Any Port In a Storm
Chapter VII :
[ colloquial title : ]
***
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventur'd piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents' strife.
***
He came to her door at first light. Right away, she knew what she had to do.
One might have thought that a delicate creature like Ms. Swann would have been shocked to fainting upon receiving word that her husband had been imprisoned for harboring the most fearsome pirate left in the Carribean. Pirates were supposed to scare young ladies. But Elizabeth was, in fact, not a delicate creature at all; she simply looked the part. And she had absolutely no fear of pirates, either.
Quite the contary; every living pirate that she had ever known - and one that had spent a short time dead, as well - had been, at their very cores, Good People. Granted, many a man would argue heartily with Elizabeth's definition of "good" - but what's in a name? Capulet, Montague; two houses, both alike in dignity, yet each an afrontment to Good in by one another's standards. Good was what you made of it. Good depended on the circumstances.
She didn't look up from her book as her father laid the news regretfully before her. Mockery. The Governor had never approved of Will, anyway. Save your regretful tones for those who'll believe them. He'd shown her beloved husband the absolute minimun of required acceptance in the past year - keeping him on the fringes in public and at arms length in private. Will, who was sometimes too good hearted for his own well being, harbored him no resentment for the lack of warmth. He loved her, he said, and needing her father's approval was the last thing on his mind. Even so, he was all too understanding, and it made Elizabeth doubly furious when he turned the other cheek so benignly at her father's repeated cold shoulder - furious not at Will, but at her father.
That was why she left him to wait a few, tense moments in silence before she said, "You do understand, father, that if you harm either one of them I shall never speak with you again."
"Elizabeth, darling. You must understand--"
"No, father, it is you who must understand; harm a hair on either of their heads, and I promise you that you have seen the last of me."
Governor Swann puffed up like a large, tropical bird in a powdered wig. "Now see here, darling, I understand that you--"
"You doubt me. You look at me, and you see a silly little girl, don't you? I'm not a little girl anymore, father. I am a married woman. And mark my words - harm my husband, and I am no longer your daughter. Since our very wedding day you've shown him nothing but thinly veiled distain, and I have held my tounge only out of my dying respect for you. Hurt Will, or Jack, for that matter - who if you would be so kind as to remember, saved not only my life, but yours - and you severe the last thin threads of respect that bind me to you."
Her father was shocked into silence, frozen momentarily in place before the heat of anger and indignance melted the chill of surprise from his features.
"You dare!"
"Dare to what, father? Fufill the vows of my marriage?"
"I am your father, Elizabeth!"
"Harm them, and you shall be so no longer."
"Renounce me, and you shall be alone in this world, Elizabeth. Renounce me and you have nothing."
"I'll have more than you've ever given me. Take your grand house, your fine clothes, your silk and your lace and your bloody sense of propriety. Take every cent you've ever given me, and burn it; I'll not lift a finger to stop you. But as God as my witness, father - take my husband, and I take my leave of you."
"You don't mean this. You need to rest, darling. I understand how very hard this--"
"You would be a fool, indeed, to test the honesty of my words."
"Elizabe--"
"Get out of my house."
Silence.
"Go. I have nothing more to say to you. Stella" - her colored servingwoman seemed to materialize out of nowhere - "please see my father here to his carriage."
"I should have cast him back into the ocean."
"I don't know you," said Elizabeth. "And I never have. The house is your, but Stella stays with me. Goodbye, Governor Swann." And with that, she left the drawing room.
She listened for the sound of his shoes on the front steps, and as soon as she heard them, Elizabeth put her plan into action. It wasn't hard to think and argue with her father at the same time. Elizabeth thought vert fast, and her father argued very slowly. Right away, she knew what she had to do. Bickering with her father had only given her time to fine tune the unfortunate necessities in her mind. Now she ascended to her chambers with a brisk, purposeful stride - not thinking about Jack, or Will, but only about the process that lay ahead. She did not allow herself to worry for them, as the pulled open her wardrobe, and dug deep into the back of it for her weapons; a dirk that Will had crafted for her, sheathed in leather, which she strapped to her forearm beneath the sleeve of her dress... a smaller blade that Jack had left her with, which she tucked into her garter... an old pistol, and a small sack of shot for it, both of which she hid carefully in the folds of her skirt. She might very well need all three of them.
In retrospect, perhaps it would have been to her advantage to play the distraught young doe. Only as she descended the grand staircase of the house did Elizabeth realize that it would have made her task even simpler. Too late. No matter. She called for her carriage, waited in the drawing room - looking out one of the long french windows, down the hill and over the town, picking out the garrison with her eyes.
Captain Jack Sparrow had returned. No wonder she'd seen not hide nor hair of Will for nearly fourty-eight hours.
Will was a good man; a good blacksmith, a better friend, and the best husband that she could have wished for - but he was a pirate by blood, and Elizabeth had never forgotten this. Their marrige had quenched the proverbial flames in his blood, but the embers still smoldered somewhere inside of him, beneath the ashes of domesticity. Jack was a catalyst for Will - a trigger, a match. Jack fanned those embers with the wings of freedom. And there was something ten times as beautiful about a free man as there was a bound one.
She'd never meant to bind him, of course. Had Will asked her to come away with him - to take to the high seas aboard the Pearl and never look back, she wouldn't have blinked before saying yes. It was he who had asked her hand in marrige, who had settled their lives into lavish and familiar comfort. It was he who had ordered the furniture for their grand house on the hillside, just five minutes from her father's mansion. Will himself had hired their cooks, their footmen, their stable boys. He'd undertaken their lives together with vigor - and though it had surprised her, she had found no reason to doubt or distrust his earnest when he said that he was happy here, with her. His happiness was her happiness, and so she was happy, too.
But it made her sad, in a way, to see him readjust so easily. A year and a half ago, something magical had happened to the William Turner she had always known and loved. He had found himself aboard the Black Pearl. The little boy they'd dragged on deck eight years prior had finally grown into his fathers boots; and oh, what boots they had turned out to be. She'd loved him all the more for it.
But the fire came and went, in him, like the roll and ebb of a wave. When the Black Pearl had pulled out of port a year and a half ago, Will had left a piece of himself on her deck, and the flames had died to mere embers once more.
Unlike Will, however, Elizabeth had never been naive enough to believe that they had seen the last of Captain Jack Sparrow.
He would come back, because he loved Will.
She'd never told either of them that she knew, of course. They didn't want her to know, because they both loved her, too; but she had seen it in their eyes, clear as day. She'd heard it in Will's voice, as they slid the noose around Jack's neck. "Elizabeth, I should have told you from the first time I met you.
"I love you."
**But I love him, as well.**
And how beautiful it was to her - that he could love her so deeply, and still have room to love another just as much. Indeed - William Turner had a capacity for Love that most human beings could never hope to understand. His love for Jack did not negate his love for her, or vice versa. His heart was big enough for both of them, and there was no one that she would rather share it with than Jack; the man who had brought them together, the man who had saved them both. That was why, when Will had stepped between Jack and Norrington's blade, she had stepped to his side.
She only wished that he would have brought Jack here. Of course she knew why he hadn't, and now she cursed herself for never confronting him. "Will, I know you love him. And it's okay. I love him too." How simple it would have made everything. She wouldnt be standing here, now - waiting for the carriage to pull 'round to the steps, and staring down the building in the distance as though it were the enemy.
"Your carriage, Mrs Turner."
Elizabeth cocked the pistol within the folds of her skirt, and let Stella escort her down the front stairs.
***
- to be continued -
Chapter VII :
[ colloquial title : ]
***
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventur'd piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents' strife.
***
He came to her door at first light. Right away, she knew what she had to do.
One might have thought that a delicate creature like Ms. Swann would have been shocked to fainting upon receiving word that her husband had been imprisoned for harboring the most fearsome pirate left in the Carribean. Pirates were supposed to scare young ladies. But Elizabeth was, in fact, not a delicate creature at all; she simply looked the part. And she had absolutely no fear of pirates, either.
Quite the contary; every living pirate that she had ever known - and one that had spent a short time dead, as well - had been, at their very cores, Good People. Granted, many a man would argue heartily with Elizabeth's definition of "good" - but what's in a name? Capulet, Montague; two houses, both alike in dignity, yet each an afrontment to Good in by one another's standards. Good was what you made of it. Good depended on the circumstances.
She didn't look up from her book as her father laid the news regretfully before her. Mockery. The Governor had never approved of Will, anyway. Save your regretful tones for those who'll believe them. He'd shown her beloved husband the absolute minimun of required acceptance in the past year - keeping him on the fringes in public and at arms length in private. Will, who was sometimes too good hearted for his own well being, harbored him no resentment for the lack of warmth. He loved her, he said, and needing her father's approval was the last thing on his mind. Even so, he was all too understanding, and it made Elizabeth doubly furious when he turned the other cheek so benignly at her father's repeated cold shoulder - furious not at Will, but at her father.
That was why she left him to wait a few, tense moments in silence before she said, "You do understand, father, that if you harm either one of them I shall never speak with you again."
"Elizabeth, darling. You must understand--"
"No, father, it is you who must understand; harm a hair on either of their heads, and I promise you that you have seen the last of me."
Governor Swann puffed up like a large, tropical bird in a powdered wig. "Now see here, darling, I understand that you--"
"You doubt me. You look at me, and you see a silly little girl, don't you? I'm not a little girl anymore, father. I am a married woman. And mark my words - harm my husband, and I am no longer your daughter. Since our very wedding day you've shown him nothing but thinly veiled distain, and I have held my tounge only out of my dying respect for you. Hurt Will, or Jack, for that matter - who if you would be so kind as to remember, saved not only my life, but yours - and you severe the last thin threads of respect that bind me to you."
Her father was shocked into silence, frozen momentarily in place before the heat of anger and indignance melted the chill of surprise from his features.
"You dare!"
"Dare to what, father? Fufill the vows of my marriage?"
"I am your father, Elizabeth!"
"Harm them, and you shall be so no longer."
"Renounce me, and you shall be alone in this world, Elizabeth. Renounce me and you have nothing."
"I'll have more than you've ever given me. Take your grand house, your fine clothes, your silk and your lace and your bloody sense of propriety. Take every cent you've ever given me, and burn it; I'll not lift a finger to stop you. But as God as my witness, father - take my husband, and I take my leave of you."
"You don't mean this. You need to rest, darling. I understand how very hard this--"
"You would be a fool, indeed, to test the honesty of my words."
"Elizabe--"
"Get out of my house."
Silence.
"Go. I have nothing more to say to you. Stella" - her colored servingwoman seemed to materialize out of nowhere - "please see my father here to his carriage."
"I should have cast him back into the ocean."
"I don't know you," said Elizabeth. "And I never have. The house is your, but Stella stays with me. Goodbye, Governor Swann." And with that, she left the drawing room.
She listened for the sound of his shoes on the front steps, and as soon as she heard them, Elizabeth put her plan into action. It wasn't hard to think and argue with her father at the same time. Elizabeth thought vert fast, and her father argued very slowly. Right away, she knew what she had to do. Bickering with her father had only given her time to fine tune the unfortunate necessities in her mind. Now she ascended to her chambers with a brisk, purposeful stride - not thinking about Jack, or Will, but only about the process that lay ahead. She did not allow herself to worry for them, as the pulled open her wardrobe, and dug deep into the back of it for her weapons; a dirk that Will had crafted for her, sheathed in leather, which she strapped to her forearm beneath the sleeve of her dress... a smaller blade that Jack had left her with, which she tucked into her garter... an old pistol, and a small sack of shot for it, both of which she hid carefully in the folds of her skirt. She might very well need all three of them.
In retrospect, perhaps it would have been to her advantage to play the distraught young doe. Only as she descended the grand staircase of the house did Elizabeth realize that it would have made her task even simpler. Too late. No matter. She called for her carriage, waited in the drawing room - looking out one of the long french windows, down the hill and over the town, picking out the garrison with her eyes.
Captain Jack Sparrow had returned. No wonder she'd seen not hide nor hair of Will for nearly fourty-eight hours.
Will was a good man; a good blacksmith, a better friend, and the best husband that she could have wished for - but he was a pirate by blood, and Elizabeth had never forgotten this. Their marrige had quenched the proverbial flames in his blood, but the embers still smoldered somewhere inside of him, beneath the ashes of domesticity. Jack was a catalyst for Will - a trigger, a match. Jack fanned those embers with the wings of freedom. And there was something ten times as beautiful about a free man as there was a bound one.
She'd never meant to bind him, of course. Had Will asked her to come away with him - to take to the high seas aboard the Pearl and never look back, she wouldn't have blinked before saying yes. It was he who had asked her hand in marrige, who had settled their lives into lavish and familiar comfort. It was he who had ordered the furniture for their grand house on the hillside, just five minutes from her father's mansion. Will himself had hired their cooks, their footmen, their stable boys. He'd undertaken their lives together with vigor - and though it had surprised her, she had found no reason to doubt or distrust his earnest when he said that he was happy here, with her. His happiness was her happiness, and so she was happy, too.
But it made her sad, in a way, to see him readjust so easily. A year and a half ago, something magical had happened to the William Turner she had always known and loved. He had found himself aboard the Black Pearl. The little boy they'd dragged on deck eight years prior had finally grown into his fathers boots; and oh, what boots they had turned out to be. She'd loved him all the more for it.
But the fire came and went, in him, like the roll and ebb of a wave. When the Black Pearl had pulled out of port a year and a half ago, Will had left a piece of himself on her deck, and the flames had died to mere embers once more.
Unlike Will, however, Elizabeth had never been naive enough to believe that they had seen the last of Captain Jack Sparrow.
He would come back, because he loved Will.
She'd never told either of them that she knew, of course. They didn't want her to know, because they both loved her, too; but she had seen it in their eyes, clear as day. She'd heard it in Will's voice, as they slid the noose around Jack's neck. "Elizabeth, I should have told you from the first time I met you.
"I love you."
**But I love him, as well.**
And how beautiful it was to her - that he could love her so deeply, and still have room to love another just as much. Indeed - William Turner had a capacity for Love that most human beings could never hope to understand. His love for Jack did not negate his love for her, or vice versa. His heart was big enough for both of them, and there was no one that she would rather share it with than Jack; the man who had brought them together, the man who had saved them both. That was why, when Will had stepped between Jack and Norrington's blade, she had stepped to his side.
She only wished that he would have brought Jack here. Of course she knew why he hadn't, and now she cursed herself for never confronting him. "Will, I know you love him. And it's okay. I love him too." How simple it would have made everything. She wouldnt be standing here, now - waiting for the carriage to pull 'round to the steps, and staring down the building in the distance as though it were the enemy.
"Your carriage, Mrs Turner."
Elizabeth cocked the pistol within the folds of her skirt, and let Stella escort her down the front stairs.
***
- to be continued -