The Commodore's Daughter
Chapter Nineteen
"Bloody hell," Jack muttered. It had happened again. His hands were bound and he was being marched through a crowd of militant Englishmen to certain – and unpleasant – death.
His life was getting downright predictable.
Of course, an unwanted addition to the by-now familiar scenario was the presence of his crew behind him. Unwanted for two reasons – if they were with him, that meant that there would surely be no rescue, and also because he didn't want them to die. Just because he was fool enough to help people who wanted him dead was no reason to have dragged his fellow pirates to the gallows.
Jack leaned back toward Gibbs, who was being marched directly behind him. "Sorry," he said brusquely to his first mate.
Gibbs looked at Jack, his eyes widening in surprise. "Blimey, Jack," he answered, "have you ever apologized for anything before in your life?"
Jack blinked. There was a question to think about. "No," he said finally. "I don't think so."
"I'm honored, Captain," Gibbs said with an attempt at a smile.
Jack's own attempt was no less of a failure. He straightened before his "smile" got a chance to turn into despair, and he swallowed. For the first time in his life – that he could remember – Captain Jack Sparrow was nervous about dying. He couldn't recall any other time that fear had plagued him on the way to the noose, but it was definitely rearing its ugly head now. And with it came another head, one that Jack supposed must be the cause of his fear.
He could summon up the face of Anna Norrington quite easily.
I am a fool, he thought. Why in bloody blazes could I be stupid enough to let myself – well – to let myself fall in love with his daughter, of all people? My mind must be deteriorating with old age.
And even more surprising was the thought that he would be sorry never to see her again.
Luckily, someone slapped the side of his head before he could get too lost in useless musings on his stupidity. "Look lively, Sparrow!" hissed one of the guards on either side of him. "The hangman's waiting for you. Don't make him wait too long or his temper'll get stretched." Both guards guffawed at the prime bit of gallows humor. Jack surprised them by showing his teeth in a sarcastic grin and climbed the steps to the scaffold.
The hangman unceremoniously dropped the noose over Jack's head and tightened it. A man across the square unrolled his sentence and began to read it aloud. The bloody thing gets longer every time they do this, Jack thought with a surge of pride. He could almost forgive the man for, once again, leaving out "Captain" when the list of his crimes went on and on and on. Jack kept his mind firmly on what the man was saying. He refused to let himself think about...her...so that his fear wouldn't start up again. That was the last thing he needed right now.
"...And are hereby sentenced to be hung by the neck until dead!" finished the reader, rolling up Jack's sentence with intense relief that the massive job of reading Jack's crimes was done.
Here goes, Jack thought, making a last effort to squash the terror of death that flared up inside him. He kept his eyes open – to close them would be to admit to fear – and saw the hangman reach to open the trapdoor.
"Halt!" shouted a voice that Jack knew far too well. He looked up, wondering who it was that had interrupted his death, and saw a figure in naval uniform making his way through the crowd, followed by two other figures in civilian clothes. Jack blinked, and would have rubbed his eyes if his hands had been free. He wondered if he was already dead.
"Halt, I say!" shouted Commodore Norrington again. "He is not to be harmed!" He had made it through to the scaffold, and climbed quickly up to stand not too close to Jack.
"Uh – sir?" asked one of the guards. Norrington looked down in annoyance. "Are you – still in charge?" the guard asked tentatively.
"I have been found not guilty of the charges laid against me," Norrington announced in a voice that spread over the square, "and remain acting commodore in Port Royal. As such, I will not allow any of these men to be harmed." He turned to the guards and said, "Bring them here."
The guards, bewildered, herded the pirates onto the scaffold. "Now cut their hands free," Norrington ordered, and he was obeyed again. Jack slipped out of the noose and looked, not a little confused himself, at Norrington.
The commodore faced the crowd and raised his voice again. "If any of you had forgotten," he intoned, "these pirates risked their lives to help you regain this colony. It was they who blew the French powder magazine, and it was they who entered the fight at peril of life and limb. And it was they who, these services forgotten, were condemned to death by the same people they fought to liberate!"
From her place at the foot of the scaffold, Anna grinned as the force of her father's words made the citizens of Port Royal blush with shame.
"But it is those same people who will now redeem themselves," Norrington went on. "For in their name and in the name of the King, I, James Norrington, commodore of the King's navy, name Captain Jack Sparrow and his crew to be privateers sanctioned by the crown! From this hour, they are free men and law-abiding citizens of the British Empire, pardoned by the crown and free to sail the seas in service to that crown. And all of you bear witness to this action!"
Later, in the privacy of the Norrington house, the commodore explained to the pirates what had happened at the scaffold.
"A privateer," Norrington told them, "is essentially still a pirate. The difference is that privateers work with the permission of their government and are legally allowed to loot, steal, and kill, whereas pirates do the same things outside the law."
"So there's no difference really?" Jack asked.
Anna grinned and answered, "Well, you are alive, Jack – and safe as long as you don't attack any English ships. You are, after all, a law-abiding citizen of the British Empire, Captain Sparrow." Annamaria snorted irreverently, and soon the Black Pearl's crew was all laughing with her.
Anna took advantage of their distraction to tug at Jack's sleeve. "You should thank Father," she whispered. "You have no idea what he had to tell himself to be able to do this for you."
She saw comprehension dawn in Jack's eyes, and she sat back satisfied as Jack said, more seriously than she had ever heard him speak, "Thank you, commodore."
Norrington took a moment before he answered, but Anna knew he meant it when he finally said, "You're welcome."
A few evenings later, Anna came to Jack's room, her arms full of something she was sure he wasn't going to like. She managed to knock on his door, and she grinned mischievously as she saw him register what it was that she held. "Oh, no," he said flatly. "No chance, love."
"Shall I tell Elizabeth Turner that you said so?" Anna asked virtuously. "She worked so hard on these." Jack blanched, and Anna pushed past him and dumped a captain's uniform, complete with gold braid and three-cornered hat, onto his bed. "For you, Captain Sparrow. You're a sanctioned privateer now, and you should dress the part."
"What, all the time?" Jack demanded, outraged.
Anna relented. "Actually, most officers just keep their fancy uniforms hidden. They change into them when occasion demands it, but they usually wear more comfortable clothes."
Jack breathed a sigh of relief. "So I don't have to wear it?"
"Oh, yes, you do!" Anna scolded. "You have to try it on, so I can see if we need to make any alterations!"
It took her a good half hour to alternately bully and coax Jack into the uniform, but he finally emerged from behind a dressing screen in the full uniform. Anna smiled in spite of herself. "You look quite marvelous, Captain Sparrow," she teased. "Of course, I'm sure you look much better in your ragged, dirty, sea-stained, unwashed pirate's clothes – you just look nice in the uniform," she amended when she caught the look in Jack's eyes. "And I think we got the size perfect. You can take it off now."
He didn't, though. He cocked his head at an angle and looked at her quizzically, until Anna blushed and demanded, "What?"
"Do you prefer me like this, love?" he asked calmly.
Anna blushed again and looked at the floor. "I prefer you alive," she said quietly. "I don't really care if you're wearing a uniform or your old clothes." She looked up and asked, "Just where are we, Jack? Is there even a 'we'?"
"Blimey if I know," Jack said somewhat helplessly. "I mean, I'd rather not have met you at all than to never see you again, but I've no idea what it means besides that. If there is a 'we,' it's got to be one of the strangest 'we's' there ever was."
Anna sighed. "No," she said. "I don't want to know about 'we.' I want to know about you. What –" She swallowed the lump in her throat and went on, trying not to think about what she said. "What do you feel about me?"
He only looked at her, straight into her eyes without flinching away. "Bloody hell, Anna," Jack said at last, "I think I love you."
She smiled slightly. "I think that's what I'm feeling, too."
Jack took her hands and pulled her to him. Her arms went around him, and she nestled her face against his chest. "So there is a 'we'," she said, smiling where he couldn't see her face, and she felt him laugh quietly. "I suppose there is," he said wonderingly.
The harbor was busy that day, loading the last of the refitted ship Black Pearl's supplies. "Don't you dare be gone too long," Anna warned Jack. Her smile, however, belied the scolding tone she was attempting, and he hugged her and kissed her quickly. "If you are, I'll come after you, even if it is improper," she promised.
"Seasick and all?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.
Anna laughed and swatted him playfully. "Oh, fine, then, don't come back!" she teased. "I swear, Captain Sparrow, I will never make a gentleman of you. And I'm glad of it."
"Captain!" called Gibbs from the deck of the Pearl. "We're about ready to leave."
"I'm coming, lieutenant!" Jack called back to him. Then he turned to Anna. "We shouldn't be gone too long," he promised, "but while we are, you stay safe, savvy?"
She grinned and kissed his cheek. "Savvy," she answered.
Jack sighed. "I'll never get used to having a send-off."
"Or to being a law-abiding Englishman?"
"That, too," he conceded.
"Good," Anna declared. "I wouldn't have you be any other way."
They shared one final quick kiss, and Jack walked up the gangplank and boarded the Black Pearl. Anna stepped back and took her father's hand. Commodore Norrington smiled down at his daughter, and looked up at Jack, pacing around the deck of his ship and giving orders. It had been surprising how fast he had taken a liking to his former nemesis.
They hauled up the anchor, and the Black Pearl sailed out of Port Royal. Anna, standing on the dock, waved goodbye to her fiancé until his ship disappeared on the horizon.
The End.