Norrington was in hell. He could see the blood pulse scalding through his closed eyelids, feel his skin tighten beneath the licking flames. When he breathed the air was molten lead, when he tried not to, he smothered and panic forced him to open his mouth and gasp the boiling metal once more.
He supposed indeed the punishment was just. There were men dead whom his additional diligence might have saved, lives and livelihoods lost because he had not worked hard enough, women defiled whom he had failed to protect, and foulnesses in the very fabric of government that he had not challenged. What good he had achieved was more than outweighed by the evil he had failed to prevent. He should have done more.
Hell tossed like a ship in a quartering sea, and his voice joined the groan of timber, as agony tore the outcry from him, mocking his pride, his dignity and strength.
"We're just coming about, mate. It'll be easier soon."
Oh God! He was in hell with Jack Sparrow. A torment individually and lovingly crafted by the Devil's own brand of humour. Unlike the pain, he was not altogether certain he deserved this.
The heat had become a living thing. He lay in the breath of the dragon. The blast of this creature was sweeping across the whole Caribbean; fire was descending on his house. The garden he had planted for Elizabeth - in the hope it would say for him what he could not find the words to express - was withering, petals charring to dust. Making a choked noise he struggled to get up. Pain burst beneath his ribs like the powder magazine going up. "Have to... water... the roses."
A quiet laugh in the darkness, as he fell back, defeated. "I'm impressed, Commodore. It's not every man that can rave genteel-like."
"The garden.. you don't..." You don't understand. Nobody does.
Something wet touched his lips. He licked them - water and rum, tepid and soft, the water soothing in his parched throat, the rum making him drift. A cold hand settled on his forehead. Sighing, his mind filled with Elizabeth; smiling, roses tossing about her like the breakers of the ocean. Their scent filled the evening like the gentle fall of cool rain.
o0o
When he woke again, it was to find himself cradled in a man's embrace - his head tucked beneath a bristly chin, his cheek lying against rough linen and a strong heartbeat under his ear. It was a mark of his weariness that this was not so unpleasant an experience as it should have been.
"Who...?" he said, pleased to at least be making sense.
"Gibbs," a pause, and a tensing of the muscles against him. Then, unexpectedly; "Sir." The voice seemed familiar, and the concession unlikely from a pirate. 'Gibbs'? Where had he heard the name before? He twisted, trying to sit up, bring the face into focus, and a hot slice of pain went through his lower back.
"'Old 'im still Mr.Mate. I'll have a map of Jamaica drawn ere in scars at this rate."
It didn't seem like Hell any more, except in the metaphorical sense, but it was still very difficult to conceive of an alternate explanation for why Jack Sparrow might not only have failed to kill him, but actually taken the trouble to return him to life. Fingers lit gently on his back, then the chill of a knife blade; a tug, and the brief searing sting of a cut stitch being pulled out. There was something distinctly insulting about it - that they could afford to show him mercy. But it was also disquieting to think that Sparrow at least must have wanted to. Why? What was his plan?
He cleared his throat. Two, three... how many more stitches to go? OW! And that was just the cutlass wound. God knew how he'd survived the shot. "Gibbs from the Endeavour?" He was good at remembering names, skills, circumstances. Not so good at translating that knowledge into fellow feeling. Laid off in Antigua, and refused references by Captain Mayhew for persistent drunkenness. It had been a petty and unjust decision, as he remembered; for despite being lordly sodden in his off time, Gibbs had only appeared on deck drunk once, and many a man had been merely lashed and returned to duty for worse.
Mayhew had run a nervous, unhappy ship - taut as a sail raised in too much wind. A smart ship, zealous, neat as a pin, but just a little too tightly strained. Despite his taste for liquor and superstition, Gibbs had been a loss to her - he had a skill for getting the best out of the crew, and a reassuring presence the boys had missed.
"Good man," James said, unable to fit this lengthy reflection to speech.
Again there was a pause, and a grudging, surprised "thank'ee Sir."
The Pearl was now making only the contented creaks of a ship well sailed before a good following wind. He'd been angled into a position where the sunlight from the cabin's small starboard window would fall across his back, yet it was dim in here, and warm, and but for the regular hot stabs of stitches being removed he would have found it very easy to fall back to sleep. There was a tired, intimate mood which encouraged reminiscence.
"Do you know what happened to the men who were laid off with you? Peterson...?"
"Hung himself, Sir."
"And his.. um... friend? Lambton?"
"Went a bit funny after the Pillory. Blew his brains out, poor sod."
"Damn." He shouldn't have asked. Now he felt both accused, responsible for this - for who else should shoulder the burden of the Navy's honour - and terribly regretful. He didn't even remember what Lambton looked like, but he had been a good sailor, and that was a rare blessing in a service filled with impressed men and petty criminals. "Waste..."
"Aye," said Gibbs, with a note of strange humour. "Should've come along of me. Plenty o'their kind among the Brethren."
This was not an encouraging thought. Particularly when one was half naked and weak as a kitten, alone in a cabin with two of them. He tensed, and as a result the last stitch coming out was like a mule's kick. The sting of it made his eyes water.
"Brace yourself," said Jack's voice behind him, slurred and amused, and that was all the warning he got before a cloth full of sea water was wrung out over the wound, salt making every fibre of his body scream in protest. "There, that's not so bad if I say so myself - and it'd be a worrying thing if it was me speaking but it wasn't myself, wouldn't it? So I suppose I do say so and it isn't bad. What do you think?"
Red waves of shock and pain broke over him. He gritted his teeth and rode them out grimly. "Hurts.. like.. buggery!"
"Mate," Jack's mocking drawl was no less insulting for being soft, "if that's what buggery feels like to you, you're doing it with the wrong gents. I'd be more than happy to give you a demonstration of how it should be done, if you find yourself with an interest."
And now he had some inkling of the terror Elizabeth must have felt, in her own imprisonment on this ship. Like her, he was damned if he was going to show it. "Mr Gibbs?" He laughed instead, coldly. "Please do me the favour of shooting me again. This time in the head."
o0o
"He bloody meant it!"
"I know, Jack, and it'd be a good idea. It's bad luck, having the likes of him on board - and I'm not saying nothing the rest of the crew aint thinking."
The Pearl rode at anchor off Aruba, its scrubby villages and barren fields gilt in glory by a sky on fire. The sea was dark and sleepy beneath her, almost too calm. The furled sails were silent, and the wind barely trembled in the rigging. From where he sat on the roof of the Captain's cabin, Tearlach played, the sweet notes of the pipe skirling over the water like hunting swifts, like swallow flight. At the stern, Quartetto grumbled beneath his breath at having been left behind - for the rest of the crew had taken the jolly-boat and gone ashore, to spend some of the Nimrod's unwanted silver.
Jack was not in the mood for revelry. Nor was he in the mood for peace. Truth was, he wasn't sure what he was in the mood for, though getting drunk in the process sounded good. He was like the Pearl, he thought, the wind had gone from his sails, and he was waiting, becalmed, for it to turn.
Finest ship in the world, in tribute, he took a long pull on this evening's drink - Captain Payton's pilfered brandy. "Port," he said aloud, sniggering, "should have been porter."
"Eh?"
"'Captain Payton's pilfered porter'," he grinned as Gibbs gave him one of those looks, "'S got more of a ring to it."
"Are we free men or not? The crew's got a right to know what you're thinking, Jack. We got a right to our say. He makes us nervous, and it'd be easier to be rid of him now, afore 'e starts waking up to where he is; poking about in our business. Talking."
"Seemed to me you two were getting on right matey - old brothers in arms; catching up with fallen comrades. Now you want me to slit his throat on the quiet and dump him overboard?"
Gibbs looked ill at ease, and Jack wondered how much Navy loyalty there still was, lurking unacknowledged in his piraty heart. "We could maroon him. Somewhere... nice. Lots of food, no way home."
"I'm more worried about the 'sir' thing, meself."
"That!" the first mate scratched his sideburns meditatively, gave an expression that was half smile, half grimace. "Don't mean nothing. 'E's just a 'Sir' and you're a 'Jack', Jack. You can scrub at it but it don't come off..." He turned his flask upside down and looked sadly at the single drop that quivered in a bead of amber at its lip. "Thing is, he may not be as slippery as you - God knows few men are - but he's strung up almost every other pirate that dared sail British waters. You can't keep him on board like a ship's mascot; he's not safe."
Not safe. That thought rang a waking bell in Jack's soul. Fact was, after facing the undead, gambling with eternal damnation in the moonlight, even the horizon seemed a little tame. He'd chased after the Pearl for ten years, every thought focussed on that goal, and now the dream was achieved; there was nothing left to challenge him, nothing left to overcome, but for this man.
It rankled with his pride that he had not truly escaped from Port Royal. Norrington had let him go, like a man deliberately losing at chess because he played with a child. The gesture threw him further off course the more he thought about it. It deserved a devastating response, something Norrington could carry with him for the rest of his life, knowing himself defeated. Thinks he's so above me he can afford to show me charity, does he?
"So what's your plan?"
"I do have one." Jack held up a finger to emphasize the point. "I do. But the thing is, see, it's a plan of such monstrous cleverness, of such diabolical ingenuity and ironic undertones," his hands danced in the air, tracing its subtleties, "that mere words is not sufficient - not eloquent - enough to capture its elegance."
Gibbs pulled the seal from a bottle of rum with his teeth, and spat it over the side. The sea was so smooth, Jack fancied he could feel the ripple of impact up through the Pearl's planks and through the soles of his feet.
"You don't know what to do with him either."
Jack laughed and shook his head till the beads jingled. There were times when Gibbs was too clever by half. "'Aven't got a clue, mate."