Chapter Six
Captives
"We have to go after them! WE HAVE TO!" Jack bellowed. He was shirtless, bleeding, and had turned a startling shade of white, but it was as if he had been untouched when one looked at the fire that was burning in his eyes. "All heave to and make sail!" He cried, turning too quickly and stumbling.
Will caught him and held him steady as he spoke directly to him. "Jack! The Pearl is sinking. We can't sail after them unless we want to die at the hands of the sea." Will said this with regret. Chris had played a key part in him getting Ali back, and… Ali! His expression turned to one of fear. "Ali… where's Ali?!" He released Jack and whipped his head around frantically, searching the deck for his daughter.
There was a funny little laughing sound from one of the dying men lying on the deck. He choked and grunted. "She's back with Captain Malcolm!" He coughed. "My money is that ye'll never see here again!"
Will lunged at the man and picked him up by his shirt, his fist pulled back in preparation to punch him with all his strength. The man laughed and made another choking sound before he released a long breath and was still. Will let out a tortured yell and threw the man back to the deck. Jack watched this silently. I could still make a pirate of him yet… Jack brushed the thought away. There were more important things to deal with. The first was getting the Black Pearl into sailing order. He looked up to see his crewmembers that had survived watching him. "Get the bodies off the deck!" He ordered. "Anamaria, Marty, get below and start working the pumps! Cotton, make sure we have enough hot tar to patch the ship's bottom!" He looked at the largest of the retreating ships. "We have a ship to catch."
"You're bloody mad, Jack!" Anamaria said. "Ship repair at sea with naught but pumps and hot tar to help us? Chris is a good sailor and a good pirate, and I'm sorry about Will's daughter, Jack, but the plan is daft! We don't even have enough men to go against Malcolm if he was able to gather three ships at the drop of a hat."
Jack turned to her. He looked a rather fearsome sight, ashen and streaked with blood. "That sounded suspiciously like you were questioning my orders, Anamaria!" He growled. "Remind me when we obtain our quartermaster to have her dole out your punishment." Anamaria's lips parted in disbelief. Jack looked at his crew and asked, "Am I the only one with ears on this ship?" Immediately, the sailors of the Black Pearl moved to follow his orders. He flinched as he headed for the stairwell and then his legs gave out beneath him. Gibbs and Will rushed forward to help him back to his feet.
"You need your rest, captain." Gibbs said. "No man should be walkin' around after takin' a bullet to the chest!"
"Duly noted, Mr. Gibbs, but I need to ensure my ship is in working order." Jack replied, taking a shaky step.
"Marty is the carpenter, let him deal with it, Jack!" Gibbs bade his captain.
"He's right, Jack, you need a doctor. You're bleeding." Will said, his eye upon the still bleeding bullet wound. His own side was still bleeding, but after inspecting it, he discovered it was just a superficial cut to the skin. He'd be fine.
"Chris was the closest thing we had to a doctor. Shall I call for her?" Jack snapped. "If it bothers you so much, I'll fix it." He went to the stairwell in the forecastle with determination and entered the galley, Gibbs and Will behind him. The cooking fire had continued to burn through everything that had happened, but the poker had been nudged into the coals in the haste to join the fighting. The tip of the poker glowed red hot. Without a word, Jack plucked the poker up by the handle and whipped the red hot tip to his chest. He let out a groan of pain as his flesh sizzled and the smell of burnt skin filled the air. Will and Gibbs' mouths fell open as they watched their captain remove the poker and place it in the stand next to the hearth. There was now a rectangular burn mark with rounded edges where the bullet hole had been. "Satisfied?" Jack asked the pair before brushing past them out of the galley and continuing below.
Meanwhile, Chris was clawing, scratching and biting on the deck of Malcolm's ship. Four men rushed her and managed to tie her hands behind her back. "Bloody Bastards! LET ME GO!" She cursed and with a very high and lucky kick, she hit a man in the jaw. He screamed as his jaw made a cracking noise. Malcolm stepped forward and backhanded her, again and again until there was a stream of blood from her nose and she was not acting cantankerous. She looked up, blood dribbling down nose and lips. She spat it onto the deck at Malcolm's feet.
"Take her down with the girl." Malcolm ordered, looking down his nose at her before turning on his heel and walking away. Some men pulled her to the stairwell that led below. They marched her to the very last deck of the ship where the brig lay. This brig was clean and tidy, which was saying something, especially since pirates didn't usually much care for whoever would be thrown inside. The wood was fresh there was not a whiff of a mildew smell, and the lanterns hung on the outside of the brig's bars were actually full of oil and cast good light. One of the men unlocked the brig's door and positioned her in the doorway. Once the door was opened, her bonds were cut and she was kicked inside, hard. She hit the bench that would be used as a bed and seat as the door clanged shut and the lock was turned. Curses streamed from her lips as she turned to glare at the single man left to guard her. Chris' body ached all over from the beating it had taken in the past hour or two, and with the fresh impact against the bench, it sent her breastbone stinging with pain. Her pain was soon forgotten, though, when she spotted the quivering bundle of cloth that was Ali. She seemed so small in her dress, and as she shivered, so did the cloth.
"Ali? Oh Ali..." Chris' voice became soft and gentle as scooted over to the girl and sat beside her. She placed a hand on Ali's back and rubbed it soothingly. Sure, things were looking grim, but she needed to assure Ali and try and keep things positive. "It will be all right Ali. They want me, not you." Alright, maybe that wasn't that helpful…
"Are you Chris, Daddy's friend?" Ali asked, sniffing and wiping her nose with the back of her hand. Her bruised brow looked like it had puffed up a bit from her crying, and Chris' lips twitched downward in pity. Poor thing, only four years old or so and she had received blows that she never should have had to suffer.
Chris smiled gently. "Yes, and I promise, Ali, I won't let these bad men hurt you. They're just mad at me, not you."
"But that's Uncle Edward. He doesn't like me. L-last time he visited Poppa John, Uncle Edward kicked me in the side." Ali sniffled. "I think he's going to try and hurt me."
Chris leaned down and pulled Ali up so that she was no longer lying on the floor, but leaning against Chris. "It won't happen again, Ali, I promise." She reached down and started stroking Ali's hair. She remembered that when she was little and upset, her mother would stroke her hair and tell her a story. So, with the intent to keep up morale, Chris decided to do the same. "Want to hear a story about your mummy and daddy and Captain Jack?" Chris had first heard the story of Captain Jack Sparrow, Will Turner, and Elizabeth Swann and a chest full of cursed Aztec gold shortly after signing onto the Black Pearl, and Chris was pretty certain Ali wouldn't have heard the story of her parents' grand adventure.
"Oh, please yes!" Ali said, looking up at Chris.
Chris' fingers deftly moved through Ali's hair as she began the story. "Well, it all began when Captain Jack – Let's call him Uncle Jack – sailed into Port Royale on a sinking ship…"
Meanwhile on the Black Pearl, Will was shirtless and in the hold, working the pumps alongside Anamaria. Some hasty sewing by Cotton had stitched up his cut, but some blood still seeped from it. The handle of the pumps spread across the breadth of the ship and were set up so that when one person was pushing down, the other was pulling up, preparing to press down as soon as the other let up, and in so doing the pumps could work continuously. The pump drew the water out of the hold below and pumped it up over the side of the ship. Will and Anamaria had been at it for hours while Jack and Marty were trying to patch the holes beneath the waterline below.
As Will's muscles were screaming for release, Jack and Marty climbed up the stairs. Jack had put another shirt on, one that was not destroyed and was less covered in blood than his previous garment. He crossed to the pumps while Marty continued upwards with the ship's repair supplies. "She'll hold until we can get into port to a proper shipwright as long as no one else decides to blow anymore holes in my ship." Jack sighed and rubbed his face. "But I don't think we'll be able to catch up to them until tomorrow."
"What? Tomorrow?!" Will erupted. "Ali could be dead by tomorrow!"
Jack looked at Anamaria. "Love, we won't be needing the pumps worked anymore if ye want to get some grub." Anamaria looked between Will and Jack and nodded before headed above. Jack moved to Will and leaned in so close that their noses were barely an inch apart. "Will. The sun is setting, and the ocean will soon be darker than any pit in Hell. We have nothing but the wind to aid us and the general direction of where the ship sailed. There's nothing else we can do."
"But Jack, my daughter –"
Jack raised a hand to silence Will. "Yes, your daughter is with my quartermaster and I will do my best to make sure that my ship sails as fast as she can to find the ship that took them. But do not make the mistake that I am not worried about the whether or not Chris and Ali are alive or dead. Do not." With that, Jack crossed to the stairwell, holding his chest where the bullet had hit him, and continued above.
Will stood in the hold with his chest heaving from emotion. He felt like he was going to fly apart in a dozen pieces. In the space of forty-eight hours, he had gone from having no family, to gaining some of it back, to losing it again. It was a miracle that he hadn't gone mad. Will joined the palms of his hands and rested them against his nose, breathing in deeply. Keep yourself together, Will. You need to keep yourself together long enough to get Ali back… He released a long breath and then headed above to see what he could do to help the Black Pearl get under way.
"…And that was how your mummy and daddy met Uncle Jack and fell in love." Chris finished her story some hours after she had started it. She may have embellished a little bit, and acted out some of the parts complete with different voices for each character, but it certainly took Ali's attention away from the fact that both she and the female pirate were in the brig of an unfriendly ship.
Ali looked up at Chris in the dim light, her face full of amazement. "Wow!!!" She breathed. "I never knew that."
Chris smiled. "It's all true. Jack told me the entire story and I was lost for words."
"Jack is the one with the rope-like hair, right Aunt Chris?"
Aunt Chris? She smiled at the title. "Aye, Ali, they're called dreadlocks."
"He called my dad a Eucharist or you-muck or something. What's that?" Ali asked, her brow arched in curiosity.
Chris blushed and stifled a chuckle. "Ask your daddy when we see him again." There were just some things a girl needed to hear from her father. The door to the hold opened and two men walked in. One of them was a tall, dark Spaniard and the other a young man who had white hair at his early age. They nodded to the guard and he began to unlock the door. Chris immediately plucked Ali from her lap, stood her upon the brig's bench, and placed herself between the young girl and the two men that entered.
"The captain has sent us to fetch you to dine with him." The Spaniard informed Chris.
Chris looked to Ali and turned back to the Spaniard. "I am going to have to respectfully decline. My cohort and I were planning to dine alone." Her hand moved behind her to find one of Ali's. When she did find the girl's hand, she enveloped it in her bigger one and squeezed.
"You don't have a choice." The white hair man grunted. He pulled out a sheathed dagger and crossed to Chris, pulling arm back to strike her.
"Stop! I'll go with you," The white haired man paused and looked at his Spaniard counterpart as Chris spoke. "I just need to know that she'll be fine."
The Spaniard and the white haired man looked at each other, their brows raised. "That's up to the guard."
Chris turned to the man that had stood for the past three watches outside the brig. "Do I have your word, sir, that my small friend here will not be harmed in my absence?"
The guard looked a bit taken aback. "Of course."
"Do you swear on your honor?" Chris asked.
"I will treat her as though she's me own. I have one her age back 'ome."
Chris gave Ali's hand another squeeze before releasing it. She walked forward so that she was flush with the white haired man and said, "Then I will go without a fight."
The Spaniard looked to the white haired man. "That actually wasn't the plan." The white man clobbered Chris in the back of the head and she knew nothing but darkness.
When her consciousness returned, she felt that her arms were bound to a chair and she was not wearing her trousers. Her eyes slowly opened and she saw that, in her unconsciousness, she had been stripped of her trousers and shirt and dressed in a blue dress that was too small. Her chest was practically spilling from the neckline, and she was having trouble taking in anything but a shallow breath. She saw that her chair was in what could only be the officer's mess and she sat before a table. The cabin had a carpet upon the floor, several other chairs, and the table that was loaded with food. A lantern hung from the ceiling and swayed with the rolling of the ship. The single lantern made the atmosphere in the cabin intimate and quiet, except for the fact that on the other side of the table sat Edward Malcolm, finishing a leg of meat.
"Now, that's how I like my women dressed." He said, throwing the bone onto the table and patting his lips with a napkin as he stared at her chest. "Do not worry; my men were very, very gentle changing you." He smirked and stood, pulling Chris' trousers and shirt from the chair beside him. He held them up as if inspecting them and asked, "Not really the latest fashion, is it?" Chris stared at him hard. He let her clothes drop to the floor and circled around the table. "No no, this suits you much, much more." Malcolm came up besides Chris and fingered a strand of her hair. She jerked away from his hand and he smiled. "Now… To business." He left her side and crossed back to his seat across from her. "I have graced you with my name, and I know that you know it. But I've yet to learn your name." He stared at her intently with his dark eyes.
Chris stared right back into Malcolm's face. She knew Edward Malcolm's name, but not out of pleasure or necessity. And she was certain that if she told him her name, he would know who she was. But she couldn't stay silent. "My name is Chris Thomas."
"Chris Thomas." Malcolm replied, taking a wine glass from the table. "Chris… Thomas –" His head whipped up from the glass and he looked at Chris hard. "Chris is short for Christiana?" The female pirate swallowed hard and nodded. Malcolm set the wine glass down on the table and said, "Well, doesn't fortune smile upon me! My missing bride finally arrives!"
Chris' father was a lord, and he always wanted what was best for her. So he arranged for Chris to marry a wealthy lord named Edward Malcolm who owned a sugar plantation in Jamaica. She knew that her father only wanted her to never want for anything, so she agreed and sailed for Jamaica after her fifteenth birthday. En route, pirates had attacked the ship she sailed upon, and the ship's captain offered her and the ransom she would bring in exchange for his ship. The pirate captain accepted, but also took the captain's cargo to teach the man a lesson in manners. While Chris was captive, the pirates were attacked by Spaniards and Chris saved the pirate captain's life. In exchange, he offered to put her off at any port. Instead, Chris decided to become a pirate.
Lord Malcolm couldn't help but grin. "This is cause for celebration! I go to find my father's killer and his young ward, and not only do I find both of them, but my long absent betrothed!" He took the bottle of wine and uncorked it before pouring the red spirits into the glass he had set down. "After everything your fool of a father did to try and find you –"
"You may say want you want about me, but hold your tongue in regards to my father!" Chris snapped icily.
Malcolm smiled at her and picked up the glass. "As you wish." He leaned across the table and held the glass to her lips. Chris turned her head. Malcolm withdrew the glass and drank from it instead. "Do we have to be so difficult, Christy? You don't mind if I call you that do ye, Christy?" He didn't wait for an answer. "So, as well as being my future bride, you're the one that killed my father. Actually, you did us a favor. Now I control several pirate ships and most of the trade in and out of Tortuga." He took another drink from his glass and searched the table for something to eat.
"My father said you were a lord with a sugar plantation." Chris said, her voice quiet. "Not even a lord can participate in piracy and go unnoticed."
Malcolm plucked a bunch of grapes from the table and pulled several off with his lips, chewing as he spoke. "Normally, that would be true. But it was not me, but my father operating in piracy. And if a pirate has the same last name as a man who bought his way into the peerage, so what? As long as I kept my nose clean, no one had a second thought." Malcolm swallowed and took another bite of grapes, spitting out little bits of vine. "But as to the current predicament, I am torn whether to reward you or punish you for bringing me into my inheritance. Punishment, of course, would be death, but seeing as we were supposed to be married, and given your current profession…" His eyes roamed up and down her body in such a blatant fashion that she squirmed. Malcolm smiled and his voice was husky with lust as he spoke. "You could be my pirate queen, my wife at last. We could pillage and plunder the entire Caribbean and make Spain, Britain, France, and the Dutch quail underneath our gaze." Malcolm's dark eyes flashed and he looked into her face. "But first, there's the matter of providing an heir for me…"
Chris' lips parted in a snarl. "I would rather die." The way that Malcolm's words rolled from his tongue was enough to make Chris sick to her stomach. And to think of giving herself to this man that was supposed to be her husband and had been trusted by her father only to turn out to have lied to him and abused his trust made her want to run him through.
"Christy, Christy, you don't have a choice here. Whatever I choose is final, and you don't have a say in it. Just as it should be with women." He downed the rest of his wine and sank down into his chair across from her. "But, until I decide, or you make it easier on yourself…" His tongue ran across the rim of his bottom lip as his eyes hovered on her chest, "I need to keep you alive." He took the bunch of grapes he had been eating off of and held it to her lips.
"I could feed myself if you untied my arms." She said innocently, hooding her blue eyes.
Malcolm smirked. "One arm. I am not stupid; I have seen only some of what I'm sure you're capable of." He rose and crossed to where Chris sat and loosened the rope on her left hand. He backed away slowly and watched as Chris flexed her hand to get any cramps out of it before reaching for and apple. She brought the red fruit to her lips and bit into it with a satisfying crunch.
"There we go. You need to keep up your strength, Christy." Malcolm placed his hand upon her shoulder and squeezed. Chris rolled her shoulder so that his hand fell off.
"Just because I'm eating your food doesn't give you the right to touch me." She snapped with a mouthful of apple.
"You are my captive, and in being so, I can do whatever I please with you. I think you'll stay in your bonds tonight, but spend it in my cabin." A smirk slid onto his face that made Chris want to slap it off.
She swallowed the bite of apple and decided that she was not going to settle for any of his nonsense, nor was she going to be frightened. "Don't think that you'll have me on this ship for long, Malcolm. The Black Pearl will come for the girl and me, and when she does, you'll be sorry."
Malcolm let out a derisive snort. "I don't think so. If the captain is even still alive, he's probably too drunk to repair his ship and they're probably sunk and stranded in jolly boats to be found by the Royal Navy. And, if the Royal Navy finds them, I'm sure they'll be too interested in hanging all of the pirates instead of coming to rescue you."
"If the Royal Navy does find them, the girl is the granddaughter of the governor of Jamaica and one of those pirates is his son-in-law. You won't get far before they blow you to kingdom come or, more likely, somewhere worse." Chris smiled sarcastically.
"I don't think so." Malcolm repeated. "I have power everywhere. The Royal Navy was recently able to build a new man-of-war named the Titan because of my donations. They stay away from my waters, I stay away from theirs. Any Royal Navy ship in my waters is blown to pieces."
Chris' hope faltered. If he had contacts in the Royal Navy, where else could they be? "I'm not hungry anymore." The apple fell to the floor and she stared straight ahead.