A Line In The Sand
Chapter Fifteen: Epilogue - Part I
Author's Note: As the epilogue was so long, I've split it into two parts to make it easier to digest. It's ten years later, but there are flashbacks so you know what's happened in the intervening ten years.
As the Pearl neared Shipwreck, Victoria fell steadily quieter and James guided their children further away from her, to leave her to her thoughts. In almost ten years of marriage, he had grown used to these occasional bouts of silence and found she returned to her usual cheerfulness much quicker if left alone than if he tried to talk to her.
There were quite a few of them crammed into the longboat – James, Victoria and their four young children, along with Gibbs and Jack. She turned white as they rowed to the island and sought James's hand with her own cold and clammy one.
"Will Grandpapa have barnacles?" seven-year-old Katherine asked.
Victoria turned a fiercely incredulous look on James, who looked alarmed and shook his head quickly. Gibbs coughed and offered her a sheepishly apologetic smile.
"No, Katie," Victoria said after a moment, glaring at Gibbs. "Your Uncle Will saved him from that."
Mary was moving restlessly around the room, glancing every now and again out of the window and tutting loudly. Victoria was ignoring her. She was in bed, with one arm curled round her week-old son, while she held Elizabeth's letter up to the candle beside the bed.
"She says young William has Will's eyes," Victoria commented. "I hope I'll have chance to write a longer letter about Thomas. I've only scribbled a note so far. And we must announce you properly to your Aunt, mustn't we, Thomas James Norrington?"
She ran her curled index finger along her son's cheek and he opened his eyes blearily. He made a snuffling, gurgling sound, shifted slightly and fell silent. She could feel the soft warmth of his skin through his cotton clothing and shifted her hand slightly, so that it was splayed across his chest, where it could feel the reassuring thump of his heart.
"You ought not to have let him go, Victoria," Mary said suddenly, seeming not to have heard what Victoria said. "Fancy letting him go off drinking with pirates!"
"Oh, Mary, he's not touched a drop for over a year and he's every right to celebrate the birth of his first-born-son. Besides, Joshamee insisted."
"Humph!" Mary grunted, looking out the window again.
Victoria smiled, sensing that Mary's bad mood had more to do with Joshamee's immediate removal to the nearest tavern an hour after he arrived back in Tortuga with the Pearl, than with anything else. Mary fixed Victoria with a beady stare.
"I'm just saying the drink 'twas the ruin of him last time."
"Oh, no," Victoria replied lightly. "I was the ruin of him last time. Will and I really. When we freed Jack."
Mary didn't answer; she had heard drunken laughter not far from the house and was peering through the curtains again.
"Here they come – drunk as lords. You'd think Joshamee had been away from a Tortuga tavern three years, not three months."
"Tell them to keep it down, will you, Mary?" Victoria said, lowering the letter again to study her dozing son. "I don't want them to wake Tom."
Victoria had barely gotten out of bed to put Tom in his cot before Mary had swept out of the room. Victoria could hear her hissing savagely at the drunken pirates and herding them into the forge, where there were several palettes made up for them.
"Oh, Mary, my sweet lass," Gibbs cried, his voice carrying through the house and up the stairs. "Have you no kinder words for me when I've been away so long? No kinder welcome?"
Victoria bit her lip to stop herself smiling and settled Tom down, pausing for a moment as he stirred and wrapped his tiny fingers around her thumb. A vicious sort of love welled up in her, bringing with it an inexplicable urge to cry. Gently, she extracted her thumb and kissed his head, climbing back into bed.
"And you, James Norrington," she heard Mary snap. "Your poor wife and child up there alone all evening, with only Elizabeth's letters for company. And you – roaring drunk! You ought to be ashamed! Not a sound on your way up, the wee lad's just settled."
Victoria sat waiting, listening to James slow and deliberate journey up the stairs. He lurched into the room, hanging onto the door handle and mimicked her immediate gesture of finger on lips. He was stubbly and red-faced, but he grinned adoringly at her and any thought that she ought to be angry with him vanished.
He shuffled over to the cot on her side of the bed and smiled down at his son, flashing her that brilliant grin again.
He climbed onto the bed beside her, fully-clothed and smelling of rum, exactly as she remembered him from over a year ago.
"You really are nothing like your brother, you know," he said in a low voice, stroking the hair back from her face and tucking it clumsily behind her ear. He leaned in close and she put a hand to his shoulder to stop him, thinking she had heard Tom stir. "Ah," he said. "That way lays disaster."
"You remember that?" she asked, blinking in surprise.
"My drunken attempt at kissing you? Oh yes. I've never been so gratefully disappointed in all my life."
She smiled and slipped her arms round his neck, kissing him gently, finding for the first time what rum tasted like inside his mouth. Pulling away, he nuzzled her neck, then settled his head there and began to snore.
Young William and Tom ran ahead of the others to watch the Dutchman's steady progression towards them. By the time Tom's younger brother and sisters and the adults had caught up to them, two figures in a longboat were already halfway to shore.
Victoria felt the colour rush back to her face, a warm fidgeting joy start in the base of her stomach and swell up through her chest until she couldn't contain herself.
"Will," she breathed and without thinking, turned and raced along the path down the cliff.
By the time she reached the shore, her brother was clambering out the longboat. He looked up and saw her running towards him and went to meet her, laughing, with his arms open.
"Will!" she cried, leaping into his arms. "Will. Oh, Will."
She was gasping, not really from the exertion, but the thrill of seeing him, the wonderful familiar solidness of him as he held her. She clung tightly round his neck and already felt a desperate mounting sense of loss that he might be gone by sunset.
She pulled away and Will was grinning at her, studying her face.
"You haven't changed, Vicky," he said, though she knew it was a lie. His gaze flickered over her shoulder and his eyes widened. "Are these…?"
She glanced back, to see that the others had followed. James and her children were coming towards them, Elizabeth and William bringing up the rear.
"Yes."
"I ought to have given you away," he said, glancing shrewdly at James.
"I couldn't have waited – not even for you. But Elizabeth is waiting, Will."
Slightly ashamed of herself, Victoria gave her brother a nudge towards his wife. He made his way slowly, as though unable to believe she was there. When he reached her, he put his arms around her delicately, reverently. They stood like that for a moment, William watching them closely. Then, still holding each other, they turned and Elizabeth introduced Will to his son. Will, still holding Elizabeth's hand, sank to his knees before the boy.
Victoria, feeling almost content, turned back to the longboat and came face-to-face with her father.
James had been sitting on the hard-backed chair outside the room for hours, when he wasn't guiding Tom and Katie back to their room, with gentle suggestions of what to play and soft reassurances that their mother was fine.
The soft reassurances had been difficult because when Mary had herded him out of his bedroom earlier in the day, it was not in the same brisk way she had done when Tom and Katie were born. And sure enough, he had not been beckoned in to have a child placed in his arms shortly after his dismissal.
When Victoria's howls of "James!" were particularly emphatic, he had burst in, objecting fiercely when Mary had bundled him out again. Mary's anxious expression swam before him as he dozed fitfully in the chair, having exhausted himself with pacing.
"A boy and a girl."
The weary voice made him jump and when he looked up, Mary was pushing her hair back off her face, looking about ready to drop. Her complete exhaustion was also something new to James and, terrified, he brushed past her to go into the room. He froze in the doorway, staring at the wreckage of the crumpled and bloody sheets in the corner. He looked at his wife then, she was chalk coloured, her skin barely indistinguishable from her white nightgown and the fresh sheets that Mary had hastily thrown over her.
"Victoria?" he choked out, offering it to Mary almost as a question. He started towards Victoria's prone body, feeling a wild, brutal horror rear up inside him.
"She's asleep," Mary whispered, grabbing his arm. "She's worn out, poor little thing. The litt'luns are fine," James looked for the first time over at the cot, where he could see a tangle of limbs waving in the air. "They're a good strong pair. But – James, lad – there'll be no more for the two of you."
"No more?" he echoed in a hollow voice.
"Children, I mean. She won't be able to – after this. No matter if you try."
"But you said she will live," he said, turning to Mary, the stubble and the circles under his eyes horribly dark against his pale skin. "You said they will all be all right."
"They will. But she'll need rest, lad. A good couple of months bed rest. You'll have to do what you can in the forge and I'll take care of Tom and Katie and help her with these two."
"Can't you take care of them?" he asked desperately, settling cautiously on the bed at Victoria's side.
"Aye, but 'tis best if I help her with them. She would not want them taken from her. I'll see she won't exert herself. Smile, lad, you've a bonny pair there."
James peered for the first time into the crib to see his two youngest and last children gurgling gummily up at him. Taking Victoria's warm hand, the fingers of it curling unconsciously round his, he managed a smile.