"Will! Will wake up damn you!"
"Whutsthematter?" Will looked up groggily at the dishevelled pirate leaning over him, then promptly screamed, as it is quite disconcerting having a rum breathed, gold toothed, dread locked madman just appear in the small hours of the morning. Jack leapt back.
"Jack what the hell are you doing?"
Jack paced the floor of Will's room, looking absolutely terrified. "I've been threatened."
Will just blinked at him. "It's past midnight on the eve of my wedding day. You- Jack Sparrow- woke me up to tell me you were threatened?"
In exasperation, Jack threw his hands up. They were shaking, but not from the rather copious amounts of rum he had consumed. "I've not been threatened by anyone! I've been threatened," he paused, glancing around the room for hidden listeners then staring directly into Will's eyes, "By Bonny Hawk!" Again, Will just blinked.
"I'm sure that would have more impact on me if I knew who Bonny Hawk was."
Jack sighed. "I suppose," he said slowly, "You might know her by the name of Anne Bonny." More blinks from Will.
"Do you know nothing, lad?" he paced the floor, muttering to himself. Among various expletives, Will caught 'son of Bootstrap not knowing about Anne Bonny' and 'young people today'.
"Are you going to tell me who she is then?" Will had realised that Jack was going to be here a while, whether he liked it or not.
Looking thoughtful, Jack sat cross-legged on the edge of Will's bed, wondering where to begin. He made several false starts before settling on his story.
"In 1698, an Irishman got his servant girl pregnant. They ran away to the new world. He became a plantation owner. Grew sugar, became quite wealthy. Anywho, they had a daughter by the name of Anne and she wasn't exactly what a rich man's daughter ought to be like."
"How do you mean?" Will interrupted.
"Well, there are stories. Some say she stabbed a servant girl when she was fourteen, and I'm not sure whether that's true or not. I do know that lots of men wanted to marry this fine young lady, and she wasn't having any of it. She used to insult anyone who came asking for her hand and once-" Jack broke off, remembering the many stories that surrounded Anne Bonny.
"Yes?" Will tried to stifle a yawn, wanting the story to be over as quickly as possible.
"A man tried to. . . force himself on her when she was fifteen. She beat him senseless with a chair." He smiled, seeming to forget how terrified he was. "That girl had savvy."
"Jack?" nostalgic pirates did not help to speed a story along. "Jack! Get on with it!"
Jack looked around, surprised at being brought out of his reverie so abruptly. "Oh sorry Will. Where was I? Oh yeah, she beat a man up, married a pirate and was disowned by her father. Might have burned his plantation down but no one knows for sure."
"Right then." You got used to Jacks sporadic way of story telling after a while.
"So this pirate she marries, John Bonny, he turns informer. Gets other fine buccaneers locked away, the git. Anne doesn't like this, so she leaves him, hops on a ship with Calico Jack."
"You!" Jack looked insulted. "No! I'd never change my name. Captain Jack Sparrow is good enough for me, and Jack Rackham should've been good enough for Calico." He readjusted the coat on his shoulders. Will got the feeling that had Jack been walking, he'd have swaggered.
"So she went with this Calico Jack person- that we've established isn't you- then what happened?"
"Well, I was on that ship too. In my youth. I wasn't always a captain you know. Anne was a friend of mine. No, not that kind of friend." The last part was in response to Will's raised eyebrows.
"Are you sure of that Jack?"
"Course I'm bloody sure! We were in that alley for ten minutes and she didn't slap me once- how's that for proof?" at the mention of an alley, Will's eyebrows raised further.
"It was the alley she threatened me in- look do you want to hear this story or not?"
"Just get on with it!"
"I would do if people didn't stop questioning my reputation every time I stop for breath! Anyway, as I was saying before I was interrupted," he glared at Will, "I was friends with Anne. One day, we docked at a Jamaican port, and I went a shore. For rum and the like, you know. Well, when I was off ship, it was attacked by the English bloody Navy. All the pirates on board hid, all save Anne and Mary."
"Mary?"
"Those eyebrows are raised again Master Turner. Put them down." Will obliged. "Mary Read. Another female pirate. Dressed as a man a lot. Not my type. So Anne and Mary fought while all the men hid away below deck. Bloody good fighters too. I saw the ship being attacked from the shore, but I couldn't do anything about it could I, all by me onesies? All the crew were taken prisoner, sentenced to be hanged. People around here seem to like that punishment don't they?" this was followed with mutterings about the Navy and how they seemed to think Pirates and the gallows made a good match.
"So you stood back and let your friend and crew mates be captured?" Jack seemed to miss the sarcasm lacing Will's voice.
"Yep. I don't particularly like offering my neck to the Navy, as you well know. 'Orrible men with 'orrible headgear. Anyways, there's me crew in jail, and me out. It was a while before they were hanged; there were lots more pirates in those days. Waiting lists for the bleedin' noose. Not like today. Well, I worked out a way to get Anne out of there."
"How Jack? Or do I really want to know?"
"Why is it you presume that every time I do something it's sordid and below the law?"
"I call it 'past experience'." Jack considered this for a moment, weighing the argument in his head, then nodded.
"Yeah, I suppose you're right. But this time, what I did, I got this old beggar off the street-" Will groaned inwardly- "and I told the prison guards he was Anne's father and I was her brother. In we go to talk to her in her cell, and we decide on a story to tell the guards. Well, Old Joe the beggar didn't do much deciding, he was off his head on free rum. We tell 'em Anne's pregnant, and it's illegal to hang an unborn child. They could have kept her locked up till she had the kid- not that there was one- but I reckon they needed the room so they let her go. The rum we gave 'em probably helped things along."
"Jack does your world revolve around rum?"
"Absolutely. So, me and Anne get ourselves a ship, pick up a crew and sail around the Caribbean for a bit. We get ourselves a small fleet, three ships between the three of us-"
"Jack, when did a third person enter the equation?" it's hard to keep track of a story in which many major details are left out. Jack rolled his eyes.
"Barbossa, my first mate. He took The Fraternity, Anne had The Liberty and I had The Equality. Small ships, but good enough."
Will sensed a moment of pirate daydreams on the horizon. "What happened then?"
Jack's face darkened. "I listened to Barbossa."