Disclaimer: Any recognisable character belongs to Disney.
The Spider (3): Pandemonium
An hour after their departure from the Fair Lady, Elizabeth was awoken by foreign voices to the stink of fish and the jolting of the horse cart. She laid still, her face plastered sleepily against the small crate on her left, content with listening to Jin Hai and Nianzu, and the steady drumming of her heart. Her headache had diminished, but when she swallowed, she felt a tingling, the first sign of a sore throat. From the corner of her eye, she could see the sky suffused with the slightest shade of purple, hinting the crack of dawn.
When finally her neck ached, she sat up, heeding to the numbness on one side of her face, and the prickling sensation on the other. She yawned to escape the discomfort, simultaneously greeting Jin Hai with a nod of her head. He did not pause to reply, but ran the back of his hand briefly over his cheek, clearly indicating her to mimic the action. Lazily, she dragged a palm over the stinging half of her face, and froze.
She was tracing what seemed like patterns. She repeated the action. Something stirred in the depths of her memory. Jin Hai was watching her intently now, though he had not ceased his conversation with Nianzu. Elizabeth closed her eyes, and drew her fingers lightly over her face one final time. Her breath caught. It can't be... She inched to her left to look at the crate she had been leaning on, and even in the faint light, she saw a profile that appeared far too familiar. Her hand reached out on its own accord to remove the thin cloth that draped over the object, and her slender fingers explored its surface, running gently but surely over a pattern she had memorised many days ago, alone on a sandy Caribbean shore.
Jin Hai had stopped talking, she realised, and he was staring at the object with equal parts of disbelief and amazement. Elizabeth put her ear to the metal, and listened to the slow beats emanating from within, calm, as always.
Ana walked to the gangplank, and stared as far as she could. Ships on either side of them were loading, gearing up to set sail, and in all haste due to some turbulence encountered further south. It made no sense for the Pearl to wait longer than it was necessary, but there was no sign of her other captain despite the fact that half a day had passed since his announcement to summon the crew.
"Think I see him," muttered Ana, lifting her chin to better see the conspicuous hat floating through the crowd. "Seems to be dragging someone along."
"Where?" Gibbs asked, reaching her side in two strides. He shielded his eyes from the blazing afternoon sun.
"There!"
Jack couldn't resist peering over his shoulder, and sure enough, a familiar figure was tramping amidst the sailors, accompanied by not one, but two shorter, younger men. It wasn't until the three of them were at the bottom of the gangplank that Jack recognised one of Barbossa's companions as Dafydd, the 'night-fisher' at the Rock of the Siren the previous day. The other, Jack could not identify immediately, but from his Southeast Asian features, it was obvious that this would be the man who would decipher the characters on the charts. Jack squinted at him sceptically as Barbossa beckoned the duo to proceed onto the deck.
"Good morning, Miss," Dafydd said to Ana with a tip of his hat, and then turned to Gibbs, extending a hand in greeting. "And good sir."
Gibbs shook his hand appraisingly, and threw an uncertain look towards Jack, who continued surveying the two visitors with mounting suspicion. Dafydd followed Gibbs' gaze, and met Jack's eyes with a cordial smile. Jack braced himself for another bout of Welsh prolix, but it never came, despite the fact that Dafydd had taken a deep breath in, and poised to charge into full introduction.
"Mr. Gibbs," Barbossa announced peremptorily, "we are to weigh anchor by sundown. Make haste. Y'could say we have a heading." He gave Jack a complacent smile, unmistakably savouring the confusion in his eyes.
Gibbs, being more than eager to avoid a rampant argument, hollered to those on deck before descending through the hatch to spread the news down below. Voices answered, scuffling ensued, and the Pearl rumbled with enthusiasm. If the Chinese man was discontented by the lack of warmth in their reception aboard the Pearl, he hid it well, but Dafydd was less covert: he stood rooted, looking tentatively from Jack to Barbossa.
"This way, gents."
"Can't even be on time for his own bloody meeting," grumbled Jack, walking briskly towards the cabin, taking care to elbow his co-captain out of the way. The unnamed man walked confidently behind Barbossa, and was shortly followed by Ana. Dafydd trotted at the rear of the queue, doubtlessly flummoxed.
When finally the five gathered in the cabin, Barbossa pulled himself up to his full height so that he was but a few inches taller than Jack. Jack reached for his tricorn, and with a twitch of his moustache, placed it lightly atop his head, earning a distasteful look from Barbossa in the process. The charts were unrolled, flipped over and spread over the desk.
"Well, Master Nianzu," said Barbossa, "Here be the characters. Sooner ye solve it, sooner ye get yer gold."
Nianzu. Jack had heard that name before, and after rummaging his memory, he realised the man was mentioned during Dafydd's ramblings at the pub.
"Nick, Captain Barbossa," the man said, smiling wryly as he towered the charts. They watched him with bated breath. Even the Pearl seemed to cease her creaking, eager for a response. A gentle breeze whispered through an open window, ruffling Jack's sleeves and eliciting a musical clink from his trinkets, as though in an attempt to ease the gauche silence. Nianzu skimmed the text for the third time, and the smug smile began slipping off, until finally, it moulded into a grimace. "These, I cannot read," he stated.
Barbossa looked positively irritated.
"What?" he barked, squinting at the characters himself. Jack was unsure whether to wear a conceited expression at the hole in Barbossa's plan, or an irate one at the fact that they were all back at stage one after all the apprehension and anticipation.
"They're too complex. These characters are traditional Mandarin."
"'Course they are," Jack quipped, opting to fix Barbossa with triumphant smile. Nianzu looked up from the charts to observe Jack for a moment, whether sordidly or curiously, Jack could not tell, and frankly, he did not care; he was content with grinning jubilantly at his rival's fiasco. Ana glowered at him from the corner, but he masterfully eschewed her gaze.
"Where did you obtain these... charts, may I ask?"
"No," retorted Jack quickly, "You may not."
"What a shame. Perhaps I could have directed you to someone near Cape Town who might have been able to help you."
"What be that yer proposin'?" snarled Barbossa.
"An answer to your problems, but I'm hardly willing to give it away for a goose egg."
"Well ye'll certainly have more than one goose egg to exhibit if there be any disagreement aboard this vessel."
By now, Dafydd looked fairly traumatised. Ana took a small step towards the door in order to hinder any impulsive endeavour of escape. Nianzu observed Barbossa silently.
"I'll want the gold, still."
"Ye can have half now, and the rest when we locate the man."
The man contemplated the offer, meeting Dafydd's eyes once before pronouncing his reply: "Agreed."
Barbossa smiled sardonically, retrieving a bag of coins from his pocket. He counted out a few, and dropped them back into his pocket, and then tossed the remaining, along with the bag, to Nianzu. He caught it easily.
"Early this morning, I took a man and a lady of the evening to Hout Bay," he started. "He was from Singapore, and definitely more learned than I am, or so he seemed from his manner of speaking."
Jack lifted his chin, and a small scowl materialised on his forehead. Ana had stopped seething, and turned cautious eyes on Jack, but he was oblivious, having ears only for the man seated across the room.
"He said he was of the merchandising industry," Nianzu continued, "but I knew better. Their lies were too thick to overlook. The woman could not have been a strumpet, I knew, because when I took her hand to help her into my cart, her calloused palms spoke otherwise. She was a sailor, for the abrasions were quite like my own, from rope and sea weather. Furthermore, the man – Cheng, he called himself – carried not one, but two swords; one considerably shorter than the other, not of oriental origin."
"Awfully observant, aren't you?" Jack interrupted quietly.
"Just cautious," came the reply. "They did not ask to be dropped off at the dock, but chose to stop a short way away. I offered to take them further, but they refused.
"I went a little way further towards the few cottages, then followed them on foot, but they were clever; they took the path through the forest, a longer path, but one which would leave less of a trail. I headed for the docks instead. There was only one ship afloat there, huge, with four masts."
Jack kept his expressions neutral, but from the corner of his eye, saw his withheld anxiety mirrored openly on Ana's face. She brought a clenched fist to her mouth, and dug her teeth into her whitened knuckles. Nianzu stared pointedly out of the window, unobservant of them all.
"There was a lot of movement on deck, and I did not dare progress; not onto a ship I had seen before, and that too in a terrible state..."
Elizabeth.
For a hopeless moment, Jack thought it would be the Empress, perhaps even hoped it would be the Empress, but there was only one ship in his knowledge that would likely have four masts in this day and age. He brought a palm to his forehead. Nianzu, too, seemed disturbed, and he was silent for a few moments. Had they caught the whiff of a frown that appeared fleetingly on Barbossa's face, they would have known that he was listening with renewed interest.
"Describe her." Ana's feeble voice interrupted the silence. It was then that the whole room turned to her, and Nianzu's eyebrows rose, if just a little, as he acknowledged the apprehensive girl.
"Four masted, large, dark-wooded. A new model of an old galleon, you could say," he replied, examining Ana's expressions closely.
Jack thought he would be liable of choking. His throat had constricted so that when he spoke, his voice escaped as a hoarse whisper, inaudible to everyone, and in synchronisation with Nianzu's answer: "The Vendaval."
Whatever colour remained in Ana's face drained completely, and she looked almost as though she were collapsing. Dafydd was behind her in a second, seating her down on a chair that Barbossa had promptly kicked in her direction. It gave Jack a moment to regain composure.
"I see you are familiar with the ship," stated Nianzu.
"Yes."
"We – We saw it sailing away from the inflamed oriental ship a fortnight ago," Dafydd elaborated.
Ana met Jack's gaze fearfully, and he held it steadily, solemnly.
"Carry on, Master Nianzu," said Barbossa, crossing his arms, and leaning against the bookshelf.
"Well, I returned to my cart, of course, and made my way to the village's small market. I knew better than to meddle too deep into affairs that weren't my own. It was when I was taking out the baskets of fish that I realised the pair had stolen one of my possessions: a chest."
"The chest?" cried Dafydd, jumping from Ana's side, frowning. "Why, that would be a waste. We could hardly open it ourselves. Asked several blacksmiths, but nope, not a clue. No one's ever seen anythin' like it. It seemed to have some kind of living thing inside it... sounded like it anyway."
"Sounded?" Jack was pretty sure he would need a chair to sit down in, sooner or later. He swaggered casually over to the desk, and sat himself on the edge, in case he misplaced his equilibrium. A chest that didn't open, a 'living' sound that emanated from it, a living thing? No, a living heart.
"Oh, aye," replied Dafydd, "couldn't hear it lest you had your ear to it."
The room was stuffy now, almost as warm as the hot day Jack recalled. For an instant, he relived it: the blistering heat, the Caribbean wind, the tender brush of her golden locks against his cheek as they crouched on the sandy beach, ears upon an unopened chest, listening to the thumping emerging from within. It's real, he heard her say. And then he was back, back to the present, back on his Pearl. He grimaced, catching Barbossa's eye for a moment.
"How did ye gents come by this chest, then?"
"It's a funny thing, really. We were fishing, as usual, and this thing gets caught in our net. It was bloody light in the water, but the minute we took it out, t'was like a blooming anchor! Strange, we thought, so we took in back in the hope of finding something of valuable nature inside."
"It'd be a fair guess t'say it came t'ye 'round the time ye saw the Vendaval, aye?"
"Why, yes. Now that I think of it..." Dafydd replied, scratching his forehead in thought.
Jack pinched the bridge of his nose, and closed his eyes.
So now Gomez wants the chest? Only one reason for that.
He obviously was not aware of Jack and Anamaria's presence in Cape Town as yet, or else, they would have been chased long back. Or perhaps, they were being chased. Why else would the Vendaval be so far from her home and the Caribbean? Jack contemplated the situation. The translator was aboard the Vendaval, but so was Gomez... and perhaps, Elizabeth. If she was alive, it would be despicable to abandon her in her need. After all, emancipating her would also provide them with bearings to the Fountain, he told himself, brushing aside the thought that whispered the true reasons for his uncharacteristic graciousness. It unnerved him, for he could not distinguish if it were a selfless impulse or a selfish one.
"This... lady," Jack mused aloud, "describe her features."
"Can't rightly say. She covered the majority of her face by a scarf. Braided hair, and she kept it out of her face, more like a seafarer than a trollop, if you ask me. Apparently, she was summoned by the captain. Called herself Amelia."
Jack hitched an eyebrow.
He visualised the possible scenarios. The Empress aflame: a dead Elizabeth, or a captured one. If he presumed she was dead, then there would one less worry aboard the Vendaval. But if she was captured, she would be in the brig, along with the rest of her crew. That would explain the Singaporean in Cape Town. But if the Singaporeans were in the brig, then why was there one astray last evening? Perhaps he opted to join Gomez's crew – that sounded about right.
Jack betrayed a small nod before moving on to the next piece of information: the woman. If Elizabeth, an enemy captain – and a fine one at that, he thought distractedly – was aboard the vessel, why then had Gomez called for company that evening? Either Elizabeth had pitched a fit (likely) or she was dead. Or... she was the 'lady of the evening'. But it hardly made sense for Gomez to set Elizabeth free, and it made even less sense for her to return to the Vendaval.
You're going around in circles, mate.
No, there were too many ifs and buts in his propositions. He would need to find the Vendaval to answer his questions, and though he told himself that the questions regarded the charts only, his instinct told him otherwise. No, he would seek the Vendaval, but only for himself. He chanted it over and over, offering bribes of youth and immortality, and yet he knew his efforts were futile; a gut feeling told him there was someone aboard the Vendaval he was afraid to meet, and he realised with a sense of unrest, that it was not Gomez.
Withdrawing a pouch from pocket, he tossed the rest of Nianzu's agreed amount to him.
"We sail at dusk."