Norrington paused in his silent pacing of the quarterdeck and turned to look down into the waist of the ship. The men were formed up in several chains, bringing out the stinking gravel that lined the hold and tipping it over the side; replacing it with bags and sacks and hastily rigged bundles of sailcloth full of coins. Handfuls of emeralds lit tar stained hands with verdant flame. Crowns were passed from pigtailed head to head. When she returned to Port Royal from the Isla de Muerta, the victorious Dauntless would sail into harbour ballasted by gold. Every man aboard was now absurdly, stinkingly rich.
It seemed a shame then that there should be no cheering; no shanties to make the work go lighter, no slapping one another on the back and discussing the pubs and racehorses that were going to be bought, the girls who were going to be made very happy, as soon as they got home. Norrington swallowed down a feeling of shaky cold at the last thought - a wounded feeling - and concentrated on his misgivings over the crew. That taunt had been delivered in Gillette's smoothly sneering tones, but it lacked any of his usual imagination; spiritless as the men.
Gazing over the silently bent heads, Norrington watched his first lieutenant with some concern. Gillette stood as upright as ever, his hands linked behind his back, but some quality of confident buoyancy had gone out of him. The laughter had faded from his eyes.
The crew - who appreciated a truly scathing insult as they appreciated a prize fight - and who were quick to catch the colour of their officers' emotions, looked if possible even less happy now. And though Norrington knew that some of their despair was caught from him - his own joy becoming more and more transparently a lie - the First Lieutenant was in some ways more closely attuned to the heart of the ship than the distant, godlike Captain. He was the flashpoint where the Captain's authority connected to the life of the people. His distress was more visible, more influential - it should be dealt with first.
"A word with you, Mr. Gillette."
In the private sunshine of Norrington's day cabin, the strain in Gillette's face was all the more evident. The neatness of his uniform, his exactly tied stock and freshly powdered wig, took on something of the quality of armour, and though James gave him a reassuring smile as he gestured him to take a seat, Gillette did not smile in return, not even mockingly.
"You'll take coffee?"
"Ain't no coffee," the Cook - a wooden legged Goliath of a man - appeared in the doorway, cradling a red-stained box perforated by toothmarks. "Fuckin' rats've got at the beans, ate the fuckin' lot, sir, pardon my fuckin' French."
"Though it would have made you laugh to see them afterwards," George, the Captain's servant - a lank-haired boy with a face cratered by small-pox - shoved the giant aside and bore in a tray stacked high with fine porcelain, two steaming silver pots and half a fruitcake which bore similar evidence of gnawing but had clearly been found less tasty than the coffee. "Such squeaking and jumping about! We paid them back for their antics, sir - had them in our lobscouse this dinnertime."
Norrington looked up, inwardly cursing the purser. "We're barely three weeks out of Port Royal - no one should be eating rats yet."
"Oh," George arranged cups and saucers, teapot, water and milk jugs, plates, forks, spoons and sugar bowl on the writing desk. Cutting a couple of slices from the least touched side of the cake he put the plates on a folding stool, and the rest wedged into a corner of the painted canvas floor - the Great Cabin, with its more convenient long table, having been ceded to Governor Swann and his daughter for the voyage. "I don't say we had to. Lots of the middies enjoy a nice rat by preference. Us being habituated, as you might say."
"With our midshipmen it comes close to cannibalism," groused Gillette under his breath, earning himself a grin from the Cook, who limped back to the galley chuckling "rats and squeakers, nowt to choose between 'em."
"Can I offer you a dish of tea then?" said Norrington, noticing that despite the vague sally, Gillette's face was white even to the lips. "Thankyou, George. Close the door behind you."
He tipped milk into the translucent cups, gently laid a silver strainer over the first and listened to George's footsteps pause outside while the boy laid his ear to the closed door. Pouring out his own pale cupful first, he swirled the leaves in the pot and let it steep a while longer - for Gillette took his tea brick-coloured and heavily sugared, like the labouring classes.
Looking up, he expected to receive a knowing, complicit smile at the delay - George's propensity to gossip being something they had both set out to cure - but Gillette was paying no attention. His gaze was fixed on the sunset framed in the stern windows, watching the dark bulk of the Isla de Muerta as though it might rise up and swallow him. The homely sound of pouring tea took on an ironic tint against that bloody sky. Red streaked the deck once more, as though they had not washed the stains away.
George caved in at last, his sigh and light footsteps, drawing away, perfectly audible in the silence. James sipped his tea, and felt the veneer of civilization curve about him, delicate and precious as fine bone china. "Andrew," he said, "What is it?"
"Sir?"
"Don't be coy. You are not yourself, and I am concerned. What troubles you?"
Gillette took off his hat and placed it carefully by his feet, put one hand to his head, as if to smooth down his auburn curls and balked at the touch of horsehair. "It's embarrassing, sir," his face twisted into an almost comically earnest look, before falling again into blankness. "I am... frightened."
"Frightened?" If there had been one thing Norrington believed he could have felt unmixed, triumphal pride for, out of all this debacle, it was the bravery of his men. From Gillette to the lowliest marine, not one had fled nor faltered, though confronted by waking nightmare and certain death. As a result of their steadfast defiance the 'damned' crew were now locked in the Dauntless's brig, waiting to be publicly tried and hanged for their misdeeds. "What is there left to be afraid of?"
Andrew scowled at the table, opened his mouth, hesitated, and closed it again. Normally he was so clever a man with words, it was disturbing to see him at a loss, and Norrington hazarded a guess rather than sit and watch him struggle.
"Is it the court-martial? I assure you there is nothing for you to dread on that score."
"Nothing?" Startled, Gillette looked up. "The Interceptor would not have been lost but for my timidity. I deserve to be disrated at least."
Norrington had expected this conversation, for if Gillette asked for perfection from the men, he also expected it from himself, and no one was more contemptuous at the slightest flaw. Perfectionism was a good trait in an officer, and one that - at sea - saved lives, but at times, like many things, Gillette took it too far. "Can you explain why you acted as you did? You call it 'timidity' - did you fear for your life?"
"Not at all!" ebony eyes sparked like coals, insulted at the insinuation that having a pistol thrust in one's face might be a cause for concern. "But my people were portside-drunk and in no fighting condition. I didn't wish to see good men massacred for want of a little caution. And as two pirates alone could hardly have beaten the Dauntless up to windward out of the harbour, I was confident I could retake her before they'd even sheeted home the main course."
"What if they had not intended to steal but to scuttle her? You didn't consider that sinking the flagship might have been a notable coup for a pirate?"
"No sir. Turner was involved, so I conceived it to be some manner of futile and ridiculous rescue attempt." Gillette frowned, "I admit the thought of sabotage hadn't occurred to me."
Norrington sighed, took a bite of the cake - which tasted largely of sweetened wood shavings and needed a deal of chewing - and said, fondly, "Well then, I can't imagine why you're reproaching yourself. Your instincts were correct. They did not intend to harm the Dauntless, they could not have sailed her, and - as a matter of record - they did not take her. It is I who let them steal one of his Majesty's ships from beneath me, I who did not think clearly, nor act with due reason. I was angry and precipitate. It will be my career on the line, not yours. And rightly so."
"Sir!" Gillette came swiftly back to blazing, partisan life, "Captain Jennings should have been doing his job! He should have had the Interceptor's men divided between reserve crew and boarding parties before ever you had to give an order. The thought of everyone leaving!" he snorted with scorn "it doesn't bear thinking about. You couldn't have imagined such a shambles! No one could."
Norrington chuckled at such vehemence, though the memory was a searing shame. "I was in charge. It is my fault."
"But that's worse!" It seemed his attempts at comfort were no more successful than his leadership, for Gillette - who had seemed to face his own ruin with hard won calm - was now looking positively distraught. "Infinitely worse. The Navy can better afford to lose a thousand of me than one of you."
And although it was one of those statements that Gillette could only make because he was an Irishman - unhampered by English restraint - though it made James feel horribly self-conscious, it still eased the humiliation a little. Sparrow might justly ridicule him, Elizabeth might look at him with an expression more usually reserved for the executioner, but if he had managed to inspire such loyalty in his followers he must have been doing something right.
"It isn't going to come to that," he said, embarrassed but grateful. "I suspect that the capture and public hanging of the 'last real pirate threat in the Caribbean' will rub out the black mark. And their share of so much treasure - even after I've dropped that chest into the fathomless deeps - should be more than enough to sweeten the Admiralty towards me. I've no real anxiety on that score. But your comments are noted, Andrew, and appreciated."
Gillette gave a tighter, queasy version of his normal grin, and shifted in his chair to keep an eye on the slowly darkening land. "I'm reassured, sir."
There was a scuffle and clank, as light grew lazily gold behind the partition he had had erected between the Day and Great cabins. The sound of George stammering through a breathless 'good evening to you ma'am', came clearly through the canvas wall. Elizabeth's reply was too low to hear, but her tone sounded so dispirited, so unfeignedly unhappy it made James' heart twist with misery. The prospect of marriage to him seemed to weigh her down more every day. Yet she had said her decision was unforced, unconditional. She had said it, and he would not believe her a liar. Some other misfortune must be the cause of her heaviness. If only she would tell him what it was.
Elizabeth bent down to take the lantern from George's hand, and for a moment her profile was thrown in shadow onto the sailcloth - sharp and sombre, with a pigtail like a tar, her marine's uniform making her look as though she belonged on board. As she hung the lantern from the ceiling, and the shadow dissolved into smudges, he could not help closing his eyes for a second to torture himself further with the memory of her unconvincing smile.
When he opened his eyes it was to find Gillette watching him with a look of concern, and that too was not what one expected in the friend of a man newly betrothed to the love of his life. He held up a hand, forestalling any expression of sympathy; he didn't think he could bear that.
"I owe her an apology, you know," Gillette said instead, as the door was opened and George came in to take away the plates and to hang lanterns. "She warned me the Pearls couldn't die. I thought her naive to believe Sparrow's fantastical tales, and laughed. God don't I wish I could laugh now!"
Norrington winced a little, inwardly, imagining that confrontation. Andrew and Elizabeth were more alike than doubtless either of them would care to admit - eloquent, quick tempered, quick to dismiss what it did not suit them to hear. 'Pig headed', he would have said, had it been an appropriate thing to say of one's future bride. 'Arrogant' was hardly better. 'Confident' was perhaps the politest way to put it, so long as it was understood to be an understatement.
"I wouldn't have credited it either," he said. "Though I repose great faith in Miss Swann's honesty, she may be mislead. Indeed, now the experience is past, I begin to doubt it again. Did we fight cursed, undying men? Or were we overcome by some noxious exhalation from the sea bed, and only thought we did? Two days gone, I find my belief in such things smokes away in sunlight, like the damps of the night."
"You're fortunate, sir." In the lantern light, the stern windows showed black. Sightless night pressed on the panes, and Andrew watched it, flinching. "I can't make myself forget it. So quiet they were, rising up from the seabed like the dead on the Day of Judgement, and me looking in the wrong direction... I'm afraid to close my eyes in case I miss the next time. But when they're closed I'm afraid to open them again, for fear of what I might see."
"I don't understand you," Norrington was aware that George had paused and looked at Gillette with something like recognition. Was this what the men were feeling too? Did they not sing because they dared not? But why? "You and I will stand in the square in Fort Charles and watch those pirates hang. We defeated them. What need is there to still be afraid?"
"I'm not afraid of pirates - living or dead," said Andrew, his eyes shockingly dark in his white face. "It's what they represent. May I tell you a story, sir? A tale, about something that happened when I was younger, so that maybe you'll be able to grasp the horror and the helplessness of the thing." His voice slowed and deepened as he spoke, brushed with a tint of the harsh, poetic accent that rarely emerged except when he was drunk, or wounded, or very very tired.
"I'd be glad to hear it," said Norrington gently, and fixed George with a reproving stare. The boy was teetering in the doorway, not even pretending not to listen. "If you will eavesdrop, boy, have the decency to sit over there in the corner in silence. Unless you'd rather I sent him to clean the heads, Mr Gillette?"
"Let him stay, sir. I've no doubt he's heard worse. It's like this; my family has a bean-nighe. A banshee, sir."
Norrington laughed, he couldn't help it. After such a build up, he expected something more dramatic than a folk tale. And yet would he not also have laughed at the idea of cursed gold? The thought was more than uncomfortable. Coughing, he guiltily turned the smile into an attentive look.
"You have to picture it; I'm five years old and waiting by the fire for my grandfather to come home from Dundonald fair. The sleet's coming down, and the trees are tapping on the window. Sometimes the whole house will shake, and my ma will say it's the Good Neighbours, the Fair Folk - we daren't use their real name - passing by where the corner of the parlour was built accidentally out into one of their rades.
It's long past midnight when my grandfather comes in, sopping wet to the skin and with the tears pouring off his face like the rain. Such a grand old gentleman he was - fearless as a hawk, high tempered, fight you as soon as look at you, like one of the Fenians come back to life - but he's shaking and weeping and grey in the face. Stooped and wizened and every bit of a hundred years old, the fire in him dead as ashes. 'Lord,' he said, 'I seen her. I seen her bowed over the stream, and the blood washing away out of her fingers. I seen her face and... my God! It was terrible.'"
Gillette smiled a complex and rather bitter smile, "we put him to bed, and my ma told me to say goodbye to him, and she's crying while she sweeps the house to be ready for the wake, and I'm crying, and the old fellow is crying, and I think to myself 'this is stupid, he probably only saw a thornbush in the darkness.' But in the morning, sure enough, there he is dead, and the look of terror on his face stays with me still.
"When I ran away to sea," he went on with faint scorn, "I left it all behind me. I had no wish to be thought an ignorant bog-Irishman, and it suited me well to live in an enlightened, rational society where such things did not happen. I said, yes, he saw a thornbush, and the dark, the fright and the chill did the rest. But now... if cursed skeletons, neither dead nor alive, may put a hole in my hat with a pistol, then the chances are one day I shall be meeting with that old lady myself, and I don't like the thought of it."
He put his empty teacup down on its saucer with a gentle, musical click that seemed to make the silence of the world outside all the more profound. In its unfeeling embrace, Norrington was conscious of the darkness over the Isle of the Dead as a presence in itself. Who knew what it was concealing? Did he dare to scoff, while only the width of a plank separated him from lightless depths, while he floated in a ship as fragile to the capricious sea as the porcelain in his hand? Such small barriers to separate a man from the eternal wild.
"And all the people are thinking the same?" he said, understanding at last, "Not about the banshee, obviously - but discomforted by the evident truth of the supernatural world?"
"I think so sir, yes. If curses are true, then why not the Good Neighbours, or the Sea-people, the Wild Hunt, the Sidhe, the Djinns of the Barbary Coast, every last monster and spirit you ever heard of and some you didn't? Of course, the men have always believed in such things, so it's not the re-shaping of their world that it might be for the officers. But even so, there's a difference between believing and seeing."
"This troubles even the officers?"
"More or less, according to personal experience and character." Gillette smirked, "Reverend McAlister has finally been invited to ward with us permanently, which should give you an indication of our state."
It certainly did - having the ship's chaplain at table set such a restraint on the appropriate topics of after-dinner conversation that the poor man generally warded in solitude, shunned by his shipmates. It spoke of a great need for supernatural comfort that the parson should have become acceptable company overnight.
"And the young gentlemen?" Norrington raised an enquiring brow at George, who stood to attention, narrowly missing cracking his head against the lantern.
"Much the same sir. Some that are having nightmares, some that are weathering it easy. But Black Jack and Jack Nastyface are doing a roaring trade in lucky charms, and Mr. Kenyon had to stop Holdfast Tom from doing something heathen with a chicken on the orlop deck. He said it would keep us safe from voodoo spirits. I don't mean to snitch, like, I just thought you'd want to know."
This called for a second cup of tea and some serious thought. Norrington topped up the pot with hot water and listened to the waves break on the shore. Though he could pick out the tread of Groves pacing the quarterdeck, and hear a murmur of conversation from the cabins beneath his feet, there was no sound of laughter, nor any music, not even the unwelcome shrilling of Murtogg of the marines, whose determination to learn the flute was only exceeded by his lack of ability.
Norrington's childhood had been rigorously rational, and he found that his first reaction was still to say 'what superstitious tosh!' But the fact was that his belief that such things did not happen, was exactly that - a faith, now proven incorrect. It did him no good to continue to deny it, he must deal with the situation as it stood.
"Do you remember what it was like, Andrew," he said at last, letting himself smile at the thought, "when you first came to sea? Weren't there times when the vast peril of the ocean oppressed you, and you thought you would never grow to bear the life; so precariously dependant on a few shreds of timber and canvas? Didn't you ever think you'd lose your mind in the storms - clutching onto the handrails, in morbid terror of the water and the wind, while the bastard Lieutenants caned you to make you climb the shrouds in the dark and take in sail?"
Gillette laughed, with something like his usual lively chuckle, "The good old days. Aye sir. Though now I look back on it, it's the Lieutenants I pity."
"This is the same," Norrington said, with certainty. "At present if we are afraid, it is because we have not yet been trained to work this ship or navigate these strange waters. The best cure for that fear is not to repine, but to learn, as swiftly as possible. If there comes a next time - which there may not - I would rather we were no longer dependant on the advice or aid of anyone so unreliable as Captain Jack Sparrow."
"Quite!" Gillette ate his cake with the equanimity of a man for whom anything is better than salted horse. "Though black magic rituals on the orlop do not appeal either."
"Indeed no." Norrington nodded at George, "You may tell Tom from me that while I commend his loyalty, we are, after all, British. Animal sacrifice is not part of our tradition. I'll have Reverend McAlister bless the ship after muster in the morning, and he'll have to be content with that."
"Aye sir."
"I mean now, George."
"Aye aye, sir, I'm on my way."
When he had gone, James stood and turned to the window, leaning against the gently curving wood, looking out to where the Caribbean's outrageous stars blazed above land and water alike. The sea and the supernatural world might envelop them in danger, he thought, but there were things higher and more certain than both. Though a man might feel frail and alone, he was not abandoned. Never that.
"Gillette," he said, without turning his head, "while it may be true that you are just as afraid as the men, you are nevertheless an officer. They look to you for certainty, for reassurance. They need to see you blithe, bold and unconcerned, whatever your real feelings on the matter. I know that you know this, but your conduct has given me cause to remind you."
In the glass, the pale reflection of his first lieutenant straightened his shoulders, with a look both mortified and reassured. "I apologize, Commodore. It will not happen again. Sir... might I suggest we exercise the great guns tomorrow? That always puts heart into the people."
James turned, relieved that the reprimand had been so well received, and pleased to see Andrew already working on the problem of morale. "I think that will answer capitally, Mr.Gillette," he said. "Let us remind ourselves who we are. We are the British Navy, defender of the three kingdoms. We are the wooden walls which stand between our country and her enemies - and if her enemies now include worse monsters than the French, all the more reason for us to stand firm. We will learn to fight them, we will learn to beat them, and we will make them fear us, Mr. Gillette. As always."
The gun deck roiled with smoke, its sulphurous smell making Norrington's heart pound almost as much as the bone-shaking roar of the cannon. Simultaneous broadsides on both sides of the ship made even the majestic Dauntless shudder and skip on the waves. He took out his pocket watch. "Let's make this a little more interesting," he bawled - his ears muffled after the huge, triumphant noise. "Rolling fire, Larboard against Starboard, and as we're all so rich now, loser pays the winner a hundred pounds."
Gillette, who had the larboard, and Groves who had the starboard team, grinned at one another before stripping off jackets, waistcoats and wigs, rolling up their sleeves. "Ready, sir!"
"Fire!"
It rushed towards him - a wave of frantic, disciplined activity, the men sweating and hollering; stabs of blazing fire; the boom of powder like being hit in the chest, Groves and Gillette darting from gun to gun, bellowing orders, lending a spare shoulder to run the cannon in, leaping out of the way when it came hurtling back on the great recoil, chains twanging and the deck shaking.
"Put your backs into it!"
"It's not ballet, Dutchy! Push, don't pirouette!"
He felt the heat against his face as the nearest pair went off almost simultaneously. Then the furthest, having already reloaded, roared out a second time without an instant between them. The silence that followed was full of heaving breaths and eager eyes, as every man looked at Norrington for the verdict. "One minute forty," he said, feeling as wrung out and uplifted as if he had taken part himself. "Not bad at all. But a draw, gentlemen. Nothing for it but to share the money among your crews."
And there was the cheer he had been hoping for. Smiling at the good-humoured uproar that broke out in its wake he felt one worry at least ease away. His people would come through the darkness substantially unscathed.
But now... Now he must be as brave himself. His mood stuttered and dimmed, as his mind turned from one anxiety to the next. Elizabeth. When had the thought of her begun to cause him pain? When had she become a problem? He shook his head and left the gun-deck for the privacy of his own cabin. There were letters to write to grieving relatives, a report to judiciously falsify - lest the Admiralty think him insane - purser's chits and midshipman's log-books to examine, the infirmary to visit and the butcher's bill to finalize... and at some point in all that paperwork, he must face his own fear with the ruthlessness he had recommended to Gillette. He must find the courage to ask Elizabeth what it was that was making her unhappy, and he must put it right, before it was too late.
He swallowed, mouth tasting of brimstone. If only he didn't suspect that he already knew.