PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE AFRICAN STAR
By ErinRua
CHAPTER 20
"I reckon they'll keep 'er somewheres aft."
Will started and looked at the man suddenly standing beside him. Sunburned and ragged, he was not even sure he knew the pirate's name, but the fellow was staring at him with a queer sort of earnestness - and what had he just said?
"Beg pardon?"
"Where 'e keeps yer lady. I reckon it'd be aft, near 'is cabin." The man bobbed his head with an uneasy grin. "I crewed on 'er once, th' Royal Venture. Didn't 'ave th' stomach for it. Sir John's a fearsome 'ard man."
"He would keep her aft? Why do you say that?"
"Special cargo, I reckon. 'e'd want it near 'im. 'e'd not put 'er somewheres way below decks where others could muck about. So me an' th' lads, we been shootin' high or low, but not to th' stern."
Will's hand slipped and canvas clattered somewhere overhead. Steadying the helm, all he could think to say was, "Thank you."
"'s all right, cap'n. Thought ye'd want to know."
Then the man shambled away and Will looked to the horizon. There to west-southwest came the Black Pearl, striding across the wind like a thunderstorm, and as he met Anamaria's fierce gaze an answering hard grin grew on his face.
"All right, Sir John. Time to let the Pearl have you."
With that they turned the sloop away from the Royal Venture, across the wind and towards the growing tower of black sails that was Jack Sparrow coming. Beneath Will's hand the Lady Elizabeth raised her head and flew like the lady she was.
Aye, the Lady flew, like a falcon, like an arrow, like a wind running down a blue sky. But the Royal Venture took that same wind on her stern quarter and her vast sails bellied fat and full. She came though the Black Pearl drove towards them from the blaze of a sinking sun; she came though a gallant sloop strained for every knot she could command. And when the Lady was fairly run down, the big guns thundered once more. The scream of chain-shot howled across the water and wood splintered like broken bones.
As terrible sounds burst among them Will would remember having only one thought: They've killed us.
***
Jack Sparrow saw them coming. He saw the Lady Elizabeth racing for her life, soaring to meet him and the Pearl, a gallant little hunter who had given her all and flew now to her master's glove. And he saw the Royal Venture lean to the press of the wind in its sails and he raged in bitter silence. The Black Pearl lunged towards them with every sail close-hauled and for an endless, breathless space he thought it might be enough.
But then he watched as the slave ship loomed upon the Lady Elizabeth and then the Royal Venture's cannons fired. Huge smokes punched outward and the haze of it blew dreamlike across the water. For a moment it almost seemed an illusion that the Lady's mast was toppling, a trick of drifting white smoke and sunlight. However, wind wafted the fumes away and reality was the Lady's mast slowly tilting and sinking, her sails collapsing into the sea. She could only drift on the remnants of her own speed, until the big guns roared one final time.
Sparrow never spoke as the Black Pearl plunged across the waves. He never spoke as he lined her bowsprit dead on the Royal Venture, spinning the wheel to follow its turn like a stalking cat. Biltmore saw them coming, oh yes he did, but his arrogant blood-thirst mayhap had made him reckless, for the Pearl was now far too close for escape. Sparrow's hands gripped the wheel with terrible gentleness and his fingers caressed the spokes as the Black Pearl, his huntress, surged beneath his touch and he felt her eagerness shuddering in his bones.
Nor did he speak as the slave ship turned on a broad reach and spread its wings to the wind for escape northwesterly across the Windward Channel. They were abandoning the cape and hope of refuge at St. Nicholas. However, perhaps Biltmore read the Pearl's rage and knew that no harbor in the world would save him now. Gibbs shouted the crew to their stations for he needed no orders to know what his captain wanted.
Like an avenging gale the Black Pearl came, inexorably closing the distance. She flew no flag because she needed none: black sails were banner enough. At a thousand yards she turned her full broadside towards the slave ship, and savage men stared down the cannon barrels with smoking linstocks in hand.
"Fire as you bear!" was Sparrow's only command, and as the deck rose upon a long swell her guns boomed in smoking fury.
The sooty pall of her wrath obscured the damage from easy scrutiny, but the wind that drove her swept a clear sea astern. There Gibbs stared behind the Pearl, grim and sad. His ears rang and his eyes burned with smoke as he turned to the man next to him.
"Tearlach, best tell the cap'n. We got people back there who'll be swimmin' real soon."
Up on the quarterdeck there was a brief, mad moment when Tearlach was truly afraid, for that great, shave-headed hulk of a man found himself staring at another half his size, and he saw Death. Sparrow's seething black gaze was scarcely human and for an instant Tearlach was not sure the captain had understood the words he had spoken. Perhaps Jack was beyond hearing and the prize fleeing before them was more than he would give up.
But then slender, bronzed fingers flexed on the helm, the fey eyes blinked, and the two little beaded braids in Sparrow's goatee twitched.
"Very well," Captain Sparrow said.
Thus for the first time the Black Pearl let a prize go. She turned her head across the wind sullenly, raggedly while the Royal Venture fled away unhindered. The slave ship was lame now, but reaching for the horizon and mayhap Cuba beyond.
"I know where to find her," Sparrow said. Grimly the Pearl retraced her course, to pick up what shattered pieces there might be.
***
On board the Royal Venture a queer silence ruled. Somewhere far away through wood and timber a man's voice cried out, a thin keening that drew nails across Elizabeth's soul. She could feel the ship limping, things shuddering somewhere far above where sails no longer caught the wind so truly, and heard distant shouts of men cutting away sundered rigging. The repairs being made seemed to demand a great deal of noisy haste.
Her head still rang like a struck bell from the chaos of sound that had seized them. In the gloom the captives' eyes stared in fearful shock, amazed that they were yet alive and wondering if the thunder of death was about to return. Yet the ship plunged on and the queer hush remained. Distantly they heard voices of question and command. The guns remained silent.
Finally Sarah's whisper broke the quiet. "What … happened?"
"I think," said Elizabeth, "our ship escaped."
"From who?"
Who indeed? Only once had Elizabeth known such a fury of cannon fire; when Barbossa sailed the Black Pearl to destroy the HMS Interceptor and recover the last cursed Aztec medallion. This had to have been the Pearl again, this time with Jack Sparrow at the helm, in an assault so savage that Elizabeth thought it would kill them all. However, with a sinking heart she began to realize that, for some reason, Sparrow had broken off the attack.
"I'm not sure," she replied.
"You tink your friends?" Bess asked.
"Perhaps."
"Dey do all dis wit' dat little boat?"
"No … no, a bigger boat. A pirate ship." She felt them staring at her and looked up to meet the dimly-seen gleams of worried eyes. "They are … good pirates. Sometimes."
"But …" Sarah's round face registered bewilderment. "Why did this ship get away? Why are we still prisoners?"
For that, Elizabeth had no answer. She would not, could not think the worst. The Black Pearl could not be vanquished by the likes of Sir John Biltmore and his reeking, filthy slave ship. However, for reasons that frightened her to imagine, the Royal Venture had escaped, and with her went eight women who feared they would find no escape at all.
A piercing gasp escaped Elizabeth's lips as wood grated and then the door of their prison slammed open. Framed in pallid daylight their captor loomed, backed by First Mate Fry and two leering sailors, and they brought with them the sulfuric reek of gun smoke. The blank crimson façade of Biltmore's mask shaped him as some great demon of wrath and his false voice dragged through his stifled fury like a plow blade through frozen gravel.
"Know this," he growled. "Whatever hope you might have had, any of you, consider it dead. Whatever friendships you keep, they are in vain."
Defiance flared before Elizabeth thought and she spat, "Jack Sparrow will never let you get away!"
"So … it's true that Sparrow is again master of the Black Pearl." Mocking humor scraped in his voice as he stepped into their cell, but it never touched the points of ice that were his eyes. "Of course a governor's daughter would have only the cream of brigands as her ally. But my dear, he already has let me get away."
He saw the flash of uncertainty that crossed her face and chuckled without humor. "Perhaps you are not as precious to him as you thought. Tell me, Miss Swann." Biltmore raised a languid finger towards her chin and behind the mask his eyes narrowed as she flinched away. "With what did you buy this pirate's loyalty that he sells it so cheap?"
Cheap did not describe the hell of cannon fire that had rocked their ship, but her face flamed at his implications. Through clenched teeth she spat, "It's not Captain Sparrow you need worry about."
Yet Biltmore met her seething glare bleakly. "I worry about nothing, miss. Very soon we will be in Spanish waters and the worry will be all yours."
His featureless gaze swept over the bedraggled captives like a slow scrape of cold fingernails. "I will see you all … dead … ere anyone lays hands on this ship. But you, Miss Swann, will first see your little friends, here, die before your eyes. Remember that."
Biltmore turned and his henchmen retreated as he stepped out the door. His exit seemed to suck all the air from the room and the thudding door shut them into wretchedness. In the gloom Elizabeth slid slowly back to the floor.
"Oh, Will …" she breathed, and wished the desperate strength of her heart could somehow reach beyond these bleak walls, could reach across smoke and sea and the distance between them, even if only to shout, "Here I am!" Silently she shut her eyes against a burning flood of despair.
"We make our own chances, den." Bess' soft, deep voice spoke. "We wait an' watch. You see, miss. Chances sometimes come."
"Yes," Elizabeth replied, and opened her eyes once more. Will would not wish her to concede defeat, even now. "Yes. Chances sometimes come."
***
The Lady Elizabeth would fly no more. Sunlight on water blazed a fiery halo around her, and in all that bright sea she laid alone, her silhouette hushed and still and strangely flattened. Her decks were awash, tilting towards a shambles of mast and sails that trailed in the water like broken wings. As she rocked in her solitary agony, wavelets tugged at the bodies of those who would never rise again.
There was no sound but the clunk of oarlocks as two longboats from the Black Pearl drew near. Jack was first to clamber over the smashed rail, and what he found … there were no words. Chain shot and canister did terrible things, and the only voices now were those of the sea.
Will sat on the deck beside the splintered tiller, his arms draped over his knees, blank-eyed and motionless. Sparrow pretended not to see the flush of bitter tears staining the young man's face. Anamaria clambered to her feet to join them, bloodied but whole. Jack took her hand and solemnly met her eyes as he pressed a kiss to her knuckles; nor did she pull away.
They let others sort through the wreckage, though Sparrow knew already that the work would be short. Deep inside the Lady things creaked and groaned, and as a watery rumble vibrated in her timbers, the deck tilted just a little more.
"She's dying."
Jack looked down towards that soft voice. Will's gaze remained fixed on things only he could see, or perhaps he still saw what used to be; a trim, brave sloop with sails like white wings and all the sea to run on.
"Aye, son. She is."
A sighing breeze pushed at the broken vessel, but the Lady could not respond. If anyone spoke it was in whispers, for while tending the wounded none would disturb the dead. Finally Will's gaze drifted upwards to meet his, but Jack looked away. No man should stare another in the eyes and see his soul naked and hurting.
"I asked for Ogun," Will said softly. "I think that was a mistake."
Anamaria shot Jack a quick glance and shook her head. Best not to ask, not now. Beyond them, men were transferring the injured to the boats. Original John moved with ponderous care, Irish John's wiry form guiding the big man though blood streamed down his own face.
"We can't stay, mate," Jack said.
However, it was unclear if Will was hearing just yet, for the lad never moved. When he spoke again it was in that same toneless voice, his eyes fixed elsewhere.
"I should have …" Whatever the thought was, it seemed to escape him and he frowned. "What of the others?"
'The others' were those who lay motionless before them, on a deck where blood and water swirled in ghastly patterns. Two of the dead had signed on with the Pearl for the first time at New Town. One was the man who once sailed aboard the Royal Venture. The last was gangly, redheaded Matty Whitlock.
Gently Jack replied, "Let the Lady keep them."
A moment passed before Will looked up again and said, "Did you know Matty wanted to buy a fiddle?"
That of all things Jack had never imagined and he could not frame a reply. He could only look down at that handsome young face and try to swallow the god-awful hollowness in his gut. Damn luck and damn Sir John Biltmore and damn you, too, Jack Sparrow.
Aloud he simply said, "Time to go, Will."
A brief spark flickered in Will's eyes then, his seat on the deck suddenly a point of anchor. "In a moment."
From down in the Lady Elizabeth's hull more sounds of breaking gurgled forth, and then Jack realized Will's intent. When the dead were secure in the cabin below, when the wounded and Jack's crew were all in the boats, when Jack himself stepped over the rail and sat down, only then did Will move.
He stood and slowly walked the sloping deck, seeming not to notice the ruddy blush in the water swirling about his feet. Original John reached with his one good arm and steadied the young man while he stepped over the gunnel and Jack watched Will sit as if he bore some hidden wound. Which it was clear he did. As surely as if he bled, Will Turner was wounded.
Strong arms pulled the oars and drew them away across the water. From one of the longboats a voice arose in a long, clear note that trembled like a fine wind in the rigging. Like weeping it was, ere it slid away into strange and mournful words. T'was Irish John singing a caoineadh for the Pearl's dead and his lament needed no translation.
Behind them the sea gently rose and fell and rose again, until somewhere between one swell and the next, the Lady Elizabeth slipped away. Moments later, only swirling water and splintered wood marked where she went down. In the longboat Will made no sound and he did not look back.
***
TBC …
A/N: There you have it, two chapters at once, since I figured an angry mob would hang me from the yard arm if I left them with a cliff-hanger like chapter19!
These two may have been the hardest to write, yet. I hope they worked! Thank everyone for reading. :-)