Mark The Earth With Ruin

Chapter 3

"Come, lad, you have to eat something," Jack cajoled, sliding the plate of bread and cheese toward him. Will gave him a look, but picked up the end of the loaf and took a bite. "Good lad." He drummed his fingers on the table for a moment. "I've promised young Lizbet to escort her to open water," Jack said after a long silence.

Will took a long drink of ale. "I've been neglecting her these last two days." He shook his head.

"Aye, well, you've had plenty on your mind," Jack said, balancing a slice of cheese on a hunk of bread and taking a bite. "She understands more than you think." They chewed in companionable silence for a bit, and then Jack got to his feet, shrugging on his coat. "What's keeping Ned? I thought he was coming to the quay with you. Isn't the little Norrington wench going with Lizbet?"

Will made a face. "I'll wager I know what's keeping him. I've never seen him look at a woman the way he looked at Mrs. Palmer."

Jack knew what he meant. The way Ned's face had suddenly lit up, the way his gray eyes seemed to sharpen and focus and follow the dark-haired stranger around… well, it was unusual, to say the least. The Palmer was a beauty, though, no denying that, even if something about her didn't sit right with Jack. Well, there was no accounting for taste.

He clapped a hand on Will's shoulder. "His timing's a bit odd, but at least 'tis good to know he's got some baser instincts. I was beginning to think he was a eunuch." That got a small grin out of the younger man, as it was intended to do.

The subject of their discourse came down the stairs then. His sister Emmy had been dispatched to the mansion to repack her trunk and join them at the wharf, and had rather mulishly obeyed; Annie Palmer was still upstairs tending to poor Bill.

"Nearly time for you to go, isn't it?" Edmund said to the men, his tone slightly impatient.

Jack was surprised, but kept it to himself. Not so Will, though. "I thought you were to come too, to see Lizbet and your sister safely away."

"Oh. Um, yes, I was. But that leaves Mrs. Palmer alone with poor Bill, which hardly seems the way to treat a Good Samaritan." Edmund's tone was haughty, one he hadn't used in front of his friends in years.

Jack cleared his throat. "Rose is still here, Ned. Mrs. Palmer would not be alone."

Edmund gave him a cold look. "Mrs. Palmer is used to more… refined company, Jack. I hardly think it would be proper to leave Mrs. Palmer otherwise unescorted."

Will and Jack exchanged astonished glances. What the hell? This was not like Edmund at all.

~*~

Dark, it was, here: the kind of dark that terrifies the very spirit of a man.

But there had been a promise of warmth, of light; he remembered that well enough. She'd touched him once and he'd followed the promise like a rat after a piper, followed it away from everything safe, only to find the darkness slamming shut behind him, cutting off life, and light, and air.

His body betrayed him. He tried to form words, but his mouth would not obey. She'd taken that from him: the ability to name her, to tell them what he was to become. The vanguard of her army, she'd told him silently as he lay writhing in agony; the pain in his body a clouded reflection of the sorrow in his soul.

All he could do was beg for them to burn him, and even knowing he'd be burned alive, beg he did. Better to die in agony than live as she had planned.

They were all in danger. Don't touch her! he wanted to cry, but her cruel laughter rang in his mind and his tongue refused to obey him, sapped of his will like the rest of his body. Too late, he knew it. He saw the trap sprung, saw the same change come over Norrington that had spun him away. Saw the smile of triumph again touch those wine-colored lips.

He opened bloodshot eyes at the whispered sound of a sigh. She turned from Rose, her smile rich and filled with malevolence. No, he protested silently. Not Rose. Not my Rose.

"Yours, William?" she purred, though he did not understand how she could hear him. "No longer, I think. But don't fret yourself; she is merely asleep." She approached the bed, pulling something small from her pocket. "So very easy, this has been," she said, her Scottish lilt more evident. "You made this so very, very easy."

He railed; he wept; but through it all his body remained wooden, frozen… dead.

She uncorked the tiny, iridescent bottle she held. "It's time, William."

And Bill watched in helpless horror as Annie Palmer severed the last thread of the life he knew, the warp and weft unraveling in his fevered mind, until all that was left was the cold, smooth walls of his prison, and the unmoving body on the bed.

~*~

Will turned to see Rose coming slowly down the stairs, her eyes swollen and red, her lower lip caught between her teeth.

Ah, no, he thought. Not so soon. He looked his question, and she nodded, and Will felt something in him burst and flood. "No," he muttered, running for his life, or rather his father's, pushing past Annie at the door, who gasped in shock; but it was too late. Bill's sightless eyes stared at the ceiling, his face gray, his chest unmoving.

In the midst of fresh grief, Will's lips tightened. Lizbet must not know, not yet. He couldn't let her go away bowed by the weight of this sorrow, yet away she had to go, for there was one grief Will would not risk.

He stood over Bill's body for a moment, then bent swiftly and kissed the still-warm forehead. "Goodbye, Father," he whispered gently. Quickly he left the room, closing the door behind him so that his curious seven-year-old wouldn't come upon her grandfather accidentally.

Downstairs Will found a weeping Rose clasped against Jack's chest. Edmund looked at him sadly. "I'm sorry," he said. "Bill was a good man." Will nodded.

Annie Palmer came to him, her hands outstretched. "My dear Mr. Turner, I'm so sorry I couldn't do more," she said. Will took her hands, only to have the woman jerk them away as though burned. "I'm sorry," she repeated with a gasp. "Sickroom hands – I should have wiped them." Her black gaze sharpened on him, and he shrugged dully and turned away, mildly uncomfortable with her increased regard.

Edmund noticed and was glaring at him angrily. Will suddenly found himself furious. Even brother as he was, the man had no right to conduct his ill-conceived affair of the heart in a house of mourning, and even less to suspect Will of doing the same with his father not even cold in the room above. "Excuse me," the blacksmith snapped, out of patience. "I must see to my daughter. Come to the wharf or not, as you wish," this was directed at Edmund, who flushed, "but please don't tell Lizbet what's happened. Time enough for her to grieve when the danger has passed."

~*~

"Give me the Hand, Blackbeard," she demanded. "Or I will take from you something I think you value rather much. And that will only be the beginning."

Edward Teach shook his head. "Ye've nothing I want, witch. An' 'tis more 'n my life is worth to give you the Hand of Power. God only knows what ye'll seek to do with it."

She laughed. "What Lucifer failed to complete, perhaps. The Hand, Teach. Is it worth more than this?" A white hand beckoned to the shadows, and Jack found himself answering her summons.

Teach cursed succinctly. "What have ye done, witch?"

"Made him mine." Her face grew cruel. "Now, Teach, the Hand. Or I shall give this boy over to whatever God he serves."

Teach looked at him, eyes narrowing. "Come 'ere, Jack." Jack fought to run to his master, but his legs wouldn't move. He looked helplessly at the tall pirate.

She flicked a hand at him. "You may answer him, Jack."

"I – " He found his mouth suddenly working. "I want to, Cap'n, but I can't!"

She smiled, triumphantly. "You see? I may do with him what I will." Without warning she grasped Jack's arm and twisted, snapping both bones in his forearm. Jack screamed.

He jerked awake with a shout this time, cradling his arm against his body.

The sway of his quarters reminded him where he was: on the Black Pearl, coming back to the Jamaican cove where she sometimes berthed on the sly. He fell back in the bunk with a sigh, throwing an arm over his eyes.

Little Lizbet had been a stitch, waving that wee hanky of hers 'til she nearly tumbled headfirst into the twilight surf. Gibbs had put on a show, lighting braziers belowdecks and floating smoke out the portholes to give the Pearl an eerie air. Jack himself had taken a page from his old mentor's book and woven hempen strands through his hair and beard and lighting them, so his head seemed to be wreathed in ectoplasmic fumes. The expression on the face of the stiff captain Edmund had appointed was worth the effort alone. And Emmeline Norrington had been trying not to laugh aloud, from what Jack could see through his spyglass.

And then he'd come down to his old cabin to try and catch up on the sleep he'd missed earlier… Jack angrily bundled the tangled bedclothes into a ball and threw them to the floor, stalking to the sideboard and pouring a tot. These clouded, half-remembered horrors – why were they haunting him now?

He drained the glass and poured another, brooding over it. If not for the muslin bag hanging round his neck he'd think they were merely that – horrors, nightmares, midnight terrors. Not real. Not true.

But true they were, though he was faulty at best on the details. Those few days at the end of his service on Blackbeard's ship were shrouded in fog, blanketed and becalmed in the sea of his own confused mind. The face of his tormentor was never clear, just a general impression of dark hair, pale skin, eyes black as sin.

He crossed to the balcony and looked up at the moon. The Hand of Power, his master had called the thing the witch was after; but what exactly it was, Jack never really knew.

Where it was… that was a different matter.

~*~

They buried old Bill the next day, not wanting to delay and possibly spread disease. Jack had mentioned his friend's earlier request, but Edmund had pointed out that there were no facilities for cremation in Port Royal. It was just as well, Jack thought. The idea clearly shocked young Will, and enough was enough, really.

The local chaplain read the obsequies, and Jack did his best by way of a eulogy. Rose was there, white-faced but stoic. Annie Palmer was at the graveside as well, though Jack wasn't fool enough to think it was out of compassion for the family of the dead, not the way she kept watching Norrington. And Will. And Jack himself. He grimaced inwardly. How did one rid oneself of a limpet?

Edmund, for his part, started to cough suddenly, and finally had to be excused when his nose began to bleed.