution to it. At least none that he could bring himself to admit to.
But the horns of that dilemma had become both longer and sharper as he sat through the dark watches in this relic of past powers, remembering things from before, unwilling to sleep and unable to halt the marching of his mind. Why was he here when he didn't have to be? He had tried every permutation of the possibilities he could think of and yet he still wasn't sure that he knew the answer.
'But,' he wagged a mental finger at himself, 'maybe that was the wrong thing to ask any way, maybe the proper, the more pressing, question was whom was he doing it for? Which shadow from his past had driven him here? For there must be a reason he was lying on the rapidly cooling sand, surrounded by crumbling stone and shadows, when he could be almost anywhere else, and it wasn't his rival for the Pearl.'
As the fire fell into grey ash and the night turned from raven haired to silver locks he had lain sleepless, staring up into the shadows, and wondering.
Weren't for Barbossa, he knew that. Weren't for Teague neither, though there was no denying that the old bastard had spoken nothing more than the truth back there at the Brethren Court.
Jack shifted his position on the hard ground with a grimace. Uncomfortable thought that one, that maybe Teague was something other than a drunken bully with a knack of surviving. But should he be surprised? Not really, for who knew the illusions men could weave around themselves better than Captain Jack Sparrow? Was it not the case that many, most maybe, were ready to call him mad or fool when he knew himself to be neither of them? Weren't surprising at all that they thought that now was it? Not when he took so much care to make sure they thought him nothing else. Perhaps the same was true of Teague, maybe that was where he had learned the trick of it; and there was another uncomfortable thought, the realisation that he might have more in common with his sire than he had ever allowed for!
He pushed the unwelcome idea away as unproductive because he knew that it wasn't for Teague that he had come here.
For her then? His mum, the one who had put this wretched streak of honesty into him and sent him off all upright and hopeful and …… honourable to his doom. Was it for her? Well…. mebbe…. and then again… possibly not. The son she had sent out into the world had died a long time before the Kracken swallowed his husk; he knew that and the knowing was why he had never gone back. Better that than…… well no point in thinking on that either, but it was possible that the ghost of that boy had brought him here.
Or then again… had it?
He rolled over and pillowed his cheek on his hand, staring wide-eyed into the dying embers. On the edge of his vision he could see the gleam of Elanor's hair as she apparently slept, the thick bundle of it pale in the dying light, and he shifted uncomfortably again. Was it for her then? This creature from another time and place, was she the reason that he had come here? No denying that he found her…. interesting, no denying that at all. No denying either that she had seemed to expect that he would come. Was that why? Because now they were bound together by the legacy of the water of life, two of kind forever separated from the rest of humanity? Not that he'd felt much kinship to most of human kind for many a year. There was no denying that staying on the right side of her was all the more important if they would stride the centuries alone but for the other, and he couldn't quite fathom her, though he'd not let her know that if he could help it. But she was odd, very odd, for she apparently accepted his piratical behaviour with barely a qualm and yet she behaved as if she expected him to be a good man even so! Was perplexing. Most people were more than ready to think the worst of him thank god! But she….., well she was a conundrum and an inconvenient one at that.
Jack squinted at her across the fading glow from the embers, the air was cold, as it could be this close to a desert, and she was wrapped around herself against any possible chill, her face buried in her sleeve. Yet he didn't need to see her to recall every detail of her face, it was not one he was ever likely to forget; though 'twas true there were others about whom he had the same thought in the past, lasses he had thought unforgettable, yet he would struggle to recall so much as the colour of their eyes now.
Even Elizabeth Swann, a female that he had good reason to recall, was fading into shadow now, at least during waking hours. At night he could still picture her well enough, at least he could see her eyes and the curl of her lip as that shackle closed shut around his wrist, but the rest was beginning to blur even there. Her voice was clear though, certainly when carried on the winds of sleep, "I'm not sorry". But by day he could no longer recall the shape of her face or the curve of her smile with certainty. No he had good cause not to forget her, and yet, he realised with a jolt, that was just what he was doing.
Despite that he was sure that nothing could drive the picture of Elanor Cavendish from his mind. Nor ever would. Like a great work of art there was something about her that memory would not let go of. Her beauty, the unreal, inhuman, damned perfection of her, was only a part of the reason, for the story it hinted at intrigued him, speaking as it did of a world so different from his own.
For what world, what kind of people, would risk so much for a face? Would he one day walk that world?
Yet even that was not the whole puzzle of her, for Jack would swear that for all her glowing and unmarked perfection she had seen somewhat more than thirty summers. As an officer with command in the navy she must have done so. The water of life had done little to change her appearance but if you had stood her beside Elizabeth you would have been uncertain of who was the elder.
Until you looked into her eyes that was, for they, and only they, betrayed her. But betray they did, for their blue green depths held a wealth of something that could only be achieved by surviving the turning of a further decade or more of years.
Captain Cavendish had commanded men before too, and not a few, he knew that, would be a fool not to, which he was not, for the indisputable truth of it was written in her every word and action. A sobering thought that one, given her attitude to himself, for it suggested that she, a captain and commander of men, might have seen through his legend and judged him as lacking in villainy. Not a comfortable idea at all, for while he might know that a pirate could be a good man it was quite another matter having her know it.
Such knowledge might well lead him into waters he'd rather not sail. Just as it haddone so more than once before.
Was this one such voyage? Had her casual acceptance that he would not wish the locker or its like upon anyone, even Barbossa, pricked him into sailing these dry and dusty waters? Mebbe, but he rather thought not.
There was a hiss as another fall of ash disturbed the quiet and a bit more of the fire died. Jack watched the fading ember and sighed, the answer to the vexed question was not so hidden if he but allowed himself to face it, that bloody chart! Or rather what he thought he had seen in that bloody chart.
He shivered, and not because of the dying fire; recalling that moment still sent a shiver down his spine, something that he did with tedious regularity. Had she or her ghost seen it too? Was that why she had come with him? Had she looked? Of course she had! He would have done nothing less himself. But had she seen what he had seen?
If she hadn't, then had he betrayed it to her?
***
Elanor heard Jack sigh through the thinning mists of sleep and had no doubt that he was wondering what had brought him here again, and probably regretting it.
The ground beneath her seemed to get harder and the trickle of sand down her collar more insistent as sleep retreated further. But as Jack showed no desire to be up and about she assumed that there was not yet sufficient light for them to make the trip back to the ships, certainly the chill air suggested that the sun was not even close to the horizon. Rising now would be pointless and might involve her in a conversation she would rather not have for the moment. But sleep wouldn't return and so she dipped her head back under her sleeve and let her mind drift.
Not surprisingly it immediately drifted towards Jack.
Why had he brought them here? He had no love of Barbossa, that much had been clear when he had brought the man to the Chaser, so concern for a fellow captain had nothing to do with it. It was true that he'd looked very thoughtful when she'd told him that he couldn't leavethe man to his own version of the locker, whatever that was, but she doubted that it was enough reason to explain his willingness to travel so far and with such danger. If some of what she heard of him was true, and she had no certain reason to doubt it, then Jack had a streak of honesty and generosity thatwas suprising given his life and its mores, but this interlude was stretching it a bit too far. Too far even for the adventurer with a taste for risky living that he seemed to be. It was possible that some part of the reason might be the superstitious fear that leaving Barbossato his fate would in some way make his own return to the locker more likely, but the again Jack didn't seem superstitious in the way of Mr Gibbs so that wasn't a complete answer either.
Elanor shivered and buried her face deeper into her sleeve. Of course some of the reason was almost certainly bound up in this 'what a man could and couldn't do' business, and while she hadn't quite worked out exactly what it was that Jack couldn't do she thought it might encompass a wider range of activities and actions than the man himself was happy about. Abandoning another person to hell in cold blood, even when the person concerned was an enemy, might, she supposed, be covered by that 'couldn't do'. But it still wasn't enough, there had to be another reason, a reason more capable of being reconciled with piracy in Jack's wayward mind. Thinking back she decided that she might know what it was. The chart.
Or rather what he thought he had seen in the chart.
He'd first mentioned it that drunken Christmas eve as they sat off Tortuga, and though she had not been in any state to pick up on it then there had been something in his expression when he said it that had fixed the remark in her mind.
Neither of them had been quite themselves at the time of course, the combination of the then unsuspected effects of the lake water and rather a large amount of alcohol had seen to that, but she had not been so impaired that she hadn't noticed. 'After all', she told herself, 'when a man with his type of past talked of destiny or fate even a half drunk mind takes some note, at least it does if it's not the mind of a total idiot.'
She hadn't been so drunk that she knew how drunk she was at that point, only that she had felt warm and comfortable and relaxed, and more at ease with Jack than she had ever been before. Somewhere in the cavern below the sea she had decided that he would do her no harm if he could avoid it and that had allowed her to relax and appreciate that he could be good company.
He had been too. Lying looking up at the stars, telling stories and sharing memories she had been as happy as she had been for a very long time, and the instinct and skills of years told her that he was more than content too. They had both been so off guard and in accord that, almost without thinking, she had asked the question she had never asked before, but that she had been burning to ask him since she first realised the was something more to him than just a pistol wielding thief.
"How did you get the brand?"
He'd gone suddenly still, both face and body unmoving, and in a man who was a habitually restless as he was that was noticeable. For a moment she thought she had ruined the mood and that he would get up and walk away from her and the question, but for some reason he didn't. Instead he gradually relaxed and smiled softly,
"Not many get around to askin' that."
There had been a strange edge to his voice, not anger nor mockery but something altogether more…. uncertain, and it confused her.
"I suppose most people from this time think they know." She replied, not sure if a reply was expected.
His smile died,
"Aye, suppose they do." The whisper of that unnamed feeling was still there in his voice.
"But I don't, so tell me."
That brought his smile back, only wider this time and with a hint of derision,
"Got caught. Nothing else to tell."
She'd rolled over and looked down at him, his face was easy to see in the combined light of the starts and the mast lamps but it was impossible to read. Must have been the drink of course but she had forgotten the careful respect of privacy that has been drummed into her during her service years and ploughed right on,
"Caught doing what? Where? By whom?"
Jackhadturned his head slightly and stared up at her and to her drink-fumed mind his eyes suddenly seemed darker than the shadows could explain. He gave a low and gravely laugh,
"Being a pirate luv."
"How?"
He had looked back towards the sky, the smile fading from his lips, but after a moment of apparent indecision he had raised a languid hand and made a dismissive gesture,
"Long time ago, so it doesn't really matter any more now does it?"
But for all the bored tone of his voice she felt that there was some kind of test buried in the easy words, though she had no idea what it might be a test of, so she answered as honestly as she could,
"Matter? No it doesn't matter. You are what you are and you've never claimed to be anything else. But I would like to know. I saw enough at Tortuga to understand that people might be driven to desperate measures here, to doing things that those in less perilous circumstances might see as wicked. Particularly if they were the losers in the situation."
His smile had returned, flashing silver, not gold, in the hard light of the moon,
"Ah, lookin' to absolve me from me sins are you Captain Cavendish? Now why would that be I wonder?" His tone was purring and provocative but his eyes stayed turned away and he didn't give her time to respond before he continued with an air of weary melancholy.
"Kind of you, but a lost cause I fear." he circled an emphatic hand, "I'm a pirate, given to selfish impulse and the pursuit of whatever me fancy is." He seemed to change mood suddenly and he winked at her, "take what you can and give nothing back darlin'"
She had sighed in exasperation,
"Jack, that describes a fair proportion of the people in my world. The pursuit of selfish impulse and whatever takes your fancy at the time is almost a religion for a large percentage of the people in my bit of it! Accountability is nearly as dirty a word as restraint or duty, so much so that we've probably doomed ourselves to extinction on the back of it. " She had banged his chest with the base of her wine bottle in emphasis, "But none of those people would describe themselves as pirates."
That seemed to surprise him for it brought his eyes back to her face,
"Would they not? Even less honest than me then, if what you say is the truth." He wriggled his shoulders and flicked a finger, "But it changes nothing. I'm a pirate. I'm not an honest man, I steal things." The grin widened, "At every opportunity."
She had smiled back at him recognising the attempt at deflection and bypassing it,
"And you got the brand stealing what exactly and from whom?"
He was silent for a moment his smile fixed and his eyes wary and calculating, then he turned them away to the heavens again and sighed heavily,
"Not goin' to give up are you?"
It was her turn to laugh,
"No, I'm not. Just consider the information a Christmas gift."
He snorted his disgust at that, for she had been telling him of Christmas gifts and cards and he had not entirely believed her.
"Gift indeed!"
A thought seemed to occur to him and he sat up suddenly smiling brightly at her,
"Now you mention it…" he reached across her and picked up his discarded coat rifling in its inner pockets for a moment before leaning back with a hint of triumph in his face, "No call to give you that. See, I've already got you one."
With that he pulled out a string of beads and thrust them at her with both hands like an eager but bashful child offering his favourite teacher a box of chocolates.
For a moment she had been deprived of breath, and though she knew that the gesture ended any chance of her finding out anything about the brand, at least for the moment, yet still she couldn't take exception. The glass beads were pretty and he had certainly not gone ashore with them, and with pearls to offer his ladies why would have bought the beads? Except for her.
He was smiling with an uncertain but unfeigned pleasure as he held them out to her, apparently with no doubt that she would find them pleasing. She had to admit that she did.
Elanor had never felt at a so great a disadvantage at anytime since she brought him aboard and she hesitated before reaching out to take them,
"I've not had the chance to get you or Mr Gibbs anything. " was all she could find to say.
Jack wound the beads around her fingers and sat back.
"Not thought that you would have. No worries," he grinned again and wriggled an eyebrow at her, " no worries, next Christmas I'll make sure you get time to go shopping luv'."
His smile took on the wicked edge that betrayed his intention to taunt her and he edged closer,
"though not all gifts need to be shopped for. Eh?" the wiggling eyebrows became a leer.
She had laughed and grasped the beads, reaching up to fasten them about her neck and allowing him to help her when she struggled with the unfamiliar clasp. As he secured it she smiled at him,
"Give it up Jack, I'm not playing."
He'd just shrugged and leaned back again,
"Ah well plenty of time to change your mind. Seems fate ain't goin' to be parting us for a while."
That was when something had prickled at the back of her neck, and it wasn't the clasp of the necklace, for there had been that harmonic in his voice that betrayed that he had just let slip something that he considered important. The suddenly closed look on his face only underlined the fact that he had betrayed something he had not intended to and she had stared at him uncertainly,
"What do you mean?"
It was obvious that she was right in thinking that he had not meant to say anything on the matter for in that moment he looked both irritated and uncomfortable,
"Nothin'! "
He'd paused and the look of irritation had disappeared to be replaced for a moment by a rare blank look , and then he had smiled again and gone on more easily,
"At least unless you are planning on throwing me overboard, or abandoning me to me fate in some navy riddled port."
The alcohol must havecertainly been staking its claim to her brain at this point, or maybe she had just recognised that he didn't intend to say anything more, for she'd taken his words at face value and they had moved on to talk of other things. But somewhere in her mind a marker had been set, and she had soon come to the conclusion that if he had meant anything at all by the words then the answer to what would lie in the chart. She knew he had spent hours poring over it in the weeks after they had found the water of life but she hadn't really expected him to do anything else, not given that he had found what he was looking for ths first time. He was a pirate after all and if there was a chance of other treasures being hidden within the map it was only to be expected that he would go looking for them.
But she hadn't expected him to find anything of course, not then, one wonder was enough and finding any more seemed very unlikely. But she'd looked anyway and no one could have been more shocked than she had been at what she found.
It might well be some part of why he had felt the need to come here. As a wind fanned at the embers of the fire into a redder glow she once again wished that she knew what it meant.
***
Jack rolled over again, shifting uncomfortably. Bloody chart! Damn the thing, he almost wished he hadn't looked! But having found the water of life he could not resist the idea that there might be other prizes, other treasures, waiting to be found within its coils.
Finding himself within them had not been expected.
He was almost sure that it was himself, couldn't see who else it could be. But given the events of recent years perhaps that was not so alarming, at least so he kept reassuring himself. Might have convinced himself of it too if only he had stopped there! If he had then he might have assumed that his part had been played out when Elizabeth sent him into the Kracken's maw or when Beckett went to the bottom.
But he hadn't stopped had he? Of course he hadn't! Not Captain Jack Sparrow! Finding her and her white ship there too put an end to that comfortable idea, leaving only a disturbing one, the suggestion that destiny had got its yellowed teeth into more than young Mister Turner.
Suggesting that her fate was in some way bound up with his no less, he who had steadfastly refused to take control of the lives of others for so many years. He who had learned long ago, and in the most painful manner, that, despite all the tracts to the contrary, men will do what they will in the end. He who had learnt so bitterly that their mistakes are their own and that only they can take the responsibility for them. Made him angry just thinking about it, angry and something else that he wouldn't examine.
Yet maybe it would be a kind if justice. He had been bound to Elizabeth by his reckless saving of her, and he would now, in his turn, be bound to another by her saving of him; the circle was completed perhaps.
He just wished he knew who the other figures in the map had been, particularly the female in the hat.
***
The sun was rising behind a milky sky as they traced their steps back from the ruined palace, if that was what it was, and towards the shore. The air was still finger nipping cold and strangely still, and the sands lay dead looking in the uncertain light. They had separated from their hosts at the edge of the dunes, Jack had exchanged a few words with the priestess, at least Elanor assumed that was what she was, and she had put a hand on his arm and replied tersely but with some emphasis before turning away. Jack had nodded just the once, apparently with some reluctance, before striding away across the sand and back towards the shoreline. He had been morosely and silent ever since not even casting a backward look to see if they were still following.
Elanor had kept her own counsel but had joined him leaving the others strung out behind them, she was close enough to see the frown between his brows and the way he would occasionally lick his lips and chew at his lip. Whatever he planned to do now it wasn't with any great enthusiasm.
The flat sands were easy walking now that there was no heat to draintheir bodies, but it was an unsettling walk all the same, even with the mission accomplished; assuming that it was. The light was as unreal as the events of this last night, every lines and bolder softened in that half twilight that could exist when the sun was not fully above the horizon and the moon still kept a finger hold on the sky. Behind the high, pearl pale, clouds the sky was still undecided as to whether to wear its night or daytime shade and the shadows showed the same uncertainty. The sound of the surf breaking on the rocky coast was somehow ghostly in the still air as it came booming across the towering dunes. The men huddled their necks into their shoulders and kept their hands on their weapon hilts as they trailed in their captain's wake, glad to be leaving and desperate for a sight of the sea, even Murtog who had not yet come to think of himself as a sailor.
Jack shivered as he walked, and not for the chill, resolutely turning his eyes away from the mounds of white sand to his one side and the flat expanse of desert to his other, fixing them instead on first the compass and then his boots. Not that he needed the compass to find his way back to the Pearl but it was something to look at other than the expanse of sand that was gradually whitening under the strengthening sun. He had stirred enough unwelcome memories in this last day to last him for a long time without risking the shadow of the locker falling across him again.
But even without those memories his thoughts held little comfort, and there was nothing to distract him from them; behind him his crew were silent and nervous and to his side Elanor seemed lost in her own thoughts. Jack had no doubt that those thoughts were going to be directed towards getting some answers from him very soon now, and he couldn't see how he was going to avoid giving her what she wanted if he was to keep her assistance in the matter, and the other matters he had in mind. But which answers could he give her? What would she accept? Only than the truth and he was disinclined to go that far however much he might need her good will.
No denying her good will would be useful, for if he had to sail north, as it seemed he must, then there was another chore that might also be usefully done, and he would rather not sail to that venture on the Pearl. This crew were untrustworthy miscreants who had abandoned him once already and it would therefore be foolish to trust them with so valuable a secret, and he had neither the time nor the resources to find another crew fro the moment. Which meant that he would need her and her ship to carry him to that particular treasure.
To his side the dunes were starting to reflect the morning heat and a shimmer had appeared over the desert, and still there was no wind. The memories stirred again and he wondered if it was just by chance that everything seemed to conspire to remind him, or if other forces were at work. He'd not be surprised if they were, not given the message that…. they.. had given him.. Maybe someone was making very sure that he understood what was at stake, and maybe with good reason.
He frowned at the thought of what needed to be done. They would just make the morning tide and be on their way to the next stage of what seemed like to be a long voyage. A voyage that would involve several unwelcome complications, not the least of them being his intention to sail under Captain Cavendish's command one more time. It made him very uneasy, the idea of leaving the Pearl again; but Gibbs would take good care of her, and if he tackled this other business first then Barbossa would remain as he was, and iso n no shape to abscond with her, until her rightful captain was back aboard..
If they were right, and he'd bet a cask of the best rum that they were, then his old enemies fate was much as his own had been and the man was as powerless to change it as he had been. So just as Barbossa had sailed to rescue him from the locker for his own best interests now he in his turn must render the same service, and for similar reasons.
Funny old world.