Disclaimer: The Lady Swann is mine. The lady Turner is not, nor is anyone else who looks even vaguely familiar. Gabe McBride and his Scottish accent are also mine, although I'm not sure if the latter is much to be proud of. The city of Port Royal belongs to the people of Jamaica. I am not making any profit off this venture, only indulging the whim of my own fancy.
IV.
The Sailing of the Lady Swann
Now in sailor's clothing young Jane did go
dressed like a sailor from head to toe...
--"The Female Smuggler"
"'Tis time to hoist anchor, Cap'n Turner! We oughtn't delay much longer, if we be wantin' to keep th' wind's favor."
Will ignores the boatswain's warning shout; he scans the docks on either side of the Lady Swann with increasing anxiety. "I told her we'd be sailing on the early tide," he mutters.
His first mate, Gabriel McBride, places a huge, calloused hand on his shoulder. "We canna' wait longer, laddie. Yon tide be turnin'."
"She said she'd be here," he insists. "She always comes to see me off, Gabe. You know that."
"Aye, that she does, Cap'n." McBride leans over the portside rail beside Will; his canny glance at the younger man assesses the situation rightly. "Ye been havin' some troubles wi' the missus, I take it."
"We had something of a disagreement the other day," Will admits. "But I didn't think she was angry anymore. She was in very good spirits last night."
McBride chuckles, and slaps him on the back. "Good spirits, eh? Canna' be all bad then, me lad. Mrs. McBride disna' do a wife's duty when I come home tae her bed. Has naught but scolding for me these days, she does...tha's what keeps me at sea, ye know."
Will blushes. "That's not what I meant," he tries to explain, despite the memory--still fresh in his mind--of his wife slipping naked into their bed sometime after midnight. He was half-asleep, but Elizabeth was quite...insistent, loving him fiercely and thoroughly, as if determined to memorize every inch of his body with hands and mouth. He let her have her way with him; her bold inventiveness in such pursuits still manages to shock him sometimes, but he has learned that it is decidedly in his own interest not to protest her unladylike notions about bedplay.
Remembering those notions, he feels his face grow even hotter; his first mate's laughter becomes uproarious.
"Let's away, gentlemen, look lively!" Will shouts, avoiding McBride's knowing grin. "Set topsails! Come on, get moving!"
He allows himself one backward look at the docks, where a few of the crew's wives and families are gathering, handkerchiefs at the ready in the women's hands. But Elizabeth is still not there. No proud, slender figure, no auburn-lighted hair; and her eyes, always tearless but full of longing, are nowhere to be seen.
She's the only wife who never carries a handkerchief to these occasions.
Will sighs, and turns his own gaze back to the sea.
She really didn't seem angry last night, he thinks, though they did not breakfast together this morning. He had awakened briefly, sometime before dawn, when Hattie knocked urgently at the door; rolling over groggily in the dark, he mumbled a question, and Elizabeth answered from across the room: "It's all right, Will--it's just Mary's time, and I promised I'd attend at her childbed."
"Who's Mary?" he slurred.
"One of the ladies from town...Don't worry, darling, it's only women's business. Go back to sleep."
He willingly complied; he did not even hear her go out. At sunrise, he woke again to find a note folded neatly on the pillow beside him.
Forgive me, darling. I'll be there when you sail, if I can get away, it read in her graceful script. All my love. It was signed your Elizabeth. He'd smiled, and tucked it into the breast pocket of his coat.
Perhaps that's all her absence signifies: that her friend's travail is proving difficult, and she has not been able to slip away long enough to come down to the docks. Will knows little of such things as childbirth, but this sounds plausible enough to him.
McBride pounds his Captain's back again on his way down to the main deck, startling him out of his reverie.
"Dinna worry, laddie," he booms. "Ye never can tell with womenfolk. Tha's fickle as yon ocean herself, and just as moody. She'll be waitin' in a few months when she sees our sails on th' horizon, ye can be sure o' that."
Will nods, abstracted. Above him the sails unfurl, and the Lady Swann shudders as the wind fills them. In a moment of rare fancy, he imagines that she shudders with pleasure at being on her way, free again and eager to meet the waves.
He shakes his head. Ship's a thing of wood, canvas and caulk, no more. The blasted sun must be getting to him after all these years. He best be careful, or he'll soon be as daft as Jack Sparrow, the man who taught him his first lessons about sail and sea: A ship's just like a woman, lad. No two alike, an' with the right touch she'll do just about anything for you, anything you ask her to...
This makes him think of Elizabeth again, and he frowns. She will forgive him for not bringing her with him...won't she?
Her restlessness is understandable, but he can't forget that first ill-fated voyage they took together, young and foolish as any two newlyweds. When he came down to her quarters and found her writhing and muttering, senseless with fever, her too-bright eyes blank and unseeing in her delerium, he was gripped by a kind of dread such as he'd never felt before. These days, he revisits that fear whenever he considers taking her with him; even more when he considers the danger he's sailing into, the shameful deeds the Lady Swann will almost certainly witness during her time at sea.
It's bad enough that the sickness left Elizabeth barren, that she bled close to death when she miscarried four months into her first and only pregnancy, that same terrible fortnight. He'll have nothing of her left if he loses her; he leaves her behind so he can have faith that he'll see her again.
Not until two nights ago, when the distance in her voice left him cut adrift under the bougainvillea amid shifting patterns of moonlight and shadows, has it occurred to him that there might be other ways to lose her...
But he must not dwell on that now. Better to take Gabriel's advice, and give his wife's restless mood time to dissipate.
He turns his attention to the task at hand as the harbor falls back in the distance, and the Lady Swann takes to the open seas before a brisk and favorable wind.
Curled up in the back of the hold behind a collection of old crates and barrels, Elizabeth Turner feels the ship tremble, hears the anchor-chain creak upwards; her heart gives its own little lurch at the sound. Her mind is a jumble of racing thoughts and emotions: excitement, triumph, and misgiving in equal parts. She can hardly believe she's actually pulled this off.
Most of the previous day has been spent in preparation, beginning with a visit to the Governor's young clerk, Byron Wallace, who worships her from afar in much the same way that Will used to when he was only a blacksmith's apprentice. Byron proved more than happy to be entrusted with the upkeep of her house and the supervision and payment of the servants after she reassured him that no, His Grace would not object to her plans; of course he assumed that Will already knew, and she allowed him to go on thinking so.
She puzzled for some time over how to escape the house early enough without arousing Will's suspicions. It was Hattie who solved this problem for her; Elizabeth, intending to tell the servants only that she would be away for a little while, found herself pouring out the whole wild scheme to the cook while Hattie listened, chuckling and plying her mistress with lemonade and tea biscuits. "Jus' tell him you goin' to a birthin'," Hattie said, when Elizabeth mentioned her dilemma. "Ev'ryone know babies don' wait for daylight. An' he won' ask no questions 'bout dat, neither. Dem men, dey never do."
Later, Elizabeth bid her husband farewell in her own fashion; and if he noticed and thought it strange that she could not bring herself to look directly into his eyes, he gave no indication. She lay wakeful beside him, afterwards, practically vibrating with anticipation; when she finally heard the big grandfather clock chime the fourth hour in the hall downstairs, she could wait no longer, and crept out of bed to dress in the dark. Hattie's complicity made it all quite simple: the knock at the door, the whispered message. Will half-woke, making an inarticulate noise of inquiry; then, at her assurances, he quickly sunk back into the deep sleep of the blissfully ignorant.
She feels a mischievous smile tug at her lips. She hasn't done anything this exhilarating in far too long.
Or this stupid, she admonishes herself. A grown woman, running away like a child. I ought to be quite ashamed of myself.
Irredeemably unashamed, she pulls the boy's cap down further over her head and shoves a wayward curl back under the band, looking down at herself critically. She makes a rather convincing young man, she decides, with her breasts bound tight against her chest, an old, somewhat shabby pair of boots on her feet, much-mended breeches and waistcoat, and a nice layer of grime rubbed over her fair skin. She knows she never really gained back the weight she lost to that infamous and near-fatal fever, making it much easier to conceal her femininity, though it's not as if she can wander about the Lady Swann at her leisure. Regardless of how unbelievably thick in the head Will Turner might be, he can't be so oblivious that he'll fail to recognize her face, dirty or not. She'll have to be very careful to avoid him, at least for a few days, until they're far away enough from Port Royal that he won't just bring the ship about and deliver her home again.
The rest of the crew, however...
It was unexpectedly easy to sneak on board in the pre-dawn bustle of their preparations. In fact, she didn't even have to sneak; she discovered years ago that if she walked like she had every right to be somewhere, everyone assumed she was exactly where she belonged. The technique served her just as well today as it used to in her childhood, and provided exactly the same sort of illicit thrill.
It will be the journey itself that will present the greatest challenge. She has brought a rucksack full of provisions and several flasks of water, but she'll have to improvise a chamber pot, and bathing of course is out of the question.
She reminds herself that it won't be the most uncomfortable voyage nor the most distasteful accommodations she has ever endured. At least all the sailors on the decks above are alive. Flesh and blood seamen, however crude they might be, are greatly preferrable to cursed pirates, and not likely to come up with the idea of sacrificing her to heathen gods.
Still, she wishes that she could stand up there at the rail, lean over the stern and watch the lovely isle of Jamaica fade into a green haze behind them. Say a proper goodbye to blasted Port Royal and a proper hello to the blue horizon.
No matter. She's well and truly quit of her private hell now. Ostensibly, of course, her goal in this venture is to discover whatever it is that Will Turner has been hiding from her; or that is what she's been telling herself as she made her preparations. Secrets for secrets, lies for lies. But those concerns and resentments have ebbed away for now, replaced by an exultant sense of liberation. Whatever lies ahead for her may not be objectively better than the life she's left behind, but it will, at least, be something new.
She rests her head back against the hull. She's missed this, the rhythm of the waves, the steady motion of the ship around her. The sensation comforts her, as it did the first time she ever sailed, when she and her father had left behind forever the cold, filthy spring of London and the big house that had become nothing to Weatherby Swann but an incessant reminder of his beloved wife, and set out for a new home in the New World. Elizabeth had cried bitterly for her mama every night until the first night on the American Queen. But that evening at bed-time she took out the mother-of-pearl brooch that bore Cecily Swann's likeness, kissed the image gently, placed it under her pillow, and fell asleep in the arms of the ocean.
She hasn't cried much since.
She puts those memories out of her mind, along with the twinge of regret she refuses to feel and the unknown future she's sailing toward, and closes her eyes, allowing herself to be lulled to sleep by the rocking of the Lady Swann.
Her last conscious thought, as she slips into the first dreamless slumber she's enjoyed in over two years, is something like: You must be daft, Elizabeth Turner.
A voice from her past seems to answer her: Aye, daft like Jack...
And it's the happiest thought she's entertained in a long, long time.
