Note: This scene is the first part of a trilogy of vignettes that take place on the rum-runner's island during the honeymoon. These chapters are not an official part of the story, so if you prefer to read it without these chapters, please do. I never intended to insert them as part of the story, so I did not take any special pains to keep the plotting in them consistent. I wrote them mainly meant as an experiment, an exploration of the first, early days of a marriage, when new spouses often have clashing expectations, and end up learning some surprising things about someone they thought they knew pretty well already!
These three chapters deal with adult themes. Please show good judgment over whether to read them or not. They mention the physical aspect of marriage a little more openly than the "wedding night" chapter. I've recently had someone point out that some readers may wish to avoid reading such things, so even though it's still not very graphic, I am making a greater effort to label them beforehand.
A special note to my younger readers and the more sensitive ones: please make a responsible choice about whether or not to read these chapters. For the young ones, and you know who you are, remember that it's more mature to make wise decisions about one's reading material than it is to push the limits and read things before you're really ready to. If you want to wait, it'll probably still be here when you're older! (And if not, then shoot me an email and I'll send 'em to ya.)
The night that Elizabeth and Jack got dropped off on the tiny island, they were preoccupied with the aforementioned bonfires and seductions in the sand. The morning, however, Elizabeth unpacked the extra parcel of things they had brought from the ship. Gibbs had simply dropped it into the longboat the previous evening with no comment but a smile.
"Jack, did you see these?" she asked. "They're from your father. A wedding present, presumably." She held up the pair of gorgeous, leather-bound journals with a card from Teague tucked into one of them.
Jack came over to see, and let out a long whistle. "Nice!" He picked up one of them and flipped through it. Thick, smooth paper securely sewn to the leather binding, and gilt edges. "This'll be my new log book for when we start working for the governor," he announced. "'Twouldn't do to have his work written in the same book as all that piracy beforehand. Especially that last ship we took! De Vrees' ship, with all the lace, only a few hours out of Port Royale!"
He lifted the book to his nose and inhaled. "Nothing like the smell of a fresh log book," he said with satisfaction.
Elizabeth smiled at Jack's expression of enjoyment over a new book to write in. Sometimes he didn't quite succeed in hiding his vast intelligence, no matter how hard he tried to. She held up the other blank book. "I'd like to use one of them for a personal journal, if you don't mind. Aunt Agatha suggested we write down a factual account of all our supernatural adventures so far. You know, for posterity. Or for Jacob, at the very least!"
Jack waved his acquiescence. "'Course, love. Which one d'ye want?"
"I'll have the brown one. You can take the black one, to match the Black Pearl."
"Might have known you'd insist they match," he teased, switching books with her. He hadn't known how compulsive she was until she started sailing with him.
"Oh, shut it," she grumbled, pushing him.
He hauled her in close for a kiss, laughing, and then straightened up again. "Think I'll go see if I can find us some lunch," he said. "'M a bit peckish. You?"
Elizabeth shook her head. "You know, I saw a fallen tree with a big stone next to it, over there on the other side of the island. I'll bet I can make it into an acceptable writing desk, especially since Teague also sent along some ink and a few quills. I think I'm going to get started on the writing now. D'you mind?"
"Have at it, darling. Show it to me later, eh?"
"I will, and perhaps you'll be adding to it." She smiled. "I may be a while, though."
"I'll be here," Jack quipped, looking around the tiny, empty island. Where else would he go?
She smiled and picked up the quills and ink, and headed over to the other side of the island. Jack relaxed in the shade for a while and ate some of the bread and cheese they had brought with them, and then went fishing for a couple of hours. Pleased with his catch, he cleaned the fish and set it out on their "cooking stone" near the fire ring.
Elizabeth still wasn't back.
Jack didn't want to interrupt her, as she'd wanted to be left alone to write, but all the same he was getting antsy. He didn't worry about her safety; the island was too small for her to get into any trouble. But all the same, he was going to need her back pretty soon.
He lay down and tried to sleep, but his eyes kept popping open again after a few seconds. He jumped up and began pacing the beach. He couldn't run, like he had in the past, because Elizabeth would be sure to see him and ask what he was running from. He tried to keep moving purposefully, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Maybe if he could just see her, they would stay away? If she took too much longer, they'd be here—oh.
Too late.
They were here.
Jack groaned and collapsed on the ground. "Bugger!" he muttered as he looked up to see… himself.
Captain Jack Sparrow stood there with his arms folded, leaning against a tree. He was dressed in full regalia with coat, sash, pistols, sword, and tricorne hat—Jack noted clinically that it was his old one that he'd lost in London, not the new one that Elizabeth had given him in Shipwreck—with his long hair beaded and dreadlocked, and his long beard braided with Tia Dalma's beads in it. "What's the matter, Jackie?" he taunted.
"What do you want with me?" Jack asked him.
"What happened to you, Jackie? You've sold out! Hardly worth calling 'pirate' anymore. Oh, that's right. You're not a pirate anymore, are you?" Contempt dripped from the Captain's tone. "You've gone all respectable," he mocked.
"Well, I had to, didn't I?" Jack protested. "I've a family to think of now!"
"Family!" the Captain scoffed. "Jackie, you're too smart for that. You let some woman talk you into signing your life away for the sake of a pretty face and a few curves! Precious few curves," he added, grimacing in Jack's direction. "Honestly, Jackie, if you did have to get yerself shackled, ye could have done better than that. Woman looks like a stick!"
"I like the way she looks!" Jack defended hotly. "I think she's beautiful. I love her, in fact!"
The Captain clucked his tongue at Jack. "You love her. The woman who fed you to the kraken. You love the woman who chose the whelp over you. You'll be taking the whelp's leavings, have you thought of that?"
"It's not like they had much time together," Jack explained. "Anyway, like I told the whelp already—he may have had her once, but I'm going to have her forever!"
"Forever is a long time to be tied down to the same woman, Jackie," the Captain put on a mockingly sympathetic expression. "Especially one that's shaped like a pole, when there are so many more curvier ones out there. She only wanted a father for her bastard anyway. She doesn't really love you!"
"She does!" Jack cried. "She told me she does. She tells me all the time!"
"Aye, and women never lie, do they?" the Captain sneered.
"This one doesn't," came the voice of a new Jack. This one was completely clean-shaven, with short hair and nary a hint of kohl around his eyes. He wore an earnest expression as he sat cross-legged in the sand a few feet away from Jack.
"This woman doesn't tell lies, and she didn't trick you into anything. I agree you shouldn't have married her, but it's not because you're too good for her. It's because she's too good for you! You've taken an angel of a lady and dragged her down into your pirate filth. Now, really, Jack—if you truly loved her, you'd have left her alone! She could have done so much better than you."
"Well, that's true," Jack admitted.
"Poppycock!" exclaimed the Captain. "It's her that isn't' good enough for us!"
"Don't listen to him, Jack" the earnest Jack said, creeping closer. "You know the truth. Miss Swann was a lady, a governor's daughter, and you made her into a pirate. You made her into the king of the pirates, even! You sailed away and left her on that hillside to fend for herself while you went chasing off after the Fountain of Youth with another woman!"
"I was press-ganged!" Jack cried.
Earnest Jack went on relentlessly. "You still abandoned her for over a year! Left her to have her baby all alone, this woman you claim to love. You're the reason Angelica went after her in the first place. And speaking of other women, how many have there been, Jack? Hmm? Do you even know? Does Miss Swann know that you've been using whore's tricks to pleasure her with?"
"Whore's tricks!" the Captain snickered derisively. "How appropriate for her!"
"Shut up!" Jack yelled at him. He looked back at Earnest Jack. "She already knows about my past. Why would she care? At least I've been pleasing her! Which is more than the whelp did."
"Aye, but in the back of her mind you know she's always wondering how many other women you've done this with. Will hadn't shagged anyone else before her, and she knew it. She didn't either, except for her lawful husband. She came to ye pure, Jack, and what have you offered her in return? A scarred, half-blooded, aging body, the best of which has already been given and used up by whores the world over. She'll be lucky if you don't give her the pox! Didn't get much of a bargain with you, did she, Jack?"
"I can't help that! I've been a pirate me whole life. Swiving whores is what we do when we make port."
"Hear, hear!" chimed in Captain Jack Sparrow with a leer.*
Jack's voice went a little higher as he defended himself. "I didn't know I was going to marry a genuine lady, now, did I? I don't have that many scars, and my mum was beautiful. And I'm not that old. And I don't have the pox!"
"It's a miracle if ye don't. Like I said, ye really shouldn't have married her. You ought to release her, you know. This could all be hushed up and she could be free to make a real marriage, Jack."
"She did make a real marriage," Jack said quietly. "Everything vowed, signed, and witnessed properly. There's no getting out of it now, for either of us, so you can both just BUGGER OFF!" He shouted the last two words.
There was a pause, and then, "There's still one way," said Earnest Jack.
"Aye," agreed the Captain, with an evil grin. "There is."
"If you killed yourself, Elizabeth would be free, and she could find someone decent to wed next time." Earnest Jack made it sound so reasonable.
"What?" Jack and the Captain exclaimed together.
The Captain continued. "Don't be daft. If he kills her, then he'd be free to not marry again. He could return to piracy and a life of complete freedom!"
"And loneliness," Earnest Jack pointed out.
"Eh?" Jack asked.
"Ah, now, when has our Jackie ever been lonely?" the Captain laughed. "There's always some pleasurable company to be had for the right coin. And he has his mates and his crew to boot!"
"Aye!" Jack agreed.
Earnest Jack ignored him. He stood up and faced the Captain, with Jack still sitting on the ground like a child looking up at them both.
Earnest Jack said, "He avoids his 'mates' 'cause he owes 'em all money. His crew and his pleasurable company, he has to pay to stay with him. There's not one single soul who voluntarily chooses to associate with him without he pays 'em for it!"
"No one else associates with us because no one else is good enough for us! We don't need anyone else! We're Captain Jack Sparrow!" the Captain boasted.
Earnest Jack shook his head sadly and gestured toward Jack, sitting alone on the sand. "Not one single person in the world that he can trust, or even call 'friend.' If that's not loneliness, I don't know what is."
As the Captain started arguing with Earnest Jack, Jack covered his ears. "Not listening," he muttered. "Not listening. Not listening."
The arguing got louder, with both doppelgangers shaking fingers in each other's faces, and Jack drew up his knees in a protective pose. He rested his forehead on his knees, and clasped his hands over his head. He started rocking back and forth on the ground. "Not listening, not listening, not listening," he chanted to himself.
Then something Earnest Jack had said a moment ago suddenly broke into Jack's conscious mind. "No," Jack said, looking up at them suddenly. "You're wrong. You're wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong!"
"What are we wrong about, Jackie?" the Captain asked.
Jack pointed his finger up at him. "You're wrong that we don't need anyone else," he said. He pointed up at Earnest Jack next. "And you're wrong that there's no one I can trust or call 'friend.' Wrong, wrong, wrong, the both o' ye, and I'm not listenin'!"
"Who do you need?" the Captain asked.
Earnest Jack spoke simultaneously, "Who can you trust and call friend?"
Jack chose to answer both questions at once, by yelling as loud as he could. "ELIZABETH! Elizabeth! Elizabeth, where are you? ELIZABETH!"
* Note: Another error I see all the time is when someone agrees with someone else, the author will write, "Here, here!" rather than "Hear, hear." It's wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. "Here, here" means "right here, at this very location. "Hear, hear" means "Listen to him; he's right; I agree with him." When you agree with someone and want others to listen to him too, why would you talk about his physical location? You wouldn't. You'd say, "Hear, hear!" I just know that none of my cherished readers would ever make that mistake, but I thought I'd point it out just in case.