- Chapter 6: Lieutenant Gillette -
"There's a man going around taking names
And he decides who to free and who to blame
Everybody won't be treated the same"
- Johnny Cash, The Man Comes Around -
-/-
Gillette felt trapped and anxious. There was another place he needed to be and during the last several hours spent suffering through endless meetings caused that need to border on excruciation. His knotted stomach made it nearly impossible to focus. It seemed that all concentration was sapped from him, making even the day's most routine duties unusually tedious and difficult. Including listening to the woes of the man currently sitting across the desk from him, Mr. Lohmiller, a merchant who imported molasses from the French West Indies to the Colonies.
Gillette saw Lohmiller as a lower class dullard with the same pitiful whines over the tariffs to make port and trade the wares they carried from non-British occupancies. Just as the rest of the nonaligned merchants that came to him with such gripes, Lohmiller was claiming that the Company was growing too large, overreaching their influences, and monopolizing trade in the Colonies and territories of the New World.
The censure of Company policy was not uncommon and was becoming an increasing occurrence among Lohmiller's like. Gillette would not be faulted if small, independent merchants could not compete with the East India Company. If they wanted to make a profit with less strife, they should sign allegiance with the Company.
They could quibble monopoly all they wanted. In the end, it was all just good business.
It was this fact that he'd relayed to Lohmiller several times before and was finding himself reiterating again. Gillette found having to repeat himself over and over annoyingly tiresome, but it was still his job to hear and to make reports on complaints from the colonies regarding imperial administration. So Gillette tried to give the man what he believed to be an adequate level of his professional patience and attention, which was little, since it took nearly all of his concentration not to squirm in his chair and fidget like a youngster during church.
Lohmiller, who'd been growing steadily more exasperated, realized he was getting nowhere with the policy-strict, and obviously distracted, official. He stood abruptly and drove his fist into Gillette's desk, the action failing to elicit the slightest flinch from Gillette.
His eyes never rising from his desk top, Gillette pulled a fresh sheet of paper from his desk and started writing a report while dryly alerting Lohmiller that his grievances would be documented.
If Gillette had glanced up at that moment, he'd have noticed Lohmiller's cheeks coloring to an angry shade of purple. Too frustrated to speak coherently, the merchant left in a flourish of unintelligible cursing, slamming the door behind him.
"Oh, thank heavens," Gillette gasped, fumbling through his vest pocket to retrieve his gold pocket watch.
He checked the time and moaned. He had yet twenty minutes until the end of his working day.
Still staring at the timepiece, Gillette anxiously drummed his fingers on his desk and debated if he could stand the remaining minutes. Although his position was acquired by royal appointment, he did not view it acceptable to leave early, even if many of the other officials did when they pleased, but the situation in his stomach was worsening. Lohmiller had been his final scheduled meeting and the office was closed tomorrow. If there had ever been a time that an exception could be made, this was it.
Under normal circumstances, Gillette would have painstakingly filed each document away in its proper place, secured his daily ledger in his desk, and enjoyed a quiet glass of sherry before heading home for the evening. On this night, he gathered up the neatly stacked papers on his desk, including Lohmiller's uncompleted grievance, stuffed them inside the cover of his ledger, and crammed the overflowing book in the top drawer.
He threw himself into his coat and failed to bother with the fine buttons. He plopped his hat down over his wig and doused the lamps. The office was dark. Now all he had to do was slip out before someone unannounced came and caught him trying to leave early.
He eased the door far enough open to crane his head around it. He peeked left, then right, and seeing only a handful of ordinary merchants and sailors, decided to risk the early departure. With haste, he stepped out, jerked the door closed, locked it, and dropped his key into his pocket. Head down, he spun sharply to walk down the street running squarely into another man.
"Pardon me," Gillette growled without even a glance at the man he'd just collided with and hurried off.
"Oi! Sir, a moment of yer time, if you would." The man had called after him.
Gillette continued to ignore him, but after a few steps more found himself sniffing. His fine new coat had been fouled with the smells of dampness and rotting fish, no doubt a result of having contact with the man outside of his office who must have been a fisherman. Angry that the garment may have been ruined, he stopped in his tracks and turned, determined to berate the fisherman for being so rude and clumsy.
"You imbecile!" He fumed. "Don't you know this cost more than you make in a mon..."
Gillette's rant trailed off when he found no one standing anywhere near his office door. For reasons unclear to him, he was startled that the fisherman had gone so fast, as if disappearing from plain sight, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He stood rigid for a few more seconds, looking and waiting, wondering if the fisherman would return. Then, shaking away the eerie sensation, Gillette cleared his throat and figured it was just as well that the fisherman went on his way as the fierce cramping in his abdomen returned with a growl. He made a face and sniffed his coat once more before turning on his heel and proceeding on his way.
It was only a few short blocks from his office to common courtyard behind his comfortable home, which was shared with his neighbors, but this evening, it felt as if miles had suddenly been added between the two points. He found it with great difficulty not sway in his stride and averted his face from those he met on the way so that they'd not see his increasing discomfort. He could not risk someone stopping him to ask what was causing his face to twist and to sweat so profusely.
When he entered the courtyard and saw it empty, Gillette broke into a jerky and awkward run towards his destination. He didn't think he could possibly wait any longer; the urge was becoming too strong, to the degree that he was tugging at his belt before crossing the threshold. He slammed the door closed and latched it and let his trousers drop to his ankles even as he spun about.
Finally, relief.
Gillette had never needed an outhouse so urgently before. He heaved a long, gratifying sigh claiming a small victory over the sickness that had been plaguing his stomach for the past week. It had taken three years to build his current social standing and he refused to lose it all by humiliating himself before the superficial and unforgetting eyes of the Charlotte elite, to whom image was everything.
He snorted, thinking, 'the public eye, bah, such a fickle thing. People are always different behind closed doors, where they are authentic and true, yet that isn't the persona by which one is judged.'
He groaned when another wave of sickness left his body, then sighed with contentment. Even if this wasn't his idea of a pleasant start to his evening, Gillette did enjoy the peace and solitude he found inside the outhouse walls. He plunked an elbow on his knee and rested his chin in his palm, puffing his cheeks with air, and began to wonder what his wife had the cook prepare for dinner when a loud knock came at the door.
"One moment," he answered dully, subdued in his response as more knots released in his stomach.
Two knocks.
Three knocks.
Gillette huffed, growing quite annoyed. "One. Moment. Please."
His tormentor resumed his knocks, this time in an upbeat rendition of Rule Britannia, circling the outhouse as he did. Anger flushed Gillette's face. He tracked the tormentor's body as it blocked out the slivers of dim light that filtered through the thin spaces between the outhouse's wooden slat facade.
He gritted his teeth and addressed the tormentor irritably. "If you could be so kind as to adopt the common decency to use proper patience and wait your turn to-"
Gillette would have continued his tirade, but was silenced when the figure suddenly stopped and deliberately cocked a pistol just beyond the door.
Jack heard frantic shuffling of feet and trousers from inside the outhouse.
He rapped the door with the butt of his flintlock. "Relax, relax. Jus' ...take a load off."
The shuffling stopped as Gillette stiffened in his seat and presented his hands before his chest in surrender. Feeling foolish, he let his hands slap against his bare thighs knowing the other man outside could not see them.
"Splendid evenin', don't you agree, Andrew Gillette?" Jack spoke the usually pleasant greeting sourly.
Gillette's eyes went wide at the mention of his name by the mysterious tormentor. "Yes, splendid," he answered with a quiver.
"T'would be a splendid evenin' buoyant. I must admit to being slightly puzzled at why I've come to find such an errant, career-minded and underhandedly ambitious Naval man land-locked."
"I've not been with the Navy since surviving the hurricane whilst under the command of Commodore Norrington."
"The low wages and high death rate didn't make it worthwhile?"
"I am a Trade Official now, working under Governor James Glen, appointed by the Board of Trade and our blessed England," Gillette retorted stiffly.
"Trade Official, ay? Which means what, exactly? No real authority yet a favorable seat at all the great parties."
Defensive, Gillette responded, "I am responsible for overseeing taxation and collection of levies of all trade and commerce imported into Charleston Port."
"Yer a very popular man then," Jack spat sarcastically. He didn't think it was possible, but he suddenly cared for Gillette a great deal less. It was widely acknowledged and scorned rumor that many of the overseas appointed officials accepted bribes and inflated taxes of the people they represented to pad their own pockets.
"Who is speaking?" Gillette demanded.
"Don't r'member me voice, do you? Pity. 'Never forgot yours," Jack said, feigning hurt. His tone then lowered and he continued venomously, "I also never forgot that is was you who held the first torch to me Wench."
"I-I-I never burned a woman," Gillette stuttered, appalled and disgusted by the tormentor's implication.
Jack's voice velvetted to a deep rumble as he stopped pacing and spoke very directly through the door's wooden slats. "Not woman wench. Ship wench."
No sound came from the outhouse.
Jack straightened and rolled his eyes, realizing that the man inside was not catching on. "The Wicked Wench," he clarified flatly, beginning to circle the outhouse's perimeter again.
Jack couldn't help but smirk to himself and only barely resisted the impulse to rub his hands together in delight. It was utterly satisfying to have caught Gillette with his pants down, and quite literally at that. He had to steel himself against the urge to empty his pistol into the outhouse and fatally pockmark the man inside, his former first mate, who was responsible for reporting his decision to free the slaves aboard the Wench back to Cutler Beckett. The betrayal that forever branded him a pirate.
After a pause, Gillette finally peeped, "Mr. Sparrow?"
"Captain. Captain Sparrow," Jack said indignantly, thumping the outhouse soundly with his fist.
Gillette jumped in his seat with a sharp gasp; his shaking arms reflexively up-stretched high over his head in surrender. He too remembered that day, and more specifically, he remembered the haunting, quiescent anger that burned in his former captain's eyes when he was shackled by his own crew and lead away for persecution. It had bewildered Gillette how a man demonstrating such promise would throw away his career by doing something so idiotic as to release an entire hold of Company owned cargo without order or sensible reason. It was his obligation and duty to report his wayward captain to their superiors. In his opinion, sole culpability for the burning of the Wicked Wench lay wholly with Jack's malfeasance.
More than a decade had passed before their paths crossed again aboard the Dauntless in Port Royal Harbor. At first, Gillette had not recognized the long-maned man aiming a pistol at his face, until he'd cast that same haunting glare upon him. Why the pirate didn't shoot him where he stood, trembling and frightened, much like he was now, Gillette could never fathom. Recalling those past events now and imagining the pirate currently wearing the same looming glare, caused Gillette to examine his current predicament. He was unarmed, without reinforcements or escape, and, most distressing, completely at the pirate's mercy. Gillette swallowed hard, loud enough that Jack could hear it, and his stomach cramped with fear instead of sickness. Apparently, even his bowels were afraid as they clamped tighter than a lock on a chastity belt.
Jack boasted a self-assured grin as he spoke that was clearly evident to Gillette through his confident tone. "Now that we have been reacquainted and since you are just sittin' there, pay attention. I suggest that you listen to and concur with a little proposition of mine. Tell me what I want to know and I'll leave," he paused and then, for nothing more than effect and his own amusement, added with very deliberate hostility, "you unharmed."
"Alright," Gillette croaked in a small, defeated voice, wrapping his arms around himself.
"I was directed to your door by one spirited individual who believes you can lend me information on a commissioned second man, who appears to have been possibly involved with a departed third, who had an unfortunate fatal run in with a unknown fourth party.
"And also, I believe what you may have to say might eliminate or confirm the possibility of the second and fourth man being one in the same for that is certainly not out of the question."
Jack paused to let Gillette catch up. It may not have been more than the feelings of resentment and bitterness reeling their heads, but Jack couldn't help but think that if it weren't for the Gillette being so obnoxious, he'd have no personality at all.
"Even with all that being put forth, my insistent curiosity begs the question: Why would you be in his acquaintance, when a typical man of your political station would consider affiliation with a liberal, degenerate, smugglin' priest a compromising fallacy?"
After hearing that description, Gillette knew in an instant that Jack was referring to Father Seamus McNamara. "That is none of your business!" he snapped in a high-pitched squawk.
"Why would said priest, who so commonly barters his loyalties for personal gain ... heh, much like yerself, actually... see fit to keep buttoned up over this particular association? What aid do you provide each other?"
Gillette chewed anxiously on his bottom lip as, unseen to him, Jack impatiently waved his hand silently imploring him to continue.
"I not dare say," Gillette said, nervously drumming his fingers on his bare knees.
"Oh, but do dare. For daring not will provoke the daring of a certain deleterious nature on my part to find other means of...acquiring... the information from you."
Inside the outhouse, Gillette clenched his jaw and raised his chin in unseen defiance.
"Come now, Lieutenant," Jack cajoled at Gillette's lack of response. "Yeh've never hesitated to promote your own station by condemning another. Consider this a life altering decision." Jack rapped the flintlock against the outhouse door once again to emphasize the point to Gillette that he was trapped.
The sound of metal on wood loosened Gillette's tongue even if his attitude remained taciturn. "The Father and I... well, you see we, ah," he began in a strangled voice, "he found me in a compromising situation which he's managed to exploit for a few years now."
Jack's brow met his hat brim. "Do tell, what would that be?"
"It's a personal matter!" Gillette squawked.
Jack's face quirked with a scandalous realization. He chuckled. "Who was she?"
Gillette felt his bottom lip flutter against his teeth. His answer came from a quiet and ashamed voice. "She was Mr. Glen's wife."
"Governor Glen," Jack corrected. "And to keep the good Father quiet?"
"For his confidentiality, I divert a shipment of rice to his rebel mission and McNamara is able to barter in Charleston without penalty."
Jack now knew Father McNamara's hesitation in revealing Gillette's name. In order to help the people he cared about, Seamus had to smuggle within the very organization that had caused their distress. It was very likely that many would not give a moment's thought into how Seamus acquired the food and clothing he supplied them, but if they did, and found out he was moving merchandise within a Company controlled port and profiting from it, they'd either go without help and starve or take matters into their own hands, fail and get arrested, and then hung simply out of spite for feeling betrayed by the Samaritan priest. It was a risky gamble for Seamus, but one Jack could understand and even support.
Now seeing that the secrets of both McNamara and Gillette had been revealed to him by the other man, Jack feared that they might act out against each other. All that mattered to Jack was that harm would not befall innocent people in event of any repercussion. H, he hoped he could smooth things over with Gillette enough that he'd continue to look the other way and allow Seamus to fence his illegal goods in Charleston.
"The first man has been addressed, so let us commence discussion of the second, a commanding officer under the name of Greitzer. What makes this man significant?" he asked.
Gillette sneered. "Well, for one, if you have a problem with pirates, and want it eliminated, you contact Greitzer."
"Ah, finally, some progress."
Gillette was perplexed by Jack's optimism, his head tipped to one side in confusion.
"Tell me of Greitzer. Everything. From details of his command and location, to his personal grooming habits, I want all of it."
Gillette held his head in his hands, fretting what would befall him if anyone ever found out that he aided the pirate with information, even if it was by extortion, and felt certain he would hang and die as a traitor. A truly inappropriate end to his intermittently lustrous career.
"R'member... you're at gunpoint, Lieutenant." Jack hissed, and Gillette concluded that the pirate's potential wrath was far more dangerous than anything the Navy or the Company could ever be to him.
Gillette sighed heavily and massaged his throbbing temples as he talked in a hushed voice. "Greitzer is a strategist, one of the many brilliant minds behind the stride against piracy. The well-equipped fleet of Naval and requisitioned Company ships undisputed control of the seas ensure the Company's hold on global trade."
Jack's nose twitched at Gillette's asinine emphasis on undisputed. The man was bloody obnoxious.
"Building an insurgence of this magnitude was no hard feat after the sinking of the H.M.S. Endeavor and murder of Lord Beckett," Gillette continued. "That was a sizable blemish to the reputations of both the Navy and East India Company and, well, to be quite frank, really pissed off the Crown." He paused, then snipped, "I'd ask you to pardon my vulgarity, pirate, but a reprobate such as yourself would not know courtesy if it jumped up and bit you on the arse."
Jack rolled his eyes. "Such infallible logic you have there. Do go on."
As Gillette went into details over the Royal mandated increase of Naval presence in the Caribbean and of Greitzer's promotions, Jack fished inside his damp coat and found the key he'd lifted from Gillette's pocket when they meet so abruptly outside of his office. He turned it over in his hand before dropping it in his pocket. It could prove useful in the future. The real prize he'd stolen from the office was Gillette's ledger book with numerous documents stuffed between its bindings.
Balancing the ledger in one hand, he used the mouth of his pistol to flip through the pages all while circling outhouse. After the first set of pages, Jack glanced up at the outhouse and smirked to himself as he wondered just how long it would take Gillette to find the dead fish he'd hidden deep inside his desk. Returning his focus to the ledger, Jack found that not only was Gillette's assiduous but unkempt documentation very informative, but the collection of pages collaborated with what the official had been saying, effectively confirming that Gillette was telling the truth. That surprised Jack. He'd not expected the man to be so guileless. Perhaps Gillette had more of a conscience or backbone then Jack originally gave him credit for, or it was as simple as Gillette being too cowardly to lie. Either way, Jack was getting what he needed from the loose-lipped official.
Among the stolen papers were acquisition reports, collection records, and complaints placed by merchants ranging from issues with the Company itself to incidents with pirates, one of which was a formal request to move against the Black Pearl that had been submitted by Gillette himself. Jack beamed with pride seeing that his Pearl was not letting her reputation for to waste, even if she was under the command of Barbossa.
Jack listened quietly and intently, absorbing everything Gillette had to say, until his eyes fell upon something that made him stagger back a step. At the bottom of one of the papers, written on Company parchment, was the signature of Commodore David Greitzer.
A pang of undefinable indefinable emotion thundered in his chest at the site of the name. For several beats, it felt as if the world stopped as Jack pressed his flintlock down upon the signature and ran the muzzle along each letter, smudging the ink and searing it into his memory.
He would have remained entranced for longer if not for Gillette's next question.
"What of the third man?"
Jack jumped slightly. "Eh?"
"The third man? You obviously know the names of the first and second and possibly the fourth. So, who is this third man?"
Jack paled, then burned with anger as he remembered the preamble of his interrogation -a departed third. He became irrationally enraged that Gillette would even consider asking about the fallen Keeper.
He answered Gillette in an unsteady rasp. "He is of no consequence to you."
Jack paced a full circle around the outhouse, smoldering and fermenting. He skimmed over the pages that followed the document Greitzer had signed, but saw no further correspondence baring bearing his name. When he felt his anger reside enough for his control to return, he asked coolly, "Where does the reputable Commodore make berth?"
As Gillette went in to depth on Greitzer's Port Royal based command, Jack heard movement behind him. Glancing over his shoulder he saw two young women in maid's uniforms watching him warily. He turned and casually leaned with his back against the outhouse door, keeping the pistol concealed under his arm and still pointed at his captive, and with exaggerated facial expressions and nods, acted as if he was confirming what was written in the ledger for the man who talking inside.
Jack continued the charade for a few seconds before glancing up and pretending he had just noticed the two women were still in the courtyard. He presented his most charming smile, but despite his best efforts to appear unpretentious, they continued to scrutinize the stranger even as they entered an adjacent house. Jack determined that his time interrogating Gillette privately was nearing its end, as it would be mere moments before the suspicious maids alerted an audience.
Moving the conversation forward, Jack asked, "In similar nature as your clandestine arrangement with McNamara, would the commodore work in secret with a pirate to further his own gains?"
Gillette scoffed. "That is a slanderous and erroneous defamation! Commodore Greitzer is a decorated, exemplary officer of the Navy and loyal supporter of the East India Company. His accelerated rate of promotion is based on his dedication to ridding the seas of the vermin with which you have cast your lot." Gillette craned his neck and added arrogantly, "He is an avid pirate hunter, Mr. Sparrow. His fleet is swift, undaunted, and highly successful." He paused, then concluded caustically, "his only association with a pirate would be the ordering of its hanging."
Unfazed by the other man's threat, Jack uncocked his pistol, and returned it to his belt, and tucked the ledger inside his coat. "I'm havin' a thought, Lieutenant," he started, with exaggerated pleasantness. "Since you have been so helpful thus far, you can continue by informing Commodore Greitzer that Captain Jack Sparrow shall be having a word with him. If you can manage that, I give you me word to forget your dalliance with ol' what's-her-face and you and Seamus may continue on unchanged."
Gillette's brows met his wig. "Just how do you plan to live through that? To simply stroll up and meet with one of the most notorious pirate hunters in these waters. Idiot. You'll never make it out alive."
Jack grinned wolfishly, and leaned so his mouth was nearly brushing the wooden outhouse door. He answered Gillette's question with purpose. "Son, I'm Captain Jack Sparrow. Savvy?"
The reference to when the pirate spoke the same words when taking Dauntless from him years ago was not lost on Gillette and the Lieutenant Governor became incensed.
"You have nowhere to run, Sparrow! I shall track you down to all four points of the compass and see your neck properly fitted for a noose, one from which you will not escape!"
"There are thirty two points on a compass actually, so ya better get a good night's sleep before yeh get started," Jack said, casting the raving man a lopsided salute before disappearing into darkness.
"The rag-tag remnants of your pitiful buccaneer fleet will swing next to you on the gallows and without so much as a song to sing!" Unaware of Jack's departure, Gillette continued to shout irrationally.
When the pirate did not retort, Gillette's anger flared hotter. He leapt to his feet and lunged through the door still cursing the absent pirate at the top of his lungs. Failing to pull up his trousers before doing so, he promptly found the ground rising rapidly to meet his falling face upon clearing the outhouse door.
Hitting the ground with such force had knocked Gillette's wind from both his conniption and his lungs. He coughed and groaned, wondering how his day could possibly get any worse.
"Having trouble with our trousers are we, Lieutenant Governor?" came a mocking, feminine voice.
Suddenly, Gillette wished that the taunt had come from the pirate and not who he feared to be now in the courtyard. Gillette cringed and swallowed hard. He lifted his head enough to see Mrs. Blythe Canard, who was the water wheel of Charleston's rumor mill, standing not far from him with her two giggling maids.
Red faced, Gillette scurried to his feet. His jaw hang limp from its hinges as he was left dumb and disoriented from embarrassment.
Mrs. Canard, still waiting for some sort of explanation, looked the dusty man up and down, her cynical eyes hesitating below Gillette's waist.
"Perhaps just a bit?" Mrs. Canard pressed, causing her maids to erupt into opened-mouth laughter.
Mortified, Gillette cupped the little dignity he had left and cowed off to the nearest door with his trousers still circling his ankles.
Again, many thanks to Calathiel of Mirkwood for beta-ing this for me.
Historical notes:
Charleston, South Carolina, became the leading port and trading center of the southern colonies. Lumber, tar and resin from the longleaf pine provided some of the best shipbuilding materials in the world. North and South Carolina also produced and exported rice and indigo.
James Glen was appointed Governor of South Carolina by the Board of Trade in 1738 but did not arrive until 1743. (Note that PotC is a fictional universe, which, according to its writers, is set in a floating time period spanning thirty years around 1720. My story takes place a few years after the Battle of the Maelstrom)
The Board of Trade was an English governmental advisory body established by King William III in May 1696 to replace the Lords of Trade in the supervision of colonial affairs. The board was to examine colonial legislation and to recommend disallowance of those laws that conflicted with imperial trade policies, to nominate governors and other high officials for the colonies and to write the instructions for appointed governors, to recommend laws affecting the colonies, and to hear and to make reports on complaints from the colonies regarding imperial administration.