The Commodore's Daughter

Chapter Seventeen

"Anna? Anna, wake up! Anna, you can wake up now." The voices were the first things Anna heard when she began to push aside her dreamless sleep, and they sounded like Will and Elizabeth's voices. Blearily Anna opened her eyes and became aware of a few things at once. The first was that she was in her own room – she recognized it instantly. The second was that the pain in her right arm was only a dull throbbing ache now, and not a roaring, blazing agony. And the third thought, which struggled slowly into her mind, was that since these were familiar faces and voices and places, their mutiny must not have gone too badly.

"Oh, thank heavens, you're awake!" Elizabeth cried as Anna tried to sit up. "No, you should still lie down. You're not completely better yet." Anna made herself keep her eyes open and blinked to clear her vision. There were other people standing around her bed, she realized as her eyes flickered from face to face. Besides Will and Elizabeth, little Kate was there, dirty and looking utterly pleased at her condition. And Governor Swann was peering over his daughter's shoulder, looking a little confused. And there was her mother and sister, and Thomas, whose clothes were dark with sweat and dirt, and her father, whose face looked so stretched and tight that Anna thought it would rip if he strained it any further. She smiled bemusedly at them all, wondering who was missing. There was one face in particular that she would have thought would be here, but it wasn't...

Then it hit her who was missing. Jack's name flew to her lips, and she just barely bit her words back. It would hurt her father no end if she swam up into consciousness and Jack was the first person she called out for. So she restrained her tongue and her curiosity and looked at the commodore. "Father," she said, smiling, and reached out to hug him.

Norrington threw his arms around her and, in an unexpected display of emotions, hugged her so tightly that she thought she might break. He was careful not to jostle her arm which, Anna now noticed, was bound up in linen much cleaner than Jack's shirt had been. Careful in her turn, Anna gave him a one-armed hug. Then nothing would do but that she must hug Thomas, and then Elizabeth, and then Will, and gradually everyone standing around her bed, and it all ended in a burst of laughter at the absurd scramble for hugging rights.

When they were all at ease about Anna's healing condition, she could restrain herself no longer and asked, "What happened after the house blew up? I didn't really see anything after that."

"Oh," said Will knowingly. "Well, it was a fairly noticeable signal. We started work on the people at once. Kate went around banging on doors, and Thomas located a trumpet from God only knows where and started blaring away on it in the center of town – as if the explosion wasn't enough to wake people up! They came out of their houses, and we started telling them that Governor Swann was here."

The governor in question fidgeted embarrassedly, but Elizabeth smiled fondly at him and continued. "Father was wonderful, actually. I don't quite know what happened, but he got up onto a water trough" – Governor Swann actually blushed – "and started yelling along with all of us. He won everyone over."

"Oh, stop it, Elizabeth," muttered Governor Swann. His daughter's grin widened, but she didn't pick up the topic of his performance again.

Thomas took up the thread of conversation this time. "And no sooner did we have the crowd ready to revolt, than the second group of pirates came into the square and announced that the French headquarters in the center of town was in utter chaos! So of course we lost no time in telling them that two of the three French stations in Port Royal were gone, and that it was up to all of us to do away with the third. They clamored to do that right away, so we all headed over there – they had the third station by the harbor."

"We had to blow up a few ships in the process," Norrington added, looking regretful. "Only a few, though." It didn't sound as though his consolation did the commodore any good.

"And once the smoke cleared from that station," Thomas finished proudly, "what should we see but three ships of the British navy! You remember Gillette had sent them a message. Well, the French were arriving on the site fairly quickly, and we had a hard time holding them off, but then our ships opened fire on them and blasted living hell out of them. Most of the civilians were safe," he added quickly. "Only three died – the rest got out of the way, and there were only twenty injuries. Astonishing, actually. So Port Royal is, once again, a British town." He beamed down at Anna.

She smiled back, but then she remembered, again, that Jack was not there. Come to think of it, none of the pirates were at her bedside – not Hendrikson, not Cotton, not Gibbs, not even Annamaria. Their absence was surprising to her. "Thomas," she asked, carefully pushing herself up on her good arm, "where are the pirates? Are they in the house?"

He paused, his face stricken. And then Anna knew, with a sudden cold horror, where they were. "Anna –" Thomas tried to say, swallowing. "They're pirates – the British navy came here –"

Anna stared with large, unseeing eyes out of the window as Thomas tried in broken sentences to tell her what she already knew. They were arrested, jailed, maybe even already executed. Unbidden and unwanted, the image of Jack dangling by his neck from a gallows rose to her mind, and she gasped and covered her face with her left hand, as though she could banish the image from her mind by shutting her eyes. Her body shook with dry silent sobs.

Finally she lifted her head. Her eyes were red, but her face was dry. "Where – exactly – are they?" she asked.

"The – executions – have been postponed," Will said, as gently as possible. "Because your father's court-martial takes precedence."

Anna's eyes shot open. In her curiosity and grief, she had utterly forgotten that, with officers of the navy in Port Royal, Norrington would not have to travel to England to be court-martialed. "And when is that?" she asked urgently.

"In two hours," Will told her. "Anna, you should rest, you shouldn't be this excited, it's not good for you –"

But Anna's mind, unutterably grateful for something other than Jack's execution to contemplate, was eagerly whirling. "Thomas, I need to talk to you," she interrupted, before Will could well-meaningly convince them all that what she really needed was sleep when her father's career and Jack's life were at stake. "Please."

With a face full of misgivings, Thomas nodded. The others quietly withdrew, leaving brother and sister alone. Once the door was shut, Thomas said, "Anna, Will was right. You shouldn't be this worked up."

"Thomas, do you expect me to lie here and sleep and not do a thing to help anyone?" she demanded incredulously.

After a pause, Thomas sighed ruefully. "No, not really."

Anna breathed a sigh of her own. "Good. We'll need to formulate our defense of Father. I wonder if we could be allowed to speak in his defense?"

"I'll get the evidence," Thomas told her, standing up and making for the door. Anna forced herself, while he was gone, to think only of legal matters. Thinking of anything else would not do her any good right now.

Nearly two hours later, Rear Admiral Corry was sitting at a bench staring out at the impromptu naval court before him. As the senior officer in charge of the British fleet in Port Royal, it was he who would have to try Commodore Norrington – a task which he most assuredly relished. He could recall with perfect vividness a certain incident when Norrington, as a young lieutenant, had arrived in Port Royal as the escort to the new governor and his young daughter. He had been full of fire and ready to sail out and search the seven seas for pirates – some incident during the crossing from England had set it off in him, Corry understood. Corry himself had been newly promoted to captain, and Norrington's incensed urges that piracy needed to be fully eradicated had irked him no end. "Are you trying to do my job for me, lieutenant?" he had finally snapped, and Norrington, his ill temper worn thin, had retorted, "I think I could do it better than you could, sir!" Corry had greatly enjoyed locking him up briefly for mutiny.

And no less would he enjoy dismissing Norrington from the British Navy. Corry smiled, a smile that had nothing of warmth in it. He took his seat behind his judge's bench and pictured Norrington abjectly pleading to stay in the Navy. The thought made his harsh smile deepen.

Well, perhaps Norrington would not plead. From all that Corry had heard, Norrington had toughened up thanks to his mad pirate crusading. And Corry had seen his face during the fight for Port Royal – a face of implacable granite. No, Norrington would not plead – but he would be close to it, very close to it, by the time Corry finished with him.

The door to the room opened loudly, and Corry whirled, irritated at the loss of his fantasies. "What?" he snapped as an officer came into the room, shut the door, and snapped to attention.

Lieutenant Reed, a young man newly transferred to Corry's command, said quickly, "There are two children here to see you, sir. Thomas and Anna Norrington."

"What?" Corry said again, standing up and shoving back his chair. "Reed, this is no time to play games! Send them out!"

"Aye-aye, sir," Reed said, saluting smartly. He made a crisp turn and opened the door to leave the room.

On the other side of the door, Anna and Thomas seized the opportunity.

Reed stumbled back in surprise as Thomas brusquely shoved his way past the lieutenant and into the room, Anna following on his heels. The bewildered Reed tried to herd them back out, but Thomas was too quick, and Reed was enough of a gentleman not to shove a lady – even if she was only sixteen. Thomas walked quickly to Corry, nodded briefly, and spoke. "Admiral Corry, I have been studying my father's case for quite some time," he said calmly, his face expressionless. He and Anna had agreed that they would have a better chance if Thomas, not his sister, proposed to be Norrington's lawyer. "I have heard that he has no lawyer to argue his case as yet."

"That is correct," snapped Corry. "Boy, what are you getting at? Dispense with the formalities and come to the point."

Thomas inclined his head. "Very well, sir. I believe every man has the right to be defended at a court-martial, is that not so?"

"It is," Corry grumbled.

"Then, as I am acquainted with the case, I would like to have that position."

Anna held her breath, watching just out of Reed's reach as Corry's round face grew absolutely florid with rage. "You?" Corry finally demanded. "You, boy? You're barely out of childhood, and you presume to want to defend a naval officer?"

"I have the right," said Thomas, implacable, "and I have read the case." His face was as bland as bad pudding – his eyes, the set of his face, the stillness of his body all betrayed no emotion.

Corry sat back down with a loud thump. "Fine!" he spat, sounding for all the world like the child he'd called Thomas. "Very well."

"There is one more thing," Thomas said smoothly. "My sister is my assistant and clerk. She too must accompany me."

Anna smothered a most childish giggle at Corry's face, now positively purple, and curtseyed. "I am somewhat acquainted with the case as well, sir," she said passively.

Corry slammed his fist down on the table in front of him. "Very well!" he snarled. "Now get out of my sight! You have what you want, now go!" Thomas executed a smooth bow and left, Anna following him demurely. Lieutenant Reed took one look at his superior, seething with rage across the room, and prudently withdrew as well.

Rear Admiral Corry picked up an inkwell that lay on his table and hurled it at the wall. It smashed, and the ink ran down the wall and onto the floor, staining the wallpaper and the floorboards black. It relieved some of his fury, but not much. "Damn it," he swore, hurling himself out of his chair and pacing the room. "Damn, damn, damn it!"

Outside the room, Anna and Thomas gave in to their impulses as well – and laughed.