When Evie turned thirty-one, she rather thought it might be time to leave Tortuga, though the thought was a troublesome one to her. There did not seem overmuch reason for staying these days and she knew the cocoa leaf was slowly killing her in her boredom. Perhaps on another shore, where she was a new face with new prospects, she could kick the habit and just drink herself to death instead. The hacking cough she'd picked up in the last couple of years was painful, and not exactly erotic and though every whore down the docks had some ailment or another and the lads didn't mind so much, Evie minded.
It was a brilliant morning in Tortuga, the sky a luscious periwinkle blue speckled with plump clouds like new-spun fleece, the sun high but not fierce and the water twinkling brilliantly beneath it, green and gold as far as the eye could see. Evie was awake, for sleep would elude her an hour or two yet, and sat down in the sand, away from the wharves with her shoes and stockings balled up beside her, scrunching her toes in the damp, white earth. Off to her right, the wharves stretched out like long fingers into the sea and the piers they jutted from were enjoying a mild flurry of activity with a few traders flogging their wares. Not much for Evie there – she'd already looked. Most of it salted meat and spices.
Tortuga just wasn't the same old port anymore. Oh it was still jolly enough and Evie made enough to cover her expenses and keep herself comfortable besides, but the whole place seemed to have lost its fire and be more a haven to reprobates and has-beens than to cheering shiploads of pirates with pockets bursting gold. Evie had to work twice as hard and see twice as many gents these days to make the same amount and it was an annoyance to be sure, not to mention painful and things hadn't been entirely right with her since the botched abortion.
Besides, there was a mere handful of the old crew about now. Everyone else had long nicked off, or were in the habit of staying only a few weeks before setting off to do same elsewhere, and nearly all the old camaraderie had been lost as a consequence. Time was, a whore of Tortuga looked out for her fellows and you could always count on a girl to shout you a rum if you got belted. Now, a girl was just as likely to trip you up and pilfer your biter while she was at it.
Maybe somewhere else she could get a place of her own (she'd saved so hard, after all!) and establish herself as a companion to older gents, build up a little coterie that she would see, four or five of them once a week maybe. Gents like the odd fellow who sometimes still found his way to Tortuga and wanted little more than a pretty face and sympathetic ear and was more than happy to pay generously for it. But no fucken sailors! Proper gents. She'd have to find a respectable town for that, which would mean she'd have to do herself over to suit. Evie picked up a sliver of driftwood that had been entangled in a clump of pungent seaweed and traced in the sand with it. Wasn't it about time she had a bit of an adventure herself, after all? All these years listening to the adventures of other people and she'd never had one herself. She wondered what her furniture would bring, in particular those mirrors. Everything else in Tortuga might've depreciated (including a whore's cunny!) but she'd warrant they'd at least still be worth a pretty penny.
Evie sighed, and uncorked her gin bottle for a swig, sweeping her hair from her face and squinting in the sunlight. What would her mum say to see Tortuga now!
Far off in the horizon, a ship entered the port of Tortuga with such an air of levity it was positively palpable. Its sails billowed joyously, its stern rose from the waves as though swollen with triumph. It stirred Evie just to behold its merry procession along the water towards the docks, but it lifted her to her feet to see that the ship had black sails. The Black Pearl!
Evie was up and hurtling towards the docks then without pausing long enough to replace either stockings or shoes. Her bare feet thumped in the sand as she reached the wharves and climbed up onto the pier, darting through the stacked up wares and arguing bodies as The Pearl did not drop anchor a mile out, or even half-mile out, but sailed in steady and sure, straight alongside one of the wharves where she was roped in tight by sailors who leapt from her decks. A small crowd began to gather to see it, wearing a collective expression of astonishment, and Evie caught them up, elbowing her way through their sweating and grimy bodies, reaching the very outskirts of the Pearl's dock as the plank was lowered and dropped and from the Pearl's shadowy belly emerged, all pomp and brass and clearly enjoying to the utmost the drama of his arrival, Jack Sparrow.
Evie pulled up short upon sight of him, unable to conceal the staggering shock she felt; her jaw gaped open and her eyes bulged and she was barely able to stifle a cry. It would not matter if she hadn't, for everyone about her let out a similar gasp and Jack paused in his step and raised his hands to them.
"Yes, gents and ladies, questionable or otherwise," he declared grandly, "Captain Jack Sparrow returns to you all, restored once more as the rightful owner of my beautiful ship and having wreaked vengeance most triumphant and terrible upon the scabrous devils what so heinously mutinied on me some ten years ago! But that!" And here Jack snapped up a finger, a gold-toothed grin splitting his face. "Is a tale for the taverns! Join us, won't you!" And Jack tossed back the tails of his overcoat and set forth with a flourish down the wharf, the smiling but somewhat dazed members of his crew scurrying after him and after some excited exchanged glances, the sailors, pirates and whores that surrounded them left what they were doing and followed.
"Did ye rid yerself of that shot then, Jack?" A toothless and hunched fellow lisped over his bottle of rum and Jack tipped his hat and near-tittered. As he drew closer, Evie dropped back amongst the spectators on the pier. She did not think he had seen her yet.
"Aye! Indeed I did, my good man. Straight into the black heart of the scoundrel what first gave it to me."
And Evie felt her own heart clutch and rise to her throat.
Then Jack and his admirers were passing swiftly by, but not so swift that Jack did not have time to glance directly at her and drop her a wink with a half-tipped smile, not once hesitating or breaking his stride, but turning then back toward the town leaving exclamations of astonishment and speculation in his wake.
Evie felt herself sway a little where she stood, the voices around her blurring to an incessant drone and she grasped for her gin bottle. A swig steadied her; her vision stilled and she hemmed in her throat and glanced about her at a near empty pier as one by one the pirates gave into their curiosity and made off after Jack and his crew. And The Pearl – there she rested in her dock, looking as proud of herself as could be and Evie felt a stab drive through her heart, so fierce that it left her gasping and clutching at her breast. It ricocheted through her body for several long moments before finally subsiding to a dull sting and Evie gripped a nearby post for support.
Barbossa was dead then. She knew it, though the exchanges between Jack and the others had been cryptic to her ears, still she knew what they had meant. He was dead, her much beloved and much mourned Captain – brought down by the hand of a fey and fanciful charlatan.
Numbly, she turned on her heel and walked back down, off the pier and onto the sand, wandering further and further from the town. He was truly gone and she realised, as her body trembled with the ache of his loss, that she had been waiting still. That there had been some part of her left that believed he would return to her as he had been of old, smiling and jovial, delighting in all sensual pleasures of the flesh and desirous of her to partake in them with him. That he would kiss and sweep her into his arms and the years that she had lost him would be swept away as easily as flotsam on the tide and she would once again know true rapture, true pleasure and true contentment in his arms. But he was dead.
And Evie came to a stop and looked out across the sea to where the foam-capped waves rose and fell endlessly, tireless and never ceasing, her toes caked in sand and her gin bottle dangling from her fingertips. The sky did not darken, the sun did not fall and the seas did not boil or froth. There was nothing to mark this moment but the harrowing pain that reverberated throughout her soul, silent yet echoing.
And Evie, one of the last true whores of Tortuga, dropped her gin bottle to the sand where it clunked into a patch of seaweed, and wept.