Chapter 30: Secrets Written in Gold
Jack very soon discovered the reason why I looked "somewhat familiar" to him, and it didn't come very easily either. When confronted with the dilemma of explaining to him who I was in terms of origin, I decided that coming out bluntly with the fact would be best. I'd do no good making him all the more befuddled by trying to describe my pirate ancestry in little, awkward hints.
I began by telling him about my lovely foster parents, William and Elizabeth Turner. As I anticipated, their names rung a bell, but the chime made in Jack's head related in no way whatsoever to my existence, and so I was forced to explain that he dropped me off at their house more than a decade ago.
At that, he paused in his musings and brought a finger to his lip, which eventually began to tap against his skin as he tried to recollect such an event.
"In Port Royal," he murmured, and I nodded eagerly.
"Yes! Port Royal! Now, do you remem—"
I was interrupted by his sudden 'Eureka' cry (although he didn't say eureka per se. His motions were equivalent to a Eureka moment), and his finger was raised into the air as if he was finally about to announce a great, unprecedented discovery. Only, his brows furrowed in the midst of his awakening and his finger slumped down again, dwindling in his failure to remember my name.
I huffed as my patience wore thin.
"It begins with an—"
"No, no," he told me, waving his finger at my nose and squinting at my puckered face as he thought. He began to mumble to himself a list of various words beginning with 'A,' and I was at least content that he could recall that my name did in fact begin with the first letter of the alphabet.
After a grueling hour (or what seemed like one), Jack finally hit upon my name, and I stopped him from making anymore guesses by screaming, "YES! THAT'S IT!" For I had honestly heard enough of all the 'A'-words he was voicing. (—Astro?... Asshole?... Asinine?... Assart?... Assizer?... Astrophile?... Astringe?—)
And after he had said my name once, he continued to say it, almost squawking it like a parrot—"Astrid? Astrid? As-trid?"—as if it was foreign to him, which without a doubt it was. He probably hadn't even thought of me for, well, over a decade (which he had yet to discover was all at his doing, not mine).
The more he said my name, however, the more he began to realize why he had left me in the first place, and after enunciating my name for about, say, seventy times, he finally turned to me and said, very seriously, "I left you in Port Royal so that you wouldn't follow me, love."
And I answered his frank solemnity with a rebellious insistence.
"Oh, I know that, Jack," I beamed, placing my hands on my hips and straightening my back as far as my confidence would allow me. "But you should have known when ye left me that pirate is in me blood and that I'd end up going to sea whether you liked it or not."
He did not seem to appreciate the defense for my cause, and he frowned at me, showing that same unreadable frown on his face that drove me nuts as a baby. I could never tell if he was serious or joking, and I still couldn't.
"What?" I said, glowering back at him. "Why are you looking like that at me?"
"You're not made up all of pirate, lass," he answered, turning around and sauntering out of the cabin we were in.
Ooh, don't even remind me… I moaned inwardly, looking down at myself and remembering the horrible weeks in Tortuga, not to mention the living nightmare with Griffith on the Resolve.
"And that gave you reason to desert me?" I challenged, running after him. "Do you have any idea how hard it was to fit into a place like Port Royal? At sea, I'm more comfortable than I have ever been!"
"Just exactly how did you get here? Don't dear William and his darling Elizabeth know you've run away?" he brought up, ignoring my question by putting out his own as he meandered his way up to the quarterdeck of his small ship, whipping his head around (and his thick dreadlocks too for that matter) as he spoke to me.
"I'll tell you if you tell me why you left me," I grumped, crossing my arms over my chest as I stood beside him at the helm.
His hands held naturally onto the wheel with an easy, all-knowing grip and his dark eyes had now shifted away from me and back onto the distant horizon. I glanced over at what he was looking at, just to try to understand what he could have found so enchanting about the limitless sea, and I found nothing that I hadn't already seen. Nothing but the pale, rosy sky hovering above the black horizon line where the sun was sinking slowly below.
"I already did," he answered, raising an eyebrow as he briefly glimpsed at me from the side. "I didn't plan on ye bein' pirate. I don't think yer mum would 'ave wanted it anyway."
"You should have known that my profession would have been inevitable. I am your daughter, Jack. Hear the word: daugh-ter."
"Surprisingly, that really shouldn't mean anythin', love. I mean, look at Cord." He nodded over at Cord's small figure at the waist of his ship, her arms twirling a new doll around and around until she got so dizzy that she fell back on her bum. I snorted and peered at Jack irritably from the corner of my eye, a retort already forming on my lips.
"Oh, I looked. She acts jus' like you. Always so disoriented that she falls back like a drunk pirate. She grins like ye too. Wide and toothy. Jus' because she don't wanna be pirate doesn't mean you can't tell she's a Sparrow." And as soon as I said that, I caught my own mistake and felt my face glow red.
Oh damn, Astrid. Why do you always have to prove your own self wrong? My humiliation was so heavy that I had the urge to slap my forehead numerous times, and I deemed that my face was as brightly hued as a ripe apple.
But Jack didn't pay heed to my embarrassment, or at least, he didn't act like he did. He didn't augment my humiliation by saying, "I told you so," either. He just stood at the wheel, humming what I knew to be "A Pirate's Life for Me," and after a few minutes, my cheeks cooled down, the embarrassing blush flowing away like a smooth current of seawater.
"Will you get rid of me again then?" I asked, not knowing that my voice was growing bitterer with ever word I uttered. "Will you drop me back in Port Royal like you did over a decade ago? Hmm?"
"Hell no, love," he chuckled, unfazed by my mockery. "Tom 'ere has told me that you have got yerself in as big a mess with Mad Anne as I have. I can't let ye leave now. We share a common problem."
"Really?" I gasped, any negative feeling I had toward Jack vaporizing into the air. "I can stay?"
"As long as ye tell me where Mad Anne is headed," he replied, and I stopped giggling with joy and fell silent again. There's always gotta be a catch, doesn't it?
"Where Anne is headed?" I echoed, confused. "Why?" He rolled his eyes minutely and groaned a bit, as if he was regretting my being allowed to stay on board.
"So I can take back my ship." He said it almost as if it was something any old fool would know and should know. It was no surprise that I felt sheepish again and I responded with my trite, "Oh."
"Don't tell me ye were on my ship an' didn't even find out where she was headed, Astrid." I faced him with a nervous smile and a weak, broken chortle.
So much for being a pirate, Astrid…
"So much for being a pirate, love," he said softly, more to himself than to me. I almost laughed at our nearly identical thoughts.
"She took everything I had," I grumbled. "And she also has Will and Elizabeth's son." His eyebrows rose up at that.
"She's holdin' the Turners' boy hostage?"
"I'm not sure. She could be or Roland could have joined her crew." And I honestly prayed that it was the former. If Roland joined Mad Anne's crew, what would I tell Elizabeth and Will? I would have allowed their only son to become the right hand man of the cruelest witch of the sea!
"Damn." Jack's curse was what plucked me out of my worries, and I questioned his frustration.
"Damn what?" He didn't answer me directly. Instead, he called for Tom to take over the wheel, and he stepped aside and nudged me off the quarterdeck. Tom took command of the wheel and winked at me as Jack and I departed, and I sighed without even knowing it.
It only occurred to me after I had made cow-eyes at Tom that Jack was looking at me with an I-can't-believe-she-is-doing-that face, and he did not hesitate to drag me off the quarterdeck and down to the waist, muttering, "Pirate, not so much. Sparrow, undeniable. Tortuga wench? Very much like her mum indeed."
Upon reaching the waist, Cord happily trotted to us, still humming and dancing with her new doll. "I got a new one, Astrid!" she giggled, presenting her toy to me eagerly. "I named her Gabrielle and she ain't gonna drown in a storm as Jacinth did." At the mentioning of her lost, submerged doll, Cord sent a dark glare in Tom's direction and I knew the Irishman was simply grinning back at her despite her grudge.
"Cord, love," began Jack, interrupting our little exchange of doll-talk, "Lemme talk t'Astrid for a while an' then ye can play dollies with her all ye want." My face dropped.
"But—" He winked at me to hush my big mouth and I pouted and kept quiet.
"But Astrid doesn't even like dressies, Jack," Cord piped up. "I dunno if she'll play dollies with me."
"Oh, she will. An' then she'll teach ye a game called Sharky. Now, go on." Cord gave Jack a quick squeeze around his middle and then went back to twirling back and forth with her doll on the opposite side of the deck.
"Right…" I mumbled, trying to sort out a proper way to get Jack to explain what the hell happened in his life over the past decade. "So how exactly did ye lose the Pearl to Anne?"
"It's quite a long story, love, worthy of a long meeting with the bottle." At that, he took out a little container of rum and popped the spout into his mouth. "Ye want some?" he asked, speaking through the bottle spout after he saw me shaking my head at him.
"No," I answered sharply. "Well, not right now at least. Too early. You're getting off topic again."
"Well, whaddya want me to tell ye, lass?"
"You're actually asking me what I want to hear?" I told him, surprised that he'd be willing to reveal his story to me.
He shrugged and gave a subtle nod. "We have the time. You might as well hear it."
"All right then, Jack Sparrow—"
"Captain," he corrected.
"Fine. So tell me, Captain Jack Sparrow," I rolled my eyes as he beamed when I said it. "Tell me how you came about to your current position, why you have a second daughter, and how in the blazes you got such a lovely first mate, and I'll tell you how I came to know who you are, how I got to sea, and why Mad Anne wants my head. Savvy?" He squinted at me as he raised his eyebrows and removed the rum bottle from his lips.
"Do you mean now, at this moment, precisely at this time?" he asked, seeking clarification.
"Oh, yes. Yes, I do. I forgot to add that in. Forgive me."
"Well, then Miss Sparrow," he started, his hands slipping into his coat pockets as he began to wander away. "It all began, simply, over one thing."
"And that thing would be?"
"A bottle of rum."
Great…
It just so happened to be that Jack had lost his ship to Mad Anne due to his undying infatuation with a particularly spicy alcoholic beverage commonly referred to as rum. Consequently, that particularly soothing drink caused him to be too openly forward with his own secret plans, and those plans, in turn, led Mad Anne to learn about a treasure that she, in her naturally avaricious self, just had to get her greedy little hands on. So, what did the clever wench do?
She got Jack drunk. She got Jack to spill out the secrets of the treasure (and where those secrets were located). And she got Jack's ship while he was passed out on the floor of a Tortugian tavern. How lovely, Daddy…
And it was no surprise to him that Anne would do such a thing. Of course, she was a wench and she was a pirate, but her dislike of Jack had run further back than that. The specific bit of news that followed in Jack's rather long anecdote almost made my heart stop.
Mad Anne was my mother's closest friend, and in addition to that, she was the person who named me. Me. Dammit.
"But I thought you said that my mother named me!" I shrieked, refusing to accept that crazy Anne, who, mind you, still had Roland under her grasp, had given me my birth name. To think of it! I almost wanted to be named something else. I'd even settle with Fat-Manure-Cow Sparrow rather than Astrid Sparrow after learning that Anne had christened me.
"The thing is, Astrid—" I cut him off there.
"Call me Fat-Manure-Cow," I groused.
"All right. The thing is, Fat-Manure-Cow, your mum developed childbed fever after she birthed you, an' she was so sick that she hadn't the sense to name ye properly. An' if you want to know all the facts, 'Astrid' was yer mum's name. And to continue with the specifics, yer mum died the day Anne named you. Now, Fat-Manure-Cow, d'ye still want me to call ye that?"
"No," I returned meekly, crossing my arms over my chest as I murmured my incessant complaints to myself.
"Now, considerin' that Anne was yer mum's best mate, well, it was no wonder that when I did return to Tortuga that she gave me a hell of a lecture. 'Course, I never listened to her. She even held ye in her arms as she screamed and shrieked and shrilled at me for not bein' there when yer mum gave birth to ye."
"That doesn't surprise me," I murmured. He heard my mockery and set his stare straight onto my cantankerous visage.
"Don't you be turnin' into Mad Anne, too, love," he said, his voice low. I relaxed my furrowed brows and released a short sigh to indicate that I had forgiven him for his neglect, and he continued with his story. "Finding me incapable of takin' care of a fat, little babe, Anne thought it would be best if she raised you herself. Though, I weighed the sides of your background: pirate versus wench, and I decided that pirate seemed the…better path. Anne immediately protested the option of me taking you on board the Pearl."
"But she's a pirate now. Why would she want to keep me with her and on land?" I asked, not really knowing what else to say after hearing that I had just narrowly missed being Anne's adopted daughter.
"That comes later, love," Jack explained, stopping to drink some more. "I let her think that she was going to be yer new foster mum and managed to convince her to take a few drinks. She went out like a light (she doesn't hold her liquor very well), and when she was nappin', I took ye and off we went."
"Oh…" I said, "so that's how I came to be on the Pearl and that's also probably why Anne hates yer sorry little pirate-y innards!"
"…Aye…" said Jack hesitantly. "Well, anyway, I soon realized that takin' care of the likes o' you was no easy task. I barely got any sleep the first week I took you on board and my crew was so irritated that that they considered a mutiny. But I wasn't going to give ye back to Anne. That was out of the question. I knew she was already scheming up a way to get back at me for takin' away her dreams of bein' a mum and so I couldn't take you back. You stayed… for five years, until I thought I'd go mad if I kept you on board any longer."
"Jack!" I shrieked, swatting his arm. "How could you have thought of me as such a burden! I couldn't help it! I—"
"I put you in good hands, didn't I?" he returned, defending his reasons. "Ye fell in love with Elizabeth and Will, didn't ye? An' ye got a playmate too along with a good house, good parents and probably anything else you could ever want."
"So why did you decide to keep Cord and not me!" I yelled. "What was different?"
"Cord's mum was still alive. I had help. Ana Maria's mum could take care of Cord in her early years in Tortuga. The only reason she knows I'm her dad is because I was obliged to visit her. Otherwise, Ana Maria would berate me and her mum might even put a curse upon me. With you, I had no options."
"Why didn't you visit me then?" I posed softly.
"If I did, I'd probably be dead by now. It was hard enough trying to sneak you into Port Royal. If I had to do that every time I went to see ye, the blasted commodore would have figured out that I was there."
"Did you ever plan on taking me back when I was older?"
He scratched his head at that and looked away, trying to hide his guilty expression. Oh, I see what yer doin', Daddy, and it's not gonna work this time. No, it ain't. And in went the spout of his rum bottle into his mouth as he avoided my glare.
"You didn't. I knew it!"
"Well, we're here together again, so why argue!" he cheered, showing off his cheeky grin again. "I don't know about you, but I'd like to get off this subject and move to the topic of treasure and how to get my ship back."
"You didn't tell me how you got such a lovely first mate," I added, grinning mischievously.
"I'm afraid that when you're on my ship, lass, you're going to have to be pirate, not Tortuga wench. What is this? A floating brothel?" That earned him another swat.
"Fine. So what's this deal with the treasure, eh? An' how are we gonna get your ship back?"
"I'm glad you asked, love," he smiled. "The story begins with but one thing—"
"Ooh! Let me guess!" I said, with false bravado. "Rum."
"Actually, no," said Jack. "But good guess. The tale starts with a pirate named Calico Jack…"
"Eleventy-one, eleventy-two, eleventy-three…"
"Cord, it's one hundred eleven, one hundred twelve, and one hundred thirteen, not eleventy-whatever," I said, shaking my head at her as I faked some rope.
"I like eleventy," she replied proudly. "An' now I lost count, Astrid." Her hands remained motionless as she sought to remember which number she was on as she brushed her doll's yarn hair with a wooden comb.
"You were on eleventy three, sister."
"Aye, that I was. Merci, ma soeur." And with that, she slowly coasted into song:
"Chante rossignol, chante,
Toi qui as le cœur gai
Tu as le cœur à rire,
Moi je l'ai à pleurer
Il y a longtemps que je t'aime
Jamais je ne t'oublierai
Sous les feuilles d'un chêne,
Je me suis fait sécher
Sur la plus haute branche,
Un rossignol chantait…"
"Now what are you singing this time and why do you always drift off into French?" I grumped, frustrated that I could not understand the words to a very melodious tune. Her songs reminded me too much of Bennett.
She paused in her singing and looked up at me as she sat on the deck, cradling her doll in her arms.
"I was born in France, Astrid," she beamed. "It is my country." So that's the reason for her Napoleon worship, I thought. However, I tossed away the prejudice after I realized that she was indeed my half-sister and that blood was always thicker than water. Though, if Roland were with me, he probably would have burned from the mentioning of a French citizen. Of course, after he saw little Cord, he'd probably soften up. She was too sweet to harm anyone with her adoration for her country. I might have not praised Great Britain as highly as she eulogized France, but we were proud to be what we were.
"So how did you learn the language? I tried learning it when I had a governess (and don't you ever get one for your daughter when you grow up) and it's such a difficult tongue." I sat cross-legged beside her on the deck and place my chin in my hands as my elbows rested on my legs.
"I began learning it as soon as I was born. My grand-mère, talked to me mostly in French. I only started learning English when I came back onto Jack's ship. I should teach you French. It might come in handy if we go to Paris."
No way in hell am I gonna find myself in Paris. But for Cord's sake, I kept my smile.
"Just teach me the French songs you sing." She looked puzzled at my request and so calmly said in reply:
"But Astrid, you sing horribly." It was no surprise that directly afterwards, I chased her around the deck, stole her doll and threatened to toss it overboard. Her reaction, however, was far worse than I had expected and she wailed when I dared to throw Gabrielle away. Jack, Ana Maria and Tom came running to her aid and I was forced to step down.
Little sisters…
To prevent any further doll threats, Jack proposed that I join his and Tom's discussion over how to pursue Calico Jack's treasure.
The rings that Jack had mentioned before turned out to hold the map coordinates to the gold's location. He knew, from some "unidentified" sources (whatever the hell that was supposed to mean), that the coordinates would be somewhere in the territory of the Bermuda Triangle, and that with the rings in Anne's possession, she'd be preparing her crew (and Jack's ship) for whatever danger lied ahead of them on the course to find the treasure. That, Tom pointed out, would buy time to gather a larger crew, to take on a larger ship, and to reclaim the Pearl for Jack. When I asked why he had to have the Pearl in order to find some dead pirate's blasted treasure, Jack just gave me one of his Am-I-Speaking-to-a-Simpleton? faces, and I had no choice but to stand down again.
"Where are we going to get more men and how are we going to find out where Anne is? And don't forget that I need to rescue Roland… or at least… convince him to break away from Anne's bewitching clutch," I reminded to Jack as our brief meeting broke up. He was headed back for the helm as I spoke.
"Anne's crew is quite talented, I'd say," replied Jack. "Which means we'll be needin' to get a talented crew of our own. We're headed for New Orleans."
"New Orleans?" I squawked, fed up with the French motifs running around the ship.
"That's French!" screamed Cord from afar. I could see her waving her arms wildly above her curly head as she ran to us for a confirmation.
"Why New Orleans? You plan on getting us a whole French crew?" I groaned.
"Now, don't be sour, love. New Orleans may be a French establishment, but it's right by Spanish territory and American territory. We'll get the best of the best that way. That, and it's only a couple of days away."
"I've basically done nothing for the past few days, Jack. All I've done is idle work. I can't stand doing idle work anymore. I did it enough on a warship!"
"I can't give ye special privileges 'cause you're me daughter, lass. I don't think you're ready yet."
"Can I take command of the ship you're going to get as soon as we get a bigger crew?"
"Are ye mad!"
"What? I know enough!"
Tom laughed from behind us. I'm going to kill you, you Irish bastard…
"Astrid," began Tom between his spurts of laughter. "All of the pirates on this ship have more than six years sailing experience. How many have you, bonnie lass?"
I looked down as my face flushed.
"Two," I uttered meekly.
"Ah, two. Well, I'm afraid you're either gonna need to prove you are ready or just stick with what we tell ye to do? Savvy? Good. That's a good gal." He patted my shoulder before heading off the helm and down to the lower decks. I looked at Jack to reconsider but he just shrugged his shoulders at me.
Oh, things are never ever easy, are they, Astrid? I scowled as I leaned over the larboard railing. Oh, well… when in vain, blame the French…sorry, Cord.