Disclaimer: Nope, still not mine, worse luck.
Author's Note: This chapter's been a long time in the writing, but in its long gestation, several aspects of the plot and its conclusion, of which I was not previously aware, came to light. At last, I know how it all ends, and I must say that's a tremendous relief. Note to self: never try to write a long fic again without working out a complete outline first.
Historical Note:Most parts of Hispaniola, whence the fictional Navidad is located, switched back and forth between Spanish and French rule during this time period. In the world of this story, Navidad was once a French settlement, but is now under Spanish control, hence the linguistic mixture. The pertinence of this information will become clear in following chapters.
Linguistic Note: For the most part, the meanings of the words and phrases rendered in French or Spanish throughout this chapter are fairly clear in context. I've translated the more important bits below. If anyone catches errors in usage, please point them out.
Apothicaire/Boticaria "Apothecary" or "Druggist"
Quién está? "Who is it?" or "Who's there?"
Une fille rousse, peut-être? "A red-haired girl-child, perhaps?"
chère Tante "dear Aunt"
necesita ti ayuda "She needs your help"
No tenga cuidado "Don't worry"
está lastimado "he is hurt"
Chapter XXVI.
Coming Home
Full ten thousand miles behind us
and a thousand miles before,
ancient ocean waves to waft us
to the well-remembered shore.
Newborn breezes swell to send us
to our childhood welcome skies
to the glow of friendly faces
and the glance of loving eyes.
--"Rolling Home"
Nichole D'Bouvoire, who rarely hesitates, is hesitating now.
The sign above the door of the little shop still reads "Apothicaire," with a smaller sign below it, a concession to changing times and languages: "Boticaria." Nichole went round the front, first, to make sure. Though the workshop next door is dark and silent, light chinks through the small windows upstairs above the shop, and under the kitchen door.
Nevertheless, she lingers uncertainly in the shadows by the back gate, at the edge of Navidad village. Behind her, the jungle stirs, but the whispers of the palms and mangroves make her less nervous than what lies before her. The jungle is the same as it always has been, just as it was long ago, when it saved a young girl running for her life. But are other things the same...?
It's been too long, she thinks, almost panicky. Too many years since I last walked through this gate. And they were not young when I knew them...
She controls a start when something butts up against her calf, and glances down. Two glowing green eyes stare up at her from a small, furry gray face.
"Mrow," commands her attacker, and threads its way around her muddy legs.
"Shh," she chides, crouching. "Hello there, puss..."
"Mrow."
She scratches the grey tabby's ears, to much appreciative purring, and considers the creature thoughtfully. "Well, it appears someone still feeds you lot..." Standing again, her resolve strengthened, she gives the kitchen door a speculative look.
It cracks open, spilling golden lamplight into the yard. Nichole moves backwards instinctively, taking cover under the branches of the sprawling magnolia bush that guards the gate.
Then she hears the peculiar sing-song whistle from the figure in the doorway, and her heart swells at the familiar sound. Her new friend is just as pleased; the cat leaps over the gate and trots toward the house. Nichole straightens slowly, hanging back in the shadows. The figure bends down to greet the dozen or so felines who have swarmed up the steps from various places in the yard, answering the whistled summons with loud meowing.
Some things don't change so much, after all.
She must not be as stealthy as she means to be, however, for the old woman at the door suddenly raises her head, calling out sharply, "¿Quién está?"
"Just one more stray, Auntie," says Nichole, in French, and steps toward the gate.
There is a long pause. "Come here, child," the old lady says, in a queer voice. "Into the light, where I can see you properly."
Nichole obeys, re-latching the gate behind her at the remembrance of long-ago scoldings, and walks towards the door. Most of the cats scatter at her approach, except for the grey tabby, who watches the new visitor expectantly.
The old lady squints at her for a moment. "Your pardon, lad," she says finally. "You reminded me of someone, in the way you spoke just now."
"Une fille rousse, peut-être?" says Nichole softly, and throws back her black hood so that her hair spills around her shoulders.
"Mon Dieu," whispers the old woman, trembling. "It cannot be..."
"But it is." Nichole reaches out, takes the gnarled hands between her own. "C'est moi, Marie. C'est moi."
A little gasp, and she is enfolded tightly in old Marie's arms. "Thank God," Marie says. "Oh, thank God, Nichole, ma chère. We had heard such things, such terrible things--they said Captain Morena, that devil, had sunk your ship, and sent you to the bottom of the sea--"
"As you can see, they were quite mistaken," Nichole laughs. "Morena should have known from experience that it would take a bit more than that to kill me, dear Marie. He was quite careless about it...oh, Marie, don't cry, chère Tante--"
"C'est un miracle," the old woman asserts fiercely. "Un miracle!"
A sudden sadness washes over Nichole, a grief she's not acknowledged until now. Being held in Marie's encompassing arms is like being a little girl again, a girl who could weep, who could feel things other than anger or pride...She pulls away. "It would have been a better miracle," she says, more savagely than she intends, "had God seen fit to save my crew as well as myself." And I would have been a better Captain. Controlling herself, she touches Marie's arm in apology. "But let us not speak of that now. I have a patient for you, Tante, and he may need all the miracles you can summon. But I need help bringing him to you. Is Georges here?"
She regrets the question as soon as she sees the look that passes over Marie's face. "Non, ma fille," Marie says gently. "He is in the churchyard, now."
Nichole stands still, stricken. Big, kind Georges, who called her his petite princesse even as he taught her to walk and speak and fight like a lad... Marie's face blurs before her eyes. "It has been too long," she murmurs. "When...?"
"Two years ago, when the fever was so bad in the Islands. All my tinctures and herbs could do nothing."
"Tante Marie, I am so sorry."
"It was his time, ma chère, and my loss is old now." Marie takes her arm. "Yours is fresh. I am sorry to give such sad news. Come in, sit down by the fire, let us talk...look at you, you are soaking wet..."
"I have just climbed out of the sea," says Nichole. "No, tante, I don't have time to sit, not yet. Are you alone here, then?"
"There is the hired boy, Pedro," Marie says. "He will help you with your friend. He is a good, strong boy."
"No doubt. But can he be depended upon to keep his mouth shut?"
For the first time, the significance of her visitor's disheveled state and dark clothing appears to dawn on Marie. "Nichole, my child...what have you done this night?"
"I've killed Captain Morena," Nichole says shortly. "The Spaniards think my friend and I are both dead, else we'd be fugitives from the noose. Now, can I trust the boy?"
"Mon Dieu!" Marie stares at her. "This is not one of your jokes--no, I can see that it is not. Yes. Yes, I think you can trust him. Pedro!" she calls up the stairs. "¡Rapidamente, por favor! I want you to meet someone..."
There is a muffled thump from above, and a tousled youth appears on the landing, blinking sleepily. He is a skinny thing, all brown elbows and knees and wide dark eyes like a colt's, and he moves in a colt's haphazard fashion, as if he hasn't quite grown into his own limbs. He scrambles halfway down the stairs and then stops short, looking at Nichole with evident alarm. When he turns his head to look worriedly at Marie, Nichole sees the long, deep scar that disfigures the left side of his face, running from his left cheekbone to the corner of his mouth.
"It's all right, Pedro," Marie assures him, in Spanish. "This is Nichole, lad. She used to stay here, too, long ago."
"In that very same cubby as you do now, if I'm not mistaken," Nichole says, smiling. Then, when he continues to hesitate, she adds with some impatience, "No tenga cuidado, boy. I don't bite, for pity's sake."
Marie shoots her a reproving glance. "You can't blame him for his caution, ma chère fille, for I have never seen you look so disreputable! Come," she says to Pedro, going to him and tucking an arm about his shoulders. "Nichole necesita ti ayuda. Su amigo está lastimado."
Pedro nods, finally, and descends the staircase, sticking out one hand solemnly toward Nichole without a word. She regards him, bemused, and shakes the proffered hand. "Pleased to meet you, Pedro."
"Just do as Nichole asks, dear boy," Marie tells him. "Here, you'd better wear your coat, there's a nasty chill off the ocean tonight...and you, Nichole, you will catch your death out there in those wet clothes."
"Tante Marie," Nichole says sternly. "You are a very foolish old lady. If Morena couldn't kill me, what makes you think a head cold will do me in--?" She breaks off then, for at the name Morena, Pedro goes very pale, seeming to retreat into himself even more. Careless, D'Bouvoire, you're getting careless in your old age. "You listen well, now, boy," she says, voice harsh. "If you say anything about me, or my friend, to anyone," she draws her finger across her own throat in a pantomimed warning, "I swear I'll--"
But Marie grips her shoulder, silencing her. "There's no need to threaten the lad. He will not say a thing."
"This is about life and death, tante," Nichole says, never letting her eyes stray from Pedro's face. The boy shrinks back, staring at the floor. "You never could believe ill of your charges, whether or not your faith was justified." She laughs; Pedro jumps. "I mean, look at me, for example...How do you know he won't talk?"
"Even if he could, he would not," Marie says. "But you need not trust my judgment. You see, Pedro is mute, ma chere. He has not spoken a word since I took him in, almost a year ago now."
Nichole stares. Then she begins to laugh again, more softly this time, though Pedro still watches her warily. "I'll be damned, " she says at length. "Not a hired boy at all, really, but another stray. Of course...How little things do change, Marie."
They find William Turner just as Nichole left him: sprawled unmoving in the mud beneath the docks. Relieved, she lets out a puff of breath she didn't know she was holding. "Thanks for not waking up, my friend," she murmurs, pressing two fingers to his throat and feeling the pulse there--strong enough, if a little too fast. "You'd do yourself no good and all sorts of harm wandering about in the state you're in..." She turns to Pedro. "Let's get him up," she orders. "I'll take his shoulders, you take his legs. Have a care now--"
Despite his skittishness and wide-eyed speechlessness, Pedro proves to be an able assistant, stronger than he appears and more quick-witted than Nichole expected. Nonetheless, Marie's cottage is some distance from the harbor, and lifting and carrying Will's limp body up the quay and through the darkened streets is no easy task for two persons of slight stature.
"Damn, but he's a heavy bastard," Nichole gasps, pounding on the door of the shop. "Hurry up, tante Marie, are you asleep in there? I'm going to drop him in a second." The door swings open, and they stagger through. "Where should we put him? He's a filthy mess...worse than me, I'm afraid."
"Take him this way," Marie says, all business now that she has a patient to look after. "In the workshop. No one goes there now, after Georges...Except Pedro, of course, to look after his birds. But he will be safe there, away from prying eyes."
The unused workshop smells different than it once did; only a faint hint of smoke and flint remains, overlaid by the odor of dust and dovecote. They lay the unconscious man in the clean straw that covers the floor; Marie hangs a lantern on the wall and bends over him, clucking her tongue disapprovingly. "He is in a bad way, oui?"
"He was in Morena's clutches, tante. Doesn't that tell you all that you need to know?" Nichole folds her arms across her middle, pushing back old memories. "I think he has earned himself a broken rib, or two. Was clear enough that he was in a good deal of pain, even before he fainted on me."
"But it is more than a broken rib, if he is still insensible." Marie waves an imperious hand. "Pedro, fetch me clean cloths and the warmest blankets from the lean-to, please. Nichole, I set a kettle full of water to warm on the kitchen fire when you left, if you would bring it here for me. Oh, and another lantern, the one that hangs by the back door—"
"Yes, tante," Nichole says hastily. Pedro has already vanished in pursuit of blankets. But Nichole finds herself lingering at the doorway, watching Marie wiping the dirt from Will Turner's flushed face and wondering at herself for it.
If there's anything to be done, Marie will do it, she thinks, and frowns when a pang of worry jolts her at the thought that there may be nothing to be done. Then Marie lifts her head, noticing her still standing there, and Nichole turns away from the old lady's piercing glance, betaking herself with alacrity to the kitchen.
Why does this stranger's fate matter to me so? she demands of herself severely, plucking the kettle from the fire. He is no one to me. Why did I feel compelled to rescue him?
She tries to tell herself it has everything to do with Mrs. Elizabeth Turner, with the tremor in the girl's voice when she spoke of her husband. But it is not Elizabeth's fair, shadowed visage that comes again and again to mind, but William Turner's face, suffused with rage and grief, as he flung himself at Francisco Morena.
I have killed many a man who wished to live, without a second thought; now I am trying to save the life of a man who wished to die.
She laughs aloud at the irony; startled by the sound, the handsome orange tomcat curled up by the fire shoots her an aggrieved look and stalks off toward the pantry.
"You're quite right," she tells it. "That's more than enough of this nonsense."
But Marie's orders are not to be countermanded. Reluctantly, she collects kettle and lantern and returns to the workshop.
"He is fevered," Marie announces upon Nichole's entry, answering a question the younger woman hasn't voiced. "Very warm. Too warm. And see—"
She brushes back the dark, still-damp hair, and Nichole realizes that it is matted not with mud but with dried blood. The wound looks swollen and angry around the broken skin. Nichole remembers the butt of a rifle, rising and falling.
"This should have been tended to." Marie shakes her head, swears in French. "Those idiot bastards. But I will see to it, and the ribs as well. Nichole, if you would--?"
Nichole nods, drawing her knife; Pedro shrinks back, and she can't resist favoring the lad with her most feral smile before focusing on the task at hand. Kneeling by Will Turner's prone body, she carefully slices apart the fabric of his shirt and jacket, pulling the cloth back and away from the muscled torso to reveal a large, ugly bruise purpling along his right side.
Marie prods lightly at the bruised area; even under her skilled fingers, Will moans a little in his fevered sleep, his head moving restlessly from side to side. "Ah." She lays one hand on his forehead until he calms again. "You were right, ma fille."
"Is it very bad?" She keeps her tone disinterested, but she can't help asking.
"He will live; if the fever breaks...He seems hale enough otherwise."
Straightening, Nichole steps away. "Let's get it seen to, then, so he can be on his way."
"Ah, but he surely is very fine-looking, my dear." Marie twinkles up at her. "Are you certain you do not want to keep him?"
"Marie!"
"Never mind then. But only time will heal these hurts, with proper care and better luck than he has suffered so far." As she begins to clean and dress the cut on the injured man's head, she adds, "You will be watching over him tonight, for young limbs will find better rest on the ground than my old bones. Pedro will make up a pallet for you." Her sly twinkle returns. "After all, you know the rules. This fugitive is your stray to look after, and not mine, my dear."
Later, when she is somewhat cleaner and drier—save for her hair, which is still damp and which, despite vigorous rinsing with Marie's herbal soap, still smells faintly but unmistakably of harbor mud—Nichole is too tired to think much of Pedro's unexpected presence in the workshop room, nor of the guilty, startled look he gives her as she enters. The boy jumps to his feet and backs up hurriedly, before making for the door at an almost-run.
She watches him go, thinking that she must ask Marie more about the youth's history in the morning. Perhaps his odd behavior will make more sense then, and she will be able to determine the nature of the curiously intent expression she glimpsed on his ruined face as he crouched by Will Turner's side.
Probably charged with first watch over the invalid, and scared to death of me already, she decides. Of me, and likely every girl under the age of fifty. He seems the type, although it's true, too, that she hasn't exactly been soft with the lad since her arrival.
She tries and fails to stifle a jaw-cracking yawn. It's been a long...a bloody long day, and it's beginning to catch up to her, although the full import of all that has happened, all that she has accomplished, has yet to sink in fully.
Francisco Morena is dead. After so many years. Her revenge is hers at last, and her justice.
Took you long enough, didn't it?
She sinks down on the little pallet that's been laid out a few feet from the patient's own, presses her palms against her eyes. Once upon a time, she'd thought this justice, finally achieved, would be enough, would satisfy her rage, would make things right. Now, the rage has burned out and left her empty, and all the wrongs of years past are still wrong.
Marie has always hated Morena, for reasons much like Nichole's own, and even on Nichole's behalf. But Nichole finds herself praying that her tante will never know just how many men her petite fille has caused to die today, and many a day previously, for the sake of vengeance; will never know that Nichole barely remembers their faces any more, their names, or much at all about them save the ways and means of their disposal. It is not the way Marie taught her, to have no regard for a life or for a death.
A slight noise pulls her from her grim reverie. Will Turner shifts in his makeshift bed, muttering something. A word, a name. Nichole sits up, watching him, but he does not wake; he is dreaming, or delirious, his brow knotted as if he feels the pain of his wounds even in his sleep. His lips move again; she leans closer, listening.
"My 'lizbeth..."
"Ah, you poor fool," she whispers. She's yours no more; was never so, most likely. A girl like that takes no better to chains and vows than a wild hawk to jesses.
But for just a moment, her hand hovers over the sweat-beaded forehead, perhaps even rests there very briefly. Presently the sick man's restlessness seems to pass, his frown relaxing, his shallow breaths deepening; and she knows it is not her touch he feels, but the ghost of another's. With a small, wry smile, she sits back on her heels, again contemplating him, marking the tanned, boyish features, the sunken shadows under his cheekbones. He must be a man of at least five-and-twenty years, but asleep he looks impossibly young, even with the two days' worth of beard on his chin. Yet this man is a ship's captain, and a lady's husband; blood-enemy of her blood-enemy, fellow fugitive, and friend of the British Royal Navy. An enigma, like her impulse to pull him along with her in her flight from La Venganza.
She herself has begun to relax at last, stretching her legs out and propping her head on her hand, when something stirs just outside the pool of lamplight. She stiffens, her fingers instantly seeking out the knife she's stowed under her lumpy pillow. But the intruder is only the small grey cat who greeted her earlier. It pads over to her, sniffs at the blankets, and installs itself in the hollow formed by the crook of Nichole's knee, where it begins industriously to wash itself.
"I don't think you are allowed in here," Nichole tells it, with an eye to the faintly burbling dovecote. The cat pauses in its ablutions to give her a limpid look of pure innocence. Nichole scowls at it, but finds herself too bone-weary to argue, even with a creature which cannot actually speak.
And perhaps justice, or vengeance, has its reward in the end. For after a time, Nichole D'Bouvoire, who has long refused to share her sleeping-chamber with anyone—even her lovers, occasional and otherwise—lays her head down and sleeps without nightmares, for the first time in a very many years.
The first time she awakens, in the pale dim light of very early morning, Elizabeth finds herself tangled up in Jack Sparrow: one tanned, tattooed arm draped over her, his hand half-cupping her breast as if by instinct, his even, slow breath against her shoulder. Half-conscious, she curls closer into him, and is rewarded by a drowsy, approving rumble at the back of her neck; his fingers stray from her breast to her own hand where it lies on the counterpane, and covers it, though his breathing tells her he has not woken at all. She lies still then, willing him not to rouse further and herself to sleep again, carefully keeping her mind blank of everything but this moment, this waking, his warmth and scent surrounding her; blank of its meaning, its reasons and consequences. He is her anchor in this place; without his weight and pull, she fears she might float away and be lost forever.
She thinks that this is why, when she next wakes and he is no longer beside her—the big bed empty and cold somehow, though the air in the cabin is warm—she panics and struggles upward through a sea of soft sheets (too soft; he must have stolen them from some unlucky lord or dignitary), crying out, "Jack!"
He is there, after all; seated at the table in nothing but braids and breeches, clutter swept away; at her outburst, he glances up from the large chart spread out before him in the cleared space. "Aye? What is it, then?"
"Sorry," she mutters, avoiding his gaze. "It's just...I thought..." She presses her palms against her closed eyelids. "You were gone."
She doesn't hear him rise and come round the table to the bed, so she starts away from his light touch at first. He brushes a tangle of hair out of her face, takes hold of her wrists to gently but inexorably pull her hands from her face. "No, love," he says. "I'm not going anywhere." He chuckles, but she can plainly hear the concern in his voice. "At least, nowhere you're not going, too. 'Tis my ship you're on, y'know."
"I feel as if I don't know anything anymore. As if nothing in my life is sure, nothing is solid..." She looks down at his hands, now enfolding hers. Nothing, except this. "Jack...what happens now?"
"That," he says, lifting one of her hands to his lips, with just a ghost of a roguish grin, "is entirely up to you, m'lady."
"You know what I mean," she says, stubbornly, though suddenly very aware that she is naked save for his shirt, and he save for his breeches; and that sometime during the past night she has left behind any shyness or shame she would have had in that knowledge. "What do we do? Where do we go?"
"Why, wherever we want to go, of course," and that little smile plays round his mouth again.
"Away," she says, and her own passion startles her. "I want to go far away from here. And keep going. Maybe forever..."
Jack's expression changes; she thinks she glimpses surprise and hurt on his face before he smoothes it away, his dark eyes hardening. "Well, if that's what you wish, Mrs. Turner." Getting to his feet abruptly, he returns to the table to stare down at his charts, his back to her. "I can arrange passage for you to England easily enough."
She stares at him; then realization strikes. "Jack, you're a damned bloody fool," she says, with a shaky little laugh.
His own laugh is harsh and short. "Aye, you're dead right about that, lass. And never more than just now."
"Jack... " She unwinds herself from the sheets and pads barefoot across the cool boards to him to take his arm; he stands still but for his long fingers, tracing a random, graceful course across the Atlantic. "I have no desire to return to England. There is nothing more for me there than in Jamaica. I only want to go far away from...from what I've known...To piece together whatever happiness I can. To make a new life, see new things." She hesitates, rushes on. "With...with you. I'd like to stay with the Pearl. As long as you will permit it. If you will--"
But he turns to her then, and she sees what is in his eyes and falls silent.
"You'll have to earn your passage," he says roughly. "Same as the rest. No special privileges, savvy? The crew won't have it. Birthright means nothing on a pirate ship."
"Of course," she says, and her heart beats hard in her chest; he's looking at her, like...she hardly knows what that look means, but she thinks she's seen it before. It's very like the way he looked at the Pearl, watching it sail into Tortuga harbor in the light of morning. "The last thing I need now is to be idle. If I work hard enough, I won't have time enough to think...about things."
He frowns. "It's hard, physical labor we're speaking of here, and I can't imagine you ever having call to perform the like. So you must be sure. Are ye sure?"
"I'm sure," she says. "I'm stronger than I look, you know."
"When it comes to that," says Jack, gravely, "I believe you are, Elizabeth. And I, for one, never doubted it."
He's giving her that look again; she flushes, looking away from him and down at the parchments spread out across the table. "What's all this?"
"All what--? Oh! Right." He flutters a vague hand over the mess. "Truth be told, I've been finding the Caribbean a bit small of late...Come, have a look."
She leans over the table, aware of his proximity, his bare arm close to hers. "These are maps of the East Indies."
"Aye," he says. "Thought we might take a holiday of sorts. A pleasant jaunt around the Horn. So, what say you?"
"Aye, Captain Sparrow," she says. Her smile is real, if small, and for a moment, the drag of sorrow upon her lessens a little. She thinks that one day, not soon, but foreseeable yet, she might feel joy again. She tries not to think that hope betrays Will's memory.
"Excellent," Jack says, and pulls her into his arms.
When he has finished kissing her, in a manner not entirely befitting a captain's behavior towards a member of his crew, and when she can speak again, she says, "Jack?"
"Aye?"
"Will there be pillaging?"
"Aye. Pillaging, plundering, a bit of looting and rifling, and even, perhaps, a general not giving of hoots. You don't mind, do you?"
"Not in the least. Do I get my own sword and pistol?"
"If you can adequately demonstrate that you know how to use them without hurting yourself. Or me." His grin is pure mischief. "And only if you promise Uncle Jack that you will be very, very good, obey your Captain, and otherwise behave yourself like a proper little pirate lass."
"Jack!"
"Ow. Violent—and, may I say, undeserved—retribution against said Captain will not be tolerated, missy." He scowls theatrically down at her. "Don't think, just because this happens to be a pirate ship, that we don't know the meaning of discipline. I could have you whipped for that, I'll have ye know."
"You wouldn't dare."
He raises an eyebrow. "Wouldn't I?"
She has never yet been quite prepared for the speed at which he can move when he wants to. In an instant, he has her pinned between his body and the hard edge of the table. "That's a careless challenge to put to the likes of me, my girl," he purrs into her ear.
"Jack Sparrow!" She tries to squirm away, but as usual, his grip is inexorable. "You are enjoying this far more than can possibly be considered seemly."
"No more so than you, I suspect," he says; and though he keeps his face stern, laughter sparks in his eyes, and his hands have found their way under her shirt to her skin.
Her punishment, when it comes, is not one well-calculated to deter wrongdoing; and it is not long before Jack's charts are unceremoniously relegated to a jumble of parchment and foolscap on the cabin floor, while the table is put to more urgent and much less nautical use.
Deepest and most sincere thanks to all who have come this far. Only a few chapters remain to be told; but the truth is that the author would never have gotten to this point without you, the readers and reviewers. So, all you who have laughed, cried, stayed up past your bedtimes, left homework undone, sent me multiple emails begging for updates, and generally flattered me far beyond what I deserve, I dedicate this story to you. Yes, each and every one of you. You know who you are.
