DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Disney. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. Hopefully, Disney's many experienced lawyers will hopefully not decide to come after me for this, as I posses only a computer, some black eyeliner, and a world atlas with colour maps of the Caribbean.
Posted by: Elspeth (AKA Elspethdixon).
Author's Notes: As before, I've only seen the movie once, so if you find any mistakes, inconsistencies, or inaccuracies in characterization, please tell me.
Ships:Will/Elizabeth, Jack/Elizabeth, eventual Jack/Will, eventual Norrington/OC
Warning: This story contains killing, stealing, lots of angst, an OC, and a non-evil Norrington. Sadly, it probably will not contain any hot, steamy sex scenes.
Chapter Five: In Which Norrington and Elizabeth Quarrel.
I have a fair true love on the ocean,
for seven long years he's been at sea.
And if he's gone for seven more, sir,
no other man shall marry me.
Elizabeth sat alone on the bed she shared with Will, staring silently at the two small objects she held in the palm of her left hand. The pearls shone faintly rose-coloured in the light of the setting sun, and as she shifted her hand out of the beam of sunlight slanting in through the window, their settings flashed red gold. Such pretty things to bear such an unwanted message.
Where did you get them? Never mind, I don't want to know. I'd only feel guilty if I did.
You prob'ly don't want to know.
Jack's words from two weeks ago echoed in her head as she contemplated the ill-starred jewelry. She really shouldn't be so surprised to find that her new earrings were stolen. She had known all along that Jack couldn't possibly have obtained them legally. She just hadn't expected…
Hadn't expected to find that he had stolen them from her cousin's wife after killing her cousin? Of course she hadn't thought of that! It was too ridiculous, too far-fetched, like something out of a badly written play.
Except that now she was holding the evidence in her hand.
She had known that Jack was a pirate. She had known, far better than most young woman her age, what that meant, that killing people must inevitably be part of the package. She had seen Jack kill before. Granted, the victim had been a sinister, undead pirate captain who minutes before had been on the verge of killing Will, but Jack had still caused him to go from undead to permanently dead. So why did this new revelation bother her so much? Aside from the obvious fact that Robert had been someone known to her, that is.
Elizabeth rolled her pearl earrings--Mary Rose's pearl earrings--around in her palm and remembered gentle hands sliding them into her ears, remembered dancing clumsily but exuberantly around a driftwood fire singing her pirate song while another voice provided a slightly off key but extremely enthusiastic counterpoint, remembered brown eyes smiling into hers while their owner curled the ends of his mustache and leered at her, remembered white bone gleaming in the moonlight, flesh rotting away and then knitting together again as the spectre wielded a sword with a grace she had never seen from anyone else but Will. Remembered shackled hands taking her by the throat and the cold barrel of a pistol pressing against her head.
Will's voice drifted almost mockingly into her thoughts.
He's a pirate, and a good man.
Who had made Mary Rose cry silently in a church pew while the priest recited prayers for the soul of her husband. Who had saved Elizabeth's life at least twice. Who was probably at this very moment sailing back from Tortuga with her husband on board his ship.
Perhaps Jack had had a reason for killing Robert. Perhaps Robert had been fighting with the ship's crew, had raised a sword or pistol against Jack, had compelled him to shoot him, or stab him, or whatever it was he had done. Or perhaps he had not. Elizabeth very much wanted to believe the former, but reason whispered treasonously that the latter was equally likely. And added that both English law and family feeling ought to compel her to take her knowledge of Jack's whereabouts, limited as it was, to Norrington or one of his subordinates.
Except that where they found Jack, they would find Will
^_~
Commodore Edward Norrington hesitated outside the door to the Governor's house, knuckles hovering a bare inch from its painted surface. Once a frequent and welcome visitor, he now felt awkward whenever he set foot inside the graceful building. Governor Swann was as gracious as ever, but lurking deep within Norrington's mind was the knowledge that somewhere upstairs was the apartment shared by Elizabeth and Will, by his former fiancée and the man she had left him for.
This time, however, he was not making a social call. Today, he was here on official business.
Mrs. Swann had been most adamant that the earrings Elizabeth had worn this morning were the same pieces of jewelry that Sparrow had stolen from her. Two pearls, she had said, suspended within golden cut-work. Norrington himself had not noticed Elizabeth's jewelry, but Mrs. Swann had no reason to lie, and the statement had a disturbing plausibility to it, no matter how strongly something inside of him wished to believe Elizabeth innocent of any conniving or wrong-doing. Who better to receive Jack Sparrow's stolen booty than the two who had saved him from the hangman's noose?
Norrington took a deep breath, letting the air trickle out through his nose, and knocked.
Ten minutes later he was comfortably seated in the Governor's parlour, waiting for the housemaid to fetch Elizabeth down from her room. Across from him, Governor Swann straightened his wig nervously.
"You're sure that my daughter possesses the information you need?" he asked again.
"Not completely, sir," Norrington repeated. "But Mrs. Swann's account of her husband's murderer matches up very nicely with a certain escaped pirate of Elizabeth's, of Mrs. Turner's acquaintance." He had not told the man about the earrings yet, concentrating solely on Elizabeth's past with Sparrow. There was no need to present the older man with such damaging evidence just yet. First, he would hear Elizabeth's explanation.
"Commodore." The voice came from the doorway, cool and polite, as she always was with him. "To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?"
"Mrs. Turner," he responded, rising to his feet and bowing slightly. "Much as I enjoy the pleasure of your company, I am afraid that this visit is of a very serious nature." Elizabeth paled slightly as he continued, but remained otherwise composed. "I must speak with you on a matter of some importance." He cast a significant glance at Governor Swann. "Alone, if that would not be too much of an imposition."
The governor nodded and left the room quietly, leaving the door open behind him. Elizabeth crossed slowly to the settee in which faced Norrington's own chair and sat down, carefully arranging her skirts. She was, he noted, wearing a pair of plain gold earrings now, which went well with her subdued cream coloured dress. "What do you need to speak with me about that cannot be discussed in front of my father?" she asked, still politely.
"Mrs. Turner," Norrington began, trying to keep his voice gentle and calm, "I have reason to believe that you may know something about the pirates who attacked your cousin's ship."
Not so much as a flicker of surprise showed on her face. "And why is that, Commodore?"
Norrington stifled the impulse to sigh in exasperation. She knew what he was here about, and was playing innocent. "Mrs. Swann provided me with a description of one of the marauders, as did the Golden Dolphin's captain and several of her surviving crew members. Nearly all of them mentioned a man of medium height with a red scarf about his head and beads in his hair and beard. Does this sound familiar to you?"
"I have not seen Captain Sparrow since last summer." Elizabeth's voice and face were perfectly composed, but one hand toyed nervously with the pale fabric of her skirt. "He could be anywhere between here and Virginia, for all I know. I'm afraid I can't help you," she added, looking not at all sorry.
Norrington seethed inside with irritation. He had never been able to fathom Elizabeth's odd fascination with pirates, which had begun before he ever met her and had culminated eventually in the decision to collaborate with one, rescue one, and to marry a man who was in his opinion the next best thing to one. Sparrow, he was certain, would have found some way to communicate with Turner after the man had saved him from his much deserved fate at the hands of the law, and Elizabeth, who had played no small roll in the man's escape herself, would not have been left out of the loop. And then there were Mrs. Swann's earrings.
"Please do not lie to me," Norrington said. He could hear his voice hardening slightly as he went on. "I know that you have been in contact with him. I am willing to overlook that, if you will simply tell me where he is headed."
"Commodore, really," Elizabeth protested, "I do not know what you are talking about. I have no idea where he might be."
She was lying. Norrington wasn't sure how he knew that, but he was, nevertheless, certain of it. Elizabeth most definitely knew something. He prepared to fire his heaviest guns. "Mrs. Swann claims that Sparrow stole a pair of earrings from her when his pirates attacked the Dolphin. Golden earrings, set with pearls. She says that she saw you wearing an identical pair of earrings this morning."
One of Elizabeth's hands moved upward, as if to touch her earlobe. She halted the motion partway through and returned the hand to her lap. "Perhaps my cousin was mistaken. She may have been distracted by her grief."
"She was not mistaken," Norrington snapped. "You have seen Sparrow, you have spoken with Sparrow, you have received those earrings from Sparrow, at some point within the past three weeks. That, or your husband has." He curled the fingers of his right hand into a fist, imagining the smarmy pirate leering at Elizabeth, taking advantage of her fascination with his profession and her gratitude over his saving her life in order to winkle information out of her. Or perhaps he had made some sort of arrangement with Turner, selling off stolen gold to him to have it melted down and recast. "You must know something of his whereabouts. Even knowing how recently he was in Port Royal would help us," he added, trying to reason with her. He really did not want to have to threaten her with charges, or embarrass the governor by accusing his daughter of being an accomplice to piracy. "I understand that you feel some gratitude to him for saving you from drowning, but surely that debt has been paid."
"I'm sorry," Elizabeth said, sounding strained. "I can't tell you that."
"Why the devil not?" Norrington demanded. "Robert Swann was your own cousin!"
"I-" she started, then cut herself off. "I just can't," she repeated.
"Don't tell me you feel more loyalty to that verminous blackguard than you do to your own flesh and blood!" Norrington kept himself from shouting with an effort, but his voice was still louder than usual as he snarled the accusation at her.
"He saved me!" she half-shouted in turn. "He saved Will! I won't repay that by helping you hang him, whether he deserves it or not. Besides, if I-" she stopped, looking away from him to study the brocade upholstery of the settee with distracted eyes. "Some loyalties are deeper than blood."
A dark slither of suspicion worked its way into Norrington's mind. No woman was that vehement in defence of a mere acquaintance. That strident-voiced declaration had all the passion of a lioness defending her mate.
"Turner is with him, isn't he?" Norrington slammed a fist down on the dark, polished wooden arm of his chair, leaping to his feet. "That's why he left Port Royal. He's not fixing a piece of ironwork for some planter, he's out there with that pirate! That's why you won't tell me where he's gone."
He saw by Elizabeth's sudden pallor that he had guessed right, and continued, "He was here two weeks ago. He could be anywhere in the Lesser Antilles by now. But if Turner's with him, he's got to come back here eventually, and I'll be waiting for him."
"He's not," Elizabeth protested, looking now on the verge of tears, though whether from misery or anger, Norrington was not sure.
"He is. Turner would never simply sail off and leave you, not after all of the trouble he went through to rescue you."
"He's not!" Elizabeth repeated, louder this time. Norrington's anger was momentarily tempered by the obvious distress in her face. It was, after all, only natural for her to defend her husband, no matter the scum he associated with.
"When I catch the Black Pearl, I will spare no man aboard her," Norrington warned. "I cannot, nor do I desire to, but I have no wish to hang your husband, my lady."
"Helping you to catch him is not going to do him any good." Elizabeth's jaw was set stubbornly. In her anger, she did not appear to notice that she had just all but admitted that Will Turner was aboard the Black Pearl.
"No, but it might do you some," Norrington told her. "How do you think you'll be treated, as the wife of a man wanted as a pirate? No one in Port Royal will ever speak to you again, and the Governor might even be forced to disown you. You can't want that, Elizabeth." Did she not realize how precarious her position was? How much being implicated in this could hurt her? "Please help me. It's for your own good."
Elizabeth stood abruptly, back stiffer than mere corsetry could account for. "This interview is over, sir," she said flatly, angrily. "One of the servants will see you out." She nearly stalked out of the room, not quite fleeing.
Norrington stared after her in dismay. Why must she always be so stubborn? He could not make himself bring charges against her, no matter that her actions warranted it. And harbouring a pirate, or aiding one in any way, did warrant charges. But arresting Elizabeth? Such a thing was not possible, would not have been possible even had she not been the governor's daughter. Only months ago he had hoped to marry her, and even though those hopes had come to naught, he could not bring himself to do her any harm.
Her husband, on the other hand, was quite another matter entirely, as was Jack Sparrow. There was no way he could avoid bringing charges against Turner, not if he was sailing aboard Sparrow's ship, and seeing "Captain" Jack Sparrow dance on the end of a rope had been a personal ambition of his for over half a year.
Yes, catching Sparrow would be a pleasure.
^_~
Lesser Antilles: Group of islands southeast of Puerto Rico, extending from the Virgin Islands to the coast of Venezuela.
Next up, Chapter Six: In Which the Gallant Commodore Norrington Sails Forth in Search of Pirates.
Stay tuned for an entire chapter of Norrington POV.