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Chapter 20: Death

"'E's dead, Jack."

"Dead?" Jack echoed faintly. But his mind was already racing ahead to all of the implications of the death and all possible causes.

"I've already sent fer Jacobs, same moment I come for you," Gibbs said, lowering his voice and glancing over Jack's shoulder at Gwen, who stood agape behind him.

Jack nodded. Gibbs was a good man and a good first mate, anticipating his orders well. "Where's Tom?" he asked wearily.

Gibbs jerked his head in a vague, general direction and turned to lead his captain to the deceased crewmen. Gwen fell in behind them, but neither man acknowledged or even seemed to notice her presence.

The first mate led them below decks, taking them steadily downward to the belly of the ship, answering his captain's subdued questions in similar low tones.

"Just found?"

"Yessir."

"Dead long?"

"Serge don't know yet. He was jus' getting down as I's headin' up fer you." 'Serge' was the arbitrarily assigned nickname of a crewman legally named Christopher, who did his best to fulfill the duties of ship's surgeon.

"Was it...?"

"If it were murder, it weren't blade or shot, Cap'n," Gibbs said, his tone sepulchral. "But you saw Tom this morning, didn't ye? As alive and spirited as any man on board. Somethin's not right."

At his words, Gibbs ushered Jack and the tagalong Gwen into the main cargo hold. Four other crewmen crowded around in the open space down the middle that formed an aisle between the barrels and crates of cargo. One of the men was holding a brightly-trimmed lantern so Serge could see. Jack briefly met the eyes of each of the four men, quickly judging their mental status at the death, before letting his gaze drop briefly to the figure they huddled around.

Tom, a rather large and burly man in life, looked somehow shrunken in death. Perhaps his broad presence, when alive, had consisted largely of his swagger and deep voice. In any event, now his body, laid out carefully on the wooden boards of the ship which had been his life by men who had been his mates and fellow crew, only looked crumpled and defeated.

Jack involuntarily closed his eyes, unbidden images of all the dead he'd seen in his life springing into his mind. The innocents murdered. The warriors falling in their last battles. The criminals accepting their fatal punishments. Those whose time had simply come for them. Even those who had met their ends by Jack's own hands and commission.

He inwardly groaned as he opened his eyes again to the scene of death awaiting his attempts to breathe life and order back into it. It was his duty, as captain and leader of these men, to sort out the truth of this man's demise, bestow the final rites to the lifeless body, and see that life continued and prospered thereafter aboard the vessel.

"Who found him?" he asked quietly.

John, the youngest member of the crew, waveringly held up a hand as one of the other men gestured and said, "The lad here did."

"Cook sent me down after another water-jug for the galley. Said we'd drunk him dry during lunch and he'd forgot to bring up more." The youth paused, as though realizing he was on the verge of incoherent rambling.

"He was there," he said after collecting himself a little better, "all slumped over. He didn't answer me, and weren't breathing, so's I went for help."

Jack nodded curtly in acknowledgment of the information and peered into the shadows in the direction he had indicated. Wordlessly, he crossed to the corner, purposefully not looking down at the body as he edged past it and its attendants in the narrow passage.

He didn't really have to look to know what was there or what should be there. The corner Tom had been found in was the one where the barrels of gunpowder and other weaponry and artillery materials were stored. No matter how often his crew cleaned up, reorganized, readjusted, and again lashed down the cargo, he always knew where everything was- in the same way that he made it a point to know the personality and activities of all of his men on board.

After inspecting the area, there was nothing of note that seemed suspicious to Jack. Why, then had this apparently healthy man suddenly died?

As he returned to the huddled group, his gaze fell upon Gwen. She was standing apart from the others, Gibbs having stepped closer to the body and leaving her back near the steps. Her face was completely blank, her eyes almost glassy as she stared motionlessly down at Tom.

Jack finally let his own eyes drift downward. Tom's face was the first thing he saw, as Serge was bending down over the man's torso, checking for any injuries he might not have noticed immediately.

Tom's eyes were only half-closed, revealing grotesque slivers of the ashen-hued whites. Jack suspected they had been wide open when he died. Serge had apparently not been able to close them any further than halfway. The man's face was frozen into an indeterminable grimace of some kind, his upper lip curled back slightly, baring the pointed edges of only a few teeth.

"Let's get 'im out of here," Jack said. Though he wouldn't admit it, he was unnerved by the look. It was not the face of a man who had expected to meet Death, or who had succumbed to it willingly.

The men moved to comply, to take the deceased out of the hold to somewhere where matters could be looked into with proper space to move and light to see. But then three more men arrived down the ladder-like steps. One crewmen was escorting Jacobs, and the other man had apparently followed along out of interest or concern upon overhearing the news.

Jacobs seemed to comprehend immediately why he had been taken from his meal to be brought before this somber assembly. His eyes flicked from the captain to the dead body to the suspicious faces that turned to regard him, and he sighed softly in a resigned sort of way. There had been a sudden death on board. Seamen tended to be a relatively superstitious and apprehensive lot, some more so than others, but to all of them, the arrival of a new individual and the subsequent ill-timed death of one of their own was more than just cause for mistrust of the newcomer. Thus, he knew it made him their first target of suspicion.

"I haven't been near the man more than handful of seconds all day," he defended himself after silently bearing the dubious glares for a moment or two. "Although I believe the fellow played a hand or two immediately after lunch before going on-duty, as it were," he added, if a little shakily, after sparing a glance at Tom's gruesome countenance.

"Can ye prove yer whereabouts?" Jack eyes narrowed. The prosecutor and the accused. Both were more familiar roles to him, for his equal time spent on both sides as captain and as general criminal. This, at least, was a more comfortable role for him to play, and his demeanor visibly relaxed a bit, while his face and voice sharpened.

It was Gwen that spoke up then. "I was with him all afternoon till just a quarter-hour ago, Captain."

Jack cut his gaze across to her, giving her a scathing look. He knew her testimony was true. But in his mind at the moment, she hadn't quite escaped from his suspicion herself. Her quick defense on behalf of the old man and her use of the title "Captain" merely stoked the fires. Admittedly, it could be simply that she was impressed by the gravity of the situation and felt the need for honesty and formality. Either way, he refrained from comment.

"Where were ye before ye joined the card-table?" he asked, this time directing his question more pointedly at Jacobs alone by shooting a stalling, fierce look in Gwen's direction.

"I was in several parts of the ship during the late morning and early noon-times, before lunch," the man admitted after a brief pause. He quickly continued, "But I was never alone. All my time can be accounted for if you ask all of the crew."

"One of the crew is dead," Jack said, "and dead men tell no tales. He can't tell us whether or not you were with him when he died."

"I've got no weapons," Jacobs pointed out. "You would have known, I'm sure, Captain, if I had tried to smuggle any aboard with me. And if the gamers from this afternoon can all attest to the simultaneous presence of both myself and this man, alive, as well as accounting for the rest of my time before you found him just now, then surely it doesn't matter how I spent my time in the morning, before he expired."

"Serge?" Jack prompted, not breaking eye-contact with Jacobs.

The ship's surgeon responded dutifully with a weary voice. "I ken't tell as there be any injuries, Kept'n. It could ha' been 'is heart, but I don't quite b'lieve on it."

"Perhaps he was ill with some disease," Jacobs interjected.

Serge looked up to address the accused directly. "Look at 'is face, why don't yeh?" he said, suddenly fierce. "'E weren't ill. That's the look o' one who's attacked sudden-like and don't know 'e's dead till Death's got 'im good 'n' hard."

Jack made no attempt to call the surgeon into order.

Jacobs made no attempt to reply.

"If it were something in his insides, then," Jack said then in a low, dangerous tone, "and something sudden, was he poisoned, Serge?"

"I've 'eard of poisons what could do't to man like so. He han't been dead for long, Kept'n, but I'd wager it's been at least a few hours. Prob'ly didn't last too much past that hand of cards what Mr. Jacobs there mentioned."

Jack let Serge's words hang in the air, convicting any doubters of the very likely possibility that Tom had indeed been murdered, by means of a poison.

"Assuming I'm clever enough to have either brought it on board myself or stolen and concealed after arriving, where did I get the poison? From that island? Do you keep such things on your ship?" Jacobs asked boldly. Too boldly, Jack thought. The man was brazen, convinced either of his own innocence or of Jack's inability to discover his involvement in the death of Cannon Tom.

"That is what we will have to determine," Jack said, simultaneously giving orders, in the form of curt gestures, that the whole party move out of the cargo hold to further investigate the matter.

"Were you with Jacobs at all during the day?" Jack asked dully, already growing tired of that line of questioning, though Will was only the third man who had come forward with evidence of self-professed importance.

"No," Will answered in similar heavy tones. "But I was with Tom. We spent most of the later morning sparring in the gymnasium. Headed down not twenty minutes from when you and Gwen and Captain Jacobs returned to the Pearl. Tunnel and Matthew were there longer than we were, they can attest to when we came and when we left. Directly after, we went to the galley. Elizabeth joined us, and we all three ate together along with Ben Blades. Jacobs was at the opposite end of the galley at that point.

"All four of us played a few hands of cards with Jacobs and Gwen and some of the other usuals before the time for afternoon shift came up and Ben and Tom left. Elizabeth and I played a hand or two past that and then I took her back to our cabin to rest.

"I stayed with her for a half-hour or so. Directly after that time passed, I spoke briefly with Ben on-deck. We were talking about how little there was to be done other than watch the horizons for threats when we anchor, and away from a port at that. Ben said that Tom had realized that very thing and had gone down to inspect the cargo and make his duty-time useful.

"I didn't think any more of it till just now, when I got the word on Tom, Jack. Jacobs is not your man here. I was with Tom practically all day. Frankly, I don't see how anyone could have poisoned him or even so much as tossed a stone his way that I wouldn't have noticed."

Will ended this great monologue. His tone had increased in intensity from weary to fervent over the course of his witness, and he now stood with the same manner as though he were anticipating a judgment call on his own behalf.

Jack's frown deepened even further, drawing creases and lines into his face that were rarely seen. What more could be said or done? Ben had already given testimony to being perhaps the last man to see Tom alive. Ben's story lined up perfectly with Will's, and Jack had no reason to doubt the honesty of either these two men.

Not to mention Jacobs' own protestations as to his own severe lack of motive. What did he have to gain in killing someone he scarcely even knew when he had been dealt no offense by him? Especially considering that in the few hands of poker he'd played, Tom's only association of any sort with Jacobs, Tom had not even beaten him. Above and beyond that, Jacobs had pointed out the absurdity of murdering a member of the crew of the vessel which had essentially rescued him from an exile spanning four decades.

Jack frowned as he entered the galley, well past midnight, and discovered Jacobs sitting at a table in the corner. Either the crew had understandably forgotten to show him where to sleep, or the old man didn't feel like sleeping. Or didn't feel like associating too much with those who had only just released him from a charge of murder.

The night had been long. The captain and crew had finally, reluctantly admitted that it seemed Tom's death had been merely an astounding coincidence and furthermore had been natural. Serge had allowed the unsettled crewmen to sway his semi-professional opinion back to the possibility of heart trouble. The men seemed more comforted if they could grasp some reason why their companion- even he were among the most troublesome among their number- had suddenly died.

But Jack still couldn't get the dead man's horrific face out of his mind.

That wasn't the only face troubling him. Although at the time, it had only annoyed him, now the remembered image of Gwen staring, aghast and stricken, at the dead man, pained him. As far as he knew, she had experienced only two deaths in her life, those of her parents, on separate occasions. But even he had to admit that as many dead men as he'd seen in his own life, Tom's corpse was particularly disquieting, to say the very least.

Ah, but Gwen. In the light of everything that had been discovered, discussed, and illuminated in the past few hours, it no longer made any real sense to him that she was in league with some diabolic plot. She had probably returned, greatly shaken and perturbed, to his cabin.

When he had at last started to head back above decks to return to his cabin, he had been hoping he could find some release from the stress of the night, hoping to mindlessly rut away his anxieties and then collapse in a sweaty heap to sleep off his troubles till morning. But he had then been reminded that Gwen was perhaps already asleep, and that even if she were awake, it was probably best for him to give her at least a full day's time to heal.

Acutely aware of disappointed desires then, he had just been walking past the galley when his stomach rumbled and he realized he hadn't eaten. Thinking a late meal and several good stiff drinks would satisfy him and numb his senses just as well, he turned aside and entered the galley.

Jacobs offered a vague half-smile in greeting, but the expression only looked like a twitch at the corners of the mouth. There was no emotion in it.

Jack hesitated. Despite all the evidence, he still wasn't sure he trusted the man. At the very least, he wasn't fond of him, and the old man made him uneasy somehow.

But Jack only nodded in acknowledgment and silently crossed the wide room to the double doors of the actual cook's galley. When he emerged a few minutes later, he made his way over to Jacobs, depositing on the table a platter of rummaged foodstuff which didn't require preparation- leftover bread and fruit- and a pair of bottles.

Jacobs cheered visibly when Jack shoved one of the bottles toward him and upturned his own.

"The last drink I had was so long ago," Jacobs said fondly. He paused for a moment in rumination, then downed a tentative sample from his bottle. "Brandy," he said after a moment. "I never really did acquire a taste for rum. But it was always so hard to find good brandy around Tortuga or any of the old haunts."

So perhaps if the old man wasn't guilty, then that explained why Jack didn't like him very well. Not like rum?

By the time Jack finished off his own bottle of rum, he had already returned for a second of the brandy for Jacobs. Jack knew better than to allow himself to have more, as he would need to be awake again early in the morning and couldn't sleep all day. Jacobs, however, knew no such limitations. Nor did he have the tolerance to handle even his first bottle, which was only two-thirds full, let alone the second.

But a world devoid of sobriety is often a kinder world, Jack had noted oft before, and he found it much easier to get along with Jacobs once they both had decent amounts of liquor in them.

His original intentions had been to get Jacobs drunk enough to drag out the truth of any lies the old man might have told thus far. That objective fell by the wayside shortly after he taught Jacobs his favorite song. The old man's alcohol-saturated tongue had a tendency to change notes and even keys far more often than the song really called for, but to Jack's ears, the warbling was pleasing enough.

When it seemed that choruses of "Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me," finally became too difficult for Jacobs to manage without laughing heartily at himself and Jack alike, he reverted to telling tales, interspersing them with apparently unrelated comments, such as how lovely and beautiful it was to be on board a ship again, and what a wonderful ship she was! Mostly, he just repeated bar-legends that had been popular back in his own hey-day. The few he told of his own adventures were mostly dull and had nothing to do with the legends of the cursed treasure or with his accidental exile. To keep himself from dropping off to sleep where he sat, Jack began telling of some of his own adventures.

"So then I got this rash from a Tijuana whore," Jack was saying, grimacing appropriately but exaggeratedly at the memory. He looked lost for a moment, then resumed blithely, "Robert's your uncle, Fanny's your aunt, and then I 'found' ten gold crowns and bought meself the ugliest bastard of a boat I've ever sailed. Last boat I ever wasted money on. People selling things, they always lie. Ye commandeer 'em, ye see what ye're getting, right up. And if it does turn out bad, ye didn't lose nothing. Just go get another'n."

"Cap'n!"

"This'n, see," Jack said sagely, "this'n knows things, knows who 'er captain is, lis'n!"

"Aye," Jacobs crooned. "Lovely Pearl, lovely lady."

"Cap'n!" But this time, the Pearl's voice was closer and. more masculine, somehow, than Jack thought it should be.

"Cap'n," young John said again as he approached and stood before Jack, breathless. He had been running through the ship seeking his captain.

The urgency in the lad's voice had a somewhat sobering effect on Jack. Despite the pleasant buzz of the rum, the serious events of the evening had not strayed far from his consciousness. In limbo between the real world and the fairer world of intoxication- though still a few drinks away from being totally lost in the latter- he tried to corner his concentration-skills as he dutifully asked John what his message was.

John hesitated for a moment. "It's Gwen, Cap'n."