The Scroll Of Kesmehet
Chapter Six: The Lost Sacred Parabolic Fables Of Olden Lore
"What do you mean, you don't make corsets that size? Are you calling me fat? People are always calling me fat!"
Elizabeth stood embarrassingly close to the suddenly hysterical pirate, caressing the small rabbit in her arms and wondering if it would start eating the lace of her dress. Self-consciously, she pulled a particularly delicate hem of laced edge away from the rabbit's wriggling black nose, wondering if she could drop the animal and run to the patiently waiting carriage outside the tiny little corsetry. But the notion was immediately dismissed; for how could Elizabeth even step out of the door if she did not have her shoes? She was wearing very expensive lilac stockings of flowered Chinese silk: she would never risk ruining them. For if she did, her maid Estrella will certainly notice, and Estrella had always been one to gossip, and so the servants will be informed, and one of the servants was a butler, who was on close terms with her father's secretary, and then her father will approach her and frostily enquire as to why her stockings were ruined, and what the circumstances were that led to such a crime, and what could she say? She had been on thin ice ever since the events of last summer, when she'd distracted the Commodore Norrington in order to assist in Jack's escape, and now she was engaged to Will Turner, who not only was a lowly blacksmith, but also the same blacksmith that had assisted in the escape of the pirate Jack Sparrow, so she really—
"Why are you ignoring me?" The sudden whine of the corset-hunting pirate cut through Elizabeth's desperate thoughts of despair. "Lizzie Lizzie Lizzie why?" As if to accentuate the point, the strange character had taken to bouncing on the balls of her feet with every syllable, pouting childishly as she spoke. "Is it because I'm fat?"
Elizabeth's brown eyes widened as the pirate suddenly burst into tears. Did she do that a lot, or had Elizabeth unintentionally upset her?
"No no no, Flavio, you're not at all overweight…" she awkwardly comforted. "Do you want your rabbit back? Let… Baldrick here… comfort you…"
"Oh Baldrick!" Flavio cried, causing the spinster-looking corset-maker to rudely stare at the pretty, if a little over painted, pirate, and she seized the poor animal, caressing the ball of fluff to her shoulder. "You're the only one that actually understands me and loves me for who I am, not how thin my waistline is!"
…Yes, Flavio. Baldrick the bunny understands you completely, even though he only met you today…
"And you, madam!" Flavio suddenly cried, whirling around to glare at the woman whose shop the two were in and ignoring the terrified rabbit's furious attempts at escape. "How can you expect to profit from this trade of yours if you're so rude to your clientele? I shall make certain that my very good friend, the governor's daughter Eliza Swarm—"
"Actually, Mr—Miss Flavio," Elizabeth interrupted timidly, worried that her next words might set the pirate off into another onslaught of tears and vows of never eating pies again, "my name is Elizabeth Swann—"
"Yes, Elizabeth Swann herself here!" Flavio hurriedly amended, glaring at the terrified shopkeeper. "Mark my words, Madam, this insult shall ne'er be forgotten! You'll never sell a strip of whalebone again!"
"I apologise most respectfully for whatever insult I may have done you, milady!" the woman suddenly cried, wringing her hands in distress. "But I sincerely doubt we carry corsets for rabbits!"
"What do you think I am, insane!" Flavio bellowed in return. "I know you don't carry corsets for rabbits—that's why I'm here! At a corsetry! To commission a corset for my darling Baldrick here!"
If Flavio hadn't stolen Elizabeth's shoes, she would've made a run for it. As it was, the wealthy governor's daughter was currently shoeless. And seeing how she'd only been truly shoeless three times in her life—when she was born, when she'd been stranded on the island with Jack a year ago, and whenever she bathed or slept—and seeing how none of the aforementioned situations involved corsetries, or indeed, rabbits, Elizabeth felt a distinct wave of discomfort wash over her as she stood barefoot in a corsetry with only a paranoid pirate holding a rabbit for company.
"Lizzie!" Flavio suddenly shrieked, causing the fair-haired governor's daughter to jump in shock.
"I don't like it here," she explained, clutching her precious Baldrick closer to her. "They're all so very mean and insulting and cruel, and they discriminate without cause!"
Elizabeth blinked her brown eyes in confusion. "How—how so?" she asked timorously.
Flavio's response was to rub Baldrick's soft fur in a comforting manner. She looked around surreptitiously, before communicating in a whisper the Tsarina of Russia would have been able to hear with minimal difficulty, "They don't do corsets for rabbits."
Elizabeth blinked yet again. "…Oh."
"And I don't mean they don't just not stock them," Flavio continued martyr-like. "They don't design them neither." She whirled back to deal the spinster the coldest violet-eyed glare she could muster. "This, madam, is terrible customer service," she proclaimed in a most damning manner.
And with that she'd grabbed Elizabeth's wrist and attempted to drag her towards the door.
"Flavio!" Elizabeth protested fervently, attempting to wrench her arm away from the madwoman. "I've not my shoes!"
"Well that was a tad injudicious," Flavio called back cheerfully. "Should have thought of that before you let your pretty feet step out onto the garden path, now, shouldn't you?"
"No, Flavio," Elizabeth attempted to explain. "You took my shoes and—"
"What? I did not take your shoes!" Flavio protested, looking utterly scandalised. "Look look look—do you see?" And he stuck out a leg very inconveniently in the doorframe, looking expectantly at Elizabeth.
A beat.
"…Yes…?"
"I'm not wearing your shoes," Flavio explained. Looking down, Elizabeth could see that this was true; Flavio wore the knee-length black boots that gentility wore for riding. Looking at the leg, Elizabeth felt a wave of resentment cover her; Flavio wasn't particularly tall, yet his legs were rather long and shapely.
"Yes, Flavio, I see…"
A pause.
"Lizzie, why are you glaring at me like that?" Flavio blinked in confusion. "I don't have your shoes!" And she suddenly held her pet out in unquestionable sacrifice. "Glare at Baldrick!" she pleaded. "Baldrick has your shoes!"
"But you were the one that took them off!"
"I wanted to see your stockings!" Flavio defended, tears sprouting to her eyes. "They were so pretty, and you have the most beautiful legs, which really does the silk justice…"
And that was the real reason as to why Elizabeth was desperate to be away from this rather flirtatious Italian.
"It's not so much a question as to whether he's right in the mind or not," Bill was explaining rather calmly to a confused-looking Gibbs and young William over a pint of ale in what can only be assumed to be a seedy tavern, "as I think it's apparent as to what the answer to that question to be. But Mr Gibbs, you must surely be familiar with the saying: 'Judge not a man by how he treats his equals, nor his betters, nor his inferiors, but by the condition of his hat.'"
A strangely inappropriate silence fell upon the small table, in which Will and Gibbs exchange polite glances of concern. Bootstrap look from the pirate to the blacksmith and back again. "Are you not… familiar with that saying?" he asked unbelievingly. At the younger Turner's shaking of head, Bill exploded. "Christ, lad! I assume your mother raised you as a God-fearing, decently-educated, respectable, courteous, well-mannered, law-abiding citizen, did she not?"
The question was more of a plea, a desperate, anxious plea for an answer, for reassurance. Will rushed to give it. "Yes, sir!" he said shortly.
Bill's reaction was utterly unforeseeable: his brown eyes widened, then flared, then misted, then narrowed, then faded away as he presumably reminisced. Sighing, he leaned forward, and whispered across the table, so that only Will can hear: "Son, did your mother, by any chance at all, teach you the Lost Sacred Parabolic Fables of Olden Lore?"
"The what?" Gibbs echoed, but Will understood him completely.
"Of course she did, sir," he replied, shocked at the mere thought that his dearly beloved and sadly departed parent would do otherwise.
"NO!"
"No?" Gibbs enquired over his mug of ale.
"Yes!" Bill agreed.
"Is that approval, father?"
"No!"
"No?" Gibbs asked again.
"Yes," Bootstrap stressed.
"No, I mean, I wanted to know why you were saying 'no,'" Gibbs attempted to explain. "'Cause as you can clearly see, mates, I am the only one in this lil' circle o' three here not in the know of what is being said 'no' to, you know?"
Both father and son attempted to process this long and lengthy speech.
"Mr Gibbs," Bill began after a long swig from his tankard, "are you, in your own way, expressing a profound desire and curiosity to have knowledge of the tales of the Lost Sacred Parabolic Fables of Olden Lore?"
"…Yes, I think I am," Gibbs said solemnly. Clearly, the man was drunk already.
Ah well: a man had to be somewhat inebriated to willingly consider and reflect upon the Lost Sacred Parabolic Fables of Olden Lore anyway. Sighing, he began:
"The Lost Sacred Parabolic Fables of Olden Lore are the…" he glanced furtively at Will, who nodded solemnly for him to continue. "The… optional, and faintly questionable, additional…" He swallowed, certain that his next words would be a blasphemy within themselves. "Biblical tales," he finished unhappily with a swig of watered ale.
"…I don't quite follow," Gibbs cheerfully admitted. Anything for a good yarn, aye Mr Gibbs?
"Well…" he said. "Don't get me wrong; I may not be a God-fearing man, but I'm no atheist either: I am certain that the Good Book had, on some level or other, been compiled from the words of the Lord Almighty. However, there were… fables that the first editor of the Bible tactfully decided to leave out." A swig of the watery beverage to steady his nerves. "Otherwise, they'd have made us wonder if Our Lord was dropped on the head as a babe.
"Now, there is a sect within the Puritan movement that study and take into account all of these strategically-misplaced tales alongside those of the official guide to the Christian creed. His mother," and Bill indicated his son with a gesture of his head, "was one of them. Of course, when I first met her, I didn't know that. Good Lord, how I didn't know that."
Will effectively gasped in melodrama. "Father, you didn't just… take the Lord's name in vain?" he whispered, panic-stricken.
"…Maybe…" Bill admitted, carefully avoiding direct eye contact.
Will, completely unexpectedly, rather uncharacteristically, yet quite understandably, fainted. Poor blacksmith.
"Now then," Bootstrap continued, turning back to Mr Gibbs as he was completely oblivious to the fact that, as the caring father that he assumed himself to be, the civil thing to do would have been to help his son up off of the floor—he'd been sitting on a stool, poor devil—and drag him back home to where a warm, comfortable bed and nightcap presumably awaited his arrival. "Where were we? Ah yes, the Lost Sacred Parabolic Fables of Olden Lore are a large collection of multifarious, badly-written, notoriously-punctuated tales weaved from the dark, disturbed recesses of the criminally-insane mind from the ancient world's most primitive philosophers—"
"Why don't you give an example of one of these… Lost Sacred Parabolic Fables of Olden Lore?" Gibbs interjected on seeing the man work himself up into a suicidal frenzy.
"Yes, that would be a lot easier on my mental health," Bootstrap agreed, swiping at his suddenly sweating brow. He paused, staring into his watery ale. "Are you at all familiar with the angel Lucifer's fall from grace?"
"Of course!" Gibbs exclaimed, looking highly affronted. "What sort of non-practising Christian do you take me for?"
"Just making certain, Mr Gibbs. But I assume that you are familiar with the cause of said angel's fall from Heaven?"
"Jealousy, desire for the throne and crown of God, failed mutiny against Our Lord?" Gibbs summarised.
"Yes, that sounds about right," Bootstrap agreed, pausing uncomfortably and fidgeting with his neckerchief. "And you know that Lucifer led an army of angels against those of the Almighty?"
"There was a dragon in there as well, come to think of it…"
"Really?" Bill asked, blinking in surprise. "I'm not familiar with any dragon…"
"Aye, there's a dragon in there with nine crowns or nine heads or somethin', but that's not really the point—"
"But… But I thought the dragon was a part of the Lost Sacred Parabolic Fables of Olden Lore and therefore omitted from the standard Biblical text…" Bootstrap murmured to himself in confusion.
"Come now, Bill, don't be a fool!" Gibbs reprimanded with a hearty pat on the shoulder. "Of course the dragon's included in the Bible! Why, as a growing lad, that was me favourite part!"
A pause. "Yes, Mr Gibbs…" Bill worried his lower lip, uncertain how to proceed.
"Go on…" Gibbs encouraged with a failed attempt at stealing Bootstrap's beverage.
"Well… Ah…" Bootstrap looked nervously to where his son's unconscious self was currently getting trampled upon, silently contemplating upon the pain of having one's face walked over. "Did you know that the dragon was rode by…" And he murmured the last noun into his mug.
"Sorry mate, what?"
"…Rabbits," Bootstrap answered meekly.
"…I don't quite follow…" Gibbs said after envisioning nine wriggly-nosed rabbits riding on the back of a winged reptilian steed.
It was now that Bill realised that he would have to explain a large bulk of his late wife's unorthodox beliefs in order to make the parable clear. Sighing, he looked up at the confused shipmate.
"The angel Lucifer was tempted by the rabbits on God's great green earth, Mr Gibbs," he calmly explained. "Just as the serpent tempted Eve in the garden of Eden, so Lucifer was tempted by the hop-legged creations of the Lord Almighty."
"How was he tempted?" Gibbs asked, ever one for morbid details.
Bill's response was to raise an eyebrow. "You don't want to know."
"Aye, I do!"
Bootstrap adamantly shook his head, refusing to be swayed. "I'd rather not have Sparrow on me back for scarring one of his most highly-valued crewmates and confidants."
"I could go to hell for all Jack cares," Gibbs contradicted, looking pleadingly up at the taller sailor.
Bill sighed, drumming his fingers on the table whilst searching for an appropriate metaphor. "The rabbits tempted Lucifer the same way a whore entices her next client," he said rather bluntly.
Gibbs' eyes effectively popped from out of his skull.
"Now," Bill said cheerfully, "next blasphemous topic, please—"
"Wait!" Gibbs interrupted, leaning forward with a glint of madness in his eyes. Clearly, Jack's influence was beginning to get to him.
"Yes, Mr Gibbs?"
"What was their punishment?"
Bill blinked. "Beg pardon?"
"Their punishment," Gibbs repeated. "Lucifer and his minions were thrown down into the deepest fiery pits of eternal torment in Hell, the serpent was made to crawl upon his belly, Adam and Eve were granted mortality and banished from the Garden of Eden… What happened to the rabbits?"
"Oh, that," Bill comprehended. He looked the sailor straight in the eye. "Why, Mr Gibbs, I thought that would have been obvious."
"What happened to the rabbits?" Gibbs pressed eagerly.
"Bad dentistry."
Before this fact could even begin to sink into Gibbs' mind, a raving mad lunatic chose that particular moment to dive under their table.
"Lovely night for it, Jack," Bill greeted him, unfazed.
"Hide me!" came the pleading whisper. The two seated men looked across at each other in confusion.
"What's wrong with him?" Gibbs murmured uncertainly.
"What isn't? OW!" Bill yelped as someone kicked at his shin.
"Bootie!" The shrill shriek rose high above the normal chatter and clatter of the tavern. Of course, nobody actually noticed.
Bootstrap's face visibly drained of colour. "Quick, help me get 'im out!" he pleaded at Gibbs, who shook his head in reply.
"I've long since taken a vow to stay clear of Jack's women—men—Jack's people in general, really."
"But if Jack's not here, then I'll be the one that—"
Flavio appeared suddenly out of thin air, curling comfortably into Bootstrap's lap. He sighed melodramatically. "Oh Bootie, my inamorato, I've such a bad, bad day," he confessed into Bill's ear.
"What a pity," Bill agreed, attempting to shift the lighter pirate off.
"I accidentally misplaced your future daughter-in-law," Flavio whined, sniffling in despair. "And—and—and she had Baldrick with her!"
Will would have fainted again at the thought of his future bride, childhood sweetheart, and overall love of his life alone and defenceless against Baldrick the bunny, declared Hound of Satan. Unless, of course, she had a poker. It's amazing how much damage a supposedly gentle-natured noblewoman could do with those.
"On the plus side, I've got more dresses!" Flavio exclaimed, demeanour effectively brightening. "And a few corsets! They're being made as we speak. Elizabeth Swann was so good as to pay for them…"
Gibbs was tactfully stealing glances under the table as this exchange was occurring. "You alright down there, Jack?" he whispered. The captain bravely nodded.
"Does he know I'm here?" he mouthed back.
Gibbs furrowed his brow, unable to understand this simple phrase without the aid of sound.
"Have you seen Jackia?" Flavio asked timidly, looking up at Bill through long golden lashes.
"Come to think of it, I 'ave, he's right under there," Bootstrap said with a kick at Jack's shoulder.
Flavio squealed in delight before immediately diving under the table and wrapping his arms about the frozen captain. "Jackie!" she crooned, positively beside herself with ecstasy. She nestled her face into his shoulder. "Jackie, did you miss me?"
The unfortunate Jack Sparrow had to then endure a fluttering of affectionate kisses, vainly twisting his head away from the overly-friendly lunatic and consequently hitting his skull against the bottom of the tabletop seven times. Eventually, he was able to crawl from under the furniture, unintentionally bringing a clinging Flavio with him.
"Get off!"
"Aw, look, how sweet, he's playing hard to get—William?" And the Italian had released a choking Jack Sparrow to attend to the unconscious Will.
Crawling madly over to the blacksmith, she poked at William several times before sitting back on her haunches, her lips trembling. Suddenly, she burst into tears.
"What's the matter?" Jack asked fearfully, discreetly backing away from the bawling buccaneer.
"Oh, Jackie, Jackie Jackie Jackie, my darling…" And Flavio turned fearfully towards the terrified-looking captain, dabbing at his eyes with his sleeves. "I think William's dead," he whispered. "Oh Jackie, William is dead, and I… I'm crying… And—And my makeup's running!"
Poor Flavio: his makeup was no longer perfection incarnate. Tentatively, Jack edged a little closer to the sobbing pirate with running makeup, hesitant as to whether his sudden brainwave would have the effect he hoped for.
"Flavio?"
The vulnerable-looking Flavio looked curiously up at Jack, sniffling. "Hmm?"
"You know what would make you feel better about the eunuch's… unconsciousness?"
"No…"
"If you went and fixed your face—I mean your—"
"What's wrong with my face?" Flavio asked.
"Nothing's wrong with your face—"
"Ah you saying that my face is ugly?" Flavio asked dangerously.
"No—"
"Oh, so my face just isn't good enough for you then, is that it?" Flavio shrieked. "What kind of face are you after anyway?"
"Your face is fine," Jack assured, mentally kicking himself in the arse for attempting to 'comfort' the emotionally-unbalanced female impersonator.
"So why did you tell me to go fix it, then!"
"Do you have a mirror?" Jack asked suddenly.
Nodding, Flavio's narrowed eyes remained fixed on Jack's as she slowly reached into her coat pocket and held out a small, circular, chipped hand-mirror. Jack took it only to hold it up in front of the Italian pirate.
Flavio's violet eyes widened before rolling into the back of his head and he effectively swooned, lying unconscious next to William. Grinning at his achievement, Jack slipped the mirror into his own pocket, joining his silently observing crewmen at their table.
"So," he beamed, "how has your day been?"
AN: Sorry for this very late update, I'd been working on other fics and this one kinda got neglected… Thanks for reading and don't forget to review!