Chapter Twenty-Five – Tess' End

As the first capital city on the mainland, Saint-Domingue was a sprawling place of absolutely mammoth proportions. Melanie and Carly's coach may have arrived in the early evening, but it was well into the night when they finally halted at Rue Martine – they had nearly been consumed amongst the winding brick roads and narrow cobblestone streets, and on one heart-stopping occasion, the driver had admitted that he was completely lost. They arrived safely at their destination, however, no matter how far into the night they had progressed. As Carly and Melanie climbed out of the cab and onto the silent street, Melanie took advantage of the fact that the driver felt awful for taking up so much of their time. The man well understood who it was that he was ferrying from city to city, and Melanie intended to make his services worthwhile.

She pulled him aside. He immediately began to apologize again, but she silenced him with a severe look. "Listen. I won't lie to you and deny that you've cost us some time. But if you remain here until we are finished and then return us, you'll earn yourself a handsome bonus and all is forgiven." Grateful for another chance, the driver agreed without hesitation. He pulled the coach into a dark alleyway to watch and to wait. Melanie was satisfied.

She turned to Carly. "This is Rue Martine," she said. "Now we have to find where Roberts lives." Wordlessly, Carly raised her finger to point, and Melanie turned to look. All up and down the road were ramshackle houses and rundown brick buildings that looked as though they had seen better days. There were only two exceptions that stood out in the rather bleak landscape: further up the street and to the left was a massive stone building, flanked on all side by iron gates and armed soldiers; some distance further and to the right was a handsome colonial house, one of the only homes on Rue Martine in which lanterns were burning.

Melanie smiled. "It looks like we have our heading."

Even in the dark, it was clear that Roberts made berth in a lovely home. Exquisite samples from some of the most beautiful places in the world adorned his walls and rooms: Melanie and Carly walked carefully amongst gleaming vases from the far East, shining gold statues from Egypt, and smooth ebony carvings from Africa. However, even in the dark, it was also clear that Roberts believed the best protection his home had against the curious was simple anonymity – he simply had not expected anyone to associate this home with his name. With the exception of his – laughably – locked door, the only preventative measure that Melanie and Carly encountered was a pair of jet-black guard dogs with spiked collars. They turned into joyful, wriggling puppies at Carly's feet, however, and the waif nodded at her captain to continue on while she entertained them. Milton leapt to Melanie's shoulder to be of assistance.

With the capuchin's warm tail curled around her neck, Melanie crept from room to room. She gingerly touched doorknobs and crept past open doors. She was searching for something that would resemble Roberts' study, or the equivalent of a captain's cabin in this immobile ship, but creeping from room to room in the dim house, Melanie was increasingly unsettled by the motionless view outside of the many windows. Living in a house, she decided, even one as posh as this one, or as classy as one that she was certain she could fill with her own souvenirs, was simply not an acceptable way for her to live.

She absentmindedly stroked Milton's fur as she cast about inside another room. No, she could not settle in a house. Even now, she wondered how it was that her sister, Carine, could move so easily between life in her pub in Port Royal and life on the ocean with the Yellow Dart. There was something about how static life on land was, how obscenely monotonous it was, that jarred Melanie. She had to keep moving. She had to keep changing. She had to keep searching.

With the opening of another door, however, it seemed that she could at least stop searching for the moment. She entered a dark room with a large window, and gazed around, enthralled – all of the walls were absolutely plastered with maps. More sat spread and rolled on the vast wooden desk in the center of the room, and piles were rolled and stacked in the corners. It was simply lovely.

With a happy little chirrup, Milton sprang off of her shoulder and began to pick through the papers. Melanie walked around in something of a daze while Milton searched for their event parchment. She lifted a map here and there, marveling at the sheer volume that Roberts had managed to collect. Was this impressive collection simply Inigo's, or was it a compliment to the entire Dread Pirate persona? All corners of the world seemed represented here, and it was all she could do not to lift one or two for her own collection. She made a note to ask Inigo whether or not he could remember the Dread Pirate Roberts ever having been a woman. Maybe it was time.

Thinking of women, Melanie stopped before the study's large window. From it, she had an excellent view of the ominous bulk of Tess' End. It loomed squat and foreboding in the darkness, housing both pirates and the records on paper which boasted of their exploits or condemned them, depending on one's outlook. Before the commodore had met his end, hadn't he said something about it being 'impossible' that the infamous Captain Cash was a woman? Melanie was glad her name was being spread through the right circles, but it did her no good if everyone thought that Cash was a man. Might her record have something to do with that?

Milton chattered at her suddenly, and she turned. He was hopping up and down excitedly – he had unearthed a bundle of four rolled parchments collected together with a silk thread. "Thank you, Milton," she said. The capuchin warbled happily and scampered back on to her shoulder. He was eager to lean forward and examine the paper with her, and Melanie carefully untied the thread and set it on Roberts' desk. She hesitated for a moment with her fingers hovering over the scroll marked Thief, fighting the urge to unroll it and learn the fate of her own event. Milton waited, watchful. But after a moment, Melanie put that parchment to the side. She glanced at the little monkey. "It's because Carly said if," she explained. Milton regarded her with merry black eyes. He might have been smiling.

Melanie selected the slim parchment marked Shot and unrolled it carefully. She wanted only to peek inside at the instructions and avoid unrolling it entirely, but there seemed to be nothing on the paper. She spread it on the desk completely, frowning. There was only one word written on it, in the very center of the parchment, in elegantly inked script.

Plaza.

There was nothing more. Melanie turned it over to examine the other side, but it was similarly smooth and clean. "I hate to think that we came all this way for nothing," she said to Milton.

Carly poked her head around the door. Melanie could hear the dogs playing happily in the hallway behind her. "Find anything?"

"I did," sighed Melanie. "But it isn't very helpful. All it says is 'plaza.'" She held up the parchment for the waif to see, then started to roll it again. She gathered the four rolls in a bundle, and secured them once more with the thread. Finally, she held them out to Milton, who hopped down onto the desk and carefully replaced them precisely where they had been, confirming that there was no end to the benefits of associating with a literate and meticulous monkey.

"There," Melanie said. "I guess we're finished in here." As she and Carly left the room, she cast a longing look over she shoulder towards Tess' End.

She and the waif exited the house quietly, and resecured the lock behind them. Milton hopped back onto Carly's head and used her curls to balance. "What now?" the little girl asked. There was a sly smile just behind her eyes that made Melanie helpless to do anything but smile in kind. It appeared that her attention to Tess' End had not gone unnoticed.

"Well, I might as well run an errand. While we're here."

Melanie paid the carriage driver generously and told him to make haste back to Léogâne with a message for Jack Sparrow. She assured him that Jack would provide an additional bonus for his speed, and as he hurried away, she hoped that that would be the case. Regardless, with her urgent message already on its course – namely that the event in which Dana and Matthew would participate was up to fate – Melanie and Carly the waif turned their attention to the notorious Tess' End.

There were only a handful of ways into the prison. Apart from the obvious method of being arrested by the royal guard, there were several windows ringing the second floor of the building. The iron gate that secured the prison was actually quite low, and the guard was staggered. Under the cover of night, Melanie and Carly knew that it would not be difficult to climb into the windows undetected. They scaled a tree, easy work after the number of times they had scaled the mainmast of the Dart, and waited patiently until for the rotation of the guard. With one leap across to the wall, and a brief soundless clamber up to the window ledge, both pirates were inside the prison without incident.

That, they knew, had been far from the most difficult part of navigating Tess' End. The challenge would be to find their way around – the cells and holding areas were kept underground in an area much more fortified than that which they had been able to access so easily. It was generally known that there was no emerging from the dark depths of Tess' End. On the first and second floors, relatively easy to access now that they were inside, were the filed records of convicted pirates. These were what Melanie sought. She wanted to find her own personal record of crimes, her own pirate profile, and correct what appeared to be a grievous identity error: she wanted her name, in all its glorious sinfulness, to correctly belong to that of a woman. They began to search.

As it was night, the majority of personnel were no longer needed and no longer present. This did not preclude Carly and Melanie from being careful, however: they moved silently from room to room, always pausing and allowing their eyes to adjust to the darkness. They moved without a sound on the soft toes of their leather boots, always keeping in mind the path back to their window in case of the need for sudden escape. Locked doors posed no obstacle to Melanie's nimble fingers and miniature lock picks, and before much time had passed they had scoured the entirety of the second floor.

They descended cautiously to the first floor. This floor was lit by infrequent lanterns that burned and sputtered in the hallways. They cast only a small amount of light, and yet provided enough shadows that Melanie and Carly did not fear exposure. They paused when they heard muffled voices speaking, but the sound was always far away. While Carly and Milton kept watch around the bend of a long hallway, Melanie inserted her lock picks into yet another locked door. She was speedily rewarded with a satisfying click, and upon opening the door, knew that she had found what she was looking for. She gestured for Carly to follow her inside, and the waif carefully lifted a lantern from the wall before ducking in.

Carefully, she shut and locked the door behind her. "Is this the room?" she whispered.

Melanie nodded. Her heart was in her throat, a constant thrum, because it was not every pirate that had had the opportunity to delve into the functioning core of Tess' End: the room was large, and contained bookcases upon bookcases of precisely recorded and organized legal documents. She walked along the rows, letting her fingers trip over the wood, and paused when she arrived at the bookcase marked with a brass C.

She browsed quickly through the alphabet. There were a surprisingly large amount of pirates whose names or aliases began with Ca. If Melanie had had more time, she would have settled in to read some of the collected pirate histories purely for interest sake. Flipping through the sheaves, her eyes glimpsed details of lives scrawled in black ink: known dead; father of twelve; retired in France; frequently found in bawdy houses; tattooed with a spider across his cheek; guilty of treason; guilty of armed robbery; guilty of kidnapping; executed; executed; executed.

Executed. Melanie skipped quickly over these finalized documents. It seemed odd to her to keep so closely the records of the dead when there would never be more to add to their exploits. She smiled grimly to herself, and vowed to keep the royals pulling up her profile and adding charges for years to come. She would warrant her own bookshelf.

Melanie eventually located her own name, preceded closely by that infamously endearing and thieving girl-pirate, alias Carly the Waif. Melanie ushered Carly over to the bookcase so that she could see her own profile. She removed it from its place in the file eagerly. It was thick. Melanie's record, however, was nearly as thick as her finger. Carly giggled when she saw it, and patted her captain on the back. "I knew I picked the right employer," she said with a grin. Melanie winked, and skimmed the pages.

She was familiar with the majority of the charges leveled against her, as she had heard them called out in condemnation many times. Jack was not the only pirate that had been close enough to the gallows to smell the hangman's sweat and escaped unscathed. Once more, Melanie was grateful that there was no end to the benefits of associating with an intelligent primate, particularly one with a penchant for wielding boot daggers and a finesse for hacking through rope. She chuckled at some of the charges, remembering previous adventures, and pointed several out to Carly: fraud against the Church; theft of Royal Livestock; impersonating a member of the Royal Family. She was almost tempted to add a few of the more recent enterprises to the list, just to keep it current. Then, she found exactly that she was looking for:

(Captain) M. Cash – attached to the Yellow Dart. Brown hair, brown eyes. Brand: left side of chest. Tattoos: several, most notably flag on right shoulder and script "Hoist the colours" on left shoulder. Male, born approx. - - 84. So it was indeed that the record was inaccurate. She cast about in the dim light of the lantern for a quill, then neatly filled in an f and an e. "There," she said. "As simple as that. If there is one thing that pirates are good at, it's upholding a name."

If Melanie's tongue had not been such a valuable tool in her career as pirate, con-artist, and feral bedroom creature, she might have bitten it: just as she replaced Carly's pages and returned the Ca collection back to the bookshelf, they heard voices in the hallway, approaching the door. Carly extinguished the lantern immediately, and they both hoped that the glimmer of the light had not betrayed them from under the door. Lady luck had temporarily forsaken them, however: the voices halted outside, and there was a rattle as a key was inserted into the lock.

Blades in hand, the two pirates flew to the door and positioned themselves flat against the wall on either side. The door opened, effectively concealing Melanie, and low light spilled in from the hallway. Two uniformed men entered, chatting, with lanterns in hand. Once they were inside, Melanie slammed the door closed, and she and Carly descended on them.

But as fast as they were, one of the soldiers was faster. Both men had been taken by surprise and were unable even to conceive of drawing their weapons, but one of them – and more than likely the only one in a hundred – had been properly carrying his silver whistle, issued to blow in case of emergency. And blow he did, with his last breath, shrill, long, and loud.

Very loud.

Over the sound of the dead men hitting the floor, Melanie and Carly could hear the pounding footfalls of more running soldiers. The captain of the Yellow Dart swore loudly and locked the door before it was rocked with the impact of men pounding on it from the other side. She glanced at Carly.

"This is bad."

The waif nodded grimly. Listening to the efforts of the men close on the other side, she crouched and swiped her blade suddenly and viciously under the door. There were several cries of pain as polished leather boots proved no match for shining steel. Carly's blade drew back bloody. Melanie laughed, and the sound must have infuriated the men, for the redoubled their efforts.

There were no windows in the room, and as long as the door might hold, there was no way around the fact that they had been neatly trapped. For Melanie, the worst part was not knowing how many men were outside, because attaining the outside was the only avenue of escape. In order to curtail the numbers, she drew her pistol. Carly saw her and did the same. They both backed away from the door, and started to fire as one.

Their shots blew several holes in the wood and felled several soldiers. After the initial onslaught, the shouting men grew wise to the idea and put the muzzles of their own rifles through the door, but Melanie and Carly had swiftly returning to their stances on either side of the door. They fired uselessly in the room nearly half a dozen times, making tables and chairs explode in clouds of splinters and filling the air with gunsmoke. Seeing the cloud, the two exchanged a look – now or never. Melanie threw open the door with a cry, and ran her blade through the first man she saw. Carly did likewise, and they managed to cut down several surprised soldiers outside the door before the others could properly react. But there were more, and more approaching.

In the smoke, Melanie booted one man in the gut and snatched at Carly's hand to lead her in the direction of the stairs to the second story. They ducked as well as they could beneath the wild swinging swords of the confused and furious guards, and Melanie cried out in pain as one blade, then another, found and bit into her shoulder. She grit her teeth and pulled Carly along behind her, and they half-ran half-stumbled down the dim hallways and up the stairs to the second floor.

Eyes streaming from the smoke and the pain, Melanie pounded down the hallway with her crewwoman in tow, and the crewwoman's monkey clinging fast to the crewwoman's neck. They found their window still open, and without hesitating, Melanie leapt out and into the tree outside Tess' End.

The wind was knocked from her lungs as she hit a thick branch. She gripped it tightly and swung herself up, seeing sudden stars from the pain of the gash in her shoulder. Carly followed close behind. Melanie drew her pistol as soon as she was steady, and with an effort, switched back and forth from leveling it at the window and the ground below. Both were silent and still, but even in the black branches of the tree, neither woman dared relax entirely.

If there's another thing that pirates are good at, thought Melanie, her lungs on fire, it's running. She worked to catch her breath, and could feel warm blood spreading from the wound on her shoulder. She pressed her palm to the injury, unsurprised to see it covered in blood when she pulled it away. In the darkness of the night, the blood was black. Black as ink, she thought. But despite the pain, she turned to grin at Carly in the dark. The waif had started to giggle.

"Let's go back in," the girl said. "I want to add that one to the list."