Chapter Three
"Finished!" Anna threw down her pen gratefully and stretched her sore fingers. For half the day now, she had been deciphering Gillette's illegible handwriting, taking copious notes from his records, and organizing them into a simple tally of what had been ordered, what had been brought on board the Mercury, what had been sold, and what had been returned home. Thomas had helped her with the mathematics, but they had both checked each other's work and come to the same conclusion - there was no possible room for anything to have been smuggled. Gillette's records, although unreadable without goodly amounts of time to decode them, were precise to the gram. There was nothing that was not given an account for.
Thomas picked up her transcribed tally sheet and went over it. "Don't you dare tell me there's a mistake on that!" Anna warned her brother. "If you tell me I have to pick up that pen again, I may have to kill you." Thomas smiled, but didn't lift his eyes from the tally sheet. When he put it down, he nodded. "It's good?" Anna asked.
"Perfect." Thomas reached out and hugged her. Anna sighed in relief and threw her arms around her brother. "Let's go tell Father," he suggested.
Anna picked up her tally sheet and was halfway to the door before a thought struck her. She froze. "Thomas, how are we going to get to London?"
He blinked. "With Father, when he goes."
"By then everything will be in place to court-martial him and throw him out of the navy!" Anna started to pace the room, her arms crossed and her fingers tapping her elbows. "We have to get the tally sheet and Gillette's records to London in time to get a lawyer to argue the case! If we get there soon enough, we might even be able to make them call off the court- martial!"
Thomas sat down on Anna's stool. "How do we get there in time?" he asked softly.
"If Gillette was making a trip, he could be there to present his records." Anna mused, thinking aloud.
"And he'd have to stay there for two months until the court-martial," Thomas pointed out. "I thought we weren't going to uproot anyone's lives."
"Well, you come up with an idea!" she cried, exasperated. "If all you're going to do is say what's wrong with mine -!"
"That's not what I was trying to do!" Thomas snapped. He bit back the end of the last word, though, and when he spoke again, his voice was calm. "Anna. Give me the tally sheet. I'll show them to Father, and you can see if a ship is leaving for England any time within the next two months." He smiled, the smile he'd learned worked wonders on his sister's volatile temper. "You know your way around the shipyard better than I do, anyway."
Anna closed her eyes and took deep breaths. Calm yourself, she thought. You do no one any good by being angry. "All right," she said, and surrendered her work to Thomas. "Good luck. Make sure Father will let us go," she called as her brother left her room.
Once she was alone, Anna gave herself a few more moments to get herself fully under control. When she was confident of her calm, she tied her sun hat onto her head, walked down the stairs, and quietly let herself out of the house.
The fresh air did her good. Anna breathed it in happily as she walked down to the shipyard, feeling herself relax with every step. I should get out of the house more often, she told herself, no matter what Mother and Elizabeth say about my complexion. She refused to let her good mood be spoiled by thoughts of what they would say when they heard of this excursion out into Port Royal without a chaperone. Instead, she played a game with herself that she had often played when she was a child. As she neared the bluff looking over the harbor, Anna tried to identify what ships were cargo ships, merchant ships, or ships built for fighting. Thankfully, she didn't see many of those. Except for the occasional French privateer, Port Royal saw little battle action. She knew it had in the days when pirates were as common as rancid butter in the Jamaican heat, but her father would rarely speak of his pirate victories.
Anna was so engrossed in her game - so far, three cargo ships and one she couldn't see clearly enough to tell - that she did not notice the well- dressed woman whose path she stepped squarely into. She collided jarringly with the woman and fell to her knees. In her haste to get back on her feet and apologize, Anna tripped on the hem of her gown and fell again.
"Be careful!" cautioned a voice that Anna knew, which bore a hint of laughter. A hand came into view, and Anna accepted the woman's help gladly. When she was upright, her face red with embarrassment - she should have been watching where she was going, not playing some childish game! - Anna opened her mouth to apologize, staring at her shoes. "It's quite all right, Anna," the woman assured her. "I'm not even very fond of this dress."
Did she know this woman? She certainly knew the voice. She just hadn't looked at the face out of humiliation. Anna looked up, and knew in an instant that an apology for absentmindedness would not be needed with Elizabeth Turner.
She made one anyway. "Elizabeth, I'm so sorry, I wasn't even watching where I was going!"
Elizabeth smiled. "You're forgiven - on condition that you tell me where you were in fact going."
Anna bit her lip. "The shipyard."
"Without a chaperone?" Elizabeth looked quickly behind Anna. "I'm surprised your mother let you out of the house without your sister."
Anna smiled faintly. "They don't know I'm not still there. I have to get passage on a ship to England."
"And why - oh. The commodore's court-martial." Elizabeth's face, which had been smiling a minute before, turned solemn. "Anna, I'm truly sorry about that."
"No, it's going to be all right if Thomas and I can get to London!" Anna said quickly. "We borrowed Gillette's records of the Mercury's voyage. If you examine them, there's no possible way for Father to have smuggled anything! We just have to show them to the admiral, and Father will be allowed back into the navy."
"And you need a ship?" Elizabeth asked. A sparkle was coming into her eyes, a sparkle whose meaning Anna knew to be that Elizabeth was getting an idea."
"Yes - one that's sailing soon."
"Perfect!" Elizabeth's face was lit up. "Anna, my father has been recalled to England. They're finally allowing him to go back home, and he wants Will and me to come with him. You and Thomas can sail with us! You know us, at least, which might be more than you could say for another ship you might find, and we're sailing in three days." She looked carefully at Anna. "Do you want to?"
"Thank you! Oh, thank you thank you thank you!" Anna cried. She threw her arms around Elizabeth impetuously and hugged her. "That's absolutely perfect! Thank you so much!"
Elizabeth fairly beamed with joy. "Wonderful. Will you need much time to talk your father around?"
"Thomas is working on him at this very moment," Anna assured her, "and he can work wonders with his words." She was grinning so hard her face hurt, but she didn't even notice it. "Elizabeth - I really can't thank you enough, especially since you and Father -"
Elizabeth smiled sadly. "The past is done. I wouldn't take back my choice, but I always thought your father was one of the finest men I knew. I'm glad to do something for him. I always wished I knew him well enough to explain. He deserved better than what I gave him."
Anna squeezed Elizabeth's hand. "I think he understands. Like you said, the past is done, and I'm sure he'll be grateful."
"All right." Elizabeth sighed and shook her head to clear it. "Can you and Thomas be at the dock at eight o'clock three days from now? I'll stop by and remind you the night before."
"Of course. We'll be there, and thank you so much!" Anna hugged Elizabeth again. "I'm so glad we're friends, even if you're older than me," she whispered.
"So am I," replied Elizabeth, a smile back on her face. "I think my life would be much the worse if I didn't know you, Anna Norrington!"
"Less madcap, at any rate!" Anna laughed. "I'll go back and tell Thomas."
***
When she arrived back at the Norrington household, she found her father and Thomas in the middle of a vociferous argument. Anna closed and locked the door quietly behind her as phrases drifted to her ears. ".don't be a fool, Thomas, you're only fourteen." ".rather be court-martialed than let us go." ".talk to me like that! I'm your father."
Anna slipped into the drawing room and injected herself carefully into the argument. "We wouldn't be going alone, if that's what you're worried about, Father."
Norrington looked at Anna, startled - he hadn't noticed she was there. "Why is that?"
Anna took a deep breath. The only thing her father hated more than pirates was subterfuge, and her trip to the shipyard definitely counted as subterfuge. And that wasn't even taking into account his feelings when he heard the names of their prospective traveling companions. "Because there's a ship sailing in three days for England, and a highly respectable family will be on board. They've even volunteered to watch out for Thomas and me."
"And who might this respectable family be?"
Anna crossed her toes and took the plunge. "Governor Swann and the Turners." She went perfectly still, bracing herself for one of Norrington's rare explosions. The few times he was angry enough to have them, they were quite formidable.
But to her utter shock, nothing came but complete stillness. Anna didn't look at her father - she was afraid to see what thoughts would be crossing his mind.
Finally he spoke. "You have made the arrangements?" he asked, his voice tightly calm.
"I have," Anna said with a good deal more spirit than she felt. "They are willing to have Thomas and me on board with them."
"Then it seems there's very little I can do," Norrington said. "I wouldn't want to inconvenience them, or slight their generosity." Every word he spoke sounded to Anna like knives he was driving into himself. She flinched with each one and silently cursed herself in graphic language for bringing this pain on her father. "It seems that you and Thomas are sailing to England."
"Thank you," Anna whispered. She caught Thomas' eye long enough to make him understand that she'd talk to him in her room, and then fled.
***
"Genius," Thomas pronounced as soon as he entered her room. "Utter genius."
"Thank you," Anna said dryly. "Myself, I feel rather like a heartless prig."
"Why, for heaven's sake?" Thomas demanded. He sat down and closed the door behind him. "You managed to find the perfect people - a family Father could never say no to. You even timed it perfectly, and you brought him around so easily!"
"And cut his heart to ribbons in the process," Anna finished. She blinked hard and turned away from her brother. "Or didn't you notice that he felt like we'd betrayed him?"
Thomas sighed heavily. "I did," he admitted. "And I didn't like it. But I thought you deserved credit for what you did. And Anna -" She turned her head around, her eyes bright with tears. "He wanted us to go. I could tell. He didn't want us to be in danger, but he wanted us to go if we could help. He's always had trouble letting himself do what he wants to do, instead of what he feels he has to do. He thought it was his duty to protect us, but he wanted us to try and help." Thomas stood up and put his hand on his sister's shoulder. He could feel it shudder beneath his hand with stifled crying. "So don't think it was entirely your fault. I love him - he's my father - but he let himself in for some of that pain. It wasn't all your doing."
Anna sniffed back her tears. "Thank you," she whispered.
***
Three days later, Anna watched from the upper deck of the cargo ship Mermaid as sailors hauled up the anchor. It had taken no time to board, and Elizabeth was making short work of getting everyone settled below the deck. Anna had stayed to help Elizabeth unpack their things, but then she had gone up to the deck, where no one would be witness to her sudden and emphatic attack of fear and sadness. I'd call it homesickness if we were far enough from Port Royal to make that sound less ludicrous, she thought.
The sail above her head unfurled even more, to catch the wind. Anna looked up at it, flapping in the breeze like a great bird's wing, and sighed despite her sadness. She had wanted since she was a child to be on board a ship, and here she finally was. That's what comes of hearing one too many navy stories starring your father, she thought, bringing a smile to her face.
The Mermaid suddenly lurched beneath her feet. Anna made a grab for the railing, and then made the terrible mistake of looking down. Forty feet below her, the dark morning sea roiled and churned as the Mermaid cut through it like a carving knife through ham. It sloshed against the ship's sides and made it roll with the waves. "Elizabeth?" Anna croaked, and was promptly and heartily sick.
Welcome to life at sea, she thought, miserably hanging over the railing and vomiting. And oh, what a joy it is.
Author's Note - All right, I know that I've gone for three chapters now with no sign of living, breathing pirates - but bear with me! They're coming with a vengeance in Chapter Four! And if they don't.well, then you can keelhaul me. I promise.
"Finished!" Anna threw down her pen gratefully and stretched her sore fingers. For half the day now, she had been deciphering Gillette's illegible handwriting, taking copious notes from his records, and organizing them into a simple tally of what had been ordered, what had been brought on board the Mercury, what had been sold, and what had been returned home. Thomas had helped her with the mathematics, but they had both checked each other's work and come to the same conclusion - there was no possible room for anything to have been smuggled. Gillette's records, although unreadable without goodly amounts of time to decode them, were precise to the gram. There was nothing that was not given an account for.
Thomas picked up her transcribed tally sheet and went over it. "Don't you dare tell me there's a mistake on that!" Anna warned her brother. "If you tell me I have to pick up that pen again, I may have to kill you." Thomas smiled, but didn't lift his eyes from the tally sheet. When he put it down, he nodded. "It's good?" Anna asked.
"Perfect." Thomas reached out and hugged her. Anna sighed in relief and threw her arms around her brother. "Let's go tell Father," he suggested.
Anna picked up her tally sheet and was halfway to the door before a thought struck her. She froze. "Thomas, how are we going to get to London?"
He blinked. "With Father, when he goes."
"By then everything will be in place to court-martial him and throw him out of the navy!" Anna started to pace the room, her arms crossed and her fingers tapping her elbows. "We have to get the tally sheet and Gillette's records to London in time to get a lawyer to argue the case! If we get there soon enough, we might even be able to make them call off the court- martial!"
Thomas sat down on Anna's stool. "How do we get there in time?" he asked softly.
"If Gillette was making a trip, he could be there to present his records." Anna mused, thinking aloud.
"And he'd have to stay there for two months until the court-martial," Thomas pointed out. "I thought we weren't going to uproot anyone's lives."
"Well, you come up with an idea!" she cried, exasperated. "If all you're going to do is say what's wrong with mine -!"
"That's not what I was trying to do!" Thomas snapped. He bit back the end of the last word, though, and when he spoke again, his voice was calm. "Anna. Give me the tally sheet. I'll show them to Father, and you can see if a ship is leaving for England any time within the next two months." He smiled, the smile he'd learned worked wonders on his sister's volatile temper. "You know your way around the shipyard better than I do, anyway."
Anna closed her eyes and took deep breaths. Calm yourself, she thought. You do no one any good by being angry. "All right," she said, and surrendered her work to Thomas. "Good luck. Make sure Father will let us go," she called as her brother left her room.
Once she was alone, Anna gave herself a few more moments to get herself fully under control. When she was confident of her calm, she tied her sun hat onto her head, walked down the stairs, and quietly let herself out of the house.
The fresh air did her good. Anna breathed it in happily as she walked down to the shipyard, feeling herself relax with every step. I should get out of the house more often, she told herself, no matter what Mother and Elizabeth say about my complexion. She refused to let her good mood be spoiled by thoughts of what they would say when they heard of this excursion out into Port Royal without a chaperone. Instead, she played a game with herself that she had often played when she was a child. As she neared the bluff looking over the harbor, Anna tried to identify what ships were cargo ships, merchant ships, or ships built for fighting. Thankfully, she didn't see many of those. Except for the occasional French privateer, Port Royal saw little battle action. She knew it had in the days when pirates were as common as rancid butter in the Jamaican heat, but her father would rarely speak of his pirate victories.
Anna was so engrossed in her game - so far, three cargo ships and one she couldn't see clearly enough to tell - that she did not notice the well- dressed woman whose path she stepped squarely into. She collided jarringly with the woman and fell to her knees. In her haste to get back on her feet and apologize, Anna tripped on the hem of her gown and fell again.
"Be careful!" cautioned a voice that Anna knew, which bore a hint of laughter. A hand came into view, and Anna accepted the woman's help gladly. When she was upright, her face red with embarrassment - she should have been watching where she was going, not playing some childish game! - Anna opened her mouth to apologize, staring at her shoes. "It's quite all right, Anna," the woman assured her. "I'm not even very fond of this dress."
Did she know this woman? She certainly knew the voice. She just hadn't looked at the face out of humiliation. Anna looked up, and knew in an instant that an apology for absentmindedness would not be needed with Elizabeth Turner.
She made one anyway. "Elizabeth, I'm so sorry, I wasn't even watching where I was going!"
Elizabeth smiled. "You're forgiven - on condition that you tell me where you were in fact going."
Anna bit her lip. "The shipyard."
"Without a chaperone?" Elizabeth looked quickly behind Anna. "I'm surprised your mother let you out of the house without your sister."
Anna smiled faintly. "They don't know I'm not still there. I have to get passage on a ship to England."
"And why - oh. The commodore's court-martial." Elizabeth's face, which had been smiling a minute before, turned solemn. "Anna, I'm truly sorry about that."
"No, it's going to be all right if Thomas and I can get to London!" Anna said quickly. "We borrowed Gillette's records of the Mercury's voyage. If you examine them, there's no possible way for Father to have smuggled anything! We just have to show them to the admiral, and Father will be allowed back into the navy."
"And you need a ship?" Elizabeth asked. A sparkle was coming into her eyes, a sparkle whose meaning Anna knew to be that Elizabeth was getting an idea."
"Yes - one that's sailing soon."
"Perfect!" Elizabeth's face was lit up. "Anna, my father has been recalled to England. They're finally allowing him to go back home, and he wants Will and me to come with him. You and Thomas can sail with us! You know us, at least, which might be more than you could say for another ship you might find, and we're sailing in three days." She looked carefully at Anna. "Do you want to?"
"Thank you! Oh, thank you thank you thank you!" Anna cried. She threw her arms around Elizabeth impetuously and hugged her. "That's absolutely perfect! Thank you so much!"
Elizabeth fairly beamed with joy. "Wonderful. Will you need much time to talk your father around?"
"Thomas is working on him at this very moment," Anna assured her, "and he can work wonders with his words." She was grinning so hard her face hurt, but she didn't even notice it. "Elizabeth - I really can't thank you enough, especially since you and Father -"
Elizabeth smiled sadly. "The past is done. I wouldn't take back my choice, but I always thought your father was one of the finest men I knew. I'm glad to do something for him. I always wished I knew him well enough to explain. He deserved better than what I gave him."
Anna squeezed Elizabeth's hand. "I think he understands. Like you said, the past is done, and I'm sure he'll be grateful."
"All right." Elizabeth sighed and shook her head to clear it. "Can you and Thomas be at the dock at eight o'clock three days from now? I'll stop by and remind you the night before."
"Of course. We'll be there, and thank you so much!" Anna hugged Elizabeth again. "I'm so glad we're friends, even if you're older than me," she whispered.
"So am I," replied Elizabeth, a smile back on her face. "I think my life would be much the worse if I didn't know you, Anna Norrington!"
"Less madcap, at any rate!" Anna laughed. "I'll go back and tell Thomas."
***
When she arrived back at the Norrington household, she found her father and Thomas in the middle of a vociferous argument. Anna closed and locked the door quietly behind her as phrases drifted to her ears. ".don't be a fool, Thomas, you're only fourteen." ".rather be court-martialed than let us go." ".talk to me like that! I'm your father."
Anna slipped into the drawing room and injected herself carefully into the argument. "We wouldn't be going alone, if that's what you're worried about, Father."
Norrington looked at Anna, startled - he hadn't noticed she was there. "Why is that?"
Anna took a deep breath. The only thing her father hated more than pirates was subterfuge, and her trip to the shipyard definitely counted as subterfuge. And that wasn't even taking into account his feelings when he heard the names of their prospective traveling companions. "Because there's a ship sailing in three days for England, and a highly respectable family will be on board. They've even volunteered to watch out for Thomas and me."
"And who might this respectable family be?"
Anna crossed her toes and took the plunge. "Governor Swann and the Turners." She went perfectly still, bracing herself for one of Norrington's rare explosions. The few times he was angry enough to have them, they were quite formidable.
But to her utter shock, nothing came but complete stillness. Anna didn't look at her father - she was afraid to see what thoughts would be crossing his mind.
Finally he spoke. "You have made the arrangements?" he asked, his voice tightly calm.
"I have," Anna said with a good deal more spirit than she felt. "They are willing to have Thomas and me on board with them."
"Then it seems there's very little I can do," Norrington said. "I wouldn't want to inconvenience them, or slight their generosity." Every word he spoke sounded to Anna like knives he was driving into himself. She flinched with each one and silently cursed herself in graphic language for bringing this pain on her father. "It seems that you and Thomas are sailing to England."
"Thank you," Anna whispered. She caught Thomas' eye long enough to make him understand that she'd talk to him in her room, and then fled.
***
"Genius," Thomas pronounced as soon as he entered her room. "Utter genius."
"Thank you," Anna said dryly. "Myself, I feel rather like a heartless prig."
"Why, for heaven's sake?" Thomas demanded. He sat down and closed the door behind him. "You managed to find the perfect people - a family Father could never say no to. You even timed it perfectly, and you brought him around so easily!"
"And cut his heart to ribbons in the process," Anna finished. She blinked hard and turned away from her brother. "Or didn't you notice that he felt like we'd betrayed him?"
Thomas sighed heavily. "I did," he admitted. "And I didn't like it. But I thought you deserved credit for what you did. And Anna -" She turned her head around, her eyes bright with tears. "He wanted us to go. I could tell. He didn't want us to be in danger, but he wanted us to go if we could help. He's always had trouble letting himself do what he wants to do, instead of what he feels he has to do. He thought it was his duty to protect us, but he wanted us to try and help." Thomas stood up and put his hand on his sister's shoulder. He could feel it shudder beneath his hand with stifled crying. "So don't think it was entirely your fault. I love him - he's my father - but he let himself in for some of that pain. It wasn't all your doing."
Anna sniffed back her tears. "Thank you," she whispered.
***
Three days later, Anna watched from the upper deck of the cargo ship Mermaid as sailors hauled up the anchor. It had taken no time to board, and Elizabeth was making short work of getting everyone settled below the deck. Anna had stayed to help Elizabeth unpack their things, but then she had gone up to the deck, where no one would be witness to her sudden and emphatic attack of fear and sadness. I'd call it homesickness if we were far enough from Port Royal to make that sound less ludicrous, she thought.
The sail above her head unfurled even more, to catch the wind. Anna looked up at it, flapping in the breeze like a great bird's wing, and sighed despite her sadness. She had wanted since she was a child to be on board a ship, and here she finally was. That's what comes of hearing one too many navy stories starring your father, she thought, bringing a smile to her face.
The Mermaid suddenly lurched beneath her feet. Anna made a grab for the railing, and then made the terrible mistake of looking down. Forty feet below her, the dark morning sea roiled and churned as the Mermaid cut through it like a carving knife through ham. It sloshed against the ship's sides and made it roll with the waves. "Elizabeth?" Anna croaked, and was promptly and heartily sick.
Welcome to life at sea, she thought, miserably hanging over the railing and vomiting. And oh, what a joy it is.
Author's Note - All right, I know that I've gone for three chapters now with no sign of living, breathing pirates - but bear with me! They're coming with a vengeance in Chapter Four! And if they don't.well, then you can keelhaul me. I promise.