Any Port In A Storm
Authors Notes : ...'Expect the next chapter within a week.' You can all boo me vehemently for that one, for I've earned it. This chapter simply did not want to be written; and when it finally came to me, it came in one fell swoop. My utmost apologies for the long wait -- but I do believe I finally have it right. Also -- please excuse any historical inaccuracies that you come across in the following chapters. I have enough research to do for my books, and I simply don't have time to make this yet another piece of historically accurate fiction. I am not entirely sure what the piracy situation on the African coast was like in the early eighteenth century. Hopefully, neither are you -- but if you are, well... put your Fairy Tale hat on, and don't worry about the details.
Chapter X : Long Lost November
[ colloquial title : casablanca could not cure me ]
******
I'm here without you, baby,
but you're still on my lonely mind
I think about you, baby,
and I dream about you all the time
I'm here without you, baby,
but you're still with me in my dreams,
and tonight girl
it's only you and me.
-- fifteen doors down --
***
I never forgot her.
Fifteen years at sea, and I could still see her face without the slightest detail lost to time. Fifteen years, and I could still smell her skin on the salt air, still taste her in each gold and blazen dawn. Fifteen years, and yet the wind still whispered with her voice each time I closed my eyes.
It still seemed as though just yesterday I left her upon that pier -- and even with the sweet southern seas beneath my hull and the fair southern wind in my sails, it was that cold northern yesterday which I longed for. No gold we plundered shone with the luminous beauty of the Irish dawn. No horizon harbored all the rich and enticing promises of her arms.
My crew was once again sated and subordinate; for most of them, the riches of Spain and the African coast had been more enough to lift their spirits, and quell the faint rumblings that had passed between them in Killybegs. Pirates are, on the whole, simple men -- and simple men have simple desires. The spoils of a most lucrative coastline seemed fair compensation for the wasted fortnight in Ireland to the majority of them, and they were in fine spirits by the time we reached Cape Verde.
All, that is, but one.
David Spencer's nose had never healed properly from the blow I had dealt him that long--ago morning, and neither had his pride; indeed, when I caught wind of the whispers of mutiny, I had no doubt as to their source. And when the African coastline proved too little for him and his few remaining conspirators, I knew at once what had to be done.
It was off the coast of Cape Verde that I left them, on an island no greater in length than my ship, armed only with their senses and their suicide shots -- four in all, and none of them a sadness to part with. Truth be told, I was more than glad to be rid of them -- but none of them moreso than Spencer, whom I had never truly liked despite his keen eye and hearty sailwork. The gold meant nothing to him, nor did the sea; it was the women that he wanted, always the women, and never for a moment did he forget about Grace -- the finest loot, by his score, that had ever been swindled from him.
Perhaps that is truly why I marooned him in Africa. Whatever the case, he was gone from me then.
But Grace McClannathan felt closer than ever. In her arms, I had dreamed of the horizon. Now, on the horizon, I dreamed incessantly of her arms.
I could feel her in my sleep; the sinuous, silken warmth of her in my arms, the soft veil of her hair against my face, the even whisper of her breath against my throat. I caught the lurid gleam of her hair, each sunset, in the corner of my eye. But when I turned, she was never there, and when I awoke, she dissipated into dreams.
We sailed north to Casablanca, a city I hold quite dear, and one that had much to offer our likes. There was enough rich drink and black market bartering to keep my crew well contented, and without Spencer to exploit their restless spirits they remained so for nearly two months as I searched in vain for refuge. I drown myself in rum and rich living and the pleasures of silk--draped brothels; drown myself in the arms of exotic north African beauties two at a time. It was to no avail. It was her I was touching as I lay with them, her name that I whispered when passion overcame me. It was her face I saw when I closed my eyes, no matter the strength or quantity of the drink.
Casablanca could not cure me.
And so I made for another port, and another. For over a decade I ran from the ghost of Grace McClannathan. I pressed the limits of the law ceaselessly - tackling voyages that few would dare, raiding ports that they said could not be raided - doing all the things they said could not be done, and yet it was not enough. Nothing was enough. I came back to the Caribbean, back to Tortuga, and it was there that I gathered the maddest of the madmen; a hardened, raucous band of scalawags, each and every one of them tried, tested, tenacious, and treasure hungry. I set my sights upon the Isle de la Muerta, upon the treasure of the great Cortez himself. I feared nothing, risked everything; set sail with my eyes on the horizon and my mind back in Killybegs. I walked, I talked, I schemed and bargained and cheated as I always had, but it was mechanical, nothing more. I was a haunted man.
Had it not been for Barbossa, we may never have made it out of port.
He smelled my weakness from the very beginning. I know this now. He smelled it a mile away, and I wouldn't be surprised if he had planned the entire mutiny before we even left port. Being a predator, however - and any good pirate is essentially just that - he bided his time, waiting for the opportune moment to move in for the kill.
It was roughly thirty leagues west of the Windward Islands when precisely that happened.
I would like to be able to say that I saw it coming, but I didn't. Barbossa was no Davey Spencer - he planned well, and fought even better when the time came; and a fight there was, indeed - for I did not go easy, nor did I go without taking over a dozen of them with me. They came for me at dawn, hoping to catch me in my sleep - but I caught them at the door of my quarters, armed to the teeth, and I cut the first swath of them down like sheep at the slaughter. I fought them with everything that I had until my hands were bound, and the pistol was at my temple, and only a thin plank of wood stood between me and the waters of the Caribbean.
I remember the moment quite clearly to this day - gazing down into the sparkling turquoise shallows, with two dozen swords at my back and the rising sun in my eyes. I remember the scent of the wind, and the sea, and the warm wood of the ship, and the sun - oh the sun - brilliant red and blazing just above the horizon. I remember how very different it was from the Irish dawn; and in the last moment before they forced me into the sea, I remember thinking only that Grace would have loved to see this sunrise... that she should be here to see this sunrise, and that if she were, whatever came next would be perfectly all right with me.
What happened next, however, has since become both a myth and a legend. Only you, Will, and your dear Elizabeth know the truth of it; that the daring, dramatic, and heavily debated escape of Captain Jack Sparrow from exile was really nothing more than sheer luck, and a talent for bargaining.
My money was gone. My ship was gone. Everything that I had ever known as life was gone, now, and the only thing that I had left lay on the other side of the Atlantic. There was no decision to be made. There was not even a choice. Somehow, I had to get back to Killybegs.
I bartered passage aboard a privateer clipper that took me as far north as the Carolinas, and from there I was able to hop a merchant vessel to the Spanish coast under an assumed identity. It was in the Mediterranean that I rounded up a small but hearty crew, and commandeered the rickety vessel that took me up the European coast, at last, to Ireland.
The fishing village had changed but naught since last I saw it, and the moment that I set foot on the pier, fifteen years of my life disappeared. It seemed as though I had come right back to that long lost November; seemed that if I hurried I could still catch her, still stop her, still tell her that I wasn't leaving, never left her -- no, Grace, I'm still here, right here. I've always been here.
Sublime seemed the very dock boards beneath my feet as I made my way along them. It all looked the same, smelled the same, felt the same -- and then I saw it; the Sweet Jane, rocking lazily at her moorings in the little harbor. I had come home at last.
It was not to the boat that I first went, however, but The Black Dog; for if the Sweet Jane was moored, surely Grace must be there. My strides couldn't carry me quickly enough, once I came within sight of the door. fifteen long and lonely years I had long for this, dreamed of this, and now my Salvation lay not leagues, but mere paces before me. This time, I would not let her go. Somehow I would persuade her to come away with me, or I would die here with her, I did not care -- so long as she was with me. I had found the greatest treasure that the seas had to offer me, and such a fool I had been to leave it behind.
Such a fool.
The warmth and light of The Black Dog was a shock to my senses after the bitter November evening, and only dimly did I hear the door close behind me. Same tavern. Same tables. Even some of the faces were familiar. Roaring with music and laughter, churning with motion and spinning with color, it seemed that I had fallen into my very dreams. I stood against the wall, reeling, my eyes purging the crowd for the face of the woman I loved.
I did not find it.
"Yeh've got a right keen eye, mate. Who might it be lookin' fer?"
The woman's voice froze the very blood in my veins. I turned.
The voice had been Graces, but the face was not. Indeed, it's owner was only just a woman; a dark haired, dark eyed young creature, beautiful to be sure, but full of Saxon blood and not but half my age. Yet there was a cunning behind her eyes that one does not often find in such youth, and her smile alluded to things of which children know nothing. And her voice...
"There is a woman who comes here. Her name is Grace."
The woman's dark eyes grew darker. Her smile hardened.
"You'll not find her here, tonight nor any. If yer lookin' for Grace, you'll be wantin' the boneyard, mate."
For a moment, there was Nothing. I heard, I saw, but I did not feel. I did not think. I simply stopped, and time stopped with me. Frozen against the wall, I only stared at her, tried to drive the words back down her throat with sheer force of will so that she'd never spoken them. My breath lay still in my chest, my stomach twisted. Take it back, damn you. Take it back, bring her back, take...
"... You're Jack, aren't you."
She was still standing there, very still, her dark eyes on me. She wasn't smiling, anymore.
"How--"
"You'd have to be Jack. No one asks for Grace, anymore, but she told me that you would."
That voice. Stop speaking. You are going to break me with that voice, her voice...
"Who are you?" I breathed.
"Jane. I'm her daughter."
******
A/N : Once again... our sideplot is not finished. Keep an eye out for the third and final installment of it next chapter -- then we'll get back to the present, promise.
Authors Notes : ...'Expect the next chapter within a week.' You can all boo me vehemently for that one, for I've earned it. This chapter simply did not want to be written; and when it finally came to me, it came in one fell swoop. My utmost apologies for the long wait -- but I do believe I finally have it right. Also -- please excuse any historical inaccuracies that you come across in the following chapters. I have enough research to do for my books, and I simply don't have time to make this yet another piece of historically accurate fiction. I am not entirely sure what the piracy situation on the African coast was like in the early eighteenth century. Hopefully, neither are you -- but if you are, well... put your Fairy Tale hat on, and don't worry about the details.
Chapter X : Long Lost November
[ colloquial title : casablanca could not cure me ]
******
I'm here without you, baby,
but you're still on my lonely mind
I think about you, baby,
and I dream about you all the time
I'm here without you, baby,
but you're still with me in my dreams,
and tonight girl
it's only you and me.
-- fifteen doors down --
***
I never forgot her.
Fifteen years at sea, and I could still see her face without the slightest detail lost to time. Fifteen years, and I could still smell her skin on the salt air, still taste her in each gold and blazen dawn. Fifteen years, and yet the wind still whispered with her voice each time I closed my eyes.
It still seemed as though just yesterday I left her upon that pier -- and even with the sweet southern seas beneath my hull and the fair southern wind in my sails, it was that cold northern yesterday which I longed for. No gold we plundered shone with the luminous beauty of the Irish dawn. No horizon harbored all the rich and enticing promises of her arms.
My crew was once again sated and subordinate; for most of them, the riches of Spain and the African coast had been more enough to lift their spirits, and quell the faint rumblings that had passed between them in Killybegs. Pirates are, on the whole, simple men -- and simple men have simple desires. The spoils of a most lucrative coastline seemed fair compensation for the wasted fortnight in Ireland to the majority of them, and they were in fine spirits by the time we reached Cape Verde.
All, that is, but one.
David Spencer's nose had never healed properly from the blow I had dealt him that long--ago morning, and neither had his pride; indeed, when I caught wind of the whispers of mutiny, I had no doubt as to their source. And when the African coastline proved too little for him and his few remaining conspirators, I knew at once what had to be done.
It was off the coast of Cape Verde that I left them, on an island no greater in length than my ship, armed only with their senses and their suicide shots -- four in all, and none of them a sadness to part with. Truth be told, I was more than glad to be rid of them -- but none of them moreso than Spencer, whom I had never truly liked despite his keen eye and hearty sailwork. The gold meant nothing to him, nor did the sea; it was the women that he wanted, always the women, and never for a moment did he forget about Grace -- the finest loot, by his score, that had ever been swindled from him.
Perhaps that is truly why I marooned him in Africa. Whatever the case, he was gone from me then.
But Grace McClannathan felt closer than ever. In her arms, I had dreamed of the horizon. Now, on the horizon, I dreamed incessantly of her arms.
I could feel her in my sleep; the sinuous, silken warmth of her in my arms, the soft veil of her hair against my face, the even whisper of her breath against my throat. I caught the lurid gleam of her hair, each sunset, in the corner of my eye. But when I turned, she was never there, and when I awoke, she dissipated into dreams.
We sailed north to Casablanca, a city I hold quite dear, and one that had much to offer our likes. There was enough rich drink and black market bartering to keep my crew well contented, and without Spencer to exploit their restless spirits they remained so for nearly two months as I searched in vain for refuge. I drown myself in rum and rich living and the pleasures of silk--draped brothels; drown myself in the arms of exotic north African beauties two at a time. It was to no avail. It was her I was touching as I lay with them, her name that I whispered when passion overcame me. It was her face I saw when I closed my eyes, no matter the strength or quantity of the drink.
Casablanca could not cure me.
And so I made for another port, and another. For over a decade I ran from the ghost of Grace McClannathan. I pressed the limits of the law ceaselessly - tackling voyages that few would dare, raiding ports that they said could not be raided - doing all the things they said could not be done, and yet it was not enough. Nothing was enough. I came back to the Caribbean, back to Tortuga, and it was there that I gathered the maddest of the madmen; a hardened, raucous band of scalawags, each and every one of them tried, tested, tenacious, and treasure hungry. I set my sights upon the Isle de la Muerta, upon the treasure of the great Cortez himself. I feared nothing, risked everything; set sail with my eyes on the horizon and my mind back in Killybegs. I walked, I talked, I schemed and bargained and cheated as I always had, but it was mechanical, nothing more. I was a haunted man.
Had it not been for Barbossa, we may never have made it out of port.
He smelled my weakness from the very beginning. I know this now. He smelled it a mile away, and I wouldn't be surprised if he had planned the entire mutiny before we even left port. Being a predator, however - and any good pirate is essentially just that - he bided his time, waiting for the opportune moment to move in for the kill.
It was roughly thirty leagues west of the Windward Islands when precisely that happened.
I would like to be able to say that I saw it coming, but I didn't. Barbossa was no Davey Spencer - he planned well, and fought even better when the time came; and a fight there was, indeed - for I did not go easy, nor did I go without taking over a dozen of them with me. They came for me at dawn, hoping to catch me in my sleep - but I caught them at the door of my quarters, armed to the teeth, and I cut the first swath of them down like sheep at the slaughter. I fought them with everything that I had until my hands were bound, and the pistol was at my temple, and only a thin plank of wood stood between me and the waters of the Caribbean.
I remember the moment quite clearly to this day - gazing down into the sparkling turquoise shallows, with two dozen swords at my back and the rising sun in my eyes. I remember the scent of the wind, and the sea, and the warm wood of the ship, and the sun - oh the sun - brilliant red and blazing just above the horizon. I remember how very different it was from the Irish dawn; and in the last moment before they forced me into the sea, I remember thinking only that Grace would have loved to see this sunrise... that she should be here to see this sunrise, and that if she were, whatever came next would be perfectly all right with me.
What happened next, however, has since become both a myth and a legend. Only you, Will, and your dear Elizabeth know the truth of it; that the daring, dramatic, and heavily debated escape of Captain Jack Sparrow from exile was really nothing more than sheer luck, and a talent for bargaining.
My money was gone. My ship was gone. Everything that I had ever known as life was gone, now, and the only thing that I had left lay on the other side of the Atlantic. There was no decision to be made. There was not even a choice. Somehow, I had to get back to Killybegs.
I bartered passage aboard a privateer clipper that took me as far north as the Carolinas, and from there I was able to hop a merchant vessel to the Spanish coast under an assumed identity. It was in the Mediterranean that I rounded up a small but hearty crew, and commandeered the rickety vessel that took me up the European coast, at last, to Ireland.
The fishing village had changed but naught since last I saw it, and the moment that I set foot on the pier, fifteen years of my life disappeared. It seemed as though I had come right back to that long lost November; seemed that if I hurried I could still catch her, still stop her, still tell her that I wasn't leaving, never left her -- no, Grace, I'm still here, right here. I've always been here.
Sublime seemed the very dock boards beneath my feet as I made my way along them. It all looked the same, smelled the same, felt the same -- and then I saw it; the Sweet Jane, rocking lazily at her moorings in the little harbor. I had come home at last.
It was not to the boat that I first went, however, but The Black Dog; for if the Sweet Jane was moored, surely Grace must be there. My strides couldn't carry me quickly enough, once I came within sight of the door. fifteen long and lonely years I had long for this, dreamed of this, and now my Salvation lay not leagues, but mere paces before me. This time, I would not let her go. Somehow I would persuade her to come away with me, or I would die here with her, I did not care -- so long as she was with me. I had found the greatest treasure that the seas had to offer me, and such a fool I had been to leave it behind.
Such a fool.
The warmth and light of The Black Dog was a shock to my senses after the bitter November evening, and only dimly did I hear the door close behind me. Same tavern. Same tables. Even some of the faces were familiar. Roaring with music and laughter, churning with motion and spinning with color, it seemed that I had fallen into my very dreams. I stood against the wall, reeling, my eyes purging the crowd for the face of the woman I loved.
I did not find it.
"Yeh've got a right keen eye, mate. Who might it be lookin' fer?"
The woman's voice froze the very blood in my veins. I turned.
The voice had been Graces, but the face was not. Indeed, it's owner was only just a woman; a dark haired, dark eyed young creature, beautiful to be sure, but full of Saxon blood and not but half my age. Yet there was a cunning behind her eyes that one does not often find in such youth, and her smile alluded to things of which children know nothing. And her voice...
"There is a woman who comes here. Her name is Grace."
The woman's dark eyes grew darker. Her smile hardened.
"You'll not find her here, tonight nor any. If yer lookin' for Grace, you'll be wantin' the boneyard, mate."
For a moment, there was Nothing. I heard, I saw, but I did not feel. I did not think. I simply stopped, and time stopped with me. Frozen against the wall, I only stared at her, tried to drive the words back down her throat with sheer force of will so that she'd never spoken them. My breath lay still in my chest, my stomach twisted. Take it back, damn you. Take it back, bring her back, take...
"... You're Jack, aren't you."
She was still standing there, very still, her dark eyes on me. She wasn't smiling, anymore.
"How--"
"You'd have to be Jack. No one asks for Grace, anymore, but she told me that you would."
That voice. Stop speaking. You are going to break me with that voice, her voice...
"Who are you?" I breathed.
"Jane. I'm her daughter."
******
A/N : Once again... our sideplot is not finished. Keep an eye out for the third and final installment of it next chapter -- then we'll get back to the present, promise.